Monday Motivation

Friday Featured Client: Reliable Maytag

Reprinted from: What's Cooking at W.L. May Co? Volume 1 Issue 10. Reliable Maytag is proud to call St. George, UT "home". St. George is also home to some of the most spectacular beauty found anywhere; beauty that attracts scores of vacationers every year to witness, among other treasures, Zion National Park. This beautiful city offers year round recreational activities and festivities such as the annual Easter Day Art Festival and the St. George Marathon, held the first Saturday of October.

Reliable Maytag has been a family owned and operated business for the last 26 years. Wayne Hoppal has been in the appliance repair industry for an equally impressively long time. Fresh out of high school in 1982, Wayne was approached by Speed Queen to service local area commercial laundry mats. After 12 years of mastering appliance repair, in 1994, the opportunity to

purchase the local Maytag retailer presented itself. Thus marks the "birth" of Reliable Maytag. They successfully utilize the small local radio station to market their current and prospective clientele. Wayne is an admired fixture in the area due to his creative and distinctive radio spots. In their spare time, you can find Wayne and his wife Cindy out on the trails of the Paiute Trail System or boating on Lake Powell.

The biggest concern for Wayne is the amount of servicers being approached by manufacturers to become authorized techs in their small community. In his area, there are currently 4 authorized techs, and recently they learned 4 more are being added. In such a small city, this could prove costly. He considers his best tool is the internet and the instant access to information it provides. The introduction of cordless tools years back has made a great impact on repair times. The reduced time to repair appliances, allowed more service calls to be performed daily. Like in every aspect of repair life, having the right tool at the right time is key. Wayne feels that "W.L. May Co has all the right tools in place for servicers like me to be successful."

If you are ever cruising through Utah, enjoying the breathtaking beauty of the State (see link in the left column), stop by Reliable Maytag and introduce yourself; who knows, maybe Wayne will share his infamous radio commercials with you.

If you would like YOUR company profiled as a featured client send an email to: rob.m@wlmay.com

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Goals

Reaching That Goal! 

Hello everyone and welcome back. We hope you had a great Christmas, however you celebrated the holiday. At the end of the year, we enter a time of reflection upon our previous years accomplishments as well as directing our thoughts to what we would like to accomplish in 2014. The tradition is to start each year with New Years Resolutions. This has become almost a joke as so often people will make grand resolves and by the end of January they will have thrown in the towel and have gone back to their old habits.  What I want to examine today is how to turn that resolution into an accomplishment.

There are two things that are most likely to cause a resolution to fail. Those things are unrealistic goals and inadequate planning. These two factors go hand in hand. The more difficult a goal is to achieve, the more planning will help to reach those goals. I am not suggesting that you limit your dreams. I AM saying that a challenging goal will likely not happen unless there is a plan in place to achieve it.

When goals are considered, experts recommend that they be both attainable and measurable. What is attainable will vary depending on your situation. For example, for a small company that was run as a part time operation in 2013, that is planning to go full time a 100% increase in profits seems pretty reasonable. That would be miraculous growth for a large established operation running a fleet of of trucks. The first thing is to consider what you want. At this point, go ahead and let the sky be the limit. You may find yourself with a few things you would like to make happen. Once you have pondered what you would like to make happen, stop and consider if it is a realistic option. If so, you are ready to begin planning. If not, consider breaking your objective down into its various parts. If 100 percent growth is an unattainable number, what about 50%? 25%? Sometimes the hardest part of attaining goals is setting them in the first place.  Once you have determined what results you would like to see then it is time to work out a strategy.

One Bite At A Time!

There is an old statement that says the way to eat an elephant is one bite ate a time. It means that when you have a seemingly insurmountable task, the way to conquer it is to break it down into more manageable portions that can be tackled. Lets say, for example that last year your new company did 10,000 dollars worth of business and this year you would like to double that number to get to 20,000. How will you get there? Bite size pieces.

I would suggest staring by looking at how many days there are in the year to work with. On the average, there are 260 business days a year. You might need to take a few of them off so lets keep the math simple and work with an assumed 250 day business year. Next we need to take our desired goal of 20,000 dollars and divide that number by the number of days we have to get it it done. So 20,000 divided by 250 is 80. That means you will need to do 80 dollars worth of business a day to reach that number. Another way to consider the problem is to take the increase you are hoping to see, and divide THAT by the number of days. That shows us that we need to do 40 dollars a day increase over our daily figures for last year.

Now obviously the example I am using is likely much less than your own personal goals for next year but the method is the same. We have taken the too large to ponder number and broken it down to a far more easily attained goal (yet we haven't changed the main goal at all). Now that you have a more manageable number, it is time to consider what can be done to get there. To grow profits, you really have two choices: increase income or reduce expenses.

To increase income you can raise your rates or you can do more calls. Of course, you can only raise your rates so far and there are only so many hours in the day. At the recent Regional Service Meeting the subject came up in the round table discussion of interruptions by phone calls as guys were running their service calls. It was suggested that, in many cases, it would make financial sense to hire a part time entry level employee to take those calls and schedule them so that the tech in the field could concentrate on the job. The suggestion was that if you were to follow this approach it is possible that you would free yourself up enough to more than offset the cost of the employee. That would be another way to increase income. There are lots of ideas that may be other ways of increasing income, or reaching your other goals that you can come up with.

Another way to increase profits is to reduce some of your overhead expenses. If you find yourself going to a job twice, once to diagnose and once again with parts, you are in the perfect position to reduce your expenses by making sure that you have enough inventory on hand to fix most breakdowns on the first visit. Other expenses that can be addressed involve warranty service. If you are running calls for a warranty company at less than profitable rates, you may gain some customers as a result of that relationship. Make no mistake though, if you are doing these call at a loss they are really an expense. Can you negotiate a better rate or run cash calls instead? There are probably dozens of small expenses through the day that can add up as well. Any of those expenses that can be reduced help your bottom line.

Little Bits Add Up

As you can see, there are many ways to reach the goals you set for yourself. The important thing is that you set those goals and work to achieve them. You will probably have some days where you just don't reach that daily goal you have set for yourself. When that happens, don't be discouraged and give up. Each day is a new beginning. Start each day focused on your goals for that day, and work to achieve them. By the end of the year, you will find yourself in a much improved position. One bite a time.

Thanks to all of you for your help in letting me achieve my own goals for 2013. W.L. May Company, and myself, would like to wish you all the greatest success in 2014. May all of your goals be reached-whatever they are and how ever you strategize to get there. Good luck!

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Seasons Greetings

Monday Motivation

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Holiday Schedule

Portland's Peacock Lane picture courtesy of Chuck Coe

During Christmas and New Years Holidays, there is are several schedule changes that you should be aware of. They are as follows:

December 24, Christmas Eve:
This is the busiest day of the year for shipping companies. Most carriers will put a priority on residential deliveries.
W.L. May Co: Closed
UPS: Normal delivery of ground, air, and international shipments. Pickup of air and international shipments only.
OnTrac: Normal Deliveries. Pickups by special request.
Fed EX: Ground-Open. Early station, on-call pickups and drop box closings in some areas.
              Home-Open
              Freight-Closed
US Mail: Regular Delivery
WXPX: Normal Delivery

December 25, Christmas:
WL May Co: Closed
UPS: Closed
OnTrac: Closed
Fed EX: Closed
US Mail: Closed
WXPX: Closed

December 31, New Years Eve
WL May Co: Closed
UPS: Delivery and pickup of air and international packages only.
OnTrac: Normal deliveries. Pickups by special request.
Fed EX: Ground-Open
              Home-Open
              Freight-Open
US Mail: Regular Delivery
WXPX: Normal Delivery

January 1, New Years Day
WL May Co: Closed
UPS: Closed
OnTrac: Closed
Fed EX: Closed
US Mail: Closed
WXPX: Closed

All of us here at W.L. May Co. wish you all have a great Holiday Season!

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Throwback Thursday: News Recap December 19, 2013

If you have been reading the W.L. May Blog but haven't checked us out on Facebook, Twitter or Google+, you may not be getting the whole story. We use all of those social media outlets to share news stories that relate to our industry as well as appliance tips we have found from other sources. Here is a recap of some of the top stories we have seen lately. A lot has been happening so without further ado:

We start with some consumer friendly articles we feel would be great for sharing:

• Freds Appliance talked about some frequent washing machine problems, the causes and solutions. LINK
• Samurai Appliance Repair Man wrote a great article discussing extended warranties and protection plans. LINK
• Treehugger posted a list of 8 easy maintenance tips for front load washers. LINK
• All Tech had some suggestions of things to check for on broken dryer and how to prepare for the repairs, if needed. LINK

Next, we look at the manufacturers and how they have been in the news recently:

• The chief Design officer at Electrolux, Stefano Marzano is retiring. LINK
• Digital Journal reported that Electrolux has jumped on the shipping container construction craze, by using them to build a mobile showroom kitchen. LINK

We found several articles that might be of interest to those of you who love all thing appliances:

• Some respected thought leaders said the washing machine is a more important invention than the internet LINK
• Reviewed.Com had five "awesome lifehacks" involving appliances. LINK
• WickedLocal.com turned an old dishwasher into a terrarium. LINK
• Crafty Garden Mama offered a how-to make wool dryer balls to use instead of fabric softener sheets. LINK

Sometimes, the links we post are related to technology, business or happenings on the internet:

• Intuit discussed fake reviews on online sites. How to spot them and what to do when you find them. LINK
• New York Times ran in interesting article that discussed small businesses, and the opportunities and pitfalls for them when considering affiliate programs.  LINK
• Livescience discussed the transition to smart homes. LINK
• Business Marketing Sales advocated refrigerator magnets as an inexpensive way to grow your business and keep repeat customers LINK
• Smart Van shared the results of a report on European service companies and how they are running their businesses and increasing their profits. LINK
• HBR Blog Network discussed how an increase in employee performance data has the risk causing an overlook of hard-to-measure employee skills. LINK
• Smart Van showed us some of the resources they are using to stay informed. LINK
• Service Coach found Twitter to be more useful than Facebook for marketing. LINK
• Inc. ran the results of a survey of small business owners regarding their views on 2014. LINK

We close with a fun story:

• Wall Street Journal revisited the prototype kitchen developed by RCA and Whirlpool for the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959 to see which ideas have made into the modern home. LINK

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