5 Easy Ways to Reduce Company Expenses

5. Run folding to reduce your heating bill. Folding uses your CPU to help fold proteins. So keep your CPU and workspace nice and warm (no, it doesn’t hurt the CPU) and feel good about doing it.

4. Use the phone as much as possible. Gas prices are high, so why drive 45 minutes when you can simply teleconference?

3. Use fast computers (no, not to be able to run World of Warcraft). If they aren’t up-to-date, you will be wasting more time than you have. How many times have you wanted to smash slow computers for taking 5 minutes to simply start Photoshop?

2. Skip the secretary. Hiring people to do small jobs just out of convenience is a waste of money. Don’t get me wrong, secretaries sometimes have incredibly important jobs (CEO’s get lonely, too… oh wait…), but some businesses don’t need one – many startups will only need a few people to do several (very dedicated) jobs.

1. Hire the right people - duh. Unlike point 2, hiring the right people means finding an employee or partner that will actually do the work effectively and efficiently. There is nothing more costly than having to fire someone – and the cost that trumps firing is actually hiring to fill that void. Hiring costs time, training, and “employee warmup,” which I will define as the time it takes for the individual to actually get good at what he/she does.