Saving money in your business...

When I was with at&t (then SBC), the 90's were great years. We had I believe three stock splits in the decade.

Then came 2000 and 9/11 and the economy and budget controls. One I remember clearly was the decree to turn off you monitor at the end of the day when you went home.

This was a time with it was dejour to have your screen saver running so that you could show everyone your own identity. People had the line screen saver, pics of their kids in a slide show, aquariums, etc.

Well, there was some grumbling about "having to do this stupid chore". The company explained their position by saying one monitor makes no difference. But multiply that by 400,000 and we stand to save millions of dollars in energy bills every year.

Made sense.

Now, in a small business, you're lucky to have more than one monitor. :)

So you will have to look for other ways to save money.

Here are several ways I found during the past three months in dealing with my pending move...

1. Negotiate Everything - On my building sign, I had six bids. One company gave me a $9000 bid for the same sign that everyone else was bidding $4500 - $6000. The only difference is that his was LED rather than NEON. It will save energy and cost less to maintain. I dismissed it without a thought because it was double everyone else, regardless of being LED. This guy came back and asked if he could take another shot at it and incorporate a guitar element into the sign. He said that he had worked with the property management company several times and thought he could pull it off (they have a no-anything but letters clause in the lease). Long story short, they would not allow the guitar. But, to get my business we started negotiating again and I ended up getting the LED sign that he originally bid at $9000 for $4500 installed. To get there, I gave him my business for my other sign requirements (i.e. door lettering, street signage, etc.)
2. Do it yourself - I just don't get the construction business. I thought with the housing crunch and construction labor job losses that I could find some good deals on my construction costs. No way brother. Every bid was 40-50% higher than I anticipated. So to save money, I figured out what the contractor needed to do (framing/drywall/power) and what I could do myself (painting/covace/doors/etc). By breaking a sweat and calling in some favors from friends that had tools that I needed, I was able to save several thousands on the job. Look for things you can do yourself, rather than paying someone to do them. Learn how to design your own ad proof, wash your own windows, learn how to code/design your website rather than paying someone to do it. These are a few ways to do things yourself.
3. Ask for lower rates - my phone bill was not making me happy. Working at the company, I know that there is no difference between residential and business in how dial tone, DSL and side services like call waiting get to your location. Sure, they try to offer better service on the back end if you have trouble. However, things work so well that you rarely have to use the Business Support centers. When calling to move my service, I asked specifically if I was getting the best prices on each service I had. In the end, I dropped some services (because I don't use them) and on three services, actually got a better deal on the month to month rates. The bottom line is most companies will likely not give you a better rate, even if they're offering it, because you "seem to be fine" with the old rate by not questioning it. I ended up saving nearly $20 a month on my bills by asking for better prices.

So there you go, put a little work into finding ways to save your business money and you will find them!

Best of luck to you!

Staying busy is good...

We've had a lot of activity with our pending move into the new studio!

The contractors have nearly finished their work, with only the carpet left to do.

The sign company placed the door and window lettering and will put the building sign up this week.

I've ordered the new stuff for the studio (i.e. posters, furniture, basketball hoop, etc.).

And we have three days before our first night in the new location ... which will be Friday night.

Phew...

With all that, there is still a ton to do. And on top of it all, we're doing a Home School activity fair Thursday evening until 9:00 p.m.

This means that from 9:30 Thursday evening until whenever, we're going to be moving the last of our furniture and gear from the old studio to the next. Then, Friday morning, we'll be back up there bright and early to hang paintings, posters, set up rooms, set up the drums/PA/amps, install the basketball backboard and who knows what else. All to be ready for our open house starting at 6:00 p.m.

The point of this post is this...

Being busy for the right reasons is a great, great thing. Even though we have a tight deadline and a ton of work to do, we're excited about the move and are ready to start the next phase of our business in the new location.

When you're busy because the business is doing great, you hardly think about the work you do. Rather than looking at the workload as a big drag that never ends, you look at it as a "must do" list (rather than a "to do" list) that is required to take the business to the next level.

Besides, in the end, everyone would prefer to be busy rather than having nothing to do and starring at the phone all day hoping a customer will call.