A second area I overlooked was building strong relationships with brewers and distillers after we began production. I would walk into their operations and see one of our grain bags mounted on the wall, yet I knew they hadn’t purchased from us in over six months. That was discouraging. It was also difficult just to get time with them. I would schedule appointments, drive two hours to a brewery, and then discover the person I was meeting had forgotten to put me on their calenda

Business plans are valuable because they help you focus your thinking. They force you to define what you want your company to look like, who your target market is, what you plan to sell, and how you intend to operate. However, even with your best efforts, you won’t anticipate everything. A business plan should always be treated as a work in progress. A good example comes from when I developed a business plan for a malting firm. I began by identifying a niche market within the

Not everything that comes from a lawsuit is bad. The one I was involved in with our local transit authority forced us to review many aspects of both our business and our personal lives. The first thing we did was ensure that our company’s pension plan was fully funded. It was structured as a profit-sharing plan, and if we had been forced into bankruptcy, those funds would have been untouchable. We also made a point not to skimp on employee bonuses, we didn’t want to risk peop

When we had this dispute with the Transportation Authority, we filed a major lawsuit against them for additional costs caused by unforeseen changes that the architect had not anticipated or included in the bidding documents. This led to a 10-year legal battle that should have bankrupted us, but fortunately, it didn’t. It did have the questionable title of being the longest lawsuit in NYS history and the court of Appeals forced the Authority to finally agree to come to court.

When you withdraw from several unions, a number of things happen, some positive and some not. Construction companies operate differently from most unionized businesses. In many industries, employees vote to form a union, and the company then negotiates wages, benefits, and other terms with the union. In construction, however, the company typically signs agreements with unions, and those unions supply the skilled labor needed to staff projects. This can make operations more ef

Dealing with the NLRB was a very interesting experience. From where I sat, it often felt like fairness and truth were not the priority. Instead, there were strict rules we had to follow. As an employer, I could not speak to my employees or make any promises as that was against the law. The union, on the other hand, could make broad promises and paint a very optimistic picture of what they intended to extract from us. The process began with discovery. We were required to provi

Dealing with the NLRB was a very interesting experience. From where I sat, it often felt as though fairness and truth were not the priority. Instead, there were strict rules we had to follow. As an employer, I could not speak to my employees or make any promises, as that was against the law. The union, on the other hand, could make broad promises and paint a very optimistic picture of what they intended to extract from us. The process began with discovery. We were required to

What I am writing is strictly from my perspective—where I was standing when the issues arose with the unions, and we felt we had no choice but to withdraw. Each union responded in a different way. One union, the Cement Masons, waited until we had a pour and needed a large number of finishers, about a week after we withdrew. They called and said they would not interfere with the pour if we agreed to meet with them the following week to discuss the issues. We agreed, and the ne

When you withdraw from a union it is best to have a plan on how you are going to survive. If you have multiple sites and withdraw from the union on one site you could survive. If you are bound to one site you will find it more difficult. When we withdrew from our unions, the contracts only covered us for the local county. The economy in our area had required us to expand earlier beyond Erie county to all the upstate counties in New York State and the western half of Pennsylv

My previous company before I was bought out struggled with not only a changing client base but also a changing labor base. As all the plants continued to leave New York State and the Buffalo Area, the ones left started to change the rules for bidding on projects. We saw this in the general contracting area and the specialty contractors. One contractor who did only flat work decided that it was time to liquidate his company and concentrate on his property rental portfolio. A c

One of the most significant lessons our company learned was how dramatically a workforce and a market can change over time. We began as a union contractor operating out of Buffalo and Niagara Falls, New York. For years, the regional industrial base was strong enough to support our business. Our clients were long-established manufacturing plants that had operated successfully for decades. As long as those industries thrived, so did we. Then the Environmental Protection Act res

As CEO, you must constantly scan the marketplace. Complacency is fatal. Howieson and Hodges argue that leadership today cannot be understood through outdated models built on stability, predictability, and top-down control. Organizations now operate in complex, adaptive systems where markets shift quickly, competitors innovate relentlessly, and customer expectations evolve. Companies do not exist forever. Products do not remain relevant forever. And CEOs cannot afford to sit b