Necessity and Invention: Saving Your Business Money During the Great Recession

Save money, stay in business…that seems to be the mantra of so many small business oriented websites these days. Everyone has a plan, be it with 10 or 101 ways, to save your business money. There are a lot of useful ideas out there that don’t involve spending a lot of money to save, or even make money in your business. I’ve included a few of the posts below, from the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, and the Times-Herald Record.

101 Ways to Save Money in Your Business

6 Ways For Small Business Owners to Save Money

10 Ways to Save Money

At Pathway Lending we’re not immune to the Great Recession. So we’ve undertaken a few money saving ideas that allow us to better focus on the needs of our clients and continue to deliver high levels of service. We’ve reduced what we consume and increased the impact of what we continue to use. Here’s a quick list of what we’ve done:

- Talked to our power distributor: TVA and its network of local power distributors offer free energy audits for your commercial facilities. The process provides your business with a comprehensive list of opportunities to reduce energy consumption and save money. Check out their website for a list of other commercial energy services: http://www.tva.gov/commercial/

- Reduced Paper: As a small business we used to do things the hard way, pushing lots of paper internally and sending everything in the mail to clients, investors, and colleagues. Recently, we’ve moved to low-cost, on-line systems for client management and marketing services. Low-cost systems like Salesforce.com and myEmma.com have had big impacts – they allow us to be more flexible, move quicker, and get information to the right people at the right time. Plus, it cuts out a lot of the printing, paper, and postage costs we used to have.

- Opened ourselves to suggestions: Opening the feedback loop, whether with potential customers, current clients, or investors is important to the success of any business. We’ve started using surveymonkey.com as a low-cost way of providing our audiences with an easy way to tell us if our products are hitting the mark.

- Network, network, network: Whether it’s the local Chamber, trade groups, or gatherings of like-minded individuals, we’ve taken advantage of many free opportunities to network and get the word out about our business. Happy hour events, speaker series, or other forums are a good way to give yourself a bit of free advertising and build a network of partners and advocates.

If necessity is the mother of invention, there is no better time than the present to start thinking creatively and streamline your business practices. There is plenty of information out there, it's up to you to make it happen.