Capacity Ep. 15 - Fritz & John Schlabach of Rock Run Industries

What started as a garage hobby shop in 1999 has evolved into Rock Run Industries — a 150-person sheet metal fabrication powerhouse and the #35 ranked company on The Fabricator’s prestigious FAB 40 list.

In this episode of Capacity, Fulcrum CEO & Founder Sunny sits down with the father-son duo Fritz and John to explore how Rock Run Industries transformed from humble beginnings into an industry leader known for innovation, equipment mastery, and a culture built on respect and empathy.

Building on Risk and Innovation

Fritz started Rock Run Industries without prior experience, driven purely by determination. Early on, he learned an invaluable lesson: investing in the right equipment not only improved productivity but enriched employees’ lives. “Better equipment leads to better parts, happier customers, and better-paid employees,” Fritz shares. But it wasn’t without risk. From his first iron worker bought on borrowed trust to a half-million-dollar laser purchased at FABTECH, Fritz understood that equipment investments required bold decisions and faith in the future.

Culture as Strategy

Perhaps more critical than technology was the decision to cultivate a workplace built around humility and respect — rooted in Fritz’s personal values drawn from Philippians 2:3-5. Fritz’s employee-first philosophy was straightforward yet powerful: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition…rather, in humility, value others above yourselves.” By genuinely prioritizing employee welfare over immediate profits, Rock Run became known locally as “the best place to work.” The outcome? Remarkably low turnover and a team that not only stayed loyal but thrived.

John, having grown up alongside the business, notes how this intentional culture creates an environment where employees leave energized, not exhausted. “People stay because they like the people around them. It’s that simple.”

Leading Through Generations

John, now leading sales, recalls his early days operating a laser cutter at just 14 years old. This generational shift is contributing to Rock Run’s success: Fritz built the foundation, and John is now driving innovation further, such as automating quoting processes and embracing lean manufacturing inspired by Toyota’s methods.

Yet, both acknowledge the inherent risks of leadership. “The more decisions you make, the more often you’ll be wrong,” Fritz advises. “Real leadership isn’t about being perfect; it’s about having the courage to admit mistakes, learn, and keep moving forward.”

Thriving Through Challenges

Over two decades, Rock Run Industries didn’t just weather storms like recessions and pandemics — they used them to accelerate growth, seize market share, and reinvent operations. “Never slow down when orders slow down,” Fritz urges. Instead, use quieter periods to refine processes and seek new opportunities.

Looking to the Future

As Rock Run Industries prepares for the future, the focus remains on continuous improvement, adaptability, and innovation. From exploring new markets like aftermarket RV components to leveraging automation software, Fritz and John are steering the business toward even greater efficiencies and sustained growth.

Ultimately, Rock Run’s story isn’t just about building a successful business; it’s about nurturing a legacy. As Fritz puts it: “The next generation will take this business places I couldn’t imagine, and that’s exactly how it should be.”

Listen to the full episode to explore how Rock Run Industries turned passion, humility, and bold decision-making into a manufacturing empire built to last.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Fritz, Sunny, John

Sunny  00:00

Welcome to another episode of capacity. We're here with Fritz and John of rockrun industries. Rock run is a sheet metal fabricator that's recently branched into all different industries, but primarily focused historically on the RV industry. Here in Topeka, Indiana, they have a lot of really cool equipment. They have a two blazer, the panel vendor. So if you have need for those work centers, please reach out to them. But welcome. Thank you for coming on the podcast.

John  00:29

Thank you.

Sunny  00:31

I'd love to learn about Rock Run. What do you guys do? How did you get started? What are your individual roles? One is the father to the other. How does that work? What's the relationship like? There's a lot of stuff to dig in, but wherever you want to start, Fritz.

Fritz  00:45

Well, it all started. I would say in 1999 I decided to get married and quit playing sports. I needed to do something to fill my hours.

Sunny  00:56

Isn't the year that John was born, too?

Fritz  00:59

It's the same year John was born, which was probably a mistake. Looking back, if I could do it again, I would wait 10 years to do that, because I missed out on a lot of the younger the year my oldest children, their youngest years, I missed out on a lot of that, and my wife likes to remind me of that every now and then, that I was pretty unpresent during those times, and ironically, I was thinking the same thing about her is like, Hey, I'm trying to build this business. I'm putting in all these hours. And she wasn't there to help me. But we had a growing family, and I was more focused on business than I should have been. But no matter, that's the that's the the course we took, and this is where we're at. My children have good minds. They have they're very high achievers. They're involved in the business, which is great. It's a great feeling when your children have the same interests that you do want to support the same business that you've struggled to grow over the last 20 years. So it all worked out in the end, but looking back, maybe I should have waited a couple more years. But anyway, it started in 99 we had just gotten married. John was born. I went to help a friend work in his shop. He was assembling some large crates for draft horses that was required some steel parts. He put me to work painting those steel parts, and he didn't have the proper equipment to do that. I pointed that out to him. I said, Why don't you buy these parts in painted so you don't have the painting equipment, you don't have the proper environment. It was cold in there, it was dirty in there. And by the end of the day, I made the proposition to him. I said, Hey, why don't I make your parts? I will paint them, and I will sell them to you, and I will match the price that you're paying for these parts in the raw state. And that's what I did. I kind of put my put my neck out there. I didn't know how to weld. I really didn't know a whole lot about fabrication. I like to build things. I didn't know where to buy bar stock. I didn't know where to buy angle iron. I had no idea. I had to go ask people, where would you buy some flat stock, or where would you buy angle iron? And it was quite a struggle, but the struggle was kind of fun. I bought a stick welder, engine driven stick welder. Dragged it into my garage. I Shut the garage door, and I taught myself to weld. I taught myself to drill holes in steel. Didn't know anything about feeds and speeds. It's kind of funny. I kept going up to the local hardware store buying these bits and take them home, and I would run them through my drill press that was really set up for wood, and I did not know why, but I couldn't drill more than about one or two holes. And that bit was shot. And I go up there and buy another one. And the local hardware store owner said, What are you doing with all these bits? And I said, Well, I'm burning them up. They must not be very good bits. And he said, Oh, wait a minute, those are high quality bits. What are you doing wrong? And he took the time to come out and show me about feeds and speeds and getting the heat into the chip, and getting the chip up and away from the steel, saving my bits, learning to drill holes in steel, some of those things that we take for granted nowadays. But I did not know how to do that. I just, I had a passion, and I was going to, I was going to make this work. Once I decided I'm going to do something, I was going to make it work one way or another.

Sunny  04:28

So you're buying equipment. What does your wife think about all this?

Fritz  04:31

She thought I was absolutely crazy. I bought a iron worker because I was spending so many hours drilling all these holes. I wanted an iron worker so that I had a flat shear and I had a punch. And we we were, I wouldn't say we were poor, but we had just gotten married, we had just struck out on our own, and I was only working my day job about three days out of every 14, so we didn't have a whole lot of money. And I. I went up to the local bank there, talked to a banker, and said, Hey, I've got this opportunity to build these parts. There's a machine I can buy for about $5,000 it was an Edwards iron worker, a 50 ton. But I said, I don't have any money, but I need an iron worker. And he looked at me and says, Well, you know what, I made a lot of loans your dad, and he always paid his bills. And I'm I'm gonna bet that you will too. We're not gonna run the numbers. We're just gonna make the loan on your dad's reputation. So he did, and my payment was $111 and some odd cents per month. I can remember that he gave me a five year loan, and I cut my production time for a group of 10 parts, or 10 sets of parts, in about 1/10 of the time that it took me to drill the holes I was punching those holes. So it allowed me to catch up and allowed me to over produce. It allowed me to spend a little more time with my family and allow me to go back and enjoy my life. Since then, I guess I never realized until later, maybe that was the kickoff. I figured out that better equipment is worth the money. Buying equipment to make your life better, buying equipment to improve your process, improve the quality of your parts. Your customers like that. You can build more parts per hour. You can pay your employees more, better equipment. Great employees. Usually have very happy customers when you do that.

Sunny  06:33

How do you make a decision whether you believe this equipment is actually going to have the benefit that it's advertised to?

Fritz  06:40

You do as much research as you can, but when you do make that decision, oftentimes it is a little bit of a leap of faith. When I bought my first laser, it was a CO two model. It was a Hong Kong and it's also, it's also a very, how should I say it's a big leap of faith? And I know I bought it at at Fabtech in 2014 2013 or 14. Bought it at Fabtech. I didn't sleep until about 315 the next morning. I was just spending $520,000 on a piece of metal working equipment. Just seemed so so far out of my reach. I had it financed. I knew I could afford it, but it just seemed like a a big step for me. And I thought, Man, this is, this is the straw that's going to break the camel's back. Now I got to find work for it. I got to keep it busy. But the work did find the laser. The laser did keep us busy. There's lots of downstream work that comes with being able to do the first step process. Truthfully, you should probably crunch the numbers a little more than I do, but I'm a bit of a gambler. I guess. I just assume that once I have this machine, I'm going to find the work for it, and we're going to pay for it. And we did, and we have on all the other lasers we've purchased since then.

Sunny  08:08

John, you were a kid in the beginning days of rock run. What were your memories?

John  08:13

Watching the steel trucks pull in, sometimes they were unloaded by hand, sometimes by forklift and watching the truckers come in, take parts and then bring them back from powder coat. I remember that we used to sell paint. We haven't talked about that yet today, but I used to sell paint. I remember that probably more so because it was more retail. So it happened later in the day. So it would have happened when I was home from school. I remember riding, riding my bike through the shop after or in the afternoons, even though I wasn't supposed to get all this steel sticking out. So I remember, remember doing that with my brothers and sisters.

Sunny  08:53

What was your feeling about the business in general?

John  08:57

I think I thought about it a lot. You can tell by my work projects or my school projects I had in that time. So obviously I liked it, but I can't really remember what I thought about too much back then.

Sunny  09:13

Do you remember your dad buying an iron worker and being home more often?

John  09:18

No, that was probably too early for me. I remember the laser, though.

Fritz  09:21

The reason John remembers the laser is I, I had a hard time learning the new technology that went with the laser, so John would have been about 14 at that time, and John worked a lot of afternoons and evenings and Saturdays keeping that laser running. It was a manual load and manual unload, and he did a lot of the nesting and running the laser. And to this day, I can't program a laser yet, and the next generation is doing a phenomenal job of maximizing the throughput of our CNC equipment. I never figured that out.

Sunny  09:59

What did it feel like learning how to program a laser and learning about NC code and G code and nesting?

John  10:06

Well, it was almost like just another big math problem for me. And I always liked math, so like you said, working. I worked long hours, but I never had an issue with that. Made me feel good to accomplish something.

Sunny  10:19

Most 14 year olds are, you know, playing video games and reading comic books. You're reading manuals. You're reading laser cutting. Like, how did you learn?

John  10:29

We had one guy that taught me a lot, an employee, but mostly just by trial and error, by doing.

Sunny  10:36

So you have had a heck of a run over the last 24 years operating this business, what were the most formative one of the most formative points is buying that first machine and realizing that the right equipment is going to increase your quality of life and also your throughput. What were some other lessons that you learned throughout the time?

Fritz  10:58

Early on, I realized that great employees make for a great life if you're the business owner. Over the years, I've heard owners complain about, where do you find good help? How you get good help? Heard people complain about their employees. I've had very, very little turnover in my business. We have about 150 employees. I don't know what our turnover ratio is, but it's extremely low in industry standards. The first two employees that I hired are still with us today. I'm not quite sure where I really stumbled on that, but I know I met with Al Glick from ALRO steel. Al Glick was in his 80s at the time, and I took a tour of Al ro steel. And Al looked at me and said, What do you want from your business? What do you want to what do you want to be known as? And I thought a little bit, and I thought, you know, what? Just the other day, there was a guy there looking for a job, and that was about the fourth or the fifth time he had come back looking for a job. And this guy, I asked him, Why do you keep coming back? And he looked at me, and he said, people tell me this is the best place to work. And that felt real good. I was like, Man, that's that's really something. If we, if we can be known as the best place to work, the place to work, that'll be great. And that felt good. It felt, it felt good to me as a person, because I've always been an employee person, even when I was in management, lower level management for the RV industry. I always wanted my group of of employees to be, you know, make the most money. I wanted them to get out the earliest, get done the earliest. I wanted them to make the most money. It was a, it was a feather in my hat. That was, that was just something. I wanted to be at the top of the heap. And it didn't change when I was the the owner of the industry. I wanted my employees to be, you know, making the most money. I wanted them. I wanted to be the premium employer. And I told Al that. I said, Al, I want to be known as the best place to work, not only for the money, but for the environment, the culture, the safety. And I implement a lot of my Christian beliefs into our business. And I started applying first, Philippians, chapter two, verse three, four and five to our employer employee relationship, and things just kind of blossom from there. What do those verses say? This is the part that I like, and this is actually my version of management training here. Do nothing, and that's what that means, do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, and it's easy to get there if you're a manager or if you're a business owner, especially selfish ambition or vain conceit, but do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, rather in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others. And if you have an employee, if you're not looking at your own interest, if you're valuing their interest higher than yourself, you're more concerned about their paycheck, about their welfare, their home life, their quality of life, than you are about your own your own things are your due dates, your Profit margins. The employees seem to blossom with that attitude, and they brought that attitude. So applying those verses to the employer employee relationship really helped us a lot.

Sunny  14:31

Do you tell them that this is your philosophy about the workplace, so that they can hold you accountable for it?

Fritz  14:36

I have I don't necessarily make a point of that. There for a while we were doing every new employee, we would talk about those things. As we continued to grow, the culture seemed to change a little. People were coming because of the money, not because of the environment. And you could tell there was more strife. There was more discord between groups or between departments and. So now, recently, we made a plan that, hey, when we have new employees, two or three or four or five new employees, I will sit down with them and I will tell them about what the dream is at Rock Around we're more concerned about being a great place to work than we are about how much money we make. We're going to make a lot of money, but we want to be a great place to work. We want to be that place where you enjoy going to work, where you feel safe going to work, where you can be proud of what you're doing and that you're going to get to work with some real new, cool equipment, things that are great. You're going to be able to do some great things. And shame on us. We've hired 30 new new employees in the last 12 months. It's hard to keep up with that. We're all very busy, or we seem to think we are, and we've done it with some of them, but we haven't gotten all of them just to talk about the culture, how it's more important to be a great place to work than it is about what we make. Or this department does this and doesn't worry about the next department. You know, how that, how that affects everybody's home life, or, well-being.

Sunny  16:10

Amazing. How do they react to it when you give them, you know, the dream?

Fritz  16:14

Some of them get a little emotional. I have a hard time not getting emotional when I speak about those things, they all agree that that's it. What they want, for some people is just harder to keep that in the front of their focus, when, when the when the struggle comes. You know, you might have a press brake guy that's got a reason for doing things his way, but the well department wants things done in a different way. They're both right. They both have their reasons for doing what they're doing, but it comes back down to look not each on his own thing, but also on the things of others and and lowliness of mind, as you know, consider the other guy above yourself. So just because you want to. It's easier for you to do a part in a certain way, or stack it on on the skid in a certain way. If that hurts the next department, you might want to reconsider that. And some people do it better than others. That's just a personality thing, and it's okay. We don't expect everybody to be perfect, and we don't even reprimand them. We just, we like to let them know that's what we're about going in. And so far, it's always worked great. The system weeds itself, you know, it cleans itself. If we have a guy that just can't conform to that, and we've had those after a while, he starts to feel alienated around here and uncomfortable, and he usually ends up quitting on his own. We don't have to fire him. He just doesn't fit, and the system tends to push him out on their own. But every man, every man, has his weakness. You know, there's good days, bad days, there's days when problems flare up.

Sunny  18:01

For me, oftentimes I have all these perceptions of how I've created my culture, and I've made mistakes, and things have gotten worse and better. I'm certain that Josiah has a very different perception of things than I do. Well, what do you see?

John  18:13

I think we can do a better job, and probably we'll never get it perfect, but I'm thinking now of when I pushed him to explain to everyone how our piece rate system works. And his response was, Well, they know. And I said, Well, I don't think they actually know. Some of them do, some of them don't. And it's the same way with the culture thing, like he's saying it's, you know, we I don't know. I didn't even know about this, that he's doing that. So I don't know, did you do it once or twice? So now we're missing 20 some people again. So it's not like we don't want to do it. It's Everyone's so busy. And I think we can do better. I think we have been doing better, right? I sometimes overhear our managers when they're talking with people, when they're applying, and they do a much better job than they used to, to set the expectation closer to being correct before they come on board.

Sunny  19:09

What have you seen that makes you believe that this is important? Because not everybody believes that this is important.

John  19:16

Well, I just Friday, we had our company picnic, and I talked to your guy, and he said, I asked him, Why do you what makes you work here? Because, you know, we might make more money in a year's time, but that's not necessarily important to people. The dollars per hour is sometimes more important because they have hobbies. But he's he said that we have a less stressful environment. People are easier to work with. He has more energy when he gets home to do his homework, and that's because of the culture. That's not because he's making a lot of money or he's making a part that he likes. It's because the people around him like him and he likes them, and that was my take on it. So that tells me that something is working.

Sunny  20:00

We tell our team often that there's four things that make you successful. Manufacturing. Got to know how to make stuff which your hardware store guy showed you, and getting new equipment and learning new things this entire time, and figuring out how to program a laser, you have to also figure out a good culture. You have to also figure out how to run a business, how to make money, and then how to sell. And we tell our team, if you can do one of these four things, you can probably stay in business. If you can do two of these four things, you're gonna grow. If you can do three of these four things, you're gonna thrive and make money. If you can do all four nothing can stop you. So you got two down. How, where did you learn about sales and about how to grow? You've you've grown 30% year over year for many, many, many years in a row, for over, over a decade and a half. There are software companies with much higher gross margins that would love to have that kind of sustained growth. Why? Why? Why have you been able to figure it out, and it's hard for a lot of other people, what did you What lessons did you learn?

Fritz  21:03

Well, I think the culture might lead into the sales part a little bit there. We have great people. We have great we have great employees. Therefore, a lot of our customers like buying from us, so it's easier to sell. We still make a mistake. We make mistakes. We do things that we shouldn't. You know, we we send out parts that might be out of spec, but we do that on very minimally. I can't I seen the numbers here a week ago. On the what do we do? 125 235,000 different parts a week of 4800 different part numbers since January 1 for us and our 150 employees, that's a lot of that's a lot of parts, but we do most of our parts are right, and we actually don't have to. We don't spend a lot of time inspecting and doing QC, and we just know that our guys are going to try to do it right. So to sell that that's not that hard to sell those parts. I think the other thing that helped me in sales was, for many years, from 2007 Up until 2000 about 16 or so, I was doing the sales, and in our area of the world, most of my customers are within 30 miles of me, and I worked in the industry that I'm selling into. I knew what they wanted, and they liked the fact that they're talking to the owner. The buck stopped there. If I stood in front of their desk and said, Yes, we can do that rush order, we'll have it to you by 48 hours from now. They were talking to the owner. They were talking to the guy that made a decision. It made it easy for me to sell because I was the owner. I think I was passionate about my my product. I was passionate about my business that always helps everybody. I made a focus of being extremely honest, and instead of spending money on marketing and advertising, see, we have a local customer base. Most of my customers, like I say, are within 30 to 50 miles from us. Instead of spending money on marketing and advertising, which we didn't for many, many years, what we would do is we would let the customer sometimes just kind of take advantage of us. If they forgot to order something, we would do everything we can and at our cost, to get them their parts, to get them out of trouble if they ordered more than they should have and they wanted to reject the parts for no reason other than they like, hey, we over ordered. We'd let them do that. There's a cost involved in that. But instead of saying, you know, yeah, that's not fair, we're not going to do that, we let them do that. That was our I always looked at that as like a marketing cost, to let that customer, in a small way, take advantage of us. There's a limit to that, but we let them abuse us. We let them take advantage of us. The word spread that we're easy to work with. We do what we say. We're going to do. We'll do everything we can to help them out, and if they needed this part built just a little bit different so that they could utilize it just a little bit better in their in their RV that they were building, I usually could come up with a way to do that, and that's the part about knowing how to build I knew how to build things. I knew what equipment we had. I knew what capabilities we had, and if I made a commitment to the customer. Well, shoot, I was the boss. So it had to be, you know, I was a guy that could actually make that call. I didn't have to say, well, let me, let me get with my my team, or let me get with my boss, and I'll let you know I could, right then and there, and make that commitment. I don't know if there's any other I mean, all those things, you know, they help sales. You. I never had any sales training in my life. I don't even know how to go about I don't know what sales training looks like, but it worked for me. But every salesman is different. I have three sons that are in sales. They all have different personalities, their unique personality and their unique way of going about doing sales works for them. Might even be slightly different than I, than what I would do, but it works for them.

Sunny  25:27

You've sold through two big recessions, one pandemic that was a very short but intense burst, and then also a longer, greater recession in ‘08-’09, what were your experiences through those periods of time?

Fritz  25:45

Well, you never quit looking for a way to reinvent yourself, and you never quit looking for a way to, you know, collect market share during those reset during that recession and during that pandemic. That's an awesome time to look at, Okay, what else could we do and what could we do different? I've never been one. I like to say, well, just because we used to doesn't mean we should keep doing that. This is a year later. Let's do something different. Let's do something better. Let's improve our product. And during those down times, that's the best time to be improving your process, improving your equipment, because you might not have as many due dates, that you might not have as many urgent, urgent projects on your table, but you have some very important ones, and that's a that's to improve your process, improve your equipment, just because don't quit or don't don't slow down, just because your your orders slowed down, you want to keep improving something. Do whatever you can.

Sunny  26:54

Most people do slow down. They they feel afraid that the sales are slow. Not the best time to buy equipment. What gave you the realization that that you should take those kind of risks, that you should continue to invest in the business, even when things were slow?

Fritz  27:10

Well, it's always better than the alternative.

John  27:12

Well, you could talk about what you said earlier. Now, I wonder who's going to make my parts? And then he said, no, I wonder whose parts I'm going to make?

Fritz  27:24

It's all about perspective. Sometimes I want to work. I do really want to work and but I also want to improve the product. And if I can improve the product enough that someone's willing to pay me more than my competitors part, then that's just an extra bonus, because I don't have to sell on price. I want to sell because my parts better. We I got away from that a little bit ago, selling on parts. I want to sell because my parts better. I hate selling because my parts cheaper, because there's not a whole lot more you can do if someone comes down to your price, then you have to go cheaper yet, but if I can sell because it's better, I have to keep improving it. My competition is going to improve. We're always looking for that different fastener or that. We just in the last six months, we had an orbital Riveter. We haven't hardly used it. We aren't even sure what we're going to use it for. But I'm I'm convinced that a lot of these parts that we move that articulate, that these drop down kitchens. If somebody in the world is making parts that move freely and and consistently, then I should be able to do the same thing. And John and our R D guy started looking into how to do articulating parts with an orbital Riveter. So now it's there. Now our engineers can start to design with an orbital with a rivet and we can improve the process and improve the product. I'm assuming our parts are still costing more than our competitions. But if their value, if there's enough value there, our customers are going to pay for it.

Sunny  29:07

Anything to add John?

John  29:11

As far as the equipment — so far, we've always found a use for it. Seems that once it gets here, oh yeah, we could use it here. We could use it there. Then we approve something else that we didn't even think about. We have a our press hardware machine for up here in Topeka is going to come next week or the following. So you probably didn't even know that, but

Fritz  29:34

I didn't, nope, I forgot about that one.

John  29:37

I was looking at a machine to rivet plastic to steal for a part that we do for the RV industry that had the flush on top, and it needed to be production friendly and at the same time. When I was doing my research, I saw that they make one that also does press hardware at the same time. So there you go. We've always had this issue. We always. Have to send parts from Topeka to Millersburg that get press hardware, because we don't have the ability up here in Topeka. So now we're going to solve that problem at the same time. So we're hoping this other, this riveting cell, piercing, riveting part, goes somewhere. But even if it doesn't, we still have a use for the machine, and we're going to find more uses for that rivet. The laser welder would be a good example, too.

Fritz  30:23

I think in equipment, it's very, very important that you always look at the value of equipment, not the cost. Don't worry about the cost. Look at the value. So if this laser costs you a million dollars, that's okay. If it's going to make you 2 million, that's great. More than likely it will. If it doesn't, the difference is probably you, because it'll make a lot of money for someone else. So if it doesn't make that money for you, there's a The only difference is you. So if you look at the value of equipment, and don't worry about the cost now, there's, there's like, I say there's a common sense line there, you have to, have to be able to afford it. But some of this equipment has a tremendous return on investment, if you go to work and you figure out how to utilize it, how to sell, how to create something that you can put that equipment to work with it, but it's got tremendous value, much more than what it costs. So I think that and that those are some of the things that I've over the years. In the last couple of years, I've, I don't know, I think I've gotten a little lazy, maybe a little burned out, and haven't been working as hard as I could have been on improving processes. If it's just walking up to a welder and watching him weld some parts, and then saying, hey, what if you did this and this instead of this? And we're taking a look at how some things are put together, and then going back to the engineer and see why the heck don't you guys redesign this little bit. It would make it easier for the guys out there, or make it better for the customer. There was a time when our engineering department really just hated to see me come by, because they knew I was going to make a change to something, and I quit doing that. But I think that's a mistake. You always have to be looking, always have to be looking for ways to improve things, and if you quit doing that, your competition will overtake you.

Sunny  32:17

So you and I have both seen a lot of companies get themselves into trouble. How have you managed to stay out of trouble yourself? Trouble yourself? Where did you learn your sense of understanding how to make a business work financially?

Fritz  32:29

Well, I'm fortunate that I enjoy the fabrication side, but I also enjoy the numbers side. I really do. I have a mind that works well with numbers. Numbers make sense to me. So some people enjoy fabrication, but don't enjoy the business side. Some enjoy the business I don't understand the fabrication side. I understand both. I enjoy banking. I have the privilege of sitting on a bank board have since 2018 so I understand a bank's role in helping your business grow. You know, the responsible use of credit is one of the best tools in your toolbox to make your business grow. That is a God given gift. Not everybody gets that gift to understand numbers. The other thing I that helps me, you know, grow my business, is I like to work at it all day long. And when I say all day long, that's 16 to 18 hours a day. It's not the greatest formula, if you're you know, for a family guy, unless you can have your family involved in the business, there's some guys that enjoy their work, but then they also want to enjoy their hobbies. They might be hunters. They might have other interests. I never really had a lot of end of their interests. I enjoy my work. I enjoy fabricating. I enjoy grabbing a welder and welding something. I also enjoy sitting at the desk and poring over numbers and seeing okay. Why is the profit lower this year than it was last year? What's where's it going? What's happening to it? Or if I bought this machine, how many dollars there was a point when I knew how many? If I hired another guy, how many dollars of sales increase should I see in order to justify that? I like playing with those numbers. I think staying focused on the business has helped me stay out of trouble. And I think the philosophy of hiring the best people I can get, and committing to paying them as well as I can has probably been more has done has had more to do with that. So I'm surrounded with great people, and it's hard to go backwards. When you're surrounded with great people, they're going to keep you going forward. They want, they want their they want the business where they work at to succeed. So they're going to, I'm supported by 150 people that want me to succeed, that are really concerned about that I'm not afraid of risk that that helps me succeed. I. That that comment about searching and looking for the value in something instead of the cost of something, that helps me to be comfortable with risk. It helps us to grow and there again, that also helps attract top talent, because top talent likes to work with late model or very new equipment, and we tend to buy all new equipment. Someone told me once how many decisions are made in a day, and there's these 1000s of little micro decisions that stack up to be in a successful business, it's always hard to pinpoint one specific decision or that decision. It's all these little micro decisions that you make daily, but you figure out what you're good at. You get up in the morning, you do that. You do it again. The next day, you do it again. The next days, you just keep doing that thing that you're good at. Keep your eyes on the horizon. Be willing to change, because your environment is going to change. Your customers are going to change. For us, our parts usually have a part life. After a couple years, they're obsolete. We're always trying to find new parts to build for the RV industry. We're trying to find new customers and new industries things that we can service well. And lately, these last couple of years, one of the biggest mistakes we make sometimes is to not say, No, there's things that we're not good at, and we can kind of tell when that opportunity comes to us that we're probably not that good at this. And sometimes we do it anyway. It's a big mistake. Sometimes we have to be more honest with ourselves and say, You know what? This is not a good fit for us, even though we want to do it.

Sunny  36:42

More companies today than ever before have no next generation to pass their business on to. They sell to private equity firms, or they let the companies die, or other things may happen. You have three children that are working in the business. John has a pretty prominent role in your organization. How have you made that happen? What has that experience been like for you?

Fritz  37:04

Well, it's very humbling. I actually have five children involved in the business. I've got three sons that are in sales on the rock run industry side, and then on rock run cabinetry side, which is a sister company that builds a residential line of aluminum cabinets. I have two daughters working in that in that division, and I have a married daughter that used to work in the Rockland cabinetry. She also worked in industries, and she took a great amount of interest in in the business. Now she's left. She wanted to get married. She has, has a baby daughter is born in February, so she's not working so but we still discuss the business a lot. And I think if you can discuss business in a positive light, and business as a force for good, we made a point long ago. My wife and I have never complaining about our employees, never complaining about the work, or we tried not to John can probably say, Yeah, we heard Jim, but to always portray business as a force for good, I think that's one of the things that you can do to let your next generation know that, hey, this, this can be a great thing. You know, yeah, it's challenging. Yeah, it takes a lot of your time, but this can be a great thing. And yes, I am fortunate that the next generation wants to continue. I also want to be aware that their interest level. They're in their early 20s. This is when they're interested. I want to get them involved now. I want to be ready to step away as much as possible, because that allows them to to implement some of their own ideas. They're going to go, they're going to take this business, and it'll probably change, and I'm okay with that. It'll probably change for the better. It'll be a better place to work 10 years from now than it was to than it was the first 20 years. That's okay, and that's actually great, and it'll be different than what mine was, but they're living in a different era. They're going to utilize software. They're going to use utilize things like fulcrum. They're going to utilize CNC equipment in ways that I never even you know. Thought was possible, but it is. Things are possible today that weren't two years ago, that weren't three years ago. The people entering the workforce today are making a much bigger impact than what I did. I'm 50. When I entered the workforce, I just did what the guys you know for the first 50 years ahead of me did. I just did the same thing. That's not the case. Today. Things are different. These guys that are entering the workforce now are making big changes, and that's that's great. Things are better than they've ever been. There's opportunity for increased production per hour. People can make a better wage. They can have a cleaner manufacturing environment. Day than they probably ever had, and a better paying manufacturing job than they've almost ever had. So all those things are great, and they give us something to look forward to. And I'm looking forward to the next generation taking this and going with it. What direction, I don't know, but it doesn't really matter that's up to now.

Sunny  40:23

All right, John – batons in your in your hands. Now, what's the experience been like for you over the last — what, five years now? — that you've been kind of fully focused here.

John  40:32

So in ‘21 I took the camera tree division and made it my own. So did that for three years. That was a very good experience. That's probably about as close as I've gotten, or ever will get, to running my own business. We had had to make money, had to figure out why we're not making money. Try new things. Work a lot of hours. Of course, I still have always had the safety net. So it's not a true, a true experience, but it was close to and I think that helped me now in my in my new role at Rock Run — on the Industries side.

Sunny  41:08

What did you learn about that? How did you solve those problems? How did you get it to be profitable?

John  41:13

Well, I guess so. As an example popped into my head. We used to make the drawer boxes all the color of the cabinet. We changed that to all those being the same color that cut down on parts that were made wrong, streamlined production, just a lot of small things that add up over time to improve the process so we can get more done per hour. And it also helped me look at the big picture and look at how from order entry to shipping, how each section affects the other.

Fritz  41:42

I think the biggest thing John did to make cabinetry successful and profitable was to he really believed in the Toyota way. I had bought the book, I don't know how many years ago, but I never I started to read it and didn't finish it. John grabbed it and read it, and he implemented and he convinced me that, hey, this is what, this is the way we're going to go. We're going to improve production and reduce lead times by implementing a lot of the ideas and the processes that you find in what they call the Toyota way.

John  42:13

So we used to, it used to be a three week lead time. We used to order weekly. But our issue was we had a big pile of parts that we now had to assemble. A week's worth of parts to assemble in one week. But by the time we got to the front, the front of the parts were on time, the front of the pile, but the back of the pile was late, and I might not have known that they made him the wrong color or something else was wrong by the time we got there, then we started ordering every day. We got our parts in a week's time instead of in two weeks time, and we were hitting our due dates without even trying, and we were turning around revisions and parts that were made wrong a lot faster because we were working on a similar part or a similar color at the same time that we needed this rush order or this part that we screwed up, and at first, the guys did not want to do it. I had about one guy on my side. The rest of them did not want to do it. They said, it's going to create more work. But not long after that, if I didn't place an order per day, every day, they soon started asking, Hey, where's this one? Where's this order? I don't like that. You're grouping them. So there you go.

Sunny  43:28

And how did you just, you just continue to do it the way that you thought was right, even if they didn't want to like, how did you convince? How did you have the patience to get them on your side?

John  43:38

Well, I guess I explained it, and maybe they in the back of their mind, they thought, maybe it will work. They were maybe a little bit too proud to say that. I don't really remember what really tripped them. Do you know?

Fritz  43:50

Well, I think it comes down to good leadership. A good leader doesn't necessarily think like the herd does. Sometimes you have to know that you're right and implement it. You do it with compassion, but you implement it and say, Okay, let's try this. Give me. Give me three months. Let's try this. If it doesn't work, you know you're going if you make if you're a leader, you're going to be wrong every now and then, and everybody's going to know it. You're going to be exposed if you're willing to do that, if, but you can't. You can't do a group that. You can't be a group think guy and a leader. And this is where John had to say, No, this will work. I've thought this through in my head, and he did. He would. We talked about it. I was even a little skeptical. You know, daily orders, man, we're going to be running the same color every day. We need to group some of this. We need to group some of that. But it made sense what he was telling me, and he was patient enough to explain it. He didn't just ram it down their throats. He explained it, but he let he did not let him get into that group think. Way of thinking doesn't mean that that the group's wrong, but a leader sometimes i. You know, strike out in a new direction. Say, here's where we're going to do this. Here's why it'll work. Give me a couple months, let's try this. And it didn't take long for everybody to jump on board. We're starting to implement a lot of the same things in industries, which is now possible with fulcrum. It would have been very difficult without fulcrum. That's what I was talking about. This generation is going to take manufacturing much further, much they're going to be more efficient, they're going to be more profitable. There's going to be more dollars per hour available to the workforce, more dollars per hour available to the company. Things are possible now that weren't three years ago or 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

Sunny  45:37

I think one of the most common mistakes that I see in new leaders is that urge to get consensus, to to, you know, pander is pretty strong of a word, but to cater to what everybody wants, and being afraid of telling people No, that we're going to do something different. How did you learn that? How do you teach that? How do you make sure that you know John and other people that are leading in your stead know that, because as the stakes get higher, it gets harder and harder and harder, and you get more and more fear of a failure, and admitting that you're wrong takes more courage with every new person you have.

John  46:13

Well, I I know where I learned it, and that was from watching, I mean, from seeing, seeing Him, live it, do it. That's how I learned it.

Fritz  46:23

I think John's had it since he was a first grade. John was a leader in school, too, and he just he didn't wait for someone to do something. He made it happen. One of his sixth grade teachers told me once that he said, Well, John wanted to play volleyball at in recess, but the school didn't have any boundary lines. The next day, John shows up with a bunch of Baylor twine in his pocket, and he brought his own boundary lines for the volleyball court. That's making it happen, that's not waiting, that's not complaining to the teachers that, hey, we need boundary lines. He said, Well, okay, we need boundary lines. I'll bring them. Sometimes a leader has to do that, and sometimes you have to think outside the box. Some people are not comfortable doing that. And sometimes we say, well, he's a born leader. I think everybody can be a leader if they can figure out how to be comfortable being wrong, because we are going to be wrong. If you're the guy making a lot of decisions, the more decisions you make, the more often you're going to be wrong. Percentages tell us that. But if you can live with that and say, Oh, crap, that didn't work, we're going to have to do something different. But most of the time, you're probably going to lead your people in the right direction, especially if you're if you have good incentive to do it like John did. He had an incentive to change the way we were doing this. He wanted to get the lead times from three weeks plus down to two weeks, and he wanted to streamline some things, and he could see how this would work, and he could he had to convey that passion, that urgency, to his people, and say, let's try it. Give me a couple months. But if he'd have been wrong, we'd have had to revert, and he would have had to live with that. It would have sullied his reputation with his people for quite some time. But that's part of the risk. Being a leader, you are going to be wrong every now and then, and how well you handle it, how how you react to it. Those are all things that come with experience, but it's amazing how wrong the group can be every now or maybe not. You shouldn't even say how wrong, but how satisfied they are with mediocracy. I think too many people are okay with mediocracy. America in general is okay with mediocracy. They should be shooting higher. They should be trying harder.

Sunny  48:44

The way that I was taught, that I think is useful for me, is that the group has a different perspective than the leader. And me, accuracy is equally at fault of lack of strong leadership as it is of the people. I think so, right, John, you're you're in rock run industries now, you're head of sales. You're running a bunch of different things. What do you see today? What have the last couple years been like? What do you see going forward in the future?

John  49:10

So for the past year, fulcrum, like I said, was my main thing going forward, we need, we're trying to automate quoting and more in the future for and he touched on it a little bit, and I've already softly tried to implement in industries, is not having them order parts from the shop so far ahead. My theory is I do not like to see when the shipper has the parts a long time before he needs them. It was almost as bad as if he doesn't have him on time, because there's chance for damage, he'll lose him. I have to handle him twice. Handle him twice. So streamlining, trying to streamline that, is probably going to be a big part in the next couple of years, and it'll take time. Yeah, because everyone is used to doing it this way, they use we used to order on Monday mornings. He would have started to order everything that is due in two weeks for that whole week. And this was another one where it took me three or four conversations with them to explain why that is not a good idea. And the one guy got it immediately, Jeremy got it immediately. Aaron did it at first. He's still kind of on the fence, and I think they've kind of reverted back to the way they were doing it. But I got them to start saying, Okay, on Monday, I'm going to order everything that's due in two weeks, on Monday, Tuesday, for Tuesday and so forth. The problem with them ordering on Monday for the whole week in two weeks, is it took them a couple days to do that. So they're actually creating their own issue. They're not putting it out in two weeks time. But I would like to even squeeze that tighter, down to 12 days and 11 days and 10 days, because how much work can you get done in a day? One day's worth of work, that's it. So if we can get closer from the time we order it to the time it ships, the better it will go. And I proved that before in cabinetry, like we were talking about, our problem with industries. On the industry side of it is every day we're getting rush orders for stuff that is due the same day. So in that case, we probably need a buffer of some sort that I don't know, but it'll need to be figured out eventually.

Sunny  51:26

Your dad said earlier that you're gonna take this thing further than than he could have imagined, in ways that he couldn't imagine. What? What do you imagine? What? What do you see going forward?

John  51:36

Well, I we service the RV industry as a whole, quite obviously. So that's kind of where my mind is. He's not really for going into aftermarket parts for RVs, but I like the idea there's it opens up a lot of new problems for us, but I know that some of our competitors are making good money at it. So that is one spot that I would like to get into at some point. I don't know how what, what it looks like, or how we get there, but I envision a separate company that buys from Rock Run Industries.

Fritz  52:07

But automated quoting is a big is going to be a big thing. Quoting, up until now, has always been tribal knowledge, so to speak. You know how much labor goes into this part, and I think John has started the process of automating our quoting, systemizing it and making it more consistent, because the way we're doing it now some days are, if the guys at the quoting table are feeling overwhelmed with the amount of work, they tend to push the labor rates up. If they're feeling oh, gosh, we got to bring work through the door. The labor rates are tending to drop down. That's not a good system. And I think John's going to implement that Paperless pParts, or something similar to it, and the quoting will be automated, and we'll get a quote request on it in one day, and we'll have a quote out the door the next day or the following day, where right now, sometimes it takes quite quite a bit longer now.

Sunny  53:05

John, any words for your past self or your future self as we close this out?

John  53:10

I was telling, talking to you earlier on the way over here about some of those mottos I had, and when I say that, I'm telling, saying that to myself, sometimes I react too fast. He was talking about over at the restaurant, about focusing on something. I did that with this labor thing. We discovered it yesterday, and I went home and spent a couple of hours with a pile of papers and figured everything out where we're at. And there probably wasn't, and I put stress on myself, and there probably wasn't a would, wouldn't have had to have that information until today or later, tomorrow or something like that. So reacting too fast is probably one big thing that I need to work on.

Sunny  53:55

Fritz, what about you? A message for your previous self or for your future self.

Fritz  53:59

Previous self is, don't push myself so hard. Future self is, don't take on more projects than you can really handle. Leave some open space on the schedule. I don't tend to do that because I enjoy working, so it doesn't make any sense to have open space on the schedule. But things are going to come along and fill those spaces right now, those things are coming along and trying to fill those spaces, but those those open spaces are filled with work, so it creates conflict. And I don't want to have, I don't want to continue to have that conflict. So, yeah, leave some in the future, and leave some open space, and then just wander around the shop and see if there's a process that could be improved, or a part that could be improved, or something you could do different make things better, or chit chat, ask a guy about his home life, or visit with one of the employees. As we continue to grow, there'll be more and more employees to visit with, and. And keep that human nature in at Rock Run.

Sunny  55:04

Amazing. Well, thank you both for taking the time to share your story. If people want to get a hold of you, want to put work on your panel vendor or to buy re components from you, how can they reach you?

John  55:15

Or email me? John at Rock Run Industries.

Fritz  55:19

They can go to the website, it's rockrunindustries.com, I believe.

Sunny  55:25

Amazing. Congratulations all your success and best of luck. Thank you.

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