Not to rain on the parade here, and I tend to agree with most of you, but that's business. There are no guarantees. You can lose even if you work hard. That's why mom and dad told us to go to engineering school so that at least we had some sort of leverage in the work world. Honestly, anybody can buy a saw and some climbing gear and call themselves a tree business. But we should have recognized that before we got into this business, right?
Look, I have worked close to some very successful people in some very large businesses who aren't scared to reduce the cost of their product if that's what it takes to compete. I've sat on the process review boards, did Kaizen events, and you name it, and believe me I learned to squeeze blood from turnip, and somehow in spite of ourselves, we got the cost down. Before I did all that though, I just sat around like everyone else griping about all the doom and gloom. Can you always hit your target? No. But you sure can do some serious damage to inefficiencies and waste - and maybe even have a significant revelation along the way.
I had a good friend that owns a cabinet shop that probably never made more than $40,000 a year. One night, at his shop, and over about a case of beer, I walked him around and showed him every inefficiency I saw, while our other friend kept calling BS and talking about more volume, more volume. Stupid stuff like put a trash can at every workstation and shave 10 minutes a day off that guys workload. Anyway, my friend took what I said to heart, hired me to come down and get him started, and subsequently spent a lot of time refining his workflow and reducing costs. He survived the housing crisis of 2009, and now he's making some really good money. One of the regional construction firms was so impressed with his workflow that they gave him a large commercial contract and now he's rocking.
When I was at Dell Computer, Michael Dell was always fond of the fact that he started out as a "hack", building affordable custom systems out of his dorm room at University of Texas. He was proud of it. He pretty much owns the computer industry now. When you walk into ANY work facility at Dell (20 years ago anyway), they had the entire Dell R&D process printed out on banners and secured along the walls of the facility. ANYONE could recommend a change through their review committee. Michael Dell got personally involved in that process on occasion, because he knew he was going to obliterate his competitors with it - and he did. We were PROUD of the fact that while groceries prices were soaring, computer prices were staying the same, and you were getting more horsepower.
Look, I'm not implying that bad work is okay out there. I just saying that maybe we can give the customer a good job for a lower price and stay in business. BUT ... and this is the hard part ... get ready to reduce your crew of 4 to a crew of 3, or find a way to generate more volume. That's the reality of any business today though.
