What was the smallest change you made in your business that had the biggest impact?

[204SignGuy]

Far too often people think that you need to make leaps and bounds before taking the first step. What was the smallest (or easiest) change you made in how your business operates that has pushed you to the next level?

 

[WYLDGFI]

Letting go of 1 majorly toxic employee and bringing in 2 guys who love the job and are really good at it was huge.

 

[iPrintStuff]

My favourite was switching to only Matt vinyls and reducing the amount of types. At one point we had 4 different types of vinyl and Matt/gloss each. Then Matt and gloss lam to go with.

we whittled that down to 2 vinyls (cast and an air release polymeric) and three lams (Matt poly, gloss poly and gloss cast). So now we barely need to switch rolls at all.

It’s saved us tonnes of time switching rolls in the printers and laminator. We were changing it 3/4 times a day but now it’s a lot more rare. Saved a lot of space as we don’t need stock loads of printable vinyls and a lot less chance now of taking a roll out then a job comes in lol.

Obviously we still have mountains of cut vinyl etc but as far as the printable side goes, it’s saved a lot of material and labour time. Especially all the wastage from switching rolls.

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

Increasing prices.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

Having employees keep time cards for each thing they work on throughout the day and sticking that info into a spreadsheet. It calculates cost of the job, a target price/margin based on time/materials and a desired profit percentage and then what that actual margin was when it is all finished. At any point in time, I can also look to see where we are at on a job cost wise. Second thing was a daily schedule board that lays out the job, task and time for each task for the entire day per employee. (i.e. Jose 8-10am weld frames)

 

[myront]

Switching from the "antiquated" i.e. "old school" method of manually tracking jobs with job jackets, multiple wall mounted process files and large wall mounted wall tracking board and going to trello.

 

[Jeremiah]

Keeping it simple. Everything at eye level and within reach of production area. Really increased production time.

 

[Z SIGNS]

Learning how to recognize and say No to work that doesn't make money.

 

[rydods]

Just built our new shop and one of things I wanted to go along with our larger garage bay was an easy to use pressure washer so we bought an electric pressure washer connected to hot water. Not sure if the hot water will do any damage to it in the long run but It's been amazing being able to do a quick wash down of vehicles the night before. Especially with all the winter dirt and salt on the vehicles.

 

[MikePatterson]

Quit doing stuff for free. IE layouts before deposits. It weeds out the tire kickers.

And started using Quickbooks and looking at what makes us the most ROI.

 

[AndyN]

For me it was getting deeply involved in B2B and networking with other business owners in my local town. My primary customer base disappeared during the pandemic.

 

[John Miller]

Sharing with the customer that most projects actually are two projects. The first is the design zoning, setup. The second is doing the work. Tell your client very matter of factly that you collect a retainer to cover the cost of design, zoning, planing etc. This means you are not working for free. If the client balks,
he is either wanting REAL work for free or he's just a tire-kicker. If I get push back I tell the client that when the design is finished, he owns it and can take it
to any sign company for a quote. After this phase, I quote the job and get a deposit to begin production. Believe it or not, most clients who are serious about moving forward on their sign project have no problems with this scenario.

 

[Rocco G]

Aside from raising prices, when we started to charge by the hour for permit acquisition. Sometimes it was a simple process but we lost out on the majority of them. When I bought the business from the family that was the 2nd thing I did - after raising prices. Now I don't mind getting permits so much.

 

[2B]

Stop micromanaging, deal with what's on your "desk"
If there are issues on someone else's desk, they will resolve it or no longer work there

 

[204SignGuy]

Keeping it simple. Everything at eye level and within reach of production area. Really increased production time.

My goal would be more so to decrease production time and increase production efficiency, but I think that's what you're meaning haha

 

[E Coloney]

I read THE 4 HOUR WORKWEEK (https://fullfreeebooks.com/download/the-4-hour-work-week) and applied the 80/20 rule. Essentially that applies to many things in life. Here it would be 80% of your profit comes from 20% of your customers and 80% of your problems come from 20% of your customers. Apply that to what you are doing and become more efficient and profitable.

 

[visual800]

raising prices and not wasting time with bs clients that are tire kicking

 

[Cameron Hoag]

Having employees keep time cards for each thing they work on throughout the day and sticking that info into a spreadsheet. It calculates cost of the job, a target price/margin based on time/materials and a desired profit percentage and then what that actual margin was when it is all finished. At any point in time, I can also look to see where we are at on a job cost wise. Second thing was a daily schedule board that lays out the job, task and time for each task for the entire day per employee. (i.e. Jose 8-10am weld frames)

Notarealsignguy, did you purchase a software for the daily schedule or just do a manual dry erase type of system?

 

[Stacey K]

As a rule, I stopped doing "personal jobs" and stick to commercial jobs. I also raised my set-up fees for smaller orders. I stopped wasting a lot of time on estimates for smaller jobs or "what if this, what if that". Especially now, I've been extremely busy, either you want it done for $100 or it might be $110. Do they want it done or not? Most people don't even ask prices anymore, they just need it done, especially my regular customers.

 

[rjssigns]

Let another shop cut/weed/tape all colored vinyl. I no longer stock 80 plus colors or pay the carrying cost. Current stock consists of white, white and white.(banner, 2mil, 4mil)