So we’ve been talking about the advantages of having automation in your shop in order to try and reduce some of the human component often required for processing your orders. We mentioned that unlike people, superior digital t-shirt printing equipment not only out works the folks that would normally be standing behind it, but it never gets injured. It never complains and it never gets sick. When you add up all these factors of what you’re paying your employees and all the other criteria mentioned, the right tools to do the job is by far, the least expensive part of the equation and typically will give you less aggravation as well.
We also touched on the fact that you can typically acquire a used piece of machinery for a fraction of what it would cost to go out and buy brand new. This strategy is one that I would highly encourage that you consider, especially if you’re brand new to the industry and trying to start up a Columbus t-shirt printing company.
We also spoke about not getting the cart before the horse. By this I mean, I recommend strongly that you don’t go and take out a huge business loan until you know what you’re doing and realize what you’re getting into. So many people make this mistake. The fact that I believe marketing and sales are the most significant part of the equation in any business endeavor, make sure you’re going to be able to have enough customers to sustain your monthly overhead before you proceed. This approach is so much less stressful and could potentially save you a lot of sleepless nights and aggravation. By taking the step by step approach I mentioned, it will allow you to grow at your own pace instead of forcing something that’s not actually established yet.
I’m talking about the American dream here. This is the ability to work for yourself and be your own boss. The key here to achieving this is just going about it the correct way and arm yourself with the necessary knowledge required before you get over your head. I don’t want to mislead you and make you think that it’s easy. It’s normally far from easy and there’s a learning curve to it. It often has to be tweaked over time. Just like most things that are good, there’s also a potential downside. Although there are no limits to how much income you can acquire but with that being said, there’s also no guaranteed paychecks at the end of the week like you have on a typical nine to five job. Here’s an example of what I’m referring to. When most people leave their day job, they go home to their families and don’t give it a second thought. Friday comes, and they look forward to a nice relaxing weekend where the last thing they’re going to think about is job related.
I’ve been self-employed the majority of my entire adult life and I often thought to myself, how nice it would be to just shut it down and not think about business at the end of the day or on the weekends. My reality as a successful custom embroidery and digital t-shirt printing company owner was probably just the opposite of that. I never knew when my phone was going to ring and had to make myself available pretty much 24 hours a day. I was always thinking about how I was going about doing things and if I could potentially improve and if so, how that was going to happen. I also started out with financial overhead responsibilities that I knew I had to meet. That’s a heck of a lot of pressure for a young guy who didn’t have any financial backing or help to incur on his own.
So once again, I don’t want to mislead anybody and say that it’s as simple as following a recipe. Do this and do that and you should end up with this result. It might all make sense on paper but that’s not real life reality as again, if it was easy everybody would be doing it and everybody would be successful.