[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 Corn. Welcome to The PrinterChat podcast.
[EPISODE]
[0:00:26] DC: Hey everybody, welcome to Podcasts From the Printerverse. This is Deborah Corn, your Intergalactic Ambassador. And today, we are here with the PrinterChat podcast. Hello, gentlemen. Hello, Will Crabtree.
[0:00:38] WC: Hello, Deborah.
[0:00:40] DC: Still my favorite thing. Hello, Jamie McLennan.
[0:00:42] JM: Hello, Deborah. And hello, Will. How’s everybody doing?
[0:00:46] WC: Hello, Jamie. Good to see you.
[0:00:48] DC: Hello, Jamie. We’re going to do our catch-up right now and see how everybody’s doing. Let’s start with you, Jamie.
[0:00:53] JM: Yeah, it’s 2026. As usual, the beginning of the year starts out a little – everybody’s kind of what’s going on. But now the beginning of February, we are crazy busy. Just everything started hitting. Everything started to come in. A little worried for a couple of weeks. And then we’ve been crazy quoting some pretty nice projects. And everything has hit. And as usual in this industry, everything hits at the same time. So, we’re busy on all accounts, in assembly, in packaging, and all that. So, yeah, we’re having fun.
[0:01:23] DC: When you say everything’s coming in, are these orders that you expected they come every year, or is this new business, or –
[0:01:29] JM: Projects I’ve been working on for months, and knowing that they were supposed to hit in the first quarter. And everybody’s like, “These are going to hit early, early.” And then you’re like, “Well, early is January. Early is January.” And then they all said they’re starting to come. And you would get a PO, but then you don’t get the files. And then now everything is basically the files have started loading. Got a bunch of different projects for a few museums that we’re working on that all need to get done right away. And it’s just like everything happens at the same time. All of a sudden, all the presses are full, everything’s cutting, we’re having to get a couple of temps in to help package stuff, and stuff like that. Yeah, we’re at full speed ahead. Yeah, it’s always good. We knew that it was going to happen by what people said, but hey.
[0:02:14] DC: Cool. One last question for you. Are any of the museums a museum I referred to you?
[0:02:19] JM: No, not yet. Still working on it.
[0:02:19] DC: Damn it. Okay, get that one, please. Okay, then we have a big announcement. Okay. Will, the printer. Will, the software developer. Will, the Tampa media magnet. What’s up?
[0:02:33] WC: I don’t even know when the last time we were on to tell you everything that’s been happening. Software is moving in a very, very positive direction. Very excited about that. Cannot divulge details at the moment of all the things that are brewing, but things are brewing.
I bought some new toys. I bought a 36×40 inch, 200-watt CO2 CNC laser, and a 24×36 inch flatbed printer. UV printer. The printer is a Xanté. I love the printer. We vetted the printer when we went to the show. We talked to the CEO. I went through a dealer, applied innovation, the whole experience was delightful to put it lightly.
The laser, not so much. And I won’t bust out the brand, right? If you want to know what brand that I would say not to buy, you can message me on LinkedIn, and I’ll bust out the brand. But I’m not going to say their name here because I don’t feel like that’s appropriate. But I will tell you about my experience. And it is the most convoluted piece of software I’ve ever experienced from the standpoint of having to go through multiple steps. You actually start in PDF. So you send it to print, which then sends it to the RIP. And then from the RIP you set your settings, which half of them are wrong. The presets don’t work on the laser. I’m having to go through and actually load material and troubleshoot in different areas of the bed to find consistency, and to find the speed, and to find the power, and do all of these things.
The materials that came with it were contradicting of like you do this to start up, you do this to start up. It came with a dongle. It’s just the biggest mess ever. And literally, the piece of equipment was delivered off of a liftgate truck. We had to unload it, unpack it, install it. There’s videos on the website, but you have to submit a support ticket to actually get.
And to this date, I’ve never even gotten a response from any of the support tickets that I put in to the questions that I’ve asked. I’ve had to defer to my sales rep, who has answered my questions and has been – I give the man credit because he’s having to deal with me and me not knowing what’s going on. And I’m a pretty savvy guy. I’ve done a lot of stuff, and I’ve built a lot of things, and I’ve dealt with a lot of pieces of equipment. And having to go through the processes myself, I can’t imagine what somebody else would be going through. Again, I don’t want to bust out the company. So I won’t. But if you want to know who it is, if you’re in the market for a CNC laser, I’ll tell you who not to buy from.
But on a more positive note, we’ve actually had a lot of good influx of work from some of our contracts this year. We’ve been really busy to start out. And in fact, I’ve had little time to invest in getting the laser up and running, and building the new products, and figuring out the pricing, and adding the additional exhaust that they didn’t tell me that I needed that I really needed that just got done today.
There’s a lot of things that are occupying my time, and I’m not getting to apply my time and efforts towards the things that I really want to. But it’s all good. We’re moving forward. We’re going to expand into a lot of really cool acrylic stuff. The Wuzzle is coming back. I have an idea for the Wuzzle that will be over the top.
[0:05:46] DC: You just told everybody.
[0:05:49] WC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[0:05:50] DC: And you’re going to make my Girls Who Print awards moving forward, too.
[0:05:53] WC: Yes, we will make those awards. With the flatbed UV, we can do textured printing. We can do a second surface on clear acrylics. With a 200-watt laser, we can cut up to 100-inch-thick acrylic. Although, we landed at the half inch.
[0:06:07] DC: Wait, 100 inches?
[0:06:08] WC: Sorry. One inch. Not 100-inch.
[0:06:10] DC: Okay. I was like, “Wait a second.”
[0:06:11] WC: That would be really cool. 100-inch acrylic.
[0:06:13] DC: I don’t do math, but seems like it’s pretty thick.
[0:06:16] WC: 200-watt laser can cut through one inch acrylic. I got my numbers crossed in my brain. Yeah. No, we can cut through one-inch acrylics. And I’ve been looking at – I don’t want to get too far into the chachki world of things, but we did troubleshoot trying to figure out how to print on footballs for one of the local sports teams, and did like a case study of what it would look like for them to do implant versus just outsourcing it. And that was kind of an interesting thing to kind of go through. The dealer that sold us the printer was like, “Hey, could you do this?” And I was like, “I don’t know. We’ll have to see. Bring in a football. We’ll figure it out.”
[0:06:49] DC: Right. Roland had – remember that thing we saw, Jamie, that like printed on YETIs? But the thing about it is that nobody accounts for the slopes in things. That might work for your footballs.
[0:07:03] WC: It might. Yeah. Yeah.
[0:07:04] DC: It’s very cool. That is so cool. Very cool stuff. Okay. Anything else before we get to me?
[0:07:11] WC: No, I could sit here and yammer on all day. So, we’ll leave it at that and move on to the topic of the day.
[0:07:16] DC: Okay. Excellent. Well, first, I’ll give a little catch-up in case you missed the post that garnered almost 100,000 impressions. I shared my X-ray on LinkedIn because, New Year’s Day, I had a freak accident and literally shattered. I don’t know why I’m laughing. Although it was my humorous bone. Ha-ha-ha. I shattered my humerus, and my arm was no longer connected to my body, which, by the way, is the weirdest feeling I’ve ever felt. I could move my hand to my wrist, but when I would tell my brain to move my arm, it was just like swinging in there. It was so weird.
[0:07:55] WC: So, you could move your hand, and you could move your wrist, but you couldn’t move –
[0:07:57] DC: I could move my hand. No. I could move my arm, but it was like swinging. You’ve seen people be injured on the football field or the soccer field, and you just see their knee, their leg, or their ankle. That’s exactly what it was like. And I had to keep lifting up my arm. And here’s the crazy thing. I’ll just say this. I thought it was dislocated. I’m like, “Well, in the movies, they just bang it into the wall.”
[0:08:23] WC: Oh, you didn’t. Did you?
[0:08:24] DC: I did. I was sitting in my house banging my shoulder.
[0:08:27] WC: Oh my god. Banging your broken arm into a wall. Ugh.
[0:08:30] DC: No. But here’s the good news. There was nothing wrong with my shoulder. My shoulder was fine. It was the fact that my arm was not attached to it anymore. But after 10 screws, a wire, and a metal plate, it is back connected to my body, which is a good thing, everybody. And I’m hoping that next week I’ll be able to drive again. And then, not a great thing to happen literally on New Year’s Day. So, happy New Year, everybody. I hope it was better than mine.
Today’s topic is actually about collaboration. I’m really focusing on collaboration this year and all of the positive things that could happen when you have partnerships and also when you have support of some kind. And I’ve been speaking to association people. I can see just from what’s going on in the trade pubs and all these other – there’s mergers and acquisitions. There’s companies that are closing down. And there are people who, looking to save on some expenses, are looking at things like memberships and industry organizations, and assessing whether or not they are still something that they want to participate in.
I am really interested in talking to you guys about that because I guess I am a member of some organizations. But since I’m not a printer, I don’t navigate them the same way. I don’t need the benefits that they offer or anything like that. I don’t need to pull in for health insurance for my employees, for example, or be part of a buying group for paper or anything like that. And there’s certainly way more benefits that some of the organizations do offer.
[BREAK]
[0:10:23] 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]
[0:11:22] DC: So my first question is, and we’ll start with Jamie, do you or have you belong to any industry organizations? And what made you decide to join?
[0:11:34] JM: We are members of quite a few organizations. And I don’t know what made us decide to join some of them, but I do on others. But when we were DMR, we were one of the SGIA, which was a screen printing organization. They had always belonged to that. So when we purchased DMR, we inherited SGIA, which became PRINTING United. So that became that whole big conglomerate. We were still members of that. So we kept going in that.
We became members of the Print & Graphic Communications Association, which is a mid-Atlantic in New York and above. Local association, I call it. We became members of them in 2023. One of the vice president or president stopped in one day and just introduced herself and said, “Hey, you guys used to be members years ago. Why aren’t you members again? This is what we can do for you.” Rattled off all this stuff. We’re like, “We’re joining.” She sold it on us. Melissa was great. Sold us on it.
We do different educational courses with them. We do webinars with them, training. There’s leadership meetings where you go for a day and have a day of classes. So, we’ve gotten a lot out of that group. PRINTING United, SGIA, we’ve gotten a lot out of that. We go to the shows almost every year, but we’ve also taken classes. Estimators have taken their training classes and stuff like that.
With their purchase of the roll label company, we joined TLMI last year. All the roll label business. That has been really helpful with that. People learning more about that, and something I should pay more attention to. And who else?
[0:13:05] DC: Are you a member of ISA?
[0:13:07] JM: We’re members of ISA. Yep. And members of Girls Who Print.
[0:13:11] DC: Yes, Girls Who Print.
[0:13:13] JM: Every single one of these, we get something out of each and every one.
[0:13:16] DC: Okay, we’ll get into those details in a second.
[0:13:19] JM: Okay.
[0:13:20] DC: Okay, Mr. Grinch, are you a member of any industry organizations, or have you been a member? And why did you decide to join or not?
[0:13:31] WC: No, I am not currently a member of any organizations. And I have joined one organization once. I don’t remember which one it was. And I think it was being – I joined it because I was prompted to do so by you. And I paid for it for the year.
[0:13:50] DC: It was NPSOA, the print owners association.
[0:13:53] WC: Is that what it was? I don’t know which one it was. I don’t know.
[0:13:55] DC: It had that list serve thing, and you went insane over it.
[0:13:59] WC: Oh, that email. Oh my god. That’s what it was. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So, I joined the one organization. The email thing drove me crazy. And then I cancelled it before it was even over. I was out.
[0:14:08] DC: I told Jamie. Too many emails. He was like, “I’m out.”
[0:14:13] JM: A big problem.
[0:14:14] DC: I’m out. Too many emails.
[0:14:17] WC: I’m not a joiner of clubs. It’s never been my thing. Organization is – I’m organized, but I don’t join organizations. I don’t follow organizations. It’s never been my thing. I figure things out and beat my own drum and kind of always have. And I think that there’s value there for certain people when it comes to resources in the same way that there’s value in someone starting a franchise. I’m not a guy that would ever buy or start a franchise. It’s just a different type of viewpoint of being an entrepreneur, and it’s just not my thing.
[0:14:52] DC: Do you have any questions for Will, Jamie, about that?
[0:14:56] JM: No. I’ve worked for companies that were not part of any organizations. But I had a question. Do you do any local networking chambers or anything like that, or anything? Because they’re organizations in a different way, but –
[0:15:08] WC: I don’t participate in any of those either. I’ve done the BNI thing, and I’ve done the networking groups, and the Chamber of Commerce, and all of that stuff. And it’s never really brought me any business that’s been surmountable to the amount of time that I have to invest to go to these events and deal with these people. Most of them I don’t care for. And the rules and the da-da-da-das.
Actually, I have one organization locally that I am a part of. It’s called JMI. And it’s like an entrepreneur class that I took in 2021. So now they have cohorts. It just started this month again. So it’s a new group this year. We just started this month. We’ll go on the first Wednesday of every month. And I like to call it, it’s like entrepreneurs’ anonymous. It’s like going to AA, but you just get to like vent about like your problems.
But the way it’s presented is like, “Okay, this is my problem.” And then if the group – everybody, we all present a problem. And then we decide as a group, “Okay, this is what we’re going to address today.” And you can never speak from the standpoint of like this is my advice for. You can only speak from experience. This is how I dealt with this problem and what I did, versus this is what you should do.
[0:16:16] DC: Right.
[0:16:17] WC: I like that organi – there’s no expectations. It’s not like, “Oh, you have to go to lunch with these people. Da-da-da-da-da. And you have to go to these big events and go to this stuff.” And it’s super chill. I do like that one.
[0:16:26] DC: You have to interact with other humans.
[0:16:28] WC: Right. Very few of those. And then I like to support local nonprofit organizations, right? I have a couple of organizations that I work with. Children’s Cancer Center, you guys know I’ve worked with for many, many years. I just recently started working with an organization called Madi’s Movement, which is a company that it’s a nonprofit organization that works with youth that are aging out of foster care, which hits home for me, because I aged out of foster care.
As a local entrepreneur, I’ve been going to the events and helping with – this is some stuff that I think that we can do, and coming up with ideas. I’m actually speaking on a panel in April for this luncheon that they’re doing. I’ve spoken at a couple of other events for them. I like to dedicate my time to stuff like that. And whether it brings me business or it doesn’t, I don’t care. That’s not the motive. It’s just giving back to the community. Things like this for me is quid pro quo. I like to do things that either it hits home, and I’m excited about it, and I want it to succeed, or it’s got to bring me business. And the organizations have never brought me business, and I’m definitely not excited about them.
[BREAK]
[0:17:29] DC: Gentlemen, leadership isn’t just about making decisions. It’s about setting the tone. Joining Girls Who Print as a male ally sends a clear message. You’re committed to advocacy, mentorship, professional growth, and creating a space where everyone can thrive. Membership gives you access to a powerful global network, exclusive events, conversations, and resources that support meaningful progress. Whether you’re an owner, manager, colleague, or peer, your presence makes a difference and helps shape the future you’d want for your colleagues, your clients, and your daughters. Learn more about ally membership at girlswhoprint.org. Link in the show notes. Empower long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:18:22] DC: Welcome back, everybody. We are speaking about industry organizations today. Jamie, you’re a member of a zillion organizations. Whether in general or specifically to a specific organization, what have you gained from being involved? And more importantly, what would make the experience more valuable for you or your company?
[0:18:45] JM: I have gained quite a few things because I’d taken some leadership classes, which were very helpful when I became GM. There’s another one I’m looking at this year as well. I thought the class on estimating was really good. I had a bunch of estimators and salespeople take this class to make sure they’re doing things properly. There’s a lot of neat things you really – it’s interesting because they don’t do a good enough job showing you what’s there.
If you want to go look on the website and find the stuff, it’s there. And like Will said, you do sometimes get barraged by some emails. And sometimes you don’t look at them, and you miss certain things. But there is a lot of different things in the different groups that we’re in if you spend the time to just go through and look at some of the stuff. Some of the classes you can take, some of the seminars, the print universe training courses, they’re all very helpful. And they have stuff for HR. They have stuff for helping you with insurance and 401(k)s.
So, we found a couple of our different associations, we could find out what the hourly rates were for our employees. They have whole reports on who runs a press, who runs a cutter, who does this. We got some reports on that. Went through all that and looked at everything in our company and said, “You know, some of these guys aren’t getting paid what the industry standard is. We need to start bringing the levels up.” That was very helpful. That was really big. Two years ago, we went through that whole thing. And trying to – this is what we need to do, and this is what our plan is for the next two years to make sure everybody is going to be on level with what they should be according to these reports that we’ve gained through our association. So, that was very helpful.
[0:20:12] WC: I’m just curious on that report. That report, was it broken down by city and market, or was it like nationwide of this is the expected wage for this position?
[0:20:20] JM: We got it from a local one, which was all local mid-Atlantic. And then we also got it through PRINTING United. It was a little bit bigger scope of everything. We kind of went through, and kind of dissected it, and kind of said, “In our area, this should be in this range.” Yeah, we kind of looked at both.
[0:20:35] DC: And had you not had access to this information, how would you have figured all of this out?
[0:20:42] JM: I don’t even know how we started. I mean, we could have called other companies, said, “Hey, what are you paying your prints with?”
[0:20:47] DC: I mean, all of it, even your leadership training. Would that have been invokes responsibility in some manner to send you for leadership training, or your own personal responsibility, take a class, or do some research?
[0:21:01] JM: I learned a lot in the last two years doing some webinars and actually going on site to classes, and listening to other people speak was really good. But what we also found is our new sales reps, they have some classes for that in the associations, and finding other sales leaders to train them. We’ve had them join classes throughout the last six months. We know a couple of hot salespeople that we’ve had on this group on this chat here. I have them all lined up that soon everybody will get their turn.
Once they’ve done their share of classes, I’m like the next guy is in line. You learn more by listening to all these different people. I’ve listened to probably a dozen different sales trainers, and I take a little bit of every single one to make my own how I do it. It’s great for these younger kids to learn that. So, they’re just out there by themselves, just listening to the five sales reps here, give them ideas. So, it kind of helps to generate – gives them interest. They’ve seen it very helpful.
[0:21:55] DC: Yeah. And I’m sure that they feel supported and that they understand that they’re growing in their career as they’re also doing their job, which is awesome. Will, what would it take for you to join an organization?
[0:22:10] WC: I don’t know. Buy me a press?
[0:22:14] DC: Besides how to speak to humans.
[0:22:16] WC: Yeah. Give me free equipment. I don’t know, because I’m not a class taker. I was horrible in school. I would get in trouble for doing my homework in class because I didn’t want to listen to the teacher. But I find information, and I find data the way that I find information, and I use it. I typically do it to solve an immediate problem versus seeking out knowledge from that type of capacity. There’s not really an enticement for me.
And trickling that data or that content down into my staff, I would need to filter it and understand it before I subject my team because it may contradict some of my workflows or processes or other things that I have in place. And I honestly just don’t have time for that. I really don’t know.
I think each organization probably has its golden ticket, right? Like this is what we have that sets us apart, and why you should join us. And why it’s worth X to join this, right? And organizations range anywhere from, I think, 50 bucks a year to $1,000 a year, right? And even more or anything in between those ranges. I know. I can think of one organization that is $1,000 a year, and I think you have to – if you want to have a booth at their show, you have to become a member regardless, right?
[0:23:30] DC: You can say PRINTING United.
[0:23:31] WC: Hey, hey, look, I’m trying not to throw out – not to name drop people or –
[0:23:36] DC: This is when the printers get real podcast, and you’re being all cryptic.
[0:23:40] WC: PRINTING United, yeah, it’s $1,000 a year.
[0:23:41] DC: Everybody knows that they have a membership.
[0:23:43] WC: You don’t have to be a member to go to the show, but you do have to be a member to exhibit.
[0:23:47] DC: There’s member and non-member pricing to go to the show if you don’t have a code from an exhibitor.
[0:23:52] WC: Do you have any idea how many codes I have? I could bring 50 people under 50 different organizations to bring to UNITED if I wanted.
[0:24:01] DC: I know. But I’m just saying, there are –
[0:24:02] WC: Look, kudos to them. They’ve done a great job at marketing and getting their vendors and getting the people to bring other people out. And we saw that at the last show that we were at.
[0:24:11] DC: It’s true. We did.
[0:24:13] JM: We had a very big in-depth thing with PRINTING United, their AI division. And we had three days of chats with them for a couple hours going over what’s involved with it, what do we need, what are we looking forward to do, and coming back with us with some kind of plan.
[0:24:27] DC: Really?
[0:24:27] JM: Yeah.
[0:24:28] DC: Very cool.
[0:24:28] JM: Yeah. Very interesting.
[0:24:29] WC: And the classes that they have at all the shows, because all the organizations have classes at the shows. I don’t go to those classes. You don’t want me in your class. I would be the guy in the back, like, “Hey, no, no, no. You should do it this way. And this is what you should do.” Yeah, I’ll be that guy.
[0:24:44] DC: Wait. Let me give the exhibitors a tip. You also don’t want Will in your booth. Just let him come by. Let him run through the booth.
[0:24:51] WC: You don’t want me to ask the questions that I’m going to ask.
[0:24:53] DC: Don’t want him in there.
[0:24:55] WC: Not in front of other people anyway.
[0:24:56] DC: He’ll take his pictures, and then he’ll go do his research, and then he’ll reach out to you if he wants to. So if you happen to see Will Crabtree in your booth, run, don’t walk.
[0:25:07] JM: I’m not going to promote the people that we are members of, but we do get discounts for UPS shipping and stuff like that. Being a member with them, we’ve gotten substantial discounts on that and other things. Processing, and our payroll, and all that stuff. So, that’s been helpful. Yeah.
[0:25:22] WC: Yeah. And there’s resources that are like that, right? The organizations, if you don’t know how to get credit card processing, if you don’t know where to find health insurance, if you don’t know how to do all of those things, right? New business owner or old business owner that hasn’t done those things that needs to do those things, these organizations are great resources for that stuff. But I know how to do all of that stuff already.
[0:25:44] DC: And also helping you find partners if you can’t do it yourself. A lot of companies do outsource their HR. They don’t need somebody sitting in the printing company or whatever company it might be. They only need them when they need them for HR things that they do. Interesting.
There’s a proverb that says if you want to go quickly, go alone. And if you want to go far, go together. Which approach has worked better for you in your career, and why? Although I think I know the answers to these questions. Will, let’s start with you.
[0:26:23] WC: Together, right?
[0:26:24] DC: Really? Okay, I’m shocked.
[0:26:26] DC: Absolutely. No, no, no. Together. But together in like I don’t have business partners. I don’t work with organizations, but I have people that work with me. I’ve worked with tons of vendors. I’ve purchased tons of equipment. I broker. Still a ton of work. I work with a lot of other companies and a lot of other printing companies. If it weren’t for my clients, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do.
So, there’s a lot of togetherness that still comes from what I do, even the way I do things. And I acknowledge that. I know that I wouldn’t be able to do what I do if it wasn’t for other people. Even though I try to isolate myself for my own personal health. If I deal with too many people, I start going crazy. But I need other people, right? So, I can’t say that I’ve done it alone. If it weren’t for other people, I wouldn’t have a business.
[0:27:13] DC: Right. That’s interesting to hear from you only because you are – I think of you, even though you’re absolutely correct, your team is amazing. And they’re there to run the business, for sure. And you trust them to do that. I just always think of you as a solopreneur for some reason. And you’re right, and I’m wrong to think of you that way. Any comment?
[0:27:35] WC: I appreciate that. Yeah. I mean, when I talk about isolating and limiting the people that I deal with, and things like that – straight up, I have social anxiety, right? I don’t like to interact with people. If I interact with too many people in a day, I get exhausted. It drains me. And I’ve learned this over time, and I’ve limited the number of customers that I interact with because of this. And I acknowledge the people on my CSR team that have to deal with people on a daily basis. And I stand up for them when people leave bad reviews. And you can tell obviously that it was the customer and not them, right? There are a lot of other aspects and a lot of points of view to look at it from the standpoint of, again, togetherness, and collaborative, and working with other people outside of my little bubble that I try to keep my safe space in.
[0:28:24] DC: And your wife, Ashley, is also your business partner. It’s really a together thing going on in your home. Yeah.
[0:28:30] WC: Absolutely. Yeah. She’s the boss really, actually. We’ve established this.
[0:28:32] DC: Yeah, amazing. I love Ashley. She’s the best.
[BREAK]
[0:28:36] 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]
[0:29:13] DC: Jamie, if you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. You’re a together guy.
[0:29:19] JM: I am a together guy. But growing, starting in sale – when I left being a pressman and going into sales, I was always thought I had to do it all myself. When I’m in certain places, I was like, “I got to go sell a job. I got to take the proofs. I got to do this.” And I always felt like it was me. If I’m not there, jobs aren’t getting done.
But I’ve learned to – I have a good team. It depends where you’re at, what business, what company you’re in. Certain companies were that way. You’re alone. You have to make sure your job’s getting done. Because if you’re not there, it kind of slows down. But if you have a good team, you have a good company, that’s what I’ve learned in the last 10 years, where I’m at, that that’s the thing that makes this thing grow.
Yeah, I have the contacts. I bring a lot of different people in. We do a lot of crazy things, but it’s the team behind me that makes it and gets it done. That’s how we go further and how we’ve built so many different things here.
[0:30:08] DC: It’s really interesting what you just said because delegating things can be very stressful. It’s like, “Okay, it’s going to take me 30 minutes to explain exactly what I want. And I could probably do it in the same amount of time. So let me just do it myself because nobody can do it the way I do it.” Right?
[0:30:29] JM: Guys here say that all the time, like, “I explain this. I’ll have it done.” I’m like, “But that’s not what you do. You’re better than this.
[0:30:34] DC: Exactly. Then what are the 20 things I’m not doing in that 30 minutes instead of –
[0:30:41] JM: It’s hard to train people.
[0:30:42] DC: Yeah. And then I was over at Wills, and he was proofing something on Slack. And all of a sudden, he’s talking in a video, and he’s moving his mouse around, and he’s giving someone directions. And he hits send, and I’m like, “What just happened?” And he said I’m proofing a piece. I said, “Oh my freaking god.” I was like, “I literally write comments on everything instead of just doing it that way.” That was an eye-opener on you can delegate in a way that doesn’t suck up your time on your end. That’s still my favorite new trick, Will.
[0:31:19] WC: Yeah. No, I use it a lot, especially because of my hands. Typing is painful sometimes. I’ve leaned more into taking the videos, and the voice, and all that stuff.
[0:31:26] DC: Well, you’re talking to someone who only has one hand right now. Yeah. I mean, it was incredible. And I have been really into my talk-to-text thing going on on my computer. You know, there’s a lot of things that you can talk into. I didn’t even realize it. Although I still can’t get my Mac to open things. Apparently, I don’t have it set up to recognize. And the other day, ChatGPT was just not recognizing my accent and was telling me to speak more clearly, so I felt a little abused by it. Just saying.
I am a total together person. I have always been a together person. It started in – I’m a Gen- Xer. Schoolyard rules. You have your team, you have your people, and that’s it. You’re always with your people. Don’t say anything about – if this is the family, you don’t disrespect the family. Godfather rules, schoolyard rules. I always call them schoolyard rules. And a lot of people don’t know what schoolyard rules are.
But no matter what is happening, you stay with your people, and then you go work it out with your people away from the other people that are coming around to get on the seesaw or whatever they want to do, play on the basketball court, whatever it might be.
[0:32:39] WC: It sounds like Deborah was like the mafia of the playground over here. She was like taking over pieces and being like, “Yo, it’s ours. You can’t come in here.”
[0:32:44] DC: I was a bit of a bully. I do admit it. I was a bit of a bully. I definitely admit that.
[0:32:51] JM: New York thing there. Definitely.
[0:32:54] DC: Look, everybody was a bully. You had to hold your ground. But I actually learned when I went to college, I was fortunate enough to be able to go to college. And when I went, the first thing I learned was that, socially, I was an animal. I had no idea because I grew up amongst people who were exactly the same as me. I realized when I went to college that, like, “Oh, if I actually want to get along with other people who didn’t grow up in my neighborhood, I had better do a quick check on my view of what the world is.”
And it is what strengthened my belief that together is the only way to move forward. You know, I do a lot of things by myself, and I don’t always think that they’re as good as they could be because I’m not bouncing those ideas off of anybody. It always reminds me of Tobias Degsell, who’s the former curator of the Nobel Prize. And he did a study in his head, because he’s a genius, about is there a formula for getting a Nobel Prize. And what he realized was that it was the most diverse teams that would win.
When a linguist and a scientist would have dinner, I mean, would walk into a bar, it’s literally not a joke. It’s what they would do. They would call them these high-top dinners or something. And they would have people from different disciplines just tell the other person what project they were working on, and somebody would say, “Well, why end up doing it that way? You can do it this way.” And the mathematician would be like, “Oh my god.” Because they’re just fully immersed in that.
I think that there’s a real benefit to working with other people in some capacity. And I have to assume that that benefit extends exponentially when you’re working with an organization that’s comprised of many people and many partners that they have that they can bring to the table, that they can introduce you to new ways of doing things. Or bring in a salesperson to speak who’s going to give you something, that missing piece of your cold call or whatever it might be.
I would encourage everybody out there to check out your organization. And I would say check out your local one first, because – Jamie, would you agree? I mean, you belong to national ones, and you belong to local ones. But local ones are, I would assume, your first line of information. It’s the most relevant information if it’s about your region. Correct?
[0:35:33] JM: Yeah, sure. Definitely. And they’re the ones that they have more events in this area, so we will go to those. The national ones, it’s once a year. PRINTING United, we’re going to that. And they have webinars and other training stuff, but these have events strategically throughout the tri-state area or more. Like, “Hey, meet and greets, get together. These are class we’re going to have.” You get to talk to other people in the industry, see what they’re doing, what they’re doing right, what they’re doing wrong.
Kind of like Will said when he went to these things for business owners, that’s really good because you’ll find out things that are going on. And you’re like, “I didn’t know about that, or I didn’t know about that.” And it was pretty interesting. And then found out about one company that’s got AI following up on quotes and stuff like that. I’m like, “That’s really cool. I want that. Where did you get that?” Now that’s something else I’m looking into. That was pretty neat. That was actually from my local networking group, that a plumbing company’s got an AI that’s calling in and following up on their quotes, and selling $40,000 worth of work that they wouldn’t have gotten because they’re not following up. They’re too busy to follow up. And I was like, “Wow, I need to talk to you. Let’s see what’s going on.”
[0:36:32] DC: Wow, that’s crazy.
[0:36:33] JM: That was cool.
[0:36:34] DC: And then I just want to wrap it up by saying Will’s strategy is also awesome because he’s working together with groups outside of the industry. And we will get you speaking at those. Remember, we were talking about you speaking at the Chamber of Commerce, and all of that, Will? Bringing marketing things to those different groups. And that is a way to not only get you new business, but it is also a way just to – you don’t know. You might run into a lawyer that you might need one day down the road, or something like that. I shouldn’t have said lawyer for Will, but you know what I mean. Insurance agent. We always need those in Florida.
[0:37:11] WC: Yeah.
[0:37:12] DC: All right. I want to thank you, everybody, for listening to PrinterChat. I don’t even know how many years we’ve been doing this. It’s been many. But gentlemen, it is one of my favorite podcasts that I do, a series that I do record. And I have to say, and you guys know firsthand because we walked around PRINTING United together, that the printers love listening to it. So, thank you so much for your time and your expertise. And everybody, 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]
