DECEMBER 12TH, 2014 SHOW NOTES – PLANNING FOR 2015 Continued
Please find some links and notes from the 2 Regular Guys Podcast. This weeks show featured a continued discussion between Terry and Aaron about their plans for 2015 and how to best plan for the future in your business. Terry will cover the ins and outs of training and operational planning while Aaron will tackle marketing and sales planning. This show will help all business owners be ready to tackle 2015 and help you be successful.
Sponsored by: Equipment Zone (Use Coupon code GUYS)
***Please support this show – Buy a Mug!***
Planning for 2015 – Continued
***From Previous Week***
Production / Training / Operations Concepts for the New Year – Terry
-Something special about a brand new year… time to assess, fix, change
-Sound business – positives steps, useful changes
-This time of year, reassess professional goals and principles
10 basic concepts that dominate my approach to business
- Put trust in your employees (Trust your employees and allow them to do their jobs)
- Avoid playing good cop/bad cop (Owners and managers like to take the good cop role, Production floor supervisors and managers are relegated the bad cop role)
- Let employees hit the stop button (How many times has an employee said, “I knew that order was wrong…”)
- Find the best ideas within your company (You used to think, “If I were running this place…”)
- Provide training weekly (52/15) ***From Previous Week***
- Turn a profit on every order you process (Status customers or customers with potential – Decide what business you are in, or what business you would like to be in)
- Borrow your customers glasses (“Would you buy it?” “Would you get in your car, deliver the order, and watch them open it?”)
- Rattle the rafters (Been talking tweaks, but sometimes big changes are needed. Most of us recognize major problems long before we do anything)
- Be the best at what you do (Make a conscious effort every day to be best…)
- Follow two inseparable concepts for success (Make yourself totally indispensable / Absolutely no one is indispensable)
Marketing / Sales – Aaron
- Marketing Plan – Must have and why?
- SWOT Analysis – Describe what it is and how to do it.
- Compare prior years sales data and look for trends / Excel/Spreadsheets are your friend PROMISE!
- Determine your goals / Sales Growth from existing customers? New Customers? Better sales (More Profitable)?
- Design your marketing plan around those goals
- Sales / Marketing Trends for 2015
- Expanding into new markets segments – Sublimation? DTG? Transfers?
- Customer Service / Customer Experience – Solve a problem your customers didn’t know they had.
- Go Digital!
From the Chat Room:
GregKitson: Good morning guys!
2 Regular Guys Talking Decoration: Morning Greg!
alanhowe01: I get to listen live today
2 Regular Guys Talking Decoration: Awesome Alan. Love having you.
alanhowe01: morning Greg
alanhowe01: always on the road, I get to listen to podcast while traveling
alanhowe01: thank you
alanhowe01: profits grow company’s, not sales
2 Regular Guys Talking Decoration: Alan – Absolutely. Sales never pay the bills, it is the profit of those sales.
alanhowe01: we have all heard companies say ” I can’t be bankrupt I am way to busy”
ErichCampbell: Absolutely.
ErichCampbell: Sorry I’m in late guys! We have a media interview coming up in about 30 min and had to confab with the owners this AM.
ErichCampbell: Hello everybody!
ErichCampbell: Focusing on the answers and not the problems- it’s a great way to get your head right.
ErichCampbell: The best things that have ever happened to me happen because I said Yes and made myself useful. My entire career came from noticing a niche in digitizing and filling it. 🙂
ErichCampbell: Great one.
alanhowe01: Marketing I believe this is the biggest failure for most of the small companies, printers, embroidery, suppliers.
alanhowe01: so important and always on the back burner
KristineShreve: Marketing tends to be an afterthought for a lot of companies. Alan is right, companies put it on the back burner, probably because they don’t see the value,
KristineShreve: A SWOT analysis is so useful. I recommend them a lot to people.
ErichCampbell: It’s hard – admittedly, especially when you’ve been in the business a long time- referrals feed your stream so well sometimes that the growth prospects aren’t evident.
alanhowe01: also smaller companies everyone is wearing multiple hats, so if it’s done it’s done poorly
KristineShreve: Acknowledging your weaknesses as a company and working to fix them can be a big strength. Everyone has things they’re less good at doing. There’s no shame in admitting that.
ErichCampbell: Absolutely. Honesty is necessary to that process and addressing weaknesses requires that analysis.
ErichCampbell: Besides, those weaknesses often become learning experiences.
KristineShreve: That’s very true Erich. Learning how to address your weaknesses and turn them into strengths can be really valuable.
ErichCampbell: Great writing topics, too. 😉 heheh
KristineShreve: Good point, Erich. Ideas for articles.
alanhowe01: print wear and impressions will have 3 articles of the same topic from all three of us LOL
ErichCampbell: BTW, another great thing to do is track habits as well as goals- I am a huge nerd so I use HabitRPG, but there are lots of ways to do it. 😉 https://habitrpg.com
ErichCampbell: Provides some tracking and measurement, at least. 🙂
alanhowe01: not going to happen is correct, but a great profit center that needs to be looked at if it could fit into the company’s biz plan and tap into a new market or expand an existing
Upcoming Trade Shows
- ISS Long Beach – January 16th – 18th, 2015
- Exploring All Garment Decorating Methods to Find the Best Fit For Your Business – January 18th, 2015 at 10:30AM PST
- Secrets of Starting a DTG Business – January 16th, 2015 at 1:00PM PST
Other News/Events
- Complete Screen Printing Business Course – Workhorse Products in Phoenix – February 7-8, 2014
Terry’s Books:
Screen Printing: A Practical Guide to Starting Your Own T-Shirt Business Just $4.95 as an e-book.
Direct to Garment: A Practical Guide to Starting Your Own T-Shirt Business Just $4.95 as an e-book.
This show is brought to you for a full hour by: Equipment Zone, with 20 years experience selling garment printing equipment nationwide. Equipment Zone offers the new Epson F2000 SureColor direct-to-garment printer, their own VelociJet-XL DTG printer, and the all new SpeedTreater-TX automatic pretreat machine with a full 16”x24” pretreat area. Introductory price is $3,895. Equipment Zone also carries a full line of DTG inks and supplies. Go to EquipmentZone.com
This show is for the listeners so please make sure to ask us some questions or give us some topics you would like us to discuss. Also if you have any event or upcoming items related to our industry that you would like us to bring up on the show, please contact us via our Facebook Page. Also make sure to interact/follow us on Twitter or Google +. You can also find information over at our You Tube Page.