Why Some Workrooms Stay Busy But Not Profitable | Ann Johnson
Guest Profile: Ann Johnson Ann K. Johnson’s wholesale workroom, Sew Easy Windows LLC, Avon Lake, Ohio, was established in 1992. She is the author of The Professional Workroom Handbook of Swags I & II, and publishes Kitty Stein’s Price Your Work With Confidence! Ann offers private workroom training and consultations. She is a dynamic instructor for seminars and hands-on classes in workroom fabrication, pattern drafting, efficiency and pricing. She is a popular instructor for CWC, IWCE & WCAA. Other Notes/Links: Resources Mentioned in This Episode Ann K. Johnson – https://annkjohnson.com Curtains & Soft Furnishings Resource Library (CSF Library) – https://csfrl.org The Workroom Channel – https://www.theworkroomchannel.com The Workroom Channel (YouTube) – https://www.youtube.com/@TheWorkroomChannel Window Coverings Association of America (WCAA) – https://wcaa.org WCAA Virtual Chapter – https://virtualchapterwcaa.org Educational Resources Referenced CSF Library Archived Webinars & Industry Resources – https://csfrl.org WCAA Educational Webinars – https://wcaa.org Workroom Tours & Method Shares – https://www.theworkroomchannel.com Follow Sew Easy Windows LLC On: Facebook pssst…. want to be a guest on the show? Listen to other episodes Subscribe to Marketing Panes for more expert insights, strategies, and real stories from across the window treatment and awning industry. Spotify: https://bit.ly/4j20C49 ApplePodcast: https://bit.ly/4c2VN8s Video https://youtu.be/laWhqS5cAvI?si=bzfEoocniu1okFh4 Click here to display Transcript TRANSCRIPT William Hanke (00:00)to another episode of Marketing Panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals about what’s working in marketing, what’s changing in the industry, and how to grow smarter. Today’s guest is someone who spent over three decades inside the workroom, not just working in it, but constantly refining how it runs. She built and operated her own workroom for more than 30 years before recently stepping away from production to focus fully on what she’s become known for in the industry, helping workrooms become more efficient. She’s taught at major industry conferences, developed training programs, and works directly with teams to improve workflow, reduce wasted motion, and ultimately make businesses more profitable and sustainable. If you ever felt like the workroom is busy all the time and you’re still struggling to keep up, this conversation is going to hit home. Welcome to the show, Ann Johnson. Ann K. Johnson (01:02)Thanks, Will. I’m glad to be here. William Hanke (01:04)Yeah, appreciate you coming on. So let’s jump in. Tell me a little bit about yourself and what’s keeping you busy right now. Ann K. Johnson (01:10)Okay, well, history what gives me license to teach other workrooms. I started in ninety-two. I worked and I’ll tell you what, there was I didn’t even know I was a workroom. Had no idea, didn’t have the right equipment or anything, kept thinking I was gonna get out of this business because I fell into it and didn’t choose it. in 2006 I had been going to a workroom networking group, and the owner of the place who always hosted us Asked me to come work for him as workroom manager. And I thought, hot dog, no more cutting and covering boards and work, you know, on Monday through Friday, nine to five. And after two years, I realized that I just wasn’t employee material anymore. You know, you work for yourself, it’s hard to go back. So what I learned in that two years, because he had five sewists and a whole staff behind that, so they were William Hanke (01:56)Yes. Ann K. Johnson (02:07)putting work through this custom workroom, unbelievable amounts of work. And he was all about efficiency. always, well, how he put it, tweaking, you know, processes. So when I walked away from that business, from him, still friends, I developed the class on efficiency because it just it brought it home. And then the more I teach it, The more it brings it home. it also keeps it in my brain so that when I was working, I was on top of all this, but I was always grabbing other people’s ideas. You know, this workroom did this. Well, that’s intriguing. Let me try it. ⁓ I like it. I’m going to include it, or doesn’t work for me, but I might still include it and say pros and cons, right? So William Hanke (02:53)Fair enough. Ann K. Johnson (02:53)Because the way I do it isn’t necessarily the way somebody else wants to do it, right? And so I’ve just built up the reputation as an efficiency expert in the workroom. when I give a class and the whole class gasps, ⁓ that’s my moment. yeah. And I’ve taught workrooms that have been in business long longer than I have, 35 plus years. William Hanke (03:10)awesome. Ann K. Johnson (03:19)And they always walk away and say, wish I’d known that sooner, right? So that’s where I’m coming from is efficiency, intentional efficiency, thinking about it every day and constantly looking at your processes and seeing what can I do to make it better. William Hanke (03:23)Right. Yeah, that’s awesome. We’re gonna dive into some of that today, by the way. so I’m excited to hear a little bit more. Now you spent decades actually doing the work before stepping into the teaching side. And I think a lot of our listeners are kind of in that phase, you know, where they’re listening. Ann K. Johnson (03:41)I know. Yes. William Hanke (03:54)When you look back at the early workroom days, what were you doing the hard work way that you see different now? Ann K. Johnson (04:02)everything every stinking thing I didn’t have the table the machines the tools right and because those first 15 years I kept thinking well maybe I won’t stick with this right I wouldn’t invest and it wasn’t until I was meeting other workrooms or going to George’s workroom meetings and seeing what he had then I William Hanke (04:03)Okay. Right. Ann K. Johnson (04:27)Picked up a couple of machines, but I still, again, back then, workrooms were not charging what they needed to charge, right? So I never had enough to go out and pay for, invest in. And I just kept thinking, ⁓ next year I might not be in this anymore. So why get into it? It wasn’t until I left Georgia’s. I’m like, okay, I’m stuck in this. I now need to make the investment. There were no Professional patterns when I started, right? Everything was singer-sewing for the home and the library. doing everything the hard way. And then my first client who got me into this was a designer who was extra creative. So there was no references. And so it was all doing it the hard way. And and a lot of times I will take my mistakes, my struggles, and turn those into lessons because I don’t want workrooms who are coming into the business to suffer the same thing, right? So yeah, I pretty much did everything wrong for the first 15 years. William Hanke (05:32)⁓ too funny. ⁓ you mentioned not having the right tools early on. ⁓ how much did that affect like the overall efficiency day to day? Ann K. Johnson (05:42)everything. And I had no idea, right? I was just struggling. Okay, so you know, the right tool is your table, a padded table. You can pin things into it, it’s at your the right height, it’s the width, it’s 60 inches wide for a width of fabric, and it can be as long as you can make it. And so I started out on a ping pong table and then it collapsed on me, so I took half of it and propped it up on a couple of folding tables and I was making full length wide panels on a half a ping pong table with no padding. So you can’t get any more inefficient than that. totally. Because I refused to take and invest the money, right? William Hanke (06:25)Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. So before we get too far, how do you define efficiency in a workroom beyond just like moving faster? Ann K. Johnson (06:39)Right, right. So efficiency isn’t necessarily going as fast as you can. It’s better quality for sure. because you’ve got a happier client. You put out the same product every time, you know, you get the same details. your clients know what to expect. That’s what they get, right? That’s efficiency, having standards and that sort of thing, and also keeping your error rate low, right? There’s so many details and numbers that go through the workroom, and especially if you’re handing stuff off to employees or subcontractors, there’s even another level where things can go wrong. So setting up processes and all to keep those things moving, through the workroom. So what did I say? Quality, continuity, low error rate, that’s efficiency. William Hanke (07:27)Yeah. And that’s I mean the what’s the very well known book, the E-Myth right? That was that was all about McDonald’s, for example, always making the same burger the same way every time and the output’s always the same. So yeah. Ann K. Johnson (07:33)Yes. Yeah. Exactly. And they had processes for it. And as far as I’m a aware now, Amazon does the same thing. You know, they’ve got processes and they’ve got things set up so that the workers don’t have to go hunt the right box or bag or whatever. You know, it’s all folded into that. William Hanke (07:47)For sure. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So for somebody that’s listening who maybe feels like they’re constantly busy but behind, what’s usually the real issue here? Is it workload or workflow? Ann K. Johnson (08:05)Mm-hmm. Okay, I’m gonna go with workflow on that because workload is controllable, quote unquote, because you can say no, right? You can back your clients up. They might squawk, but then send them on their way. They’re not your client, right? ⁓ yeah, no. ⁓ you never hire somebody new when you’re under stress. William Hanke (08:27)Yeah. Or you can hire more people, right? I mean that’s it’s a solvable problem. Okay, fair enough. Ann K. Johnson (08:38)Ask me how I know. ⁓ it’s it’s just too hard. because bringing somebody in under stress, if you don’t have documentation and processes in place, you can’t teach them, right? And then you’re constantly overseeing them. And ⁓ there’s only one employee that I always recommend hiring, and ⁓ because a lot of employees work at their own most employees they work at their own speed and i’ve seen this in workrooms right people are like i don’t know how to make them work faster you either have a little buzzy bee who is just so fast and loves what they’re doing and wants to do more rare that’s very rare ⁓ you’ve got the good steady workers in between But more often than not, you’ve got the ones that are just gonna work at their own pace and they don’t care what the schedule is or anything. So that gets frustrating if you’re a very ⁓ high energy person, right? ⁓ did I get off the question there? So with work, yeah, with work load though, you can you can ⁓ like say no or back them off or whatever, but work flow is always there. William Hanke (09:41)No, you’re good. Ann K. Johnson (09:54)And if you have bottlenecks or whatever, then you’re always going to come up against those, and they’re always going to slow you down ⁓ at the bottlenecks, and those are what you need to. Andor an underreported or thought about is error rate. That’s really quite important because that’s a huge bottleneck. If you’re having trouble. Moving stuff through the workroom and you get a lot of errors either in the workroom you’re having to redo something or you go to the install and there’s something wrong and you have to bring it back and redo it. That’s all the worst thing, right? Right. So studying your error rate. William Hanke (10:32)Yeah. Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (10:37)will help you, you know, catalog them and analyze them and figure out where your weaknesses are. And that helps too. You can target them. William Hanke (10:46)Yeah, yeah. Very good. let’s get into the real day-to-day stuff. I think a lot of people don’t realize kind of where they’re losing time. so imagine you walk into a workroom for the first time. What are the first inefficiencies you usually notice? Ann K. Johnson (11:01)Okay, let’s talk about drapery panels because that’s the most common thing everybody does. And and I used to do it this way. they cut all their panels and then they split the ones they need to split, and then they spend time shuffling everything back together into panels, right? And William Hanke (11:03)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (11:19)Then you can that’s number one, that’s a lot of extra work doing all that shuffling. And number two, now you’re setting yourself up for an error of two right panels or two left panels because you didn’t put them back together in the right order. ⁓ and then bringing it back to the table after you ⁓ shuffle everything, bringing it back to the table, and then going along and glue basting or taping or pinning to pattern match. Right, so that you can sew your seam. Whereas if you simply cut your whists in the right order, split them in the right order, and stack them, you go straight to the machine, and there’s a method to pattern match right at the machine without doing all that pre-work. Every time you take that treatment back to the table, you are handling it. Too much, right? So if we can eliminate some of those steps back, and that’s been somebody once said I just took 30% of the time off of their making panels with just with that. ⁓ workrooms also, I call them crutches, time wasters. somewhere along the line, something William Hanke (12:26)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (12:38)Catastrophic happened, right? And it it caused all sorts of trouble. Now they worry. And one of them is length of panels, right? They went to hang them, they were too long, they were too short, they grew or whatever. And so now they hang up every panel that they fabricate. That’s a waste of time, you know. And this is where I have to go to them and say, no, you’ve been doing this long enough, you know which fabrics are good and which fabrics are bad. William Hanke (12:55)Okay. Yep. Ann K. Johnson (13:04)Right? So the fabrics that you know are good and stable and all make up your panel, trust your work and get it out. If you have a fabric that you’re not too sure of, go ahead and hang that one. Right. But we clutch sometimes these crutches because we’re afraid because of something that happened in the past. Mm-hmm. William Hanke (13:23)Right. Yeah. Definitely makes sense. Ann K. Johnson (13:26)and and you know, you could probably look at just about every type of treatment out there. In the last, I’m most familiar now with drapery panels, Roman shades, various versions, and box bleated valences, simple box bleeded valances, because that’s all anybody’s made in the last six, eight years, right? So if you go back to swags and kingston valances and the frufru stuff. Those aren’t gonna be as efficient because you don’t do them as often, right? And you don’t have that, but you can really get those core treatments down. Panels have often been thought of sometimes as a lost leader, and they shouldn’t be, right? William Hanke (14:06)Yeah. Yeah, those are some great tips. You’ve already affected a couple hundred workrooms, I think, just with this. Ann K. Johnson (14:12)We’ll see. William Hanke (14:15)So what are some common habits that feel normal to owners but are actually killing their productivity? Ann K. Johnson (14:20)hoarding fabric and you know they have leftover fabric they don’t know what to do with it or they’re always someday i’ll make pillows out of this right and it piles up around them and so keeping Extra leftovers in your workroom, in your actual work area, slows you down because you’re working around it. It’s also eliminating space for your tools and materials that you use on a daily basis and keeping them near you, right? And then another one of the biggest things is perfectionism. If you go to any group and you say who defines himself as a perfectionist, You know, ha more than half the hands go up, and it’s like, no, don’t do that. By definition, perfectionism is not attainable, right? And this is fabric, it’s not even like stone or wood, it’s fabric, it has a life of its own, and it’s gonna do what it damn well pleases. Sorry about that. And ⁓ so I’m trying now to get people to look more to to to get perfectionism. how do I move forward on this? I can’t make it perfect, or I can’t follow this standard or or whatever. And then they freeze up and they’re not happy with what they did. Whereas if you tell yourself, I’m striving for excellence, okay? It gives you it literally just that word takes a load off your shoulders. And you say, Okay. William Hanke (15:51)Yeah. Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (15:55)I’m doing the very best I can. I’m putting out an excellent product. People love my work. They keep coming back. Perfectionism isn’t gonna do you any good. You have to change your mindset. William Hanke (16:10)I like that. I’ve heard the phrase done is better than perfect. ⁓ you know, that’s yeah. Yeah. But I do like excellent is better than perfect, right? That’s that keeps that excellence in mind. I like that. That’s really good. So are there any specific workflow breakdowns you see over and over again across the different shops that you visit? Ann K. Johnson (16:13)yes, love that phrase, yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. the shops that I go into, and lately I’ve been going into more that are multiple employees, and a couple last year were designers bought their workroom because the workroom owner was tired and wanted to quit, retire, but the designers didn’t want to lose them. William Hanke (16:49)Okay. Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (17:00)Assuming that the workroom has two or three employees that know how to do the work, right? And so, but the ⁓ designers would then call me because they were like, I can’t believe how slow these people are, right? And a lot of it was because the workroom owners had been in the business too long, were tired, and weren’t out there learning new. Right? They were just like caught up in their own. So I would say the most common thing is is doing it the way you always did it. Okay. And and sometimes that’s almost inevitable because you have it it’s like a spiral, right? You’ve you have this huge workload and you’re just killing yourself trying to get it done. And you know there’s gotta be a better way. You go to conferences, you come home, your head’s ringing, and you’ve got all these great ideas, but my gosh, you got those deadlines, so you jump right back in to doing it the way you always did, and so you never quite get and and you don’t give yourself permission to step back and take a week off or a couple days, and you get so overwhelmed you just don’t even know where to start. That’s where sometimes whenever I teach. William Hanke (18:21)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (18:25)Here we go. I’m gonna assign your listeners homework. ⁓ whenever I teach a class, any class, and the four-day workroom hands-on class, they have to do this every night, is through the course of the class write down three things. I don’t care if it’s tips, it’s a technique, a process, a tool, that you’re going to immediately. William Hanke (18:28)Okay. Ann K. Johnson (18:51)⁓ use when you get back to your workroom. You’re gonna order it, you’re gonna practice it, and you’re going to make it happen in your workroom. If ⁓ this way they go home with a targeted list, right? And if they have more, then make two or three one one lady said, can I make a list for my husband? Because he worked with her. And I was like, yeah, go for it. But ⁓ this helps narrow your brain down. You’ve learned so much William Hanke (19:11)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (19:19)You don’t know where to start. You’re you’re overwhelmed. You have to just jump right back into that gopher wheel again. And and and you don’t give yourself time to learn something new. William Hanke (19:31)Yeah. Yeah. There’s something to be said for speed to implementation, right? ⁓ just and and just like mentally having some sort of a win, you know, when you’re trying to improve something, if it’s just little, it it invigorates you to then do more. Ann K. Johnson (19:37)Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, it does. you don’t have to write all your documentation in two days, right? You just you’re working on a job, just jot down the steps as you go along and take pictures. You just created documentation, right? numbers. I just did a class in Massachusetts on William Hanke (19:56)Right. Ann K. Johnson (20:09)numbers through the workroom. And at first I struggled, you know, I was like, I’m going to give them this whole package so they can just use my forms. And the more I worked at, the more I struggled because there are so many numbers that come in from different directions that go into every job. And everybody thinks differently, right? So all I could do was show them samples, talk about the steps, William Hanke (20:29)Right. Ann K. Johnson (20:34)Along the way and have them go back and step back and study. I mean, we’re all doing it. because I started before forms and everything, it was always that scribbled out. I’d take a piece of paper and I’d scribble out the specifications and I would had a Measure sheet that was just a drawn window and numbers that I you know, missed measuring half of them. and you know, then I’d calculate how much fabric on this piece of paper and I’d calculate my labor and the final cost. And usually, especially if I was on the road, forget something and keep telling myself, I need a checklist. William Hanke (20:59)Okay. Ann K. Johnson (21:13)Why am I not using a checklist? But I was always so charging ahead. Even as a teacher, this is a do as I say, not as I do thing, right? Because, but if you go back and you look at the way that you receive the quote, you calculate all the details for the quote, however, you’re doing it now on paper by hand, you could start, you could lay this out and realize you’re doing it the same way for every job. Now. Let’s just take this one part of it where we have the most errors and make it a checklist or make it a form we fill out. Well that worked. Let’s do another one, right? it is baby steps. William Hanke (21:57)Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. For somebody who maybe hasn’t taken your course or any course lately or been to a conference, if if they want to improve efficiency, what’s something they should evaluate first? Ann K. Johnson (22:12)Errors, error rate. Evaluate your error rate and how your numbers and your information flows through your workroom. Okay. that’s where you spot your weaknesses. And then from there, there are so many ⁓ opportunities out there. If they go to the curtains and soft furnishings library, they have ⁓ all the old webinars from the ⁓ The old custom furnishings academy. You know, they used to do webinars every month. And they have those archived in the library. You’d for I don’t know what the Pro Plus level costs, but I know it’s very reasonable for the information there. So you go and you start watching those webinars. So you’re going to get lessons. The Workroom channel has online classes, very reasonably priced. Go and take those, you know. If you’re part of WCAA, they have years of webinars, their lunch and learn webinars. They archive all of those, and I’m in a lot of them. And ⁓ the WCAA virtual group does their own monthly webinars and they archive those. So you can go, there is so much information out there. the workroom channel on YouTube, method shares, they’re short videos, but they give you short, they show you how to put a zipper in a pillow. They show you how to pattern match the machine, little things so that you learn it and incorporate it and then move forward to the next one, right? William Hanke (23:56)Love that. Yeah. And you mentioned earlier on getting the right tools and investments that counts as tools and investment for your business. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. what does a well-designed workflow actually look like in practice? Is there a way that you could verbalize that? Ann K. Johnson (24:01)Mm. Totally, totally. Mm-hmm. Maybe. so a well-designed workflow is work we could do workflow or workroom. well designed. let’s go with workroom. When you receive William Hanke (24:15)Okay. Okay. Ann K. Johnson (24:30)materials, supplies, hardware, that sort of thing, having one place for them to go into. And I had created and I used, I I did have a couple forms I used. And I had a receiving form so that I knew what, you know, I could fill that out for every job for everything coming in for a job. And then kept that binder next to where I received things, right? And I always insisted that all hardware came to me also so that I could unpack it. And make sure all the pieces parts fit together that I’ve got the right finish, that sort of thing. So there’s that’s a checklist, a quality checklist thing, ⁓ so that there’s not that error. And same with the fabrics and everything. And then I had a method to store. Once everything was checked in, there was a place for trims to go, right? They would be labeled as to the client and everything. And those trims would go on a special shelf. hardware, the long poles, would go back out on my studios in my house. So they went back out on tables on the gr in the garage because they were long. They took up too much room. But the box with all the brackets and finials stayed in the workroom on the shelf, off to one side, so I could pull them when I was actually doing fabrication to double-check returns and number of rings and everything. So You have a receiving space. That’s important. And at the receiving space are the scissors and the tags and the marking pens and everything you need. And then once you receive, it goes into very specific space, fabric under the table, trim on the shelf, brackets on the shelf, and poles out in the now. This all sounds well and good, but you can get overwhelmed in a hurry, right? and then at your table where you work and if you have multiple workers each one of these should have under my table was the fabric pending right waiting to be fabricated but also we tend to stand in one specific corner of our tables just whatever our setup is its habit right so right there is my rulers on a shelf under the lip of the table William Hanke (26:43)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (26:50)All the tools and supplies I use on most jobs right there and smaller stuff a step behind me, right? On the shelves behind me. So having all your everything that you work with on a daily basis right there. And anything you don’t work on with on a daily basis set to one side makes a big difference. And then there was a place to put the finished treatments. After they were bagged and tagged, there’s a place for them. So that’s a that’s a good workflow. I could tell you about a a workroom in I want to say Boston, but or New Jersey, and it used to be a slaughterhouse, right? And they had several rooms downstairs where these people worked. And they had UPS stuff coming in over here and they had UPS stuff coming over here and you know when it was ti they just they had no plan. They didn’t have, you know, you you had to go around hunting for everything. And that’s ⁓ that’s not a good workflow. ⁓ other than that, like I said, ⁓ the ⁓ forms and the numbers catching. William Hanke (28:00)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (28:10)And the that you carry from one step to the next is important also. William Hanke (28:15)Yeah. As I said it before, but I’m sure you’re affecting workrooms that are listening to this just with just with these great tips. So I appreciate that. that’s great. And and it’s funny how you know somebody could be listening that’s been doing this for 20 years, like you said, 15, 20 years. I never even thought of that. Why didn’t why don’t we do that? You know, and just making that one little change improves their profit. It improves their bottom line at the end of the day. Ann K. Johnson (28:29)Mm-hmm. Right, we don’t. It reduces their stress, you know. One of the things I do is I give them permission, you know, to not be perfect, to go ahead and do it this way, even though everything they ever read said you did it that way, it’s okay to do it this way. Because that is faster and it’s causes you less problems in the long run or whatever. And and you know, I’ve often been told that it’s like, you give me permission, right? William Hanke (28:56)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (29:08)I kinda, yes, anytime I teach, I mean what I’m giving you now is like high level tips and techniques. When I teach, whether it be a one and a half hour class or four days of fire hose, I give a lot. And yes, I overwhelm, especially that four day class. By the third day, they’re all like, William Hanke (29:15)Right. Ann K. Johnson (29:35)You know, I’ll say, do you want make a sample of that? And they’re like, no, just keep teaching. And but I also give documentation and follow up, you know, with reference and stuff. The four-day class is a 160-page student manual. That was literally a brain dump when I first made it up. It is not publishable, it is ugly. You know, but they’re like, yeah, I reference that every week. So as long as, you know, I can give lots of tips and techniques and and processes and that sort of thing, but I need to follow up with documentation links to the what I referred to before, the method shares, or go watch this webinar that’ll, you know, flesh it out even more or something. So that’s important. William Hanke (30:20)Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. in the world of personality tests, I’ve been labeled as a quick start. And a quick start is somebody who sees the new object and they go after it, right? So I think it would be good for people that are like that, that hear about all these efficiencies and like, we got to go implement all these. How did how we need to talk about balance, right? How do they balance efficiency? Ann K. Johnson (30:45)Right. William Hanke (30:47)Keep quality and especially if their teams are already under some stress. Ann K. Johnson (30:54)Right, right. So if especially if you have a team, you have to take the stress off of them as much as you can. hourly workers are not paid to take the stress. That’s my thing. like I said, baby steps, getting started, how to balance the stress and the qual and the efficiency. you have to set boundaries, okay? A lot of workrooms don’t set boundaries. They’ll answer the phone or reply to emails at any time during the day. William Hanke (31:12)Yes, yes. Ann K. Johnson (31:25)Laura Nelson, we just came from her workroom on that workroom tour that I did with Chanel. And her workroom tour is going to come up on the YouTube channel somewhere soon. And ⁓ she has hours, 10 to 4. She doesn’t, you know, she she gets up, she starts working at eight and she might work past four or whatever, but 10 to 4 is when she responds to emails for her clients and that sort of thing. Not before. William Hanke (31:34)Okay. Ann K. Johnson (31:54)not after and i have found when there was couple of years and 2015 is my biggest learning year let’s put it that way that that created a whole webinar on what not to do because i was just inundated with work right and instead of making good decisions see when when you get under stress you stop making good decisions William Hanke (32:07)Okay. Ann K. Johnson (32:20)You’re like, I’m in a hurry. I don’t have time to do right now. we’ll just wing it. No, you don’t wing it. You know, that just that just my gosh. So I I did a whole webinar on that. So William Hanke (32:27)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (32:33)You have to give yourself boundaries. You have to say, no, I’m not gonna work all night. I am not going to work on weekends. I am going to work, and everybody’s different. You know, if you have young children in your husband’s home on Saturdays, yeah, maybe you’ll work while the kids are at school and then on most of Saturday, right? Everybody works out their own, but you have to put those hours on your wall. You know, you have to post them. You have to put them in your contract with your client. Post them, right? And remind them over and over again because and and people start to res they will respect that, right? But if you don’t respect yourself, then they’ll just keep coming at you. And so that’s where you get your balance and your stress by taking care of yourself, by setting boundaries, setting hours, giving yourself time away. Maybe even Laura was. She will work three weeks a month and take the fourth week off, but that’s her week for playing ketchup, that’s her week on you know, book work or whatever, or experimenting with something new or whatever. So that’s her way of maintaining her sanity and growing because she gives herself that time off. But you have to discipline yourself for it, right? Because we all wanna like, ⁓ they want that, they’re moaning, you know, they it’s just like, I hated that question. And I could always see it coming through the phone. So no pressure, but you know when it might be done? It’s like in my last three or four years or so, you know, I was helping take care of my folks, you know, as as they neared end of life and stuff. William Hanke (33:51)I think that’s important. Yeah. Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (34:20)And so you never knew when you had to drop everything and go to the emergency ward or something like that, right? And I was very, very lucky to have a very strong support system here, but I was I was the key person, you know, who handled their. William Hanke (34:35)Yeah. Teams are under pressure. Ann K. Johnson (34:38)I started answering with the question, well, do you have a date? Do you know when it’ll be done? Or can you have it done by this date? My answer was always, sure, pending on foreseen circumstances. I just always William Hanke (34:53)Two, no? Ann K. Johnson (34:54)put that on there, pending on because you never know what life’s gonna hit you with. So you you have to if you always jump for your client. Then that’s what they’re gonna expect, right? You need a jump for yourself. So that’s handling stress and quality and efficiency. William Hanke (35:04)Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. You mentioned hitting that burnout at one point. And I think that’s something a lot of people in our industry, you know, quietly deal with. Ann K. Johnson (35:16)yeah. William Hanke (35:20)What led to that burnout for you? Was it volume, lack of systems, or something different? Ann K. Johnson (35:20)Mm-hmm. Yes, yes, yes. ⁓ and yes. So I took on a new designer the fall before that, in twenty fourteen. And she’s a nice lady, a little manipulative, right? But I could handle her, right? and so as we flowed into January, she had three houses that we were doing. And this is on top of my regular workload, but I wanted to impress her and you know, draw her in is so that could keep her. And so also at the time my kids are gone, my husband doesn’t need me to fuss over him for dinner or anything like that. So I’d say, well, I could work a little later every day. And she was constantly calling up and well, you know, can you have this two weeks from today? And I’d be like, ⁓ she’s and and ⁓ my client’s gonna be so upset. And so I would like, yeah, okay, two weeks. That’s plenty of time. And of course it wasn’t. But I’m, you know, was managing them and the and I was also because I was under so much stress, and the all three houses were on the east side, which is over an hour away, right? So just popping over there to check and measure or something was Would have taken some time. Now, if I had been smart, I would have taken a day and gone over there and double checked all the measures through the house. I had sent somebody else to do the measures, and there were a couple that were wrong. So a couple things started coming back. And I had a job that four long cuts of scalamandra fabric folded on my table between my machines. Where it was safe and out of the way until I could work on it. My oil can fell over and I didn’t know it. And I had a huge oval grease ring in the middle of those four. Panic, panic, panic. I figured out how to salvage two, but had to spend eight hundred dollars buying more. so there come the hits, you know, and the stress. Things start coming back, they’re making mistakes, and then Boom, like in September, I just ran right into a brick wall, metaphorically speaking, of course, and spent most of the rest of the year chasing errors, chasing problems. So when I went back and I looked at my net income from 2014 and my net income from 20 ⁓ 15, my gross was like 25% higher. My net was only about five grand more. William Hanke (38:04)Hmm. Wow. Ann K. Johnson (38:05)for all those hours and all that stress. It’s not worth it. You have to take care of yourself and not let other people tell you how to run your business or what your hours should be or when you should deliver. ⁓ that’s for you to choose. William Hanke (38:22)Yeah. Yeah. How often do you see burnout tied directly to the inefficient processes? Ann K. Johnson (38:29)⁓ yeah, you see it. You talk to people and and you see it. ⁓ and and some of it too is life, what’s going on in their lives doesn’t help, right? which is all the more reason you have to sell set boundaries with your clients, right? and get the help you need if you can’t. And this goes back to charging enough. To be able to bring in somebody to clean your house for you or mow your lawn, right? And the one worker that I tell every workroom to hire. I hired her, I hired a friend who needed money, right? she struggled to work in the real world because of AD, HD, or you know, whatever. She was just Flighty is all get out. You gave her a list at the beginning of the day, and then you didn’t pay attention to how she got it done because she’d be all over the place, but she’d get it done. She was proud of what she did. The years that I had her working for me, my productivity skyrocketed. Because an unskilled utility worker, that’s what they call them a utility worker, an unskilled utility worker. paid at hourly wage can do everything right up to the point where you pull the fabric out and start fabricating the skilled part. And then when you get to a certain point in the fabrication process, you can hand it back to them to finish it off. Right. So I think workrooms, I keep trying to tell workrooms that, and I don’t think they truly understand that. And that could be somebody, a mother who sends her kids off to school every day, right? And just comes in for three or four hours for three days a week or something. It’s unbelievable. And then maybe if they’ve got a little skill, you can eventually train them and bring them up to a skill level that would be valuable in the future. So William Hanke (40:22)Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I I’m a huge systems guy. I love building systems and having them in place and then figuring out ways to ⁓ you know make them better, make them more efficient, as we’ve been talking about. ⁓ so so I love that the I love what you’re saying. So so now that you’ve stepped away from the workroom, your focus is on helping others improve theirs. ⁓ when you go into a workroom to train a team, what’s usually missing? Ann K. Johnson (40:34)Yeah. Mm-hmm. ⁓ I don’t know, that’s a blank. I mean, every workroom’s different, but it’s and it depends. So, like the class I’m teaching, those are workrooms coming to me. They are ones who are already learning. You know, they’ve got their finger on the educational ⁓ opportunities out there. The workrooms that I go into with hired help and new management. William Hanke (40:56)Okay. Ann K. Johnson (41:21)they are missing current. ⁓ they’re still doing it the same way it’s always been done and haven’t kept up with ⁓ processes that could be ⁓ help to streamline things. William Hanke (41:38)Yeah, yeah. How do you ⁓ how do you approach teaching efficiency without overwhelming them? You mentioned the fire hose earlier. Ann K. Johnson (41:46)yeah, I overwhelm them right from the start. ⁓ it’s it’s a given. ⁓ but we use the student handbook. That’s my, you know, st ⁓ stylus or whatever they call it. ⁓ you know, I just go through page by page to the handbook and then we stop periodically and I encourage them to just make small samples, practice this, you know. a lot of them You know, some will already know this and some will already know that. And ⁓ depending on how much they’ve had their finger on or been watching me, they might know a lot. But still I and and also is the discussions. You know, somebody all pipe up and say, Well, I’ve been doing it this way. And everybody so ⁓ so we do homework every night, those three things, right, that you learn today, and I’m always praying they find three. William Hanke (42:40)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (42:41)They usually find 10, but we go around the table the next morning and it always fascinates me. There’s a certain few favorite, you know, tips or techniques that everybody does, but this one might write down something that that one said, right? So we learn from each other too. There’s I want to publish that student manual that’s in my that’s William Hanke (42:57)Mm-hmm. That yeah. Ann K. Johnson (43:06)my goal to do in the next year or two, but it won’t quit changing. Make that I just keep adding to it. So I don’t I gotta figure out how to cut it off. William Hanke (43:10)No Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. so far, fantastic tips. I really do appreciate it. I wanted to zoom out before we wrap up and talk about kind of the industry as a whole. what do you think the window treatment industry gets right when it comes to workrooms? Ann K. Johnson (43:33)I think we can thank Cheryl Strickland for bringing work rooms out of their basements. And getting and and opening up discussions on the ⁓ gosh, the for very first forum she was there. workrooms, they they work by themselves, you know, they don’t have often don’t have somebody to bounce ideas off of or whatever. So she brought the conversation out into the open. And got us to looking around and realized, I mean, for a long time there, you couldn’t get if if a woman was charging ten dollars a width to make a panel, now gosh, those a panel cost you a hundred to end up, depending on who the designer, you know, the workroom is and all. And and so they weren’t making any money. And so they were like hoarding their information because, no, you know, you might take my clients if I teach you this, right? And I think there was a lot of that for generations. And if you look back at books from the late 1800s, the techniques in those, if you can figure out what they’re talking about, are ⁓ were lost for William Hanke (44:43)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (44:48)Just just basic techniques for controlling fabrics from flare and and how to cut to create a pattern or whatever. Those were lost because nobody would share it. Now they share everything. So Cheryl opened that up, you know, with her magazines, with her school, with her forums. and then Kitty Stein ran with it with her pricing book, right? And got people to start. Realizing that they’re worth more and they can charge more and they should. Michelle Williams took that even further with her classes. so doing it right, if you are a workroom who is tapping into education in the industry and paying attention. There’s so much information out there, so much being shared, and at such a reasonable price, right? So I would say they are getting that right. William Hanke (45:42)Yeah. Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s great. Couple rapid fire questions for you. what’s one tool or setup change you wish every workroom would adopt? Ann K. Johnson (45:57)I wish they’d all hire a utility worker. An unskilled utility worker. their productivity would go through the roof. And it gives them a potential line towards some you know, a skilled worker down the road. William Hanke (45:59)Okay. Yeah. I like that one. what’s the most overrated practice in a worker? Ann K. Johnson (46:15)perfectionism and unnecessary handwork. There’s a lot of workrooms I still see, you know, they they do little videos on there and that there they are sewing away. It’s like you could have done that with a machine, you know. and so, okay, so I don’t want to disparage somebody who puts that kind of personal touch, but you better be charging for it. William Hanke (46:28)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (46:44)And you better be letting your client know this is what you’re doing for them. I have a colleague here, she was both designer and workroom, so she would go out and you know, sell the job and then she would make it up. And she had incredible creativity and she would do her own installs. So she was incredible. But what she would do is after she installed something and dressed it out, she would then take her client over to it and say, Look, isn’t this gorgeous? Look at this detail. Look what I added here just to make it look better for you. She would resell it to her client. So, what’s her client gonna tell all her friends and family when they come through? Look what she did for me, right? I think they do a lot too much handwork sewing on trim and stuff like that. but if you are doing it, William Hanke (47:24)Yeah. Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (47:32)then be sure to charge for it and let your client know this is what they’re getting for that, right? Don’t go telling other workrooms that this is the only way to do it, because that’s not true. William Hanke (47:37)Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I like that. thank you again so much for all the awesome tips and wisdom that you’ve given us. last question. If somebody listening takes just one action after this episode, what do you think it should be? Ann K. Johnson (47:57)And I’ll pull out your work, your paperwork, see the continuity and how you do each job, whether you do it with forms or you know, scribble, and start identifying the weak spots or the where where the bottlenecks and just take that little spot there and make a form, make a checklist or something. And also start looking at the go to the curtains and soft furnishings library and start looking at those circle time. They’re constantly creating new content as well as the old webinars that they have. And WCA has all those webinars. The workroom channel on YouTube has an incredible amount of information on real workrooms, workroom tours. they go into small little tiny rooms where people are or you know, have a workroom into these large commercial spaces and do a tour. They’re amazing. William Hanke (48:55)That’s great. ⁓ well, thank you again for everything that that you’ve added today. if somebody wants to learn more about you, where should they go? Ann K. Johnson (49:04)annkjohnson.com That’s my website. Yeah. I developed that when I was easing out of the workroom and easing more into the teaching part of it. So William Hanke (49:07)love that. Love that. They can go there. They can learn about your classes, about the different things, and obviously contact you as well. Perfect. That’s great. Well, thank you again for for being on today. I do appreciate it. Ann K. Johnson (49:22)Contact me too. Yes, definitely. I enjoyed it. Thank you for having me, Will. William Hanke (49:32)Yeah, no problem. So that was such a practical conversation with Ann and honestly a bit of a reality check for a lot of us. If you’re running a workroom and constantly feeling like you’re busy but not making progress, there’s probably something in your workflow that needs attention, not just more hours in the day. If you found this helpful, share it with somebody in the industry who’s in the trenches right now. And as always, follow marketing pains for more conversations like this. Where we break down what’s actually working in real window treatment businesses. TRANSCRIPT William Hanke (00:00)to another episode of Marketing Panes the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals about what’s working in marketing, what’s changing in the industry, and how to grow smarter. Today’s guest is someone who spent over three decades inside the workroom, not just working in it, but constantly refining how it runs. She built and operated her own workroom for more than 30 years before recently stepping away from production to focus fully on what she’s become known for in the industry, helping workrooms become more efficient. She’s taught at major industry conferences, developed training programs, and works directly with teams to improve workflow, reduce wasted motion, and ultimately make businesses more profitable and sustainable. If you ever felt like the workroom is busy all the time and you’re still struggling to keep up, this conversation is going to hit home. Welcome to the show, Ann Johnson. Ann K. Johnson (01:02)Thanks, Will. I’m glad to be here. William Hanke (01:04)Yeah, appreciate you coming on. So let’s jump in. Tell me a little bit about yourself and what’s keeping you busy right now. Ann K. Johnson (01:10)Okay, well, history what gives me license to teach other workrooms. I started in ninety-two. I worked and I’ll tell you what, there was I didn’t even know I was a workroom. Had no idea, didn’t have the right equipment or anything, kept thinking I was gonna get out of this business because I fell into it and didn’t choose it. in 2006 I had been going to a workroom networking group, and the owner of the place who always hosted us Asked me to come work for him as workroom manager. And I thought, hot dog, no more cutting and covering boards and work, you know, on Monday through Friday, nine to five. And after two years, I realized that I just wasn’t employee material anymore. You know, you work for yourself, it’s hard to go back. So what I learned in that two years, because he had five sewists and a whole staff behind that, so they were William Hanke (01:56)Yes. Ann K. Johnson (02:07)putting work through this custom workroom, unbelievable amounts of work. And he was all about efficiency. always, well, how he put it, tweaking, you know, processes. So when I walked away from that business, from him, still friends, I developed the class on efficiency because it just it brought it home. And then the more I teach it, The more it brings it home. it also keeps it in my brain so that when I was working, I was on top of all this, but I was always grabbing other people’s ideas. You know, this workroom did this. Well, that’s intriguing. Let me try it. ⁓ I like it. I’m going to include it, or doesn’t work for me, but I might still include it and say pros and cons, right? So William Hanke (02:53)Fair enough. Ann K. Johnson (02:53)Because the way I do it isn’t necessarily the way somebody else wants to do it, right? And so I’ve just built up the reputation as an efficiency expert in the workroom. when I give a class and the whole class gasps, ⁓ that’s my moment. yeah. And I’ve taught workrooms that have been in business long longer than I have, 35 plus years. William Hanke (03:10)awesome. Ann K. Johnson (03:19)And they always walk away and say, wish I’d known that sooner, right? So that’s where I’m coming from is efficiency, intentional efficiency, thinking about it every day and constantly looking at your processes and seeing what can I do to make it better. William Hanke (03:23)Right. Yeah, that’s awesome. We’re gonna dive into some of that today, by the way. so I’m excited to hear a little bit more. Now you spent decades actually doing the work before stepping into the teaching side. And I think a lot of our listeners are kind of in that phase, you know, where they’re listening. Ann K. Johnson (03:41)I know. Yes. William Hanke (03:54)When you look back at the early workroom days, what were you doing the hard work way that you see different now? Ann K. Johnson (04:02)everything every stinking thing I didn’t have the table the machines the tools right and because those first 15 years I kept thinking well maybe I won’t stick with this right I wouldn’t invest and it wasn’t until I was meeting other workrooms or going to George’s workroom meetings and seeing what he had then I William Hanke (04:03)Okay. Right. Ann K. Johnson (04:27)Picked up a couple of machines, but I still, again, back then, workrooms were not charging what they needed to charge, right? So I never had enough to go out and pay for, invest in. And I just kept thinking, ⁓ next year I might not be in this anymore. So why get into it? It wasn’t until I left Georgia’s. I’m like, okay, I’m stuck in this. I now need to make the investment. There were no Professional patterns when I started, right? Everything was singer-sewing for the home and the library. doing everything the hard way. And then my first client who got me into this was a designer who was extra creative. So there was no references. And so it was all doing it the hard way. And and a lot of times I will take my mistakes, my struggles, and turn those into lessons because I don’t want workrooms who are coming into the business to suffer the same thing, right? So yeah, I pretty much did everything wrong for the first 15 years. William Hanke (05:32)⁓ too funny. ⁓ you mentioned not having the right tools early on. ⁓ how much did that affect like the overall efficiency day to day? Ann K. Johnson (05:42)everything. And I had no idea, right? I was just struggling. Okay, so you know, the right tool is your table, a padded table. You can pin things into it, it’s at your the right height, it’s the width, it’s 60 inches wide for a width of fabric, and it can be as long as you can make it. And so I started out on a ping pong table and then it collapsed on me, so I took half of it and propped it up on a couple of folding tables and I was making full length wide panels on a half a ping pong table with no padding. So you can’t get any more inefficient than that. totally. Because I refused to take and invest the money, right? William Hanke (06:25)Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. So before we get too far, how do you define efficiency in a workroom beyond just like moving faster? Ann K. Johnson (06:39)Right, right. So efficiency isn’t necessarily going as fast as you can. It’s better quality for sure. because you’ve got a happier client. You put out the same product every time, you know, you get the same details. your clients know what to expect. That’s what they get, right? That’s efficiency, having standards and that sort of thing, and also keeping your error rate low, right? There’s so many details and numbers that go through the workroom, and especially if you’re handing stuff off to employees or subcontractors, there’s even another level where things can go wrong. So setting up processes and all to keep those things moving, through the workroom. So what did I say? Quality, continuity, low error rate, that’s efficiency. William Hanke (07:27)Yeah. And that’s I mean the what’s the very well known book, the E-Myth right? That was that was all about McDonald’s, for example, always making the same burger the same way every time and the output’s always the same. So yeah. Ann K. Johnson (07:33)Yes. Yeah. Exactly. And they had processes for it. And as far as I’m a aware now, Amazon does the same thing. You know, they’ve got processes and they’ve got things set up so that the workers don’t have to go hunt the right box or bag or whatever. You know, it’s all folded into that. William Hanke (07:47)For sure. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So for somebody that’s listening who maybe feels like they’re constantly busy but behind, what’s usually the real issue here? Is it workload or workflow? Ann K. Johnson (08:05)Mm-hmm. Okay, I’m gonna go with workflow on that because workload is controllable, quote unquote, because you can say no, right? You can back your clients up. They might squawk, but then send them on their way. They’re not your client, right? ⁓ yeah, no. ⁓ you never hire somebody new when you’re under stress. William Hanke (08:27)Yeah. Or you can hire more people, right? I mean that’s it’s a solvable problem. Okay, fair enough. Ann K. Johnson (08:38)Ask me how I know. ⁓ it’s it’s just too hard. because bringing somebody in under stress, if you don’t have documentation and processes in place, you can’t teach them, right? And then you’re constantly overseeing them. And ⁓ there’s only one employee that I always recommend hiring, and ⁓ because a lot of employees work at their own most employees they work at their own speed and i’ve seen this in workrooms right people are like i don’t know how to make them work faster you either have a little buzzy bee who is just so fast and loves what they’re doing and wants to do more rare that’s very rare ⁓ you’ve got the good steady workers in between But more often than not, you’ve got the ones that are just gonna work at their own pace and they don’t care what the schedule is or anything. So that gets frustrating if you’re a very ⁓ high energy person, right? ⁓ did I get off the question there? So with work, yeah, with work load though, you can you can ⁓ like say no or back them off or whatever, but work flow is always there. William Hanke (09:41)No, you’re good. Ann K. Johnson (09:54)And if you have bottlenecks or whatever, then you’re always going to come up against those, and they’re always going to slow you down ⁓ at the bottlenecks, and those are what you need to. Andor an underreported or thought about is error rate. That’s really quite important because that’s a huge bottleneck. If you’re having trouble. Moving stuff through the workroom and you get a lot of errors either in the workroom you’re having to redo something or you go to the install and there’s something wrong and you have to bring it back and redo it. That’s all the worst thing, right? Right. So studying your error rate. William Hanke (10:32)Yeah. Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (10:37)will help you, you know, catalog them and analyze them and figure out where your weaknesses are. And that helps too. You can target them. William Hanke (10:46)Yeah, yeah. Very good. let’s get into the real day-to-day stuff. I think a lot of people don’t realize kind of where they’re losing time. so imagine you walk into a workroom for the first time. What are the first inefficiencies you usually notice? Ann K. Johnson (11:01)Okay, let’s talk about drapery panels because that’s the most common thing everybody does. And and I used to do it this way. they cut all their panels and then they split the ones they need to split, and then they spend time shuffling everything back together into panels, right? And William Hanke (11:03)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (11:19)Then you can that’s number one, that’s a lot of extra work doing all that shuffling. And number two, now you’re setting yourself up for an error of two right panels or two left panels because you didn’t put them back together in the right order. ⁓ and then bringing it back to the table after you ⁓ shuffle everything, bringing it back to the table, and then going along and glue basting or taping or pinning to pattern match. Right, so that you can sew your seam. Whereas if you simply cut your whists in the right order, split them in the right order, and stack them, you go straight to the machine, and there’s a method to pattern match right at the machine without doing all that pre-work. Every time you take that treatment back to the table, you are handling it. Too much, right? So if we can eliminate some of those steps back, and that’s been somebody once said I just took 30% of the time off of their making panels with just with that. ⁓ workrooms also, I call them crutches, time wasters. somewhere along the line, something William Hanke (12:26)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (12:38)Catastrophic happened, right? And it it caused all sorts of trouble. Now they worry. And one of them is length of panels, right? They went to hang them, they were too long, they were too short, they grew or whatever. And so now they hang up every panel that they fabricate. That’s a waste of time, you know. And this is where I have to go to them and say, no, you’ve been doing this long enough, you know which fabrics are good and which fabrics are bad. William Hanke (12:55)Okay. Yep. Ann K. Johnson (13:04)Right? So the fabrics that you know are good and stable and all make up your panel, trust your work and get it out. If you have a fabric that you’re not too sure of, go ahead and hang that one. Right. But we clutch sometimes these crutches because we’re afraid because of something that happened in the past. Mm-hmm. William Hanke (13:23)Right. Yeah. Definitely makes sense. Ann K. Johnson (13:26)and and you know, you could probably look at just about every type of treatment out there. In the last, I’m most familiar now with drapery panels, Roman shades, various versions, and box bleated valences, simple box bleeded valances, because that’s all anybody’s made in the last six, eight years, right? So if you go back to swags and kingston valances and the frufru stuff. Those aren’t gonna be as efficient because you don’t do them as often, right? And you don’t have that, but you can really get those core treatments down. Panels have often been thought of sometimes as a lost leader, and they shouldn’t be, right? William Hanke (14:06)Yeah. Yeah, those are some great tips. You’ve already affected a couple hundred workrooms, I think, just with this. Ann K. Johnson (14:12)We’ll see. William Hanke (14:15)So what are some common habits that feel normal to owners but are actually killing their productivity? Ann K. Johnson (14:20)hoarding fabric and you know they have leftover fabric they don’t know what to do with it or they’re always someday i’ll make pillows out of this right and it piles up around them and so keeping Extra leftovers in your workroom, in your actual work area, slows you down because you’re working around it. It’s also eliminating space for your tools and materials that you use on a daily basis and keeping them near you, right? And then another one of the biggest things is perfectionism. If you go to any group and you say who defines himself as a perfectionist, You know, ha more than half the hands go up, and it’s like, no, don’t do that. By definition, perfectionism is not attainable, right? And this is fabric, it’s not even like stone or wood, it’s fabric, it has a life of its own, and it’s gonna do what it damn well pleases. Sorry about that. And ⁓ so I’m trying now to get people to look more to to to get perfectionism. how do I move forward on this? I can’t make it perfect, or I can’t follow this standard or or whatever. And then they freeze up and they’re not happy with what they did. Whereas if you tell yourself, I’m striving for excellence, okay? It gives you it literally just that word takes a load off your shoulders. And you say, Okay. William Hanke (15:51)Yeah. Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (15:55)I’m doing the very best I can. I’m putting out an excellent product. People love my work. They keep coming back. Perfectionism isn’t gonna do you any good. You have to change your mindset. William Hanke (16:10)I like that. I’ve heard the phrase done is better than perfect. ⁓ you know, that’s yeah. Yeah. But I do like excellent is better than perfect, right? That’s that keeps that excellence in mind. I like that. That’s really good. So are there any specific workflow breakdowns you see over and over again across the different shops that you visit? Ann K. Johnson (16:13)yes, love that phrase, yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. the shops that I go into, and lately I’ve been going into more that are multiple employees, and a couple last year were designers bought their workroom because the workroom owner was tired and wanted to quit, retire, but the designers didn’t want to lose them. William Hanke (16:49)Okay. Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (17:00)Assuming that the workroom has two or three employees that know how to do the work, right? And so, but the ⁓ designers would then call me because they were like, I can’t believe how slow these people are, right? And a lot of it was because the workroom owners had been in the business too long, were tired, and weren’t out there learning new. Right? They were just like caught up in their own. So I would say the most common thing is is doing it the way you always did it. Okay. And and sometimes that’s almost inevitable because you have it it’s like a spiral, right? You’ve you have this huge workload and you’re just killing yourself trying to get it done. And you know there’s gotta be a better way. You go to conferences, you come home, your head’s ringing, and you’ve got all these great ideas, but my gosh, you got those deadlines, so you jump right back in to doing it the way you always did, and so you never quite get and and you don’t give yourself permission to step back and take a week off or a couple days, and you get so overwhelmed you just don’t even know where to start. That’s where sometimes whenever I teach. William Hanke (18:21)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (18:25)Here we go. I’m gonna assign your listeners homework. ⁓ whenever I teach a class, any class, and the four-day workroom hands-on class, they have to do this every night, is through the course of the class write down three things. I don’t care if it’s tips, it’s a technique, a process, a tool, that you’re going to immediately. William Hanke (18:28)Okay. Ann K. Johnson (18:51)⁓ use when you get back to your workroom. You’re gonna order it, you’re gonna practice it, and you’re going to make it happen in your workroom. If ⁓ this way they go home with a targeted list, right? And if they have more, then make two or three one one lady said, can I make a list for my husband? Because he worked with her. And I was like, yeah, go for it. But ⁓ this helps narrow your brain down. You’ve learned so much William Hanke (19:11)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (19:19)You don’t know where to start. You’re you’re overwhelmed. You have to just jump right back into that gopher wheel again. And and and you don’t give yourself time to learn something new. William Hanke (19:31)Yeah. Yeah. There’s something to be said for speed to implementation, right? ⁓ just and and just like mentally having some sort of a win, you know, when you’re trying to improve something, if it’s just little, it it invigorates you to then do more. Ann K. Johnson (19:37)Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, it does. you don’t have to write all your documentation in two days, right? You just you’re working on a job, just jot down the steps as you go along and take pictures. You just created documentation, right? numbers. I just did a class in Massachusetts on William Hanke (19:56)Right. Ann K. Johnson (20:09)numbers through the workroom. And at first I struggled, you know, I was like, I’m going to give them this whole package so they can just use my forms. And the more I worked at, the more I struggled because there are so many numbers that come in from different directions that go into every job. And everybody thinks differently, right? So all I could do was show them samples, talk about the steps, William Hanke (20:29)Right. Ann K. Johnson (20:34)Along the way and have them go back and step back and study. I mean, we’re all doing it. because I started before forms and everything, it was always that scribbled out. I’d take a piece of paper and I’d scribble out the specifications and I would had a Measure sheet that was just a drawn window and numbers that I you know, missed measuring half of them. and you know, then I’d calculate how much fabric on this piece of paper and I’d calculate my labor and the final cost. And usually, especially if I was on the road, forget something and keep telling myself, I need a checklist. William Hanke (20:59)Okay. Ann K. Johnson (21:13)Why am I not using a checklist? But I was always so charging ahead. Even as a teacher, this is a do as I say, not as I do thing, right? Because, but if you go back and you look at the way that you receive the quote, you calculate all the details for the quote, however, you’re doing it now on paper by hand, you could start, you could lay this out and realize you’re doing it the same way for every job. Now. Let’s just take this one part of it where we have the most errors and make it a checklist or make it a form we fill out. Well that worked. Let’s do another one, right? it is baby steps. William Hanke (21:57)Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. For somebody who maybe hasn’t taken your course or any course lately or been to a conference, if if they want to improve efficiency, what’s something they should evaluate first? Ann K. Johnson (22:12)Errors, error rate. Evaluate your error rate and how your numbers and your information flows through your workroom. Okay. that’s where you spot your weaknesses. And then from there, there are so many ⁓ opportunities out there. If they go to the curtains and soft furnishings library, they have ⁓ all the old webinars from the ⁓ The old custom furnishings academy. You know, they used to do webinars every month. And they have those archived in the library. You’d for I don’t know what the Pro Plus level costs, but I know it’s very reasonable for the information there. So you go and you start watching those webinars. So you’re going to get lessons. The Workroom channel has online classes, very reasonably priced. Go and take those, you know. If you’re part of WCAA, they have years of webinars, their lunch and learn webinars. They archive all of those, and I’m in a lot of them. And ⁓ the WCAA virtual group does their own monthly webinars and they archive those. So you can go, there is so much information out there. the workroom channel on YouTube, method shares, they’re short videos, but they give you short, they show you how to put a zipper in a pillow. They show you how to pattern match the machine, little things so that you learn it and incorporate it and then move forward to the next one, right? William Hanke (23:56)Love that. Yeah. And you mentioned earlier on getting the right tools and investments that counts as tools and investment for your business. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. what does a well-designed workflow actually look like in practice? Is there a way that you could verbalize that? Ann K. Johnson (24:01)Mm. Totally, totally. Mm-hmm. Maybe. so a well-designed workflow is work we could do workflow or workroom. well designed. let’s go with workroom. When you receive William Hanke (24:15)Okay. Okay. Ann K. Johnson (24:30)materials, supplies, hardware, that sort of thing, having one place for them to go into. And I had created and I used, I I did have a couple forms I used. And I had a receiving form so that I knew what, you know, I could fill that out for every job for everything coming in for a job. And then kept that binder next to where I received things, right? And I always insisted that all hardware came to me also so that I could unpack it. And make sure all the pieces parts fit together that I’ve got the right finish, that sort of thing. So there’s that’s a checklist, a quality checklist thing, ⁓ so that there’s not that error. And same with the fabrics and everything. And then I had a method to store. Once everything was checked in, there was a place for trims to go, right? They would be labeled as to the client and everything. And those trims would go on a special shelf. hardware, the long poles, would go back out on my studios in my house. So they went back out on tables on the gr in the garage because they were long. They took up too much room. But the box with all the brackets and finials stayed in the workroom on the shelf, off to one side, so I could pull them when I was actually doing fabrication to double-check returns and number of rings and everything. So You have a receiving space. That’s important. And at the receiving space are the scissors and the tags and the marking pens and everything you need. And then once you receive, it goes into very specific space, fabric under the table, trim on the shelf, brackets on the shelf, and poles out in the now. This all sounds well and good, but you can get overwhelmed in a hurry, right? and then at your table where you work and if you have multiple workers each one of these should have under my table was the fabric pending right waiting to be fabricated but also we tend to stand in one specific corner of our tables just whatever our setup is its habit right so right there is my rulers on a shelf under the lip of the table William Hanke (26:43)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (26:50)All the tools and supplies I use on most jobs right there and smaller stuff a step behind me, right? On the shelves behind me. So having all your everything that you work with on a daily basis right there. And anything you don’t work on with on a daily basis set to one side makes a big difference. And then there was a place to put the finished treatments. After they were bagged and tagged, there’s a place for them. So that’s a that’s a good workflow. I could tell you about a a workroom in I want to say Boston, but or New Jersey, and it used to be a slaughterhouse, right? And they had several rooms downstairs where these people worked. And they had UPS stuff coming in over here and they had UPS stuff coming over here and you know when it was ti they just they had no plan. They didn’t have, you know, you you had to go around hunting for everything. And that’s ⁓ that’s not a good workflow. ⁓ other than that, like I said, ⁓ the ⁓ forms and the numbers catching. William Hanke (28:00)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (28:10)And the that you carry from one step to the next is important also. William Hanke (28:15)Yeah. As I said it before, but I’m sure you’re affecting workrooms that are listening to this just with just with these great tips. So I appreciate that. that’s great. And and it’s funny how you know somebody could be listening that’s been doing this for 20 years, like you said, 15, 20 years. I never even thought of that. Why didn’t why don’t we do that? You know, and just making that one little change improves their profit. It improves their bottom line at the end of the day. Ann K. Johnson (28:29)Mm-hmm. Right, we don’t. It reduces their stress, you know. One of the things I do is I give them permission, you know, to not be perfect, to go ahead and do it this way, even though everything they ever read said you did it that way, it’s okay to do it this way. Because that is faster and it’s causes you less problems in the long run or whatever. And and you know, I’ve often been told that it’s like, you give me permission, right? William Hanke (28:56)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (29:08)I kinda, yes, anytime I teach, I mean what I’m giving you now is like high level tips and techniques. When I teach, whether it be a one and a half hour class or four days of fire hose, I give a lot. And yes, I overwhelm, especially that four day class. By the third day, they’re all like, William Hanke (29:15)Right. Ann K. Johnson (29:35)You know, I’ll say, do you want make a sample of that? And they’re like, no, just keep teaching. And but I also give documentation and follow up, you know, with reference and stuff. The four-day class is a 160-page student manual. That was literally a brain dump when I first made it up. It is not publishable, it is ugly. You know, but they’re like, yeah, I reference that every week. So as long as, you know, I can give lots of tips and techniques and and processes and that sort of thing, but I need to follow up with documentation links to the what I referred to before, the method shares, or go watch this webinar that’ll, you know, flesh it out even more or something. So that’s important. William Hanke (30:20)Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. in the world of personality tests, I’ve been labeled as a quick start. And a quick start is somebody who sees the new object and they go after it, right? So I think it would be good for people that are like that, that hear about all these efficiencies and like, we got to go implement all these. How did how we need to talk about balance, right? How do they balance efficiency? Ann K. Johnson (30:45)Right. William Hanke (30:47)Keep quality and especially if their teams are already under some stress. Ann K. Johnson (30:54)Right, right. So if especially if you have a team, you have to take the stress off of them as much as you can. hourly workers are not paid to take the stress. That’s my thing. like I said, baby steps, getting started, how to balance the stress and the qual and the efficiency. you have to set boundaries, okay? A lot of workrooms don’t set boundaries. They’ll answer the phone or reply to emails at any time during the day. William Hanke (31:12)Yes, yes. Ann K. Johnson (31:25)Laura Nelson, we just came from her workroom on that workroom tour that I did with Chanel. And her workroom tour is going to come up on the YouTube channel somewhere soon. And ⁓ she has hours, 10 to 4. She doesn’t, you know, she she gets up, she starts working at eight and she might work past four or whatever, but 10 to 4 is when she responds to emails for her clients and that sort of thing. Not before. William Hanke (31:34)Okay. Ann K. Johnson (31:54)not after and i have found when there was couple of years and 2015 is my biggest learning year let’s put it that way that that created a whole webinar on what not to do because i was just inundated with work right and instead of making good decisions see when when you get under stress you stop making good decisions William Hanke (32:07)Okay. Ann K. Johnson (32:20)You’re like, I’m in a hurry. I don’t have time to do right now. we’ll just wing it. No, you don’t wing it. You know, that just that just my gosh. So I I did a whole webinar on that. So William Hanke (32:27)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (32:33)You have to give yourself boundaries. You have to say, no, I’m not gonna work all night. I am not going to work on weekends. I am going to work, and everybody’s different. You know, if you have young children in your husband’s home on Saturdays, yeah, maybe you’ll work while the kids are at school and then on most of Saturday, right? Everybody works out their own, but you have to put those hours on your wall. You know, you have to post them. You have to put them in your contract with your client. Post them, right? And remind them over and over again because and and people start to res they will respect that, right? But if you don’t respect yourself, then they’ll just keep coming at you. And so that’s where you get your balance and your stress by taking care of yourself, by setting boundaries, setting hours, giving yourself time away. Maybe even Laura was. She will work three weeks a month and take the fourth week off, but that’s her week for playing ketchup, that’s her week on you know, book work or whatever, or experimenting with something new or whatever. So that’s her way of maintaining her sanity and growing because she gives herself that time off. But you have to discipline yourself for it, right? Because we all wanna like, ⁓ they want that, they’re moaning, you know, they it’s just like, I hated that question. And I could always see it coming through the phone. So no pressure, but you know when it might be done? It’s like in my last three or four years or so, you know, I was helping take care of my folks, you know, as as they neared end of life and stuff. William Hanke (33:51)I think that’s important. Yeah. Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (34:20)And so you never knew when you had to drop everything and go to the emergency ward or something like that, right? And I was very, very lucky to have a very strong support system here, but I was I was the key person, you know, who handled their. William Hanke (34:35)Yeah. Teams are under pressure. Ann K. Johnson (34:38)I started answering with the question, well, do you have a date? Do you know when it’ll be done? Or can you have it done by this date? My answer was always, sure, pending on foreseen circumstances. I just always William Hanke (34:53)Two, no? Ann K. Johnson (34:54)put that on there, pending on because you never know what life’s gonna hit you with. So you you have to if you always jump for your client. Then that’s what they’re gonna expect, right? You need a jump for yourself. So that’s handling stress and quality and efficiency. William Hanke (35:04)Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. You mentioned hitting that burnout at one point. And I think that’s something a lot of people in our industry, you know, quietly deal with. Ann K. Johnson (35:16)yeah. William Hanke (35:20)What led to that burnout for you? Was it volume, lack of systems, or something different? Ann K. Johnson (35:20)Mm-hmm. Yes, yes, yes. ⁓ and yes. So I took on a new designer the fall before that, in twenty fourteen. And she’s a nice lady, a little manipulative, right? But I could handle her, right? and so as we flowed into January, she had three houses that we were doing. And this is on top of my regular workload, but I wanted to impress her and you know, draw her in is so that could keep her. And so also at the time my kids are gone, my husband doesn’t need me to fuss over him for dinner or anything like that. So I’d say, well, I could work a little later every day. And she was constantly calling up and well, you know, can you have this two weeks from today? And I’d be like, ⁓ she’s and and ⁓ my client’s gonna be so upset. And so I would like, yeah, okay, two weeks. That’s plenty of time. And of course it wasn’t. But I’m, you know, was managing them and the and I was also because I was under so much stress, and the all three houses were on the east side, which is over an hour away, right? So just popping over there to check and measure or something was Would have taken some time. Now, if I had been smart, I would have taken a day and gone over there and double checked all the measures through the house. I had sent somebody else to do the measures, and there were a couple that were wrong. So a couple things started coming back. And I had a job that four long cuts of scalamandra fabric folded on my table between my machines. Where it was safe and out of the way until I could work on it. My oil can fell over and I didn’t know it. And I had a huge oval grease ring in the middle of those four. Panic, panic, panic. I figured out how to salvage two, but had to spend eight hundred dollars buying more. so there come the hits, you know, and the stress. Things start coming back, they’re making mistakes, and then Boom, like in September, I just ran right into a brick wall, metaphorically speaking, of course, and spent most of the rest of the year chasing errors, chasing problems. So when I went back and I looked at my net income from 2014 and my net income from 20 ⁓ 15, my gross was like 25% higher. My net was only about five grand more. William Hanke (38:04)Hmm. Wow. Ann K. Johnson (38:05)for all those hours and all that stress. It’s not worth it. You have to take care of yourself and not let other people tell you how to run your business or what your hours should be or when you should deliver. ⁓ that’s for you to choose. William Hanke (38:22)Yeah. Yeah. How often do you see burnout tied directly to the inefficient processes? Ann K. Johnson (38:29)⁓ yeah, you see it. You talk to people and and you see it. ⁓ and and some of it too is life, what’s going on in their lives doesn’t help, right? which is all the more reason you have to sell set boundaries with your clients, right? and get the help you need if you can’t. And this goes back to charging enough. To be able to bring in somebody to clean your house for you or mow your lawn, right? And the one worker that I tell every workroom to hire. I hired her, I hired a friend who needed money, right? she struggled to work in the real world because of AD, HD, or you know, whatever. She was just Flighty is all get out. You gave her a list at the beginning of the day, and then you didn’t pay attention to how she got it done because she’d be all over the place, but she’d get it done. She was proud of what she did. The years that I had her working for me, my productivity skyrocketed. Because an unskilled utility worker, that’s what they call them a utility worker, an unskilled utility worker. paid at hourly wage can do everything right up to the point where you pull the fabric out and start fabricating the skilled part. And then when you get to a certain point in the fabrication process, you can hand it back to them to finish it off. Right. So I think workrooms, I keep trying to tell workrooms that, and I don’t think they truly understand that. And that could be somebody, a mother who sends her kids off to school every day, right? And just comes in for three or four hours for three days a week or something. It’s unbelievable. And then maybe if they’ve got a little skill, you can eventually train them and bring them up to a skill level that would be valuable in the future. So William Hanke (40:22)Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I I’m a huge systems guy. I love building systems and having them in place and then figuring out ways to ⁓ you know make them better, make them more efficient, as we’ve been talking about. ⁓ so so I love that the I love what you’re saying. So so now that you’ve stepped away from the workroom, your focus is on helping others improve theirs. ⁓ when you go into a workroom to train a team, what’s usually missing? Ann K. Johnson (40:34)Yeah. Mm-hmm. ⁓ I don’t know, that’s a blank. I mean, every workroom’s different, but it’s and it depends. So, like the class I’m teaching, those are workrooms coming to me. They are ones who are already learning. You know, they’ve got their finger on the educational ⁓ opportunities out there. The workrooms that I go into with hired help and new management. William Hanke (40:56)Okay. Ann K. Johnson (41:21)they are missing current. ⁓ they’re still doing it the same way it’s always been done and haven’t kept up with ⁓ processes that could be ⁓ help to streamline things. William Hanke (41:38)Yeah, yeah. How do you ⁓ how do you approach teaching efficiency without overwhelming them? You mentioned the fire hose earlier. Ann K. Johnson (41:46)yeah, I overwhelm them right from the start. ⁓ it’s it’s a given. ⁓ but we use the student handbook. That’s my, you know, st ⁓ stylus or whatever they call it. ⁓ you know, I just go through page by page to the handbook and then we stop periodically and I encourage them to just make small samples, practice this, you know. a lot of them You know, some will already know this and some will already know that. And ⁓ depending on how much they’ve had their finger on or been watching me, they might know a lot. But still I and and also is the discussions. You know, somebody all pipe up and say, Well, I’ve been doing it this way. And everybody so ⁓ so we do homework every night, those three things, right, that you learn today, and I’m always praying they find three. William Hanke (42:40)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (42:41)They usually find 10, but we go around the table the next morning and it always fascinates me. There’s a certain few favorite, you know, tips or techniques that everybody does, but this one might write down something that that one said, right? So we learn from each other too. There’s I want to publish that student manual that’s in my that’s William Hanke (42:57)Mm-hmm. That yeah. Ann K. Johnson (43:06)my goal to do in the next year or two, but it won’t quit changing. Make that I just keep adding to it. So I don’t I gotta figure out how to cut it off. William Hanke (43:10)No Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. so far, fantastic tips. I really do appreciate it. I wanted to zoom out before we wrap up and talk about kind of the industry as a whole. what do you think the window treatment industry gets right when it comes to workrooms? Ann K. Johnson (43:33)I think we can thank Cheryl Strickland for bringing work rooms out of their basements. And getting and and opening up discussions on the ⁓ gosh, the for very first forum she was there. workrooms, they they work by themselves, you know, they don’t have often don’t have somebody to bounce ideas off of or whatever. So she brought the conversation out into the open. And got us to looking around and realized, I mean, for a long time there, you couldn’t get if if a woman was charging ten dollars a width to make a panel, now gosh, those a panel cost you a hundred to end up, depending on who the designer, you know, the workroom is and all. And and so they weren’t making any money. And so they were like hoarding their information because, no, you know, you might take my clients if I teach you this, right? And I think there was a lot of that for generations. And if you look back at books from the late 1800s, the techniques in those, if you can figure out what they’re talking about, are ⁓ were lost for William Hanke (44:43)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (44:48)Just just basic techniques for controlling fabrics from flare and and how to cut to create a pattern or whatever. Those were lost because nobody would share it. Now they share everything. So Cheryl opened that up, you know, with her magazines, with her school, with her forums. and then Kitty Stein ran with it with her pricing book, right? And got people to start. Realizing that they’re worth more and they can charge more and they should. Michelle Williams took that even further with her classes. so doing it right, if you are a workroom who is tapping into education in the industry and paying attention. There’s so much information out there, so much being shared, and at such a reasonable price, right? So I would say they are getting that right. William Hanke (45:42)Yeah. Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s great. Couple rapid fire questions for you. what’s one tool or setup change you wish every workroom would adopt? Ann K. Johnson (45:57)I wish they’d all hire a utility worker. An unskilled utility worker. their productivity would go through the roof. And it gives them a potential line towards some you know, a skilled worker down the road. William Hanke (45:59)Okay. Yeah. I like that one. what’s the most overrated practice in a worker? Ann K. Johnson (46:15)perfectionism and unnecessary handwork. There’s a lot of workrooms I still see, you know, they they do little videos on there and that there they are sewing away. It’s like you could have done that with a machine, you know. and so, okay, so I don’t want to disparage somebody who puts that kind of personal touch, but you better be charging for it. William Hanke (46:28)Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (46:44)And you better be letting your client know this is what you’re doing for them. I have a colleague here, she was both designer and workroom, so she would go out and you know, sell the job and then she would make it up. And she had incredible creativity and she would do her own installs. So she was incredible. But what she would do is after she installed something and dressed it out, she would then take her client over to it and say, Look, isn’t this gorgeous? Look at this detail. Look what I added here just to make it look better for you. She would resell it to her client. So, what’s her client gonna tell all her friends and family when they come through? Look what she did for me, right? I think they do a lot too much handwork sewing on trim and stuff like that. but if you are doing it, William Hanke (47:24)Yeah. Yeah. Ann K. Johnson (47:32)then be sure to charge for it and let your client know this is what they’re getting for that, right? Don’t go telling other workrooms that this is the only way to do it, because that’s not true. William Hanke (47:37)Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I like that. thank you again so much for all the awesome tips and wisdom that you’ve given us. last question. If somebody listening takes just one action after this episode, what do you think it should be? Ann K. Johnson (47:57)And I’ll pull out your work, your paperwork, see the continuity and how you do each job, whether you do it with forms or you know, scribble, and start identifying the weak spots or the where where the bottlenecks and just take that little spot there and make a form, make a checklist or something. And also start looking at the go to the curtains and soft furnishings library and start looking at those circle time. They’re constantly creating new content as well as the old webinars that they have. And WCA has all those webinars. The workroom channel on YouTube has an incredible amount of information on real workrooms, workroom tours. they go into small little tiny rooms where people are or you know, have a workroom into these large commercial spaces and do a tour. They’re amazing. William Hanke (48:55)That’s great. ⁓ well, thank you again for everything that that you’ve added today. if somebody wants to learn more about you, where should they go? Ann K. Johnson (49:04)annkjohnson.com That’s my website. Yeah. I developed that when I was easing out of the workroom and easing more into the teaching part of it. So William Hanke (49:07)love that. Love that. They can go there. They can learn about your classes, about the different things, and obviously contact you as well. Perfect. That’s great. Well, thank you again for for being on today. I do appreciate it. Ann K. Johnson (49:22)Contact me too. Yes, definitely. I enjoyed it. Thank you for having me, Will. William Hanke (49:32)Yeah, no problem. So that was such a practical conversation with Ann and honestly a bit of a reality check for a lot of us. If you’re running a workroom and constantly feeling like you’re busy but not making progress, there’s probably something in your workflow that needs attention, not just more hours in the day. If you found this helpful, share it with somebody in the industry who’s in the trenches right now. And as always, follow marketing pains for more conversations like this. Where we break down what’s actually working in real window treatment businesses.
