Someone once said that if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. There is also the individual who sits on the sideline and criticizes his boss and upper management on every move they make. This guy seems to have all the answers, but yet he would rather just show up for work every day and punch a time clock. I would have to ask myself, if it’s so easy, why is he not doing it for himself? He has it all figured out, right? Let me just tell you that there is nothing easy about being in business for yourself. Anything and everything you do is going to be a calculated risk and whether or not it happened to be a good investment or not is just relative to the return. That being said, some business ventures are riskier than others.
I have been an entrepreneur my whole entire adult life and have tried a lot of different things. I remember when I first started out trying to make a name for myself as a St. Louis T-shirt printing and custom embroidery company. It didn’t happen overnight. The cell phone had not even been invented yet and neither was the Internet. I can remember just knocking on doors and asking to talk to the business owner. There is really no point in talking to the receptionist because she has no power to make a decision. So regardless what you thought of your presentation she wasn’t going to place an order. She would say let me pass this on to my boss and then you would have to say the same thing all over again.
Knocking on doors was extremely hard work as well as time consuming. I can remember at the end of the work day thinking how tired I was. Most of the people that I called on used St. Louis custom T-shirts, but only a small amount actually needed them right this minute. The rest would say for me to give them a card and they would call me when they’re ready to order. They might have meant well when they said it, but reality was that by the time they were ready to order some more custom screen printing or embroidery, they had either lost my business card or it ended up in a stack of others cards that might be 2” to 3” thick. Unless it happened to be by chance on the very top, they would forget that it was even there.
Over time we have become a leader among the St. Louis screen printing companies, but that didn’t happen overnight nor did it happen by accident. It took many years to establish our reputation, as well as perfect our craft. I have always been under the impression that no matter how good you are at whatever it is you do that nothing good can happen until the sale has been established. Marketing and sales are the engine that makes or breaks a St. Louis digital T-shirt printing company. You have to do something to set yourself apart from the rest of the custom embroidery crowd in order to win the confidence of your potential customer. Then at that point it’s up to you to make sure that they’re well satisfied and when it’s all said and done they are glad that they chose you over all of your competitors.