Upsize is a magazine with a single mission: to help Minnesota's small-business owners build bigger and more profitable companies, and to connect CEOs with the people, products and ideas they need to grow.
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looking for the location serving the High- land area and greater St. Paul; we were looking for the electrical opportunity to serve Minnesota Elevator for its electrical needs on site; and we were looking for an office for Minnesota Elevator. Upsize: And it's the first company that you've purchased a stake in. What attracted you to Highland Electric, when you've looked at a hundred companies as a turnaround expert. Lowenberg: First was geography; the other companies I've worked with were scattered all over. From an industry standpoint, I've got a manufacturing background but we're in a service econ- omy, so Highland Electric offered that service piece; and then we wanted an electrical contractor that could service the Minnesota Elevator contracts efficiently. Upsize: You said Minnesota Elevator is a $50 million company, and Highland Elec- tric is much smaller, under $1 million. How big do you want Highland Electric to get, if you state goals that way? Lowenberg: I don't. We look at growing in the niche that we're good at. We're good in the residential area in St. Paul; we're good on the commercial side servicing retail for trouble calls; we're good in the elevator service side. I don't have a set LAW Mitigate risks of a business divorce "Early on shareholders are often ebullient about business prospects and their ability to always reach agreement. Personal or economic stress can dampen that spirit. Areas of contention include un- equal compensation, added capital contributions, debt guarantees, vacation days taken, whether a position on the board is guaranteed. Business divorces, like other divorces, can be expensive and acrimonious. Mitigate risks by documenting your agreements in the form of a shareholder control agreement." Tom Dougherty Lommen Abdo 612.336.9330; tdougherty@lommen.com This expert's advice was taken from an article that ap- peared in Upsize. To see the entire article: CLICK HERE www.upsizemag.com number for how fast I'm going to grow. We were able to grow quickly over the last three years, 78 percent last year, 30 percent this year, and we can continue that 30 percent rate. We are looking at products to add, too. We sell surge protection for homeowners and small- business owners; we have a solar pole product that we've been trying to sell, but it's been tough; and we have thermal imaging where we can go into a home or business and look for trouble spots with our camera. Upsize: So when you say you don't have a specific revenue goal that you aim for, what are you focusing on? Profitability? Lowenberg: Certainly profitability. That's No. 1: If you don't have the cash flow, the profitability, you're not going to be able to sustain the business. No. 2 is support- ing the customers we have and following them in the work, otherwise you're going to get into trouble. We've been able to follow property managers, for example, as they change companies. Upsize: When you set out goals and vision for your employees and management team and your co-owners, what do you talk about? Lowenberg: We have a process. Actually it starts in November. We meet to look at how we're going to finish the year from a financial standpoint. And then we look at the tactics we set out the year before, for example on the marketing side. How many flyers did we send out? How many church bulletins were we in? How did we do on our lunch and learns, where we have a plan where Derek meets with our custom- ers so many times per year. Once we've put together the results we start to work in December, January as to what we're going to do for the next year, and we bring our three electricians, our bookkeeper, our managers together and go through what we're going to do, starting with me. It's not complicated. It's 10 pages, starting with me: What am I going to do? What is each person going to do? Upsize: You mentioned Derek. I know he's key to your operations. Lowenberg: Derek Nissen. You mentioned lessons I've learned. One lesson I learned, when I bought the company I agreed to keep one of the projects, but it turned out to be a complete disaster from a materi- als planning standpoint, from a billing standpoint, and that's when I made the decision to let that whole team go, and start with new. So in January 2009 I hired Derek Nissen as my full-time operations manager. Because of that baseline with Derek and then Steve Romnes, focusing on the elevator side, we started getting LAW Why employers must address networking sites: "An employee who is discharged due to social net- working posts may have various state law claims, including a claim for invasion of privacy. Typically, information on a web site is not private because the public at large can access it — unless the user controls access by invitation, such as Facebook. If the employee can restrict access to the public, he or she may have a reasonable expectation of privacy and, there- fore, claim an invasion of privacy if the employer discharges that employee based on private online communications." Stacey DeKalb Lommen Abdo; 612.336.9310; stacey@lommen.com This expert's advice was taken from an article that ap- peared in Upsize. To see the entire article: CLICK HERE THE GROWTH GUIDE 2012 UPSIZE ONLINE 21