Contractor U – The best way to higher profits: waste less time

Almost all contractors and subtrades are looking for ways to make more profit.  One of the best ways to do so is to reduce your costs.  Sounds simple enough, yet everyone struggles with how. Here is one secret….

One of the best ways to reduce costs is to do something faster han you are doing it right now. Time is, after all, money.  Now, you might object, “Well, if it takes me five hours to do a task instead of four, my costs haven’t really gone up.  It is just my time and I make the same amount.”

It is true your costs haven’t really gone up but you have taken longer than needed to complete something – which means you are not available to work on another project that could be earning you money as well.

So, every hour that you save can be used to do another job.  Think about it, if you could save four hours per week, you would have another 200 hours per year or five more weeks for more paid work.

Everybody can find ways to be more productive; it just takes some discipline.  Take a good hard look at what you are doing and how you are doing it and you will find that you can save at least four hours per week.  Even saving one trip back to the “store” each week  could save you half of this time.  If your employees are making the extra trips then your costs are really going up.  You might even have trades waiting on the job site for materials to be delivered.  That is more time and therefore money wasted.

Eliminate busy work and make sure that you and your employees are doing productive work.  You will complete the project faster and you will make more profit.