The Stoneforge Newsletter
Longer pieces for owners of established services businesses – on winning work, on the numbers, and on what actually moves a business that has flattened out.
Six minutes slower
Elite goalkeepers dive on nine penalties in ten, and save more of the ones where they stand still. Why the pull to act hardest under stress is the same pull that buys a truck in a month whose numbers cannot yet say whether the work is real, and what a stage gate does about it.
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The art of losing a finger
The worry came to the workshop, the wood twisted, and the joint is fused now. Why an owner ends up running the employee’s job and the owner’s job at once, and how the two labor efficiency ratios read the difference between working harder and working efficiently.
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Thinking big and small
A $34 undershirt becomes ten shirts at $22 apiece, because every increment costs the seller almost nothing more. Why small work carries the best margin you will book all year, and how chunking a stalled proposal changes the shape of the decision without shrinking the deal.
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Attawhat?
Hancock is told to flatter people, and does it badly. Why an owner’s attaboys land as weird, how a run of true compliments can add up to a false one, and what an aim needs to have in it before anyone can tell whether it was reached.
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Profit is a dirty word
A dealership sells the car at a loss and makes its money on the servicing years later. Why profit stopped being something owners aim at, and what the number actually measures.
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How to get ghosted with your next proposal
Hear a yes that was never said, skip discovery, propose the moment the business checks out. The five stages a deal moves through, and how to close out a proposal that has gone quiet.
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Ten thousand hours in, and my belly flops still don’t win medals
Thousands of hours off a diving rock bought competence, not a medal. Why the plateau arrives after the proving rather than before it, and how to tell which of eleven areas to work on first.
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Honoring instinct
Three of us wrote a bid on a blank page, cold, and came within five percent of the number three weeks of work produced. Why an owner’s gut is almost never the part that is wrong, and what the numbers are actually for.
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What your price funds
A photographer told us to double our price, and then double it again. What changed was not the money – it was what the work could become, and who turned up to buy it.
Read It →See which part of the business is doing the limiting
The Anatomy of a Well-Run Business walks eleven areas of the business, computes where you stand from your own answers, and ranks where to focus. Free, and nothing you answer is saved or sent.