Matt: Welcome to episode 58 of Publish & Prosper. Today we are going to be talking about ways you can use print-on-demand to support your business, which is one of my favorite topics. 

Lauren: What print-on-demand or business? 

Matt: Both. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Especially when they're combined. 

Lauren: Well, this one is just for you then. 

Matt: And I just realized I said that about the topic we recorded for a couple of episodes ago, which was…now I forget. 

Lauren: Oh. 

Matt: But I do remember I said that in the intro. 

Lauren: Yeah, you did. It was the one where we were talking - it was another selling direct one.

Matt: Yeah. Another of my favorite topics. No, this one I really do love. 

Lauren: I would think it stands to reason that most of our episode topics are favorite topics of ours, because we're the ones that pick the topics. 

Matt: Yeah. I don't, I don't know if I agree with that, because there's definitely been a few where I'm just like, dreading coming into the studio. Cause I know that your outline is going to talk about something like ISBNs or some other that I just don't want to talk about. 

Lauren: Yikes. 

Matt: So I do think there's some where it’s just kind of like, ugh, let's just go have fun and we'll talk about the stuff I don't want to talk about, but whatever.

Lauren: Okay, well we can do more fun episodes if you want. 

Matt: This is a fun episode. 

Lauren: Okay, great. 

Matt: This is going to run over an hour. I'm just going to warn everybody right now. 

Lauren: Oh no. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Starting with me. Okay. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: All right. 

Matt: Starting with you. 

Lauren: Let's see how it goes. Let's put that challenge out there and see if we can keep it under an hour. 

Matt: All right, let's do that. 

Lauren: So then should we dive right in or?

Matt: Oh, I don't know. Is there anything else you want to talk about? Any going on the news you want to discuss? 

Lauren: No. 

Matt: Any small talk you want to make? 

Lauren: No. 

Matt: How's that weather? 

Lauren: Oh God. Could be - could be worse. 

Matt: As we record this towards the end of January - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: There's still some snow on the ground where we're at. 

Lauren: I moved here for a reason.

Matt: Yeah. I always thought you were getting away from some sort of issue with the law. And that's why you moved here from upstate New York. 

Lauren: Upstate New York? 

Matt: Well, you're Long Island, right?

Lauren: That is not upstate New York. Oh, oh, oh, Matt decided to open this episode with a fight. That is the opposite of upstate New York. Thank you so much.

Matt: I woke up and chose violence today. 

Lauren: Clearly. When don't you? 

Matt: Many days I'll have you know. 

Lauren: Is that just the default? And then you - it's the opposite where you just choose non-violence today? 

Matt: No, no. And you're not funny at all. I wake up and I always choose sunshine and rainbows.

Lauren: Yes, that checks out. Great.

Matt: I'm trying to keep a straight face. According to my social media bio, I am mostly optimistic.

Lauren: According to my social media bio, I am 99% Monster and 1% spite. 

Matt: I mean, if you mean Monster energy drink…

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Then that's true. 

Lauren: Yes I do. 

Matt: Good Lord. Can we get a podcast sponsorship out of them? 

Lauren: Here's hoping. 

Matt: Maybe you should start putting that big old can right here that you drink.

Lauren: I haven't had one in two weeks.

Matt: Really? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: That might explain a few things. 

Lauren: It sure does. Doing a little mini detox.

Matt: All right. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: All right. 

Matt: Print-on-demand for your business. 

Lauren: Great. 

Matt: Right? This is not the same as self-publishing a book because you want to be an author. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: That's not what we're talking about. We are talking about using the actual technology of print-on-demand to further your business in one way or another.

Lauren: Right. So not talking about using the book as lead gen necessarily - 

Matt: That’s right. 

Lauren: - or using your book to grow your brand. Although these are things that will help you with your business. We're talking about the actual like practical uses of a technology like print-on-demand - 

Matt: That’s right. 

Lauren: - to help you with your business.

Matt: That's right. Yeah. I love this. And again, so as we just pointed out, this means you don't actually even have to like, publish a book. 

Lauren: Right, right. 

Matt: This could be an employee manual or something like that. So we're going to get into all that. But again, at the top, we just want to make sure everybody understood. This is not an episode about self-publishing a book to then use print-on-demand to then grow your business similar to some of the other episodes we've done, which are great. This is truly about the technology and functionality of print-on-demand in your business. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: What do your bracelets say? 

Lauren: Oh, Just One Time, I Love You I'm Sorry, and Epcot Forever. 

Matt: Hmm, okay. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Lauren: Two song lyrics and a Disney reference. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Got it. Moving on. 

Lauren: Okay. But yeah, I do actually, I mean, we'll get into this more in this episode, but I do think that's a really important thing to highlight at the top. If you saw this episode topic and then you started listening to it and you're like, I don't want to write a book, that's not necessarily what this episode is about. 

Because a lot of the things that we're going to talk about in here are using this technology in ways that you can either like promote or distribute material that you already have. Or a lot of books can be things like photo books or portfolios - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - or notebooks or workbook or even calendars, something like that, that could support your business without being a novel or a hundred and fifty page - 

Matt: As format types, right? 

Lauren: Right, yes. 

Matt: So when you say a photo book to apply it to your business, it could be that you just need a really good catalog or look book for your upcoming, you know, fall line of whatever - 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: - clothing that you design or whatever that might be. And a lot of brands, they do that for sure. And so what you just described are basically what we would call formats, but the uses for those formats are what we're going to talk about and how wide ranging that is. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Right? 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Cool. 

Lauren: Absolutely. 

[5:28]

Matt: All right. So there's a couple of different ways you could use print-on-demand, especially the way we've set it up here at Lulu and some of the other technology that we've built into our print-on-demand platform. And it's just really going to boil down to how you might want to share this particular book or book format with whoever it's going to hopefully land in the hands of. Whether that's an employee, whether that's a customer, whether that's a potential new customer or some other variation of that. But you can do a lot of different cool things with print-on-demand, which is why it makes it really beneficial for anything from a small business to an enterprise level business. Right? 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: So you can control how many copies you need, how they're distributed, where they're distributed. You can control how quickly the information in those things gets updated, which is why it's a popular tool for doing employee manuals in medium-sized to large-sized businesses. Because again, if you have to change something, like your return to office policy or something like that, you can update the manual immediately, that file, and then new books are already ready to take on those changes. So that's really helpful. What would be some other things that you think are helpful? 

Lauren: Well, are we focusing right now on internally? Like internal uses? 

Matt: Yeah, just the benefits of print-on-demand in general for a business. 

Lauren: Oh, well, I mean, I think it's great that it's something that you can use. Like we don't have to have a 10,000 copy print run. If you only need a thousand copies of your book for your different employees, you don't need to order a 10,000 copy print run of them. Especially if it is something like Matt said that it's going to have to get updated, whether it's something that gets updated annually or just something that gets updated periodically. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That way, you know, you're not just setting money on fire basically with wasted copies.

Matt: And the opposite of that, by the way, is - because I've worked at companies where this has happened - is you do have a pretty nice employee handbook or manual or whatever it is, right? Your culture playbook or whatever they call them these days. And you're doing them one at a time anytime you hire a new person or a few at a time if you bring a few people. But you're going down to your local like, you know, Staples - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: - Office Depot, whatever, and you're having them print these things out and bind them in a coil, you know what I mean? It's super expensive and it doesn't look very cool. It doesn't really represent your brand in a really cool way. So that's the opposite of actually ordering thousands of copies upfront so that you get a good deal on an offset printer, right? 

Lauren: Right, right. And to that effect too, one of the really cool things about print-on-demand and specifically with Lulu and with our order import tool or some of our other features, is that you can have your books shipped anywhere. So if you need to order five copies, if you have five new employees, but you are working remotely and you have five new employees in five different places, you can order five different copies of your book to be shipped to each one of them. Just an individual one to each one of them. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So that just streamlines that whole process too. 

Matt: That's right, yeah. 

Lauren: And it'll be ready like on demand as the name might imply. 

Matt: Yeah. And what's even cooler, and this is why I love this topic and what you can do. If you're actually going to incorporate our API to use, you know, for your business, there's a level of personalization you can achieve. So you can really take, you know, again, let's stick with the new employee example. 

If you're onboarding a new class of employees, you know, five, whatever, it doesn't matter if you're using our API, you can update each one of those handbooks or employee manuals or whatever you're calling them or whatever it is you're having done, to be personalized with their name and stuff in it and their position, their role, their title. So each one would be personalized for each employee that is receiving it. I mean, you can do some really cool things like that, so. 

Lauren: Yeah you can get, if you get really creative with it. You could get modular with the content within it too. 

Matt: Yup, yeah. 

Lauren: So if you're doing an employee handbook and you're onboarding an employee on the marketing team and you have marketing team specific content that you want to include in there. 

Matt: Like podcast waivers. 

Lauren: Right, or something else. 

Matt: Which we don't have, do we? 

Lauren: Do we need those? It's just you and me so far. 

Matt: Yeah, but what if Hollywood comes along and wants to scoop me up? 

Lauren: They can have you. 

Matt: Oh, God. 

Lauren: I think that'd be really cool. 

Matt: Let me take this call real quick.

Lauren: Matt that I have to go. See you later. All right. 

Matt: Anyways. 

Lauren: Yeah. But yeah - 

Matt: Now that you just crushed all my hopes and dreams. 

Lauren: You would rather be doing this podcast and go off to Hollywood?

Matt: No, I said you just crushed all my hopes and dreams that I won't be going to Hollywood. 

Lauren: I said they can have you. 

Matt: Oh, yeah, you did. Right. 

Lauren: Great. 

Matt: I'm always just prepared for the fact that you're arguing with me, that you're going to be a contrarian to me, that when you actually say something in the positive - if you could consider that positive - I'm not prepared for it and I'm already poised to like, but you got me. 

Lauren: That is actually how I approach all of my friendships in my life. You should default to assuming I'm going to be mean so that when I'm nice, it's even nicer. 

Matt: I mean, I wouldn't say mean. Contrarian, I think, is a little more. 

Lauren: Alright. 

Matt: But either way. 

Lauren: Sure.

Lauren: Sarcastic maybe? 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: So why, yes, definitely sarcastic, cynical, you know, and actually that's probably a good descriptor for both of us, but let's move on before we start making each other look terrible. My mom's gonna be like, taking notes, like I'm not a fan of this. 

Lauren: Sorry. 

[10:20] 

Matt: Why would a business want to use print for internal things necessarily, right? A lot of times some businesses, many businesses are the opposite to the degree that, you know, they don't necessarily want things in print or paper or… I don't want to use the word paper trail. That sounds nefarious, but - 

Lauren: Isn't it? 

Matt: Yeah, I don't know. I mean… But you know, what are some reasons why business might want to utilize print for some internal stuff? 

Lauren: Well, I think it's a nice option to have for your employees. It's a nice option in terms of accessibility. Some of your employees might prefer having print copies of things instead of digital copies of things. It might also be, like it might actually be more secure depending on what the particular content is. If it's something that is more along the lines of like, you're frequently updating them and you wanna make sure that the most up-to-date one is the one that people are referencing at any given time, a print copy could be nice to have.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: I think there's a lot of different practical ways that it would be valuable to have that. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But it's also, again, one of the beauties of print-on-demand is that you don't really have to rely on this necessarily, it's just a nice option to include as a possibility, you know? 

Matt: Yeah, it's a great sort of compliment to other things - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: - potentially, but I do think that there are certain things that lend itself really well to print. And like you said, it's not always a need to have, but it can be a fun or nice to have, especially for organizations that have a little bit of extra resources and money to put towards something like a really cool, you know, employee handbook. Or give it a cooler name, have fun designing a really cool cover for it, then you put all your employee manual stuff in there and maybe some other fun things about the company or whatever that might be. You can use it for other things, like you said. We've seen companies actually use our service to create like, a company yearbook each year. Which was really cool to see, and you can do a lot of fun stuff with that. 

So if you've got, you know, small to medium sized business, even an enterprise level business, you should consider something like an employee yearbook, especially with everybody working remotely these days, to a degree. How cool would it be for all of your employees to get this yearbook at the end of the year or the beginning of the next year? And you could see a lot of the people that maybe you've barely ever talked to, if ever, maybe you don't know what they look like. You get a few little fun facts about them, as well as some of the other executives and things like that. I think that's a really cool idea. I think that's something we've always kind of wanted to do here and just haven't had the time to pull it together. 

Lauren: Oh yeah, I’d love to do that. 

Matt: But yeah, we've seen other ones and they were really cool. Certain types of reporting, if you have a business whereby, I don't know, maybe you're doing something to do with the financial services sector or taxes, and maybe you want each of your employees to have the latest tax code updates and things like that readily available and handy, it's very easy to throw together a real quick little manual for your employees to use as kind of their North Star when going through doing people's 2024 taxes or things like that.

So there's a lot of different uses where it might be a little more effective and efficient to have something on hand like as a reference book or something at your desk. Versus them having to keep going back and looking at different websites or finding different things that they need to validate what they're working on. 

Lauren: Right, it can also be great for internal education purposes if you're doing something where you're onboarding or you're just doing recurring training within your employees and, you know, having to split your focus on a laptop screen - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - or a desktop if you've got an online class going in one corner and you're trying to take notes or follow along with a PDF - 

Matt: Yup. 

Lauren: - in the other corner, like that gets really dicey sometimes. But if you have a printed workbook that you're going along with the course that's happening, that can also be a reference guide after the course is done. That can be a great opportunity. 

Matt: Yeah, I agree. 

Lauren: I just had this like, image when you were talking about end of year reporting or something like that. I just - remember those presentation things - I haven't seen one of these in years - but it was like a like two pieces of plastic that were folded together and then you had to slide a little like. 

Matt: Oh yeah. 

Lauren: You know what I'm talking about? 

Matt: Yeah, yeah. 

Lauren: Like I haven't seen one of those in like 20 years. 

Matt: It was like a report sleeve or something like that. 

Lauren: Yeah. It was like whenever I had to do a book report for school or something. 

Matt: And you get the little different colored plastic edge things to - yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. So if you've ever used one of the, first of all, if you're still using one of those in the year 2025 - 

Matt: I don’t know if they still make those. 

Lauren: - please let me know because that would be fascinating. But also, like if any kind of report that you're doing that you're doing something like that, that you're adding a nice little touch to it by binding it in some kind of way, this is another way to add a nice little touch to it. 

Matt: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. 

Lauren: And it's also not necessarily in the reporting example, but if you're just doing this for like employee reference or you want to make sure that somebody has something really nice on hand, you don't have to do the whole nine yards of formatting it. It's always nice to create like a really cool book if you're doing it for onboarding purposes or something like that. But you can also just very easily run off an eight and a half by eleven edition of exactly whatever Google doc you're using. And just instead of using, printing it out or having it as a PDF, bind it as a book. 

Matt: Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think the things you can do internally with, with this stuff are unlimited. It's all about, again, what is it you're trying to achieve? What type of a message are you trying to send to your employee base? What is characteristic and in alignment with your brand and tone and your company? But yeah, so many cool things you could do. Again, I love the company yearbook idea. I think that's a fun one. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Company cookbook once a year you can get together every couple of years or something like that. Like stuff like that, I think is super cool. 

Lauren: Well, there was one that I loved for a couple of years. I haven't seen it in a while, so I don't know if they're still doing it, but there was a balloon company that every year would publish their best of balloon projects. Because they had employees throughout the country, and they would put together like a look book of here are photos of the coolest balloon arches and like, designs that we saw with people using our products and stuff like that. 

Matt: Oh yeah. So they're balloon manufacturers and they were, they would take user generated content from the stores that actually bought their balloons to sell to customers. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Yeah. And the projects that they created with those. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: That's a great idea too, yeah.

Lauren: Yeah. And that's like a dual purpose thing because it's a great thing to share - 

Matt: It’s a sales asset. 

Lauren: - internally with your employees and also as a great sales asset - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - and something to show - 

Matt: That’s right. 

Lauren: - potential customers.

Matt: Yeah. So, I mean, those are just some of the ways you can use print-on-demand internally to show off your brand and other things you're doing. Let's talk about some of the stuff you can use it for to show off your brand externally. 

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: Yeah. 

[16:35] 

Lauren: Well, we just walked right into one. So, creating some kind of portfolio or a lookbook of your best work. We've talked about this in a recent episode too, the idea that sometimes your work, whatever you do as a business, is not something that you can just easily bring to a trade show to show off to potential customers. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Or bring even to your office. Anything ranging from if you're a tattoo artist, you can't, you can't just have everyone you've ever tattooed standing in your studio waiting for someone to come in and get a tattoo from you, but you can have a nice lookbook on your table in your waiting room for people to look through and see the work that you've done. 

Matt: Which they actually do. So.

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. 

Matt: I mean, the most common thing you might find when you walk into a tattoo studio, a beauty services studio, any of those businesses where you're offering a service or creating something like that, where your potential new customers really do kind of need to see the quality of your work, but yet you can't have every person you’ve tattooed or did permanent makeup on or hair or whatever standing in your lobby all day long - 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: - as, as examples. So these types of look books and portfolios are extremely popular for services based businesses, especially beauty service industry and other places like that. And it's very easy to do that. And basically, you're creating a photo book, but you're doing it for your businesses as a portfolio. So yeah, that's a really good and very common one. I love that one, obviously. 

Lauren: Yeah, I mean, and so far beyond that too, if you're a landscape architect company - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - and you want to be, or like a landscape architect firm, and you want to have - 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: - your best work on display without bringing people to somebody else's house. 

Matt: Yeah, or you're a mural painter - 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: - or I mean, there's so many uses for that - 

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: - that lookbook concept you're 100% right. I didn't even think about the landscape one. But yeah, I mean. 

Lauren: Even something, you know, fashion. 

Matt: Sure, yeah, yeah.  

Lauren: If you work in fashion or clothing industry and you want to put together a quarterly magazine, even if it's again, just for internal use, where you're putting together like, hey, here's a, here's a look at all of the products that we're going to be launching this quarter. And then you have a whole repository of the last five years of quarterly products that you've put out. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: A new customer or a new employee can look through and reference at any given time.

Matt: Yeah, I love that. You could also put something together that is basically a compilation of content that you've created. So blog posts, email newsletters, articles, things like that, and kind of turn that into almost a portfolio, or a kind of a sample book of the content that you've created to showcase your work. 

And so, you know, whether you're a solopreneur freelancer who is looking to land more gig work or even, you know, a small to medium size services based business again, where maybe your services offered include content creation or things like that. Again, I think the list is endless with ways that you could do this or types of industries and services you could apply this to.

Lauren: That is actually a great idea that has never occurred to me before, what you just said about if you're in the business of being a content creator and you can use a book to show off the content you've created, not necessarily for your own brand, but for other brands. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: What a great idea. 

Matt: Thanks. 

Lauren: You're welcome. We did do a whole episode on how to use your personal content to publish a book to promote your brand. So the idea of like, publishing your own blog posts into a book or something like that. So we don't have to dive too much into that right now. 

Matt: Yeah this would be different just to be clear. 

Lauren: Yeah. Yes. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But yeah, if you wanna dive more into that particular idea, go listen to episode number 33. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But I love that idea of using it as a content look book almost. Yeah, that's great. 

Matt: So I guess that was an easy one though too. So for people to connect the dots between content creator and then something like this, it's a little easier for them to develop a list in their own head. So we won't spend too much time on that one. 

But you know, again, thinking about other ways that you could use this externally for external purposes that aren't just, hey, I'll create a book to sell this for revenue. Like how can this book add value to my business? One of the examples I always love is if you're a, if you're in the travel business, right? And you're creating like curated or bespoke travel experiences for people, whether you're an actual travel agent or you're somebody that kind of works somewhere in that space in between there. 

You know, we have friends that they run some Disney travel services where they create customized itineraries for you and things like that, which are great. Imagine what you could do with print-on-demand in this space. You know, if you sell, let's say a luxury trip to a family - I have three kids. If we're going to take a luxury vacation, right? Wouldn't that be great? I hope my kids aren't listening by the way. 

Lauren: Don’t get any ideas. 

Matt: But if they are, this is just an example. That's it, nope. Anyways, but let's just say, you know, five people, a luxury vacation, at least seven days, right? That's well north of $10,000. If somebody's gonna spend that kind of money with you, imagine turning around and after, let's say a week after they book this trip with you, they get this really beautiful customized, you know portfolio-style travel itinerary in the mail from you or your organization, and it's customized to their trip and their family and all the places they're gonna go that you've now booked for them, and what that looks like, and some of the best restaurants in those areas, and you know, has their names and all that stuff. 

Like, what an experience that is for somebody who just spent 10,000 plus dollars with you. They now really feel wowed. It's that same Disney concept right like you know, you book a vacation package with Disney most the time you get this little customized thing in the mail before your trip. It's a little card, it's addressed to you, it's like, all this stuff. And it's all basically print-on-demand technology as well. And so taking that and applying that to one of your services based businesses, I think is super cool. 

Lauren: I think that's an awesome idea. And it is something, if you're listening to this and you're like, okay, but I already do that, but I just do it in like an email form - 

Matt: Boooooo. 

Lauren: - or a PDF form or something like that. I'm like, just think about how much it's elevating the experience to get a physical printed copy of it. 

Matt: Yeah dude. 

Lauren: And also just to have for reference, I mean, how often - we're currently working on planning our travel to go to London for London Book Fair. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: - in a couple of months. 

Matt: Yup. 

Lauren: And you know, that's always one of the things that gets me when I first get there is I'm like, oh, I got to figure out all the wifi and my phone and the data and the international data roaming and all that stuff. And like it always happens when I'm at the airport after the overnight flight, where all of a sudden I'm sitting there and I'm like, is my phone set to all the right things?

And like, imagine if I could just pull out a book out of my backpack instead and be like, oh, yeah, this is where I'm supposed to go. This is where I'm supposed to be. Like, once I get to my hotel, I can figure out all the details. But right now, I don't need to worry about digging through the email to find the attachment that I may or may not be able to download to my phone because I may or may not have service right now. 

Matt: Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, in 2025, like, I don't think the conversation anymore should be what can I digitize, right? I think we need to start looking analog again. And so like you said, yeah, I mean, this could, it could be an email that I could pull up on my phone. But I'm probably already doing three other things on my phone. And I mean in this day and age, I don't want to do everything on my phone anymore.

Lauren: Same. 

Matt: Let's go back to the example of, let's say, a Disney vacation. What if in that cool customized itinerary book, you also put some things in there for the kids, right? Like some coloring pages or some, you know, word problems or things like that. So, you know, maybe mom and dad are on the plane. Everybody's excited. They're going to Disney World, but then you hit that, that seventh inning stretch where the kids are tired, they're getting cranky. You just hand them that thing and say, here. You guys do this thing and let's figure out, you know what I mean? Like there's all kinds of cool stuff you can add in there - 

Lauren: I would have loved that as a kid. 

Matt: - to bring multi-layered facets to what you just offered this family. And it's something they'll throw in the backpack. Even in the case of London, you could toss it in your backpack and carry it around with you. And there could be other stuff in there, a checklist of, did you do this? Did you visit this coffee shop? What was your favorite thing about this museum? Things like that where when you get home from your trip, now you also have this really cool kind of memento and review of all the things that you did and your thoughts at the time. Hey, standing at the Tower Bridge in London, how did you feel? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Did you see anything cool? What was the weather like? Like this is all cool stuff that later on can go into some other fun project. 

Lauren: Absolutely an amazing idea. Something that would be - recommended packing lists - 

Matt: You're giving me way too many compliments. I'm feeling weird. 

Lauren: No, no, no, but I love this and I, and I totally agree that could be so.

Matt: I’m just kidding. 

Lauren: That could be like just such an elevated value in so many ways. I would absolutely like that would turn me into a loyal customer for life. I would never book another trip with any other company after that. Like every I would just use that company for everything after that.

Matt: And I want to highlight one thing here real quick, and I normally wouldn't do this, but our friend Stephen in Orlando, he's a physical therapist. He's also Disney freak. He is putting together a book. I think he might be done with it and I'll look and if it is, we'll put it in the show notes. But he is creating a book that is meant to be something you take with you to Disney. 

It's a small, you know, pocket book size, but it's all about how to stretch and warm up before your day starts at Disney. Things you can do throughout the day to keep yourself pretty limber and stretched out, not too tired. Then after the day ends, certain exercises and stretches and things that you would do back in your hotel room where you have the right amount of space to be able to make sure that you wake up the next day. 

It's this cool little accompanying guide that you take with you for people who, again, wanna be able to do multiple days at Disney all day long, but you and I both know like, that first day you get back to the room and it's like bro, somebody just shoot me now because I got three more days of this and while I can't wait, like also I don't think I can do it. So, you know, there are things you can do in that similar vein and we'll get to talking about actual products you can create to sell - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: - which is a little more where Stephen's is, but again, on the idea of creating something that somebody might keep with them during an experience, there's no limit to what you could create that adds value. You just have to niche down, not niche down, and figure out what that is.

Lauren: I am going to need about five copies of that book. So we're, we're going to have to come back. 

Matt: Yeah, I'll find the link and we'll put it in the show notes. 

Lauren: Okay, great. But yeah, absolutely. With something like that. And it's also, there are so many different ways that you could get creative like that, if it doesn't exactly apply to your business, I think there are also ways that you could do that after the fact, instead of beforehand. 

Going back to like the landscape architecture firm. If you take a bunch of really cool before, during, and after project photos for your client and then you just put fifteen of them - also, we're not talking about 200 page books here. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: We're not talking about putting together like a dictionary for every single person that is a customer. We're talking like fifteen, twenty-five, thirty page books. 

Matt: Yeah, depending on what you're doing. 

Lauren: Yeah, depending on what it is, something like that. Fifty maybe at most. But have a pre-templated book that you put together that you can just plug in a couple before, a couple during progress, whatever, and a couple of finished project photos and drop ship that off to your customer at the end of the project to thank them for choosing your company. And maybe it has some like, care tips as well in there too, and something like that. Like what a product that would be. 

Matt: Yeah, I agree. 

Lauren: Absolutely, just way to just elevate the entire experience of doing business with you.

Matt: Yeah, anything post-transaction like that, post purchase where you can continue delivering wow after the fact, that's just one more thing that's gonna ensure they're gonna come back to you if they ever need that service again, you know? 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And it's also something that I think is a great opportunity to connect with potential new customers as well. 

Matt: Sure. 

Lauren: And again, I can hear the voices that are like, well, why, like that's what Instagram is for. That's what whatever is for. Like they can just go look at the pictures that I posted on Instagram and see them there. And like… Sure. Yes, they could. But - 

Matt: If Instagram’s still around. 

Lauren: If Instagram is still around one. Two, I don't know about you, but I get distracted. I don't even get as far as like three photos on somebody's Instagram, if I'm looking at a specific Instagram, before I get distracted and go look at something else.

Matt: Well, yeah, but that's a great point. I just want to pause there for a minute. The distraction piece, and maybe I wasn't clear earlier, like this idea where we've made such a push over the last probably fifteen to twenty years to just go digital with everything, right? Digital, digital, digital, like, oh, what textbooks, I mean, anything you name it, like there's just been this push to digitize it and put it on the web and access it through your phone or your laptop or whatever that might be. 

But when you talk about some of these other things and you really sort of think about the staying power of having something like that in print as a, you know, again, a post purchase type of thing or some other type of a thank you or an itinerary or something that that's going to last beyond that. Think about the fact that that's there. It exists. It's a legacy product. 

These other things, not so much and not everybody wants to live their entire life on the internet because of how much white noise is there. If I just go post this up on, on social media, great. You know, it's there, sure, but I'm also now competing for your attention with 6,000 other posts of like, dogs dancing and all kinds of other fun and crazy stuff, right?

If I sent this to you in your mailbox, I'm competing with maybe three other pieces of junk mail. So I would, I just won. You open that mailbox and pull out this amazing catalog or look book or, or custom itinerary for you and your family or whatever it is. I just won. 

Lauren: Absolutely. 

Matt: I'm only competing against three fake loan offers and maybe something about consolidating your credit card debt. I just won. Versus your inbox where I'm competing against seventeen other newsletters that you've subscribed to that you barely read, fourteen other sales that are going on in all your favorite retailers, right? An email from your Uncle Kevin somewhere who's got an alcohol problem and probably some other things going on. That's a lot of white noise. Or social media where I'm now competing with the entire world. So I would rather win your mailbox than to compete against your inbox or struggle in your DMs. 

Lauren: Well, and you're also, not only are you winning that, but you're also getting a golden remarketing opportunity with that because in order to be able to send a potential customer a physical copy of something, you have to be able to get their information. So they are expressing enough interest in you that they're saying, okay, sure. Yeah, you want to send me a lookbook so I can see a little bit more about what you guys do like, okay, great. Here's, here's my contact info. Here's my address, whatever. And now you have the opportunity to follow up with them because you have their information. You're not just sending them an Instagram profile and hoping that they might follow you. 

Matt: Yeah. On the front side. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Again, on the backside post transaction - 

Lauren: Well, yeah. you have that information, you’re right. And that feeds back into things we talk about all the time about what to do with that customer data. Hello. Here you go.

Lauren: Yup. 

Matt: This is what you do with it. This is how you build wow. And you bring them back for more and more. Not by shooting them a DM on their social media, not by shooting them an email that they're just going to delete, show up in their mailbox. So we can have two weeks later with something really cool, customer for life. 

Lauren: I mean, yeah, also not for nothing, but is there anything more exciting than getting cool mail? 

Matt: These days no, because again, I don't open my inbox, and my emails’ like a nightmare, social media. I'm sorry, like unless you're like within my immediate sphere, I'm not looking at a DM and I'm just doom scrolling, but you know, you get something cool in the mailbox like that's different these days. It used to be the norm, but again, everything is flip-flopped. So now we're going back and let's say, let's take it analog. Let's start getting into the mailbox again with really cool things.

Lauren: I used to, when I was a kid, Disney used to do the, like you could fill out a form online and they would send you a free vacation planning VHS tape. 

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: That was that was always my way of being like hey, don't you think it's time for another Disney trip? Look at this thing that came in the mail that I definitely didn't order. It was free. 

Matt: Yeah, there's all kinds of examples like that - 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: - back in the 80s and 90s. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: For sure. Well 80s you wouldn't know but 90s, yeah. 

Lauren: I was I mean I was alive in the 80s. I just wasn't forming memories at an age of consciousness yet.

Matt: Whatever. 

[32:38] 

Matt: So I think we could go on and on about how to use it in that fashion, but before we get too crazy on time I'd love to switch over to now talking about how you can actually create a new product to sell. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Or a new product line, or actually build a business around print-on-demand. If you don't even have a business yet - which we've seen a lot of examples of that too. 

Lauren: Yeah, we've seen some really great ones. 

Matt: Yeah. So why don't you kick us off? 

Lauren: Well, I think that it's a great way - we kind of talked about this at the beginning already - it's a great way to add a very low lift new product line. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: So if you're talking about something, however it would lend itself to your brand, like low and no content books. And those are things like notebooks, planners, journals, very easy to create, very cost effective. They're really easy to create, because you don't have to get so crazy about it. I mean, you could just do a notebook that has your company logo on the cover. You know?

It doesn't have to be like super, super -  I mean, you can get really good. And I would encourage you, like the more fun you have with it and the more creative you get with it, the more likely it is to actually be an effective product - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - and also marketing tool. But there are ways to get really broad. Here are some really cool products that we have. And also a great thing with low and no content books and also with calendars, they are finite resources that if, in theory, if you've designed them well and they are actually effective in use, will bring customers back. 

Matt: That's right, yeah. 

Lauren: So I always think those are a great way to try to get just a little something extra added. And I think that's a great way to add a new product line to any kind of - if you have any kind of online store, whether you're a published author already, and you're just looking to add like, a notebook or a reading journal to go along with your books, or you're an enterprise business and you're looking for a little something extra that you can add, like offer to your customers. I think those are a great option. 

Matt: Yeah, I think the fun part is really digging in and trying to figure out based on what your business is or your vertical, if you have established a business already, how to apply this and create a new product or new product line on the back of print-on-demand. And we see so many creative people doing it. 

And then again, lately, I'd say over the last couple of years, really since the COVID lockdowns 2020, we started seeing people get really creative with building businesses on top of things like print-on-demand or another way to say that is, is, is seeing creators monetizing their work in different ways. And so again, you know, you see spin-offs of, you know, we mentioned our friend Stephen, who's a PT, a physical therapist, creating a product that really is an extension of what he does, right? And he's turned it into a product that now kind of complements what he does. 

So you might see Stephen as a PT, you know, once a week or a couple of times a month or whatever. But then you might also have a need to buy that book, throw in your backpack and take it to Disney with you. Or any other park for that matter, but we all know Disney is the only one that matters. 

Lauren: Well, yeah, but yeah, I mean, you know, don't get, don't get lost in that too. Like don't get lost in that detail too. Like, yes, you can write a book that is targeted towards Disney adults that are going to need to do a little extra stretches before and after park days every day. But you know, that also could be… I could, I could use those same stretches when I go to a music festival or when I go backpacking around Europe - I'm never going to go backpacking around Europe. I couldn't even get through that sentence without breaking. 

Matt: I think you missed that window of opportunity.  

Lauren: I think so too. 
Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But you know, people that are interested in that kind of stuff understand that it's applicable to them, even if it's not like directly targeted to them. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: And alternatively, publish five versions of the same book with just slightly… stretches to do for Disney adults, stretches to do for all day concert goers, stretches to do for people that spent all day laying on the beach and now they have weird kinks in their back because the sand was uneven, like. 

Matt: Well yeah, you could apply that to people who work at conferences all day long. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah, so variance is what we would call it, or variation of - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: - you can create variance. And that's actually a great use of using something like, you know, an AI tool to just take existing content and just saying, hey, everywhere where it says Disney Parks, replace that with music festival, right? And then you have a new interior file that you can use. So, you know, really rely on some tools to help with that. 

But I think back to this idea where you're creating a new product or new product line for your business specifically, you know, on the back of print-on-demand. I brought up Stephen as an example, just to show you that if you provide a service or you're, you know, something like that, you can still create a product that doesn't limit you.

Even if you're, let's say you do, you know, counseling or therapy, right? There are therapists and counselors who have created a type of book that wouldn't necessarily be something they would want to put in Barnes & Noble per se, but it's something that for their patients and or other people that might, you know… maybe they're a grief counselor, it's a book that's kind of objectively written around dealing with grief. And it's something that they can have outside of their therapy sessions as kind of a stopgap until the next therapy session or things like that, or it's a workbook around you know, grief, things like that. So - shout out to Alison, by the way. 

So there's all different really cool things you can do around building an actual business of products on the backs of print-on-demand, regardless of what it is you actually do in your daily life. And I think that, you know, when you sit down and you understand what can I do with print-on-demand from a product standpoint, how can I take what I do, turn that into one of these products, and then the rest of that's really easy, right? It's just plug and play on Lulu. You're off to the races. 

Lauren: Yeah, there are so many really great ways that you could just create really fun products. Like I'm just, I mean, you're sitting here and I'm just thinking about - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - all the things that we've talked about it in this episode that I'm like, okay, you can do this, you can do this. Again, we've also referenced this recently, but I'm issuing the challenge again - this is one of my favorite games to play. So if you want help brainstorming, how a book could be a cool additional product line for your business, shoot me an email. 

Matt: Yeah, we do like this. I like when people come up to me at conferences or events and they'll try to stump you like, oh, I do this. What kind of book? Oh, no problem. 

Lauren: Yep. Got it. 

Matt: And then like 20 minutes later, they're like, how do I do this? 

Lauren: Don't worry. We got you covered there too. 

Matt: Yeah. Don't bring a knife to a gunfight. Take that how you want. Anyways, the one other thing I think is important to touch on is how you can use print-on-demand in your business or a business or for a particular purpose, such as something nonprofit oriented. So we see a lot of organizations using us to create things that are essentially sort of fundraiser type products. So you might have a local animal shelter, which we do, who creates calendars with really cool, funny pets on them, one for each month. And then all the sales of the calendars go towards, the proceeds go towards their animal shelter, things like that. So it doesn't always have to be a book per se, and it doesn't always have to be something as cut and dry as like, oh, I'm just gonna create this workbook to go with my whatever, like. 

Again, there are organizations like nonprofits and churches and other things that are using print-on-demand to fund some of their efforts for things that have a larger purpose, maybe it's a little more pragmatic in nature. And so I think when you go to that level and you start thinking about, man, you really can use this technology for almost any vertical, any business, any product, you just need a few minutes of brainstorming with somebody who kind of understands, or you need to do your homework on some print-on-demand. And then you can just create just about anything of value. 

Lauren: Absolutely. 

Matt: I was trying to think if there are any more favorites of mine lately. 

Lauren: I can't think of any specific examples. But I know - I'm just like, I'm trying to think about all the different products that I've seen and projects that I've seen people create. And I've always loved people that do cookbooks and then will also do like as a companion to the cookbook, here's a recipe journal that you can write your favorites in or a meal planner journal that you can plan out your meals and put your grocery lists in here. Or people that offer - something like a cookbook is an expensive product if you're doing a full hardcover, full color book. 

Matt: Sure. 

Lauren: But if you're doing an ebook version of it, and then you do a printed journal to go with it so that people can take notes on from your ebook and stuff like that.

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: There are great examples there. Workout guides that are your track your progress - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - as you're going through my like, 180 day online course for how to get your beach body by July. I don't know what days work out to be. 

Matt: I'm going to do a burrito body workbook.

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: So I'm gonna track our burrito intake for 365 days. 

Lauren: Are you gonna include burrito recipes within the burrito tracking workbook? 

Matt: That's a great idea. 

Lauren: I think that is a great idea. 

Matt: I think I am. 

Lauren: One for every week, like 52 burrito recipes. 

Matt: That's a lot. Everybody send your burrito recipes to podcast@lulu.com. 

Lauren: I think we can make this a team effort. 

Matt: I think so. 

Lauren: Yeah, I like that idea. 

Matt: I think burritos is a good one. 

Lauren: Great. 

Matt: Pizza's probably too confined. And I don't wanna offend any pizza purists out there. Like some of you upstate New Yorkers. 

Lauren: I am not a pizza purist. 

Matt: Or an upstate New Yorker. 

Lauren: Or an upstate New Yorker, but we've already established that. I am from Long Island. Thank you so much. 

Matt: You say that with some authority and some pride. 

Lauren: I do. 

Matt: Yeah, I don't know anything about that. 

Lauren: That's okay, most people don't. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: It's fine. It's all right. One other thing when we're talking about adding them as a product line, we have already talked about the ideas of portfolios and lookbooks. You can use those as a products as well. 

Matt: Sure. 

Lauren: If you do a really cool like, coffee table book - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - or a cool photo book or something like that, like I absolutely would buy… We see them all the time, there are coffee table books that are just the best of Louis Vuitton. And I'm like, okay, this is actually just - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - a really fancy catalog, basically. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Which also, I'm not sure if we actually said the words catalog or magazine at any point during this episode, but those are for sure product types that you can create. 

Matt: I said catalog, but you're right. Magazine is another one. I didn't even think about that. There's some actually really cool ones that come through our, our platform, but magazines these days are also different too, because I think the days of like traditional types of magazines that you would have gotten ten, fifteen, twenty years ago are pretty much gone. 

The ones you do see, like they're printed so cheaply and in such mass amounts that they just pulp what's left over and it's no big deal. But all the really good ones are now switching over to that format where the paper's a little bit thicker, the photos are a little better, you know, the covers are a little thicker, more almost like book type. And so magazine is taking on a different connotation right now. And I really like it. There's a lot of cool ones out there. 

Some of them are only published quarterly. You know, there's one that I really like. It's a quarterly surfers journal. It's really cool. And it's thicker paper, all full bleed, you know, photographs and articles and really nice covers. You can do some really cool stuff with that. And it's a really good way to also infiltrate a particular vertical where maybe something like that doesn't exist. So if you're in, uh, I don't know, let's say the business of podcasting, creating something like a podcasters quarterly journal, right? And it could be relatively inexpensive. You just throw together some really good articles. Maybe you get some contributors, some other podcasters, then you go out, you find a few sponsors like some podcast equipment, like maybe Rode will sponsor your first issue. And then you go to market with it. And before you know it, you're the only print magazine in the podcasting industry. 

And now you've established this medium whereby you can start collecting more sponsor revenue. You've got people who want to write articles for your magazine and you're establishing a whole new basically revenue stream, if not a whole new aspect to your brand or who you are, your persona. So I think there's a lot of cool things you could do with magazines specifically right now that nobody's doing them because nobody's thought to really, I think, approach that medium from a business or brand standpoint. But again, I think if you expand that, there's a lot of opportunities there. So yeah, I like the idea of magazines. I'm glad you brought that one up. 

Lauren: I'm glad you like that. Cause I have bad news for you now. 

Matt: What's that? 

Lauren: Our camera has overheated. 

Matt: Is that a thing? 

Lauren: Mmhmm. 

Matt: The camera can overheat? 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Man. So if we do a podcasters quarterly journal, I think the first article should be about how you should not buy a Nikon because they're garbage for podcasting. 

Lauren: Yeah, this is not working out for us.

Matt: Yeah. Well, anyways, I think we've given sufficient examples, by the way, of using print-on-demand for your business. I think that the internal possibilities, if you're trying to create a really cool internal culture that you could use it for really fun, you know, employee handbooks, things like that. 

We've talked about ways to accelerate your branding and reach, you know, externally using print-on-demand through things like catalogs and post transactional thank yous, photo books, all types of really cool ways to deliver wow after the transaction. 

And then, you know, this idea that you could create particularly new products or a new product line off your existing IP or content, or literally if you don't have a brand or a business yet, print-on-demand is a great way to try it out. It's the perfect combination of content and drop shipping where, you know, again, if you just want to test the waters, go create like a notebook or a journal or some sort of a guided type of workbook that you could apply some of your knowledge to and see what happens. 

You know, I think that in this day, having the access to that technology. There's such a low barrier to entry from a financial standpoint, you wouldn't have to put a lot of money upfront, hardly any at all, and you could really test out your content, the concepts for any other products that you might be thinking about, and quite frankly, just test the waters with your audience just to see how prone they might be to purchase something from you. 

Lauren: Yeah, I really wanna make sure that we're emphasizing that in this conversation is that when it comes to something like print-on-demand, the whole point of it is that you can just do some sample copies for yourself. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Like you don't have to order. If we're saying like, it would be really cool to have a lookbook of your best work and have some kind of portfolio, you don't have to make a thousand copies of them and figure out what to do with them. Say you're going to a conference in a couple of months and you wanna test this out and see how it performs with the people that you talk to at your booth. Order three copies of a book that you designed and bring them with you and see what that's like.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: You see how people react to them, something like that. 

[46:33] 

Lauren: We didn't really get into the nitty gritty on practically how you can actually go about doing this. And I don't want to get too far into that right now, but there are different - like, you can use print-on-demand in different ways. If we're talking about Lulu, you can just upload files to Lulu directly, not publish them anywhere. They're not going anywhere. You don't have to have your own website. You don't have to put them on the Lulu bookstore. You can just private access, have copies that you order for yourself as needed.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: You can create them and publish them to the Lulu bookstore through something called select access, where they're not going to be publicly available on the bookstore, but anybody that you share the link with can access it. So if you want to do like, an employee handbook where you want to send the file, or you want to send that link directly to a new employee and say like, you know, at your leisure, please order yourself a copy of this book from - 

Matt: Leisure? 

Lauren: As opposed to what? 

Matt: Leisure.

Lauren: Oh, well, that's - okay. So this is a very - no, so. 

Matt: You know, I'm recognizing a trend here, niche, niche. Leisure, leisure. 

Lauren: No, no, no, because that's one of those very weird words for me that like the phrase at your leisure is very much that is how you pronounce the phrase. But I do say like I'm doing a leisurely activity right now or I'm doing like, like, I don't know. It's the same way that I go on vacation to the Caribbean, but I ride Pirates of the Caribbean.

Matt: Man, this is going to go sideways. Let's pick back up where you were. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: So you can have a private access where nobody -  

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: - you can do a link whereby only people with the link can get about the Lulu bookstore. 

Lauren: Yes. And then you can also use a direct ecommerce plugin to - 

Matt: Sure. 

Lauren: - have them directly on your own website. 

Matt: What’s that mean? 

Lauren: So having the books available on your website? 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: Where customers are coming to you. 

Matt: So if you use a Shopify website - 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Or Wix, WooCommerce - 

Lauren: Yeah. Or our API plugin. 

Matt: The API is the really cool one that'll allow you to do some really cool personalization stuff as well. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So there are a lot of options there for how you can actually go about doing this and what different tools you have available to help you out with that. 

Matt: Yeah, and again, technically, it's not - you're not self-publishing or you're not publishing a book, you're creating some book content for a very specific purpose. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So yep. And on that note, our camera decided it was going to overheat again and die. So I think this is the perfect time to say goodbye. 

Lauren: I hate ending when it doesn't have - we don't have a camera. I guess. Well, it doesn't look like it's coming back anytime soon, so we might as well. 

Matt: I'm not either. I'm done. 

Lauren: I will remind you that the camera, both the camera and video episodes in general were your idea.

Matt: Yeah, let's, yeah. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Thanks for joining us on this episode. Hopefully you'll come back and hopefully I'll be back as well. 

Lauren: I hope so too. 

Matt: If you want to shoot us any ideas or ask us for any ideas, podcast@lulu.com. We would love for you to like this episode. 

Lauren: Yeah. And hopefully future ones we do too, so. Absolutely. If you have any ideas for episode topics, if you have any questions that you want to ask us, if you want to issue us the challenge of here's my business, tell me how you think we could create a cool book that would help support this business. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Challenge accepted. Just let us know. Podcast@Lulu.com. Find us on Lulu social. Hopefully we'll see you there. 

Matt: Later.