Bryant Gillespie: Learn how to build a better sign and print shop from a
few crusty sign guys who've made more mistakes than they care to admit.
Conversations and advice on pricing, sales, marketing,
workflow, growth, and more.
You are listening to The Better Sign Shop podcast with your hosts, Peter COIs,
Michael O'Reilly, and Bryant Gillespie.
​ Before we jump into the episode, I'd like to give a shout out to
our sponsor, GCI Digital Imaging Grand Format Printer to the Trade.
We talk a lot about outsourcing on the podcast and the importance of.
Good partners and gci Digital Imaging is a good partner to have owner TJ
bak and his team focus on providing killer customer service just the
way grandmother used to make it.
If you're interested in learning their approach to business, hop
back into the archives to episode nine where the guys and I interview
TJ about customer experience.
So if you're looking for a high quality trade printer for banners, wraps,
and other printed graphics that your customers throw at you, check out
GCI Digital imaging@printgci.com.
All right, guys, we're back with the next edition of the Better Sign Shop podcast
with me, as always, the sign shop Yoda, wearing the baby Yoda helmet or hat.
Got Peter Caris.
Peter Kourounis: How are you, Pete?
Pretty good.
I'm happy that no shave November is over.
At the filming at the time of this podcast.
It is now December 1st.
I finally shaved it all off.
It was getting ridiculously long.
Really excited about that.
Also, I am a year older.
I just celebrated my birthday, so I am now a whopping 3,
Bryant Gillespie: 8 38.
Oh, congrats.
Dude.
I didn't even know it was your birthday.
I feel like I
Peter Kourounis: know every, everybody wishes me a happy birthday on Facebook.
Everybody did.
I even think Chris did.
But, but you, I,
Bryant Gillespie: but you
Peter Kourounis: but me.
Well, my main squeeze
Bryant Gillespie: forgot it's birthday.
What a jerk.
What a jerk Mike did.
Peter Kourounis: Sorry, dude.
Mi Mike did.
Sorry, dude.
Mike's not here, but he, I'll give him props.
He was like, happy birthday man.
Appreciate you.
Yeah.
Bryant Gillespie: I'm sorry dude.
I apologize.
I'll make it up.
And
Peter Kourounis: you're knee, you're knee deep in like every
little bit of project, so I get it.
You'll have a, you get a pass
Bryant Gillespie: and, and flu season too.
So, yeah, we're missing the sign burrito.
The chi changa.
What?
It's not as fun when he is not here to do the nicknames, but I know we
had, um, cr Hey, what was the, what was the one that Chris gave him?
The Sign Sign Design Samurai.
Peter Kourounis: That was a good one.
I don't know, man.
I don't know.
Isn't he like the Sign Shop general?
The sign The sign general?
Chris Fleniken: Yeah.
I,
Peter Kourounis: I, listen, we just need to stick to something between you and I.
We just need to like, we need to make him like a name plaque for Christmas.
Like that's it.
Like that, that's gonna be it.
It's gonna be set in the stone.
Like if and if I had it my way, that Shimmy Chango would
definitely be the winner for me.
Bryant Gillespie: I like the Jimmy Chaga for sure.
Crusty on the outside.
Fluffy on the inside.
. Peter Kourounis: Love it.
Love it.
Bryant Gillespie: Updates from me, man.
I've been at home with my wife sick all week, and I, I gotta say I've got
a new found respect for everything that she does on a daily basis.
Mm.
It's kind of one of those things where it's like, you know, but you,
you have no idea type of thing.
, like, I see everything that she does throughout the week and how
she keeps our house hold together and does everything for the kids.
Uh, but, but like actually doing all that and try to.
Take care of the kids and your wife and I still have some type of involvement
in work is extremely difficult, and she does it every single day.
So I feel like I have to give a shout out to my wife.
I hope you feel better by the time this is released.
If not, we're gonna have a problem.
But I, you're amazing.
Um,
Peter Kourounis: ah, you are amazing.
You are, you're all amazing.
You're all amazing.
Your girls are amazing.
You're amazing.
You, you're a very generous guy.
You, and you know what?
You wouldn't be the man you are today without the strength
of a strong woman behind you.
There
Bryant Gillespie: you go.
Behind every good man, great woman is a great.
Yeah, so what are we talking about today?
We are talking about a question that has come up over and over again from a
lot of our owners that we've talked to, either in our Facebook community for
sign trap, owners, plug plug, or on some of our mastermind calls, which is, Hey,
I am in a small town, small-ish town.
Depending on how you define small, how do I grow my shop?
How do I grow my business?
And we've got a special guest joining us today, one of my best
friends in the whole state of Texas.
Probably my best friend in the state of Texas, Chris Flynn.
Chris runs real graphics and they have bought up just about every
other printing and signed business in their small town of Lufkin, Texas.
Like, seriously, every time I talk to him, he's bought
another business there in town.
So excited to jump into that conversation with him.
All right, so we're back from technical difficulties.
We've got my man Chris Flynn from Rio Graphics in Lufkin, Texas joining us.
Uh, as I mentioned, Chris is probably my favorite dude in the state of Texas, and
I know there's a ton of dudes down there.
Chris Fleniken: Good to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Appreciate it.
It's gonna be a lot of
fun.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, Chris.
All right, man.
So what's the origin story?
Like, give us, give us the real graphics story because every time I talk to
you, you've bought another business or you've expanded or no, you've, you've
got all these different things going on.
And how big is your team now?
They're, they're
Chris Fleniken: like, we're we still hover around 25 people?
Cause we, we'll get up there sometimes, but I think 25 is a good average.
Sometimes we might peak out, but 28 or so.
Yeah, happy to share.
So, uh, I love hearing in the group all these comments about how people
stumbled into the sign business.
No one intentionally planned it.
My story's kind of similar along par with that as far as, you know, I was
planning do, do youth ministry work.
I had been impacted by a great youth pastor growing up, and I was
like, man, that's what I wanna do.
Have fun with teenagers, hang out and have fun on forever.
And, and that's what I kinda started out doing.
And then along the path, you know, different churches that I was involved
with and working at Design came up designing graphics and logos, making
videos to getting things printed, getting shirts printed, things like that.
And so along the path, just figured out stuff along the way to.
Making things happen.
I, I really enjoyed that part.
And so years into it, I was still a single youth guy, you know, having
a good time doing the youth ministry side, but needed to make a living.
And so, uh, one of the youth pastor buddies ma said some
magic words to me one time.
He said, Hey, how much would you charge me to design a poster, an event poster
for my group and print it for me?
I was like, man, yeah.
Heck yeah.
25 bucks, man.
I'll, I'll make you a poster.
And it just kinda started the idea of like, I could do this for other
people, but it never was an idea of like, I have a business one day.
You know, it just was, and it just happened.
And so my passions kind of just tweaked that way, you know, just enjoyed working
with customers on projects and what, you know, and in my first year, I was
just, you know, side hustling and doing this and that and, and they would, you
know, throw the burden on me of like, Hey, here's the, here's what I want.
And then we'd make an event poster or a flyer and then we'd go get shirts
printed or whatever for whatever event's going on and things like that.
So I was just kind of middleman in a lot of it.
And that's kind of, how much did you earn that first year?
Yeah.
Not enough to stay afloat, , you know?
Uh, but yeah, so I like throw like a number
Bryant Gillespie: out at me.
No, I really have no
Chris Fleniken: clue.
There was no books involved.
It was like, write that check lit and uh, you know, you got cat,
you know, it was really simple.
But that really did just start like this new excite my cited passion.
And so within that year, kind of was starting a business and luckily I put
the name real graphics on it because I was gonna do like real design and a.
Printing.
I was so close on those and luckily, graphics was a broad one,
so it worked out for the future.
Um, but that's kinda how I stumbled into it.
And then just kind of slowly got going.
Um, you know, I rented a little office space just because I
bought a little poster printer that was an antique at the time.
Design Jet when you guys started 2007.
End of 2007, I rented a little office space and uh, I bought a 1995 HP Design
Jet 3005 CP printer that was 10 or 12 years old, used many times before me.
And, uh, anyway, but that kind of helped me get limping along.
At least I could had something in the office to hit print on.
Uh, but anyway, I started with that and then was outsourcing.
And so nowadays, like fast forward, we do a lot of stuff in-house,
but it comes from those pain points that I had of outsourcing
and just relying on someone else.
And not that, I mean great vendors is what got me here, but just.
That was what it was all about.
At first, I couldn't do anything but printing a poster in-house.
But yeah, I just had a good time doing that.
And then I, I would've hustled it along too.
I had a day job for a year working at our local newspaper.
I talked him into hiring me with this much design experience and, uh, I enjoyed, I
mean, it was making like newspaper ads and it wasn't that exciting, but it was really
good practice and it got me a little, like fast and quick, but I would like plan
meetings at my office at my lunch break.
So I'd be like, you know, oh yeah, I can talk to you about that shirt project.
How about noon?
And I'll see you at the office.
And I'd rush over across the, you know, down the street to my little design shop
office where I had, you know, a little desk and a little printer in the corner.
That was it.
And, uh, but it was, that's kinda how I got started that first year.
And I just kind of planned it around that.
So every day I'd pretty much have a noon and a five o'clock
meeting, and then I'd work in the evening getting the stuff done.
But I was.
Shirt maker, the signed printer, you know, I just, vinyl cutters, you know, all that.
Do it all guy Spanish show for the first while and then, um, but yeah,
fast forward down the road, man.
I had an intern along the way that was really good help.
Kind of a guy that came along, wanted to learn some stuff, jumped in.
Uh, eventually I paid him a little something every week.
Um, eventually I got an email from a girl that was a design student and,
um, wanted to get some experience.
So this was 2010 and I'm like, man, I got a lot of work going on, a lot
of different projects at that time.
And I was like, I can give you experience but no pay.
And the girl was desperate and said, sure, she'd love it.
And, uh, came in and she was fantastic.
Like she really knew her, like knew more than me when I said I needed the artwork
like this and Vector and, you know, paths welded together, fonts out outlined.
She knew it all and it was amazing.
And then her creativity.
Way beyond me.
Um, I, I like faked it to get us going, but like she was a
talented artist, talented designer.
Um, by the end of the summer, she's fallen in love with me
and ended up marrying this girl.
So I met my wife, uh, in the business.
Um, so that was really amazing.
So she was a huge asset though, that really just took
our design to the next level.
And I think foundation of our success really has been that really good design,
creativity, um, overdelivering customers, what they kinda come in expecting or
asking for, um, if we can wow 'em with the design, they're hook, they're gonna
love getting the sign or whatever it be.
And so we could kind of run from there.
So question for you, dude.
Yeah.
Bryant Gillespie: If, if we play this back for m or is she gonna be
mad that you called her Desperate.
Chris Fleniken: No, I mean, desperate for some work.
She said No, I, I'm just picking man.
Yeah, no, she, she, she said, she's like, she sent out all these emails and like no
one emailed her back and I was the only person to respond and say like, yeah, you
could come and get some experience here.
So it worked out.
But, but like two weeks in I was like, Hey, I gotta start paying something
because like she really was helpful.
I was expecting her just to be a body in the shop, but,
Have to teach along the way.
You know, I didn't expect for her to have such a great grasp on everything.
So it was really, really great.
Um, but then, and then it just kind of fell in place.
Cause like she went back to school for a while and we actually did start dating
and stuff long distance, but like other people started following in my lap,
basically like for great, talented people.
Like another great designer came in, joined the team.
Um, from there, just other good like production team.
My brother started working with me around that time.
It was really great at the production side of cranking out signage,
weed and vinyl, installing vinyl.
So we figured a lot of stuff out in those early years, which was really fun and
exciting, but exhausting at the same time.
You guys know how that goes.
But that was kind of the path we got going.
And then every few years it just seemed like we'd kind of get to another
level of buying, piece of equipment that would allow us to do more.
Eventually we'd maxed out our little 2200 square foot space.
Grew into and there was no more space to grow into in that building.
And 2016 we bought this, uh, building right now and it was, uh, 13,000 square
foot building We've added on a little bit.
So we're at 15,000 square feet now.
And that was a game changer cause it really led us grow
the business as we needed to.
I mean, back in the old shop days, if we needed to cut an
aluminum panel sign down, it was.
Set a table up outside, run an extension cord.
I mean, just
Bryant Gillespie: I've, I've done that.
I can't terrible tell you how terrible, how, how many panels that we cut at half
on a couple of saw horses out back of the,
Chris Fleniken: the old shop.
If I had standard operating procedures back then, it would be pretty fun.
You like first run the extension cord, second hit the tall horses
third, whatever, you know.
Oh, rough man.
It was good days blade.
Uh, what was a acm?
I don't even know if I figured out what a ACM was.
. Four years later, man, there was so many, like I went to my
supplier one time to pick up stuff cause I got a desperate pitch.
So I had to drive a couple hours to like go get something and I'm in
there and I'm like, what is this?
Oh, that's PVC board.
I didn't know.
I mean, like, you know, no one, there was no sales rep in my area coming to say,
Hey, these are the things you need to do.
I just, if you didn't know to ask for it or whatever.
And their websites back then, you know, really stunk.
Man.
I learned a ton just walking through that warehouse.
I was like, can you walk me around?
Lemme just see what substrates you have.
And it was light bulbs going off.
I think that's seriously whenever I found out about ACM panel by just
seeing it, I'm like, I need this.
What is, you know?
Yeah.
So, man, I wish someone would've taught me along the way, but figured out there
are things that we know now, right?
Yeah.
So anyway, so that, that's kinda the, the beginning.
Uh, we're in Lufkin, uh, Lufkin's, about a 50,000 people town.
We're surrounded by the, in the county, a lot more little cities around us.
So we got about a hundred thousand people in our one hour reach,
uh, which has helped us to grow, I think, in a town our size.
And, um, well, one thing that we've had to do is we've kind of grew
on what I say, sideways in our abilities to do more for our customers
because there's not a lot of people.
Are doing all these different things.
So if they can come to one shop, get more things done, I think that's helped us
to survive and grow through these years.
Because there's been times where maybe a January, February where shirt
business really slowed down, but at least we were doing signage and all
these other things to stay afloat.
I remember one year we were doing a lot of websites and luckily man,
we did hardly any signage and very little other stuff in December.
But we did several website builds and it really helped carry us through.
And so I think offering a lot of stuff in our smaller rural area has
been a big, big help to our survival and growth through the years.
So yeah, that's kinda how we got started and everything was outsourced.
And then basically we've become a pain point, like t-shirts for instance,
we would outsource seeing one guy down the street, uh, did a good job.
But two got to a point where our orders were getting bigger and
more frequent and eventually we had to do something about it.
Started printing t-shirts in my brother's garage.
Um, eventually built a little.
Affordable building shop behind our office and that roughed us through
a few more years until we were able to move into the building right now.
You know?
But like a lot of things that limited us in the shop we were in before when
we started going was like, we didn't have two 20 power to add any, like the
latex printers we wanted, you know, we didn't have space for it anyway.
You know, laminator had to be done elsewhere.
I mean, it's just a lot of pain points installs.
We'd borrow a shop down the street to go do some installs at and a tip shop.
And so we just had to do a lot of flexing to make things work and took
a lot of energy to do simple task.
We got this build bigger building.
A lot of those things became more routine and that to start growing
and scaling up little bit better.
So that was a huge help in our growth.
And so now we offer, talk to us about
Bryant Gillespie: what, give us the, the whole scope of what you
guys offer, what you guys offer in house, because you guys do.
Like, out of every shop that I've talked to, you guys might do the
most stuff in-house that I've ever
Chris Fleniken: seen.
So when you walk in, we've got front sales team.
So we have three or four sales reps, uh, that are talking with customers, taking
orders, boom, phone, email, or in person.
Um, and then you go back from there.
We got production starts.
We have an apparel department running embroidery, sublimation,
uh, D T G and screen printing.
We've got a full small format print shop.
So we're doing digital printing and it's, I mean, I'd say a smaller
operation, but just real versatile.
So notepads, envelope printing, we do a lot of mailers, um, direct mail stuff.
So we're preparing it, sending it straight to the post office.
I postcards all those great things in.
Does everybody
Bryant Gillespie: still do NCR forms in Texas?
Chris Fleniken: Man, they're running like seriously?
No, like right now they're running numbered NCR forms and it's a
big long run of so many thousand.
And so they're like, don't, don't stop anything.
It's just they don't wanna interrupt the numbering.
So those are still running hot right now.
Uh, that used to be bread and butter for
Bryant Gillespie: us on some of the, like the local businesses, like especially
like the service businesses, like the plumbers or the Yeah man contractors.
Like, Hey, we gotta have the three part number tickets because
that's how everything is organized in a, a capital somewhere.
Chris Fleniken: Hey, we can even bite it in a booklet for you, man.
We can do just, we Gotcha.
So yeah, stuff like that.
The print shop's super great and versatile, you know, all
the way down to like threaten.
Invitations for baby shower and you know, dressing the envelopes,
mailing 'em out, turnkey.
So real versatile on that.
Our signage department's pretty wide in signage.
We have the vehicle wraps, decals, vehicle wraps for vehicles, signed
production items like yard signs and banners and those types of things.
Um, and then also in that same areas, the same fabrication, building the sign
cabinets, installing channel letter sets, doing installs for, uh, electrical signs.
Um, we've finally actually done a couple, uh, digital board signs.
That was something we've been growing into the last few years.
And so, um, but yeah, so pretty versatile little shop.
We have engraving also in signage, laser engraver, flatbed
printers, uh, laminators.
We had 10 foot wide roll printers and do more banners in house.
We got a couple latex printers to keep the vinyl getting printed
and wraps and stuff like that.
So, versatile shop, we're not the biggest.
We're not, I mean, I love seeing some of the bigger ones that just
are running all these flatbeds and running, you know, just all this.
So, but we're very versatile and so it's all about just
Bryant Gillespie: kind.
There's, there's hardly anything you guys couldn't produce in.
Chris Fleniken: So we do love that 85 to 95%, depending on
the month, is done in house.
So very few like fabric display stuff.
We, you know, we outsource that.
Probably'll always outsource that.
You know, every now and then there's some unique printing products of
like foil printing, um, some things like, uh, specialty, you know,
laminations of paper products.
We might outsource those jobs.
But yeah, we love being able to kind of keep a, a hold on all the quality,
the pricing, the stuff, but the downside, and I mean, Peter, you, you
could definitely go off of this one for me, but is all the headaches that
come with that, you know what I mean?
I've heard you guys comment about some of the beauty of sending some
things out, let someone else do it, focus on what they're good at, you
know, but kinda been in that struggle.
So yeah, it's just been good.
And I think just.
I think our town, maybe it's not just me, but I, I swear we're a last minute Lufkin.
You know, it just seems like everything's always outta rush.
You know what I mean?
Like the Christmas parade, we know it's coming in December every year, but all
week has been, could you print me the, you know, and it's like, so to have those
abilities in house, it is awesome to be able to come through with customers and,
and it's not a big deal to like, Hey, you know what, what's six more sheets of
quarter running on that printer today?
It's, it's great, it's good.
But if we didn't have that ability in house, we would be in a tight
spot and have to say no a lot more.
So I do love that, but I think I'm getting the gray hair from.
Keeping all those things going and there's not three pieces of
equipment that could break down today.
There's 20, you know, so there's so many more things that could go
wrong and, and problems to overcome.
And so that's kinda, I, I don't think
Bryant Gillespie: that's, um, that last minute deal.
I don't, I don't think that's a Lufkin problem.
No, just, I just tell
Chris Fleniken: you, I think that's why the sign shop groups have been
such good therapy this last year is just like, okay, you know, and I'm not
the only one or we've done that too.
And so it's been kinda good to hear some other guys' stories and and relate.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
Especially in the industry that's pr you know, traditionally kind of closed off,
you know, that's, that's where we're having a lot of fun with this on the,
the podcast and the group and everything.
I know Peter and I and Michael, like this has been, yeah, probably the
highlight of my sign career, I would say.
Getting to just talk shop with everybody every single day.
Yeah.
Chris Fleniken: But, and I love that the signage community seems to be
a lot more opening and helping and.
Probably plenty critical, but maybe a little supportive.
But like apparel side, like, I don't think screen printers, like,
they don't share tips as much.
They're not like, I don't think as much is a signage.
So I mean, we do a little bit of both.
And so I'm, you know, you know, different groups and stuff and you, but
Peter Kourounis: you wanna know why I, I have a theory on this
and I actually believe you.
Uh, not only I believe you, I agree with you and you're in the screen
printing business, which I came from Bryant's part of, you know,
you, you, you dabbled in it as well.
There's really not too many ways to skin this cat, right?
You have to burn screens, you have to get a silk screen machine.
You have to dry it.
If you can't figure it out, you shouldn't be in the business, right?
From a design perspective, setting up your processes, setting up your,
your, your spot colors, burning those screens, it's all the same.
Nobody does it differently.
Maybe some people do it a bit more efficiently.
They have larger shops, better equipment.
Okay.
But I'm not gonna talk to you about how to set up your shop and compete with me.
Yeah.
Right?
Chris Fleniken: Yeah, because it's the same,
Peter Kourounis: becau uh, I'll take this from a pricing course.
It's the same unit of work, right?
Yeah.
It's
Bryant Gillespie: the same medium every time.
You know, like it's, yeah, yeah.
It's, it's kind of freeing because hey, you know, you're printing on a
garment and depending on your pallet size, it's like, Hey, we're not
gonna do anything other than like 12 by 16 or 14 by 20 or something
on a a t-shirt or a bag or a hoodie.
So those constraints are, are definitely cool on the design side, where you're
kind of working against and you come up with different ways to decorate a
shirt or, you know, make it stand out.
But yeah, process wise, it's.
Peter Kourounis: It's, I could buy, I could buy the shirts from the same place.
I can buy my ink from the same place.
Yeah.
You know, so from, in a lot, in a lot of areas, when you're in a, when you're a
shirt shop, it's all about efficiency.
Can you, how quickly can you pump out a shirt for a customer to pay,
uh, a price That's probably pretty consistent in almost every market.
Mm-hmm.
. Right?
True.
I could buy the shirts the same place, I could get the ink from the same place.
Okay.
So that's why I believe that there isn't a lot of help in that industry
because it's very consistent.
Learn it, watch a YouTube video.
Almost everybody does it the same way in the sign business and everybody
here knows this, but so I might be stating the obvious, but there
are so many ways to skin a cat.
I could show you an image of a sign and we all can come up with probably
a dozen ways that that could be made.
And that's also what fluctuates the price.
That's also what fluctuates the workflow.
The costs, the labor factor.
So there's a lot more moving parts in this business.
And, and before we kind of dump, jump into it here, Chris, I, I, I kind of
wanna go back to the beginning part of this conversation, if we may.
You know, Bryant gave you a really great introduction, but
we never really touched it.
What businesses other than this one do you own and how do you afford that time to do
Chris Fleniken: it all?
Working on the time part sign business was the main thing.
Got going.
I've always thought the storage unit business was interesting.
And so when a customer came in as.
2011, 12, somewhere in that range.
And, uh, was talking to my wife about some si a logo and some signage for
the sign, bus, uh, storage business.
They were gonna start up, bought a property, blah, blah, blah.
That wasn't existing business, but he was gonna make it a go.
And, um, so she made the comment to him, like my husband's always mentioned,
he wanted to do storage business.
That would be a cool industry to get into or whatever, made some comment.
Well, the guy called back was like, Hey, have you printed the signs yet?
She's like, no's said, hold off.
I, I found something else I wanna do instead.
I think I just wanna get out from underneath this property.
Would y'all be interested?
And so went, looked at it and it was perfect.
It was 52 units, an old property that just wasn't in an active business
and hadn't been for like 10 years.
And so we bought that, turned it into storage unit business.
It's been good for us and a good diverse option, you know, to have along the way.
And then, um, I bought the building that we used to be, uh, rent from.
We bought that whole little building.
So it's three different tenants.
So I got a little commercial building there.
Uh, we upkeep and, and, and rent out.
It stays nice and rented.
Uh, some to some great businesses.
Bought an ice house in 2020.
You know, the vending machine, ice houses.
Um,
Bryant Gillespie: how much paper do you have, Pete?
You could be here.
Chris Fleniken: What I'm trying, I'm trying, I've got a lot of
Peter Kourounis: goats.
I'm like, wow, this guy went to storage unit.
I'm like, okay, let's keep going about that.
Let's do some research
Bryant Gillespie: there.
So the, the ice house, and I didn't even know this was a thing.
Yeah.
They don't have this in, they're
Chris Fleniken: not your area.
Yeah.
So basically it's like a free standing, you know, 10 by probably 20 little
building structure that basically has a big ice machine in there and a big
bin and it dispenses bags of ice out.
So it's an ice vending machine.
Um, I always thought they were cool.
Made a comment to a local guy about like, Hey, do you own
the machine on your property?
I think that's really a neat business.
And he basically was like, no, I don't own it.
I just lease the property.
I know the guy who does, and next thing I know, he comes to see me
at my office, like, talks me into, Hey, you wanna buy this from me?
. And I was a sucker and jumped in.
I thought it would be a great, you know, again, a diverse option to jump into.
Um, we did start a Lufkin Real Estate magazine back in 2012,
and it was basically, there was just not a printed publication of
real estate listings in our area.
Um, and that was really good.
It went for a while, I think, till 2017.
Um, so I tried, I've tried several things that didn't really take off
and do much, but, but yeah, as far as businesses, we still got, um, the
storage unit business is, is, is good.
Um, the ice house is up and down depending how things are rolling.
We love Hot Summers and we sell a lot of ice during the summer.
Let's see, let's see.
That's not that bad.
Now I bought some businesses along the way, and merged in.
I was, wait, I was waiting, dude.
So before, I was always thinking why would someone buy an existing
business when you could start it?
And I guess because I had started a few things, it just made sense
of just like get it off the ground and running the way you want it.
You don't have overhead of buying something, you know, preexisting.
You don't.
I don't, I just, it didn't seem like a really great fit until it was 2015.
I made a little goal list and like one of the biggest items on there, and a
big pain point we had was em embroidery.
I mean, it just continued to grow as a demand.
We were outsourcing this great person locally that was doing it
at our house, but again, the orders were getting bigger, more frequent.
I didn't have control on pricing, turnaround times, quantity,
uh, quality, uh, was good.
But so I just didn't have any control, any of that.
So the goal was like, how do I get into embroidery?
Doing it ourselves.
I didn't have the space.
And I get a phone call early 2016, mid 2016 from a girl and she's like,
Hey, I'm calling you about two things.
One, my boss has an embroidery business and he's wanting to retire and sell.
Um, and two, I'm gonna be looking for a job soon, wondering if
you'd have any work for me.
And it was a, a great deal that fell into place.
The guy had the thema embroidered machines that I was researching and looking into.
He hadn't started the process of, um, large format sublimation
for like sport jerseys.
So kinda had that going a little bit as a side thing he was trying to go
to, but just kinda was done it for 20 years more and was just ready to retire.
And that deal was really great.
So basically the money that I bought the business for, there was
enough equipment and business there.
To pay for itself.
And I rented his building until he got a bigger one a year later, and
it just really worked out great.
Another thing that came along the way was in 2017, we had outsourced to
this other local print shop for years.
Um, and so they were great for like the quicks things, the smaller
quantities, the odd quantities, uh, just like unique projects that could
always send that eastex printing.
So, and we had talked about buying that shop for a couple years
and it just never made sense.
We didn't have the space.
It, the overhead, having a second location was a big thing to get overcome.
Well, when we bought this big building room, now we had
plenty of space at that time.
Like we didn't know how we were gonna fill it.
And when the owner came over and we were just chatting, I was showing him
the new space little tour, he's like, man, you gotta buy the print shop.
You could put it in this part of the building and you know, so
he kinda opened my eyes to that.
I'm like, well, crap, you're right.
We could . And so we kinda worked the deal in a few months
and we bought that business.
He came to work with us, the whole team.
We basically downsized it from a 5,000 square foot building.
They were in to our 3,500 square foot area we had for it.
And it was great.
And so again, it just fell into place again.
We were already outsourcing to 'em at least a couple thousand dollars a month.
So I financed a little business loan there.
Again, the customers that followed, we were able to offer them more services.
Then.
It wasn't just about printing, Hey, who's doing your t-shirts?
We'd love to do that, uh, websites.
And we were able to pick up other types of jobs from those, those current customers.
So that was another deal that really just worked in, was great.
A few years later, after that was embroidery.
Um, no, I'm sorry, engraving.
We were outsourcing.
Engraving to a girl did a good job.
But again, we just didn't have that control.
We were able to hire her and buy her business and equipment, kind of bring
it under the same roof, and that helped us again, go from just doing some
embroidery jobs every month to just, we're constantly running at a machine.
So it's been really cool.
Little things like that that've kind of fell in place and so like,
it's just changed my attitude to why buy a existing business and their
problems and their old stuff to it.
It can work out really well just depending on, I guess, the reputation, the
following and what, what you're getting.
So that's kind of helped us also, I think, grow faster in some areas instead of just
getting things started and figured out.
We were able to kinda start out kinda a little bit elevated up and so it's worked
here, we're figuring it out as we go.
Bryant Gillespie: here, we're, yeah, you've built like a miniature empire, I
will say miniature, like you, you, I mean, I'm proud of, they basically own the, it's
not, you own the town of Lufkin, Texas.
Chris Fleniken: No, sir.
If there's any Lufkin nights listening, they're, they're laughing right now.
Like, what the crap are you talking about?
? But, but I am, I, I do wanna, like, I am proud of the progress and it's because
of this great team members that's come along, you know, like, I don't know
hardly anything about the prep shop, but there's two great people over there that
know it in and out, you know, embroidery.
Like that's an area that I can't run that machine.
I, I understand a lot of it, but there's people over there that are passionate.
They love it.
They brag about, you know, how smooth these stitches came out
and, you know, it's great to see them being passionate about the
areas that they're really good at.
And that's allowed us to be.
To this point, as good as we've been.
So we're figuring it out, but that, that's the
Bryant Gillespie: key.
Yeah.
So obviously the topic is, uh, and, and you've seen this in some of the
mastermind calls and some of the, the sign shop community for, for
owners that we've got, but a, a lot of people are in similar positions
where they're not in a major market.
Like Pete Peter's probably gonna pitch you a franchise after we get done
here because you need to d diversify your business portfolio even further.
But , nevertheless, there's a, a lot of shop owners that are in
the, in a similar situation where, Hey, we're not in a major market.
There's I, you know, small-ish towns I'll, I'll say, and there could be
local competition or competition from out of town, but a lot of it there is
just like, how do I, how do I capture more of the market or expand and, you
know, so how do I grow in a small town?
What, what would you say that your competitive advantage is like?
Like why would customer, why are customers working with you guys?
Because I, I feel like that's the, like the, the crux of the issue for
Chris Fleniken: me.
Right.
No, I, I, I think really one thing that got us off on the right foot
was just a strong creative team.
I think we can, we do really well on the creative.
Um, I think constantly I'll hear good comments as far as like, I
know there's plenty other places in town that print t-shirts, but your
designers always just really knock it outta the park with the creative part.
So I think having the creativity right is good.
I mean, I.
First shop our size.
Way back when having one or two graphic designers on the team was pretty rare
when I would talk to other shops.
And so, again, not that I was a genius to plan it that way, it just happened.
But I think getting that design right and standing out with a
great design was a big deal.
And that, that's helped us a lot.
I think another thing is embracing the community.
I think we've just naturally done a good job of just supporting
and being there in our community.
You know?
Yeah.
We got involved with the Chamber and other resources that are in place, but
I think just jumping in like, like this weekend is the lighting of Rudolph.
All right.
So I'm gonna tell you something about Lufkin.
Lufkin, uh, part of our industry in our area.
What?
Hold off the lighting of Rudolph.
Okay.
Lot of timber in our.
Hold on.
I'm gonna tell you this is unique and crazy and I wish I
had something here to show you.
So another big industry is Lufkin Industries here, an old, old hundred year
company and they make oil pumping units.
And many, many years ago, one of the employees took one of their pumping units.
It's this weird shape structure and, uh, basically made it look like a, a
reindeer, put a head on it, put lights on it, and made it, and basically ru
Rudolph the oil field pumping unit.
And so it's a tradition in Lufkin of this.
Um, this is great.
This is every fantastic a title for this episode.
It's, it's really fun.
It's really cool.
Um, and so like one thing, again, embracing the community, we're
setting up a tent next to it.
We're giving away.
Check this Free kid tattoos, temporary tattoos that say, have a Lufkin Christmas.
We are, uh, we, we designed a custom, uh, coloring book and it's like,
I think again, the same title of like The Great Lufkin Christmas or
some kind of cool title like that.
And it just talks about the things that we have in our community, you know,
that we have an ice skating rink that's opening up for the first time this year.
Um, so it's like, you know, we wrote this little coloring book story.
Uh, we're gonna give 'em that.
And then we got these, um, crayon boxes printed with our logo on it.
We're giving out crayon, then coloring books.
Uh, so doing fun stuff like that I think goes a long way.
You know, people wanna do business with people they know, and so
when, when they can connect with you is people in the community,
you know, it's not just a company.
I think it just, it, it really helps a lot.
And I think also just again, having those good people on our team, Has built
those relationships and connections with people and it's gone really far.
So they're not coming into a company, they're coming to
see Josh about another order.
They're coming in to talk about their design with Zach because man, he, he did
that logo and it's just been so great.
Or he did that first vehicle wrap design for him and, and you know,
so I think that's just been really a big deal about rooting in and,
and embracing things like that.
Um, and we've done other little things that's come along the way.
I remember a long time ago there was a big deal, it was kinda silly, but
something about in God we trust stickers run all the police vehicles in our area.
And there was some kind of conflict about they didn't wanna use city money
to put that vinyl on the cars, you know?
So we heard about it and so we just said, we'll put vinyl on the police
cars for you and we won't charge you.
It's no big deal.
We can donate that.
And so it was a big deal and we made stickers and then people
were coming saying, Hey, can I get a another one of those in God?
We trust stickers for my personal vehicle.
And we made them like crazy one year and it was just, You know,
just kinda serving the community and something relevant at the time.
And it was really cool for us because we made a lot of connections
throughout that, uh, as well.
So I think just being open to what's going on and jumping in where you can
and giving back is gonna go a long way.
Yeah.
Bryant Gillespie: I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold this up.
I'm not sure if you guys can read it.
It says luck.
Like I, I heard you talking about all the, the businesses that you bought, right.
And I, I don't, I don't remember where.
Heard this idea of like your luck surface area, maybe on a podcast, maybe some
book that I read, but like, it's good to think about luck as not like luck.
Like, hey, just, it's gonna happen.
Just like coincidence.
It's about like moving and being out there.
And when you do that, when you participate in your community, you're
increasing that luck surface area.
So if I've got more surface area that we cover, oh hey, lightning
can strike here or there, here or there, and like listening to you talk
about all these different businesses that you bought and it's just like,
oh, it just happened to do this.
I feel like you're downplaying it, obviously, honestly.
Like, hey, like, it's like, oh, this, this happened and this hap this just,
I walked in at the perfect time.
You know?
And that's looking back at it.
Maybe it seems that way, but to me, like listening to you talk,
like I, I'm seeing a pattern.
Not sure if you're seeing the same kind of pattern, Pete, where it's like,
hey, we run into a challenge or like, Hey, we, we outsource the product.
Things are going great for a while.
We kind of overwhelm that particular outsourcer, or we need more control.
And then it's just like, okay, like, hey, we're gonna bring that into the fold.
And that's, it seems like that's the, the strategy that you guys have employed
Chris Fleniken: successfully.
Yeah.
Appreciate you saying that.
I mean, but I, you gotta put in the time, you know, I mean, like, you could look and
say like, man, I wish my business would fall in place, like real graphics did.
But like, dude, we've busted it and we put in the time.
And so I think maybe that hard work kinda aligns with opportunity and that's
where that intersection of luck comes in.
But we gotta hustle it and work it, you know, to make it happen.
And it's not been easy, but yeah, it's, it's worked out.
Free kid
Bryant Gillespie: tattoos.
I love it, man.
The, the, what is it?
Rudolph the light, the Rudolph, the oil field.
Chris Fleniken: It's really like Rudolph, the Pumping unit.
Um, pumping unit.
Okay.
Yeah.
But the pumping unit is like an oil filled type product thing.
So, and the other thing I really think really is training and getting
a really good team underneath you.
Cause I do feel for some of the sign shop guys that it's, they're
still the core of it, you know?
And I know they're just wearing thin, running hard and like if, if
they're sick or there's something goes on, like there's so much that
doesn't get done because of that.
And that's a tough load to carry and I think everyone
has to carry it for a season.
But I think quick as you can, you know, is to train up the people
that can carry those loads.
And if they're out, there's another person to help.
Is it a Boy Scout thing or an an Army military thing of one is none.
Two is one or something like that.
You know, like that's kind of true.
Like if you've got one, one person that can do that, and if they leave
or they're out, you're in trouble.
And that's one thing that we're constantly facing and still facing now, is just what
happens when that one person leaves and they knew this much stuff that no one
else knew, it could put you in a bind.
Uh, and it has, I'm not talking like we have that figured out,
but those are some pain points.
So I just hope time shop owners can try to start investing in their team and
building 'em up and getting the right people in places because you need 'em.
You really do.
You're not gonna be able to keep up with everything forever.
What was that
Bryant Gillespie: transition like for you?
Because, you know, now I know you're still, you're, you're still
very involved in the business and the community, but you're.
You know, like if, if you take two or three days off, I, I'm
assuming things run just fine.
Like it's, it's, yeah.
Not the end of the world.
And I know that's, that's a different case for a lot of sign shop owners
that are, are in small towns.
It's like, Hey, I, if I walk away from the, the shop for two days,
like something bad's gonna happen or we're gonna have to shut the doors.
Or you know, even if you're just running into a situation like I'm in
this week, like, hey, if yeah, hey, my wife and kids are at home sick and I've
gotta be there to take care of them.
Like, you know, are things gonna run smoothly?
So maybe speak a little bit about like, that transition for you.
Like what year was that?
Were you in the business?
Were you kind of like, Hey, I gotta make this, and you know, what
were some of the pain points that you had as you went through it?
Pl
Chris Fleniken: please don't think I got this figured out, but I don't think
I've got, I'm kind of a control person, but I don't think I'm terrible on.
Letting things go.
So like, I'm, I'm okay with like releasing the reins and
saying, Hey, you focus on this.
So I think naturally that's kind of been a part of my connection with the team.
It's just, you know, letting you do your thing and then maybe I
might coach you along the way.
So I think gradually there's been a, a fair bit of empowering and letting
other people do things that, you know, I think maybe, oh, I could probably
do that better, but hey, I need you to learn and grow in that area.
So that's kinda happened along the, on the way, and I think
that again helped us a lot.
But man, it just, you do carry so much as a, an owner or founder or,
or even the leader of a company.
And man, it kinda led to some burnout for me in 2020.
Just started really struggling with different things.
In a different way, you know, where it was just, it was really wearing on me in 2021.
It, it was just kind of hit me at some breaking points of just like,
man, I gotta make some changes.
Because there was a lot of those things where that custom quote is
waiting on me, that special project that I, I'm gonna have to figure
some out, you know, is waiting on me.
And it was just always that if I don't get this done, it's not getting done.
And there was a lot that would bottleneck at me.
And so I again just reached out to some team members and like, man, I need some
help and I need y'all to kind of carry.
And my operations manager now just really stepped up to help.
That was like the lifesaver of it because then now I don't have the same feeling of.
That customer's waiting on me directly.
I still need to lead, I still need to set, you know, goals and problem solve
and, and use my skills in, in those areas.
But it's not on the daily of like, yes, if I was sick tomorrow,
everyone could run this place just the same and we're gonna be fine.
And so I kind of did an analogy talk with the team about, you know,
we built from just this little one man boat, you know, where we could
scoot along and get things done.
And I was figuring it out as we went.
We were quick to navigate and turn and pivot and do what we
needed to do to get them to grow.
And then we kind of got to be a little bigger ship, needed
more team members involved.
And then I told 'em like, now we're, we're more of a bigger
vessel that we need apartments, we need someone in the engine room.
We need someone, you know, doing these different areas and doing them well.
And I said, I've been here trying to keep a hand on the steering wheel.
You know, keep, keep us, you know, afloat is what we kinda, the term we
used a lot during that covid season.
And I was, I told him, I was like, well, I'm tired of just keep it afloat.
Like if we're gonna be going forward, we wanna be growing forward.
And so that's been our theme since then this last year was we're growing forward.
I don't wanna be afloat anymore.
Bryant Gillespie: Maybe, maybe that's the episode title
Chris Fleniken: right there.
Well, it's just been the truth of like, where I was and like, I think a lot of
the team was just like, you know, I don't wanna have the same struggles month after
month, and so let's make changes to, to, to be growing for, I can't stop saying it.
And um, but anyway, I told my team is like, I need to get my hand off the
steering wheel on the daily things and move up to the, the lookout
tower and figure out where we're going, how we're gonna get there.
You know, let's get a growth mentality and let's put processes and things
in place that we need to be a, a more of a firm solid foundation.
And, you know, appointed Melissa.
Like, Hey, she's gonna be having her hands on the steering wheel
now and y'all support her.
And so as a team, we just evolved a.
September a year ago, uh, was kinda where that started and it's
just been a new chapter for us.
We're not outta the woods.
We are still post covid struggles and every month has got different challenges,
so it is not free sailing at all.
But as an owner, that's where things really changed for me
because I was just, man, I was.
It was struggle, you know, it was tough.
Like putting your hand on the door to walk into work was just like
something, I didn't realize what it was, but it was anxiety of just
like, oh, I dunno what's about me?
I don't, you know, I had a great morning.
You know, I, what's so that's point I, and thankfully things and
team was really load out and it's been a different world for me now.
Alright, so let,
Peter Kourounis: let, let, let's kind of take that and run with it here.
You know, we got a lot of listeners out there that are going to love your story
and love how you got started, but now that you're, you're seasoned, right?
You've been doing this a long time.
This is your, this is your baby, this is your shop.
Still working on the time aspect, like you said.
What can they take from this?
What, what processes?
I'm gonna put you on the spot here Chris.
Maybe something that Bryant here has helped you with, so I don't know, but
what processes have you put in place for your shop, for your shop size
that our listeners might be able to
Chris Fleniken: get benefit from?
Man, the last year has been a lot of exploring what are the steps
we need to take to be more solid.
I'm not the best implementer, I'm not the best at carrying things out.
Bryant has come along as a consultant, but also as a doer and put some things
in place for us and things in shop box.
That's been really helpful.
Bringing up pain points and brainstorming with him on like, okay, this is a problem.
We're getting wrong a lot.
What's gonna be a better flow for that?
But I will say a struggle just honestly has been just the overwhelming wideness.
And again, I think of a lot of this because this, the wideness of our shop
abilities, because it's like, I feel like every department needs so much attention
and I have felt like my attention and my energies have been spread by
like what problems the loudest today.
So I'll say as a failure that I have not mastered yet.
Focusing in like, this part needs to be better.
Let's get it and move on to this area.
Um, so I'm trying to do that.
Bryant has helped me, like we've jumped in and tackled a lot of apparel products
in Shop box that were just wonky and kind of, you know, and we focus like, hey,
let's get these five really main products we use and let's get them really good so
my sales reps are smoother, production will get better information and so on.
And so like that little improvement we focus on for a month or two really has
made a good change of, uh, difference.
So I do envy someone that maybe is just a sign shop or apparel shop that could
like laser focus and maybe get more accomplished quicker because I constantly
feel like I get pulled to, okay, now paper printing prices are a problem and paper's
outta stock and prices keep shooting up.
We've gotta recalculate that.
And so I need to shift my attention there and help kinda dive in on that spot.
So that's not something I'm master, that's something I'm trying to work on.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, it's almost like the one stop shop approach is
kind of like a double edged sword.
It's, it's like, hey, it's great for growth because, and, and we went
through this same thing in our shop.
Like we were in a small town.
We did printing, we did large format, we did signs, we did screen printing,
we did embroidery, we did wraps.
You know, we did it all.
A lot of it we did under one roof.
A lot of it we would outsource.
You know, our mix was different.
It was probably like 60 40, 70 30, you know, 70% in-house, 60% in-house.
But you know, when you have that many products and that, I'll go
back to that word surface area.
When you've got all that surface area to cover, it's a lot.
Especially in, you know, even, even at 25 employees, that's, you know,
if you've got five, six different departments, that's, you know, it's
still not a lot per department to run essentially what's its own business unit.
And
Chris Fleniken: I will say like with team wise, I mean the goal would
be to be real cross trained, so that way if this person's out sick,
hey, we can pull this person from this department to help fill in.
We haven't mastered that, but we, we try to let people train in all departments
just to get an idea so that if they needed to fill in it would be an option.
But again, every department is pretty signage, probably has six or eight people.
Um, apparel has three or four.
A print shop has two to maybe two and a half if there's someone else helping.
Um, and then sales reps, there's usually about three to four primary sales reps
and then designers about five or six.
Uh, normal.
We got one web guy keeps our digital stuff going.
So there's not a lot in every department.
It's not like a mass team.
So sign production stuff, yard signs and banners.
There's mainly two people that are keeping those things going.
So if one's out, there's another, but if you need a third set of hands, we
got to rob from somewhere to help.
So that's kinda the flow of our team and how that kinda looks.
But yeah, so I think getting those things in place, uh, one thing if
I could do it different and if I would've known that, hey, this is how
we're gonna look like in five or 10 years, I think laying a foundation
of those procedures and processes and, and, and a training structure.
We would be a different company today.
You know, if we had the standard, you know, cause right now if we
get a new person, our training isn't, isn't very structured.
So they get trained this month differently than someone got trained nine months ago.
You know, just because of the work on on hand or what's going on.
And so that's tough.
So I think if I could do it again, getting more firm things at place
on a, like a foundational level would really help us a lot better.
And I,
Bryant Gillespie: but I feel like that's always a, a tough one
though because it's like changes.
Yeah.
It changes and it's, it's very
Chris Fleniken: fluid.
New machine, new process.
And, and that's one thing, I mean, we do have a few things in place
of, of standard operatings that are, have been pretty crucial.
But it is kind of funny sometimes it's like, no, we don't save PDFs anymore.
We have to save an S for that new program for this new printer.
Or the RIP software takes a, it's just, there's always those tweaks along the way
that it's like you didn't get the memo.
We have that struggle often.
But yeah, trying to keep everybody on the same page and trained in the same way.
Balancing act we're to work.
I think a lot of the problems we make are from lack of training,
you know, from the sales rep taking an order in a certain way.
You know, if they would've been trained a little bit deeper to
understand our routing abilities or to understand, you know, know that
PVC sign doesn't weather outside.
Well, they wouldn't have sold it that way.
We had a job the other day get laminated Coroplast, and I'm like,
why are we laminating cor sign?
You know?
But like, well the customer, you know, we were talking and, and I told 'em
the lamination, you know, protects from scratches and that way their,
their, their yard sign doesn't get lam, uh, scratched like, oh gosh.
You know, training, you know, is a key.
And then like, I was also talking to the, the production team about
like, did y'all not question why we're laminating yard signs?
You know what I mean?
Like, well, we just thought it was weird, but we were just getting the order done.
It said it and said it on the order sheet.
Okay.
Anyway.
Yeah.
Fun stuff, man.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
So going back to like Pete's question about like the process changes,
like, like what, like what's one change that you guys, like, one
specific change that you've made?
Like I, I don't want to hear the stuff that we've worked on
together because that's boring.
I mean, it's, it is cool, but it's, you know, it's boring
for the context of this one.
Like what's, what's one big change or a, a specific change.
It doesn't have to be a big change that's made like a big impact for
you on the business or, you know, as an owner that you guys have
done over the last year or two.
I'll
Chris Fleniken: tell you, I've struggled with nailing that
question with a great answer.
But another thing that's another work in is trying to create a little bit
of levels of leadership because for a while it was me and then a lot of team
members, and then we kind of did have a couple department leads, um, that
could kind of help take on some stuff.
So I think.
What they were working on.
That's still kind of working progress, is trying to kind of put these good
leaders in place at different levels so that way they're your go-to.
So when you know when a production team member has a struggle with this, they
know, Hey, lemme go talk to this person.
Okay, we're still having a problem, then let's go to this manager.
And again, usually that was me.
And now that would be Melissa.
And then Melissa, if there's still a problem that they haven't overcome or
we need a special troubleshoot, hey, I'm happy to get involved and help.
But that has helped a lot because my day.
Hijacked, you know, and I know a lot of owners have to relate to, you had a plan
to something you were about to do for the next two hours, and, and that's out
the window because you're, you're trying to fix a printer or something else.
So to have more people, you know, not under you, but just in, in, in line,
that can help, I think would go a long way and protect the owner's attention
and, and focus a little bit better.
So we're trying to do that.
I think another thing goes to proper delegation, you know, because like a
guy told me a really great acronym for delegation, and I just, I've loved it.
I can't regurgitate it right now, but it basically was like different levels of,
you know, there's gonna be someone that comes to you, Hey, what do I do with this?
And you're gonna say, go and do this.
Exactly.
Then there's gonna be another one where it's like, what do you think we should do?
Okay, that's a good one.
Why don't you try that.
Let me know how it goes.
Another level of.
Hey, I think you can figure it out.
Go and figure it out.
Try whatever you think's best and let me know how it turns out.
And then there's that final level of, go figure it out.
I trust you.
You got it.
Don't even tell me how it turns out cause I know you're gonna take care of it.
Working down that path, you know?
And so I think it's easier just like, oh, just let me fix it and get it done.
You're not letting that person grow at all.
You're, you know, they're not gonna grow the next time that problem comes up,
it's coming right back to you again.
So if you could start working with that team member as far as with
those different levels and building trust and confidence in them.
Cause I've had a lot of people say like, oh, I didn't wanna make that
call cause I didn't wanna, you know, make the wrong, wrong move.
Or I didn't wanna mess that up.
And I'm like, you know what?
I'd rather you mess that up and let's figure something out so that way next
time you're that much more prepared.
So I think trying to con constantly build up your team in that way
could be a big help going forward.
So that way I'm not with so many service level things that.
You should have been able to figure that out on your own.
I'm building them up in confidence and they know that, you know, and then they
might report back, Hey, I did try this.
It didn't work, but I did this.
It worked.
You know, just letting you know.
And I love that.
Hey, thanks for keeping me in the loop.
Glad you figured it out.
Glad that printer's back going, glad that customer's happy
with the fix or whatever it be.
I think that's good because I do think just knowing a lot, some
other sign shop owners, they make that final decision every day.
Everything has to go to them.
That's tough.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
I, I love that.
Four levels of delegation thing.
I've, I've not heard it phrased like that, but yeah, it definitely
resonates with me a hundred percent.
Yeah.
Like, Hey, you've got, hey, like when somebody starts out, There, you don't
give them a lot of leeway or mm-hmm.
you can't.
And there's some people that jump in at like a different level of that.
You know, like, hey, your operations manager's coming in at like, Hey,
you, you've already done something similar in a different position.
Like, now you're gonna step in and I'm gonna hand some of the reins off to you.
But, you know, I still have to make sure we're effectively communicating
and a kind of high level strategy stuff.
So yeah, I, I definitely like that,
Chris Fleniken: that, well, here's another thought too though that I think
I've been guilty of, and I, I try to consciously not do it, is kinda like,
jump your ranks as far as me going to a, a production team member and tell 'em to do
something one way when maybe someone else had already said, you know what I mean?
Like, respect that.
Well, hey, what did Melissa tell you to do?
Okay, then, you know, go back to that.
Let's go, well, hey, did you already talk to Melissa about this?
Okay, go see what she thinks.
If y'all need help, come, lemme know.
You know?
And keeping that order in place is, is very healthy because we've had
that happen where team member wants to just jump straight to me and then
gotta kinda reiterate, well, cool.
Did you already troubleshoot that with the, with the department lead?
Then y'all go talk about it.
I bet you could figure that out.
If not, let Melissa know.
I bet she could.
You know what I mean?
And just keeping that in check and kind of training the team to, to
lean on one another I think would be.
I really think good thing to get, get down in that process of delegation.
Cause I think it's too easy for a sign shop owner or, or even a manager
to come in and just kinda override something that, uh, you know, someone
else had already put in place and, and that you lose authority there.
You know, they're, they're gonna think, why do I even bother gonna
that person and Chris is gonna tell me something different anyway, you know,
so try not to make those mistakes.
Like I said, I know I've done it and I've tried to be cautious of
not overriding that some, something that someone else has already.
It takes a
Bryant Gillespie: lot of self-awareness to, to catch yourself doing that.
I, I mean, I, I'm guilty of it in the past as well, like, hey, like, oh, I'm gonna
jump in and, oh, I'm gonna take this one.
Don't worry about it.
Chris Fleniken: I got it.
Yeah.
So I try not to, so, yeah.
Anyway, so any sign shop owners, man, try to get outta that
daily stuff as quick as you can.
Not because you're, you wanna avoid it, but just because then you can
focus on those bigger picture things, you can make sure that we're firing
in on all cylinders and everybody's supported and good because if I'm just.
Taking customer orders, we're never gonna get really past that.
You know, this level, we're not gonna grow where we potentially canned and
should and or you're gonna be like me.
And I think for million and years, I just neglected a lot of the foundational
things I needed in place, you know, so we probably could be a lot healthier
as a company than we are now, but a lot of things we're kinda loosey goosey
and just winging it along the way.
Now another thing that Brian, you helped get in place in 2019 was the connection to
the Sprint CFO guys, uh, Tyler and Brian.
Like, man, that was a game changer for us because I had an accountant.
Yeah, my taxes were good and my books were somewhat balanced, but these
guys came in and started dialing in my margins and my departs and, you
know, where's my labor cost going?
Not just in general, but to each area.
And those types of things were really, really big, big help.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, that's a big, um, that's, that's one that I've, I've
talked to a lot of shop owners about is like, you think that a, like your
typical CPA accountant, Like, they just wanna do your taxes, honestly.
Like, Hey, I just want to make sure you're compliant with the government.
And I did, you know, but, but, but like the expectation from like the
business owner side, or even, and, and I was guilty of this too, when
I started my own business, was my accountant's gonna be involved and give
me advice on what I should do here?
Should I buy that equipment?
Or, you know, what, what are we gonna project sales at for next year?
So, can I hire somebody?
And that's a really, like, that's not the job of an accountant.
Chris Fleniken: No.
If you find that.
Wow.
Yeah.
Cause you're right.
I would've loved to have that along the years.
Like that would've been great.
No.
Yeah.
So definitely club
Bryant Gillespie: for those guys.
Chris Fleniken: We'll, so those team members.
Yeah.
That Tyler's link in the, the shoes man, that, that's been a game changer.
And they've been right about a lot.
Like, Hey Chris, you're gonna run low on cash in next month.
And you know, it's like, Yep.
They were right.
You know, they, they, they could see the trends.
They were helping me notice things, and they had also identified problems
as far as just even in our bookkeeping of this, margin's not right if
you're selling it for this and your labor's, you know, and we found some
things outta place and fixed it.
And so it's been really cool collaborating with those guys.
Awesome.
It, it seems
like
Bryant Gillespie: you don't have any problem whatsoever, like, or
any ego in like, Hey, somebody else is, can figure this out.
And like, letting that, giving that person the space to do it.
Like you said, youve done that with your team, your operations manager with
Tyler and the guys at print, c f o.
Like, was there, was there ever a time where you were like maybe in the, at
the start of the business where you were wound a little held on a little tighter?
Or is that just like a muscle that you've developed like.
Chris Fleniken: Let's call that a muscle.
That's a good way to put it.
Cause yeah, I mean everyone has that.
I don't, don't even know if it's would be ego-driven, but more just like control
nurturing, you know, like, Hey, I was the only one doing this and if you're
not doing it that same way, you know, you could start having problems or you know,
and someone could have a little ego as far as like, that's not the way I showed
you to do it, but to be open to see like, Hey, you know what, that does make sense.
Let's adapt and doing it that way and taking others ideas.
I whatever you can do to empower other team members, I think's the goal because
I can't be in all departments at once.
So if they have the idea, Chris would do it like this and they
can evolve and make it better.
That's, that's awesome.
Another quote that I've heard my pastor say and I love is like,
you produce what you reiterate.
You keep what you celebrate and you deserve what you tolerate.
And that's been so.
So when we find a team member doing something right, let's praise that.
Let's encourage that.
Let's celebrate that.
Hey, that is exactly how we wanna do it.
You know, let's produce what we reiterate.
Let's reiterate the important things.
Hey, because our customer matters.
We do not wanna let this go out.
Or because this might be a problem, let's go ahead and run that by the customer.
Let's not surprise them with the change or you know, whatever it be.
You can reiterate those things so that way our team knows to make the
right decision in that right way.
And when it does not go right, whenever it's like, what were they thinking?
Usually we could look at that situation and say, you know what?
We kind of deserve it because we've tolerated this for so long.
When that happens or that attitude comes out, it's because we've
let it get sloppy, that area.
And so I've also kind of embraced that little saying and, and, and
tried to use that to again, The team.
And I think another thing we could kind of even mention is a big deal
is creating opportunity in your team, because you're always gonna have just
staff members if they're just there to do a task or a job, if there's
opportunities for them to dial in.
And I've heard you guys talk about this on a recent podcast, and I think that's
really importantly, including your team members in and the decisions, Hey, why
do you guys think this was a problem?
What can we do different involving their opinions?
I think it's awesome and it makes them feel value, but also
shows that they are valuable.
And from there, you're probably gonna get some really good ideas to move forward.
So creating those opportunities.
And then also we try to create opportunities in our pay scale.
So like our production team, we put something in place a few years
ago to where they're paid, uh, production bonus on as they work.
I didn't, I didn't
Bryant Gillespie: have this in my notes, but I'm glad you brought it up
because I, I, I, it's not the norm.
I, I definitely wanna dive into
Chris Fleniken: it.
Well, it.
There was another company in town that is amazing and we, we work
for them a lot, but also glean really great ideas from them.
And one of the things that they put in place was for their service technicians.
They were paid kind of almost as their own little business owners of their
truck, you know, and hey, they created opportunities for them to earn more.
And, you know, as they made more efficient moves, they could,
you know, generate more income.
And we love that idea.
So we adapted it in a small way of just, okay, hey, you're, you're
getting paid to show up and do your quality job and give us your, you
know, your, your excellent work.
But on top of that, here's a production bonus that comes every
month by the work you produce.
So if we have a call back, we have a problem.
We gotta reprint that amount of funds goes out of the budget.
Like you're not gonna bonus.
Shared order because we had this problem or we missed a deadline,
quality was maybe a not to par.
We gave a discount, you know, so that could get disqualified from that.
But if everything went great, customer's happy, we hit the deadline.
We got 10 orders done this week instead of eight.
You know, they're receiving a small percentage of those jobs per team.
Um, it also kind of creates the teamwork of like, hey, the screen print
department, they wanna crank out these orders together because we've been,
we bo they bonus off the same amount.
Uh, sales reps, the order, the reason they wanna crank those orders in and make
sure they're going through production smoothly and correctly is because they get
a percentage on all the orders that they put through shop box, things like that.
So, Again, we don't have it perfected, but that is something we put in place with the
hopes that our team would have opportunity to, you know, their paycheck could
reflect the hard work they're putting in.
And they would also feel a little pain of like, man, we messed
up in that big shirt order.
I didn't make a bonus off that because we had to reprint or we
had to fix or discount, whatever.
So that's something I hope to grow again.
What is we, we launched it in January, 2020.
January, 2020 was one of our best months.
February was one of our second best months in March.
Everything kind of came crumbling and so we kept that in place.
This time, even though profits are not what we near hoped, it's been
more of survival mode since, but we kept it in there because that's just
important I think for the team to have a feeling of kinda ownership
in their work and their ability.
And we, we try to preach to like, Hey, you're not coming to do a job, you're
coming to bring value to the company.
Um, so don't just come to be here, but.
Engage, leave, empty leave knowing, man, I, I gave some quality work today.
I poured into this project, or that I brought my skills, my, you know, my
creativity or whatever their role is.
You know, like I want them to feel proud of what they leave and proud
when they see that sign on the wall or the truck driving down the road or
whatever it be, you know, like, and so anyway, we wanna try to celebrate
those things with them and create the opportunities that they can learn and
grow and like doing what they're doing.
So that's something we've tried to do constantly, but, but also like,
back to the creating opportunities.
We've had several team members move different places.
Like, we had one guy that started as a helper right out.
He wasn't even outta college, he was on academic probation from college,
from slacking around a little bit.
Came in as a, as a helper, you know, really great hard worker.
Then he started working on a production team.
Then he was our, kind of our lead sign production guy for a year or two.
But he always wanted to be a graphic designer.
Uh, that's what he was starting to go to school for.
And so we made efforts to move this valuable team member from
one role to a creative role.
Because that was kind of where his passion was.
We had another guy that also was in signage and was a super great
installer, super great operator leader in that area, but he's super
creative and he did great video editing for church and different things.
He had these skills and so we painfully, you know, tried to navigate him away
from that and got him in a creative role where he could, you know,
use his gifts and talents better.
So I think just wanting the best for your people is another big thing
because we've made some painful moves that I wish that person was still in
that role, but they thrive over there and that's good, uh, for them as well.
I think that's important.
So moving people around I think has been, and again, not everyone can, I
mean some people just, I need you there.
So stay there for a while, but when we can, we try to like get them
opportunities to, to change it up and do different things and I think that
helps keep them engaged and that way it's not just a job, this is opportunity.
It's my career.
This is, you know, I'm a valuable team member.
I'm needed here.
And hopefully they could be and do the best.
I
Bryant Gillespie: love that approach that you mentioned career, right?
Like a lot of a, like not the owner or manager, but like a lot of the production
employees are probably, are, are calling this a, a job in other shops and you're
trying to instill that, hey, there's something bigger than we're working on
here and this is a, a career for you guys.
So Pete, I'm gonna open the floor for you, dude, because I know you
got like a couple, I know you've been sitting on like a pointed question
or two before we wrap this thing up.
Yeah,
Peter Kourounis: well, I mean, we, I was really enjoying everything that Chris was
saying, so I wanted to let him kind of, as I like to say, ramble on a little bit
But thanks you, you covered a lot of really great topics.
I think the, the, the biggest question for me is, is not going to be something
that I think is gonna be hard for you to answer, but like, what do you see yours?
How, how do you see yourself?
In terms of time, like if you had time where, where is your time best used in
your life and your businesses right now?
Chris Fleniken: I learned from a, there was a little seminar as that
and they, they, it's kinda like personality profiles, but they were
talking about different, know your area of strengths and, and running that.
And part of that was this visionary and I, they called it something else.
It was like a visionary profile and then there was like a manager operator,
someone who implements things.
And then there were a couple others and I totally identified
with that visionary one.
And again, I'm, sometimes that term seems a little cocky, but I am a good idea guy.
So when you got a problem in a shop, I mean in my, in our little area, I love
coming out with the problem solve of that.
You know, Hey, you know what, this is it.
You've already tried this, you've already tried that.
I do love kind of tackling some of those special things like that.
And I think I'm can bring value to the company in that type of area.
I think setting big goals, Is a big part of it, you know, like if we can,
I mean, like, we're gonna say doing what we're doing unless someone cast
out this new idea, Hey, what, what if we in five years had this going on?
Or a different location or whatever.
So I hope that I can find my time wisely to navigate us towards
bigger things and new ideas because that will keep the team general
generally more excited and engaged.
Because yeah, I mean like everyone's gonna kinda get dull by doing the same routine.
Yeah.
Ok.
So,
Peter Kourounis: so, so you're more of a visionary.
You wanna explore those opportunities, kind of solidify those cracks before
they become deterrent in the future.
Right.
Take risks.
And the only reason why you could do that and the obvi, it's an obvious statement,
but the only reason you could do that is because you're not in your business.
You're working on your business.
You are the leader, the coach, the consultant, the trainer.
Those are areas where I'm hearing, and you may not be saying them,
Based off of what you've said, I'm making really great assumptions that
this is where your expertise lies.
As a shop owner, your responsibility is not designing or quoting or selling
or even installing or fabricating.
It's more training, guiding consulting, looking for those areas of weakness and
then shoring up those inefficiencies.
You know, I'm speaking to a, I was speaking to a specific sign shop
on new sign shop owner earlier.
This.
Who is quite the opposite of you, Chris?
I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna mention his name or, or his shop, but he
just bought this business from a, from an experienced sign shop owner
who is very involved in the system.
Very involved.
In fact, everything was up here.
He had told me that all of his pricing was listed on laminated sheets.
And I'm like, oh dude.
Like we need to fix this problem.
You know, let me ex, let me introduce you to like a shop management tool.
And you know, you have side shop owners out there.
Chris let, like, let's not forget that we all started this way.
This gentleman is just coming in and learning everything about this industry.
He doesn't know how to make signs, he doesn't know how to design signs.
And when I'm talking to him and I'm working through all of those, uh, building
blocks, One of the things that always comes back in our conversations is
that you have to build the foundation.
You have, this is what you're going to build the engine.
You're, you're gonna build your engine no matter who you sell this to or who
gets hired, or hey, if you want to go on a two week vacation, no matter
what happens, the engine is always capable of running and that is what
people are now building their shops on.
So that's what I like when I'm listening to you, is that you've built this engine,
you've, you didn't start this way, right?
Mm-hmm.
, you, you, you, you said it yourself.
You know, you made that first poster for $25 because you said, Hey, yeah,
sure I can use an extra couple of bucks.
For me hearing your story, learning a little bit more about how you
kind of grew into this, making it.
Making it exciting, but most importantly, building the foundation, building
your, you've built your engine.
In fact, one might say that your engine is built and Bryant is helping
you supercharge that engine, right?
Like you're adding all sorts of tweaks to it because you continue to be
involved in the business enough where you can explore those inefficiencies
to make that engine better.
So when I asked you earlier about like what processes you have, like
that's all part of the engine.
That's all part of it.
You know, one might say, you built the system.
What does an engine need?
It needs gasoline to run.
So that, in my mind, that's marketing, right?
So what does a shop do of your size, marketing wise to attract its customers?
That's a question I'd like, uh, that I wanted to ask.
I kind of took the long way to ask it, but
Chris Fleniken: no, thanks for the recap.
I mean, you really did say that, right?
And.
You're right.
Peter Kourounis: But yeah, you know, you need, every engine needs gasoline,
every engine needs gas to run, right?
So we look at that in marketing dollars and marketing ideas.
So what, uh, for a shop your size, what are you doing to attract new
Chris Fleniken: business?
So mine's gonna be having a solid pance presence online.
A lot of those foundational things are in place, right?
But we're not super aggressive there because luckily for so far all the
business that we've grown from has come in the front door, called us or emailed it.
So we haven't really gone out and asked for a lot of work.
So that's what energizes me to think what are the possibilities out there?
If we went out to actually ask for more work, we actually like pursue some leads.
We followed up with existing and older customers and asked them, Hey, we'd
love to have your shirt business.
And we're not doing any of that right now.
So I think for the future of us to have an outside sales con.
Point person would be a pretty cool, powerful team
member that had in the future.
But for now we are just managing the stuff coming in, which again, I don't
want it to sound in the wrong way cause we're super grateful, but like what a
blessing to have plenty of work coming in that we've continued to grow every year.
I haven't fueled a lot of gasoline on the fire for that, but we've got,
we have stayed consistent there.
Yes, I'm gonna have some Google ads running.
We've ran a billboard just for fun before we have our wrap
vehicles that are out there.
And that constantly brings us great attention.
I mean, I was, I was pumping gas the other day and I got in one of our, I
was in one of our work vehicles and it just, The guy just starts chatting
to me about his business and all this, and I'm just thinking like, what other
opportunity would come this way if you did not have that wrap vehicle there?
That he's not only talking about wanting to wrap his construction
company truck, but y'all print business.
I mean, it's just brings so much opportunity.
So our wrap vehicles have been a great help to stay in the area and relevant.
I love it.
Whenever I get comments I'm like, man, I saw you guys' truck
way out in Jasper yesterday.
What are y'all doing out there?
And so it's been good seeing those on the street and, and,
and know kinda keeping people.
Thinking of us, uh, to, to that, to that
Peter Kourounis: point, to that point, I always talk to my, I always
talk to my, uh, my consultant, my clients that I consult with, my sign
shop owners that I consult with, and I always bring up that story.
We actually talk, uh, it was ama uh, I'm not sure if the episode
is out yet, but that episode that we did about raps with, um, Bryan,
Dana Antonelli, yeah, thank you.
I couldn't recall his name.
Dana Antonelli.
When we release, I was, I was like, oh man, this is gonna be my jam right
here, because I can't wait to think.
I was just thinking about this story.
I had a little shop, right?
I just got started my first year, and my father, he says,
Pete, you need a billboard.
He says, here's a $900 van I found on Craigslist.
You should just wrap it.
Just wrap it and park it on the side of your building and watch what would happen.
I'll never forget that.
This is like before wraps became like a, a.
You know, like almost every
Chris Fleniken: shot cut vinyl layered up or no?
Was it?
No, no.
Peter Kourounis: It was a real wrap.
It was a real wrap.
It was a real rap.
But before RAPS were like they were today.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Like almost every shot does raps now.
I still remember the very first rap I've ever done, which was like, I remember
jumping up for joy, like got a rap.
Yeah.
You know, somebody gave me $5,000 to do a wrap.
You know, I still remember that to like, it was like it was yesterday.
But the importance for those shops out there that are
not looking at it like this.
That's a really simple way of just branding yourself, right?
Keep a truck parked right outside, maybe park it on the side of a, a building an
intersection, a an empty or a deserted parking lot and just keep it there.
Park it there, get your name out there.
It's a really simple way of attracting, I wouldn't even say new business, it's
just a way of getting the brand out there.
Brand awareness, right?
Like keeping your brand consistent.
They drove past it on Main Street.
Now they're driving down Douglasville Road or whatever you want to call your
road on, and now they see your shop.
That's two touch points, right?
So doing something just like that, it's a really great tip for the small sign
shop owner, the small guys that are out there that are like doing 250 to
$500,000 a year in sale that are looking for like added ways of, of really trying
to get, you know, the brand out there.
Maybe they don't wanna spend $500 a month on.
I don't know a billboard advertising Google.
No, I get it.
Chris Fleniken: You know, but if you spent, uh, if
Peter Kourounis: you spent $900 and did it yourself and wrapped your own
vehicle, that's gonna last a lifetime.
That's gonna, well, maybe not a lifetime, but you know, it's gonna last a lot
longer than a, than a monthly ad and a magazine or, you know, a diner ad,
a billboard for a couple of weeks.
I mean, even Bryant knows you can advertise in like magazines
and maybe the impressions
Chris Fleniken: are not great.
Peter Kourounis: Yeah.
You know, maybe there's some digital mar magazines out there that want
your advertising, but they suck.
You know?
So where, where is your money best?
You, best being spent?
You know, I mean, for, for us, season sign Shop guys, we've
advertised everywhere, right?
We've, we've done the diner mats, we've done the sponsorship
of the little leagues.
Yeah.
We've done the sponsorships on the Light Up Your Rudolph event.
Okay, we're do, we're handing out little things.
I remember, I still remember one of my first trade shows, I routed out
over 500 corrugated plastic guitars to hand out, you know, like just to
people like, gimme, gimme, gimme.
Yeah, that's awesome guitars.
But it was just a cutout piece of coro.
It was, it was cool looking, but people would recognize you and I
can't, and I sold franchises that way.
So there's so many things that a sign shop owner can do to
pour gasoline into their engine.
But Chris, I'm bringing this right back to you.
And my last question here and, and please, I'm gonna caution you if you could be
Chris Fleniken: specific.
Peter Kourounis: For those listeners, I mean, I'm gonna ask you a pretty
simple question, but be specific.
Give them a tip, help them out here.
Let's be, let's be really great sign shop owners here and, and pass along some
really great advice for that Next sign.
Shop owner.
You got a great system built of processes, right?
You mentioned you use shop box, you have, you do some marketing, right?
Here's the question.
When a lead comes in, okay?
When a lead comes in of any kind, no.
Doesn't matter.
How, tell our listeners what happens in your shop?
Who answers
Chris Fleniken: the lead?
How does it get processed?
How quickly
Peter Kourounis: do you turn into an estimate?
Walk us through the front end of your process so our listeners can
learn a little bit of something, how to do it in correctly
Chris Fleniken: in their shop.
Well, figuring things out.
But right now, yeah, if you, if if a website order comes in, we've try to
be there and, you know, order come in through Facebook or any kind of online
deal, it funnels through a couple email accounts we have ready, so that
way we know kind of how it came in.
So yes, front desk will receive it, share it with a, a sales rep, just kinda
depending on who would be best fit.
Uh, then they'll reach back out, make connection.
Hey, how can we prepare a quote?
What are these details?
Uh, we also have five, and I don't mind sharing this, but I
have five top questions that our sales reps kind of run through.
Um, it's basically, and I've heard y'all kind of mention some of this stuff.
It's like talking about budget, talking about timeframe, talking about scope of
work, you know, expectations, how, you know, how long we want this to last.
Gathering those top five things would let them give the best educated quote.
Generally, we're gonna give them a good, better, best, or at least a.
Good and better option.
Um, so sometimes they might ask for a cor plus sign, but by the time we kind of
retrieve the goal of it, what's it for?
It might evolve to something different.
And so hopefully we give that customer, Hey, this is what you asked for.
Maybe here's even a better option if you want it to last a little longer.
Or, Hey, yes, our, our basic t-shirts start at six bucks a piece.
But if you are wanting one of those fashion tees that are tribal in that
people really don't wanna take off, here's an option that costs this much.
Um, so hopefully we provide those options in pricing, pass it.
Then from there we get the order, go through the deposit step, assign it to a
design team member to provide the mockups.
Um, and then from there approval, it gets assigned at dip production due
date and passed into the production stage state to go down that flow.
So that's kind of the flow.
So hopefully we're fielding that.
Again, I don't think we have it perfect, but man, to lose a lead is so bad.
I mean, that one person's gonna be disappointed and they're gonna tell
way more people than that happy customer that was taken care of.
So it's very important to make sure we're receiving it because
if not, we're wasting all that.
We, we, we wrap that vehicle, we, we sponsor that little league ad
and all this stuff to get this, this opportunity and we missed it.
And so I just feel like if we had to be good stewards of those opportunities
and do it well, and that's kinda why we haven't really ventured out to ask for
more work is cause we're still trying to make sure we polish and take care
of these customers that are coming in.
We also run a 25% repeat customer rate, which is great.
I'd love to see that grow in that.
I'd love to just nurture those accounts better, nurture those
customers, reach back out.
Hey, how was your experience?
I think there's opportunities that we have to do that better that I'd love to see us
grow in, but we've gotta receive that well because one of the worst things we get is.
People say about other places, well, I reached out.
I never got a quote.
Or they did, they showed up and surveyed, but they never came
back and gave me some options or didn't call me back or whatever.
And that's something I don't want people to say about us.
So we've gotta do everything we can to.
Be one of those that they're telling the shop down the road,
Those guys never got back with me and that's terrible.
So we're doing our best, but we've been blessed with a lot of work coming in.
So yes, I wanna do a good job of fielding it and taking care of them.
Awesome
Peter Kourounis: man.
Thank you so much for that.
Chris Fleniken: Appreciate it.
Hey, another thing that I've got going on today is a tour, and I don't know how
many other shop sign shop owners open their shops up, but we do several tours
a year for like schools to leadership.
Lufkin is like a leadership program in our local, uh, chamber that comes through.
There's also a high school program of these kids that are in the leadership
program that come and so we have a talk, we we tour around the shop,
they screen for their own t-shirt.
Sometimes we'll make a vinyl sticker or something, but like we just open
the doors and let them kind of see.
And it always is such a positive, you know, takeaway.
Yeah, I, I wish
Peter Kourounis: more and more people, I wish more and more people did that.
I think that's an excellent thing.
I would encourage you to even look beyond.
What you're currently doing, just from a recruitment perspective, you know, like
kids in school, they remember meeting, you know, the governor, the mayor, , you
know, they, that that's what inspires people in the next generation to be
in politics or, or, or in education.
When they, when they, you said it yourself at a young age, you learn
from a, a, you know, a youth pastor.
Yeah.
And that's how, that's why you knew that that was something that you wanted to do.
So I love that.
I, I personally, I wish I did that.
I, I had, I had not really thought of the idea, but opened houses, Sign, uh,
like a sign shop, open house, getting people to touch things, play with things.
It's such a creative industry.
You could do almost anything that you want.
You can have them build little ra glow in the dark reindeer if you
want, you know, around this time, around this time of the year.
I mean, it'd be so cool.
I encourage you to really explore that.
Even come back to us with like, Hey, how is this doing?
Film it.
Throw it up on social media.
Get it out there in pr.
Like I personally love that, love that I would tell every sign shop to do.
Chris Fleniken: And here.
Another thing though, the flip side of it is, yeah, it brings a burden to the team.
They gotta make sure their areas are clean and things like that.
And I ask 'em all to have something running in all the departments so
that way we're cutting something on the table, we're flatbed.
Yeah, you
Peter Kourounis: gotta prep it.
You gotta prep it, right?
You gotta make sure
Chris Fleniken: dec you point at them and you say, Hey, this is the
operator who runs this machine.
Tell us about what it does.
Or here, here's the screen printer, tell us how we're gonna screen print our shirt
today and let them shine for a minute.
And that's a cool thing that they get to like show off, Hey, this is
my skill, this is how I know to do,
Peter Kourounis: let them use the power washer and clean a screen
and you know, let, let them throw, like start folding shirts.
I agree.
I would absolutely do it in any shop of any kind.
Show how you do things.
Show how you make the magic happen.
You know, even in a small shop, and we're a small town like yours,
or a large community like mine, that is needed in this business.
The youth in the industry needs to know what they can do in this career.
They could be designers, they could be foreman, they could be installers, they
could work with their hands, they could be, you know, they could be bookkeepers.
They could do anything that they want in industry.
That is why I love it so much, because you could wear many different hats.
You could be a business background, a marketing background, a design background.
You could be a contractor, you could be a manager.
You could do anything you want, and the kids, the youth of
this generation need to know.
So I would, Chris, anybody who's listening out there needs to take
your advice and get that done.
Start put bringing in your Chamber of Commerces, your networking
groups, bring it all in.
And I'm not even talking about business owners, like just.
You could do it with anybody.
An open house.
Yes.
Yeah.
You know, it doesn't have to be kids, it could be anyone.
So yeah, man.
Way to end it on a positive note.
I love that.
I encourage others to do that.
Thank you so much for being here, Chris, it was great to hear your story.
I love having you on, uh, look forward to seeing you again on our Mastermind calls.
Uh, and, and Brian, why don't you wrap it up here and, and
then, you know, close us out.
Guys.
Chris Fleniken: Thanks for letting me ramble.
I've enjoyed it.
Bryant Gillespie: Oh, man, I, I knew this was gonna be a slam dunk conversation,
so I appreciate you joining us, man.
Chris Fleniken: Oh, wait, Brian, new like that.
Chris guy can talk.
He'll fill an hour.
Easy man.
Hey, hey.
Bryant Gillespie: Honestly, like you've been, um, a, a great inspiration
to me as well and a good friend, and like hearing you like Flex and,
and like, not even Flex, but just share some of your experiences.
Like, I, I knew you had all this in you.
I, this is gonna be tremendously helpful for all of our listeners.
I, I know it will be because like you've been through this over, over 15 years or
so that you've been running this business.
I mean, and it's, you know, the takeaway for me is like when you truly enjoy what
you're doing and you value what service you're providing is a, a sign shop or a
print shop or a wrap shop to your local community like that pays dividends.
So if you're in a, a small town and you're looking to grow, And you're
asking, how can I grow in a small town?
You're asking the wrong question.
Right?
The question is, how can I help my small town grow?
Yeah.
How can I help the other business owners in my small town grow their
businesses and be more successful?
Because to me, to like distill down everything that you've said, like
that's the takeaway here is basically you guys came in with creative on the
front end and outdid anything that they were getting from other sign
or print shops that were just there to provide a sign or provide print.
Like you guys are actually investing in that small business that's coming to you.
Like, Hey, we we're gonna make sure your design looks great.
We're gonna make sure that we help you put the pieces together.
Like, Hey, you may come to us for a banner because you're trying to open
a, a new location, but guess what?
We've got flyers that we can do for you.
Mm-hmm.
, like, we're going to give you the whole package.
So that's the takeaway for me.
How do you grow in a, a small shop or a small town?
How can you grow your small town?
How can you help other business owners in your small town?
Chris, that's awesome, Chris.
Um, if you guys want to check out Chris and Real graphics, it's real graphics.com.
I, I don't want to flood you with calls, but I know.
No,
Chris Fleniken: I enjoyed it.
Yeah, it's been a great meeting part of the community and connecting
with more and more owners.
It's been really encouraging, so it's awesome.
And there's this Me Too therapy that's been really helpful, you
know, to hear other people talk about things and be like, ah, me too.
I'm not alone, you know?
So I've enjoyed, uh, the connection with you guys.
So thanks so much and keep doing what you're doing all's good.
All right, thanks Chris.
Bryant Gillespie: Bye guys.
Appreciate it.
Guys.
If you
Chris Fleniken: liked this episode, make sure you hit subscribe to get
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