3/12/2015

$100 Business

I am at $86 so I need to push real hard this weekend to get to the $100 mark.  I had hopes to get the extra points but oh well, not going to make it.  It really is my own fault.  I did not have the time to invest in the business to make tons of money so it is what it is.  But some things I have learned.

1 - have the time
2- be willing to change and adapt
3- be consistent
4. get your system done early on so it does not become a mess

Learning in class

I learned about an area I did not even know existed formally.  Interesting enough I could take what I was learning and reflect back on some times when my husband has stepped into a situation and made changes to make the process go smoother.  For example

He starts at a company - during the recession - and not really in his accounting field.  He is over AR and AP.  It is a packing company, mostly tomatoes and pears, but lots of other things.  In fact they do the sauce for Papa Murphys.  So there is no vacation from July 4th until Thanksgiving. That is pack season.  And during those months he worked 12 hour days and every Saturday.  He could see, after one cycle, that there could be lots of improvements so right after 'pack' of the first year he begin making those changes and these are some of the things I remember him doing.

He interviewed the gals and asked them what they thought could be done differently
He went to IT and talked to them about some changes
There was a team of them, not sure who was on the team, and they created a new way of accounting for the tomatoes and such.  This cut the process down by tons
He saw who was talking too much in the office and who was not accomplishing their work.
He pulled up reports that did key strokes monitoring(hmmmm never knew they had such a thing) and looked over how many accounts each person was handling and not handling.  He gave allowances to the accounts that were very time consuming.
He moved the office desks around and installed little walls  so gals could not talk to each other. This eliminated some of the chit chat that was making is so they did not work as fast as they should.

Next pack came, they hired their normal temp BUT no one worked overtime.  The gals were not happy because they liked the extra money that came in.  The owners were happy because overtime was expensive.  The new system worked so much faster and better.

Next year he redid some more stuff including squeezing out a gal that did very very little work.  She probably did not know there was such a thing as monitoring key strokes and such.  Her presence actually impeded others from doing their work.  Her life was always in drama and it was brought to the office to be solved.  With her gone everyone's key strokes rose. Just that one thing.

Next pack, no overtime and no temp was hired.  Amazing what you can do with some research and some planning.