Looking for ways to make this coming year more productive and more profitable than the previous year.
My father once told me that if you don’t work hard now, you ‘will’ work hard the rest of your life and in all my years of work and school I’ve never heard better advice. I want to share some goals I have for this coming year. Maybe if you have time you can add to the list.
1) From 5 Gallon Buckets To Gaylord’s
I have purchased 1,000 postcards for my e-waste business. I plan on delivering them to every business in my town and posting them at every community bulletin board. I also plan on running a few local newspaper spreads. I think I’ve budgeted enough for these full spreads although I might do numerous smaller ads instead.
2) Vowing To Never Scrap Before Checking Resell
I have thrown so much money away this past year by letting the scrap-urge take over. It’s amazing how we will spend 30 minutes checking per pound prices but not 1 minute checking resell prices.
3) Moving From Scrapping To Resell
I’ve been wiping and testing hard drives for some time now but have never gotten around to listing them. My goal this year is to start selling hard drives, power supplies and other disk drives as these are the easiest items to test.
4) Increase Contacts
I’ve been lazy on this front. My goal is to start really shaking hands with individuals who could benefit from my services. I want to construct a contact book for anyone who may be interested in the products I get in and I want to know what items they are looking for.
5) Stop Dealing With Steel
My goal is to free up my space by outsourcing all my steel to another company. In return, they promise to haul some of my plastic as well. This should free up my time to engage in more profitable undertakings. Especially since I only get $0.07 per # for steel and I have to pay $0.03 per # to get rid of plastic.
6) Separate Working From Being Busy.
Too often I walk into my shop and spend ½ a day accomplishing very little. Thus, I was busy for ½ a day, but did very little work. My goal is to not walk into my shop until I create a to-do list.
7) Start Charging For My Services
My goal for 2013 is to not touch a CRT monitor or CRT TV with being paid for it. My goal is to not touch a large floor-model copier without being paid to haul it. Neither one of these units are worth the time to haul in comparison to the recovery.
8) Organization
I believe that lack of organization can be a real hindrance on productivity. I spend too much time per week trying to locate a tool or other items.
9) Sticking To The 80/20 Rule
Like anything, 80% of our profit/productivity comes from the first 20% of the work. For example, you could sell your Universal Power Supply for $.09 per pound or you could break down and sell the parts. By doing so you would more than likely triple your money with very little investment of work. However, you could also squeeze another 10-15% by breaking down the power supply or stripping the wire, but this would triple the time with little payoff. Thus, I want to eliminate all activity that doesn’t fit in the 80/20 rule. By doing so I can likely cut my work time significantly without sacrificing much profit.
To another year of hustle!
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Originally Posted by taterjuice
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