Over a year ago, I was having lunch with a good friend…

Dan Morrissey of Fafco Solar (he’s on the left), and he asked me:

“How can you cut your energy consumption by 10% in the next year?  How about 20%?  30%?”

A few thoughts came to mind right away:

• Review our expenses relating to energy.
• Create a spreadsheet showing reduced expenses, with columns for:
  • Expense name
  • Average monthly cost for expense
  • 10% of monthly cost
  • 20% of monthly cost
  • 30% of monthly cost
• Brainstorm other ideas, document, and share with team.
• Implement biggest savers – begin saving energy.

I’m a firm believer that “you can’t change what you don’t measure“, and at the time, this really piqued my interest.  Since then, it’s become exciting to see the results come to life!

As you’ll see this grew from reducing energy consumption to going green.

With most things, it’s a work in progress, but check it out:

Our Top 5 Results from Going Green:

1) Reduced office power consumption – energy savings of 15%.

Simple things such as:

• Powering down computers nightly.
• Replacing standard bulbs with their fluorescent equivalent.
• Turning off lights during the day (a few of us get headaches from fluorescent lights when we’re looking at a computer screen for hours).
• Being sensitive to our energy usage.

2) Consolidated computers – energy savings of 30%.

This turned out to be huge benefit to our business, here’s my personal story:

A year ago, I had:

• A work computer at the office,
• A work computer at home, and
• A notebook for anywhere else.

Now, I have one notebook computer that I use wherever I go.

The initial savings were great because I didn’t have to leave my office computer on to access files (saving about $15/month in energy consumption) and notebooks generally consume much less power than desktops.

The biggest additional benefits I’ve seen are:

• I have all my files with me, always (which are backed up hourly when online!)
• My projects stop when I have to go, I shut the lid on the notebook and it goes to sleep.
• I open up my notebook when I’m ready to work, everything’s just the way I left it, in seconds I’m back in business. (Kudos to Apple for getting this right, it never worked consistently on my XP notebook.)
• During Florida summer thunderstorms, if the power goes out, it runs on battery, AND
• I can continue to work (while unplugged from everything to prevent killer surges).

Reducing energy consumption has not only made my life simpler in this respect, I’ve gotten a considerable amount more done in shorter time as well.

3) Reduced monthly lease payment by over 50%.

How much space does a person need to work efficiently?

We halved our office space discovering we actually work more efficiently in less space and with less stuff.   A side note, I’ve found that I live more comfortably with less stuff too.

Our work is highly creative, and we’ve found that entering a clutter free workspace gets us into our creative zone more quickly, too.

We cut our electric bill in half by doing this.

4) Reduced on-site client trips – nice reduction in energy & cost savings.

Instead of driving to a customer’s location for training and support, we now use Fog Creek’s Copilot – this has saved countless hours of idling at the long Florida stop lights over the last year, along with driving time (and related energy consumption).

This has had many additional business benefits, the biggest being the reduction in travel time — resulting in an increase in usable work hours.

5) Reduced printing & paper consumption – energy savings to be determined.

How did we reduce printing & paper consumption (and the energy associated with printers in standby mode) quickly?

We sold all but our most necessary printer!

Currently, we’re just kicking off the final part to our reduced printing & paper consumption goal by introducing:

• E-mailed invoicing (side effect: all customers will be able to securely pay online with full PCI-DSS compliance, resulting in a better cash flow!)
• E-mailed proposals (for the most part we’ve done this already, now we’re 100% committed).
• E-mailed promotional sales (vs. standard post card mailings).
• Almost all supplemental sales material online (we’ll still have standard business cards!)

Want to learn more, or see how I can help you, too?

Feel free to contact me, you probably noticed this has become a passion of mine — I’d love to help you realize how beneficial this can be you, your expenses, the environment, and your business!

If you’re interested in saving money, starting now, contact me.

I’d also like to send out a very BIG Thank You to Dan for planting the seed!

If you get the chance to meet Dan, you’ll quickly learn he’s one of the most passionate & knowledgeable guys about “going green”, living healthy and reducing your carbon footprint.  Good stuff.