Success Stories Ep 85 - "Upselling the Future"

You're in for a real treat on today's Success Stories podcast! Cole Lundstrom with LA-based ShirtAgency -- is on the show! Cole has been the driving force behind the success of this business since its inception in 2012. 

Want to know how great a shop Cole has? 

Well, brands like Bella + Canvas and NextLevel film their marketing videos in his shop;  so you could say the team at ShirtAgency does things the right way and you'd be correct. 

This episode will talk to Cole about his origins, evolving his sales efforts, podcasting, and how he is looking to make a better future by upselling. So grab a cup of coffee, kick back, and get ready to take some furious notes!

Transcript

Marshall Atkinson 
Okay, you're in for a real treat on today's Success Stories podcast, Cole Lundstrom, with LA-based t-shirt agency, is on the show. Cole has been the driving force behind the success of this business since its inception in 2012. Want to know how great a SHOP Cole has? Well, brands like Bella Canvas and Next Level filmed their marketing videos in his shop. So you could say the team at t-shirt agency does things the right way. And you'd be correct. And this episode will talk to Cole about his origins, evolving his sales efforts, podcasting and how he is looking to make a better future by upselling. So grab a cup of coffee, kick back and get ready to take some furious notes. So cool. Welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

Cole Lundstrom 
Yeah. Hi, Marshall. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to get into it. I know that you've been in the industry for so long, I'd probably like to get some tips and tricks out of YouTube during this episode.

Marshall Atkinson
I'm sure it's gonna come. I can't help it. It's like holding back to ocean Cole.

Cole Lundstrom 
Yeah, I know too much.

Marshall Atkinson 
But here's the thing. I know some stuff, but I'm always learning. Right. So like, it just never ends, you know. And I think that's the fun part of doing a podcast. And I know that you have one right, is learning from people? Because they've got a different experience. And that's the fun part of this stuff.

Cole Lundstrom 
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I started my podcast because I wanted to have one on one time with some of the best people in the industry. So it's just exciting to hear what people are doing. You'll hear one millionaire have the exact opposite opinion of another millionaire. And both of them are succeeding because they followed their own true path. It's really interesting to see how people do things. So I'm excited to talk with you today.

Marshall Atkinson 
Great, great. Awesome. So ready for some questions?

Cole Lundstrom 
Yep, hit me.

Marshall Atkinson 
Alright, so I always like to start the show with something, you know, that I'm really constantly curious about, which is how and why did you get into this crazy industry? Right. So give us you know, the origin story of Cole Lindstrom? Yeah,

Cole Lundstrom 
Yeah, so I was one of those kids in high school that actually learned in an ROP class. So we had these regional occupancy training programs. And we could take these classes. This one was called graphics. But it was essentially just a screen printing class. And after the first semester, I just took it again and again. And again. I ended up doing like five semesters of it. And after the first semester, the teacher would just let me do whatever project I wanted every day. So by the time I was 1718, I was like a pretty good manual screen printer. And then going into college, it was kind of the thing I knew how to do. That would make me 600 bucks without having like a normal job. So it's kind of started as like that hustling, manual screen printing origin story. After that, I moved into actual facility shops. I did one in Texas, and then I moved on to one in West LA, I ended up managing the one in West LA, I left to work for a brand because they wanted me to do all of their different fulfillment. And then they ended up firing me because they basically didn't actually have the budget to have my position. And so when I got fired, I had a whole chip on my shoulder and decided I never wanted a boss again. So that night at midnight, I bought t-shirt agency.com. And I've been doing t-shirt agency for about 11 years now.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's great. That's fantastic. And so when you started, like in school, right? Are you doing T shirts or flat stock or screen printing on a item, you know, like a padfolio or something? I mean, were you doing everything or just just apparel.

Cole Lundstrom 
We did learn other things to print and also because it was a high school the equipment was old. So like we had the huge cameras. We had to actually make the film before we then shot it on camera. We also had an AB dick 360. So we learned some of that. What's it called like the roll presses where you make the plate and then you fill the plate with the ink and you do that for like paper stock. But I personally ended up going mostly the t shirt route, especially once they left me alone to do whatever I wanted. I would just kind of decide I was going to make a weird design. And I would just start messing with it. Sometimes I'd spend a day or two just on a Ancient Macintosh trying to make it in like Photoshop one or Photoshop two. And then I would ultimately, like, print the shirt. And by the end like near senior year, I was like booking jobs for like the elementary school. Oh,

Marshall Atkinson 
wow, that's cool. And that's kind of like you got to entrepreneur blog a little bit, huh.

Cole Lundstrom 
I like projects, like I like finishing a task, if I can be in control of it. So if you say, you know, create something for me, and then you just walk away, I'll be a happy camper. And so it was kind of the perfect type of class for me where it was like, Hey, go ahead and just make things in this building. And they just gave me the space to do that for like, five semesters.

Marshall Atkinson 
So that's very interesting. And I know a lot of people who don't really get to where they want to go, because they haven't learned the skill of completing things. And so that a lot of people start stuff, right. Yeah, not everybody finishes things. And so if you learn to see things all the way through, I think that's a skill set that really helps you along the way. Regardless, if you own a business or not, it's just a really good habit, you know,

Cole Lundstrom 
yeah, I have a kind of a weird, I don't know, like a tension thing going on in my brain where if I decide I'm obsessed with something, I can do it for 1112 hours straight and ruin my whole day. And I can ignore other things I actually should be doing, and just kind of mindlessly pursue that one goal. And T shirts has always been something where like, I may not answer your email for five days. But if you booked an order, your order will absolutely be done. So it's like, there, I actually kind of procrastinate other parts of my life, by finishing things like a T shirt project, which is something I kind of want to balance more. But in the very beginning, it worked well, because if I had a seemingly, you know, impossible task ahead of me, I could just buckle down and get it done.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's interesting. I kind of have the same thing a little bit where I call it zoning out, right? And I'll you know, I'm an artist, I do watercolors and stuff, and in, but sometimes I'm just working on a spreadsheet or whatever, and I just get going with stuff. And then I've already worked through lunch, and now it's three o'clock and haven't eaten today. Yeah. You know, like, what happened? Where did the day go? And it's just crazy that sometimes that happens that all the time. But that's when you're just you're really super focused on stuff. But that's how you finish things. Right is just getting it done. Right. So that's all good.

Cole Lundstrom 
Yeah. Lately, I've been doing a lot of it with like, automations and AI and stuff. Because, yeah, I just kind of have decided I'm interested. And so all of a sudden, that's where I've been spending a ton of time. And by the end of it, I find out that I still don't love my results. But at least I learned a lot by trying. Well, I think

Marshall Atkinson 
it's the Yeah, the trying and the failing, and this doesn't work. And I need this and let me find this out. I can Google the thing, or I can talk to somebody and and this is how I think the the results that years down the road. Like how did that guy do that? Okay, happen years earlier, with lots of attempts and lots of failures and lots of struggles. And, you know, like just worming your way through, you know, successes. And as you know, you probably see that graph where it's not a straight line. It's like a crazy zigzaggy little thing that goes just all kind of like looks like a doodle. Because that's what it's really like is trying things and learning and didn't work and like, you know, whatever. And then you add on to that success that you had each week and you make it better. And that's the fun part of whatever you're doing, I think, and especially this industry.

Cole Lundstrom 
Yeah, absolutely. It's, it is kind of a wild ride. And there's been so many points where I'm like, I'm a complete idiot, I need a normal job. Why am I doing this? And then I talk to people that are in corporate, and they say, you know, like, Oh, I wish I actually had my own thing. I wish I controlled my own thing. And so it might just be a grass is always greener on the other side type of thing. But in those times when I kind of like feel like I'm doing a terrible job. I just kind of focus on a new project. So yeah, our our website will get redone practically every year or so mainly because it's slow. There's not enough sales. And so I decided it's because our website sucks and then I just spend the week you know, improving and tweaking and changing and redesigning So yeah, it's it's kind of a way to distract me from feeling like I'm not successful. So I just kind of overwork in those situations. Right.

Marshall Atkinson 
Okay, cool. All right. So I think let's get into the kind of evolve a little bit, right. So, you know, your business has evolved since you've been doing things 11 years ago, right when your customer base. And I think we're always searching for a better client, we're always searching for more profit. We're always chasing that, right? So talk about how you pushed your thinking about who your customers are, and maybe how you serve them, right? And what's the best fit for alignment between you know, your customers that you're going after, and your main core service agency that you want to build?

Cole Lundstrom 
Yeah, I think as things have gone on, more and more, I've wanted to talk to less people, but make more shirts. So in the beginning, I wanted to get anyone and everyone and I thought that hitting up the local Italian restaurant and doing 50 shirts for them was what I was supposed to be doing. But now we've evolved or we're focusing more on partnering with like marketing agencies, corporations, larger scale businesses, and then having them be able to not only know that they can have us printed, but also know that we can help them design and help them create additional promotional products. So I like having, you know, one or two people inside of a marketing agency lien on me for a ton of projects, instead of going out now and trying to find a bunch of tiny projects that I'm supposed to explain to each new customer how we work. So more and more, that's what I've been trying to focus on is like people that need a lot of work with us, because they already have their own clients or because they're a larger business. And not necessarily me having to deal with 90 or 100 unique clients in any given month.

Marshall Atkinson 
I like to I like the idea of partnering with people. I like the idea of innovating and collaborating with people, and especially if you're working with people who are creative anyway, they might not know the decoration end of it, I can't tell you how many crazy things I've had to like help ad agencies with because they want stuff that's impossible to build on our t-shirt and yours. Okay, we can't do this. But here's how it could work. And kind of helping people kind of understand the medium a little better, about what's possible or what's possible, then, you know, their framework of what they want to pay, obviously. Right. And, and that's really good. In fact, on our the last Shirt Lab that we had, you know, Jay buzz Sal did this great presentation. I don't know if you know, Jay or not, but he's, he's a genius, right? He did this whole thing about inventing what he called a Collaboratory. Right, which is, which is you developing something with somebody else to get a different result that would never exist before, right? And I love that idea with what you're doing, where you're working with a marketing agency who has customers that they have to serve, and they're always looking for unique spin on things do you do you have a project or something that you've done that maybe you can talk about or share?

Cole Lundstrom 
I mean, we've done a ton of stuff, specifically with Hyundai because of their marketing agency, which is called in ocean. And so we'll do anything from uniform jackets that are fairly boring to helping them create, you know, napkins and sublimated koozies and different giveaway promotional products that we can add on besides just doing custom apparel with them. And so then basically coming and saying, Hey, we're trying to spend $7 ahead, in promotional spend. And then me being like, well, this is something we haven't done, this is something we haven't done. That's kind of what that relationship looks like, as opposed to what they would do with their other vendors, which is they came up with an idea like a giveaway mug, and they're hoping that they can kind of come up with a way to make it unique. Whereas I'm like, you know, let me spit ball and give you 10 ideas, and try to make these promotional products, or these custom apparel products different than what you've already done 100 times.

Marshall Atkinson 
Now, how do you take that idea was how you decorate it, how you use it, or I don't know, whatever, right? And because it worked here, of course you can use it with another customer. And of course, it's gonna be a different project, different decoration, but because you figured it out. You've done all the legwork, you know that it's going to work because look, look, they're successful with it. Do you take that and you sell it to other customers?

Cole Lundstrom 
Yeah, I mean, the thing that I think has probably been the best example of that has been live printing because we I've been refining live printing since about 2017. And as we do interesting, difficult versions of it, for example, we did Adobe MAX the last year and we actually brought DTG is on site and did completely custom items for every single person. And it was a nightmare. But once we kind of figured that out, we were able to figure out pricing and offer that in something that is actually like a package that we can present to other people. And so we're able to expand our live printing besides just standing in the corner with a one color manual. And now we've gotten into a lot of heat pressing and some sublimation live. And it allows us to feel different than just somebody who is going to show up with a one color screen.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's great. That's great. So and what's the when you do a live printing thing? Or, you know, what's the response with people? Why? Because, you know, I think that's always kind of interesting. And you see a lot of people really wanting to get into that. So like, like, what's this little secret sauce? So making those folks that are there have a better experience?

Cole Lundstrom 
Well, I think one mistake that I see what other print shops getting into live printing, as they feel like they're getting an opportunity to like market their business. And so they don't charge or maybe they try to charge for the individual products and whatever sells sells, what we've really done is focused on going directly to corporations and saying we're going to have your promotional event be successful for you. And we're going to manage that side of it. So instead of us ending up at like a local event and hoping people buy 20, or 50 shirts, and we get a cut of each shirt, we're going to events with Hyundai or Live Nation or Adobe. And we're saying listen, we're going to show up with 1000 shirts, and we're going to go until 1000 shirts have been given away. And you're going to be filling out these live lead forms with the clients in exchange for the free product. And for us, it's kind of about building a line and having people feel like it's exciting and then made on the spot. So we kind of put together this show element to it, where we're not just handing out a white t shirt, we're making your T shirt, you're choosing your design, it's an experience. And the marketing teams absolutely love taking photos of their booth, having 80 people in line in the booth next to it having one or two people milling around. So creating that kind of like excitement is more important than just your ability to do it, your ability to do it is the bare minimum.

Marshall Atkinson 
Wow, that's great. I love that. I love that. And and I love that you're you're experimenting and your your willingness to get out there. And let's do this once and then we refine it and make it work. And I think sometimes you just got to take the risk, right? And the phrase I use all the time is you must be present to win, right? You got to be there, you got to do it. Right. You're not going to you're not going to have victory from your office chair a lot of times. Yeah,

Cole Lundstrom 
it's true. And you know, the kings of we're not the kings of live printing, family industries, and then barrel maker just do massive amounts of this kind of work. And Justin, specifically at barrel maker, he will just straight up lose money to reach new markets, he'll buy equipment he'll have the equipment cost more than the actual event. But for him, it's about breaking through into new markets and having those opportunities open up and be repeated in the future. And we've definitely had those kinds of situations where like, we might have a client who's paying $50,000 For a large multi day event. But at the end of the day, sometimes those events aren't technically worth it. But as the relationship continues long term, you will be making money but that first event, a $50,000 spend, like maybe you're only keeping 10% of it or something because you're pushing the event as far as you possibly can to make sure everybody likes it. And it's something that almost no other company in America is offering.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right? And are you looking at like your cost of acquisition for your customers? Is that something that you're looking and tracking when you're thinking about this type of stuff?

Cole Lundstrom 
I mean, my cost per acquisition is fairly low. And thankfully we have good SEO, because we were talking about live printing in like 2017 and also because of my podcast, talking about live printing, and also always having my URL in it. Our search engine for live printing is almost always page one of Google. And then I probably spend like two grand or so on Google search. So if somebody is blatantly searching, live printing, especially in southern California, there's like a 5050 chance they're going to see my ad Mmm. And there's not that much competition. Family industries, is probably the most dominant in Southern California. And they don't really do like Google search ads, they just have a really great sales team who's directly reaching out to people. Whereas I am a little bit more at the mercy of people finding me. But it also means I don't have those big office salaries that someone like family Industries has. Right,

Marshall Atkinson 
right. And you just strictly California. No,

Cole Lundstrom 
we've been flown all over I go to Miami every single year. It's gotten to probably 30 states or so for live printing, and we'll send staff also if I'm not the one going. I like traveling. So a lot of times I go on the trips, but yeah, DC, Miami, New York a ton of times. There's just not that many people who are local that the corporate people trust. There might be people capable of doing it. But they're not speaking the language the corporate people want to hear.

Marshall Atkinson 
Ah, there we go. Alright, so speaking of speaking the language, right? You have to, you have to learn that right? So I'm a big believer in education, right? Whether from experimentation, videos, books, classes, right. So think should always be trying to fit some new nugget of information in your head, right? So call, how do you learn? And more importantly, how are you putting whatever that is into actual practice where you get, you're getting a benefit of that effort?

Cole Lundstrom 
I mean, there's a few ways I learned I would say that the podcast was created selfishly, to have me have one on one conversations.

Marshall Atkinson 
We'll talk about that real quick. Because maybe people don't know you have your own podcast.

Cole Lundstrom 
Yeah, building your T shirt empire. I started in like 2016. And three or four episodes in, I booked Danny Harris from Bella canvas. And that was the whole reason I started the podcast, I was like, if I can talk a few people I already know like Ryan more into coming on, then I can tell Bella that we have real guests. And then Bella is gonna let me sit down with Danny for 90 minutes. And so that was my whole thing. I was like one of the only people I know in the industry who might actually become a billionaire. I want to talk to him. And so that was kind of the initial idea with the podcast was, how do I talk to people? How do they give me time when they basically you can't even pay some of these people for their time. And so it's been really interesting to talk to people, and learn from them directly in those conversations. And then besides that trade shows are really important. People try to pretend that you can learn everything on YouTube. But it's amazing what you can learn during one of those mixer hours, just walking around talking to people, people will just casually give you an idea you'd hadn't even thought of they'll have opinions on equipment that you never, ever would have heard in any certain any sort of online marketing, and those relationships that you build up being able to text them and say, Hey, I'm in a bind. How did you do this? How do you do that, that ends up educating you more than almost anything else. I definitely will watch YouTube and stuff like that to learn new skills. But nothing comes close to those relationships you built in the trade shows and then leaning on those people over the years.

Marshall Atkinson 
Like what you hear so far, be sure to subscribe so you can get the latest from Success Stories. And now here's Zach shortly with the SMS spotlight. Trying

Marshall Atkinson 
So I love the tradeshow thing and I've I get it a lot of times. And I have kind of a trade show strategy where I try to have breakfast, lunch and dinner with different people, you know, be there for multiple days right and breakfast, lunch and dinner with different people. And it's intense conversations about things and I was like trying to get with people I haven't met yet if I can, right it's always good to hang out with your people you know, because that's all always hilarious fun, right? Yeah, it's but it's always good to meet new people. And here's the interesting thing about trade shows is, you know, only about 10% or so of the, this industry attends a trade show. And then most people only go about every three years or so maybe five years, sometimes in some cases. So that's a whole bunch of people not attending these things. Yeah, it's really interesting to me, because, you know, there's regional shows, of course, you know, there's bigger ones and other ones and, and, and there's three reasons I think that people go to trade shows, right? There's the new gizmo, right. It's, it's the new consumable, the anchor, whatever thread, but there's new shirts, there's new equipment, there's all that kind of stuff, what's the new thing, that's why people are going, there's also the social aspect, which is one of my favorite things is hanging out with people who are just like you, but they just live somewhere else. Right? That's always kind of cool. And then, of course, there's the educational track, which are classes. I know, you teach classes, I've been teaching classes forever, right? And, and that's always a lot of fun. And of course, some of that gets combined, right? So you have you know, you have a class and there's always time before the class starts and client time the class ends, and just sitting around with people you're hanging out with in the class and just saying, Hey, let's go, let's go get a cup of coffee after this, or whatever. And that's how you meet new people. And a lot of people have done that over the years. And and I think that really adds a lot to the industry. Because there's somebody like you're listening to this right now. You're struggling with something. There's somebody right now who just solved whatever that is for you. You know, and are you going to meet them? That's Are you open for the opportunity. And here's the thing that I think a lot of people struggle with call raising their hand and saying, I don't know something. And I think and here's the other thing, this industry is made up of a lot of guys, you know, and I think we're like 6040, maybe 7030? men, the women, right? Oh, yeah. And guys can't say I don't know something.

Cole Lundstrom 
Okay, want to look like pros, they

Marshall Atkinson 
want to look like pros, they want to know, they know how to do stuff. And I think the women have such a greater advantage, because they'll just go, Hey, how'd you do that? Strip night. And and I love to see what's going on with the women in print and the printer mafia and all that stuff. They're slowly just taking over the whole industry is because they have, they have no fear about saying, Hey, I don't know how to do that. Oh, can you show me Hey, let's partner let's do something. Right. They do that all the time. And it's that they're a little tribe. And I think that's really great. You know? So like, like, thinking back some of the relationships that you've built, right? Just going to trade shows? Is there one or two that stands out to you like, Man, I wouldn't have done it if except for that.

Cole Lundstrom 
Ah, there's so many of those. It's kind of incredible. Like, the thing about a trade show is everyone is waiting for you to walk up to them and talk to you. So when you walk up to a booth, and you ask, like, oh, how much is this new shirt gonna be per case? It's like, Yeah, they'll answer that question, but you're not really getting in there. But I've had the experience of walking up to some of these brands like Bella Canvas in the past, or next level or Bayside. And I already know pretty much how I can get all their products. I don't necessarily have to go touch them in person. But if I can walk up to them and be like, Hey, can we do private classes with you? Hey, can we do specifically like marketing campaigns or videos with you? Can we partner in some way? And those sorts of conversations are actually wildly rare? Because most people don't have the guts to just walk up and just pitch something. If you're telling someone like hey, can I make content with you that is gonna cost you basically nothing but your time, and hopefully is better than what you're currently doing. They're thrilled to start playing ball. Gavin taught me a lot about trade shows. Because Gavin when he was starting his shop, he would go to so many trade shows he wasn't even selling anything yet. He was just meeting as many people as humanly possible, and then just asking to do stuff with them as quickly as he could. So he ended up being a part of that all made crew and he ended up knowing pretty much everybody at like rock Ryan at the people at like next level. And it's just because he puts himself out there. And back then he was running a like I think he had one employee. He had an auto he was outside of Miami. He wasn't a big shop at all. And these people running multimillion or even like billion dollar companies would give him time no one personally give them their cell phones. And it was all about the fact that Gavin put himself out there a ton. And more and more, I feel like that's the real secret is, you don't go to a trade show to shop and get talked into buying a piece of equipment, that's fine. And there'll be years where you need equipment, and you will do that. But it really is about like, having these people in your Rolodex that you can either reach out to for projects or reach out to to learn something, or even just have a job when you fail. Like if I fail and shut down t-shirt agency, I'm not going to be on LinkedIn, I'm going to have 35 people that I can call and be like, so what do you pay? You know, so it's, it's about having real connections with humans, and you got to put yourself out there.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, it's funny that you mentioned the word Rolodex, there's people right now going what is what does that word mean? You know, and it's, it's funny, you mentioned gather, you know, Gavin's probably one of the nicest people. If you haven't met Gavin. You need to meet him with subs.io. He's just one of the most genuine, sincere, awesome people I think this industry has. Yeah, I met him in 2018. At red X in the first one that was in Palm Springs at breakfast, right. And it's one of my favorite stories, actually, because he was sitting next to me at breakfast. Tom was sitting on my left and Gavin was sitting on what Tom rauen was sitting on my left. Gavin sitting on my right. And I introduced myself, we sat down at breakfast, and he hands me the smallest tiniest business card I've ever seen in my life. I mean, it's this thing is like a big as like a mailing label, you might put on an envelope. I mean, it's this tiny little thing. And I talked about that business card, I don't know yet for years, because it was the most memorable thing. And he talked about his, you know, t-shirt company was called proud shirts. Right? And, and what he was doing with it. And of course, now he's doing SEPs, and he's a sponsor of Shirt Lab, and he's got all this great stuff. And, you know, it's just really great to see that guy evolve over the over time. Right? And I think it's because it is natural curiosity is really what's driving. And of course, you know, this kind of question topic is about education. And I think whether that's me or you, or Gavin or anybody, right, that's what really is a driver of success is to be naturally curious about how does that work? And who can help me and what should I be doing? And what should I stop doing? Right. And and I think that is just a cornerstone of a lot of this. Right? I know, it has been for me, I'm sure. Probably for you too, don't you think? Yeah. I

Cole Lundstrom 
mean, I think in this industry, there's so many people in the industry that you look at them. And being in other shops, I saw this happen to some of my bosses, where they were just like, it's worked for 10 years, and it's gonna work for another 10 years. And they thought everything new was a waste of time. I remember having a very legitimate argument where I was getting mad at the table with my boss, because he was positive Google search ads in 2008. Were a horrible investment. And nobody's looking for you that way. We all have phone books, and I'm like, it is 2008 2009. How are we having this conversation? And, man, if we had been doing those ads back then they were pennies on the dollar compared to what they are now. Now it clicked cost you $2.50 or something? Back then he was arguing that was a waste of time to have an eight cent click cost. Yes, like man, you could have, you could have had 1620 Autos running the way that you had this opportunity sitting in front of you. And t-shirt agency. When I started it. About a year and a half later, I would spend like $50 a month on Google search ads, just because I was one of the only print shops that thought it was a good idea to like, make the internet be something that mattered to me. And so that's why my Google Search Engine Optimization today works so well, is I actually beat these people that had been in business 1520 years to the punch just because they thought everything new didn't matter. And they thought they had it figured out. So like sleeping and staying static, really can undermine you in the long term. So you got to keep changing and flowing and evolving. And that's why I've gotten so much into this AI stuff. I'm like, I want to at least see what's going to replace me coming. I don't want to assume that it's not going to happen. You're speaking

Marshall Atkinson 
my language call We can go down that tangent, but let's not let's let's focus on this education part. And I think, yeah, you're absolutely true. And there's I met these people, I meet them all the time where they're, you know, it's like they're stuck in whatever decade they're in, right. And they think everything is the same. And it's not. And it's because there's new fabrics every year, there's new consumables every year, there's new decoration techniques every year, there's new ways to sell. There's new ways, there's software, there's, there's all these new tools that are constantly evolving, it is because the companies that make this stuff, they're just not sitting around, you know, with a Mai Tai and a lawn chair going, Hey, we got to good, we don't have to do anything. They're trying to earn more market share and do things better. And they're constantly evolving and everything. And they want to take you along for the journey and improve your business. And I think if you're not out there looking for that stuff, you don't know, the new line of colors for this one brand, or and you don't understand how to do online stores, or how to do DTF, or, you know, the benefits of anything, right. And we can name anything and talk about it for a while. But if you don't really start literally thinking about that. And more importantly, understanding how that can affect your customer, your relationship with your customer, and then what they're looking for, or maybe they don't even know that they need it. But when you present it to them, it's like it's the best thing they've ever seen in your life. And you're the champion, right is because you're bringing them the idea, and they're going oh my god, this is the coolest thing ever. Right? If you're not doing that on a regular basis, because you're still trying to print like you did in 1987. Right? You're you're just not going to win, right? It's just not going to happen. So,

Cole Lundstrom 
yeah. Yeah, I mean, I love when my customers just come to me. And they're like, we know we need 250 shirts, you're the professional, whenever they say you're the professional, I'm like, great, they actually believe in what we do. They believe that we do a good job, they believe that our end product is exciting. They think that we know trends. And all of a sudden, we can suggest blanks, we can suggest printing methods, we can suggest pretty much anything we think will give them the right result. And it's because we're not presenting, hey, we want to do the cheapest printing possible. And, you know, this guy is in here sweating it out every day. And you know, tell me what you want me to do. Whenever you you want people to tell you what to do, you're basically becoming their employee, instead of offering them a service,

Marshall Atkinson 
right? Here's the thing with that, right? When that happens, they're appreciating your value, that's the value you bring to the table, your creativity, your expertise, your skill, you know, your, your whole your the whole body of work that you have, they appreciate that. And they value it and they'll pay for it, as opposed to commodity pricing, which is I'm selling income cotton. And so when you start the conversation in sales, somebody says, hey, I need some shirt for a thing. And you go, Hey, how many and what how many colors you want, right? You've already lost? Right? There's no way that you're ever going to get a higher value price for that. Because you're not trying to diagnose the problem. And you know, instead of saying that, you know, the proper thing to say is, Well, hey, how are you using the shirts? Where's the shirt where the shirts for? Yeah, right, and then starting the conversation with the outcome and the end result that they're trying to achieve? And then having a whole conversation based on value and not based on it's just the lowball price, you know, ever. There's always an idiot that's going to do it cheaper than you. We're not going that route. In fact, we don't even want you as a customer. That's not what we do here.

Cole Lundstrom 
Right? Yeah, I this one friend of mine Sam's I don't know if he wants me to say his shop or not, because I don't know. But anyway, Sam. He his growth in last two years has been absolutely phenomenal. I would say he was probably close to 2 million before and now he's north of 14 million gross in two years. And the reason he did it is he basically had no conversations with anyone about price. And what he did was he was like we are a merch management solution. So you're going to have your art created by us you We're going to have your inventory on your tour managed by us, you're going to have your ecommerce managed by us, you're not even going to place orders with us, we're just going to tell you how much you made at different events. And that sort of like full package solution where he's fixing the problems for his customers, and he's doing so much more than being a printer allows him to charge quite a bit. I mean, if he does a 6000 unit run, so many guys out there would be like, Oh, I'll print it for 89 cents aside or whatever, because they're so excited about just doing, you know, 10 grand in an order. But Sam, he'll charge $2.75 aside, he won't even blink about the price, he'll have a margin on the blank. And then he probably will have some sort of cut of the sales at the actual booth that they're doing on their tour. So by the time it's all said and done, he's bringing in four or five times what a cheap shop would have charged for the same job. But his customers love him more than they would ever love dealing with one of those cheap shops. And it's it's about going above and beyond. And it's about solving problems that your customer doesn't even know they have yet. Yeah. Right.

Marshall Atkinson 
Is it's the end result is the experience is the it's that whole value thing that people really appreciate. And that's what they're looking for. And but here's the thing, there are so many customers out there that aren't, they'll never do that. Right? Is the fact that he knows who he's going after, right? He's not trying to sell to everybody. He's being very specific about the direction, right. And I think that's what a lot of people miss in this industry is they get hung up with, you know, just posting on Facebook as a quote, it's the thing I gotta do, I gotta, the only people I can sell to is my high school, right or whatever, right? And they get so you know, that whole Blue Ocean Strategy thing, they're going after that red water meat that's sitting there that everybody's trying to get? They don't understand there's a better way of doing it somewhere else. Just better customers are out there. You just gotta look for him.

Cole Lundstrom 
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like in our area, because we moved to Huntington Beach out of Los Angeles. And on our street, there's five print shops, I'm actually probably the smallest one. Next door to us is like ink, right? Graphic ink is down the street. Coach's choice. These are all very successful shops. Not one of us does the local high school, not one of us. And the local high school, I can throw rocks at it. It's so close. And every single one of us has never even reached out to them. Because it's just not what any of us are focused on. None of us are threatened by each other. And none of us feel like we're competing. Because one guy is doing stuff for Quicksilver another guy's doing stuff for, you know, team uniforms across the nation. We're doing stuff for marketing agencies, even though you can literally park your car at my place and talk to five other people without driving anywhere. You're not going to shop or price compare amongst us because we're all focusing on a specific service and a specific client. We're not just a string of cheap printers, like we used to see in Los Angeles and Los Angeles, we had people who would walk across the street and be like, can you beat this person? They want to do it for 90 cents. And it's like, I'm not competing with him. It's not about this street. It's about finding the right client.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right? That's perfect. Perfect, perfect. All right. Last question. One of the things that, you know, I'm constantly reminding my coaching customers about is upselling. It's like my big thing lately, right? And I call it the Would you like fries with that move? Right? So it's like you when you go into a restaurant, how many the waitstaff always asked you, Hey, would you like dessert? You know? It's because it's adding more to the ticket. Right? So looking ahead into this year and beyond, right? So cool. What moves are you making to upsell customers to drive that average order revenue up? Right? Where are you? What are you thinking about?

Cole Lundstrom 
So I mean, we already tried to recommend other custom apparel to people. So adding hats, adding like hoodies, or polos for the management, that kind of a thing. And we've done that for quite a while. But in the last seven months or so, we've blatantly decided that we're going to purposely sell promotional items. And so we're using things like ppi and ASI to find good qualified promotional products, companies that we can actually read reviews on. We can have contract pricing upfront, so we already know what to charge our customer without contacting those companies. And it means that I can tell somebody like a Hyundai. Hey, of course I can do your jackets. I've been doing it for years. But why don't we do notebooks Why don't we do battery packs? Why don't we do USBs? Why don't we do yetis? And that has really been something that's been noticeable this year, we've probably done. I don't know, I think we're north of 100k. Now since we started offering promo products, and that's just been revenue we never ever went after before. And so in 2020, for pushing that more and more, I mean, I still don't even publicly market the promotional items. I've basically just been doing it in phone calls with existing clients. But as we move on, and 2020 for doing that kind of marketing blasts for the promotional products, I mean, if I can keep 30 40% of a promotional product sale, and do no labor, why shouldn't I book those all the time? And being in Southern California, there's a lot of those guys that are down the street from us. So we can make these partnerships pretty easily. And just start feeding them wait, why like weekly work?

Marshall Atkinson 
And are you getting samples man? See, you can see the print quality or the whatever, right, so you get the actual product. So you know that how they operate, how their customer services they shipped on time. The the final product, you know, is what it's supposed to be. Are you doing?

Cole Lundstrom 
I'd like to say yes, but I'm not. A lot of these have been event based. So I've been working with people that already have good reputations, they have like a long list of like inside of the ESP portal, if you've used ASI before, there is review systems you can read from other people who are contracted into them their experience. And then besides that I get on the phone and actually talk to them, I don't just send in, you know, an anonymous order form. And lately, one of the companies that we've liked the most is in Garden Grove, and they're called Evans manufacturing. And we've done three or four projects with them. And basically, any single item that we send to get made by them, just turns out beautiful. So more and more, I'll kind of know who I like the most and feed them work. But I have been trusting the reviews and stuff on the ESP portal quite a bit, and I haven't been burned yet. If I had a really long turnaround time, maybe that would be different. But especially with events, there's people calling me saying you know, the event is in six days. We want t shirts, we want Yeti mugs, we want blah, blah, blah. And so I can't wait to have a sample created, then have the customer approve it then end up starting the run. I mean, that would take all the time. How

Marshall Atkinson 
is this a sample to see that companies work? Not necessarily for an order? Yeah.

Cole Lundstrom 
They they've given me samples, I now have samples on my front room of random stuff they've done in the past. But yeah, I kind of move fast when I land an order because most of them are event based. So we have a lot of tight turnaround times. Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
Cool. All right, man. Well, the good stuff today really appreciate you spending some time on the show. Yeah, so what is the best way to contact you as someone who wants to learn more about you or what you do? And please share how to listen to your podcast? Sure. So

Cole Lundstrom 
there's a lot of ways to find us, the easiest thing is t-shirt agency.com. You know, you could hit us up through an order form. I'm fairly active on like social media and stuff. So there's at t-shirt agency, there's at cole L, which is my personal one. The podcast is building your T shirt empire, it shows up very easily in Google. I think if you just search t shirt podcast, it should probably be somewhere on the front page even. And then besides that, we have the Instagram for building your T shirt Empire, which is just AT T shirt empire. And so we're posting clips and stuff to that. And then in 2024 We're actually going to be doing some stuff with impressions. So you'll ultimately be seeing us on the impressions website as we help them with some weekly news blasts. Awesome.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, thanks. Cool. Appreciate you money.

Cole Lundstrom 
Yeah, thanks for having me on. It was fun.