Buy the Numbers

Defense manufacturing is supposed to be a massive opportunity for American machine shops. The government needs more domestic suppliers, existing weapons systems need replacement parts, and emerging defense companies are looking for manufacturers who can scale production. So why aren't more shops jumping in? For me, the answer comes down to a question we ask all the time on Buy the Numbers: Does th...

Nobody outworks  me . If that's part of how you see yourself, this episode is going to sting a little. Greg Harrod's spent 30 plus years in and around manufacturing, and he coaches leaders who feel like everything still runs through them. His point is that the grit that built your shop is the same grit that eventually caps it. We spent a good chunk of this one on a distinction I hadn't thought abo...

Replacing an employee can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $40,000. But the real risk isn't just recruiting and training their replacement. It's everything that walks out the door with them. Jess Bird supports CAM software across the Midwest and hosts  CNC Underground After Hours , giving her a firsthand look inside a lot of shops. Her test for whether a company has real systems is simple: Can it sur...

IMTS is about a week and a half out. Most people heading to Chicago are showing up with a shopping list, and the ones who aren't will still find something on the floor that makes them start one. Either way, there's a question worth answering before you get there. What can you actually pay for? We've been trained to do this everywhere else in our lives. You don't tour houses without a pre-approval....

There's $35.8 million sitting in a federal fund built to pay manufacturers for hiring and training apprentices, and most shop owners have never heard of it. It pays $3,500 per apprentice. It's first come, first served. And when the money runs out, it's gone. That's the American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund, or AMAIF, and it's what we dug into on this episode. Phil Hanke is back in t...

Almost every shop owner I talk to has told themselves the same story at some point: we are too small for a real ERP, so we will keep running the business on the old system and a pile of Excel spreadsheets. On this episode, I wanted to kill that myth, because the cost of believing it shows up in underpriced jobs, broken handoffs, and a value chain that quietly leaks money from quote to cash. To dig...

You spend money on a website, LinkedIn posts, maybe some email and a trade show booth, and then you ask the question every owner asks: is any of this actually working? For most of us the honest answer is a gut feel. The machines are cutting chips, so marketing must be doing its job. That is not data, and on this episode I wanted real, practical advice on how to know. So I brought in Brendon Forres...

Most shop owners believe the number on their business is locked in by their earnings. It isn't. Two shops with identical profit can sell for wildly different prices, and the gap almost always comes back to one question a buyer is quietly working out in their head: does this thing run without you? For this one I brought back Phil Hanke from CLA and added Heather Parbst, who leads CLA's owner transi...

Most shop owners never sell a business before the day they actually sell theirs. You build something for thirty years, then one phone call later you're trying to figure out what it's worth, what the buyer is really paying for, and why the number in your head doesn't match the offer on the table. The fix is simple to say and hard to do: start thinking like a buyer long before you ever plan to sell....

Part two of a good conversation is where things usually get real. In this episode, I pick back up with Nush Ahmed and Brooke Laing from Sisterhood of Trades, and we get into the questions most shop owners quietly wonder about but rarely say out loud: why more women aren't walking through the door, what it actually looks like to attract them, and whether our instinct to "just hire good people" is a...

In this episode of  Buy the Numbers , I sat down with Nush Ahmed and Brooke Laing for one of the more entertaining and eye-opening conversations I've had in a while. What started with jokes about generational slang and communication styles quickly turned into a serious discussion about leadership, workplace culture, and what younger generations are actually looking for in manufacturing careers. As...

Recorded live from the DN Solutions open house near Chicago, this special crossover episode blends the worlds of  Buy the Numbers  and  Lights Out  into one conversation about manufacturing growth, automation, and the real numbers behind machine tool investments. Surrounded by machines making chips all around us, we dive into what actually drives smart capital expenditures in a modern machine shop...

If you're like most shop owners, HR, payroll, and benefits are necessary evils—important, but far from the reason you got into manufacturing in the first place. Yet those "back-office" functions can quietly drain your time, introduce risk, and even limit your ability to attract and retain great people. In this episode of  Buy the Numbers , Mike sits down with Jon from Thrive PEO to unpack one of t...

Breaking the Ceiling: Systems, Data, and the Truth About Scaling a Machine Shop, Ep #44 Manufacturing will humble you—no matter how good you get. I was talking with someone recently about how this might be the only industry where you can perform at a world-class level and still lose money on scrap. That's just the reality we operate in. So the question becomes: how do you build a business that can...

What actually makes leadership work in a manufacturing environment? Is it KPIs, lean systems, and dashboards? Or is it something far more human? In this episode of  Buy the Numbers , I sit down with Jason Woodard, COO of Geislinger Corporation and author of  Manufacturing Leadership That Works , to unpack the leadership principles that drive real operational performance.  While the conversation to...

CMMC is no longer something manufacturers can afford to ignore. If you're doing work in the defense supply chain—or even thinking about it—this is quickly becoming a requirement, not a "nice to have." And what makes it challenging is that it's not just about passing an audit. It's about how your entire business handles data, systems, and security. In this episode of  Buy the Numbers , we break dow...

Most of the time on Buy the Numbers , we focus on revenue growth, margin improvement, cash flow strategy, or capital investments. But in this episode, we turn our attention to something many manufacturers rarely question: utility expenses. Electricity. Gas. Water. Sewer. Waste. For most of us, these bills show up, we pay them, and we move on. They're viewed as fixed costs of doing business. But wh...

Too many manufacturers treat taxes as a once-a-year compliance exercise. You gather the documents, sign the return, write the check, and move on. But the reality is that tax planning is one of the most powerful strategic tools available to business owners, especially in capital-intensive industries like manufacturing. In this episode of  Buy the Numbers , I'm joined by  Dylan Valentyn  and  Julie...

Quality is often treated like a cost center in manufacturing. Something we have to do to satisfy customers, auditors, or certifications. But in my experience, quality is much more than that. It's one of the biggest drivers of cash flow, reputation, and long-term profitability in a shop. In this episode of  Buy the Numbers , I sat down with Mehul from Ground Control to talk through the real, often...

One of the patterns I keep seeing in manufacturing has nothing to do with machines, software, or technology. It shows up in how teams respond when something goes wrong. In this episode of  Buy the Numbers , I sat down again with Josh McKain from Throughput Mastery to talk about the habits that actually drive throughput, especially accountability, communication, and culture. Josh has now hosted mor...

What changes when you're not building a business to sell, but building one to hand down? That's the question that kept coming up for me in this conversation. In this episode of  Buy the Numbers , I sat down with Jack Watson of HFW Industries, a fourth-generation manufacturer whose family has been operating the same business for nearly 80 years. Jack's story starts with his great-grandfather in 194...

Inventory is one of the most overlooked levers in manufacturing finance, yet it is often the single largest asset sitting on a company's balance sheet. In this bonus episode of  Buy the Numbers , Mike Payne is joined by inventory accounting experts Erica Parra and Cindy Houser from CLA to unpack why inventory accounting methods deserve far more attention than they typically receive. Most manufactu...

Innovation in manufacturing is often framed as a technology problem. Better machines, faster software, smarter automation. But in this episode of Buy the Numbers, the conversation takes a different turn, one that looks past tools and toward the human systems that actually make innovation stick. Mike Payne is joined once again by Al Whatmough, CEO of Toolpath, for a wide-ranging discussion on why i...

KPIs can feel like a buzzword—every manufacturer knows they  should  be tracking them, but few feel confident about where to start or what actually matters. In this episode of  Buy the Numbers , Mike Payne sits down once again with Jon Hughes of CLA to unpack the real purpose of KPIs, why they're so misunderstood, and how data-driven decision-making can completely change the way a shop performs. M...

In this special crossover episode of  Buy the Numbers , Mike Payne joins Josh McCain on  The Throughput Show  for a fully interactive, live conversation about one of the most misunderstood and mission-critical topics in manufacturing:  cash flow . Unlike traditional episodes, this one unfolds in real time with audience questions, open dialogue, and the kind of raw, honest examples operators rarely...