Search Interviews:

Jeremy Weisz 15:45
Okay, what’s, um, what do you use for systemization? I imagine there are so many steps with each one of these. And all the customers are kind of had their own preferences or individual things ain’t Need maybe, you know, stuffing mailer? And some maybe not and others are they insert? What are some of the ways you communicate with the staff so everyone is on the same page?

Wayne Deehring 16:13
That’s a great question. You know, what’s interesting about that is there wasn’t a software that existed. And still, it does not exist to be a hybrid like we are in and what I mean by hybrid is a print house slash fulfillment company. So what we had to do was write our own system. We wrote it from the ground up, so that it could be tailored entirely to us. So my business partner and I wrote this system, it handles the orders coming in. We have a lot of moving parts of different servers that handle these processes of these orders coming in and then it goes into our system. Now our system is set up where the production gets They’re, you know, production tickets and tell them exactly what’s in the course. As well as the system kicks out instructions for the shipments to go out. So the staff in the warehouse, get those shipment requests and they’re able to see exactly what needs to go into each particular shipment that’s going out. And then the quality control takes a look at it and double checks the order prior to it being closed up and being sent.

Jeremy Weisz 17:29
Nice. And I know you do a lot of things for events as well. And I just wanted to give I think, you know, a big thank you. I think a while ago, when you and I were introduced by Vinny Fisher I think it fully accountable and then more recently, Carrie NAB who heads up sponsorships at traffic diversion. You do a lot of work with traffic conversion and events in general. Talk a little bit about what do you do around the trafficking version in other events that you work with.

Wayne Deehring 18:04
So what we do for traffic numbers and just print just about everything that they need and everything from, you know, printed items, like their brochures or anything they’re handing out that goes in your bag of traffic and conversion to a large format printing to the lanyards to several of the sponsors, making the booth making all of their promo items, all of that sort of stuff. So that he that’s what traffic numbers as well as we have a booth there so that we can talk to potential customers that need printing and fulfillment. The other side is events in general. So we work with companies all across the scope of business out there, but primarily events have for us have come down to info companies. So you have the companies the likes of Fortune Builders and companies like that. That are out and doing events on the road. We handle everything for the events from all the printing all of the logistics of everything getting to the events, as well as whatever’s leftover, getting back and resetting it to go back out to another event.

Jeremy Weisz 19:18
How do you sound so calm?

Wayne Deehring 19:19
And that I read

Jeremy Weisz 19:20
On your website? I know, you supported over 3400 events last year alone, and I don’t yeah, that’s pretty amazing.

Wayne Deehring 19:32
You know, I sell systems-based. Well, it’s funny it would be if there was no systems in place, but I am a systems person in terms of IT systems don’t fail. Yeah, people do, but systems don’t. So if you have the right system in place, you can rely on the system. So it’s really when you have the right systems in place and you really look at efficiencies and KPIs and These sort of factors to determine what is the most efficient way to do this and you create the system around it and it gets it out. So it does have a lot of moving parts, it requires quite a bit of work on the back end that people don’t see as far as making sure that stuff is picked up from these parcel carriers from these events, making sure it gets back to us. When it gets back to us. It’s a lot of work to go through everything. Make sure that what’s usable, what’s not usable. All the while printing new items for these events, and making sure that items are getting there we at any one given time. We have events that are shipping, we have events that are currently at their location, say today, it’s a Friday and there’s a weekend event, and there are events on their way back to us. So if you can imagine it in your mind’s eye, it’s sort of like a just a big cog that keeps on just clicking. You know, one click at a time and everything does a circle and cut gets back to us.

Jeremy Weisz 20:58
That’s amazing. What would be cool It’d be really labor intensive. If we saw I saw watch like a time-lapse video of like creating a logo to put on the thing, do you produce a ship? I mean, it’d be insane to watch that time-lapse video of all the things that happened for it to actually show up at that event and then shipped back. It’s, it’s remarkable.

Wayne Deehring 21:22
That would be, that’s a great idea. I mean, that would be a great idea, just so they can see the work that goes into what we have done that where we create it from inception. Right? So from a customer just saying, I think I want my logo to look like this, or I have no idea. Yeah, and yeah, they’ll tell us we just want these colors. No, from that point.

Jeremy Weisz 21:42
Yeah, exactly. Are people products.

Wayne Deehring 21:44
Exactly. And so from that point, what we do is we you know, make it and create the whole design, get it out to the customer. Once that’s all approved, we start making the course and there’s the cup customers grow. Not everybody grows, you know, some people are the size they’re going to be and some grow giant, you know, so, but we just what we do is we fit it into systems we already have in place and it works out. You know, we’ve, we’ve done this for a very long time. So we have a very good

Wayne Deehring 22:20
Good idea of how to make everything work. Yeah, that would be really cool to see

Jeremy Weisz 22:27
A lot about I mentioned some big customers that you have, you have and I’ve had. What’s one that was especially you’re especially gratifying or proud of, based on maybe it took a long time to get them or the type of project you did with them. And I mentioned like Lyft and Sony and Coca Cola and Disney and Walmart. I don’t know all the companies that you’ve gotten. What’s one that’s been especially gratifying for you?

Wayne Deehring 22:57
Well, it’s they all I’ve been doing went for so long that I don’t really, you know, pay much attention after I’ve done it if that makes any sense to you, my wife, I had done a project for Sony. It was a rerelease of A League of Their Own. I love that movie. And yeah, you know, it was interesting because they called us which and asked us to redesign a DVD box for the movie. We put a bunch of items inside of it, that were part of this special edition, produce everything, get everything ready boxes, everything except for the actual D DVD itself, which was put into the box by Sony at their distribution facility in the Midwest. But and we had approximately one week to do all of it. It was just a limited run ended design. So that was an interesting project. I’ll tell you why. We had to come up with a design. We didn’t know what to do. Then we take like six, they didn’t give us something.

Jeremy Weisz 24:11
Design.

Wayne Deehring 24:13
Well, I had a good idea. I had an idea in my mind’s eye. So what we did is I had one of our female employees. I went about a baseball and I had her kiss a baseball. We put on red lipstick, bright red lipstick and kiss a baseball. Then I went up the street, took my DSLR went up the street just up the street from us is the daughter’s farm team. called the quakes. Anyway, they’re two blocks up. They have baseball diamonds all around the main field there so took the baseball that was kissed and threw it around in the dirt. Just to get a dirty look like it’s been used and take out my DSLR can’t get it to work. I proceeded to drive around a little bit to find a charger for the battery. Nobody had the charger. So I got creative at the time I had an iPhone seven. So I take the iPhone seven, I turned it upside down in the dirt might take about 4045 pictures of the baseball from that real close up almost with the bokeh effect behind it. And or that ended up being the cover of the DVD case. So it was a shot down. The third baseline with that, you know, and throw the logos on there, put some items in it, but what I was proud of that job was because we were able to do it again. We don’t tell customers to know they needed this. I was still curious why they didn’t handle it in-house with their own in-house designers. But they had us do it. We and in that time we also fulfilled made the 25,000 it was just a run of 25,000 It was a very it was a small limited edition, that special edition run. And excuse me, we fulfilled it as well. So we printed the boxes, assembled the boxes, put everything inside the boxes, boxed it up and got it out. And we sent it with some drivers that, yeah, drove straight across to Indiana where their DC is. So it was a quick project. But that’s what we do. You know, we’ve had people call us for TNC. For example, they called me less than 12 hours before the event started, I needed 6000 of something printed. And we did it, we printed it. And I brought it with me when I drove down to the event and yeah, it’s we’re known for that. We’ve never done any advertising. We’re just we are known. It’s all word of mouth. And we’re sort of known as when you have an impossible project. It’s possible for USP

Jeremy Weisz 27:03
That’s your tagline for this. I was looking at your website.

Wayne Deehring 27:08
But yeah, we played around it’s one-stop one solution or, you know, I believe, because of what we do inception to completion because we really take projects from an idea

Wayne Deehring 27:21
To completion. Yeah,

Jeremy Weisz 27:23
Totally. Um, how did Sony hear about you?

Wayne Deehring 27:27
Well, I have a friend that is Jane Seymour’s daughter that is a friend of mine and she was actually the one that introduced me to Sony. And we were working on some different disc, you know, different projects here and there. And then, as I said, we also we do mailing or you know, we’ve done mailing in the past and do mailing for a bunch of different people, the Grammys, the Grammys, the academies, this, you know, everything across the board.

Jeremy Weisz 27:58
You’re like they won’t need this actually. award you’ve probably like a Grammy Award on your mantle just like yeah,

Wayne Deehring 28:05
We’ll keep them funny. So what we do we say yeah, we send out a lot of the stuff as it’s coming into award season we were sending out all the members of the academy or the different guilds we’d send out screeners and that sort of stuff, that the letters talking about them where they can view the movie prior to the prior to the Grammys or the Emmys of the academies. Yeah, all that stuff. You know, they do. Not a lot of people know, but the studios do a lot of marketing to the academy members that boat before they vote. So saying, you know, trying. Yeah, that’s mean. So and that’s what this is, is more is basically marketing to get them to watch the movies and that sort of stuff.

Jeremy Weisz 28:55
They don’t see it. They can’t vote on it right or they can’t elect it.

Wayne Deehring 28:58
Right, right. How can you vote on it? Good in good conscience, right?

Jeremy Weisz 29:03
You know, Wayne, what’s another cool project that you’re especially proud of the Sony one? They love that story with the League of Their Own. What else? What’s another cool one that you remember?

Wayne Deehring 29:16
I, you know, it’s, it’s really all over the board. I’ve never given it much thought Sony was interesting. We just, we make custom boxes for people, those are fun projects for me, because it allows me to get a little creative and you know, really, you know, visualize something in my head and bring it to reality. That’s, that’s always fun. You know, and that’s what design is. It’s seeing something in your mind’s eye and, and really putting it to, you know, to paper on the computer wherever you design, whether you’re illustrating or what have you, but it’s tough. You know, we just do so many times. It’s like

Jeremy Weisz 29:59
Which one? I didn’t know if like you were walking in Costco or something? Oh, that’s my, you know, I don’t know something that’s especially gratifying to see like it for my tuition. Yeah.

Wayne Deehring 30:14
Yeah, you know, it’s never easy. It’s funny that you bring that up because my wife would say that she was so she was like, that’s so cool that you know, we’re walking in the store and you’re what you produced is sitting here, right? For A League of Their Own for instance. Yeah. And she thought it was interesting, but once the project’s done, I don’t it’s, it’s changed for me over the years. Once it’s done, it’s I’ve done it so many times, thousands of times, we’ve made, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars

Jeremy Weisz 30:43
at this point.

Wayne Deehring 30:45
Yeah, you know, I designed billboards, you know, not that that’s any sort of a big deal, but it’s, it’s once you once you’re complete with the project, it just becomes a memory and then you’re moving on to the next one because we move at such a fast pace. So You know, it’s just for me, it’s that’s what it is. You know, it’s, it’s different from my wife or friends that see things that I have done or see what I’m working on, you know, because they find it interesting but yeah, I just sort of numb to it like you said, it’s just there are so many projects going at one time, you know, early on

Jeremy Weisz 31:22
Where you felt it was a big break for you in the company. Maybe it was a project maybe was a company.

Wayne Deehring 31:28
Yeah. No, I never was it’s just I look at it a quite a bit differently. No, yeah, it’s just for me. It’s a design that is less all that part of the business. It’s just like anything, right? It’s, it’s, with what you do or anybody else does. It is. It’s just what I do. And it wasn’t anything that I ever for. I get excited for my customers but for myself, making it never really nothing’s ever anything. It’s just not for any other reason then. Because usually when I’m finished with a project, there’s probably 3040 other projects lined up to go. So I just don’t have the time to breathe. And along with time zones, you know,

Jeremy Weisz 32:16
Now’s the time. So we’re breathing right now a little bit. I want, I’m interested in this. You did some work with Lyft What did you do with Lyft?

Wayne Deehring 32:27
Well, we send out all their new driver kits, we, you know, make and design different things for Lyft. So it’s that it’s interesting, but again, it comes down and people are like, wow, you do that. But for us, it’s, it’s again, it’s another it’s just another cog in the wheel and we just keep on doing it. Yeah, we just put we put a system around it. It’s interesting, you know, with Lyft wants their stuff out very quickly. We create a system so the orders come in and they go out the same day. You know, whatever our customers ask, I can’t go back to that enough, whatever they asked, we make it happen. There used to be a joke with us that if they asked us to do their dry cleaning, we’d say we’d probably do it and they started asking us to dry clean certain things, and we do it now. So it’s just it then never says know what makes it easy. We’re not the least expensive company out there doing what we do. But where the value in our company is that you can make one phone call, one single call, and have everything done from the fulfillment, the printing, promo items, packaging, custom packaging events, you know, just on and on. And we even just launched a, an agency pipe company, where we’ll handle their social media, that sort of stuff because it’s, it’s all part of the whole process. If we’re making a look or a design or a logo or again, a brand for a company for us to be able to make the other assets for the social media part and that it’s just a natural fit.

Jeremy Weisz 34:08
You know, when Who do you consider? I’m sure you have a lot of colleagues, it could be colleague, it could be a mentor, who do you consider as influential on your, you know, who do you go for, for advice and in mentorship over the years and it could be a colleague or just a mentor in general?

Wayne Deehring 34:31
Well, you know, over the years over the last 10 years or so, it’s been the guys from digital marketer, to be honest, you know, and that also, Fortune Builders, you know, guys like Dan Merrill to with Roland Frasier, Ryan Deiss, you know, Perry Beltre, talking to those guys. We are heavily invested in their success because they order a lot from us. So you know and their success has been tremendous. So using them as a mentor or relying on them as a mentor and asking for advice from them. Those are probably the people I go to the most.

Jeremy Weisz 35:13
Yeah. Um, I’ve one last question. When I asked him first of all, thanks for sharing your stories. They’re commonplace to most people. It’s pretty amazing how your work reaches so far and wide with the companies you serve and the events you know, it really touches your touching. I mean, you’re helping whatever tens of thousands of companies but you’re touching millions of people. So to me, it’s remarkable. You it’s just

Wayne Deehring 35:42
Your what you do. Yeah, I’ve never really thought about it that way. That’s a great way to look at it. I’ve just you know, it’s when you’re so close to a project a focus does not become well. Man, if you will, right. I get

Jeremy Weisz 35:55
it because someone is like do this in a week. You’re like, you can’t focus on anything. Like getting it done in a week, you know, right?

Wayne Deehring 36:03
Well, if you imagine, if you imagine like an image where you zoom in, you know, and you’re so close to it, a lot of these projects were so close to it’s right in front of our face to where our focus is, is a very little part of that project. And I’ve never, I don’t really ever zoom out enough to make sure the process goes you know, all the way through to completion, but never zooming way back. Yeah, where you go, wow, you know, I’ve never thought about it that way. But that’s an interesting, an interesting way to think about it. And if I ever had, you know, five minutes to

Wayne Deehring 36:35
think about it.

Wayne Deehring 36:38
Consider this your five minutes, you know, thanks. I appreciate

Jeremy Weisz 36:42
So I always ask since it’s inspired insider two things. One, what’s been a low moment, a challenging moment that you really had to push through And on the flip side, what’s been especially a proud moment for you in Oh, you know, decades of business. Because we all you know, as a business we there’s always challenging moments and tough times what’s been a challenging time and how you push through it.

Wayne Deehring 37:11
Well, the challenging times have been less have not really been on the business side then. We’re in the service side, but it has been on the personal side. I have five sons. And I tell them, my sons are twins. I have twins and they were born at 27 weeks. Wow. So they were two pounds. They were in ICU for 14 weeks. One of those boys has cerebral palsy. And as a result of being born that early in the cerebral palsy is basically brain damage. And so while you know working designing a managing product launches while I’m sitting at Children’s house, spittle by my son’s having brain surgery. Those were some, those are some challenging moments. Putting the word is actually what helped me get through it. Yeah, it was at work is what helped me get through it because, you know, people used to tell me when we were going through this said you guys are you know, my wife and I, You guys are so strong and I said no nobody that goes through this you don’t have a choice there isn’t. You don’t have a choice to be strong. You’re in a three-sided hallway with the back pushing you forward and you just, you know, continue walking. So going through that whole process that was the real challenge, you know, challenging, but work is what actually kept me my mind on a singular path where you don’t dive down into the negative of everything that’s going on around you. So I was able to sit there at the hospital while this was going on. And he’s had five brain surgeries at 12 or four 14 surgeries by this point but you know and after the third or fourth brain surgery which is fine now he’s a very intelligent boy he has cerebral palsy he’s in school he’s a great kid but he, you know going through all that is I was grateful to have all the work because that’s what kept me sane. Well,

Jeremy Weisz 39:22
So what is the day in the life when you get home or before you get to the office and in the evening with

Wayne Deehring 39:30
Five sons that many kids well, so my oldest child, he’s out of the house now but the other four are 10, nine and three. So, a typical day is get up very early, which I do. Naturally. I go to bed about eight o’clock at night, and there’s a reason for that, but I go to bed by eight o’clock in the evening. So I get up very early. Get up. I let my wife sleep in a bit. I Get the kids, the three ready for school. Get downstairs, feed them breakfast. Meanwhile, my wife comes downstairs, she gets their lunches ready. I get them loaded up, take them to school, come to the office, do what I do all day. And there’s a running joke here at the office that I, I come to work to escape the chaos at home. But Alright, so then my wife picks him up, I get home, I hang out with the boys. We talk about their days we do that sort of stuff. They’ve already had their homework done by the time I get home. Typically the older boys or two of the older boys bathe themselves my 10 year old with cerebral palsy needs help. So I usually bathe him and my three year old and that’s kind of our time where we talk and chat and In the reason why I go to bed is it’s just a nightly routine my three year old after he’s got his pajamas on he comes and lays down with me. And that is like probably the single greatest sedative in the world because when he lays down with me I fall asleep with him so right and then I wake up, put him in his bed and rinse and repeat every day.

Jeremy Weisz 41:23
Thanks for sharing that. That’s pretty amazing. Yeah, no worries. So when’s number six coming knowns?

Wayne Deehring 41:30
No more.

Wayne Deehring 41:32
I was never the guy that was gonna have five sons. I was just never that guy. And you know, I’m glad I do have five sons. But outside of that, so we decided

Jeremy Weisz 41:46
You know, that was lame to me. Yeah, I mean, come on after like, two What about on the flips? Thanks for sharing that way on the flips. Yeah. What’s been especially proud moment it could be business or personal.

Wayne Deehring 42:01
You know that the problem is just with is with the kids, mostly that they’re there. You know, they turned out good. It’s challenging. And what I mean by good is just all the issues we went through from them being born so early. And like I said, you know, they’re both on the autistic spectrum. So just and they’ve had 6500 hours of therapy. Wow. But they, they’ve had literally therapy since they came home and just you know, that the fact that they’re well adjusted, and given everything that they’ve gone through, you know, that’s really, you know, them. My kids are my greatest, you know, as far as I’m concerned, My children are my greatest achievement. Yeah,

Jeremy Weisz 42:50
Yeah, totally. Well, thank you. I appreciate you sharing your story. And I appreciate you sharing. Because that’s the reality of life, right. It’s people see the business stuff but like, there’s this whole universe that people don’t see, like, when you go home and you come, you know, you come back to work is this whole world, which is the most important worlds,

Wayne Deehring 43:12
You know, so I appreciate you sharing, right? And it’s the bulk of your day, right between sleeping and, you know, your family that that’s the bulk of your day and this little bit of work is you know, and I have an amazing wife that allows me to be me and and and do what I do and you know, so that helps as well if I didn’t have that you know, probably things might be different or things would be different. So, what are some lessons you learned from your wife? She’s calmed me down, you know, really? I am by nature an anxious person. I would not always be moving and always doing something. Yeah, right. So I, you know, she’s really grounded me, you know, that’s, that’s really what it is. And she’s, she’s a polar opposite of me. I’m a type two Aaa personality and she’s very laid back and very easygoing. And it’s, uh, you know, it’s a good offset for me because if I had something it was just like me It probably be war all the time.

Jeremy Weisz 44:13
What about with your business partner? Is he more calm? Or is he more type alike, you

Wayne Deehring 44:20
You know, he’s very calm, very diplomatic. I am the polar opposite. Okay.

Jeremy Weisz 44:25
So he balances you out in the world.

Wayne Deehring 44:27
Yeah, he really does, you know, in here, which is funny. He’s very diplomatic. about things. I’m not I don’t we do so much that I don’t have time for diplomacy with my employees. And they all know me and they’ve all been here for a long time. But they, you know, things have to get done. Yeah, I don’t pull punches. And I don’t sugarcoat things, because there’s just there’s no time for it. And, you know, so I think that the two of us together really balanced it out. Well. Cool.

Jeremy Weisz 45:00
Wayne, I want to be the first one to thank you. I really appreciate it. Everyone should check out your sp fulfillment.com check out what they have going on. Wayne, thank you so much.

Wayne Deehring 45:11
Thank you so much.