To the Cogent Team:

On behalf of Midwest Tinting, I am pleased to provide this testimonial for Cogent and, specifically, Rick Garcia, Senior Project Manager.

Midwest Tinting has been in business for 50 years. For 48 of those years, the company operated under a sole owner. Today, we have transitioned to an equal partnership of three owners, with 46 employees across three locations.

We have always been a profitable company, but as we grew and transitioned into a new ownership structure, we recognized that we had some significant gaps in our organizational structure. Much of what made Midwest Tinting successful over the decades lived in the experience and knowledge of the people who had been here for years. We knew how to run the business, but we just hadn’t always taken the time to put that knowledge, those processes, and those responsibilities down on paper.

That is where Cogent made a tremendous difference.

One of the biggest areas where Cogent helped us was understanding our financial information in a more meaningful way. We knew some of our basic numbers, such as how much money we were making and what we were purchasing, but we didn’t fully understand concepts such as above-the-line and below-the-line expenses or how our QuickBooks information could be structured to give us a clearer picture of the business.

Cogent helped us learn how to properly enter, organize, and map our QuickBooks information so that we could better understand what our numbers were telling us. This gave our ownership team a much clearer financial picture and provided a better foundation for making business decisions.

Cogent also helped us develop processes and procedures, organizational structure, SOPs, and job descriptions. Creating these documents was not as easy as it might sound. After decades of doing things based on experience, habits, and institutional knowledge, it was surprisingly difficult to explain exactly how we did what we did. A lot of our processes had never been formally documented because, for years, the people involved simply knew how to do them.

Cogent was instrumental in helping us work through that process. They asked the right questions, helped us identify what needed to be documented, and worked with us to turn years of knowledge and experience into processes that could be communicated and followed by our team.

The development of an organizational chart was another important step for us. It helped us begin defining responsibilities, accountability, and reporting relationships in a way that we simply had not done before. With three owners, 46 employees, and three locations, having that structure in place is extremely important as we continue to grow.

What we appreciated most about working with Cogent was their patience and their ability to work with us where we were. They understood that we weren’t starting with a broken business, we were starting with a successful business that needed to put the right structure around what had already made us successful for 50 years.

Cogent helped us take what had historically been in people’s heads and turn it into something that can be documented, communicated, taught, and carried forward. That is extremely valuable to us as we move into the next chapter of Midwest Tinting.

We are grateful for the work Cogent has done with our company and would gladly recommend them to other businesses looking to create greater structure, clarity, and accountability within their organization.

Sincerely,

Ron Talley & Caleb Silkett
Co-Owners
Midwest Tinting LLC