INDUSTRY TIPS | THE ONLINE PRINT COACH Why Being Good at Print Isn’t Enough Anymore Most print business owners I meet are incredibly good at what they do. They know how to produce great quality print that gets results for their clients, hit impossible deadlines, fix breakdowns on the fly, and win clients with a quick turnaround. But here’s the bit no one warns you about: Being great at print doesn’t mean you’re ready to run a print business. Trust me, I learned this the hard way. Running a print company requires a totally different skill set. Pricing for profit. Managing people. Navigating cash flow challenges. Setting strategy. Building systems. These aren’t skills that come from the print room. And they’re not taught at school, college, or university either. So, what happens? You dive in, head first. You learn on the job, usually through mistakes, late nights, and sheer blood, sweat, and tears. And you do it because you care. But if you're not careful, you end up building yourself a job instead of a business. A job with longer hours, more stress, and zero holidays. Sound familiar? You need to evolve from a print professional to a business leader. That doesn’t mean abandoning the things you’re good at; it means building something sustainable that doesn’t rely on you doing everything. Start by asking this: What parts of your business are dependent on you? What happens if you’re off sick for a week? Or away for a family holiday? If the answer is chaos, you don’t have a business; you’ve got a pressure cooker. Are You the Bottleneck in Your Print Business? You’re juggling quotes, jobs, client calls, production issues, deliveries, and the occasional cash flow panic. You get the job done. You always do. But it’s exhausting. This is what I was taught is the "operator trap". You’ve grown beyond the start-up phase, but everything still revolves around you. You are the business. Here’s the scary bit: this is where most print business owners get stuck. Not because they’re not capable. Not because they don’t work hard. But they never built the structure to grow beyond themselves. Every time you get busy, production slows. When you sell more, delivery gets delayed. Colin Sinclair-McDermott, the Online Print Coach, takes a look at the evolution of print business owners, and gives his advice for efficiently running a modern-day print company Having been in the print industry since the mid-late 90s, Colin Sinclair McDermott entered the world of self-employment in 2004 and over the years that followed, experienced a number of highs and lows running his own print company, learning what does and doesn’t work. In 2022, he trained with The Business Coaching Academy to become a fully certified corporate coach with the Worldwide Association of Business Coaches. Through The Online Print Coach, industry members can access an online training platform, Print Mastermind and private 1-to-1 coaching with Sinclair McDermott. www.theonlineprintcoach.com When you fix one fire, another one lights up. It feels like you’re making progress, but really, you’re running in circles. The big shift comes when you realise you’re not just the operator; you’re also the bottleneck. Growth becomes impossible if every major decision, approval, or fix requires you. So what’s the fix? Start by stepping back, just a little. Block out time each week to work on the business, not just in it. Use that time to: • Identify the most common tasks that only you handle • Systemise one of them • Train someone else to take it on This might sound small, but it’s how sustainable businesses are built. Bit by bit, you reduce your business’s dependence on you. That’s when the real freedom starts to appear. 32 email: editor@printmonthly.co.uk July / August 2025 - Issue 355
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