The Smallest Box Possible

Artificial Intelligence can be useful in your business if you don't fall down the rabbit hole it can create. In this episode, Jason talks about using ChatGPT to help write a business plan and Midjourney for art projects. Both of these services are great tools but they will not replace the hard work necessary to get great results with documents or images.

Trade Memberships and Organizations offer you two things that your business wants: discounts and access. In this episode of The Smallest Box Possible, Jason talks about the benefits of joining organizations as well as attending functions like pitch practices.

Asking Jason about other people's invoices is like poking a bear; his grammar becomes as terrible as his mood. How you bill people speaks volumes about the quality of your business. Don't mess it up.

Dealing with customers can run the gamut of emotions from joy to absolute frustration. In this episode Jason shares experiences with customer service along with tips on how to be prepared for the worst. Being honest, direct and friendly has been the key to our relative success in dealing with customer issues and we hope these will help your business be successful too.

What can you do when you face financial uncertainty with your business?  Some people are saying a recession is coming, some say a recession is here... Jason has tips that can help you focus on the things that you can control within your business.  There are 6 steps you can take to combat financial uncertainty in the market in general and then catapult your business forward when the uncertainty passes.

Warehousing and fulfillment are two areas of your ecommerce endeavor you probably didn't spend much time thinking about.  Over the past 5 years, Free Radical Labs has gone through some heartaches and changes due to the growth of our ecommerce business.  In this episode of the podcast, Jason talks about how we store products to the services we use to ship merch to our customers.  We started using Shopify only, but have since used Shippo and finally ShipStation to ship products.  Jason presents his unbiased (and unsponsored) opinions on these services and how growth can cause you to change service providers.

Should I buy a heat press or should I use a contract screen printer?  These are the questions you should be asking yourself when it comes to how you are going to start your t shirt business.  Now, there are plenty of caveats and considerations that come into play with this decision but we wanted to share our take on why we decided to go along the path we chose.  Tens of thousands of shirts later we have not looked back once on our decision.

There are too many people advertising and posting on social media wanting you to believe they are the kings and queens of business.  What makes it worse is they want you to come to some cheap hotel to listen to them spout a mix of Google search results and outright lies about how you too can reach their level of success.  Beware the False Profit$

So you're ready to order some shirts?  Jason walks you through the process that @FreeRadicalLabs uses to set their clients up to success.  We will have some pertinent questions though...  Before you order t-shirts for you business or organization, give us about 26 minutes of your time so we can give you the benefit of our experience.  We probably have questions you didn't even think were important and could make or break your project (or budget).

What do you do when you get knocked down in business?  Surely, you are not planning to fail, but if 2020 taught us anything its that the best laid plans can fall apart.  Sometimes it takes an honest, dispassionate look at what went wrong to improve.  You can spend all of your money on continuous improvement experts or you can ask yourself some basic questions, make some real and lasting improvements and move on to the next little surprise waiting on you.  Small business owners tend to be passionate about their work - don't let that passion stand in the way of preventing mistakes from happening or learning from them when they do.

Nick's back and we are talking about how important a professional email address is to establish a professional rapport.  If you are offering any professional service, you need to have a professional email address - that is something that does not end in a commonly available free email platform.  You can integrate your email into an existing free email platform, but what the potential customer needs to see is an email address from your company.  We also touch on phone numbers and how a certain segment of the population simply will not answer the phone if they do not recognize the area code.  If you happen to have a phone number from somewhere else in the country, you may want to look into a VOIP option that provides a number local to you.

Many entrepreneurs balk at the notion of spending over a thousand dollars to hire a graphic artist for their business.  They let the visceral feeling of spending money override the investment they are making in their businesses visual presentation.  We sit down with world-class, Atlanta-based graphic designer Daniel Flores and talk about what you should be getting for your investment.  Daniel and Jason break down some simple terms you may here with regard to artwork for your business as well as what can go wrong if you don't listen to a professional. You can follow Daniel @DELTATANGOMIKE on all social media.

As we continue to dissect what went wrong in 2020, we take a moment to understand the lessons learned in the digital space.  E-commerce companies raked in billions of dollars in revenue by being able to pivot quickly into contactless service.  They honestly didn't have much to do to execute it flawlessly - this should have been a warning to business who were caught up in doing things "the way we've always done it."  Jason talks about how digital growth in terms of web presence, electronic payments and remote scheduling were key to success in 2020 and will continue to be important.

Jason discusses 2020 from the aspect of financial relationships with vendors and financial institutions.  Too many businesses missed out on financial assistance because they did not have pre-existing relationships with financial institutions.  This could have been for many different reasons but ultimately if banks (and the government) did not know you existed, you simply were not able to secure financial help during the COVID pandemic.

Nick from GarderLoop is my guest today as we discuss why your business needs a website.  2020 taught businesses some hard lessons, one of them being that becoming tech-savvy is an essential key to surviving during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.  In this light-hearted discussion we talk about costs, responsibilities and alternatives to full-fledged websites for your business.

Episode 2: Toys vs Tools

Jason discusses the choices that business owners need to make when it comes to differentiating between a consumer toy and a professional tool that they may need to use in their business.  He discusses the pros and cons of attempting to save a little money on a major purchase by going with a less expensive piece of equipment that is designed for consumer use versus paying more for an industrial or commercial machine.

Who doesn't love talking about shipping and freight costs?  Shipping in the Smallest Box Possible is really a mindset about preparedness for starting and the continual improvement necessary to maintain a small business.