How to Take a Vacation While Running a Screen-Printing Shop

[printavo]

Running a screen-printing shop is tough. It's time-consuming and requires a lot of energy. Employees, production operations, sales, marketing, and growth can be hard to a balance all at once.

Steven Farag from Campus.Ink has managed to take a nice vacation from his shop while operations continue to run. We called him and got tips on how to take a vacation that he used. Check it out!

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Watch the full video here: https://www.printavo.com/blog/how-to-take-a-vacation-while-running-a-screen-printing-shop

[T Shirt Farmer]

How to Take a Vacation While Running a Screen-Printing Shop...... close down your shop while you are gone 

[Sbrem]

How to Take a Vacation While Running a Screen-Printing Shop...... close down your shop while you are gone 

This! We all get the same week around July 4th, this year the 30th - 8th inclusive. We do the same from Christmas to New Year's as well.

Steve

[T Shirt Farmer]

How to Take a Vacation While Running a Screen-Printing Shop...... close down your shop while you are gone 

This! We all get the same week around July 4th, this year the 30th - 8th inclusive. We do the same from Christmas to New Year's as well.

Steve

Steve,

The older we get the more important time off without interruption becomes, a weeks lost income is a small price for mental health. I consider my staff to be top notch but when stuff starts going sideways decisions can be tough and costly.

[dirkdiggler]

CLOSE YOUR SHOP!  We close tomorrow and will NOT be back till July 5th!  Best way to do it!

[Sbrem]

How to Take a Vacation While Running a Screen-Printing Shop...... close down your shop while you are gone 

This! We all get the same week around July 4th, this year the 30th - 8th inclusive. We do the same from Christmas to New Year's as well.

Steve

Steve,

The older we get the more important time off without interruption becomes, a weeks lost income is a small price for mental health. I consider my staff to be top notch but when stuff starts going sideways decisions can be tough and costly.

In our case, it's so slow, it really doesn't matter much. I monitor email from home, but there isn't really much, and time off is really important, especially for my partner and I, as we moved earlier this year, and have basically been working 65+ hours a week since January. Up until 2008, we were always busy in the summer, very busy actually. Then, it all fell off the table, so we made the decision to close around the 4th. What we saved in the utility costs was substantial, however in the new shop we're down to one small IR dryer, and an Interchange MD-8, all gas.
So the jury is still out on that part, but as I said, it just gets February slow for a couple of weeks there.

Steve

[T Shirt Farmer]

They guy in the video is a little too happy, a bit too confident and probably has crap ton of issues to deal with when he gets back to the shop. Now if you are a larger shop with dedicated managers or co owners on site you can make the vacation thing happen.

[printavo]

How to Take a Vacation While Running a Screen-Printing Shop...... close down your shop while you are gone 

This! We all get the same week around July 4th, this year the 30th - 8th inclusive. We do the same from Christmas to New Year's as well.

Steve

Steve,

The older we get the more important time off without interruption becomes, a weeks lost income is a small price for mental health. I consider my staff to be top notch but when stuff starts going sideways decisions can be tough and costly.

This ^

The goal from Steve (in the video) is showing how to extract yourself from daily operations and create processes, training and delegating to provide more value to your business. What's tough is getting out of the day to day to become higher level and start directing the ship instead of hoisting the sail, cleaning the deck, scolding the crew, etc. No easy task of course.

[pwalsh]

Setting your business up with trained employees and S.O.P's in place to run it in the owners absence is a major step in the transition from being a self employed screen-printer to being the owner of a sustainable business. 

[T Shirt Farmer]

How to Take a Vacation While Running a Screen-Printing Shop...... close down your shop while you are gone 

This! We all get the same week around July 4th, this year the 30th - 8th inclusive. We do the same from Christmas to New Year's as well.

Steve

Steve,

The older we get the more important time off without interruption becomes, a weeks lost income is a small price for mental health. I consider my staff to be top notch but when stuff starts going sideways decisions can be tough and costly.

This ^

The goal from Steve (in the video) is showing how to extract yourself from daily operations and create processes, training and delegating to provide more value to your business. What's tough is getting out of the day to day to become higher level and start directing the ship instead of hoisting the sail, cleaning the deck, scolding the crew, etc. No easy task of course.

Getting out of the day to day task requires employees that are driven, professional and are making a career in our industry. These are the employees that become managers allowing you to plot the course instead of raiding sails. Maybe you have not noticed there is a huge shortage of under 30 workforce who have no desire to take on the required responsibility of a manager they rarely can even manage themselves, when you factor in the wages we generally pay you generally are not attracting tier one talent.

Steves (guy in video) ideas all sound great and are nothing new the challenge is implementing and maintaining which generally is a full time task which is why owners are on the shop floor raising sails instead of in there office driving the boat.

[T Shirt Farmer]

Setting your business up with trained employees and S.O.P's in place to run it in the owners absence is a major step in the transition from being a self employed screen-printer to being the owner of a sustainable business.

Pete, your recent employers have been large companies that have broad management available to build and maintain the system. The reason companies like M&R and Sanmar are so successful is the owners surrounded themselves with a bunch of really great diversified talent. Try doing that in a shop of 8-12 workers with the majority if not all making less than $30 and hour a pretty daunting task indeed.