Environmentally Friendly

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is just one of the many new ways that Printers are becoming more environmentally aware. Using soy based inks, recycled paper and wind power energy are a few others. Our company follows a lot of environmental practices, many of which you can find at http://www.bridgetown.com/environmental.html.

FSC has really helped our industry create awareness in the environment where soy based inks and recycled paper have kind of dwindled. FSC has created a serious buzz in ours and many other industries with its creative marketing campaign. One of the FSC logos is a Rainforest Alliance logo and on the logo is a frog. I know a few customers loved using that logo on their brochures and have said they will continue to do so on future projects. Each time we print this and the FSC logo, we create awareness.

I read the other day that Gibson Guitar has produced 25 environmentally-friendly guitars with the Live Earth logo on the front and they are FSC certified. Apparently they will be auctioned off to benefit the Live Earth concerts and Alliance for Climate Protection. This is very cool.

We all try to do our best to help the environment and in addition to sorting my plastic, paper and aluminum goods at home I try to educate my clients on the uses of FSC information. Printed information gets seen by a lot of eyes so the more jobs I can get these logos onto, the more I feel I'm helping create awareness for the safety of our forests.

Just do it!

My very first boss in the printing industry used to say "Just do it" and that has stuck with me all this time. When I first started in printing, I worked as an estimator figuring out the costs and the way a print job would run. I remember complaining one day about a request I received to provide a multitude of options for a print estimate. My boss turned to me and said, "Just do it! It's going to have to get done anyway, you might as well stop complaining about it and get it done!" This was said in a semi-jest way but I knew he was right.

From that day forward we both lived by that Mantra and whenever someone complained about something they had to do, we gave them that advice. It is good advice. Too many times I think we as a whole complain just to complain so other people will feel pity for us. In the end, if it is something that has to get done, you just do it and get it over with. Complaining about it won't get it done faster or make it easier to get done. One of my best friends just called me complaining about all the work he had to get done by the weekend and you know what I said?

You know it. . .

Take a minute . . .

More and more I find that I don't take a minute and just notice things once in a while. I often get to wrapped up in life and what I'm doing to ever stop and smell the roses. Yesterday, as I was taking the trash up my hill to the curb, I found myself looking into the sky and noticing the blueness of it and the scattered clouds that reminded me of childhood and how I used to lay on the ground and seek out animal shapes from them.

I remember one time watching a lifetime movie about a person that became blind later in life due to some illness that couldn't be prevented. The actor in the movie mentioned that she missed being able to see the colors of the leaves, sky and the grass. After watching that movie, I tried to take a little time every now and then and just appreciate the ability to see and hear everything around me. I take it for granted most of the time however yesterday I just took a minute while taking out the trash to just listen and see the world around me. It was nice and I'm gonna try to do it more often because if I don't, I may just miss it.

Cell Phone Madness

What did we do before cell phones? I mean, it wasn't that long ago that if I was in the car and I had to call someone, I had to pull over and find a pay phone. A pay phone! What the hecks that? Have you ever seen anyone use one lately? I did and it was a little odd. I was thinking, that guy's using a payphone, who does that anymore? Who doesn't have a cell phone these days? How much does a call cost from a payphone now? Is it still a quarter? Too many questions. . .

On the flip side, I think its weird seeing really young kids with cell phones as well. I don't know why, it just seems too grown-up, like they should earn it somehow. I say that now but that thought goes right out of the head when I think about my two sons growing up, going to school and having the luxury of being able to reach them when I need to.

I also think about how different my job would be without a cell phone. Obviously, sales positions survived before them but I'm not sure if I would be as efficient. With my disposition, I like to contact my customers as soon as possible after receiving a voice mail. If I didn't have a cell phone, I couldn't have received the voice mail in the first place if I was away from my desk and who knows when I would have been able to return the call.

Cell phones may not have the best reputation but they sure have helped me and I'm sure they'll help me even more in the future.

Putting things into Perspective

I was listening to the Adam Corolla Show this morning on the radio and they were taking callers who seemingly had extraordinary problems and put them into perspective for them. I constantly have to remind myself daily to put things into perspective.

Things can get out of hand so quickly and all perspective is lost. For instance, One of my co-workers had a project that was due to deliver last Friday, yet when he came in this morning to the office, he found out that the project didn't deliver on Friday but was delivering today due to challenges that happened that was out of his control.

I know it is never good to miss a delivery date and we always strive to deliver earlier than expected if possible. In actuality, the delivery location was wrong from the beginning given to him by his customer. When he called to let his customer know this, immediately the world was coming to an end. You might as well close the door and go home. The day was done and the customer lost everything that meant anything to them. Did anyone lose their job over the project showing up a day late? Did someone get hurt or possibly maimed when the truck didn't get there on Friday?

I understand that the end result wasn't what the customer was expecting and we would never purposely deliver the job late if there had been an agreement with our customer beforehand to deliver it on a certain date. But stuff happens. We have to get over it and move one. Think about the next step or how this might not happen again. It's a good thing it wasn't two days or possibly, (don't even think about it) three days late! My God, what would happen then? The Apocalypse? Maybe. . .maybe we should put things in perspective and think about the bigger picture sometimes.

As a society we should demand excellence however when we are sidled with less, we should adapt and make due because when you think about it, there are a lot of things far worse than whatever daily problems we face.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Printing has many emotional ups and downs like most jobs, however I'm here to tell you about the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of print sales.

The good parts of print sales focuses around knowing you have a great partnership in a customer after persuing them as a prospect for a long time. They call you up or email you letting you know that another project is on its way to you without you even giving them a quote first. They are bidding you out, they know that the service they are receiving goes far beyond the menutia of getting quotes from multiple vendors.

Also when you complete a project for a customer without a hitch. They love the end product and praise you for it. I love that email when it comes through reading, "We love these brochures!" It is a great feeling.

The bad happens when projects go awry without having the control to change the outcome. For example, a brochure that is printing and is due to the customer by a specific date and the last process of the project gets botched. This happens usually because someone lacks attention to the details and the brochures get folded wrong or scuffed creating a inferior product that the customer will not be happy with. A process that the print salesman has no control over can create a bad situation where a customer could end up severing ties with the company this print salesman is associated with.

The ugly (worst of all), happens when after a project goes awry and instead of doing damage control and attempting to fix the situation by taking responsibility for the inferior product, the company ends up trying to blame the customer in any way it can. This can become very ugly and can produce such a bad taste in the customer's view that one, they will never come back and two, the ugliness can spread to other customers giving the printing company a bad name in the industry causing a whole slew of other problems.

I try to stay only with the good however the bad happens sometimes and i've steered clear of the ugly. I can only do my best to make sure my customers are happy mainly due to hard work and honesty, both traits that are endearing to my customers.