For every business that exist, saving time not only saves us money, it makes us money as well. There’s a number of thing’s we can do to save time in our business. Not to be confused with short cuts, time savers are very profitable and when we apply them on a daily basis they can really accelerate the process of the days agenda.
I remember the first bunk bed I made. The only tools I had was a chop saw, drill, and an orbital sander! It took me six hours to make that bed! With the profits I made from the first bed I sold, I purchased a 4×24 belt sander. Wow! Talk about a time-saver! Then I purchased a small shop vac., the hose of that thing fit perfectly into the back of my chop saw, which saved me time in cleaning up. Then I got rid of that little bag that hung on the belt sander. I bought a PVC Elbow Fitting, whittled down one end of it to make it fit the hole that the bag used to fit onto, and super glued it into there, then the shop vac. hose fit it too!
After a while I stopped ripping the 2×4’s for bed rail cleats. Instead I starting purchasing the 2x2x8’s, that saved time as well. I met a young man at Lowe’s, a guy that was somewhat knowledgeable about wood. I asked him one day, “If you wanted 30 of the best pieces the 2x6x10’s, how long would it take you to get them out of the rack? 30 real nice one’s?” He said “Oh about 15 minutes.” Long story short, I started buying 30 pieces of 2x6x10’s every week. I’d be at Lowe’s at 7:00am when they opened every Thursday, and not only would I have a cart waiting for me with 30 pieces of 2x6x10’s, but also every single thing I needed to make 3 bunk beds, all the wood, hardware, sanding belts, shop vac bags, EVERYTHING! The best thing about it though, he did this for $15.00! Then two men loaded it into the back of my truck too! That idea turned 2.5 hours into 30 minutes.
As we come up with time-saving ideas and implement them into our daily tasks, they become part of a wonderful progression that helps ease some of the tension and stress that we couldn’t experience without them. It is my hope for you that you to will come up with many witty ideas for time-savers.
