Welcome to Digital First Leadership, the podcast that explores the essential principles and strategies for leading in the digital age. In this dynamic podcast series, we dive deep into the realm of digital leadership, equipping leaders and teams with the necessary tools to thrive in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Richard Bliss:

Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Richard Bliss, and you are listening to another episode of Digital First Leadership Podcast. I certainly appreciate the time that you have given to listening to these episodes, the feedback that I receive, and the opportunity to have met so many of you. And also, I appreciate the feedback you're giving me about the guests that I've had on the show and the quality of those guests. That's what makes the show so much more enjoyable and informative. The one other thing I want to thank you for is those of you who have begun signing up for my LinkedIn weekly tips through text. Now, this is a phone number you can send a text to #LinkedIn. And the phone number is 415-534-9722. So every week you will usually on Monday morning, you'll get a text from me giving you a heads up and a reminder of something you should be doing with your LinkedIn to be more effective. I really don't spam you. I don't send unsolicited links. But I appreciate we've got 250, 300 people who've already signed up for that. So we're looking good. Now, I got to tell you, today, my guest has got me way excited. Now, she and I have been conversing here a little bit, and I just got to tell you that I got excited because this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart. We're going to talk to Sandee Rodriguez. Sandee, thank you for joining me. I'm just so excited to have you here.

Sandee:

Well, thank you for having me on the show. I'm excited to get to talk about one of my favorite topics.

Richard Bliss:

Well, and the topic is okay. So those of who are listening, we've been doing a series from the greatest, “The Most Amazing Marketing Book Ever.” And for those of you who are listening, know that I participated. Sandy participated. She has her copy. Sandy did Chapter 25. And it's called “How to Make Promotional Products Sing.” Now, I got to tell you, this is exciting, but before I do, Sandy, I'm going to read your introduction on the back of your chapter. Sandee Rodriguez is a promotional marketing consultant and the owner of D&S Designs. She's also the founder and business advisor of Sandee Solves and leads CEO Councils high level masterminds for successful women founders. You can find her at www, the letter D and the letter S Designs.com or www.sandeesolves.com. That's SandeeSolves.com, Right? That's how people find you. 

Sandee:

That's right.

Richard Bliss:

That's awesome. So Sandee, and I have five daughters, so I always appreciate those who focus on making sure that women in today's world have an opportunity to grow their voice and their influence as they continue to have success.

Sandee:

That is very important to me.

Richard Bliss:

It is. It's important to me as well. Now, we're going to talk about promotional items, which is an odd thing to talk about in today's digital era. This world of everything NFTs all of that. But your background is around this, and you said it, near and dear to your heart. Let's talk about a little bit of your background and this idea of promotional items so that people know exactly what we're talking about.

Sandee:

Sure. I came out of being a school teacher for four years to start my family, and at the same time, my husband, who was an artist, was looking for a way to use his skills to also feed his family as an artist. We didn't want to be the starving artist stereotype, and we were made aware of a screen printing set up that was available for sale. So we picked that up and suddenly we had a side hustle back before we were doing all side hustles, where we were screen printing T shirts and other items. And that has only grown over the past 30 years. We started that back in 1991.

Richard Bliss:

Wow. Well, that's been more than 30 years, Sandee.

Speaker C:

Yes, unfortunately it has. But we started screen printing, then embroidery, and people started asking us about promotional products. I'm like, There has to be a way to do this. So I did the research back pre-internet days to figure out how you even got involved in it, discovered a trade show, met some people, learned a few things, and boom, suddenly we're doing promotional products too. And very quickly, I feel really blessed because when I got started, I got in a group with some high level promotional products distributors, and I'd say they had to have cut my learning curve more than in half as far as selling it well, too. Not as you and I were discussing the stuff that ends up in landfills or in children's toy boxes, but promotional products that actually work, that get results. So that's been my focus all of these years, is actually intentionally looking for clients who want someone to consult rather than just someone to give them the cheapest price. Because we're not the cheapest, never will be. That's not what we're about. But we get results.

Richard Bliss:

And so one of the things, let's just be clear so you provide consultation, but you actually create the products themselves, is that right?

Sandee:

Well, I'm what's known as a distributor, so I have a network of suppliers who have all the specialized kinds of equipment to produce the actual products. Much of it is produced overseas, some of it is made in the US. But usually the branding of the items is done here in the US. And because there are so many different ways to do it, whether it's screen printed, whether it's hot sealed, heat sealed, I should say, or hot stamped, that's the word I was after. Engraved, dye sublimation, embroidery. There are dozens of decoration techniques. And investing in all of that equipment, forget just the space issue, but all of the cost of all the equipment, no one does that. So the industry is structured so that there are people who basically, I'm an unpaid sales rep for these suppliers.

Richard:

Got it.

Sandee:

I only make money if I sell their products, so it works out well for everyone. Suppliers get all of us selling their products. They're making money. We make money in the marking up of the things which I'm sure everybody knows by now is how it works.

Richard:

That's how it works. Now what's fascinating is how much it's changed over the last so 30 years. And in our previous conversation, I've been also doing this for 30 years. And the biggest change probably has been the adoption of technology. As China became so much more integrated into the supply chain, they made heavy investments in manufacturing capabilities that just didn't exist here in the United States, right? And I'm thinking about 15 years ago, 20 years ago, they really started pouring money into it. And that's when we saw this opportunity of doing some very creative, low cost. Of words that normally would not be used in the same sentence. Is that kind of what we're seeing? This huge ability to tap into this market because of the global supply chain capabilities that we've seen?

Sandee:

I would say yes, we were able to get things we couldn't get before because the quantities would have simply been too high if you had to go to a manufacturing solution and create your own products. You're talking about having to do 5-10 thousand of something – Right. – Whereas with the way the system is set up now, I have done as few as one. It's not obviously all that profitable to do just one of something, but the other thing –

Richard:

It's possible. But it's possible.

Sandee:

And so it's not uncommon for me to do 50 of something now. A bigger part of the evolution has been the personalization side, though, and that is growing. I see more and more opportunities for, and really, now you're talking about one of something, it gets fully branded and then it gets personalized in some way. So, like your stainless steel tumbler, for example, they'll print all the logos on, then they'll go back and they'll drop names in there, right? Because of everything being so digital now, they have a much higher capacity for offering personalized products. And in the world we're living in, that's the kind of marketing everybody wants is really the one to one. So being able to put someone's name on something is really an edge. It is smarter. Businesses are using it.

Richard:

It stands out. It makes it personable, it makes it a talking point if we ever go back into the office, right? It's like sitting on your desk, like. Or something that's important to me. Or it showed up on a customer with their name on it. Okay, so your clientele are over the spectrum, right? Big and small, one to many. So what would be some key things that let's suppose I wanted to create a series of promotional items. Let's take BLISSPOINT. BLISSPOINT. I've got a little logo. My clientele are really odd. Not odd. Hang on. Hopefully they're not listening to that comment that I just made. Meaning there's not a single demographic.

Sandee:

In a good way.

Richard:

In a good way. Yeah, in a good way. So how would we start that conversation? What are some of the things that. I would need to know if I wanted to start thinking about that? Because otherwise I'm going down and I'm buying a bunch of rubber duckies, sticking them on my next trade show, and here's a stress release rubber ducky thing right. Which I call landfill toys right. Talked about that are just totally worthless. How would you approach me and what are some of the key things I need to consider?

Sandee:

Well, I would say probably the very first question I ask when I'm working with someone and I don't know all of their background yet is, What is the outcome you hope for giving this out? What is the action that you want people to take after you hand them something with your name on it? Are you going for brand awareness? Are you thanking them for purchasing a product? Is it a referral gift? What's the reasoning behind why you're handing something out?

Richard:

Wow. All right.

Sandee:

Put some intent behind it.

Richard:

Yeah, that's a tough question, isn't it? So, again, we'll use my example. Let's suppose I want to thank guests who've been on my podcast. Okay, let's do that. That's an easy one. I want to thank guests who have been on my podcast. All right? And so it's a thank you gift. For them to remember that they were on the show and maybe on their own show or something, they're going to remember and bring it up. But it's just more of I want them to remember because they're on a bunch of podcasts, remember me. So there we go. That's pretty limited. I should do better job, but we'll stick with that.

Sandee:

No no. That's exactly the kind of thing you're looking for when you're trying to get started with, I mean, there's literally over a million products. You've got to start drilling it down somewhere. So what you described was something, we talked about the golf club story that you did before. That's not something you can just send out. So you've just limited those millions of products down to something that can be sent either UPS or through the mail or whatever, because your guests are from all over the place. So now we're looking at sendable items. So that puts you in a certain classification. Then the next thing I would look at is your quantity and your budget, because that will drill it down again. It's like, what do you want to spend per head for giving out something like this?

Richard:

Okay, I want to spend $200 per head.

Sandee:

Okay. That's a pretty big budget.

Richard:

That's a pretty big budget. But hopefully they're not listening. Well, you are, but it's only because that's a pretty big budget for a $200 sendable item, because normally you're down into the, what, 50, 40, $50 range? Or even lower?

Sandee:

Unfortunately, yeah, usually lower.

Richard:

But if we wanted to make an impression, because some of my guests or some of my audience, these are, let's say, high worth individuals, high influential individuals, and I don't want to send them something they're like, eh, thanks, Richard. It gets tossed. I want them to wow. Wow, that's unique. Wow.

Sandee:

Yeah. That is exactly my goal when I'm working with my clients, is I want them to look at that go, oh, that's cool, because if we wanted to stay out of the landfill, it has to be something someone actually wants, right?

Richard:

That's hard. How do you do that? Let's take today.

Sandee:

That's what you just said. You know, they're high worth individuals, they have a lot of money. That means they already have a lot of stuff. So how do you send them something they don't already have that they would actually want? I'll use an example I just did because it was so fun. I got a request for a plaque for a man who has run a math showcase for probably 20 years, and he was retiring.

Richard:

A what?

Sandee:

A math showcase. So if you've heard of science fairs, same idea, but math. Okay, mathematics. Let's say it that way. And my first email back to her was, Does it have to be a plaque? Because in my mind, I'm going, oh, no, please, please don't give him a plaque.

Richard:

No.

Sandee:

You know what she said back?

Richard:

What?

Sandee:

I'm so glad you asked me that, because she knew I was going to come back with completely different ideas for her. She has experience working with me. So I'm thinking, okay, so now I take these parameters. It's a thank you gift. I've got $100 budget. It's a guy who's been doing math showcase. I know he's an engineer. He's got good money. What can I suggest that this guy might not already have that he would think was cool? So I have one particular award that I've been using more and more of. It's a metallic cube that's magnetic, and you get attachments that can go on it. You could print the front and print the back in full color. So it's got lots of real estate to say wonderful things. And in this case, I had sponsors to also thank as part of this. So we had the math showcase logo plus the major sponsor logos. Then on the back was this whole beautiful full color thing I designed to thank him for his many years of doing this.

Richard:

Right.

Sandee:

And then on top we put a magnetic thank you. And then I stuck a little stick that has a clip so that he could clip on a picture or a note card or something. So now he has an award that is A, fun to play with because it's magnetic and B, useful. It's not something on a wall that's collecting dust.

Richard:

Yeah. Or in a box.

Sandee:

Exactly. And I guarantee you he would not have had one of those.

Richard:

No, there's no way he would.

Sandee:

That's right.

Richard:

He did not go down to Target and say, oh, I need one of those.

Sandee:

Right.

Richard:

And so that's one of the biggest challenges. So that's interesting because in my case, let's go back to my example. You said, oh, it's sendable, and that put me in a different category. What would be another category that I might end up if it wasn't sendable?

Sandee:

If it wasn't sendable?

Richard Bliss:

What would be an example of because you said, oh, it's sendable. I'm like, all right. What happens if it's, for example, if I'm a non-sendable would be if I'm at a trade show, right?

Sandee:

Right.

Richard:

That's a non sendable. But even then –

Sandee:

Well, that depends, too, because –

Richard:

– you have to get it there and they have to get it home in their luggage.

Sandee:

Yes. And we discuss that often. I'm in some mastermind groups in the industry, and we'll talk about that sometimes. Everyone's flying in for this. We need some ideas of things they can put back in their suitcase. We tend to jump over into either the digital or technical side of things for that because they're higher price value, but small, obviously. Flash drives are one of the key things for ages that we've been doing. One thing that people can do to kind of jump that value up, though, is to do a very unique flash drive. You can do shapes, and what I mean by that is you could do an airplane shape, sky's the limit. You could do any shape that you want, and you can preload content onto them that they can go back home with and review after the fact instead of having to sit there and take a bunch of notes. They go home with everything on there.

Richard:

But one of the challenges in my industry is that flash drives are now seen as a security risk, right. Because you can load preload things on there, and when you plug it in, it loads. Right. And so my wife insists that I –

Sandee:

I've got that covered. Okay. Assuming you've done it, produced everything correctly and securely, there are now blockers.

Richard:

I was just going to say, my wife has me travel with the blocker in my technology, in my tech bag.

Sandee:

There you go. Yeah, that's right.

Richard:

You plug it onto the flash drive and then plug that onto your computer.

Sandee:

Yeah. They say even charging your phone in an airport, there are blockers for that now to make sure nobody gets around your security that way. Staying ahead of the cybersecurity issues is definitely a challenge, but that makes a good thing to send as well. Right. You see the camera covers on your computer. My camera came on the other day, and I could not figure out, for the life of me, why. And I had to go through everything that was open on my computer and figure out why my camera was running before I finally found it. And it was because I started, but did not finish initiating a FaceTime.

Richard:

Oh, really?

Sandee:

But who knows how long that camera was actually on before I paid attention to the fact the green light was on, right? If I had had a camera cover on there…

Richard Bliss:

There you go. Camera cover. And sometimes these can be the smallest thing. What would be one of the most we could talk more about the thing specifics, but I'm interested. What would be one of your more crazy or successful promotional items that you've done that you can look back on?

Sandee:

It is a really basic story that I tell for such a simple item, but it was so effective, I still have to tell it. So everybody knows what a yardstick is. Three foot, right? There's something called a walking stick, and it is 4ft, and it's cubicle instead of flat. Okay?

Richard:

Okay.

Sandee:

It's serious and hefty and heavy. It comes in big four foot long boxes. It's not for the faint of heart to give out.

Richard Bliss:

Okay.

Sandee:

I've done them twice, though. The first time made sense. It was a landscape company, and they were going to a show where they're and they measure plants out in the field, and it had the leather thongs. All of that made sense. The second guy, though, was a mortgage broker. I know. At first I didn't get it either. Why would you give out a four foot walking stick? But I guess he had seen one before and thought it was really cool. So he determined to take just one box to a trade show. He got more than one box in his shipment from me, had his mortgage company branded on there, and people came to his booth, and he started handing them out, and people started seeing them going around the trade show floor. This big four foot stick. You can't miss it, right?

Richard Bliss:

Right.

Sandee:

And they're like, oh, that's cool. Where do I go to get one of those? So he started getting traffic and very quickly ran out of them. Smart man that he was. He did not give out the last one. He kept one on hand, and he said, Look, I've got more of these back in the office. Anybody who books a meeting with me today, I will bring one. How many meetings he booked at that show?

Richard:

Right. And because basically, it was advertising revenue that was spent at the show – Exactly. – that caused people to say, I want one. Okay, yeah, all right, I'll do that.

Sandee:

Yeah. Who wouldn't? Meeting to get one, right. It's just a little bit of your time.

Richard:

Right.

Sandee:

But he got more meetings booked at that show than he had ever had before from this crazy concept.

Richard:

Holy cow. Well, I have a story where an accidental brilliant thing happened. We went to a trade show in Barcelona. I was the vice president of marketing, and we decided to take some T shirts. Now, we were an anti spam, antivirus company. That's what we did. We didn't sell software. It was a managed service kind of thing. Anyway, I had 50 of these shirts printed up because I didn't have a big budget. And we're shipping it from the US to Barcelona, and they had three words on them, three shirts with a single word in big, bold font, virus, spam, or porn. And that's it. And we put a tiny logo on the back of the T shirt. Just a tiny logo. Well, the idea was to give them out to our key customers or type of thing, but it didn't happen that way. They started handing them out, and what happened was we ran out, and the show coordinator, we were just a sponsor. The show coordinator came to us and said, look, we can't have you do that again. Like, why not? Their information desk got hit up so hard from everybody wanting to find out how they could get one of those shirts that they were just overwhelmed, and they're like, don't do that to us again. But those shirts became legendary in the industry because you'd catch people in pictures, or virus standing next to porn. It was the greatest thing. I got to tell you. Running it sometimes through HR was always a challenge, right? Even though I was the vice president of marketing, it was like, you sure. Yeah, because that's what we were talking about. And so sometimes it can be a happy accident, like your friend where you. Run out, and in his case, he was smart enough to keep the last one. That's very cool. Okay.

Richard:

I'm cognizant of our time, and we're kind of a little bit overtime, and I knew this was going to be a tough one for me to end on. Now I'm going to encourage everybody, go buy the book, if nothing, just to read your chapter about this whole promotional, because the tangible nature of promotional items today cannot be overstated because we are doing everything so virtually right.

Sandee:

Yes.

Richard Bliss:

Virtual trade shows, virtual meetings, virtual working from my office. It does make a challenge, because if I want to send you something, oftentimes, I don't have your home address because you're working from home. So what kind of pieces of advice would you give as we wrap up for them to think about, companies to think about when it comes to these promotional advice, as they turn to you? What would be some key things for them to think about right now? And we can take some points from your chapter or something else that you want to share.

Sandee:

I mean, starting back with, what's the point of sending it? Why are you doing this? What's your budget? Where are these people located? How do you plan to distribute it? You're referring to not having home addresses. One of the things that's interesting in the industry right now is we have digital options. So this is a digital leadership show. You can give digital gifts whether it's I mean, the very early ones were itunes gift cards, right? It was a code. You just send a code and you redeem it and you get your itunes gift.

Richard:

But you can send a Kindle gift. A book. A kindle book.

Sandee:

And there are more and more options coming out, which, again, the idea of staying out of the landfills, giving something that is wanted, there are more and more digital options coming into the industry every day.

Richard:

I'll tell you one, okay. I said we were going to end, but we're not, because right at the beginning of the pandemic, Amazon was not giving away, but selling virtual tours of famous places around the world. I remember that it was like for $99 you would get for 2 hours an individual to strap on basically a GoPro on their chest and walk around as you in Turkey, in Rome. And you could actually buy things because they could hold it up and your Amazon account would actually buy it and then they could ship it to you. I mean, it was amazing.

Sandee:

That is cool.

Richard:

And they discontinued it sometime last year. But I was like, I gave them to my team. Like, here, you're all stuck at home. Go somewhere on me. Right? That was just a way cool experience that I thought about. And something else is my book. With print on demand. I do a custom, I met a young man at a trade show last year, and he had listened to my previous podcast, which ran for ten years. And when I walked up to him, I had never met him. I was introduced, and he screamed, oh my God, you're Richard Bliss. You changed my life.

Sandee:

Wow.

Richard:

Which was like, okay. But through a series of stories, he informed me that my podcast had been a transformational time in his life, and it transformed to where he was successful as a massive booth at the trade show. And he was giving me credit because of my podcast. Well, I went home and sent him a copy of my book, but because it's Print on Demand, I actually customized the dedication page. 

Sandee:

Oh, cool. 

Richard:

And wrote him a dedication page, not just to his name, but I wrote him basically a letter, sent him the book. I don't hear anything. I don't hear anything. I sent him a text. Hey, did you get the book? Yeah, thanks. Did you read the dedication page?

Sandee:

No.

Richard Bliss:

2 seconds later… OMG, no. He did not. But you bring up an excellent point in today's world of digital assets, print on demand. Right? The ability for you to customize it on digital assets. I'm going to ask this, How do you get paid? If you're suggesting is it because you were brought in as a consultant and it's part of your consulting offering because this brokering that you're doing, or are you brokering the digital assets as well?

Sandee:

I'm still selling a product. It's just a digital asset product instead of a physical product. So the process doesn't really change on my end. My job again is mostly as sales and getting the branding and making sure the correct branding goes on the product to the right people. I'm the one handling all the customer service on behalf of the suppliers. So that doesn't really change just because it's delivered digitally.

Richard:

Got it.

Sandee:

If anything, sometimes it's a little more work because I might not have physical addresses, but I've got to make sure every email address is right if it's going out that way and so on.

Richard:

Yeah. And we've had that challenge. You have to double check and double check again, spelling a simple mistake. Sandee, this has been awesome, an awesome conversation. I've just been very excited about having the chance to meet you and spend some time. I know this is going to be one of the longest episodes I've done. How did you get involved with “The Most Amazing Marketing Book Ever” project with Mark Schaefer? How did you get involved?

Sandee:

I took a kind of winding path. John Esperian of Espresso Plus on LinkedIn, in his group I'm in, started talking about Mark Schaefer was starting this group called Rise that was going to be studying Web three marketing and cutting edge. And I'm kind of a tech geek, so I'm like, cool, I'm going to get into that. And I bought my little bits of crypto in the beginning and I was in the community very early. And then I saw this thing that said, hey, we're going to try and write a book as a community. And I've always wanted to write a book anyway. I thought, well, that's a lower threshold. I only have to write one chapter. I could certainly do that. But there's a story behind why I'm actually in the book I wasn't supposed to be. When Mark put up the list of the different chapters he wanted written, promotional products was not one of them. And I had suggested it and he had said no. I had to make a very impassioned plea to Mark to say promotional products need to be part of an overall marketing plan because they have the longest durability of any marketing method you can use. And I sold him very passionately on my chapter and he said, OK, then you can write a chapter. So I almost wasn't in there.

Richard:

Oh, my. Well, and Mark's such a great guy, but you made a strong case. And it's not very often you get to school the master, so to speak, right? Like, no, Mark, this is really important. Well, I'm excited the chapters in there. And thank you again for joining me and being part of the podcast today.

Sandee:

It was a pleasure.

Richard Bliss:

You've been listening. To digital. First leadership. Podcast. My guest has been Sandee Rodriguez, who is a promotional oh, now I'm going to screw it up.

Sandee:

Promotional products distributor.

Richard:

Thank you. A promotional products distributor. I always learn something on every time I get a chance to talk to my guests. And today has been no exception. This has been a very exciting episode for me, as you've all been able to tell from my enthusiasm. I've had to back myself away from the mic a couple of times because I just got so excited. Take a listen. Go check out Sandee's material. Sandy, tell us again how they can find you.

Sandee:

The best way to find me is actually at my business advising website, which is www.Sandysolves.com. And that's Sandee. S-A-N-D-E-E a little different there. So Sandeesolves.com and that's the best way to find me.

Richard Bliss:

Perfect. And they can also probably look you up on LinkedIn under Sandee Rodriguez. And I know you've been listening. Take the opportunity to listen to the chapter, take an opportunity to get a copy of the book and check out Sandee's chapter. I'm in there too, but I don't really need to do some self promotional about that. It's all about the LinkedIn stuff. Thanks for listening. Take care.

You've been listening to Digital First Leadership, the podcast where you learn to leverage and build your expertise on digital platforms. For more valuable tips on mastering the language of social media, subscribe to our newsletter@blisspointconsult.com. If you'd like to stay in touch, feel free to add Richard on LinkedIn and join the conversation.