I’ve been giving lots of thought to what often happens when I talk with clients about overheads, profits, and productivity. Often these values are really just taken from the “street” .. the same logic that will tell you to “charge $200 a foot for uppers and lowers” (Please don’t BTW!). So there’s often a vagueness around how these all interplay with each other to create your outcome (hopefully a good profit).
I’m outlining, over the course of the next weeks, my thoughts on this aspect of the business and how we can achieve better and more consistent results, as well as better forecasting. If I achieve what I’m looking to do it will result in a series of postings that cohesively lead from a simple fundamental beginning, through to a nice strategy that you might choose to use in your companies, should you desire.
None of this means that I am the “end all be all” expert on the matter, or that there is one single strategy that works for everyone. I do have, though, 20 plus years of working on these exact types of issues with clients throughout the US and Canada, from high end residential work to architectural millwork, to commercial and institutional casework .. and the many flavors in between. So I do have that as a cornerstone.
If you have some ideas or questions you would like to talk about in the meantime, please feel free to post here. Posts only require a name and an email, and rest assured that your information is never shared with any third party and your email account is not visible to other users .. so post away!