Glavin ID

For anyone who fights this same battle, I keep my money in my business bank accounts (and a business investment account) to avoid impulse purchases. If I want to buy something stupid, I have to tell my accounting team which is another good accountability check for me.

When cash is flowing I literally have to remind myself every day to buy income generating assets and not toys. That side by side would be fun but it ain’t making us more money.

I am still a total novice but it seems like almost every day I unlock some new major time saver using AI.

This kind of stuff scares the shit out of me. All it takes is a few decisions that made perfect sense at the time you made them and boom, you are done. I am sure there is more to the story here but this is precisely why we don't invest in equipment that could sink us. We spend way more time analyzing what could go wrong and worst case scenarios when making any major investments than we do on the upside. We write a business plan and game out what happens if we lose whatever piece of business we used to justify the purchase. We don't just purchase capacity for "potential" business it might bring in and we sure as hell don't buy anything that we cant afford to make the payments on if the business dries up. I do realize this slows growth and I am 100% OK with that. I also know that this game isn't always linear and you could still lose it all based on something totally out of your control.

How many fender benders do we think have occurred from dude's trying to match the arrows on their Zyn can?

Update: So far all but one of our biggest credit card users have switched to paying ACH with zero complaint. We have offered ACH payment options for years and tried to get every one of them to switch multiple times. I guess the penalty is what was needed to motivate them.

Love the volume but hate the BS of doing business with big companies. Have a supplier trying to get me to submit pricing on their portal. No problem, do it all the time. Issue is they have no idea what they are doing. Our prices are qty driven so 100 pcs will be very different than 1000 pcs. Their portal has 60 something parts on it, half of them have NA in the qty field and 1/4 of them have qtys like 1.25, 6.77, 33.25. First, none of these qtys even meet our mins for these products. Second, how can I sell them a partial label? When asked what we should do, we got the canned response, "sorry you have to quote the qtys on the portal". This is the kind of BS I spend my days dealing with.

Love seeing this on a PO from a customer we have been doing business with for over 20 years.

If anyone wonders what keeps us busy in the OEM/Electronics markets, I can count 13 labels in this picture haha.

The $300 orders seem like they are the ones that cause the most problems. You gotta take them though. Don't give your customer a reason to bring in your competitor. We have picked up a lot of business over the years taking small orders no one else wanted to figure out then growing those customers once we were in the door.

One of the few legit “cheat codes” in small business…having an amazing spouse. Our back lot just flooded after a torrential downpour which means I was wading through a foot of standing water to unclog a drain and my boots and socks are now totally are totally soaked. Heading downtown for a dinner tonight and I brought a change of clothes but no shoes or socks, which means I would have to leave work early to drive 20 min in the opposite direction, just to drive 45 back downtown. Called wife to tell her my plan and she said “don’t worry, I’ll bring you everything you need”. So now she is going 40 min out of her way to make my life easier. It’s not some grand gesture or like she gave me a kidney. But she knew I was already stressed and took care of a problem she could solve. You can’t put a price on having a wife who will jump in and fill those little gaps, especially when you don’t even ask for it. She could be salty that I’m going to a nice dinner and she has to handle the kids by herself tonight, instead she jumped into action to help make my day a little easier.

As an small business, computer hardware is one of those hidden costs that can creep up on you quickly. We have already spent well over $20k on hardware this year, most of them replacements of old machines. These "small" line items add up quick and all of a sudden you have $100k in costs you didn't expect.

I always get a kick out of the customer who is past due and says "I dont understand why I am on credit hold, it's only $300 (or sometimes a few thousand if they are really ballsy)" If it isn't that much money then why dont you just pay it???

We crushed it last month. Rev & profit records. On cloud 9 this morning. Then I got kicked in the nuts and brought back to reality. Press down, cutter not working right, issues with multiple orders, and our income statement is all messed up due to changes our EPR company made to fix problems we found last month.

Making a big move today that we have been arguing about for years. Sending out a notification of credit card surcharges starting Sept 14th. We are nervous about how our bigger customers will react, a bunch of them pay with Pcard.

I will never understand the customer who calls and says, "I need these labels quickly, when can you get them done" and when we respond with a date they immediately come back and say no, "I need it by this date". Why not just tell us the date you need it from the start?

Lots of hate for travel sports on here the last few days. I felt the same way, until of course my two boys played this summer. Was it a lot, yes. Was it expensive, yes. Was it worth it, also yes. Here's how it went for us: My boys played local lacrosse starting in the 3rd grade. Played against local teams and a few tournaments within an hour of home. No overnight travel. During that time of their lives, they played all the other sports when it wasn't lacrosse season. As they got older, their lax skills improved and they wanted to play more. I have told them their whole lives; if you want to be good at something, work hard for it, put in the effort and we will support them in what they are passionate about. As they got older they started to care more about lax and less about the other sports. We started doing training in the off seasons, skills sessions, speed and agility, stuff like that. After the regular season their local coaches and the travel coaches would ask if we were going to try the travel thing. We always said no because I didn't want to do it. Then last summer, the ask came. "We want to try out for a travel team". We talked as a family and decided they could try out for a few teams and if they made one and still wanted to do it, we would give it a shot for one summer to see how they liked it, and how we (mom and dad) liked it. I was not thrilled with spending the money and time I knew was going to be involved. But, all I could think about was living up to my end of the bargain "put in the work, get good at something and we will support your passion". This past summer was our first travel season. One kid going into 8th grade, one going into high school. Well let me tell you, it was A LOT. Practice three days a week 40 min away and three out of town tournaments (Columbus, Indy, and Chicago). First one was a disaster, they lost every game and it wasn't really close. Second one went better, won a few, lost a few. The last one was amazing, they won the championship. It was a lot of time and money, for both them and us as parents. But let me tell you, seeing them bond with their teammates (who are from all over the area) work their asses off all summer, and having it all pay off on the field was an awesome experience. Watching them see the fruits of their labor lead to success was the best kind of life experience we could give them. All that to say, yes travel sports can suck. But, when my kids had passion for something and wanted to do more of it so they can be their best, I couldn't stand in the way. It was MY comfort that I cared more about at first. Imagine having a kid start a lemonade stand, having it take off locally and they get an offer to open a stand at the state fair where they could make a bunch of money and get tons of exposure. Then saying, "Sorry, it's going to take too much time and money, you should just say in front of our house". I know our road to travel sports was different than others and I have heard some of the horror stories. For my boys it was a great experience and we will continue to support their passions as long and they are willing to put in the work. That doesn't mean I won't wine about it from time to time though.

A lot of business owners who got into the game during or shortly after Covid were dealt a tough hand and it's something they had very little control over. Super low rates, good economy, free money from the govt, all the stuff that makes a business easier to run, especially if you took on debt to do it. Learning how to run a business is hard, even when times are good. But it is way harder when times are tough. I learned how to run my business in the worst of times. Sales in a downward spiral, no profit, team a mess, cash a mess, debt out of our ears, old equipment; one major disaster away from it all being gone. It sounds counterintuitive but I think I got lucky. "Good times" were foreign to us for a long time, it was all about survival. We fought for everything. Things like "we gotta make the paper towels last another week, we can't afford to go to sams club right now" or "shit, the cell phones got shut off because we are 60 days behind paying the bill". Best part about it was I didn't know any different. This was how I learned how to run a business, counting every penny, only spending on the most important mission critical stuff, operating when cash is super tight. It taught me a lot of good habits and it also taught me that I never wanted to go back to running a business that way. Then Covid hit and everything changed. We crushed it during Covid. Sales went through the roof (we got lucky to be in a business where we could use existing assets to make Covid related products), profits followed. That allowed us to right the ship in short order. New equipment, new people, no debt and some breathing room. So I have been through a bad cycle and a good cycle. No matter how good the good feels, that survival instinct I learned early in my management career will always be there whispering in my ear. I definitely like the good times a lot better but those bad times will always keep me on my toes and in check. Just ask my sales manager, we had a few slow days earlier this month and I was ready for the floor to fall out from under us. Turns out we are probably going to have a record month. I count myself as lucky for learning the hard stuff first. The goal now is to make sure the good times last no matter what is going on around us.

As an old guy who doesn’t go out a ton, it is amazing that I can drive in to downtown Cleveland on a Friday night to have dinner at an A+ restaurant and not hit a second of traffic. Not great for 25 year olds, awesome for 42 year olds.