We’re joined by THE Gorilla Joe of Gorilla Joe Printing in OH. We discuss the gradual deviation from contract printing and becoming more than just your shop.
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Transcript:
00:00:04:06 – 00:00:34:11
For an exciting episode with Gorilla Joe Printing out of Youngstown, Ohio. This episode is is touching it. Really is it? We really dive into how Joe is transforming, running his business from a large contract shop to divesting from that. So a lot of us contract work, but also with a better focus on his personal life. Joe just talks about what was going on with his marriage and how he can be able to create a better work life balance.
00:00:34:12 – 00:01:00:12
So excited to really dive into this topic. And, you know, Joe’s pretty open and transparent shares a lot in this. So here we go. But first we’ve got a couple sponsors that we want to be able to share because they’re an incredible supporter of this show. First up Supacolor Supacolors world’s best heat transfer. It’s made for screen printers by screen printers, and they understand the pressures and expectations of running a screen printing business.
00:01:00:17 – 00:01:19:15
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00:01:19:17 – 00:01:42:01
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00:01:42:02 – 00:02:11:05
Send him your email address, pop up in your Instagram app, send them your email address and he’s sending that out every single week. That is awesome. Thanks, Dave. Easiway. If you’re spending hours cleaning screens, that is a thing of the past with Easiways screen printing and screen cleaning chemicals. Their innovative formulas are designed to work quickly and effectively so you can spend less time cleaning and more time creating, selling, just enjoying life, whatever you want to be able to do.
00:02:11:07 – 00:02:36:19
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00:02:36:21 – 00:03:00:08
Encompassing as I have five production artists that helps with star creation, customer service production art, mock ups, things like that. They do a bunch more. If you hit on my graph x source.com, mention Printavo part two for until about 24, I get you 50% off your first vector step or digitized order. All right, let’s jump into the episode.
00:03:00:10 – 00:03:23:08
Curious as we we we talked a lot of different guest that are in different stages of the businesses. And everyone’s focused on different things. And sometimes it’s like, well, this is what I’m thinking about, but this is what I probably should be spending time or thinking about. Kind of curious. And your. And what keeps you up? What what do you what do you spend a lot of mental cycles thinking about?
00:03:23:13 – 00:03:43:09
I know we’re talking about business here, but, lately, for me, it’s just been a lot of personal shit. But, as far as business goes, when I listen to you guys this podcast about hiring a CEO, I took that really, really, to heart because I was like, I don’t want to be in the everyday operations anymore.
00:03:43:11 – 00:04:05:11
So I’m, I’m training our production manager to, to be that. So he’s going to learn how to do some of the stuff that I do. I’m basically switching roles to just finance stuff. Accounting. Not me doing the accounting, but just worrying about that kind of stuff where the money is being spent. How it’s coming in, how it’s going out.
00:04:05:13 – 00:04:25:15
And then when I’m sick of that, I’ll hire someone to do that. But as far as production goes, I mean, if somebody needs me to help pull shirts or something like that, and I’m here, I’ll do that. But I really want to stay the fuck out of everyone’s way. And I want to kind of have a life again.
00:04:25:17 – 00:04:49:04
And not just think about this place. This place is my only fun. I’m like, I’m there. So. Hey, Joe, you’ve been at it for how many years now? Legally, since 2012. A paid hobby since 2009. So 2009 ish. So, I mean, you’re going on 12 years, like 13, 14 years. And, you know, if you were to just.
00:04:49:04 – 00:05:09:04
And we know you as Gorilla Joe because you’re Gorilla Joe printing, right? Like the company is your name, your you know, it’s going to be a little. Yeah. This identity thing. I want to talk about a little bit. But like in terms of scale, where has the business really professionalized like in the last couple of years? It’s really gotten I mean, you’ve had Ryan Caspian come out and work with you for like 6 to 8 weeks, like, how big is.
00:05:09:04 – 00:05:34:12
So people understand how big your facility is now. Can you give everyone a little bit of a footprint before we dive into where you’re at in your business career? Yeah. You know what? I don’t really consider our shop big. I have acquired other businesses that were going out of business. Like, when I needed. I didn’t need a third auto when I bought it, but I bought a shop in Columbus for 30 grand, and it came with an auto.
00:05:34:17 – 00:05:55:14
It came with a bunch of screens. It came with a bunch of contract work for the next two years to that. That paid for that. Don’t I need the third auto? No. But like, I got it. And then we were printing a lot for, a big merch company in Cleveland that I bought. They’re 16 color.
00:05:55:16 – 00:06:13:20
I didn’t really need that, but I got a really good deal on that and a dryer. And you know, we, we don’t run full capacity with all four of our presses because we have four presses. But we, I mean, we do sometimes like, right now we’re running all four presses. All of our tag presses are, congested.
00:06:13:22 – 00:06:33:23
And, you know, we we have a manual, but we don’t really do anything much on that. But we have about 17 employees. We do a lot of merch for bands. A lot of fast churn stuff. You know, it’s like hot market for brands. We don’t really do much sports. We do a lot of schools. But, you know, most of our, like, our, our language is bands.
00:06:34:04 – 00:07:08:02
Is there a, is there a size to the business. And maybe it’s revenue size or people size where you started to feel that, you know, I don’t want to be involved in operations anymore. Yeah. You know what? I think it was? I’d say last year we we hired outside sales. Last year, just one gal. She works remotely from states away, and, we went from 70% contract work to, like, basically doing away with all contract work.
00:07:08:02 – 00:07:30:16
Unless we had a really good relationship and it was really easy process. So now for like full package. And so I’d say last year when I started to be like, okay, I kind of want to remove myself because it was just getting, you know, I mean, we last year was was a great year. This year’s going to be a really great year too.
00:07:30:18 – 00:07:48:03
But yeah, I’d say last year when I started to realize, like, okay, like I need to kind of focus on other things and like, I kind of just want to let this place run itself. What? Yeah. What goes on for you when you get to that point? Okay. So like, I bet you there’s a lot of people listening to this that feel the same.
00:07:48:05 – 00:08:10:05
I’ve been at this for ten years. The businesses, you know, at this point I want to start to remove myself from it. What triggered that for you? I’m going to be I’m going to be brutally honest. I felt my relationship. I felt like my relationship with my wife was failing. And, there was proof that it kind of had, we started to become detached from each other.
00:08:10:07 – 00:08:29:23
I don’t want to say that there was anything that worth ruining the marriage over, but, there was some stuff that surfaced, and, I realized that I was like, fuck this. That’s more important. I can I can let this. I can, I can these people can run this without me. And, I like to come in.
00:08:30:01 – 00:08:48:12
I like to check on things, but I’m really not checking on the progress of things. I don’t even know what we’re printing half the time. And it’s not because I don’t care. It’s just. I don’t see the production schedule or like Nate does. Or our sales girl. You know, that’s kind of. That was the kind of trigger for me.
00:08:48:12 – 00:09:13:20
Like, I want to get back to having fun on vacation, not worrying about stuff at home. And, the the relationship with my wife wasn’t it wasn’t imminent. So it it’s repairable. We’re we’re working on things right now and things are the best they’ve ever been. So I think, you know, my my relationship with my business didn’t make things fail.
00:09:13:22 – 00:09:52:15
I think my disconnection with my family made things almost fail. So that’s that was a that was a big thing for me. I want to talk about this is really interesting. You bring this up of unintended consequences of going like beast mode on your company. Something that I’ve been looking at is like, what are the unintended impacts that happen when we become beast mode entrepreneurs and we’re, you know, working 100 hours a week and we’re like superheroes, like, you know, I don’t feel like it’s like it’s like you didn’t start this business to say, like, I’m going to put everything into this and I don’t care what happens to my relationships.
00:09:52:17 – 00:10:15:20
It just kind of happens, right? Do you do you feel like that unintended consequence started happening like elsewhere, too? Like you said. Okay. So like with my wife, like, where else did you start to see like this? Like, Holy shit, I need to, I need I got one life, you know, I see another. Seems to like she likes to travel.
00:10:15:22 – 00:10:36:14
I any time that we would, discuss a vacation or go on a cruise, like I, I dreaded it. I didn’t want to go because I felt like I was missing out here. I don’t know, like it just. And it’s not about going on vacation. Like, I really just want to, you know, my daughter’s. And she’s gonna start first grade last year.
00:10:36:14 – 00:10:55:20
You know, obviously, she’s in kindergarten. I have to leave now at 330 to get her off the bus every day. If this was five years ago, I would have had a panic attack because I couldn’t leave at that time. Even when she was born, I didn’t want to go to the hospital because I was pressing Jersey like it was just, I don’t know.
00:10:55:22 – 00:11:17:18
So I hope I answered that question. I kind of speak roundabout and and I go off on tangents. So just keep me focused. No, but I think, like, this is, you know, like my parents, you know, I’ll be like, hey, what’s going on? You didn’t call. And they’re like, well, we know you’re busy, right? Or like, we know that.
00:11:17:20 – 00:11:41:01
Like, we know that Stephen’s out there doing whatever Jets, you know, we know that. And it like almost becomes the norm and people like associate you to that. And that’s like, especially when your name is on the company. Yeah. You know, and that was that was unintended. To be honest, we were doing I was working from, my house at the time, and I got a job with, Penn State.
00:11:41:01 – 00:12:03:15
Shenango. So that’s, you know, local campus for Penn State. And they asked me what our company was called. And I have a tattoo of a gorilla on my leg because my band members used to call me a silverback gorilla. And I, I hung up the phone because I was like, I don’t know what our company is called. I’m just in my basement printing, just, you know, I call her back and said, that’s Gorilla Joe for any company.
00:12:03:17 – 00:12:23:13
And, so I made a fake invoice and it just stuck. It’s it’s not some narcissistic plea to put my face on anything. Half the time on our videos, I’m not even in them. And, you know, but my family, I would I would not go to family outings. I remember completely just being like, I’m just too busy to go.
00:12:23:13 – 00:12:43:15
Not visiting my dad when he had failed health, not having the time to really do anything fun. Like I didn’t really have fun doing anything. Like I was just like so glued to this place and this place. You know, I’ve never worked so hard at something in my life. And and to have the results come out of it is, is like a high.
00:12:43:17 – 00:13:09:03
It’s, it’s a, it’s a dopamine rush. So it’s like when, when I’m, I mean, I printed shirts for some of my favorite bands the entire world. Like there’s nothing that feels better than that. Like, I almost feel like I wouldn’t even care if we got paid. I’m just like, so stoked that we’re doing it. But. So that’s kind of, you know, what the whole purpose behind having this identity or whatever, like blowing other people off to, to basically run the business.
00:13:09:05 – 00:13:33:04
But Bruce, do you felt like this when your middle name was Printavo on Facebook at your. Yeah. I mean, and I relate to the to the marriage strain. And then like, not being, excited about, like, being away from slack and from my I, it was like the weekends were the only time that you could, decompress a little bit because, you know, all the channels were, weren’t moving so fast.
00:13:33:04 – 00:13:52:12
But I think I realize now, like, that was a crazy addiction like that. What that was just like, that was that was me trying to do more of what got us to step one, but won’t get us to step two in a way, which it sounds like you’re going through that transition of step 1 to 2 of like, all right, let the team do its thing.
00:13:52:12 – 00:14:13:20
I, I can let them execute. I don’t need to. We always say that. We’re just we’re like it’s kind of poisonous. It’s like I’ll just, you know, do this or let me just, complete this for them. Yeah. I mean, I was getting a lot with that. There is, the coach of the, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, I think his name is Bruce Arians.
00:14:13:22 – 00:14:31:02
Like his opening speech to his team. And his staff is like, if you if I’ll fire you if you if you miss your kids activities, I love that. And it’s just like, damn like you only got you know, I know we’re going to be on the road. I know we’re going to be on TV every Sunday. Do not miss your kids activities.
00:14:31:04 – 00:14:50:03
You know? And it’s like, I think we all live in this bubble because we’re like, I look at business and I think, Joe Bruce, you resonate with this business is play for us. We’re playing. We’re just like kids in a sandbox with our little trucks playing in the sand, printing for our favorite friends, flying the trade shows.
00:14:50:03 – 00:15:17:09
We’re doing all this stuff. And then people are like looking outside to play the sandbox is like, have they had enough? Like, you know, but it’s it’s play. Go ahead. So like, you know, I grew up touring with my band, like I was in a band. I mean, it kind of came back now. There was a resurgence of like heavy metal bands in the 20s and stuff, and I think we’re more wanted to play now than we were when we were actually functioning.
00:15:17:11 – 00:15:39:17
So we’re doing some shows and stuff like that. We’re doing a couple little tours. But I get more out of traveling on these, you know, work stations, you know, for ice and other things. I get more out of that than I ever did touring because, you know, I think, I don’t know, I, I this just like, excites the hell out of me.
00:15:39:19 – 00:15:55:10
And that’s never going to go anywhere. Like, so I’m never going to remove myself from that kind of stuff. But, you know, my wife runs a salon and she goes on work trips, too. She doesn’t feel the same way I do about, you know, like she doesn’t have friends in a bunch of different states that own salons and stuff.
00:15:55:10 – 00:16:24:13
It’s kind of more of like all the text, all day, every day. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And like, yeah, our group chat is friggin awesome. Like, there’s a, there’s not a ceiling. There’s like literally like an emotional drive. Now to make a change. What’s next like hot like what do you do now. Well I, I sat down with Nate and I said, look, dude, I was like, I want you to run this company.
00:16:24:15 – 00:16:52:00
And what’s Nate’s role right now? He’s a production manager. Okay? So he does some hiring, he does some firing. He uses the power scheduler religiously, daily, maneuver stuff. I mean, I mean, he’s a logistics master as far as playing chess with jobs coming in, because obviously we know we might have something scheduled, but the truck doesn’t come in with the shirts or we’re missing the two axles and it’s a ten color front, three color back.
00:16:52:01 – 00:17:15:11
He is. I took all that stress off of me, put it on him. He’s also, we have a maintenance guy, and he’s also fixing our image. If it’s if it fucks up and we have an image and we have a spider. The wax unit I love. Way better. No offense to the image, but, you know, we had an issue with something with that for two days, and he was on it.
00:17:15:13 – 00:17:32:08
And he kind of does everything he tells me when, you know, something’s broken and, you know, we need to order some parts or. I mean, he he does kind of everything. And he talks to most of our customers who are direct with us, who might have, like, his number and say, hey, can you fit this in instead of this job?
00:17:32:08 – 00:18:06:15
You know, instead of, you know, he took all that off my plate, which we used to stress, stress me the hell out. So how do you groom him to really like. So we talk about promoting from within or getting like professionals to lead the company. Right. Like you heard that podcast from Andrew Wilkinson or whatever of of actually hiring like a professional seasoned executive or like, you know, where what does Nate have to learn to be able to really take the place over with confidence that you can, like, turn your back, like, what are you and Nate, if you’re listening to this, we love you.
00:18:06:17 – 00:18:13:07
But like what what where are you going? To have to groom him the most.
00:18:13:09 – 00:18:49:20
Honestly, I don’t know, because I have literally no control over production. And that’s one thing that when, when I, when I, when I was working with Ryan and we were working with Ryan, I was still involved and he was learning. But now there’s I don’t have anything to do with anything. I mean, the most that I do is, as far as production wise, is I might enter an invoice here and there, you know, through for Davo and tell my sales girl that, hey, this has to run on Friday.
00:18:50:02 – 00:19:11:12
It’s for a friend of mine. Can I just can you make sure Nate can get it done? If not, I’ll run it on a press roll late at night or something like that. Like, you know, that’s literally the extent of it. So I don’t know what else I could even throw at him. I don’t want him to get involved with, like, finances or anything like that, because I’m not really trying to make one person do everything.
00:19:11:17 – 00:19:29:19
It’s just he does. He does all production. He knows what the hell is going on. He knows when an under base isn’t right and it’s being re image. I mean, he knows absolutely everything. And I’m amazed sometimes like sometimes I come up and I’m like, hey you know about this, right? And he’s like, dude, it’s done already or you know, something like that.
00:19:29:21 – 00:19:54:15
So I don’t know what else I could possibly do. Do you have to hire? Okay. So knowing his voyage, like, okay, he’s not going to be the finance guy might not even be the sales leader but still knows customers. Would you have to hire another executive or someone like senior to really get you? Like if you were taking a year long vacation, who would you have to hired and put in place to actually get the business to run?
00:19:54:17 – 00:20:29:02
I think probably, a professional CFO and like bookkeeper. I do you still control the money right now? Yeah. You? Yeah, for sure. I drive the sales side. Then the CFO person. You mean like outside sales? Yeah. Like, just to make sure that you’re not going backwards, you know? Yeah, for sure, because I, I look at outside like the outside.
00:20:29:04 – 00:20:59:00
Outside sales grow. She’s not bringing us 200, $300 order. She’s bringing us. I mean, right now we’re doing a $189,000 order for one band. One of our first jobs last year was almost $600,000. And then it got added to it, and I was just like, Whoa. So her her jobs per month might be like 5 or 6, but they’re very, very high end, like, expensive jobs.
00:20:59:02 – 00:21:17:16
So I’m looking at those to make sure, you know, we charged enough for the upcharge on the blank. We’re doing a lot of readings right now, so we’re buying shirts and then send them to dye House to be dyed. And I want to make sure that that’s compensated for you know, the shipping bring it back to us.
00:21:17:18 – 00:21:45:06
So I don’t want to talk about this, but like, does she needs a liter, right? To be able to work with her, talk to her, check in with her because like, if her, well, go runs dry or for context, run out, or if she gets picked up by someone else. Right. Like how do you if you were to leave for a year, which she self-regulate and self manage, or would you have to hire someone to like oversee to make sure those 4 or 5 orders were coming in every month?
00:21:45:07 – 00:22:10:06
I know I wouldn’t have to, basically her and Nate or her, Nate and Kelly in our front office are the absolute driving force. They are so organized. And so, like, if this if everyone were to quit, as long as those three didn’t, like, we could still keep going because Nate would be like, fuck it, I’ll run one press and then we’ll hire.
00:22:10:08 – 00:22:30:06
We have a buddy, Mike Gayton at Hydro Print House in Toledo. They’ll contract the rest of the shit to that that guy, like, I mean, he’ll he’ll figure it out. He always figures it out, so I mean, I wouldn’t have to I don’t I don’t like, look over them to make sure that everything’s okay. I just, I just, you know, look at it.
00:22:30:07 – 00:22:50:06
It sounds like there’s a lot of trust between you and them. Right? Right. Like mutual respect. Trust. Is it a pay thing? Incentives like these are your. These are. That’s your tribe basically. Right. And like how do you keep them motivated happy. You know, I know Nate’s been with you for a minute, but like, how do you make sure.
00:22:50:07 – 00:23:12:03
Because you said something. They’re like, if one of them left, we’d be fucked. Like what? What do you do to actually keep them happy? Cohen sounds like they’re pretty happy. Yeah. No, I didn’t say if one of them left would be fucked. I mean, I’d be very inconvenienced. But what I meant, like, if our whole team. Yeah, if it’s all right.
00:23:12:03 – 00:23:35:04
Right. And that’s fine. I mean, no, I meant the whole team left as long as, you know, none of them did. But, no, I guess I guess I did say I’d be fucked, but, to keep them motivated. I mean, they are there’s incentives. There’s. I mean, the more sales, you know, come in like the commission, you know, obviously gets paid out.
00:23:35:06 – 00:24:19:15
Yeah, yeah. And like, salaries. Good. With Nate, like, I mean, like, you know, there’s raises a lot. And he loves what he does, like, I mean, this is, you know, having a print shop with a, a bunch of misfits. It’s like when you can get everybody to really just love this whole industry. You know, I think, I don’t want to say that that’s enough because people come and go, but you got to be a certain type of person to want to watch screens all day or to run a, reclaim or be in the hot, sweaty environment, you know, of catching shirts.
00:24:19:15 – 00:24:41:23
You next to a giant fucking pizza oven, you know, like it? They care about the, you they’re in an environment where they can. But it’s like if if the. I think what you’re saying is, like, you, you bring your team to trade shows, right? Yeah. Like, there’s always a tribe around you and you’ve always religiously done that.
00:24:42:01 – 00:25:00:18
I don’t know, I don’t always, not always. Okay. You’ve, Since I’ve known you, I’ve always seen, like, Nate with you or something like that. Right. Sure. I got, but you created an environment to say, okay, the work might suck day to day. It might be hot, grungy, sweaty, whatever we’re going to do. Cool shit. Come along with me on this journey and I will, like, take care of you.
00:25:00:18 – 00:25:39:08
It’s like you got a little Father Abraham on you, you know? Right on. Yeah, man. And I’m so fucking stoked for, the print out of, you know, print out the thing, and. Yeah, because it’s an hour away. So, like, anybody that wants to go in my shop is going to go and, you know, we’re going to get a bunch of hotel rooms and, you know, we’re going to see a different side of each other than, you know, anybody seen, you know, like partying, hanging out there, going to see, you know, Jack and all that other stuff like so like I can’t wait, I hope I hope everybody comes.
00:25:39:08 – 00:26:07:07
I don’t care how much it cost. Like, you know, I can’t afford everybody to come out. The IRS and some people it doesn’t really make sense. But you know. Yeah, I mean I, I, I want to lead them into like I also let people know too that when they start out this isn’t they’re stealing like late start it up like $12 an hour when we first I mean this was like 2015, running a press and like basically this interview was can you set up a job?
00:26:07:09 – 00:26:25:14
And he set up a job and he was like, he’s like, I don’t want to go to my other job tonight. Do I have a job here? I’m like, yeah, fuck yeah. He goes, all right, I’m going golfing. I’ll see you Monday. Like so. Ever since the beginning, we just try to create a culture of hard working, fun, crazy artists.
00:26:25:14 – 00:26:59:11
Pretty much. You know, what’s interesting is I feel like, on one side, you talk about the team is so powerful, you know, they gel well, they’re able to manage stuff. They can take care of things, they’re proactive. And then the other side, it’s like I’m mentally trying to not be like in their way. And I’m like forcefully trying to get myself out of that, where I feel like a lot of us are in a similar boat to where it’s like, yeah, we actually do have a team, or at least a good enough team that can self solve probably 90% of the problems.
00:26:59:11 – 00:27:26:00
But we definitely are addicted to, you know, trying to jump in on stuff. Like, are you physically Steven always talks about like just don’t even physically be there. Leave the chat rooms. You know, so you’re not even tempted. Are you doing that? Yeah, yeah, I am, I, I do what I want to do. Like, I don’t mind cleaning bathrooms, to be honest with you.
00:27:26:00 – 00:27:49:10
Like, I’d rather me clean the bathroom than somebody like else that might be checking in shirts or something like that, because we don’t have anybody that really just does that kind of stuff. I was fixing our image yesterday, like, I like doing that kind of stuff. I don’t know, I, I kind of, I am in people’s way, like when I’m in the shop every day.
00:27:49:12 – 00:28:13:02
Yes and no. I think I’m just not someone who likes to stand, like, sit at home. I have three dogs and they drive me absolutely fucking crazy. So like, I don’t I don’t have peace at home. I have more peace here doing stuff than I do, anywhere else. So, you know, me being absent is maybe taking my kayak on the friggin lake or something like that.
00:28:13:04 – 00:28:32:08
But. But does the team expect you to come in every day? No, not at all. So there’s no expectation. So you’ve kind of like, rip that Band-Aid off. Like if Joe comes in, Joe, like, why are you here? Get the hell out of here. Yeah. Sometimes they’re like, you don’t have to be here, man. Like, just go do something like, it’s.
00:28:32:08 – 00:28:57:21
It’s so funny. Our teams want us to actually go enjoy ourselves more than we do. Right? And that’s, That’s the truth. My business partner started a rumor in the back of the shop that I moved to California. I’ll tell you this now. And so whatever I go back, though, he’s like, we’re Steve and he’s like, oh no, he moved to California and he’s just like, I don’t know if he started a rumor or not, just to, like, screw with everyone.
00:28:57:23 – 00:29:08:04
And so there was like a month and a half, I did not I was just I was busy and I was traveling. And so I got back and and they were asking me like, how California is. How’s my.
00:29:08:06 – 00:29:25:08
Did you find a place, like, no, no, no no, I actually I but like, yeah, your employees don’t want you there all the time. Like, they want to see you and they want to greet you. I’ll tell you a story. My shipping and receiving guys, I Berrian, Tim and they’ve been with me for a minute. And Barry’s an incredible artist.
00:29:25:08 – 00:29:45:22
And, you know, Tim’s kind of his, right? Like, they just run the back of place. It’s super clean, tidy. And my favorite part of going down to champagne is just going back there and kicking it with them for 25 minutes, like. And then they feel good, I feel good. And then I’m on my way and it’s like, hey, is there anything going on?
00:29:45:22 – 00:30:05:08
And then like, no. But like we just shoot the shit and talk about stuff. And I think like, that’s what employees want. They do not want you breathing over their necks every single day. It’s a it’s annoying, you know? I’m curious. Joe, do you like, do you live in your inbox, like slack? What’s your how do you communicate with everyone?
00:30:05:10 – 00:30:25:21
No, I don’t use slack. They have their own slack channel. I’m not in it. I’m down. He’s one step ahead of you, Steve. And no slack at all. No, I. No, not at all. We were contract printing for a shop in Pittsburgh for a little bit, and there was a slack channel, and, like, I was missing messages because I was like, I don’t fucking.
00:30:26:02 – 00:30:55:00
I don’t need one more platform to communicate. We use, you know, G suite, like Google Messenger and stuff like that. But I have five people on that. You know, Nate, my artists, shipping, receiving sales and front, front office and usually it’s, you know, whatever. And then, to be honest with you, I’m not trying to juice you guys up so much, but, like the tasks in front of it, we use tasks to communicate.
00:30:55:02 – 00:31:26:14
So if there needs to be some kind of, I don’t want to say reaction, but some kind of physical thing that has to be done. We just ask each other. So that’s, one thing Basecamp talks, I keep bring them up, but they talk a lot about removing real time communication. They’re like, how do we how do we take just the extra minutes and either write a longer form description of what a problem is and what a potential solution, and then get your thoughts or yeah, there’s no like live chat.
00:31:26:14 – 00:31:50:03
It’s we put up a task and someone gets to it, you know, before the due date. But it’s pretty interesting that you said that. I do want to drag you back, though, to the original question, which was, okay, now that you know that you need to make a change. Like what? What are the what did like the tactical things that you’re doing to make that change?
00:31:50:03 – 00:32:16:01
Like what exactly are the the you’re you’re one, two, three steps to say. All right. Like, I cannot be sucked in here. Could could you say bringing Ryan in was like a step, 100%. I was, I was so start there for that. Yeah, start right there. So, you know, I, I started the company. I screwed up royally with a lot of things.
00:32:16:03 – 00:32:33:05
You learn from your mistakes. You can’t really train somebody how to run something when they’ve only been an employee. I had no idea how to do that. So when I brought, I actually text Ryan one night we were in a clubhouse chat and him and I would, you know, talk about things. And I knew that he ran companies and stuff.
00:32:33:05 – 00:33:04:22
And like, I was looking at my finances and I was like, I really want to buy a new dryer this year, but I need to train up production manager. So I texted him one night and was like, hey, dude, how much would it take for you to like, work in my company for six months or a year to basically, you know, hire production manager or be a production manager and carbon copy you and, Ryan Caspian, by the way, will leave a link to his Instagram in the description.
00:33:04:22 – 00:33:26:14
He does a lot of consulting work. Yeah. And he thought about it for a little while, and then he kind of basically thought about starting his company, which is covered in ink. And we worked out a thing, you know, he’d come to our shop once a month for a week. I don’t know if it was every other every month or every other month, but, it was pretty consistent.
00:33:26:16 – 00:33:55:01
And he’d work extremely hard on certain tasks, you know, screen room stuff. I mean, we, we’ve done like, we completely demolished so much stuff in our shop and expanded and all this other stuff and worked out efficiencies, but ultimately turned out to be a production manager. And, I mean, they still talk very frequently about questions, problems, but it’s it’s less and less about, hey, what would you do in this situation?
00:33:55:01 – 00:34:19:12
More like, I don’t know, just kind of bouncing stuff back with each other. But now I think I’m at a point where I need a consultant again to figure out what really the important things are supposed to happen to keep going forward. Because last year we had we had our best year last year. You know, we did about 3.8 million.
00:34:19:14 – 00:34:46:12
But we were doing mostly contract work. So the profit on that sucks. And I almost completely ended our company financially wise, because we were not making money. We weren’t getting paid. This year. We’re going to do probably way before, but it’s all it’s all full package. So we’re making more money this year. So now I could look at, you know, benefits like, you know, all this other stuff because they don’t have health benefits.
00:34:46:12 – 00:35:07:14
I pay cash for my daughter to be born, you know, six years ago. So I need to, like, I, I want to hire somebody to help me figure out what I need to do next to, to keep the trajectory. I think. I think what’s interesting is you’re willing to go to extreme measures for your people, saying to Ryan, Ryan, I know you live in Colorado.
00:35:07:14 – 00:35:29:04
I know you’re starting to consult. I don’t care what it costs. Just come with us in a shape. It’s almost like someone saying, like, I’m hiring a trainer and just work out with me every day until I figure it out. And I think shops will make huge investments in equipment. They’ll buy $100,000 a presses, but they won’t invest in exactly what you talk about.
00:35:29:06 – 00:35:47:02
And it’s like you realize that that you didn’t have the you didn’t have the capacity to do it or the wherewithal you needed Nate, to be great. So you’re like, I’m just going to bring the best human being in this industry, not best human being. Like, you know, he’s kind of I’m just kidding. Ryan’s not listening to this.
00:35:47:04 – 00:36:08:20
He sucks. Ryan. You suck. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, you brought him in, and he was, like, whip us in a shape, I don’t care. And that’s probably paid dividends beyond an unreasonable amount. Like, you probably can’t measure the work that he did. Which is super, super cool. And so you’re almost now what you’re vocalizing is okay, I’m going to do that again.
00:36:08:22 – 00:36:29:08
I need to figure out how to understand how to run a 4 or 5, seven, $10 million company. Now, if I want to if I want to take this to the next level. That’s interesting. That’s interesting. Bruce, what you going to divest fully away from contract? Yes, yes. We have only about 3 or 4 customers that we do contract work for.
00:36:29:10 – 00:36:50:14
One takes up a lot of our time, and they take up a lot of our square footage in our warehouse because we house all their blanks. They, they get, high end blanks, and then they get their tags sewn in and stuff like that. We don’t do that. Basically our tag presses are for their sleeve prints because they do a little, like, you know, embossed thing on there, not embossed, but like a print on their sleeve.
00:36:50:16 – 00:37:17:14
But what’s getting more and more complicated is we’re not we’re not a partner with them, but they demand a lot of our time and a lot of fast terms. And, you know, I don’t really charge enough for the the square footage that we’re charging for their or, you know, housing their blanks. So and then everybody else, you know, I’ll basically email them when we’re slow and say, hey, you have anything you can throw at us?
00:37:17:16 – 00:37:38:13
And then if they throw something at us when we’re too busy, we just say, no, we can’t do it. So it’s that that’s, you know, a good relationship. But yeah, I would like to get completely out of contract. I mean, it’s nice in January and February when shit’s slow as hell and, you know, Joe, I think, a lot of shops right now are going through some tough times financially.
00:37:38:13 – 00:38:03:08
Like, you know, Covid money’s dried out, sales are down, labor is high. From what I’m hearing, you seem to be running a pretty happy, profitable company that’s moving up into the right. How much of your how much of your decisions is driven by how much profit you guys are making, how much cash you have saved? Like, you know, you said you said something there, like I paid for my daughter’s child birth in cash.
00:38:03:08 – 00:38:35:12
Like you seem to make some smart business decisions. What are those principles that you live by? You know, I mean, it doesn’t sound like you make dumb financial decisions. I don’t make dumb financial decisions. But I don’t understand a lot of things. Like, the past two years were kind of tough because every piece of equipment that we bought, I paid outright for it, and we were doing bad work, meaning like we were doing bad business choices, like for a lot of contract work.
00:38:35:14 – 00:38:58:15
And it. What do you mean by that? Like, just like, I don’t know. Yeah. I didn’t understand the numbers enough. And when that’s pretty much mostly what we were doing. We were staying afloat. But I was playing chess with all my bank accounts. You know, I think one time I pulled from our line of credit for payroll, and we were getting paid, laid on things, so I was paying extra in interest.
00:38:58:17 – 00:39:20:08
It was just a really tough year. Like, I was very unhappy. I also think that was a direct correlation with possibly, you know, me fucking up in our marriage, not me fucking up. But just like being a miserable turd. You know, because I was it was that was that was tough. I mean, like, you know, I always had money.
00:39:20:08 – 00:39:41:14
I always had money to do anything I wanted with. And then when I bought all this equipment with cash and then took on all this bad contract work, it just, you know, it put me in a bad spot. Yeah. For sure, you know? So, you know, I correlated like this. Let’s say you’re a doctor or someone who has a professional degree.
00:39:41:16 – 00:40:04:10
But you don’t have steady professional degree work. But on the weekends, you get a Dollar General job, and you’re making 11 bucks an hour. Well, when that Dollar General job needs you there more, and you start saying no to the good work, and you’re only making $11 an hour full time. That’s that’s what we were doing. And we had and we were and we were so heavily busy.
00:40:04:12 – 00:40:28:14
I hired more people. Right now we have 17 people. Last year we had 22 making way less money as a company. So it was it was tough. What where is your where is your business sweet spot. You feel like that you want to head to? We talked about this with call the other day of like did you you know he he unfortunately closes shop because he was in a situation for too long.
00:40:28:14 – 00:40:49:10
But you know he talked about yeah, I missed my sweet spot because I was just focus on top line growth. And now focus on profitability which you’re sounds like you’re, you’re kind of writing the ship, but where do you feel like that business sweet spot is maybe size wise, people wise. Yeah. If you could describe it like a picture painted like a picture.
00:40:49:12 – 00:41:09:13
What’s that sweet spot? It’s. That’s really tough to say, because when I felt like I mean, when we had a ton of money in the bank, when we had constant work, I mean, we we have constant work now, but, it was probably before we even hit a million, to be honest with you. So what I wrote says, I feel fucking crazy.
00:41:09:15 – 00:41:43:23
I, I think literally almost every single person has had roughly within a couple like 100 or $200,000. Yeah. So, I hope like we’re doing good now, but it could be better, I, I think, I don’t know, I think, I think we could still do the same as what we’re doing, just cutting out more contract work. So I think if we stay the same and we do more business, the business and we get more bigger band, you know, bigger tours, I think 5 million will probably be it for us.
00:41:44:03 – 00:42:07:09
Like, like the next sweet spot, because the amount of that money that we see now, I mean, we were I’m gonna be honest, if we did a one color print was a thousand shirts. We’re making $0.50 a shirt now. Like, you know what the up charge of the garment and, you know, a one color print being a couple bucks, like, I mean, that’s I don’t know why the fuck never did that.
00:42:07:09 – 00:42:30:05
Why did we ever do that? We could because we didn’t have enough of our own work. And, you know, that’s why. But we keep going on that, you know, forward motion like it’s going to be. I really feel like it probably is like the 5 million mark. Probably like there’s, there’s the, the the CEO or the founder of one 800 got junk is I forget his name, but super cool individual.
00:42:30:05 – 00:42:45:05
He writes this book called Vivid Vision and it’s like you should actually try to paint your business in your life in a picture of, like, what you think it would look like. It’s going to be a $5 million shop. It’s going to have 23 employees. It’s going to be 10% profitable. I’m going to go in twice a week.
00:42:45:05 – 00:43:02:14
I’m going to have, you know, a leader to manage Nate and the crew. I’m going to have a CFO. Like, this is what our holiday party is going to look like. These are what quarterly meetings are going to look like. And you actually like draw it out and you give it to your team so that they can align with you.
00:43:02:16 – 00:43:28:09
Have you have you ever have you ever dreamed with Nate and company and like that, like, tell them this is what I actually want. I mean, kind of, but never that explicit. So that’s something I, I like that advice. Like, I think it’s a good idea. And I think the sharing with the team part, you know, because we all maybe we think about it internally but we don’t share it.
00:43:28:11 – 00:43:45:21
But then it’s also good to figure out for, you know, those three individuals, what is their vision too? And they’re like, this is, you know, Justin Lawrence said this with a lot of wisdom. He said, I had an employee that just said, this is the number I want to make to be super happy. If I can just make this number, I’m here forever.
00:43:45:21 – 00:44:06:19
And he’s like, let’s build a plan to get you and build this for you. And it’s like, you know, if you know what your employees goals are and you know what your company’s goals are and you can align the two together, you can build a beautiful thing that lasts forever. Right? And so I think, it’s really interesting because you’ve got amazing people, you’ve got a great business.
00:44:06:19 – 00:44:23:17
It’s in a, in a, it’s starting to find this like sweet spot. But you’re not the type of guy that’s like, I want to have 20 autos. I don’t think. Yeah. No. Do you think you would buy more equipment and stuff or you think you’re like, you’re done? No, I mean, I mean, eventually maybe have to. But here’s the thing.
00:44:23:17 – 00:44:48:13
We have four autos and three are running all the time. Like, every every ship. Like, well, one ship, you could do so much with four autos or, I mean, if we had two shifts, that’s that’s where we would go next. Like, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t buy any more equipment just to get more done in one day. I would, I would be like, okay, well, you know, we’re going to have a second shift.
00:44:48:13 – 00:45:04:14
And that second shift would probably be only three people, you know, one person, running the process, one person offloading and one person catching or. Yeah, catching the shirts. I wouldn’t they wouldn’t have to deal with customers. They wouldn’t have to deal with emails. It would be very easy. And they could bust out a thousand piece job in one night.
00:45:04:16 – 00:45:25:06
So that’s where I would go next. And I wouldn’t just take on all this work and fill up for orders for a nightshift. And I mean, because that’s that’s a learning experience too. So we’d start off easy and slow, maybe leave, just like I said, simple jobs for that. But no, I don’t really think I’d buy any more equipment.
00:45:25:11 – 00:45:45:14
I have auto reclaim. I have a developer. I have to, you know, image like, you know, images for, you know, screens and stuff. I think the only thing I’d get after that probably be a laser, but I want to make sure the technology is there and stuff like that. But, you know, as an auto coder, I mean, I’ve automated almost everything we possibly can so that you don’t need that many people.
00:45:45:14 – 00:46:13:00
And I don’t know what else I would need. And Joe, from what I hear, you don’t take on a lot of debt. No, I don’t, with a baby, though. I mean, can you can you shed a little wisdom on not having a not carrying a ton of debt because, like, that’s there’s something there. The fact that you’ve grown this business to have every piece of equipment you want and you haven’t really taken loans, I’ve taken loans.
00:46:13:02 – 00:46:33:12
But I’ve paid them all off. I own my building outright. I and I have a leasing company. It’s it’s called, 31 Woodbine, yo. And that’s that’s our address. But that’s a separate company. That Guerrilla Joe. Pretty company pays. Yeah. Rent too. And they also own all of our equipment, so they do. Gorilla Joe Printing Company actually leases our equipment.
00:46:33:18 – 00:46:48:15
Yeah. So we keep that separate. You know, it keeps it separate because if somebody got hurt or something like that, you can’t really go after Gorilla Joe Printing Company because they don’t own the equipment. But they pay rent to that, too. And that all goes to me. So that that was another instead of giving myself a raise.
00:46:48:15 – 00:47:16:22
That’s kind of how I, you know, you know, I’m saying, but yeah, no debt. Our building was cheap. If I think more people knew how cheap it was to operate in Ohio, I’d be in trouble for local companies, because, you know, I built my I bought my 17,000 square foot building for 100 grand, like, it has a 10,000 square foot basement that I rent to bands and people to store their cars and whatever.
00:47:16:22 – 00:47:40:23
And but bands rehearse down there, and, I mean, we’ve had to do a lot of upgrades and stuff, but I mean, it was it was quick to pay off at 100 grand. It’s a good starting point to add a lot of upgrades. So I think what’s also cool, what’s also cool is when you don’t carry a lot of debt and you own your own building and you really don’t are getting anything like your equipment is being leased back to you.
00:47:41:01 – 00:48:18:06
The only real expense you have every month is labor. Yes, right. And so if you’re busy and utilities and all that stuff, but like your labor is the hardest to control, right? Because you really have to like cut people, you know, what your utilities are going to be. Those are essentially sort of fixed right. And so like, I think the key to running a healthy business is all the little things that you just brushed over there of, like buy your building, you know, lease back equipment, don’t have a lot of, like hack your hack your real estate to get a second floor of of income, like whether whether you do 3 million, 4
00:48:18:06 – 00:48:39:06
million or 5 million. It’s okay, you know. Yeah. And next, you know, I did the math when, when Covid hit and we had to close down. We had a bunch of Saint Patrick’s Day jobs ready to print and a bunch of fucking green shirts that weren’t going to get printed because they were all for for bars and stuff.
00:48:39:07 – 00:49:01:00
I did the math. We could have stayed close with all the with the cash that we had. We could have stayed closed for 44 months before we would have tapped into the My Zero account. Meaning like my zero is 50 grand or whatever. So I was not scared. I was more afraid for my employees, you know, but because they were out of work.
00:49:01:00 – 00:49:25:14
But, you know, I mean, pretty quickly, everybody got unemployment and it was more than what everybody was making. You know, 44 months of runway. Yeah. It’s pretty sick. Yeah, that’s that’s impressive. I wasn’t that scared. I didn’t want it to happen, but, you know, I, you know, Dylan owns his building, too, and he always talks about not having any debt.
00:49:25:16 – 00:49:46:06
And it’s kind of like, it’s it’s very. I don’t want to say rewarding, but it’s it’s it’s it’s secure. I, I don’t know what I would do if, you know, when you start a, a restaurant, you don’t have customers, you have to buy all this stuff, and you have to sell a lot of pancakes, pizza, sausages and stuff like that to keep the doors open.
00:49:46:08 – 00:50:09:23
But with the screen printing shop, you know, you can start off at 600 bucks. That’s what I did. And. And if you don’t get any customers, doesn’t really matter. But you have to make that initial investment for a restaurant that if you’re not making that money every month, you’re losing and you’re going to just eventually drown. So it’s nice to have everything paid for and not have to be a slave to taking on shit jobs just to have some money coming in.
00:50:10:01 – 00:50:31:23
What advice would you give shops right now that are in that they’re trying to cross a million bucks? They’ve got equipment loans, car sales are drying out a little bit like they are not. They don’t know if they’re going to be in business next year. I don’t I’m not like an above and beyond type person. Like I don’t really know much.
00:50:32:01 – 00:50:53:19
I just know from experience that a lot of you. What would a small gorilla Joe tell them? A little little guerrilla Joe? Honestly, hire somebody that knows more shit than you. Because, a new press isn’t going to get you out of debt. You know, just because you could take on more work doesn’t mean you’re going to get it.
00:50:53:19 – 00:51:27:15
You know, I think, like, if sales are drying out, hire somebody, you know, like Kevin Bumgarner to help you with, you know, sales or hire somebody that can help you, you know, train a production manager or, you know, whatever that that’s that’s what I would say. It sounds like the outside sales role too as well. Yeah. That outside sales role, I’m kind of curious a little bit different topic, but do you see in the kind of music world you talked about telling color print, you know, do you see transfer as changing anything for you guys or.
00:51:27:16 – 00:51:52:14
No. Because your volume so high or what. We would like bands no one transfers. We do transfers for a lot of things. Like we just took on this really fucking big contract, not contract job, but like like they’re these neoprene like scuba suit covers for water tanks for minerals in your basement. And nobody. Nope. Yeah. Nobody would touch it.
00:51:52:17 – 00:52:10:09
I did I did 12 of them myself just this day. And like I had to press them four times for the transfer to stick and I gotta find a different transfer for it. But like, we’re charging out, out the ask for it, but, yeah, that’s haunting me. I didn’t think I’d bite on the price then like they did.
00:52:10:09 – 00:52:31:10
And it’s like we have to produce like, like 100 of these a month. Anyway, they throw out a crazy price, like, they won’t take this. We won’t have to be, like, sure, there’s nobody else to do it. They want their name on these things. But no, I don’t see that happening in the band world. When we decorate hats, we use transfers or embroidery.
00:52:31:12 – 00:52:55:20
We used to print them, and some people want them printed. But I’m not going to set up that little hat press clamp thing and print them myself. We’re just we’re just we’re not doing that. So that’s the only kind of disruption I see if that’s what you’re talking about. But I don’t even like digital squeegee. Like we I don’t really see much happening with that.
00:52:55:22 – 00:53:24:06
Yeah, I feel like the murmur on digital squeegee was like this. And now it’s just like, yeah, yeah. What’s interesting is we did a lot of shirts for one of my favorite bands, and it was a contract job, so this sucks. But, it was ten colors. The the artwork we got wasn’t that great. I had to outsource the sets because our sets just weren’t looking correct.
00:53:24:08 – 00:53:39:14
And we finally, when I think I only I think we got it and we get it on a Saturday, we test it on a Saturday to run it on Monday. We printed it, thought it looked great. The band rejected it. They wanted to stay within less than ten colors, ten colors or less. So we kind of limited ourselves.
00:53:39:16 – 00:53:55:20
Got it to as good as it could look in ten colors or less, and they ended up digital switching it. So it was like we had it. We were fighting a, a no win battle with this thing. So it was that was really frustrating. And they rejected it. So we didn’t get paid and that was a contract job.
00:53:55:20 – 00:54:23:08
So like, yeah, that sucked. But you know, I think that’s one of the only things I can think of, that, you know, but as far as transfers, I don’t really see transfers being super relevant with bands other than certain things because. All right. Yeah. Good to know. Youngstown, Ohio. Gorilla Joe, if you go to print, if you go to print hustlers, you’ll be able to, you’ll be able to visit, so.
00:54:23:10 – 00:54:45:19
Oh, yeah. For sure. Yeah, yeah. Joe, this has been this is great. Go ahead. Bruce. Sorry. Yeah. Thank you so much for being able to, to share your story. And just being honest and transparent about, you know, your transition and personal and business life all together. I think, you know, there’s a lot of, like, good things that are always put out, but it’s really nice to have the reality of what’s what’s actually going on.
00:54:45:19 – 00:55:05:18
So. Oh, yeah, we appreciate you, Joe. For for that I appreciate and I thank you, man. Thank you. And listeners, thank you guys. Subscribers, thank you so much. We appreciate you guys for joining us. So I we’re just going to have to end this. Hey we’ll see you next week. Have a good one. Thanks so much for listening.
00:55:05:18 – 00:55:26:19
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00:55:26:19 – 00:55:27:06
Bye.
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