Building a Profitable Print Shop with Korey Chapman

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Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

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Speaker 2
All right. Welcome, everyone to Blue Collar start up the podcast for hard work meets big ideas. This is the home for real talk, real stories and real strategies from the frontlines of life and the business of the trades. I’m one of your hosts, Mike Nelson from Five Towers Media. Our other host, Derek, is, running a little bit late, but he’ll be jumping on, come in and coming in hot here at some point, so we’ll see him shortly.

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Speaker 2
Before I introduce our guest today, let me just take a quick moment to recognize our sponsors. You know, these are the the amazing people and companies that allow us to raise money and donate it to locals, both these programs and to HVC, what we affectionately call the blue collar college. You know, we send money over there for kids, for tools and tuition, help them kind of get through some of the trades programs they have.

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Speaker 2
So big thank you to people, Liz Martin, electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction, Michaels Group, Catamount Consulting of course. Big shout out to, Derek’s team over at Data Cleaning Systems and our team over at Five Towers Media. Again, thanks, everybody, for everything that you do to help make this show happen. And, without further ado, let’s introduce our guests here.

00;01;31;13 – 00;01;43;24
Speaker 2
Corey running, you know, so I don’t mess anything up here. Whether it’s your your name or, stuff by your company. Why don’t you go ahead and, introduce yourself and little moose prints and kind of tell us who you are and what you do.

00;01;43;27 – 00;02;08;17
Speaker 1
Yeah. My name is, Corey Chapman, and I own little moose prints. We’re, custom job shop. We do screen printing, embroidery and laser engraving, and we’re based in the state of Idaho. Just at the start of the panhandle or northern Idaho? Yeah, near Moscow, Pullman area. And this is our 10th year of business. Yeah.

00;02;08;19 – 00;02;12;28
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, I listen to years, man. That’s ten years is a good milestone.

00;02;13;02 – 00;02;18;15
Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s kind of a blur at this point. People go, how long have you been doing this? And I’m like, Holy thanks. So.

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Speaker 2
Feels like forever.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah.

00;02;24;09 – 00;02;27;22
Speaker 2
How many, people you got over there these days?

00;02;27;25 – 00;02;38;29
Speaker 1
I believe my production manager just stepped out of the room. 7 or 8. I’ve had as many as 11, but we hover around 7 to 10 people. Yeah.

00;02;39;01 – 00;02;56;22
Speaker 2
Yeah. And, you know, I ask that question because it’s always important for people to understand the scale of where you are and the growth of your business. Yes. And to kind of so we can focus in and hone in on some of the challenges and things that you face at that size, because it’s such an interesting business.

00;02;56;22 – 00;03;19;01
Speaker 2
And, you know, I’m, I’m about to say same size as you are. I think we have, eight team members right now. And, we’ve been up to 12. We’ve been down to just me, like, during Covid. And, you know, it’s, all over the board. What? But I love to hear about how did you even get into doing screen printing and, and and the services that you’re offering.

00;03;19;03 – 00;03;32;09
Speaker 1
So the first 25 years of my life, I was a farmer. I was a fourth generation farmer, in California. Okay. Don’t hold that against me. All the blue color, guys. Don’t hold that against me. Oh, well, we’re just. Before we start.

00;03;32;09 – 00;03;38;01
Speaker 2
Recording, you’re asking me about the farming stuff? Yeah. Yeah, that that that. So, you know way more than I do, man.

00;03;38;01 – 00;04;02;19
Speaker 1
Oh, well, we did, we were half almonds, which is, permanent crop. And the other half was rotational. So tomatoes, corn, alfalfa, wheat, stuff for dairies, silage, that sort of thing. And, when we quit farming, we were right at 5000 acres, which was. Yeah, quite busy. And along the way, farming is very generational.

00;04;02;22 – 00;04;24;10
Speaker 1
And my dad thankfully said, whatever you do, go to college and find something else to do other than farming. So I went to college and got a business degree. For your business degree, which is worth the paper. It is printed on and graduated and came back and said, hey, I’m going to run the farm and I don’t know what you’re going to do, but you can show up.

00;04;24;13 – 00;04;54;19
Speaker 1
So for about 2 or 3 years I did that and farming is very cyclical. So when the economy is in the tank, farming is usually technically better because commodity wise overseas they their dollar stretches further. And so farming is very cyclical. So we recognize that and we were looking for, different business to purchase. And somebody from our town reached out and said, hey, I’m thinking about selling my business and you have your business degree, you should buy it.

00;04;54;19 – 00;05;18;28
Speaker 1
And I’m like, well, I don’t know what you do. And it happened to be the same model of shop that I have now. So for about a week I went and job shadowed him for all intents and purposes, and thought I was hot stuff, and knew it all, and never could come to terms on a price as far as the business buyout went, which was a good thing because we ended up moving to Idaho like three months later.

00;05;19;00 – 00;05;40;00
Speaker 1
So when we moved here, I started working for a local lumber mill, which is actually one of the largest employers in the area, and about 250 employees, and did that for right at 100 days before I said, this is not for me. And along the way I had said, well, what other life experiences do I have? Because I didn’t know a store.

00;05;40;01 – 00;06;01;27
Speaker 1
When we moved to Idaho, I did not know anybody and I thought that I knew this industry. So I started printing in some borrowed shop space. My wife and I, and printed on the weekends, tried to sell a few jobs during the week when I wasn’t, napping from working some weird swing shift at the lumber mill. And then within about 100 days, thought that I had enough business to go out on my own.

00;06;01;27 – 00;06;28;09
Speaker 1
I didn’t, but did it, but did it anyways. Yeah. And ten years later, here we are. So. Yeah, it’s very interesting because most people approach this industry from a creative aspect, meaning they need band shirts or they enjoy creating stuff. I enjoy the creative part, but I can’t draw. I can’t draw a stick figure. So thankfully I’ve surrounded myself with, those type of people.

00;06;28;12 – 00;06;47;17
Speaker 1
And I’ve basically been focused on the operations almost a little bit too much. This last year has been a big change for me personally, which we can get into later, but I’m an operations guy to the core. You know, this is the deadline. The customer needs it. We’ve committed to it. I don’t care what it cost or how many mistakes we’ve made.

00;06;47;17 – 00;07;18;15
Speaker 1
We have put our shoulder down, get through it and get it out the door. Times hundreds of jobs a month. It’s very close to a restaurant. Meaning, I input a lot of employees needed to generate that final product. And unfortunately, it’s a race to the bottom. Yeah, this is probably the only industry in the past ten years where people have had to lower their pricing, even though our inputs have gone up 30, 40%.

00;07;18;17 – 00;07;39;15
Speaker 1
Just because the initial cost to entry are pretty low, like everybody has an aunt, mom, a grandma that has a screen printing press in their garage, or a heat transfer machine in their basement. You know, that’s been that’s been ultimately the the ultimate challenge.

00;07;39;17 – 00;07;44;21
Speaker 2
Yeah, I got a question for that. But Derek, Derek just joined us, so I wanted to, So. Hey, d.

00;07;44;24 – 00;07;51;07
Speaker 3
Hey, how are you? I, I should have known that you two were going to nerd out on farming here, but I’m down so.

00;07;51;09 – 00;07;54;08
Speaker 1
Well, it was it wasn’t too bad.

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Speaker 3
No. That’s great.

00;07;55;13 – 00;08;09;18
Speaker 2
You brought it up and. But I wanted to get the show started because I know we got such a tight, schedule today, so I was like, man, I, I just kind of answered the questions. We talked about it real quick, and I didn’t find out until I asked the introductory questions that he was a farmer for. I’m like.

00;08;09;20 – 00;08;12;05
Speaker 1
Yeah, I was holding that. I was holding it in. I’m holding it back.

00;08;12;08 – 00;08;30;25
Speaker 2
Oh, good. Because I I’ll spend the whole episode talking about farming. And my only experience on the farming side is with the livestock stuff that we do. The commodity farming that you’re doing is a fascinating subject to me. I listen to a ton of podcasts about it all the time and like, it’s just it’s kind of wild.

00;08;30;25 – 00;08;49;25
Speaker 2
But I have to imagine that commodity farming probably gave you a skill set when you’re coming into and you just brought it up right, and into an industry that is almost treated like a commodity because of the competition. And, you know, people are ordering a couple hundred shirts from you and they’re like, well, so-and-so can do them for 599.

00;08;50;01 – 00;08;51;14
Speaker 2
Can you get it?

00;08;51;16 – 00;09;05;12
Speaker 1
Yeah. And and I tell people, farming really prepared me for this because of the long hours, low profit margin. People tell you what they want to pay. I mean, yeah, it’s crazy. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know necessarily. It’s a good thing. But yes.

00;09;05;14 – 00;09;06;01
Speaker 2
I’ve heard for.

00;09;06;04 – 00;09;08;19
Speaker 1
It.

00;09;08;22 – 00;09;28;24
Speaker 2
So ten years you’re about, seven people. We talked about just kind of catching up here, and we talked a little bit about how you got into this work as a side hustle. I and I don’t know, maybe you kind of touched on it, but, you know, what was you were were you when you started this as a side hustle?

00;09;28;24 – 00;09;33;06
Speaker 2
Was it with the idea that you were going to turn it into full time? Was that the ultimate goal?

00;09;33;06 – 00;09;55;22
Speaker 1
Yeah, I, I’m, I’m detrimental to myself, to the core. So I don’t do anything halfway. Yeah. At any point in my life. And so yeah, when I started it, it was in some borrowed shop space, I think we lasted one week, my wife and I, before somebody said, hey, you did baseball warmups for us that you screen printed.

00;09;56;00 – 00;10;18;01
Speaker 1
Can you make us our hat? And I said, sure, absolutely. I didn’t even own an embroider machine. My wife thought I was nuts, and I was, jumped on Craigslist, found an embroider machine, drove a thousand miles to pick it up, throw it back that same night, and we were learning embroidery that night and somehow delivered a somewhat impressive order of hats.

00;10;18;03 – 00;10;35;02
Speaker 1
And then it kind of snowballed from there. So I can remember my wife freaking out because we ran out of an ink and she goes, oh my God, she goes, you’re going to purchase an entire quart of ink like we have pints of ink. And I’m like, yeah, we’re going to buy a quart of ink. I said, I want to buy a drum of ink.

00;10;35;02 – 00;10;43;02
Speaker 1
Someday we’ll be buying five gallons of milk. And she thought I was nuts. And now I’m purchasing ink by the five gallon lot. So, yeah.

00;10;43;05 – 00;11;05;24
Speaker 2
It you know, I gotta say, it’s one of my favorite things about entrepreneurs is. And I know I’m like this, I can’t speak for D, but, something tells me he’s like this, but like so many entrepreneurs that I know that they have, like, you’re doing shirts and someone says, hey, can you do this and that? And I like, oh, they’re going to pay me money and I.

00;11;05;27 – 00;11;13;01
Speaker 2
Yes, and I need money. Yes, yes, yes, I can. And then you’re figuring out how to do it after you. And yes, it’s.

00;11;13;01 – 00;11;33;05
Speaker 1
Always a balancing act because if you’re a lawn care guy, yes, you can wash windows, but you don’t want to be stuck at somebody’s, you know, somebody’s house for seven hours. You know, you need to get your root done type thing. But it has always been a sister product. So screenprint and embroidery go hand in hand. I’ve dabbled in some other stuff.

00;11;33;07 – 00;11;49;02
Speaker 1
Dye sublimation. We still do a little bit of laser engraving, but I’ve kind of kept an eye on. Okay, we can offer everything, quote unquote. But at some point, each department has to pencil out. Otherwise, you know, we’re just we’re just spinning here. So. Yeah.

00;11;49;09 – 00;11;56;27
Speaker 2
Yeah. And it, so was it YouTube University that helps you? Understand how to use your, your machine and.

00;11;57;00 – 00;12;15;13
Speaker 1
A lot of, a lot of YouTube, a lot of late night, a lot of crying, blood, sweat and tears. I mean, I printed manually on a manual screen printing press for six years. I was I did all the printing, everything. I printed way too long on a manual press. I literally 20 hours a day, seven days a week.

00;12;15;15 – 00;12;44;19
Speaker 1
You blue collar guys will understand. I’ve told other people that that’s, you know, the amount that I worked, and they go, that’s impossible. And I’m like, oh no, no, it’s not, it’s not impossible. So, from there, we got our automatic, just before or just as Covid was happening, which was a life life changer, because ultimately, at the end of the day, it is regardless of what industry you are, just by selling and trading time.

00;12;44;21 – 00;12;48;00
Speaker 1
And that’s and that’s what I came to recognize.

00;12;48;03 – 00;13;04;25
Speaker 2
Yeah. So you’re a large leap guy. We talk about the trade. Yes a lot with the guys and and some, some, some folks do slower transition. They do weekends. They do nights until they get it up to where they the business kind of forces them to make the leap. But you’re just like a screw it, let’s do it kind of guy.

00;13;04;26 – 00;13;23;11
Speaker 1
Yeah. And and I probably waited too long to do that. I mean, I put my family through a lot, over the years. And thankfully, my wife, was very faithful and stood by me in that regard because I told her at one point, I said, you need to treat me like military spouse. Kiss me on the cheek and say, I’ll see you when I see you.

00;13;23;11 – 00;13;32;16
Speaker 1
I think because I can’t tell you when I’m coming home. And thankfully she had that with the farming background as well. But yeah, it’s a lot, a lot of long hours.

00;13;32;19 – 00;13;49;23
Speaker 2
So I bet it was, and still is for that matter. Right. What do you. Yeah. What do you think? You know, along the way, ten years in, what do you think the biggest challenge you saw was throughout the last ten years?

00;13;49;25 – 00;14;29;17
Speaker 1
Biggest challenge. I looked at that question, and there’s been so many. It’s it’s a long list. I think like most blue collar industries, ultimately it is. It comes down to labor. Like your actual help. If you will, whether it be skilled or unskilled. And after ten years of having employees, I’ve come to realize there are those who want to work regardless of the pay, and there are those that just inherently don’t want to work, and no amount of upswing the other way will get those who inherently don’t want to work on board.

00;14;29;17 – 00;14;53;12
Speaker 1
And I’ve tried everything that we’ve paid above industry. We’ve tried three day weekends, free time bonuses. It just doesn’t matter. Those who inherently want to work will work very well and need to be treated appropriately. And I do my best to do that. And I just attended another conference and somebody said, and it really stuck with me.

00;14;53;12 – 00;15;14;13
Speaker 1
There is so much mediocrity in the world. Do not accept mediocrity for yourself and ultimately for your team. If somebody will not follow what you have in place, just get rid of them and move on to the next person until you find those people and that, yeah, that’s really that’s really stuck with me.

00;15;14;16 – 00;15;23;02
Speaker 2
You know, it’s interesting and and I certainly do not disagree. I, I think my trouble that I’ve always run into is I hang on to the people that don’t want.

00;15;23;02 – 00;15;47;02
Speaker 1
Yes. For too long. Yeah, yeah. Oh, 100% like I am. I am, faulty to a cause for that. And somebody told me they said you need to be feared as the owner because it’ll generate respect for your middle management. And I was like, oh, yeah, I’m failing in that regard because I am loyal to a fault. I see the best in people regardless.

00;15;47;04 – 00;15;57;08
Speaker 1
And yeah, I and I come from a, you know, you just work and this is how you make money. And so I just thought that everybody else was like that. And no, no, that’s not the case.

00;15;57;09 – 00;16;12;02
Speaker 2
So so ten years in do you, have you changed that strategy or do you still feel like you’re failing at the, being the boss or getting rid of bad hire? The sooner.

00;16;12;05 – 00;16;32;12
Speaker 1
I, I’ve done better. Just in the past couple weeks after I attended that conference, I was like, man, it is it is time. It’s beyond time. And then the other thing that they talked about, the conference that I struggle with because I’m such an operations guy, is the numbers, focusing on a weekly or bi weekly or monthly, numbers check.

00;16;32;14 – 00;16;48;02
Speaker 1
And yeah, I’ve, I’ve kind of transitioned into doing both of those and I mean down to like a daily. Okay, this is, this is what you need to do today in order to make everybody else successful. So the challenge but we’re working on it.

00;16;48;04 – 00;17;07;28
Speaker 2
Numbers are tough. I know D and I have talked about that quite a bit. And it’s you know I’m at my heart I’m a sales guy. You know I I’ve been in different industries over my career. But ultimately it’s always been it’s almost always been in some sort of sales role, whether I was the owner or not. And as a sales guy, I just want to move on to the next deal and the next sale and the next.

00;17;07;28 – 00;17;33;20
Speaker 2
Yes, and the next signature. And I, it’s always a struggle for me, man. And it’s actually. Yeah, it’s funny because it’s my 20, 26, goals. Like, that’s my number one is to like, be rock solid with my numbers and my score. You know, I call it a card, but that weekly score card and actually doing it and holding myself accountable to it, it’s, Derek is much better than I at that stuff, but.

00;17;33;22 – 00;17;49;16
Speaker 3
I don’t know about that. It’s just, you know, you learn little bits, as you go. And, I mean, it sounds like, you know, that’s the way you’ve done it, Corey. That’s the way that that I’ve done it. You know, you kind of figure it out as you go and make adjustments, you know, to get you where you want to go.

00;17;49;19 – 00;18;09;28
Speaker 3
But yeah, I mean, we, we look at financials on a weekly basis. We have our scorecard. So our, you know, we’re pretty transparent with some of that. As far as our upper management go. So everybody can see, you know, where we are. There’s no secrets. Right. And they they realize, you know, how the business as a whole is doing, whether it’s good, bad, indifferent.

00;18;10;00 – 00;18;23;23
Speaker 3
And they get to see that and I think it brings a new light, you know, to their appreciation for, you know, why I, I push the way that I do. And, you know, they can kind of get a sense or. Okay, well, he’s doing this for our own good, you know.

00;18;23;26 – 00;18;38;22
Speaker 1
Yeah. I realized how different I was because I’ve had a number of employees over the ten years. They say, wow, you can really make a decision quickly and stand by it. And I just look at them and go, well, duh.

00;18;38;24 – 00;18;39;12
Speaker 2
You can do.

00;18;39;12 – 00;18;59;05
Speaker 1
It. And then, yeah, and then I’m standing there going, oh, this is a learned, apparently a learned promise that most people haven’t been presented with. And it’s wild because, you know, I’m looking around and going, okay, you know, there’s seven of you staring at me going, what are we going to do next? And yes, I have to make a decision and move forward.

00;18;59;05 – 00;19;21;01
Speaker 1
And, you know, I’ve been told, hey, you know, but we’ve made this mistake. Yeah, but it’s like a Band-Aid. Rip it and keep going, because we can’t just stand here and cry about it metaphorically or actually, because now we’re just losing money again. You got to keep going. It’s not saying that we’re not going to identify the problem and fix it before we move forward, but yeah, we gotta we gotta go.

00;19;21;05 – 00;19;22;13
Speaker 1
We gotta, we gotta move.

00;19;22;18 – 00;19;38;17
Speaker 2
So, d I actually, I, I got to ask a follow up question to you, Derek. Based on what you just said, if I heard you correctly. So you you’re sharing, like, your scorecard, your financial numbers. Is that with your management team or is that with everybody?

00;19;38;19 – 00;19;58;17
Speaker 3
Yeah, just our our upper management team. Yeah. The people who, you know, it impacts and you know, we have incentive packages, you know for for everybody that’s tied to their, their compensation, you know to, to do the right things and reward that. So unless they know where we stand, they don’t know where they stand in terms of their incentives.

00;19;58;18 – 00;20;03;17
Speaker 2
So okay. All right. And are you guys doing that in like the iOS level ten format.

00;20;03;24 – 00;20;04;13
Speaker 3
Exactly.

00;20;04;19 – 00;20;09;14
Speaker 2
Okay. Yeah. Got it, got it, got it. Corey, are you familiar with iOS?

00;20;09;16 – 00;20;10;10
Speaker 1
I’m not.

00;20;10;12 – 00;20;16;05
Speaker 2
Oh, you should check those guys out, man. IOS world. Why that? No affiliation. I we’re not paid to.

00;20;16;05 – 00;20;18;08
Speaker 1
Say second hand on that.

00;20;18;10 – 00;20;22;12
Speaker 2
There’s actually a book called Traction by Gino Wickman.

00;20;22;14 – 00;20;23;18
Speaker 1
That one I have heard of.

00;20;23;23 – 00;20;41;14
Speaker 2
Yeah. Great book, but that it’s all and that’s basically that’ll give you kind of the, the iOS overview and some of the details. Great book, easy to read that it reads like a story. They do a great job with it. But it’s it’s from, you know, Whitman created the iOS. So, I’ve been exposed to it over the years.

00;20;41;14 – 00;20;52;12
Speaker 2
We’ve had people on, on different shows that, are affiliated, whether they’re an integrator or whatever, and it’s it’s a great system. I know there’s been been using it to some extent, if not fully using it.

00;20;52;14 – 00;21;01;15
Speaker 3
Yeah. I mean, we utilize it for what, what makes sense for for our business. You know, there’s there’s bits and pieces you can take out everything. So yeah lovely.

00;21;01;17 – 00;21;24;20
Speaker 2
Helpful for sure. Yeah. I, you know, I’m curious as far as, you know, kind of selling that or feeling like a commodity sale with your business. Corey. What, how do you handle that in the sales process? Like, do you do you have, like, cost plus margin, and you just stick to it, and it is what it is, or how do you handle that whole.

00;21;24;20 – 00;21;48;22
Speaker 2
Because I know, you know, in a lot of the trades right now in our current environment, they don’t really see that because it’s such a, there’s such a short supply, whether it’s roofers, weld, you know, pretty much all across the board. So they’re able to they’re in such demand. They don’t really have that problem anymore. But if we go back to 2015, 16, 17, I mean, those guys suffered that same problem, right?

00;21;48;22 – 00;21;59;04
Speaker 2
Trying to build a deck. You’re quote a deck. You’re 1 to 10 guys quote in the deck. And it’s a it’s a race to the bottom like you put it. So yeah I’d love to hear how you handle that.

00;21;59;06 – 00;22;23;21
Speaker 1
The first two years I was in business, I left so much money on the table is unimaginable. Because I didn’t realize I was the last phone call. Blue collar guys, if you have a phone number listed somewhere, answer it. I don’t care if you’re using I at this point, if you have a phone number somewhere and it is listed and it is ringing, answer it.

00;22;23;21 – 00;22;50;04
Speaker 1
It is free money. There is 8 to 10 other guys that did not answer their phone. Answer it. And I’ve failed at that in years previous. And I have changed that because yeah, the first year business people would call with some insane turnaround time. Hey, I need it’s Tuesday, I need shirts by Friday. No problem. I had no idea that ten other shops had refused them because they have a standard two week turnaround time.

00;22;50;07 – 00;23;12;17
Speaker 1
Which I’m basically hovering at at the moment and always do now. So yeah, quickly learned that. And then I try to stick to that, you know, cost plus margin because there’s a certain number that we can’t go below. And then I’ve always told people I try to treat our level of service as the utmost is utmost importance.

00;23;12;17 – 00;23;31;24
Speaker 1
At the end of the day, you are buying a throwaway item. It’s a t shirt, it’s a hat, it’s low cost. You’re going to give it to a vendor, a client, somebody else. We primarily work with small to medium sized businesses, so it is just a promotional product. I said we meet our deadlines, we answer our emails, we answer the phone.

00;23;31;26 – 00;23;55;05
Speaker 1
We do a bang up job of printing your embroidery. And ultimately, I’m here to exist as a business with employees and provide for them. So that’s my story. My story is unless it’s your mother doing it or a family member, give us a shot the next time that your current provider says no. Because after ten years of doing this, I realized it’s one of the hardest sells.

00;23;55;05 – 00;24;13;24
Speaker 1
Because if you’ve been in business longer than six months, you’ve already got a guy. You’ve got a guy that has your working files, they do your paper goods, they might outsource the printing or embroidery. You’re not aware of it. It doesn’t matter. And so I’ve just told people, hey, the next time you forget something and you got some crazy deadline, if I can make it happen, we’ll make it happen.

00;24;13;26 – 00;24;47;26
Speaker 1
And usually that’s a, a remembrance of mine recall for when it does happen. Because the more I’ve done failed, I. There’s not much that I can deliver past what another shop already is doing. And in fact, that’s a major red flag for me. Now, I just fired a client that did well north of six figures with me a year in gross sales because they were just a horrible client, and when I onboarded them, it had all the red flags and I still said yes, trying to deliver.

00;24;47;29 – 00;25;10;14
Speaker 1
They said, hey, we’re ready to use you as a shop because I had emailed them a couple times and they did quite a decent volume there. A, social media YouTuber and I said, oh, well, why are you switching? And they go, well, something’s always wrong. And I’m with our other orders. And I’m like, Red flag. First one, I’m like, that’s fine.

00;25;10;14 – 00;25;30;24
Speaker 1
I was like, let me send you a quote. And they go, well, that’s double what we’re currently paying. Second red flag. I said, no problem. Send me an invoice of what your previous shop was doing. Now, mind you, that’s not that wasn’t initially the price match. And this is where I made my error. When they sent it over, I was sure enough, yes, that’s half of my cost.

00;25;30;26 – 00;25;50;22
Speaker 1
But this is interesting because this current shop must be pricing based off of volume. So I ask them, what is your volume that you order on an annualized basis? And they told me and I said, okay, that makes the number a little bit more enticing. If you can stick to this number of annualized volume, we can give it a go.

00;25;50;22 – 00;26;12;11
Speaker 1
But recognize that this guy wasn’t charging you any margin on the blank garments. He was just getting a print cost, which is a whole different sector of the business. They have contract printing, which I do for a bunch of clients at the moment. Where you don’t make any margin on the blank. Good. You just charge a print cost and it’s just labor, which is fine.

00;26;12;14 – 00;26;32;15
Speaker 1
And I told him, just make sure you hit this annualized number and we’ll give it a go. But recognize that the reason that this something was always wrong was because this guy couldn’t afford to stop, and neither can I. And it just snowballed from there. And so that really brought me to a point of that. What what are we trying so hard for?

00;26;32;15 – 00;26;56;13
Speaker 1
We’re hitting all of our deliverables. Everything is just above board. And this person just keeps finding something wrong. And I finally told them, I said, one of us is insane for continuing this relationship because I keep going above and beyond. We’ve done reprints. We’ve delivered overnight. We’ve driven stuff to you. I think you’re the insane one for continuing because I can’t anymore.

00;26;56;13 – 00;27;19;28
Speaker 1
This is ridiculous. Yeah. And so that was one of the few in ten years of doing the, my business where I said, you know what? I we can’t we obviously cannot perform. So you got to find somebody else. And that is just the 1 in 1,000,000 person that cannot be satisfied and doesn’t want to give any professional courtesy.

00;27;20;00 – 00;27;27;06
Speaker 1
The other way to allow you to do your job. So, yeah, thankfully I don’t have a lot of those, but it does happen.

00;27;27;09 – 00;27;30;05
Speaker 2
How did they take the news when you broke up with them?

00;27;30;08 – 00;27;52;07
Speaker 1
Nothing, which is what I, what I was figuring, which was great. It was just it cool on to the next person, which was fine. Yeah. There many late night texts and. Yeah, this it. I don’t use the term narcissist a whole lot, but this person was a whole nother level of entitled to the point where I was looking back at some of our techs going, why?

00;27;52;11 – 00;28;00;22
Speaker 1
Why did I put up with this for so long? But it’s the carrot. It’s the carrot in front of the horse metaphor, which we’ve all probably fall into.

00;28;00;22 – 00;28;18;00
Speaker 2
So yeah, I think we have all been there. I mean, I’m dealing with one now, or it’s like I’ve got, you know, and I don’t I’m not cavalier with breaking up with clients and getting rid of clients. Like it doesn’t happen very often. I don’t even know that it happens once a year where I have to have the conversation with someone.

00;28;18;00 – 00;28;36;17
Speaker 2
But over the last 12 years of doing this, there’s been half a dozen times where I’ve had to have that same conversation, you know, and it’s like it I to your point, right? Like, I can’t believe you are not the one initiating this conversation. They are unhappy. You have claimed to be right. Yes.

00;28;36;20 – 00;28;38;07
Speaker 1
Yeah, exactly.

00;28;38;09 – 00;28;39;00
Speaker 2
It’s pretty wild.

00;28;39;00 – 00;28;55;07
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. And the final straw for me was they texted back and they go, well, I have two more designs for you if you can print according to our standards. And I was like, nope. I was like, my I’m like, your standards are unachievable. Is not physically possible.

00;28;55;10 – 00;29;02;26
Speaker 2
Yeah. I want I know a deal is coming on. You know, we’re talking about hanging on to employees too long. You know, I wonder if we’re hanging.

00;29;02;26 – 00;29;06;06
Speaker 1
Yeah, I come back to you, right?

00;29;06;08 – 00;29;06;27
Speaker 2
Because I always.

00;29;06;27 – 00;29;07;13
Speaker 1
Just,

00;29;07;16 – 00;29;30;11
Speaker 2
Always, I always take responsibility. So I’m like, if I have a team member that’s struggling, I’m like, it’s on me. I’m as a as a leader, as a business owner. Yeah. Some sort of help. I’m not giving this person that that if I gave them this help, they would succeed. Right. Or same thing with the clients. I’m like, you know, if if they’re having all these issues, it’s obviously something wrong with my business.

00;29;30;14 – 00;29;40;12
Speaker 2
And then afterwards, like with the client situations, like, you know what, they probably have all these problems no matter who they work with. And yeah, that’s yeah. Mean you have to realize that I guess.

00;29;40;12 – 00;30;09;03
Speaker 1
But yep. Yeah. Well there’s a big lifetime value to me with my clients because it is hopeful. Unlike real estate where you know, 1 to 2 transactions maybe in your lifetime with that person, this person ordered basically quarterly or every two months. And so there’s a huge lifetime value to a customer, which it took me a while to figure out that I needed a measure that, not only, you know, your initial cost to acquire that customer, but then what is their lifetime value?

00;30;09;03 – 00;30;17;02
Speaker 1
The customer and for me, it’s huge. And you hope you’re hoping that they order, you know, more than once a year, which most companies do. So.

00;30;17;04 – 00;30;31;29
Speaker 2
So I know we got to, to keep us on track here. We got to jump over to the Patreon, side of things here shortly. But before we do one last question. You know, as far as, your business the next five years, you know, what does the future look like for you?

00;30;32;01 – 00;31;07;09
Speaker 1
Oh, that answer would have been different a couple weeks ago. Man, I’m not going to buy any new equipment. No new shiny things. And really focus on the numbers. What we currently do, strengthening that and ultimately, gaining more clients. I see I see us growing. That’s the only way. Only way that that I know that that keeps me satisfied not only as a business owner, but as a company.

00;31;07;12 – 00;31;47;26
Speaker 1
But I’ve realized that it has to be with the right customer. So somebody who spends a specific dollar amount or setting a better minimum project size as far as dollar wise goes or count piece count goes, because there’s plenty of customers out there that are what I have, which is smaller to medium sized customers. So now it’s time to find some that will actually move the needle because like a restaurant, if you pack the restaurant with some two for one hamburger special, the only thing you’re creating is gobs and gobs and more work for yourself, and you’re just hiring more employees, and then you’re just doing volume but not generating any additional profit.

00;31;47;28 – 00;32;09;01
Speaker 1
You generating revenue but not profit. And and two things I will say that I wanted to get to is if you are going to start a business from this point forward, start a service based business, do not start a product based business, and definitely don’t start a customer based product business, which is the industry that I’m in.

00;32;09;03 – 00;32;30;05
Speaker 1
And then the biggest piece of advice that somebody gave to me that I still kind of latched on to and I’ve told other people, is price where you want to be, not where you’re currently at. Otherwise you’re always going to just be spinning your wheels. And I’m I’m guilty of that. But price where you want to be and and keep it moving forward.

00;32;30;08 – 00;32;43;03
Speaker 1
Along with that story, there was one more thing. That was a big, big nugget. It’s that my brain. It’ll come to me later. All right, all right.

00;32;43;03 – 00;33;00;06
Speaker 2
Well, we’re going to we’re don’t go anywhere because we’re going to jump over to the Patreon segment of the show. And maybe it’ll come back to you in there in the. Yeah, in the questions we’ve got for you over on that side of things, for our listeners, if you haven’t, joined yet on the Patreon side of things, there’s going to be a link in the show notes that Taylor will put there.

00;33;00;08 – 00;33;18;14
Speaker 2
You know, in our Patreon account, we put a bunch of other content, whether it’s blogs, other videos like we’re about to do with Corey, that really gets down into some of the more unpacked, detailed, information about growing and scaling a business in the trade. So, make sure if you’re not a member, you sign up, join us over there.

00;33;18;14 – 00;33;24;11
Speaker 2
And in the meantime, Corey, if people want to learn more about you and what you’re doing, how they find you guys.

00;33;24;13 – 00;33;48;17
Speaker 1
You can, we have a website, little moose prints, dot com, and then we have all of our socials as well. TikTok, Facebook, Instagram. You can call or email us. We ship nationwide and yeah, our our preferred, client to work with is a small to medium sized business. And blue collar businesses are some of my favorites because they, got to buy hats and t shirts.

00;33;48;24 – 00;33;52;03
Speaker 1
So absolutely hit us up. Love it.

00;33;52;05 – 00;34;07;05
Speaker 2
All right, let’s jump on over to the Patreon side. Thanks everybody for listening. Of course, you can find us at Blue Collar Startup Audio. And, we’re on Spotify, Apple Rumble, and YouTube if you’re looking for that video side of things. So jump on over to Patreon. Join us over there.

00;34;07;05 – 00;34;35;06
Speaker 1
And that wraps up another episode of Blue Collar Startup. A big thank you to our sponsors, Five Towers Media, Daigle Cleaning Systems, Daigle Fire Solutions, The Michaels Group, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction People, and Catamount Consulting for making this podcast possible. And thank you for tuning in. If you learned something or felt inspired. Connect with us on our website at Blue Collar Startup Bio or email us at hardhat Dot CSU at gmail.com.

00;34;35;06 – 00;34;47;15
Speaker 1
We’d love to hear your questions and topic ideas. Help us spread the word by sharing the show and following us on social media for updates. Until next time, keep on building. Keep on dreaming and keep hustling like your future depends on it.

00;34;47;15 – 00;35;02;27
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

00;38;31;20 – 00;38;47;00
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.

00;38;47;00 – 00;39;03;29
Speaker 2
when you’re looking at when we’re looking at, like the startup environment. Right. Either someone’s looking at starting their own business or maybe they have in the last year or two, you know, when when you were getting started, what were the keys to success that you might have had or still have, for that matter?

00;39;04;02 – 00;39;32;21
Speaker 1
Definitely over promise and don’t don’t under deliver. And I got buried pretty quick early on because I was a little bit equipment poor and in spite of, you know, however many hours in the day that I can generate, including working seven days a week, it was just impossible to stay on top of everything. And to that end, along with, you know, pricing where you want to be at,

00;39;32;23 – 00;39;51;22
Speaker 1
Oh, man, I lost it again. I that nugget will come back to me. Sorry. Yeah, it just when you’re in the startup, you just really be focused on making sure that you’re over or, over promising and being able to deliver, all of your all of your stuff for sure.

00;39;51;24 – 00;39;58;18
Speaker 2
What you’re promising. You sound like a guy that, at least in the startup time of your business, you like to say yes.

00;39;58;21 – 00;40;00;17
Speaker 1
Yeah. For sure.

00;40;00;19 – 00;40;02;10
Speaker 3
I did the same, you know? I mean.

00;40;02;10 – 00;40;09;03
Speaker 2
I did, too. That’s why I’m like. I, you know, that’s the best thing to do, right? Do you have to? Because I feel like you have to say yes.

00;40;09;05 – 00;40;32;23
Speaker 3
You know what it is? It’s like, you know, you get that big order probably in your business career and ours. It’s like, hey, we got this big challenge. We need this big building cleaned in two days. Can you do it? It’s like, well, yeah, we’re going to figure it out. You know? And then you do just that, you figure it out and honestly, if nothing else comes out of it, even if you fall on your face, at least you’ll learn a few things along the way.

00;40;32;26 – 00;40;35;03
Speaker 3
So it’s like I looked at it.

00;40;35;06 – 00;40;55;21
Speaker 2
Yeah, I remember I, came across these young kids. This is probably like 2017, and they had started a marketing company. They had like two clients and I like them. They’re good kids, you know what I mean? So they’re like, kind of like looking to me to mentor them a little bit. So I’m having these conversations with them and I’m like, well, tell me about your clients.

00;40;55;24 – 00;41;13;29
Speaker 2
And they start. They’re like, well, we we refuse to work with this. We we refuse to do this. We refuse to do that. And I’m just looking at I’m like, hey, do me a favor for the next 60 days, anything anyone asks you to do, and I don’t care if it includes clean their hotel room, like say yes to it because they were dying on the vine.

00;41;13;29 – 00;41;32;22
Speaker 2
They they were, you know, like getting evicted from their office, getting evicted from their interests. And they had no money. I’m like, it’s because you guys, someone told you that whole thing about how you need to, really niche up and only work with specific clients, I’m like, you can’t do that in startup mode. You have to say yes to everything.

00;41;32;24 – 00;41;44;00
Speaker 2
And you can afford to say no. I’m like, you guys can’t afford to say no. That’s why you’re, like, dying right now. Yeah, I just I was wondering, you sounded like your ear of the same mind. Like say yes.

00;41;44;00 – 00;41;59;07
Speaker 1
To a man. Yeah, that’s the salesman in me. Which is also. It can be a double edged sword. Yeah. Because as you grow, the mistakes get bigger, they get more expensive, they get more for it. They get more costly with time. Yeah.

00;41;59;09 – 00;42;12;26
Speaker 3
Yeah. So Corey, one question that I had, what role did you play in the family farm when you were involved in operating that? And how did that translate into what you’re doing now?

00;42;12;28 – 00;42;32;09
Speaker 1
I during it’s interesting question. During Covid, there was Covid, I was only down about 10%. I would say this year has actually been my most difficult year of business. But during that time, there was a couple of weeks where I told my wife, hey, I’m going to find another job. And then I’m just, I’m just done because why?

00;42;32;14 – 00;43;03;10
Speaker 1
Why am I doing this? But my my current business that I’m in and she’s like, well, what are you going to do? And I was like, that is an interesting question. I said, I think I would serve a company best if they were a custom home builder that did remodels as well. And I had 2 to 3 crews and 40 to 50 vendors and juggling that act, because while we were farming, I was handling the day to day with thankfully with farming and equipment wise, we didn’t have that many employees.

00;43;03;10 – 00;43;27;00
Speaker 1
I think we had 5 or 6 employees and didn’t deal with a whole lot of subs. But I dealt with the day to day. Did the scheduling of, you know, this field needs to be taken care of for this task. And then during harvest season, it was me scheduling trucks to come pick up the stuff, dealing with sales contracts.

00;43;27;02 – 00;43;47;03
Speaker 1
There’s a whole seasonality to it. Our permanent crop. You wait nine months to get a paycheck. And I can remember my dad very thankfully, he even when I was, I don’t know, 14 or 15, we would sit around the dinner table and he’d be like, hey, this is the almond price right now. This is what it’s been historically.

00;43;47;03 – 00;44;07;26
Speaker 1
What should we do? And even as a kid, you sit there and scratch your head and go, well, I don’t know, like they’re not even grown yet. So that big picture, always helped. And I can remember my first decision where I actually told my dad it was after I graduated college. He goes, hey, this is the almond price.

00;44;07;28 – 00;44;26;20
Speaker 1
What do you think? And I’m like, we should sell 2 or 3 fields worth right now at that price, because it’s a decent price. And there’s these rainstorms that are coming that are going to affect the crop. I believe. Or sorry, we had we dodged some rain storms and the crop looked like it was going to be very large.

00;44;26;20 – 00;44;53;10
Speaker 1
And so we were expecting the price to drop and it didn’t. And so when we got the production numbers back on that field, I did the math and I was like, oh, I torched the Lamborghini. Like I left 100,000 on the table just off those three fields of production and, you know, eats at you a little bit. And my dad, to his credit, looked at me and goes, don’t ever have that mentality because it could have just as easily gone the other way.

00;44;53;12 – 00;45;18;05
Speaker 1
And so to that end, it’s that juggling act. I call it whack a mole. I think everybody does this in their in their business, of which mole is standing up the loudest or screaming the hardest, and that’s the three 4 or 5 six that I’m going to hit today. And yeah, constantly juggling that, which sometimes I do a better job of.

00;45;18;07 – 00;45;19;00
Speaker 3
Very interesting.

00;45;19;06 – 00;45;36;06
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. And definitely playing whack a mole for sure. Yeah. What when you were, when you were growing out of the small shop that you’re in, at what point did you decide, like, I need to hire an employee? Like, what did that look like for you?

00;45;36;08 – 00;46;00;02
Speaker 1
My wife said, I am going home to take care of both of our children. We just had our second, and she said, good luck. And if I don’t go home, you, you know, your stuff is going to be on the porch. And that sort of metaphor. She said that jokingly, we’ve been together for for ages, but I definitely did definitely did some work there.

00;46;00;02 – 00;46;17;19
Speaker 1
And I remember complaining I had to hire two employees to basically replace her. And I came home and complained one day and she without missing a beat because my wife is wonderful. She goes, well, better the payroll than losing half your stuff. I was like, cool, I guess, I guess I’m going to go back to work. What do you do, honey?

00;46;17;23 – 00;46;46;11
Speaker 1
Yeah. Oh, and I sorry. I do remember now that little nugget of wisdom. But yeah, before you hire people and regardless of what stage you’re in, in your business, before you hire another person, raise your prices. I don’t care what industry you’re in. If you say, oh, there’s no way. Because I say that constantly, man, are people really going to pay 16, 17, $18 for, you know, a sleeve of custom hat?

00;46;46;11 – 00;47;14;00
Speaker 1
And then I look around and go, well, they’re going to have to because everything’s gone up. So before you hire somebody, raise your prices, because the worst thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to shrink a little bit and you might actually maintain or even better, your profit margin, because you can hire a ton of people and they can be brilliant, but then you just have to feed the beast again and fill the pipeline back up.

00;47;14;02 – 00;47;22;19
Speaker 2
I love it. I think that’s a great way to look at it. What? What was what was your first hire? Just a production person.

00;47;22;21 – 00;47;47;07
Speaker 1
I hired a graphic designer, which I always needed. And then my second hire was actually my embroidery department, and she is still with me to this day, so she’s my longest running employee. And we we tried to delegate our tasks to where I was running the printing, and my wife was doing kind of the front, front of house, if you will, and some of the embroidery work.

00;47;47;10 – 00;47;56;11
Speaker 2
So do you have some sort of like, retention program in place that you used to try to keep quality hires, or is it just you get lucky?

00;47;56;13 – 00;48;17;28
Speaker 1
I got very lucky. And I have a double edged sword of being able to recognize good and bad people on on it just immediately, even on the phone. It’s almost to a detriment for my sales process, because I can tell you immediately whether or not the relationship is going to go good or bad, regardless of the length of time.

00;48;18;00 – 00;48;43;10
Speaker 1
And my current production manager, I actually hired her from our local gas station and just walked in the door and immediately recognized, oh, this person doesn’t want to be here. Well, maybe they want to be at my business. And I described what we did, and I was currently hiring for a like a nighttime position. I said, I’m not a fan of poaching an employee from any place, regardless of whether or not they, you know, want to be there.

00;48;43;16 – 00;49;08;18
Speaker 1
But I have this alternate shift, and I got done telling her, and after ten years of doing this business, I don’t blow smoke anywhere. She goes. You don’t really seem to speak highly of what you do. And I’m like, I it is what it is like. Everybody has a romantic view of what it takes to clean something, or mower, lawn or make fast food, and everybody has a romantic idea of what it takes to make a t shirt.

00;49;08;18 – 00;49;33;25
Speaker 1
I’m like, we are a production facility, and our job is to make shirts as efficiently as possible, and it just is what it is. Come down and take a look. I don’t hire a production person without a at least two weeks of them being on the floor, because I’ve had a good half dozen people that run out of the building screaming or crying.

00;49;34;00 – 00;49;53;25
Speaker 1
And I’m like that. That’s fine, because I really try to tell them this, this is what this is, and I want you to recognize this, but this is going to be like the first couple dates. We’re just having coffee and we’re going to see if we like each other or if you like the working environment, because at the end of the day, I can’t promise you much other than you’re going to be working inside and you don’t have to dig a ditch outside.

00;49;53;25 – 00;49;59;01
Speaker 1
But it is. It’s a churn for sure.

00;49;59;03 – 00;50;14;09
Speaker 2
What? I know we’re about to wrap things up, but I got one more question for you when you are even now. Right. Like what do you think the best strategy is that you’ve employed for getting new clients and customers and then keeping them?

00;50;14;12 – 00;50;45;22
Speaker 1
I’ve worked on the keeping part because I had somebody asked me, hey, why? Why do your clients use you? And I had to pause and go. I don’t know, you know, I meet their deadlines, we produce a exceptional product, but at the end of the day, it has to go a little bit deeper than that, where you’re you’re nurturing that client level of, you know, staying on top of them in the sales process.

00;50;45;24 – 00;51;07;03
Speaker 1
And it can be personable. You know, don’t try to sell somebody every time you pick up the phone or the email or whatever it is. And so I’ve worked on that because at the end of the day, you I mean, your clients can be taken from me relatively easily, particularly in the trade. There’s always somebody that got to do it cheaper or faster or better.

00;51;07;05 – 00;51;27;11
Speaker 1
And then as far as gaining clients, I just went through the process of hiring, my first outside salesperson. And I’m still going through some of the training with him. But he had asked me that, like, hey, what is a good, like, hook that I can tell somebody and I’m like, well, just tell them that we can be there for them.

00;51;27;13 – 00;51;48;12
Speaker 1
You know, if if they forget something or their current provider says no, if you don’t think they’re going to commit to it immediately. I said, the second thing that we can offer is a free set up with similar logo, whatever hideous format you have it in, whether it be on your phone or on a business card or whatever, and we will digitally recreate that for our use and ultimately for their use.

00;51;48;14 – 00;52;03;27
Speaker 1
And then that’s how you can gain and retain a client in my industry, simply because people think that when they switch, oh, God, now we’re going to have to, you know, have it redrawn and I’m going to have to dig up this file and I don’t know where it is. I’m going to have to send it to somebody.

00;52;03;27 – 00;52;15;28
Speaker 1
And then we have to, you know, okay, new mock ups. And so making that initial sales process as easy as possible has been beneficial to me. But it.

00;52;16;00 – 00;52;26;20
Speaker 2
Corey, one more time for people that are in the the Patreon side of things. Maybe they didn’t hear the other episode yet. If, people want to get Ahold of you, get in touch. Find out more about little moose prints. How did they find you?

00;52;26;23 – 00;52;44;20
Speaker 1
Yeah, we have a website. It’s little moose print scum. You can reach us via email, our phone numbers there as well. And then we have all of our social media channels Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, reach out. We, ship nationwide all of our products. So looking forward to hearing from you guys. Yeah.

00;52;44;22 – 00;52;59;05
Speaker 2
Thanks, everybody for listening. Of course. You know, for you folks over here on the Patreon side, thank you so much for being members. Really appreciate the support that you give us. And hopefully you are appreciating the additional content that we are creating for you. So thanks everybody for listening. Corey, thanks so much.

00;52;59;07 – 00;53;00;03
Speaker 1
Yeah, for sure you guys.

00;53;00;10 – 00;53;08;02
Speaker 2
I’m gonna wish you all the continued success in the world, man. And, we’re I have to set up a separate podcast so we can talk about just farming at some point.

00;53;08;02 – 00;53;09;11
Speaker 1
Awesome. Yeah, absolutely.

00;53;09;14 – 00;53;14;14
Speaker 2
I mean, I’m a geek about it, so I need more, I need more, so thanks.

00;53;14;16 – 00;53;15;15
Speaker 1
Yeah. Thanks, guys.

00;53;15;15 – 00;53;43;16
Speaker 1
And that wraps up another episode of Blue Collar Startup. A big thank you to our sponsors, Five Towers Media, Daigle Cleaning Systems, Daigle Fire Solutions, The Michaels Group, Martin Electric, MLB construction, Pinocchio Construction People, and Catamount Consulting for making this podcast possible. And thank you for tuning in. If you learned something or felt inspired. Connect with us on our website at Blue Collar Startup Bio or email us at hardhat Dot CSU at gmail.com.

00;53;43;16 – 00;53;55;25
Speaker 1
We’d love to hear your questions and topic ideas. Help us spread the word by sharing the show and following us on social media for updates. Until next time, keep on building. Keep on dreaming and keep hustling like your future depends on it.

00;53;55;25 – 00;54;11;07
Unknown
Oh, hey. Oh, hey.