Print is Better Than You Remember

Hey friends, welcome to the CreativePro Podcast. Happy you’re here. CreativePro is where design professionals come for real world insights, practical tips, and inspiring conversations.

And today, the conversation is all about print. If you’re a print designer or curious about print, you’re going to enjoy this conversation. You’ll hear about what’s happening in the print industry today, and you’ll get some tips on how to find a good printer and then develop a good partnership with them.

If you’re new here, welcome. Make sure to hit the subscribe button so you can catch all the episodes. I’m Theresa Jackson, CreativePro Program Manager.

And before we get into the conversation for today, I want to share a little more about CreativePro. CreativePro helps you stay current and work smarter and build a career you love. We have practical how-to events, membership, articles, tutorials, quick tips, and a welcoming creative community.

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This episode features two speakers from the upcoming Design and Marketing Summit, which will be held online September 14th through the 15th, 2026. I invited Sabine Lenz from Paper Specs and Chris Carls from Cirrus Visual to come on the podcast. They are both super passionate about print and have years of expertise.

And listening to them share that passion back and forth, I always enjoy just listening in on their conversation. I know that you’ll enjoy this too. So I’m gonna hand it over to Sabine and Chris now.

Hey, thank you, everybody. And thank you, Theresa and CreativePro Network for this opportunity. I can’t even wait.

We’re here with Sabine and myself, Chris, and we’re gonna talk about print and design for print. We want to empower you all to consider print and then just inspire you to all the possibilities of print and then how you can actually make it a part of your life. Wait, we’re still talking about print, Chris? Really? The possibilities of print.

So let me tell you. Let me tell you. Few years ago, I was at Adobe Max and I was standing in line for coffee, as one does, and you chitchat with other attendees because that’s the fun part, isn’t it? And so they all told me, they shared their fancy titles.

They were UX this and video that and digital that. And I’m getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And I’m thinking, whoa, whoa.

And then my turn comes and I’m like, so what do you do? I’m like, well, you know, I help designers make smarter print decisions. And like, it got all quiet. And I’m like, print? We’re still doing this? And I felt like ancient, dinosaur ancient.

But then I handed out my business card and they all started looking and feeling and rubbing and how thick it is and they all got excited. And I’m like, so there, print is still alive and well. 100% and bringing people together, I think really is what brought us together.

We met at CreativePro Week last year, just a little over a year ago. We connected because of our deep history in the print industry. That’s tricky.

Me being an art director at a design and print firm for 25 years. And then finding out you are talking to the paper manufacturers and know the embellishments that we use in house. Like we made an instant connection.

We went out to dinner and could have, and this is where Theresa, who introduced us, will have to jump in and stop us because we could talk about print for hours and hours and days and days. Trust us. Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. But I am a recovering designer myself. So I think we should point that out as well.

So this is how I got into all this because I really felt like somebody needs to explain to designers how this all works. And you are one of them because once we connected, we got really, really deep into these things. Yeah, seriously impressive.

And really it was going back to print and how, because again, as an art director at a design and print firm, we are still printing on the daily. Print is not dead. It’s far from it.

In fact, digital print industry, we have only grown over the years, but there’s still a reason for the print. You’ve said you handed out a business cards. I mean, think of all the legal documents and the educational documents, the publications that we still get.

Print is so alive and so important. And for us designers, the why, Theresa would want me to answer why, why be empowered with this? So that we are more valuable to our clients. If we can make them more successful, then we become more valuable as designers.

And then they come back to us for next time if that mailer works. Can I plug in a little bit my- Well, that’s where you- Is this my plug? You’re late. That was a nice segue into- It’s like I’m a pro at this or something.

So speaking of direct mail, I’m given a direct mail. I’m sorry, designing direct mail that delivers for the Design and Marketing Summit, CreativePro’s Marketing Summit in September. So I’ll be, my magic trot, honestly, to empower you all, my gift is to show you that you only need this little bit of a space down here for your mailing space.

And the rest of it is all just huge real estate. Don’t give it away. Don’t give it away, Chris, don’t give it away.

You’re gonna have to come to my talk. Yeah. So yes, and then, but why else, Sabine, why else do people use print? Well, I think, especially in the day and age of, and I’m gonna say the word, AI, not as Adobe InDesign or Illustrator, but I know, I know, I don’t have a pillow.

I’m surprised they even let me speak today and talk to you. But I think print really enables trust these days because it is very cheap, let’s put it this way, to fake something on AI. Actually, I remember a few weeks ago, all of a sudden, Oprah popped up on my Instagram feed and she was selling some kind of a diet supplement thingy and I’m thinking, Oprah, really? And then I realized, wait a second, let me double check this.

So I went to her website and she’s like, this is not me, blanket statement. So it takes somebody 15, 20 minutes to have Oprah say whatever they want. And it’s a fake.

But when you invest in print, now you’re generating trust because somebody realized, wait a second, they went to that extra effort. This is not your everyday five minute spiel. This is really, there’s craft, there’s thought, there’s intention behind it.

And so I think really the trust factor of print is increasing by the day, the week, so to speak. Yes, absolutely. And the trust is that, you mentioned it, like if you pay, if you invest, sorry, in your own company, your own branding, and you mentioned you handed out a business card, I guarantee you, you hand out a business card that’s got soft touch lamination on it, that’s a first impression that will last, right? That’s how the first impressions last is so true because, and that’s been out for years.

It could be the paper, right? We could geek out on paper over here, the plaque versus, sorry. It could be a soft touch lamination, but you really, that soft touch, people still, it wows them. They’re like, ooh, and they’ll keep that card.

Don’t give me a business card. I’m a business card snob. It could be too light of a weight of a paper, and that thing’s going in the recycle bin.

Oh, I’m a snob. I’m a snob, and I’m allergic to wimpy business cards. Allergic, I like that.

I’m gonna use that. Sorry, I can’t take that. That’s for sure.

And let’s face it. There’s really no reason not to have a well-designed piece because, I mean, there was a time, and you and I are old enough to remember this, when you had to do a longer run length, and it was all offset and whatever, but the options we have now and the quality that are produced now are just stunning. I actually, we’re talking digital.

That means you can print exactly the number you need, not more, not less. And- You can do A-B testing with direct mail. You and I geeked out on the technology, on the quality.

I mean, look at this. This is digital inkjet. Yeah, and not to age us, Sabine, but we’ve both lived in this industry long enough to have lived through when offset was superior, period.

And at Cirrus Visual, where I’m the art director there, we’ve been on the forefront of digital for decades, literally about 30 years. And we were trying to sell digital, but offset, the quality was there. But like Sabine said, you had to do the longer runs.

Now the technology of the digital presses, fancy word for color copiers, but these things are bigger than my truck that we have at Cirrus. I’m sorry, don’t even say color copiers because people think they’re like- They’re digital presses. These things are huge.

The quality now actually surpasses offset, depending on what you’re looking for. Now, I do know there’s a craft in the offset. Don’t trust me.

I do appreciate that. But I’m talking about those colors pop off of there, even though they’re printed in CMYK, we work in an RGB workflow to get our colors flow. Anyways, we’ve lived through that.

And in fact, to bounce back on direct mail, sorry, another plug, but we’ve lived long enough that the, and this goes back to trust too, the response rates for direct mail, printed direct mail, back when email came out, man, they tanked. And now all of a sudden, the response rates for direct mail, printed direct mail, up to like four or 5% where email is like 0.1. So you talk about trust. Gen Z loves direct mail because for them, this is neat.

Yeah, yes. And they’re very excited about it. Like my CD collection that I have back there.

You can actually hold this thing in your hand. They’re antiques. They’re antiques.

So, yes. And then, oh, sorry. I was just gonna mention, I’ve also lived long enough through the design for print to appreciate the digital file workflow that we are currently experiencing.

And I’m talking PDF, because PDF runs our lives. We send our estimates in PDF. And that’s gonna get even better.

Right? We send our proofs. We send the, well, okay. We do send press files, but if we do a direct mail and we do a Fusion Pro, that actually sends a different type of a file that’s way less obnoxious of a file size.

Anyways, PDFs. Back in the day, I was on InDesign 1.1. I couldn’t use my. Okay, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t.

Am I aging again? Don’t even go there. You can’t see my gray hair. People would think we’re in a dining store.

Let’s not go there, Chris. Let’s not go there. But we couldn’t even send our files, because the people that were making our plates, they had to have our native files, right? So, the technology that has expanded us, both in the print capabilities and the file capabilities are huge.

Well, I think especially when it comes to print, this is changing. Not at the speed of AI. I will not say that, but it’s changing fast.

There are new things coming out later this year that I know about that will make our workflow life easier. But because you talked about digital, it’s also, yes, it’s the printing part. And you and I geeked out on the whole embellishment part as well.

And that can be a life saver, depending on what you’re working on. And I promise you, I show you the samples of the story that I was telling the other day. A friend of mine was asked to create menu covers for the World Cup.

Small event. Nobody heard of, so to speak, soccer. And they came basically to him like a week before they needed the menus, which is like, it’s a typical client.

We’ve all been there. Wait, are our clients on this? Our clients are listening? They might. If you’re a client, you’re obviously exempt from this one.

But they came and they had this really great idea about they wanted linen covered menu covers, like the heart cover menu covers with linen covers. And my friend said, that’s just, no, not within a week. Because they wanted 12 versions, 12,000 each.

And he’s like, this is not like Command, Option, Shift, D, and it doesn’t, you know? Done. But he know, that’s the point. There’s a point here.

He knew what is possible. So they said, what we can do is we can do something digital. And so they went back to your soft touch.

So this is soft touch, laminated, digitally printed, digitally, can you see the shimmer? Embossed. And so they did, I kid you not, 12,000 in all different colors, shapes, forms. Total crazy town.

There’s a point here. If he would not have known that it is possible, he could not have offered this solution. So there within is my little point here.

And digital embellishments have come so far. They’re getting better in quality and you can do larger runs and sheet sizes now. Well, I think what you’re tapping into is this whole dreams versus realities, right? There’s memes about this of like, well, the client dream versus the client expectations versus what they actually get.

We could probably plug some of those into the recording here because they’re hilarious, but they’re so true. But honestly, you kind of have to think. Wait, wait, wait, let me, this is right up your alley.

I want to, let me just, sorry, because I know where you’re going. I know, I see you. So here’s the fun part.

They wanted a lower cost version. And so there was just a simple glass laminated one. But once the client saw this one compared to this one, they’re like, wait, forget about what we said about the budget part.

Can we just have all of them this way? And obviously there was no time, but budget. And I know that’s one of your pet peeves. Oh my goodness, Sabine, this is what I think got us first talking.

It comes down as simple as paper. And it kind of, again, I’ve been in the industry long enough that the paper reps come in and they show off all the fancy new paper and they get us all excited about the, ooh, you got the fiber or the rough or all the colors and the soft touch. And we all know now, like, dude, ain’t nobody going to pay for that.

And next year it’s probably not even available. So we go back to silk coated because we know that that’s what prints well on our printers. And so poor us designers are like, we just kind of like, no, give up.

But talking to Sabine was my burst of inspiration. And I go back to my designers. I’m like, you know what? We got to fight for this.

Because we kind of like, we kind of give up after a while because of what the clients are willing to pay for and what works, honestly. But, you know, the fancier the paper, however, this would be the segue for Sabine’s talk, because- I just want to say, this is a nice segue. I appreciate that one.

Because we all dread the B word, budget. That’s probably the worst word in the design language. And we will go deep into this in my session in the marketing summit.

We’re going to talk about real world solutions for any budget. And I always like to say, there is a solution. Let it be foil or whatever it is for any budget.

You just need to know what is available to you so that you can make smart decisions about it, so to speak. You have to know your budget. And clients, if you ask your, and it depends on who we’re talking to.

I’m speaking for us as a designer. We’re taking work from our client and we’re producing work for our client. So we’re curious about what their budget is.

But if you are looking for printing, I suggest to know your budget and maybe don’t be afraid to share it because the more your printer knows, I think that’s one of our main takeaways here is like find a printer. Call your printer first, right? I’m sorry, find the right printer. Find a printer that you can partner with, that you trust from the beginning and talk to them way before you start designing, way before you even start planning.

I do this so often. Somebody will come to me with a, I want, this just happened last week. They pulled out this pocket folder full of, I’m not, of stuff and it was all over the place.

And they’re like, well, we’re gonna put a sticker on the front of this pocket folder to give out to our visitors, our clients. I’m like, how about a printed brochure of saddle stitched with the static information? And we can actually tape in a pocket at the back if you have variable information in there, but man, it would look clean. It would all come in.

He’s like, yes, yes. And guess what? It’s probably gonna be cheaper than what the whole thing cost them to put the things in and stickers on. And it looks better.

And it looks more professional. So it’s what you’re basically saying. And we’re on the same page there.

It’s not just go to your printer and say, hey, print this. Here it is. Yes.

Printed. The idea is to come ideally and say, so this is what I’m trying to achieve. This is my budget.

How could we possibly get this? This is my, this is what I kind of need. It’s a function. Every single thing has a function, whether it’s a business card or a flyer, a brochure, a promo item, whatever, man.

They all have a function. So knowing that. Well, and there might be solutions out there that you might not even be aware of.

Like my favorite one is square back binding. Nobody’s, I’m still, it’s still my party trick. As I say, square back binding and people like, wait, what? This is where I love talking to you.

I love talking to you, Sabine. because I’m gonna leave it for later. This is it.

I show that off. I’m like, well, you know, cause we actually have a perfect binder and we do perfect binding, but there’s that, it’s that in between, between saddle stitching and perfect binding, which technically it is saddle stitching, but for that little bit thicker and it almost has a little bit more professional side there. So people don’t know about that.

People don’t know that we can print on a 30 inch sheet of paper. This just happened a few, this actually happens often enough, but it did just happen. We had an eight page brochure.

They said, we wanna add a page. Now you all out there talking to you designers, if you’re gonna saddle stitch this or staple this, right? How many pages does it need to be? Needs pages of four, unless you’re gonna coil bind it or staple it, right? So nine page doesn’t work, friends. We need to either go down to eight or go up to 12.

Aha, but wait, we can print on a 30 inch sheet of paper. We can do a large scale trifold. What does that mean? Three times three, that gets us six pages at least.

Maybe we can do an insert, a stitch bound inside of that and have a couple extra pages, right? So I’m gonna do a roll fold. You could do a smaller piece, you know? So yeah, talking to your, speaking to your printer first, that’s I think is one of our best, best pieces of advice. And then to know what you really wanna create, but maybe not be so 100% locked in on what that end piece is.

Right, and find the right printer. I think that is something I hear over and over again, where designers come to me and say, oh, my printer says it can’t be done or my printer, you name it. That’s not really the printer you wanna work with.

You want somebody who says, okay, that is tricky, but we’re gonna find a solution. So don’t just be locked in with one printer because ultimately, and we love printers. Hi, Chris.

Ultimately, they sell you what they have on the floor, what they are capable of. And so it’s always good to have two or three options so that you ultimately can go and say, okay, this is the printer for this. This is the printer for this.

This is more for run of the mill, but if I wanna go really crazy, this person will find a solution. And they’re out there. And I love those printers.

They’re like, bring it on. We love a good chance. We like being honest with our clients.

And if it’s in our wheelhouse, we are absolutely honest with you. But if it’s not, we try to find a solution for you. So honestly, a really good printer, if they can’t do it in-house, they might be able to do it for you because we don’t have huge offset presses in-house, but we can rent that equipment from large presses in town, right? So we are unique in that we do have the large format and the digital presses.

And so we can kind of take care of a lot of things. But if we can’t, we find that solution for them, which is, that’s, I think, is the best solution. If you find somebody that can kind of not be a one-stop shop, sorry, that’s an old cheesy way of saying it, a holistic approach, right? Because our needs as printers.

Ooh, I like this one. Our needs as designers, the things that we design, let me back up. The things that we design are usually not just one thing.

And this actually taps into why we create in an RGB workflow, is that this is probably one piece of a campaign, right? Maybe this is a rack card that we also need a roll-up banner, and a website, and a Instagram social stuffs, and, and, and, and, right? It’s a whole campaign. So that’s why we designed an RGB to keep that color gamut across the whole, all the applications as consistent as possible. But I can tell you, even within our production room, they’re all printing in, say, MYK, but between the flatbed, the roll-fed, the two different laser jet and inkjet envelope printers, the three digital presses, they’re all CMYK.

They’re all printing as close as we can calibrate them. But in Tucson, Arizona, the humidity changes things on the daily, right? We have to, anyways. So my point being, it’s usually not just one piece anyways.

So having your print partner, being able to help you with that holistic approach, maybe you need stickers too, you know? Like, so they hopefully would be able to help with all of those needs. But otherwise, like Sabine said, you’re out there trying to find individual pieces for all those. And you don’t want this necessarily.

And you don’t want to be the one in charge. I have this time and again where people say, oh, is it going to be cheaper if I bring my own paper? And I’m like, oh my gosh, that’s the last thing. And don’t tell me how many up you want it.

We don’t, we don’t print on eight half by 11. We don’t, cause we still get that. Like, it’s so cute though.

And they’re like, oh, we need this four up on eight and a half 11. Like, just tell us how many you need. We’ll take care of the paper size.

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. So I think work with, find somebody you trust. So find the right printer.

We’re back to that. And the right printer will outsource, as it’s called, if they need to. If they, back to the menus, and in this case it wasn’t needed, but just say they were not able to do the digital foil, they will find somebody who can, if it’s a good printer.

They will make it work. And quite honestly, I think I mentioned, did I mention, yeah, this was like a four day turnaround. 12,000 of them in four or six different colors.

So that, without the print relationship that was already established, wouldn’t have happened. And without that digital. Because that printer was running 24 hours a day.

Right, but without that technology either, that wouldn’t have, without the digital foil, there’s no way we have one of those machines. We got a next day turnaround foil. While in, meanwhile, in the back, we have a stack of dyes, right? Old school dyes, which we still have to get dyes to get the foil or cut.

But you know, to get old school foil would have to get a dye, and then you have to find somebody to impress the dye. So the, that technology is what also allowed that. Now you could have used maybe a chrome paper and could have printed a white substrate on top of that to get that, let that metallic shine through.

But that’s what I mean. That’s what we mean. Talk to your printer.

Maybe if they didn’t have digital foil, maybe they could find another solution that had that metallic effect. And that’s where our- Like a metalized substrate with- Please, that’s where our print geek brains just go on fire. So my suggestion, our suggestions, because we have some tips for you all.

Because again, we want to empower you. Well, these were already a lot of tips. Oh, we’re loading this thing in, I’m telling you.

We’re going to have to come back for part two, Theresa. You got to schedule us. You got to pencil us in, part two.

It’s going to be a monthly recurrence. Here’s the deal. Collect those samples.

Like Sabine had, you found something that had some cool kick butt foil on there. Keep that. You found something that was a large-scale trifold.

You know that’s possible to produce. Keep that and hold that and keep your little samples. Be inspired by everything around you.

I actually, I teach Adobe Illustrator over at the community college on the side. It’s my little side hustle. It’s actually my expensive hobby.

But I tell my students, be inspired. Everything you do, whether you’re driving down the road, you’re looking at billboards, that’s actually what not to do a lot of the times. But you can actually pick up some good inspiration.

But if you- Do not take your phone to work, Chris. No, I’m not driving. I’m taking visual inspiration.

But I, and then I say like, boy, in this day and age, if you treat everything like a billboard, like a good billboard, you got a way better chance of actually getting seen in the first place. But, you know, we go to a restaurant as a print. We’re not looking at the menu.

We’re looking at the print quality and the fonts that they use and the paper, you know. So, and then keep that. They’re, you know, I’m not saying suggest to steal from the restaurant, but keep and keep these samples and be inspired by everything around you.

And, and- But it’s also the- Go ahead. Yeah, bringing it back to direct mail. Check your mailbox.

And I have to say my mailbox is getting fuller again. This came in the mail the other day. Was that the card or the envelope? That was the, that was what was inside.

It was the card that was in the envelope. See, look at, oh, I didn’t have full color print because we can do full color envelopes. That’s your eye catching thing.

You get that. If you get in from the mailbox inside, Sabine actually opened that. That, that’s the first step.

Like, because the envelope, like, oh, that was cool envelope. And then you looked at, wow. But if that was just in a plain white envelope, you might not have even seen what was inside there.

Probably not. Probably not, let’s face it. But that’s what I’m saying.

You know, you can find inspiration anywhere. Just keep your, keep an open mind. Sometimes, you know, the other day, I actually had a trailing edge envelope and I’m like, well, this is cool.

You know? You saw one in the mail in the wild? In the wild, I know! You’ve been talking about this and this is, I’m actually gonna plug Sabine on this one. After we’ve met, I’ve come to all of the, or gone to all of the paper specs unboxing events. It is amazing.

Talk about inspiration. I get a box of stuff. And then after that, we open it up and get to see all the different papers and types and embellishments.

I go up to the manager meeting and I share with them and inspire them. And then I go to my designers and it has been great. So Sabine, I just have to thank you.

I know I’ve thanked you off on the side, but it has been, it’s been my little, I don’t know, little, every once in a while I get this little treat, little inspirational package. And then your newsletters, what was it? This week, it was the cost for painted edge binding, right? Or painted edge. And I’m like, there’s no, nobody can afford that.

But then you actually showed the video like, you know what? That actually could be done. And I know we have a bind tech up in Phoenix that could do it too, right? So it’s me in the industry for 30 years, still getting inspired on what’s possible. And how can I sell that to my client? Not sell it as a salesperson.

Help them, right? Stand out. Cause that’s why we’re here. Really, as a designer.

And I think that that’s what we talked about. We’re back to what we talked about earlier. This is constantly changing.

This is not, okay, this is what it is and we’re done. This is constantly changing. Totally still changing.

And you need to know, you don’t need to know how to run a press, even though Chris might want to teach you. But what you need to know is what is possible. I think really that’s the key.

You collect the samples, know what is possible so that nobody can pull the wool over your eyes. Is that what we say? Yes. So collect the samples and stay curious.

I think that’s the most important thing. And you’re all curious, that’s why you’re here. So we’re good.

So we mentioned as our takeaways is like find a printer, and partner with the right printer. Sabine, I am not the person to ask this, but I could answer what questions you should ask your printer, what capabilities they have, what relationships they have with other vendors in town. But what do you think, what would be your advice for finding a printer? You know the printers out in the world, not just this country, but you know a lot of printers.

How would you suggest trying to find a printer? I always like to see if they’re willing to go out of their way. That’s for me a benchmark, to be honest. I mean, everybody can print CMYK on 80 pound text coded paper, no offense, but you know, nothing to it.

But you want somebody who can print these crazy menu covers at the last minute. So you need somebody who already shows you from the get-go in a conversation that they’re willing to do this, that they thrive on this. Let me rephrase that, that they enjoy this.

And there are printers out there. The whole team is enjoying finding solutions for this. Look at the work they’ve done.

Look at the more crazy work. Ask for the turnaround times, because we’ve all had clients. None of us ever had clients who came and said, I need this tomorrow.

No, never happens. So you see the response and dig deeper. Really dig deeper.

It’s nice to know what equipment they have, but as you said earlier yourself, Chris, they will outsource. Are they willing to outsource if they don’t have? And I know printers who have little equipment themselves, but they know exactly whom to partner with. And the quality that the final product, it’s stunning.

The top of the creme de la creme is printing with this guy because he is so finicky about this that he would only bring in the best people to collaborate. And I’m like, there’s nothing wrong with this. If you build a house, you bring in different people to put the roof on and the electricity and whatever.

Great analogy, I just came up with that. Little subcontractors really. And there is a point where if there are things, elements, we design websites, but we work, we have a relationships with somebody that maintains and hosts them.

We don’t wanna get a part of that part of it. We just wanna do the fun design part of it. So definitely, so yes, I guess in finding a printer, you’re probably gonna have to have some sort of a test runs to I suppose, right? Or some scenarios or a project in mind or something to start that conversation.

But then after that, using those questions, turnaround time is a great, that’s a great question. I would say look for a printer when you don’t. Yeah, it’s kind of what I’m saying.

Like if you can kind of poke around now with if you had a sample thing, like, hey, I’m just, I have an event coming up and I’m gonna need rack cards, I need a roll up brochure, I need a table throw and I need some stickers. And that right there, I can table a booth with that, right? A 10 by 10 booth. I got a table throw, a little roll up, rack card, business cards.

How much would that kind of cost for, get some standard quantities and then maybe have like a little test project. I don’t know if that’s just one suggestion. Well, I think it’s really also the response to anything crazy.

Right. And I know I showed you the menus before, but as I mentioned, these were originally linen covered, linen hard cover covers, so to speak. And it was just not doable.

And the client had heard this several times. You know, the printer said that it’s not doable. And you want a printer who says, I can’t do this, but I can do this.

This is doable in this amount of time. So that’s somebody to look for as well, who says, wait a second, this is tricky, but how about if we go about this way? That’s for me, I talk, as you said, I talked to a lot of printers. So I think at this day, I within five minutes can pretty much suss out how flexible they are, how willing they are to bend over backwards.

And that’s what you need sometimes. We didn’t even talk price. Isn’t that funny? It’s like, oh, what’s your per car? People ask me how much for business cards.

I have no clue. That’s not even an answer that I want to give because you know what? How much is a car? They’re all custom. They’re all different.

Business cards, I said, they’re all three and a half by two, but they’re all different. We got a rounded corner. Some are two sided.

Some are silk touch laminate. You know, like they’re all totally different. There isn’t one set price.

So it’s not, you should get a second quotes, just like if you’re trying to buy a car, you should actually go get a second opinion or something. Right? But certainly I can only hope that their pricing in fairness and in comparison to their competitors, I suppose, they’re still in line, you know? But so yeah, you probably should do some little price testing, I suppose. But we didn’t even talk about price.

And if it’s not, and if it’s not dig deeper, because I think that’s the hard part of our printing, the confusing part often is you ask for the same thing, but then you get three different quotes and they’re all used different papers and different this and different weights. So there’s no way, read the fine print because there’s no way for you to compare apples to apples. It’s so true.

That right there is huge. That’s why we even ask for, hey, if you’re open to letting us know what the price is, like what, it might not even be in the same ballpark. And then that’ll tell us immediately like they can’t even afford the paper for that cost, you know? So that’s huge.

Ballpark is good. And everybody has a budget. All right.

We’re going to continue this conversation at the marketing summit. Oh yeah. And yeah, sorry.

The design and marketing summit in September. Design marketing summit. But in the meantime, I would say just stay curious.

Stay curious. Feel empowered, right? That’s the whole thing. And then go out and see what you can collect, be inspired and then go find a cool printer and go make some cool stuff.

I think that’s it. Just to go inspire people to make cool stuff. And then honestly, if you want to learn more, my suggestion is becoming a member of the CreativePro Network has been huge.

The amount of just the, like the newsletters that come out or their monthly magazines that I read. And the tips and tricks. Loaded.

The webinars. Even I didn’t know about. Even yesterday, we were both in a webinar from Cara and I was like taking notes.

I’m like, I thought I knew everything about this but I’m learning. I’m still learning. That’s my favorite part.

Learn something new every day. So join CreativePro Network and I guarantee you, you’ll learn something and meet tons of people in an amazing community and a great family that I’m proud to be a part of. So yes, thank you.

Thanks to CreativePro Network for this opportunity. Thanks to Theresa for inviting us. I’m so proud to be a part of this.

And letting us geek out. Letting us geek out collectively. We can go on for hours.

We’re going to have to go offline, Sabine. Have another little, have a little dinner conversation that turns into breakfast someday because I’m telling you, we can, if you can’t tell, we’re a little passionate about print. So if you need anything at all, we’re both here.

My saying is like pass the torch. I’m all about inspiring. I’ve been in this long enough that it is time to share this information with others and empower you all.

And I know Sabine does the exact same thing. She gives a lot of her time to give back to others and inspire you all. So thank you.

All right. Take care.