To grow a successful
company, you have to
take risks, even if they don’t always pay off, says
Herb Engel.
“Sometimes, you just have
to look at it and say,
‘Sometimes, they work;
sometimes, they don’t,’” the
president of Marine Group
Boat Works says.
The full-service boat and
yacht repair facility — founded in 1986 as an offshoot of a
boat yard business founded
by Engel and his brother, Art
— has grown despite facing
several challenges along the
way: The company reached
2007 revenue of $13.3 million — an increase of 88
percent over 2006 — and
has 50 employees.
Smart Business spoke
with Engel about the keys
to growing your business
and how to learn from mistakes with growth.
Q. What are the keys to
growing a company?
Analyze your market and
look at what’s out there. Look
at what the existing market
is. We put together a business
plan at the beginning of every
year and sit down and look at
the markets, what’s available
in the segments and figure
out how much we think we
can do. As we go each year,
then we get better and better
data that we can go back on
and track ourselves and see
how we’re doing.
The biggest thing is to know
what your market is. You’ve
got to go ahead and know
your market and what you
think you can pull out of the
market and plan accordingly.
Keep in touch with your
industry. You look at trade
journals and magazines. You
go to trade shows, keep up
to date with industry happenings and contribute to
organizations that benefit
your trade. Networking and
keeping in touch with contacts that you have made is
also key.
Passive involvement has no
advantage, but if you take
initiative with the affiliations
you make and actively seek
to collaborate with these
people or businesses, you’ll
know what’s going on, and
it’ll help make you an expert
at what you are doing
and what your competitors are doing.
Q. How do you
communicate the plan
to employees?
We let people know
how we’re doing, and
it’s just part of the
whole philosophy.
They don’t have to
know numbers; the
main thing is, they
know the philosophy is
we want to grow and
move forward.
The people who own
it and manage it, it’s
their mindset. Our plan
is built by key people.
We get input from managers and employees
on a regular basis. They provide us with insight as to
what works and what does-n’t, and we take their input
and incorporate it into other
forms of research, such as
examining past experiences,
following current and future
market trends, and seeing
where we can be along those
trends.
Feedback helps us find
more efficient ways of doing
things, and when that happens, everyone is much more
motivated to integrate it into
their practices.
