1. Cash Flow
Having a cash flow positive company is critical for success. This means the business has more cash at the end of the month than the beginning.

2. Quick Ratio
This simple balance sheet formula divides current assets minus current liabilities. Ratios greater than one mean the company has enough current assets to pay its current bills.

3. Customer Annuities
This means repeat customers pay the company automatically every month. This ensures that there are sales at the beginning of the month even without marketing.

4. Fixed Overhead Expenses
High fixed overhead expenses do not give companies flexibility as sales and profit changes. Keep as many expenses as possible variable with sales.

5. Management Team
Strong companies are not about their owners, but their team leaders. Build a culture that can make a profit while the owner is on vacation.

6. Employee Turnover
Loyal employees generate more profit for companies than those with high turnover. If your turnover is higher than 25% a year, there is a problem.

Solution: Copywriting, demographic targeting, and choosing the right keywords can trip up the novice. Get help from a search engine marketing professional like Hubspot and Dex One before launching a campaign.

2. Travel expenses
Small-business owners shop hard for the best airline, hotel and car deal before they leave for any trip. Unfortunately, once they get on the road, they waste a great deal of money. This includes $5 coffees, $12 alcoholic beverages, $5 sodas from the mini bar, city parking and taxi rides—not to mention that client dinner that went way over budget.

Solution: Look at public transportation from the airport. Many times, this can cost 10 percent of a taxi or rental car. Ensure that the hotel is near planned appointments so there's less costly commuting to and from those locations. Book hotels that have kitchens in the room or pack food for the trip.

3. Wrong Smartphone Data Plan
Due to the fear of overages, most small businesses use the unlimited plan. According to Consumer Reports, 48 percent of consumers use less than 300 MB a month.

Solution: Check your company’s plan and negotiate with the provider to get one that matches usage. Telephone bills are also ripe for renegotiation, or you can move to using a voice over IP solution (VoIP) from companies like Nextiva that offer a flat rate per phone per month.

4. No Follow-up Procedures in Place
Small businesses spend tons of marketing money generating leads for their company that they never follow up on to get the sale.

Solution: Have a process in place that tracks every lead, not just for the initial contact, but on a monthly basis. Having a customer relationship management system (CRM) like Salesforce or Infusionsoft is critical for success.

5. Non-retail Office Space
This fixed expense is too big or extravagant for what the company needs. Small-business owners overpay and overbuild because they miscalculate how fast their companies will grow. Large or fancy office spaces also can feed their egos.

Solution: Can the company be virtual? What is lost if everyone works form home? Determine what investments need to be made for a virtual office to work and compare those figures to the current cost of office space.

6. Website Design
Most small-business owners focus on a unique website design and pay handsomely for it. They also invest too much in branding and logos when their company launches.

Solution: Pick a template for an open sourced Web tool like WordPress. Focus investments in keeping content updated, reviewing website analytics, using CRM and e-commerce.

7. Bad Hires
Hiring the wrong employee typically costs 20 percent of his or her annual salary. This doesn't even include the lost productivity that a successful person would contribute to the company.

Solution: Be slow to hire and quick to fire. Make sure prospective employees match the company culture before testing their skills.

8. Large Investments in Technology
Too many small-business owners invest in large hardware and software solutions that need to be customized. Their business changes, and then they need to migrate to a different system.

Solution: Use applications in the cloud that charge a monthly fee. This technique matches a variable cost model more closely. Reputable vendors will constantly innovate their technology, and their small-business customers will benefit with little cost.

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To bring Barry Moltz to your organization, please contact Michael Frick at: Mike@Speaking.com