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FORNEY INDUSTRIES is a powerful company in Fort Collins. Never heard of them?
Well, it’s nice to know that the family-owned business was born and raised in Fort Collins.
Forney Industries makes welding and metal-working equipment and parts. It’s a fabulous business, powered from a solid reputation for delivering top value since 1932.
With about 220 employees worldwide, most in Fort Collins, they deliver their products through hardware, farm & ranch, automotive aftermarket, and industrial distribution stores. They sell online, and their sales force also works directly with customers who do welding and metal working as a part of their business.
DO YOU WANT PRODUCTIVITY?
Here’s the simple truth of the matter. You can’t beat people into being productive, at least not for long.
People put their passion and energy into what they care about, not what their boss cares about.
Sounds hopeless? Well, there’s a solution.
THE CRAFT BEER SCENE in Northern Colorado is pretty crowded. But Horse & Dragon Brewing stands out from the crowd because of their character.
Carol and Tim Cochran started this business in 2014, based on a long passion for craft beer and a desire to make their home in Fort Collins after living in other states and countries.
And the beer’s pretty good – of course I’ve had to do plenty of research for this story. But there’s a lot of great brewers in the area.
It’s the culture of this company which makes it special.
LILLY SORENSEN owns the local franchise of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? You may have seen their trucks driving around, but don’t know the great company which they represent.
I sure didn’t.
Lilly started her journey back in Ann Arbor, when she was looking for a job and joined up as a driver for the company. Despite their pleas to keep her on, she ended up moving out here to Colorado to start a new life.
But the universe can be a surprising place.
Photo by Anthony Easton, flickr
FOLLOW YOUR PASSION.
We’ve been telling our kids this for decades now, and there’s some powerful truth behind it.
But it’s a limited view of the world.
If we have everyone just seeking personal fulfillment, there’s no guarantee that we’ll actually have a stable and functioning society. Yet we hold up this great American ideal that we’re all independent, self-sufficient, and self-fulfilling.
RYAN WALLACE OPENED A GREAT PUB here in Fort Collins three years ago. William Oliver’s Publick House has great food, wonderful drinks … It’s a place that you enjoy taking friends.
But there’s a lot more to the story.
I found out that they instituted a no-tipping policy last September, so I was eager to find out why he made the decision and what the results have been. After all, very few restaurants have the courage to make this magnitude of change.
ARE YOU DOING SOMETHING AMAZING in your business?
I’m seeing a powerful trend in 2015 and 2016 of companies which are out to change the world. Or at least their corner of the world.
It’s almost as if people are waking up to the fact that there’s more to life than money. Not that money’s bad, but that it doesn’t actually change the world for the better until you apply it to making something better.
KENT GARVIN STARTED his company in 1995 with a conviction to build a different kind of business.
What he’s grown is amazing in more ways than you’d expect.
At the moment it’s actually three businesses:
- Colorado Iron & Metal scrap metal recycling
- Colorado Metal Manufacturing fabrication and machining
- Green Hop’r equipment sales
HOLIDAYS like Christmas, Eid ul-Fitr and Passover are important at multiple levels. We enjoy them perhaps as cultural touchstones, but even more important is the core grounding of each event.
These examples happen to be religious, but you can find similar secular examples. In the US we’ve adopted Memorial Day and Labor Day as the unofficial beginning and end of summer. And like everything in this country, it seems they’ve also been overtaken as consumer events.
But the core behind these remembrances is quite deep, based on the loss of lives in military battle, and the conflict between management and labor in the Industrial Revolution.
A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO I talked about how generosity brings loyalty. Well, it’s time to take this to the next level!
Employees who are loyal stick around. OK, that’s pretty basic; it’s kind of the definition of “loyal.”
Why do they hang with you through good times and bad? Because they figure they’re doing something valuable, and they enjoy it.
The Values-Based Business 