If your time is so limited that you feel that you are going crazy, let me offer a different alternative. Hire an employee that can take care of some of the things that you do, so that you can spend some quality time doing something else.
I used to own a dry cleaner. I worked half days (from 7am until 7pm). I hired a part time employee to run the store for a few hours each day, and found that the extra time gave me a lot of stress relief. Can you train your employees so that you can take off early one or two days a week?
The second question is always; Is it profitable?
Profit is having more money than expenses. One of the ways to increase profits is by cutting expenses. If you have a 20% profit margin; (For every dollar that you bring in, you keep 20 cents, after all expenses), then for every dollar that you save, you have achieved the same effect as increasing revenue five fold. Since your selling price is based upon a multiple of your profit (or your gross revenues) a $1 savings in expenses could be worth up to $100 in sales price. Is that enough incentive to be a cost cutter?
How can you cut costs as a small business owner?
1) Printing costs: You need to print things, but your corporate culture should explain to your employees that they should think twice before printing, and that excessive printing cuts profits, and you are monitoring their printing. Any flagrant misuse of the printer for non-business functions will not be tolerated.
2) Vastly reduce printing costs. If you are using inkjet printers, research Continuous Ink Supply systems. For less than $100 you can get a CIS system that will allow you to reduce your color photo printing costs greatly. Instead of spending $50 for a thimbleful of ink, you can spend $8 for a large bottle. It takes a little more work, but it is definitely worth it. (I reduced my costs for large photos from about a dollar a page, to less than 2 cents.) Sometimes you have to invest to greatly reduce savings.
3) Coffee costs. It is possible to cut or eliminate coffee costs. How? By removing the coffee maker and/or having people pay for their own coffee by donating a couple of bucks a day for gourmet coffee. (Again, this is an area that is grossly abused in most companies. I don't provide coffee. If they want it, they can buy their own.
4) Smokers: Do you really want them? One of the biggest productivity wasters is having smokers wander off of their job for five minutes an hour for a smoking break. It is unhealthy, it is unproductive, and they are demonstrating that they make poor choices. If you institute a policy of no smokers, you will greatly increase your profitability. It is NOT discrimination to discriminate against smoking. Also, your health insurance costs will go down immensely.
5) Cell phone use. If your employees are on your payroll, they are NOT paid to answer their cell phones. If they answer their phones on company time, they are stealing from you. If they answer their phones while they are talking to a customer, and make that customer angry enough to leave, they are sabotaging your business. Insist that cell phone use be eliminated at work, and that a ringing cell phone is grounds for a disciplinary action, and that answering one, without express approval for medical emergencies, is grounds for termination. You aren't running a club, you are running a business.
6) Productivity: Prune your payroll regularly of the people that waste your time and money. If they don't contribute enough each and every day to double the cost of their salary, expenses, and benefits, you have to analyze if you want to pay for their services.
7) Outsource: If you have a need for specific services on a regular basis, but not a full time basis...consider outsourcing. You don't need to have a graphics department if you are a regular business, you just need to be able to hire a company that does graphics at a great price. Outsourcing will seem expensive, at first, but a close analysis will probably reveal that it is more profitable to hire the best at reasonable prices, than to have low skill people that are accountable to you. (Also, if you are working with a company, you can give them specs, and have them fill it.)
8) Come in from the monorails: When I was putting myself through school at Disney World, they had the trainers do an exercise that was so simple that it was brilliant. Come in from the monorails. This meant that our training supervisor had us look at things the same way that our guests did. We drove out to the monorails, and came in as a regular guest did. We discovered, by looking with fresh eyes, that we saw things that we didn't see each day.
Take the time to put on your fresh eyes and see things as a new customer does. Is your sign clean and spelled correctly? (You would be amazed at how many times a million dollar business has incorrect spelling on their marquee.) Is your entry area clean? Does it look professional? Can you see yourself, as a customer, being impressed? If not, why not? What can you do to improve for free or cheaply to make it look professional.
In summary, the easiest way to get a business ready to sell is by increasing profitability by decreasing expenses. It is going to be hard, but if every dollar saved increases your sales price by up to $100, it is worth it to cut costs vigorously.
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