In the competitive world of painting companies, achieving a 50% boost in profitability with a leaner staff might sound audacious, but it's entirely feasible. Let's break down this bold claim into five essential principles that will transform your business in 2024.
1. Get Super Organized: The Foundation of Efficiency
The first roadblock to increased earnings is often disorganization. The 80/20 principle applies - 80% of productivity comes from 20% effort. As a business owner, valuable time is wasted on deciding what tasks to prioritize. Streamline your operations, clear the clutter, and pave the way for enhanced productivity.
Practical steps:
Get into the habit of creating a weekly priorities list and daily agenda
Spend 10-20 minutes at the beginning of each day to write out the 3-4 most important things that you must accomplish today to reach your weekly or monthly priorities.
When running a painting business you can be in such a “reactive” mode where problems happening consume 100% of your day so you never have time to focus on expanding, growing, earning more. You hit a stalemate and can’t grow past your problems.
If you dedicate non-negotiable time in your schedule to do things that are on your priorities list. You will slowly but surely make progress.
2. 100% Focus on What’s Important: Strategic Decision-Making
Identify and concentrate on high-priority tasks that directly impact your bottom line. Distill your goals into actionable steps, ensuring every action contributes significantly to your company's success. Focused efforts lead to a more efficient use of resources.
Practical steps:
Trying to increase your profit margin? Identify what in your business is eating up your profit. Here are a few common ones. Identify which one is applicable to you and decide how you should tackle it.
- Unreasonably High Labor Cost
- Prices to customers is too low
- Mistakes on jobs, lost revenue, or change orders
- Too much overhead expenses
3. Eliminate Non-Essential Expenses
Non-Essential expenses are dead weight costing you money, and wasting time equates to lost net profit. Evaluate your business and eradicate non-essential expenses. Implement automation and technology to streamline operations, allowing you to invest more time in income-generating activities.
Practical steps:
Stop investing money into things that produce no results.
- Non-working marketing campaigns
- Software you aren’t using
- Employees that aren’t pulling their weight.
Utilize Software, it’s 2024 for goodness sakes. There’s software to streamline most areas of your business.
Don’t procrastinate on this, every month you keep paying for things is eating away at your bottom line.
If something is not producing enough value to make it worthwhile; cut it!
As a business owner you can probably tell within a few weeks if something is working or not, go for your gut-feeling and get rid of expenses that don’t make sense.
4. Optimize Labor Expenses: Smart Staffing Solutions
On the same topic as #3… Labor costs are a significant expense for painting companies. Especially employees that are doing manual tasks!
Optimize your staffing model by identifying what’s truly important for your business, leveraging technology for efficient production. Smart staffing leads to cost savings without compromising productivity.
Don’t be resistant to implementing technology or software to streamline!
It’s 2024 there’s a software out there to streamline almost 100% of your business processes.
Employees are the #1 expense of every painting business. Especially PM’s. If you can get 3x more efficiency from a PM thanks to technology, why not do it?
Hint: Try HeyPros to streamline your subcontractor management.
5. Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: Learn from Success
Successful strategies exist; there's no need to start from scratch. Study industry best practices, learn from competitors, and adopt proven methodologies. Avoid unnecessary experimentation and leverage what works to expedite your company's journey to profitability.
If you’re struggling, there are so many resources out there on practically any topic. Dedicate 20-30 minutes a day to educating yourself.
Don’t learn from your own mistakes, it’s too expensive.
Conclusion: A Profitable Future Awaits
Embrace these principles, and watch your painting company thrive in 2024. By getting super organized, focusing on what truly matters, eliminating time-wasters, optimizing labor expenses, and learning from success, you'll pave the way for unparalleled profitability with a more efficient and agile team. The future of your painting business is brighter than ever. Let's make 2024 a year of unprecedented success!