When I first started TableTop Upgrades, I ran some numbers and decided that in “Phase One” of the business I’d need to be sending out around 100 packages a month. At the time, 100 packages a month seemed completely crazy to me. How on earth I’d be able to achieve those kind of numbers was a mystery, but one which I aspired to find the answer to.
In the first weeks of TableTop Upgrades, I was completely amazed that someone was able to find my products and then buy them without ever meeting me. It seemed like magic (and still does). I’d duly make the product and send it out the next day.
As sales grew, I found more and more time was needed to fulfill orders and slowly but surely they built up and I found myself working every night. I’m glad to say that the orders continued to roll in and suddenly working late every night wasn’t good enough, I needed to work late every night. I’m not complaining, each order is a privilege to make and something that I enjoy very much, but late nights, night after night take their toll.
This, as you can imagine, is completely unsustainable, especially considering I have a young family and a demanding full time job as an engineer. Enter Kaizen - the Japanese manufacturing philosophy of making small but regular continuous improvements. It’s something that I studied at University and encountered in my first ever job in engineering, it wasn’t until I saw a YouTube video series about American entrepeneur Paul Akers that it all clicked - by tuning processes and ruthlessly hunting down waste, you can shave off a second here, a second there and cumulatively efficiency, quality and personal sanity all improve!
Here’s a video from my YouTube channel showing some of the lean improvements I’ve made in the past month.
Kaizen and Lean have been so transformative in my business (and life) that I intend to make this a running theme of this blog. It is my intention to run a monthly post showing that month’s Lean improvements.
The topics covered in the video have made a massive improvement to my work flow and Jan 2021 is already my best month for sales to date and yet I’m less stressed and the quality of my products has never been higher. Lean Thinking has without doubt the most important business tool (life tool?) that I’ve ever encountered.
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