From a podcast interview featuring Ben Bertram, Owner of Fiberglass Solutions, LLC
In this episode of CEO Growth Talks, Ben Bertram, co‑owner of Fiberglass Solutions alongside his wife and CEO Amy Bertram, sits down with Pete Hayes to explore the challenges and opportunities of leading a manufacturing business through growth and strategic evolution. After acquiring the Wisconsin‑based industrial fiberglass company with no inheritance or legacy connection, Ben shares how the experience transformed their family’s life and business trajectory.
Fiberglass Solutions serves a wide range of commercial and industrial markets—from custom brine tanks for cheese production to pool filter boxes and other complex applications. As growth leveled off after several strong years, Ben explains why he turned to Chief Outsiders for help sharpening the company’s sales and marketing processes, implementing technology like a CRM, and building repeatable systems that will support future expansion.
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“Let’s bring somebody in who can get us rolling faster... We figured this [hiring Chief Outsiders] was the way to do it.." Ben Bertram |
Ben and Amy Bertram purchased Fiberglass Solutions to build a family business and provide stability—despite having no prior ownership background or inheritance.
The company manufactures industrial fiberglass products used in diverse settings, including brine tanks for cheesemaking, pool filter systems, and other custom solutions tailored to customer needs.
After rapid growth early on, the business reached a plateau. Ben recognized that to scale further they needed reliable sales and marketing infrastructure—something he felt unprepared to build on his own.
Chief Outsiders helped Fiberglass Solutions establish essential processes and systems, including CRM implementation and strategic marketing foundations, so future growth is measurable and repeatable.
While working with an external fractional CMO felt like a bigger upfront investment than hiring internally, Ben explains that the experience and acceleration it brought were key to moving the company forward with confidence.
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[Episode Transcript]
[00:00:00] Pete Hayes: Hello everyone. I'm Pete Hayes. Welcome back to CEO Growth Talks. I'm your host and we have Ben Bertram, the owner of Fiberglass Solutions. and he, we were just talking and his wife is the CEO, so that's really cool. uh, we have the owner, the CEO's, heart at work, and we're sitting here gonna talk about.
[00:00:25] Pete Hayes: what Fiberglass solutions is and, uh, and we actually had a chance to work together, so, so Ben, welcome to the show.
[00:00:31] Ben Bertram: Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.
[00:00:34] Pete Hayes: Yeah. Now I know you and your wife, you acquired this business. What were you thinking? I mean, this is kind of crazy, but what were you looking for?
[00:00:40] Ben Bertram: Yeah, that, that's, that's a great question. We, we get asked that question quite a bit and, um, we, had been working, I had been working in a, a professional role as a plant manager, for several years in another place, and we always kind of knew that we wanted to. Pursue owning our own business.
[00:00:57] Ben Bertram: and, and I think at the same time we, we kind of analyzed who we are as people and we're not the most creative people on the planet. for us to start something from scratch to come up with a product or an idea that we could run with didn't really seem to fit who we were. at the same time, we had three little kids, uh, under the age of six at the time.
[00:01:16] Ben Bertram: And, uh, you know, we just decided, hey, we, we need to go out and try and find something that we can purchase that's gonna support our family. but at the same time, be ours. we really dove in and began our business search and to see what we could do to purchase a business. Um,
[00:01:32] Pete Hayes: and I remember, I remember asking you, I said, wow, that's, you're, that's pretty good.
[00:01:36] Pete Hayes: I mean, uh, typically, uh, folks will buy business, uh, will take over businesses from their family. Um, maybe they came into some inheritance and it's time to make some investments. But when I asked you that question before, you had a surprising answer for me, which was.
[00:01:53] Ben Bertram: No, uh, you know, just bootstrap it, huh?
[00:01:55] Ben Bertram: Definitely not inheritance. You know, my, uh, blue collar family, my dad was a truck driver. my, my mom stayed at home. She worked, part-time jobs here and there and, and, uh, was a teacher for a bit. yeah, no inheritance, no relation to the business. We just, you know, I had a particularly bad day at work one day and, and came home and I said, uh, Amy, if, if we're gonna do this.
[00:02:17] Ben Bertram: We need to go all in and, uh, I, I can't even make it up. She looked up that night, she said, would you move back to Green Bay? We were living in a, in River Falls, Wisconsin at the time, and I said, I'd love to move back to Green Bay. And she said, there's a fiberglass business for Sailing Green Bay. And I said.
[00:02:32] Ben Bertram: I worked one, one summer in a fiberglass, plant back in high school and college. And, uh, I said I'd never do it again, oddly enough. And, um, we made a call and got some numbers and, and, met the, the owner who actually was in my office about five minutes ago, the previous owner. So Oh wow. Still get along.
[00:02:49] Ben Bertram: Great. and I just had an initial meeting with them and I came back and I told Amy, I said, Amy. These are the kind of people we wanna buy a business from. And, uh, from there, the rest is kind of history.
[00:03:00] Pete Hayes: Well, it's, it's very impressive. And anyone listening to this that's, uh, perhaps younger and maybe saying it's not time yet, uh, man, when you've got the itch and the opportunity, go and you'll make it work, right?
[00:03:14] Ben Bertram: Absolutely. And I think, there's never a good time. I, I help a lot of people that are looking at businesses and looking at doing the same thing we did, because it's been, it's been life. Changing for us. I mean, it's been, transformational. It's been amazing. I wouldn't have it any other way.
[00:03:29] Ben Bertram: I do say sometimes it's good to be a little naive when you're starting out. 'cause I look back at what we had going on and, and this being our only source of income. Three little kids and, and moving to another city. I mean, that was a big risk. but when you put it all on the line, you don't have any choice but to be successful, put all your
[00:03:48] Pete Hayes: eggs in one basket and take care of the basket.
[00:03:50] Ben Bertram: Yeah. And, and what's the saying, you know, you land on shore and burn the ships. I mean, that's really, yeah. Wow.
[00:03:57] Pete Hayes: so. Fiberglass solutions, and we're looking at the, backdrop you have. the, the, imagination just kind of goes wild. I mean, I start with surfboards and, and boat holes and I, but, you're really, you build really industrial, Fixtures and maybe just describe your most common products.
[00:04:18] Ben Bertram: Yeah, great question. and we have worked on surfboards. not my favorite by the way. we don't work on boats. what most people think of and, uh, we are very much commercial, industrial, and, and. Anybody who's familiar with, call it Green Bay, Northeast Wisconsin.
[00:04:35] Ben Bertram: It's a very, very much a manufacturing town, a manufacturing area, a lot of blue collar jobs. so there's a, there's a big need when it comes to commercial and industrial fiberglass. our business itself is kind of made up of three different facets. We've got manufacturing where we do a lot of contract manufacturing.
[00:04:52] Ben Bertram: We make anything from fiberglass prison beds to pool filter boxes, which are, you know, buried in the concrete below. you know, like water parks, things like that. We'll make window wells we make, boy, it, it's just about anything under the sun. If, if people want parts and pieces, we, we work on it. some of our more interesting stuff is our custom projects.
[00:05:17] Ben Bertram: w Wisconsin being a, the dairy state, you know, with cheese plants just about on every corner. Uh, we make brine tanks for Italian cheeses. So if you eat any kinds of mozzarella, Parmesan os asiago string cheese, there's a good. Probability it's made in one of our brine tanks. So, kind of a fun fact.
[00:05:37] Ben Bertram: You go to the store and show your kids, you're like, Hey, that cheese right there is made in one of the brine tanks we designed and built. So, so,
[00:05:43] Pete Hayes: so I, so when I think of, of a tank in food manufacturing, I'm thinking stainless steel. So why is fiberglass a better solution than, stainless steel?
[00:05:53] Ben Bertram: Great question.
[00:05:53] Ben Bertram: A fiberglass itself is, you know, we've got FDA approvable products. it's clean, it's sanitary, and it, it's very much chemical resistant. So it, it holds up to the cleaning processes. And when it comes to, in particular, cheese making, it's, holding salt brine. So if you think about a boat. A boat is made of fiberglass.
[00:06:14] Ben Bertram: It sits in salt water, its entire life, and it's, very non-corrosive to fiberglass. Same with the cheese making process. It's a salt brine. And these aren't tanks that you think of in the sense of a big round cylinder. Uh, these are more what looks like a lazy river of cheese. Just a bunch of flumes that turn back and forth on each other, and the cheese flows through it as it, uh, absorbs the salt and, cools off.
[00:06:37] Pete Hayes: Yeah. So go to go to his, uh, website if you wanna see what those, uh, containers look like. 'cause they're really interesting. Yes. Yeah. Wow.
[00:06:44] Ben Bertram: And, and they're fun. Everyone's different. Everybody makes their cheese different. And, and I tell you what, we've, we've had a lot of great cheeses over the years just by being in this industry.
[00:06:53] Pete Hayes: Wow. um, in this economic consumer industrial climate that we're in, what, what are the, things that are, challenging your business the most right now?
[00:07:08] Ben Bertram: Yeah. Um, well the reason I know Chief Outsiders is because we were running into the challenge of how do we grow more. we, people asked us over the first, you know, it's been seven and a half years since we bought the business now, and we really grew dramatically the first four to five years.
[00:07:26] Ben Bertram: and people said, you know. What did you do to grow the business? And I'm not a business guy. My background was not business, you know, we just kind of did what we knew how to do and, and that was answer the phone. every business I looked at prior to this one, I was told by the owners, you know, there's tons of room to grow.
[00:07:44] Ben Bertram: I just, you know, pass up on opportunities. And in this case, previous owner, Ken said, yeah, there's a lot of opportunity to grow. He was spot on and literally we answered the phone, we responded to our customers. We, quick, got back to them quickly. We, were on site quickly, whatever they needed us.
[00:08:01] Ben Bertram: And we reached a point, call it about a year and a half ago where we said we're kind of plateauing, where we're leveling out. And I'll be honest, I didn't know what to do next. It's not my forte. I'm not a sales guy, I'm not a marketing guy. I didn't know what was next. Uh, so, you know, that was our biggest challenge.
[00:08:21] Ben Bertram: I, uh, we have great people, absolutely phenomenal employees. we have great customers. A lot of repeat customers and a lot of customers. You know, it's spread out really great. So we knew we were in good shape there. We've got a new facility. organizationally, I mean, operations run very well. So it kind of came down to what can we do next to help us grow?
[00:08:41] Ben Bertram: And that's when we started to try and figure out is this sales? Is it marketing? who are we as a company? what are we going to do to help build, take us to that next level? You know, we really plateaued and I'm not the kind of guy that likes to sit around and just be comfortable. We need to put ourselves out there and get uncomfortable again.
[00:09:03] Pete Hayes: okay, so what, And what, what, where GM then ended up doing, were you solving a sales problem, marketing a problem? Uh, how did Chief Outsiders come in and what were those discussions like initially?
[00:09:15] Ben Bertram: Yeah. Uh, you know, initial discussions, I, I randomly ran into Ken, at a networking event. Wow. And we talked about it a little bit and, and he followed up and I said, you know, we're not really in the market right now, but maybe in the future and.
[00:09:29] Ben Bertram: It came down to we asked ourselves, do we hire a salesperson? What should we do? I don't know what the next step is. I, I have enough on my plate. We also have another business that we own, that I can't be out on the road selling. Uh, but I knew we had to get in front of our customers and I said, okay, so if we hire a salesperson right now, how are they going to be successful?
[00:09:51] Ben Bertram: We, we didn't have a CRM system in place. I, I. I don't know what to even tell them that we sell other than commercial and industrial fiberglass. You know, what, are they going to do? I don't know how to give them direction. So ultimately we ended up talking with Ken and I kind of laid these things out there for 'em and just said, Hey, this, this is what we need help with.
[00:10:10] Ben Bertram: I, I feel that we need to have processes and procedures in place. On the marketing end, on the sales end to help somebody be successful for sales if we want to go that route down the future. But I think we gotta take a step back and look at our, our internal processes and say, what do we have that's going to help us be successful when it comes to managing customers, managing leads, figuring out how to go from here and grow.
[00:10:35] Pete Hayes: Wow. Okay. Alright. So, um, and how long did Ken work with you or is he still working with you now? Still
[00:10:42] Ben Bertram: working with us now. Uh, we started in about June and, um, you know, it's been a very good experience. It, it's very eye-opening for me. again. I've never worked in, in the past in any sort of capacity with marketing or sales.
[00:10:56] Ben Bertram: you know, we are very much focused on marketing for this, this, portion of everything here. And I mean, we really just did a deep dive into who we are as a company. Ken had to get to know us, uh, what we did, what we excelled at, and you know, we spent a lot of time, those first couple months, just really deep diving into who we are, what, what it is we do, and, and what can we sell.
[00:11:17] Pete Hayes: Okay. how are you evaluating as you're in process and how will you evaluate, getting a return off of, of this? 'cause working with Chief Outsiders is not inexpensive, as many people know.
[00:11:29] Ben Bertram: Yeah, no. Yeah, you're exactly right. And, and we talked about that right upfront. You know, what is gonna be an our, our ROI and, um, really what made me hesitant as a person, to move forward because, Things aren't, things are going well, but it's a big investment to bring somebody on. Mm-hmm. And we really wanted to focus on making sure that we do get an ROI and I'll be honest, I think it's taken a little bit longer than I anticipated upfront. Mm-hmm. Um, but I think things are going in the right direction.
[00:12:00] Ben Bertram: We've got things in place now. We've got a CRM system. We're starting to do more of the external facing marketing efforts now that, you know, it took a few months to get things in place and, and really. We've seen some success in just, Hey, we sent out an email yesterday and I, and I received a phone call and out of it I, I got a job.
[00:12:19] Ben Bertram: Okay? So that's one job that. We may not have had. So, right. There's an ROI. so that's kind of where we're really looking at it to see how many more people can we get in front of, you know, how many more new customers are we going to bring on? Uh, what are we seeing as far as interest level in, in regards to emails, you know, posts on social media, that kind of thing.
[00:12:40] Pete Hayes: Okay. All right. If I back all the way up, had you looked at any alternatives? did you, uh, was it, you felt good with the relationship with Ken, but were there other things you considered?
[00:12:51] Ben Bertram: Yeah, absolutely. we, I have a, a pure network of business owners in, in this area, and we meet. About once a month we get together.
[00:12:59] Ben Bertram: And,
[00:13:00] Pete Hayes: which group is that?
[00:13:01] Ben Bertram: Uh, we started a group called Business and Beers. So being Wisconsin, naturally, we, uh, we get together for beer. Oh
[00:13:08] Pete Hayes: yeah. Chairmans and Cheese. Okay, got it. Got it. Yeah, beer and cheese,
[00:13:12] Ben Bertram: pretty standard. Uh, about as stereotypical as you can get. That's perfect. But yeah, I reached out to them, I said, Hey guys, what have you been doing?
[00:13:20] Ben Bertram: Yeah. And. To be honest, uh, most of my peers brought on somebody in-house internally to work directly for them. some of them went outside with virtual assistance and, you know, kind of handling it on.
[00:13:33] Pete Hayes: So, so why wouldn't you have just brought somebody in-house? That must have been an important part of your process,
[00:13:38] Ben Bertram: uh, extremely important part, right?
[00:13:40] Ben Bertram: Mm-hmm. And, and especially because you look at, okay, financial considerations of both. We could bring somebody on board, that works directly for us and have them going, and, you know what, at the end of the day, maybe it's a little less expensive. But at the same point in time, we then weighed that against bringing in a, a fractional, like Ken and saying, all right, Ken's got the experience.
[00:14:03] Ben Bertram: All right, Ken's done this before. Maybe not in our industry, but maybe that's what we need, an outside look at what's going on. So we ultimately weighed that decision and said, you know what? Let's bring somebody in who can get us rolling faster and, in our book, we figured this was the way to do it.
[00:14:20] Ben Bertram: And,
[00:14:21] Pete Hayes: oh, go ahead.
[00:14:22] Ben Bertram: No, I was gonna say, you go ahead.
[00:14:26] Pete Hayes: some of our, clients say while it's outsourcing, when, somebody like Ken comes into your business, they really kind of become part of your business. Is it like outsourcing or is it more like insourcing or is it fractional insourcing or, I mean, how do you describe it?
[00:14:41] Ben Bertram: I think insourcing is a good word. because ultimately Ken had to learn our business inside out and he probably knows it just about as good as anybody, I'd say after six months. Mm-hmm. Um, because in order for him to do his job well, he had to know exactly who we were and his questioning his, everything else was getting to the bottom of who we are.
[00:15:01] Ben Bertram: So, call it insourcing, if you will. but Amy and I are both big believers and do what you're good at. And, so that's why we didn't waste time saying, Hey, maybe I'll take on marketing and see if I can get it to go. we said, let's bring in the people who know what they're doing and let's keep this moving faster.
[00:15:20] Ben Bertram: I do believe you're gonna pay a little more upfront, but you're gonna see those returns. Quicker in my book
[00:15:26] Pete Hayes: and everybody, Amy's his wife and the CEO, I should have put Now do you have a sense that when Ken leaves that he's not just done some work and he's gone, but there'll be some lasting process?
[00:15:40] Pete Hayes: Was is there an engine, is there. some lasting value. Is there an asset that you get when he leaves? Can you tell?
[00:15:48] Ben Bertram: Yeah, absolutely. and that was really our goal. I, I told him upfront, we don't know if this is gonna go beyond six months. We don't know if this is gonna go longer. It, it could go a year, it could stop at six months.
[00:15:59] Ben Bertram: We don't know. But what I really wanted to get out of it was process and procedure. Uh, I'm very much a process and procedure person. I, don't like paperwork, but I wanna make sure that we set people up for success. So. When it comes down to it, that's what we did. We laid out who we are as a company. We came back, uh, we ultimately, we have a CRM system.
[00:16:20] Ben Bertram: So now if I wanna bring on a salesperson, we have a system in place that can help them to be successful at their job. They're not just out there winging it, saying. Am I selling fiberglass today? I don't know what I'm doing. Instead, we've got leads, we've got all of our customers, all of our contacts in there, we've got lists, we've got everything.
[00:16:38] Ben Bertram: We've got a format for doing social media posts. it's the processes and procedures that we're really looking to get out of it, and, I think we're in, in a very good spot from that standpoint.
[00:16:50] Pete Hayes: Okay. Yeah. And you don't sell fiberglass, you sell solutions. I mean, it's really clear. Correct. You have a variety of solutions.
[00:16:56] Pete Hayes: That's awesome. Mm-hmm. Wow. this has been helpful and I, I, I think we know a little bit more about, fiberglass and industrial, applications.
[00:17:06] Ben Bertram: Yeah.
[00:17:07] Pete Hayes: Hit the website and you'll see some really great examples, but, uh, absolutely. Well, Ben. It's been great chatting with you a little bit and learn a bit about your business and thank you for, for bringing us in, getting, giving us a chance to, help out and, uh, take you to the next level and with process and people and, and a little bit of technology you mentioned too.
[00:17:24] Pete Hayes: So yeah, that's terrific. So, absolutely. Yeah. So thank you Ben, for joining us today, and I'll just say goodbye to everybody else and we'll see you next time on CEO Growth Talks.