A custom fabrication shop in Austin
Same operator, different business. We brought the rented-to-owned approach into a fabrication shop that now runs on software it owns.
Before
One of our founding partners runs a custom millwork shop on the side, building signage, retail fixtures, and feature pieces for restaurants and commercial buildings. Like most shops its size, it ran on memory and spreadsheets. Money owed drifted, the books lagged behind reality, jobs were tracked in people's heads, and contracts got signed without anyone reading them in a structured way. There was no standing meeting where the team looked at the same numbers together.
The first bet
Get a number the operator could trust
We started with the books, because there's no point planning around bad numbers. We cleaned up the P&L and built a view that showed money owed and money due in real time, so the operator could pull up one screen and know exactly where the shop stood. Everything else came after that.
What we built next
A pipeline view
Once the books were clean we layered the active jobs and the pipeline on top, so a glance at one screen showed both the work running through the shop and the work coming behind it.
Contract review
Incoming contracts now get parsed before anyone signs them, with the scope, terms, deadlines, and payment milestones pulled out in plain language so the operator can read what he's actually agreeing to.
A standing weekly meeting
The whole team meets every week looking at the same numbers, the same pipeline, and the same active jobs. That meeting wouldn't exist if the data underneath wasn't trustworthy.
What's now possible
The shop now runs on software it owns, using the same approach as our consulting clients. When we tell a CEO that one operator-engineer can take a company from rented tools to an owned system, we are describing something we have already done in a custom millwork shop in Austin.
What we built