Success Stories Ep 105 - "How You Build The Shirt Company of America"

In today's success stories podcast, we're going to explore the concept of wanting to do more to be better and not to be satisfied with the status quo. Who better to discuss this topic than Atlanta-based McKenzie Brackett. 

He's been in the decorated apparel game since 2015 and has always strived to get better and do more. He runs his shop The Shirt Company of America that way, but has recently entered the shop software game with DecoGro. 

On today's show, we'll peel back the layers and find out what drives McKenzie to constantly want to improve, and where the inspiration comes from to get into the software game. 

This is an episode you won't want to miss!

Transcript

Marshall Atkinson  
In today's Success Stories podcast, we're going to explore the concept of wanting to do more to be better and not to be satisfied with the status quo. Who better to discuss this topic than Atlanta based McKenzie Brackett. He's been in the decorated apparel game since 2015 and has always strived to get better and do more. He runs his shop, The Shirt Company of America that way, but has recently entered the shop software game with DecoGro on today's show. We'll peel back the layers and find out what drives McKenzie to constantly want to improve, and where the inspiration comes from to get into the software game. This is an episode you won't want to miss. So, McKenzie, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

McKenzie Brackett  
Hey, Marshall, it's good to hop on with you and chat today. 

Marshall Atkinson  
Yeah, and you know, you're in Atlanta, hot Atlanta, right? A lot of, lot of everything going on in Atlanta all the time, right? Yeah, is that where you're from? 

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, I'm from Atlanta. I've lived here my my whole life. My business is based out of Atlanta. I'm not a big traveler. I need to get out in the world a little bit more. But yeah, everything's out of Atlanta right now. 

Speaker 1  
That's great. I've had a lot of fun in Atlanta over the years. You know, we won't go into all those stories. Let's just say I've had some really good bar tabs in Atlanta.

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, it's a good culture hub, and it's also a good hub for the industry. You know, there's a lot of manufacturers and stuff down here, so it's a great place to be.

Speaker 1  
Yeah. So I want to get into the first question here, right? And you started your shop in 2015 and had success and everything, and then COVID hit, and this is where I want to pick up today, right? So you completely changed your business after COVID, right? Just to survive and do things, right? So kind of like talk about pre COVID, and then what happened, and then how you pivoted and found even better success. Because I think, you know, people are still recovering from that disaster, right? So talk about that a little bit with your journey.

McKenzie Brackett  
Absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, I started, just like most people do, you know, on a little manual in a room in their house or something, and I built it up from there. I started when I was in college, I was in a fraternity, and I was like, you know, we order a lot of shirts. I bet I could start making some of these shirts. And I just started doing it. And we had great success. For the first five years, we were growing and growing consistently. I got up to where we had, you know, some automatics, a bunch of employees. We're actually operating 24/7 before COVID. So we were, we're printing non stop every day.

Marshall Atkinson  
Who are your who are your customers?

McKenzie Brackett  
So, a lot of schools, a lot of Greek life, we would also do a lot of contract work. We were kind of all over the place at this point, so I'd say, like, I wasn't super focused. And we did also acquire a couple other people's books of business. So it made me have, like, a real good mix of different industries in there.

Speaker 1  
So you're just, like, doing everything because you could not necessarily, because it's the right thing to do?

McKenzie Brackett  
Exactly. And my mindset was all about growth, and I didn't really consider what I wanted to grow. So to me, it was like, let's print more shirts and let's try to get more revenue.

Speaker 1  
Yeah. So your your garden is full of flowers and weeds at the same time. And there it is. It is beautiful. Look at the growth.

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, exactly, exactly. There was a lot of, a lot of growth, but it wasn't necessarily, you know, we weren't getting enough flowers.

Speaker 1  
Right. So COVID happened, yeah, and the and I remember the the world stopped when the NBA said we're done. And that until then, until the NBA, it's kind of weird that one single thing really was the like the canary in the coal mine, when the NBA said, Hey, we're not going to play anymore games, I think everything came to a screeching all. Do you remember that?

McKenzie Brackett  
Yes, I remember. And it was, uh, it was a shock. And for us, I mean, this is crazy. The timing is unbelievable. But March 1, I had a bunch of new machines delivered into a new warehouse. We tripled our size. I brought on a bunch of new employees, and two weeks later, everything starts shutting down, you know.

Speaker 1  
Yeah right, yeah. And it's horrible. I know so many decorators who are out of the business now because of COVID. They, you know, they, I know a guy who just bought a building he closed at the end of April, and then he didn't have any work, right? So, so anyway, so you pivoted with COVID. So talk about your decision to do that. When did you do it? And then, more importantly, what did you do?

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, so there were a few different steps once COVID started, you know, immediately it's like, order stock coming through the door, and I'm like, What are we going to do here? We were fortunate that we had a very, you know, variety of customers different markets. And one of the markets that we were working with were e commerce brands. And during COVID, e commerce actually took all so we were able to shift and kind of lean into that market so that we would have work to do. But it was a lot of contract work. It wasn't exactly what I wanted to be doing. And so I kind of made a decision. I realized, you know, if I have a business where I'm able to take home, you know, six figures, I'd rather take that home off of 40% profit margins on like, a million dollar business versus 10% profit margins on a $4 million business. So I'm like, how do we adjust for risk? Not necessarily because something like COVID is going to happen again, but there are just inherent risks when you're running a lower margin business.

Speaker 1  
Yeah, you're right. And one of the things that I coach people with is, how can you work half as hard for twice as much? Yeah, right. And that concept just blows people away of like, What do you mean, right? And that becomes like a whole conversation about your value, the value of your time and all that. But this is exactly what you were talking about.

McKenzie Brackett  
Yes, exactly. And being able to focus on not the wrong KPIs to me, which are, like revenue and like volume, but profit, how much were able to make off the jobs that we are doing. And so when I shifted my focus to that, I just realized, you know, there's a lot of risk having all this overhead, and it's not exactly what I love doing. I like the sales side. I like the art side. I enjoyed production, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't my one true love. So we slowly turned over our business from where we had, you know, 50 employees going 24/7 printing 10s of 1000s of shirts a week, whittled away to now we outsource all of our work, and we've been doing that since about 2022, 2021 so, you know, it took us a long time to kind of get rid of our machines, get out of our warehouse.

Speaker 1  
All right, so you sold your equipment, got out of that monster building, right? And so talk so currently, right now, talk about your staff, talk about where your business is. It was go that route.

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, for sure. So, you know, we had a huge team, and we whittled it way down. At one point it was just me and my wife and one guy who used to work production for us, and then he kind of shifted over to more of a sales role once we got out of the production side of things, and from there, we've built around us with a team of VAs to help with, like our art admin processes and stuff like that. And that's where we sit today. I'm focusing a lot of my time right now on building out the software, but my wife handles the day to day, and then we have, you know, our small team doing everything, and we, as far as profitability goes, are much more successful than I was ever with my old model.

Speaker 1  
Yeah. So I think, as decorators, right, we put the decorator glasses on, right? So I'm a screen printer. I look at everything as screen printing. I'm an embroidery I look at everything as embroidery, right? And then we're not really looking things through the entrepreneur lens much, right? Yeah. And so if you think about we're in this because we're Americans, right? We're capitalist pigs. We want to earn more profit, right? We're not focusing on that as much as we are the just the game of how I want the shiny new piece of equipment, I want this thing and whatever, and what you learn if you talk to enough people, you get out of your office, right? And you realize, like, for example, the promotional marketing industry, right? They sell, I think it's like 30 billion with a B, dollars worth of repair all year, okay? And none of those people do any of their production. Yeah, right. So here's what they know that I think a lot of us don't know, is the fact that nobody cares that you printed that shirt or you embroidered that polo, or you DTF that tote bag, right? Nobody cares about that stuff. They just want their stuff by Friday, and it's got to look good Exactly. And it's not saying that you can't do that in house and be and make tons of money, because a lot of people do that, but it's just one of these things where your customer doesn't really care that you're doing any of this work, right? And that's what you discovered, correct? 

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, exactly. You know, it's all about meeting your customers expectations, and for most customers, like you said, they just, they don't care how you decorated it, they don't care what mesh screen you use, how quickly your press fund. They just want the product. They want it to look good and to be on time. And so whether you're able to achieve that in house or you do it with, you know, good contract partnerships, as long as you're meeting your customer. Needs. You're good, you're golden.

Speaker 1  
So now here we are right. Do you have you surpassed your revenue and your, more importantly, your profit goals from back when you had this monster shop?

McKenzie Brackett  
No. So we have not surpassed revenue, but profit, we are crushing what we used to do that just because our margins are so much better and we're able to focus because our focus isn't on the production side. We can focus on getting the customers that make us more money. And you know, you could do both, but you have to have the team to support doing both things. If your focus is on production all day. You can never turn and say, Oh, I actually need to be getting new profitable customers. So you gotta have a team to do that.

Speaker 1  
Yeah. So one of the things I always think is funny in this industry is we always compare our company to another company by their revenue, right? I'm a $500,000 company, I'm a million dollar company. I'm a ten million company, right? How come nobody says I'm a million dollar company at 40% margin, right? Nobody talks about their net profit, right? And, and that's the dirty little secret, right? I was, I was somewhere, I won't tell you where. And I was talking with the shop owner, and he was telling me that he was a $9 million company, $9 million shop. He's all proud of it. I go, Yeah, well, where's your profit margin last year? Your debt profit? What'd you make? He's like, Oh, we broke even. I go, Oh, so the guy out there, right, who's got a manual in his garage who, you know, he eked out 50 grand worth of profit. He did better than you, and that guy didn't really like that much so, and I think that's, that's the thing, that's the lesson that you learn with this right is we don't have to, if we work harder at getting people who are driving more profit to us, and really identifying those folks, and we can get into that in a minute, but really identifying those companies and organizations and stuff who really value what we do, who will pay more for a better experience, for better quality, for better on time, or, you know, you can hit their Pantone color, or whatever they're measuring right, they will pay more for that, because that's what they're looking for. If you can solve that problem, whatever that problem is for them. Here, here's, here's a really great client that's going to be with you for a long time, and instead of just trying to, like, fill up the production schedule with stuff that doesn't ever make money.

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, exactly. And I think one of the big shifts for me and business was realizing that if I cater to a specific type of customer, then I can charge a premium and give them the best possible experience versus what I was doing before, which is kind of whatever job will come my way. Let's just take it on and, you know, yeah, get it half effort. You know, we're doing as good as we can, but we're not able to give a really catered experience to what what they do.

Speaker 1  
Right. So do you do you double down on that experience? Is that something that's really important to your customers, how you work with them and stuff.

McKenzie Brackett  
I think so. So we do a lot of, like, design heavy stuff for our clients. So, you know, there are shops who, they have an art department, right? But they don't, they don't necessarily do creative design work. For us, it's all about doing, like, creative, really cool designs, and that's really differentiated us, also being able to turn things around very quickly, no matter where people are in the country, and that having our contract decorator network has really allowed us to do that as well. So those have made really big differences. And then just just giving a good customer experience. A lot of times, I see businesses, and again, they're so focused on the production aspect that they're out on the production floor all day, and then they don't respond to their emails all day, their customers waiting 48 hours for like, an email response. And so just having people on our team who are responsive to customers, and that's their sole job, versus, you know, having the owner operator who's kind of half doing this and have doing that, that also really adds to the customer experience and makes a big difference.

Speaker 1  
I can tell you, I can't tell you how many shops that I talked to, and I talked to, I don't know, 50, 6070, shops a week, maybe something like that. And I'm always talking with new people. I go to trade shows all the time, and I'm talking with folks, and you'd be surprised at how many people say they can't afford to hire sales person. They can't afford to have somebody in the shop to be inside sales. You know, that's that customer management kind of thing, because they're too they just don't have the revenue for that. And there. Is he doing all these other things right? And so my response to that is, well, you need to find better customers that will pay more who want a better experience, so you can afford to hire the people to set up that infrastructure, because it's kind of like a chicken and egg thing. If you don't have it, you're never going to get it right, so you have to figure out how to build it right, which is what you did. I think, Am I hearing what hearing that story correctly?

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, exactly. And I think of it kind of like you're saying, like when you are making profit, it's a virtuous cycle in that you are able to make that profit and then you're able to use it to give your customers a better experience, which leads you to making more profit. On the flip side, if you're just staying busy and you're not making any profit, then you can't take that, you know, non existent profit, and put it back into giving your customers a better experience. You make less and less money, and their experience gets worse and worse. So there's two sides to that cycle, and fortunately, now I feel like we're on the right side, but it all starts with it. You know, identifying what customers will make you profit and focusing on those.

Speaker 1  
Okay, segway alert this next question, which was, many shops tend to attract the wrong type of customers, right? And which are the ones that aren't profitable, right? So one of the things that we spoke about the other day was your mindset, which is, quit being busy being busy, and started being busy being profitable, which is, Marco Dray says that I think every five minutes, right? S He's been talking about that for 20 years, right? So can you elaborate on that kind of hook and how you have rewritten your business plan or your target market for an ideal customer, and really focused on that, the KPIs, and how you're tracking that, just like what has really helped you blossom into being a more profitable company where you don't have to Print 24/7, to make the money you want to make.

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, for sure. So I mean, first thing first, you know what you focus on is what you're going to improve, and that's why KPIs are so important. So when our focus was volume and revenue, those numbers were going up, and other numbers that are more important to me now, like profit, we're not necessarily growing. And so when I'm looking at KPIs, when I'm looking at taking on any project, putting any investment in the business, I'm looking at it as, okay, how does this tie back to us making more profit, having a higher margin, or having, you know, better overall net profit on the business? So that's the first thing is just focus. I see so many people who focus on they take on these projects to improve their shop. But, you know, after talking to other shops, I say, like, Okay, why are you doing that project? And they don't have, like, a clear why? They don't have a clear how this relates to profit. It's just like, Oh, I'm just improving this for the sake of improvement. So that's been the number one thing.

Marshall Atkinson  
Yeah. okay, that's good. And do you have a I'm focusing on this niche, this type of customer, and you know, literally everything about them. You're constantly talking to them, you've got data on them, and you've narrowed down your sales channels to like, two or three types of customers, and you go after them, like, like, like, a laser beam type focus.

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, absolutely. And so what I've tried to do is focus on the customers that require what our expertise is, which is giving them really nice design work, doing things in a quick turn time and having good, clear communication with them. I know not all all shops need to have good communication. They all need to have good turn time, but for certain niches, it's more important than others. So we're dealing with a lot of industries that require that, that design work. So a lot of Greek life is one of our big things. We're also doing a lot of summer camps, all types of camps, anything that's kind of a where they view their apparel as true, like marketing, so they want to make it as cool as possible. That's kind of what we specialize in, because we can work with them versus, you know, other industries, which are also, you know, can be super profitable for different types of shops. Like, you know, some people are really big into construction. Construction construction companies typically are just getting their logo on the front and back. You know, they may not be doing something that's so creative, custom illustration and stuff like that, so different, different niches work for different shops. But for me, it's key that the abilities that we have invested in like doing creative design work, I want all of our customers to need that so that, you know, we're really honed in and we're able to focus on what they need and be able to charge more if I've invested all of this time and getting a really nice design team then and then all of our customers are just getting a front and back logo. It's like, Why did I, you know, commit my time to this project? And that's, that's how I view every project now. It's like, why am I doing this? Why are we committing to this.

Marshall Atkinson  
Do you have a dashboard that tracks your KPIs that you're is like, auto updated with Zapier links, or any, you know, APIs or whatever. So you could just look at any given time. You can just see you could take the temperature of your business to make sure you're on the right track. Have you built that?

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah. So I have moved around. I've tried to find platforms that kind of do it for me. And right now we're using like a combination of like Google Sheets and air table. And this is also within the platform that we're building deco row, a functionality that we want to have in there, because it to me, like having clear reporting is the most important part of any business, really, but particularly for businesses like ours, where there are so many different variables that have to be accounted for, you need to know the profitability on your orders. And as you probably know, most shops that you talk to, they don't know what their profit margins are on any single order.

Marshall Atkinson  
Don't get me startedman. Yeah. And, and the other thing, I think, is the not all of the industry, shop softwares, but a good chunk of them really don't have good reporting, right? How many impressions did we print last year? And for me, an impression is unit of work, right? So 100 piece order front and back is 200 impressions. I want to know how many units of work that we print today, this week, this month, last year, or whatever. And then if I can tie in, well, how much money did we spend, not on garments, but just running the business, right, then you can really easily get a cost per impression number right. What is that an average right? Your average cost per impression number, and then you can use that when for pricing, because one of the things that I think we do a really bad job of in this industry is teaching people how to price their work. And a lot of people, and by the way, if this is you out there listening, you can't do it by the average of all the idiots around you, right? Because that doesn't work. Because how do you know they're profitable? How you know you have different bills and costs than they do, right? And then what if they go out of business? You're using their price sheet as the basis for yours? It just doesn't make any sense. So if we use the our our actual, real math that we use to run the shop with, and then we base our pricing on that. Then what happens is our pricing is truly reflective of what's going on. And then we can make the money we want to make, because you can set the profit margin and the outcome that we want. And then what you got to do is just constantly test that to make sure it appears in reality. You know, and what I like about what you're saying is that you're actually looking at this data and using and using it for the outcome, which is just, it's like, it's like, Beethoven to my ears. It's like this, the best thing I could hear, right? I love that, right?

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, and going off what you said about looking at like other shops pricing, I will say I do use that information to help inform my pricing as well, but in a different way, because what you see people doing is they'll look at an other shops that are cheaper than them, and then they'll use as an excuse to lower their pricing, I know exactly what our costs are, and so I know what we need to charge. But if a shop down the street, if all the shops around me are charging $5 more than what I'm saying, I'm only using the information of their pricing to bring my prices up so let alone lose out on profits.

Marshall Atkinson  
Okay, so here's the thing, is, your pricing needs. To be based on what you want to do, right? And sometimes I challenge people. It's like, I want you to figure out, what would it take for you to be the highest person, highest priced company in the state? What would you have to do? Who, what customers would you have to have to be that? Right? And they go, Oh, we that's you can't do that. That's impossible, whatever. And my thing is, we'll look at other industries, right? Have you bought an iPhone lately? Right? You know, have you bought a Mercedes? Have you went out to an expensive steak dinner at, you know, you know, the palm or Ruth Chris, or, you know, whatever Capital Grill, okay, you know, have you paid? Have you paid 80, $90 for a steak? Okay, people will spend the money. They're just probably not the people that you're used to talking with, right? Yeah. And so it's like, there's always a better class of customers, and they want a better experience. You know, I fly on airplanes a lot. There's always people in first class, how they get there, right? And, you know, so people are willing to pay more money for things, right? And so what you have to do is figure out, what is the experience, what is the value that these people want? And think, you know, we talk about pricing, I don't think people know how to sell, which is the reason why they're always dropping their pants on pricing is because the closer I get to zero, the easier is for someone to say, Yes, right? And so if you don't have anything interesting to say, right, that's when we give up, we give up our profit in order to get the deal right, and so that what you have to figure out is, what is your superpower right? What are you doubling down on? What experience are you delivering that nobody else can do? What is your unfair advantage that gives you a leg up and people will pay more if you really hone in on that and know what that is, right? And it sounds like you're doing that with what you're doing.

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, we are. And what I'll say just to piggyback on what you were talking about when it comes to people's focus and they're figuring out, like, what KPIs to focus on, I think they should spend more time on the K part, like, what is key? Okay, having performance indicators, like you can perform in any which way within your business, but what what areas are actually key? And if you spent more time focusing on things that actually drive profits, then, then you're going to end up more profitable. I would rather you know if you have to slack in certain other areas of your business in order to focus on the areas that actually matter. I would do that sometimes. You have to do that. You have to figure out where, where does your focus lie? So when you're looking at acquiring new customers, if your business is in the spot right now, where you're not profitable, or you're not as profitable as you want to be, you need to take your time and spend it just strategizing on what am I going to go after, what customers are going to allow me to be more profitable? And that's not wasted time. It may not feel as busy or as productive as like going outside and saying, I just cleaned 50 screens, but at the end of the day, that's what's going to increase your profit, not clean and 50 screens.

Marshall Atkinson  
Yeah, right. Well, you know, you know what the 8020, rule is. Have you done that? I'm familiar, yeah. So if you, if you guys listening, don't know what that is. So you could take, take your accounting, your total sales, right? Export that to CSV file, right? And I want you to sort it by customer, with what they spent with you, or, better yet, the profit on those jobs, if you know that right. And then I'll tell you the top 20% of your customers give you 80% of your revenue, right? So the reciprocal of that is the the bottom 80% of your customers, which is the lion's share of what you're doing, only gives you 20% of your money. So why are you wasting your time with these people? Okay? And so this is a hard lesson to look look at, and a lot of these folks are the ones that are the biggest pain in the butts, right? And I'll tell you, the people who are great customers are the ones comfortable with commas in the price, yep, you know. And the people who it's a $500 order, and this is they act like it's, this is their last $500 in their bank account. They're the biggest pain in the butts ever, right? And so the people who are used to spending money will spend the money, right? You just have to find these folks that. And that's always the trick.

McKenzie Brackett  
Absolutely, sometimes I feel like it does kind of feel like a step backwards when you have to kind of trim the fat off your business because your revenue may go down. I mean, that's what happened with us all. Revenue went way down. But you have to see that revenue is not the KPI that you're you're driving for. You're looking for profit. So like you were saying, Well, what was it? Don't Work hard. Work smart. What would you say earlier?

Marshall Atkinson  
You want to work half as hard for twice as much.

McKenzie Brackett  
There you go. Yeah. Yeah. So you know, when you do the 8020 again, like you could eliminate 80% of your customers and keep 80% of your profits. So just do it. Just do it. You just got to dive in, and then you could use that extra time to make that 20% that you kept into 100% of your business.

Marshall Atkinson  
Yeah, right. Well, it's focusing on what matters, right? And I think a lot of people run their businesses without intention, right? Which was kind of what you were doing early, right? You were just, you were just gathering anything that walked along. Hey, yeah, come over here. We'll print your shirts, right? And then, so you're doing things that weren't as profitable as you as they could have been, right? And the other thing I'll tell you was these unprofitable jobs, right? That's what clogs up the schedule. That's the reason why you have overtime. That's the reason why you have a lot of production headaches. That's the reason why you have to have 24/7 production and all those second and third shift crews, they get paid a lot more because who wants to work at two o'clock in the morning, right? And so this all just drives your costs up instead of just focusing on better order. So raise your minimums, raise your prices, charge fees, do the things that you have to do to make your company better, and at the end of the result is going to be a better outcome. There are going to be people who will just huff and puff and whatever, and they'll go somewhere else, but when they go somewhere else, they'll find out that, oh, those guys suck, and they'll probably be coming back. So that always happens. People go away six weeks later, they're back going, Hey, could you do my shirts? Yeah, and then they might act with you, for you, you know, they have their shipping. Did it happen with you McKenzie?

McKenzie Brackett  
Oh dude, it happened so many times. I mean, especially as we were making this transition, you know, the easiest way to increase your profits is to increase your price, you know. And it's hard to do, and you have to be able to to support that price increase, you know, with your customers. But when you're not charged, if you're not charging enough, there's no way to get out of it without increasing your prices. And that's where I was at. And so I had tons of customers, tons of pushback, but at the end of the day, you know, 8 out of 10, 9 out of 10 of them, they go try another place, and then they go this place keeps messing my deadlines, or they keep printing the wrong color. They didn't count in my garments or whatever. And you know, we were able to make it right for them.

Marshall Atkinson  
Yeah. Well, they see, here's the thing, here's the lesson. They didn't understand the value, yeah. And so your job is to educate your clients about why you're worth the money, you know. So when we think about like, buying an iPhone, right? Why is that worth the money? Why not just buy a cricket, you know, like, Why? Why is there Alexis or Mercedes worth the money? Why not just buy a 14 year old used Buick, right? And so there's people who will spend the money, and there's people who will never do those, right? Yeah. And so, you know, just concentrate on people who will want what you're delivering. And that's the challenges of seeking those people out, and that's what has to show up in your marketing and where you are, and all that stuff, right?

McKenzie Brackett  
And I'll say as like a prerequisite to that, I talk to a lot of people who don't seem to value their own work, so you have to, you have to, in your mind, realize the value of your work before you can express that to your customers.

Marshall Atkinson  
Yeah, right. All right. So you seem to always be challenging yourself. Mackenzie, right to be better, find more opportunities, find a new direction right for your shop. What have you been working on lately? And why?

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, so this is perfect. We were just talking about the 8020 principle, and that's kind of what all of our focus is going into right now, and we do this at least once a year, is basically look at what we've got going on, figure out who are our most profitable segments are, and then how do we dive deeper into those segments? Do we need to make changes to that bottom 80% to make it more profitable? So it's it's about looking at that and then using that data to increase our average order value, and not really order value, but more like average order profitability, that that's, that's our main focus right now. And so what I do in order to achieve that is one, we're trying to raise the floor of profitability. So anyone who's maybe, you know, ordering. Smaller orders, if we see we're not making enough money on, you know, with DTF now, we're doing a lot of smaller orders that are only, you know, 1224, pieces. So I've learned over the past couple of years, as we implemented DTF, I just keep raising the floor as far as what our profit should be, minimum profit on an order so that we can make more money on those because at the end of the day, you know, if we are making 20 bucks on an order, for us, for our business model, it doesn't make sense. For some people, it might, you know, depending on what you're doing for an on demand or something. But for us, it doesn't. And then the other side of that is increasing our ceiling. So, you know, if we're in a vertical and I see, okay, we're making, you know, five times as much profit on this customer as our average customer. How do we get into more companies or groups that are just like this? What do we do and kind of taking our focus and just shifting it ever so slightly? We're not necessarily trying to redefine our business, but just saying, Okay, how? What adjustments do we need to make to head more in this direction?

Marshall Atkinson  
Have you explored the value per hour for your equipment? Have you ever looked at that?

McKenzie Brackett  
So yeah, I when we had a shop, I was very in depth on trying to figure out all of that, and not only our value as far as what we could make, but also like what our costs were for every little thing. How long does it take this person to code a screen, to reclaim a screen? How long does it take to do the setups? I did do that research now, I'll say it's been a couple years, so I'm not as privy to it now that I'm outsourcing everything. 

Marshall Atkinson  
Right. So, so anyway, so I think that's that's a really great concept, if you want to think about it doesn't really have to be on equipment either just be value per hour in your time, right? So we, you know, you can always make another dollar, but you can't make another minute, right? So when we're when we're thinking about our day, especially with sales, right? So how can we best use our time to get more in, right? And so this is, this is why people use vas. This is why people have automations. This is why people are doing things so they can accomplish more during the day and achieve the result they want. You know, in production, it's really about the type of jobs you're you're booking, right? But it could also be from a profitability standpoint, where what you're selling, right? So when we're talking with a customer and they want, I don't know, three designs, and they're going to pick one, I'm an ex art director. I always wanted to punch people in the nose when they do that and and I'm like, I'd rather just spend the time doing one design perfectly. Let's ask you more questions. And so that's an example of the value of time, right? I don't want to do three designs, which is triple the work for you to choose something because you're indecisive. Let's just go in and let me ask you more questions about what you like, and then we'll see if we can arrive at it that way, right? And and so this is just the interesting idea. Have you ever explored, you know, how you're using time, or your staff, how you're they're using their time, and how you can maximize the value of that time? Have you ever done anything like that?

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, I'm actually a little bit obsessed with maximizing my use of time, not just in business, but in, like, my personal life as well, and how those kind of connect. So as an example, that just happened to me this weekend, I just got new grass, and I spent almost the whole weekend out in my yard doing like, heavy labor, trying to prepare it to get this grass put in. And at the end of the weekend, I had, like, blisters on my hands, and I was worn down. And I was like, Man, if I would have spent these two days selling or doing something where I could make money, I could have paid someone to do this and profited. So I'm always looking at my time going, what activity is actually the activity that's going to make me the most money. And it starts with Master my own time, and then moving down and saying, Okay, how do I import these principles into my my business and my employees and my team members? How do we help them also make their time as efficient as possible? Because people waste a lot of time, you know, if they don't know how, if they don't value their time, and they don't know how to assess the value of what they are doing, they end up wasting a lot of time on the wrong activities. And that's really, for me, it's it's about one eliminating activities that provide no value, because people spend a lot of time doing stuff that at the end of the day, it's like, why did we do this. We were talking about it earlier with projects that you know maybe align with performance indicators that are not key performance indicators. They're just like some random metric you pulled out. So there's a lot of that, and then also figuring out which activities maximize your time and allow you to get the most out of those activities. So the. You could deep dive into it. You know, there's so many different ways to slice it, but I'm real big on trying to make my time more efficient, using vas, using, you know, delegation to team members, using automations. I spend some of the biggest projects that I've done in our business. I'm a more like technical guy, is setting up automations that completely eliminate the need for, you know, an employee to be doing this certain role, and then I can take that person and plug them into a new role, and you just keep doing that, and eventually your business is efficient. 

Marshall Atkinson  
Yeah, exactly. So there's a really interesting book that came out last year, maybe the year before, I can't remember, but from Dan Kennedy, who's like a business genius. It's called who, not how, I know if you've read that, but it's really, what's really interesting about this book, is this a Dan Kennedy book, but Dan didn't write it. So it really, they talk about the book, about Dan not writing it. It's like the inside joke in the book, right? So, so if you're listening right now, just think about, there's something that you're doing right now that you know that you don't need to be doing because, A, you're not good at it. B, you hate doing it. C, you could be doing something better with your time. And so, like you were just talking about, you know, you're laying sod in your yard or whatever you're doing, right? So how much would it have really cost to do something, to hire somebody to do that for you, right? And so I was at culture studio a month or so ago, and I was talking with Carl Oviedo, who's their director of sales, and he had a big whiteboard. And on his whiteboard he had this phrase which says, What is the cost of your happiness, right? So, how much money does it cost for you to be happy, right? And then, how come we're always cheaping out and so, and this could be in business, in your personal life and whatever, right? So what would it cost to hire a sales person or a somebody to read is on your website that's going to attract more business or whatever? And so, because, yes, we could be doing that stuff right, but it's not we could be. It's should we right? Should we be spending time on this stuff? Right? And then if we hired somebody, or we found some, a software tool or whatever, and it did it for us, then we could be doing something better with our time, whether that's an actual job thing, or just sitting by the pool with an umbrella drink, because you really need that, right? I mean, whatever, right? And so I think this really kind of is something I think people need to kind of be looking into more, because I talk to so many people all the time, and they blame everything, especially sales, on the economy. It's the economy nobody's buying and blah blah. And I can tell you that everybody's buying. They're just not buying from you, okay? And so, and you start asking them questions about their sales, and there's their every excuse, none to man, right? But it's they don't admit that it's their own fault, and I'll ask them, okay, so tell me about your sales yesterday. What did you do for sales yesterday? How many calls did you make? Who did you call? Whatever? And they'll say, Well, I didn't really make any. I was cleaning screens. I go, Well, you know your your actual sales activity is proportional to your sales results, right? And lots of people just wait for the phone to ring or the email to come in, and they're not out there hunting.

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, absolutely I am sorry. Go ahead. 

Marshall Atkinson  
No, I was just gonna just and so, and that's like the biggest problem, and they don't, they don't want to admit that, right? Why do you think that is McKenzie?

McKenzie Brackett  
You know, I think one of it is, is kind of a mindset thing. I talk to a lot of people, and I'm sure you do too, their mindset is, well, you know, it'll be cheaper if I just do this myself, and that that's an argument for every activity in your business. Yeah, you know, you could have no overhead by doing absolutely everything yourself, but you're capped at, you know, much smaller than if you're able to delegate and able to automate. It's just you can't. You got to eliminate that thought from from your mind. That's not a good operating system for running a business, right? And in order to elevate your business, you know, grow profitability, or do whatever your goals are, you've got to elevate yourself within the business. You've got to take a process, you know, get it well defined, either pass it off to somebody or automate it, delegate it, whatever you need to do, and then you need to move up to the next level of okay, how do I manage this part of my business? And. Kind of how I look at businesses, I'm constantly trying to to move one step up. So previously, I talked about I've spent a lot of time like automating certain tasks within my business, and then I got to the point where I was like, Man, I'm spending a lot of time automating stuff. So I delegated the creation of automation, you know, and I just continue to try to level up in that way and that, right? That's the only way to scale.

Marshall Atkinson  
Your this industry is Tim Ferriss, you just, you want to have a four hour work week, right?

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, that's quite a compliment. I'll take it. I'll take it.

Marshall Atkinson  
All right. So let's shift to the last question here, right? So it's kind of the elephant in the room a little bit. So I want to talk about your new shop software that you're launching, DecoGro, right? Yeah. What's behind this? Why are you doing it? Why should shops pay attention they're already using something that they hate, right? Because that's all I hear about, how they hate whatever they're using, right? So what's going on here McKenzie?

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, so I was one of those people, you know, I've used tried every other platform out there, and this was kind of a unique start for me, because when I started getting into the industry for on the production side, it was like, okay, you know, I am an adult, and I need some sort of way to make money. So, you know, I started doing this, but with the software, it really came because I'm like, dude, like, this is something that people need. I need it. Other people need it, that there needs to be a better solution out there. So I've been working on it for about a year. It's called deco grow. We've been using it ourselves for about five, six months at this point, and we've got a few other shops that have started kind of doing an early access period and trying it out as well. And really, where I feel like we are going to differentiate ourselves is that when I look at the platforms that are out there, I see a lot that are, like, kind of weak, they're not very powerful, and they're good for, like a starter shop. And then I see some that are very robust for, these massive operations, and I just feel like there's not a platform that really bridges the gap and grows with your business. And I just feel like it can be done, and we're doing it. And not only that, not only growing in the sense of being a software that grows to manage your production as you scale, but also some of the stuff we talked about earlier, like getting insights into your KPIs and your profitability, I think that a software can be a tool, not only to grow with the shop, but to actually drive a shop's growth by giving them the right information and allowing them to make the right decisions To get to the next level with their business.

Marshall Atkinson  
So you mentioned that you're different than other platforms. What are you doing that's different?

McKenzie Brackett  
So our initial focus is that scalability. So I've basically, like I've tried multiple platforms, pretty much every single one, and on certain platforms. I don't want to name any names, but I'll, I'll get started using it, and it's like, okay, this is working. But then as my shop would grow, we would just get stuck, and I'd be like, this, this. Now I've broken the platform because we're doing too much. Now I need to use, like, another platform to help me out. So I've also looked at other platforms that are that are very robust, but it's like the onboarding is like months and months just to get set up before you can actually use it. And for us, the real difference is that we're focusing on the ability to scale with your shop, so we allow more flexible workflows that'll fit shops that are doing different decoration methods, different sizes, different processes, because every shop is unique. And instead of trying to force every single shop to do our exact workflow, we're able to take their workflow and kind of implement it into the software. So it's very unique in that way. And as you grow the software world will adapt to new processes that you add new employees, that you add new decoration methods, because shops are always changing, and you need a platform that changes with you.

Marshall Atkinson  
And so, have you launched yet? I mean, so you've got some people using it, but, you know, no real paid users, or you have paid users, or what's the story?

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, so right now, as the time we're recording, we're still in like, an early access phase. So I actually just brought in our first users. We're calling them, like early access. They're kind of like beta testers. So we are not in a paid Open Access yet, like, it's not available to everyone, but I think by the time the podcast airs, we will be in our open release.

Marshall Atkinson  
Okay. And All right, great. And so will it have reporting like, Can I can I see what has orders on the schedule haven't been received yet? Or can I see how many impressions I printed? Last month. Or can I see, can I get a report on the average number of screens per job last April?

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, exactly. 

Marshall Atkinson  
Can you spin all that up? 

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah. So that's one of our big focuses. And you know, we're still early in the process. We're still improving things, but the big focus is to be able to get whatever data out of your business that you need, that you can apply to whatever your specific goals are. So whether you need to know, like, hey, how many imprints did I do last February? And also, like, what was my overhead? So that I can see my cost per imprint, that, you know, we want people to be able to do that within the platform to be able to get any data that they want. But on the flip side of that, you want a lot of things to be more automated, because you don't want someone necessarily sitting there all day just entering data, right? You want things to be automated to where you can get that information as easily as possible.

Marshall Atkinson  
And so do you have, like, API calls and all that stuff set up with all the major stuff?

McKenzie Brackett  
We will we're still growing. So right now, the main functionalities we have is just having the reporting, being able to create and do your invoices and then manage your production. And we're still adding on modules that will kind of allow you to get more and more data. So, you know, a software is a never ending growth. We're gonna get there.

Marshall Atkinson  
Okay, all right. Well, cool. Well, hey, thank you for sharing your story of success with us today. If somebody wants to learn more about what you do or maybe how you can help them, what's the best way to contact you? McKenzie,.

McKenzie Brackett  
Yeah, so my email is mac@decogro.com that's just M, A, C @decogro, D, E, C, O, G, R, O, no, W, at the end.com and you can also follow DecoGro on any platform, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, we're starting to get our content out there. So you know, I appreciate people following along on the journey.

Marshall Atkinson  
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. Is great, and we'll talk to you later dude.

McKenzie Brackett  
Awesome, awesome. Thanks, Marshall. I appreciate you having me.