How to Scale Without Burnout

Ask John

By John Duever

Cody G asks: John, on The WrapIQ Podcast you talk about producing thousands of wraps and graphics packages a year, how on Earth do you keep your crew from getting burnt out pushing such a pace and what are some things I need to take into account as I scale?

Great question, Cody, thank you.

My first response to this question is with a few key ingredients: an impossibly talented team, solid processes and procedures and a very positive culture but to me, those are very obvious so let's dig a little deeper. When you push a pace you can find yourself in a lot of trouble if you don't set the staff up for success. You have to have a very streamlined systematic approach to high levels of production. I am a massive fan of the lean business model and really focus on this when I look at how things are done. The lean business model will change your life if you fully or even partially embrace it. Essentially, it is reducing or eliminating waste on all fronts from product usage, and nesting the panels and graphics properly to not wasting any steps or movements when you are producing. The nesting and product usage is pretty straightforward with any experience in production. Nest things accordingly, print jobs together where able, reduce the amount of different brands of materials and laminates you use and group all jobs on the same material as much as possible, EVEN IF there are different due dates and one job jumps in front of another. When dealing with this aspect it is important to schedule your jobs accordingly. Full wraps and large panel graphics packages are done together for a day or two and then print and cut jobs are done on another day or part of a day. If there is one thing that will break your crew it is monotony, if they have to produce 300 of the same wrap or graphics package one after the other it is frustrating and after they get to the point of the lowest time possible it gets very boring. People in our industry do not like to be bored and they certainly do not like monotony - schedule the jobs accordingly and keep it interesting. With all this being said, there are still going to be deadlines and jobs that come in that will need to be the same thing one after another and that's just how the cookie crumbles sometimes. Make sure this happens Ask John as little as possible and everyone will be willing to deal with it from time to time.

Pushing a very high pace is an art form that changes with the complication level of the production process, the difficulty of the job, the skill level of the production personnel as well as their ability to endure essentially torture. Let's just say that we have broken a few people by pushing way too hard to make a deadline. We have learned a lot from our mistakes and now take these things into account. We want to make sure our crew is happy, they are not working too hard and they do not overwork themselves. You must be able to read your crew and read when they are near that breaking point. NEVER, and I mean never find your crew's breaking point. Get close and back off, educate, get close again and back off, educate, get close and back off. Each time a new level of education occurs, the breaking point naturally rises especially if you hire high achievers and competitive team members.

Let's talk a little more about that breaking point. Your ability to produce is limited to the talent level of your team. If you think a job should take 25 minutes to produce from start to finish and it takes 35 minutes, guess what, you better put that on the schedule for 35-40 minutes. It doesn't matter what you think, it matters what your team is capable of. This right here is probably the most valuable point I'm making in this article. Do you want to break your team? Expect them to produce more than they are capable of on a regular basis. This creates frustration, animosity and anger among all parties involved and leads to a downturn in culture which leads to a downturn in produced jobs. How you counter this is to work to your team's abilities, maybe a little bit more. Educate them, get them training and the times will decrease. Give them the tools necessary to be more successful and they will, as long as they are the right person for the job. Speaking of time, time yourself on your jobs. This started for me early on in my installation career. You may not know a single person on Earth who is more competitive than myself; I was born this way and it has only gotten worse over time and I LOVE to challenge myself. I started to time myself when installing panels. If the first panel on a box truck took me 5 minutes, the next one better only take me 4 minutes and 50 seconds and so on and so on until I find the fastest time possible that maxes out my skill set while keeping the quality to my expectations.

When it comes to production, you cannot control it unless you track it so if you have multiple jobs simply time yourself from The time you grab the roll and begin the process of weeding, masking, trimming, etc time it. Get better and faster with each aspect of the job and you will naturally decrease your time. However, there is a fine line between working fast and making mistakes and working fast and not making mistakes. You have to walk that tightrope without falling because if you make a mistake in production it could blow your entire job up if a panel needs to be reprinted or reprinted then plotter cut which only adds a crazy amount of time and stress, especially if there is a deadline to meet.

I have found that as I age my ability to maintain breakneck speeds while keeping quality as high as possible has lessened. Over the years I have gone from installing an insane amount of square footage a day for many days in a row to only being able to push my fastest pace for a day or two max. This has been a hard pill for me to swallow but at the same time, it has given me a ton of empathy for my team and scheduling. You cannot maintain your fastest time for weeks or months on end, it is impossible and I don't care who says they can - they can't. In 23 years in this industry, I have seen every single "world's fastest wrapper"'s speed fade with time and their ability to maintain that speed and quality has faded too. Don't get me wrong, I'll still smoke people in hood wrap competitions but after 4 or 5 of them, I have reached my fastest time and will only fade from there. Understand that no matter your age or ability in your job you will find your limit. Respect this limit and work to your strengths. Funny story, I was in production just yesterday and I was talking mad trash to my guys about how good I am at weeding. I haven't weeded vinyl on a regular basis in years and I started to weed a job and just started laughing. The trash talk turned from me to them to me to myself. Let's just say I won't be challenging anyone to a weeding race for a little while. :) Without practice your skills fade and mine have certainly faded in the weeding category. Practice and continued work sharpens your skillset and it goes away without practice. Scheduling is very important for high production. Know how long a job takes and schedule the day accordingly. Know the team's ability, train them where they need it and increase their speeds.

Finally, I want to touch on the equipment involved in high production. Buying the right equipment gives them the tools they need to be successful, this also comes with time and scaling. Over the past few years, we have grown our equipment stable into a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility with the best equipment that money can buy. Printers, laminators, flatbed weeding and application tables and flatbed routers. Having the right equipment is paramount in high production next to having the right people in the right positions. Every purchase that you make should be bigger, better and faster than what you need because that means your output is scalable when you plug in the correct people paired with the proper training. Our ability to produce thousands of wraps and graphics packages a year has taken a lot of time and learning, not to mention the money we have spent over the years in our facility, equipment and team. Be patient, be a student of the game with the understanding that you have no clue what you don't know, never stop learning and the sky is the limit.

John Duever

John@wrapiq.com

Co-Owner/Operator, Vinyl Images

Founder/CEO, WrapIQ

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