14. You Can’t Hire Your Way Out of the $3 Million Plateau

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Everybody wants to hit $3 million. Almost nobody talks about the stretch between $2 million and $3 million, where the business turns on you.

I sat down with Adam Zimmer of Zimmer Manufacturing, a guy standing exactly where I stood a couple of years ago. Same machines, same plateau, same itch to hire your way out of it. I’ll tell you now, that doesn’t work. We went from 22 to 29 people and the top line didn’t move.

In this conversation, we get into role duplication, the ask to seat ratio, and why overhead eats you alive when you only own nine machines. Then I put Adam on the hot seat with the question he brought: keep hiring and push through, or pull back and regroup.

My answer is a salesperson first, more QC than you think you need, 80 percent of your work on one zero point system, and automation on everything you already own. And the part nobody wants to hear: it never gets easier, you just get tougher.

What’s Covered in this Episode

• (0:00) I hired from 22 to 29 people and the top line didn’t move
• (1:08) Learn more about Adam Zimmer and Zimmer Manufacturing
• (3:19) Adam’s AS9100, ITAR, and why we’re both moving away from firearms work
• (5:20) Keep your spindles running with the Hennig Workflow Automation System
• (6:11) A snapshot of Zimmer Manufacturing in 2026
• (7:02) Why the $2 to $3 million plateau is a role duplication problem
• (10:55) Go bigger or go smaller: business is a competition of staying in business
• (13:14) Burned by recruiters? That’s why we built Hire MFG Leaders
• (15:33) The E-Myth: a great machinist isn’t automatically a great owner
• (17:05) Buying and navigating the difficulties of running a machine shop
• (23:11) Kennametal on tooling that never slows your shop down
• (23:59) Adam’s question for me: keep hiring or retreat and regroup
• (27:21) Set your core values before you go on a hiring spree
• (30:31) Why “you can’t scale a prototype shop” might be a mental block
• (33:16) Why the first person I’d hire is a salesperson
• (34:05) Automate what you own, and the 10 percent overtime rule before you hire
• (37:22) Why I don’t trust manufacturer’s reps to work for you
• (39:09) Put AI chat on your website with Navu
• (40:20) Bringing in a fractional salesperson or part-time hire
• (45:08) Fix sales and your bottleneck becomes quality control
• (47:16) Where shops get stuck by headcount and why 50 employees scares people
• (50:21) It never gets easier, you just get tougher

Resources Mentioned

• Navu
• Hennig Workflow Automation System
• Hire MFG Leaders
• Kennametal
• IMTS
• MakingChips

Connect with Adam Zimmer at Zimmer Manufacturing

• Connect with Adam on LinkedIn
• adam@zimmermanufacturing.com
• Zimmer Manufacturing
• Connect with Jamie on LinkedIn
• jamie@makingchips.com
• MakingChips