Brian Atkin, President and CEO of Frank Lowe, runs a profitable, well-managed custom die-cut manufacturer that has been serving the fenestration, automotive, and industrial markets since 1955. He called ProCFO Partners during a plateau, with foreign competition moving into his niche markets and a senior team of three that had been together for 20-plus years and were comfortable but not always challenging. Brian and his ProCFO John Martin talk through what it looks like to bring CFO-level thinking into a company that already has clean books, why one strategic initiative at a time was holding the business back, how lease negotiations and AI investments and acquisition modeling started landing on John's desk instead of Brian's, and what changes when a CEO finally has the room to do the job a CEO is supposed to do.

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