If You Were to Start from Scratch

Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently if you could start over?  In almost any area of life this is a thought-provoking question. How would you choose your friends? What career would you pursue? What traits would you look for in a spouse? How would you run your business? This question mines the depth of your experience to pull up hard-earned nuggets of wisdom. It’s a great way to uncover your core values.

But when you ask this question, you must have grace for yourself. You didn’t know what you didn’t know, right?  Having raised four kids into adulthood, I gulp when I think of the monumental decisions young people make before they reach the age of twenty-five—with almost no relevant experience to evaluate the pros and cons. So, they hopefully seek some advice, then most go with their gut, make mistakes, learn lessons, navigate course corrections, and build their own resumé of experiential wisdom.

When Dave Peterson first acquired Van Ladder, he didn’t know much about manufacturing, but he did have a dream of one day building a great piece of equipment. Working for his dad, he had operated heavy equipment since he was old enough to climb into the cabs, and he’d already owned an excavating business and a ready-mix business. His experience gave him an appreciation for great manufacturers like CAT who made highly reliable and functional equipment. So, in the back of his mind, Dave thought it’d be fun to make a piece of equipment that would make life easier for its operators.

His opportunity came in 1997, when one of his friends learned that Van Ladder was available. The company had been mothballed after making aerial lifts for the cable television industry for a couple of decades. With nothing but entrepreneurial optimism and some assets from his other businesses, Dave jumped into the manufacturing arena with both feet and immediately enrolled in the school of hard knocks. Dave wanted to sell aerial lifts into the sign and lighting industry, but his expertise as an equipment operator and a business owner was in dirt-moving and concrete-mixing. So, as it goes with many new ventures, our team was building the plane in-flight, which generally isn’t advisable.

The best thing about the school of hard knocks, though, is that if you survive it, its lessons are never forgotten. The red-hot poker of experience has a way of branding each lesson deep into your hide. When asked what we learned from those early years in manufacturing, any one of us can spout a quick summary:

• Don’t go to market until your product is ready.
• Your product isn’t ready until you fully understand the needs of your customer.
• You don’t fully understand the needs of your customers until you’ve spent loads of time with them in the field, asking every question you can think of.
• Use the best components available, regardless of cost.
• Treat people (customer, employees, and vendors) the way you want to be treated.

These bullet points all have compelling stories of their own, but I’ll save those for other posts. My point here is that we’ve learned the value of understanding the needs and wants of both equipment operators and the business owners. As the marketing guy, I’ve had the privilege of sitting down with many customers in the sign and lighting industry, listening to their stories, and learning about their own hard-fought lessons. We use this feedback not only for marketing, but also to identify areas of product improvement. Being factory-direct places us in contact with those who matter to us the most—those who count on our equipment to make money, stay safe, and make life easier.

During a recent interview with one such customer (Jason Ricketts, owner of Airport View Signs in Frederick, Maryland), I asked the question: “Knowing what you do now, what would you do if you were to start a sign company today?” Here’s what he said:

“If I had to start from scratch, knowing that I would do installations, I would definitely buy a Van Ladder for a couple of different reasons. One is that it’s easy to use and more compact to get around town. And probably one of the biggest things is that you can put everything inside of it, so you don’t have to worry about strapping it all down, or the potential of it falling off or getting damaged on the road because there’s a lot of cargo space and plenty of places for all your tools. It also opens up more options of who can operate it because it’s a smaller vehicle as opposed to the bigger bucket trucks where you might need a CDL. You can even use it as a cargo van if you want to go letter windows. You don’t always have to use the lift. So you wouldn’t need to buy a second vehicle to do your ground-type stuff. You can drive it downtown and park it in a parking spot and be comfortable with it because it’s not much bigger than a Transit van.”

After struggling through our early years, it’s incredibly fun to be part of the conversation when an experienced sign guy contemplates what he’d do if he had the opportunity to start from scratch, and he includes us! I feel like we’ve come a long way from those early days when we didn’t know the industry. And, after earning a degree from the school of hard knocks, our gratitude is off the charts when we find favor in the eyes of a customer. Thank God for keeping us around to see it.