Everything comes with instructions, why not a painting company? Call it automating your business, any time you can automate a procedure you free up your time. An automated business can run without a manager, you. Can your company run for any length of time without you? Can you take a vacation?
Did you ever see a McDonalds go out of business?
Certainly one reason that helps them to succeed is their operations manual. Go in any McDonalds from Alaska to Florida and they are the same. Another reason for McDonald success, no matter where the McDonalds is in the US, you can get the same burger, and that makes people feel safe, so that they know they can fell assured that they will get what they ask for. The next really smart thing about McDonalds Policy manual is that they can take totally inexperienced people and have the store function consistently by just following the manual.
And while a painting company has many jobs that need specialized skills, there are many tasks that are repetitious and can be laid out in the form of an instruction manual. Estimation, payroll, sales can be almost totally formulated. Even a foremans skills of running the job will benefit from policies or directions describing the way we do it.
Imagine how large you want your business to be in a few years, then by establishing relationships and then by visualizing the flow of work or information between the relationships. Now define these relations with job descriptions. Such as Sales manager, marketing manager, accounting, and then when you know the people you need to hire, create a detailed job description for each one. Of course you won't need to hire these people immediately; because, you will still be doing most of the work.
Here is an example of an outline of a business operations manual:
1. Plan, mission statement
2. Your Flo-chart
3. Employee Information
4. Human Resources (hiring/firing, vacations, overtime, payroll, etc.)
5. Services
a. The Industry
b. Our Organization
c. Business Management
d. Daily Operating Procedures
e. End of Week, End of Month, End of Quarter and End of Year Procedures6. Sales, Policies and Procedures
7. Customer Service, Policies and Procedures
8. Marketing
9. Reports & Records
10. Safety
11. Legal
Consider the manual a work in progress. Use it and keep modifying it as you use it.
Making changes and simplifying the manual will improve it. Although a lot of work can go into this, be assured that the rewards are well worth the effort.
