Starting your own business can have a lot of upsides! You have the ability to live out your passions and interests, while being independent and self-made. Contrary to all that, there are also many downsides that as a new entrepreneur you may not be prepared for. The list can go on. But for now we are going to provide you with a few tips on how to cut costs and increase your potential profit margins when starting your own business.

1. Don’t Pay For A Business Account

When my business partner and I initially began our entrepreneurial journey at The Clarendon Trading Co. we had a fairly unrealistic understanding of what it meant to be a business partner. We believed that in order to run a business you had to have the best, most professional (even if its just professional looking) products and services to run a successful business. We quickly realized that just because a product is good, it doesn’t mean that it’s a necessitly to your business at least not in the beginning stages.

When we first opened up our business, we believed that the best thing for us to do was to open up a business account. This account offered us 25 transactions for $30 a month. This account as professional as it was, with personalized cheque books, the separate line up at the bank ect, it simply did not work for us. At the time we were a start up! So $30 dollars a month is a lot for a business to pay when we were generating zero sales or revenue at that point.  Over the year we were spending $360 alone on one bank account that really wasn’t helping us when we weighted the pros and cons. Immediately after running the numbers we cancelled the account and made one of the smartest decisions for our company. We opened a joint account that had no monthly fees and unlimited transactions. Of course it doesn’t have the same “prestige” as a Business bank account does, but it was the appropriate move for us and enabled us to put the extra saving into other avenues. And in reality that perception of “prestige” in reference to a bank account doesn’t really matters, what matters is how much you have in it!

2. Automation Is Not Your Friend 

Technology has the ability to speed things up and ultimately make any process easier.  However, it also has the potential to burn a hole in your wallet. Our business was doing great in regards to social media content. So we decided to get a super-efficient automation account that ran us about $23 a month so about $276 a year.

What we did not expect was the decline in engagement with our audience, due to a lack of personal engagement, and the random glitches that would occur. After reviewing the necessity of these apps we realized it wasn’t saving us as much time as we liked and changed how we engaged with our audience. Ultimately we cancelled the account, saved money, and rebuilt the relationship with our community.

3. Be Your Own Picasso

As I previously stated technology has the ability to speed things us especially when you want something done on your time. Making a website can be quite costly and time consuming particularly when we you have a graphic designer doing all the work. Getting a website put together can easily run you from $500 -$2000 (this is just a modest number).

If we would of known earlier, we would have taken the time to educate ourselves with FREE YouTube videos, or signing up to a website like www.wix.com that essentially do all the work for you at a fraction of the price and saves you time.

Overall when starting your business always try to find ways to reduce cost by doing some research, you’ll be surprised how much money and time goes into the whole process. After we made all those changes we had a surplus of approximately $1110, which enabled us to allocate the money into other avenues of the business. Don’t forget some of the best companies make money by saving money!