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"That Human Touch": Rich Armstrong of The Snowman Group · The Ric and Dan Show

• 0:01
  (Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) He's Rick Tyler and he's Dan Cashman.
• 0:04
  And I'm Rich Armstrong, president of the Snowman Group.
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  And I'm on The Rick and Dan Show.
• 0:09
  In Maine, we often hear, you can't get there from here.
• 0:12
  These are the stories of the risk takers, the trailblazers, those who turn obstacles
• 0:17
  into opportunities every day and found their way to get there from here.
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  And today, they're on The Rick and Dan Show.
• 0:26
  Can you settle a controversy that still exists today?
• 0:28
  Sure.
• 0:29
  How long has the company been in business?
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  It would be 94 years.
• 0:34
  94 years later, can you finally tell us, is it Snowman or Snowman?
• 0:38
  Yeah.
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  So it's like Bangor and Bangor?
• 0:41
  Yeah.
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  Snowman.
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  It is Snowman?
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  It's not Frosty.
• 0:45
  Okay.
• 0:45
  It's Frosty the Snowman, but it's Snowman Printing or the Snowman Group.
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  We figured if it were the Snowman Group, your logo would look much different.
• 0:54
  Yeah.
• 0:55
  Well, you know, the old logo did have kind of a snowman in it.
• 0:57
  That's why people think it was Snowman.
• 1:00
  Well, those aren't really, it's not really, it's rollers on a press as well.
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  No, it's a snowman.
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  See that?
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  I'm sorry.
• 1:08
  Rollers on a press?
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  Can you turn that, push that our way?
• 1:11
  I think it's time for our first Rick and Dan Show poll.
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  We'll post this and you can judge for yourself.
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  Maybe that's why people think it's Snowman because it looks like a three circle snowman.
• 1:22
  The only reason why they think that is because they've got their words in front of it.
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  I don't even know how to respond to that.
• 1:27
  Oh yeah, those are rollers.
• 1:30
  But why not just reverse the snowman so that the rollers are...
• 1:35
  So he has a fat head like you and me?
• 1:36
  Yeah.
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  Biggest to smallest.
• 1:39
  Dan, there's no bad way to pronounce it.
• 1:41
  Okay.
• 1:42
  Just don't call it late for dinner, right?
• 1:43
  As long as they're pronouncing it.
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  Snowman.
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  Okay.
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  Snowman.
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  I'm on board now.
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  Maybe I should put an I in there.
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  Snowman.
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  Here's my problem now, because I had always pronounced it Snowman and now that we've had
• 1:54
  this conversation, I'm going to have to think before I say it.
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  Every single time it comes out of my mouth, there's going to be a pregnant pause for two
• 2:01
  or three seconds while I remember this.
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  They don't say cash man.
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  They do call me late for dinner.
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  Right.
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  I've been called worse, but some people call me cash man.
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  You got mugged in the park.
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  Someone said, hand over the cash man.
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  They turned around.
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  That's right.
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  Oh, you know me.
• 2:15
  Yeah.
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  Well, they thought I had cash though.
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  That was the part that they didn't know.
• 2:18
  Yeah.
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  I mean, maybe years ago it was Snowman, but the original founder was Harlan P. Snowman.
• 2:25
  Okay.
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  And he worked for the Bango Daily News.
• 2:27
  Oh.
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  He was a pressman way, way back when.
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  A pressman or a pressman?
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  Pressman.
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  Pressman.
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  That's politically incorrect.
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  You can't say that.
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  Press person?
• 2:37
  Yes.
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  It was 94 years ago.
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  Don't we just call them reporters now?
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  Press it.
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  Press it real good.
• 2:43
  Yeah.
• 2:44
  Yeah.
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  So Harlan?
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  Harlan.
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  Harlan.
• 2:47
  Yeah, not Harlan.
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  Harlan.
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  Harlan.
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  Harlan.
• 2:52
  Okay.
• 2:52
  Oh gosh.
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  So Harlan's working for the then Bangor Daily News.
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  It wasn't the Wigan Courier or whatever it was back then.
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  1932.
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  1932.
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  Working in the press room.
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  Working in like the reporter press room?
• 3:05
  No, no, no.
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  Or working with the presses and making...
• 3:07
  Yeah, yeah.
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  He was like, you know, set type, put the type on the press, put the paper on and it pressed
• 3:13
  up against the sheet.
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  And so he went out on his own.
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  What inspired that?
• 3:16
  I don't know.
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  I don't know.
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  I don't know much about him.
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  There's only two owners that separate my father who bought it in the seventies and Harlan
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  sold it to a Henry McBurney.
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  I did know him.
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  He was a really good guy, but he only owned it for a couple of years and my dad used to
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  go in to get his printing and just joke and go, Hey Henry, when are you going to sell
• 3:34
  me this business?
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  And he'd leave and then Henry called him up and said, Hey, hey, were you serious?
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  And of course me and my father go, Hey, let's talk.
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  And that's how it started.
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  How long of a conversation was it?
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  I didn't really ask those questions.
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  You know, I was into, you know, gasoline and perfume, so it didn't really affect me.
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  Well, how old were you at the time?
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  I think it was eighth grade.
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  So it was ramping up, you know, perfume, gasoline, I'm going to have to Google that.
• 3:58
  Should I have to get rid of my paper route?
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  Is there anything in the existing location that hearkens back to when Harlan was running
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  the operation?
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  As far as equipment?
• 4:14
  No.
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  Everything's changed.
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  We do have, you know, photographs and we have some memorabilia, but as far as production,
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  no.
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  I wondered if there was a Gutenberg press over in the corner.
• 4:24
  Right, right.
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  There's a picture.
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  I think I've seen a picture.
• 4:27
  What's the guy's name?
• 4:28
  Who's like the historian in Bangor?
• 4:29
  Dick something.
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  Shaw?
• 4:31
  Yeah.
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  I think that he posted a picture or someone showed me a picture of Snowman way, way back,
• 4:37
  like in the 1930s and it was dark and dingy and I couldn't even tell you what they
• 4:44
  equipment was.
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  It was just like, wow.
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  And what were they printing back then?
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  I just, you know, everything like they print today, you know, but just a lot slower, you
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  know, a lot less variables, you know, your font, you might've had, you know, 10 choices
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  of fonts.
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  Two or three fonts.
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  That's right.
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  It's not like the Adobe font.
• 4:59
  Do you get nostalgic about that sort of stuff?
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  Do you like the history of the business or is it maybe less relevant to you because you
• 5:06
  came in later?
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  I don't get nostalgic about much.
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  I live in the day.
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  I mean, I love the fact that there's history there and I think it's super cool, but I embrace
• 5:15
  all the technology as it comes because it makes you better.
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  It's not cheaper.
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  I can tell you that.
• 5:20
  Upgrading costs money, but if you don't, you're left in the dust.
• 5:24
  You get left behind and you got to take chances, you know?
• 5:27
  What's an example of a chance that you can recall?
• 5:29
  Well, you know, moving from Bangor to Herman, that's a big, big chance.
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  When you were in Bangor, you were at?
• 5:35
  We were on Harlow street.
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  Yeah.
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  Well, before Harlow street, we were on Franklin street and then Franklin street, there was
• 5:41
  that big development from a developer and my father got the notice, Hey, by the way,
• 5:46
  on this date, you're out.
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  And he's like, uh oh.
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  No negotiation.
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  No.
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  No, no, no.
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  Where were you on Franklin street?
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  It's on a very big street.
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  You remember that glass awning that used to go out onto the street?
• 5:56
  Yeah.
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  That was Snowman printing or HP Snowman.
• 5:59
  That was a bar, wasn't it?
• 6:01
  Yeah.
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  Rick, you would know.
• 6:02
  It was.
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  It was McCarthy's on the half shell and there was another one there and.
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  Wasn't there a Pepinos in there for a time?
• 6:08
  Could have been.
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  Could have been.
• 6:09
  I was off, didn't live here at the time.
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  I was shipping out on tankers and I came home and I'd go there, but I couldn't really tell
• 6:17
  you much about that.
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  At that time, my dad had moved to 408 Harlow street, which is that last building out on
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  Harlow street.
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  That's now that sprinkler company.
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  Yep.
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  And that building was built in like 1861.
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  Easy to heat.
• 6:28
  Oh yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  And I lived there.
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  I lived above the print shop.
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  Did you?
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  Yeah.
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  That must've been loud.
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  Not really because...
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  No, I meant for them, not you.
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  Oh, could have been.
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  You know, I remember when my dad said, Hey, you don't come to work for me?
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  I'm like, what do you do?
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  You know, cause I didn't, I, you know, I was out by that time, you know?
• 6:47
  So he explained it, but when we moved from, I met my wife down in Massachusetts and moved
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  her up here.
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  It took her about nine years to adjust.
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  I think she's adjusted now, but, so my dad said...
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  Let me put that down on the to-do list.
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  It'll be a check with Rich's wife to see if she's actually adjusted.
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  And my dad said, you can live right above the print shop.
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  We've got three apartments.
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  And I'm like, Oh God, that's going to suck.
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  And how long did you stay there?
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  Two years.
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  Yeah.
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  We stayed there from like 1999.
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  No, no, we probably stayed there probably two and a half years cause in 92 we had Ryan and
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  then we moved to Hamden in 1992.
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  So we lived above the print shop, had a baby.
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  It was great.
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  I loved it.
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  I didn't think I would, but it was so convenient.
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  I didn't like shoveling the sidewalk every storm.
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  No, it was horrible because the city would go, that's your sidewalk.
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  I'm like, no, it's not.
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  They go, yeah, it is.
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  You're paying taxes on it.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  So I'd shovel it and then I'd hear the...
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  They'd fill in the sidewalk again.
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  I'm like, mother...
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  What the...
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  Son of a...
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  And my dad would look at me and go, you know, you knew your role.
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  Yeah.
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  Welcome to adulthood.
• 7:59
  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  So I just have to, where are you going to put it?
• 8:01
  There's a building in the street.
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  So you got to put it back out in the street.
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  You know, you asked me nostalgic.
• 8:06
  Oh God, I love being out of that building.
• 8:09
  Yeah.
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  It was a good building, you know, but it was built in 1861.
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  We operated on two of those floors.
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  It was four floors.
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  I gotta imagine your scale of operations probably necessitated the move.
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  Try to run a 10,000 pound press on a wooden floor.
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  It vibrates, right?
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  And on concrete it doesn't.
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  and you can run it so much faster, everything's better quality. Yeah. But it
• 8:31
  all comes to the price tag.
• 8:33
  But did that, when you lived above the press, the business, did that vibration
• 8:37
  on the wooden floor, did that reverberate up to your apartment? Did you kind of
• 8:41
  constantly feel that motion when the business was operating?
• 8:45
  Linda never complained. I have no idea.
• 8:47
  You have no idea.
• 8:48
  No, because we didn't operate at night. I was working. So I do know that between
• 8:51
  the bottom floor and the next floor, we had to, you know, we had to support that
• 8:56
  whole floor with, you know, massive 10 by 10 beams, you know, to hold that
• 9:01
  weight. Sure. You know, hardwood's great, but it's only so strong. Yeah. And
• 9:05
  getting the paper in every week, I marveled that the truck drivers, you
• 9:08
  know, they had a kiddie corner across that dangerous corner. And then we had
• 9:11
  to, you know, step over that weird angle with, you know, cartons of paper heavy.
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  And I'm not talking 11 by 17. I'm talking like 23, 35. Yeah. Big cartons of
• 9:21
  paper. But I was young and strong. I never do it now. I go, my back, my knee.
• 9:27
  I bet there were days when you wished that your commute was longer, that you
• 9:31
  didn't have to just walk downstairs and walk upstairs.
• 9:33
  Oh, oh, oh. When I lived there? Not really. It was, it was cool. Not much
• 9:36
  bothers me. You know, it was like, okay, you walk down the, you know, 20 steps
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  and then you take a left and go in the front door. It was great. And then when we
• 9:45
  moved to Hampton, you know, drive-in, it was, that was great too. We did that for,
• 9:48
  you know, 10 years or whatever.
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  When we were all working from home, I didn't mind that commute going down to my
• 9:53
  basement. But there was one day I looked at my watch at the end of the day and I
• 9:56
  had taken a hundred steps and I thought, oh, something's got to change. That's why
• 9:59
  my sweatpants are tight.
• 10:01
  Yeah. No, it was good. You know, even in my wife liked it. So if your wife likes
• 10:06
  it, you're going to like it. You know, it was not a, it wasn't a problem. If she
• 10:10
  hated it, it would have been miserable, but she didn't. It was, it was good. And
• 10:13
  my dad and I got along great. So it was, you know, it was always good to go to
• 10:16
  work. I've never disliked going to work. I always loved it.
• 10:18
  How exciting was the move to go from the queen city just out the outskirts of
• 10:23
  town, just to Herman?
• 10:24
  It was exciting, but it was exhausting. You know, it's a huge step. You know,
• 10:30
  you, you're trying to run a business. You're trying to maintain sales, make
• 10:33
  payroll, be ingenuitive and build a building. And when you build a, well,
• 10:39
  it's a 30,000 square foot building now, but I think then it was like 20 and it
• 10:44
  literally started on a napkin. My dad and I were at Dice Arts and we were
• 10:48
  like, man, and we started with a loading dock. That's how we started the building
• 10:51
  with a loading. So we kind of drew it out on paper and then we looked all
• 10:55
  around. You know, we looked, we didn't want to move from Bangor. We looked in
• 10:57
  Bangor, Brewer, we looked all around and then I'm like, geez, I know that the
• 11:03
  Dice Arts have a bunch of land out on the Colebrook Road. So I asked Mary and
• 11:06
  Mary said, Hey, you know, go talk to Tim. And Tim said, geez, actually, you know,
• 11:09
  we're thinking about putting a development out. You know, we got to kind
• 11:12
  of plans laid out. So we bought our five acre lot before that development ever
• 11:16
  went in. And of course our road is printers drive. And they did that in
• 11:20
  honor of us, which I thought was awesome. Just a super good family. You know, that
• 11:24
  road didn't even exist for the first two years we were there, you know, with the
• 11:27
  promise of it, of it coming across the front of the building. And to answer your
• 11:31
  question, it was just so awesome being on concrete. And it was so cool. Uh, my
• 11:36
  dad had a grand opening, you know, when we had a, uh, it was, there was a huge
• 11:40
  tent. A ton of people came. There was a girl playing, I don't know, some stringed
• 11:44
  instrument. What are those ones? You're sitting in a chair and you go, yeah,
• 11:47
  there you go. Yeah. And she was really good.
• 11:51
  That's my subject matter expert area.
• 11:53
  Sounds like that was good. That was quick. Thank you. Thank you. You know,
• 11:56
  you're sitting in a chair and yeah.
• 11:57
  Cello.
• 12:00
  Well, people listening couldn't see he had one, his left hand was up around, I
• 12:04
  guess the neck of the cello and he had his hand like on the little, uh, Wandi
• 12:08
  thing. Yeah. Right. I mean, it was charades more than anything else.
• 12:11
  That's what I would call it too. The Wandi thing.
• 12:12
  Lucas Richman would like to talk to you about joining the Bangor Symphony
• 12:15
  Orchestra now.
• 12:17
  Yeah. I did play an instrument for a while.
• 12:19
  What's that? Not the cello.
• 12:20
  No, no. The saxophone for about four weeks. I liked the way it smelled. You
• 12:23
  know, when you open up that case and.
• 12:25
  Why didn't you play that during the grand opening?
• 12:27
  Oh, ADD. Yeah, that wasn't for me.
• 12:33
  So it was probably more of a drum guy.
• 12:34
  Okay. ADD or capital A, capital D, capital D.
• 12:39
  What's that mean? I don't know what that means either. You said ADD. Yeah. Okay.
• 12:43
  Do you have ADD, lowercase A-D-D or capital A-D-D,
• 12:47
  meaning I've got it and I've got it really bad. It's a challenge.
• 12:50
  Oh no, no. I just get bored with things that don't interest me.
• 12:52
  If I'm interested, I'm all on, you know.
• 12:55
  We're lucky to have you have sat with us for at least 15 minutes now because
• 12:58
  we're risking losing you at any moment. I feel like this is a win.
• 13:01
  No, no. Like, you know, in school boys, if they don't like it, they check out.
• 13:05
  English, boring. I love math. And you know, I have an engineering degree.
• 13:10
  I like that stuff. But you know, when it kind of came to like stuff I didn't like,
• 13:13
  it's like.
• 13:15
  Where did you earn your degree in engineering?
• 13:17
  Uh, Maine Maritime.
• 13:18
  Oh, MMA.
• 13:19
  Yeah. I went to MMA. My brother Mark was my partner in the business.
• 13:23
  He went to MMA. My son, Ryan, who is a partner in the business now as well.
• 13:27
  He went to MMA. So a lot of Maine Maritime history.
• 13:29
  Is there arm twisting there or is it just a natural?
• 13:32
  Natural. Really? Yeah. And we get along great. We get along great. We're so,
• 13:36
  we're so blessed that way. You know, there's no fighting. There's no,
• 13:40
  we don't argue. You might have a better point than me. So I get it.
• 13:44
  I'll come up, you know, Ying and Yang. Mark's different than I am.
• 13:46
  He's an engineer and I'm an engineer, but we're different.
• 13:49
  When we first got out of Maine Maritime,
• 13:51
  we worked at General Dynamics in Connecticut building submarines.
• 13:54
  He had an electrical crew. I had a piping crew. We worked on the same subs.
• 13:57
  It's pretty cool. He went left and went out shipping.
• 14:00
  And then a year later I left and went out shipping.
• 14:02
  Just General Dynamics is great. And it was super cool to be involved in that.
• 14:06
  And we were in this, it was called the career development program. And they,
• 14:09
  they, because you were, you know, young and handsome and fit, they would say,
• 14:12
  okay, you know, we want you at the launchings.
• 14:14
  So you got to walk all the VIP's wives down to the front row.
• 14:18
  And you had a front row seat when they took that champagne bottle and broke it
• 14:21
  on the bow. When you're that young, 22, you have no idea how cool that is,
• 14:25
  but it's cool. Right. But in retrospect, I'm thinking that was really cool.
• 14:29
  But General Dynamics is one of those massive, massive companies, you know,
• 14:33
  where I worked in Connecticut at 20,000 people, and then they transferred Mark.
• 14:37
  And then they transferred me up to Quonset Point, Rhode Island,
• 14:40
  and they had 6,000 people. So it wasn't half as big,
• 14:43
  but they built 60% of the sub and then the other 20,000 put it together.
• 14:47
  It was all union in, uh, in Connecticut. And a lot of just, you know,
• 14:51
  you're like thousand dollar toilet. Well,
• 14:53
  I get it because there was just a lot of like super redundancy. It was,
• 14:58
  and it bothered me.
• 14:59
  So that's part of the reason why I left is because they gave you all the
• 15:02
  responsibility in the world to make budget, make you guys do stuff. But you know,
• 15:05
  they didn't give you any control. You couldn't fire anybody. So I was like,
• 15:07
  you know what, I'm going to go shipping. If I don't, I'm going to regret it.
• 15:10
  So I went out and worked on oil tankers.
• 15:13
  And then my dad called me in the middle of the ocean and said, Hey,
• 15:16
  you're going to be getting married. What are you, what are you doing?
• 15:18
  And I go, I'm shipping out. I'm actually, I'm watch dad. I'm in the engine room.
• 15:22
  What's up?
• 15:24
  He goes, why don't you think about coming to work with me? And I'm like,
• 15:27
  what do you do? So he explained it. And, uh, I had,
• 15:31
  I was living in Massachusetts at that time where I met Linda. And, uh,
• 15:35
  I was like, money really didn't mean anything to me. I was always like,
• 15:39
  I don't want to go back to Maine. I always loved Maine. Right.
• 15:41
  I liked the hunting fish and snowmobiling. So that was my opportunity. And you
• 15:44
  know, my dad put it, Hey, listen, you're going to make a lot less money now,
• 15:48
  but in the future you won't. So think longterm. I was like, okay,
• 15:52
  so we dove and went and said two cars. We had one car,
• 15:55
  lived above the print job and had a baby, had a mortgage, you know,
• 15:59
  and it was, it was all good. It's always been good. Just awesome. Very,
• 16:01
  very blessed. And I have to say that I have a super strong faith,
• 16:05
  so I don't really get stressed out. I just let it go. It's not really in my
• 16:08
  control.
• 16:09
  Not everybody has that.
• 16:10
  No, no. But my parents did a really good job, especially my father.
• 16:13
  My mother was like one of those, you know, mysterious Catholics.
• 16:15
  I'm a Catholic too, but she was like, don't look at the tabernacle.
• 16:18
  You go straight to hell. And I'm like, what mom? It's a box. Come on.
• 16:22
  I never knew that. I was an altar boy. I looked in the tabernacle all the time.
• 16:26
  Yeah. Yeah. Well you can, you can.
• 16:27
  It's just supposed to be reverent when it's open.
• 16:29
  But my dad was from South Boston and my mother was from Dorchester right next
• 16:32
  door. And
• 16:32
  Oh, the Dorchester tabernacle. Yeah. That one, that one is rough.
• 16:37
  She's from dot, you know, and all my relatives are from down there.
• 16:40
  So my mother had all these superstitions that I'm like, well,
• 16:44
  those don't make sense.
• 16:45
  Is the, uh, don't eat meat on Fridays during Lent. Is that real?
• 16:48
  Cause that's, uh, I struggle with that.
• 16:50
  Yeah. Yeah. I still don't.
• 16:51
  Yeah. I don't either.
• 16:52
  Although I did have a vegetarian tell me once that pepperoni is a spice.
• 16:55
  So I'm all in on pepperoni pizza. And I feel like when I'm at the pearly gates,
• 16:59
  I'm calling her up and I'm like, Hey.
• 17:01
  So my brother Mark's really good about knowing why I do it,
• 17:06
  but I do it just because I want it. Yeah. I want to eat it,
• 17:10
  but I don't eat it just because it's kind of a sacrifice like Christ sacrificed
• 17:14
  for us. So it's kind of a reminder. And, uh, we go to Gagin's and, uh,
• 17:19
  the bartender there is awesome. She's like, wait a minute. You're not eating meat.
• 17:22
  Is it Lent again? I go, it's not Lent. It's Lent.
• 17:26
  I got to brag a little bit. When the friars had their bake house down here,
• 17:29
  I told them that I love the tuna melt with bacon.
• 17:32
  And so they put it on the menu, their menu as it was, you know,
• 17:34
  it changed every day and they called it the cashman.
• 17:36
  And so I told brother Don at one, sorry, it was the cashman. That's right.
• 17:39
  Cashman. I told brother Don at one point, he said,
• 17:42
  we're going to have that on the menu Friday. I said, brother Don, it's Lent.
• 17:45
  I can't have bacon. He said, well, what do you have? Just a tuna melt. I said,
• 17:48
  no, I put green pepper on it and have a little salt.
• 17:50
  So I get the crunch and the salty.
• 17:51
  So then he had the Lenten cashman on the menu that Friday.
• 17:54
  It was maybe the biggest honor I've ever had in my life.
• 17:57
  That is cool. My problem is that I don't, there's nothing I don't like. Yeah.
• 18:00
  Same, you know, finish your food. There's no dessert.
• 18:03
  There were kids starving and with a pit lock. That's what I got from my parents.
• 18:06
  Yeah. It was China for me. That ship sailed. We were impressed, Kyle.
• 18:09
  So they had to point to another community. Yeah. Yeah.
• 18:13
  I know the only thing I really didn't like is liver. I never tried it.
• 18:16
  I had everything. I've never tried liver. Yeah. My dad loved it.
• 18:19
  Cause my dad loved it too. Yeah. At Dice Arts.
• 18:21
  And thank God we had a black lab and he'd live under the table so he could
• 18:25
  pretend you were eating it and you'd feel this nose and like ready for dessert.
• 18:30
  Mom, what was the black labs name? Bass. Bass. Good dog. Yeah.
• 18:35
  I bring my black lab to work every day. Yeah. His name's jet jet black.
• 18:40
  I love it. Pretty creative. Yeah, it is.
• 18:44
  How much time do I have left? You're making me nervous. No, no.
• 18:46
  I just got a reminder that it's lent and uh, I can't swear.
• 18:50
  That doesn't say that. Yeah, that's not a rule. No, I blew that one.
• 18:54
  I'm not Catholic. My wife is, we've raised our kids that way.
• 18:57
  And on this day I had an egg salad sandwich.
• 19:00
  I brought her a tuna salad sandwich.
• 19:01
  We're having a meat free charcuterie for dinner tonight.
• 19:05
  And I have been trying not to cuss at all. Let me tell you,
• 19:10
  it's getting harder and harder, but I catch myself. What did you,
• 19:14
  what did you do fully efficient? I've known you a long time.
• 19:17
  I don't know you to cost that much anyway,
• 19:19
  but I gave up candy for Lent and some people say, Oh, that's easy.
• 19:23
  Walk through the halls of this building.
• 19:24
  There are four candy bowls constantly filled and I have just instinctively
• 19:28
  reached into Nope. Lent can't do it.
• 19:31
  I probably lost five pounds since Lent started.
• 19:32
  It's like Willy Wonka lives here on the weekends.
• 19:34
  I also gave up TV during the week. Oh, I could never do. That was a tough one.
• 19:39
  I was trying to really reason you really don't need to.
• 19:42
  So are there any major television events that, that March madness? I mean,
• 19:46
  you can't watch March madness, right? Plus all the streaming. Yeah.
• 19:50
  Well you can't see episode three of season five.
• 19:53
  You said you keep up TV and he didn't give up your iPad.
• 19:56
  I don't have an iPad. You could stream something right here.
• 19:58
  I'll let you borrow mine. You can bring it with you. No, no, the Olympics.
• 20:02
  I have Olympic, I still have a residual Olympic fever.
• 20:04
  I could not have gotten by those two weeks without watching the Olympics.
• 20:07
  And some of that was during Lent. Yeah, yeah, I know. Wow. My hat is off to you.
• 20:12
  Candy seems so insignificant now. No candy. Big wild. I'm a sweet tooth.
• 20:15
  Love candy too. Me too.
• 20:17
  I couldn't have given up the Olympics because of curling. Curling.
• 20:22
  Lindsey Vonn. My heart broke when she broke her leg. I, yeah.
• 20:25
  But how would we have done if the Russians were in it? I don't know. Right.
• 20:28
  Hockey wise. That's different.
• 20:29
  I would have put send in a sketch artist in order to send me back some images.
• 20:32
  And show me a guy with no teeth. Oh, we won.
• 20:35
  That USA game was awesome.
• 20:38
  I think it's sad that they had to melt down the gold medals to try to refill
• 20:41
  their teeth.
• 20:43
  I got a text and said, can you imagine if that happened in the NBA?
• 20:48
  I said, yeah, they canceled the game and the guy would be out for the year.
• 20:51
  Yeah. Yeah. Not there. He, you know, it's like, you follow me. Oh my gosh,
• 20:54
  I'm flopping on the ground like soccer. I'm hurt. I'm hurt. Get the stretcher.
• 20:59
  Get the stretcher. It's a miracle. He's in five minutes later.
• 21:03
  That's this different kind of miracle.
• 21:05
  Yeah. This guy's picking up his chiclets off the eyes.
• 21:11
  What are you printing these days? Because we don't print like we used to print,
• 21:15
  but we're still printing. Otherwise you wouldn't be printing.
• 21:17
  Right. Right. You name it. So you have a mailbox. Yeah. Yeah.
• 21:22
  And is it still filled with stuff? Oh my word. That's you. Oh yeah. Yeah.
• 21:26
  You're welcome. Thank you. And you're welcome. Don't swear. Don't swear.
• 21:29
  Don't swear. Don't swear.
• 21:30
  Son of a gun's okay. Son of a gun. Don't say the other one.
• 21:34
  It's a lot of that stuff. Oh God. Yeah. I mean, from your simple, you know,
• 21:38
  you know, your business cards to your letterhead, not much letterhead, really.
• 21:41
  Everybody prints it out. So why would you? Yeah. But anything that, you know,
• 21:44
  ends up in your mailbox and banners and the signage and what you put on your
• 21:49
  side of your vehicle. And we do engraving. And you know,
• 21:52
  if you go into a trade show and you want to hit a full color name tag,
• 21:55
  or if you had a notary seals or notary supplies, you name it,
• 21:59
  go into any place and look at any printed literature. That's what you did.
• 22:02
  What was the board meeting like where you sat down and realized this thing
• 22:05
  called the internet is here. Things are changing.
• 22:09
  We need to change and evolve with it. What can we do? Ideas go.
• 22:13
  Yeah. I think that was more of a slow burn and the internet was more of a slow
• 22:17
  burn, you know, but you had to be thinking, this is going to change things.
• 22:21
  There's no question. It's going to be less. So there is less printing,
• 22:24
  but there's less printers. You know, we used to have like 14 printers around here,
• 22:28
  not anymore because you know, you have to get out and go out and get it in
• 22:33
  printing. You're not going to be inventing something that is an epiphany.
• 22:38
  You know, if you're really good,
• 22:39
  you should be able to do it just like the customer wants it every time
• 22:42
  consistently. And there's a lot of printers that can do that.
• 22:45
  So what separates you customer service? It's really, you know, it's like,
• 22:49
  hi, Mr. Reach, let me help you. I'm like, Oh, this is my, you know,
• 22:53
  I've been on call for like, you know, an hour and you're my fifth person.
• 22:56
  And you just called me Mr. Rich, you know, but when you call and say, Oh, Oh,
• 23:01
  hi Rich. Yeah, no problem. Hold on just a second.
• 23:04
  And they give you an answer within like 30 customer service or you're proactive
• 23:08
  on the customer service and you reach out to Rick and say, Rick,
• 23:10
  your job's complete. It's going to deliver tomorrow. Yeah. Oh great. Thanks.
• 23:14
  That human touch. AI can't fix that. You know,
• 23:18
  we all get those emails that say, Hey Dan,
• 23:21
  just in case you didn't see my last email, you're like AI. Okay. Yeah, sure.
• 23:25
  Yeah. Can we park the bus here just for a second? Man, I'm no expert,
• 23:30
  but it's now to the point that much like you could recognize cello and charades
• 23:35
  as quickly as you did. I'm really,
• 23:37
  I think getting pretty good at recognizing AI text,
• 23:42
  especially shared in social media. Do you get texts? You get AI texts.
• 23:46
  I think I think it's like text.
• 23:48
  I'm referring to texts that I would see in social media and Instagram post
• 23:51
  something on X, something on Facebook, personal cell phone.
• 23:55
  Well, you know, you say that. And for some reason, a couple of things happen.
• 23:59
  I have been getting some stuff and the patterns, the flows,
• 24:04
  the verbiage that I'm seeing, it's really flagging to me. Like that's not OI.
• 24:09
  That's not, that's not organic intelligence. That's AI or heaven forbid,
• 24:14
  SI is next, but that's a topic for another day.
• 24:17
  I'm only going to send you texts that run through chat GPT from now on.
• 24:20
  Now that I've told you that, you'll figure it out pretty quick.
• 24:22
  So I got a text the other day and it said, um, Hey, recipient name here.
• 24:30
  And the rest of the email was wordsmith and it was good.
• 24:33
  And it came from a person that I knew. Yeah. But you're like, dude,
• 24:36
  you forgot to put your name in there. I'm like, Oh, you caught me. I use grok.
• 24:41
  Yeah. Instead of chat GPT.
• 24:42
  I've got both and I do occasionally a compare and contrast and I'm just about to
• 24:47
  jump into that to see if I can see much of it.
• 24:49
  What do you get from grog that you're not getting from chat?
• 24:52
  Everybody's using chat GPT. So I use grok. Everybody has an iPhone.
• 24:55
  I have a Samsung. Oh, my dad has a Samsung. Yeah. It's awesome. No,
• 24:59
  it takes better pictures. You're the reason we get green bubbles. Yeah. Oh yeah.
• 25:04
  My friend, I didn't get a text. Something's wrong with my phone.
• 25:06
  I never get your texts because he's an iPhone guy.
• 25:08
  You know, in the Marvel cinematic universe,
• 25:10
  villains are not allowed to use iPhones. I know. Right. You look at the,
• 25:14
  they're always holding an Android. Yeah. Yeah. How cool is that?
• 25:17
  That's enough to just have one.
• 25:19
  Are you from the Marvel cinematic universe that would explain a lot.
• 25:24
  He's the snowman. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't get out the blizzard, please.
• 25:30
  I wonder if there's going to come a time that we are getting so enthralled with
• 25:35
  electronics. Cause I think there's more to come and AI that when you do go to
• 25:40
  your mailbox and you get something that's actually on a piece of paper that's
• 25:44
  printed and sent to you, the feeling of value might skyrocket.
• 25:48
  They've already proven that, you know, it actually print is coming back,
• 25:52
  especially to like the millennials.
• 25:54
  It's like they actually get the haptic feedback of a,
• 25:56
  and it's proven that if you actually read a book and you turn the page versus,
• 26:00
  you know, you do it on an electronic Kindle or electronic device,
• 26:03
  you actually retain more.
• 26:05
  If for some reason that haptic feedback from turning the page and in a book and
• 26:10
  physically holding the book versus holding an iPad and reading it
• 26:14
  electronically, you know, I know myself,
• 26:16
  if I'm reading something on a screen my eyes get way tired,
• 26:19
  way quicker than reading a book. Definitely. Like, man, my eyes are killing me.
• 26:22
  They've actually proven that mail is actually coming back.
• 26:26
  Now you'll see a lot of things won't come back just because, you know,
• 26:29
  you have a lot of nonprofits that are, you know,
• 26:31
  you're going to send that magazine out or whatever. We can just email it. Yeah.
• 26:35
  But no one reads it. You know,
• 26:37
  so you still have a lot of the schools and in a lot of the bigger nonprofits and
• 26:41
  they still do print because people read it. You know, it's a, it's an easy,
• 26:45
  uh, easy, uh, line item to, to eliminate.
• 26:51
  But then why don't you look at your donations? You know,
• 26:54
  people still do a lot of appeals, you know, when they time them right,
• 26:59
  but they're doing more targeted appeals now used to be blanketed. Now it's like,
• 27:02
  okay, I want to go to this specific area and I want to target people with this
• 27:07
  income that have kids that own a house. Bang.
• 27:12
  So you go from 50,000 to 3000,
• 27:17
  you know, and you can,
• 27:18
  you can request that database from us or any other printer and say, listen,
• 27:23
  can you give me these parameters? And then they can decide,
• 27:27
  I want to mail to, you know,
• 27:30
  the 18 to 50 instead of 18 to 30 it's more,
• 27:36
  but I want to get that demographic too.
• 27:38
  So demographic specific mailing is here to stay.
• 27:42
  It's way more accurate.
• 27:43
  You know, who's wearing us down Viking cruises. Oh yeah.
• 27:47
  One day Elizabeth and I were curled up and looking at Viking cruises and
• 27:51
  thinking, you know, we want to take a river boat cruise.
• 27:53
  We want to go see like the Rhine or the Rhone and see the castles and the food
• 27:57
  and everything. And then we flipped to like the last page.
• 28:00
  And we saw everyone that was on the cruise was so old.
• 28:05
  So we stopped. We didn't say yes. Yeah. Within two weeks we started getting,
• 28:11
  and I will, I'll bet all the money in your pocket rich against all the money in
• 28:15
  Dan's pocket. In the next seven days we'll get another brochure from Viking
• 28:19
  cruise. Once it's there in your hand, you can't,
• 28:22
  what was the episode of Mad Men when the phone was starting to come in and they
• 28:25
  were doing work for the telegram company and the guy Draper said,
• 28:29
  you can't frame a phone call. Short phrase, but it really solidified,
• 28:34
  you know what there is and always will be a special place for print and printing.
• 28:40
  Yeah, I completely agree. And you see it,
• 28:42
  high quality images look so much better in a printed piece of collateral printed
• 28:48
  piece of material than seeing them in a bulk email or even on a website.
• 28:53
  Educating your customer too is big. You know, it's like,
• 28:55
  well this looked a lot different on my screen. And I'm like, well,
• 28:59
  screens RGB, red, green, blue. But when you print it's CMYK and it's either an
• 29:05
  ink or toner or inkjet and it will look different.
• 29:08
  So if you really want it to look exactly the way you receive it,
• 29:11
  request an actual copy.
• 29:12
  Seeming those people in that book aren't really as old as they look.
• 29:16
  And was I on the cruise? No, no. Yeah, they're all mid twenties.
• 29:19
  But I will point out some friends went on one of those cruises and they are not
• 29:23
  that old. And they said, it's the greatest thing ever. Yeah.
• 29:26
  All the old people go to bed at six 30. You've got the boat to yourself.
• 29:31
  No lines at the bar. The buffet is yours. Dance until midnight.
• 29:35
  Plus the, the, the, where they go and look so cool. My parents did that.
• 29:39
  My mom said it was awesome. I still have my mother's still alive. Yeah.
• 29:43
  88 driving, living by herself. Yeah. Oh yeah.
• 29:46
  Everything is like an immediate crisis.
• 29:48
  My computer, I clicked on this picture and it won't open.
• 29:53
  You don't have to come now, but please.
• 29:56
  And so I show up, what are you doing here?