$250k Profit/Year Print Shop Profit but Feeling Trapped

To me this seems like the perfect opportunity for you because it's enabling you to basically start a startup with no money. Welcome back to the Kerner office. We are back to our normal format of me answering questions from entrepreneurs. I took three questions today. One from Aaron, Alejandro and Daniel. Aaron is an ex mechanical engineer turned software engineer and he wants to learn some marketing skills so he can help a family friend with their eight figure business that sells sells grills. Alejandro was next and he wants to help his friend grow her dog training business. So I had a unique idea of reverse engineering social media posts to find out how to do that. And Daniel was last but not least and he owns a print shop in Brooklyn and he's making good money. Six figures plus printing wedding invitations and bar mitzvah invitations. But he feels trapped. He's working 15 hour days and he wants to scale his business. Maybe he wants to buy another business. He just feels trapped cause he feels like he can't afford to hire someone to replace him. But he's just kind of in that messy middle. So I talked him through his problems and that was a good one. I think you'll like it. Enjoy. All right, so what you wrote to me was I'm a wantrepreneur slash software engineer developing consumer electronics, mid-30s, make 185k. I already trade my time for money. I don't want to start a side hustle that requires more of that. I. I already tried cleaning gutters. I want something that scales. I read your newsletter and I'm desperate for my first dopamine hit of someone willing to pay me for something. I did slash created and I will add it does feel really good so you're on the right track. I would love to sell something online. I have no e commerce experience, I have no experience trying ideas, I have no sales experience or online marketing experience, et cetera. But I would love to get this experience. Question 1 Should I prioritize getting experience with something like Klaviyo, which is a marketing email marketing software that gets me exposed to marketing and testing ideas or work for a company part time selling their outdoor grill product commission only and learning how to generate my own leads? Question 2 I love spreadsheets but I have no accounting background. Can you recommend a resource to learn the business lingo, important metrics etc. So my first question to you Aaron is two part one has anything changed since you submitted this question? And two I would love to hear more about this side hustle opportunity to sell grills.

Yeah, so I did the Only thing that's changed since then was I approached through a family friend who's done very well for themselves and they have some sort of stake in a company that makes a really nice grill and they gear it very much towards like the yachting industry. It's an electric grill that's approved for marine use. I was. And so they're trying to get into other markets, namely like the condo market where you're not allowed to have a gas grill on your porch if you own a condo or the RV space. So they're trying to find some hungry people to get their product into these areas. So that's kind of been the only thing that's changed. And I forget the second question.

I'm sorry, has anything changed since you submitted this question?

Yeah, nothing's changed. I'm still. Yeah, everything's still basically the same.

Okay, so this grill company, how are they currently marketing? Is it kind of an old school business with boomer owners or are they pretty savvy at marketing?

Very much like old school marketing as far as I know.

And how are they doing with that?

They go to trade shows and things like that. I don't have any sort of insight into how they're doing it, but it's made in the usa, so I would assume, I believe they're in some very. I won't mention the name, but they're in some very popular like boating stores that are common.

Okay. So they're mostly just doing the old school stuff, trade shows, retail. Are they doing any direct to consumer or E commerce shipping through their website at all?

I think they have E commerce through their website from what I understand. I've looked into it and you can purchase one online as far as I know, but I don't believe they're on any other platform like Amazon or anything like that.

Okay, so they've kind of sought you out thinking, oh, this guy, he's young, he can help us. And you're like, I want to know how to help you. But I, I'm not quite there yet.

Sure.

Do I fake it till I make it? Do I use this as a learning opportunity? Do I say, nah, no, I'm going to try something else? Is that kind of where you're at?

Yeah, they're very much. I think they would be eager to have somebody commission only who's hungry on the team who's also like, my background is mechanical and software, so I can speak technically to their product and explain that kind of thing. So they're eager for somebody who has that background because it doesn't seem to me like from what they've said, that's a common thing. Somebody going from the technical sides who wants to get into sales. So that's what the pitch to me was, so to speak.

And how much do these grills cost?

I want to say they start at around $1,000 and go from there. I think they may have a lower budget, one in the 750 range.

Okay. Do you know what their revenues look like?

Yeah, I have no insight into any of those details.

What about how many employees they have? A lot of times you can reverse engineer their revenues.

I would say probably between fifty and a hundred. They do all their manufacturing in the US and they have, I would say between 50 and 100 employ.

Wow. Okay. So I would think it's probably like a low eight figure business. That sound about right?

Yeah, that's a good guess.

I'll give you some insight into why I'm asking these questions. Because when it comes to selling things, especially on commission only, it's really helpful to find a sweet spot, right? Like there's always a trade off between the ticket size that you're selling. Call it swimming pools or verse T shirts in an American Eagle store versus the difficulty of the sale. And occasionally you can find a sweet spot where it's like A, the sales cycle is not too long, B, the ticket size is high, at least in the thousands. And C, it's not a very hard sale. Right. But like it occasionally you can find like some arbitrage there. But usually if you're selling a $100,000 pool, it's going to be a six month decision and it's going to be really hard. It's going to take months or years before you earn your first dollar. But then once you get that pipeline full, you can make some really good money. That's usually how it works. So I'm understand what would a commission look like and how successful is this company already? And if they're thousand dollars grills, I see this as a perfect type of product that you could sell with Google Ads, just direct Google Ads, because your cost per acquisition is probably going to be like 40 to $140. But if they've got good gross margins, then they can afford to scale that and to pay you a commission.

Okay, would you say that like a number of your newsletters and podcasts and stuff you mentioned Outscraper and different online tools that you can use to generate leads? Just being that boomer owners, I don't know how far down the rabbit hole They've gone this. And me being a software engineer, I'm very eager to write some of my own scripts or use like outscrapers API to have a server running in the background. That's like trying to find the owners of a condominium per se and get leads that way. For a customer who might put a grill on in every single one of their condos or mandate that all their tenants have a grill that meets certain requirements. I'm trying to find a succinct way to ask this, but I guess I'm wondering if this organization has not gone down this route yet to employ some of these tools. Do you see that as something that I could use to set myself apart?

Trade shows work. Right. I'm not going to dog on what they're doing, but their eyes just aren't opened to the new ways of finding customers. Right?

Right.

If you were to be able to bring them new ideas and say to them with respect, hey, what you're doing is working, keep doing that. Don't. You obviously don't want to dog on what they're doing, but then say, why don't you let me try this and just start throwing a bunch of terms at them that's going to confuse them but make you sound smart.

Right.

Like I'm going to run an outscraper API to pull up the owners of these condominiums on the back end and then I'm going to go to Google Ads, go to moz.com and paid account and I'm going to learn where the arbitrage opportunities are. Because some long tail keywords have high competition but low volume. But other ones have high volume but low competition. And so I really want to start bidding on those. And they're going to be like, whoa, yeah, that sounds amazing. I assume they're going to be like that. And to me this seems like the perfect opportunity for you because it's enabling you to basically start a startup with no money now, commission only. That's fine because the alternative to this is to like start drop shipping someone else's grills. And you're gonna have to learn with that and you're gonna lose money on your first few orders or first hundred orders and it's just gonna be really hairy. But if they're willing to pay you for success, then I don't think you have much to lose but your time. And you don't even have that to lose because you're. The reason you're calling is cause you want to learn, you want to develop new skills. So I would think this is the perfect opportunity because they're a family friend. And if you didn't have this opportunity, I might very well suggest that you call a company like this and ask if you can do something like this. But you already have someone offering, so that part is done. Being more specific, if I were you, I would take them up on that offer. Give yourself a 60 day out just in case you don't like it. That way you could be respectful to them in 60 days and to yourself and there won't be any hard feelings, especially since it is a family friend. And give yourself 60 days to really see if you could move the needle and move some of these grills. But conversely, if they are requiring you to be commission only, ask for an ads budget and just tell them direct, like, can I just have like a thousand dollars a month that goes straight to Google Ads? Like, I can set a cap on the budget. And I'll tell you straight up, I'm learning, but it's going to cost a little money for me to learn. But I can't spend my own money on your Google Ads. Do you think they would agree to that?

I think so. They would be willing to do something like that. And I guess that prompts me to want to ask you, as an engineer with no sales experience, what does a fair commission look like for somebody like me wanting to get started but bringing a little bit of technical experience to the table?

It's tough because a commission on a grill that you had to pay $50 to get through Google Ads is going to look different from a commission on a grill that you acquired by cold calling a condo owner. Right.

Okay.

And so I would try to work out those details side by side with them and say, and just go cover all your bases. Say, if I cold call a condo owner and sell 100 grills, what does my commission look like? If I spend $40 in ads to sell one grill, what does a commission look like? If I find an influencer to make a video of your grills and he sells a thousand, but I have to pay him 100 bucks per grill, what does my commission look like? So I would just make a structure that covers, basically take all the ideas of what, of everything you might want to do to sell these grills and try to see if you can get a commission and a budget attached to each one. Okay, that makes sense.

Yeah, completely.

A lot of influencers are going to be like, yeah, oh wow, you want to give me a percent of every grill that I sell you and Everyone else. That means you don't want to take any risk. I'm going to need some money up front. And so some influencers will be willing to take that risk. But usually the best ones are going to want some money up front so they feel like their time is being guaranteed.

Understood. Okay, great. This is definitely some food for thought. I really appreciate you talking through this with me and I think that's a great idea about the 60 day. Let's try this out and see how it goes. Because some of my questions to you in the email. Right. I have some other interests and things. I was wondering too if I should pursue those and I can call back about that another time. I think that's a great idea. So I really appreciate you mentioning that.

Yeah, absolutely. And I would recommend, I think it's moz.com or ahrefs.com pay for something and it's usually gonna be 50 to 150 month to month. You can cancel anytime where you can do keyword research specifically and find those arbitrage opportunities where people are searching for it but not a lot of people are bidding on it and then use that data to bring to the owners. You sound like you're more knowledgeable than you already are, but you have the intent to become that knowledgeable by the end of the 60 days.

Gotcha.

Right.

Okay. Awesome. Chris. Yeah.

And then I would take like a. A Google Ads course or something. Just find a guy on YouTube or find a.

A Udemy person.

A Udemy person? Yep. If you're a data guy, you will love it. Like Google Ads is just fun.

Okay.

It's just really fun. And if you can crack that code, you'll never run out of money. Got it.

Okay. Hey, listen, I'm so grateful that for you having me on. Definitely going to try to come on in the future and ask. You are doing is awesome. And your partner as well. So thanks again.

Thank you, Aaron. I appreciate that a lot and good luck.

All right, talk soon. Bye.

All right, see ya. All right, we have Alejandro in the lobby. Okay. So you wrote in and said I just started some doing some digital marketing work for some friends and happened to connect with a dog trainer who's trying to grow her business in the Dallas Fort Worth area. She asked if I had any ideas to help her grow. She's on social media but doesn't put any time into it. She let her website expire. She's actually a very good trainer. She's has a good track record of past clients from what I can tell. I'm convinced she needs to take social media Google my business seriously, which is step one to get a digital footprint and reviews. But what I really want to do is some out of the box ideas for marketing like events, giveaways, etc. Some ideas? These are your ideas. Setting up a free training day at a local dog park and maybe run ads, post flyers or outreach, partner with a rescue organization. Two, go on local dog Facebook groups, mom groups and share dog training content to those looking to get training. I've never done this, so not sure if there's a certain code of contact that needs to be followed. Okay, so can you add any context to those questions or tell me if anything has changed since you submitted them?

So nothing has changed and I feel like that's as much context as I can give off top of my head other than any questions you might have on specifics. Got it.

How big is her business? Do you know?

I would say it's pretty small. She probably does maybe 1500-2000amonth in dog training. She typically will do about four or five sessions at like 500 bucks for a total.

Right?

It's about 125 bucks per session.

125 bucks per session. Okay. And is this her full time slash only thing?

Yes.

Does she want to scale it or is this a dream that you have for her?

No, she wants to scale.

Okay. And she just doesn't know where to start.

She'd done 100% word of mouth and she's never really invested much in the digital space. Never really done any kind of advertising or marketing on her own end other than a couple Instagram posts here and there. But she just has. She's good at what she does. But the business aspect, the marketing aspect is not her thing.

Right.

Has she or have you identified direct competitors in the nearby area?

Very.

I have very loosely. I've even worked with some other dog trainers in the DFW area that I was not impressed with at all. Spent 3, 4, $5,000 for a boarding train, $10 10 day boarding train, which was not worth it in the end. But as far as specifics, I don't have a list. I don't have any kind of specific info yet.

Okay. And do you know how much work she's doing right now to grow her business or is she just trying to run it?

She is really just trying to run it. She has not, like I was saying before, not put a lot of effort into any kind of marketing or advertising, doesn't do a lot of the social media Stuff she's trying to get in the social media thing, trying to do Instagram, which has kind of worked a little bit, kind of driven some traffic to there, but not much, just running the business.

Do you mind telling me the name of her business so I could look it up and I can also edit it out if you would prefer that. But I'd like to get more context here.

Absolutely. It's Ascend Dog Trainings. A S C E N D. All.

Right, let's see what we got here. Is it in Arlington?

Yes.

All right. Okay. So how long have they been opened?

That's a good question. I'm not 100 sure. It's over a year for sure. She's been dog training for a number of years, but this specific business, I'm not. I couldn't give you exact time.

Does she use any software for managing her bookings or anything?

No. Nope.

Is there not a marketplace for dog trainers? Is there anything like that, like an Uber for dog trainers where they match you with customers?

There might be. I'm not familiar with one. Every time I've looked up anything, I've never seen anything like that. But that's an interesting idea.

I would look into that. A lot of times there is a random niche marketplace for something like this that people, they just, they don't think to look for it. Another question I have is, would it be that hard for her to get her website back up and running again? Is she against that?

I'm actually working on that. So we are her domain domain name. She really wants to keep the same domain name she has and so somebody else had bought it. So we're working on trying to get that back and I'm building up the website right now.

What about ascendtraining.com if you can't get that one back? Is that one open? Do you know?

I don't know that one specifically open. I do know Ascend Dog Training TX for Texas is open. She was not too interested in doing that one, but she's open to it. She's still trying really hard to get her old domain name back. So.

Okay, yeah, if I were her, I would invest in a tripod and simply let a camera start rolling as she's training these dogs just to document. And 95% of the time nothing special or interesting is going to happen, but occasionally something will happen and she can just start by posting that to Instagram, to any short form video platform. And I would also suggest that she makes a list of her five biggest, like most direct, most local competitors, and then start reverse engineering how they got to where they are today. Looking at the web archive scrolling way back on Facebook and Instagram and look at those first posts. Look at the popular post on Facebook and Instagram that got the most comments specifically. So I'm kind of obsessed lately with reverse engineering why certain things go viral and it's always in the comments and it doesn't. She doesn't have to find something that went viral. Right. I'm just using that as an example. Look for the post of her direct competitors that have outperformed. Okay, so maybe she has a competitor named Arlington Dog Training, and their average Instagram or Facebook post gets seven likes and six comments. Then you see a few that get 70 likes and 60 comments. Don't just look at what they posted to get that, but specifically read the comments on that post of what they are saying and then create social media content that helps regenerate comments like that on her own posts. Does that make sense?

Yes. Yep.

So like for instance, maybe one of our competitors posted a video of them training a dog how to heal and they had a choker collar in the video and all the comments were like, oh, those are bad. Those are unethical. You can use that. Right? Maybe now her brand is like ethical dog training or kind dog training. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Okay.

It's kind of like what people do, what Amazon sellers do. They will go to competing products and read the negative reviews and see. Oh, okay. Everyone's upset that this plastic widget always breaks around week three. Okay, so now not only are we going to make sure that part of our. Of our widget is metal and not plastic, we're also going to talk about that in the title and in the top of the description. So taking the pain points of a competitor and highlighting those of your own.

Got it. Okay.

Yeah, I think that should be enough to get her going. And of course, like, get any website back up. I wouldn't worry about getting the exact website. I'm sure she wants it. But it's really hard to convince a domain owner to get them to sell their website unless you're really willing to pay up.

Yeah, that's what I've told her. And I'm pretty sure we'll go with a different name. But she's just, she's new to this whole thing, so once she kind of gets into. Once she realizes it may not work out, I'm sure we'll find something else.

Yeah, I get it. Anyway, I'd Love to hear a follow up once you make these changes.

Absolutely. I appreciate your help. Thank you.

Nope, no problem. Have a good day.

Thank you, sir.

Yep. See ya. Daniel, how are you? I'm good.

I'm doing good.

All right. So what you said. I have a business I own and work at full time. It is set up as a high touch service heavy business. I would like to buy another business that I can use to increase my income. Since my current business takes up so much of my day. What type of business should I be looking for? So I'd love to hear about your current business more.

Basically, it's a print shop. That's the forward facing type of business. But we really specialize only in printing for wedding, bar mitzvah and similar events. That's it. We know what the event planners want. We know how to design it the right way. Other print shops that just do commercial things, they don't know necessarily how to design it the way that the event planners like it. They don't stock the funny papers, the blush pinks and the metallic taupes, all the different things they like. We have those in stock all the time. And we have some specialty capabilities that a standard printing business might not have.

And you're in Brooklyn?

Yes, in Brooklyn.

Yeah.

We are able to get a higher margin because everything for a wedding always gets a markup that other things don't. Whatever service or product you're providing and printing is no different. And the downside of it is that you're dealing with a lot of last minute things. That's why I'm here all the time. I'm basically here 14, 15 hours a day. The rest of the time I'm either with my family or doing other different obligations that I have.

And how long have you been working that much?

That many hours? Yeah, at least three years. It's been like this. I had a really great employee before COVID during COVID immediately after Covid. But then he said I could move someplace else and get the same apartment for about a third of the price. So that's what he's going to do. And since then I've had a couple people that are not just not competent enough. And I found that I'm paying them, but I'm still coming back at night, so there's no point. Like when I had the other guy, it really took a load off and it was just, it was so much easier. But then after I lost him, it's hard to get people to work here that either they're overqualified and they Think that, oh, this is so easy. Printing is just control P file print, what's the big deal? Or they're under qualified and they're watching Netflix while they're doing the work and then I see it afterwards and I gotta fix it all or things like that. It's just not, it's not, it's hard to find a good fit. That's the thing with this type of business.

Okay, so you've been working this hard for two to three years. How long have you been in business and what is your annual revenue like?

I've been in business for about 10 years. A little more than 10 years, 10 and a half years. My annual revenues are about 650, 700, something like that. But because of the high margin, I'm able to take home a substantial portion of that. So my income is good. But I could always, I need more, let's put it that way. Definitely, yeah.

And when you said take over, did you buy this or what was that process like 10 years ago?

It's interesting. My mother in law had this business, but not at the same. It wasn't as built out as what I have now. She had it and she was using it just as a business to print addresses on envelopes, guest addresses, and that is a high margin service. After a few years of my being married, she said, you know what I mean, maybe your wife wants to come work with me, we'll expand the business. And that's what it did. They took it, they expanded it to offer everything, but most of the work was brokered. And when I took it over, she called me one day and she said she wants me to take it over. She can't handle it anymore, she'll give it to me debt free. I just walk in, it's all mine, I can do whatever I want. I didn't have to pay for it. So I was like, why not? I brought a lot of processes in house and it's been good every year we've seen growth every single year. Last year was our best year ever. This year we're a little off on the numbers. I'm not sure why. Every month our revenues have been down, but I'm still able to take the same salary.

Okay, do you have any employees?

I have. My sister in law comes in for about four hours a day, three days a week to do some graphic design. But I don't need her to come in. I'm able to do it all by myself.

Are you purposely trying to grow right now or are you just getting business because of Your reputation.

Right. Right now, I am trying to find some new people until. For the last couple years, I've had good customers and I haven't needed to expand. Over the last couple years, I've been experimenting with some different things. I tried to say, let's move out of New York. Let's go someplace else, buy a different business that's more nine to five. Then I was trying to figure out a way to take this to more of a commercial direction and hire somebody to work with me. I noticed over the last six months, two or three people have stopped ordering almost completely. And they just tell me the reason they stopped ordering is because they haven't had business. I see on social media they do have business. I'm not sure what that means. Everything's really been good.

I don't know. When you say people, you mean party planners.

Those are like, yeah, party planners, Event planners. Yeah, I have a dozen that come a couple times a month, and they spend a few thousand dollars each time. And it works out. The core of the business is working with the event planners and turning things around in 24, 48 hours, things like that. Okay, so I haven't been trying to grow that, but I want to replace those people. I'm really trying to get to a point where I can sell this business and. And just wash my hands of it. I don't have another thing to replace my income. That's the problem.

All right, so if your take home is high enough to where you could sell this business for a good price, it's also high enough to where you could hire someone. Right. A replacement.

So it's interesting. I take home 250,000 a year. I don't have any extra money to hire somebody, at least not full time. What people have been suggesting is do part time. The problem with hiring someone part time is you don't know which part time because jobs will come out of nowhere, like Wednesday. I didn't even know I had this job that's taking me four or five hours to do. And now I have the job. So I don't really know. I need someone that I can just call. Oh, come down. I have a couple hours today or tomorrow. I can't find someone like that. So I'm trying to keep it in a steady state where I'm able to still make the same amount of money, but build something else on the side. Where in the next three, four years I could sell this.

Yeah, I've been there. You're in like, that messy middle where you feel trapped, right? Yes. You feel like I don't have enough to hire, but I have too much where I'm like golden handcuffed to this business. It's hard to make a move in the place that you're in without some level of faith. Right. And I don't mean that in the religious sense. I mean that in the, oh, I'm.

Ready to take a risk. I'm totally ready to take a risk. I have no problem. I will take the loan. Because as terrifying as it is, it's far more terrifying to me to be in the same place in 10 years. Like I can't do that. Like I'm scared to take a loan, scared to buy business. But I'm far more terrified of being exactly where I am now, 10 years from now. I can't handle that. That's not a good.

I wouldn't think about this sounds harsh, but I'm glad you're terrified because that's the opposite of complacent. Right. You're not complacent. And so you're thinking, do I sell this business or do I double down on this business? Both of them are going to take a leap of faith into the unknown. Right.

Right.

You said you had a comment earlier where it's let's find a business that could act more of a 9 to 5. But honestly, some industries might make it easier to be more like a 95. But a quote I heard recently was a graveyard is full of irreplaceable men. Right. Like any task can be outsourced, some are harder to outsource, some make you feel more uncomfortable. But really anything can be outsourced and you've done it, you've done it yourself. You had a rock star and then they left. Let's say someone came to you right now and said, I'll give you 750 for your business, three times earnings. But I don't want to run it. What would you do? Because you're the one running it. Right. Like how is it sellable today if you want to sell it? If you don't have anyone working for you, really?

Right. That is a good point. I never even thought about that. I never thought about that. That's a good point. If I don't have anyone else working here, who's going to buy it?

Right, Exactly. You're selling a job and people don't want a job. They want to be a passive income business owner. Whether that exists or not. I think no matter what you do, you're going to have to find some good help. And you're going to have to take a leap of faith to get that help, because you can't sell it until you replace yourself. And you can't replace yourself until you've decided what you want to do. Here's my gut. Like, I'm the king of shiny objects. I'm the king of managing seven things at once, whether that's a good idea or not. And I'm so tempted to ask you all about this other business that you want to buy. But if you still have to find someone to replace yourself before you even think of that, then I want to talk about that more.

What I was thinking was like, oh, couldn't I buy something like a laundromat? But like having a laundromat and paying a guy $20 an hour, $25 an hour just to sit there. What could go wrong in a laundromat? Someone loses their money, they need their quarters back. Something goes wrong with the equipment, you call the service technician. Replacing me here is a lot harder than replacing just putting a body that scrolls his phone all day in a laundromat that like, how hard? I always got myself into a lot of trouble with. How hard could that be?

The grass is always greener, right? This is the devil. The devils are in the details. This devil you've de risked this devil. As you're talking, I just googled. So there's about 100,000 party and event planners in the United States and in New York city. That's about 3% of the US population. So all else equal. And you could argue there, there's a higher proportion of party and event planners in New York City. But let's keep it conservative. There's 3,000 potential not end consumer customers, but 3,000 potential wholesale customers that are touching dozens of other customers per week or per month.

Right.

You have what, 20 to 40 event planner customers?

No, not even. I have probably like a dozen. About a dozen that come a couple times a month.

Yes. But I want to ask a couple more questions before I for sure get to that. How many direct competitors would you say you have in New York City that focus on weddings and bar mitzvahs?

I don't think there's really anybody that does it because there's a lot of people that broker this kind of work. I don't know of anyone that does what I do, especially at the price I do it.

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned prices, because on the YouTube livestream right now, someone AI home leads just said, like, raise your prices.

Right.

Same amount of work.

I did that. I did a little bit. I raised my prices. And then you get pushback. They start whining about it.

How much pushback? Right. Like 20% price increase, 10% pushback, you win. Right. That's a net win. So I would measure that before, like, anecdotally saying you get. Because of course you'll get pushback. But is it more pushback than the additional revenue that you're getting?

There's so few people that if I lose the wrong one.

Sure.

That's what my feeling is. Like, there's three or four people that are the bigger fish. Like, of the 12, there's three or four that are. That, like, I'll do whatever they say, I'll come in whatever they want. If I lose one of them, that's a big problem. That's why I'm hesitant.

All right, I'm going to throw up a bunch of stuff on you. It's floating around in my head. Okay, you ready?

Okay.

Put your poncho on. So, first of all, I completely understand what you're saying about being hesitant to raise prices because you only have a dozen customers and they're big customers. I think you could use that to your advantage and say, I only have a dozen customers. I'm going to get all of them on the phone and have a very honest and transparent conversation about where I'm at in life right now and about my prices and kind of feel it out. Because a lot of people think about raising prices, and it's just. You just send an email and you raise prices. Crap, I lost four customers. Crap, I lost a third of my revenue. I'm screwed. It doesn't have to be like that. Because of the fact that you have 12 customers, you have the luxury of being able to talk to all of them in an afternoon and just feel it out. Listen, man, I'm. I don't know what to do.

Like.

Like, we. You've worked with me for a long time. Like, I'm just being honest. What do you think? Could you afford to take a 5% price hike? So that's my. I'm not advocating for you to raise prices. Someone mentioned it in the comments, and I thought it was an interesting idea. And you've already thought about it, but I think you should explore it a little more. Okay, there's that. Second of all, let's say I asked how many people do what you do? None. Now, I know you're kind of exaggerating. There could be one or two other guys that you're not super familiar with.

I know there's one that does it, but he charges a lot more than me.

There's your precedent for raising prices, Right? There's your case study.

What I get is I get some of the people that want sort of his aesthetic that he provides. Like, he does provide an exceptional product. Like, people in the industry know the party plans. They know, yeah.

Okay, so let's be super conservative and say there are 10 people. There are nine other people in Brooklyn, New York City, that do what you do. If that is the case, then there's 3,000 party planners and event planners in New York City. Let's divide that market up equally proportionally, and there's 300 for everyone. Okay? So basically, if you were to 4x your business go from 12 customers to 300. So let's call it. Let's say you have 10 customers. If you were to 30x your business, then that puts you at a proportional share of the market. Are you with me? If there are 10 direct competitors?

Right.

So in my head, like, you live in one of the biggest cities on the planet. You also live in a city where they're having a lot of bar mitzvahs and weddings. I just googled it. There's like 60,000 weddings a year in New York, 56,000 marriage licenses issued. I think you need to approach this differently. As if, like your print shop, like you're on the cusp of your print shop 2.0 and not on the cusp of your print shop 1.0 versus buying another business altogether. I would look at the 2.0 version of your business as another opportunity altogether. And that opportunity looks like having a competent person to replace you. That looks like growing your business, maybe by raising prices, maybe by finding more customers. When it comes to growing your business, I think there are some high leverage, low effort things that you could do. I think you should. When you have that same transparent conversation with your 12 customers, I think you should offset the awkwardness of a potential price increase with the promising aspect of potentially offering a discount in exchange for some sort of shared marketing initiative. And what I mean by that is you have a viral marketing aspect built into your product because your customers are distributing your product to hundreds, if not thousands of people. And so maybe you say, hey, I'll give you a 10% price break or 20% price break if you distribute my business card with all of your invitations, or if you let me print, like, my logo on the bottom right corner. And maybe they freak out and they'll never work because it's yeah, but maybe they don't. Maybe they have price sensitive customers that wouldn't mind that. Right. If you're a web designer, you're like, listen, it's going to be five grand to make your website or it's going to be three grand if you can just let me put my name in the footer. That way I get a backlink and then maybe one day someone see it and clicks and I am able to sell them a $5,000 website. Have you ever tried something like that?

Yes, I did. I did that. I did it for probably two years. On all the day of printing that we do for weddings, I put my phone number and email address in six point font on the back, very small. I got one phone call and that phone call was only to. They wanted to know if they could use a portion of my work without paying me anything for it. So that was the only call I.

Got from that in two years.

About at least two years. And I asked every single person that comes in or calls or emails how they found out about me. I ask every single person, all word of mouth, everything, it's all referrals. But no one called me back based on that. Tried a lot of things.

No matter what you try, you do have to have multiple touch points. Right. And maybe it's the same venue. Like maybe you cold call them 10 times and maybe it's 10 different types of touch points. But if you try that again by printing your name and number, I would try printing a different number that you only use for that. Because if most of your business is based around referrals, a lot of times leads don't come back in the door for months or years. Right, right. Have you tried using a different email address or a different phone number for certain initiatives to track it more directly?

I haven't tried that. I should try that.

Okay, that's one lever. Right. But you could hop on upwork and find someone in Argentina that has just a slight Hispanic accent or a slight Latin accent and have them start cold calling events and just very low pressure, hey, we're in the area. And just like 8 bucks an hour, you could have them doing that 10 hours a day and sending you a daily report at the end of the day. How many did you talk to? How many people showed interest? How many people said, never call me again? Like you just, you need hooks in the water, right? Like you need a lot more hooks in the water if you want to grow. And if you're having operational issues with this business, which it sounds like you are. And I do too. No judgment. Then that's gonna carry you on to the next business. Right. So it's almost like you have to. You're in. This is maybe a bad analogy. You're in kind of a toxic marriage right now. You don't know how to get out of it, but you want to.

Yeah, it's really what it is. I tell my wife, like, I have another woman. It's crazy. It's.

Yeah, it's really crazy. So you're in this toxic marriage. You're like, I need it. I need a better wife, I need a better woman. But you really need to fix what's going on there. And it might not be your fault, but you still have to confront it head on. And then once you do, you're either going to learn, you know what, this marriage wasn't toxic, I was just looking at it wrong. Or you learn this is toxic and I figured out how to fix it. So I'm going to go into another marriage and I'm going to be that prepared. Like, you're not to that point yet. You're just at the toxic point. You need to go get to the point where you answer that question for yourself. Do I need another business or did I just fix my business in the process of getting ready to sell my business? And now I don't even want to sell it. Right. It's. You're just like, you're asking the right question, but you're too early.

Yeah. This is what basically everyone's been telling me that you're saying what everyone else has been saying. Like, why am I running away from this? Like, why would I get rid of something that's making me money? Everything that I see as such a big problem is really very surmountable. It's not. None of this stuff is insurmountable and I should just figure it out instead of running from it.

But you are figuring it out, right? Like the fact that we're talking means you're figuring it out.

Yeah, I've streamlined so many things. Part of what's been difficult is it's been me, a lot of my employees, majority of the employees have always been family. My wife, my sister in law, my mother in law, worked for me for a little bit in the beginning. And it's hard to get family. Family. If you try to institute a process, you can't discipline people that aren't conforming to the process because they're your family. So then if they don't want to do the process, they're just not going to. But since my wife left in November after our sixth kid and my sister in law's has less hours, I've been able to make things very streamlined.

I just want to give you a couple more things. Okay. I want you to make me a promise that by the end of the day you will have two posts on Upwork. One for a cold caller, one for a bookkeeper on Upwork will will cost you 300 bucks a month.

And I have a guy I'm working.

With already someone to clean up your books because you said your books are ugly. And I get that. I've hired Vas for everything and I've had very hit and miss experiences but when it comes to financial stuff like binary categorize this or that, I've had a lot of good luck.

So yeah, I have a guy who told me what to do. Like I have a QuickBooks. I just have to classify the transactions and I set the rules and for some reason the rules are not automatically classifying the transaction. I'm not sure why that is. I have to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

In that case I would open QuickBooks, start loom, hit loom and say hey, here's what's going on. I'm classifying it. It doesn't. I don't know what to do. Take that link, go to upwork, post that in your job posting and say someone fix this for me please. $50 and it could be fixed by the end of the day or by the end of the week. I've been in your shoes. You're feeling overwhelmed. The only way, the only antidote to that is to take action. And you are, we're talking, you're doing it so like to not to zoom out too much. But you're in the game. Just stay in the game. Just keep caring, keep grinding, keep doing what you're doing, keep worrying about this and the answer will come like the only thing you shouldn't do is just throw your hands up and watch Netflix all day. Right? You're getting there.

The main problem I have is that I'm working too much on the day to day and not taking care of the bigger picture things. So I've been trying to work on that the last two weeks.

An antidote to that is to do whatever it takes to this sounds. You're gonna, you're gonna hate this. Overwhelm yourself even more, try to get more business because then you will be forced to find help. You will get to that point where it's. I'm literally gonna die if I don't find someone right now. Right. Lean on your email list. Like, how often do you send drip marketing campaigns? Like, how much are you.

I wanna do. I thought of that last week. I said, why am I not sending a newsletter at least once a month?

You have to be.

Yeah, I need to send a newsletter. Yeah, I try to send out emails to my whole list about seasonal things, like holiday items, things like that. And I do get a little bit of a response, but not enough.

Once a week. Send them something once a week. An email. If I were you, I would literally just write a journal of what you're doing. Document what you're doing. The stresses, the insecurities, the wins, the successes. The picture of something that you just printed that you're really proud of, and spend 30 minutes on it a week and email it out to every single person that you have, even if they're not a customer and it's your Aunt Nedra. Send it to everyone. And I promise that good things will come back to you. You just have. You're not top of mind for nearly enough people.

Yeah. Okay. This is what I want to hear. Yeah, I was hoping to get advice about the other business. Okay. Okay, fine.

Let's save that for another call.

Yeah, a different call. Okay. Thank you for your help.

Cool. Yeah. Thanks, man.

Have a great weekend.

Thank you. You too. Bye.

Bye.

All right, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of the Kerner Office. Please rate me in the Apple Podcast Store and in Spotify. Five stars would be great. And share me with your friends and give me a review. Let me know what you think. I'll see you next time.