Success Stories Ep 49 - "The Brothers Print"

Let’s say you have a family-owned shop that has been around for over 43 years. You’ve gone from the early founding and startup years to the mega national music touring years, to the contract printing (Custom Ink) years, post-contract printing, COVID, and now a whole new era for your company.

That’s what we’re going to discuss on today’s Success Stories podcast.  Will and Jackson Kulick are brothers, that operate Blue Ridge Graphics in Charlottesville, Virginia.  We will hear all about those stories and more on this episode of the Success Stories podcast.

So, buckle up and get ready to hear how one shop has grown and found over four decades of success!

Transcript

Marshall Atkinson 
Welcome to Success Stories brought to you by S&S activewear. I'm your host, Marshall Atkinson. And this is the podcast that focuses on what's working so you can have success too. Let's say you have a family owned shop that's been around for over 43 years, you've gone from the early founding and startup years to the mega national music touring years to the contract printing custom ink years post contract printing COVID. And now a whole new era for your company. That's what we're going to discuss today on today's Success Stories podcast. Will and Jackson Kulik are brothers that operate Blue Ridge graphics in Charlottesville, Virginia. We'll hear all about these stories and more on this episode of the Success Stories podcast. So buckle up and get ready to hear how one shop has grown and found over four decades of success. So Will and Jackson, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

Will Kulik 
Thank you, Marshall. It's very nice to be here. We appreciate it. Yeah, thanks, Marshall.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, I can't wait to dig into some stuff and known you guys for a couple years. And I think this is gonna be a dynamite show. And I can't wait to dig in.

Will Kulik 
Is it okay, if we say we're starstruck?

Marshall Atkinson  
You're not starstruck. All right. So you're ready for the first question? Yes, sir. Yep. All right. So we'll let's start where all good things begin with your origin story. Take us back to the roots of Blue Ridge graphics.

Will Kulik 
Sure, I'd be happy to. So Blue Ridge graphics is our family's t shirt printing business. It was started by our father, John Kulik, back in 1979. And so we're a second generation screenprint shop where Jackson and myself are running it now. But it started because through I think, really his appreciation of and interest in the arts and things like that, you know, the family story is is that he graduated from UVA, with a art history major. And after that being an art history major needed to find a job have something to do. So was, you know, not doing so well trying to make it as a waiter at Florida where they were living at the time, our parents, like we've heard on a lot of other stories, took a class, this was a community college class on screen printing, and just really, really enjoyed it. And so after they came back up to Virginia, he continued on with this and the company really got its going got its start when they posted a t shirt advertisement in the back of a Organic Gardening magazine in the 70s. You know, in the t-shirt was we still actually have the shirt hanging on our wall. It was the sunflowers as garden organically garden naturally. And they did a male in posting and the success from that said, Hey, we can print t shirts.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's like the 1970s hippie thing, I think you bet

Will Kulik 
it was he was printing in his artists, friends, you know, his artists rent studio, they were doing the whole, like carrying the T shirts in the oven in the kitchen, you know, the whole nine yards. And so it started from that started from that T shirt, you know, being able to sell some shirts out of a you know, again and gardening magazine in the 70s. Right, I mean, pretty classic. And from that led to starting a full fledged screenprint business in Charlottesville went from a you know, a back alley, little setup to multiple locations that we've been in Charlottesville to our present day now.

Marshall Atkinson 
And so now so Jackson, describe your space now and what you guys do.

Jackson Kulik 
Yeah, I mean, just to add in there that our father also not inspired by Andy Warhol himself, but loved the you know, he loved art, love pop art, he loved screen printing was coming to the forefront of the art and, you know, his appreciation for the artistic elements, screen printing, you know, remains that's kind of like a part of the identity of the company, that we have that appreciation for the art, and he's retired now. But even when he was still walking around the print shop and not functioning as a general manager, you know, he would stop the press and comment on their angles and their pressures and make sure that really everybody understood that there is an art element to what we do. So we're you know, we were fortunate to kind of have that as a part of our foundation.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. So talk about you know, where you are now, like, you just described your shop.

Jackson Kulik 
Yep. So we're still in Charlottesville. We have around 20 employees, a little bit less post COVID than what we had four. We run two autos and we have to six head embroidery machines, purchased our uncle's embroidery company from him in November 2020. So we've added that as a much stronger piece of what we do. And yeah, we used to run two shifts. I mean, we've kind of done all a variety of things when it comes to personnel and layout, but I would say what was it four or five years ago, we did a remodel, knocked out some walls and have kind of a shoebox building. It's like, it's really narrow and long. So it's almost like one of those Richard scary books, when you chop the building in half, you know, every department is like, has this really interesting section of the building? And yeah, after we did the remodel four or five years ago, we were able to upgrade our automatic presses. And we've kind of proven with a couple of different events that we have the ability to print, basically, however large orders we want to print, we're not really limited by space. And when it comes to capacity, that's good.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's good. And being an artist, did you guys get into flat stock posters and or other types of art creation?

Will Kulik 
We did? Yeah, you know, growing up in the business, right. I mean, I spent some time in the flat stock back when we were doing more of that, and back in the 90s. And so a few for a while Charlottesville had some Hollywood movies coming through it. So we were printing up posters for from various movies in and around town, still hanging on our wall is a 1982 Grateful Dead poster that we printed when the dead came to UVA, and we printed it for the organization that was putting it on. So we definitely have have some roots in the flat stock as well, we still have our drying racks. And you know, it's actually, you know, a pipe dream of mine saying, because of the art aspect of that is oh, you know, we ever wanted to get back into it, you know, kind of holding on to that type of equipment.

Marshall Atkinson 
So it must be kind of fun to realize that you've guys grew up in this business and you're doing your basically your whole lives. And you're still doing

Will Kulik 
it is and you know, and then I'll adapt and answer this also, I mean, the really nice thing is this is that we grew up in the business. And so you know, kind of a funny thing, teachers have always kind of been a part of our lives. But there was never a pressure there to come on board. I was a middle school teacher for a couple years after college, that's when I got my masters. And so I went off and taught for a few years. And then you know, we all kind of recognized that our Father was kind of getting to the end of his professional life in terms of wanting to do new things. And so just basically, we started having the conversations on our own, you know, in our own families at this point of, is this something that we actually want to go back and take a look at again, I mean, we knew it always had good experiences with it always was on the print side, you know, always we were always catching T shirts, or, you know, we were always one of the production crew versus anything else and realized, hey, not everybody has an opportunity to walk back into a family business that's still doing really well, you know, it's it's a pretty great opportunity. Maybe we should see how it goes. And so that's what we did. Super happy about it. Yeah, I think the lack of pressure that we'll mentioned, is that key piece, kind of the intergenerational component of our business, and probably a lot of businesses. I mean, lo and I each have a bundle of kids. And one of the things that I know, we are not going to do is apply pressure on our kids to take over the company, I have a lot of empathy for people that have been put in that position. I can imagine that's really hard. But yeah, we're basically, you know, we're perpetually always going to be very grateful that our parents didn't try to project that on us and pressure us to take on the business just happened very organic.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, but I bet your kids look at t shirts all the time. Like I have a son, his name is Jack, and he's just being around me. He goes, Dad, look at that this registration. You know, stuff like that. And he goes, Hey, I just got this cool shirt. And he ordered from his favorite band is like, look, it's a transfer. You know, he just knows this stuff. Because it's like, osmosis, it seeps into their heads.

Will Kulik 
Oh, you know, we haven't gotten to the registration question. We haven't had the registration conversation with our kids yet. But you know, I hear at least my kids, you know, they talk about how are we gonna fit all the cousins in Blue Ridge graphics, like that's a lot of people like, you know, so they have the conversations on their own and like, you know, it's, it's a part of their world as well. It's just, you know, kind of from the 10 and 12 year old perspective of,

Marshall Atkinson 
yeah, one of my proudest moments was he got something from his school, and he showed it in my wife is in graphics also and showed it to us and goes, Look at this. They use three fonts on this. All right, anyway, so Jackson, one of the fun things about your shop is that you are entrenched in the music scene with tour shirts. So I think a lot of shops out there, they do stuff for bands and local bands, but you're kind of more on the national scene. So talk about what that's like and maybe a story or two about working with a particular artist.

Jackson Kulik 
Yeah, absolutely. So in the mid 90s, we were just circumstantially, we were fortunate enough to connect with a local artists. They were in town and Charles Though we started printing to them, and, you know, essentially, they exploded in a couple of short years. And by the late 90s, that band was the largest music retailer in the world. So they sold the most merchandise of any band in the world. And at that time, 100% of their merchandise came from our shop. So, you know, obviously, that was not a known thing. But we had one auto at the time, two manuals, I still don't know how they managed to pull it off, right, like, we were pretty young. And, you know, I'll go into our exposure to that, but, you know, 24 hour shifts, and some really great people were involved. But it was a pretty well and I are big on looking back at the business and kind of in a way to understand it talking about these particular stages as eras. And you know, this era for us, this big band printing was kind of like, unlike nothing else that company has ever done. And we have a lot of really fond memories about it. That being said, it's not something that we are necessarily trying to recreate it had its place, and it was amazing. But, you know, granted, there was just a lot of exceptional circumstances that kind of lined up for us. So, you know, that was probably late 90s to early 2000s is when I would say that peak was. And so for me, that was when I first started working here as a young young adult. And these these tours were massive, right, so each individual tour, you're loading multiple tractor trailers throughout summer, so I have a lot of sentimental memories, you know, driving with my dad being pretty tired not knowing what's going on the in the younger kind of smaller body loading trucks. So you know, you're getting put up in the top of these tractor trailers, strapping these boxes down, you have no idea what's going on. And just having a ball, you know, looking around,

Marshall Atkinson 
you're just the monkey at the top of the thing, trying to add that extra box to the top. So

Jackson Kulik 
there's 100% of area. And you know, a lot of Invincible ignorance, right, like, it was super hard work, but I loved it. So you know, you're looking around, there's a lot of sweat and a lot of blood and tears, loading trucks, but I thought it was a blast. And fortunately, the band itself was a pretty wholesome band, and everybody around that band, and you know, specifically who I was exposed to, was really great, really friendly, just so lovely to work with. And then we you know, there's a couple of employees now that we still have that we're obviously working full time back then passing that I was, and really a wonderful experience to grow up in. And then you know, you look back and you can really learn to appreciate it. But yeah, the things that we would pull off those tractor trailers, you know, as they're making stops in between tours and shows crazy crazy things that you have nothing to do with music and nothing to do with T shirts, you know, bars and snowboards motors. I mean, everything you can imagine would like become an off these tractor trailers don't know how they got there. So that was always a blast, you know, playing with all that stuff, and then putting it back.

Marshall Atkinson 
So Will, you told me a story about your dad working out some numbers on the kitchen table. Can you share that with us?

Will Kulik 
Sure. You bet. So when we're working with this band back in the mid to late 90s, and they're now blowing up and they're now on national tours, you know, we're talking Madison Square Garden for a couple of nights, you know, you know, one side of the country to the next all sold out, all sold out. As Jackson said, we were both the printer and the advisor to this band on the merch that they needed. How this came about. I'm not really 100% Sure, because again, you know, we were observing just from the family side. But there were times when I mean, I was literally there that our dad was sitting at the kitchen table, crunching numbers for how many T shirts he needed to print for three nights in a row at the Meadowlands like and so here he is. He's doing like calculations. He's like, Oh, I've got to tell these people to buy more teachers, I've got to sell them more teachers, I got to print them more, because it's three nights at the Meadowlands and they don't have enough, you know, in the tractor trailers leaving on Friday. And so you know, not only were we doing the printing, and like Jackson said, you know, in his one auto shop, I mean, it was just not new. We had two manuals at the time, we were mostly manual, two manuals and an auto, but we were just Frank all day long, and just fill these warehouses to fill these tractor trailers and he would just be constantly bringing home these giant three ring binders of just, you know, basically tours worth of data that you would kind of like look over to decide this is how many shirts you need of this design to again to fill these national venues. And then you'd say this is what they knew. And they would go along with it and we print it and then you know, load a semi and off it would go and it worked out really well for a number of years, which was really amazing. Yeah, and sometimes he would order stuff. I mean, I doubt this happen frequently. In reference to wills story. I do remember times him like proactively ordering things without being asked, and basically saying, like, I gotta order some of these things immediately, so that I can talk to them, because they don't know if they're short here. I mean, don't get me wrong, like the people on their end were were really, really good. But you know, that's what you get when you have something that scales, so ferociously, so many moving parts. So it took, you know, there was plenty of room for us as a decorator off to also be helpful. And, you know, great, great, great graphic artists on our side, that did did a ton of work and great artists on their side. And that was the other thing, I remember our father coming here and with, you know, stacks of designs, and put them out on the kitchen table. And we'd all gather around a family and like, pick out the ones that we'd like to push really hard for this, you know, this long sleeve to be made. This is late 90s and early 2000s stuff. So I remember being like, I want a bunch of Raglin ringers, that was my thing. He's asking us and you know, our sisters, you know, like, we're basically you know, I don't know if it's really happening, but we're really feeling like we're influencing the national tour merch for this. We're the ones you know, making. Whatever happened, we don't know after that. But

Marshall Atkinson 
somewhere out there, there's a fan in New Jersey, it's like, why did I buy this shirt?

Will Kulik 
Get this 14 year old picked it out after dinner.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's great. That's great. And so you working with this one band, but you're doing other things for other bands also,

Jackson Kulik 
I did, it did snowball into that. I mean, basically the people on their end, managing this band and building these musical companies that want a big merge company, and then a big touring like management company, these companies kind of sprung from the success of this band. So it did turn into us printing for other national acts that were also blowed up. And yeah, and that was kind of towards the tail end of that era, because they became so big. And they built these, this little economy around themselves, they essentially had to diversify it well, and they probably they did to probably would have killed her dad if they didn't, but and they also felt like they had to diversify, they were just getting too big. And so that, yeah, then they kind of worked with many, many screen printers after that. And that was probably first decade of the 2000s. So 2004, 2005, 2006 is kind of when we started putting into these other massive bands, but also when kind of I think the writing on the wall was there that this era was starting to change out a little bit.

Marshall Atkinson 
And you're seeing more stuff being pre decorated overseas and brought in because they can make more money, are they

Jackson Kulik 
Yeah, and also, I think, you know, our father just realized that we couldn't handle the volume that they needed. So he just saw the other players were being introduced other screen printers in the state, or on the East Coast, and, you know, good for them.

Will Kulik  
And also, I mean, it also turned into for more of for good portion, we were sourcing, you know, not all the design, but sourcing the material doing the design, you know, doing the printing, and as it transition towards the end of these, you know, the large part of these relationships is it kind of transitioned more towards, you know, true kind of contracts, like printing and things like that, where, at that point, here's the designs, here's this, we're sending you the blanks, you know, it went more towards that model in at that point, you know, and then that model began with us as well as with a lot of other printers. Because again, as Jackson mentioned, they had this huge group of artists at this point that it had grown to. And so now it's They've developed their own network. Yeah. And they scaled really, really well. I mean, that was what they probably had to do, and in order to meet their goals, and I think we still have a good relationship with a lot of those people. And a lot of those people are exactly the same people that were there, you know, a testament, right, like they didn't get bought out by anybody. They didn't get sold off to, you know, some big music label entity that does this kind of thing.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. Did you ever go to the concert and just see all of your work there with everybody jumping and screaming and stuff?

Jackson Kulik  
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All right. Awesome. kids all the time. Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Will Kulik 
All right. So you know, one was Tibetan Freedom Fest, I think it was 1998. And through these relationships, we got to print for that. And so because of that, you know, got to basically Hey, Dad, I'm 1617 Can you get me and my friends tickets to this show up at you know, I think it was RFK in DC. And so, you know, through these connections, here we go to the Tibetan Freedom Fest concert, you know, and it's the Beastie Boys are walking out, you know, dress like scientists. This is like the Hello nasty era se you know, it was like two days of just, you know, just amazing shows. It was the show if anyone remember that, you know, someone got struck by lightning in the in the fan in the stands, you know, day one or something like that. And so that never came on stage. But, you know, it's through that you know, Right, there we are. And like, you know, we're, we're there because of these connections and because we got to deliver some shirts. So we did get some of those variances, which was always pretty cool. Is that where you bumped into? Like 311? Playing basketball or? No, no, that was as word board fest.

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.

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Marshall Atkinson 
So let's switch gears. So we'll for a while you guys made your bones as contract decorator, and then have, you know, moved away from that. So what did you learn from that experience? And why did you shift into something else? As a

Will Kulik 
very good question. So we've been talking about all this music, you know, this music era, this big band era of Blue Ridge graphics after that, once that tailed away, kind of organically and kind of because we were approached, we moved into a more of a contract decorating role with some, you know, some big online screen printers that are still around today that I'm sure lots of people are still printing for. And so we were approached early on when they were developing their contract network, and we printed for some major, again, online printers for a number of years. And it was great, because we had a lot of capacity holes to fill after these, after our customers kind of shifted away from those major bands. And so it was good that it filled capacity. But when and this is after years now of doing contract printing for this one particular customer, but after years of doing this, I mean, we just kept crunching the numbers and crunching the numbers and realizing you know, here's something that's taking 6070 75 80% of our production, you know, in a day our capacity, but the revenue that was coming in was what below 40. Below, I don't want to I don't know, I can't remember that number off the top of my head. But I remember that here's your daily capacity of 80% of this contract work. 75% is this contract work, which means we're getting in four or five, six jobs of our own customers if we can squeeze them in. But the revenue that was getting brought in was well, or I mean, basically, we were, you know, printing ourselves almost out of work. And so once we realized that, that's when, you know, the contract printing had taught us a lot taught us you know how to really be a lot more kind of methodical, more organized in terms of really just churning out work in that contract, like mentality Have you set it up, you print it, you move on. We're not eating a lot, we're printing. So that was good. But that contract era was it was good, because it taught us how to be a high production facility again, in a different way. larger number of setups, smaller quantities, okay, fine. So we learned something from it. But then at the end of the day, we realized, you know, just again, the volume it took versus the revenue that it brought in, it was just it was not sustaining anymore. So it was time to break ties with that customer. It was a gamble, obviously, because opportunity costs, they were eating up a lot of opportunity costs. That being said, we didn't know if we had a customer base that was going to sustain us at the level that we wanted, if you take away 70% of your production. So it wasn't an easy decision. But I think it was basically a you know, a simple decision. We were getting driven in one particular direction. And we realized that that's not where we wanted to be in five years.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right. And my background as you guys may or may not know has been always with on the contract decorator side. So I ran a big company in Florida, I ran a big company in Wisconsin, and to be profitable in that it's all about your process. It's all about analyzing your numbers, your KPIs, being as efficient as possible, and not making any errors because you goof something up. I mean, there's the profit for that job plus probably two or three more out the window. And it is really ruthless. So, and to be really good at it. It's about having really good systems and processes in place, cross training your people information, communication workflow was such a key thing. And I talked to people all the time where they feel they have extra production space. And so what they start doing is they start offering up contract printing because hey, I've got three Yeah, hours a day, I'm not running my press, let's do contract. And then what happens is it it's like a fungus on your foot, it just overtakes your whole shop. And then all your profitable customers, they don't have room on your schedule anymore because this other entity is in there the beast, you know, that you have to keep churning this stuff out. And I totally understand where you guys are coming from. Because, you know, I think as people we're ingrained to not let anybody down, especially when we're in business. And it's really hard to turn the switch off when there's all this stuff constantly coming in, because contract printing is easy to get work in. Yeah. It's hard to say no, it's hard to let people down. And it's harder to go out and hunt and find stuff that's got a value, that's 10 times more than that contract job. Yeah, it's harder to do that, which is, I think, why a lot of people like are attracted to contract stuff.

Jackson Kulik 
I think you're exactly right to be successful. I mean, we have a huge amount of respect for contract shops that can do it well. And to do it, well. I mean, you have got to want it. This is not something you just like back into, you do on the side. In order to do it successfully. It's part of your identity, because it's next level when it comes to processes. I mean, like six months ago, when I had a casual conversation with a printer, who was offering basically, to partner connects, he adds a massive contract printing relationships. I mean, I think these were like six figure relationships. And we're like, oh, yeah, I mean, we had the talk. And it was interesting. And he said, we think about it. As he walked out of the door. He says, I'm like, Well, let me know, if you want to get stressed out, you know, in reference to the amount of production in demand. I was like, well, that's, we do not? Yeah, then they're there multiple times.

Marshall Atkinson 
I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with printers who have grown. And they used to be two or three presses. And now they're 1516 20, right? And you have to feed that beast. There's all these people, there's all this overhead, you're in this gigantic airplane hangar of a building. And it's such pressure to keep that going. And they were all lamenting, man, we should just stuck to where we were. Yeah, that's back when we were happy.

Jackson Kulik 
Yeah, that's another really good piece of advice that our Father always gave us is that you don't always have to go up. Sometimes that's not what you want. You don't have to continue to grow. If that's not what you want to do. It was interesting advice, right? I'm going to always kind of remind us like, Hey, you should ask the question, do you want to be growing up? Do you need to be growing up. And you should recognize that in a lot of ways you are going to be more profitable if you go the opposite way and get a little bit smaller and tighter. And you know, he's not wrong, we've bumped into screen printers that have made that decision that they want to scale down for quality of life and for profitability. And yeah, that's an option. Right? Stagnation is really tough. And that's, that's like a business killer. But getting lean and getting smaller as it is can be a really good option for something.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, yeah, instead of growing by adding lots of little things, you could just sell more high dollar things. and B make just as much money. So work half as hard for twice as much,

Jackson Kulik 
probably a lot more money, because that's like the brutal reality is a small, profit can be high.

Marshall Atkinson 
So where do you guys think you're going in the future? Right? So what are you guys thinking about? Because there's a lot of really interesting technology has come out, you know, the apparel fabrics change all the time, the decorations change all the time. You know, what are you guys interested in?

Will Kulik 
Good question. I think, for us, adding an embroidery company was a really big addition and really kind of an exciting component. So I know, you know, for a lot of people, for a lot of shops, right? They've had embroidery for a while we were a little late to that game. So we've had a lot of fun adding embroidery. And then we'll and I both been really impressed and excited about the DTF developments. So you know with that, for us, specifically, the footprint of our shop is definitely a limiting factor. We don't have a lot of space. Everybody in that company knows that. If we want to grow and continue to achieve our goals, your space does become a major factor. So DTF is kind of a really interesting development that can allow us to basically add presses, without large footprints. With the amount of production you're able to add onto them. But also you're able to be a little bit more mindful of what you're putting on a screen printing press. Similar to how we were talking about, you know, with contract printing, your opportunity cost, right like you load up your press with a bunch of 40 AP Since then, it always takes the setup time, you never can get rid of that, even if it's efficient. So you'll lose a lot of your press time, with the smaller jobs, having that DTF capability, being able to send all your small jobs over to DTF. without having to worry about the quality, I think that's something that we have been really excited about, inspired by, you know, another printer is taking that big step, and something that we're looking at pretty closely, as far as on the technology side of things.

Marshall Atkinson  
So have you purchased equipment yet or anything?

Will Kulik 
We have some heat presses. So to do that, I mean, we've been working with companies like Supacolor, and whatnot, to do that, on the technology side that was already here, from our, you know, personalization days when we were doing, you know, more, you know, names and numbers type stuff. So that's in house. So that's good. But I actually want to hit on this question a little bit, too. You know, because you're asking, what do we think of in the future? What are we thinking about? And, you know, that's the technology side embroidery side? That's, that is good. And that is, you know, where a lot of our focuses, you know, Marshall getting ready for this phone call Jackson, and I were kind of having these conversations, you know, what is success really mean to us? And you know, that, as I told you, in an email, like, that kind of stumped me. I should probably try to figure out how to answer this question like, What is it?

Marshall Atkinson 
It's the what do you want to be when you grow up?

Will Kulik 
Yeah, right. And that's, I think, you know, that's actually a fair way of saying it, because I function a little bit more as the General Manager, while Jackson does a little bit higher level in terms of strategy and things like that. And so I, you know, spent a decent bit of my day in the weeds, right, and I hadn't come up to really ask myself kind of review those questions in a good while. And so that was really important for me to to ask myself, and then go to Jax and say, Hey, we should talk about this, again, we we constantly have those types of conversations. But it had been a while. And so, you know, I think for us that some of the, you know, our goals are really to improve our business in a way that keeps the two of us kind of happy and engaged, where you know, we can make a living, we can support our families. But at the same time, and this is something that I'll let Jackson talk more on, is the desire to want to be able to offer those same types of opportunities for our employees. Yeah. So I think one of the ways we've kind of broken down and you know, post COVID, like, throughout COVID, we were working with business consultants, post COVID, we've been working with business consultants. So that's, that's another kind of like, plug, I would highly recommend,

Marshall Atkinson 
I love business consultants, they're awesome. I

Jackson Kulik 
know. That is something that we just didn't realize, I just don't know, if we're going to come to a point, I don't know if we're going to run a company without having a business consultant that we're working with on Sunday. Because the amount of leverage that you can have that you can impact your company with by that experiences is incredible. I mean, we've only had a few conversations with you. And I distinctly remember your help when it comes to when we were trying to wrap our heads around our pricing mechanism and how we were doing our costing. So one of the things we've really learned from this most recent round of consulting is, for us, what we have done is identified and it's still work in progress. But identifying what our seven to 10 year goal is what our pinnacle goal is, and then we say, okay, we're committed to that seven to 10 year goal. We'd like that goal that inspires us that's gonna inspire the company. And then you kind of reverse engineer that and say, Okay, well, then what are our three to five year goals? What are our milestone goals gonna be in order to achieve that seven to 10 year pinnacle? And then you're continuing that process? You say, Okay, if those are our milestones, then what's our one year goal? And then if that's our annual goal, and what are our quarterly goals, and that just kind of system, that way of presenting information to the employees, but also thinking about ourselves has been such a huge game changer. It's so hard to think about, oh, maybe our kids are going to be running this in 15 years, you know, what if they choose that that's great, and that's their deal. But you know, as we've seen looking at our company, and we are in a particular era of the company, and I'm sure that as we've all had experience with COVID, every 10 years, right, there's a big event that's going to shake up the industry shake up the world a little bit, who knows, the next one is going to be it could just be another recession, right? So we need to be able to set these benchmark goals and have those be driving motivations for us. And as well mentioned, you know, the purpose, why you exist, what you want to be when you grow up, you know, the company has to answer that question to, like, the employees want to know what the company wants to be when it grows up. Like what is the purpose of his company? Right? So for us, I mean, you know, our main purpose and to like put it pretty simply, it's based on these relationships based on these relationships. These quotes Do you ever life, personal relationships, these relationships with our employees, making sure that they can be in a position to have a high quality of life, and then obviously relationships with our customers too. And not to put those last, but you don't put your customers and forget about your employees, and you don't build a company where your employees, you know, are your only thought and you forget about your customers. So it's this really interesting dynamic about these human relationships that really motivates us.

Marshall Atkinson 
Wow, what a great answer. And I'd like to just say that if somebody's listening and you're thinking about your goals, your goals don't have to be about sales. They can be about the types of customers that you want, or the type of decoration you want to do, you know, maybe or just where you want to live or the profit you want to make or just your give back to the community you want to you want your goal could be to support a particular organization, like Wounded Warriors or Habitat for Humanity or whatever your goals could be more altruistic than just about money.

Jackson Kulik 
I agree. And I think if the only goal is a monetary one, I mean, they're useful and that they provide some like pretty consistent ways of measuring a company's success. I mean, objectively, you've got your top line number, and you got most importantly, your bottom line number, and you can't ignore them. But money is not that motivation. It's just not a lot. You're not gonna like change. You're not gonna inspire your company by a money goal. And you're really not going to be inspired by yourself for too long by finagle. That's just not how humans work.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right? Cool. Well, hey, thank you so much, guys, for sharing your story of success with us today. If someone wants to learn more about what you do, or maybe how you can help them, what's the best way to contact you?

Will Kulik 
The best way to contact us we have a joint email address and that is brothers. So brothers@bgrtshirts.com. And then you'll reach both of us at once and then we reply or so we know that one of us have picked up the email. Otherwise, you can also reach me at will at BRG T-shirts reached Jackson.

Marshall Atkinson 
Awesome. Cool. Thanks, guys. I really appreciate your time today. It's been just a wonderful show. I appreciate it.