Push yourself
So here we are, I finally did it, writing a blog. Writing is something that has always stressed me out. I don’t know why either, but I think it’s because there are so many great writers out there that I felt intimidated by them to write. I have had great luck with writing copy for people and also great luck with doing weekly live videos and training sessions but when it’s come to me writing I’ve always frozen up. 2021 is going to be the year that I break this cycle. This will be the year that I will write more. I am going to start by putting myself and my goals out there. I will write a minimum of 2 blog posts per month. Now I know this may not seem like that many to some but it’s a lot for me and if I am asking you to push yourself I need to push myself.
But what is this blog going to be?
I am so glad you asked what this blog is going to be! Being in the garment decorating industry off and on for the past 15 years I have seen a lot. I have also messed up a lot too. So much wasted time and money that it makes me sick to think about but I also know that all of those mistakes and the misspent money were learning lessons that helped us grow.
This blog will be used to talk about my experiences over the years and what is going on now, and what the future holds. I will talk about what we have done, what we are doing, and where we are going. I am always up for answering questions and talking about your topics too.
A little back story
It all started in 2007 with a cheap cutter, seems like that’s the way a lot of us got started. By doing decals I realized that there was amazing money to be made in this business! The next logical step to grow our business was to get a heat press because if you can cut you a decal why not cut some heat transfer vinyl to make you a shirt? Now that first cutter is long gone but that first heat press is still alive. It’s an old HIX, not digital, the timer only goes to 30 secs (sublimation was fun!), a dial for temperature settings and the temperature gauge looks like an actual dial thermometer you’d find in an oven. She may be archaic but red and I have made some good money over the years. Back when we were getting started there weren’t a lot of places to find good info and the only real place I could find anything was over at the T-shirt forums. This was before Facebook for you youngsters out there. Even there the info was hit and miss and I got the feeling that if you used HTV you weren’t a real business. Now I used this setup for a few years to run a good side business and honed our craft but due to some life conflicts taking over we had to stop for a few years. During this time I helped out a few different people and places with artwork and did some projects here and there for existing clients. Fast forward to 2015 and it was our daughters 1st birthday and the place I had been working with completely screwed it up and I had to break out the old equipment to fix it. Around this time I found that the place had ripped off a bunch of people that I had sent to them. This did not sit well with me and I had to do something so I started reaching out to these people and started helping them out. I realized how much I missed making shirts and decals and was re-energized to get out there and back in the business. This time I took it seriously and within a year we were opening our first 400 sq ft store, a year later we moved into a 3500 sq ft mall location, and a year after that the business became a full-time job. During this growth period, we soaked up as much information as we could by taking as much training and attending as many trade shows from coast to coast as we could and along the way met Matt from The Rhinestone World who helped shape our business to become what it is today. We also met some great people, heard some amazing stories, and made lifelong friends along the way. One common occurrence that seemed to come up was that people could buy any piece of equipment that they could but there wasn’t any real business training that went along with it. I had made plenty of mistakes during my time and I knew that I wanted to pay it forward to help people succeed but I just wasn’t sure how to do that.
In April of 2019 at DAX Tinley Park over some beers and chicken wings I was able to finally meet one of the people I looked up to in the industry, Aaron Montgomery, and we had a great conversation about how to help people succeed. 9 months later in January 2020 we launched Our Success Group with our first training series “5 keys to growing or launching your business” and It was a great success that led us to create our Youtube channel at LiveOSG.com where we have Tuesday with Todd, a weekly live broadcast that we show product demos, test new products, and in general allows me to make the screw-ups so you don’t have to and it also hosts Small Business Saturdays where Aaron dives into the nuts and bolts of what it takes to run a business as well as a monthly membership that includes a minimum of 2 live training sessions per month on subjects that mattered to small business owners, how do I know they mattered you ask? Well, the training we put on was requested by members of our private Facebook group. We want to provide resources that empower business owners to achieve their idea of success and involving them in what the training would be was one way to do that. More was wanted so we started up a mastermind group which now really allowed us to work with smaller groups of people to help them achieve their goals faster and hold them accountable.
What’s next? Where do we go from here? Well while we helped hundreds of people in 2020 the goal is to help thousands of people in 2021. We are going to do what it takes to get out of our comfort zones and take the massive actions needed to provide resources to empower business owners to find success. This blog is way out of my comfort zone and I plan to offer as much help as I can to people. So, as I said earlier, look for a minimum of 2 blog posts per month where I will talk about questions I have asked, things going on in the industry, new products, and anything else that comes to mind. You can find us online at OurSuccessGroup.com and on Facebook at Facebook.com/OurSuccessGroupPRO and we even have a private Facebook group at Facebook.com/groups/OSGBusinessBasics. So there you have it, this is me, us, and what the plan is. I would love to hear from you in the comments here, on our Facebook page at www.Facebook.com/OurSuccessGroupPro, or you can always email Success@OurSuccessGroup.com.