In 2015, ETTER Engineering celebrates our 75th anniversary. Founded in 1940, we have endured a World War, survived 13 Presidents of the United States and made it through 13 recessions. In 2013, ETTER was named to the INC 500|5000 fastest growing private companies in the United States. We think it’s pretty cool….
So, how does a 75 year old manufacturing business, headquartered in the worst ranked state for business, make the INC 500|5000 list in 2013, 2014 and we are pretty sure we are going to be on the list for 2015?
This is the first of a five (5) part story of how ETTER accomplished this feat…..
Part #1. It all started with a goal. In 2007, Tom Etter and Jon Moore, owners of ETTER Engineering, set a goal. To be a $8.0M company by 2012. 8 in 12 became the rallying cry. Nobody was quite sure how to attain the goal, but it was the first step. Revenues at the time where just under $3M, so it was a lofty goal. Why $8M – was it just a guess? Did we pull the number out of thin air? Nope… It was a projection of the current business, by business line, over a 5 year period. We applied a reasonable growth rate for each business line over time and it culminated in the $8M number. When the projections were done, it seemed reasonable, however, if we just picked $8M, we would have all agreed that it would be a challenge to reach the number. Tom Etter said it best after we reached agreement on the number. He said “It’s just a number”. He was right, it was just a number.
Stay tuned for Part #2, where we will talk about how a just a number became a little bit more……
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