There are only two ways a home based business can increase it’s bottom line: increase it’s the sales or decrease the expenses.  Too often, the business owner is focused only on increasing sales.

Hey, it’s much more exciting to get a new customer or have an existing customer buy more, than to spend time going over your bills to see what you can cut.  I get it.

But, as hard as we work to get more business, it’s silly to see that money wasted on costs.

It’s true that most of us are cautious when we first incur an ongoing expense.  We look for the best possible price before buying.  The problem is that over time, it’s easy to ignore watching to make sure the costs are still the best available.

Here’s a real life example:  this past year we go a slight increase in our auto insurance.  We’d been with the same broker for many years and never questioned the bill.  This time we decided to check around.

What did we find?  Yup, you guessed.  We found better coverage for less.  Lots less.  So much that we decided to shop our homeowner’s policy too.  (We had that coverage with the same agent that had our car.)

By now, you’re probably not surprised to learn that we were paying too much there too.  Combined, we saved over $1,000 per year and had better coverage.

Here’s the rule:  to maximize the profits in your home based business, you need to review your costs at least once a year.  That doesn’t mean you need to leave your current supplier.  But you do need to go through the conscientious review you did when you first bought the product or service.  And no, the lowest price is not always the best, but you need to be able to make an informed choice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Written by Philip Cohen