Learning how to save money as a business owner can sometimes mean the difference between the success or failure of your business.
As a business owner, it’s your job to make sure that the business continues to bring in profit, and the more the merrier which is why we should aim to save where appropriate.
In this article, we’ll learn how we can save money as business owners.
Table of Contents
1. Do all the graphic design yourself
A lot of business owners hire graphic designers to create graphics for their companies. The cost can easily add up.
Depending on your budget, you may want to consider doing all the graphic design yourself.
Even if you can comfortably afford a graphic designer, you may realize that you don’t need one as you can do the design yourself for free.
Canva is a free graphic design tool you can use to create simple, beautiful, modern graphics that you can share on social media, print out as posters, or even email to your subscribers.
There are lots of templates available on Canva to edit for free so you don’t have to worry about not being a graphic designer.
2. Don’t hire a social media manager
Social media managers sometimes charge hundreds if not thousands for a few posts per month.
You can save a lot of money by doing all the graphic design and sharing yourself.
Unless your business is bringing in significant profit, don’t hire a social media manager.
There are lots of videos on YouTube where you can learn how you can grow your following effectively.
You don’t need to hire somebody to do it for you.
It really just comes down to high-quality posts, consistency, and a niche that has seen previous success.
You can definitely save a lot of money by being your own social media manager.
3. Don’t pay for the best equipment
An acquaintance of mine failed his first business because he spent all his investor’s money on buying the best equipment before they even saw a penny from the business.
He would buy the latest Apple desktop computers for his employees, rent the best office space downtown, buy the highest quality chairs, and even their coffee was top-notch.
He ended up losing all his investors’ money.
When you just started, you want to make sure you don’t spend too much money on getting the supplies and the equipment.
It’s okay to buy supplies second-hand or buy from a less notable brand if it means you can save money.
4. Don’t bulk buy anything in the beginning
You may want to rethink bulk buying even if you can save money per unit. At the beginning stages of your company, you really don’t know if things are going to work out so you’ll want to avoid buying a bunch of supplies that you may not use.
This means you may want to test the water first. Just order a little bit of the supplies in the beginning. No need to bulk buy.
Once you realized people are willing to purchase your product/service and everything is running smoothly, that’s when you can start to think about bulk buying.
5. Shop around for the best deal
You want to shop around for the best deal especially if you’re buying a lot of it.
Are you buying chairs for your business? Then you’ll want to make sure you pick a chair that is universally loved and it’s the absolute best deal you can find.
This goes for insurance, logo stickers, office space, warehouse location, equipment, etc.
6. Find a mentor
A mentor may help you save a lot of money as they have been there before so they know what costs should be could cut and what shouldn’t be cut.
Find a mentor to help guide you in the right direction. They can’t help you make all the decisions but they do have valuable insights to give.
The best way to find a mentor is to visit conferences or events for entrepreneurs. You may find someone in your industry and make sure to connect with them. Add them on LinkedIn, ask for their number, etc.
Another way to find a mentor is to go to the lobbies of expensive hotels, they typically have high-end clients who make millions per year and are successful in their businesses.
Don’t be afraid to strike up a conversation with them, ask them what they do, ask them how they make their money, ask them about their industry, and tell them about your business and what your future direction is.
They may give you some pointers on how to run your business more efficiently.
7. Don’t hire unnecessary employees
Another way businesses lose money is by hiring unnecessary employees.
Do you really need a receptionist, graphic designer, or social media manager?
Sure, they may be able to do their jobs better than you but maybe it doesn’t matter in the grand vision of your business.
You can easily create all the graphics yourself and as long as it looks decent and gets the message across, it’ll still work.
Carefully access each role in your business and assess whether there is a need for each role.
Elon Musk famously fired his secretary because he realized there is no need for her when she took some time off from work.
If you don’t need them, you might as well save some money. But, please give them an appropriate amount of time so they can attempt to find another job before they lose their jobs.
Elon Musk gave his secretary some company stocks and a year’s worth of salary before letting her go.
8. Hire a tax professional to do your taxes
Tax professionals know the ins and out of taxes including how to help you save money on your business.
For instance, certain expenses can be written off as part of the cost of operating your business (even if you don’t need it to run your business) so your total taxable income would be lower thus bringing your total taxable income down.
When you do taxes yourself, you’re likely to miss some tax benefits. You may save more money when you hire a tax professional than by doing your own taxes.
9. Budget and document expenses
As a business owner, you’ll want to track your expenses and budget to make sure everything is running smoothly.
The last thing you want is to find out is that you’re running out of money because you weren’t documenting how much your business expenses were.
Revenue – Expenses = Profit
You’ll want to document all the money coming in and all the money coming out to know your true total profit.
Knowing how much you actually earn after deducting everything will tell you whether you need to increase the price or not.
You can hire an accountant to do this for you or you can do this yourself with software like QuickBooks.
10. Lease equipment
Depending on your business model, you may need certain equipment to operate.
Instead of buying all of your equipment, you may consider leasing them so you don’t have as high of a start-up cost or operating cost.
Say you run a lawn mowing business, you can start out leasing lawn mowers and once you have made enough money and gained enough clients to know this business is viable for you, you can then consider buying a lawn mower.
11. Have your employees work from home
During the pandemic, a lot of people were told to work from home to follow the social distancing measures.
What started as a temporary practice becomes a permanent one when employees perform more efficiently at work than in the office.
Many companies have accounted for a permanent work from home measure to retain their current employees and keep productivity high.
If you own a bakery, you obviously can’t allow all your employees to work from home.
But if your business model allows, you may want to consider a WFH opportunity for your employees.
Having a work-from-home practice can not only increase employee productivity, but you can also save money on renting the office space, and acquiring office supplies, plus you get to save time and money on the commute as well.
With fewer cars on the road, there’s also an environmental benefit.
All meetings can be done via Zoom and it can be a lot more efficient as well when you don’t have to scramble into the office quickly. All you have to do is to switch to a new tab when you’re ready for the meeting.
12. Hold off on your purchase from Alibaba
A lot of business owners source their equipment from Alibaba and they would buy in bulk for a cheaper per unit price.
However, you may want to consider buying domestically rather than through Alibaba, here’s why.
- Shipping can be expensive since it’s oversea (unless you live in China)
- Shipping can sometimes take 1–6 months
- The minimum order amount is typically high so you may have to pay more to access the supply
You may be able to buy from domestic markets such as Uline where the minimum order amount is less and the shipping is faster even if the per-unit price is higher. You do save more monthly expenses this way.
You can even source your material right from Amazon. Sure, the per-unit price is more expensive but if you’re new to your business, you’ll want to test the water first before spending thousands on a business that ultimately may not work out.
90% of businesses eventually fail so it’s not outside the possibility that your business may not do well. Instead of diving head first, go in cautious.
If you’re a business owner with an already well-established business, you may consider ordering from Alibaba but you may realize that it’s ultimately more efficient to order from domestic markets since the shipping is faster.
A bit higher per-unit cost may be justified if you can obtain the supply faster. You may still be saving money on monthly expenses since you aren’t ordering in as large of a quantity.
Final thought
What’s your thought on this? Do you have any strategies to help you save money as a business owner?
Tell me in the comment section below!
I hope you continuous success with your business. Running a business is hard. There is so much overhead and you need to keep track of it all.
You can only try your best and if you do fail, don’t be afraid to start another business. You’d be starting from experience the next time around.
For me, my favorite type of business is blogging since,
- The start-up cost is low compared to a traditional business (you can start blogging with less than $100 per year)
- There is little overhead aside from domain name, hosting, and mailing service provider
- Everything is done online so you can work anywhere in the world at any time (just schedule your post to go out at a specific time)
- You don’t handle any physical products (no need to order more supplies every month)
- Don’t need to handle shipping, returns, etc
- There is minimal social media advertising needed
- Your income is uncapped
If you want to make money blogging, read this blogging guide here.
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