Printavo PrintHustlers Podcast

Justin Moore started Barrel Maker Printing in 2009. They printed on a manual screen printing press for several years before they purchased an automatic press. Justin and his wife, Erin Moore, felt they could get a lot out of their manual press, but it was exhausting. Listen to Justin talk about how when he switched to an automatic screen printing press and how it helped their shop. Try Printavo - https://www.printavo.com

An untrained employee is likely to be unhappy due to confusion. They will underperform, and you will be frustrated because they're not doing what you want. Your new hire won't stay long and you'll have to spend time searching for another, which will cost you time and money. Quality of work delivered will be less than expected. Don't believe the new hire's deliverables will be exactly what you asked for since you didn't take the time to teach them properly. Not only that, you're going to have to do most of their tasks for them over again, which will, again, cost you time and money. Your customers are your lifeblood, and new hire mistakes will create unhappy customers. Here's how we onboarding our new hires at Printavo to give you some ideas! Try Printavo: www.printavo.com

Getting started with a reputable HR provider early on will save you many headaches down the road. Dealing with new employee documentation, benefits, taxes, offer letters, payroll, hourly, contractor, and full-time employees will drive you up a wall! At Printavo, when we first started hiring employees, we wanted to make sure everything was very clear for our team members. When was payday, how to enroll in benefits, etc needed to all be written clearly and easily comprehensible for everyone. In addition, you have enough on your plate and don't need HR issues added onto this. We did a lot of research when finding an HR/payroll provider that was simple to use and had a support team to help us. We looked into using our accountant, ADP, ZenPayroll, Gusto, Intuit, and more. After many trials, phone calls, and demos, we decided on Gusto. Gusto met our needs in the following ways: Onboarding new hires - They can allow you to create new-hire documents for signing. Support - Their live chat and email support has been amazing. They do have a phone number although we haven't needed to call it. Data - We can pull all types of reports, find old paystubs and connect Gusto with other services for reimbursements, detailed accounting, and time-tracking. Benefits - When we started to offer healthcare to our team, setting this up was unbelievably simple and required little work. They can handle 401k, transit benefits and more. We're not compensated by Gusto to write this but truly feel it can help shops grow and focus on printing. Any questions? Drop a comment below! Try Printavo: www.printavo.com

Hiring the right people is the single most important job you have as a shop owner. As the business grows, your team is the most important asset of the company. It's what you should be spending a significant time on in regards to hiring, training, 1-on-1's, improvements and more. Hiring can be tricky as the goal is to fully vet candidates to make the right choice. Candidates may not tell the full truth, exaggerate responsibilities or not just be the right cultural fit for your shop. If you hunt for candidates, phone interview 20 people, and have 3 in-person interviews, that can add up to 50+ hours of work. Multiple that by what you value your time at hourly and it adds up quickly. Let alone the training for this new candidate, plus what if they don't end up working out and you start over? Point being, we want to get as many new-hire decisions right from the getgo. At Printavo, we've found a neat trick that helps us vet candidates by using a 3rd party interviewer. We have found that having someone external, with interviewing experience, helps the candidate open up more. They don't feel as up-tight as talking to the business owner and reveal a lot more about their personality. We've been able to use this to decline candidates and avoid costly hiring mistakes. At Printavo, we use Balance HR Solutions (http://bhrspartners.com) to interview all of our candidates. They will ask questions such as: - Salary expectations - Missing resume information - Stumping experience questions - Dive deep into goals Plus they'll deliver a summary of their opinions and anything odd that may have come up. They bill us hourly for the time and we can talk through candidates' summaries on the phone. Of course, there are many people with experience interviewing. The point is to have someone outside the company talk to the candidate and get a different feel for their fit. Have any other tips you use? Leave a comment! Try Printavo: www.printavo.com

We can all agree that we'd like to be more productive each day. As a business owner, you probably feel many days escape from you. You'll start off with a task list for the day and end up completing little to none of it as the day winds down. Putting out fires is a constant reason for not being able to execute on the things you need to complete either in your screen-printing/embroidery shop. The long-term solution is to continue to hire for the tasks that you do every day. With people that you trust, you can delegate. Of course, this isn't easy. You're used to handling everything yourself. But your goal is for the business to run without you. But what can you do today? What can you implement right now to help make yourself and others more productive? Here are two tips that I use every day to increase productivity. Limit your day - That's right, shrink the number of hours you're giving yourself to work. If you normally come in at 7am and leave at 7pm. Leave at 6pm, no excuses. What this does is force you to complete higher priority tasks. You will have no choice but to pick higher value items to complete and push off lower priority ones. It also makes you fully understand the value of delegating more of your day to complete what's important. This also helps to waste less time. How much time do you feel is spent on email, Facebook, Instagram? Instead of waiting for a response for 10min and taking a break by scrolling through Facebook, you'll be forced to knock out another task before leaving early. To-do List - Every morning, before you start answering email and going through jobs, write down the tasks you need to complete for that day. If your list is longer than 5 items, draw a line and only focus on those top 5. This truly helps to visualize your progress and understand if you're behind or not. Bonus Tip: Write down what you actually did that day next to your to-do list and you'll be able to visualize your progress and understand if you're behind or not. This also helps to know the tasks to start delegating off if you're seeing recurring items that push your off track. Let us know how it works and if you have more tips! Try Printavo: www.printavo.com

Shelby Craig, Founder of Rocket Shirts is a marketing guru. “Making Shirt Happen and Getting Shirt Done.” Shelby’s LinkedIn quote perfectly describes him. Shelby dives into how facebook marketing works to help your screen-printing shop suceed. He gives you easy steps on how to get started! PrintHustlers Conf 2018 is the second annual conference for the decorated apparel industry organized by Printavo. This conference will provide a unique opportunity to grow, develop, learn new ways to expand your business and increase profitability! Become exposed to industry leaders, thought-provoking tips and tricks and an abundance of resources to assist shops with running a viable business. Try Printavo: https://www.printavo.com

Starting and running a business isn't easy. And it doesn't get easier. There's an ever ending amount of tasks to be done, goals to be met and sales to generate. This constant process of wanting to grow your shop can be mentally draining. It's tough to keep up with everything especially if you're a sole owner. To prepare your mind for a 20 year plus haul, you have to find happiness in your work. This sounds cliche, I know. Let me break it down further. What truly is your passion? When you head in, work on a task for six hours, forget what time it is because of how much you enjoy the work, that's your passion. This is what you enjoy spending time on every day and should focus on heavily. It's going to push your business further. Your new goal is to take everything else you spend time on, delegate, outsource or table it. Find people who love doing those tasks and you will run forward forever! Try Printavo: https://www.printavo.com

Ryan Moor, Founder & CEO of Ryonet (Screenprinting.com) started in 2004 and has grown it into multi-million dollar enterprise of screen printing supplies and education. Ryonet's growth didn't happen overnight and Ryan touches on what helped make them successful. People, systems, investments in yourself and your team are the major themes Ryan will touch on. Try Printavo - https://www.printavo.com Subscribe to our podcast: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/printavo-presents-printhustlers-podcast/id1213143414?mt=2

Customer satisfaction is so important. It's the core of your business and creates longevity for you and your company. Treat it wisely as every interaction with your shop creates your brand and image. Josh Keane from Thread Monster talks about how he goes above and beyond with customers. Handwritten notes, writing down birthdays, special events and more. Take a listen to how Josh excels in customer service.

Live screen printing has been around for a while. It's a great new source of revenue for businesses. But optimization and efficiency are crucial to making it a scalable source of income. Max Hellman, Owner of Family Industries knows how to make live printing work. Listen to his tips on handling live events with excellence. Try Printavo: https://www.printavo.com