Systems and other industries

To try and gauge how important systems are to the smooth running of your decorating business we only need to look at other industries. For example, Amazon. You decide that your batteries in your TV remote control have run out and you need some more. You pull your phone out, search for batteries, find them, click to order and the next day they pop through your letterbox.

Amazing.

Now do you think the guys at Amazon have a system for this or do you think they make it up as they go along like we do?

They have a system, you can bet your bottom dollar they do, that why Jeff Bezos earns $8 million an hour and we are just scraping by.

Another great example of a company that has taken a simple product, the hamburger and put a system together that turned that product into a twenty-one billion dollar business is McDonalds.

Just to repeat – twenty-one billion dollars!

Now we all know McDonald’s these days, so we are not surprised. They are on every street corner. To be honest, they make it look easy. But imagine going back in time to 1940 and telling your mates you were going to set up a burger stand and if you got the systems right you reckon it could turnover 21 billion dollars.

What do you think they would say?

For a start, a billion dollars would be a mind-blowing amount in 1940, most people would not get their head around that. Back then that was bigger than entire economies.

This is the point. Even the humble hamburger is worth the effort of putting systems in place.

The founders of McDonald’s were Richard and Maurice McDonald. Mac and Dick. They looked at the most efficient way to make a hamburger. They chalked out the kitchen on a car park and got people going through the process of making a burger. They watched as people moved about the make-believe kitchen and identified any bottlenecks. They felt that this was worth the effort to get their hamburger into the hands of the customer fast. Even today you can marvel at the speed your order is made and given to you.

If you can build a system to make a hamburger then you can build a system to deliver decorating to the customer and yes, it is worth the effort.