[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:02] DC: This is the true story of two printers who agreed to podcast with me and have their opinions recorded. Listen to what happens when printers stop being polite and start getting real.
[0:00:13] JM: Hi, this is Jamie McLennan.
[0:00:15] WC: And this is William Crabtree.
[0:00:16] DC: And I’m your host, Deborah Korn. Welcome to the PrinterChat podcast.
Mental wellness has become an increasingly important workplace topic across industries, and print is no exception. According to the American Psychological Association’s 2025 Work in America Survey, more than half of the workers report significant stress related to job security and economic uncertainty. Other workplace studies continue to identify heavy workloads, time pressure, and competing priorities as leading sources of workplace stress.
For print professionals, those pressures can come from tight deadlines, production schedules, staffing challenges, customer demands, equipment issues, sales goals, and the constant need to solve problems in real time.
Today we’re talking about the realities of working in a demanding industry, how people manage workplace pressure, and the role employers can play in supporting mental wellness and creating healthy work environments. Welcome to the PrinterChat podcast. I am here with Jamie McLennan, General Manager of Invoke Conshohocken. How do you say it, Jamie? Conshohocken?
[0:01:44] JM: Conshohocken.
[0:01:47] DC: Conshohocken. And we have Will Crabtree from TampaPrinter.com, Sign Parrot, and AutoPrint. Welcome, gentlemen, to PrinterChat.
[0:01:57] WC: I love how your cadence in this opening is very – it’s almost like a shrink. We’re very calming as we’re going into this one when we’re talking about mental health, you know.
[0:02:08] DC: I’m literally trying not to stress anyone out.
[0:02:10] WC: I feel like we need one of those bells in the back of those little like –
[0:02:15] JM: The vibe off of it. Hello, everybody.
[0:02:17] DC: Like those Buddhist bells. Hi, Jamie. It’s so good to see you. Jamie’s in a different place now. He’s literally sitting between two ferns, which is pretty funny. Gentlemen, mental wellness is a big topic in the printing industry. Who would have thought that all the guys out there would want to talk about their feelings. The feefees, right? Their feelings. But it’s not just gentlemen. It’s everybody. It’s not just the printing industry. It’s everybody on the planet. What causes you the most stress at work, Will? And everybody, hold on, because who knows where this is going to go.
[0:02:55] WC: Actually, I can’t complain too much. My levels of stress at this point in stage in my career. My stress comes from impatience and not having things moving as quickly as I want, that are dependent on other people. But I also try to be mindful of not putting additional pressure on my web developers, like, “Hey, I know you’re working your ass off, and I know you’re stressed out because we just launched this big thing, but I also need you to do this other stuff, and I need you to get it done right now.” I don’t do that. And we try to avoid doing that at the print shop, too. There’s always deadlines. There’s always machine problems. There’s always all of the things that you just listed out.
And when you have an employee that actually cares about the company that they work for, they carry those loads and they feel those things, right? Having to be mindful of not adding additional pressure on there. But for me again, my biggest stresses used to come from dealing with customers and clients, and dealing with problems and having to fix issues, and this mistake and that mistake, and this problem and that problem, and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Where now I don’t have much of that in my day-to-day. So my stress levels are I’m almost back to leaning Will. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re almost back there.
[0:04:09] DC: Low-riding Will.
[0:04:10] WC: Low-riding Will.
[0:04:12] DC: Low-riding Will. Because he sits in his chair with this gangster lean all the way down on the floor. He’s low-riding in his chair. Jamie, what causes you the most stress at work?
[0:04:22] JM: I like what Will said about impatience, because, yeah, I’m an impatient person. I try and hide that when I’m here. What really gets me is when – we don’t do it very often, but when we mess up something. And the team works hard. Everybody puts in an unbelievable amount of time. And it’s always like something gets messed up when it has to be done on a certain day. That’s usually when my stress level gets kind of crazy. Like jump through hoops. How are we going to correct this? How are we going to make it right? We need to do this, switch gears, and do that. That’s usually when I get crazy. It’s not like on purpose or anything like that. It just happens.
And we have a good team, and they jump in. They’re like, “We’ll take care of it. We’ll take care of it right now. We’ll do this.” And stuff like that. Some of the other stuff that happens is if we have a new press coming in a couple of weeks, that is going to be major stressful because we’re going to be down for probably six days or so, something like that. How are we rescheduling that work? I’m trying to let customers know now, like, “Hey, you’re going to have a little blip. If we need to have it on that press, you’re going to miss a couple of days. We’re going to have to ask you for some more time because the new press is coming in. The old one’s going down, the new one’s taking its place. It’s not like they’re going to run next to each other.” Yeah. That’s going to be a little bit of stressful time. We were talking about this afternoon, what’s the best way to handle that situation, so it’s less stressful for everybody? And then that pressman is going on vacation right around the same time.
[0:05:35] WC: Jamie, Jamie.
[0:05:36] JM: Oh my god. Now what?
[0:05:38] WC: No one listening right now can see your face turning colors, different shades as you’re telling these, listing off all of these things that are stressing you out.
[0:05:47] DC: And you see the little veins in his forehead are popping too.
[0:05:50] WC: Yeah. He’s gone like five shades of purple in the last minute and a half.
[0:05:57] JM: We had a little debrief before we started and like –
[0:05:59] WC: Yeah. Yeah. Take a deep breath. Take a deep breath, man. It’s okay. It’s okay.
[0:06:03] JM: Yeah. That’s the little things. Every day, we deal – customers come to me; I’m like, “This is what we do. We turn things around incredibly fast for you. We jump through hoops for you. That’s why you come to us.” That’s usually not the stressful part. I’m not worried about customers emailing me this morning like, “I need this tomorrow by noon.” I’m like, “Uh, sure. Let me see what we can do.” I mean, “Do this, do this.” “I’m not in the office right now, but we’ll get it done.” And that doesn’t stress me out.
[0:06:28] WC: Yeah. The deadlines aren’t that bad, right? It’s like a day in the. Like, “Okay, you need this tomorrow? Whatever. No problem.” It’s when something goes wrong. And usually if something goes – and I guarantee you everybody listening to this is going to feel the same way. When something goes wrong on one thing at the beginning, then it just spirals. And it’s just like every little beat of this one job just keeps getting fucked up. A job that should have taken 5 minutes will take 5 days, and you’re just like, “Argh. I want to pull my hair out.” That’s like the worst part.
And it very much part of what we do. We’re custom manufacturing, right? We’re making a thing that is unique to one person in a manufacturing environment, and the opportunity for something to go wrong is very high. It takes a lot of workflow, and processes, and everything else to make sure that doesn’t happen. But then when it does, it’s that one thing. And now once it goes wrong, it just goes sideways, and it spirals out of control, and it’s just like, “Argh.”
[0:07:26] JM: Yeah, we try not to have that happen. But it does.
[0:07:28] WC: We try not to, but those are the ones that get you. Keep you up at night.
[0:07:33] JM: Yep, definitely.
[0:07:34] DC: All right. Let me ask this. If when things like this happen, which they happen all the time, and you’re stressing out, is that causing other people to stress out? For example, if maybe there’s a problem with the press, and the press operator starts stressing out because they know you’re going to stress out as soon as they tell you that there’s a problem. I guess, how do you contain that dynamic?
[0:08:01] JM: That would be the best way to find out. The pressman comes to you and says, “I’m having a problem.” Then there’s no stress. It’s when the customer comes to you and says, “There’s a problem.”
[0:08:08] WC: Correct. Yeah. If you catch it in production, no problem. Once it’s already been made, that’s the big problem.
[0:08:14] JM: Yes. That’s when it becomes stressful. Usually, other than that, it’s like, “Okay, let’s shift gears. We’ll do this. We’ll do this.” If we can’t run on that press, let’s put it on this press and see what happens. But yeah. Yeah. That’s the best part. I know the pressman is stressed out because I’ve been there. I’ve run the press. I’m like, “I can’t get this to run. There’s no way it’s going to – the colors aren’t right. Something’s wrong. The ink water balance isn’t right when I was running an offset press.” I’m like, “I just need to shut it down, wash up, start over again.” And I’d rather tell them right up front that we’re having a problem than try and sell a job that doesn’t look right.
[0:08:44] DC: Let me reframe the question to: how do you check in and find out if your employees are afraid to tell you things?
[0:08:53] WC: I’ll take this one. And I 1,000% know that my employees are afraid to tell me things.
[0:09:00] DC: Really? Can you imagine that, Jamie?
[0:09:02] WC: Oh, yes. No. I haven’t yelled at an employee in years.
[0:09:08] DC: You don’t have to, Will. Jamie turns red.
[0:09:13] WC: It was a long time ago. But I used to lose my shit, right? And 2019, I think, was the last time I really screamed at an employee. And I lost my shit. He made a mistake that was going to cost me thousands of dollars, and I embarrassed him. I didn’t call him out of his name. I didn’t tell him he was stupid, but I was like, “Are you fucking kidding me?” And I felt so bad afterwards. I’ve never lost my cool like that again.
But definitely, there was a time when both shops were running 40 employees, and things were going bananas that it was like, “Will is on a need-to-know basis, right?” I only need to know what I need to know.
[0:09:47] DC: I remember your need-to-know era.
[0:09:50] WC: And there’s even still an era of that. But Ashley’s the filter. So instead of it being like employees are making these decisions and deciding what I know and what I don’t know, Ashley knows everything. And then Ashley decides what I need to know and what I don’t need to know in conjunction with the general manager. But most of the equipment going down and things like that, they know how to deal with all of that. They know how to divert to the vendor, divert to another machine.
And it comes down to communication, right? Having an open line of communication. And yes, it’s funny to say, yes, my employees were afraid to tell me things because they were afraid to be in trouble. But we also created a culture of like no one’s ever going to be in trouble. We have a problem that we have to solve. So if you communicate and you go through the proper channels, then we can solve it, and we can figure it out and make it work.
It’s way worse than when you try to figure it out on your own, and you don’t really know how to fix the problem, and then we wind up giving a client something that was unacceptable. And that’s when things do take that spiral of like once one thing goes wrong, then it’s just da-da-da-da-da because you’re trying to play catch-up and make up from all the way at the finish line versus maybe a quarter mile in.
[BREAK]
[0:11:01] DC: Get ready to turn up the volume on print. PrintFM is a global internet radio station dedicated exclusively to print and graphic communications, accessible around the clock in every time zone. No more searching across channels and apps. PrintFM brings relevant topical programming from Print Media Centr, Girls Who Print, and an array of industry contributors who bring their own perspectives, guests, and conversations to the mix. PrintFM also broadcasts from industry events, with live shows being scheduled throughout the year. Visit printfm.com to explore our daily programming, event schedules, and opportunities to share your content or sponsor our shows. Expert discussions, real-world insight, and industry voices are just a click away. Listen long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:11:59] DC: So, I’m in a different situation, obviously, because I don’t technically have employees. I work with a bunch of consultants that help me do things. And I would say that in that situation, the thing that stresses me out the most is something Will just said, poor communication, because we are all remote.
To your point also, Will, when one thing goes wrong. I mean, all somebody has to do is misinterpret the assignment. And 3 days later, you’re like, “What am I reading? This has nothing to do with what was supposed to be going on here.” And I got to a situation where I kept saying, “Why does this keep happening? Why does this keep happening?” And then I pointed the finger at myself, and I said, “You can control a lot of this by just being more clear on what you want.” Don’t assume that people know what you’re talking about, even though we talked about it in a meeting for an hour and then met about it again and had some emails. I could stress out about that, which obviously I have been. I mean, I have.
Or just like a month ago, I was like, “Nope, I’m just going to take responsibility for it.” Instead of freaking out like, “What is wrong with this person?” I’m going to just say, “What is wrong with me? What did I not clearly communicate?” And that is how I unstress myself from it because I feel like at least I’m being proactive.
But let me tell you, for that first couple of minutes when I’m looking at something, and all I’m thinking is w freaking, “What the freaking hell am I looking at here?” I have to do the league of their own thing. I’m just like freaking out and just like, “Hi. This is not what we talked about,” and try to remain calm. And also, I have this other trick now, which is I write the response or the thing that I want to write in an email which will never be sent ever.
[0:14:09] WC: Oh, I’ve rewritten so many emails.
[0:14:12] DC: No, I don’t even do that anymore. Then I give it to my Zena, my ChatGPT, and she’s like, “Yeah, no.” Because we have a Deborah email response project going, and then she says exactly what I want to say, but in a professional manner. And I’ve been sending those. Because the domino effect of getting that rage out, that stress out, just for that 3 minutes and feeling like, “Oh, I got it out,” the domino effect of that is lasting, and it doesn’t work out. Those two things cause me the most stress.
[0:14:49] JM: I learned that the hard way. I used to have a sales manager that would just drive me nuts, and they were like, “Give me things to do.” I’m just like, “Are you kidding right now?” I’m like, “We’re in the middle of doing this, this.” And I would type this email, and I’d look at it and go, “No.” Then I’d send it anyway. I’m like, “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
[0:15:05] DC: Did you ever get in trouble?
[0:15:07] JM: Almost a couple of times. I’m like, “I really apologize. I shouldn’t have said that. Feel of the moment.” And I started doing what you did. Just write it, have somebody else look at it, put it through ChatGPT. And then I usually just delete it. I go, “It’s not worth it.”
[0:15:20] DC: Yeah. Usually delete that shit ASAP. Will?
[0:15:23] WC: Yeah, I don’t reply to any email immediately ever anymore, which is the beauty of the email system that I use.
[0:15:30] DC: Except for one we sent you the other day.
[0:15:32] WC: Oh, no. That one was well-thought-out. I knew what time it was as soon as I saw your email before I even looked at that guy’s website. So, we won’t even go down that rabbit hole.
[0:15:40] DC: Whoa. Will went crazy in email. Just saying.
[0:15:44] JM: I was like, “Who’s this?”
[0:15:46] DC: Jamie was like, “Will is heated up?” We were having a private text about you, by the way.
[0:15:51] WC: That’s fine. You guys do what you want. I don’t want nothing to do with that company. Anyways, I think there’s a line that I’ve found over time, and it’s the line between patience and expectations, right? Having high expectations and low patience is a formula for disaster, right? You’re going to get frustrated. You’re going to lash out. You’re going to say things. You’re going to do things that are not in your best interest or the best interest of the people around you.
And then finding the expectation level is having and owning it yourself as well. Deborah, you said this perfectly, right? Being able to responsibly delegate is what I like to say. Because you can say, “Hey, I need you to do this thing. And we had a meeting about it, and you should know what you were doing.” And then when someone doesn’t do it exactly the way you want, then your reaction is be like, “Well, why didn’t you understand me?”
[0:16:43] DC: What else do I have to do? Or should I just do it myself? Exactly.
[0:16:47] WC: But a lot of people learn and listen and understand in different ways and different mediums. So you have to explain things to people in the way that they learn the best, which is a responsibility of the someone that is delegating, right? Having the expectations associated with having good patience and then understanding how to delegate properly to get the result that you want is a very fragile formula.
[0:17:13] DC: Totally.
[0:17:13] WC: It is not a perfect method by any means, but it definitely has helped me a lot in how I interact with my employees, how I interact with the clients that I interact with, setting expectations for my clients, making sure that they know. And look, I don’t want to tweet my own horn or toot my own horn over here, but the clients that I deal with, I’m a gangster, and they know. And they’re high-level clients, and they know that they can rely on me, and that’s why they’re my clients. And then there’s clients that I don’t deal with anymore that deal with directly with my team, only that still get that same level of service. Because we do provide good service, and we provide good product, and we’re reliable.
And even when things do go sideways, we know that we can take care of it. And we’ve created an infrastructure within being able to broker and find resources to fulfill jobs when we can’t fulfill them ourselves. Or even knowing when our bandwidth is at limit. We just took in this job for 150 signs, but we’re already at max capacity. We could do it in-house. But let’s go ahead and outsource it to make sure that we get it done on time and we don’t put extra stress on the shop.
[0:18:14] DC: That’s good. The last thing I want to say about this is just like I do with ChatGPT now when I send emails. I’m like, “Do you have any questions? Do you think this is clear?” I don’t go as far as saying say it back to me so I know we’re on the same page. But I do say, “Are there any questions? Do you need more information about anything that I just said?” And still, people have free will. They interpret things the way they do. But I’ve been getting much closer, if not exactly what I want, when I took responsibility instead of just stressing out and being like, “What is wrong with everybody else?”
Okay, this is one of my biggest problems, I’m going to say. Because I’ve got a couple going on. But one of my biggest problems is how do you leave work at work? And I say it’s one of my biggest problems because I work where I live. So all I do is go into another room, and then work is in the office.
So, how do you leave work at work? Especially, you guys have kids, you have families. A lot of the stuff you were talking about, Will, it’s not just in the office. And Jamie, too, you take that home. You could take it home with you. Jamie, how does Joanne handle your stressful days? Your wife.
[0:19:30] JM: Usually, she’ll just tell me to go take a walk, walk the dog, take the dog out for a walk, go breathe it off, do something. Actually, it was easier when my kids were little because they had sports and stuff like that, and I coached. So, I would leave work on time to do that. And then when they went to bed, I would finish doing what I had to do or get in really early. It was an odd thing.
But now that they’re grown up and not there, it feels like I could be working all the time. I could be working 12 hours a day. And now I try and set limits. Because before, it was just like whenever somebody email, I’ll get a hold of that. I’ll take care of that. Let’s get it done. Now, it’s like a certain time my phone goes off, I’m done.
[0:20:03] DC: I’ve emailed you a couple of times. You were on vacation, sitting on a beach, and you helped me.
[0:20:08] JM: Yeah, because it was you.
[0:20:09] DC: Ahh. Thank you.
[0:20:10] JM: There are only a few people that can do that. But people have called me, and I’d be like, “I’m on the beach.”
[0:20:16] DC: Yeah, you sent me a photo.
[0:20:18] JM: Can I call you back in a little while, or can somebody else help you? They’re like, “Somebody else could definitely help me up. Don’t worry about it.” So, I’m getting better at that. But I get up earlier than everybody when we go on vacation. So, probably up at 6:00. They don’t get up till 8:00. And I probably do like an hour’s worth of work and then I’m done.
[0:20:33] DC: So you don’t bring any work stress home with you?
[0:20:37] JM: Oh yeah, definitely.
[0:20:38] DC: Okay, so that’s the question. How do you leave work at work?
[0:20:41] JM: I can’t. I do most of it. There’s certain things you can’t. And me and my wife will – she runs a floor in the hospital. Will’s wife used to work at the hospital. She works with the people that are – I don’t know what the appropriate word is. But yeah, she has a rough floor that she works on. And yeah, she’ll bring it home a little bit, and we’ll kind of vent about it for 15 minutes and then we’re done. Like, “Stop.” Every now and then, she’s like, “We said 15 minutes. Stop.”
[0:21:04] DC: But that’s great advice. I have a three-day plan. The first day, I’m livid about it. The second day, I fester in it. And then the third day, it’s over. I’ve done all the festering and freaking out for two days. And the third day, mandatory. It doesn’t exist anymore.
Will, you have young kids. Younger kids. They’re not babies, but they’re younger.
[0:21:27] WC: No. 12 and 14. Yeah, 14. 12. They’re teenagers. Pre-teens. I got kids. Yeah. I mean, I don’t leave work at home or work at work. I live at work. I work all the time. This is work. We’re working right now, as far as I’m concerned. My wife is my business partner. She was up last night working on invoicing. And then there was a bug in the software from the update that we just did. I’m reporting bug softwares in the middle of the night, with her yelling at me because the software is not working the way it’s supposed to be working, you know. There’s no leaving work at work.
But there’s a balance between we have dinner together almost every night, right? I take the kids to school in the morning, and she picks the kids up. We get to spend a lot of time together. And we can work from home. I have almost the exact same workstation at my house as I do at my office. And I could go to the office and literally not see another human being because I’m just upstairs and the production. Everything’s downstairs. I go to work just so I can have like a routine and get out of the house. From a perspective of a business owner and an entrepreneur, there’s no such thing as leaving work at work. You’re always at work. It is to a degree.
[0:22:39] DC: Yeah. But do you ever go home and say to your kids like, “Daddy had a really bad day at work. I need 10 minutes.”
[0:22:47] WC: No. I mean, even on my worst days, if I have like a really shitty day, I will come home. I will pour myself a cocktail. And seeing my kids is a joy. It’s not a stress. It’s not like, “Oh, daddy needs a minute.” Like, “No, no, no. Come give me a fucking hug. Give me some love.” I want to see my kids, right? You know?
[0:23:06] DC: I love that.
[0:23:07] WC: But from the perspective of being a business owner and someone that’s an employer, and if I were to give advice to someone that is an employee, and I can stand on this hill as I say this, is that draw limits with your employer. Right?
If you have someone that is asking you to do work in the middle of the night, out of the scope of your time, beyond what is expected of you, interrupting your family time. All of that stuff, right? I don’t badger my employees. I’m not talking to my employees outside of the time that they’re at work. We have a messaging system. They have their notifications turned off. I’m not asking people to work more than they should work, right?
And I think that that is a big part of the mental health issue is that I think expectations are set for certain employees to work more than they’re compensated for. And the expectation of a business owner is to get that right. I think that there’s a line.
[0:24:05] DC: Okay. Wait, we’re going to cover this more in our next question. Jamie, did you want to say anything else about leaving work at work? You never go home and – Oh, yeah. Joanne just tells you to go walk the dog when you’re –
[0:24:17] JM: Yeah. It’s like we’re done. No more work. Yeah. Yeah. There’s other part I’m looking forward to.
[0:24:22] DC: The only thing I do that completely relieves all my stress is watch RuPaul’s Drag Race. It is the only thing that just is my happy place. And when that snatch game comes on, I am just the – if you know, you know, is all I have to say. So, that’s one of the things I do.
And I didn’t realize this was a term, but comfort binge watching, comfort food. You comfort binge-watch. Because sometimes my brain literally does not have the capacity to pay attention or take in more information. I’ve tried to watch Peaky Blinders three times, and I can’t get past the first episode because there’s too much to pay attention to. So, I just rewatch things.
I just rewatched Game of Thrones, which, by the way, holds up. Seven seasons. I was like, “This is fantastic.” I can just put that on and veg out and not really have to pay attention because I sort of know what’s going to happen. Although I will tell you that there was like five things that happened. I was like, “I don’t remember that happening.” It was a good rewatch.
[0:25:35] WC: See, I fall asleep during shows. So I love re-watching stuff because there’s always new stuff that I don’t remember. But that’s the problem, it puts me to sleep.
[0:25:44] DC: I think I’m going in for Mad Men next.
[0:25:48] WC: The second dose of Mad Men? I could do it.
[0:25:49] DC: I think this will be my third. But the second one was so long ago. And I was scrolling something, and I saw a clip of it, and I’m like, “Oh, that’s a good one to add to my comfort watch list.”
[BREAK]
[0:26:01] DC: Supporting professional growth is good for people, and it’s great for business. When you sponsor Girls Who Print, you’re helping to deliver mentorship, leadership development, and career advancement tools to women across the print industry. Our annual sponsorship packages are designed to fit companies of all sizes with benefits that align with your goals, support equitable workforce development in your company and the industry, and elevate your brand. If you’re ready to stand out and step up to support Girls Who Print, visit girlswhoprint.org and download our sponsorship packages today. Empower long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:26:46] DC: Okay. What role should employers play in supporting mental wellness? And we’ve just been talking about stress, but there are a lot of other mental wellness topics to address. But how do you keep workplace pressure from becoming workplace culture? Jamie?
[0:27:09] JM: Well, actually, we have an HR person that does this. She is amazing. She is probably one of the happiest people you’ll ever meet. Always bubbly. Nothing seems to phase Stacy. She’s like, “Oh, not a problem. We’ll take care of it. This is great.” And you’re just like, “Oh my god.”
And so this year, she kicked off with doing a lot of mental wellness stuff. And we have a portal. Everybody can clock in, clock out. Your PTO and your FSA stuff. And there’s a community page. And she posts stuff every day, words of wisdom and stuff to keep everybody pumped up. This is this. And she’ll send pictures and videos.
In May, during Mental Awareness Month, she was posting a lot for mental awareness and sending links. And Invoke has an employee assistance program. And here’s the phone number. And she’ll post hotlines and stuff like that. She’s always on top of that. And what do you need? And if you find somebody that needs help, just let’s get on a call. Let them know they can call me. The three of us can get together. Whatever. We try and make it as simple as possible. See what we can do to help. That’s kind of like what work does. She’s the leader in that and really tries to make sure.
And it’s funny because some people poo-poo it. And I hear little things here and there. But I’ll also hear people quoting what they’ve read in the community page, and I’m like, “So you are paying attention. You are reading it. Yeah. All right, that’s good. So you might have poo-pooed it to these three people, but you all read it. And it’s sticking with you because you’ve offered assistance in certain things.” So yeah. I think it’s a big help, and it works. That’s kind of what we do here. I don’t have anything to do with it. I just read it. I watch the videos.
[0:28:39] DC: Has anybody ever come to you and just said, “I have a problem,” or I don’t necessarily would say it was a problem? Or have you noticed things in people, just went over and just, “Hey, I just want to check in. See how you’re doing? You look kind of stressed out.”
[0:28:55] JM: I try and do that on a weekly basis. Just stop by, everybody. What’s going on? Everything all right? And stuff like that. Usually, they don’t say anything right away, but then you do kind of see things in time like, “Hey, the person seems to be a little bit down.” And you’re like, “Hey, what can we do for you?” I’m like, “Hey, you want to get lunch today? I’ll grab lunch.” Stuff like that. And then try and help that way. I’m like, “Hey, you know, I brought donuts in today. I thought of you. I know you like donuts. Here’s donuts.” Stuff like that.
Yeah, I try. And not everybody. A lot of people just have a steel curtain. They’d come in. I work 8:00 to 4:30, I work 8 to 5, I’m going home. And I love those people. They work their asses off, and they get their work done. And they don’t seem to take the stress home on them. But, yeah, every now and then you’re like, “Hey, what’s going on in your world? You seem a little – you shut everybody out for a couple of days. Are you all right?” Yeah. You got to kind of pay attention to that. And I kind of take cues from other people, like, “Hey, so and so looks a little down. Let’s see what we can do.” Yeah.
[0:29:49] DC: Yeah. Will? First of all, are you okay? You were choking there on the video for a second.
[0:29:54] WC: Yeah.
[0:29:55] DC: I was like, “Jamie, we’re going to have to call 911.”
[0:29:58] WC: Still some residuals from being down the last week. But no, I’m okay. I mean, mental health, it’s a unique experience, right? So everybody has their own isms. Everybody has their own shit. I’ve never been shy about my OCD. I’m ADD. I got PTSD. Like all fucking diagnosed and been medicated on and off for years, right? They do more self-medicating these days than anything, but we won’t talk about that.
[0:30:24] DC: I think everybody does, Will.
[0:30:26] WC: Yeah. Right? The point is, is that what we do as an organization is I don’t ever feel that I have the ability or the position to tell someone that they can’t take time off as a company. And even now with such a small staff, if someone does take a day off, it does impact. But take a day. You want to go on a trip? You want to take time off? Tell us. Let us know. You got an appointment? You can do whatever you’ve got to do. We literally do not tell anyone no that they can’t take the day off.
Then that’s a big part of our culture is that we’re your employer, but we’re not your boss. We’re a part of your life, but you have to do what’s best for you. And if you’re not feeling well or you’re not feeling good and you’re not into it, then you’re not necessarily going to do a good job while you’re here anyway. I’d rather you take the day off. And I think our employees know that. That is very good. And people do. They definitely take advantage of it, which is fine.
I mean, a good day for me is I had to interact with the least amount of people possible. And that is where I’m at most days. I interact with a lot of my employees, but it’s all through Slack. It’s all through channels versus like, face-to-face, having conversations, talking. I don’t like talking on the phone. I don’t like having face-to-face meetings. What just took me 20 minutes talking to you face-to-face, I could have done in 2 and 1/2 minutes in an email or 30 seconds in a Slack message, right?
But then I also realize that I have employees that do need that face-to-face and do need that interaction. And the ones that I have more of a relationship with, I have to give them to that. And Ashley’s the same way. She’s very much an introvert. But I try to encourage her, like, “You should go to the office.” But with her, she’s everybody’s psychiatrist. As soon as she walks in the building, everybody’s telling her about everything that’s going on in their lives. But she’s also the HR person. That’s kind of her job, part, sort of.
But we’re a small company, a very, very small company. We only have 12 employees plus Ashley and I. We’re at 14 employees. We’re hiring. If you’re in Tampa, you need a job, and you want to come work at a print shop, give us a shout. But it’s a lot easier to manage that and be aware of that with a small team. It was much more difficult to manage it when you have 40 employees.
I mean, how many employees does Invoke now have? And you guys have how many facilities across how many different cities? I mean, you would have to have someone that’s really paying attention to that.
[0:32:46] JM: People. Yeah.
[0:32:48] WC: How many people? I’m sorry.
[0:32:49] JM: About 60 people.
[0:32:50] WC: How many facilities do you guys have? How many locations? Three?
[0:32:53] JM: Three. Yeah.
[0:32:54] WC: And you’re in Georgia, Jersey.
[0:32:57] JM: Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Yeah. Jersey is the biggest facility.
[0:33:02] DC: Conshohocken. The thing I can’t say.
[0:33:04] JM: Conshohocken.
[0:33:05] WC: Yeah. I’m not even going to try to say it because I’m just going to slaughter it.
[0:33:08] JM: There’s 15 there. There’s 30 in New Jersey and about 15, 18 in Georgia roughly. Yeah.
[BREAK]
[0:33:18] DC: News From The Printerverse delivers topical sales and marketing insight, along with plenty of printspiration, one time a month to inboxes everywhere. Our contributors cover the industry and the future of print media and marketing with strategy for strengthening your customer relationships, better targeting of your prospects, and practical advice for helping your business grow. Printspiration is just a click away. Subscribe to News from the Printerverse at printmediacentr.com. Print long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:33:55] DC: Will, I want to echo something that you just said about the fact that you know how you perform best. You know that if it was up to you, you’d prefer to communicate through a channel than face to face. And that is amazing that you know that, and that you can verbalize it. But you are also the owner of the business. In a lot of ways, it’s your way or the highway, as us as Gen Xers would say. But we don’t live in the Gen X world anymore, where that’s it. And I think that the role that employers can play in this is finding out the best way that the workers want to work.
Kelly Mallozzi tells a story about a young person out of college started working at a print shop, and she was sitting by a window. And outside, there was a picnic table. And all she wanted to do was take her laptop and sit at the picnic table outside and do her job. That’s it. No, was not allowed to do that. She’s not at that company anymore. What a simple thing to allow somebody to do. And that’s what they needed. They just wanted space or whatever it was.
I think that recognizing that all employees don’t communicate the same way, that all employees don’t get stressed out by the same things that you might get stressed out about. And just learning more about those things so that it doesn’t become a ripple effect. Jamie, thoughts?
[0:35:42] JM: No. Exactly what you’re saying. The hardest part with what I do is I try and make sure I go around and talk to everybody and do that. I learned that from an owner that we had before. He was very much kind of like, “Will, he’d much rather be good, be brief, and be gone.” He used to say, “Just come in, tell me what you need. That’s it? Good.” We’re gone. But he realized that he needed to spend time with everybody. He would make sure that I haven’t talked to so and so in a little while. I need to spend this week. I need to spend time with these people because I’ve kind of been caught in my own world running the business, but I need to reach out more. Kind of learned that from him.
And one day he just kind of said to me, he’s like, “Look, you might not think it’s a lot, but make sure you talk to everybody. Reach out, see what they’re doing. Don’t talk about work. See how they’re doing. See what’s going on. See if you can – what’s happening at home? What their interests are?” And I’m like, “Some people, I don’t know what their interests are.” And he’s like, “This person likes cars. This person likes that.” I’m like, “How did you find that out? They don’t talk.” He’s like, took a long time.” But yeah, just try and be clear and say, “Hey, what happened this weekend? Did everything go well? Wow’s your race car? How’s your whatever?” And it’s took me a little while to do that. And it definitely helps.
And sometimes I get caught up in my own world, trying to meet deadlines and do other stuff. But I try and go back to it every week, at least a couple of people. And I don’t have a ton of people on my plant. But when I visit the New Jersey plant, I try and stop by and talk to people when I’m there and say hi, and make sure, like, “Hey, what’s going on?”
[0:37:06] DC: I worked at a company once that was interested in making sure that everybody checked in. And I was one of the managers of the department. So, I had permission to take people out to lunch. And I would take my team out every once in a while after something big – at the appropriate moments. It’s like, “Okay, everybody’s stressing out. Let’s go.” We’re all going to whatever the favorite place was.
And also, made sure that twice a year, I had individual lunches. I had a six-month check-in and a six-month check-in. And that enabled me not only to have small talk and learn about things, which is much better for secret Santas and birthdays and things that come up along the way. But it also enabled us to have a private conversation. You want to vent about everybody else in this department? This is your moment so that we can see if there’s a way to resolve some of this friction, which I will tell you is usually not people, but it’s process that is causing the friction. Like not being clear. And having to tell people to redo things. And then they get pissed off, “Why am I doing this again?” Which pushes everything else off.
I also think that that’s something that businesses can do. Ryan LeFebvre from SPC Communications. Shout out to Ryan. He has, like, food truck Fridays. Every Friday, there’s a food truck rolling in there. And these types of things do matter. I worked at one agency, and when everybody was stressed out, I would get on the loudspeaker. Because we had an intercom in the office, and you could do it from your phone. I get on the loudspeaker and announce that there was a disco dance break in my office. And I got like a little disco ball, and I’d throw on disco music. And for two songs, everybody would just dance. And then they would leave, and that was it. But if I can tell you, people walked in there with piles of work, threw it on the ground, and was just dancing for a couple of minutes just to let it go for a second. You had to get back to it, but you went back to it a little lighter. Will?
[0:39:26] WC: I think that there’s a very specific distinction of what you guys are talking about and the roles that you guys are speaking from, which are those of managers versus those of being a business owner. And before I was a business owner, I was a fantastic manager. I was a great manager at the companies that I worked for. But when I became a business owner, I was not the best manager.
And there’s a hard line to drive between being a good business owner and being a good manager. And so I think that there’s something that you need to recognize that. I know not everyone that listens to this podcast owns a print shop. But for those of you that do and that you’re still trying to run the show, maybe it’s time that you find a good manager. Because I have a fantastic manager, right? That’s not part of my role anymore. I’m not a manager. I don’t manage my team. I have a manager that does that. And he literally does three rounds at least a day, where he walks around and he checks base and touches base with everybody in that building. How you doing? What’s going on?
[0:40:27] DC: Touches base with me when I come to visit you.
[0:40:29] WC: What’s up? How are you? How’s your world? Are you okay?
[0:40:32] DC: Shout out to Jim.
[0:40:32] WC: Shout out to Jim. Right? That’s his job. As a manager, he’s in charge of not only making sure that the machine moves, but also that the morale of the employees is good and that they are good. Right? That was the best thing that I ever did was finding somebody that could be that role for me because I was not good at drawing the line of, like, I see this mistake as money out the door. And that frustration for me creates my own thing. And then that creates an energy and an air of then everybody’s walking on eggshells because they know that I’m mad. I didn’t yell at anybody. I didn’t scream at anybody. Obviously, I’m upset. I just lost $10,000, you know. Being able to draw that separation was the best thing that ever happened. That’s the distinction that I want to make.
And still, Jim and I discuss things. And we do pizza parties, and we do things for everybody’s birthdays. And there’s lots of rah-rah stuff to make everybody feel included. But it’s no longer my job to like walk around and have an interaction with every employee. And it’s been great because that’s been the culture for a long time, so it’s not expected of me. I’m not breaking anybody’s expectations of that I should be doing that because there’s somebody that does do that.
[0:41:43] DC: But you are. You’re setting expectations of Jim that Jim is responsible for this. But he probably took it on by himself anyhow because he’s just that type of person.
[0:41:55] WC: He did. It was totally him. That was just him. And he is very much responsible for laying the foundation for a lot of the culture that we have of making sure that everybody’s good. Even me. He comes up even when I don’t want him to. He comes up, and like, “Are you okay? You good? How are you?”
[0:42:09] DC: I haven’t seen you in a while. Right?
[0:42:11] JM: I do that to my owner. I’m like, “Are you all right. Everything all right?” Because we meet like once a week. I’m like, “This isn’t about me. What’s going on with you? Because you look stressed.”
[0:42:20] DC: Yeah. I mean, empowering your employees to celebrate other employees. Anniversaries, work anniversaries, are also good ones to celebrate. If somebody did a really great job on something. I mean, it doesn’t take away like mental wellness issues, but maybe it just does for that 10 minutes.
[0:42:39] WC: It helps morale. Morale in general. Morale and culture are a big part of mental wellness. And if you have good morale and good culture at your company, then everybody’s mental wellness overall is better.
[0:42:49] DC: I mean, just think waking up instead of, “Oh god, I got to go to work today.” It’s like, “Oh, it’s my anniversary today. This is going to be the best day at work, you know. Even though I’m slammed with things to do, I’m also get to celebrate some of my achievements.”
[0:43:05] JM: We do 10 of 10, and basically goes over what happened in the company. Supposed to be 10 minutes of 10. But it could be a minute. But Wednesdays, we try and do like a winning Wednesday. What’s good? What did somebody do that really helped the team, or do something like that? That’s the hardest thing is trying to get people to give that up, like, “Hey, that’s a great idea. You suggested this and saved this. Or you suggested that.” I try and do those on Wednesdays to try and point out people, and scouring everybody, just trying to – sometimes it’s like pulling teeth. But we try and highlight the good that happens and make sure somebody gets pointed out and saying, “Hey, you did this.”
[0:43:39] DC: Excellent. Any final words, Will?
[0:43:42] WC: Be well. Take care of yourself.
[0:43:45] DC: I love it.
[0:43:46] WC: It’s the best you can do. And know that even if today sucks, tomorrow will be better. And if it’s not, then the day after that’ll be even better.
[0:43:53] DC: I love it. Well, Jamie, it’s going to be hard to top that.
[0:43:58] JM: Well, it is. But everybody has rough days, rough weeks. Realize when you’re not. Pay attention to your wellness, and do what you need to do to feel better. Take that walk, do whatever. A lot of times I’ll leave my office. I’ll go out and I’ll take a walk around the building. It’s beautiful out today. I just need a couple minutes just to, “Whew.” All right? Realize your own limits, and that’ll help everybody else because then they’ll realize you’re a little bit more even-keeled and not stressing.
[0:44:24] DC: My final words are that you’re not alone. That you can find a support system, that there are people in your family, there are peers, there are colleagues that are going through the same things that you’re going through, whatever industry they’re in, and to find a community to support you. Thank you all so much for your time and attention. And until next time, print long and prosper.
Thanks for listening to Podcasts From the Printerverse. Please subscribe, click some stars, and leave us a review. Connect with us through printmediacentr.com, we’d love to hear your feedback on our shows and topics that are of interest for future broadcasts. Until next time, thanks for joining us. Print long and prosper.
[END]
