Fab Shop Owners: How Can You Find Growth Opportunities When the Economy is Uncertain?
Or, How to Make a Recession Work For You... The talking heads agree we are in a recession. Year-over-year sales...
Fab Shop Owners: What Can You Expect to Get From a Business Coach?
By Justin Shaw and Ed Young You've spent the last 10 or 20 years building your business, so you know it inside...
Fab Shop Owners: How Effective is Your Business Strategy?
Economic signals are all over the map. Interest rates remain high, housing starts are down, yet the stock market is...
Fab Shop Owners: Your Playbook for Effective Management
In many respects, running a business is like playing an intense game of football. You have an ultimate goal –...
Do You Schedule Your Maintenance Time, or Does Your Machinery Do It For You?
The stone industry has come a long way in the use of technology since I worked with my first fabrication shop client...
Countertop Fab Shop Owners: Are You The Superhero in Your Business?
The Superhero Trap In the chaotic world of countertop fabrication, where every day brings a new set of challenges and...
Countertop Fab Shop Owners: Are you still working IN your business?
Does this sound like your business? Your business has hit a certain size that it just can’t seem to grow beyond....
Countertop Fab Shop Owners: Reduce Chaos in Your Business
There are many articles around about how to optimize your value-creating processes: template, fabricate, and install. ...
Could You Use an Additional Ten Percent Production Capacity in your Fab Shop?
Would you like to be able to process 10% more square footage through your plant every day — without capital...
Fabrication Shop Owners: Do You Schedule Your Maintenance Time or Does Your Machinery Do It for You?
Excerpt from this article originally published in the 2Q2023 Issue of the ISFA's Countertops & Architectural...
Fabrication Shop Owners: How To Strengthening Your Business To Weather the Coming Storm
Excerpt: Imagine you are in a 50-foot sailboat, 100 miles from shore, experiencing gale-force winds and 40-foot seas....
What Will Your Sales Be In September – Forecasting For Your Fabrication Shop
Predicting the future is always a challenge – ask any weatherman. The problem is, if we don’t know what the future...
So, You Want to Sell Your Business…
You’ve poured your heart and your soul and your blood, sweat, and tears into your business for years, and recently you...
Finding Growth Opportunities in an Uncertain Economy
Economic signals are all over the map. Depending on who you ask, we are in for either a good old-fashioned recession...
The Power of Sales Follow-Up
We often think of good salespeople as those people who have charisma, great product knowledge, and the ability to hold...
Pass Your Competition with Key Sales Management Practices
Co-authored by Ed Young, Fabricator's Business Coach and Tiffany Brooks, Sales Leadership Coach and Trainer with...
Do Your Own Pushups to Build a Great Business
There’s a Facebook post that has been making the rounds lately and starts with the line “I’m not ignoring you. ...
The ONE THING to Know When Hiring Your Next Manager
When hiring key managers for your stone business, stone experience should be the least important of your criteria....
CASE STUDIES IN THROUGHPUT
You’ve seen several articles on these pages over the years discussing and defining the management accounting...
HOW TO CLOSE EVERY SALES PROSPECT
Ed Young, Fabricators Coach Steve Brooks, Sales/Management Coach Do you follow up on all your quotes? If not, you...
BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES
Everywhere we turn these days, it seems the headlines are all screaming “Recession Ahead”. In various areas of the...
CULTURE EATS STRATEGY FOR BREAKFAST
Are you frustrated with lack of consistently good results from your business? Are your employees a little too good at...
DECISIONS DECISIONS
One of the great things about this industry is that there are so many machine and technology and software and...
PLANNING FOR SUCCESS
So, you’ve taken all the advice in our Slippery Rock Gazette articles for the past year, your business is running more...
WHERE WILL YOU BE WHEN THE MUSIC STOPS?
Will you have a place to sit, or will you be “out’ of the game? In the game of musical chairs, we have to guess...
HOW DO WE GET TO THE NEXT LEVEL?
Do you feel like your business is running you into the ground? Do you feel like you always have to be at the shop just...
WHAT IS THE BEST SOLUTION?
Have you ever had a problem in your business and you took action to solve that problem only to find out several months...
IS THAT ALL THIS DATA IS GOOD FOR?
Have you ever had a month when sales were strong, you worked harder than ever, yet your month-end Profit and Loss Statement (P&L) showed poor results? There can be lots of reasons for this.
HOW DO WE FEED THIS BEAST?
Someone once asked me how to know if a business had grown too big for the owner to manage. I think the answer is, if you can’t get your business to generate consistently good results, or if you have management problems in your business that you don’t know how to resolve, the business may be outgrowing your ability to manage it.
Whose Job Is It Anyway?
Someone once asked me how to know if a business had grown too big for the owner to manage. I think the answer is, if you can’t get your business to generate consistently good results, or if you have management problems in your business that you don’t know how to resolve, the business may be outgrowing your ability to manage it.
How Much Work Can YOUR Shop Handle?
Someone once asked me how to know if a business had grown too big for the owner to manage. I think the answer is, if you can’t get your business to generate consistently good results, or if you have management problems in your business that you don’t know how to resolve, the business may be outgrowing your ability to manage it.
Would You Rather Have a Sales Problem or a Production Problem?
In a growing economy, job growth outstrips the supply of good labor – and the effects of the pandemic have only made the situation harder to manage. So, it’s no surprise that everywhere I go and in every type of industry, companies are struggling to recruit and retain good people.
ARE YOU STILL…Having Trouble Finding Good Help These Days?
In a growing economy, job growth outstrips the supply of good labor – and the effects of the pandemic have only made the situation harder to manage. So, it’s no surprise that everywhere I go and in every type of industry, companies are struggling to recruit and retain good people.
How Do I Control the Chaos?
What do you want from your business?
If you want January 2023 to feel much better than January 2022, if you want a better work experience, if you want less chaos and more sanity in your business – then you must change how you run our business.
How Much Time Is Left On YOUR Company’s Game Clock?
What do you want from your business?
If you want January 2023 to feel much better than January 2022, if you want a better work experience, if you want less chaos and more sanity in your business – then you must change how you run our business.
Change Is So Hard – Why Should I Bother?
What do you want from your business?
If you want January 2023 to feel much better than January 2022, if you want a better work experience, if you want less chaos and more sanity in your business – then you must change how you run our business.
The 12 Days of Christmas
If you’re like most fab shops, the holidays are beyond stressful. All the normal challenges of the rest of the year — last minute order changes, employee absenteeism, machine breakdowns, late material deliveries, site issues that impact template and/or install — these all get compressed into about 8 weeks of chaotic activity.
How Fast Does Your Business Generate Cash?
If you have implemented the recommendations that I have posted here and published in the Slippery Rock Gazette for the last year, then your business should be a cash-generating machine. You should be generating much more cash each day than you are burning. Life should be good!
In fact, life can be so good at this level that a lot of companies stop improving. They are really happy with where they are. They don’t think it can get any better. Yet, there is a whole other level of ‘better’ to be had for those who are willing to go for it…
Are You Still Working IN Your Business?
Has your business has hit a certain size that it just can’t seem to grow beyond?
Have profits stagnated and you just can’t seem to move that needle?
Has the level of noise and chaos in your business reached a fever pitch and nothing you do seems to reduce it?
Do you find yourself working harder and harder and you still can’t keep up?
Then, you may be suffering from “working IN your business and not ON your business” syndrome.
Is Your Front Office Helping or Hurting Your Business?
You’ve seen lots of articles about how to optimize your value-creating processes: template, fabricate, and install. You see more articles on this part of the business because this is where the magic happens. This is where the value is created that your customers pay you for.
But what about sales and the front office?
So, what’s the difference between a GOOD idea and a GREAT idea?
So, what’s the difference between a good idea and a great idea?
Two companies decided to purchase and install their first CNC router. Company A installed the CNC, the shop is running well, and they are making more money than ever.
Company B struggled to install the CNC and is constantly having problems as a result. Jobs are running late. Customers are upset. Profits are taking a hit. Read this Blog to find out more…
Sacred Cows May Be Killing Your Business
If your business is not improving – increasing profit, decreasing remakes and callbacks, improving on time delivery, reducing stress and chaos – then, quite possibly, your business may be in the process of failing.
In working with many fabricators and other business owners to improve their businesses, it is very common to make good progress only to have things stall out. While there can be several reasons for this, the most common reason is the improvement process has run up against a Sacred Cow in the business.
Having Trouble Finding Good Help These Days?
In a growing economy, job growth outstrips the supply of good labor – and the effects of the pandemic have only made the situation harder to manage. So, it’s no surprise that everywhere I go and in every type of industry, companies are struggling to recruit and retain good people.
Stop Counting the Square Feet You Produce
If the primary measure you use to evaluate the success of your fab shop is how many square feet produced, then chances are you are not making as much money as you should.
How Much Money Can Your Shop Make? The amount of money your shop can make is limited…
Your shop does not have an infinite amount of capacity to make money – it is limited. You can only get so many kitchens or so many square feet through your shop in a day. Even though your capacity is limited, there is always room to improve. So, the question is: Are you making all the money you can from your shop?
How to Find 10% More Capacity in Your Plant – for Free
Could you use an additional 10% production capacity right now? Would you like to be able to process 10% more square...
Cost Reduction is Killing Your Profits
When I ask fabrication owners or managers: How do you improve profit? - the most common answer is: Reduce cost....
Increase Inventory to Increase Performance
Short lead times are a tremendous competitive advantage. Lower work-in-process (WIP) inventories directly correlate...
How to Love a Bottleneck
Production managers attack bottlenecks. Since a bottleneck in the flow of a fabrication process limits the output of...
Having Trouble Finding Good Help These Days?
It seems everyone is struggling with this issue. In a growing economy, growth in jobs outstrips the supply of good...
Fabricators Coach Podcast
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