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Loading... Woodworking Business 101: A Basic Business Guide For Woodworkersby A. William Benitez
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"Woodworking Business 101: A Basic Business Guide For Woodworkers" delivers the promise in the title. It's based entirely on my first-hand experience owning and operating successful one-person businesses for over thirty years. For over 20 years in my woodworking businesses in Tampa, FL and then Austin, TX I built hundreds of cabinets and furniture pieces for all kinds of customers. In Woodworking Business 101 I share all the knowledge I gained running my woodworking business to help you avoid the common small business mistakes that keep woodworkers from making a profit. For those just beginning, my book contains a helpful Getting Started chapter. For others who are already operating a woodworking business and may be struggling to profit from their skills, there are six additional chapters filled with detailed information, a preface, an introduction, a glossary, and a personal notes section that will help you with every step toward profitability Woodworking Business 101: A Basic Business Guide For Woodworkers serves as an excellent beginning with the basics of the woodworking business and including all other aspects of the business of woodworking such as licenses, local and federal taxes, best ways to deal with suppliers, setting up bank accounts both checking and savings, using and accepting credit cards, the critically important aspects of contracting for work, the difficulties of accounting including unique, much easier methods, and the less than pleasant task of dealing with the IRS. Woodworking Business 101: A Basic Business Guide For Woodworkers helps you to develop methods to get customers but more importantly it shows you the best ways to keep customers after that first job. In spite of its importance, keeping customers is often overlooked leading to a long term loss of income. This book covers how to set up a functional shop taking full advantage of the space you may have available and the best ways to get the tools you need to build the projects you sell. Then it shows you how to carefully estimate the cost of materials and labor and set your job prices to ensure that you make a fair profit on every job. This will help you maintain your cash flow and ensure long term success. The final section called Personal Notes includes just a few hints and tips I gleaned over the past few years to give you even more help in operating your business successfully. No library descriptions found. |
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A brief post about William Benitez’s Woodworking Business 101.
As an introduction to what I might need for Alasdair’s, it was helpful. The helpful business advice was don’t overestimate your skill; don’t underestimate your skill; keep up with one’s accounting; use contracts; advertise on social media; price one’s work fairly yet profitably.
Good things to think about in relation to making money through woodworking.
Benitez’s final reflections caught my attention:
"There are two basic elements in my philosophy of business. The first is the golden rule. Treat everyone the way you want to be treated. If you have any doubt about how to deal with someone in a certain situation, simply stop for a moment and determine how you would like to be dealt with if the situation were reversed…. The second element is to keep things simple" (81).
This seems like good advice for the small business person. In fact, at my day job just a few weeks ago, I was proofing a business ethics course in which the professor kept coming back to the golden rule as a basis for a global business ethic since every culture recognizes some variation of the golden rule. Whether or not corporations would respect it as a basis for their globalization efforts’ business ethic (I’m doubtful), the golden rule certainly works for one’s own interactions with others. And it’s worth, as Benitez says, stopping from time to time to reflect on how we’re treating the people we interact with. A good, virtuous practice indeed.
I also like the notion of simplicity in business. Again, at my day job, I often find myself proofing some Six Sigma course, or a Project Management course. It’s interesting to see how complicated these two business methodologies can make things. On Friday, I found myself listening to a professor describe the various processes for “project selection,” that is, which project should a business take on. Complicated stuff. Benitez simply advises one, when making a bid for some carpentry job, to make an offer and see whether or not the customer accepts. Then, get a deposit to help defer some of the initial costs. There are more nuanced parts of the book, but this forms the basis of his project selection methodology. Simple stuff.
More than just good business advice, the golden rule and the pursuit of simplicity are integral to the Christian walk, as the sermon on the mount and the monastic tradition—to name but two examples—make clear.
In closing, I doubt I’ll find myself in a position to be bidding for jobs for many years (perhaps several decades); nevertheless, Benitez’s book offers even little-old-simple-me a really good introduction to business for the solo woodworker and, via a good bibliography, really good advice for where to go next.