Apparel decoration success takes both producers & entrepreneurs

Running an apparel decoration business is challenging in many different ways. The secret to running a successful business is learning the difference between the important work and the hard work, and mastering the art of managing each kind of work optimally for your business.

Hard work involves meeting deadlines, running equipment, managing your staff, ordering inventory. It is never-ending and can often feel overwhelming. It is the work of creating your product. Hard work is the work that is essential to your business.

Important work, however, is the work for which you get paid. It is meeting the needs of your customers. It is solving problems for your customers. Important work is the work that is valuable to someone else.

Important work is the lifeblood of your business. Without it, your business cannot exist. You can spend all your time running your equipment and making perfectly decorated apparel and products. Yet without people to pay you for those products, you do not have a business.

With more than 30 years of working with apparel decoration business owners, I’ve served decoration professionals that service every imaginable market, from ostrich farming to Fortune 100 companies to presidential libraries, and everything in between. All of these business owners fall into one of two categories. They think of themselves as “producers,” or they think of themselves as “entrepreneurs.”

Producers focus on the hard work. They excel at running their equipment. They are happiest when their machines are loaded and going like gangbusters. They thrive in production mode.

Entrepreneurs focus on the important work. They prioritize time to develop new customers and connect with established customers. They are happiest when they are talking with people and figuring out what products will best meet their particular needs.

By default, I believe most apparel decoration professionals begin their business in the “producer” mindset. After all, we get into this business by purchasing equipment to do the decorating. We want to make the cool stuff with our cool machines. It is fun, to say the least. This is the hard work aspect of your business.

At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, you poke your head up out of the production mindset. You realize that there is more to this business than just making the machine go, much much more. This is the beginning of the shift from the producer mindset to the entrepreneurial mindset. This is the important work for your business.

Here is an example of embroiderers with these two different focuses, the hard work or the important work:

A customer orders 288 shirts with a left chest design. You have two single head machines. It would take you more than 50 hours to sew out these designs, dedicating both machines to this job continuously. The reality is that 50 hours of run time will take nearly two full weeks of work, hard work, as the machines are actually stitching only about 50% of the time, even in the most efficient operations.

A producer will put their head down, ignore all the other jobs on the schedule, and plow their way through this order, no matter what it takes. They will feel very accomplished when it is complete. They will know that it is a job well done, even if it was hell for them, and possibly even for their family. They will feel like they earned every single penny of that order, and indeed, they did. Whether they earned any profit on that order, however, is another matter entirely.

An entrepreneur will reach out to another business owner, one who has a couple of multihead machines and puts out high-quality work. They will subcontract the job to this other shop, and keep the scheduled jobs going on their own equipment. Yes, they will pay someone else to create these shirts. In reality, it will cost them less to job this order out than to produce it themselves. Because they trust the shop they sent this order to, they are confident they will meet their customer’s deadline and they will earn their anticpated profit on this order, all while keeping their own operation running smoothly. This is a win-win situation in the entrepreneur’s mindset.

The key to your success is figuring out how to balance both the hard part and the important part. Without customers, you do not have a business. Without products, you cannot meet your customers’ needs. When you only focus on creating products, you risk getting stuck in a trap where you never have time to get to the important work.

How do you prioritize your time as a business owner? Do you focus on the hard work or the important work? Have you developed or even mastered a balance between them so that you can leverage your equipment and time to maximize your earning potential?

You cannot run your business without the hard work. Nowhere does it state that you have to do all of that part yourself, however. You can partner with other business owners to create the jobs that would overwhelm your production capabilities. Finding these trusted production partners is important work that will enable to to meet the needs of your customers. While this might feel risky, it is one of the key secrets to building your successful business.

Once you have production partners in place, you can more easily balance how you allocate your time between the important work and the hard work you want to keep in house. You can maximize your time and your earning potential.