Background
How do you make your business more successful when you not only need more employees and a new location, but your small, family-owned business really needs a fresh and totally new outlook? How do you transition your company's reputation from that of a family-run enterprise to being recognized as a craft specialist in your industry?

Problem
Mr. Fredrick Taggart, president of Fredrick and Emily's Church Furniture Restoration, was faced with those very questions. Taggart reports, "Our residential restoration business was second-generation and we wanted to shift our vision away from residential to churches. We needed someone to help us focus our resources and to develop our plan around what we needed to do and to where we wanted to be." According to Dr. Ira S. Wolfe, president of Success Performance Solutions, "Many companies are faced with the same problem. They want to make their business more successful. Tasks need to be done to run the business—tasks that may exceed the scope of the owner's training or available time—but the tasks still need to be done. Business owners often face the need to wear many hats and juggle a lot of balls at the same time causing them to then face shortages of time."

In Taggart's case, church restoration is a specialized area. Not only did he need to "do the restoration," but in order to grow, he needed to relocate to a larger facility, hire new employees, develop a business plan and a marketing strategy, and find some time to do sales.

According to Dr. Wolfe, emotional ties to his family history of the business were a significant challenge. "Because of Taggart's father passing away, Fredrick had to put his professional golf aspirations on the back burner and assume responsibility to help run the business. Succession planning turned into a core part of the business—identifying the next person in line. Fredrick had a passion for the church restoration business, but the residential side, the core market at that point, did not interest him. Still, as second generation, he felt loyalty to his father and those loyal customers in continuing the residential business, and he had to support his family and the residential side of the business was certainly not thriving."

Taggart's church furniture business was growing rapidly. It had the potential to go regional and national. The church restoration side, however, was more involved; requiring more people, more equipment and more travel. He needed assurances that focusing on church restoration was the right decision. That's when he contacted Success Performance Solutions. "I'd met Ira Wolfe some time before this, through a local networking group. I felt confident that Ira knew what he was talking about, knew his business, not just 'did' that as a business."

During their first meeting, Taggart stepped away with a new focus. "Ira made me see that I had to start treating this family business more like a business. He helped me get out of running in circles and move onto focusing my efforts on growing the business. We needed to know what our goal was—five churches last year, 100 next year."

"I had Taggart step away and ask himself some questions," explains Dr. Wolfe. "How many employees will you need? Full or part-time? Are you looking for skilled labor? What about your aspirations of being a professional golfer? How big do you think the business will be? Do you need to start identifying certain people with managerial skills to run the business in your absence? Taggart wasn't just growing his business, but the face of his business was changing."

Solution
Because of the growing business needs, Taggart needed to contact many different business specialists to assist him in moving Fredrick and Emily's Restoration business into primarily church furniture and away from residential clients. "I feel my greatest assets are personality, the ability to talk to people and to make people feel comfortable. However, I am also good at knowing my own limits. I believe in surrounding myself with good people. You have to learn and recognize that you can't know everything about everything." Dr. Wolfe suggested, "Rather than Fredrick running around meeting one-on-one with business consultants and proposing the same business plan, we contacted everyone and brought them together, creating an informal board of directors. We presented our plan once, not a half-dozen times. Those involved were an accountant, attorney, banker, financial planner, commercial real estate broker and a business broker. To this group, Taggart offered his five-year business outlook if the church restoration portion grew. Church restoration and furniture businesses were two different entities—different ownership."

From this and subsequent meetings, a six- to 12-month business plan developed. These discussions netted a selling price for the residential furniture business. This enabled Taggart to move forward and begin to work on growing the church restoration business.

Results
Taggart's break came in his own backyard. New Holland Church Furniture, a national company that manufactures new furniture, had been referring requests for restoration work companies. Because of the outstanding job he'd been doing and the reputation he'd earned, the New Holland sales reps started to refer those leads to Fredrick. Because of his success in using his network, the church restoration business began growing faster than he could manage. Dr. Wolfe reports rapid succession. "When we first talked, Fredrick and wife Karen's initial concerns were would the business continue to grow? Before retiring the residential side, how many years of solid work in church restoration side could they do? Fredrick is good at forecasting and he estimated it would take two to three years before he felt secure enough to make some of these moves. In six months, he had far exceeded his forecasting. In 1998, Fredrick and Emily's Church Furniture Restoration business grew 300%, expanding from its Pennsylvania market to two-thirds of country."

Fredrick himself reports, "the company grew another 300% in 1999, and we are forecasting annual sales of $1 million for the year 2000." Fredrick's success has not gone unnoticed. He was recently recognized as one of Central Pennsylvania's Top 40 Under 40.

Conclusion
Success Performance Solutions' role is to take an objective look at a business, where it is now and where they want to go. "One of our skills involves the use of assessments from the front line to the executive. What keeps the people and the organization going? What drives the business and the people in it? But our key to success is helping our clients identify the obstacles and challenges—what's holding them back?" reports Wolfe. He continues, "Other consultants generally focus on strengths and overlook the weaknesses or challenges, internal and external to the company. What others refer to as 'weaknesses', we call barriers to success. People want to grow, but they're not sure if they want to take the chance. They want to become bigger and better, but are not sure whether the timing is right. Fear of success, fear of failure. In Fredrick's situation, his barrier was almost the fear of success. What would happen if the church side became successful? Would he have to give up his father's business?"

One of Wolfe's strengths is his 360-degree perspective of a problem or challenge, "I focus on not only the reasons why people want or need to change, but also the plausibility. I can play both sides of fence. I look at where they are, help them identify a path, confirm the path or clarify the path. Then, I fairly and objectively interpret the non-visible limitations or barriers that could hold a person or organization back and give them a balanced perspective of that. I was able to get Fredrick focused on where he wanted to go, then pull together a team of people to work on that plan."

"Ira Wolfe's willingness to listen and understand my business and 'me' before working with us and trying to pose solutions," is what Taggart cites as his motivation for hiring Success Performance Solutions. "Too often, consultants will teach the same method or solution for everyone, instead of individualizing. Ira really listened to what we were doing and what we wanted to do and helped us come up with the right solution for us."

Fredrick Taggart's advice to those wanting to expand or change their business is: "Choose what you would really like to do, focus and go after it. You have to be much more focused, know the markets you want to go after, not necessarily just have a product/service. If you're good, market yourself as good and charge the premium dollar. With Success Performance Solutions' help, I'm more excited about coming to work. Now, I'm working on making Fredrick and Emily's Church Restoration into a true business instead of it just being my 'job'."