Falls Fabricating is a private and locally owned metal manufacturing and fabrication company based in Little Falls, Minnesota. For over 50 years, Falls has been delivering outstanding customer service and today offers a range of services and specialties, including sheet metal and structural steel welding, fabricating, forming, and cutting, all the way through to finishing and assembly. This 84-person company has engineering and quality control services in-house and is a one-stop shop for industrial and consumer metal fabrication.
Dan Ortloff had been serving as General Manager and Chief Financial Officer of Falls Fabricating when the president of the company passed away unexpectedly. With the sudden departure of the previous president, Dan found himself in a leadership position without a mentor and had to quickly learn the ropes. He had previous experience working with Enterprise Minnesota, and after meeting with his local business advisor, Dawn Loberg, he learned about the Peer Council and how the group might help him navigate his new leadership responsibilities and provide insight into solving business challenges.
Then in 2020, Dan was offered the opportunity to purchase the business from the private equity firm who owned it. Dan, along with five management team members, purchased the business in January 2021, which once again created new challenges. The new ownership team turned to Enterprise Minnesota for additional support through their new ownership of the business.
In a leadership position, it is often difficult to talk through business issues with others in the company. Now that Dan had moved from being an employee to an owner and leader, he found the Peer Council group to be an invaluable resource for navigating complexity through this new lens. The council he joined is comprised of other presidents and owners and the group became a trusted resource for talking through decisions and seeing how others are dealing with their own leadership challenges. Financial questions, banking, people, business, human resources and employee policy, anything is fair game. The council members hold each other accountable and help solve problems.
When he joined, the country was just coming out of COVID, and in such a dynamic environment, the experience and insight from the group was hugely beneficial. By working together, members knew where to focus and found support in navigating constantly changing state and federal policies while keeping employees safe and their businesses functioning. A key takeaway that he’s learned is as president, you can’t be all about working in the business, but you must dedicate time to working on the business.
If you’re looking for solid advice and guidance to support you for a fair price, Enterprise Minnesota is an excellent resource. As a small business, we’ve received exceptional expertise from them and the vast knowledge of manufacturing they bring is extremely beneficial. They’ve helped us learn how to use our resources to make our business better.