Bruce Ackerman:
We started the business and became quote on quote successful over time because we just did stuff. We constantly did stuff and we did it and we did it and we did it long enough to start to bring on other people, to help us do it and do it and do it. And so there’s a different skill set it seems from like this like, sort of, starter phase to this professionalization phase.
Ryan Fitzgerald:
Welcome to One Next Step. The most practical business podcast in the world. You’re now one simple tip, practical tool, and small step away from growing your business. One Next Step is brought to you by BELAY, the incredible 100% remote organization, revolutionizing productivity with virtual assistance, bookkeepers and social media managers. Accomplish more, juggle less. Modern staffing from BELAY. And now to your hosts.
Ryan Fitzgerald:
Welcome to One Next Step. The practical business podcast that helps you run your business, so it stops running you. I’m Ryan. And today I’m so excited about the interview. My very own co-host Lisa Leeveld, LZ, will be talking to Bruce Ackerman, and Bruce is gonna be an incredible guest because Bruce is the founder of Printavo. He’s also the host of the PrintHustlers podcast and just happens to be a BELAY client. You’re gonna love what he has to say. Not only does he have his own podcast where he’s helping other people in the print industry, figure out how to go further, faster. He is delegated in his own business and figured out how to grow it with the help of a virtual assistant. I think this conversation about delegation and how to engage in scaling and growing your business can be helpful for any business or organization leader — no matter where they’re at. So I think you’re gonna love this conversation. I think it’s gonna be awesome. And let’s not wait any longer. Let’s jump into it.
Lisa Zeeveld:
Hey, Bruce. It is so great to have you here on our podcast. I’ve been looking forward to this, reading up all about you and your business, but first, before we get to all the good stuff, I always like to kind of open things up with a little bit of like an ice breaker. So do you mind playing along with me here and answering a fun little question?
Bruce Ackerman:
Yeah, let’s do it.
Lisa Zeeveld:
Okay, so what was the first job that you’ve ever had?
Bruce Ackerman:
I was pushing shopping carts at Jewel-Osco. So if they have those or Van’s or whatever, it’s grocery store, but yeah. I was trying to get to the cashier status in summer beause that was like that was the premier, you know, level. But no, I never got there. It’s just a summer job.
Lisa Zeeveld:
You never got to cashier? Oh, man.
Bruce Ackerman:
I know right? Although they had to do a lot of work, you know, it’s surprising, I’m sure when you go to the grocery store, they, you see them type in all the stuff super quick. Like they have to remember all the codes to, alright, bananas is this, apples that, like organic, you know, asparagus or whatever is this. Yeah. But no, it was just bagging. And then you know, you rotate from bagging to go and push carts in the parking lot.
Lisa Zeeveld:
<Laugh> That’s awesome. Of course,, I’m old enough to remember that before the cashiers had the barcodes. And so that was back, you know, like when everything actually had a price tag, crazy to think about that. I was just at an antique store and showed my kids that I’m like, look, it has a real price tag. It would say like, this is 3.99. So I remember my friends working in the grocery store and actually having to key in the price of every item. It’s such a lost art now, a lost art.
Bruce Ackerman:
Yeah. Well, I’m curious now, what was your first job?
Lisa Zeeveld:
Oh, mine is a really long story, but I ended up working as a receptionist for a nail salon when I was really young, but again, long story. But yeah, and I’ll never forget the name of it because I had to answer the phone. It was Lucielle’s Chic Nail Boutique.
Bruce Ackerman:
That a few words to say, for sure, on the phone.
Lisa Zeeveld:
I know. Yeah. It was super, super fun. I’ve always loved serving people. And so that was just a really fun little fit for me over the summer. Same as you, over the summer. I had the opportunity to serve them in that role, which was super fun and the crazy thing is I didn’t get paid for it. Which, again, is part of the long story. My first paid job was working at an ice cream shop.
Bruce Ackerman:
Okay. Yeah. There we go. That’s cool.
Lisa Zeeveld:
Yeah. So very fun. Yeah. Well now let’s get to the nitty gritty stuff. I know everybody that is listening is dying to know about your business and what you do. So can you tell us a little bit about what inspired you to start Printavo? And what exactly the business does?
Bruce Ackerman:
Yeah. Printavos is basically project management software but for the apparel decoration industry. So, you know, I’m sure BELAY orders swag. Any company has swag or employee uniforms or it’s embroidered or printed on the shirt. All of that stuff is made at these specialty printing companies. And they could be really big, you know, on print for Milwaukee Bucks or Golden State Warriors or something. Or they could just be, you know, you’re printing your family reunion shirts or things like that or kids jerseys. So I actually, in college, I bought some screen printing equipment with some friends and we loved designing apparel and we were using a shop, but one of the retailers that were selling our stuff said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this equipment in my garage. Do you want it?’ And so we put some money together and then we bought it, and we put it in the back of his retail shop actually.
Bruce Ackerman:
And ended up hiring him to help us print and learn to print. And he showed us so much. Because it’s kind of an art. There’s so much that’s involved to get, you know, customized clothing out the door. And then pretty quickly, when we were growing that, we needed some sort of software to help deal with quotes and approvals and billing and scheduling, when are things due? With every small business, you need some sort of software to help keep track of all that stuff. So that’s where I just started working on Printavo to be that solution to help us because there wasn’t anything that I found out there that I liked that also was very easy to use and affordable. So yeah, that kicked it off — that kicked off the next 11 years or so.
Lisa Zeeveld:
Wow. A long way from picking up the carts in the grocery store parking lot.
Bruce Ackerman:
One hundred percent.
Lisa Zeeveld:
I love that. Now did you always have that sort of entrepreneurial spirit because I think that that speaks a lot that you were you and your friends are like, ‘let’s just give this a try.’ Like ‘that sounds like fun to do,’ you know, did you have other opportunities before that to create a business or was this the first time?
Bruce Ackerman:
I’m more specifically am just curious, like I’m just, you know, somebody’s working on something that looks cool or you know, they were coding on something that I saw, you know, in the library or whatever I would just stop and ask like, ‘Hey, what are you working on?’ I was doing a lot of freelance design work before. So the part that I skipped was that like I was doing a ton of — I love UI design and web design. And so I was doing a lot of freelance work there. And then started to learn that the coding side on the back end just with some books and just building things. I would always be building little apps that would solve our needs. So we were selling clothes, and I needed an inventory solution and I didn’t like using Excel slash just didn’t know how to use it.
Bruce Ackerman:
So built something for that and that helped us a little way. And then we wanted to text our customers, so we built this little texting tool that we could put on our website, like a little niche. I think it was just more of just like just being curious. And I think, which I didn’t realize until probably more now was just that, with small businesses and every business owner that’s probably listening knows, there’s so many little niches out there and just finding or helping a friend move stuff or helping them work for a couple of months. There are so many good ideas to build around. So yeah, that’s how I found that one.
Lisa Zeeveld:
Yeah. Natural curiosity. I love that. And this is really a good segue for us because you know, here at BELAY, we love working with businesses of all sizes and stages. And we’re always curious to hear about some of the biggest challenges that business owners face. Specifically for you, what are some of the biggest barriers that you encountered while growing your business? You kind of mentioned a few, like you didn’t have the right software to text somebody, and so you just kind of created that. But what are some other things that maybe you didn’t create on your own, but that you saw were like big challenges for you creating your businesses and, and what did you learn from those challenges? Because like you said, the natural curiosity that comes from starting a busines, not only fuels new services or new products but at the same time can help you learn how to run a business better.
Bruce Ackerman:
Yeah. That’s a good question. Well, all right. Let me step back a little bit. So last year the business was actually acquired by a few different partners, and we’re still partnering with them and so now we’re hiring a CEO and professionalizing this business, and they’ve acquired a couple of other companies as well, but we grew from, you know, just starting the company in 2012 to about four and a half million or so in ARR, which is like recurring revenue. And through that journey — which was really great so far — but I think still, also in the smaller end, relative to its a lot of different businesses just to help give context here is that, that I, I would say the first for a software business zero to 1 million is so difficult to get traction and to figure out what the product means and like, think about it.
Bruce Ackerman:
If you’re just charging a hundred dollars, how many customers do you need to get to a million dollars, which is like 80 thousand dollars a month divided by a hundred dollars an account, right? So it takes a lot of, not just product, but customer service and marketing and sales — all that stuff. I think the first step that was difficult was just creating a really good product market fit, and just building that, that product out. I think over time though, it was first — hiring. So our first hire was a salesperson. So my thought around hiring was, I’m doing X things — and this kind of relates to BELAY actually, which kinda funny — but I’m doing X things on my day-to-day. Where can I offload something off my plate that somebody needs to focus or spend more time on? The first one was sales, so I created a lot of scripts. I created the foundation, and then I hired someone. In my gut, though, that person was bad. I was like, ‘eh, they’re kinda weird. Like, I don’t know this is gonna be a good fit, but like maybe they’ll be fine, right?’ They were so bad in fact, and they were terrible. And I let them go maybe three weeks later. I felt bad. He started to cry, and I gave him the laptop to take anyway.
Bruce Ackerman:
Learning experience of trying to standardize a hiring process so that you could measure who’s good and who’s not? So then what I learned was that, all right, if I have the same questions I’m asking everybody, then I understand a baseline. And that way I know when somebody is above that baseline, they’re good. And you have to talk to maybe 15 people, and then you’ll start to see those dots. But that was the first thing. And then I think the next thing then is just figuring out how to repeat that process. So there’s a balance of you’re doing everything, and then you’re trying to figure out what are the roles that I can start to hire for so I can do more important things with my time.
Bruce Ackerman:
And there was – somebody said this … ‘How much do you think you’re worth hourly?’ And let’s say it’s 50 dollars an hour, a hundred dollars an hour, whatever it is. Can you hire somebody that can do that task, but for way less? So 15 an hour, 10 an hour, 20 an hour, whatever. That is a really good mathematical way of then just driving that growth. And so I started using that. So support — next really good one. Standardized the hiring for support. So that was the first lesson. Second lesson — hire people under my hourly wage. Cool. Hire that person when I could afford it, and then do that. And so I kept repeating that process until I had a really solid team of probably seven in different departments.
Bruce Ackerman:
The next problem, though, and/or challenge was — they say, you can’t manage more than like eight people, 10 people. I think as a business owner, you force it with time. So you add more time into your day and you just do more, but starting to bring on managers. And I don’t think I did still a great job of that until recently where we’re really professionalizing the business, but I think it would’ve been every two contributors should have a manager or some sort of lead that I directly work with and then they delegate down. And using that to continue to scale. That was the next challenge is finding those types of people as it’s a different process in training them, and type of person and honestlymore expensive.
Lisa Zeeveld:
Yeah.
Bruce Ackerman:
So I’m sure there’s a million other things, but I think those are like the three big ones. And then also just staying mentally healthy. I feel like I was able to run for probably like eight years off of doing that and waking up super early, staying up super late, just being very passionate about it until I was starting to hit a wall of, ‘I just don’t want to do this meeting. I don’t want to interview that person. It’s just not what I’m into anymore. I just can’t spend the time doing it.’ And so shifting to, ‘Okay, who can take this stuff on?’ Because there’s always somebody else who’s more passionate about doing the things that you don’t want to do. And figuring out so that you can keep running to the next stage.
Lisa Zeeveld:
I love how you systematized everything. I think that’s probably just how your brain works. You’re very analytical. But I think that that’s probably one of the hardest things for a lot of — but yet you started out creative. So in my mind, I’m trying to figure you out, Bruce. You have so of these great talents that I think a lot of entrepreneurs really struggle with because it wasn’t that you just loved building software. And a lot of people are just like, ‘This is what I love doing,’ and then they get hung up on the hiring people or they get hung up on, I don’t know how to get out this burnout cycle. And I love that you really started to systematize everything. And so it became a problem that was easy to solve like a math problem that you could say, ‘If I have enough — that A plus B is always gonna equal C.’ And it feels like that that might have given you some peace and again that professionalization of the business and really helped you kind of climb out of that sort of burnout stage. But were there people that you leaned into that kind of gave you those nuggets of wisdom or their resources or was it just innate to you to do those things?
Bruce Ackerman:
Yeah, that’s a good question. I gravitated towards the leaders. So, we’re in a space called SAAS, software as a service, which basically means you just charge monthly for whatever you’re selling. There is certain content-based leaders, podcasts like this one, blogs, this one guy, Jason Lemkin that’s really good on Twitter. He writes a ton of blogs and he has a conference. I listen to — and would constant absorb. Like, be at the gym listening to a podcast, be driving listen to something and constantly applying things and taking little tidbits. Because every business is so different … Zappos is a good one — delivering happiness, right? So the whole premise was that customer service is a feature of the business and most people view it as a cost center, but it’s actually an extension of your brand and therefore it’s marketing, so treat customer services as marketing. Okay, cool. I’m gonna take that. That’s like our little thing here.
Bruce Ackerman:
And then to your point about the process thing. Yeah I think, especially first, starting from zero in a first couple million dollars, like it paid real, it paid dividends to have everybody — any new process that came in, we documented, put into a Google drive and put it into the department as this is what you’re, you know, this is your new hire stuff, this is how you deal with sales, here’s your demo script. here’s how commissions are paid, you know, all that. And so anybody can rely on, you know, looking at that stuff and it made training easier. And just trying to create that repetitive cycle. Now it’s not perfect by any means. I mean, it’s constantly changing. But it helped at least until you get to the manager stage.
Lisa Zeeveld:
Yeah. And do you feel like that that helped you when you brought on new partners and, and investors last year? I mean, do you feel like that was one of the things that kind of set you apart maybe from some other opportunities that they might have been looking at was the systemization and sort of the process by which you went about growing your business?
Bruce Ackerman:
I think so. I think that that process also — we put that into our product too. We wanted to build a really great product, have a great team, have great process. And like what business owner wants to be an answering the same question like four times in a day? Like, where is this, how do I do this? How would I put this? Where do I enter this data? You know? So I think the more investment made. If you can make 1% improvement every little day and, and think about that, then think about that over the next year. I mean, it’s really really huge as to where you could to look back on. And just making my life easier as much as I can.
Lisa Zeeveld:
I love that. Easier is really one of the things that we sell here at BELAY, and you kind of teased it up a little bit at the beginning that you have a BELAY virtual assistant. So I’d love to hear what is the biggest problem that you were hoping to solve with your virtual assistant?
Bruce Ackerman:
Yeah, for sure. So we started doing more trade shows, so we had more travel. And it wasn’t just my travel, it was also the team’s travel. So let’s say we go to trade show, there could be four or five people going, right. And then they’re not all coming from the same city. There’s flights, there’s hotels, there’s car rentals, and then we were doing four trade shows a year. Not only that at the same time, but we probably had 20 people maybe in the business. So not huge, but like enough where I’m so passionate about the business. I wanna spend as much time as possible on the business and improving it and working on it. And so my thought was, how can I also make my personal life easier? How do I optimize just everything possible?
Bruce Ackerman:
Like why am I spending time — it sounds maybe silly or over the top or whatever, but like, why am I spending time doing laundry? Or like cooking or things that I just don’t enjoy doing or planning on a vacation like this kind of stuff. Like I just want to go. So could somebody help with that? And the other thing too is I booked the wrong stuff like three, four times. I booked a hotel, we land in Atlantic city I wanna say, and we’re going to the hotel, we get on the shuttle to go to the rental car to pick up the rental car. And I get this call from the local area code. And I’m like, hello, they’re like, hi you’ve got all your trade show boxes here, but I see your reservation is actually for one year from today.
Lisa Zeeveld:
Oh no! Bummer.
Bruce Ackerman:
It’s that, it’s flights were booked for the wrong days. You forget to book a rental car. I think these are just like glaring red flags and you know, at least for me, I was really against hiring somebody to help me do my job because you think like, what do you mean? I’ll just spend more time. I’ll just do it. I could just pick it up. I’ll just spend another hour. Like why would I — and what I think I didn’t realize is how many little things over the course of even a day, let alone a week or month — that stuff just adds up. Like, it’s just like constant distractions of things.
Bruce Ackerman:
I’ll tell you one other quick story wrote. I was in the car sitting in the passenger seat. They won’t let me drive at the trade shows because, you know, just distractions and everything. So I’m sitting and I’m just working and I’m looking at Amazon and a colleagues, like ‘What are you doing? You’ve been looking at these like Amazon mice for like 10 minutes.’ And I’m like trying to find a good mouse. That’s like, oh, should it be cordless? Should it be wireless? And he is like, ‘Dude, you need somebody just to help you, like, why are you spending 15 minutes looking for a mouse to send someone on Amazon, then you gotta get their address and type it.’ So, anyway, that’s kind of what kicked it off.
Lisa Zeeveld:
Yeah. Well, it was funny though, because when we first started talking, you were talking about bringing on this sales person, right? And that you had a really easy kind of math problem. And I think this is a problem a lot of business leaders do. They’re like, okay, well, if I make a hundred dollars an hour — you know, you’re example — I could be doing other things and I could hire this person for less. And so they’ll do that. But what I see time and time again, is those positions seem to be easier for the founder, the entrepreneur, the business leader to let go of, but yet the ones that are like the little ordering the mouse or making the hotel, like for some reason, it’s hard for us to do the same math problem. Like we can make sense of it when it’s for a marketing person or sales or accounting or finance. But when it comes to having somebody help us do those small things, we just sort of stumble because to your point, we think, well, we’ll just add more time in our day.
Bruce Ackerman:
Here’s a problem that I realized the problem is that we started the business and became quote unquote successful over time because we just did stuff. We constantly did stuff and we did it and we did it and we did it long enough to start to bring on other people, to help us do it and do it and do it. And so there’s a different skill set. It seems from like this like sort of starter phase to this professionalization phase where it’s okay, the team’s doing it. Not like I’m not, and that’s hard. I still am guilty of it, but I think I’m better after a year or so, but it’s hard to transition that mental of just jump in and do it versus spend a little bit of extra time, train them, give ’em the login to Amazon, you know, here’s the stuff that we normally buy. Here’s the talk about it. Okay, cool. Now they’re good to go.
Lisa Zeeveld:
Yeah. And, and your personal life as well. I mean, have you found, you know, doctor’s appointments, birthday gifts. Have you also kind of jumped to that next level of saying, I also shouldn’t be the one to do those things too.
Bruce Ackerman:
Yeah. You know, I relied … it was probably like 60% business related time stuff and 40% personal stuff. And a lot of those personal things were like, okay, so we have a dog, can you book a grooming appointment? Or, or like, they need the shots from a vet. Can you find a time in the calendar that works? And I can drive over, you know, haircut appointment or can you just buy this stuff? The personal trips were kind of nice too. So, ‘Hey, we want to take a weekend and go to, I don’t know, San Diego, what’s a good place to stay. You already have the login for all the points and different things. What are maybe three restaurants we should try?’ Booking reservations was a really big one. It’s just like so much — I can keep focusing if I do that. And the other thing too is like using Siri. So — it’s gonna like blow up all the iPads and things here — but like, Hey, you know text, you know, so and so to blah, blah, blah, and like super quick. Right. Cause I think you’re like always thinking of stuff to do and it just funnels out and it tells that person and, you know, our assistant’s been awesome to be able to handle that. Yeah. I’m trying to think of other personal things. Those are undervalued by the way.
Lisa Zeeveld:
Yes. Yes. Oh gosh. I love how you just said that it helps you focus because you have the time in that you’re using technology along with your assistant because I think there was a lot of people out there who think that they’re not the same, you’re gonna keep them separate or maybe I can have one or the other. And the fact that you’re using that technology S-I-R-I to help you. So my technology also doesn’t go off and to you know, to really build that relationship and to delegate to your, you know, the real live virtual assistant on the other hand, I think is brilliant. And I think it’s beautiful. And I think that that will speak to a lot of leaders out there who have struggled to maybe just use artificial intelligence to be that assistant in their life.
Bruce Ackerman:
Yeah, for sure. You know, that’s an interesting thing too, that I thought about, which is, you know, there’s lawyers that are one person that have an assistant as a company. So why am I mentally struggling with, you know, there’s a team of 20, 25, you know, so clearly they know something there’s like a hack here that they know that we haven’t quite adjusted to. And it’s just like, oh yeah, you have, you know, you’re a lawyer and you have an assistant and, and that’s just how you get started.
Lisa Zeeveld:
That’s fantastic. Well, before we’d wrap up, I would love if you could maybe give some final words of encouragement for all the entrepreneurs out there who are listening, you know, I’m thinking of you’re accomplished and successful. You’ve gotten to a stage that many entrepreneurs just hope to be at. So what would you say to that guy who’s maybe a couple months into this journey or the gal who’s six years in and thinking maybe I should look at an investor or maybe it’s just somebody who’s struggling to delegate their, their dog’s grooming appointment. And they’re like, ‘I need encouragement.’ You know, like what would you give them? What are some nuggets?
Bruce Ackerman:
One thing is just like emulate people that — don’t try to look for the hacks of like, you know, everybody’s like, oh, what time do you wake up? What do you eat during the day? Like what, like, who cares? You know, Warren buffet eats McDonald’s and Coke, like, does that, you know, matter? I found that everybody’s figuring it out. You know, everybody from a company doing a billion in revenue is figuring it out and going to talk to other companies leaders in that size. But I think the things that differentiate folks are just forward progress probably. There’s people that will just push forward for 10 years and keep iterating and learning and being curious and like, okay, next one, iterating. Oh, I made a mistake. All right, cool. Like, you know, and just keep pushing, oh, shoot. This product just doesn’t work. No one wants to buy it and being humble about that to be able to keep making the right decisions.
Bruce Ackerman:
And then I think, especially in regards with BELAY, it’s okay to not be able to do everything. In fact, it becomes a skill to be able to do less. If you were to paint yourself in five years, do you want to be working 15 hours a day in six, seven days a week? Or do you wanna, you know, make, I don’t know, 500K a year and like put in 15 hours a day. So how do we start to work towards that goal and think about that versus just putting out fires for this week. That’s what I think about there’s no, there’s no hit and there’s only like little like breadcrumbs along the way to keep.
Lisa Zeeveld:
Sure, sure. Well, I’m gonna take that skill to ‘do less.’ I really really appreciate that. Well how can our listeners find you? How can they get in touch with you or Printavo? Give us the details.
Bruce Ackerman:
Yeah. You can follow us at Printavo on Instagram. I’m at bcackerman on Instagram and I’m on Twitter at webbruce. I need to make those the same. Those are hard to say; that’s not a good branding. And if you have just questions, I’m bruce@printavo.com. I’m always on email and more than happy to help.
Lisa Zeeveld:
That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much. Well, Hey guys, I hope that you’ve enjoyed this conversation. We definitely want you to check out our bonus content where Bruce is going to stick around to answer one last question about beginning your partnership with a new virtual assistant. To hear that clip, subscribe to our email list, and we’ll send you a link to our bonus content, or you can always visit onnextsteppodcast.com where you can find a link in our show notes.
Ryan Fitzgerald:
Wow. That was an awesome conversation between LZ and Bruce. I’m so grateful for that. I feel like there were some incredible insights about how to scale a business. And I think those things, whether you’re in a print business or any business, really apply to anything. And I also personally love to hear anytime someone has an incredible experience with a BELAY virtual assistant. It really helps their lives be better and help them accomplish more. I love hearing those stories so much.
Ryan Fitzgerald:
Today we’ve got an easy one next step for you to take, and it’s simply subscribing to Printavo’s podcast, PrintHustlers, and I hope they have incredible merch, because that’d be like a really cool sticker, but PrintHustlers can be found anywhere where podcasts are found just like this one, which is awesome. So to learn more about how Bruce’s team is helping innovate in their industry, make sure to go download PrintHustlers on your favorite podcast player. And while you’re there, if for some reason you’re not subscribed to BELAY, go ahead and subscribe to BELAY’s podcast, One Next Step. You can find that anywhere podcasts are found Apple podcast, Spotify, all that. And while you’re there, maybe leave a review. I’d love nothing more. And if you’re ready to start accomplishing more and juggling less, go to belaysolutions.com. For more episodes, show notes and helpful resources, visit onenextsteppodcast.com.