Turning Pennies into Dollars
Your Home
Business: Turning Pennies into Dollars
Copyright © Stone Evans, The Home Biz Guy
Henry Ford taught us that to simplify the manufacture of
automobiles, that the best way to do so was to install the assembly
line. That one change revolutionized the auto manufacturing industry
permitting the industry to build cars at a cost whereas the average
person could afford to buy one.
The lesson we should take from this is that having the ability to
improve the process of getting the job quicker and cheaper, without
compromising the quality of the job being done, will help catapult
the person who simplified the process to the top of his/her field.
Pennies saved in your home business can turn into dollars at the end
of the day, and dollars can quickly multiply into hundreds or
thousands of dollars over time.
Doubt me if you will, but let me ask you a question. Do you think a
saving of two fifths of a penny could make any real difference in
the profit margin of a home business? Of course the right answer is
“it depends on how many transactions are done in a year, utilizing
the savings of the two fifths of one penny.”
You only have to think back a couple of decades to really appreciate
this question. Do you remember the nut that lived and died in a Las
Vegas hotel room? You know the one who was a billionaire, and was so
worried about germs that he died of starvation? If you guessed
Howard Hughes (1905-76), pat yourself on the back.
Now Howard did not make all of his money on his two fifths of one
penny. He did however make a ton of money from his two fifths of one
penny. It seems Howard owned a can manufacturing company. And one
day, Howard’s team figured out how they could make one minor change
in the design of their food can to reduce the amount of tin
necessary to make a single can.
As the story goes — if my memory serves me correctly — the
reduction in tin usage equaled a saving of two fifths of one penny
per can. Howard — being the really smart businessman that he was
— decided that he would not be so greedy as to keep all of the
savings for himself. What Mr. Hughes did do was to keep half of the
savings for himself, and give the other half to his customers. The
incredible thing about Mr. Hughes decision is that by saving his
customers an extra one fifths of one cent per can, he managed to
take more market share away from his competition — netting his
company an additional and substantial portion of the total market
share in the canning industry.
Let us return our thoughts to your home business. Have you ever
gotten the feeling of excitement — when you read something or
thought of something — that you could not wait to implement this
new idea? This could be one of those moments…
In every home business, there are certain processes that we do over
and again. Sometimes it may be possible to trim the time or expense
of a process which in turn will add pennies or dollars to your
bottom line. If it is a process that you do hundreds or thousands of
times per month, then your savings will multiply into hundreds or
thousands of dollars in monthly savings.
Imagine what running a home business was like BEFORE the computer…
Before the personal computer, we had to hand type all letters and
invoices. Now, we can setup a letter or invoice that we send out
quite often, and we can save it in our word processor so that when
we need to use it again, we can print it quickly and efficiently.
There is no longer a need to type the document again from scratch.
The computer has simplified our business communications and has
provided us the opportunity to reduce our costs of doing business.
Think about all of the other processes that the computer has enabled
us to do for far less expense than what we could in the past.
In this case, the computer is a tool that permits us to save time
and money.
So, my challenge to you is to begin examining the processes in your
own home business and look for ways in which you can save yourself
time and money. It is far better for you to contemplate on this
matter than it is for me to do so for you. Simply put, you know your
business better than anyone on the planet does. Therefore, you are
in a better position than anyone to find those extra dollars that
will decrease your costs and increase your profits.
The extra pennies and dollars you could extract from your business
could spell the difference between success and failure for your home
business enterprise.
