Carla Ejaz WINs, WINs, WINs, no matter what!

This is the first interview in our EY Entrepreneur of the Year series.

We're beginning with regional finalists in our local area - Michigan/Ohio.

And it's an incredible story of triumph, resilience and innovation. 

I'm fortunate enough to have Carla Ejaz (and in subsequent interviews, both of her business partners) featured on WIN this week.   

I'm very excited for them to all see how three versions of the stories differ -each partner agreed to chat with me separately, without coordinating stories. The three partners have different roles and responsibilities at their business, I expect they'll all have a different viewpoint on the challenges and opportunities they're working on.

Carla and her partners acquired Lasting Impressions Promotional Marketing in 2017. 

The business was founded in 1976.  The story begins with Farrah Fawcett and it's not ending anytime soon.  In this interview we touch on the dynamics of a family business, the importance of "staying in your lane", fast pivots, high growth, being prepared for emergencies, and the importance of fostering a powerful culture and great relationships with your competitors.  

Whether you're just starting your entrepreneur journey or nearing the end, you'll be as enamored with this success story as I was.  I don't even want to outline what we're talking about, because the story is truly the things they make movies out of.

Without further adieu, let's get into it. 

Hosted by Carrie Richardson, partner at Richardson & Richardson Consulting

Carrie Richardson and Ian Richardson host the WIN Podcast - What's Important Now?

Serial entrepreneurs, life partners and business partners, they have successfully exited from multiple businesses (IT, call center, real estate, marketing) and they help other business owners create their own versions of success.

Ian is certified in Eagle Center For Leadership Making A Difference, Paterson StratOp, and LifePlan.

Carrie has helped create and execute successful outbound sales strategies for over 1200 technology-focused businesses including MSPs, manufacturers, distributors and SaaS firms.

Learn more at www.foxcrowgroup.com

Book time with Carrie here!

Be a guest on WIN! We host successful entrepreneurs who share advice with other entrepreneurs on how to build, grow or sell a business using examples from their own experience.

Transcript

Carla Ejaz WINs WINs WIns, No Matter What!

Carla Ejaz
Lasting Impressions
Call:  (734) 641-2800


Good afternoon everybody. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Carrie Richardson and I am the host of WIN. What's Important Now and with me today is Carla Ejaz, and Carla is one of the co-founders of lasting impressions, promotional marketing, lasting impressions has a pretty amazing story and I can't wait to share it with you.

So thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate you, Carla, and I'm super excited because I get to interview all three founders for WIN this week. And the most exciting thing I think we can talk about that we're gonna talk about with one of your other co-founders is your ey.

Entrepreneur of the Year nomination. So let's get right into it. Lasting Impressions was founded in 1976 by Mark Dro and you purchased the company in 2017. Tell me a little bit about how that came about. Why did you choose this firm? 

Absolutely. So this is actually a company that was founded by my father, and so we've been around this business.

Growing up. From, the time I could walk, I was down at the facility doing every job that you can imagine. Myself, along with my sister, Angela, we actually have two other siblings as well. We've been down there and we've done every job. We've worked in production, we've just filed catalogs, we've organized, we've.

Worked in the office setting. It was only natural that after we graduated college that we got involved in the business. So we've again, all worked there essentially our whole lives. And when my dad was getting ready to slow down, he was looking to sell the company. He came to us first and we decided that we did wanna purchase it.

So in 2017, Angela, myself, along with a third partner, we purchased the company from 

him. And tell us a little bit about lasting impressions. I understand that the first items that were created by your father were sports uniforms, Charlie's Ansel t-shirts and Farrah Faucet materials. Tell me about how that happened.

Yeah. Yeah. So I know it's a really cool story. He he actually dropped outta college two years in and decided that he wanted to open up a sports shop. So he started in Melvindale, Michigan. He was in a ice arena. He started sharpening skates and then transferring numbers and things on Jersey. Numbers on the back, names on the back of Jersey and his claim to fame.

What really got him on the map was that that iconic bear faucet photo of her in the swimsuit with her head tilted back. So he that was a huge photo around that time and he was like, Hey, I'm gonna put this on a shirt in, sell this. And that's what he did. And he sold an insane amount of shirts.

I can't tell you the exact number, but it was enough for him to take his business to that next step. So throughout the years he, moved away from that sportswear stuff and he. Got into the promotional product side of things where he started selling to larger corporations, and that's how it turned into the business that we're in Now, we're a part of the ASI and the P A I industry, and we sell mainly to corporations, but we do everything.

So we have a whole team of sales reps we sell to. We sell to the restaurant down the street, and we also sell to the Fortune 500 companies, and we do a lot of online stores as well. So again we, don't focus on one industry specifically. We have our hand in everything. 

There's so many interesting things to talk about.

So I'm actually super stoked that I get to speak to all three of you because I don't think we could cover all of the highs and lows of the things that have happened to you in the last five years just in a 20 minute podcast. But let's, first talk about the good things. I love to talk about opportunity, and you had mentioned that it looks like this is going to be at the highest growth year that you've ever had.

Yeah we're hoping that we will be able to hit that goal. Our highest growth year was actually through Covid as everybody knows, 2020, everything just. Stopped, and that was the same for us. We are a very event driven business, so we are providing a lot of promotional items for golf outings, for large events, for trade shows, all of that for office supplies.

While people aren't going into the office, people are canceling their events. So whenever Covid happened, it was an immediate stop to our business. It was just like canceled order, and nothing coming in. So we really had to think fast and we said, okay We're gonna do everything that we can to keep this business afloat, to keep our employees working.

We have we had a 50,000 square foot facility. We have tons of production staff down there. We just have to do what we can to keep this going. So what we ended up doing is we got into the PPE game. We started supplying masks, we started supplying downs. We ended up purchasing large totes of hand sanitizer.

Brought 'em into our warehouse facility. We were trying to figure out how to bottle this stuff, how to label this stuff. We were flying by the seat of our pants. We there was a plastic shortage at one point, so we were putting we were putting liquid sanitizer into. Squeeze bottles that really weren't supposed to contain anything that was liquid, but it's all we could get our hands on.

And we thought it's better than nothing. So we just, again, we were just trying to roll with the punches and just failure's not an option. Whenever you're an entrepreneur, you know that we were talking earlier, you gotta do what you have to do to survive. And that's what we were doing. 

I love hearing about the companies that thrived through the pandemic.

Unfortunately, mine wasn't one of those businesses, but I did get to restart in an interesting way. So it wasn't the end for me. And I know a lot of people in, I, my business was in Las Vegas then, so I know a lot of the people that probably had to stop buying. Your promotional items? Yeah, because all of the casinos closed down.

All of the trade shows that were held at the casinos closed down, and we had a lot of people in our entrepreneur's organization where their business just stopped overnight. We had a company that supplied sundries, for example, to all the hotels on the Las Vegas strip. And overnight, yeah, their business was gone and they didn't recover, and it was really tragic.

So I'm always excited to hear when people do, but you did not escape. Your fair share of tragedy. So tell me about the biggest obstacle that you've had to overcome in the last few years. 

Yeah we finally got everything back to normal after Covid. There's was the, inventory shortage has been a huge issue in our industry, just like it has been for everyone else.

We're finally on the upswing of that. We're able to provide these items for people. Inventory is looking great. Everything was going well and then, In March of 2022, we experienced a fire at our facility. So as I mentioned earlier, we had a 50,000 square foot facility. We were located in in Melvindale, Michigan.

And we experienced a fire there. The building was completely burned to the ground, so we had production screen printing embroidery. We do banners in-house. We did custom tagging, drinkware, all of that completely gone, all our inventory, everything. So thankfully we were able to save our server.

So we, with that server, we were able to be back up and running within just 14 hours of the fire happening. It's been a whirlwind of a year. We were able to find a new facility. So we're now located in Canton, Michigan. We've been renovating that facility since we purchased it in it was, it's been about since November, December that we were able to be in that facility, started renovating it.

It's 55,000 I'm sorry, 55,000 square foot. And we are gonna be moving in there in actually about a week or two. So we're really excited to have. Our production back, everything up and running. Right now our goal was to keep our employees working as much as we could. We have some employees that are working at a competitors of ours where we have an understanding with them.

They said, Hey, we'll keep your employees working. Send all that work our way and then whenever you guys are back on your feet you can take them back so that we're so thankful to our community. The, outreach was incredible. We were able to have our employees use one of our other competitors embroidery machines for a few months until we were able to get some new, machines over here.

We had another competitor that let us rent some space from them. So when we did get our new embroidery machines in, We brought those into his facility, we rented that space. We were able to keep those employees working. We have other employees that are just down at our new building right now, painting and helping make production tables and just really doing anything that they can, they're putting backsplash up.

They're helping with the kitchen, just. Whatever we could do to keep everyone working. That's our goal. And we have a really great team, so everyone's been really willing to just jump in and work at a temporary location and help us paint and do whatever that they can to help us out as well. So it, it's really a family.

Tell me a little bit about how you built that culture, because that is not common. So not only did you build phenomenal relationships with your competitors to the point where instead of celebrating your loss, they pitched in and said, how can we help you? And your employees did the exact same thing. So tell me a little bit about the evolution of the growth of your business.

I know that you said you scale from 25 to 75 employees annually in. Seasonally, which to me was I couldn't imagine trying to add 50 employees every year and then trying to slowly move them out every year and then have them come back. So tell me about your, HR processes, your culture.

Yeah. Yeah. So in terms of that family culture, you know what, that's what's most important to us and we expect to give that same back to our employees and to our clients. We wanna treat our employees like their family. We treat our clients like our family. That's why I. I think a lot of the employees like working with us and for us, and why a lot of our clients like working with us because we try to create that atmosphere.

Family's the most important thing to, to us, and I think it should be to most people. So if someone says, Hey, they have something coming up that they need to be home for, or. Someone just had a baby or someone has something going on in their lives we wanna make sure that we are supporting them in that just as we would expect support from each other.

So we really do try to create that culture and I think that's really helpful. And, we do that again with. With our competitors, we'll always lend a helping hand to them and then them to us as well. We've been around since 1976, as you mentioned earlier, so we've had a lot of years to build up.

Great. Vendor relations. Great, client relations and great relations with our competitors 

as well. I have a, question about the transition time. So you purchased the business from your father. Did you always see eye to eye with your father on how the business should be run and what needed to change through the acquisition?

Like where were there any tension points? Like I, I run a f, ran a family business as well and our first strategic facilitation. Everybody left in tears and I wouldn't even get into the car with my mother. I hated her so much. The end of it. Oh, and we have a great relationship, but at the first, like after that first, like everybody putting it on the table.

Everybody was so raw and, angry and weird. Tell me about how you managed. Transitioning. Your dad from you, you mentioned he's still in sales, so how does he watch you run the business and is he able to back up or are there points of conflict from time to time? 

I would say for the most part he's really great at that.

He does understand that. Things are going to change with, new ownership. And I, he likes the changes that we're making. I think that sometimes it is hard to watch someone maybe make a decision that you wouldn't make, but he's really great. We ask for his opinion whenever we need it and he'll offer his, sage advice and whether we take it or not, at least he knows that we are reaching out.

We do really very much value his opinion and. He, built a business he built a business on his own. So from 76 to 2017, it was just him. Things are a lot different because now we're a whole team and I mentioned earlier that there are three owners, but really we're an executive team of five and no decision gets made without the five of us.

And we each have our places in, the company. So we each have our primary focus and we have our areas of where we're gonna help grow the business. So I think that has, been a a, great attri attribute for what's allowed us to grow so much. Over the course of these past five to six years because we're, again, we're a team of five, not one.

We're able to each take those parts and expand in, those areas in terms of arguing or anything like that, that it. Something that we've grown up around our whole lives, and that's something that we've always said from the very beginning. Whatever happens at work that stays at work, we're not bringing that, we're not bringing that home in the evenings.

We're not bringing that home on the weekends. We are a big, loud Italian family. We're together all the time and we would never, you, we just can't let that get in the way. To answer that question, no, there's never any fighting. We again, we all have our areas and we respect each other in and out of the workplace.

And are you able to gently tell someone when they're coming into your lane? Is there like a secret code or do you follow a specific strategic plan where there's I know like we're, a Strat op shop and there's other companies that are e o s shops. Do you subscribe to any particular strategic planning methodology?

Yeah, you know what? I wouldn't say we've subscribed to anything in particular, but we are very transparent and I think that's just what is the most important thing. So if you are not agreeing with what someone is saying, or you do feel like someone's coming in your lane, just making sure that you express that you don't let that fester and you come to a decision together.

And what, is your lane? So I'm business development. I know we were talking previously before we started recording, but we so in 2017 when we purchased the we purchased the company and then in 2019 we purchased a supplier within our industry that allowed us to do in-house decorating. So now we do in-house.

Screen printing embroidery, direct to garment. We do drink wear in-house. We do custom tagging, warehouse fulfillment, all of that. So since we have that all in-house, we were able to fill a void in our industry. So a lot of people in a lot of clients were coming to us looking for an option for on-demand purchase in just single pieces with little to, to no upfront inventory.

Have anybody brought in. For their brand and merchandise. So now that we do all of that in our facility, we were able to fill that gap that was missing in our industry. So we do a lot of that through company stores and that's what I manage. 

Okay. And you had mentioned that you had two opportunities that you were pursuing this year.

One was going to be organic growth and the other was growth through acquisition. So tell me a little bit about how you are dividing, like where is the, focus and priority gonna be? Or will somebody else work on acquisition while you focus on the organic growth? 

Sure. So the organic growth, we always wanna grow organically every year.

That is never going to be a changing goal. That is a consistent goal for us every single year. And we have a team inside that makes sure that we are hitting those milestones with the sales with our sales team and beyond. And then, Yes, through acquisition. That's always been a goal of ours and actually something that we were actively pursuing before the fire took place that did have to go on pause until we are up and running.

And now that we are going to be in our facility. It's been a crazy, it's been a crazy year. But now that we've gone a facility we've renovated, we're gonna be moved in within the next week or two. We're gonna go ahead and get back to focusing on acquisitions. So hopefully acquiring another business within our industry.

So putting on our future site goggles, you already mentioned what your revenue number was right now. Where do you see yourself five years from now and how are you gonna get there? 

Yeah, absolutely. See ourselves again, continuously hitting that, at the very least 10% growth annually. That's, always been our goal.

And, we've succeeded that in some years, which is just icing on the cake. But to be able to in five years, hopefully at that point, acquired one, if not maybe two companies within our industry would be amazing. And to continue growing our, inside team as well continue growing with our, sales staff, and to continue growing with our inside support staff and that production as well.

I think you guys have a phenomenal story, and I think we can stop right there since we're gonna have the opportunity to speak with both Angela and Jeff today. And then for those of you who are listening to Win today, you're going to get to hear two different versions, two more versions of the Lasting Impressions story.

So I wanna wish you a whole lot of luck on your EY nomination this year. Thank you, and I'm super excited to hear how your, since they won't be able to hear your interview before they give theirs, I'm really excited to stack all three of them together and then allow all of you guys to listen to how you presented.

Yes. The, same sort of. Story cuz I'm sure everyone's gonna have just a tiny little bit of a different viewpoint. So for me it's been super exciting talking to you and I wanna thank you for your time. Do you wanna let our listeners know how they could reach you if they're in the market for some of the things that lasting impressions does?

Yes, absolutely. So a few different ways that you can reach us most commonly through our website, which is www.li team.com. You can reach us through there. We have a live chat. You can fill out a a contact us form. You can also call in (734) 641-2800. You can ask to speak to myself or anyone on the sales team and they would connect you.

That's wonderful and that'll all be in the show notes. So no need to grab a pen and write it down. It'll be there for you. And we'll link right through to the website in the show notes. And this should be live within a couple of days. So thank you again. It's a pleasure having you on Win and for everybody else out there, keep winning.

Thank you.