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Neologisms (from Greek néo-, meaning ‘new’ and logos, meaning ‘speech, utterance’) – can do all sorts of jobs. But most straightforwardly new words describe new things. As such they indicate areas of change, perhaps of innovation. They present us with a map, one that can redefine what we know as well as revealing newly explored areas; new words for new worlds.

The post Business and society: new words for new worlds appeared first on OUPblog.

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If you arrived here from our seminar Debunking Social Media Myths, welcome! Thanks for being there for our lil’ ol’ seminar, we appreciate it.

If you found this by any other means, get out. Just kidding. You may have missed the seminar, but we’ll share the PowerPoint slide show online, along with the audio from the event. If you want to be updated with the link when it’s live, send us an email: [email protected]

As we promised during the seminar, here is a short list of social media sites we use and how we use them. We acknowledge that our way is not THE way. You’ll find that things that work for us won’t work for you and vice versa. We think that’s just fine and dandy. Use this as a guideline and sally forth into Social Media Experiment Land.

From here on out I’m going to start abbreviating Social Media as SM. Cheese and crackers, that gets tiring to type.

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Facebook

Let’s start with the most popular SM network out here right now. Jenni and I both use Facebook personally, Jenni being the more active one. Frankly, FB makes me crazy but Jenni has a super force field that allows her to peruse without clenched teeth and nightmares.

That said, so many people we know use FB regularly that we created a Sparky Firepants fan page (right here). We’ve been using it for several years, but our activity has tapered off in the past six months or so. The reason is that because of FB’s new algorithms, our customers just aren’t seeing our fan page posts in their feeds as well as they used to. The interaction was declining and we found we were working very hard to push those fan page posts in our FB friends’ faces. It just wasn’t effective anymore. If you were at our seminar, you remember how we talked about being where your customers are. For us, it’s not our fan page.

So, we post here and there to keep things active for those who really enjoy seeing us on FB. That’s about it.

Twitter

This is my personal favorite. I’ve been active on twitter since 2007. For Sparky Firepants customers, we’ve found that Twitter is the numero uno place where our people hang out.

For the uninitiated, Twitter looks like a hugely random stream of meaningless thoughts and way too many links to click on. It looks daunting. It’s like a loud cocktail party where you don’t know anyone.

Take a deep breath. Very little of what you see in your twitter stream matters. Here’s a great tutorial of how to use Twitter.

Now, if you’re already tweeting like an eagle, here’s how we use Twitter. In two words, building relationships. Just like in the real world, it’s about making a real connection with your customers. Sparky Firepants has about 2,800 followers. It took about seven years to get that many. We estimate that we connect personally with about 10-20% of our followers over the course of a year. Some more than others, some not at all. The numbers are not the most important factor. What’s important.is how well you connect with real people on twitter.

Do we want more followers? Sure. We prefer to build that number organically. When you pay SM experts to “get you thousands of followers instantly!,“ it will probably work. What you’ll get is a giant list of people who don’t know you or care about what you do, which is a waste of your tweeting time and marketing efforts.

LinkedIn

Fancy online resume. That’s how most people see LinkedIn. While your user profile is essentially your resume, there’s private messaging, articles, and groups you can be involved in.

I’m very protective of my LinkedIn network. The only people you’ll see in my network (if we’re connected, that is) are people I’ve either worked with or know personally (and would recommend them for work in their field). While on Twitter I may connect with a lot of people I don’t even know, I keep my LinkedIn connections very tight.

LinkedIn groups are key for your business. Participating in a group that’s relevant to what you do makes you more visible than just putting up a profile. I’ve met a lot of great people, made new customers and learned from others in my career field through groups.

Instagram

Why eat when you just scroll through photos of what everyone else is eating? Instagrammers get a lot of flack for posting pics of every meal and multiple selfies a day, but it can really boost your online presence.

It’s the easiest marketing you’ll ever do. Hosting an event or just attending an event? Take photos, post to Instagram, add a hash tag that’s relevant to your business or event. Just one example.

Beyond posting your own stuff, you really need to be active in other people’s accounts. Favorite things you like, comment on posts, and share others’ posts with friends. That’s how you organically build a following. Like all SM and personal relationships, it’s not all about you.

But wait, there’s more!

So much more. There are new SM networks popping up almost every day. Like we covered in the seminar, we don’t think every network is right for us and one network could be perfect for you that we just don’t use.

I’m a tech geek and I like to experiment with new apps and networks all the time. That’s me. If that’s not you, then let it go. However, I will say that if you find your customers are talking about a new SM network, it’s probably in your best interest to at least check it out. Remember our social media marketing slogan:

Be where your customers are.

 

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My 6-year old son will ask me if he can watch a movie. Not once. Not twice. Not a few times. He will ask me continually, for hours, until he gets the answer he wants, which is supposed to be, “Yes! You can watch a movie RIGHT NOW.”

Eventually that’s the answer, because it becomes too much trouble to keep saying, “I’m thinking about it.” At some point I have to start thinking about other things – or at least pretend that I am.

His ability to not take “No” for an answer is partly inherent and partly learned. Partly inherent, because I think all children are born with the intuitive gift of wearing parents down. Partly learned because I almost always allow myself to get worn down and eventually give in, which he knows.

In sales and marketing, it doesn’t work the same way. Sure, you can wear people down until you get a response, but it’s not usually the response you want, which is “Yes, I’ll buy/try/attend.” Instead of wearing people down so they give in, you end up annoying them so they hang up, unsubscribe or avoid you.

I’ve experienced this in retail from the time I was a teen, working at the mall. We were pushed to attack all customers coming in, pestering them until they bought something or left. “Can I help you?” was never enough. We had to employ religious cult tactics, continually asking leading questions (Are you looking for a poster? A framed print? Is it a gift?), never accepting “I’m just browsing” as an answer.

Which was perfectly wrong, because we chased a lot of people out of our store.

The perfectly right thing to do is to leave browsers alone and let them browse all they want. Browsing isn’t the opposite of buying, it’s a gateway to buying.

Remind them you are there to help every now and then. Eventually, they will know what they want and they will more likely come to you to get it.

 

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My 6-year old son will ask me if he can watch a movie. Not once. Not twice. Not a few times. He will ask me continually, for hours, until he gets the answer he wants, which is supposed to be, “Yes! You can watch a movie RIGHT NOW.” Eventually that’s the answer, because it becomes […]

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T-shirts are one of the best ways to get your company’s name into the world. Probably the best.

Of course I would say that, I’m a t-shirt guy. If I were a billboard guy, I might tell you to plaster your marketing message on Sunset Boulevard. But I’m a t-shirt expert so I’ll stick to that.

Okay, besides having a built-in motivation for evangelizing about t-shirts, I do have some solid reasons (and experience) to back it up. Pull up a chair and let Uncle Sparky lay it down for you.

Visibility

Billboards rank pretty high on the visibility scale. Literally. So that’s wonderful, but one problem with billboards is that they’re stationary. You have to pin your hopes on people going by them and looking up (instead of texting, like 34% of drivers).

A T-shirt is fantastic for marketing visibility because the person wearing it is a moving billboard. Your marketing message is seen at the mall, the grocery store, the gym, and a bar, potentially all on the same day – for the same money. We’ll chat more about money in a moment.

Plus, it’s much more comfortable to wear a t-shirt than steel scaffolding and lights. You’ll have to trust me on that.

More Bang for Your Buck

Do you know how much custom printed t-shirts cost? Most people don’t. That’s because prices can range widely. All the variables in your design, colors, printing method, and quality of shirt make it hard to give a generic example. You can probably guess that my advice to you is to not go cheap. Of course you should squeeze the most value you can out of the deal. Just make sure you get the best quality you can afford. If you wind up with a box of shirts nobody wants to wear, you just blew your marketing budget on dust rags.

When you factor your costs for your t-shirt marketing campaign, think about this: You pay for it once, but it keeps on sending your message for years.

Everybody Wears T-shirts

Quick, name someone you know who doesn’t wear t-shirts.

Okay, I know. There’s always that one stubborn holdout who swears, “I never wear t-shirts.” Hmm. Right. Well, the toilet has to be cleaned sometime, yes? I’ve never personally cleaned a toilet in a VanHeusen button down. I’ve cleaned one with a VanHeusen… okay, perhaps a story for another time.

Whether or not there are these rare t-shirt-eschewing humans walking among us, admit it: T-shirts are frikkin’ everywhere. According to a survey, about 81% of the US population will wear a t-shirt by the time of the next presidential election. So it makes sense that you should put your marketing message on them.

Don’t Just Brand it. Make it Cool!

There are certain brands and logos that people will always wear on a t-shirt. Coca-Cola. Apple. Orange Crush. Vans. Those lucky brands, right?

There are even a few local brands that can get away with a logo-only tee, like that burrito truck that’s always slammed at lunchtime.

If you aren’t one of those brands (be honest with yourself), you can’t just stick your logo on a shirt and expect it to get the same mileage. As a marketing manager, you might get tipsy over the idea of wearing the Harvey’s Insurance logo on your chest. Harvey might. Maybe his mother. The rest of the world, not so much.

So you have to come up with an idea for your shirt that goes beyond plastering a logo on cotton. Make it interesting and fun, something other people would actually wear. That’s a tall order, I know. Think about your customer base and what they might find funny or just cool. Be careful with humor, though. Stay away from religious, sexist, racist, or political jokes. Even if you think your customer base will find it funny, tread carefully there. Your company’s name will be on it, and you don’t always get to pick who wears it.

Which reminds me – yes, do put your company logo on the shirt. Just don’t make it the centerpiece unless you’re an established brand. Sorry, Harvey.

Because We’ve Been There

Over the years, we’ve made too many marketing mistakes to count. We learned the hard way. These days, in our custom t-shirt business, we see plenty of really smart people about to make the same mistakes. Thankfully, we’re always ready to draw from our personal lunch box of stupid and help them make a better choice. Well, we try.

 Questions? Comments? Leave them below or email us at [email protected]. And don’t forget to share this post. Sharing is caring.

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In this video, I explain how I built my own exposure unit for screen printing… which is really just an excuse to talk about more important ideas like consumerism, DIY and experimenting to be more independent in life. It’s about duct tape (quack!) and trying new things.

If you’re a screen printer, you’ll learn how I made an exposure unit for under $20.

If you don’t care about screen printing, you’ll get some free homespun wisdom from Sparky Firepants. Go forth and spin some homes. Whatever that means.

It’s only 10 minutes, but I packed in about an hour’s worth of ideas. Enjoy and please share!

Make sure you subscribe to the Sparky Firepants YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/sparkyfirepants

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Don’t look at me, I’m horrid. Really. Okay, look. Just for a second. I know how your morbid little mind works.

Alright, that’s enough. Back to reading.

It’s just before New Year’s and I’m nursing a bad chest cold (is there a good one?). Maybe that’s a bad turn of phrase. I am not actually the one nursing the cold here, Jenni is nursing me. Big difference. I may publicly throw my swagger around like sweet chocolate treats, but when I get the sniffles, I turn into a sniveling mess.

Still, I’ve been meaning to write a glorious post to sum up our first official year of screen printing. I have scant time left before Ryan Seacrest and Judge Sotomayor officially let us into 2014, so there may be some chest cold-level sniveling mixed in with the gloriousness.

We did it!

First things first. We did it! We turned an idea into ink on t-shirts and happy clients. In January, I was still setting up our first press and trying to figure out how to build our shop out of two-by-fours and a halogen light from Home Depot.

By May we were selling our vegan t-shirts to a Sparky-loving crowd at WorldFest. By September we were serving (multiple) repeat custom screen print clients.

It’s four days to closing out our first official year and while we’re not (yet) the best-known screen printing shop in Los Angeles, we’ve made some really great t-shirts for thousands of great people. That makes me happy. If you’re one of those people, thank you! It was a pleasure serving you.

Oops, I did it again. Or at least once.

There were more hard lessons learned for us this year than even Amanda Bynes would appreciate. The reality checks were bountiful. Here are a few highlights of things we learned:

• Even though I shake my fist at the gods and swear it cannot be done… I will do it anyway. So new motto for 2014: Shut up and print.
• Cheap-o t-shirts feel like wearing a Brillo pad. So no more printing on crappy cheap-o t-shirts without a signed and notarized consent form or a ruling by a Federal judge. At least now we know where to get low-cost shirt blanks that feel like cotton instead of steel wool.
• We can print on paper lunch bags better and more reliably than an inkjet. Panic first, figure it out second, get ‘er done, third.
• So far we haven’t really needed that heat press and wide format inkjet printer to compete with local shops. In fact, we’ve learned how to do it all differently so we don’t have to worry about competition.
• We will screw some things up – but we can deal with it. There was that time I ordered the wrong shirts. Actually, now that I look back it was three times. Thankfully we work with two local vendors who were able to send us the right shirts in a day. I generated some unwashable armpit stains over this, but thankfully I own a t-shirt company. Crisis averted, my own stinky shirt replaced, and we soldiered on.

We’ve made our own path.

Sometimes it’s been a slow and painful hike down that path. There have been mosquito clouds to swat and thorny vines to machete our way through to get to this point. All along the way, we kept getting glimpses of the easy, paved road in the distance. It was tempting to step onto it and just do it like everyone else. It was tempting to take the cheapest route with heat presses and direct-to-garment printers, to play the game of competing on price. Just when temptation was strongest, someone would step onto our path and say, “Hey, I like how you’re doing that. Can you help me?” And instantly our focus would go back to printing by hand the best t-shirts we can for the people who appreciate our style of service.

We couldn’t have made that path without help from people all over the world, mostly via the internet. Every time I got stuck on a printing problem, someone from Ryonet, T-shirt Forums, Catspit, or even an ink vendor would rescue me via blog post or YouTube video. Huge thanks to them. I plan to pay it forward to new screen printers in 2014 with some instructional posts and videos of my own.

Go ahead, Judge… lower that ball!

It’s almost 2014 and I haven’t yet mapped our path. It’s all in my head, which is currently stuffed up. I’ll blow it out my nose in a few days and share it on Instagram. Lucky you.

Despite the phlegm hiding in the dark corners of my lungs, I need to print an order right now. Sometimes that’s how it works when you serve people with your craft. Either you take it easy and they get a huge letdown… or you swallow some boiling tea, man up, and get ‘er done.

As selfless and martyr-making as I made that sound, it’s actually the most selfish thing I could do today. I started printing for me and I love doing it. The fact that someone gets to enjoy what I create is very cool, but I think I might get more out of it in the larger picture.

Wow, that tea made me ramble. I better shut up and print now.

All the best to you and yours in the new year!

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These days it seems like everyone and their mother has the perfect idea for a t-shirt. If you browse Zazzle or another on-demand t-shirt site, you’ll see that some people actually do. And a lot more don’t.

In fact, most people who find out we have our own t-shirt line eventually tell us, “Hey, you know what you should do for a t-shirt? You should…” Sometimes they even come up with some good ideas. Plus, it sounds easy. Hey, just put that on a shirt and sell a million!

If you’ve tried to start your own apparel or t-shirt line and hit a big wall of this is way too expensive, I’m not surprised. It’s not as easy as it looks from the outside.

But wait! Here’s a sweet and tasty easysicle fresh out of the freezer for you.

Selling T-shirts the Easy Way

Sites like the aforementioned Zazzle do make it look easy, don’t they? You design it, they print and ship. That really is as easy as it gets. In fact, we recommend them all the time to people who just want to do a one-off shirt as a gag, or sell a few shirts for beer money. But hold on to your keg, because it’s not a good business model for your apparel line. It’s a great business model for Zazzle. We’ve had designs on Zazzle for years and we make a few bucks every month, without even trying very hard. It has its advantages, namely:

• Zero overhead – you don’t have to carry an inventory of shirts you may not sell
• Customers choose their own shirt and size from hundreds of options (see also no inventory)
• Complete order fulfillment - you don’t have to take orders or interact in any way
• Built-in SEO – you share the power of a larger website and its category, searching, and featured listings

Sounds amazing. So why shouldn’t anyone start an apparel line using Zazzle? It’s a dreamy hot fudge sundae with a million dollars on top! Before you get chocolate all over your chin, think about these disadvantages:

• If you price competitively (to make sales), you will bring in about $1.50 per shirt
• You can’t brand shirts with your private label
• You can’t control quality
• Stores won’t carry your line at those prices – you need to offer wholesale pricing

We think Zazzle and sites like it are great when you want to test designs and see if there’s a market. When you’re ready to get serious about starting a t-shirt line, you need to dig deeper into your ice cream truck and scoop your own cones.

Selling T-shirts the Hard Way

We get a few inquiries every month for our custom screen printing from people who want to start their own t-shirt line. They range from complete noobs testing the waters to seasoned entrepreneurs who regularly sell their shirts online and in local markets. The ratio of inquiries to printed orders for this category of customer is almost zero. The numero uno reason? Affordability.

We are usually not the cheapest screen printer around, but the issue has never been one of our prices being too high. The problem is one of sticker shock. Until they contact us, most people don’t have an idea how much they’re going to have to invest to get a viable inventory of t-shirts. I sympathize. This is a tough business. To successfully sell t-shirts, you have to order them in bulk (wholesale) so you can get them into the market at a competitive price and still profit enough to do it all over again. Here’s some simple t-shirt math for you.

Say you place an order for 20 t-shirts. For a screen printer, that’s a small order. Depending on the design, you could spend between $12-$18 per shirt. That means to sell them at a profit, you’ll have to sell them for anywhere between $18-$27. Now, if your shirts are super special, that might work in a local market or online. It doesn’t account for overhead on a booth or your web site (that counts), but you’ll make back your money on the shirts at least.

If you take your shirts to a local store, they’re not going to want to pay those prices. They’re going to get you down as low as possible so they can mark that up and sell the shirts for $15-$18. That is, if they’re super special and it’s a high end boutique, not a souvenir shop in Little Tokyo selling shirts at 3 for $10. So let’s back that price up to what you need to buy them at. If you can get those shirts at $6-$7 each, you might be able to get an order in at a local shop.

How do you get your custom shirt prices that low? You probably guessed already, but I’ll tell you anyway. You order a lot of them. Think in the hundreds, at least. Sounds like a big outlay, right? You betcha. That’s what makes the business tough.

You Can Still Start an Apparel Line

I know. It’s like your scoop of pickle pear pistachio just fell off your cone into the dirt. That’s how I feel every time I talk to someone who wants us to quote them on printing their t-shirt line. I feel your pain. But there is hope for all of us! You can still start your t-shirt line, you just need to think through a few things before you press the big phat go button. Figure out this stuff first:

• Where and to whom are you selling your t-shirts? This will help you figure your pricing, which determines your initial budget.
• Cull your designs down to the very, very best. Eliminate that iffy one your Facebook friend promised they would buy if you would do it.
• Choose a good quality shirt, but don’t get crazy. You want midrange. Not Michael’s on clearance and not Calvin Klein. Do your homework.
• Oh, yeah. Do your homework.
• Will you tag them? How? Is it even necessary? Can you do it yourself and still make it look professional? Get feedback on this.
• What do you need to spend initially to sell them? Think “easy” stuff like tables, banners, web site, payment methods. This stuff costs money and affects your profitability. It’s business 101 stuff, but you need to account for it.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Don’t listen to the critics (external and internal) who tell you it’s an impossible business to make any money in. It is possible. It takes time and persistence, for sure. If you plan well and start out early accounting for your costs and potential profits, you’ll make it work.

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By Douglas J. Besharov and Karen Baehler

Let’s assume that Nobel economist Paul Krugman and others are right about China’s economy being “in big trouble” and headed for a “nasty slump.” What does this mean for the 150 million current Chinese workers who left their home villages to fill jobs in the new economy’s growth centers? When a rapidly emerging economy built on these internal migrants — aka surplus rural labor — begins to cool, what becomes of the peasants-turned-factory-workers who made the economic miracle possible?

The answer depends largely on public policy choices (past and present). China’s leaders have long understood the destabilizing effects of large-scale labor migration, which is why they institutionalized the modern hukou system of household registration in the 1950s. In post-market reform China, a hukou operates less like an internal passport than it once did, with fewer restrictions on mobility, but all Chinese still must register in the location of their birth, and access to many services is still tied to that location. Although government officials have discussed the issue and adopted minor reforms around the edges of the hukou system for some time, receipt of pensions, health care, unemployment insurance, and other basic social benefits still tends to be highly skewed in the new economy toward areas of rapid economic development and their registrants. Migrant workers and their families are typically stuck at the end of the social protection queue.

Take schooling, for example. Public education is a national entitlement for all Chinese children under age 14, but locally financed. Until recently, children of migrants were included in the budgets of their rural home districts, where they were registered but did not use services; at the same time, they were excluded from the budgets of their actual areas of residence, where they needed services but could not register. Some migrant-receiving urban districts addressed the mismatch by charging fees for migrant children to attend their schools. This practice caused severe material hardship for many migrant families and led others to use substandard schools that catered to migrant children. The Chinese government introduced new policies in 2003 that tied responsibility for education delivery to the receiving jurisdiction rather than the district of origin and forbade the imposition of differential school fees based on household registration status. The policies did not address the financing constraints of the receiving local governments, however, and did not offer fiscal relief for local and municipal jurisdictions faced with large numbers of migrant students. As a result, differences in local-provincial financing arrangements have led to substantial district-by-district differences in educational access and quality for children of migrants.

Alongside widely recognized problems like education financing, novel problems associated with labor migration are sure to emerge if and when the much-anticipated economic downturn occurs. Redundancies will probably hit migrants first. Some laid-off migrants will return to their rural home districts, where social insurance systems tend to be thin. Other laid-off migrants will stay in the cities, placing additional pressure on urban social programs. From the migrants’ perspective, it is not immediately clear which option—stay in the city or return to the countryside—is best. In keeping with the location of economic growth, greater priority has been given to developing social programs in urban areas to replace the old, pre-reform arrangements, which depended heavily on guarantees of lifetime employment and direct provision of social services by state-owned enterprises. But migrant workers have tended to fall through the cracks of these new, post-reform urban social programs. Meanwhile, rural services have only slowly improved, lagging far behind those offered by urban social programs.

From the perspective of the general welfare, public policy needs to strike a delicate balance of incentives for return migration vs. encouraging migrants to stay in cities, while also stimulating domestic consumption nationwide. Return migration, for example, ought to serve the dual goals of taking pressure off urban social systems and transferring skills, knowledge, and human resources to the countryside. Policy might steer return migration toward rural areas that demonstrate better prospects for future job growth. Return migrants also might be encouraged and/or assisted to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities back home. At the same time, urban enterprises will need to recall some of their laid-off workers when economic growth resumes, and that points to the value of providing reasonably generous unemployment benefits for migrants in cities alongside opportunities for up-skilling during periods of slower growth. Expanded public and private spending on pensions, unemployment benefits, health care, child care, and other benefits and services are likely to be used to stimulate domestic consumption and provide a counterweight to what many have referred to as China’s lop-sided, investment-heavy growth model. Making these benefits available everywhere and regardless of hukou could be seen as advancing both economic development and social protection goals.

China, of course, is not the first country to experience enormous economic growth driven by rural to urban migration. In many countries, the result was massive urban poverty and hardship; think of Dickensian London and America’s dangerous 19th and early 20th century slums. So far, China seems to have avoided the worst elements of these costly transitions. But the hukou system has caused hardships of its own—particularly for China’s migrant worker population—in the country’s post-market reform era. With many prominent economists predicting far slower economic growth rates in the future, policymakers must promptly address the issues facing migrant workers and their families. Will China’s leaders be able to cross this river before it floods, or will they be caught in the middle, feeling for the next stone?

Douglas J. Besharov, JD, is the Norman and Florence Brody Professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States. Karen Baehler is Scholar in Residence at the School of Public Affairs at American University. They co-edited Chinese Social Policy in a Time of Transition.

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Image credit: New constructed buildings at Shenzen China. © tekinturkdogan via iStockphoto.

The post Prospects for China’s migrant workers appeared first on OUPblog.

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Imagine that you need a new car. Hey, maybe you really do. Anyway, imagine you’re out car shopping. Also imagine that you’re on a tight budget.

Well, you should be if you’re buying a car. I mean, really. Oh, wait. Are you Justin Bieber? Sorry, Biebs. Go ahead and splurge. In fact, get three.

If you’re just a regular person like me, you’re on a tight budget. And you’re environmentally conscious. Oh – and you have a small family. So it makes sense that you would seek out the priciest, gas-guzzlingest SUV you can find and see if you could somehow squeeze it into your tiny budget.

See what I did there?

Of course you wouldn’t do that, would you? No, because you’re not crazy or stupid. You know what you need, what you like and what you can afford, so you put that formula into your head before you go to the dealer.

This is exactly the same as getting custom t-shirts made. Except without cup holders and all-weather tires.

Getting custom t-shirts on a tight budget 101

We get a lot of inquiries about custom t-shirts that start with, “Hi, I need t-shirts. I have a 4-color design, front and back, I’m giving them away at our charity event. We’re a non-profit, so we have almost no budget at all. Can you give me a deal?”

Woa there, Biebs. Let’s back up. In fact, let’s go over this order piece by piece. But let’s do it backwards, because that’s the order in which our imaginary customer should actually be thinking about their needs.

Can you give me a deal?

Hmm. Of course. We give everyone a great deal. We do that by assessing your needs, then helping you decide the best way to go for your budget.

…we have almost no budget at all…

Well, we’re already in trouble, aren’t we? When I hear this, I sympathize. It’s really hard running a non-profit with a low budget. But since most print shops like ours are for profit (we have families to feed), we can’t donate our services to everyone who asks. We wouldn’t be around very long. What we can do is figure out how to get your custom t-shirts down to the lowest price possible. Which leads us to…

…I’m giving them away…

Oh boy. So much to say here. But I’ll sum it up as best I can. Listen, stop giving it all away. Even if you have a non-profit event, a great way to get some cash flowing is to sell merchandise. If you rely exclusively on donors and constantly give away their money in the form of giveaways, how much longer will they keep donating? The math is very simple. If you order 100 t-shirts at $6 each and sell them at your event for $15 each, you not only make your money back, you can now buy that new swing set in the children’s area. Non-profit means no profiting, not staying solvent. It’s still a business, right?

If you’re a for-profit marketer and you’re looking for a promotional giveaway, I totally get it. Let’s look at…

I have a 4-color design, front and back…

That’s great and we will happily screen print it for you. You’re looking at anywhere between $15-$25 each, depending on the type and quality of t-shirt you want. $2500 in marketing giveaways doesn’t sound like a tight promotional budget to me, but – wait. Is this Justin Bieber again? In that case, I recommend ordering 500 shirts to give away.

Simply put, you can’t ask for diamonds on a pizza budget. I would recommend:

• Reducing your design to one or two colors
• Printing on only one side
• Going to a full-color inkjet heat transfer (lesser quality, but still an option)

Diamonds on my pizza? Huh?

Okay, so I only concocted that weird analogy because I had my clip art folder open. And now I’m hungry.

My point is, being on a tight budget doesn’t mean you can’t get custom t-shirts printed. It means you have to think harder than your competition and come up with a smarter way of getting it done.

Want to know more?Leave a comment below or send me an email at [email protected].

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Imagine that you need a new car. Hey, maybe you really do. Anyway, imagine you’re out car shopping. Also imagine that you’re on a tight budget.

Well, you should be if you’re buying a car. I mean, really. Oh, wait. Are you Justin Bieber? Sorry, Biebs. Go ahead and splurge. In fact, get three.

If you’re just a regular person like me, you’re on a tight budget. And you’re environmentally conscious. Oh – and you have a small family. So it makes sense that you would seek out the priciest, gas-guzzlingest SUV you can find and see if you could somehow squeeze it into your tiny budget.

See what I did there?

Of course you wouldn’t do that, would you? No, because you’re not crazy or stupid. You know what you need, what you like and what you can afford, so you put that formula into your head before you go to the dealer.

This is exactly the same as getting custom t-shirts made. Except without cup holders and all-weather tires.

Getting custom t-shirts on a tight budget 101

We get a lot of inquiries about custom t-shirts that start with, “Hi, I need t-shirts. I have a 4-color design, front and back, I’m giving them away at our charity event. We’re a non-profit, so we have almost no budget at all. Can you give me a deal?”

Woa there, Biebs. Let’s back up. In fact, let’s go over this order piece by piece. But let’s do it backwards, because that’s the order in which our imaginary customer should actually be thinking about their needs.

Can you give me a deal?

Hmm. Of course. We give everyone a great deal. We do that by assessing your needs, then helping you decide the best way to go for your budget.

…we have almost no budget at all…

Well, we’re already in trouble, aren’t we? When I hear this, I sympathize. It’s really hard running a non-profit with a low budget. But since most print shops like ours are for profit (we have families to feed), we can’t donate our services to everyone who asks. We wouldn’t be around very long. What we can do is figure out how to get your custom t-shirts down to the lowest price possible. Which leads us to…

…I’m giving them away…

Oh boy. So much to say here. But I’ll sum it up as best I can. Listen, stop giving it all away. Even if you have a non-profit event, a great way to get some cash flowing is to sell merchandise. If you rely exclusively on donors and constantly give away their money in the form of giveaways, how much longer will they keep donating? The math is very simple. If you order 100 t-shirts at $6 each and sell them at your event for $15 each, you not only make your money back, you can now buy that new swing set in the children’s area. Non-profit means no profiting, not staying solvent. It’s still a business, right?

If you’re a for-profit marketer and you’re looking for a promotional giveaway, I totally get it. Let’s look at…

I have a 4-color design, front and back…

That’s great and we will happily screen print it for you. You’re looking at anywhere between $15-$25 each, depending on the type and quality of t-shirt you want. $2500 in marketing giveaways doesn’t sound like a tight promotional budget to me, but – wait. Is this Justin Bieber again? In that case, I recommend ordering 500 shirts to give away.

Simply put, you can’t ask for diamonds on a pizza budget. I would recommend:

• Reducing your design to one or two colors
• Printing on only one side
• Going to a full-color inkjet heat transfer (lesser quality, but still an option)

Diamonds on my pizza? Huh?

Okay, so I only concocted that weird analogy because I had my clip art folder open. And now I’m hungry.

My point is, being on a tight budget doesn’t mean you can’t get custom t-shirts printed. It means you have to think harder than your competition and come up with a smarter way of getting it done.

Want to know more?Leave a comment below or send me an email at [email protected].

Add a Comment

Hands down, our most popular question.

How much do custom t-shirts cost?

If I could wish upon a star, I would wish that I had an easy answer for you. Really, I would. It would make life easier for both of us. The truth is, it depends. I know that’s slightly frustrating, because when you go to PF Chang’s or Jiffy Lube, the prices are always the same. Plus, they’re displayed right in front of you, so before you even talk to someone, you have an idea of how much you’re going to spend.

Unfortunately in the getting stuff made custom world, the prices aren’t so clearly defined. But there’s one simple answer to getting the best deal on custome printed t-shirts: communication. Yup. The more we know what you need, the more you will save.

We’ve had a booth at a summer concert series here in Woodland Hills, California. It’s been great. We’re selling some pre-printed tees and we’re also getting quite a few inquiries on custom printed t-shirts. The only problem is that because it’s a concert, we can’t hear a damn thing.

Visitor: HSKKKdJ Dkdkkd kdllldlld lldllld;d?

ME: What?!???

Visitor: HSKKKdJ Dkdkkd kdllldlld lldllld;d?

ME: Oh! Yeah, the restrooms are over there!

Visitor: No, I was wondering, HSKKKdJ t-shirts Dkdkkd kdllldlld custom lldllld;d how much?

You see my point. Not exactly a consultative environment. Which is where we excel, consulting. We’re not a factory that employs an entire third-world country and spits out t-shirts on a 24-hour cycle. We do custom, hand-printed work. So lots of little things matter when it comes to price. For example, the quality of t-shirt you need can change the cost of your order dramatically. Whether you’re selling them or giving them away will help us advise you on a best course of action. In short, we need information – without bass guitar in the background.

Unfortunately with custom stuff, like furniture or t-shirts, it’s not always the same. There’s a formula, sure, but it’s not like ordering from a menu. This doesn’t mean it’s going to be outrageously expensive, it just means you will need to plan better. Yup, That’s the secret to getting lower prices on custom work. Planning. It’s your new watchword.

Planning for your t-shirt printing means that you either know what you want or are ready to answer some questions about your needs. It’s pretty simple, really.

Here are some easy questions you can be prepared to answer so you can get the best t-shirts prices with us:

Where are your shirts going?

Are you selling your t-shirts or giving them away? The answer may not alter the price directly, but we would help you figure out how to either save the most money on give-away shirts or make the most profit on selling your shirts.

Think about it. If you’re selling your shirts at $15 each, and it costs you $6 to get them printed by us, that’s a $9 per-shirt profit margin. Not bad, right?

If you’re giving out logo shirts to employees to wear on the job or at events, that’s part of your advertising or marketing budget. Ask your tax advisor about that one, but you could potentially recoup that cost.

How many colors in your design?

This matters more than you might think. In true quality screen printing, each color equals a separate screen that needs to be produced. It’s not only the cost of the screen itself, or even the ink, but the labor involved in creating a screen. If you educate yourself about how that all works, you could save a bundle.

For example, let’s say you count 4 colors in your design. Let’s also say that one of them is blue. If you print on a blue t-shirt, you just eliminated one screen/ink color, making yours a 3-color design. Hence, saving you a little money.

So asking “How much would my t-shirts cost?” does not always net a black-and-white answer.

Alert: You will likely get lower prices from online sources. But they probably won’t help you save money by asking you those deeper questions. Click a button, get a price. It’s not how we roll.

How many t-shirts do you need?

People ask us all the time, “But don’t you get your t-shirts wholesale?”

Yes. But here’s a secret: the garment industry directly affects how much you pay for custom orders. The whole industry is set up on bulk. So if you only order one t-shirt, we have to get it from one of our wholesale vendors at a “per-shirt” cost. Which is not wholesale. And that price could be as much as twice the “case” price, which is truly wholesale.

Sure, we keep some blanks in stock. But we can’t possibly anticipate 100 Kelly Green t-shirts just for your St. Patrick’s Day Fun Run. We would quickly go out out business – and we would deserve to.

The best way to lower the price you pay on t-shirts is to know up front how many t-shirts you need and in what sizes. The more you order, the lower the “per-shirt” price goes. If you only need a handful of tees, we can still help you. At least we can advise you on alternatives to screen printing, which could be significantly less for small orders. The more information we have, the better price we can give you.

The other variable is labor. If we’re printing only one or two shirts, the time it takes for us to set up the job is more time than it takes to actually print ink on the tees. We have to do the same setup for 1,000 tees or just one.

Do you really have your design ready to go?

We don’t charge for design fees unless we actually do any designing. However, you should know what “designing” means. Yes?

We recently had a customer approach us with his design “all ready to go.” When we dug a little deeper, it turned out that he had ripped out a photo from a magazine to print on his shirt. In his mind, it was ready to print. In reality, we would have to:

• Scan the image
• Fix the quality (most magazine images are printed in a “dot” pattern that doesn’t translate easily)
• Separate the colors
• Add text and other elements

Not to mention that in this case, his image was copyrighted. That means that without written permission from the photograph copyright holder, we just won’t do it. It’s more than legal, it’s ethical for us.

In his mind, the design was all done for us. In reality, we had a couple hours’ design time to go, plus approvals and adjustments. It all counts.

What kind of t-shirts do you need?

High-end or low-end? It all depends on where your t-shirts will end up (Question #1 again).

For promotional giveaways, I would recommend t-shirts on the cheaper end. Say you’re a radio station and you’re handing out free tees at an event. Do you really want to hand out the latest fashion of pricey fashion shirts that will wind up in somebody’s gym bag for all eternity? I’m guessing not.

You’d probably want a heavier jersey-style tee that is super cheap to get. Remember: in the future, some dude is going to be polishing his $1,000 steel rims with that free tee.

If you want to sell your designs as an apparel line, you’re going to want the highest quality you can afford. Ask yourself if Nordstrom will honestly take your Hanes Beefy-T for their men’s section. If Wal-Mart is your customer, you might get away with it. The point is (I can’t stress this enough) to plan for it.

How soon do you need them?

Here’s an easy pricing scale for you:

I need them sometime in the next couple weeks = Lower price

NOW! I needed them yesterday but I just thought of it NOW! HELP! = Higher price

Those are the basics on pricing custom t-shirts. Remember, your watchword is planning. The better you plan, the more you save.

What questions do you have about getting custom t-shirts done? Is it still a mystery? ask us anything, either in the comments below or email us at [email protected].

 

 

Add a Comment

Hands down, our most popular question.

How much do custom t-shirts cost?

If I could wish upon a star, I would wish that I had an easy answer for you. Really, I would. It would make life easier for both of us. The truth is, it depends. I know that’s slightly frustrating, because when you go to PF Chang’s or Jiffy Lube, the prices are always the same. Plus, they’re displayed right in front of you, so before you even talk to someone, you have an idea of how much you’re going to spend.

Unfortunately in the Getting Stuff Made Custom world, the prices aren’t so clearly defined. But there’s one simple answer to getting the best deal on custome printed t-shirts: communication. Yup. The more we know what you need, the more you will save.

We’ve had a booth at a summer concert series here in Woodland Hills, California. It’s been great. We’re selling some pre-printed tees and we’re also getting quite a few inquiries on custom printed t-shirts. The only problem is that because it’s a concert, we can’t hear a damn thing.

Visitor: HSKKKdJ Dkdkkd kdllldlld lldllld;d?

ME: What?!???

Visitor: HSKKKdJ Dkdkkd kdllldlld lldllld;d?

ME: Oh! Yeah, the restrooms are over there!

Visitor: No, I was wondering, HSKKKdJ t-shirts Dkdkkd kdllldlld custom lldllld;d how much?

You see my point. Not exactly a consultative environment. Which is where we excel, consulting. We’re not a factory that employs an entire third-world country and spits out t-shirts on a 24-hour cycle. We do custom, hand-printed work. So lots of little things matter when it comes to price. For example, the quality of t-shirt you need can change the cost of your order dramatically. Whether you’re selling them or giving them away will help us advise you on a best course of action. In short, we need information – without bass guitar in the background.

Unfortunately with custom stuff, like furniture or t-shirts, it’s not always the same. There’s a formula, sure, but it’s not like ordering from a menu. This doesn’t mean it’s going to be outrageously expensive, it just means you will need to plan better. Yup, That’s the secret to getting lower prices on custom work. Planning. It’s your new watchword.

Planning for your t-shirt printing means that you either know what you want or are ready to answer some questions about your needs. It’s pretty simple, really.

Here are some easy questions you can be prepared to answer so you can get the best t-shirts prices with us:

Where are your shirts going?

Are you selling your t-shirts or giving them away? The answer may not alter the price directly, but we would help you figure out how to either save the most money on give-away shirts or make the most profit on selling your shirts.

Think about it. If you’re selling your shirts at $15 each, and it costs you $6 to get them printed by us, that’s a $9 per-shirt profit margin. Not bad, right?

If you’re giving out logo shirts to employees to wear on the job or at events, that’s part of your advertising or marketing budget. Ask your tax advisor about that one, but you could potentially recoup that cost.

How many colors in your design?

This matters more than you might think. In true quality screen printing, each color equals a separate screen that needs to be produced. It’s not only the cost of the screen itself, or even the ink, but the labor involved in creating a screen. If you educate yourself about how that all works, you could save a bundle.

For example, let’s say you count 4 colors in your design. Let’s also say that one of them is blue. If you print on a blue t-shirt, you just eliminated one screen/ink color, making yours a 3-color design. Hence, saving you a little money.

So asking “How much would my t-shirts cost?” does not always net a black-and-white answer.

Alert: You will likely get lower prices from online sources. But they probably won’t help you save money by asking you those deeper questions. Click a button, get a price. It’s not how we roll.

How many t-shirts do you need?

People ask us all the time, “But don’t you get your t-shirts wholesale?”

Yes. But here’s a secret: the garment industry directly affects how much you pay for custom orders. The whole industry is set up on bulk. So if you only order one t-shirt, we have to get it from one of our wholesale vendors at a “per-shirt” cost. Which is not wholesale. And that price could be as much as twice the “case” price, which is truly wholesale.

Sure, we keep some blanks in stock. But we can’t possibly anticipate 100 Kelly Green t-shirts just for your St. Patrick’s Day Fun Run. We would quickly go out out business – and we would deserve to.

The best way to lower the price you pay on t-shirts is to know up front how many t-shirts you need and in what sizes. The more you order, the lower the “per-shirt” price goes. If you only need a handful of tees, we can still help you. At least we can advise you on alternatives to screen printing, which could be significantly less for small orders. The more information we have, the better price we can give you.

The other variable is labor. If we’re printing only one or two shirts, the time it takes for us to set up the job is more time than it takes to actually print ink on the tees. We have to do the same setup for 1,000 tees or just one.

Do you really have your design ready to go?

We don’t charge for design fees unless we actually do any designing. However, you should know what “designing” means. Yes?

We recently had a customer approach us with his design “all ready to go.” When we dug a little deeper, it turned out that he had ripped out a photo from a magazine to print on his shirt. In his mind, it was ready to print. In reality, we would have to:

• Scan the image
• Fix the quality (most magazine images are printed in a “dot” pattern that doesn’t translate easily)
• Separate the colors
• Add text and other elements

Not to mention that in this case, his image was copyrighted. That means that without written permission from the photograph copyright holder, we just won’t do it. It’s more than legal, it’s ethical for us.

In his mind, the design was all done for us. In reality, we had a couple hours’ design time to go, plus approvals and adjustments. It all counts.

What kind of t-shirts do you need?

High-end or low-end? It all depends on where your t-shirts will end up (Question #1 again).

For promotional giveaways, I would recommend t-shirts on the cheaper end. Say you’re a radio station and you’re handing out free tees at an event. Do you really want to hand out the latest fashion of pricey fashion shirts that will wind up in somebody’s gym bag for all eternity? I’m guessing not.

You’d probably want a heavier jersey-style tee that is super cheap to get. Remember: in the future, some dude is going to be polishing his $1,000 steel rims with that free tee.

If you want to sell your designs as an apparel line, you’re going to want the highest quality you can afford. Ask yourself if Nordstrom will honestly take your Hanes Beefy-T for their men’s section. If Wal-Mart is your customer, you might get away with it. The point is (I can’t stress this enough) to plan for it.

How soon do you need them?

Here’s an easy pricing scale for you:

I need them sometime in the next couple weeks = Lower price

NOW! I needed them yesterday but I just thought of it NOW! HELP! = Higher price

Those are the basics on pricing custom t-shirts. Remember, your watchword is planning. The better you plan, the more you save.

What questions do you have about getting custom t-shirts done? Is it still a mystery? ask us anything, either in the comments below or email us at [email protected].

 

 

Add a Comment

Have you ever tried to juggle? If you have, you probably noticed that it’s not a skill you pick up quickly. Some of us take years to get it down because we don’t juggle very often.

One of the things you notice when you start juggling is that if you stop paying attention for more than a second, it all goes right to hell. Let your mind wander and… splat! Balls down. Or chainsaws down. Whatever, although I highly recommend learning with the balls.

Life running our screen printing business and family isn’t kind of like juggling, it’s exactly juggling. Pile on the dog, the cat, the car that needs repair (again), the usual grocery shopping, laundry, birthday planning, and two kids in a local production of Grease, and you are very quickly juggling chainsaws. Did I mention that we also homeschool?

Even if you don’t homeschool, if you have kids, you know. Am I right?

Bourbon helps. If you don’t drink, try Calm. I use both.

Last week we were super focused on WorldFest. Which went swimmingly, by the way. We got a such a great response from our customers there and afterwards that we stopped looking at the balls (chainsaws) for a week. Oops. We had a few surprises get thrown at us.

It’s all good. We have our health! But it’s been a challenging few days for us as we start thinking about the Concerts on the Green this summer. We’ll have a t-shirt booth there every Sunday for 13 weeks this summer. It’s gonna be awesome, yes. We have a lot to do, for sure.

Oh! I need to remember to get gas for the chainsaws.

If you’re in the LA area, check out the free summer concerts here in Woodland Hills. My personal favorites Lee Rocker and Robby Krieger will be there. Come say hi!

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Here’s something to muddle over this week:

Is it possible to be passionate about a cause and keep a sense of humor about it?

While you ponder that with your own passionate beliefs, here’s our story. Jenni and I are both vegan. We care about things like animals being tortured and our water being polluted. While we’re at it, we’d love to see every person in the world have enough to eat.

Our efforts toward these causes are serious and dedicated. For example, here are just a few things we do:

• We eat a plant-based diet.
• We use environmentally-friendly products and practices in our screen print shop.
• We buy from companies that support our values and ideals
• We get involved with events and organizations that support the causes we believe in

In all of these activities, we interact with people who care about the same things we do. Some of these people are serious, too. Very serious. Very… very serious.

Here’s a quick self-check guide to see if you’re getting a little too serious about your cause:

• Have you ever thrown red paint on anyone (frat parties don’t count)?
• Have you ever crawled into a grocery store meat case and snuggled the packages, whispering, “You didn’t have to die for us?”
• Do you have any tattoos of Al Gore’s face? Anywhere?
• Have you angrily shouted the words “bone char” or “fracking” more than once this week?
• Do you get tweets from Alec Baldwin telling you to lighten up?

If you said “yes” to more than one of these, you may be too serious. And, you may actually be hurting the causes you’re trying to promote. For example, there’s nothing wrong with being passionate about rescuing animals from slaughter. If your end goal is to convince someone that slaughtering animals is wrong, getting up in their business with a few choice accusations probably isn’t going to do it. And they’ll go away convinced of only one thing: Those damn animal lovers are freaks, man. Message lost, mission unaccomplished.

I read somewhere that if you can get people to laugh, you have their attention. I read a lot of things “somewhere” and then forget the source.  It sure sounds like somebody said it. Lucille Ball? Dale Carnegie? Hannibal Lecter? Let’s say I made this up and move along.

Sometimes when people find out I’m vegan, I instantly become a target for teasing and animal rights jokes – not to mention dissecting my whole way of eating and thinking. I get it, I’m weird. If people realized truly how weird, they would forget about my diet. So it’s good that I have that to distract them.

In those situations where people are testing me, it would be easy to get angry and put up my dukes to defend myself and my cause. I could get all huffy (or Schwinn) and whine, “You just don’t understand the kind of evil the meat industry perpetrates! Your food is shit! You are gonna die! You’re assisting in the mass slaughter of cuddly critters and the careless destruction of the Earth, you non-caring animal-wearing meat whore!”

Instead, I answer questions and deflect “testing me” questions with humor. Then I let it go. It’s not that I’ve changed my beliefs or even hinted at agreeing with them. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. And yes, I just advocated the use of honey for catching flies. Double-bad vegan-whammy to me on that one.

Surprisingly, what typically happens is that those testing people approach me when I’m alone and start asking more earnest questions about how to make vegan meals (which I then hand over to Jenni because I never remember how to cook anything).

When we decided to launch a line of vegan t-shirts and totes, it took a few months to sort out what the designs would be. My initial sketches all had some sort of serious “We are all one world” kind of message. Which is fine. I’m not knocking the sentiment. But jeez looweez, don’t we see that everywhere? After a while we get desensitized to the ubiquitous messages of love all, serve all. We start branding people who sport those messages by saying, “Those damn hippies again.” I’m guilty of this myself.

So we went the other way. We went the weird cartoon humor route by creating some goofy t-shirts. In fact, we even have a bacon shirt (a bacon-destroying video game). Plus, we’ve got more vegan and non-cause-related t-shirt designs on the drawing board. See? We’re so serious about our health, animals, and the Earth that we can’t help smiling about it.

 

       

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I just got back after a long trip overseas. I took a look around the print shop, where all our equipment was patiently waiting for me. The squeegees were calling out, “Pick me! Pick me!”

Muffled t-shirt voices rumbled up from boxes of clean, blank apparel. Screens rattled and shook on the floor.

Welcome back, Sparky. Time to get printing.

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Just for fun, let’s pretend I like shopping for insurance (it’s called suspension of disbelief, they use it in books all the time).

I do actually need some business insurance (oh, wow, I just opened up the big marketing barn door on this one). So I went to a few sources, one being my car insurance company, USAA. They don’t offer it, but they have a partner who does, The Hartford.

So I went to The Hartford’s web site and spent about 10 minutes filling out a big ol’ form, telling them stuff like type of business, how many employees, location, when I lost my virginity, and how much I think about pickles on a daily basis. I also told them how and when they could contact me. Whew. It was a little mini-project just to get a quote on insurance, but okay. Hit me up, The Hartford. You got my digits.

Several days later, I got this email from Hartford:

 

First impressions? I just wasted my time filling out an online form. I have to call them anyway. And I’m not going to, because I am an Olympic champion calling people avoider. So admittedly, that’s me being lazy. I wonder how many other potential customers get lazy like that?

But that was kind of trivial compared to what I considered a sin of the worst kind: Sales Anonymity.

They broke my own personal cardinal rule of communicating with customers (or even potential customers). Always, always, always use your name. Not sometimes, or only when you’re a tiny little business, frikkin’ always. Actually, I think it’s particularly important the bigger your business becomes. Sign your name. Sales emails should come from a person, not a company. Email is already impersonal enough and people want to know there’s a connection with a human. We want to know there’s someone on the other end who’s accountable for something.

This email is signed The Specialized Sales Team. How very unspecial. Is it chilly in here?

What this says to me is that even if I do buy insurance from them, I’m probably going to get very unspecial, impersonal service if I ever have a question or a claim. That doesn’t do it for me. It doesn’t even matter now if they have a good or inexpensive insurance product.

The Hartford lost the sale before they even got to talk to me. Which is pretty sad, because I was going to swap some pickle recipes with them. Another huge loss for them. I’m sure they’re all depressed over there.

Contrast The Hartford with Zappos. From the very first time I bought shoes from Zappos, I was talking to a person, every time. I can get my shoes cheaper elsewhere, but I trust the people at Zappos. One of our screen print supply vendors, Ryonet, does this very well, too. Every interaction at Ryonet from order to delivery (and support) is with a real person with a real name.

They also address me by name. Nice!

For a customer like me, this is a deal clincher. Hmm, I wonder what clinches it for your customers? Pop quiz! Is it:

1. your fancy web form
2. your anonymous email autoresponder
3. golf visors with an elk on them
4. none of the above

I really hope that was too easy and merely amusing.

What you can learn from The Hartford

Frankly, I hate buzzwords like authenticity. Anything meaningful starts to lose impact the more it’s thrown around. But the core idea of authenticity (sorry) is simply that you’re a real person. With feelings and stuff. And a hankering for pickles, maybe.

If you have a small business like ours, that’s not too hard. You can probably shout across the room and tell your customer service and sales people to destroy the canned email templates and use their names.

If you’re a bigger business, it probably means a meeting. More meetings, yay. Why not make it a very different meeting and gather your sales people, customer service people, and web dev team and have them walk through the whole customer experience from interest to product delivery? I’ll bet dollars to pickles that you’ll all come away with some super juicy (dill flavor) nuggets.

Even before that meeting gets scheduled, it takes no time at all to get the word out in your company. No more “Thank You, The Specialized Sales Team” emails. Sign your name.

Signed,

The Sparky Firepants Blogging Team

Kidding. It’s just me. David.

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Back in the day, I was what you would call a spendthrift. Which is a weird term to use because it has nothing to do with thrift at all. I think someone like me should have been called a spendmore.

Over the years I’ve wised up. I give a lot of credit to my wife for my changed ways and some credit to being a business owner. In the former, Jenni has taught me the Ways of Thrift while I kicked and screamed the whole way. Really, I was terrible. I had no idea what things cost, I just bought them.

Jenni: What’s this charge for $54.98?

Mr. Spendmore: Uhhhh… toothpaste?

Jenni: When was the last time you bought toothpaste?

Mr. Spendmore: Uhhhh…

Jenni: Get back to me on that.

This happened enough times that I was virtually shamed into keeping track of my purchases. Not that toothpaste has ever been one of them (I checked).

For the latter, being a business owner has taught me the value of money like nothing else could. I should say failed business owner, because it’s those failed ventures that weren’t financially sound that “done learned me real good.”

Here are a few of the bigger lessons I’ve learned, with some cheapskate tips thrown in. Add little grains of salt where necessary.

1. Ready to buy? Holster that debit card, son.

Yep, that’s it. Wait. Especially on big purchases, I try to hold off at least 24 hours. This not only gives me time to realize I’m crazy, it gives Jenni time to pull a coupon or online sale out of her own holster. Sure, sometimes you just have to buy something RIGHT NOW, like… hmm. What? What do you have to buy RIGHT NOW? Seriously.

2. Consider the long term costs

Shiny. Pretty. Popular. iPhone. Got one? Cool. I bet you can tell me the price when you originally bought it, but how much has it been costing you over the past few years? Add that up one day. Need some smelling salts? I thought so.

This is one example, but take a look at other purchases you’ve made for your business. What hidden costs are involved in maintaining it?

3. Get creative with consumables

Specific to my own screen printing business, there are tons of consumables to keep track of. For example, I scoop excess ink off my screens when a  job is done and dump it back into the container. It’s still good! Why rinse it all down the drain?

Now, lots of screen print suppliers sell these little “screen cleaning cards” to make the job easier. They’re great and cheap at about 2 cents a piece. But to take the cheapskate thing a step further, Jenni handed me a bunch of old plastic gift cards. They’re reusable (save our environment!) and free.

4. Use what you have (or make your own)

So many times I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a piece of equipment I need, and I need to buy it RIGHT NOW (see #1). And there are plenty of people out there ready to sell it to someone like me. What I’ve learned is that in some cases, especially when you’re just starting out, you either already have what you need or you can make it much more cheaply.

In my shop, I have a light exposure unit for making stencils on my screens. I could have bought a spiffy new one for anywhere between $50-$3500. Instead, I built one myself for about $20 based on a YouTube instructional video. It works great for my purposes right now. As my business grows, I may want one of those more expensive units to save on exposure time.

Which brings me to my last tip.

5. Sometimes cheap isn’t

In the example above, there’s a risk that I wouldn’t get the best results. My jobs would suffer and my customers wouldn’t come back. So it’s important to know when to be a cheapskate and when to spend a little more money.

Dollar store paper towels are great. Unless dollar store paper towels fall apart while you’re cleaning. Then you use more and you have to buy more. And you have to go to the store more. And you have to explain to your wife why you’re always buying so many damn paper towels.

Another example is getting around. I love public transportation. Here in Los Angeles, people tend to laugh at our system (go ahead), but it’s actually improved quite a bit over the last 10 years. It’s also easy to use and you don’t have to sit on the freeway staring at bumpers. On a recent trip to Long Beach, I saved at least $10 in parking fees and almost as much in gas by taking the LA Metro.

As much as I love it, I also think there are times when it’s cheaper to drive. In my trip to Long Beach, I was flying solo. If I had other people with me, the cost of the trip would have been less if we drove. There’s also the consideration of time. Depending on traffic (are we there yet?), it can take about an hour less to drive than it does to take the train. And since we all know that time is money, we don’t want to waste it. In my case it was a Saturday and I used my train time to write notes and jot down ideas I learned from a trade show.

Embrace your cheapskatedness

As a business owner, it will serve you well to be a cheapskate. Wait, scratch that. You need to be a cheapskate. The whole point of being in business is to make money and if you are losing money, you aren’t making as much as you should be. Get creative about trimming your expenses and be proud to be a cheapskate. You’ll still be around when spendthrift (spendmore) business owners are wondering what went wrong.

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I’ve never subscribed to the idea of a “soft launch.” I’m not even sure if that’s possible. I mean, you launch or you don’t, yes? Yoda, want to jump in here?

That said, I realize that I’ve kinda done a soft launch here with my screen printing. I’ve been tossing out little hints over on the Facebook page. But if you haven’t been here on the site in a while, you might be noticing a change or two. Besides my killer moustache, I mean.

Here it is. Behind the scenes for the past few years, I’ve been learning and practicing the art of screen printing. And this past few months I’ve been deep into the ink, printing my designs and testing out new methods. That, coupled with our epic move back home to Southern California has developed into what I plan to be our Way of Life for the foreseeable future.

I’ve never been shy about expressing my devotion to this state. I’ve lived here on and off since 1990. It’s a little bit like marriage, where you promise for better or worse. And so it is with business, too. You make a commitment and stick it out for the long haul.

And it’s a relief. It’s a huge weight off the shoulders to finally be offering something tangible with my art. Like, seriously, dude.

And it’s a fulfillment of a dream I’ve had since I was 12 years old. To live in California and do something with my art. Here we are. Here we go. I also decided to start using this space to write more about our family and the weird ways we do things, like homeschool and eat a vegan diet. How we fit old fashioned cocktails into our busy evenings. Why we like red converse. And plenty about the business of design and screen printing for the good people of the San Fernando Valley.

And I want you to hitch a ride with us. Jump in, man. Let’s see where this thing goes.

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I had a breakthrough last week. I realized that I have a set of perceived limits, imagining what I can and cannot do. I know what is reasonable for me, being able to visualize myself already doing what I have planned. If my plan is to produce a certain amount of artwork a week, I will usually go for at least one that I know I can complete. This can be both a benefit and a hindrance. I will explain now why it has been a hindrance in my entrepreneurial journey.

If I already know what I can do and I know what I cannot do, than I am already limiting my potential. I am not actually pushing myself beyond what I have been able to do in the past. This just keeps me stuck in one place. A little annoying and critical voice inside my head immediately talks me out of doing anything too challenging. Doubt and fear keep my reasons alive for why I cannot do it. My most pressing issue is time. I tell myself that I don’t have time for it. And that is how I have been conducting myself in my career.

Why? Fear of failure. Fear that I will not be able to achieve everything I said I will do. Not following through on my commitments. What this really means is that I am more committed to not failing than I am to succeeding. How ridiculous is that?

So I decided to pay attention to my actions and take notice when I begin to hold myself back from bigger commitments. And than I take on whatever the opportunity is to take on and I look for areas in my routine where I can expand myself. Instead of just calling 5 business contacts today, how about I call 10? Instead of just one painting a week, how about three? With more on my plate, there is a chance that I might fail more often. But that is the whole point. More failures just mean that I am playing out more and taking bigger risks. Bigger risks mean bigger rewards and faster results. Expanding further will allow for more opportunity for breakthroughs and exciting new business prospects

One of the breakthroughs that I have always needed in my work was completing projects that I started and finishing work quickly. Since I began to distinguish where I am holding myself back, I have become much more productive and effective in my workflow. At the end of the day, I am actually satisfied with what I have accomplished. I am able to accomplish more than ever. I was able to finish 2 illustrations in one week. That is something I have never been able to do before.

Here are some questions you can start considering:

Instead of, “what can I do?” Reframe from using the word “Can” in your speech if at all possible. Instead ask yourself, “What do I know to do?” and “What have I not done yet?”

It’s all in the language.

Where in your life have you been stopped? Where are you holding yourself back? What are you really committed to? Examine where you might need to step out of your comfort zone and take a chance.

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I had a breakthrough last week. I realized that I have a set of perceived limits, imagining what I can and cannot do. I know what is reasonable for me, being able to visualize myself already doing what I have planned. If my plan is to produce a certain amount of artwork a week, I will usually go for at least one that I know I can complete. This can be both a benefit and a hindrance. I will explain now why it has been a hindrance in my entrepreneurial journey.

If I already know what I can do and I know what I cannot do, than I am already limiting my potential. I am not actually pushing myself beyond what I have been able to do in the past. This just keeps me stuck in one place. A little annoying and critical voice inside my head immediately talks me out of doing anything too challenging. Doubt and fear keep my reasons alive for why I cannot do it. My most pressing issue is time. I tell myself that I don’t have time for it. And that is how I have been conducting myself in my career.

Why? Fear of failure. Fear that I will not be able to achieve everything I said I will do. Not following through on my commitments. What this really means is that I am more committed to not failing than I am to succeeding. How ridiculous is that?

So I decided to pay attention to my actions and take notice when I begin to hold myself back from bigger commitments. And than I take on whatever the opportunity is to take on and I look for areas in my routine where I can expand myself. Instead of just calling 5 business contacts today, how about I call 10? Instead of just one painting a week, how about three? With more on my plate, there is a chance that I might fail more often. But that is the whole point. More failures just mean that I am playing out more and taking bigger risks. Bigger risks mean bigger rewards and faster results. Expanding further will allow for more opportunity for breakthroughs and exciting new business prospects

One of the breakthroughs that I have always needed in my work was completing projects that I started and finishing work quickly. Since I began to distinguish where I am holding myself back, I have become much more productive and effective in my workflow. At the end of the day, I am actually satisfied with what I have accomplished. I am able to accomplish more than ever. I was able to finish 2 illustrations in one week. That is something I have never been able to do before.

Here are some questions you can start considering:

Instead of, “what can I do?” Reframe from using the word “Can” in your speech if at all possible. Instead ask yourself, “What do I know to do?” and “What have I not done yet?”

It’s all in the language.

Where in your life have you been stopped? Where are you holding yourself back? What are you really committed to? Examine where you might need to step out of your comfort zone and take a chance.

Add a Comment

In his recent editorial, The Tel Aviv Cluster, David Brooks of the New York Times cites Start-Up Nation: The Story of the Israel's Economic Miracle when he describes the innovation cluster of technology that has developed in Israel. Having just finished reading Start-Up Nation, I'm not surprised to read about it in the New York Times. Like the other books released by Hatchette Book Group's Twelve, Start-Up Nation stays with you long after closed its covers.

The blurb:
Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel - a country of 7.1 million people, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources - produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom? Drawing on examples from the country's foremost inventors and investors, geopolitical experts Dan Senior and Saul Singer describe how Israel's adversity-driven culture fosters a unique combination of innovative and entrepreneurial intensity.

As the authors argue, Israel is not just a country but a comprehensive state of mind. Whereas Americans emphasize decorum and exhaustive preparation, Israelis put chutzpah first. "When an Israeli entrepreneur has a business idea, he will start it that week," one analyst put it. At the geopolitical level, Senor and Singer dig in deeper to show why Israel's policies on immigration, R&D, and military service have been key factors in teh country's rise - providing insight into why Israel has more companies on the NASDAQ than those from all of Europe, Korea, Singapore, China, and India combined.

So much has been written about the Middle East, but surprisingly little is understood about the story and strategy behind Israel's economic growth. As Start-Up Nation shows, there are lessons in Israel's example that apply not only to other nations, but also to individuals seeking to build a thriving organization. As the U.S. economy seeks to reboot its can-do spirit, there's never been a better time to look at this remarkable and resilient nation for some impressing, surprising clues.

Review:
Dan Senor and Saul Singer's Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle is well researched and a fascinating read. The book is divided into four main parts:

• The Little Nation That Could
• Seeding a Culture of Innovation
• Beginnings
• Country with a Motive

In The Little Nation That Could Senor we read PayPal's Scott Thompson's first impressions of a young Shvat Shaked, whose young company. Fraud Sciences, developed the most up-to-date solution to the problem of online payment scams, credit card fraud, and electronic identity theft. As we read about Fraud Sciences, its founders Shvat Shaked and Saar Wilf, their approach to problem solving and the impressions of the top executives of PayPal, Ebay and Benchmark Capital, it becomes clear that the story of technological innovations and start-up ventures in Israel is deep and unique.

I was struck by story after story that traced technological and scientific innovations to Israeli dedication, chutzpah, a culture of debate/argument a

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