Today’s Success Stories podcast is all about how you find new information and put it to use in your shop. Terry Keeven with St. Louis Print Company has been refining his business since 2007 with new ideas.
We’ll learn where these ideas come from, how he is implementing them, and what it takes to get continuous improvement changes working in a business.
Get ready to hear some impactful information that could make a tremendous impact on your shop!
So Terry, welcome to the Success Stories podcast!
Today’s Success Stories podcast is all about how you find new information and put it to use in your shop. Terry Keeven with St. Louis Print Company has been refining his business since 2007 with new ideas.
We’ll learn where these ideas come from, how he is implementing them, and what it takes to get continuous improvement changes working in a business.
Get ready to hear some impactful information that could make a tremendous impact on your shop!
So Terry, welcome to the Success Stories podcast!
Marshall Atkinson
Today's Success Stories podcast is all about how you find new information and put it to use in your shop. Terry Keeven with St. Louis Print Company has been refining his business since 2007. With new ideas, we'll learn where these ideas come from, how he is implementing them, and what it takes to get continuous improvement changes, working in a business. Get ready to hear some impactful information that can make a tremendous impact on your shop. So Terry, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.
Terry Keeven
Hey, thanks, Marshall. Thanks for having me.
Marshall Atkinson
Hey, no problem. And before we get into some stuff, why don't you talk about, you know, where are you are your shop, what kind of customers you serve, and all that.
Terry Keeven
So we're in St. Louis, we're a contract screenprint. We cater to the promotional products industry. And also online retailers, clothing retailers,
Marshall Atkinson
and you do screen printing embroidery, you do everything or just screen printing, what do you specialize with screen printing only? Okay, how come you don't do anything else? You just want to stick to what you're good at?
Terry Keeven
Yeah, we've done we've brought an embroidery probably close to 10 years ago, and we used to do vinyl and all that it just wasn't what we're good at. So we got rid of it all. And just just do the screen printing now.
Marshall Atkinson
Okay, how many presses? How many employees? What do you typically do?
Terry Keeven
We run seven autos, two manuals, we have 42 employees, we print on average about 18,000 shirts a day. One shift was Monday through Friday, eight hour shifts.
Marshall Atkinson
Okay. So just thinking back to how you got started. Let's talk about the origin story of your shop. Right? So where did that come from? And how did it evolve to what you're doing now.
Terry Keeven
So I dropped out of high school, when I was 15. Got a GED, I had some family that worked at a screen printing company. And I was told if I got a job doing that, and I worked real hard, I can make $10 An hour one day, they don't drug test, and you're gonna have all the tattoos and piercings you want. And no one's gonna care. So it seemed like a perfect job for me. And then I would say by the time I was about 19, I realized this is not what I wanted to do, I needed to make more money bla bla bla, and started thinking about the future. And so I started managing that company, I had an opportunity to start getting into the management side of it. And by the time I was 23, I left when I started a side business where I was selling t-shirts and whatnot. By the time I was 24, I went full time and started St. Louis print company with a couple of employees and been growing ever since.
Marshall Atkinson
Great. Yeah, and we're always a contract printer.
Terry Keeven
No, not in the very beginning, we did a lot of direct sales. But what I noticed was with the direct sales, it takes a lot of handling a lot of work. And when I would get a contract account, it was not only was it easier to get it was easier to keep and I have to constantly, you know, nurture that the same way you were to direct sale. So eventually, I just got rid of all of our direct sales and went 100% contract and that probably, I would say within three or four years, we just decided to knock on the contract work
Marshall Atkinson
and dealing with promo distributors and retail brands and stuff. I'm sure you've seen your share of really great clients and other clients and aren't so good to have, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. A lot of the shops that I talked to, they kind of were this percentage of contract to retail, they're like 6040, retail and about 40% contract. And they can't ever make up their mind. And what they want to do, they're just really kind of bogged down in it. And sometimes because they're not fully invested in one way or the other. They're not as profitable as they can be. So talk about a little bit about as a contract printer, just from your perspective, what makes you successful and profitable. So you can stay being a contract printer, and you're not even touching the retail side of things.
Terry Keeven
So I think it's a lot of your processes. And I think a lot of people when they're catering to both markets, not everybody, but I think the shop owners are just doing whatever comes in the door. So if they if they have retail business or doing that if they have contract work, they'll do that. They'll do whatever brings the ballers on, and they're so busy just in the day to day stuff and trying to manage to everything that it appears to me that they don't even have time to see if they're if they're making money, or they just turn in dollars.
Marshall Atkinson
Well, I know the big thing with contract print, of course, is that the shirts are supplied, which is where, frankly, a lot of the profit comes from, because we're taking that $2 shirt, and we're mocking it up to $4. And we're going to add the decoration on top for you, you're just charging for the decoration, somebody else is buying and getting the profit on the shirt markup. And I think that's where a lot of folks really kind of fall down when they're the think that contract printing is just like any other work in but they don't spend the time doing any sort of measuring any sort of KPIs, they don't know what their average cost per imprint is. They don't know what's their downtime, or how many minutes it takes to set up or all the other stuff as a contract printer, if you're really good, you know, like the back of your hand, they just guess at this stuff, which is typically why they are on good, right? And so when you got started in this and you're moving along, right? When did you start thinking, Gee, I really need to, like improve some things around here. And you started the process of learning. So talk about that real quick.
Terry Keeven
In the beginning, you know, we were, we were doing I think like a whole lot of people do, where we just kind of look at some competitors price lists, they Well, if that's what people are charging, I guess that's that's what we're charging, and really have no idea why we're charging that other than Well, that's what the guy down the road is charging. And, I mean, we were pretty hand to mouth. And we've had some really scary times, I would say, especially in the first seven years, five to seven years, where we weren't sure we were gonna make it, we were shining dollars, you know, it was $1. And it seemed like $1.10 goes out. I remember, probably six, seven years into it, you know, I had the appearance of I was doing pretty well, I owned a nice home in a nice neighborhood and had the nice cars and all that. And I remember telling my buddy like, Man, my whole life is finance, you know, I don't own anything. All my equipment, my house, my cars, everything about me was finance, had credit card that. And I remember thinking that this is what it's supposed to be, you know, then I don't want nothing to do with this. Because it was just too scary. We weren't really making any money. So I think once you come close enough to like realizing how delicate your situation is, you know, few things go wrong, and it could put you under, at least for us. That's when I realized, man, I gotta figure out how to actually make money and run this thing like a real business and not just some hobby. And I mean, I was probably thinking along those lines in the first couple years and realize as I was growing and growing and growing like, hey, this could be real real deal here, we can do millions and millions of dollars, I think then I started taking it a little more seriously. And not that I didn't take it serious to begin with. I mean, I had a family and I had a support and everything. But I started thinking, hey, we could actually potentially maybe make real money and live a real, you know, good life. And that's when I started thinking, Well, how do we do that? You know,
Marshall Atkinson
did you reach out to some business colleagues? Did you take a class, you know, what kind of stuff you into the right direction on how to change things for the better.
Terry Keeven
Now, I've always been a reader, not always, but I would say since I was about 20 or so. So I would just pick up books, and just read and I just got inundated with this business books. And I would just read and read and read and read. I did have some mentors over the years I still do today, not in this industry or anything but people who I look at up to is, you know, in a very successful and I'll tap them on the shoulder. You know, hey, what do you think about this, that the other thing, I still do that to this day with a couple of people, but I would say a lot of it came from reading. Honestly, I just read so much so many books every day, I'm reading hours a day. And I think I've been doing that for so long. I'm 39 now, so for 19 years of reading hours every day, you just start picking up on things. And you just start thinking differently. You start viewing the world differently and you start viewing your world differently. So I contribute a lot of our success to the foundation of it would be reading, honestly.
Marshall Atkinson
So it's one thing to read a book. It's another thing too take that gold nugget that you just found it in a book and actually do something with it. So how are you taking that idea and putting it into action can Do you share the steps that you found that work the best?
Terry Keeven
I don't have like a process from reading. A buddy of mine tells me when he reads he literally sits down with a notebook and jot things down. And he's reading. And that's just not my style. I'm literally just reading now, an example. I know, I read something a couple years ago, about some company that they sent letters home, to the spouses of their employees, thanking the spouse for letting the employee like work all this overtime, or whatever they were going through some busy season or something. There's a big company. I don't recall which one it was. And I thought, well, that was a good idea. He talked about how it really meant a lot to the employee and a spouse and this and that, and the whole family. And I remember reading that going, man that I really like that. And so I thought about it was like, Well, how could I do something like that, and implement something like that in my company. And what we've decided to do was, I wasn't going to send a letter home, but we fit the employees up against each other week to week, as far as production numbers. And whoever had the highest production number, we would give them like $100 gift card to a restaurant. And my theory behind that was is, well, I'm not going to send the spouse a letter in the mail, it might be kind of awkward, but this person is going to go home with a gift card and take their family out to dinner. And then in my mind, I thought well, there's going to be a conversation head, Hey, why are we going after this dinner? You know, little Susie might say, you know, the next month Dad, what are we going to go to that steak house again. And that's all I only got that steak house because I beat out the other employees. Your dad was a top producer for that month or so then it was like pressure. I thought it was a way for the family to pressure the employee to be a top producer. Because they want those steak dinners. You know, that worked out that way. It did not. It did not work out that way. But that was in theory, I thought it would. And we got rid of that after maybe nine months of doing it, we realized we saw no extra production by giving out those gift cards. So we just got rid of it. And whenever I implement something like that, I don't ever call the staff like, Hey, this is a permanent thing. I always tell it like Hey, I was thinking, what if we did something like this? And if I get everyone, they seem excited about it, then I'll we'll put it in the works. But I'll say hey, we're just gonna give it a shot. If it works, we'll keep doing it. If it doesn't, we'll get rid of it. So I always kind of leave it open-ended like that. So that way, nobody feels like I'm obligated to do these sorts of things. I would say that's just one example that came to mind that, you know, I do stuff like that fairly regularly, when I get an idea. But yeah, it did not work. And I found that a lot of our ideas do not work. But if like one out of 10 works. And I get a new idea every week, that means we're doing something innovative, you know, several times a year and it is working. And we keep going in the right direction.
Marshall Atkinson
Yeah, I was gonna say something that I found that worked really well was not the top producer thing is just we did Subway Footlong gift cards, you know, the $5 footlong thing. And I bought a whole bunch of them and gave a pile of them to each of my department heads. And when somebody in their department did something that was out of the ordinary or super special, or they found a mistake before it got printed or shipped or even just something it was just amazing. Without having to ask the manager could give them it could buy them lunch, right? That went over fantastic. So I think it doesn't have to necessarily be like a contest kind of thing. People do like to get rewarded. And one of the things I've always tried to do was do what I call a refrigerator material, which is anytime you send something to the house with a thank you note or something, you know, because you know everybody goes home for dinner and their spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend or you know, whatever, they'll ask, Hey honey, how was your day? And then what story is being told about their workplace and what you want is really good positive stories, because that really keeps that person around because they like working there when they can have a report back something that was really awesome about their day. And so I was always looking for stuff like that and although your steak dinner thing didn't work, I have had success with you know, just a lunch card. Alright, so let's, you know you're putting some ideas into action and Sometimes they're working, and sometimes they're not. How do you keep your employees going? Like, if you're always trying stuff and always trying to do stuff? Are you getting their ideas to or the like presenting? Hey, here's my idea. What do you think? And then people collaborate with you want to it's not just all your stuff, right?
Terry Keeven
No way, not all me, I'm pretty relaxed, and have that open door sort of thing. I think most of our staff feels really comfortable that they can come to me with anything. A lot of the good ideas I got implemented around here, were not mine. They were from other, you know, employees, even the ones that I have aren't original, you know, you said, I read so much that I know I'm getting these ideas from somewhere, I couldn't tell you where because, you know, they, it all starts melting together. I don't know where I got it from. But we used to work eight to five, okay, Monday through Friday, and that leaves work eight to five, they would take a 30 minute lunch that they blocked out for. But they got 15 minute break in the morning and a 15 minute break in the afternoon that I paid for. And everyone here not everyone, a lot of them are smokers. So they would use that was breaks to go out and smoke. So Simon gave me the idea to switch up our hours. And so we had a meeting and I said, Hey, guys, what would you think if we work, instead of eight to five, we work seven to four. And that way you get out. You know, like in the wintertime it gets dark at five and a time you get off work, you didn't rush out and it's dark and seems like you spent most of your day at work. And a lot of time people get the winter blues anyways. And so it just makes it worse. When you get home, it's dark, you come to work, it's dark, it's always dark. So everyone liked the idea of working seven to four. And before I had that meeting, I ran a bunch of numbers and thought, Man, if I could get that 30 minutes of production back in a day, and not give them the breaks in the morning in the afternoon, we was able to put a number on that and how much more we would produce. At the time, I think it was somewhere around 200 some odd $1,000 over the course of 12 months. But I knew that because they become so accustomed to these breaks that I couldn't just take it away, I'd have an uprising on my hands. And so everyone liked the idea of seven, four. So I said listen, what about seven to 330. And then everyone really love that. But I said the only way we can do that we still have to get eight hours of production done a day. That means we got to get rid of those smoke breaks in the morning in the afternoon. Would you guys entertain it, it was unanimous. Everyone's hand went up. They said forget about those smoke breaks. And so we've been doing it ever since for years now. And it made a massive difference. Not only did we get those 30 minutes of production back, which is actually more than 30. Because you know, the guys that you know, we say 15 minutes, but it always ended up turning into 20 You know, 20 in the morning and 20 in the afternoon. So we did see a huge increase in production. Not only that, we saw a huge increase in morale, because people were just happier. Because they're getting out at a decent hour 330 everyday. They're not sitting in rush hour traffic in the morning for to get to work and not hitting it in the afternoon on the way home from work. And even in the wintertime. They still have time to get some daylight and they get to go home, they could walk their dog do all the things they want to do that they felt like they couldn't didn't have time to do before. I mean that one thing there was pretty big for us. We saw hundreds and 1000s of dollars in extra revenue because of it.
Marshall Atkinson
So let's talk about efficiency for a minute because you know, I've been in the contract printing game my whole career and that's really makes or breaks the shop. Right? So how are you continuously improving your efficiency in the shop? So what are you looking at? What are some of the tools that you use? Just kind of walk us through how you're looking at improving efficiency daily?
Terry Keeven
Well, so I have cameras set up throughout the whole shop and then I have a huge monitor in my office. And I can click on each one and zoom in on it. We track how How many dollars each print team is producing. So we say loader, you know, the printer slash loader, or off loader and our dryer catcher, we call that a print team. And we break everyone up in teams. So we have seven, seven print themes, because seven autos and I noticed that the same team is producing so much more than the other teams, I'll start really paying attention. And I was like, looking at the cameras watching everything that person or those people were doing. And then I look at one of my lower producers, and see what they're doing. And then I was able to start pointing out, okay, this person stops here, do you have to check his phone before he does this? And maybe, look, he went to the bathroom. And, and I could just start saying all kinds of things. One thing we notice, even like dwell time, one, you know, we had a planner who just for whatever reason, he'd put a couple second dwell time. And it was as easy as that, I realize, oh, my gosh, you know, if that's why this guy's not producing, and I would literally, so these cameras are recording. And so I would literally bring some employees up here and go, Listen, I think I know what your problem is. Look at this person, and then look at you. And blah, blah, blah, and look at what you just did there. And here and here. All those things wasted time and an hour if you wasted seven minutes. And then you do that times eight for eight hours a day. I mean, you're wasting, you know, however many hours or minutes that is in a day, which you can produce x amount of shirts, which will produce x amount of dollars. So we're just always watching, you know, for stuff like that. And we don't come down on the staff. I'm not one of these guys that will yell scream punch stuff. My managers know that I don't put up with that. So they don't do it either. I always take the approaches, how can I help you, because our staff gets bonus weekly based on production numbers. So I come to them, if I'm not satisfied with their production numbers, they know what it is, it's clearly stated, they know what they're supposed to hit. And they know what bonuses they're gonna get based on those numbers. And it's a tiered system. And it starts at a $250 bonus, and it goes all the way up to $500 bonus and $50 increments for each printer. And then each offload and driver catcher has their own tier of bonuses as well, it's a little bit less. So the whole thing is and how I can get the print team on board with it is, hey, I want you to take home as much money as you possibly can. So what can I do to help you? And a lot of times they'll tell me say, Well, you see this wall here if this wall wasn't here, and I always have to do this with my shirts, and I you know, wastes X amount of time, blah, blah, blah. And then we start fixing those things. So we always ask their opinion, how could you we make your job easier?
Marshall Atkinson
When you're scheduling? Like you book? Let's just say press one's got, I don't know, six jobs to print today. You have $1 amount set for that. And then the bonuses. Oh, you did six jobs that here's what I'll pay you Oh, you do nine, this is how you earn more money? Is it something like that?
Terry Keeven
No. So let's say on any given day, we might have 50 orders to produce. So and that's if a lot of the orders are smaller. Let's say it's 50. We don't say hey, you have to finish this amount of jobs each day, we just say here's your first job, Here's your second job, here's your third, you know, we just as you get them done, we give you more, we don't base it on piece counts. Because if you're running, let's say a 10,000 piece, one color order, you're not going to bill out near as much as if you ran a couple of 1000 piece orders that were you know, eight colors, those are gonna go out a lot more. So we don't do it by piece. Because we found that not to be fair, our pricing is set up to where no matter what we print, we should be making money. And it's all should be about even. So we do it based on dollars. And I'm very transparent with our whole company with how much money we're making, what we're producing per day, and what each press is producing. So on each machine, we might say, Okay, we want to do $2,000 minimum per auto today. And anything over that. Here are the tiers. So you hit 2100 Here's your bonus, you hit 2200 Here's your bonus and then keeps going on down the line. And we cut it off at 500. And then each week, we print out a sheet and we put it on the opposite end of the timecard machine with the print team on there and how much they average the week before what their average dollar amount was per day. And they all know they have a little key I've given them that they say okay, well I did $2,600 So I'm getting a 375 Bonus. So they can see on Mondays, what their bonuses are going to look like. So that's how we do it. And it takes a lot of work for the office because they have to track every single job. Who printed it? Who offloaded? Who caught it, it takes a lot of work. I bet the gal in her office that handles this probably spends 10 to 15 hours a week, just keeping track of all that. And making sure it's all accurate and creating all that stuff.
Marshall Atkinson
Well, that sounds great. So I love the fact that people know what's going to happen. And then they work toward that rather than at the end of the week. Nobody has a clue. Right. And I think that's really wonderful. So I know, especially with when we're looking at efficiency, a lot of the gains that you might have in the shop, are not really from the actual production crews, but to be from other departments like making sure the screens are burned, or the inventories here, or the orders are organized and staged in advance. Are you working toward improving all of that as well?
Terry Keeven
Oh, yeah, yeah, we call anything that's not printing we call support staff. Yeah, we have several departments that are making sure that all of that is buttoned up. Well, in advance, we try to make sure that if we're going to print an order on Friday, the product is ready to go no later than Wednesday.
Marshall Atkinson
And do you reward your support staff in a similar fashion.
Terry Keeven
In the beginning, when we started this whole bonus structure, I wasn't sure how to bonus anybody outside of the printers, it's hard to track the efficiencies of, you know, our receiving department or our pre press department, that was a lot harder to track. Because it's like, we either have the screens ready or we don't or we have the product laid out or we don't. So that took a long time to figure out how to bonus them. But I over time, I realized I did need to do that. Because it was just creating issues where people felt like, you know, getting treated fairly, you know, every payroll week, we get paid every other week, we have a meeting, and I go over all the bonuses or raises are also based on production and hitting certain numbers. And so they can get a weekly raise with us as well, of 10 cents until they cap out at you know the top pay. So all the other stuff. We had a look at it and go How can we possibly bonus these people. So it's like for reclaim, okay, that was a tough one. So we don't have a dip tank. And we don't have an automatic Reclaimer we're still doing it the old school way with a power washer, and you know, putting the chemical on each screen. But it used to take two people to reclaim our screens, we go through probably about 200 to 300 screens a day. And even though our original Reclaimer, he's been with us for probably close to 10 years, he's solid. But to get the second one in there, it was hard, we were going through some serious turnover. And what we decided to do was, well, if we quit diluting our chemistry, so much like the manufacturer says, okay, 20 parts to one or whatever, let's dilute it last. And that way we can get more screens out, we'll be going through more chemistry, but we can get a lot more done. And my highest, my biggest expense is payroll not chemistry. And we realized by doing that, if the Reclaimer really worked his butt off, he could get just as much done by himself, as you know, with two people in there, but he had to really work at it. And so we bonus him based on I think his his or every week, that we don't have to send somebody in there to help him get caught up on screens. He gets a bonus, I think it's like $100 a week. So when I look at that, I'm like, man $100 a week. That's a pretty big notice every single week, just to do what you're supposed to be doing. But if I wasn't bonusing him that it would cost me, you know, four or 567 $100 a week to get somebody else in there. And then dealing with the headache of turnover and training and all that. So we found it's much better just to bonus the employees based on production, and what they're doing, versus hiring more employees. Before we started all this, we have 48 employees, and now we have it down to 42. So we're way more productive than we were before we started all these bonus programs. And I've talked to other shop owners and I explained to them how we're bonusing our staff and how we're doing it weekly and how some of these bonuses are up to $500 was a week. And they asked me How the heck can you possibly afford that. And the thing is, before I started doing this, I wasn't making near the money. And so if you think about it, if let's say because I'm going to bonus somebody, let's say $500, okay, well, for a printer to get a $500 bonus, they have to produce $1,000 more than what I actually need them for to produce. So they have to generate $5,000 a week. And out of that, I have to give them 500 of it, that's the deal I have. So by giving them 500, I just gained 4500. Now multiply that times my seven autos, and all of a sudden were wildly profitable. And morale is through the roof turnover is way less than it used to be. Because now every one of my employees are making really good money, people that used to make 40,000 a year now making 65,000 a year, that sort of thing. And you can see it in the difference in the cars, they drive. And they're buying homes now. And they quit taking the bus. Now, it used to be about a third of my staff all took the bus to work. Now there's only one guy left to take the bus. And he's one of the highest-paid guys here, he could afford a car, he says there's no need for him to have a car lives right up the road. So the way I see it is I can't afford not to pay these guys this way. But see, if he just said, Oh, well, I'm gonna pay my guys 25 or $30 an hour to do this sort of job, it doesn't work because they come to expect it. But if you say, hey, I'll give you a base of $20 an hour, but you can get up to $30 an hour, but you're gonna have to get it in the form of bonuses. And that way they're motivated day in and day out to produce, they're also less likely to call off work or come in late because they know that's going to offset their numbers. So that has been huge for us, our bonus structure has been huge.
Marshall Atkinson
So my last question here is about employee retention. It sounds like if you just, you know, you're paying people more, they're gonna be happier and everything. So we heard all about that. But what else are you doing? That's keeping your people around, and can't just be all about money, it has to be about other things. So what are you doing there in your shop?
Terry Keeven
Yeah, so you're right, it's not all about money. What kind of goes in hand in hand is like the benefits, you know, company match retirement, lots of vacation paid vacation time, the really good work hours, you know, seven to 330 versus the eight to five, the fact that we don't no, a lot of screen printing companies say oh, what are the mandatory overtime, we don't do any mandatory overtime, health insurance covering 100% of their health insurance, giving them a life insurance policy, it's really cheap, but it goes a long way with them. I just purchased the building that we're in. We've been in this building since 2009. And I just purchased it last year. So I finally had dumped a lot of money into this building. And we opened it up, we made it a lot cleaner, we painted and just made it so much nicer. Put in those big ass fans throughout the shop and keep it nice and cool. It's amazing. We finished that renovation in February of this year. And that probably song, when it's all said and done are probably gonna have about $400,000 in renovations under this place. But instantly, I saw a difference in productivity, just because we opened the place up gave him more space to work gave him somewhere where they can come to and be proud that they work there. They could walk their kids through the shop if they want to and say this is where your mom works. This is where your dad works. Whereas most screen printing companies you walk into, I mean, they're just gone. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And ours was that way too. I think that makes a big difference given them a nice environment to work in. And also our management style was very laid back here. Way as long as you're doing we're supposed to be doing and you're you're producing the numbers we need. There's nothing for us really to say to you. We have nothing to say except Good job. We don't belittle our people. We make it as much of a family environment style as we can. And it's easier to do when you're smaller. So for us, it's you know, only having 42 employees, it's a lot easier to do than, you know, big companies with hundreds or 1000s of employees.
Marshall Atkinson
So are you cross-training people in different departments?
Terry Keeven
Yeah, not everybody gets cross-training, but there are several people here who get cross-training. Another thing we do is we really only need 40 employees to completely like optimize our operation and run it at 100% but You know, I give 20 days off paid vacation a year, people are kind of used those days. So every single day, we're going to have people who are not here either scheduled off or they're all sick or whatever. So we actually over employee by two, and we just labeled them as floaters. And those are the people that are cross-trained. And then each day they come in, and they don't know what they're going to do, if they're just going to, you know, fill in for somebody who's not there. And so as the business owner is to look at that and see it on paper, it's a little frustrating, I go, man, I don't need these extra two bodies here. Pain, you know, but if you think about, if you had to shut the machine down 10 times a year, the revenue that you could have produced those 10 days will cover those two people all year,
Marshall Atkinson
you know, I'm a consultant, and I've been to shops for and one of their biggest problems is employee absenteeism. You had people just not show up or whatever, and they couldn't get a full crew. And it was a constant struggle in a battle. And usually, it was because of how they treat their employees and that type of stuff. And, and so I really appreciate the fact that you're working hard to keep a full crew, and you're getting people trained up. And so you have what you need every day. For the work that's scheduled. That's just fantastic.
Terry Keeven
Yeah. So everything I'm telling you is literally what we're doing. But we have our problems, too, you know, like today, you know, so we over employ by two people, right? Well, guess what, today, we were down by five, only allowing two people to take off on any given day. And then that way, we know we're covered. But guess what three people called off. So it's like, so today, we were definitely short-handed. But we also have supervisors that just go around and make sure you know, the shirts are looking the way they're supposed to that people aren't running with dwell times and things like that. So if we have to, those people can step in as well, today happen to be a day that we decided that wasn't going to be the case. So we were just down oppressor to today. But even with all that I found you'd think that with everything we're doing that every day, things would just go off without a hitch it would just be smooth. That is so rare. And everything just goes as planned and everything is smooth. Well, I
Marshall Atkinson
will. Thank you so much for sharing your story of success with us today, Terry. If someone wants to learn more about what you do, or how you can help them, what's the best way to contact you?
Terry Keeven
Email at terry@stlprintco.com.
Marshall Atkinson
Awesome. Well, hey, thank you so much. I really appreciate you.