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hey welcome back to the print house guys um my name is ken and um hope everybody had a great new year's um and uh you know got through that horrible 2020 year um it was a bad year for everybody so i hope everybody was able to get through that you know the best they could everybody's situation is different um i myself was hospitalized for chronovirus um i'm not very political i'm not going to go into details but you know it it i was in the hospital for a week my wife got it my kids got but i was the only one in the hospital so i was affected by it i just recently went back to work two weeks ago and i'm pretty excited about and i haven't shaved all weekend um but uh you know um i wanted to talk a little bit about just questions and um insights that you know since i started my channel i bought a lot of equipment you know um and people have asked me things about um kind of financial decisions and options what i would choose and i'm just going to go into a little bit of detail on what i think about that i'm not a financial advisor and i'm definitely not great at telling somebody what's good for them in their shop but i will explain my situation i'm going to be as transparent as i can i've been in the printing commercial printing industry for large sign i'm sorry for large format printing for since 92 um i've been 90 no 91 i graduated high school in 91 and i've been in it year out of high school because my my dad is also in commercial printing a large format and when i got out of high school i went right into the the union the printing union as a trade and it was great great money great start um insurance everything but you know i didn't have any kids away so anyways i've been in the commercial industry printing industry for a long time you know so i'm not even gonna do the math right now and um sci the sign business i've worked for a commercial sign builder a big one in the midwest right now i'm a commercial graphic sign designer that's what i am by trade but i've also worked in the shop and laid vinyl for years build fabricated signs um and things like that i've been around the sign shop at the company that i worked for now since oh six so i've been at that company for 14 years and uh they've been great to me um we're union i'm a union employee i'm local 701 um and i'm a graphic designer there that's what i do so um i'll just you know i'm not going to go to every single question i've gotten but a lot of the questions have been answered on my videos that's you know where they will come in i would just post and then i had my email attached there so they would email them a lot for my perspective or just my insight on how what i think of things now of course i've been in the same situation as a lot of these people have been i had a lot of questions answers from you know a bunch of youtubers i'm not you new on youtube but i'm new to like running a print business at home and i'm not officially open for print business yet i mean i'll explain that um i have had a sign shop at home with basic necessities like vinyl cutters uh cnc machines um and laser cutting that's really it i never i never had large format printing like my hp latex i've never had that at home and i never had small label printer color label printers like i do like you see in other videos except for like my my zebra uh postage printers that's that's all i've had so when i this year and 2020 started there was a lot of uncertainty and um i was in a good financial position to maybe take my my home stuff to a different level so i decided to to expand for my cnc parts business because that's what i do mainly i've been running a cnc parts business part-time um for years and i would rather generate maybe a thousand dollars a month revenue something something like that between 500 000 a month just to be transparent it was part time literally one or two hours a day nothing serious until last year when i started amping up and i was off work from from april on and then i got coronavirus and i was in the hospital and i just went back to work so i was doing really well by the time i went back i'm still doing it's still bringing in considerable i'll be transparent i make about 4 800 a month now my 90 day total is on paypal i can pull them up uh it's over 10 000 right now so i've had i've good better weeks but i'm averaging around 4 500 a month that's just my side business and that's not utilizing any printing guys i'm not using that's not i'm that's only using my cnc machine my laser machine and my my epson printer that's it the lx610 that i have is i haven't sold any i think i sold one job on there because my wife had or a couple my wife has an etsy account we're not advertising anywhere because i'm almost set up i haven't officially advertised because i'm not ready yet because i'm so busy with my cnc side that my printing has got to be on the back burner not back burner so much but i'm not trying to focus on that i'm trying to focus on my cnc well custom parts business because it's been very lucrative like i said i've been averaging around 4 500 a month just on that for the last three months it's been a crazy time for me and i've been loving it because you know a lot of those are repeat customers that keep coming back to me so i don't have a website i sell of ebay that's it i sell off ebay that is all my wife had started an etsy account it's very it's only like 10 items or less it's it maybe we've sold six items in the last three months that's it it wasn't it was just created just to get it in there and then to see how she wanted to uh transplant herself down here more doing the digital printers because we have you know the dtg printers that we were doing a lot of custom garments not really our shirts and clothes as much but like novelty items and infant stuff um because it's all white garment stuff but we found all the uses for it which is kind of interesting we'll talk about later because we've been doing uh we've been doing printing on some coasters we print directly to coasters on that so we're finding out that it's not it's because of the size it's only a four or whatever it's it's great for small items and stuff like that so my wife has been doing that but she's not doing a lot of it because she works full time also for the for the post office and um we just you know during uncertain times i decided i'm gonna i'm gonna step up now i wasn't sure who knows what what if my company closed down would it i mean i thankfully they haven't they're a large commercial sign company you know it's it was bad for a lot of people so business is great for them you know let's hope that it continues on now with the new uh democrats taking over and see how things go with shutting things down which i hope not everybody needs to be working um if you're not working you know you need to be working at home so you know but it seems like people are are buying or there are people are buying stuff online so um but let me back up here so basically i'm gonna answer a few questions my and my insight on uh questions and comments that i've gotten uh in my channel just since august since i started it we've come a long way now i haven't advertised anywhere on facebook or anywhere the only thing i do is uh sell on ebay and that's nothing printing i don't do any this isn't no digital printing no sign stuff it's it's all my custom parts uh that i list that ebay sales um i have niche markets that i i'm in and that's what i do so now i'm almost set up right i'm almost set up i just got my fusion iq finally i waited like six weeks for that thing because we plan to do a lot of shirts okay i like to have a lot of different equipment like i said i got lasers i got dtg printers um i got two small label printers and i got my large format hp latex and now i just got my fusion iq um heat press you know i like i like i like the stahls equipment because i had done a video where i had my old stahls heat press and i love it um sometimes buying quality equipment is is preferred because the longevity of it um sure i could have bought a chinese heat press i could have bought junk and i'm not gonna i'm not gonna tell you what to buy you know your situation financially is different than mine but i like a good product that's gonna last that that's gonna be proven to to get you know the quality out that i need um i think the stahls fusion iq and i'm gonna be honest i've been researching that thing for over a year it's a big investment um and i wanted to make sure that it was the route i wanted to go so i with a good heat source well i already knew because i did shirts in it for years i've done i've i've done uh vinyl graphics and shirts for over 15 years probably close to 20. i really haven't done the math but so you know you could get by with buying cheap equipment there's no doubt about it you know some things um chinese printers and stuff like that i mean a lot of them are chinese but i'm talking about like the no brand no branded name stuff i gotta kind of be careful because there's not a lot of us support for them if you can get good us support and warranties and stuff like that service and then i would feel more comfortable with them um so questions i get why did i choose certain printers as far as my label printers why did i choose both or one of the other first or whatever um my question or my answer to that one is just simple um i each one of the epson and the lx610 the primary alex lx610 i have have its own purpose my favorite printer right now is but my epson 6500 not gonna lie i am very close to pulling the trigger on the second one because what i do what i'm using that for is keeping it it's already paid for itself both of these have paid for itself but the lx610 honestly i've only been using for my own product uh labeling i've been making stickers instruction sheets header tags with it um that's all i've been using with my lx600 i maybe sold one job too that's even my wife did something um but it's been great that's what i love it for um it's small and it's it's here i don't have to order do anything i can just i can do everything i need on the fly with custom size and contour cutting boom just like that get it lx610 is great and i just found out recently that uh eye color the company i color is rebranding it they're rebranding this printer lx610 and they're called icolor250 now i have no problem with that because a lot of companies rebrand equipment but they they upped the price 500 on the printer and all of the consumables have been oh no i'm not sure the exact amount over ten to twenty percent um raise the prices on everything the knives the media the cutting street every all the consumables they've raised the price so i call it 250 is the exact same printer just rebranded by eye color and i guess they do that they've done that in the past with other printers they rebrand and up the price so they've got they got some issues there but hey they might have great customer service they might make up for it i don't know but i mean i'd rather not pay 500 more for the same printer that's already been out primera offers great service i've had a couple issues they took care of right away no problem so primarily 610 it's worked out flawless for me so when people ask me what would i rather have epson or ls610 i honestly cannot answer that because to me they both have a good purpose that the hp latex can't do they both have a purpose my epson just prints phenomenal it just prints phenomenal i wish it would print on regular vinyl that'd be nice but it prints phenomenal and what i use it for oh man it's doing so good so i print lamb and then i cut everything i do on the epson on my graphic 24 inch that's set up for a specific job that's all i do on it it's a thick media okay the lx610 is i'm doing everything for my product labeling so if you run your own business you know that you need to have product labeling you do on all your products and you know i have packs i have packs of stuff that i that i that i make and pack up all the time and i need to label them i need to pack them so it's perfect the hp latex that was my decision during the year because i've run a sign shop for years and i've i i have access to a printer at work i mean two printers one's a scitec 750 that i found out is not on and their life it's it's the generation before that that was so um but it's a it's a it's a flatbed printer that you can print boards for four by eight two and a half inches thick if you need it so i had access to the to the printers that work for a long time and cutters large format cutters that's why i really never bought one at home because if i ever needed to do anything big i didn't do a lot of small stuff but if i were any big i would just print it at work and um um on my own media i'd printed work and then uh you know send it out but it wasn't much i'll be honest wasn't much i just didn't have time to do that so my others my my hp text has been awesome i love it i've been i have not had one single problem with this it prints great i've been printing on uh some generic media i do have hp prime air gp whatever i haven't printed on yet i'm looking forward to doing that but i like this genstar stuff um because it's six mil so you can print a lot of stuff that don't need lamb that's real thick and real easy to uh deal with as far as stickers um they're easy to handle though they're not they're not real thin well it's great for that um but i can't i can't wait to get started because now that i have pretty much everything i need except i have a new thing that we're working on i'm going to be um doing a vinyl applicator table on top of this table that i already have um if you see my one of my last videos at my job they have a large 13 foot by 60 inch um application table man it makes applying vinyl and transfer so fast guys it's ah it's like why didn't they ever have that when i worked in the shop is beyond me i so upset that those guys got such an easy job now after after i'm not in there and running that table which good for them it's a great thing to have that table oh man i love it i'm going to play around it all the time so i'm gonna do i'm gonna build a diy application table with a hydraulic air hydraulic or air uh roller that's gonna be awesome i can't wait that's the only thing left that's the ceiling to my shop and then but i'm going to open up i'm officially going to start uh opening up a site um in advertising because i'm not advertising anywhere so the questions are you know what would i choose on those i can't answer that the price range for both is about the same one custom contour cuts on the fly it's not as wide because it's only four four and three quarters wide max for cutting it does five inch media but um without cutting and the epson doesn't cut at all but it does eight and a half which is great love it you can do anything with that i could do any labels on that and print them on my color my graph text so um or throw it in the uh the hp cutter um and uh why did i choose that the fusion iq why not go with a cheaper one well you know what i was in a position where i can afford to do it that's the only reason guys i i like the fact that you could store unlimited amounts of data for different substrate different materials that you use and now you've about use about five in a lot of different ways because i'll be honest i print my dtg prints and then i press them on my heat press too so it takes a different settings and different garments because they they scorch easy so i have a lot i have about maybe six or seven garments that have different temperatures in time i wanted and needed a good heat press that could handle that um i didn't want to use well i have my small one but that's gonna be for my dtf uh printing film it's cool that's coming soon so i wanted to heat press how it does equal um spread of heat in the platen and i can't say anyth enough about the the stahls equipment um it up until now i've only had it for a little bit since my video you saw and uh man i love it it's great it takes takes a little bit longer to heat up than my old one but that's expected you know i saw in videos i knew it was going to be but i like the fact that you can connect online and view your impressions and your settings and uh everything right through the webpage which is kind of cool so that's cool so why did i buy the fusion iq and not a cheaper version because there's a lot of cheaper versions out there simply because i'm like well if i wanted the touchscreen i like technology i had the money buy it so i bought a cash now i'm going to tell you the things i bought cash when i didn't okay i bought my two label printers the epson alex extent cash because i used my checking account i had the money in there my hp latex i had to pay i had to use that my credit card i maxed out a credit card to pay for that um i don't regret it because i paid it off in two payments i paid finance charge uh i didn't pay any financial i think about it i got zero percent finance on that and i made two payments it's done no more but if i was in a position where i couldn't do that because let me tell you when i pay with my credit card and i put that on there like 11 grand holy excuse my language holy crap my uh my credit score dropped because for some reason it just i guess i was at the threshold with my 50 percent of my credit card users i have i have a few cards but a lot of them are lower balances not lower or lower but i don't know it just put me over that edge and boom my credit score just like job like 25. i'm not too worried about my score because that'll bounce back in a month um because you know we just bought a house two years ago we're not buying any major purchases stuff like that but if you've got to remember that when you make credit card purchases if you go too high on your credit usage for the particular cards what not it affects your score but it's usually temporary um on credit cards oh anyways it doesn't matter so i used my plastic on that and i don't regret it because i didn't have 12 grand in my account before when i bought it because i wanted to there was a sale i was trying to get a sale and i was getting trying to get free shipping and i was trying to get um tax-free on it so by doing it at that minute i saved over a thousand dollars close to a thousand dollars taxes shipping everything else so i got i got that in that situation um so um what i what i did oh you know what let me backtrack so that was on plastic one of the printers uh i put on a card but i didn't pay it off right away i can't remember which one it was but they're about the same price one i when i one i use my debit card my checking account one i use my credit card i didn't pay it off right away that one it was a couple months too nah i just remember that so so my epson i paid with my debit card let me let me back up wow i'm really losing it my lx610 was on pre-order that i paid with my debit card i remember now when the app scene when i decided on the epson the lx610 was still on backorder now when i got my epson the lx610 became in stock and then shipped and then it charged my debit now i remember that's why i didn't buy my epson on my debit card because they didn't charge me yet for the lx610 when it was ready to ship that's when it it was going to charge and i knew i wasn't going to have enough money checking that account to pay for both that's why so alex excellent i paid cash for my debit card epson i used a credit card and it took me a couple months just to pay it off only it didn't take i just didn't want to throw you know 2500 right after i just did the lx610 and then the um now the hp text i use a credit card max it out and that was it maxed it out i literally maxed that card out i had like 400 bucks left on that thing if i would have went one month no not paying half they would have just threw it over so um but let me let me talk about why i did that now i did that you wonder why i didn't want to have a monthly payment over my head on that it would have been about 380 when i did a lease option i was thinking about it which is great because you free up capital you free up all that money and you get equipment that pays for itself so it it really wouldn't cost you anything out of pocket and and i almost did that and you and to free up that capital and use that money to do other things but i i was like i didn't want that payment holding over my head because i knew for the first three months go four months now i knew i wasn't gonna make money on that because i still haven't i'm not selling advertisement i'm not at all at all am i selling anything advertisement on that so i paid cash on it because i didn't want the overhead and i wanted to save money when i bought it that was the only reason um if you leased it you will pay more money depending on your credit you're gonna pay a lot more money um it could be a lot for you know for people um you have to be an established business business to to lease because um it goes on to your business it doesn't it's not reported uh to your credit card company as a lease it's not recorded as a personal uh uh finance because you're not financing if you lease it you're not financing it it's least to own but you're making a monthly payment that's just how it is that's normal um at the end of your lease you have the option to buy it out usually it's cheap it's nothing so it's you just go a few extra months something like that but um i decided i wanted to buy it out so i didn't have the overhead in that payment and stressing out about it because it would have been about 380 i think is what it came out to wasn't sure somewhere around 380. um that was based off my credit for release um no money down either so you do the math 115 was about uh it was about 11 000 total so um well before the discount so um because i think you can get it for like 10 2 for the combo something like that and then taxes on that stuff so i saved her 1000 bucks i was pretty happy i know that 8 900 for sure all right so that's my situation my laser has been paid for years i bought that four year over four years ago um it's not financed um fusion iq i bought that cash i mean it's only 200 something like that done um what else my dtg printers um cash those were both cash actually the first things i bought um i didn't buy my wife bought those so she put them on her cards and uh that we paid them off we paid them up in two payments so um i think she had like uh zero percent financing on her citibank or something like that she took advantage of it it's great sometimes when you take advantage of using your credit card if you're gonna pay them off right away because you get points back and that's what she did on those um and we she got a bunch of points on that and actually i'm attached to that card so i think it helped this book um what else um i think that's far as far as equipment wise that's it um so everything you see in my videos um is paid for uh you know i don't have an overhead should i have leased that not really because i don't want no rent payment on me you know i don't what happens if i don't sell any right now it's just for fun you know i've been playing around i haven't sold anything but now that i got my fusion um i ordered htv i ordered the brightline um i'm uh i think the geforce i think it's like a grimco has a bunch of brightline htv stuff and uh i ordered a couple different types of htv to test on and uh so i'm looking at brightline videos they look pretty they look pretty good so um i'm looking for something thinner that's easier to weed but i have dtf printer coming and uh i'm excited about that it's a it's a smaller format but i'm excited because it'll do all my white graphics so i can't wait for that it's exciting stay tuned for that um so i got that stuff for htv so i'm gonna i'm ready to start opening up i'm gonna start advertising and um it's still going to be part time because i and i have a full-time job um at this point i don't i don't um i don't uh i'm not thinking about quitting that because i'm in the union i i make union wages pretty well and i have 100 insured insurance my wife and we have four kids they have 100 full coverage insurance paid for free that's part of my contract union uh my wife also is in union for the post-op she has really good insurance too um but she only has to have it on herself my insurance covers her as a secondary so um and hers isn't that much i think it's like 40 bucks a week or something like that for her which is a lot because i only pay my union user like 60 70 every quarter or something like that it's not much at all so i'm never going to do it full time unless i my health issues get bad i have some issues if i get bad then i i'll work from home but right now i enjoy going to work i i work with an awesome great group of people we have a lot of fun um and i do i work at i'm a graphic sign designer i get to play with sign equipment all day how can i how can i not love that so but don't don't don't mistake that i i take my my home business here or i am taking it serious because my cnc is is very lucrative right now and it's just it's through the roof i can't believe how well it's doing for me so if i can do that and this god if i could push 10 10 grand a month i'm quitting my job my wife already knows if i hit that 10 grand a month mark between both i'm halfway there i know i'm halfway there because i'm making around 4 500 a month doing my cnc i just realized this video has gotten long and i didn't expect to do that i thought maybe 10 minutes but if i can hit 10 grand a month then i'm quitting my job and i'm gonna focus more on this stuff um because i am serious about this home business i didn't buy all this equipment because i'm just having fun yeah i'm having fun it is great guys uh it's it's phenomenal you know you could just come down in your own shop i have no i work at my house i have a huge basement i don't have a warehouse i don't have a shop and i don't need that overhead i save you know a few grand a month just not having that plus i'm at home i'm not ready for that if i did decide to work full-time at home and i grew because i thought about buying you know more printers more equipment then i'll get a shop but at this point i don't need to and plus i have a huge yard i can build a shop on but right now i'm happy in the basement because it's i can work down here all year round and it's 65 70 degrees all year round like i'm down here t-shirt and it's like 10 15 degrees out today or something i know it's under 20. so you know chicago weather is terrible it's bad so um but man i you know i enjoy watching all these other creators with the science shirts i love it you know i it's good to see a lot of people doing good um there's a few people i watch you know and um not you know not to give direct plugs but you know i've gotten help you know insight from from darren from uh derek from a few other shirt people that i've reached out to and they've been friendly they've been great um you know more power i hope those guys keep doing well it looks like everyone's doing well we all need to do well this is uncertain times for us with this virus and uh you know stay safe guys it's you know it's tough out there um i'm gonna end this video right here but um you know i hope 2021 is really good for you um if you have any questions comments anything reach out to me my email is in my about section um uh it's theprinthouse gmail.com um and um just like the channel name and uh you know if you have any questions i won't if i don't respond right away it's because i'm busy but i'm doing a lot of stuff um but hey entrepreneurs and shirt people you know i hope it continues to grow for the ones that it's working for and if it's not growing for you step back evaluate your situation get reach out to get help get professional help and ideas and insight there's a lot of guys like myself and you know that will offer free advice to you um i i plan to do a lot of how-to videos i've got a lot of experience i know a lot of tips and tricks so that's going to happen once i'm more established here which i am now i'm getting there i'm really excited um once i get my application table i'm really that's it it's over game over um and then i'm building another cnc machine guy i forgot about that too i'm i'm extending my my area back there over for another cnc machine um i wasn't going to do this right now but like a guy at work he's building one and i'm like man i want to build one so i'm going to build a larger cnc like four by six ish it's going to be a custom because i want to uh i want to be able to put larger from right now i have a two by three actually or four by eight because i can put four full boards four rights on there which is kind of cool but that's that's not the priority not prepared not priority right now the only reason i would do is because my smaller cnc i do mostly aluminum it's a 98 aluminum i do and some delrin my other printing my other cnt will be i have one under the table here too i don't know if you can see it it's it's under there um i want to do another cnc just for science stuff just milling out you know wooden stuff like that and foam and things like that um plus i'm going to be doing diy vacuum press i'm going to be doing that soon a lot of cool stuff there i i like gadgets i like equipment and gadgets and i like to just come down to be able to make or you know produce something my own self instead of ordering it you know i could imagine ordering stickers for products got it costs a lot it costs a lot of money and time and not only that i need like i had put out like 30 40 orders the other day and i ran out of details and i had to print them i just walked over the printer my computer for the printer print it out boom done if i was out i wouldn't be able i would send out all of those without labels and i would have been upset if i had to depend on a sticker company like i've done that in the past um so but anyways i'm gonna end the video guys thanks for watching 29 minutes god did i ramble on or what um i plan to do some more videos showing you uh heat pressing um because i've done a lot of shirts um and when the dtf comes i'm going to really be using that that's my main thing my main focus on that is dtf uh printing and shirts and then pressing my dtg prints because you get a better quality on washability on those after you press on the heat press the press that's built in is not it's not the best it doesn't press with a lot of pressure it's just a a very light firm pressure so because it's built in um the roland bd12 is what i'm talking about love those printers guys they're great i love them you do it right use the heat press and you do the right settings it's pretty good light garments i like no problem plus i do i do uh i've been printing on these coasters and um canvases my wife's done those pretty neat so check out my other videos guys like subscribe uh if you haven't done that already hit that notification um sorry for the bad lighting here i got man i found this light look at that light up there can you see it it's like 10 000 lumens it's uh there's three panels on it on three sides and i found it at home depot it was like 15 bucks and it's supposed to last like six years but it's got these small little led panels it's daylight too as you can tell and they're like it's ten thousand total but man it lights up this whole area bright it's ridiculous so i'm gonna get them in different areas of the basement and my electric bill probably go up a little more i don't know but um that would use you less but not as much as the old bulbs