The Recipe That Outlived the Store

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My dad is the youngest of four boys, and he grew up in his family’s grocery store. He started working there when he was five years old. Nobody sat him down and trained him. He learned the way everyone in that family learned, by being there, stocking shelves and working the counter alongside his brothers and his parents until it was all second nature.

Glasier-Clark was a neighborhood store my grandparents opened in 1947 with a loan from my great-grandpa and no experience in the grocery business. Though what they both possessed was a fierce work ethic. Their management system never lived anywhere but in their heads. They knew what to keep in stock for the regulars, like the woman who lived to be ninety-eight years old and liked to share that the key to her longevity was the two quarts of “cream soda” she purchased from them every few days. They knew the deli recipes by heart. My dad was the one in charge of the deviled eggs, for the case and for the catering orders, and he made them from memory, the same way every time.

That’s how a lot of family businesses run. Nobody really gets trained. You grow up in it. You pick up how things work a little at a time, at the counter and around the dinner table, until the knowledge is simply part of you. It’s a beautiful way to learn, and for the family, it works.

Right up until the knowledge has to leave the family.

I believe there are two moments it becomes evident. The first is the day you bring on someone who isn’t family. They can’t absorb years of context that was never written down anywhere they can find it. So, they struggle, they feel like they’re standing outside something everyone else already understands, and a lot of the time they leave. The family quietly decides that good help is hard to find, when the real issue is that the business was never made teachable.

The second is the day the business changes hands. My grandparents sold the store after thirty years. The building and the shelves went to someone new, but the recipes, and the quiet sense of what each regular came in for, none of that was ever written down. It didn’t transfer. It walked out the door in the heads of the people who knew it.

To this day, my dad is still the one who makes the deviled eggs, now for every family gathering. The recipe outlived the store, because it lived in him. When my siblings and me were little, we would help him peel dozens of eggs and watch him mix up the ingredients. No measuring, he makes them by taste. Try as we might, they never taste as good as when he makes them.

For a family, that’s a gift. For a business, it’s the whole lesson.

Writing down what your family knows isn’t about turning your business into something cold or corporate, or giving up what makes it yours. It’s about making sure what you built can outlast any one person’s memory and can be shared with the people you bring in to help you carry it.

This is the heart of what we call the Train pillar: how a business develops its people and holds onto what it knows. It’s the quietest of the four, and in a family business, it’s often the one that decides whether what you’ve built can grow and be passed on.

You don’t need a binder full of procedures. You can start with one recipe, the one thing you’d hate to lose because only one person knows it by heart. Then do another. Bit by bit, a business full of what we all just know becomes something you can teach, share, and pass on.

Curious where your business stands on this? The Predictable Performance Self-Assessment gives Train its own score, and an honest read on where to start.

What Are You Afraid Of?

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There’s usually a subtle pause before an owner answers my question. Most of the time, they’re giving careful thought to how they want to answer. And sometimes, there’s a little more to it. An honest look under the hood can stir up some apprehension. It’s like finding an unmarked trunk in your attic, that mix of excitement and dread before opening the dusty lid. Will you find money? Or a dead mouse?

I appreciate that hesitation. And it’s exactly the kind of support we’re here to lend.

I’ve come to believe something I hope is reassuring:

Understanding your current state isn’t the scary part. Not knowing is.

The things that quietly wear on a business are usually the ones nobody’s looking at. The workaround everyone’s grown so used to they’ve stopped noticing it. That kind of thing rarely shows up on a P&L, and it’s hard to improve what you haven’t let yourself see.

A lot of owners avoid the look because it can feel like admitting they’ve come up short somewhere. It isn’t. Every business has soft spots, the good ones included. The strongest owners I know aren’t problem-free; they just know where their soft spots are. When we leave those spots unnamed, they don’t go anywhere. They tend to smolder until a harder moment forces them to ignite.

“Current state” just means the truth of how things work right now. Not the version you’re hoping for, and not the worst case running in the back of your mind. Just the reality of it. And once it’s in front of you, it tends to stop being something to dread and becomes a place to start from.

That’s why I built the Predictable Performance Self-Assessment, to give owners a clear view on where to look. It takes about 8–10 minutes and walks through four areas we call PACT: Plan (how you set direction), Act (how the work actually gets done), Communicate (how information moves), and Train (how you develop your people). There’s no grade and no one looking over your shoulder. Just an honest read on where things stand.

What tends to surprise people isn’t that they have gaps. They figured those were there. It’s where the gaps turn up. Someone sure their problem is sales finds out the real issue is that nothing’s written down anywhere. Someone bracing for a hard result learns they’re in better shape than they feared, with just one area that could use some attention. That’s the benefit. Ambiguity becomes a short list of specific things you can do something about.

So, what are you afraid of, really? Go ahead. Open the lid.

Curious where your business stands? Take the Predictable Performance Self-Assessment.

Why We Dread Meetings (and How to Fix Them for the Long Run)

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Most people can’t stand meetings; the same way many people can’t stand running. (That was me until I trained for my first half marathon and married a business consultant!)

I understand it. I’ve sat through plenty of meetings that ate a perfectly good morning and gave nothing back, and I’ve worked inside companies where the meeting culture was completely out of control. Calendars stacked wall to wall, nothing decided, everybody worn out by Wednesday.

But most of the family-owned businesses I work with have the opposite problem and don’t realize it. Their dislike of meetings is way out of proportion to how many meetings they actually hold. They don’t have too many. They have too few that are worth showing up for.

So why does a small handful of meetings generate so much resistance?

The problem isn’t meetings. It’s meetings with no real finish line.

When people aren’t looking forward to a meeting, it’s rarely the meeting itself. It’s that nobody’s sure why they’re in the room. The conversation wanders, an hour disappears, and nothing has changed by the time everyone files out.

The slide starts. People fixate on what didn’t work last time. The meeting gets cancelled, or moved, or trimmed to fifteen minutes, and pretty soon it’s gone altogether. Everybody goes back to grabbing each other in the hallway about whatever’s on fire that day. It feels productive, even though nobody’s working off the same picture.

That first run is always the worst one

Think back to the first time you went for a run. It was miserable. Your lungs burned, your legs felt like cement, and you probably decided the whole thing was a mistake somewhere in the first half mile.

Nobody nails the first mile. And nobody swears off running forever because one bad run proved running doesn’t work.

Meetings are no different. They take reps to get good at, same as anything worth doing. If you expect a sharp, productive meeting the first time out, you’re setting yourself up to be let down, and that letdown is usually what kills the habit before it has a chance to stick. The results show up later, after you’ve done it consistently, week after week over the long haul.

Most people warm up to meetings once two things are true: the meeting is relevant to them, and it actually works. Get there and the groaning stops on its own.

Where this fits: Communication is the common thread

If you’ve spent any time around our work, you know we build everything on PACT’s four pillars: PLAN, ACT, COMMUNICATE, and TRAIN. Each one stands for something specific. Plan is clarity and connection at every level. Act is about empowering teams to improve and flow. Communicate builds trust through rhythm, presence, and care. And Train develops people to grow the business.

Meetings clearly fall under Communicate. What’s easy to miss is that Communicate is the pillar holding the other three up.

Plan only delivers clarity when somebody pulls it back out, holds it up against what’s actually happening, and adjusts it out loud. That’s how people come to see where their own goals connect to the company’s. It happens in a meeting.

Act is where the work gets better, but the ideas, the obstacles slowing things down, and the real cause behind a problem that keeps coming back don’t surface on their own. They come out in conversation.

Most training is formal, but some of the best development your team will ever get is sitting in a well-run meeting, picking up how the business works by being part of the conversation.

Take the structured communication away and those three pillars start drifting in different directions. When your meetings are broken, you don’t really have a meeting problem. You have a business problem that happens to be showing up in your meetings.

The quiet reason meetings feel so high-stakes: accountability

Here’s what nobody says out loud. A lot of the dread around meetings has nothing to do with meetings. It’s about accountability, and accountability gets scary when it shows up out of nowhere.

Think about the unstructured version. You’re standing around the production board in the middle of a rambling conversation when somebody asks, in front of the whole crew, why the line didn’t hit its number. No warning, no pattern to it, just a spotlight swinging onto you. People learn to brace for that. And then they’d rather just skip the meeting.

Now think about the structured version. Same time every week, same short list of numbers and commitments, reviewed every single time. Everybody answers to one set of expectations, so nobody gets singled out, and the cadence asks as much of you as it does of anyone else. When reviewing last week’s commitments is just how the meeting starts, accountability stops being an ambush and turns into a habit.

That’s the whole trick. Make accountability boring and it stops being scary. The structure carries the weight, so nobody has to be the bad guy.

This is what our Communicate pillar is really about: building trust through rhythm, presence, and care. Accountability gets easier as you build all three. Rhythm is the steady cadence that makes the next conversation predictable instead of something to fear. Presence is leaders getting out and walking the floor, seeing the work for themselves, so the hard questions stay tied to reality and help shows up right next to them. And care is the reminder that the whole point is learning, not blame. You’re looking at progress to get better together, not hunting for someone to pin it on. Run that way, accountability doesn’t feel like getting called out. It feels like the team has your back.

How to give your meetings a real job

If you want meetings your people actually value, start here:

  1. Tie every meeting to a business outcome that matters. If you can’t say what it’s protecting or driving, you probably don’t need it.
  2. Tier your meetings so the right people are in the room for the right level of conversation. Brief, purposeful daily huddles for front-line status and obstacles. Weekly leadership meetings for the cross-functional issues. Monthly or quarterly reviews for metrics and direction.
  3. Focus on the inputs and outputs of your key processes, not on whatever happens to be loudest that morning.
  4. Put a few meaningful metrics in front of the room. Pick ones that keep people focused on what matters and give the team something to celebrate, not just problems to chase.
  5. Give every meeting an owner who’s on the hook for the agenda and the follow-through.
  6. End with action items, each with an owner and a due date, then review them at the top of the next meeting. That one habit is what quietly turns accountability into a normal part of how you work.

Pro tip: how to make those early meetings stick

The first few meetings are your first run. Treat them that way.

  1. Scale your expectations back further than feels reasonable. You’re building a habit, not running a marathon on day one.
  2. Build an agenda you can actually finish in the time you blocked. Keep it short and focused.
  3. Start small, with a couple of clear outcomes, so the team gets an early win they can feel.
  4. Prepare people ahead of time so the meeting is for deciding and aligning, not for reading documents cold.

Get a few of these reps in, stay with it, and something shifts. The meeting stops being the thing everyone dreads and starts being the thing that keeps the whole operation pointed in the same direction.

That’s what the long run is all about. The first mile is always the hardest. The results come from all the ones after it.

The One Question

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My husband was in a meeting recently when a CPA asked him something I have been thinking about ever since.

He said: “What question should I ask a client to determine if an introduction to Long Run Business Services is appropriate?”

When my husband shared with me later that day, it gave us pause. Because the question itself was exactly right.

It wasn’t…. What does your revenue look like? How many employees do you have? Are you planning to sell?

What is the one question that tells you whether a business is performing the way it should?

Our response. And I want to explain why.

“Are you happy with how consistently your business performs or does it feel like results depend too much on certain people being in the room?”

Measure with Consistency

Most business owners can point to good months. A strong quarter. A stretch when everything clicked.

What separates a high-performing business from one that is working harder than it should is not the peaks. It is what happens between the peaks.

Consistent businesses perform reliably because they have built a system that does not depend on any one person’s presence, memory, or force of will. The planning is clear. The communication is rhythmic. The team knows what good looks like and how to get there without being told every time.

Inconsistent businesses have great people who are working too hard to compensate for a system that is not doing enough of the work.

When I ask an owner whether results depend too much on certain people being in the room and they pause, or they smile, or they say “well, it depends”, we already know what we are going to find.

The Deeper Follow-up Questions

One question is usually enough to crack pandora’s box. But if you want to understand what is going on inside a business, we have found these four questions will tell you almost everything:

  1. Direction: Do your people know what the priorities are this quarter and does that actually guide what they work on daily? Most businesses have goals. Fewer have goals that genuinely shape how people spend their time.
  2. Performance: When something goes wrong, do you fix the root cause or find yourself solving the same problem again six months later? Reactive vs proactive planning is a terrible business decision. These are businesses that have not yet built solid infrastructure.
  3. Future: Are you thinking about what the next chapter looks like? Growth, transition, or something else entirely? Real conversation tends to come out of this question. Owners who are thinking seriously about what comes next need a clear picture of where the business actually stands today. Not where they hope it stands. Where it firmly stands this second.
  4. People: If you stepped back for 30 days, would the business perform the same way? This is the ultimate test of whether a management system exists. Not whether the owner is good. Whether the business can perform without them.

The Question Matters More Than the Answer

Here is what we have learned from asking our clients these questions.

The owners who answer confidently and quickly are rarely the ones who have it figured out. They are the ones who have stopped questioning.

The owners who pause — who think before they answer, who add a qualifier, who say “mostly” or “it depends” or “we’re working on that” — those are the ones who are paying attention. Those are the ones ready for the kind of honest work that actually moves the business forward.

Uncertainty is not a sign of weakness in a business owner. It is a sign of awareness. And awareness is where every good engagement starts.

If something in here landed, the Predictable Performance Self-Assessment is probably worth a look. No sales pitch attached.

Predictable Performance Self-Assessment – Long Run Business Services

Are Your Front-Line Goals Aligned with Customer Value?

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In many manufacturing operations, measurements and goals for front-line teams are often disconnected from what customers actually care about. That’s a problem. When goals and metrics are aligned with customer expectations and competitive market conditions, they become meaningful. They’re no longer arbitrary productivity calculations from a bygone era—they’re context-rich tools that help teams understand why improvements matter.

But this approach requires something many companies struggle with: trust.

Transparency Builds Trust—and Performance

Take a custom job shop, for example. They bid work based on labor, materials, and a markup to cover SG&A and (hopefully) generate a bit of profit. So why not share the estimated labor hours directly with front-line leaders—and even all employees?

I’ve heard this objection more times than I’d like to admit:

“If we share the hours, they might take longer than they would have otherwise. If we don’t, maybe they’ll get it done faster.”

Oh boy. That’s a trust issue, plain and simple. You don’t have trust issues like that in your business, do you? I hope not!

If we agree that maximum transparency is the right path in most situations, then it’s worth stepping back and asking: Do your measurements and front-line goals actually align with customer needs? Businesses need goals and measures. But they must be authentic, clearly communicated, and directly tied to customer value.

Notes from the Field:

A few years ago, I worked with a $150M construction company in the natural gas industry. We started in their manufacturing facility, looking for ways to measure throughput and productivity—specifically focusing on cost. We partnered with the estimating team to understand how labor estimates were developed. Then we created a closed-loop feedback system with the manufacturing team. Here’s what we did:

  • Estimated hours by item were broken down and shared with manufacturing teams.
  • Team Leaders collaborated with experienced team members to gather their own projected hours, which sometimes differed from the original estimate.
  • Daily huddles tracked actual hours against both estimated and projected hours.
At first, there was resistance. Some worried employees would rush to beat estimates, leading to quality issues. Others feared punishment if they took longer than expected.

This is where Gemba time—being present, listening, and learning—makes all the difference. We explained that the goal wasn’t to work at a feverish pace. It was to understand the realistic time required to consistently produce high-quality work. Coming in ahead or behind estimates wasn’t a failure—it was a learning opportunity.

This feedback loop helped us:

  • Identify waste and fluctuation on the shop floor
  • Improve estimating accuracy
  • Become more competitive in the market

Scaling the Approach to Field Operations

After success in the manufacturing facility, we expanded the same approach to field construction teams. The work was more varied and complex—excavating one day, pulling cable the next—but the potential rewards were even greater. This is just one example of how tying front-line goals and measures to customer pricing can drive real results. And it’s not limited to construction or manufacturing. These principles apply across industries and pricing models.

Reality-Based Scheduling Matters

No matter how your company prices or performs today, one thing is certain:
Production schedules must be built on actual, demonstrated performance levels. Pie-in-the-sky plans lead to late orders, firefighting, and chaos.

And remember—these same concepts apply to Quality and Delivery metrics too.

Want help aligning your goals with customer value?
Reach out to Long Run Business Services to explore how these ideas can be implemented in your business.
Boosting profitability is a team effort

7 Ways to Boost Manufacturing Profitability

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If you’re leading a midsize manufacturing company, you know that profitability isn’t just about cutting costs—it’s about building a smarter, more agile operation that consistently delivers value. Fortunately, there are 7 practical, proven strategies that can help you boost manufacturing profitability in your operation without compromising quality or burning out your team.

So, where should you begin? Here are seven ways to start making more money from your manufacturing operation—starting today.

1. Get Out on the Shop Floor

First and foremost, the best insights don’t come from spreadsheets—they come from conversations and observations on the floor. Spending time with your team where the work happens helps you spot inefficiencies, understand bottlenecks, and build trust. This hands-on approach is a powerful way to boost profitability in your manufacturing operation by uncovering hidden opportunities for improvement.

Tip: Schedule regular Gemba walks. Ask questions, listen actively, and look for patterns. You’ll be amazed at what your team already knows but hasn’t had the chance to share.

2. Learn to See and Eliminate Waste

Next, recognize that waste isn’t just a production issue—it’s a company-wide challenge. From excess inventory to redundant processes, waste drains profitability. Therefore, training your entire team to identify and eliminate waste is essential if you want to boost profitability in your manufacturing operation.

Tip: Introduce Lean thinking across departments. Host short workshops or lunch-and-learns to help employees identify the seven types of waste and brainstorm solutions.

3. Focus On Meaningful KPIs

In addition, metrics matter—but only if they’re meaningful. Too often, companies track dozens of KPIs but fail to act on them. Instead, focus on a few critical measures that align with your goals. This targeted approach helps you boost profitability in your manufacturing operation by driving smarter decisions.

Tip: Use visual management boards to track KPIs like hourly production rate, scrap rate, and on-time delivery. Celebrate wins and address misses in real time.

4. Implement Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

Moreover, if your operation relies heavily on machines, downtime is your silent profit killer. TPM turns maintenance into a proactive, team-driven process that keeps equipment running smoothly and predictably—another effective way to boost manufacturing profitability in your operation.

Tip: Train operators to perform basic maintenance tasks and create a schedule for preventive checks. This builds ownership and reduces emergency repairs.

5. Use TAKT Time to Align with Real Demand

Similarly, producing more than your customer needs might feel productive—but it’s actually wasteful. TAKT time helps you pace production to match actual demand, reducing excess inventory and improving flow. When implemented correctly, it can significantly boost profitability in your manufacturing operation.

Tip: Calculate your TAKT time and adjust staffing and processes to meet it. This keeps your operation lean and responsive.

6. Break Down Silos to Drive Customer Value

Another key strategy is breaking down silos. Departments that don’t talk to each other create friction and missed opportunities. However, when engineering, sales, and operations work together, you get faster problem-solving and better customer outcomes—both of which help boost profitability in your manufacturing operation.

Tip: Create cross-functional teams focused on improving customer value. Encourage open communication and shared goals.

7. Make Suppliers Part of Your Strategy

Finally, your suppliers aren’t just vendors—they’re partners in your profitability. Engaging them in your material flow strategy can reduce lead times, improve quality, and lower costs. This collaboration is a strategic way to boost profitability in your manufacturing operation.

Tip: Share forecasts, collaborate on inventory planning, and invite key suppliers to strategy sessions. The more aligned you are, the smoother your operation runs.

In conclusion, boosting profitability doesn’t require a massive overhaul—it starts with intentional, focused changes that build momentum. By empowering your team, aligning with customer demand, and tightening your supply chain, you can boost profitability in your manufacturing operation and create a business that’s not just efficient—but truly profitable.

Ready to transform your manufacturing operation? Contact nwilliams@longrunbusiness.com today to learn how our solutions can help you implement these strategies and drive profitability.

Colored letter tiles spelling GOALS.

Questions to Discuss for Improved Goal Setting

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I have a habit of using the Notes app on my iPhone quite regularly. I write down to-do lists, grocery lists, and record the weights I lift at the gym. Sometimes, I even write down goals, usually in the form of a handful of objectives I would like to achieve at some point in the future. More often than not, I write a few goals down and then forget about having written them at all. And then, often years later, I clean up my Notes app and stumble across a list or two of objectives I jotted down. Guess what I find? That in almost every case, I have either achieved the objectives I wrote down, or I am on a path to achieve them. Before the Notes app, I experienced the same with goals sketched out in notebooks or journals. The bottom line is, I believe in the power of writing goals down, and these personal experiences are all the evidence I need.

In business, we are typically more deliberate about when and how we capture goals. Whether part of an employee review process, a team project charter, or a quarterly business review, goals are part and parcel of work for many of us. Most of us have learned to use the SMART goal framework, which can help us effectively state strong goals. If this is new to you, SMART is an acronym which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Ensuring your goals meet these criteria makes a great foundation for actually achieving the goal!

Is it that simple, or could there be more to the story? Recently, I had the great fortune to coach a couple of plant leaders for several months. We started with decent goals that fit the SMART framework, but as time went on, I had the feeling we were not accomplishing as much as we could be. The urgent was getting in the way of the important, priorities from leadership were shifting, and staffing shortages were sucking up our precious time! After a bit of reflection, I concluded that I knew what was missing: a more robust dialogue about the goals we set out to achieve.

It’s reasonable that some goals are individual and personal, but the for the majority of goals, it is probably best not to set them in a vacuum. A robust discussion about our goals, what it will take to achieve them, and what could go wrong can result in a more meaningful goal WITH greater chances of success. Going forward, I’ll use many of the same questions for kickstarting a coaching relationship that I would use for a more complex improvement project or business transformation.

I have found the below questions help to formulate a better overall goal AND give us a solid jumpstart on actually achieving the goal. I recommend recording answers to these questions, and then reviewing those answers when you sit down to review progress on the goals. This process enables us to learn more and recover more gracefully when the progress isn’t what we’d desired.

What would you add to this list?

  • What do I want help with?
  • Why is it important to me?
  • Why do it now?
  • What is the impact?
  • What must happen to achieve the goal?
  • Are there any sacred cows standing in our way?
  • How much of my time will this require?
  • Who else will I need to engage?
  • How much of their time will this require?
  • What have we tried to solve this problem in the past?
  • What are some initial steps we can each take to get started?
  • What does the end result look like?
  • What could go wrong? Anything we could do now to prevent that?