I just posted a re-introduction and now would love to get some feedback for our business.
The fire is still burning within to create something great, something with scale and something that will finally enable us to live the fastlane lifestyle ( mind you not sports cars and tropical destinations ( as we're too much of country hicks for that..we're more along the lines of a new pickup, buy more farmland and get a side by side )
BUT to finally separate our time from our money. To have the freedom to do what we want, when we want. Working hard is part of both my husband's and mine fabric ( we were both raised on farms ) and something we enjoy but right now that comes with a price, and it's a big price.
So, we have a small construction company now, and it's hard work. Hard physically, hard financially and hard to manage.
Where we live is quite isolated and currently demand is high but finding skilled labour is tough. We now have 4 full-time guys and even though we pay well, and treat them like gold, finding more to scale with is very challenging as hiring inexperienced carpenters is not efficient or for the most part even practical. So challenging that we're re-considering what we do.
This year we should pass the 7 figure mark but the profit percentage is not what it should be, as we cannot get enough help and 2 of our 4 guys are new. I work onsite when we're short, the rest of the time getting supplies, lining up subs, doing office work, etc. My dh is the lead guy and spending a lot more time after crew hours doing estimates, meeting potential customers, doing extra work to get ready for the crew, etc. We're probably not as efficient as we could be however we actually never even intended to get into this business, it just happened. And what a weird sentence that was to write, and even weirder actually to think about.
Our crew works outside most of the time and since you now know we live in Canada that means lots of cold, cold weather where fingers and noses can freeze and jobs take longer due to working with gloves on and needing to take warming breaks. The way our projects run, it's not always possible to have the indoor portion of jobs coincide with bad weather and if we and our guys don't work, then we don't get paid= trading time for money.
Right now, we're considering some type of side work that we can do indoors so as to be able to transition to a more factory type of setting, where we can produce products that we supply rather than doing custom work.
Selling on Amazon/online has been in the background for us for a while, so we're trying to figure out what types of products we can make that will sell there. We want to produce good quality products, and probably ones with a wood component to them, since that's what we know. Generally speaking wooden products are large though and that's not a great fit for online, especially since we need to be cognizant of shipping costs due to our somewhat remote location.
We were approached by a small business looking for some high quality outdoor wooden solar lights, so looking further into this as an option.
Open to suggestions or thoughts on how best to look for/evaluate potential products?
Thanks.
The fire is still burning within to create something great, something with scale and something that will finally enable us to live the fastlane lifestyle ( mind you not sports cars and tropical destinations ( as we're too much of country hicks for that..we're more along the lines of a new pickup, buy more farmland and get a side by side )
BUT to finally separate our time from our money. To have the freedom to do what we want, when we want. Working hard is part of both my husband's and mine fabric ( we were both raised on farms ) and something we enjoy but right now that comes with a price, and it's a big price.
So, we have a small construction company now, and it's hard work. Hard physically, hard financially and hard to manage.
Where we live is quite isolated and currently demand is high but finding skilled labour is tough. We now have 4 full-time guys and even though we pay well, and treat them like gold, finding more to scale with is very challenging as hiring inexperienced carpenters is not efficient or for the most part even practical. So challenging that we're re-considering what we do.
This year we should pass the 7 figure mark but the profit percentage is not what it should be, as we cannot get enough help and 2 of our 4 guys are new. I work onsite when we're short, the rest of the time getting supplies, lining up subs, doing office work, etc. My dh is the lead guy and spending a lot more time after crew hours doing estimates, meeting potential customers, doing extra work to get ready for the crew, etc. We're probably not as efficient as we could be however we actually never even intended to get into this business, it just happened. And what a weird sentence that was to write, and even weirder actually to think about.
Our crew works outside most of the time and since you now know we live in Canada that means lots of cold, cold weather where fingers and noses can freeze and jobs take longer due to working with gloves on and needing to take warming breaks. The way our projects run, it's not always possible to have the indoor portion of jobs coincide with bad weather and if we and our guys don't work, then we don't get paid= trading time for money.
Right now, we're considering some type of side work that we can do indoors so as to be able to transition to a more factory type of setting, where we can produce products that we supply rather than doing custom work.
Selling on Amazon/online has been in the background for us for a while, so we're trying to figure out what types of products we can make that will sell there. We want to produce good quality products, and probably ones with a wood component to them, since that's what we know. Generally speaking wooden products are large though and that's not a great fit for online, especially since we need to be cognizant of shipping costs due to our somewhat remote location.
We were approached by a small business looking for some high quality outdoor wooden solar lights, so looking further into this as an option.
Open to suggestions or thoughts on how best to look for/evaluate potential products?
Thanks.
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