About the author – this is how long I’ve been in the printing and marketing industry
I’ve been involved with the marketing and printing industry for last 2o years of my life. Let me tell you quickly how it all started. When I was in my early 20s. I had probably like most people had various different jobs in various different industries. And that’s when I found out something very important about myself, I hate working for other people. Not only did I hate working for other people, I just was a very good at it. When I think back as far as I can remember the first jobs that I ever had only reason I gone them as does my parents basically kicked me out of the nest and tolled me that I had to get a job. If I remember correctly, they told me dating care what I did as long as I did something legal that is. So I basically had every single job that you could think of. I worked as a busboy, I work in the local boat yards. I also hadn’t have a lot of older sisters, four to be exact. So with a lot of sisters came a lot of different boyfriends. That inevitably gave me a pic from a lot of different jobs, because there are parents generally had businesses and/or they work for a company they could recommend me for the job. I’d love to tell you that these things worked out well, but they generally did work out to well either. So I think I was about 20 years old and I was going to community college over in central Long Island called Nassau community college. A session I went to college because I didn’t know what I was in and do the rest my life. So I thought I’d buy myself some time. It’s fun, I remember it like it like it was yesterday. I was on the way to one of my classes, and somebody stop me and asked me if I’d like to get involved promoting a nightclub. To me as sound like a pretty cool idea, so I said sure. So he told me how worked, he said on the give you a stack of these flyers and on each one of these flyers or one you put your name. He then told me for every single flier that I got back to the club that he would give me one dollar. Thus started me in the marketing industry. You know it’s funny, some people have certain knack. Things that they’re good and for no particular reason other than the God seems to embrace them with that talent. I think for myself. This was true when he came to marketing, all guerrilla marketing as most people call it. You know it’s funny after my first weekly working with this guy. I immediately said to myself, I want to talk to the manager and I want to work for him directly. So I went to the nightclub that night I actually tracked down the manager and told him a listen on what work you directly, and as a result of a track them down I went from making one dollar Florida two dollars, a flier. Sometimes I think it must’ve been something wrong with me back then because I must’ve been working for you to 50 hours a week. And I was probably making some one area of $75. to like $125. $250. To me it seemed like an okay deal because I was in college, and I didn’t have anything else to do anyway. My room and my father got the first gas bill, and he went through the roof may yet understand this is back in the late 1980s, and guests at that time was in that expensive. And I think my gas bill is $250. Remember he said to me where the hell are you driving that you ran up $250. in gas? My reply to him is he told me to get a job. And that’s what my job entails. So the one thing I remember about the gentleman who hired me to hand out these flyers, he Me That If I Stuck with him and continue to work hard That When the Summit, He Would Pay Me a Good Salary to Continue to Do What It Was That I Was Doing. So that’s what I did, I did just that I work my butt off day in and day out. But you know what happen that summer came around and he was a man of his word. He was paying me $400 a week to do should reduce flyers older Long Island, which have to tell you I thought was great. Here I was in my early 20s, and walk around all of the beaches from Jones Beach to Robert Moses. I met a hell of a lot of people and had a hell of a good time. And I have to say from that point I was pretty hooked on the marketing industry.
So after working for that gentleman for about a year and a half to almost 2 years. I really started to understand that business, and I got involved with the actual creative water that which was to design a flyers and the parties and/or the events that people would be interested in coming to them. I remember my very first big deal at a friend of mine his name was Eako. He told me about gentleman had owned the nightclub over in Farmingdale. Someone on this meeting with them and we met up with the gentleman. And here is the deal that we struck. The nightclub owner was going to pay for all the flyers that it took to promote the event. And our job was to actually bring as many people as he could to the nightclub. Mom referring to this place is a nightclub really was, was a small little bar/restaurant. I think the legal capacity this place is probably about 250 people max capacity. I remembered a few years back had done a promotion, which echo was a very cute promotion, but items that was done to its full potential. The night was called bladder Buster’s and had some cartoon characters on it that there will standing in front of the bathroom crossing their legs and making funny faces. And above them. It said bladder Buster party. And underneath the cartoon characters and set free beer and drinks until the first person goes to the bathroom. I think that I ordered somewhere in area 20,000 4 x 6 flyers for this particular event. If I remember correctly it was probably done the beginning of July. So the summer was in full swing. I handed out every single one of these flyers all up and down the beaches. I also does she read the flyers with inside all the shopping malls and retail stores that I could get to. I even had all the colleges during the summer courses. I’d wait on a college campus in the middle of the day in between classes. And I would just sit there doing hand-to-hand distribution to all the people walking by. So here comes the grand opening night, and I’ve already told you that the maximum capacity of the places 250 people. We had 780 people show up to this event. It was the hottest Friday night, for probably the first year and a half of our promotion. Now don’t know if I told you this, but the way that we set our deal up was we received 100% of all, the door revenue. The price to get into the bar or the cover charges that people like to call it. Was $8. with a pass and $10 without a pass. I want to tell you that acquaints to a heck of a lot of money on a regular basis. And I had virtually no overhead.
The rest after that is all history. I owned my first nightclub at ages 26. I was running nightclubs from Long Island to Queens and Manhattan and everywhere I went. Everybody knew me. And I have to say really did enjoy. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t sit here and tell you that every single promotion I did was a home run, but what I will say is that my statistics. If I was a professional ballplayer were very very high. I did this for about 10 years up in New York. After things start to get played out for me within New York. I end up moving down to Florida. I had a friend of mine who I did a lot of work with some years back up in New York. Contact me and tell me that I had to come down to Florida because the market was ripe for a guy like me. So I moved down to Florida and I’ve been down here ever since. I read a lot of nightclubs down here as well from club Boca in Boca Raton to the theater nightclub in Fort Lauderdale. I also went up to a lot of parties, down in Miami’s South Beach.
Here’s the one thing that always seem to upset me thow. I would save over a lot of these nightclubs that were doing virtually no business at all if any. Them what you would usually happen is the nightclub owner or the manager would start to count my money and think that I was making too much. Would end up happening, a lot of the times is they would either try to renegotiate with me or kill my contract with them. I remember the very last on the net happened to me and I was pretty devastated. I went from making approximately $4000 a week to zero. And I think that’s when I finally said enough is enough. And I got into the full color printing and graphics industry. I’ve won so many flyers and work with so many graphic designers over the years. It just seemed like a natural fit for me. Over the course of the year is of dealing with always different nightclubs. I became very friendly with my printer, and he took a liking to me. He came to me and said Joe listen, I have an office over here that I’m not doing anything with it. And if you would like the office it’s yours.
I remember my first printing company was called xtreme graphics and printing. This is the very first corporation, so to speak that I ever really owned. In his most business owners is accessible as I was amazed to mistakes. So after I figured out the mistakes I made I started a new comp when he called preferredprint.com. This company has been around for somewhere in area, I guess now almost 8 years. Our client base is about 3000 clients. Which of those I would say probably about 450 to 500 of those active. We have become a one-stop shop, a full multimedia boutique. Whether you need full color business cards, full-color brochures, full-color catalogs, full-color flyers, full-color rack cards, custom Web design, search engine optimization, full-color posters, logo design, and graphic design. Basically what it comes down to is that involves promotion and marketing. You needn’t look no further.