Partner with Your Printer with Don Murray

Partner with Your Printer with Don Murray

Kelly Kennedy: ​Welcome to episode 68 of the business development podcast. And on today's episode, we have Don Murray, director of MPrint sign and print solutions, and with over 30 years of design and print experience, we're going to learn a few things. Stay tuned.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more. This is the Business Development Podcast. Based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. And broadcasting to the world.

You'll get extra. Expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca.

Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast, and now your expert host Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 68 of the business development podcast. Wow. It still blows my mind that we're, we're approaching episode 70 rather quickly. It won't be long until we're up over a hundred, but I never saw that coming. You know, I, sometimes I look back and I think about episode one through 10 and like.

At that time, we could have never pictured the growth that this show has had. So if you are a consistent listener of the Business Development Podcast, we appreciate you greatly. Thank you so much for for contributing to the success of our show. And we hope you stick with us for a very, very long time.

On today's show, we are chatting about graphic design and marketing materials. I am graced today with Don Murray, the director of MPrint Sign and Print Solutions. Don boasts a remarkable 30 year career in the dynamic realms of graphic design and printing. As a co leader alongside Jan Pysyk he has been instrumental in steering MPrint towards its position as a thriving enterprise, even amid the challenges presented by the pandemic.

Don's extensive expertise spans both sheet fed, offset, and wide format signage, making him a true luminary in the industry. This diverse background equips him with the capability to provide a wide spectrum of print solutions, blending the best of both worlds to craft bespoke and innovate approaches for every project.

Under Don's leadership, MPrint has earned accolades, including a prestigious nomination for the Atchison Community Award. His passion for the craft, unwavering commitment to quality, And creative problem solving abilities continue to drive MPrint success, making it a trusted destination for a wide array of printing needs in Atchison, Alberta and beyond.

Don, how are you today?

Don Murray: I'm doing well, Kelly. Thanks for having me on.

Kelly Kennedy: It is an absolute pleasure. 30 years in the industry. That's wild.

Don Murray: Yeah, I like to tell people 20 plus years because 30 sounds like just a little bit archaic, but you know, we we move and grow with the times, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, goodness. I hate to break it to you, but the 90s was a long time ago.

Don Murray: Yes, it was.

Kelly Kennedy: Like, is that all you've been doing since you were very young?

Don Murray: You know what? I yeah, right at the end of high school, I, I was, I wanted to go to university. I, I didn't know what direction to head to in university and an opportunity came up to apprentice in a print shop. Yeah. And, you know, back then, of course, everything was very analog, very, very craft hand skilled you know, type of took her end.

So I really fell into it and at the same time really, you know, learn to enjoy it and it was a very gratifying, you know a job for me. So so I just, yeah, I stuck with it and, and kind of rolled with the changes and here we are.

Kelly Kennedy: That's wild. Yeah. So, you know, in the beginning, like. Is it, is it one of those industries that has stayed very much the same or like what kind of change have you experienced in that time, you know obviously like the, the machinery has changed the technology to, to, to get graphic design has changed, but is a lot of printing still printing is printing?

Don Murray: Not even close.

It's, it has, it has changed so, so dramatically and so rapidly that really the you know, the apprenticeship that I, that I had, my journeyman certificate was, wasn't valid the year after I received it. And yeah, so, I mean, when I got into the industry, you know, we were producing everything with film and a lot of hand cutting for color separations and, and everything was running on offset presses and the sheet industry at that time.

Certain limitations to that. I mean, there's, there's lots of things those presses do well and still do very well. But yeah, I mean, there was no digital side of things, right. And so, you know, fast forward just a couple of years and digital scanning, you know, started to enter the industry along with digital cameras.

And, you know, so we saw this, this real change from. Great photography that was film based to horrible, low resolution, digital camera image capture. And so the, the industry almost took a bit of a hit there, right, where our print quality actually went down for, for a number of years, just in those images that were being produced.

And you know, along with that you know, Photoshop that everybody knows and loves as a software. Yeah, kind of came in year, year three in its infancy. And of course, now that is the de facto industry standard for dealing with images. Yeah. So as, as that sort of that digital footprint started to change and you know, it changed our industry and, and What really happened over the course of a number of years is we we saw digital press technology you know, moving to the industry and it always competed against the offset world.

The offset world, we could always achieve very high quality print products and the digital side, again, started very quickly. You know, it was it was convenient and it was less expensive to kind of get into it. But the print quality just didn't compare. It wasn't even close. And so as that, you know, that model changed you know, there's really a lot of that R and D kind of went into the digital side.

And you know, of course, we saw that at home with our home printers and photocopiers and then digital presses and really the digital presses are sort of that technology on steroids. Right? And. And with a lot more software support, so yeah, so with that, I mean, again, challenges, peaks and valleys, but you know, color management, color science really changed with how we were putting ink on paper.

And at the same time in the wide format signage industry. You know, it was moving in the same direction from historically like silkscreen presses to wide formatting, jet printers and you know, so that technology changed right alongside. And so, you know, with us, so as a, you know, as a person in the industry.

We had to change and adapt as well. And, you know, what are, what are the advantages of this new equipment? What are the disadvantages? You know, can we, can we bring in a piece of equipment and the software and have somebody who was doing everything by hand or an analog environment, operate this equipment and successfully transition to the software?

Right? So, so the whole industry, Yeah. You know, even from a labor perspective started to adapt and change, and some people did that very well, and some people struggled with it. And so there was that was 1 of the challenges that we faced. You know, moving forward as we, you know, as that industry changed people's needs and requirements for print changed, obviously during this period, again, dating myself, we you know, the internet, yeah, sort of came into fruition and email and digital technologies changed how print media, you know, was sort of handled in you know, in, in the business world, in the retail world, how are people you You know, digesting that information.

And so again, the industry took a took a really big hit. I mean, we all know the first you know, first Kindle came out and took a bite out of the novel market, right? There were e magazines and, you know, that took a bite out of that industry. Forms, the forms industry really changed quite significantly.

And so. A lot of printers who were sort of focused in certain areas really struggled and, and some of them didn't make it. And so the industry has been, had declined for a number of years and, and I would say probably 2010, 2011 was sort of the tapering off of that decline where you had a number of people who, you know, in North America specifically preferred reading books.

With paper, right? They, they liked the tangible feel of it. It was more comfortable. They had tried the Kindle. They'd come back, you know, and so we saw a little bit of a rebound. Magazine, the magazine market actually really dramatically rebounded. And I think, you know, people, people like some of the things they like about books and paper is that you can control the pace and the content, right?

And even as a producer of that type of content from a design perspective. We can control what people are seeing on the page without it being in their face, right? And we can give it to them rather them. You know, having to go to a link or, or an action on their part to see that, that offering. So you know, if you had an ad in a magazine, you could control what you put next to that ad or on the opposing page and people are going to flip.

Right. So, so a number of these markets did rebound but what did change was the was the quantities of, of content that people needed. And so because of the, the internet and the ability to rapidly change the amount of information we're delivering to people. Print always lagged that way because it's a, there's a production cycle to it.

You know if we put something up on the internet, we can put it on very quickly. We can look at it, we can gauge response and then we can change accordingly. Yeah. And if something is in print, it's in print and it's. It's there. It's timeless unless somebody recycles it. Right? Yeah. So so there's a bit of a lag there.

So that desire to change information rapidly, or at least anticipate information change also changed the print requirements for people. So you know, instead of. Instead of people printing 10, 000 brochures for all of their trade shows in a year, knowing that they would get a good, good volume pricing on that, they might want to print a thousand for this you know, this brochure.

So costs go up when it comes to offset printing that regard. But this is where digital printing really, you know, really got a good foothold in the industry. So, yeah, so again, embracing those technologies, you know, it was more about the right fit for the right product.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no. And, and like as a gigantic advocate for physical brochures, I, I, you know what, I see the benefit of both.

And, and I, you know, with all my clients, I say, look, we need, we need both because if you were meeting people in person, which is what we always advocate for on the business development side of things, I like give something to get something. If I'm going to ask somebody for business, or if I'm going to ask somebody to give me a business card or something, I think that an exchange should happen.

So in my mind, yeah. Whenever I ask for a business card, I give a business card. And whenever I'm at a meeting and I, you know, we're having a discussion, I love to pull out a physical brochure. And for a few reasons what I've found in my time in business development is people don't, especially if it's a beautiful, well designed brochure, people don't throw them out.

They sit on people's desks for a decade. Sometimes there's something about having that physical print product that can physically be on somebody's desk or in their pile or in their mail bin versus a digital product. I think you should ultimately send both. But if companies have gone to a completely digital strategy, my, my word of advice would be to go back and at least have a, at least go back and create.

A physical brochure to move forward with.

Don Murray: Yeah, and, and I would, you know, agree with you. And, and, you know, so that's one of the, one of our recommendations as well is to say, yeah, you know what? Everybody needs a great website, right? You have to have online content. Absolutely. But You know, we want people to be able to get there, right?

And so if you use a brochure, you know, with your QR code, website, all your contact information, your list of products, it's, it's really easy to use for them and we want to drive people to your, you know, to your website if they need more. Yeah, information or more interactions. Right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. So I want to take I want to go back to you spent some time at a company called priority printing quite a bit of time. 2020 years. What? What are some of the tasks that you learned while you were there?

Don Murray: Yeah, well, we were you know, one of the my role there was, was managing the prepress graphic design area.

So what that was you know, we had six staff members and during that time we, we did transition from, you know, a lot of the analog side into digital side, just from From a production standpoint, how we handled, you know, people supplying files versus hard copies and, you know, how to, how to transition with that.

And so lots of new equipment you know, changes in, in people's roles and a really mixed environment. I mean, we had graphic designers with university degrees or college, you know, program degrees interacting daily and working with. Trades people to produce and of course, very tight deadline industry, right?

Lots of lots of demands and and one of the unique demands that or challenges that we face in the prepress world is that it's one of those few industries where we're creating a custom manufactured product that a lot of times starts out on somebody's. Home computer. They have a very real hand in, in producing the artwork, right?

So it would be like building your own cupboard and then taking it to you know, a cupboard manufacturer to refine and finish and make a few more of type of thing. So so there are some unique things about the industry that way. And, and so, so really a lot of my time there was spent in in process.

You know, control and, and how do we change this process? How do we make things more efficient and how do we drive, you know, our business forward that way? The other thing I was, I was tasked with a priority was you know, alternative revenue streams. And that's when we you know, implemented their wide format signage area that they had at the time there.

So and those really are two different industries and yeah. So different, unique challenges between the. You know, integrating the two.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, totally. One of the questions that I have is kind of like you said, that integration of the customer and the print shop. I think that, you know, as a business, sometimes it's really challenging to know you know, like you have an idea, you need a new brochure, you need a magazine created, or you want to get some promo materials done, or you need to get a sign printed.

But like you said, you might have like an idea of what you want or given the modern day, a lot of people know how to use Canva and a lot of other different design situations, Photoshop and whatever else. How, how I'm sure that there's like the common issues that you run into all the time with regards to a customer coming to your shop and saying, Hey, I just need this done.

You should be able to just do it. And then the realization that no, there's definitely more that needs to be done or a lot more that needs to be done on the print shop side and design side to make sure that they can get it to a point that would be acceptable for the customer. Can you explain that interaction a little bit better?

And maybe Mitigate some expectations, or maybe help a business owner with what they should consider before they approach the print shop.

Don Murray: Yeah, I think the first thing I'll address are timelines. And, you know, we do require a certain amount of time, obviously, any industry does to manufacture the piece.

And depending on what it is and the quantity you know, that can change. But what I found over the years is that quite often, The, the longest process in the, in the print production side of things is, is actually developing the, the artwork you know, does the customer have the content, right? You know, we have, we have designed people on staff, but you know, and we have copywriting if they require that, but we don't know your business as well as you know, your business.

So you know, for us to copyright, we need direction. So you know, and we, we have customers who come in and they say, okay, I don't know where to start. And that's okay. Then come on in. We sit down. We have a, we have a conversation. I'll ask some questions. We'll start to see, okay, what's important to your business.

Who are you trying to reach? What are your products? You know, what do you want to highlight? And so we start there and then we start filling in the blanks and you know, the, the actual design of the piece. You know, once we have that content, now we can hand that off to our designer and let them know, okay, these are areas that need to be highlighted.

You know, do we want supporting images? You know, what kind of, you know, what kind of graphic elements do we want to dress this up? And, and then we turn it over to them. And I have a great appreciation for creatives and people who can conceptualize. And you know, so that's kind of right from that. I don't have anything, but here's what I want.

Yeah, to to people who say, Okay, you know what? You mentioned Canva. I've built this one in Canva. You know, can you just print it? And a lot of times we can, and then sometimes we just can't because it's not built to the, you know, the size and shape that they want. And so then we work with them. To either, you know, adjust those files ourselves or you know, or back to them, say, Hey, try this.

What about this? Can you make it this size? Add this, this type of thing. So yeah, so we, we, we don't you know, we don't just, just leave people when they, they sign up with us. You know, once they, they commit to an order or drop off a file, sometimes it's a bit of a back and forth process. We want to make sure at the end of the day, our goal is to deliver a product that they are, you know, happy with, that they were expecting.

There's no surprises. It's something they're, they're proud to give out. That's going to represent their business well.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. And in my experience in business development, a good design and print studio becomes an incredibly valuable partner to any organization. And I know that it can just seem like a service, but trust me, from the business development standpoint, you need a company that You can work with that.

You can spit ball back and forth with because unfortunately and or fortunately in my experience in working with print shops, there just is. There's so much to it. And there is a process and that process has to be followed to get you the quality of material that you need for your business. And ultimately, what you need is a good print shop who will go back and forth with you and say, Hey, have you thought about this?

Or this is something that we need to take a look at or If we move this here, this might work better for you, or how do you feel about this font? Maybe we can improve this. And one of the cool things, and, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Don, but you guys have seen so much, like in my experience, who better to create your brochure material than companies that have built thousands of different brochures for other companies who have seen the full gambit, who knows what is receptive or what's hot in the moment.

These are all things that your, your print studio can do for you.

Don Murray: Yeah. And, and, you know You know, when it comes to the design side of things, we're, we're happy to to work with you to develop the piece. If you've already worked with a marketing company that's developed that creative and you've got a, you know, a brand in, in motion, then we're, you know, we're going to stick to your brand guidelines and your colors and fonts and make sure that if we design anything around that brand, we're, you know, we're going to be within the spec of, of, of what that brand guideline is, is telling us are the rules of that branding.

So we're very cognizant of the fact of, of those independent brands have to be adhered to, right? That's, that's your identity as a company. And you know, those pieces that we produce for you, they're, they're like the curb appeal of your house, right? A lot of times that's your first point of contact. And.

You know what it's like when you drive up to somebody's house and the first thing you see is you know, maybe a cracked sidewalk or, or maybe you love the rock on the wall or whatever the case may be. Right? We, we tend to really focus on on little things and they can be either negative or positive. So we want to make sure that those things are positive.

So you leave that impression.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. On my show, I talk about web design and brochure design quite a bit. And one of the things that I like to talk about is how in, in 2023, you know, your website, your marketing material, they become your 20 story skyscraper. Like we literally live in a time where the image of your business, no matter whether you're small or gigantic, you can, you can portray yourself as a very big business.

Like the ability to do that by having a well designed website, by having well designed and well laid out marketing material that have great visual appeal are absolutely critical to the success of your organization and the success of your marketing teams. In your time, you've seen a lot, right? You've seen the evolution of brochures.

You've seen the evolution of brochures over 30 years. What would you say is the trend, you know, now? If people are designing a brochure for the first time, what should they consider?

Don Murray: Yeah, if people are designing a brochure for the first time, I mean, Content. What text do you want? You know, what's what information do you need to get out there? And that is really the first step. Because, you know, we want to, we want to design a piece that's going to physically fit that content, right? And we have, we have lots of sizes.

A lot of people come to us and say, well, you know, it won't fit on half letter. It won't fit on letter size. And, and we're not tied to those Home printer settings. If you want a six inch by six inch book, great. You know, let's, let's do it. Or, you know, if you want a 12 inch by nine inch page or, you know, whatever the case may be.

So, so the first thing is to to look at the content, right? How much content is there? And And then we can start to gauge the size and shape of the book. If it's something that's being handed out, you know, do you want it to fit in a pocket? Is it going in a brochure stand? You know, then we look at the physical shape and size of of that piece, you know, how many pages or fold out panels do we want?

You know, are there any other pieces that are going to be interacting with it, like a presentation folder with business card slits and, you know, those pieces that might be working together. Yeah. And then, and then really we start working on the design once we know how much content we have and the actual physical sort of constraints or creative of that piece.

How do we make that all fit? What fonts are we going to use to you know, to make it current, right? One of the, one of the most dated things we see are. around fonts, right? You know, if somebody brings us a piece that's in that's using times, new Roman, you know, not that it doesn't look great, not that it's not highly readable, but it doesn't look like it came from, from our, our, you know, our decade.

So you know, so we have a lot, a lot of those tools at our disposal. We have thousands of fonts to work with So we're going to start, you know, using different fonts in conjunction with each other to support, you know, headers and, and body content and that sort of thing, and then colors and, and supporting graphics, right?

So, you know, do we want images of your product? Do we want images of your, of your business front? What is, you know, what's going to support that content and ultimately get people to read it, right? And then at the end of the day. We want them to contact you. So how do we, you know, what part of that, that brochure or that piece is going to say, you know, here, here's where I am, call, email, website you know, how do they contact us?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I hope that one of the takeaways, Don, that our listeners are getting from this is how critical and how similar The design, the design of, of good marketing material is to the business development process. It's, it's really one in the same. I hope that they're really starting to make that connection in the way that you're, you're discussing it.

Don Murray: Yeah. And I think the the printed piece, I mean, a little biased of course, but is critical to business development. I mean, obviously, you know, everybody is. recognizes the need for an email address and a website. But the printed material is, is so good at driving people to those forms of contact.

And it is something that can sit on a basket. It's a physical handover. And as soon as you give somebody a business card or a brochure, they have to do something with it. There is a touch point there. Even if they decide it's not for them and they recycle it. They have to physically do something with it, and they're seeing your branding whether they want to or not.

So that is, that is an advantage that print has, and what I, I would say makes it critical to every business.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, well, and just to like reiterate Don's point, I was literally out yesterday doing physical brochure drops. We, we split them up. We don't do as many as we used to. But... I still think that there's a, there's a time and a place for it.

And especially locally, like, especially if it's your city where you're marketing your business to, and really it's a hop, skip and a jump to downtown, or it's a hop, skip and a jump to your, to the next prospects office, a hundred percent, there's nothing wrong with showing up with a well made brochure, introducing yourself, handing it over, grabbing a card and following up with them because mark my words, these brochures.

If they're well done and this is the caveat, okay, they need to be well designed. They need to be visually appealing. It's 2023. We have short attention spans, right? And you're marketing to millennials. Visual appeal is absolutely critical, but if you're doing these things, right, there's nothing wrong with going around and handing your brochure out.

Cause guess what? If they're done right. And they have visual appeal, they're going to sit on the desks of these people. And they're going to be seen by multitude of people. People can sit in a boardroom and pass a brochure around and this still happens. And I'll tell you what. It just, it's not the same.

It's not the same as hopping on your computer and looking at it digitally. There's something that's just more tangible about having something physically in your hands.

Don Murray: Yeah. And I haven't ever had anybody refuse to take a, you know, at a, at a trade show or a business opportunity you know, a business card or a brochure.

And, and, you know, that, you know, if, if it's got the right content and it's a, you know, you've got a service that they may use down the road, it probably is going to go into a folder or sit on a desk. And even if it gets buried, it's, there's something sort of intrinsic about our memory that says, Oh, you know what?

I read that somewhere. Let me just go take a look. Ah, here's that brochure. Yes. Ah, here's that contact, that business card. Now I'm gonna go check this website.

Kelly Kennedy: Multiple times, Don, in my business development career, I've had companies call me and say, Kelly, I've had your brochure on my desk for two years, three years.

We didn't need you. Now we need you. And, and I kid you not, I know that sounds absolutely absurd. But it has happened to me multiple times in my career and business development. And so in my mind now, like, you know, just having that burden of proof has been shown that it works. In my mind, this is happening all over.

People are keeping well made brochures. They're sitting on people's desks until they're ready. And that call may come. And I don't think the same can be said about a digital brochure.

Don Murray: Well, I, I definitely have a few brochures sitting on my desk and I do refer to them, you know, as well. And, and, you know, there is, we do have a lot of digital noise in our you know, in our business environment now, I mean most solicitations come.

Via telephone or via online forms or, you know, through the email. So you know, the, the fact that somebody paid for that brochure and they, they spent the time to give it to you or that business card, it adds a little bit of validity and some weight and some longevity to it. So there, there is some, some real value in those products.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. What have you noticed? What is the industry doing? Like, how are things changing? Are you seeing an evolution right now, Don, as AI is being implemented or all these things? What are you seeing changing in the industry, you know, over the next year or two?

Don Murray: You know, our, our, our software is changing rapidly which does, it does, I don't know if I would challenge as a designers for sure, those, those content creators, you know, they have to keep up with those changes. And certainly AI is, is really being built into now, you know, Photoshop specifically.

There's things that can be done with the software now that you just couldn't do before, or it would take hours and hours and hours and hours. So, you know, if, if you wanted me to take a picture of you sitting in your studio and, and put you on a beach in Hawaii, I can almost do that at the click of a button now, right?

So there's that, that AI side of things is. Is really changing the content in that way and and so for us, I mean, we have to keep up with that more on the front end versus the back end. I mean, our digital equipment is is constantly being improved and refined as well. The quality is still continuing to improve.

You know, it's a little bit faster, a little bit easier to run more user friendly. So our. You know, the skill of our, our operators, you know, they can get a great piece you know, day three, as opposed to year two, you know, so that's, that's been good. But yeah, software, you know, especially with the software as a subscription model, now it allows those companies that develop that software and, and not just the Adobe creative cloud that a lot of people are familiar with, but some of our industry sort of proprietary software as well.

You know, it just changes a lot more rapidly because, you know, they, they can change it and, and roll it out. And we've already purchased those updates, right? So it's not like previously where, okay, version three typically comes out 16 to 18 months after version two. So now we're going to have to purchase that.

So, you know, so from a content creation standpoint I would almost say that it's changing so rapidly that it is a bit of a challenge. And you don't always know what those changes to the software are until you, you get into them. And I mean, Canva would be the same way Microsoft Office, you know, Suite is the same way.

And so it's not specific to the print industry, but we, we really use it day in and day out. And so, yeah, there can be some, there can be some interesting challenges that way.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes, I, I know, I, I feel the same challenge in business development because CRMs are always updating so quickly or like all the social platforms we use or heck even, you know, even AI platforms that we're utilizing for various needs in our business you know, I, I had a conversation not that long ago where the discussion kind of went to like, how do you keep up?

And the answer was, yes. You really can't do the best you can. And it's hard to say with all the AI, what's going to become King. You know, it's like chat GPT is pretty amazing and probably will continue to be the leader in this space, especially for the chat bot side. But, you know, with all the other different things, like for the podcast, for instance, I use a program called any summary and it's awesome.

It does a lot of great summaries for the shows. It does. I can basically upload my whole text document for my transcript and have it help me to create an episode page to help create posts for the show. Things like that. But. They're changing so quickly and they're being integrated into a lot of these podcasting platforms now as well.

Trying to keep up with what is the best route forward as just a, a simple human. It's pretty tough. It's a pretty tough pill to swallow.

Don Murray: Yeah. And it'll be interesting to see over the next, you know, bit of time to see how many people are, instead of writing that content or really looking at their own business to say, here's what's important to me.

But to, to go to a tool like ChatGP and, and say, you know, here's my business. You know, put together a brochure for me and here it is. So, you know, we'll see if we if we do get a bit of a watering down of content or if it will be just as dynamic as you know, as we, we, people are. Able to create.

Kelly Kennedy: So, yes, I'm a proponent for AI based writing, although I still think that if you just go off of the AI based writing you still sound like a robot, so don't just go off AI based writing.

If you want to, if you want to run it, type something up and run it through and then go back and even make edits again to make it more sound like you. That's the way to go about doing it. If you're going to use it, because in my experience, it writes almost too good. It writes better than most people, but it also speaks in a way that probably doesn't represent the way that you speak.

Don Murray: Right. We'd all sound highly academic.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What I like to do is especially if I'm typing something up, that's really critical. I like to just run it through and just say, Hey, if you were to make improvements to this, what might they be? And what I'll do is I'll read through it again, say, Oh, that section sounds good.

I think I'll add that in, but this sounds like a robot. I'm not going to put that in. And I know that it's more work, but it's good for like proof checking your writing. to make sure that you are laying things out in an organized way. And you're taking people through the step process, but it definitely still needs to have that human element.

And I think that we're never going to get away from that. I, I think the human element or the element that is you as an individual you have to find ways to integrate that even if you are going to use AI.

Don Murray: Yeah, and I think that would be a great you know, a great tool for somebody who is trying to write content, maybe it doesn't come naturally to them, you know, they can just start, start, you know, jotting down information and then throwing it in and let something, let AI put it together for you and then, you know, go over it and make sure that it makes sense and it's the right you know, the right terminology and, and yeah.

You know, vibe for your business.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. And that's the other thing you totally hit on. It was like terminology, like you need to make sure that it's writing it in the way that you are trying to express that idea instead of the literal meaning in some cases, right?

Don Murray: Yeah. And a lot of times that content drives the design, right?

So if, if The verbs and, you know, the terminology doesn't quite fit with your business. And the design stemming from that might not as well right so.

Kelly Kennedy: Totally, totally. I recently interviewed an author for an upcoming show, and we were talking about how people are just writing entire books now in like chat GPT or like other different formats, and it's really, really disappointing on that level because it's like these people, especially these original authors have worked so hard to create a real piece of art.

And then you take that and you say, like, all these people dumping books onto Amazon that are written in a day with a chat GPT and I don't know, I don't know how I feel about that, I, I kind of felt bad after that discussion because, you know, the reality is, is that these authors are barely making any money as it is for the most part off of their independently published books, and then to throw in that you just got a bunch of people trying to make money using chat GPT to write, you know, books on certain subjects, it's I don't know.

That was a bit of a tough pill to swallow.

Don Murray: Well, it would be interesting to see where it goes, because, you know, just like our print industry, when ebook sort of came onto the scene, there was a lot of early adopters and then a lot of mass adoption. And then, you know what? It settled out to find its place and become the right tool for for the people that wanted it.

And I think we're probably gonna end up there as well. Yeah, you know, we, as people are very adaptable. And so, yeah, I think it's gonna settle in. And I think it's just gonna be a good tool for, you know, the right circumstances.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. Don, I want you to take us into, you know, the modern day.

Take us, take us to February of 2021, the launch of MPrint. What was that like? You know, why? Why did you start MPrint? And why did you do it right in the middle of a pandemic?

Don Murray: Right, why not? The how about naivete? Would that be the right answer?

Kelly Kennedy: I'm right there with you.

Don Murray: You know what, I Yeah, so I was working for the university and you know, when the pandemic hit, the, you know, the university was, I mean, that, that scene really changed very rapidly and, and for a while it looked like it was going to be able to kind of, we were kind of going to get back to where we were at, but the reality was between, you know, budget cuts and the pandemic.

The role that I was in with the university was not sustainable and, and, and we saw that coming for a while. Once you know so yeah, so then Jan and I got together, she was sort of between things and, you know, she's she's a business woman and has had, you know, multiple businesses over the years.

And I know the print industry. So we said really, it was kind of a, a, why wouldn't we scenario and you know, things started to kind of come together very And, and so, yeah, we, we Decided to invest in the right equipment to support both industries. I didn't feel that I could produce one without the other.

I mean, over the years, and I really found a number of synergies between the two. And, you know, when you when you handle unique projects there are just certain things that are are done more efficiently or better results in one industry than the other. And even though there may be a gray area where they can be produced in both.

So, yeah, so for us, I really felt that that was the best model for MPrint and, you know, there are, there are print shops that have some white format that augments their They're sheet fed side and and maybe even a few sign shops, a little less that have some sheet fed, you know, or paper products to kind of augment that we're split right down the middle.

We we do both day in and day out, and both areas are just as busy and and so it's kind of allowed us to, you know, I hate to use the word sort of niche market, but you know, we have, our customers come to us for either wide format products or offsets or sheet fed products, and when they realize we can do the other side of things you typically, the response has been, that's fantastic.

Yeah, we're coming back and you know, so all of our businesses so far has typically been referral, which has been fantastic and yeah, so, so really MPrint

you know, we got going and, and we're kind of busy out of the gate and, you know, I had some contacts previously who because I, I. I do enjoy those sort of custom maybe not quite so clear projects.

And so those customers were contacting me saying, Hey, I have this. What about this? And okay, well, I can probably help you with that. And so those customers really stayed with me right from, yeah, into into the beginning of MPrint before MPrint was even. Even an entity. And, and then it just kind of grew from there.

So you know, we obviously some, some challenges in the pandemic. I mean, supply lines were just as challenging for us as as everybody else. Yeah. And you know, paper we couldn't get envelopes we, we couldn't get, or if we could, we could get a handful of them, you know on the manufacturing side of things, it's always great if you find a product that fits.

Well, you want to stick with it, right? And we found that, okay, we, this month we're producing on this product. Now we can't get that product anymore. So now we've got to change and adapt and color manage, you know, a new material type of thing. So, you know, estimating you price out a product and then the customer would get back to you in a week and say, yeah, I'm ready to go.

You order it and they'd say, we don't have it anymore. Oh, no, we're out. Okay, so now I have to find something that's similar. Yeah, if it's even available and if it's not somewhere now, I have to go back to that customer and say, Hey, what's your timeline? Right? Can we wait for this? Or do we need to do this?

So hands on, you know really everything needed to be instead of, okay, I've got this. Here's the pricing. We're ready to go to okay, here's the pricing. Okay, now wait. Now we have to shift and find a, you know, something suitable and work within your timelines. And so, you know, a lot of challenges and that.

Okay. But but what we found is that you know, our, our local business community was, was very welcoming, very supportive. And they really made that, you know, those initial months worthwhile. They, they made us feel like we belong here and we're doing the right thing. We're headed in the right direction.

So let's persevere. And get through some of these issues and everybody was facing these issues. It wasn't you know, just us there were, there were some advantages as well, though, you know, advantages for us starting up in the pandemic is that we were able to create our business model based on that type of business environment.

So, you know, we don't have old equipment that is no longer viable or useful. You know, we don't have that overhead to support a pre pandemic environment and you know, so that's that's something that is advantageous now.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. You know, I think of all the same things to like we launched Capital in December of 2020, took on our first clients.

I think it was March of 2021. And same thing, same thing, right? It was word of mouth that kind of got us going in the beginning. And thank goodness it kept us rolling. But yeah, it's it was a different environment too. And, and same thing. One of the challenges that we obviously faced in the beginning of the pandemic was just we business development is best done in person and it was very much that's not going to happen.

Don Murray: Fair enough. Challenge number one.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. And so, you know, being a gigantic advocate for active marketing, which is, you know, my bread and butter, it's what I, what I believe in. Yeah, it was very tough adjusting to a team's world to you know, to try to get people to to come out and I know, especially when the restaurants kind of first started opening up and allowing masking and trying to say, Hey, you know, like this is still the best way to do that.

So we had to kind of cut our teeth in the hardest time of doing business development as well, which I think in the long run has made us better at what we do to.

Don Murray: Yeah, yeah, I would agree. I would agree.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, so one of the things I have had the pleasure of touring your shop. You gave me an amazing tour you and Jan and I appreciate that immensely.

And you're, you know, your operation is impressive. You have a lot going on. And not only is it impressive, the scope of services you guys offer is even more impressive than the facility. The range of stuff that you do. And I don't know, I don't know, you can let me know if I'm if I need to take this out or not.

But Like you guys have done a wrapped caskets at one point in time through a product line. You guys have called essence. You guys have wrapped an airplane. I thought that that was so cool. You know, there's other things going on too. And you know, just tell me a little bit about what it's like to have such a broad product line.

Don Murray: You know, it's there are challenges the experience. Really dictates that you know that it's the time and and and the ability to say, Hey, you know what? I understand. I hear you as a customer. You're looking for this product. The answer is not. No, we can't do that. The answer is we can probably do that.

And let me see how we can do that for you, right? And, and, and then finding those, those, you know, making that fit or that mesh connection. And, and what we found is that for some of those unique projects, it takes a little more time and a little more investment for sure. And a little more A little more contact, right?

Yes. But they're, they're very gratifying and, you know, we, we love the brag tag at the end of the day as well. Totally. We like to say, yeah, we, we did wrap that airplane and here's a picture of it, right? Yeah. And, you know, it looks awesome. I mean, we just sent a boat out the door yesterday. That's awesome.

And, you know what, it looked awesome. Yeah. And you know, so for, for us. You know, we, yeah, it is a very broad range and again with the challenges, but you know what, the more products that we produce and the more products that we put together, the more products we're able to produce, because we're able to now combine things that, you know, maybe we couldn't do a year ago, but, but we've taken this on and we've you know, for us, it's not always, that's not always the profitable work, right.

Yeah. But at the end of the day, it refines our craft and it does help to advance our portfolio. It does make us better at what we do. Challenges. Yes. But for me, I've, I've been in the industry long enough that I like the challenges.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure. Sure. I was going to say probably stuff like that is what you look forward to the most even.

Don Murray: Yep. Yep. I mean, don't get me wrong. We love printing your brochures and books and you know, foam core board signs and for events, all of those things to love them.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, you guys have the ability to print white. I didn't even know that this was a challenge. Talk to me a little bit about that.

Don Murray: Yeah. So You know, so we, when we brought in our, our wide format or looked at the equipment we decided to go with a latex solution.

And there's some advantages to latex, some disadvantages too, but we like to, we like to push the advantages for sure. And you know, one is it, it is a more environmentally friendly print technology. It's a water based ink that's cured with heat. And and so the new technology At the time was you know, HP had this laser printer with, and I've used latex print technology for quite a long time, but they had a white ink and white ink historically is, is very, very challenging to use in that.

It's a, it's got a large pigment to it. It requires constant maintenance and HP sort of developed a product in an ink and a machine that dealt with a lot of those challenges. And, and for us. You know, we really saw it as an opportunity to print, you know, window graphics and clear graphics where, you know, if you want something to be translucent, you know, we can do that.

If you want it to have a block out look, you know, we can put white behind it. Historically you had to print a clear vinyl and then put a whole nother vinyl over top just to block out the back. I see. Yeah. So there was, there was ways around it, but now we can. We can do that if you want your logo in white in a certain area or parts of your logo in white and the rest in color, you know, we have a ton of control.

We can treat it as its own ink. Well, it is its own ink. Yeah. And yeah. So, you know, control the, the opacity of it, you know, a little bit here, or is it almost see through of all gradients? So, yeah. So it's, it's really been good to open up those Avenues.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And so I was just completely unaware that that was even a challenge.

But from what I understand, there's not a lot of places that can even do that.

Don Murray: The white ink allows us, again, it expands that portfolio and, and helps us to you know, produce the right product for the right project, right? It helps with that fit. So it's, again, it's just another, another tool in the toolbox to yeah, to create that right look.

Kelly Kennedy: Very cool. Very cool. All right, Don. Well, this is coming to our end today. I really, really appreciate you taking the time. If you could give one piece of advice to some entrepreneurs to inspire them to take that next jump, what might that be?

Don Murray: Yeah, partner with the right printer, partner, right printer, you know if, if you're developing your business you know, we, we really find that we're very relational business.

We want to support you and your business and we want to keep your look and, and the projects that you're doing consistent. And it's much easier to do that if, you know, if the content is all coming to one one producer. So Yeah. So, I mean, there's, there's some real advantages in that.

Kelly Kennedy: Perfect. Perfect. This has been episode 68 of the business development podcast. We have been graced with the director of MPrint sign and print solutions in Atchison, Alberta, Don Murray. If you guys have any print needs within Alberta, the whole Alberta area, I think, or Canada as a whole, I don't think Don has much of a limit, but definitely services the Edmonton Alberta area.

Give him a, give him a try. Him and Jan are awesome. They're great to work with. and I look forward to our next conversation, Don.

Don Murray: All right. Thanks for having me, Kelly. Much appreciated.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Until next time, you've been listening to the business development podcast and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: Kelly has 15 years in. Sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists.

For more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the business development podcast.