Screen Printing - December 2019/January 2020 - 12

THE MARSHALL PLAN

20 GOALS FOR 2020

Marshall Atkinson is the owner of
Atkinson Consulting, LLC, based
in Mesa, Arizona. He coaches apparel decoration companies on
operational efficiency, continuous
improvement, workflow strategy,
business planning, employee
motivation, management, and
sustainability. He is a frequent
tradeshow speaker, author, and
host of two podcasts, as well as cofounder of the Shirt Lab educational
company. He can be reached at
marshall@marshallatkinson.com.

Follow this curated list to build a better
future for your shop.
MARSHALL ATKINSON

ell, it's that time of year when we naturally begin to
take a look at the next. Hopefully, way back in 2018, you set
some goals that came to fruition by now ... at the end of 2019.
I thought a good exercise would be to create a list of 20
goals for your business that you could achieve by the end
of next year. These are the ones I think can have a dramatic
impact on your company, but if a few don't make sense and
you want to insert your own, that will work, too.
The end result should be to close out 2020 with a fantastic
sense of accomplishment, financial strength, and a solid
foundation for your company. These are not in any priority order, as some may be more relevant to you than others.
Head to screenweb.com/2020goals to print your own version of
this list and track your accomplishments throughout the year.

IDENTIFY YOUR BEST CUSTOMERS
I've spoken with a fairly large set of shop owners this past
year, and most shops rely on luck more than anything to
bring in the business. Why? It turns out they haven't stopped
to figure out exactly who their best customers are. What do
they order? When do they order?
Do yourself a favor and do an 80/20 deep dive into your sales
history. Go back a few years. What you will find is the top 20
percent of your customers will give you roughly 80 percent of
your sales volume. This means the bottom 80 percent of your
customers are making up about 20 percent of your sales. AKA
you're working really hard for not much money.
Go after more customers like those in the top 20 percent.
Stop the work you're doing with the 80 percent.
Goal: Do the 80/20 assessment and work out a plan to go
after more potential clients like the ones in the top 20 percent.
Identify and land one new major account a month.

STAFF IMPROVEMENTS
Think about your team. Is there anyone who isn't quite cutting
it? Why are they still working for you? Don't just keep people
around because you need warm bodies to do the work. That's
not going to give you a competitive edge.
Instead, look to replace them with people who can grow
into different positions or be cross-trained to help out when
you need an extra hand somewhere in the shop.
If you aren't already doing performance reviews, start.
Personally, I like doing them twice a year with a 360-degree
approach. The employee, their supervisor, and anyone who
works with them fills out a simple, 10-question survey that
asks them to rank their performance on a scale of one to 10.
12

SCREENPRINTING

The scores are compared in the employee review meeting,
with goals assigned for improvement for the next six months.
Goal: Take a critical assessment of your team. Develop
tools to strengthen your team, or weed out the ones who
don't fit in and replace them with better staff members.

100-PERCENT PAYMENT UPFRONT
Cash is king. However, the prevailing method of serving customers in this industry has been to basically lend them money
in hopes they'll pay it back. That's right. We're a bank.
But it doesn't have to be this way. There's a huge movement
in the decorated apparel industry - sparked by the success of
Amazon and Custom Ink - to get 100 percent of the money up
front for orders. When this happens, the shop is in an incredible
financial position, as they can pay for the labor and materials for
the order without putting stress on their credit line. Think how
much better your business would run with zero receivables?
Goal: Stop taking deposits, billing net 30, or any other
method of payment. Charge for the full order upfront, and
when payment is complete, that's when work begins.

GET 'PROFIT FIRST' SET UP AND RUNNING
One of the best ideas that has transformed companies in this
industry is the Profit First financial framework. Profit First
is a best-selling business book by Mike Michalowicz that flips
the script on how profit is derived in a business.
The traditional formula for profit has always been (Sale
$$) - (Cost) = Profit. The trouble with that is quite often there
are too many mouths nibbling at the profit total. What's
leftover sometimes isn't that much.
Profit First says to take the profit out of the sale first,
forcing the company to run on what's left. The book has a
system for making this happen that works wonderfully.
Goal: Read Profit First, and adopt the system for
your shop. By the way, this tailors beautifully with the
100-percent payment upfront plan.

KNOW YOUR NUMBERS
They say you "can't manage what you don't measure," and
I know this to be absolutely true. Yet, when I talk to shop
owners, many don't know the basic information about what's

http://www.screenweb.com/2020goals

Screen Printing - December 2019/January 2020

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