I’ve had 8 years working with Mike as a vendor and I’ve seen how he acts with his directors, his employees, I hear the message, I get the message and the way that I’ve been transformed. I’m a 3rd generation owner. My grandfather started our company in 1903 and I took it over 94 from my dad and I see the way that Mike runs his company and how he transmits that or translates that into sales and marketing and he builds this incredible sphere of happiness and wealth and wealth is not just money.
It’s just a sense of being and you go home at night and you are happy and I’ve taken all of that to my company and I’m really trying to show them by example what a wonderful life we could all have and then they would I hope take that to their families and [trades 00:01:06] but Mike is an incredible, very special person and he’s got the gift and it’s not just being different. He is really smart.
Okay, we’ll I’m a vendor and I would do PowerPoint presentations or sponsor a lunch and I’d come here for 30 minutes before my presentation and I’d listen to Mike speak to the group and I’m thinking God, this guy is really smart or I would sponsor a lunch, I’d hangout for half an hour and I’d hear more and over the many, the 7 or 8 different times I’ve done that, 20 minutes here, half an hour there, I’m putting it all together and I’m thinking this guy is really, really got something special. I’m going to come as the attendee, pay the full fare, sit up front, get the whole 4 day experience and take it back because it is awesome. He really has it and I want to know it and I want to learn it and I want to grow.
It’s hard to put a fix dollar value but I know that it will be immense. I don’t look incrementally week by week or day by day or hour by hour on our sales and profitability and returns. I look at things sort of a little further out. I’d look at quarterly reports and I will say, that’s a good quarter, why, and I’ll try to pick it apart generally but I think I’d been in the industry enough I see my trends and I know what things work and what does work.
I don’t micromanage in other words. Some of the things that I’ve learned here I knew from the many different times I’ve sat in but other things like that’s awesome because I can take that back and I can put that into place and I know when I look back at probably first quarter report 2016 and I’ll say, “Look at the bump. Look at the jump” and when we are doing everything in an entire year cycle and you see there is a bump, depending upon the signs of the bump you look back and say, “What new things did we try?” And a lot of the things I’ve learned here.
Right now we are about 2 1/2 times our sales year over year and it’s all because of The Warrior and all the things that we are doing and it’s explosive, it’s just fun. It shouldn’t be. It certainly shouldn’t be. The first misconception is you think you know it all, you don’t. I promise you, you don’t. I’m 3rd generation owner. My grandfather and my father I thought taught me everything and I’m commercial printing but it’s a service industry, I’m a manufacturer and buyers are buyers. We all have wallets, we all spend dollars for a certain value and certain transactions. If you think you are unique and you are special and you know it all, you won’t be here.
If you think you know it all and you think I don’t have to come to Mike, you are crazy. You just won’t be here. Actually, you are the type of competition I love. Don’t come. Don’t come. You just keep sitting in your little office and you think you know what you are doing, you will be gone like the other 80% of printers you will be gone. Makes me very happy. But to have it here and have all the people here and to see the Gold Medal operation. How can you not, how can you deny extreme success.
If we are offer the Marriott in a banquet room, be a bunch of sleepers and it’s hard to sell what you can’t see. But when you are here and yeah maybe, I think we are a bit maximum capacity in this room with this size group, if you can look at all of this success and see what Rob and Mike and the directors have built and you can deny it, you are a fool, you are an absolute fool. This is the place to be to see a winning formula from a man who opens up all the doors and he will give you everything you want to know. You’d be a fool to think that [inaudible 00:04:33] can have anything like this of an impact. This is the place to be.
