How to Maximize Capital While Minimizing Costs

Higher capital, lower costs. That statement is every business’s dream. However, the term “cost” can take on many forms. It can mean time, money, fees, or anything that holds back potential capital. Even fear is a cost; it costs you brainpower, holds you back from achieving your dreams, and is a drain on your life. But fear's not the only cost. Here's how you can use AI to boost your business’s capital and cut costs—without layoffs. 

Choose free over paid. 

You don’t need to pay $240 per year for Copilot Pro when you can use Copilot for free to summarize documents, explain complex topics, generate ideas, etc. For a personal example, I had to find the average rating for several books in the library where I was being a teacher aide this past month. The librarian could have created a Google Form for the students to submit their thoughts into, allow for faster analysis, but instead she chose to have them write them down on paper, which wasn't a bad thing, since our school uses technology frequently and having a break is healthy; however the capital remained the same but the cost (time) increased due to me having to manually calculate the averages. I could have used Copilot (my preferred AI) to give me a summary of each book by scanning the papers into the app, but I didn’t. As a result, I learned that using free tools is a powerful option and can save time; but remember to use them strategically. 

Choose digital over physical. 

Going back to my previous example, the librarian chose paper over a digital form, which increased the cost, specifically time. If she had chosen digital, we could have gotten more book weeding done, which would have gotten us further through the process and allowed us to eventually focus on bigger things. Minimize costs now, maximize capital later. We have so many digital applications that automate the process for us, meaning we can get more done in a shorter amount of time. Why minimize costs by letting people go and automating half their work and giving the rest to others when you can instead increase capital while still minimizing costs? 

Understand where your priorities lie, then act on it. 

Jon Acuff, an author and public speaker, wrote a LinkedIn article called “What Your Favorite Airline Says About You”, in which he talks about where his priorities lie. To him, time is his most valuable priority. At the end, he says, “Match your actions to your intentions”, which is great advice for life, and even more so in business. For me, as a high school senior who just started his own blog, my priorities are a little muddled, but academic success and time are my two most valuable priorities. Therefore, I need to make sure my actions line up with my intentions. The day I started writing this post was the monthly late start for my school district, meaning school is delayed by 2.5 hours. Because of this, I had two options: sleep in and miss valuable time I could spend getting ready so I could use that extra two and a half hours writing or get up early and maximize my time. I chose the latter. Yes, I missed out on sleep, but I was going to wake up at 5:45 AM anyways, so I decided to make the most of it. By cutting a cost (unnecessary time lying in bed), I was able to maximize my capital by giving myself more time to write blog posts and work on homework, which helped relieve stress and allowed me to be ahead of the curve for school. 

Automate, automate, automate. 

Let’s create another example: there’s two car builders: Tim, and T.I.M. Tim is human, while T.I.M. is a robot (T.I.M. stands for Totally. Incredible. Machine.). Both can thread a nut onto a bolt, but after a while Tim will get tired, his arm will cramp up, and he could even develop carpal tunnel syndrome. T.I.M., however, can keep doing it forever unless he loses power. But Tim (the human) can create ideas to make the car better (more fuel efficient, more pleasing to the eye, etc.), while all T.I.M. can do is thread more nuts onto bolts, since that's all he's programmed to do. Tim can be creative while T.I.M. automates that manual labor. This is the reality today. We can have robots and AI do the manual labor while humans create and design, making the final product better, which lowers costs (you don’t have to pay robots and provide them workers’ comp if they get hurt), while raising capital (better product=better sales). Letting robots and AI do menial tasks allows for humans to be creative and innovate. 

Conclusion 

Now that you know and understand ways to cut costs and increase business efficiency and capital with AI without requiring layoffs. Remember: find the ways that help your company and your life thrive, not someone else’s. You are different from them, so their method might not work for you. This week, I challenge you to identify one task you can automate this week and see how it affects your capital.