Bruce and Steven take a look at Mr. Beast’s employee onboarding doc and take notes on some key things he wrote, including a $1000 incentive for reading and completing the onboarding process thoroughly!
- Augmented Reality Screen Printing with RockaBlock: Rockland Page, owner of RockaBlock has taken promotional garments to a new level by introducing augmented reality to his shirts.
- ScreenPrinting GPT and 3 Practical Uses of AI…WOW: Matt Marcotte joins the team again to introduce an amazing AI tool to help ALL screen printers
- Doing Things That Don’t Scale + Selling ALL Their Screen Printing Equipment: Davis Slagle of Bee Graphix has online stores down to a science.
Transcript
00:00:04:04 – 00:00:24:07
Print Hustlers! we have got Print Hustlers Conf 2024 November 2nd through fourth. Go to maid lab.io and you can be able to check out the agenda, the roster. We’re going to talk a little bit about it more next week. But November 2nd through fourth. We’ll see you there. It’s in Cleveland, Ohio at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
00:00:24:09 – 00:00:52:12
And coupon code hustlers 24. Enter that in when you check out. All right. Today’s episode. We’ve got really good onboarding tactics and tips to be able to help get your team ramped up faster and help them adding value a lot quicker. And I would say tactics that shift the business forward a little bit quicker, things that other people have done that shifted their business quicker, and we’re going to share some of those bullets as well.
00:00:52:17 – 00:01:19:12
But first we got some sponsors. We have a new sponsor. Bruce, I want to tell you about the best new software platform to hit the industry. It’s called DGI apparel. It was built by a group of really, really, really, really smart MIT engineers with a background in screen printing. DGI allows you to connect your accounts with sand, marker, Alpha, ACS, and more to compare prices, inventory, and shipping across every apparel supplier on one website.
00:01:19:12 – 00:01:37:19
You can even buy like, ass color out there. The average shop spends two hours purchasing every day, and DJI will cut that time in half. So ask yourself, what would I do with an extra hour every day? And what’s actually interesting is DJI apparel doesn’t have promo codes because it’s free and it’s always going to be free for shops to use.
00:01:37:19 – 00:02:01:02
That’s right, it cost them zero. And if you’re not already using DGI, you’re wasting your own time and money. Sign up today DGIapparel.com. Join the 1500 other shops that are saving time and money on their purchasing. These guys are a hoot. I can’t say enough good things about them. So thanks so much Ian and the team at DGI apparel go tell them that we send you Bruce.
00:02:01:04 – 00:02:24:11
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00:02:24:13 – 00:02:45:07
They have a proven track record of success. We have six full time GraphX at Campus Ink. Hit them up. As for Nick Wood or Lucas, use the code printable pod 24. You’ll get 50% off your first vector step or embroidery order. If you’re not already using GraphX, you’re missing the boat. Check them out. Stevens. Been spending hours cleaning dirty screens, but guess what?
00:02:45:07 – 00:03:08:17
Fade. That is the thing in the past, because Easiway. Screen printing and screen cleaning chemicals have innovative formulas that are designed to work quickly and effectively so you can spend less time cleaning and more time creating. You are welcome. Plus, Easiway is passionate about empowering printers of all skill levels. I’ve got a great team, so another great partner to have in your business is growth.
00:03:08:17 – 00:03:31:10
They offer helpful resources and expert advice to help you succeed in printing. They work with tons of distributors so you could be able to use their products and buy them from your Hey, whenever you buy stuff, make sure make sure you subscribed to their emails. They just put out a guide to Easiway chemicals. It’s an Easiway starter kit bundle.
00:03:31:12 – 00:03:52:20
And I usually maybe don’t read a bunch of emails, but this thing was awesome. I send it to all my employees and, it was super cool. So their new brand marketing, I’ll put it in the description. That’s great. Yeah, we’ll have to get the link of it. I’ll send it your way. Sweet. Bruce, have you heard of multi craft underscore?
00:03:52:20 – 00:04:24:21
Daddy? I think he’s over well over a thousand followers. And if you need inc supplies or a daddy multi craft screen printing and digital supplies for over 50 years has been providing you with top brands at competitive prices. If you mention the printable podcast, you’ll receive an extra 10% off your first order. They have partnered up with PMI tape and they give away supplies and every episode all you have to do is go to Instagram, type in multi craft, underscore daddy shoot David DM and he’ll enter you in for a drawing.
00:04:24:23 – 00:04:46:09
PMI tapes coming out with a bunch of new stuff. They’re an incredible company. Dave’s an incredible guy. He’s putting out some really good content. We’re really proud of him. So thanks so much Multi Craft for being a great supporter of the podcast. All right. Let’s jump on in. Alrighty Mister Steven how are you I’m good.
00:04:46:09 – 00:05:08:02
How are you. Good. I called you the other day. You said you were super slammed. Is that just the schools? Like, kick me back up? Yeah. I feel like over the summer you’re like, okay, take a deep breath, spend some time, chill out a little bit, get a bunch of stuff done, and then it’s like back to school and it’s like tidal wave.
00:05:08:04 – 00:05:28:18
Been traveling a fair bit. And so just getting full weeks of work are hard. And it’s just like meetings upon meetings, upon meetings, upon meetings, saying no to a lot more meetings lately, like internally or people reaching out to both want to talk what be turned on internally. If there’s a meeting that has two leaders on it, I’m like, I don’t need to be on this.
00:05:28:19 – 00:05:46:16
Send me the notes. Only invite. Invite me to as many meetings as you want. And if you really need me to be on there, I’ll be on there. But otherwise, like, send me the summary of it. Because a lot of times they might want my input for five minutes or just one thing, or just feel the need to include me and really like they don’t.
00:05:46:19 – 00:06:16:12
And so, you know, if there’s a meeting where Adam and me are meeting with a a sports agent or something, I’ll be like, you take that meeting or I’ll take that meeting, you go do something else. Like we try to conserve each other’s just calendars a little bit. Sometimes we’re just meeting overload. And then for external meetings, I really will only meet if I feel like there’s, you know, something that I need or they need or it’s going to be mutually beneficial, or it’s a connection or a network.
00:06:16:14 – 00:06:36:08
But I’m not afraid to schedule those meetings, like, two weeks out or something. Like, I’m not going to take a priority time and stop everything I’m doing to have a networking call or a catch up, you know, do you feel like you just get flooded with who would love to connect and meet? I feel like the meeting is the last resort.
00:06:36:10 – 00:06:58:15
It’s like half the time you could just explain a little bit more of what you’re looking for in the email and just spend a minute writing it down and then send it over or send me a video. And we could figure that out real quick. And so, I’ll actually push that like, hey, can you just do that and send that over?
00:06:58:17 – 00:07:19:22
Obviously, you know, that’s more externally driven and then internally, yeah, I will just ask like, hey, you know, can this person take care of it? And part of me, the itch is like, oh, maybe I maybe I should Pocan or should give my input and then part most of me is like, yeah, but you don’t want to be overly swamped again.
00:07:19:22 – 00:07:41:07
I mean, it kind of reminds me of the Gorilla Joe episode we did, right? Where he, you know, he was wanting to be in every single decision, which you have to be. You have to be for a long time, and then you know, his breaking point was his family and relationship life. And like, everything was not going well.
00:07:41:07 – 00:08:02:01
And so he needed to be able to pull out of all those micro decisions. And, that was the emotional drive. I get blown up by like industry reps, people trying to sell us inc supplies. You know, whether it’s manufacturers, apparel companies, and they always want to meet with me. And I’m like, hey, don’t meet with me, meet with my team.
00:08:02:03 – 00:08:25:14
And they’ll if you impress them and they come and nag to me like something’s good. And so I try to kind of barricade myself. You ever see those old Steve Jobs emails or someone? I’ll ask them internally, and they’re very short and to the point. It’s like, oh, tell me about this. So, you know, there would be just questions like, people would ask, I’ll have to find a good examples.
00:08:25:14 – 00:08:45:07
But the people would ask questions and he responds very directly to the point in as short as possible. It’s, you know, most of the time is one words back and forth. No. No, thanks. Yes. No. Or, you know, now, right now, you know, maybe in three months, whatever it is. But it was so quick and to the point, I was like, wow.
00:08:45:09 – 00:09:05:11
And then people are like, oh, he’s a he’s a dick. Or like, if I don’t, if I write because it doesn’t come across over if I give one word answers or like, oh, something funny that I’ve been doing, did I tell you about me leaving slack channels? No. I am in way too many slack channels. And so I’ve just started leaving them.
00:09:05:16 – 00:09:23:18
I’m just like, I don’t need to be in this anymore. I’m leaving this channel and I don’t see what happens after because, like, the team is still in there. And so they’ll kind of like troll me a little bit and be like, and that was an Irish goodbye. Like or like, okay, I’ll put one word in there, like this slack channel.
00:09:23:20 – 00:09:41:17
Hey, guys, you did a fantastic job on this. Everything look great. Look forward to doing this again next year. And then I’ll leave the channel and be, like, mic drop. And so it’s funny, there’s, like, kind of a running joke of me leaving channels, but, I was inspired by Justin Lawrence, who isn’t even in his company, slack.
00:09:41:19 – 00:10:03:11
I’m very curious. We’ll have to ask him. How does that exactly work? Does that mean that people are texting him, though? Like, is that his preferred channel of communication? There’s just a bunch of text channels. If you make yourself unreachable, people will reach out to you. If it’s important, if you make yourself so available, they will reach out to you, know, like they’ll just continue to reach out to you.
00:10:03:12 – 00:10:26:19
So I was talking to a shop this morning and I’m like, okay, like, don’t show up until 10 a.m. you were in in the last week and a half because you’re on vacation. Don’t just go running back to them. Just make yourself unavailable. Adam, who works with us, and leads all of our. Until he was on paternity leave and, you know, the day he came back, we’re like, hey, let’s just pretend that you’re still on leave.
00:10:26:21 – 00:10:56:16
Like they’re doing a great job. Don’t let them, like, drag you back into the mud of the day to day. And all the meetings like, go do other things. So I don’t know, I, I’m of the of the camp of of protect yourself, protect your time, make yourself slightly unavailable. Let them figure it out. There was a great, blog post I read last week that said, normally we take ourselves hourly costs as our salary divided by amount of hours.
00:10:56:16 – 00:11:18:19
You work. So let’s say, you know, maybe you paid yourself, I don’t know, 80 K last year. And you know, there’s 2000 hours work hours a year. That’s $40 an hour. What he said to do was multiply that by ten as an aspirational number, and use that for deciding what you should spend your time on. So you know, if it’s 40, multiply it by ten.
00:11:18:23 – 00:11:43:01
So your time is actually 400 an hour. Now organize your day and reprioritize your day and and use that based on what you should be doing or not worth your time. So I found that kind of cool. Yeah. And then you know what to pull yourself into. So if there’s a huge sales call out with a huge client, yeah, you’re going to be in that, but you’re not going to be in everything.
00:11:43:01 – 00:12:04:02
That’s really interesting. It’s an interesting way to put it. I wonder, I always see these Google like there’s this guy that creates features of what would be funny to add to like your Google calendar, your slack. And he’s like, what a meeting costs or what this meeting is worth. Do you see that? You see that? Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder if they like.
00:12:04:07 – 00:12:32:17
Yeah. On your Google calendar, like, hey, this is worth about 30 bucks to you or this is worth $1,000 to you, like, are you sure you want it like I want your task list? And literally, what is this worth? Like if you took your task list that’s in your iPhone note, or you written down or whatever, and next to it, you put Dash and then then dollars based on that hourly cost of, you know, what you feel your worth or what you would you want to do that or you would pay someone to do that.
00:12:32:19 – 00:12:46:17
It’s funny, like one of my friends is moving and he’s like, you want to come help me move? And he’s like, I was like, that’s the one thing I want to do with my friends, because we won’t be friends after it. I don’t want to help you move. Why don’t I get you a gift card to TaskRabbit?
00:12:46:19 – 00:13:14:12
And find a mover. They also shouldn’t be asking any. I don’t know how old they are, but, like, I shouldn’t be asking anyone for help to move after. Like 28 or something. I have a couple examples, by the way, of that. I just pulled up the Steve job like email responses. So like a few examples, you know, asking about Apple’s 2011 strategy, he just goes holy war with Google.
00:13:14:14 – 00:13:38:15
Is someone like an a, an Apple HR executive that emailed over, I’m sorry, a Google executive emailed him asking about why you keep poaching our people, and he just responded, smiley face. You know, and, they said a journalist or a vendor reaching out who hadn’t heard back and kept following up, please leave me alone.
00:13:38:17 – 00:14:03:14
So, I mean, you know, sure sounds rough, but it’s just straight into the point. One of my favorite ones, though, is, a mac owner who emailed him, who wasn’t having any luck with Apple Care replacing his laptop, and he looks it up the the record of what they wanted. And he says, this is what happens when your laptop sustains water damage.
00:14:03:16 – 00:14:28:12
These machines don’t like water. It sounds like you’re looking for someone to get mad at other than yourself. Honestly, like when I email Mark, he’s super short and to the point, and he just like, he writes his emails like he talks. He’s not formal whatsoever. It’s kind of funny. And so I sent him this company that was going bankrupt, and I was like, hey, we could buy this, and you could.
00:14:28:12 – 00:14:50:19
You could really own this. He’s like, no, well, I’ve got a, we’ll post a link down below to this, but I found this interesting. If you visit YouTube quite a bit, I think the number one most viewed or most subscribed to YouTuber is a guy named Mr. Beast. Probably heard about him. He’s got like a chocolate company that YouTube, you know, does a bunch of stuff.
00:14:50:21 – 00:15:15:19
Anyway, his he has a bunch of staff now that helps make these videos every single week. And someone linked out his onboarding doc. So this is when he hires someone new. This is what they get. Why is this interesting? Well, he wrote it himself, and you could tell based on, you know, how he’s writing it. Like he’s literally putting like, lol.
00:15:15:21 – 00:15:40:16
Like, I think this is important. This is not important. And you should read the full point, but I’ve got a bunch of summary notes that I think are pretty interesting. I’ll put it in. And mind you, Mr. Beast is 26 years old. He’s been doing this since he was like 13 or 14. Google says he’s valued at like over a half billion dollars.
00:15:40:16 – 00:16:05:11
He might be the first YouTube creator billionaire. That’s what, you know, people have said, and he is a beast, in the way he operates and the way he makes his videos. If you don’t know much about him and his business. He does a, like, prolific job at running his company and making even cooler videos. And so this is a 36 page guide for.
00:16:05:11 – 00:16:30:09
And he only has, I think, 100 employees or so is what I was reading. Right. But I just thought of this and I’m like, oh my gosh, I need the 36 page Welcome to Campus book. Like, I need to do this, like tomorrow. But why don’t you rip through some of the summer? The summary of it, Bruce, what are some of the things was speaking from the heart, almost in a way.
00:16:30:09 – 00:16:49:06
And the reason I think this is great, too, is because, a lot of us don’t have an onboarding. It’s either one way or the other. It’s like we either don’t have an onboarding doc, or if you do, maybe it’s too professionalized in my opinion. Like, it’s too hard. It’s to, you know, it’s not very legible from a human perspective.
00:16:49:08 – 00:17:12:15
Whereas his was literally if he was right in front of you, talking to you, and if you were training someone new, that’s exactly how it’s read. And he breaks it off into a tiny bunch of little paragraphs. I’ve got five points that I thought were interesting facts through it. The first one he says right at the beginning that there’s a test at the end, and if you pass it 100%, he will just give you $1,000.
00:17:12:17 – 00:17:33:01
You know, he’s known for giving away a lot of stuff, but this isn’t unreasonable. And in fact, it really motivates you to okay, I need to pay attention and take notes like $1,000. A lot of money. But imagine if someone actually went through all of the details and memorized all this stuff and was ready to go, and you put in so much effort into it.
00:17:33:03 – 00:17:51:05
They were able to to just speed up their onboarding process and get going, adding, so how would you take okay, how would you take this to your shop? The thing that comes to me is you write this guide, one of the biggest, things that shops and I like our friends will, will complain about is we build all these SOPs and no one reads them.
00:17:51:10 – 00:18:12:06
And so, like, what if you did okay, when you read this, if you pass the quiz at the end of this, you get $500 to SMEs to buy stuff. Yeah, it’s very motivating. I would I would take my time right. And it’s enough like because 100 bucks maybe not super motivating and but a thousand really piques your interest.
00:18:12:06 – 00:18:35:23
So I thought that was neat. I thought that was actually really smart. And, you know, imagine the amount of time you waste less of if someone really picks up on all the details and stuff that’s in a guide like this, or watches all the videos or whatever. All right. The second one, he starts off with, what is the goal here?
00:18:36:01 – 00:18:59:13
And he says the goal is to make the best YouTube videos possible. Not the most, you know, doing the most production at the funniest, at the best looking. Want to make the best YouTube videos possible? I like that because it’s a very understandable and actionable mission statement. It’s direct and to the point. It’s not like to have pie in the sky.
00:18:59:15 – 00:19:22:06
You can really people can feel like they’re part of the team by doing the piece that they’re supposed to be doing with it. So that was really cool. The next one, I’m curious, and your thoughts on this is key metrics. The next paragraph he talks about is saying he wants to get everyone on the same page with the three most important metrics we measure.
00:19:22:06 – 00:19:43:05
So the whole company is very aware of the three most important things they need to be doing. You know, for him, it’s like, you know, view rate or click through rate and in some others. But he says these are the three most important things that we look at constantly and make sure that if we’re, improving these, we’re doing a good job and executing on that mission goal.
00:19:43:07 – 00:20:04:08
I mean, Bruce, like he just says it click through rate, average video duration, average view percentage. The first minute of each video is the most important minute of each video. I wonder if we were to I wonder if I were to ask all my employees, what are the three main metrics we need to know all the time? Everybody, everybody, everybody.
00:20:04:12 – 00:20:21:05
Would they be able to say all the same three things. Part of our part of our business would be able to tell like they would they would scream AOB right away because they know I drill that into them. But like, I wonder if you could really narrow it down to at our company, these are the three we call those North stars, right?
00:20:21:05 – 00:20:42:17
What would they what would they have been at print? Have a Bruce like if you were doing it early on retention. So the amount of people that are still there this month from last month. What’s called Rpu, which is average revenue per account. That’s like the average amount of someone’s paying and probably new sales.
00:20:42:19 – 00:21:01:15
Those would probably be like the three most important because everything flows up to there. Like if you’re building great product, you have good retention. You, you know, you’ll attract new people if the sales team is working correctly. So new people signing up, how many people are staying so like churning out and how much are they spending with you.
00:21:01:21 – 00:21:30:23
That’s it. Yeah. Which is like a of thing for you guys right. What’s yours. What’s your other two? Well, our business is split between B2B and B2C. I mean, we look at the total amount of orders, the amount of online stores we have at our AOF on the B2B side, on the data seaside, we’re looking at, you know, how many schools we have live, how many athletes we have live.
00:21:31:01 – 00:21:46:17
We’ve got a bunch of metrics. But now that I’m thinking about this, I’m like, how do we really narrow it down? Traction is an interesting thing. When you do an Al ten meeting, you have ten key metrics that, you know, in your company. And you have to narrow it down to those ten, I don’t know.
00:21:46:19 – 00:22:04:07
I would have to, because there’s things that I want to know, like lifetime value of a customer, how many new customers versus existing orders. But I think those are almost there’s some that are distracting. You really, really need to narrow it down to just a couple. Yeah, I’m sure there are others that make up his top three, obviously.
00:22:04:07 – 00:22:30:03
You know, I’m sure he’s digging into a lot more than just the top three, but it sounds like those top three of the things that, hey, I want you to be thinking about this constantly. Like, I want you to wake up and go to sleep thinking about how to improve these three. I was talking to a shop that split between contract and direct orders, and we figured out the average gross profit per direct order and the average gross profit per data or per contract order.
00:22:30:05 – 00:22:51:03
And now, like he knows those numbers and they’re fixated like, you know, average contract is this much average direct is this much I need to get this many contract orders a month, I need to get this many direct orders a month. And like that’s ingrained. So I think it’s different for every shop. Right. But it’s important to try and dial it in for sure.
00:22:51:03 – 00:23:07:11
Yeah. That’s awesome. And then if the whole team like, I don’t know if his team, you tell me his whole sure, he’s thinking about it, but you know, it’s a sales team. Thinking about it is, you know, a production manager thinking about it is, you know, artist thinking about it, at least just so they have it in their mind.
00:23:07:11 – 00:23:35:09
Would they can then make their own decisions as well? Bruce, I want to touch on one thing that he had in his first, in the first, let’s see in that first thing he did say something. He said only eight players are wanted. A players are obsessive, learn from mistakes, coachable, intelligent, don’t make excuses. Believe in YouTube, see the value of this company and are the best in the goddamn world at their job.
00:23:35:11 – 00:24:02:20
I think it’s so critical. Like, I think that’s such a powerful statement. Like, these are the type of people I’m looking for, and this is who you need to be if you’re going to work for me. Now, he does say B players are new people that can get trained into a players, because I do think it’s hard to hire A’s across the board and or can be very expensive, which is why we found but yeah, can BS be trained and then C’s are just average and need to be filtered out.
00:24:03:02 – 00:24:42:04
But I love when people say this, but I do think that’s hard practically. You know, I mean, you know, is an a player wanting to be folding shirts, right? Like, you know, or or, how do you think about that? Or is what you measure, as in a player different based on the role? You know, some of my favorite employees I’m going to use, like production, for instance, some of my favorite employees obsess at being the best they can at the role they’re given, like they know their place in the ecosystem.
00:24:42:06 – 00:25:10:00
And so, like, we have a couple of guys, you know, like in our receiving area, Barry and Tim, and they’re just like, we are going to we’re going to be so good at this that people are like, people understand how crazy, seriously, we take this or like in our shipping, we have these two guys like Corey and Dustin and like, we’re going to be shipping machines and they just own that and take so much pride in it.
00:25:10:02 – 00:25:33:14
And I think they’re a little bit more mature in age. And they’re not trying to be superheroes at life. They’re just like, when I come to work, I’m going to do a fantastic job and be a pleasure to work with. And those are some of my favorite people. Corey, Dustin, Barry, Tim is literally the quote that actually you just read a players are obsessive, learn from mistakes, coachable, intelligent, and don’t make excuses.
00:25:33:19 – 00:25:56:20
They want to be the best goddamn person at their job. All right. His next thing was use consultants. Consultants are literally cheat codes. He says if you need you know, Mr. Beast, if you haven’t seen his videos, they do like just very extreme different things. So he says, if you need to make the world’s largest cake, find the last person who did it just immediately to skip time.
00:25:57:02 – 00:26:22:10
And he’s right. Like, you know, put you put the pride or ego aside, find the person who’s already been there, who’s already done it, get the advice, take what you want, need, you know, plug it in and then move on. I agree, I mean everything works upstream. So like I’ve been coaching shops because I can get them from point A to point F faster than you’ve been there.
00:26:22:12 – 00:26:41:21
I’ve been there like, don’t do this, don’t do this. Focus on this. Yeah. Just like no, no, no w doing this will work. Trust me. Here’s how we’re doing it right here. You know don’t you Skype Microsoft Teams, you slack set up your Zapier this way instead of your print type of this way. Trust me, it works. And it’s just a time saving thing, is all it is.
00:26:41:21 – 00:27:08:01
You’re just paying to speed up the process. And I think that’s when, you know, Kevin Baumgartner was probably the first consultant we we worked with. And that really opened my eyes at whoa. He just set up all of our scripting. We don’t even have to think about it. He can hop in for one hour a month with our team and get them way faster to where I would have spent way more time trying to prepare and learn and all that kind of stuff.
00:27:08:03 – 00:27:31:07
And so whether it’s Ryan, Caspian or, you know, whoever that might be, trusting consultants is it’s the same as the fractional CFO. You pay for what you get, you know, it’s the same as getting the best hitting coach or golf coach or instructor. Go find the best person and, you know, get them to get you there.
00:27:31:09 – 00:27:54:01
Yeah. Couldn’t agree more. I probably did not lean on this as hard as I could have before, but I definitely agree on this one big time. And then the last point is production. He talks about which in, you know, in his world video production, what he says extra communication is needed. More is not slower, although it feels slower but it’s not slower.
00:27:54:03 – 00:28:26:13
Less communication is slower because of mistakes. You know we’re not communicating on deadlines. We’re not communicating on details. Things like that. He also adds in a specific I always give one day buffer for them. They pump out one video a day, but he requires that always one day buffer. And then the last thing he says is we document everything, document every process that you’re doing, new process that you’re doing, put it into a doc and then document to backup plans to oh.
00:28:26:13 – 00:28:48:13
And then the last one, if it comes up or you think it’s going to happen, communicate potential issues early. So you see some things are going to unfold. Call it out. Bring it up to where you need to. It’s interesting. Bruce, when you talk about documenting everything, you know, as our company gets bigger and bigger, there are parts of the business that I don’t know how to I don’t know how some things work anymore.
00:28:48:13 – 00:29:14:07
I don’t know how licensing works. I don’t know how some reports are submitted and as our company grows and people come and go, our CFO, Steve, who came from auditing big financial institutions, is like a documentation maniac. Because like, he’s he would say like we would go through young auditors and they would come through our business and, you know, they could be gone in a year.
00:29:14:09 – 00:29:31:19
And I wonder if shops took the same approach of just, like, writing everything down in one place, so that you can always go back and do it, instead of just, like, teaching. Hey, this is how you reclaim a screen. It’s like, are you do you have your camera out? And are you recording a loom video while you’re teaching?
00:29:31:19 – 00:29:54:11
That’s, you know, teaching them how to reclaim, the tools out there that are available are so cheap, almost free, so easy to use. It’s it’s easier than ever to document. And so not documenting is almost an excusable kind of foolish. I think. What that what tools are you guys using for documentation? Loom. We use the crap out of loom.
00:29:54:12 – 00:30:17:06
Loom can go on your phone. It can record a video. It can transcribe it and turn it into an SOP. And they’re like, yeah, they’re like five minute clips. There was a tool, I don’t know if we were using it as much now called tango that will watch your screen. And then as it watches your screen, it’ll take pictures and it’ll make a click through of an SOP at the end of it.
00:30:17:08 – 00:30:39:06
Right. So how to use printable, how to enter in an order, how to send a payment request, how to do all those things. But more importantly, like we have tons of heat presses, how to level a heat press because it just drives me nuts when a heat presses off level and it’s sliding back and forth, and the press operator is, you know, pushing it with their elbow, and I’m like, stop.
00:30:39:08 – 00:31:00:22
Here’s the video for how to level the heat press. Literally, you have to go under it. You have to get the things right. You know, there’s a level in the corner and I want all my heat presses level. And so I went on a crazy person leveling Bender. I mean, it’s just it’s stuff like that, right? And, you know, I think Scott Garner, is so good at this.
00:31:00:22 – 00:31:27:05
Now, he was just showing us this morning reorder cards, that gets scanned when something’s out, and it goes to his Monday board, and he just like, he doesn’t allow a process to go unlearned. So you really have to adapt it. That’s loom along Mi.com. And then the other one you mentioned tango. Tango that we keep everything in notion.
00:31:27:05 – 00:31:52:18
Notion is our directory of procedures. So that’s our Wikipedia. And it’s really cool. It’s like a glorified Google Docs. Yeah. Notion that they do make the in notion. I think the reason that it’s better than Google axes, the like chapters or like pages are way better organized. So you can collapse stuff. You can go to different pages or chapters really easily, and you can make it a really rich document like Dragon Files.
00:31:52:18 – 00:32:10:06
Super easy. And yeah, it just has a lot that’s built out. Notion is the ocean. Notion is the ocean. All right. So that’s the doc that’ll be in the description. You guys can check it out. I thought it was super interesting. Again the tone that he wrote it in I really liked because I think it’s very readable and to the point.
00:32:10:08 – 00:32:28:12
All right. I got one more thing for you. There’s a Facebook group called Rogue Printers, which is the Stewards Facebook group. It’s a pretty good group. It has a lot of people asking pretty, pretty good questions. It hasn’t been overridden by spam, like a lot of the other Facebook groups have. And just like the one you started.
00:32:28:14 – 00:32:48:21
Yeah, I mean, you just got to stay on them because you get all these requests all the time, you accept them all, and then next thing you know, you get just digitizing and like like patch manufacturers galore. But anyway, the question was what’s been the biggest thing that took your business to the next level. And we always asked this question of gas.
00:32:48:21 – 00:33:20:01
So this was a very quick crowdsourcing of it. And there’s, you know, seven or so responses that I picked from it that are very practical things that you guys can be able to apply to your business. So, the first one I’ll mention was they said, art, anyone can print and literally, learn how to do it is we know the barriers to entry to, you know, my equipment, especially with transfers now is so low.
00:33:20:03 – 00:33:48:09
But most people can’t do art and most print jobs do mid or terrible. I already said, if you can print and do high end art and make it and print it, then that will set you apart from most. So sounds like his niche is definitely. And you know folks that really care about very detailed art. Yeah. And I think of a couple shops, a graphic disorder that does the cars right, or even Oklahoma Shirt Company where Justin really leaned into his art department early on.
00:33:48:11 – 00:34:07:01
To just make, you know, hanging designs. That stuff matters for sure. All right. The next one is someone said a few years back, I took a gamble on vending at a small music fest halfway across the country. It cost him a lot. He met with a lot of cool people, and he lost almost two grand over all that weekend.
00:34:07:03 – 00:34:29:22
But after that, several record labels and nonprofits that were there who he chatted with after I saw the company, hit them up for printing afterwards. So one of those customers is now their biggest customer and took them to the next level. So two grand essentially on, you know, marketing has all the time to do something like that, but sounds like the ROI was through the roof.
00:34:30:00 – 00:34:57:04
And so taking a risk on, you know, old fashioned mean people in person really paid off. I mean, Bruce, you said this early on, if you want to grow, you have to throw the party. Right? And you can’t throw the party inside the walls of your building. While you could. I guess if you want to have an open house or something like that, but you have to do something a little dicey, a little risky, something that you’re scared of a little bit.
00:34:57:06 – 00:35:19:15
And for us, it was two things. It was going on Shopify and setting up full online, an entire online store experience for a national fraternity. We were in over our skis we didn’t know we were doing, but we did it. And the other one was setting up a pop up store in the middle of downtown Chicago that was literally open for a week because Illinois blew it in the first round of March Madness.
00:35:19:17 – 00:35:47:01
And like those two crazy experiences are the reason our business is where it’s at today. I looked like a freaking idiot doing both of them. But I remember you laying, was it a wallpaper or like. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You like squeegee? I’m like, yeah. But, we had lines out the door. The news was there, people came in, and then when Nill hit, they’re like, oh, that’s a no brainer.
00:35:47:03 – 00:36:06:07
They’re the ones that did that pop up store. And I look at a lot of our friends, right? Like family industries, the. They were heat pressing tennis balls at the US open last week or two weeks ago. But I think of, like Max probably early on when they were first doing their live events. Right. Or now live printing.com with Justin.
00:36:06:10 – 00:36:33:22
Right. Or TK who’s at, you know, bike tournaments across the country and working on trailers and stuff like that, like the inflection points in your business are going to be because you really put yourself out there and do something a little nutty and then chase it. So I think that’s cool. Yeah, yeah. Especially in a world it feels like in a world that’s a lot more competitive, that half of the business transaction was there.
00:36:33:22 – 00:37:01:02
Yeah. You met the service, you did whatever they asked and you got it done. And the other half is just that you connected with, like, you guys have a friendly bond that they like working with you and they, they, they enjoy you as a, as a, as a vendor of theirs. All right. The third point he wrote or she wrote, I don’t remember who puts posted this, but raising prices, raising minimums and letting go of bad customers, it was a big turning point for their business.
00:37:01:04 – 00:37:21:17
I think we were all jealous of that. So for you that’s out there, congratulations. Yeah. Someone got featured in a magazine under their gift guide. So this was like a, tattoo magazine. And so under their gift guide for the holidays, they were featured. And that really boosted a lot of outreach. I think that was a pretty cool marketing tactic, actually.
00:37:21:19 – 00:37:46:02
You know, audience, did you ever do press like earn press earn media? No, we just did the ink 5000 thing, which helped for hiring. I feel like like I think it legitimized a little bit when, you know, oh, this, this company or but what do they really. Oh okay. They have this, you know, emblem on on. They’re LinkedIn or something.
00:37:46:04 – 00:38:08:06
But no. Did you guys so early on we did some stuff right. Yeah. We’ve done ink 5000. One of our head of marketing for nil came from kind of the PR world. He was the PR guy for Maryland athletics, and so he knows how to pitch stories. And so what he would do or what he does is he’s got contacts at all the big media outlets.
00:38:08:06 – 00:38:30:04
Sports Illustrated, Sports Business Journal, ESPN, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post. And he will feed them stories to try and get us featured and see what sticks. And so, I don’t know if you saw I was at the Nasdaq in New York doing an interview. Oh. That’s right. That was that was pitch that was pitched.
00:38:30:06 – 00:38:51:01
And so you can do that on a local level though. And so, you know, if we want to get published in our newspaper locally, like the News Gazette and Champagne, we just call a couple of reporters, Evan’s like, hey, we got a cool story for you. Come, come check it out. And so you, in order to get earned media or press, you actually have to put yourself out there.
00:38:51:03 – 00:39:09:15
Like I think Tom Brown was on like CNBC this morning or something. I don’t I don’t frickin know. But you have to put yourself out there and you can actually hire PR agencies to help you do this. And they’ll take a retainer like 2 or $3000, and they’ll pitch you and plug you into publications and get you interviews.
00:39:09:15 – 00:39:33:12
And, you know, even like a speaking tour, if you’re good. So, you know, like, that stuff definitely matters. And it’s something that we have recently learned about and we do it all the time now. So yeah, I feel like there’s a lot of the PR agencies feel very scammy. How did you find a good one or did you, try a few bad ones?
00:39:33:12 – 00:39:52:04
And then finally, you know, we actually do everything internally. I mean, we basically have someone full time doing our PR and sending out press releases. And these are his media contacts from working in industry. Oh, wow, I do get I do get hit up. A PR agency can be anywhere between 5 and $10,000 a month, so.
00:39:52:09 – 00:40:14:06
Okay. Yeah, but if there’s a specific niche that you’re after, they can they can seed you at once, like in a bunch of different places and plug you in, you know, seems like more practical too, is what you said of reaching out to local newspapers. Because you’re right, the reporters are always looking for new, interesting stories, so they love to feature.
00:40:14:06 – 00:40:34:22
If you can send something that’s like, you know, you hired X amount or you made this huge goal this year or you expanded all this or you know, you want to. I mean, you mentioned time round, but he’s great at, you know, he’s worn the most t shirts or he’s, you know, done all this crazy stuff, gets a lot of interesting media coverage.
00:40:34:23 – 00:40:56:04
Yeah. So you follow him, he’ll let you know about it. So he plugs himself in and then gets a lot of good, good coverage from it. There you go, Tom. There’s your shout out. All right. Next one 100% advance payment for everything. Good for them. Hats off. Love it okay. If you’re a shop hold on. The public service announcement.
00:40:56:06 – 00:41:26:12
If you don’t request payment on order, approve service announcement. Public. Public service now. Attention, Steven. For punctures. If you are not. If you are not sending payment requests immediately on every order, you should start doing it today, on every order, even to, you know, because I think. All right. So just there’s level one of that. Just send it to everyone.
00:41:26:14 – 00:41:35:09
Because if they have terms, the worst freaking thing they can do is pay early.
00:41:35:11 – 00:41:56:10
Well, I don’t want to send them an invoice because they got not 30. Send them the fricking invoice and they might pay early. Thank you. You know, you’re listening to your friend. Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for listening to my public service announcement. I bought that siren on. It was I’ve been waiting for months to use it.
00:41:56:12 – 00:42:19:19
Waiting for months. It’s literally been sitting here. All right. Second last one. Networking. Going to industry events. Yeah. I mean, look, even if you’re a small shop, I push this off for a long time. When we were tiny, my gosh, going to just go to impressions. Long beach, save up, go to Long Beach. You know, I mean, if you’re closer to Fort Worth, that one’s a pretty good one too.
00:42:19:19 – 00:42:55:22
But really, say Long Beach is the one you should. You’re missing one. You’re missing one. Dumb ass. Let’s, print Hustler’s. Hey, 2024. Print hustlers is the most specialist weekend for printers. And if you haven’t bought your ticket already, you should go to Mad Lab. Buy your ticket. There’s a coupon code because it is literally the coolest conference in our printing industry, and it’s two days long and it usually falls on my birthday weekend, first weekend in November this year in Cleveland, Ohio.
00:42:56:00 – 00:43:17:00
That’s right, and use the code hustlers 24. That’ll get you a nice little discount if you like that segue. That was great. You’re welcome from, getting paid up front to print hustlers. Kind of. All right. And then last but not least, one which you guys follow this one too. He bought his own freestanding commercial building that has a retail space in front.
00:43:17:00 – 00:43:37:10
I love this hack, by the way. Own retail space in front to a major street and it’s a huge shop space in the back rather than cash. And it’s changed the game for us. No changing rents. You know, they haven’t gotten squeezed by, higher cost of rent. And it sounded like he rented out the front. But I’m I’m not positive on that part.
00:43:37:12 – 00:44:01:16
If you can afford to buy it. Interest rates just got cut yesterday. Yeah. Half point. Half point. If you can afford to buy your building and you can grow into it, I would definitely suggest doing it, that you set the terms and it’s. You can set up a holdco that makes money. Differently from the from your business, or the business pays rent to it, and you can that that’s a way to retire.
00:44:01:18 – 00:44:20:19
And so some of the strongest shops in our industry own the real estate and if it’s something you can do, I would highly suggest you do it. Yeah. Love it. All right. Pronounces appreciate you guys hanging out with us this week. This episode number. I have no idea. I should actually look at the title. I have no idea.
00:44:21:01 – 00:44:43:13
In the hundreds, maybe. Hey, we think you guys excited to see a pronounces kind of the 2024. And we’ll see you on next week’s episode or pronounces podcast said conference. All right. Bye. Thanks so much for listening. Hopefully that was informative. Don’t forget to subscribe. Don’t forget to like don’t forget to hit the bell for notifications if you enjoyed this video.
00:44:43:13 – 00:44:56:09
If you enjoy all the stuff we’re putting out, it’s really helpful. We love to just be able to see it. That means that we’re doing a good job. To subscribe, hit the bell notification and hit the like button and I’ll see you in the next episode. Bye.
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