Sharpen Your Pencil

To Studio RK Salon & Coffee House, it's a big chunk of change when the number of employees in the south Fort Myers business is tallied. "When you're talking about 35 people, it's not simple," says Karen Steuber, RK's co-owner.

As the cost of doing business continues to climb, thriving Southwest Florida enterprises such as Steuber's are thinking and acting more like accountants determined to provide good service while controlling overhead that, if left unchecked, can cripple or kill smaller entrepreneurial ventures.

They're turning to people like Karen Mosteller to help them meet their financial goals. "We want them to grow on the revenue side but also to maintain costs," says Mosteller, a consulting partner with the south Fort Myers firm Markham, Norton, Mosteller, Wright & Co.

It's Mosteller's job to go over these businesses' finances and determine how money is spent. Many times, she discovers, their hard-earned cash is wasted on needless expenses: having two or more employees doing the same job; using vendors who charge more for goods; spending too much on office supplies or marketing and legal fees; not training employees properly; not turning off lights or adjusting the thermostat; or not having a budget in the first place.

"You would be amazed at how many people don't even do a budget," Mosteller says. "If they'd even spend the time to see how much they're going to spend, they'd see a lot of waste."

That's one of Mosteller's goals with her clients. Working with user-friendly software-Mosteller recommends QuickBook and Peachtree-can help businesses get over the fear of just figuring out comes in and what goes out each month. "If they do a budget, they're going to be able to plan," she says.

With that dollar-and-cents information in hand, she and her clients can plot their next course: where to save money and how.

It can be as simple as shopping around for vendors. Some clients stuck with the same vendor for their office supplies or other products for years. "I get amazed [when] I get people who say, 'I've been with this guy for 10 years and never shopped around.' That could be a problem," Mosteller says.

Another overhead-cutting measure her clients have taken is analyzing what their employees actually do. In some instances, business owners realize that their workers are wasting time, hence money, on jobs that shouldn't take as long to complete. The reason: Poor training or duplication of jobs that can easily be done by one person instead of two or more. "We'll find big wastage in that department," Mosteller says. "This person is doing the same job as that person."

In other cases, more drastic measures are necessary. When Dr. Trevor Elmquist was going over his finances last year, he realized that it was costing him more to keep a provider on board at Associates in Eye Care of Southwest Florida. The provider was using the same staff and resources but not contributing financially to the business. So Elmquist, a south Fort Myers ophthalmologist, dropped that position. The decision saved him tens of thousands of dollars.

Elmquist also cut back on marketing expenses by about 30 percent and shut down two satellite offices in Cape Coral and Bonita Springs. Without the second provider, he needed to be in the main office. Although he ran the risk of losing patients who didn't want to travel to the main office to see him, he considered it a good gamble. And it's paid off. He's as busy as ever, he says. He employs seven full-time staffers and sees 120 to 150 patients a week, while adding 100 new clients each month. Steuber's salon has steadily grown for nine years. She and her business partner, Renee Walker, wanted to keep it that way. "We knew we had to be ahead of the game," Steuber says.

They had started off as a four-chair salon with four stylists. Last year, they decided to move to a bigger location off Daniels Parkway. They wanted to offer their 30-plus employees more benefits. They needed to run more efficiently to do that, and also to take on the added expenses that come with expansion.

Mosteller helped the business partners track their inventory. Where were they spending more money on: Hair-care products for salon use, for example? Where were they making money: Through their stylists and nail techs, by selling products in the salon and java in the coffeehouse?

Once they answered those questions, they also began thinking about other ways to cut expenses. Mosteller suggested paying down their loans, tackling the most expensive ones first.

Now, Steuber finds herself using words such as percentages, quality control and financial goals. Not exactly salon parlance, but it's keeping her business serving lattes and highlights.

Cost-cutting tips:

. Budget, budget, budget: A budget will help a business owner determine income and where money is being spent.

. Shop around: Comparison shop for vendors, attorneys and such for better prices on products and services.

. Train employees: Properly training employees will save money in the long run by making them more efficient.

. Office expenses: Determining whether leasing or buying office equipment is best. The same goes for renting or buying office space.