The 6-Step Framework for Rescuing a Manufacturing Business w/ Dean Svarc

[MUSIC] Welcome to the Manufacturing Executive Podcast, where we explore the strategies and experiences that are driving mid-size manufacturers forward. Here you'll discover new insights from passionate manufacturing leaders who have compelling stories to share about their successes and struggles. And you'll learn from B2B sales and marketing experts about how to apply actionable business development strategies inside your business. Let's get into the show. [MUSIC] Welcome to another episode of the Manufacturing Executive Podcast. I'm Joe Sullivan, your host and a co-founder of the Industrial Marketing Agency, Gorilla 76. Before we get into today's show, I'd like to take a moment to announce an incredible event that our team at Gorilla 76 will be co-hosting alongside true marketing for the third consecutive year this coming March of 2026 in Austin, Texas. It's called the Industrial Marketing Summit. And it's just for marketers in the manufacturing sector. Last year, over 300 manufacturing marketers showed up in person to learn, network, and bring back smarter, more effective marketing strategies to their organizations. And this coming March, it's going to be bigger and better. You'll see plenty of familiar manufacturing leaders on stage, as well as a wide variety of some of the sharpest minds in the industrial marketing space. Topics for this year's sessions include designing your sales enablement roadmap, building a framework for product launches, optimizing content for AI search, crafting targeted messaging for your niche audience, building a distributor benefits program, how to be successful on LinkedIn in 2026, marketing attribution in a long sales cycle, creating binge-worthy webinars and so much more. Not only will this be an intensive learning event made up of speaker sessions and three intensive workshops, but will be hosting social events in the evenings with great food and venues for networking with other manufacturing folks who are trying to solve the same kinds of marketing challenges that you are. The event is being held from March 3rd through 5th of 2026 in Austin and seats are limited. So visit industrialmarketingsummit.com to learn more and reserve your ticket. We hope to see you or whoever is responsible for marketing inside of your organization there. Now let's get into the episode. My guest today rebuilt himself after his multi-million dollar business collapsed, rising to develop a framework that's now rescued multiple struggling companies. From overlooked basics to cultural missteps, he'll share how hidden threats often lurk within a business, undermining growth from the inside out. And one at a time he'll take you through his six step blueprint for turning chaos into clarity. Let me introduce him. Dean Savaric is a veteran turnaround specialist and author of Trojan Horse, the unseen solution to critical business problems. After his multi-million dollar business crashed to $10,000, he rebuilt himself and developed the proven basics framework that has since rescued multiple failing companies. Dean helps leaders identify and defeat the hidden threats destroying their businesses from within. Dean, welcome to the show. They should have been having me. Let's go to Abby here, Dean. For any of our listeners who may not be familiar with your work, can you start by telling us just maybe a little bit more about your background and also what originally pulled you into helping manufacturing leaders navigate change and growth? Sure, absolutely. So my background was I originally came. I was a mechanic for many years. I went to corporate IT for like 14 half years. And at the time my wife and I, you know, I was a machinist for journeymen after like seven, eight, nine years. I had two jobs most of my life until about 2015. So at the time my wife and I said, you know, we'd always wanted to own a company and with my expertise in machining and manufacturing, we thought, let's go that direction. She was an accountant of the CPA and a master's. So she was very familiar with the financial aspect of it. And so we bought our first manufacturing company and loves Park Illinois. We had moved it for years over to a Tasney Park, Illinois and grew it up four times in size, modernized everything, built a state of the art facility out there. I ended up winning Manufacturing the year 2019. And obviously going through all that, you can go through trials and tribulations. Man, you make a lot of mistakes. You have a lot of great things that happen. You have things that, wow, I probably would do that differently next time. So years went by. Souldeck company had purchased another manufacturer and company box manufacturing and then a tooling company and then a real estate investment company. And kept going out wood manufacturing company. And I still own most of those today. And going through all that, I had to go through a certain series of things that had to happen. And that's basically what's in the book. And I've learned so much that at some point, I'm like, this is a waste. At some point, if I don't give this to somebody else, I wish as an owner or as somebody coming up, I wish somebody would told me like, hey, do it this way. Don't do it this way. Don't make this mistake. So basically, that's how I kind of got into writing a book, starting a consulting company, being on this podcast, for instance, is I want to really, truly help other owners not go through the trials and tribulations I had to go through and kind of skate through a little bit easier or faster than I did and have somebody to help them. Yeah, I mean, nothing like those personal experiences to be able to help guide others. It creates a lot of authenticity. And, you know, what advice you're able to share, I imagine. It's funny. I have such empathy and sympathy for business owners because you've got guys that came out, for instance, let's say they're a plumber or the manufacturing of something or a machine, they know I do the job. They got big enough, they started hiring people, they bought a building, so they know how to do the job. They can do the manufacturing part, but they're soft skills. There are other skills that don't sound like they're important. And if you got a one or two guys shop, maybe you can get away with not having culture. You can get away with certain things, which, you know, as you can kind of keep a personal maybe, but imagine you learn those soft skills. That's where you have the ability to start growing. And this all comes back to mindset and numerous other things that you have to change internally. And they're not trained for that. The only reason I did it was because I went through hard core machining by the mechanic and I got soft skills from corporate America or 14, 15 years. You're forced to do that. And I took a ton of training. So I managed to have both sides, which is very rare. As people don't go from machining into a corporate and then go back to machining or manufacturing. I did. And that kind of gave me a very round level of experience in most industries. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. There's a marketing agency advisor that my company has followed for years who he often uses the term like accidental business owner. Like so many people wind up as accidental business owners. You made that originally set out to do that. But you know, you have a skill, you start solving a problem, all of a sudden you've got people buying something from you. And before you know, you got a 20 or 50 year 100 person company. And it's like you might have been good at machining. But you don't have all the skills that are your experiences to run a business. And so I think we have to all be intentional about how do we go fill those gaps? How do we learn from others who've been through it? And yeah, I guess be more intentional about how we continue to grow the business, right? You know, we so we could you could you could you knew and I could do that right now. We could start some kind of a machining company or something like that. Go buy a couple machines, get a small building and we'll hire a few people, get some jobs. But when the company does start to grow even to 10 people, which is a pretty good size company for small company. You have to start looking at your mindset. You could change that company, change the culture. Like what do you need culture for it that size? You do. That's you get these loyal employees. You get people who's not a jerk in the building. You get that where people want to come to that company. They're not just hiring the best friends, brothers, dogs, cousin. They actually have the right people coming to your company with the right skill set with the right mindset. When we hire more than 50% of it is actually personality. Like are you going to fit with in this organization? I can train you how to run a machine. I can't train your personality. Yeah, I completely agree with that. My business partner, John runs really the people side of our business. I tend to be more marketing sales and client consulting. But I mean, he will tell you we hire and fire on five core values that lie or like are people live. It's not just fluff or some banners on the wall or something. It's very intentionally selected core values that are required. Really. And if we have people that don't fit those values, if we are interviewing people who don't fit those values, like we know it's not going to work. And that's the first pass. If you can't meet those, then it doesn't really matter what the skills look like. Right. I can tell you that from my experience in the companies I own now and I own more than six that the we do not and we were we're hesitant to fire. Like if we hire someone, we really want to work with them, try to train them. You get three chances at certain things like it. Let's see your causing problems. We try to work with you a couple of times. At that point, you know, you probably need to find a company that's a better fit for you. But I can tell you, we do not, it is rare that we terminate or fire someone because of performance. Let me rephrase that because of skill set, but they will get terminate for usually interpersonal issues, like something where they're causing problems in the company organization. And it's so toxic. I had I wrote my book. I had such a toxic general manager one time that just killed the company internally. I didn't realize it. Even though he was responsible, I'm accountable in the end, but that's something for instance, like we just do not tolerate here. We will not tolerate if you're not a good fit. Just find the right company that's going to work for you. Makes a lot of sense. Well, Dean, talking about mindset there, I think is a good intro into the framework that is much more tangible, I suppose, that I think you based your book on, but the basics framework is what you call it. Tell us what that is, maybe name the six components to that and it will go into each one in depth after that. - Sure, so it starts out before we even get into that, there's a section, there's about four small chapters, I don't know, small chapters, on mindset specifically, and we push a very heavily, do not go to the tactical basics blueprint, because if you do the tactical, but you don't know the mindset correct, you're not gonna execute properly. It's kind of like, if you're married, you're doing the job, but you're not feeling a job with your wife or husband or whoever you're spouse is at that time, you need to wanna do it for the right reasons, not just do it, execute, it's not gonna be the same. So for instance, the first four chapters are you ready for change? And it really goes deep dive into you. It sounds like a logical book, but it's trying to have you understand the mindset matters and how you change, how things change, you cannot change your company if you can't change. It all comes from a leader. People do not leave companies, generally because of pay, clenzyness, they leave because of leadership. Now, where has it come from? If the owner has a very poor mindset and he's really not into it, he's not, they're a drive, you know, success through leadership, the leadership's not gonna wanna do it either. They're following the leader. So the owner or managing team operations manager has to be the person who has a right mindset to set the standard for the rest of the employees in the organization. So the first four chapters are you ready for change? The next chapter of that is your company ready for change. Now you have to look at is the company actually able to handle that? And they'll dig more into that later, but basically can your company handle change even if you're ready? There are some things that you have to do before you get into tactical. And to back to your original question, the basic blueprint from a high level is, we have six steps. Brute Forest, which is basically breaking bottlenecks, eliminate outdated processes and resetting layouts and roles. Analyze, which is kind of deep diving in a departmental issues, systems, inefficiencies and prioritizing by impact. We have structure, which actually kind of creates documents to core processes and assigns clear leadership and roles and responsibilities. We have improved, which is modified policies, procedures based on what is essential versus outdated. We have culture, which basically instills accountability, urgency and continue improvement. And the final one, which is where everyone's trying to get to if there are any kind of leadership or owner is sustained. You want to secure success, seek significance and review where you stand, the daily operations of your company, so you're not needed. Love it. Well, let's go into each one and a little more depth and spend a few minutes on each. So step one of the basic framework is Brute Forest. Yeah. So Brute Forest is, okay, so imagine I go into a company. Let's just say it could be a toilet company. It could be a service based company, like a plumbing company, electrical company, doesn't make a difference. When you go in, those can be blindly obvious things that are wrong, like a bottleneck, for instance. Why is there only one, why do we have to wait three or four or five days to answer emails? That's a bottleneck. That should not be there. We need to address that right away. We have five guys that can be on trucks running out for service based industry, or we have machines that we have plenty of employees, there's four machines broken. That's a blindly obvious. We need to fix these machines within reason. As long as they're worth fixing, get them fixed now. I don't know why they're like that. A lot of times I see companies where there's no, there's something blindly wrong. Everything's intermixed, for instance, finished goods, quality issues. You don't want them, you're causing more problems by not having that clearly separated. How is the building layout? Stuff like that, if it's a service based industry, do you have trucks down? Do all the trucks have tools in them? Real simple, low hanging through, blindly obvious. You don't need lengthy discussions. There's not gonna be 16 meetings on how to solve the problem. It's wrong, the roof leaks go fix it. That's basically brute force has come in, fix this up that immediately has to be resolved, because it's so blindly obvious, there's not a lot of conversation around it. Makes plenty of sense. So tell us about step two. So analyze, for instance, now some of these steps overlap. So during the brute force phase, as you're kind of fixing things and going through, you are touching on call it through a little bit because people are seeing change and they're like that. Then you go into analyze. Analyze is kind of deep diving more into the problems. And one of the things that I do, for instance, is I have a large 10 foot whiteboard that I buy for each company. And we prior to lay out per department, and we actually write down every single problem. I mean, if there's a light bulb out, we write down machines down. There's, you know, women's hair ties holding up hydraulic lines, safety issues. All of this is written down. That is the analyze, you're deep diving into problems. You're talking to employees, talk to the management. Tell me what is wrong with this company. Well, you know, we have this one problem here that happens over and over. It's great. I want to know that. This one truck doesn't start like half the time. Good. It does start. We want to fix it. We don't know that the problems we can address it. So the analyze phase is really gathering data and trying to understand what's wrong and then actually prioritizing what has to get fixed. Safety issues are number one, obviously. And then you kind of go down from there. So getting the information and then actually prioritizing it. Great. So boot force, analyze. What's number three? Structure. So structure is now you've analyzed data. You're starting to get into the point of actually building. So now this is where you go into like documenting core processes and assigning roles and responsibilities. Right now you be amazed. You'll go to somebody, let's say an admin, say, "Well, who handles taking orders?" Well, sometimes it's Jenny and sometimes it's Rachel. Okay. So no one's response. If it's missed by both thinking the other ones did it, that's a problem. If you double do the effort, that's a problem. So there's no one core responsible. So you start laying it all the way down the owner, all the way down to shipping or whoever the final person is in your organization. So you definitely want to do roles and responsibilities and then you want to understand core processes. How is this supposed to work from quote to cache, meaning when we get a quote, until we actually ship or finish the service, what has to happen? We have none of that documented. So if you ask five people in the company, they'll all give you different answers. That needs to be organized. Great. We've talked about steps one to three of your basic framework, brute force, analyze, structure, what's number four? Improved. So that's where we actually start fixing more. So through the analyze phase, you find out what's wrong and you start through structure even, start kind of fixing the major stuff that's kind of obvious. You'll have a few meetings about it. It should understand, improved is where now you're kind of refining. You've done all the major things. The truck starts, the machine's one correctly. You're doing, you've got the processes, policies. People know what their roles and responsibilities are, but now you have to say, is it right? I didn't say fix it. I said, document it. But now we document it. Is it correct the process that we have? Is it correct the structure, the organization for roles and responsibilities? Should it be that way? Should the controller be doing garbage and the general manager signing checks? I don't know. Those are things you have to kind of figure out. So now you're at the improved stage. Now you're actually refining and making it better than it was before. That was essential versus outdated. So modifying policies and procedures kind of gives you an example. Right. Number five. Culture. So this is obviously culture gets built throughout each 20 stages because brute force, they see change are very excited. Analyze like, oh, great. Wow, I'm being heard. I'm being listened to. Structure. Great. Now I know who to go to. I know what the organizational structure is. Improve. Oh, thank God we're finally fixing this. One thing has been out there for a long time. I've wanted it fixed, but wasn't big enough to fix right away. So now you're instilling accountability and urgency and continue improvement. What that means is you're going to start working with the employees and recognizing them. Make them feel valuable. Listen to their opinions. You've already asked all their, a lot of questions during the analyze days. But now this improves culture. Is it getting a coffee maker? Is it getting a second fridge for the facility? Is there air conditions or heaters or something they need for their area? Some of it's not direct tooling. Is there something that they want? Ask them, literally take an interview and ask them, hey, what's missing? What do you think they'll make the company better? Oh, we'd let you do lunch every quarter. That might be something to improve culture. So we may implement something like that. So definitely trying to empower and include the employees to improve culture. That is definitely a key factor. And finally, what's number six? So sustain is basically for a lot of the owners or management. This is where you have now taken away a lot of the deliverables that are not mandatory for you to do. So there's a lot of $20 an hour jobs that you could be doing and you've been doing in the past. Guess what? No one can do it better than you. Well, that may be true. But have something you need to learn to delegate and not quickly. It has to be delegate over months sometimes. But even a year, delegate that off to other people that are very proficient or proficient enough to do it is keep in mind, somebody working three hours on something at 20 hours hours better than you spending one hour, even if you're better at it, because your time has a dollar and a value to it. And you should be focusing on working on the business, not directly in the business. So as an owner, if you're doing 20 hour and hour jobs, you are not working on the business. I can guarantee you. You're wasting time. So this is where what you're trying to get to is you want to be able to step away. There has to be a point where you can step away from the business, even if you don't directly leave, but maybe lower your days down a few, maybe purposely going vacation for a little bit, see what happens. And I've done this and sometimes I've had a few small failures I had to resolve. But you should be able to walk away from the business and let it run out its own. If you have to baby it, you don't have a business. You have a job. Yeah, I think that's such an important one. So I have to remind myself of all the time at. could recall sitting in a room with a, it was a family manufacturing business. This was probably 10, 12 years ago. And, you know, the father is in the room. He's probably in his 60s, his son, his family in his, not a late 30s or something, is in the room too. And, you know, the father was there to sort of oversee the meeting. He was a CEO still, but everything that came up, he's interjecting, he's inserting himself, he's overruling everybody else. You could just see the look on one of his sons face who's like next in line to take over the company, as well as the other people in the room, how deflating it is to, because, you know, whatever accountability is, might be written down on paper for them. They know they're just gonna be overruled by the boss man who can't allow himself to step back and let people do their jobs. And, I see, you know, that was just one example, but I see it pretty often. And I have to fight it myself. And as we've grown from a two person to a 35 person company, I've had to take off a lot of hats along the way. And, you're right, you disappear for a couple of weeks, you take a vacation, it's like, the things that are problems while you're gone are the things you probably still need to keep working. I'm like, how do I make this part of the business more sustainable? But I find that most things keep working just the way they should, because we have put the processes in place and the people in place that are, you know, you hired them for a reason, 'cause they're good people who will execute their jobs, right? - Oh, yeah. - It's funny. So I have a consulting company, Dean is for our consulting. And what we do is primarily go into companies. And they call us up and they say, hey, we're having a problem, revenue is down, this is down. Sometimes it's companies majorly in trouble. Sometimes it's companies that are just kind of stagnant, they're not really growing. And sometimes they're actually good companies, but they are smart enough to get someone from outside better than them to make them to the next level. And, nepotism is probably one of the biggest issues I deal with. It is either communication, getting people online, nepotism, but nepotism's huge because when the father, you know, I have a son. The son is trying to take over the company, right? But the father's still involved, like you say, 75 years old, you know, kind of comes in three days a week, but he's still technically fully in charge. And the son wants to make these changes so that the father gives the son the ability to run the company, but not have any power. He doesn't empower the son. Not only that, so now you've got the kind of the things exactly what you're talking about. And we have to mitigate that. So I literally have a new client. I just took on last week, I think, and I have a kickoff meeting that's literally called a kickoff and alignment meeting. And the only purpose of this meeting is that to discuss the project. It's to discuss roles, responsibilities, how hierarchies can be handled, how decisions can be handled, how fast decisions can be handled, because I don't want to get into an issue with exactly what you just talked about. So we're saying the standard to say, hey, this is the organizational chart. The son is going to be the final say, this is the father, this and that, and on that meeting, if they don't agree to that, we don't move forward the project when they come to an agreement. And that's gonna be a contractual agreement. Like when you say, the son has final say, that's it. And then to get away from the family dynamics, we put a timeline, timely fashion, they define it. I don't tell them, they tell me what timely fashion is. So if it's two days, one day for a decision, if it's not, that now it's outside, becomes outside the scope of the project. And it's not to be ruthless or mean, it's actually to keep the project moving forward in the right direction with the right people. But if you don't establish that in the beginning, you're gonna pay for it in the end. So I literally had a kickoff meeting in the line and mean just to discuss that, we do it every single time. It does get people aligned. And then when we do get a little off target or off scope and somebody has an opinion, they can have an opinion. But if they're not a decision maker, I don't want to be involved. I hear the problem I have. I need a decision maker to make a decision. If they cannot over the phone, you've got whatever timeline you put 24 hours. Great, you guys go fight it out. I need a decision in 24 hours. I've given you all the facts. Here's what our suggestion is. If you choose a flat direction, probably the right one. If you wanna go a different direction, then we have to redo the analysis and come up with a mitigation to your new decision that probably is not part of the recommendation. - Okay, we're gonna take a quick break from the conversation here. Picture a world one year from now where the thousands or tens of thousands of design engineers, plant managers, project managers, operations folks, CEOs or whoever you need to reach an influence already knew who your company was, understood your value proposition, considered you the expert in your product category and believed you could help them solve their problem. In this world, your prospects would come to you with their guards down, already informed and genuinely excited to talk about how you could help them. And your sales team could reallocate the time they spend slinging product into facilitating deeper, more engaged conversations with right-fit prospects who actually have buying intent. So how do you get from here to there? Well, I can assure you of this, it doesn't start by dabbling in SEO or making your website look prettier or posting more social media updates. It starts with a strategic marketing plan, rooted in the most important business outcomes that your manufacturing organization needs to achieve. I'm talking about outcomes like pipeline and revenue growth targets or new market penetration or customer diversification. Start with the outcome, then reverse engineer the marketing program that will help you achieve it. For well over a decade, our team of industrial marketers at Gorilla 76 has been helping OEMs, machine builders, contract manufacturers, robotic systems integrators, and industry 4.0 technology companies strategize and implement revenue-focused marketing programs. If you feel like your company could use some guidance, please visit Gorilla76.com and consider requesting a strategy call. We'd love to have a conversation. That's Gorilla, like the animal76.com. Now, let's get back to the episode. Well, Dean, I love the framework. It's very practical. It's their actions, stuff that people can actually take, which is really great. Just curious, are there any examples you'd like to share of companies you've worked with that have put this to use and seen some impact from it? Oh, yeah. So this is funny. So for instance, when you go into these companies, the companies I either currently own or manage or something like that, but one for instance, I own as a box manager, a box manufacturing company. And I remember I came in as that awesome story. Actually, this was a LinkedIn guy. I posted this on LinkedIn and I got like hundreds of thousands of views, hundreds of comments. It was just kind of, it's not even like a critical one, but it's funny. So I first take over a company and I come in, I said, hey, listen, you know, I'd like my third day or second day and I said, I talked to the operations manager, Gary, I said, hey, Gary, I want to kind of do something nice for the employees if they go above and be out. Like, you know, gift cards, $15, $20 gift cards, like McDonald's or Subway, what do you think? 'Cause, well, I'd probably do McDonald's. Okay, great. And he was, you know, the women like the coffee, they get coffee every day there. And I said, okay, that sounds good. And we moved on to the next subject. But then my brain was still sticking with that for a second. And I said, hey, Gary, can we stop for a second? The women get coffee every day at me down. And they go, yeah, so I'm doing some basic math in my head. They probably get a coffee once in the morning before they get to work once at lunchtime. I'm thinking, how much they make an hour? How much does coffee plus the hassle getting it? And I'm doing the math in my head and I said, God, just doesn't make sense. I said, Gary, you know, I understand that get coffee, but why don't they just drink the coffee here? And he says to me something I've never heard before. He goes, we don't have a coffee maker here. Now, let me preface what this is. This is like an 80,000 square foot facility. Bigger than a Walmart. How many, we've tons of employees. There is not a coffee maker in the building. And that'll mean one that broke recently. They don't have a bun commercial coffee maker anywhere in the building if an industrial manufacturing company. Not in the office, not in the shop. No, I couldn't believe I said, what do you mean? Why would they not, now keep mind that the company had $2.5 million in bank account. I said, why would, why is there no coffee maker that makes no sense that it can't be? He goes, the previous owner thought it was kind of too expensive. I go, wow. This is it, yeah, they thought it was too expensive. I said, for coffee, he goes, yeah, I was so surprised. I would use other words, I'll use the word surprise for you for podcasting purposes. I immediately jumped on Facebook. I found six of the closest ones that I'd like to buy or coffee maker all commercial buns, you know, like you see in diners and stuff. I said, I want to buy your coffee maker. So that was the fastest way to get one. And I sent all six, one or two got bad for you. I said, I'm coming right now. One over there picked it up, came back that same day within like an hour and a half, two hours. I had a coffee maker sitting there. We ordered coffee from the local distributor. Monday morning came around, was on a Saturday we were kind of talking. And immediately I went back to the, I had a company meeting. I said, guys, I just want you to know, I didn't realize there was a coffee maker here. Not a coffee maker, we have now purchased one. We gave them two trials of coffee. We bought two different coffees. You guys choose the ones you want. Tell me what you want. That's our order from now on. Cups this that we also got filtered waters. We actually got a lot of most of the system for the coffee maker. Hence I didn't have one because why would they didn't have a coffee maker? So we didn't go like just simple. We did not smoke the system. They'll then choose the coffee. Got the coffee maker. I had people literally lifting up their McDonald's cups and like not cheering, we're going, yes, finally. What do you think that did the culture? What do you think that did to, now keep my, this is before really even brute force. This is like my second day there. You know, I didn't have a chance to talk to all the employees yet so I didn't know it was wrong. That's one example. And that's a significant example. I had another one. This one is, it's comical. You can't make this stuff up. It's hilarious. So we had a fridge, one major fridge, large fridge, commercial fridge, break in one of our break rooms. So one of the managers came to me and said, "Hey, listen. She had worked for us for a short period of time. She came from 25 years at like a pizza place or something." And I remember she goes, "Hey, the fridge broke. I was notified of it. We need a new fridge." I said, "Do me a favor. Just go online." There's like, you know, appliance places that sell this stuff, like you know, use appliances but commercial. I said, "Find one there. Get one. They should be like 500 bucks." So whatever it might be, find one. Have it delivered like today if possible tomorrow morning at the latest. Okay, sounds great. Thanks. She came back to me. I found one. X number of dollars. I said, "I thumbs up. I approve it. Get it here as soon as possible. Great. No problem." Eight days goes by. I'm out on the floor. You don't do a mic thing. And I talked to the production manager and I'm like, "Hey, you know, how's everything going? Good. We're talking at the end of the conversation." He goes, "Hey, Dean. Now I said, "You didn't do anything." He goes, "Well, Dean, you know, we got one kind of, you know, we could use kind of a fridge in the break room." You know, I said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Did it break?" I just went and went, "We could go." He goes, "No, we haven't had one for eight days. That's the only fridge in the break room. Double door, you know, big, big fridge." I go, "What do you mean?" He goes, "We never got a fridge." I go, "What?" I immediately go back to the person that was supposed to order it, got my approval, all that good stuff. And they have the approval to make the decision without me, by the way. But I said, "What's going on? What, you know, where is this fridge?" Do we get that order? What went wrong? She goes, "Well, I thought I could get it cheaper." So she weighed a week to see if she could save 50 bucks by not getting the employees a fridge in, you know, right away to save 50 dollars or 100 something small dollar amount. I go, "Are you serious?" Now, if this is again, I think I'm like a Friday night, like, you know, it's after work. I swear to God, this is true. I'm so like disturbed by the fact that this decision could be made. No one rent, no one like, we didn't have processes and policies set up yet for this. But I got the van, the company van, the production manager of me, got the van, and saved me Facebook. "Hey, I had any fridge. I'm gonna buy it right now. Yes, I swear to God we go into this company. There are two stories that we're carrying a fridge down two flights down the owner of the company, the production manager. But I didn't want to wait till Monday. I wanted a fridge here, Monday morning running. I was so, I don't want to say mortify, but disturbed. This could happen that nobody cared or the person that was in charge didn't think that this was important to get them a fridge. And no one really knew me yet. I was brand new. I didn't know maybe I was that kind of boss. I didn't care about employees who knows. So, we're carrying the thing two flights of stairs down, put the bags of van, get it plugged in, set up. So Monday morning we have a cold fridge. And Monday morning, I had a whole company wide meeting and as the owner, I apologized. I said, "I'm sorry. I did not know this was not the, we thought it was the taking care of it. I didn't care if it was a misunderstanding. It was what falls on me. I am accountable. Even though she was responsible, I am accountable." And they're a public apology. So, sorry about that guys. And now we have a fridge. Please contact me in the future. No problems. Listen to that. But that again goes to culture and accountability. That goes to structure. I had to take accountability. It was my fault in the end. And we obviously fixed the policy and processes to fix that. But those stories you can't make up. That's real stories. Like, yeah. It's nuts. How can you not, that's why you need to go through it. Why you need to read the book and go through these tactical steps. But why did it not work? The technical steps didn't work. Why? Because the mindset wasn't there. We did not establish the mindset of the employee yet. The mindset of not only the person that was in charge of getting the fridge, that obviously should have been like, wow, maybe the employees are important. The mindset of the production manager had told me, hey, Dean has been a couple of days. We still don't have a fridge. He didn't know. We didn't establish that mindset. Same thing with the coffee maker. We didn't, there was not a mindset established from our first to go over these companies. Now we established that. We expect them to speak up and say, hey, we got this problem. You know, there's something we can do about it. And give us the opportunity to fix it. But without the mindset, I guess the same old way. When you ask them, why would you not tell me about this? I literally asked the production manager, why wouldn't you say something to him? He was Dean. When we did before to the previous owner, nothing ever happens. We just stopped telling people. Yeah. Not at all. I mean, I've got one more if you want to hear it. It's kind of interesting, I think. Yeah, go for it. So this is one again. So I first took a little bit of other company. And we have a bunch of machines all over the building. It's a big building. And I'm just kind of standing there for a couple of days and I'm watching and people are kind of walking back and forth. And as they're walking back and forth, it looks like they're doing something productive kind of. But they're stopping off and talking to Jenny, talking to Eric, talking to whoever the people are. So I kind of snapped a couple of guys and said, hey, you like, you know, what are you doing? You know, like if you know why me asking, kind of like, where are you going? She's, oh, well, the Alan ranch is over there for this machine. I said, okay. And they're walking like over a hundred yards. I mean, it's far away. The building is big. And I go, you know, in Alan ranch, what do you mean? She says, well, I don't have an Alan ranch. So I'm going there to get the Alan ranch. And I'm going to make the fix and put the Alan ranch back so it's back the machine over there in case you need it. I said, okay. And they're stopping off. Keep my, they're stopping. I'm talking to people on the way. Yeah. Just natural and sick. You're walking, you walk past Joe. You say, how did Joe just throw a quick moment or whatever. And so I'm going back and forth that Alan ranch, that's a dollar or 50 cents or whatever cost they've been doing that for our company's been open at amperes over 40 years. That Alan ranch is probably eight grand 10 grand because think about how many times they have walked back and forth for an Alan ranch. So immediately we're back to brute force blindly obvious things wrong. Yeah. I immediate get me a toolbox for every single machine in the company. And then I need a tool list by anybody that works on that machine. Anything they can dream of. I don't care about budget. Just give me a tool list. We right away got a bunch of small boxes, you know, like roll around saw small boxes and every tool screws Alan ranch, screwdrivers, hammers, whatever they needed. And if you walk around now and just go just stand there and watch nobody walks around. There's nobody walking in the company when they go to that machine, they stay there. What do you think that does the productivity? I mean, literally measurable hours on a machine. You go through the roof. You're not messing around. Yeah. And these are the kind of things that when you when this is why I like to the consulting company us looking at this, the owners don't recognize this. They don't see the same or it's just how it's always been. We've always done it that way. And we want to change that process. Sometimes we even get mechanical into the machine. We have a we have a one instance where we had these multiple large die cutters, but they all took different size dies. They were similar, but not exactly the same size. So we had had a project that took you know numerous hours to figure out what the standard size die die is a part that when the cardboard goes through it check punches it needs a cut to or does something to it. Basically, it's an inserted tool. And we want to standardize that you couldn't use the dies on different machines. You had to use only the machine that you made it for. Well, so we did was we went through and modified all the other machines to the newest machine. So now one die could fit any machine that increased productivity through the roof got rid of three and four hours. So made them 35 minutes. This is what you need a professional come in your company to do and look and say what is wrong. You know, pay for itself probably in the first year, whatever you pay for somebody like us to come in and take a look at or read in the book. You could kind of get a good start to what you should be looking at. But again, going through mindset going through the tactical steps. Guys, it's a win win if you can't afford X number of dollars for a book. You're not really ready for success. If you don't have time to read a book, you're not ready for success. If you're not ready to reach out to somebody like someone like us, you're not ready for success. There you are. Enjoy the success you may have or success you may not have. But if you want to go to the next level, you need to get somebody in as done this. I have done this. I have failed and I have succeeded. This is what you need to do to be successful. Well, great conversation here, Dean. I think you give us lots to think about and some really good stories that you know kind of demonstrate the power of all this for anybody who's interested in reaching out to you or finding your book. Tom, where to go? Yeah. So basically go to deanthrark.com. If you're interested in just talking to me, you have a couple of problems in your company. Not sure how to handle it. You can book some time through there. I'd be more than happy to talk to you. And then if we decide there's a possibly an opportunity together where we could make your company better and improve your sales improve your bottom line will work together as for book. You want to go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble, but it's it was number one on Amazon for I think like two months under industrial and manufacturing or something like that. So somebody seems like this book. I think it's number like 127,000 out of all of Amazon books. So it's pretty high up there. But yeah, definitely go take a look at the book if you read the book and you think it has value definitely reach out to me. We'd love to see what you have. Keep in mind at deanthrark.com. We do have also podcast video and audio about an hour each on each chapter. So if you want to kind of read the book and I'll follow with that. That'll give you some really good insight. Beautiful Dean thanks for sharing all this knowledge today. Excellent. No, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. As for the rest of you, I hope you catch you on the next episode of the manufacturing executive. You've been listening to the manufacturing executive podcast to ensure that you never miss an episode. Subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player. If you'd like to learn more about industrial marketing and sales strategy, you'll find an ever expanding collection of articles, videos, guides and tools specifically for B2B manufacturers at gorillas76.com/learn. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.