Description
Learn how regular organization of your studio, your projects, and the stuff inside your studio will help your efficiency. Get helpful tips on spring cleaning, and why you should care about it.
For more information about shop layout, size and equipment, see these articles.
Transcript
Caleb Lawson (00:01):
To reorganize and kind of decide what’s important. And so Kate and I spent the majority of the day yesterday kind of cleaning out some areas that we’ve honestly been meaning to clean out for months and months and months and stuff gets in the way. And the reality is, in fact, I was talking to Jeff about this topic before we kind of started, but a good way to think about it, and I hadn’t really thought about this until this morning, is a lot of us save wood melamine or we’ll save a form that we made or whatever, but how much space does that take up? I mean, a lot of us are in small shops. I’m not in a huge shop. And so it would not be a stretch to say that the fluff, the extra, the stuff I don’t use every day or even every week or every month, probably takes up eight, 10, 12% of my shop.
Caleb Lawson (00:54):
And if you do the math based on what I pay for rent and I have fairly inexpensive rent, that’s $200 a month in usable space that I’m paying for that’s not being used because I’ve got something stored there that I don’t use. So if your rent is back in Orlando, my rent was three times what it is here in North Carolina. And so that was a really big deal because I had probably 15% of that shop that I did not use on a daily or even monthly basis. And so we just thought this was a really, really important topic to bring up and discuss because a lot of us accumulate things over the years. A lot of us have been, I mean, Jeff, you’ve been in that shop for at least 10 if not 12 or 14 years. And a lot of us accumulate stuff that we don’t even realize we have until we throw it away because we didn’t use it. So
Jeff Girard (01:50): 4:14
Yeah, you’re right, it’s kind of spring cleaning for me. And I wanted to cover more than simply just organizing stuff because it’s an obvious and a good place to start. So your shop space is the engine and the universe where you make your money, that’s where your business lives. And having all the accoutrements of making concrete, your tools, your materials, your casting tables, your molds, the pieces in production, all those have to live somewhere. So talking about org, how to organize things and all that is going to be the bulk of this discussion. But I want to even expand it beyond just the physical, because organization spans all aspects of a business. And if you watch or learn or read about or listen to other people who have nothing to do with concrete as a business, but they’re talking about how to run a successful business, being organized is critical and it’s something that’s a challenge for everybody. So we’re talking about being organized about your time, your scheduling, your materials, your supply chain, all those kinds of things, your labor, the people you employ, the people maybe you hire, all that well, interject
Caleb Lawson (03:24):
Is that sometimes we’re not good at that. That is not a strong suit that I have. And it has taken me a long time to realize that despite my best efforts, sometimes that’s not something, sometimes something you’re not good at that is not in your strong suit. Wheelhouse may be something you need to staff and that’s okay.
Jeff Girard (03:46):
Or find other solutions. I don’t know. I have a Google calendar that I put everything on that reminds me so I don’t have to think about it. So if I’ve got a dentist appointment or I got to take the dogs for their vet appointment, or I got to get the oil changed, I made an appointment for it. Don’t write it down, put it on a calendar. Set an alarm so that it’s on your phone, it’s on your computer, you’ve got a meeting with a customer or somebody wants to come in your showroom or to order, I need to order more pigment for this project coming up.
Caleb Lawson (04:31):
Yeah. Well, and when, for me, I, I’m bad at that too. If it’s not in my calendar, both like a day, 24 hours ahead of time and an hour ahead of time, it will not happen. And I’ve told, and so I’ve got a meeting at 9:30 and it’s tentative, it’s, it’s loose. It could be at 10:00. I’m not trying to cut this thing off, but with, but Kate needs to know about my meetings so that she doesn’t put stuff on top of mine. So I have to schedule it on both my calendar and hers. And that’s a habit I’m forming. So
Jeff Girard (05:05):
Let’s start with being organized in terms of your shop space. Now everybody starts someplace. I started in my garage and I will now be on my fifth separate physical shop in the last 24 years. And every shop is laid out differently. The sizes are different, where things are in the shop, the space, where the doors are, how big they are, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So there’s no one formula for, oh, you should do this here and that there. But can I have an article on the CCI website that talks about the general concepts of setting up a shop in terms of work has to flow what every project, if you’ve been to one of my classes, the very first thing I talk about when we start talking about how to do all this stuff is every project has seven or eight critical steps.
Jeff Girard (06:10):
And if you’re working on say a kitchen or a bathroom, you come in and templating is the first physical thing you do. And then everything flows from that templating to forming to thinking about reinforcing. In the old school days when you actually pre gfrc days, you actually had to create meshes or grids of reinforcing steel or wire. Nowadays you don’t really have to do that, but you should still thinking about it. And then from there it goes on to casting, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So there’s a logical path. You climb the mountain, you start at the base, you go to the top, and the process is a fairly linear one.
Jeff Girard (06:49):
And you always should be thinking about what, what’s not just the next step, but what are the next several steps so that you’re not having to undo what you did to go backwards. And I don’t want to get too far into that, but setting it for shop is part of that process. It makes that process easy. So where are you going to do your wet processing or where wet casting, I call that the messy area. Where do things get messy? You spray, you pour, you mix, you wash, et cetera. Where’s that happening? You don’t want that next to where you store your cement or where your expensive tools are. So the logical setup is the beginning of that. And to come back to what Caleb just said about not accumulating fluff, as you work and have more projects under your belt and maybe you’ve settled into things for a year, two years or whatever, you’re going to have, oh, I got this mold that I made for this past project and I really like it and I think I might use it again, if you don’t have a space to store it.
Jeff Girard (07:59):
And walls are a fantastic way to store things because it’s up off the floor. So in a sense, if you have a shelf on a wall, you’re doubling the floor space that sort of the shadow perimeter of that. So you can store twice as much stuff within that footprint of the shelf. And if you have more than one shelf that are stacked, you get even more. So if you can do that and it’s not disrupting or disturbing your ability to do your work, then that’s fine. But if you have this say, oh, I got this cool planter mold that I made for this one customer and it’s sitting in a corner and you’ve got to walk around it or move around it and you do that week after week, month after month, get rid of it, it’s not worth it. Or that cutoff, that scrap piece of melamine that well, it’s about that wide and about that long. And I might use it, get rid of it. It’s not worth it. It you got to have close. You got to be disciplined about it.
Caleb Lawson (08:59):
Absolutely. And I’m learning that again firsthand for the 50th time. I have infrared heaters that are natural gas in my shop. I’ve got two of ’em. I bought three, it was a deal. It was on Facebook marketplace or something. I got three for 300 bucks. I don’t know. They were reviews. It was great. I converted two of them to natural gas. I ended up having to harvest the part off of one of them to make the other two work. And so I’ve got one 30 foot burner just stacked in a corner. And it’s been there for I, I’ve installed the heaters, I guess it was a year and a half ago. I have had the thought, well, I could put it in the showroom, but they’re really not pretty and it’s a showroom. So hang on. Got to, I need to answer. Well, I’m not going to answer the call when I need to answer this text. So that person stopped calling me. Yeah, so
Caleb Lawson (09:53):
The point is, but my point being is yesterday I’m like, what is it just going to sit there forever or am I going to sell it if I made 50 bucks on it? Now that’s space. And then additionally, they were propane when I bought them and I did not have a natural gas in the shop when I bought them. So I bought 200 pound propane tank, big talls. Now I have natural gas. So the only thing I can use these things for is my torch, like the weed torch that used. I dry pieces occasionally with it that I can get a grill cylinders plenty for that. I don’t need 200 pound things. And I think I paid 180 bucks a piece for the things empty and they’re full right now. So I was like, well shoot, I’ll, I’ll get rid of ’em and I’ll make $400. I’ll listen to Facebook marketplace for $400 and two hour 12 hours later or less, I got somebody saying, Hey, I’ll come pick ’em up tomorrow. It’s like, great, cool. That’s space and an extra couple dollars. So think about these things.
Jeff Girard (10:58):
So getting rid of unnecessary things is the logical first step. I’ve been in my space for a little over 12 years, got a lot of accumulated crap. I threw out a wooden jig I made for my table saw years ago. I don’t even know when I made it. And I’ve been holding onto it. I’ve probably used it once in 10 years. And it’s not big, but it’s one of the concept is it takes up space. I got to have a place to put it. And that place, it’s cluttered, it collects dust visually, emotionally it’s it. It’s like barnacles on a ship. One or two is not bad. But when you keep saying it’s just I got a little bit more, it’s not a big deal. All of a sudden your shop becomes overrun with things you don’t need that are in your way. And I’ve had the good fortune to be able to travel around the world and see a lot of people’s shops.
Jeff Girard (11:59):
And frankly, I don’t think I keep the most organized shopped. I’ve been into shops that are very impressively organized and I applaud those folks who have the discipline to set it up to where everything has a place and everything’s maintained that way. And I’ve also been in shops where I’m trying to help somebody do something and they’re like, well, where’s your screw bit that I need? Oh, it’s over there and it’s a pile and it spends 20 minutes looking for it. The next topic is organizing the tools you need to have. And years ago, the biggest shop I ever had was a 7,000 square foot shop. And my shop manager, Brad, was more organized than anybody I’ve ever seen. And I had the big rolling tool cabinets, the big red ones with the drawers that mechanics use. Well, I have five of those and they’re full of tools and he labeled every one of them.
Jeff Girard (13:00):
So I have a drawer of hammers. And if you’ve been in my class, if you’ve been in the CCI class, where are the hammers? They’re in the hammer drawer. Where are the tape measure? They’re in the tape measure drawer. Where’s the tape? It’s in the drawer labeled tape. So when you use it, it’s where you expect it to be. And when you’re done using it, it goes back in that drawer. None of that doesn’t mean, okay, I put it down, I’m assembling a mold and I put the drill down, I have to go put it back where, but put it back at the end of the day so that the morning everything’s reset. And you would be surprised how efficient you are and how relaxing it is to work in a space where you don’t have to stress about, do I have that tool bit?
Jeff Girard (16:02):
Because it goes even beyond that. Not just where is it, but do I have it and isn’t in good condition? Do I have enough Phillips or number two square drive or a number T 25 torque bit? Do I have the right length? Do I have the right number? Are they chewed up? It lets you kind of stay on top of things. And I’ve never been in the military, but I used to work for the Navy and I worked with some really, really sharp ex-military people who they had the discipline and that was kind of baked into them. Not just they were born with it, but it was instilled on them to be organized, keep everything clean, keep everything in good working order, maintain your tools because you don’t know when you need ’em. And especially in that situation, that’s even more critical. But for us, you know, got a hopper gun, okay, make sure it works, clean it, tear it apart, grease it, oil it, whatever it takes, replace the parts that don’t work so that when you need it, you pick it up, it’s going to work. You don’t have to then go, oh geez, the trigger sticks, or I lost the nozzle, or where did that go? It’s all part of a discipline of being organized. And when you start doing that with the physical things, I think it makes it easier to move towards a broader, more philosophical point of view of being organized. Do you have anything to add, Caleb?
Caleb Lawson (15:17):
Yeah, I mean, I think too, there are going to be things that you need to have that you don’t always use. So hopper gun’s a great example. In my particular business, because I don’t spray things very often anymore, at least at this stage. I’ve gone through various stages where I’ve done different styles predominantly. And right now my predominant style is self-consolidating, direct cast backer. What I like to do, it’s working really well for me. My clients are happy with it. So that’s what I’m doing, which means I’m not spraying very often. And something that I’ve run into is that, okay, well the hopper gun was cleaned well and it worked well last time I used it, but maybe it hadn’t been used in six months and I haven’t taken it apart since then and it was wet last time, so maybe it stuck. So take the time once a month, once a quarter to inventory the tools that you have that you need, that you don’t use often and clean them.
Jeff Girard (16:14):
That’s a fantastic point
Caleb Lawson (16:18):
Because when you need it, you need it. It’s like insurances. You don’t need it until you need it.
Jeff Girard (16:24):
And when I had a big shop and I had a, not a big crew, but I had a crew and you go out to template. So for those of us who go out and do templating, and I still do the old stick, glue stick and door skin, Caleb use the strips of, was it core plastic, the corrugated plastic sheeting? Both very, very effective. I had a separate toolkit for templating. I still have it. It’s a little bag that has everything I need, has a tape measure, has the cutter, has knives, glue, tape label,
Caleb Lawson (17:00):
Template.
Jeff Girard (17:01):
I’ve got everything in it. Same with installation. I had a shelf, one of those wire shelves next to one of the rollup doors. And I had duplicate tools that were only used for insulation, cordless drills, caught knives, measuring tapes, broom, dust pan, shop vac, you name it. It was only for templating, I mean only for insulation. Sorry. It wasn’t used during production. It wasn’t used to build molds. No, nobody was allowed to take things from that to use elsewhere. Because when you go to install, it takes time to gather stuff. Well, if it’s already gathered and it’s already where you expect it, and I had a checklist of an inventory of what should be loaded so you don’t have to think about it, it’s already done. And that’s part of the organizational process that I, we are trying to instill is this is really important. Because if you have to spend 15, 20 minutes thinking about stuff, wandering around your shop, looking,
Caleb Lawson (18:06):
I mean historically I haven’t been able to get, because I haven’t done this until recently. It’s like, what time do you think you’ll be there to install? It’s local, right? 1130 maybe, because I’ve got to find everything and put it in the kit and load it up and I got to let the pieces up. And then I got to do the times recently where we’ve said no, we’re installing on Monday, or we’re installing on Friday. So we’re going to get everything together, the workday before. And we do have an extensive checklist that, and I’ve got a Milwaukee my install kit, and so it’s stacked and the boxes are numbered and the trays inside the boxes are numbered. So we have a list box one, tray one, this stuff, box one, tray two, this stuff, box one base, this stuff. And Kate and I go through it mostly Kate, the Royal we, if you will, go through it before every install and make sure everything’s on there.
Caleb Lawson (19:02):
And then we put it at the door. And I had duplicate tools of, had quadruplicate tools of everything before the flood. And I have not reaccumulated everything. So I still do steal from my regular tools to go to install. You’re still recovering from that massive, takes while, but so point being, ideally if we seal on a, it’s ideal in my shop and it doesn’t always happen, but I like to seal on a Thursday so that I can load on a Friday and install on Monday and I can, if I can load on Friday, Kate’s not in the shop front if she works four tens. And so Friday is a day when I do a lot of appointments and I do a lot of housekeeping and I do a lot of, I can load stuff by myself cause I have a forklift. So it’s ideal if we can seal on a Thursday and then load all the stuff in the trailer.
Caleb Lawson (20:06):
I mean the packout stays in inside cause I lock it, right? But load the pieces in the trailer and have the pack out ready, then I can come in at seven 30, put the pack out in the truck and drive away. And that makes a huge difference. Two weeks ago, I was in New York City on a spring break last week, but the week before I had an install of a kitchen island and I, it was a big kitchen island, took about six people to move it and I did not have access for carts. So totally separate aside thing is you should have a total layout of your job site before you go. So which we cover in other things and we don’t need to get into it, but I knew that I could not use a cart to get this eyelid in the house. Not possible it had large stairs, but the stairs went under an overhang and so cart not possible.
Caleb Lawson (21:09):
It would’ve taken eight people to move a cart with the piece and it took six people to move the piece. So piece it was, and so coordinate all my people and a lot of them are volunteer friends of mine. And I’m sure all of you or a lot of you have dealt with that where it’s like you’ve got two or three people or maybe just you in your shop. And so when you’re installing, it’s like, Ooh, I got to find people. So you coordinate those people at a certain time. All right, so I had to meet them at nine o’clock on site, so I had to have my stuff and my piece ready to go before then, so they could be there at nine o’clock. So it’s critically important that these things get done and these are lessons that at least for me are probably going to be a lifelong endeavor to learn. And you just get incrementally better if you go,
Jeff Girard (21:46):
I grew up, no, my dad’s not the most organized person. His workbench always was basically a big pile of stuff. And he tried to be organized, but that’s just not how his mind works. And I kind of inherited that early on. And I also discovered that you can’t, it’s okay to do it for yourself, but as soon as you start bringing other people into the fold, you have employees or just time, I got to get this done. I got to build these forms, I got to do whatever I need to do. And you only have so much time. You all of a sudden are faced with the cold hard truth that the way you do things isn’t really working and it’s hard to be disciplined. Putting things back, taking the time to clean up is that takes discipline. And if you bu start building that culture early, especially with new employees, it really makes a difference. We always had every Friday, every Friday afternoon, two hours before the end of the day, no more work was getting done. It was do an inventory, see how much pigment we have, see how much cement, how much sand, et cetera, et cetera. Clean up. All the tools are put away, tables are cleaned, floors are swept. Our wet processing area, we always power wash the floor. We did that every day
Caleb Lawson (23:18):
So well, and you’ll find there’s
Jeff Girard (23:21):
No accumulation
Caleb Lawson (22:23):
Because if you don’t do those things in the name of productivity, yeah, then that’s a very short term thing that’s going to work for you for three days, maybe three weeks, maybe a month if you’re lucky. But then your shop is going to be completely trashed and it’s going to take at minimum 3, 4, 5 days of what would be very productive time to get it back to, okay, yeah. So if you can get it, amazing. Now, one thing I will say, a phrase I heard recently that I quite like is perfection is procrastination. So don’t spend your life chasing the perfect setup. It’s not going to happen. But chase and set up something that you believe will work for you in the stage that you’re in. Do it and then keep it that way. And then when it comes time that you’re like, wow, this isn’t working for me, let’s change it, take the week and change it. I mean it’s fine.
Jeff Girard (24:25):
I’ve always had all my equipment or as much of my equipment on wheels as possible. Table big cabinet saw, seven foot wide cabinet saw, it’s on wheels. I bought it that way. My dust collector, it’s on wheels. Not that, I mean I got a big dust collector, you have the bigger one, but mine’s like eight feet tall. It’s on wheels,
Caleb Lawson (24:46):
Totally difference in size is the motor. We have a
Jeff Girard (24:50):
The inlet and the motor size, but it’s on wheels. And now it’s hard plumbed against the wall to where the table saws. But that the ability to place it, if I wanted to change it or move it or shift it for whatever reason I could, where my chop saw is it’s mobile, right? And until I know this is where I want to be working, I can move it around. Now things like we both have very big air compressors that are essentially, you need a forklift to move them or pallet jack, they, they’re stationary, tuck it in a corner. But stuff like where your casting tables are even, or tool cabinets, there’s nothing wrong with moving stuff around and bringing it. I want to be working, so all the tools I need for building forms, measuring tapes, screw guns, screws, et cetera. Get a small tool cabinet that’s mobile and bring it to you instead. Are you walking back and forth? The biggest shop I had was 7,000 square feet. So it was a 70 by 100 foot steel building. No columns inside.
Caleb Lawson (26:00):
That’s
Jeff Girard (26:01):
Amazing. When it’s a hundred feet away and you got to go back and forth several times a day because the stuff is way over on the other side of the shop and you get some exercise, you get your steps in. Not that actually means anything, but it’s a lot of wasted time. It’s like, well move that over here or bring stuff more centralized so that if you need some stuff at one end of the shop and you need the same stuff at the other end of the shop, put it in the middle. That seems to make sense. But I’ve been in shops where things aren’t laid out very well and I want to get back to cleaning because that’s really important too.
Caleb Lawson (26:39):
Well, and if stuff’s on wheels, you can pull it out and sweep under it because I mean exactly dust and trash and stuff slip under a ton of stuff. I had a dust
Jeff Girard (26:47):
And just interior air quality is very important, especially nowadays. We work with the material. That is it. If you don’t clean it up right away, the amount of effort it takes to get rid of it goes up exponentially. You know, got concrete on a trowel, you just finished scraping a bucket, have a rinse bucket, clean it. Now it takes 10 seconds, set it down, come back in an hour, it’s going to take several minutes to clean it, leave it till tomorrow, it’s going to take an hour to clean. Maybe not, but I mean you get the point, right? Do things now rather than put it off till later because it takes less time. There’s less to do. And more importantly, it builds the habit of doing it continuously. Being aware of staying organized, being clean is organized. Always being aware of what’s the next step? What do I need to do next?
Jeff Girard (27:51):
Two steps down, away from where I’m at now. And am I making a decision that’s going to cause me to spend more time? It’s like shuffling things around. I’m literally spring cleaning. It’s like, okay, let’s get rid of this. Moving things around. Well, if I say I want to move a shelf and it’s got all this stuff on it, if I take the stuff off the shelf and put it where I want to put the shelf, that’s just making more work for myself because I’m not thinking, I’m not being organized. So it helps to have that bigger picture in mind and just kind of, don’t be a slave to it, but just be aware that time is money. Space is money. And being organized and being efficient means your profitability stays high, stays where you want it. We all operate at profit margins that we wish were higher.
Jeff Girard (28:56):
Well, we make choices that diminish that, cut that down, that make it a lot less desirable. But we don’t know that spending time wandering around looking for something. And here’s a good example of being organized. When you template a job or you, let’s say you’re designing a piece of furniture for a customer and you get that contract, you got the green light, you got to go, you got a contract, you got to deposit, deposit. That’s the moment you do your mix design, you do all your mix calculations. And if you use my mix calculators, you know exactly how easy that is. It tells you all the ingredients you need to have. So now you go back and you look at your inventory, or if you don’t keep one, an active one, you go out in your shop and you look at, do I have the pigment for it? Do I have enough cement? And that’s the moment to buy things, to order it, because it might take days or weeks to get a critical ingredient in that could hold up your project. Yeah, okay. So again, that’s the bigger picture of organization beyond just having your tool drawers labeled.
Caleb Lawson (30:07):
Yeah, and I think really the bones of the point that we’re getting at here is these are things that we believe are critically important to the success of any business, especially one that involves a lot of moving parts and pieces and tools. And again, not everybody, myself included, has that skillset off the offhand. It’s like I grew up and I was very, let’s call it subpar at math. I’m decent at it now cause I need it. And so there are going to be things that are going to take a long time to learn. And because you got to retrain essentially your nature. Now, if you’re a super organized person, great for you, you have an advantage. But I find that a lot of makers and a lot of artisans and a lot of artists, our brains are very disorganized. And so I equate this a lot to how I feel at home because my wife is a very, very organized person and I find that my brain tends to function better at home because it’s organized and that is not my doing.
Caleb Lawson (31:21):
And so I can keep it that way. I can live within a system that’s created. And so what I’ve tried to do at work is create that system where my brain can function at its best. And so often that means staffing that weakness. It may not be your strong suit and that’s all right, but it might be some that you need to hire somebody to pressure wash once a week. It might be that you need to hire somebody to help you put systems in place and then yell at you when you don’t do them. It might be any number of things to staff that weakness.
Caleb Lawson (32:01):
And you might be the staff to the weakness of an employee that you have, keeping them on task. So all of that to say, we’re not preaching from a high horse here, I struggle with this a lot and I’m talking about it because I’m somewhat talking to myself. And so I think that there’s a lot of room here for conversations and a lot of room here for what works for you, what works for you, what works for you. And that’s one of the reasons too, that we like to get people together physically as well, because I find that there’s a lot of growth in conversation in general, but also particularly in person.
Jeff Girard (32:45):
So yeah, checklists are fantastic ways. They’re like living external documents, living external memory or reminders for things. Templating checklist, installation checklist, project management, checklists. What’s the sequence of all the things you need to talk about and do with a new customer from time they inquire about your services to the time, you know, take their check and shake their hand and walk away. What are all the things that go into that? Let’s say, let’s use installation as a good example because this is something that’s bitten a lot of us. You’re going to do, let use a kitchen dish for example, because a lot of people still do kitchens and a lot of people love doing kitchens and some people hate ’em, but it doesn’t matter. Use this as an example. You’ve schedules, you talk to the, let’s say your point of contact is the gc, so that’s who you’re contracting with and you call ’em on a Monday and say, Hey, we’re a little ahead of schedule. When is good for you? We can install next Tuesday or next Wednesday let’s say. And they say, let’s do Tuesday. Okay, cool.
Jeff Girard (34:17):
How many of us have loaded up, driven out? Maybe it’s a half an hour away, maybe it’s two hours away, maybe it’s six hours away, maybe it’s further. You get to the job site Tuesday morning and they’re not ready for you. What do you do? How do you prevent that from happening? So it’s not enough just to have a phone call, have a checklist so that we know what to do. But that physical checklist of what do we need to have from them so they get the checklist, that’s part of our project management program is here’s what we need to have from you. I need to have a clear space to park so I’m not carrying slabs up a 300 foot hill around vans and trucks that are parked in my way and et cetera, et cetera. You get the picture right? I’ve gone in to template for instance, where they said they were ready, they signed a document saying they were ready, and all the millwork for this two-story house was stacked on the kitchen cabinets.
Jeff Girard (35:30):
You’re not ready. I don’t have clear easy access to that. That’s being organized. And that’s part of that is also holding people accountable because they are always going to hold you accountable for what they think you should be. So being a professional, this organization extends well holding side of your business standard is going to actually make them respect you more as well. Yeah. So we could go on and on with examples, but the point of making it a cultural thing in your business to think about organization, think about efficiency, think about wasted space wasted time wasted opportunity, and how you can start whittling away at that. Catch the low hanging fruit first, do the big things, empty the trash, scrape your floor, that sort of thing. And then really start refining things because you’d be surprised at how more pleasant it is to work in a shop where you don’t have to look down at the floor because it’s so uneven from chunky chunks of concrete that have just accumulated over time.
Jeff Girard (36:44):
You don’t have to worry about tripping on the floor. Now maybe you’ve inherited a shop like Caleb, your last shop, you inherited a shop that where the floor was like potholes, like you, it was, and there was so much of it, you couldn’t really do anything about it. It wasn’t doing, that’s just how it was. But I’ve been in shops where a hundred percent of the reason the floor is uneven is because of laziness. You know, got excess concrete, you, you scrape it onto the floor and you don’t clean it up. That’s just lazy. And that really hurts productivity and it potentially hurts your profit because you’re pushing a cart across an uneven floor and you crack a slab. Well now you have to redo that and that’s an extreme example, but
Caleb Lawson (37:26):
Sure. So we should probably bring it home. It’s 8:45, so want to kind of open it if you have any questions, sir, I think you’re the only one on at the moment. So if you have any questions, we also want to, anybody has questions, comments, the podcast will be open for comments after it’s posted
Jeff Girard (37:52):
And we’d like to write in or send us photos of what is your shop like, what organizational tip, do you have you developed that you find works really well for you? And you would like to share that with people because everybody’s different. Some people are left-handed, some people are right handed, some people are amphibious, if you get that quote. And it’s refreshing and also very, very helpful to see how people choose to organize, how they do things, their processes and how they organize themselves. So any thoughts? Well, if not, I think we’re going to wrap this up. Thank you for joining us.
Caleb Lawson (38:47):
It’s been great. Always good to, I think it’s always a really nice thing to discuss things that, again, multiple perspectives and everybody does things differently so you can always learn from a conversation. Right,
Jeff Girard (39:00):
Right. So next time. Thanks a lot. Next
Caleb Lawson (39:04):
Time. See you.
Jeff Girard (39:06):
Bye-Bye.