Letter from your president, Jim Bartley

Dear Friends,

Our long, tough recession has had one of two effects on most concrete foundation contractors. Either we went broke, or mastered the art of breaking even. If you are reading this, my guess is you are a fine-tuned, break-even machine! I know I am.

Now that we have a better workload, I need to help my company break the habit of being a non-profit, but how? Raise prices? Good luck outpacing material increases. Increase productivity? What comes first—Productivity or production bonuses? Increase sales? Be careful of increased losses. Cut costs? That’s how we got to break-even. Reduce overhead? Not our talented people!

The answer is probably all of the above, but there is NO low-hanging fruit. Price increases may come easier if we share our results with our customers. We plan to tell them if we’re losing money! Increased productivity from our teams may happen if we share information, set goals, measure productivity, and reward success. Profits can bring wage increases and bonuses. Increase sales in a targeted way. Push products and services that bring profits. Good cost cutting may come by minimizing material increases. And finally, cut my management staff? That is where I draw the line! My people are too valuable! And furthermore, who has time for these changes anyway?!

I know. It is easy to lose money, and hard to earn it. We have to find ways to make the process easier. Start by developing a plan. In our company we call it the 5% plan (for 5% profit in 2014). Avoid reinventing the wheel—Consult your peers and gather ideas. Talk to CFA members on the phone, at World of Concrete, at “Live-before-5, or on Linked In. Avoid solving it alone—Involve your people in the process. Instead of cutting our management staff, we are asking them to help develop and implement the 5% plan.

Believe me… I don’t have all the answers. Our 5% plan is just getting started. Step one for us was continuing our CFA membership. Without the help and ideas from our CFA friends, we would be broke instead of break-even.

See you in Las Vegas! Hopefully, as we talk at breakfast, at the booth, and at the bar we can break through to 5% and beyond!

Happy Holidays!

CFA President
Jim Bartley, jim@bartleycorp.com
Bartley Corporation