Stoke RGA - Jen Fietz, Owner & CEO

Jen Fietz, owner & CEO of Stoke RGA joins hosts Mary Rhode and Terry Pinch to share more about how the Green Bay-based business is not just another consultant or agency. They’ve created a proven formula that has helped manufacturers throughout the Midwest get more aligned, ensuring they can not only scale their business faster, but smarter. 

Transcript

SCORE Northeast Wisconsin and WHBY are pleased to bring you BizTalk, a chance for you to hear from entrepreneurs and professionals as they share their experiences. From starting to sustaining growth, learn the skills needed for your business to be successful. If you miss anything, you can catch the BizTalk podcast at score.org/NortheastWisconsin. And now, from the Myron Construction Studio, it’s BizTalk on WHBY.

Mary Rohde: And good Saturday morning to everyone. Welcome to another episode of BizTalk with SCORE here on WHBY. My name is Mary Rohde, and joining me today as my co-host is Terry Pinch. Terry, good morning to you.

Terry Pinch: Good morning, Mary. Hope you’ve had a great, wonderful weather week so far.

Mary Rohde: Yes, these 80s! I will take them all day, every day. They help my garden as well, so happy to have a good start to the growing season here. Joining us this morning for another episode of BizTalk here, we are thrilled to have back as a guest. We like to circulate our guests every couple years and check in with them and find out what they’re up to. So this morning, we are joined by Jen Fietz, owner and CEO of Stoke RGA, located in downtown Green Bay. Jen, good morning to you.

Jen Fietz: Good morning, thanks for having me.

Mary Rohde: Absolutely. Welcome back to BizTalk. You were on just a few years ago, and I think listeners will be excited to hear some of the changes and new happenings in your world, but for those who may not know you, let’s start with a little bit of an introduction. If you want to go ahead and introduce yourself to our listeners, maybe share a little bit about your professional background, and a little bit of your career journey.

Jen Fietz: Absolutely. So, my name’s Jen Fietz, I’m the owner and CEO of Stoke RGA. I have a unique passage to owning a business. Boy, I never thought it would ever happen. It wasn’t even on my radar. I spent 20 years in the financial services industry, supporting marketing and sales efforts, auto and home insurance, 401K services. And found myself at a job loss and a downsize, and ended up moving into the marketing agency services world. And, that transition really showed me… I was able to, one, learn… I mean, it was like going back to college. I thought it was going to be a simple transition for me, and honestly, it was the toughest thing I’ve ever done, because doing marketing and sales for multiple companies versus living in one linear world inside a corporate environment is just a big transition. It’s the best thing I ever did. I understood, though, in that move that there was an opportunity for us to offer services just a little differently. We were allowing companies to come and ask us for transactional things, like websites and brochures and SEO, and Google Ads, and really never understanding, kind of, how that plugged into a larger plan. So when I got the opportunity to move on to Imagination, formerly owned by Dennis Kraft, downtown Green Bay, I asked him if we could make some adjustments to how we offered services, and I’m grateful, so grateful today to tell you that he said yes, and before I knew it, I was buying his business, and of course, switching the name from Imagination to Stoke RGA.

Mary Rohde: So, looking back just at your professional journey, you alluded to kind of that pivotal point in your career where you took the leap, and you kind of mentioned it was the best decision you ever made. Thinking back to yourself in that moment in time, and knowing there’s potentially others out there that maybe they’re working a 9 to 5, but they have this side gig that, gosh, they just want to make it go, and they want to jump into that entrepreneurial world. What was the push? What was your push in that moment?

Jen Fietz: I honestly think, once you discover that you’re extremely passionate about things, you realize that you’re much more likely to take risks. And I got a taste of being able to kind of adjust how we were servicing our clients, and it was working. And we were seeing some amazing results in our manufacturing environments, and once you just get a tiny bit of taste for success, you start to realize that what you’re trying to do is working. And that’s when you get to start trusting your gut a little more, and you get more confident in taking those leaps. Obviously, a lot of my success is surrounding myself with the right people, and knowing when to go with your gut, and when to pull the audience. So, I’m just really grateful for the opportunity that kind of presented itself to me.

Mary Rohde: So let’s introduce Stoke RGA, maybe to those who haven’t heard of it before, and kind of explain why you’re really not just another consultant or another agency here in the Northeast Wisconsin and beyond market.

Jen Fietz: Yeah, so, Stoke RGA stands for Revenue Growth Accelerator. One of the great things that Dennis, my former business partner, allowed me to do was to solely focus in one sector; you have to build your expertise, and you can’t be everything to everyone. As much as I would love to work with a variety of industries, I feel it’s important that you really stay focused for a service industry like ours. So, when we chose to focus in manufacturing back then, when I moved to working with him, and ever since, I just realized, one, manufacturing has a very soft place in my heart. My parents are both blue-collar workers. They worked at Fort Howard Paper Company for many, many years, and retired there. I feel that most manufacturers are built off of growth, some growth plan. They’re trying to achieve something large, and us working in our service industries, trying to plug independent things into what that master goal might be, is unlikely to be successful. So, I work directly with usually an owner, a CEO, Chief of operations, Chief growth officer, in designing with my team an annual plan—a multi-year plan, really. And that plan is focused first on growth. Like, what are you trying to achieve? What revenue goals do you have for the year? 

I make jokes all the time that the love language of the C-suite is revenue, and it sounds harsh, but it’s the truth. We’re all trying to run our companies, and we’re trying to grow. There’s a lot of other great things that happen alongside of that, but in order to stay in business, you have to be generating some growth. That, when you start generating growth, you start impacting the organization in a multitude of ways. You’re aligning your marketing and sales teams, but you’re impacting operations. Operations needs to understand that we’re ready to grow this business, and in many cases, we’ve been able to drive double-digit revenue growth for our clients, and so being able to prepare the plant floor and the office staff that this is what growth looks like… so, we’re working on a much larger playing field inside the organizations that we’re working with, aside just from marketing. Obviously, marketing’s a big part of what we do, but we work across the organization to really help that C-suite drive their growth plan.

Mary Rohde: So, you touched on the synergy that you help create for your clients within their own organizations, cross-departmental synergy, right? To get everybody working together. You certainly are not alone in what you do, either. So, what does the team at Stoke look like?

Jen Fietz: Oh, yeah, that’s a great question. So, it’s hard for me to not even include myself in the strategy, growth strategy part of this, but we have a team of really amazing growth strategists, and they lead… I serve as a consultant to them when they get stuck, but really, they are building and leading these growth strategies for our manufacturing teams. We have a team of account managers that actually, once the plan is approved and the revenue engine is in the process of getting built and executed, our team then manages the resources that help implement that plan. I think a unique part about our company is, during the pandemic, a lot of the greatest workers who have individual skills—copywriting, programming, designing—all these new skills coming out with AI, they all went to the gig economy and worked for themselves, and so there was a good opportunity for us to actually build up our resource pool. So we operate a lot like a construction company who has contractors that do different things. It allows us to run our company in a lean way, but also deliver the services that are needed in that given moment in time. It also allows us to pivot plans when things aren’t producing the growth we’re expecting to see; we can make adjustments and changes quickly without that staff being attached to our business. We have a team of roughly 8 or 9 people that are on staff at Stoke RGA, but I tell people our team is like, between 50 and 75 firms and individuals who are supporting the execution of the plans for our manufacturing clients.

Mary Rohde: Northeast Wisconsin is so strong in manufacturing, and you know, we have a lot of organizations that exist: New North, the New Manufacturing Alliance. What does it mean for a business like yours that focuses their day-to-day on growing that manufacturing sector? What does it mean to have such a strong manufacturing base here in Northeast Wisconsin?

Jen Fietz: Oh my gosh, that’s such a great question, because it allows us to give accolades to the group we have here, and I am finding that other states just aren’t as lucky. We care deeply about the manufacturing sector, and so I feel as if I’m a part of something that’s of the greater good for not just Northeast Wisconsin, but the Upper Midwest. We have a lot of amazing manufacturers going through transformation right now. And I think it’s going to take a lot more than just my firm to support that. There’s transitions in digital technologies. There’s transitions in our baby boomers going, how do I sell my business? How do I transition to the next leadership team? There’s all kinds of different things, and it takes a good, networked, supported community to be able to lift those manufacturers up and help them move to where they want to go. So, I’m grateful for the Alliance, I’m grateful for New North, I’m grateful for Wisconsin Manufacturing and Commerce—they are really focused in the manufacturing space.

Mary Rohde: Well, and I think even too, just the breadth of types of manufacturers and the sizes of those businesses. I think people think of, certainly, the giants, right? You have Georgia Pacific and Kimberly Clark down in the Valley, but there are so many smaller, even, say, less than 50-employee manufacturing businesses that are out there doing great work every single day that people may not even think of. And sometimes I can assume for you and the business you’re in, those are kind of the gems, right? Those are the ones that maybe have room for growth, but they haven’t pictured themselves growing yet.

Jen Fietz: Absolutely, absolutely. Green Bay Innovation Group is another really great organization that focuses on the “5 P” industries: printing, packaging, paper, pulp… there’s a fifth one that I always forget. But they focus in those industries, and they highlight educational opportunities for us to go and visit organizations, tour. I’ve gone down to Kaukauna and visited companies I’ve never heard of. You are right. There are so many gems and so much opportunity to be able to support our manufacturing sector right here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Mary Rohde: So with that, we’re going to go ahead and take our first break. You are listening to BizTalk with SCORE on WHBY, and we will be right back after these messages.

Terry Pinch: Welcome back to BizTalk. Our guest this week is Jen Fietz from Stoke RGA, where she’s the owner and CEO. Before I continue, I’d like to tell you about SCORE Northeast Wisconsin. SCORE Northeast Wisconsin serves a 20-county area, primarily in Northeast Wisconsin. With over 30 members in the region, and access to over 10,000 nationally, we offer entrepreneurs no-cost and confidential mentoring. Areas of expertise include marketing, cash flow, accounting, strategic planning, workflow, retail, best practices, and many other specialties. In order to register for a no-cost and confidential mentoring session, and learn more about SCORE Northeast Wisconsin, visit our website at score.org/wi/northeast-wisconsin. When visiting our website, you can complete an online application for a mentoring session. Simply complete the online form and submit at the score. Within a few days, a SCORE mentor will be contacting you to set up a meeting. Remember, SCORE is no cost and offers experts who can offer you assistance in many different areas your business may need assistance. To get started, simply visit our website. To support small business people, SCORE is always looking for new mentors. If you have experience that you would like to share with others, we’d love to talk to you. Go to our website at score.org/wi/northeast-wisconsin, click on the volunteer button, and fill out the short application. We’ll get back to explain more. In addition to our broadcasts on WHBY, BizTalk with SCORE is also available as a podcast. We bring you the same expert advice, impactful stories, and real-world insights from experienced entrepreneurs and business leaders as we do in the radio show. Listen and follow today. Available wherever you can get your podcasts. So now back to BizTalk and our guest, Jen Fietz. And Jen, I just want to build a little bit on the discussion at the end of the last segment. Looking around in this area, at the time you took over the business, you had so many family businesses who were going through a transfer, getting to the point they wanted to get out of the business. At the same time seeing all these technology impacts. How do you work through those environments where somebody has made all the decisions and done things in a certain way for so long, and you have to come in and help them change?

Jen Fietz: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, I think I read a stat this week that says 11,000 to 12,000 baby boomers are leaving the workforce every day. That’s a lot of people. And I think when that generation is owning a business, what we’ve done, what Stoke RGA has done, is identified the right partners that can work with us, because we’re typically working with P&Ls and sales information, but if they want to exit their business, there’s likely something that they want or need to get out of that business in order to retire on their terms and sell it on their terms. And so that becomes very much integrated with our growth plan. These owners, CEOs, shareholders, whoever is a part of the ownership of the business, needs those two things to be working side-by-side with one another. On the technology side, I think there’s some really great things that are happening right now. I think a few years ago, there was this big fear, and it was accurate. You know, you have this immense level of tribal knowledge inside the heads of our baby boomers and Gen X population. How do we get that to the millennial and to the Gen Z population? And so our manufacturers specifically have done a good job on process development and building those things up. What’s happening is we’re getting the good knowledge transfer there, and then they’re exiting the workforce, and that’s creating space for our manufacturing environments to look at: what does this now need to look like? With new digital technologies and AI, there’s just going to be a transformation of what our spaces actually look like.

Terry Pinch: It’s kind of an amazing thing to see where you have a societal transformation, and manufacturing is fitting right in with that and transforming at the very same time.

Jen Fietz: I agree. I agree.

Terry Pinch: As you’ve worked with manufacturers in the area, are you seeing them get more confident about the transitions, and learning more about things like artificial intelligence, and hiring 20-year-olds versus the people I’ve had working with them for a while?

Jen Fietz: Yeah, I think there’s two things that are happening. There’s way more focus on business planning, so looking at the big picture, not just from a growth perspective, but what is our business strategy for the next 3, 5, 7 years? And that includes so many pillars of things to consider. Obviously, digital transformation is something that’s going to be happening for a while, and it means so many things. There’s digital transformation happening in finance and all operational roles. It’s happening across the organization, and so I think they’re doing a great job figuring out how do we do this in a way that makes sense for our company? We don’t have to be the first there, we don’t have to be the fastest; let’s just make sure that we’re moving at a pace that makes sense for us, and that we’re monitoring what is working and what’s not, and making those pivots. And speaking of pivots, we know that things change. That’s never… we’ve never gone back to normal life after the pandemic. Everything kind of stayed at the speed that we created during that time, and you have to be able to make adjustments as macro and microeconomic things may change here. I feel like these new technologies are really going to help forecasting and scenario planning, and I just think our manufacturers are getting really good at that.

Terry Pinch: Okay, great. We’re at the point we’re going to take our second break. You’re listening to BizTalk with SCORE and WHBY, and I’ll be right back after these messages.

Mary Rohde: Welcome back to BizTalk with SCORE here on WHBY, and we are speaking with Jen Fietz, CEO and owner of Stoke RGA, located in downtown Green Bay, but certainly servicing a much larger area. And as we talked about in an earlier segment, Northeast Wisconsin is such a beautifully rich area for manufacturing, and manufacturers of all sizes. And I can only assume that that was proven even more true at the recent Wisconsin Drives Manufacturing Summit, that you were able to attend recently. So, share a little bit with our listeners about that particular summit. What brought it to be, what the summit itself was all about, and then I think additionally, it’d be great to hear from you what events like that—how they foster collaboration really across the manufacturing industry—and kind of help address some of those challenges that exist.

Jen Fietz: Yes, absolutely. So, Wisconsin Drives Manufacturing Summit, this is the inaugural year. It was put on by the university system in the state of Wisconsin. It brought together more than 700 people on Tuesday at Lambeau Field. It was workforce leaders, executives, educators, people in research and technology, and of course, policymakers. Wisconsin fell to number two in manufacturing in the United States, second to Indiana, and as we all know, we’re a competitive bunch, so the goal is to figure out as a sector, how are we getting back to number one? There was a focus on, obviously, AI was a big topic, digital twins is something that I had not even heard of—which is replicating processes or environments, and actually watching it work in real time, so you can test adjustments to things, which was mind-blowing—and then, just a variety of emerging technologies and how other businesses and universities are focusing on a variety of different opportunities.

Terry Pinch: So, Jen, from my experience with SCORE, I found people in retail are really good at networking and working together. Brewers, they get together everywhere and talk and sample and share things. Health and wellness, same sort of thing, but the one area where it was harder to get the people together and talk was in manufacturing, probably because it’s an older industry. How do you find that you can start to get people together and talk more and network and share things so it’s better for everybody?

Jen Fietz: I think that we’ve become better at that in the last few years. I agree with you. I think some of it’s… I think I agree, it’s an older industry, but it’s also an industry where the executive folks that are running those manufacturing facilities are almost always have their sleeves rolled up doing something inside the business, and so getting them to give a little time was just not even on their radar. I think that, like I said, over the course of the last few years, they’ve gotten really great at it. It was so good and felt so good to see that we had both sides of the aisle of people there. We had people from education and people from manufacturing. We had people from higher education, people from tech schools. There was just… it just felt so good. They engaged all the right people, including those manufacturing leaders, to come and actually tell us what they needed, and specifically around workforce training and upskilling, and that is a huge demand right now, is to figure out how do we make sure that the way we’re educating our students in these tech schools and universities, that we’re giving them educations that are valuable, so when they come out, we’ve got places for them to be.

Mary Rohde: Well, what a wonderful inaugural event. Can only imagine next year’s will be bigger and better. And pivoting here a little bit to talk more about your client base, as a company, every day, your team is in the trenches. You are meeting these manufacturers of all sizes and all types, where they’re at. Stoke has a five-stage approach, and I’d love for you to share a little bit more about what that means, and especially how your team really customizes those five stages to tackle whatever that client’s need might be at that time.

Jen Fietz: Yeah, I’ll jump into the stages, but I think it’s important to know that sometimes we have companies coming to us saying, we want to be a half-a-billion-dollar company. Which is a 30%, 35% increase in 5 years. Sometimes that’s the goal; sometimes the goal is we are losing market share in our pressure-sensitive label industry, and we need you just to help us there. So our first stage is all about designing our research phase of figuring out who is the company, what does the industry look like, who are the competitors, and we do a good chunk of that ahead of getting any information from that manufacturer, because our job is to see the things they can’t. We are all in the environment of being too close to it to see what the opportunities are. Then we go into interviewing, and the most valuable part, if I’m being honest, is the qualitative data that comes from surveying the C-suite and key stakeholders, people on the front lines, people in customer service and sales, really understanding how they are looking at where we’re growing. And then we basically put together an assessment report. We go through it and say, hey, this is where we found the gaps between what the market says and what you told us. We also look at financials, because everything we do is driven by a quantitative goal. So, once we get that report together and they agree, yes, that’s great, then we go into Stage 2, which is building out their growth blueprint and year-one revenue engine launch. Stage 3 is then where our team gets started, assembling our teams, getting the marketing up and launched. I think our unique value that we bring that’s different from a lot of companies is we meet with the sales folks way more than we meet with anyone else in the organization, because we start that marketing, and now if we can’t get the sales team on board, if we don’t give them what they need, we don’t actually review leads with them to find out what’s a good lead, what’s a bad lead, then all of it falls apart. So, we’re bringing the marketing team along with that, and they’re getting aligned with the sales teams. Stage 4 and Stage 5 are less linear. Stage 4 is looking at operations, and what things need to be integrated. Do they have a CRM? Do they need a new customer service portal? Stage 5 is, okay, we just killed it in that market. What market are you not thinking of? Because there’s always niche markets, areas of opportunity, areas of growth.

Mary Rohde: It might be safe to assume that you’ve come into client meetings where they have really laid out multiple goals, right? How do you help them prioritize, maybe what is either achievable first, or perhaps even the most important first, before they tackle those other things?

Jen Fietz: Yeah, a lot of our planning process is really laying out who is the most profitable market right now. Everything we do is pointed towards that. They might list a lot of things for us in Stage 2, but the easiest question is, will this drive revenue in year one? Because Stoke RGA does not succeed with a business owner who’s investing money in growing. They need to see ROI quickly. And so, we can usually very easily agree on what’s now, what’s next year, what’s year three.

Mary Rohde: As an organization, SCORE helps a lot of different industries and entrepreneurs in a lot of different paths. You just walked our listeners through the five-stage approach that Stoke takes. Would you say that these five stages, in some way, shape, or form, are applicable to other industries, and perhaps even a small business, retail business, just starting up?

Jen Fietz: Yeah, I would say this, yes, absolutely. I’m just going to simplify it for anybody that’s not in the manufacturing space. So, the first thing that every company comes in not fully clear on is who is your customer? Take a picture of one of your customers and put it on your screen, or on your whiteboard, and say, okay, this is Mandy, and Mandy’s our key point of contact. You look at what does Mandy’s life look like in their job? It sounds silly, but it’s super important. Now you start putting things into market, and you say, is Mandy gonna respond to this? In Stage 2, you’re really designing what is going to create a trigger moment or an action from your audience. And so, that’s really looking at what are the challenges that they’re facing? We all want to talk about how great our companies are, but it’s really more about your messaging should be connecting right to the problem that you know your audience is experiencing, so they can go, oh my gosh, that’s me. Everything that you communicate and put in your outreach to try and gain new business should fall around that.

Mary Rohde: That is great advice, phenomenal advice. We are ready here to take our very last break of this episode. You are listening to BizTalk with SCORE on WHBY.

Mary Rohde: Welcome back to BizTalk with SCORE, and before we wrap up our conversation here this morning with Jen Fietz, CEO and owner of Stoke RGA, I’m going to take just a brief moment here to thank our sponsors. We’d like to take a moment and thank our sponsors for their generous support of BizTalk. Haling & Associates helps small businesses and individuals not just prepare tax returns, but plan for the future. Haling & Associates: personal connection, positive results. A thank you to Johnson Financial Group. Wherever you are in life, or the life of your business, Johnson Financial Group works to match the banking and wealth services needed to help you complete your mission. Thank you to the Business News for promoting our program in the bi-weekly business newspaper serving Northeast Wisconsin with the latest news and topics for the region. We are grateful for the support of Community First Credit Union. At its core, Community First Credit Union is a community of member owners where people work together to improve their financial well-being and help one another. Thank you to New North, the regional marketing and economic development corporation that is an active supporter of SCORE. The New North facilitates economic growth and helps people in this region live their best lives. And lastly, thank you to Baird. Since 1919, Baird has guided families through investment, trust, estate, and tax planning advice. So no matter what the future brings, you can be confident you’re ready, because your family is Baird’s focus. And Terry, I’ll turn it back over to you to bring our episode to a close today.

Terry Pinch: Okay, thank you, Mary. And again, we’re talking with Jen Fietz. And Jen, could you first let people know how they can get in touch with you and Stoke RGA?

Jen Fietz: Absolutely. You can find us online at stokerga.com, and I am also on LinkedIn, at JenFietz. We also have a LinkedIn page for Stoke RGA as well. And if there’s anything that I could do, I’d be happy to even just have phone calls with people, because as you can probably tell, I am eager to support the manufacturing industry in any way that I can.

Terry Pinch: Okay, and Jen, over the last few years, you’ve made an incredible number of changes at the business, and really done a lot of things, but what’s next for Stoke RGA?

Jen Fietz: What’s next? Well, we’re really working on building awareness for what manufacturers are up against. There’s evolving PFAS regulations, so those are those forever chemicals that are really creating some significant regulatory pressure across a variety of industries. I had mentioned upskilling workforces to kind of keep pace with technology. I have concerns about the degrees that are available to our young people, and so I really want to help close the gap there to make sure that we have people coming out of school ready to join the workforce. I think it’s looking at how do we leverage AI? Making sure that we’re ready for what the opportunity is, and the last is just making sure that there’s a nice suite of diversification across our client base, because we want them to be able to handle any market swings that are gonna happen.

Terry Pinch: Okay, and when should a business reach out to you? What is the sign internally to them that should say, you know what, I need to get Jen in and get some help?

Jen Fietz: I think it starts at the top. So, when there is a group of leaders that is recognizing that they need some guidance and support to move the organization… somebody said, “I don’t know how much longer I can try and turn the massive ship,” and that’s how it feels. And so, we have the unique ability to provide outside perspective, and so I think once the leadership says, yes, we’re ready, and they’ve got a good, solid group of people helping to lead the charge, that’s when they should call.

Terry Pinch: Okay, so first of all, Jen, thank you very much for being on the show again. We really appreciate it, and really appreciate all the help you provide to manufacturers in this area.

Jen Fietz: Thank you so much for having me, you guys, it was a pleasure.

Terry Pinch: And so, for our listeners, we’re on every week on WHBY, Saturday mornings at 9 o’clock. But we also are on podcasts that comes out a few days after the show, and you can go and listen on any of your favorite podcatchers, like iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, and others as well, and can find all sorts of stories like this one about businesses in the area, because the one thing I’ve learned doing this show is there’s an incredible number of really unique and somewhat unexpected businesses in the area that you just don’t know about until you start talking to them. So, go out and look for those. You’ll find our last 3 years of episodes are on both the podcatchers and also on our website at score.org/northeast-wisconsin. So, go and take a look and listen, and you’ll find a lot of good things there. Again, we’ll be back next Saturday morning. We really appreciate you listening in, and I hope everybody has a great weekend. Take care.