Based on the title of this article, I bet your thought went right to top line revenue. Sales, Sales, Sales. That has to be the most important issue for a successful small business, right? This couldn’t be further from the truth, and is likely a major reason why 80% of small businesses fail in their first five years.

The most important issue for your success is controlling costs. Simple as that. Time and time again, small business owners do not mind their bank statements and cash sifts through their fingers unknowingly. Worrying about and being focused only on closing sales is a big mistake. Let me lay out the landscape of my point.

There is never a time in your business history when not controlling expenses is ok. Never. Look at the numerous start up companies in 2015, getting funding for literally anything remotely connected to social connectivity or aggregating consumers into a user base. There are dozens of these companies now with no hope for ever becoming cash flow positive, yet they have raised millions of dollars. Sadly, they will burn through their treasure very quickly and crash and burn. Why? No expense control. I remember personally being on a start up team in the telecom space in Europe. We had revenue, that I personally closed, but our expenses were killing us. We managed to go back out and raise $40 million in a secondary round, but we were burning $6 million a month in overhead. I don’t need to tell you what happened to that business.

It should become a point of pride for you to squeeze and eliminate as many expenses as possible. For, there are two ways to create wealth margins; by selling a lot of product at positive margins, and to lower your costs and increase your margins. Either way gets the job done.

Here are some ideas for you to immediately reduce or eliminate some costs:

Internet Bandwidth: This one is a no-brainer, but I am guessing only about 5% of small businesses take advantage of it. I have a Comcast account at home. Part of that subscription includes access to any Comcast wifi hotspot, of which there are many. You can simply log on to your wifi account at your place of business and presto – you are saving about $700 per year.

Phone Service: Paying for a monthly phone line for your business? Let’s get rid of that overhead right now. Sign up for a Skype-in number with voicemail at $60 per year. You get a number, voicemail, and skype works on any internet device. You can receive calls anywhere. You can make outbound calls as well. This will save you another $250 per year.

You get the idea, right? Start chipping away at costs. Look for repeating costs and figure out how to lower them or get rid of them altogether.

Consolidate: Adding together the minimum payments due on several credit cards that you use for business may be crushing your cash flow. Consolidate the card to one account and watch how much faster your balance goes down. Even better, find a credit card like the Slate Card from Chase, where you can do a free balance transfer and have zero interest for 15 months. No reason to pay interest.

Recurring Fees: Subscriptions, memberships, and services. Have a gym membership on auto-charge every month to work out less than that? Cancel it. Most gyms offer a day pass option. Only pay for what you use. Magazine subscriptions? Cancel them. Get your content on the free wifi mentioned earlier.

You will be surprised at how quickly the savings add up, and how much more cash flow you can generate off of your existing revenue base. The best part is that these reductions will save you each and every month going forward. Let us know others ways you have managed to reduce your small business overhead.