Scott Robbins – get off your butt and do it

NOTES

Scott Robbins on LinkedIn

Aspen Press

SUMMARY

Scott Robbins has been in the printing industry since 1989, working his way up from production to management and sales before founding Aspen Press in 2002. Over the past 21 years, Aspen Press has grown into one of the largest printers in Utah, operating 24/7 with over 100 employees out of a 100,000-square-foot facility.

Scott shares how he started working odd jobs like selling donuts and mowing lawns from a very young age out of necessity, as he came from a family without much means. His motivation was to earn extra money for basic needs and a few small luxuries. This drive to work hard has stuck with Scott his whole life – he credits always having a smile and eagerness to take on any task, no matter how small, with his success in moving up into sales and management roles before going out on his own.

The journey to launching Aspen Press includes a chance meeting with an investor who, impressed by Scott’s nonstop hustle, invested in his business plan on the condition that Scott has “skin in the game” himself. From humble beginnings with used equipment and a small team in a rented building, Scott has steadily grown Aspen by focusing on larger, more profitable print jobs and expanding into new capabilities like carton packaging and flexible packaging for food and supplements.

Scott shares insights into the printing process at scale using massive Heidelberg presses, the importance of color consistency and print certifications, and the talents of his team in getting great results for customers. After functioning as CEO for the first 20 years, Scott recently handed over the reins to a trusted partner so he could get back out in the field meeting with customers and having a bit more life/work balance.

Overall, Scott’s infectious energy and love for what he does comes across loud and clear even 20+ years in. For those looking to advance in their careers, he advises them to always have a positive attitude, take initiative in solving problems, and not be afraid of hard work. Aspen Press is sure to continue thriving with Scott at the helm.

Scott’s Recommendations:

• Get experience in different roles to find your strengths and passions
• Build relationships and trust with co-workers, partners, and customers
• Don’t be afraid to take risks and have “skin in the game” with your own projects
• Focus on quality over quantity in your work outputs
• Never stop learning – be a sponge absorbing knowledge from those with experience
• Find work you actually enjoy doing – it won’t feel like work

Kyle Knowles:
Hello there. Welcome to the Maker Manager Money podcast, a podcast about entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, founders, business owners, and business partnerships, from startups to stay ups, to inspire entrepreneurs to keep going, and future entrepreneurs, to just start. My name is Kyle Knowles, and it’s Wednesday evening at Kiln, Lehi. Kiln is the GOAT. They are the Michael Jordan of coworking communities. We’re actually in the maker room, if you can believe it. So tie that into Maker Manager Money. Today’s guest is Scott Robbins, founder of Aspen Press. Scott has been in the printing industry since 1989. He spent his first eight years in production, then moved into management and sales positions before founding Aspen Press in 2002.
Aspen Press first started doing commercial printing, dove into carton packaging, and recently added flexible packaging to its list of capabilities. Aspen Press and Packaging is a G7, FSC/SFI and GMP certified commercial printing and packaging company occupying a 100,000 square foot building in Salt Lake City, Utah. They are a two-time winner of Utah’s best of state, and have been ranked nationwide since 2013 among the top 400 printers in Printing Impression Magazine. Welcome to the Maker Manager Money Podcast, Scott.

Scott Robbins:
Thank you, sir. Kyle,

Kyle Knowles:
Did I get that right?

Scott Robbins:
That sounds good. It sounds embarrassing for me, but yeah, that sounds about right.

Kyle Knowles:
Well, why does it sound embarrassing?

Scott Robbins:
Yeah, it’s just the background that I come from. It doesn’t sit well with me to throw out all that stuff. I just like to play … kind of fly under the radar, but that is what it is.

Kyle Knowles:
Well, it’s an amazing and impressive run. I mentioned stay-ups, and you definitely have been a stay-up company, right?

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
It wasn’t something that you just founded and then, sold off quickly. So 2002, you’re celebrating your … if I’m doing the math right, you’ve celebrated your 21st year anniversary this year. It’ll be 22 next year.

Scott Robbins:
Yes. Yeah, we made it. I have some great partners. We’ve had some that have come and gone, but the core group of people there that, I guess … again, I don’t like to talk like this, but that I’ve assembled and they’ve been there from within weeks or months of me starting things. So without me, without them together working, we wouldn’t be where we’re at. So I’ll give them many accolades for sure.

Kyle Knowles:
Well, it’s really impressive because I’ve heard that 80% of businesses go out of business within the first five years.

Scott Robbins:
I heard that.

Kyle Knowles:
And then the next five years after that, another 80% go out of business. So I don’t know what the percentage is for a company being in business over 20 years, but it’s very, very small.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah, true. Now, when I started, it was interesting because a lot of printers that … I was actually a broker for a while before I started Aspen Press, and a lot of the printers that I worked for tried to work with back in the day are gone, long gone. These were the same guys that said, “Hey, keep buying good equipment because as soon as you go out of business, then I’m going to buy it, cheap.” Okay, all right. Let’s see how that works for you. Here we are 21 years later, and I think a lot of the guys that have done that are now realtors and other different … and nothing wrong with that, just they’ve gone different directions, I guess is what I’m trying to say. Completely out of the print industry.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah. So in Utah, just let’s talk about Utah. You’re one of the biggest printers, I assume, in Utah.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
How many big printing companies like yours are there just in the state of Utah?

Scott Robbins:
I thought about that, just kind of thinking about what to talk about in this meeting. Gosh, there’s not a lot. There’s a couple of people that are bigger than me. I mean, 100,000 square feet, 120 employees. It’s a decent sized printing company at this point. We run 24 hours a day, try to take Sundays off as much as we can, and sometimes we’re playing catch up, but for the most part it’s six days a week. Yeah, and we bang a lot of work out.

Kyle Knowles:
It sounds like it, I want to get to some of the fun projects that you’ve started working on recently, but let’s just talk about those first 13 years, your journey that culminated in starting your own printing company, and we can even go further back, right? Let’s just talk about your childhood.

Scott Robbins:
Let’s do, let’s get there. Please.

Kyle Knowles:
Lay down on the couch.

Scott Robbins:
That’s not embarrassing at all.

Kyle Knowles:
Let’s talk about your mom and dad as well. Now, when you were younger, did you have any kind of entrepreneurial spirit? Did you have a lemonade stand? Anything like that?

Scott Robbins:
So for me, that was … I had to do that from a family with not a lot of means, if you will. So for me to have a lot of a second pair of Levi’s or a different pair of shoes, I would do little side jobs, very young. I sold Tasty Donuts downtown Salt Lake, which is the first and last time I ever got mugged. That was kind of fun as about 11-year-old. I went and bought a curb painting kit so I could walk around and knock on doors and say, “Hey, do you want your house numbers painted on your curb?” I think I charged three bucks. I would go around constantly to ask if people needed a lawn mowed or in the winter if they needed their driveway plowed or in the springtime if they wanted their gardens rototilled.
And I’d go around and do all that stuff. I had a funny story. I did some yard work for … at the time, he was the president of Zions Bank, and I don’t want to name drop, but I just did yard work, cleaned their stables. I had to mow, and it wasn’t right the first time, so I got told to do it the other way. So it had a nice little pattern to it, and I worked eight hours that day. When I was ready to leave, they said, “Okay, well, here’s your $8.” I’m like, “Excuse me, $8 for eight hours of work.” And that was hard work. She goes, “Well, what do you normally get paid?” And I said, well, “$3 an hour.”
“All right, well, here’s $24, but we’re probably not going to call you back.” Okay. So that was a fun story, but yeah, to go along … I mean, that’s just what I did. I always tried to find something to do. I mean, I worked for the school district and clean bathrooms and out of elementary school for a while, and I worked at Lagoon for four years. Loved it. I worked in the arcade for three of those. Back in the day, that was amazing. So I had a lot of friends come in and I’d open the thing with the key and flap a few credits on it, and I was a good friend back then, a good friend to have.

Kyle Knowles:
I bet you had a lot of friends.

Scott Robbins:
I did. Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
So let’s go back to getting mugged, because I’m very interested in this. Were you working for Tasty Donuts or would you go buy donuts and then just go resell them?

Scott Robbins:
I would actually get in the van with … I can’t remember his name, but he owned Tasty Donut. He would have probably a dozen of us, a baker’s dozen. He would have a bunch of us in the van, and we would have a cart or little basket filled with a half dozen bags, and we would go out and knock on doors at businesses, and I think I was down by Ninth South and Fifth West in that area. And there was a tire store there, and I had just gone in there and sold a few bags. Then, I was walking down a back street to another place, and two guys came up to me with their knives and took my money and took two bags of donuts.
And then, I got in trouble by the owner of Tasty’s because he thought I’d stole the money. I’m like, “Dude, check me. I don’t have it,” but there was a couple of the guys who were at the tire shop that went running after them, but they didn’t catch them, and I learned a lesson, don’t walk down an aisle away in Salt Lake.

Kyle Knowles:
How old were you at the time?

Scott Robbins:
I think I was about 11.

Kyle Knowles:
Just 11 years old.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
And how did you get this gig with Tasty Donuts then? Did he know your family or-

Scott Robbins:
I think it was word of mouth. We knew someone else that was delivering donuts, and so that’s how I got involved in that, just by hearing it on someone else. Then I said, “Hey, I can do that.” So, he brought me on and I did it.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s so cool.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
So how young were you when you started hustling, basically?

Scott Robbins:
Boy, mowing yards as soon as I could. So young, I would say-

Kyle Knowles:
Seven or eight years old?

Scott Robbins:
Yeah, yeah, probably maybe nine.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay.

Scott Robbins:
And at the time, we had a push mower that had the blades that rotated.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah.

Scott Robbins:
And so I would go around and ask people, “Hey, do you have a lawnmower?” Can I mow your lawn? Because it was much easier that way. Yeah, just little odds and ends, things like that, which it’s always been in my blood.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay, and your motivation was so that you could have things, you could have extra things?

Scott Robbins:
It was have anything in order to have a pair of pants, because I had a pair of five oh ones, and this allowed me to have two pairs, and I’d wear them for a day or two, wash them and wear the other ones for a day or two and wash them. It was tough start for sure.

Kyle Knowles:
So you were basically charging almost minimum wage? I don’t know what minimum wage was back when we were that age.

Scott Robbins:
Probably $3.25 or something. Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
$3.25 an hour or something like that.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
And then did you gradually progress then? What was Lagoon paying, for example, in your teenage years?

Scott Robbins:
That’s a good question. I don’t know. It was minimum wage.

Kyle Knowles:
It was minimum wage.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay. You never got tips or anything?

Scott Robbins:
No, No. Well, playing games.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah. You got tipped by playing games.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Nice.

Scott Robbins:
We could come in early, actually and play games for ourselves for an hour, so that was super fun.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s awesome. So were you tracking … how did you track your money? Was it just all cash or did you have a bank account? How did you kind of manage, right? You’re making obviously, and you’re doing these services, but how did you manage your money?

Scott Robbins:
Yeah, I would put it into the local bank. At the time, it was Barnes Bank where I grew up, and I just made sure I always had money in there and I was funny talking to my daughter last night about that, and she’s like, “Man, I got to start working.” I said, “This is your last year. You’re a senior this year. Just put that out of your mind. We’ll take care of it.” She goes, “Yeah, but I’m getting down low on my bank account.” I’m like, “Well, what do you have? Do you have enough to get gas and stuff? She goes, well, I got about $1,000 in there. I’m like, “What are you talking about? You’re getting low.” She’s like, “Yeah, I start getting weird if I get below that amount, because I know that that’s my safety.”
Okay, that’s a good thought. So we’ll get you some stuff to do around the house so that you can put some more money in your account, and if that’s your bottom line, that’s where you need it to be, is above that, hey, more power to you. It was different when I was a kid. I think I hope to have 100 bucks in there.

Kyle Knowles:
That was a lot of money. When you had $100 in there.

Scott Robbins:
It was.

Kyle Knowles:
Did you have a baseline that you were like, it’s getting low, I’ve got to … Yeah, I had to be-

Scott Robbins:
For me, it’s $100.

Kyle Knowles:
$100.

Scott Robbins:
I needed to have that in there, and I could go to the Handy Bank and pull out 20 bucks if I needed it. 20 bucks went a long ways back then.

Kyle Knowles:
Yes, it did. So with inflation, $1000 is the new baseline for-

Scott Robbins:
For 100.

Kyle Knowles:
For the next generation, right?

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Nice. So you’re working and then, kind of talk about your progression. You’re in high school, you’re still working, you’re working summers, I guess, at Lagoon. Did you work during school as well?

Scott Robbins:
During school, I would clean the elementary school. So that was after high school. I would go up to, I think it was EG King Elementary School, and I think I got eight bucks an hour doing that job, and I’d work three hours every night, Monday through Friday, cleaning the classrooms, the bathrooms, the halls. It was a good experience. I say that because it taught me that everything you do can pay money. I mean, I clean bathrooms and I don’t mind doing that. I do that now where I’m at. I mean, sure, I’m the founder of the company, but that doesn’t mean I sit in my office and do nothing else. That means everything falls on me.
At least that’s how I look at it. I prefer to have a nice place for the customers to come, and so if their bathroom is dirty, I clean it. I also think that that sets an example for everyone else. So it kind of carries through. I think we’ve got some really good people that work with us at Aspen. Really good, very low turnover. We treat them well and we’ll always continue to do that.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s a really cool story. So I know you played sports.

Scott Robbins:
I did.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah. So how did you manage sports and your job and school? How did you manage all those three things?

Scott Robbins:
Well, sports, generally, I had, what, seventh or eighth period, whatever it was, was sports or track and stuff. Now, I did have other evenings where I’d have track, and it always seemed to work out between cleaning elementary and going to track meets or running, trying to … I think I joined track though, for just the reason of being able to get out of school for a minute and go and lay out on the high pit mats and get a tan and hang out with some buddies, and that was fun, the good old days, right? And then, I did okay in track. I didn’t focus like I should. Now, Kurt Black, the funny thing with him, you had him on before. He’s a runner and has always been a runner that I know of.
Interesting, when I should be out running, I was in my car going to the mall, I’m like, “Hey, look, there goes Kurt, running.” So he worked hard to get to where he is. And I’m not saying he’s not gifted, he’s very gifted, but he also took a lot of effort to get there for him. I saw it, yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah, he worked really hard and just long distance running in general. It’s like you have to put the miles in, right?

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah. That’s the only way to get good at it.

Scott Robbins:
It is. Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay. So you graduate high school. What’s the next step? What’s the next evolution of Scott?

Scott Robbins:
So the next thing I did, I served a church mission, and I think what I learned on that is how to knock on doors and talk to people. Didn’t matter who it was, didn’t matter to me. It was hard at first. Sure, but then it turned into … it was actually fun getting to know all the different people. It was just fun. I enjoyed it. The different members of all the different wards, it was an LDS mission, of course. For me, of course I say that, but a lot of people don’t know that. Anyways, church mission for two years helped me grow up, learned how to wake up and get going. My dad has always said … his phrase is, “Get off your butt and do it.”
So that’s what I’ve always done. He kind of called it GOYBADI, but to me, I don’t like that. It’s just get off your butt and do it. So that’s what I’ve done.

Kyle Knowles:
What is GOYBADI

Scott Robbins:
Get off your butt and do it? That’s it, literally. Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Nice. Okay, so you were very hardworking and industrious from a very young age.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay. And you go on a mission, I’m sure you might’ve had some companions that weren’t as hardworking as you.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah. That happens.

Kyle Knowles:
Would that be the majority of them? Because I’m just seeing you as this very hardworking individual.

Scott Robbins:
No, not necessarily. I mean, I felt like I was just getting into a groove back then and realized that I could always do more, and I enjoyed doing what I was doing at the time. So if you enjoy it and you make it a game, it goes quick and better, and I think you grow more. If you go and complain constantly, that doesn’t help anyone, especially yourself.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah, agreed. Okay, so you come back from your mission, and then this is where the journey begins, right? This is where the 13 years before founding Aspen happen.

Scott Robbins:
This is where the fun started.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah, let’s talk about that.

Scott Robbins:
Okay. So when I first got back, I started working at a pallet yard right there by side of the freeway in Kaysville, Utah. And I was repairing pallets and delivering pallets. Did that for a year and thought this is not going to happen at the time, and what I wanted to do was do that for a while and then go to college. So what I did is instead I had to get a job because I was getting married, and that’s another story altogether. Met my wife at the Bay, March 3rd. March 11th, we were engaged. July 7th, we were married and that was 30 something years ago now. Anyways, I act quick to what’s right, if you will.
I knew it. She knew it. Anyways, different story. Okay, so go back to pallet yard. Left that and found a job at a printing company as a driver. So I would deliver finished goods, and it was just a little place in Salt Lake City, and the boss saw that I worked hard. So I was a driver for maybe two months, and I was happy doing it. It was super chill. I mean, I’d load the truck up, I’d go drive. Listen to music, deliver the job, talk to the customers. Really enjoyed it. Well, I guess what happened was she found … again, I was working harder than she’s ever seen. So she said, “Hey, look, I want to teach you how to run a cutter,” which is a finishing product, a finishing machine for printing.
Did that for a while. Then she goes, “Nah, I want to have you over here. Let’s go learn the cutter or the folder. So that’s where you’d take a large sheet, like a 28 x 40 sheet of paper and fold it down to a signature form to make a magazine. Then, she says, “Well, let’s teach you how to do so pre-press.” I did pre-press for a while, and she says, “Well, I need a nighttime production manager.” I’m like, okay. So I was always, okay. I was always like, “Yes, I’ll do it,” always. So I did that for a while. Then I got back into the day shift in sales, and that for me was like a fish to water. I did well and started really enjoying that and making decent money.
Then some things happened at that place that it didn’t pan out. So I went to, at the time was a very premier printer in Salt Lake City, precision Litho, and that went well. I got into sales, actually first went there, I had mentioned I was a print broker a short time, and I went there and said, “Hey, look, I want to do some print brokering. Can I use you as a vendor?” And the owner, he knew me. I had done some evening work with him as a newlywed. I was working two jobs, so 12 hours at one, four hours at the other. Precision was that job where I was doing folding and cutting in the evenings. And he said, “Look, Scott, you’re a good sales rep. I’d rather you do that for me than have a print broker, a business.”
And it was Robin’s Print Management at the time. I said, “Okay, the problem is that I’m making good money.” And he goes, “Well, what do you need?” And at the time, I’m like, I don’t know, like 60 grand a year. He goes, done and I’ll … here’s your desk. Come here, start working, and then I’ll pay you 60 grand. And when you get above that in commissions, because I’d get 10% on the jobs back then the commission was starting to get good, and I’d start selling around $100,000 a month, but I was getting paid 60,000 a month. So it didn’t take long for me to go, okay, I’m ready to make the switch. So I made the switch and went straight commission.
And after the first year, I was among the top sales reps for that company and worked there for three years. Then, he kind of started monkeying with the commissions and he was getting ready to sell his company. So he was trying to keep it all on board so it would be more profitable. So the epitaph was he’d get a better multiple … all of the above. So I was complaining to one of my customers, and he’s like, “Why don’t you just start your own place?” I’m like, “Ron, I don’t have that kind of money.” I can’t do that. He goes, “I know a guy.” He says, “I’ll make a meeting. I’ll set up a meeting.” All right, so I met with Mark Peterson.
He the owner of Alpine Securities downtown Salt Lake, who’s previously he’s passed away … but he did very well with us. So I met with him, told him my ideas. He said, “Give me a business plan in 24 hours and I’ll consider it.” So burned the Midnight oil, put a business plan together. And coincidentally, I mean, that business model business plan was put together with another guy that I was selling with at Precision and also the CFO at Precision at the time. We met at the other sales guy’s house and put this all together. So it’s funny because now that CFO is still with me and he’s our CFO, but he bought in … not long, he’s one of the guys not long after I had started the company.

Kyle Knowles:
Did the other sales rep also join you?

Scott Robbins:
He did. He came on board too, and that didn’t pan out for just different reasons. So we bought him out, but he read the business plan. He liked it. So he said, “Okay, I can come into this. So what are you putting in?” And I’m like, “I hadn’t thought of that.” I said, “Well, I’ll get a second thought on my house.” I think I can borrow some money from my parents who at that time had some money, and I guess the rest is history. I came in with that and he said, “Hey, look, all I want to make sure is that you have skin in the game. If you have skin in the game, I know you’re going to work hard, because you can’t lose it.” You were correct.
So then that’s when the foot hit the path, and we started going forward, and first it was eight guys that were there, and we rented a 24,000 square foot building in Sandy, Utah and started bringing equipment in. We bought a press, used, everything you need for bindery, cutter, folder, stitcher, and pre-press, and then started producing. It wasn’t long before we had another press on the floor and more equipment for bindery, and we were leasing the other half of the building from the people that were in it. It kicked them out. Well, they were moving out, so we took it over. I didn’t kick them out. We took it over, and then we had continued growth at that point.
So we were actually, I feel like I’m talking too much. I’m sorry, but feel free-

Kyle Knowles:
This is great.

Scott Robbins:
Feel free to jump in.

Kyle Knowles:
I will.

Scott Robbins:
Okay. So we ended up in three buildings at one time, four buildings on another time in that same area. So we called it the Aspen Campus, and it was at that time still only like 55,000 square feet, but trying to move things from A to B to C to D building, it’s costly, it was timely. I mean, it cost us a lot of time. So we started looking around and we found 100,000 square feet down off 24 South in Salt Lake City and moved everything into that building. The efficiencies went through the roof. We bought a new press, put it in first. So now we have three Heidelberg presses. One of them is the XL 106, which is the latest and greatest Heidelberg press, XL 105, which it’s a UV press. It can also do conventional printing, conventional inks, and another CD press that does heavy board.
They all do heavy board, I should say. So we have the three presses, full bindery. Then, we were doing so much carton packaging for different customers that … we approached one of our vendors that we had been using to do the finishing side of that where they die, cut it, they fold it and glue it and asked that they would sell to us and we couldn’t get to a good price for us because half of the business that he had was our business. So he wanted us to basically buy his company for the work that we were sending there. So it didn’t make sense, but then, I got to tell you, so this is true for us, for our company. The stars aligned and it happened quite often over the 21 years. And another company went out of business and he sold his equipment to another company in town, and that company started to liquidate.
They only wanted a portion of the business. They wanted the digital side, which I don’t really do anymore. They wanted the digital side. So they had carton packaging equipment and they had presses, but what he told his broker that was selling the equipment, sell it to anyone except someone here in the valley in Salt Lake Valley. So we contacted our broker that we’ve bought stuff for before in North Carolina. He contacted another broker in Atlanta who made the offer for the equipment in Salt Lake. They accepted the offer. We sent a truck over, moved it down 30 minutes down south, and we started running our own packaging equipment at that time. That was fun. That was actually a lot of fun.

Kyle Knowles:
So you were able to get it anyway, just you had a broker in Atlanta, broker of the deal.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah. Nice.

Scott Robbins:
So we got the equipment.

Kyle Knowles:
So you’ve compressed 21 years and maybe even the 13 years into just seconds, basically. I want to go back. So when you meet your wife at the Bay, are you driving a truck or are you a salesperson at that point?

Scott Robbins:
At that time, I was working at the pallet yard.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay. So that was just the early days.

Scott Robbins:
It was.

Kyle Knowles:
She knew you when you were basically putting pallets together. Yeah, fixing pallets.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay. So you meet her. I’ve got to have this … I got to get the story out because I thought my marriage was fast, but yours was even faster. So let’s start with you meet her at the Bay. What happens?

Scott Robbins:
All right.

Kyle Knowles:
Love at first sight, something, right?

Scott Robbins:
It was fun. I was going to the Bay after the mission, enjoyed it. It was fun. I just liked to go let my hair down. We’d go down into the new age room and listen to Depeche Mode and Oingo Boingo and a lot of older stuff, right? And I looked out on the dance floor and I saw this girl out there dancing. She had her little black pants on, little white shirt, little V-neck with some red suspenders, a little black hat, blonde hair as can be. And I’m just looking at her, I’m like she’s dancing with a friend of hers. I’m like, “Oh, come on man. Get over here. I would like to ask you to dance.” And she’d never come off the floor. So I went upstairs and got a napkin from the bartender and wrote on it, will you dance with me?
I went down there and she glanced over and I just held it up and she comes over B-buffing, and she’s like, “Yeah, come on.” So we started dancing. Had a super time. That was a lot of fun. I said, “Well, what are you doing now? It’s midnight.” She goes, “Going home.” I’m like, “Well, why don’t we go over to Dee’s and get something to eat?” And so we go over with her friend and my friend and sit down and have some fries and a coke or something and I mean, I’m a big spender at the time, so I said, “Hey, don’t worry, I got this.” So that kind of … she’s like, that was me making 10 bucks an hour or whatever it was at the pallet yard.

Kyle Knowles:
Right.

Scott Robbins:
Wondering how I’m going to pay for this, but I had a little bit of money saved up, so I paid for dinner, and after that it was … I hadn’t met her parents. They were off in California doing a construction job. I’m like, “Well, what are you doing tomorrow?” “Well, I think I have a date with my boyfriend.” I’m like, “Okay. No, no, no. We broke up. So my ex-boyfriend.” I’m like, “Okay, that’s cool.” So we saw each other pretty much every day that week. Geez, I’m going to say this, it’s embarrassing but I said, “Hey, look, I’m doing my family history. Do you mind if I put your name here on the second line?” And she’s like, “Wait, what?” I said, “Will you marry me?” And she said, “Yeah, I will.” Still hadn’t met her parents, which they’re gone now, so I can say it. That’s a good thing. I had not met them. I’m joking. I’m joking. I’m joking.

Kyle Knowles:
They would’ve said no. Is that what you mean?

Scott Robbins:
No, that’s not what I mean. I mean, now I got to know them. I’m like, okay, but she was nothing like them. Sorry honey, she’s going to be pissed. She was nothing like her parents, but sweet, sweet girl, and we’ve had nothing but fun for so long. So 34 years. Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
So amazing. So you asked her within a week, and then you got married how long after you asked her?

Scott Robbins:
July 7th. So March 11th to July 7th. Three months-ish.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah.

Scott Robbins:
It was funny, because she called her parents and said, “Oh, hey, so I’m engaged.” And they go, “Oh, wait, wait, that’s great. Way to go.” So is it Brad? I don’t know what the guy’s name. Is it so and so?

Kyle Knowles:
Her ex-boyfriend.

Scott Robbins:
And she goes, “No, it’s a guy I met at the Bay.” And our mom’s like, “Okay, I’m coming home tomorrow.” And her dad is, “Put him on the phone.” So I’m like, “Hello, this is Scott.” And we spoke for a little bit and he said, “Well, let me talk to Kirsten.” So she got back on the phone and he’s like, I knew right then. He says, he’s a good guy, so you’re good. This is great, so we did it. Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s such an awesome story. She’s just been with you by your side this whole journey.

Scott Robbins:
She has.

Kyle Knowles:
The whole journey. Basically your whole adult life, founding a company and watching Aspen Press grow over the years.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah. Sometimes she questions, “Are you insane? What are you doing?” We keep putting more and more into this to keep it growing. We don’t take a ton of money out. We leave it in the company, because we want the company to grow, and someday it’ll be worth something to us or the kids or whatever, but in the meantime, we’re … me and my partners were having fun continuing to grow and expand. The recent one was expanding into the flexible market. What I mean by that is if you go to Maverick and you buy a bag of beef jerky and you rip it open and then you can reseal it with the zip lock, that kind of stuff.

Kyle Knowles:
That flexible packaging.

Scott Robbins:
It is, yep. So I mentioned to you that it’s big jobs. So like I say, we got away from doing digital work because we’re more focused on the same amount of effort upfront, but the bigger jobs are much better for the company. We had one flexible job that the film was a million feet. So if you do the math, I think it was 189 miles of film for one job. So it just goes to show you if you land one of those, the pay is good, the customer is happy, sales rep is happy, the customer. I mean, the company does well. Whereas the little jobs, I had someone call this week and said they need 500 letterhead, second sheets and envelopes. I’m like, “I’m so sorry, but we don’t do that anymore. We have 40-inch presses, so we just do large runs.”
So I’ll skip over those $100, $200 jobs and bring in an average of $5,000 job, 5,000 per job. So somewhere along that range, it makes more sense for our company to do that. There are a ton of people out there that can do the small runs. So I mean, even at one point we got into banners, doing signs, things like that. We bought a company and that was part of their resource that they had, that they produced. I’ll tell you, people could put those printers in their garage. So we were printing against people that just have a full-time job, and they did this as a hobbyist for a couple extra bucks. So we got out of that quickly. Didn’t make sense to stay in that market.

Kyle Knowles:
Your competitors didn’t have any overhead. So it was really just a price play and-

Scott Robbins:
Or employees for that matter.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah. Okay. Well, let’s go back to flexible packaging. How long have you been in flexible packaging? Is it called flexible packaging-

Scott Robbins:
It is, you got it right.

Kyle Knowles:
How long have you been in that?

Scott Robbins:
Two to three years. We’ve been doing it now.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay, and was it because someone came to you and said, I want to do this, or did you just decide to go into it? What made you decide to go into it?

Scott Robbins:
This is another time where the stars aligned, and I have people contact me daily about opportunities, multiple people on some days, and I had this guy reach out to me and say, “Hey, look, I know a lot about your company and I know what I’ve been in for the last 30 years is flexible.” So the cartons that you’re doing … so we do carton packaging. So why don’t you just do the carton as well as the film for the product that goes inside. If it’s a protein box and you have the protein bars, I’m like, well, yeah, that makes total sense because then, it’s a one-stop shop. People can come by. They can do the press check, look at the color on the box.
They can do the same thing and look at the color, make sure it matches, which we have tied those colors together so they all match. So they don’t have to print a box here than have to fly to Pennsylvania or somewhere else to do a press check on the film. There are a couple of people in town that do it, but they’re national companies and they have big national jobs. So for someone that’s trying to get started on something smaller, we’re a great resource. We don’t do digital flexible packaging. It is large. It’s a web that is what, 54 inches and roll to roll, so it’ll cook. It’ll eat through film. I wish I could show you some images, some video, but it’ll eat up a lot of film.
That’s the other thing, so when I met with this guy, he started trying to help us get … knocks some doors and talk to some people about doing that. So we would outsource it at that time. So if we had a job, we hired him. He came in. He was our flexible packaging manager, and he was helping my sales reps go out and kind of discuss this new opportunity with our customers. It worked out, so I don’t know, how do I say it? I mean, just trying to say it. The guy didn’t work out for us so well, but what he did was opened our eyes to the opportunity. So we continued along doing that, doing some brokering here and there, but then we just said, “All right it, let’s do it.”
So we bought the WebPress, a laminator, a slitter, two slitters actually now, and we have three pouching machines. So what that means is they have the films printed. Then we slice it so that it will go through the pouching machine, and that’s where it’s converted and that’s where the zip lock, if you will, is put on it and made into a bag.

Kyle Knowles:
Is it melted into it or-

Scott Robbins:
It is.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah, and then we send those to the co-packers that have ordered the job or the customer that’s ordered the job, and they’ll pack it. So that’s where our GMP certification came into effect. We have to have that.

Kyle Knowles:
What is GMP?

Scott Robbins:
Good manufacturing practice.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay.

Scott Robbins:
So it’s hair nets, it’s beard nets and everything that comes along with that. Meaning you have people come in and do inspections. It has to be clean. So we made a whole new clean room of 20,000 square feet to do the flexible side. So the film comes in, we print it, then we wrap it, and then we send it down to the co-packers. They fill it with product. I mean taffy or jerky or whatever, what have you. We do a ton of stick packs. And you know what those are, right? I mean, stick packs if I wanted to have a zip fizz, but not the hard thing, but it’s a leather … like a hydration pack.

Kyle Knowles:
Like you put in your water bottle.

Scott Robbins:
You put in your water. Yeah, exactly. That’s a stick pack.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay.

Scott Robbins:
So you can flavor your water and get whatever supplements they put into it. Lots, millions of stick packs, I guess we like those. I do.

Kyle Knowles:
So you are doing the bag that the actual material goes in?

Scott Robbins:
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay. So when that comes off, the press, you have … if it’s 54 inches, how many does that?

Scott Robbins:
It depends on the,

Kyle Knowles:
How many sticks does that make?

Scott Robbins:
Yeah, it depends on the size, because a lot of them are just a little bit different, but it’s 54 inches wide. So we’ll do multiple up and a lot of the people have a six count or a 12 count machine that will pack. So then that would mean we would send them the film in six or 12 per … that’s where the slitter is come into effect is we’ll split the film and give it to them how they want it and how their machine will run it. So like I say, we don’t do the packing ourselves. We don’t have to worry about the product. We don’t have to do all that fun stuff, unfortunately. That’s a whole new animal. We’re not doing that.

Kyle Knowles:
Are you going to eventually do it or no?

Scott Robbins:
No.

Kyle Knowles:
No.

Scott Robbins:
No, we’ll just stick with printing. Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay. So explain again … so your capabilities, you’ve got carton packaging, and that would just be boxes, like cardboard or-

Scott Robbins:
Not cardboard. Okay, there’s just a protein bar, let’s say built bar, I don’t know if I can drop names, but built bar or something like that, that you go to any store and you buy, it’s just like 24 point board up to-

Kyle Knowles:
It’s a little box that all the built bars are in-

Scott Robbins:
Yeah, and then, you’d have a little zipper on it. So you undo it and pop it open with a little perf and then pull your bar out whenever you want it, or a lot of times it’s in stores on the shelf and they sell them individually where I’ll just open the perf up and have a little pop-up, P-O-P, so that you’d kind of see what … yeah, little display on it.

Kyle Knowles:
So originally before you got into flexible, you were doing the carton packaging, and then those cartons were being delivered to somewhere else.

Scott Robbins:
To the same copackers that were doing the film. Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay. That were doing flexible packaging. Okay, and the reason why people would use you instead of doing, going to someone that did both at the time is because of cost or there weren’t people around in Utah doing that.

Scott Robbins:
So the co-packers don’t do any of the print themselves. All they worry about is the product that goes into the box or the bag.

Kyle Knowles:
So, they would just have two vendors then.

Scott Robbins:
They would. Yeah. They would. So a lot of times I’m just doing boxes back in the day for a special product. Then, we said, “Hey, we can now do the film. Do you want us to give you a price on that too? Heck yeah. You guys are great to work with.” So it wasn’t much to talk a lot of these people into giving us a shot. Then, we would give them a test roll. They would try it out and we would print one and say, “Okay, here you go. Try this out, and see how it works in your machine.” And what we found is the guys that we hired to run that department know more than a lot of the other people around, they’ve got some serious experience, and they would find that our film ran better than what they were using already.
So it wasn’t much of a sale. It was very easy. All we had to do is get in the door, get them a sample, product roll, and then we found here it comes. So we keep buying machines, trying to keep up.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay.

Scott Robbins:
Keep adding shifts.

Kyle Knowles:
And then so carton packaging, flexible packaging, and then regular big press runs of brochures. What kinds of things do you print on your big presses then?

Scott Robbins:
Yeah. Well, the packaging that goes on those, but the commercial print magazines, catalogs, brochures, say flyers. We do a lot of top sheets that go on to cardboard. So if you ordered a treadmill or something, it’d have a picture of the treadmill. So I will print stuff like that and send it to whoever is doing the cardboard, and I’ll glue it to the box, do a lot of that.

Kyle Knowles:
So it’s a big-

Scott Robbins:
It is.

Kyle Knowles:
Print. It’s bigger than a poster to go on a big treadmill.

Scott Robbins:
28 by 40 typically.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah, and anything ink on paper we can do, as long as it’s not too small. We used to be able to do the small stuff, but it didn’t make sense for us to stay in that area.

Kyle Knowles:
So, explain to some people, because I don’t think a lot of people have been to a press like Aspen Press, where they actually have presses, but try to describe the difference between digital printing, which all of us can do at home or go to Kinko’s, that’s a good example of digital printing. You can quickly just give them a file. They print it out, they’ve got … is it just called a digital printer, whatever. And they can print those things out. Sometimes they can print sort of bigger sizes, but explain the difference between that and your big presses, like describe how big these are, what kinds of rolls of paper you use and how much ink you put in the ink …
They’re not cartons, but I don’t know, they’re more like drums and then, explain film and how you have to make film on metal, I guess.

Scott Robbins:
Should I be taking notes here?

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah, I don’t know. I’ll just describe the process, because I don’t think a lot of people understand the work that goes into producing a magazine, for example.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah. Okay. So if you go to Kinko’s, what you’re going to have is you’re going to have an option to get an 1117 sheet. Now, they do subwork out, so a lot of people go there and they do the larger runs, but then Kinko’s or any of those other places will send the work to me. Then, they’ll put a markup on it and sell it back to the customer. What they’re designed to do is smaller full color runs on a machine that … you’ve seen them when you walk in there, they look like big copiers. That’s really all they are. Now, for me, when we got our first press, it took three semis to bring it in. I think it weighs 55 tons as I recall. It’s quite large.

Kyle Knowles:
And was it a Heidelberg?

Scott Robbins:
It was.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay.

Scott Robbins:
We’ve always gone with Heidelberg.

Kyle Knowles:
And is that actually a city in Germany or-

Scott Robbins:
It is. I’ve been there. It’s super cool.

Kyle Knowles:
And that’s where these are built?

Scott Robbins:
It is.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay.

Scott Robbins:
Yep. I went and toured the facility where they make them and where they have the metal made and everything. It’s all right there, but those presses are big. They’re really big. Now, I can mention my website. You can see me kind of walking around the shop. This is our old facility and our old website that’s about to be taken down. We’ve been working on a new one that’s going to kick off, but if you want to, you can go to aspenpress.com and you can see me kind of do a tour, so you can see how big those presses are to give you an idea.

Kyle Knowles:
So give a rough estimate. I mean, is it half a football field long?

Scott Robbins:
No, that’s not quite that high.

Kyle Knowles:
25 yards, something, 10 yards.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, probably it’s probably 60 feet.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay, so six basketball stands.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah. From end to end, yeah. About 60 feet, I’d say. Just guessing. Yeah, I mean, in order to put those things down, they’re so heavy. We had … all the buildings that we’re in, we’ve had to pull up the six, eight inches of cement and have an engineer come in and look at the soil underneath. We’d have to compact the soil so it’ll hit a certain amount of pressure. Then we’d bring in rock, and then we would bring in about four feet of cement with double one inch rebar in order to put the press on it. And it couldn’t be tied to the floor because the press is so violent if it was … I mean, it doesn’t look like it, looking at it, but it’s running 16,000 sheets an hour of 28 x 40 or thereabouts.
I mean, it cooks. So you can’t tie it directly to the floor. You can’t rebar it together. It needs to be on its own little island, if you will, and by doing that, it doesn’t vibrate the whole building. And that four feet of cement doesn’t crack. It’s thick.

Kyle Knowles:
Do you know some specific examples of people buying a press and putting it down and I don’t know, having it sink into the ground or do something crazy?

Scott Robbins:
What happens is these things are so precise that I do know people that have put presses onto an eight-inch floor thinking, “Oh, this is fine.” As it starts running, you get a little crack, then all of a sudden you get like a quarter inch crack. Well, you can’t have that. I mean, literally everything is so specific and has to be so tight that if you get that little movement, you could muff up your whole press and it cost hundreds of thousands to fix that. I mean, I think our first press was used. We bought a new one. I mean, I think the most expensive press we bought was probably around three million dollars and now, we have three of them. Stupid.
Again, this is the guy that repaired pallets, but it’s hard to wrap my head around that a lot. You don’t want to be messing around with that. You want to make sure you put whatever 40 grand into the engineering and the pad for the press, because then you don’t have to worry about it. If you put it on that floor, that’s all your risk. You’ll have to sign waivers from Heidelberg that, “No, we’re good with this floor, because they’re not going to come in and fix it.” They’ll come in and fix it.

Kyle Knowles:
But it’s going to cost you.

Scott Robbins:
It’ll cost you

Kyle Knowles:
A lot of money.

Scott Robbins:
A lot.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay. So you have this 60 foot press, and it’s super heavy because it’s made out of metal and it’s got a lot of moving parts. And then, you put … in order to, for example, do a magazine on these large sheets of paper, you have to create film. What is the process to create that film?

Scott Robbins:
So we don’t do film anymore. We are direct to plate.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay.

Scott Robbins:
So we still do the pre-press, and then, we’ll send a digital proof to the customer and then, a hard proof for color. That’s where the G7 comes into the picture here, is the G7 matches color from here to New York on other presses that are G7 certified. So if we have a product that’s going into Home Depot, it’s a very specific orange, a PMS color that you use for that. And everyone uses the same thing, so it doesn’t matter where you’re at, but if you’re not up to … if you’re press isn’t up to run into seven certification, then what happens is they’ll stop using you for one, because your color is going to be a little bit different than everything else that’s on a shelf. So not just for Home Depot, but for all the product that goes on their shelves.
The way it works is it’s a big aluminum plate, so it images to the plate and you have cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Those are the four colors that will create almost everything except for the specific colors. I can get close using those colors to a lot of the specified, like a stables red or a Palm Depot orange or all those fun things. But once you have the plate, you hang those on the press. The press has six units, so you have two options at the end. So you can run some PMSs with the four color and then, the sheets go through the press, kind of like just print, print, print.

Kyle Knowles:
So these are large rolls of paper?

Scott Robbins:
They’re not rolls. They’re sheets.

Kyle Knowles:
They’re sheets, okay. Big sheets that are going through the process and getting inked basically.

Scott Robbins:
Each time it goes through one unit, the other unit … it has little tick marks. They’ll line up perfectly. The next one, same thing, same thing. So that when you get through, it looks like it’s a picture of … it’s a photo of something, but it was just four colors printed on top of each other. If you ever have a chance to get a magnifying glass, you can look at a magazine and see the different dot patterns. And you can see there’s a yellow, there’s a red, there’s a blue, and there’s a black. Just by looking at it, you can see it, but you can’t see it with your naked eye. I can’t anyway. I’m getting old.

Kyle Knowles:
Awesome.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah. You nod your head, you’re getting old too.

Kyle Knowles:
Yeah, you can pretty much look around any room and see anyone that’s over 40 because they usually have reading glasses on. So every meeting I’m like, you’re over 40, you’re over 40, you’re over 40.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah. Truth.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s how it works.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay. Well, I love geeking out on the whole process of getting something printed, and it’s so fun to go into a press to do press checks, and it’s just an atmosphere. It’s sort of like something is being made here, right? Just like we came into Kiln and it’s like, we got this kind of creative vibe. I feel like when you go do … you’re going to go proof something that’s being printed at someplace like Aspen Press, it’s the same kind of vibe. Do you feel like your employees feel like they’re making something and that they’re creating something? They feel creative at their work?

Scott Robbins:
Yeah, these guys are experts. I mean, you can’t just put some guy off the street onto these things. It takes years to learn what these guys can do. So it is a talent, and I have people … customers that come in and say, “Hey, I want Scotty to run this, or I want Dave on this one because he ran it before and we’ve had nothing but problems with other places, but Dave, he nailed it or Scotty nailed it.” Yeah. So you get your key people in place, which we’ve done. It took some time to get those people, but we’re very happy with the way things have turned out. The product is great. Our presses are top of the line. I mean, I’ve worked at other places where you have Akiyamas or just different kinds of presses.
They just don’t have the same capabilities as a Heidelberg. I mean, Heidelberg is the cat’s meow of presses. I’m sure there’s going to be people out there that are haters and say, “No, it’s KBA or no, it’s the …” anyways, but in my experience, in 30 something years of doing this, Heidelberg is the best press. So that’s what we bought and that’s what we patterned our whole business after, is that we have top of the line equipment and top of the line talent and the rest, it just happens. It’s a good selling point.

Kyle Knowles:
What’s the best piece of business advice you’ve ever been given?

Scott Robbins:
Boy, business … I mean, I’d have to think about that. I don’t know. Work hard. I mean, I really don’t know. I mean, be honest. I think the investor originally … He says, “Look, I will be right there with you as long as you’re always 100% honest with me.” And so we’ve done that, and then, if there’s a problem on the press, we pick up the phone and talk to our customer right away and say, “Hey, look, we had an issue. We’re getting it right back on. This is not your problem. We had a problem with something on the press or something in pre-press and we noticed it, so we’re going to fix it.” Now, then you do have the other times where the customer is wrong, and hopefully you catch that in the proofing stage, and not always you do.
Yeah, being honest and being … I mean, not hiding from it. I mean, there’s people out there, it’s hard. It’s hard to tell someone bad news, but if you can just do it, get off your butt and do it. I mean, seriously, that’s the easiest way. Otherwise, you go home, you lose sleep and you stress about it, and home life is not going to be good because you’re so worried about the phone call you got to make eventually, just make the phone call. Just be honest, right up front with your customers.

Kyle Knowles:
You’ve worked with a lot of different people over the years and hired people, probably had to fire people, all these kinds of things. What do you think the single most important thing for someone getting into any job to progress in a job? What do they need to do to impress you, to advance at their job?

Scott Robbins:
Look, if you can come in and keep a smile on your face and work hard all day. That’s number one. Number two, don’t complain, and if you complain, find out really what you’re complaining about. So if there’s an issue somewhere else in the shop, deal with that back there. It doesn’t always have to go upstairs to have us fight the battles. So that’s a key thing for me, for an employee. If an employee can take care of themselves and they stand out right away, they really do, but if they can take care of it themselves, they’re going to be a good employee. If they’re not always in your office, “Hey, so-and-so did this or hey, blah, blah, blah.” Yeah, go talk to them about it or go talk to your manager.
Make sure it doesn’t happen again. That’s easy, and that’s a good employee right there. I mean, someone clearly with the industry I’m in, you have to have the talent too. You have to have the know-how, but we bring people in as press helpers and we have other lead pressmen that teach them and have taught them over the years and they will continue to move up. Eventually they will be the pressman and they have been in the past, so that works too.

Kyle Knowles:
I love what you said earlier about a customer saying, I know a guy, and I’ve heard recently it said, and it’s actually … I found out today it was a book, it’s a book title that your network is your net worth. Can you talk about that a little bit about over the years, how knowing someone really helped either open doors, I know someone, knowing someone helped you get started to found Aspen Press, but how has that played out throughout your career?

Scott Robbins:
I would say, I guess to answer that we have good, happy customers and from that, come a lot of referrals. So we have, “Hey, I need you to call my buddy over here. He’s got a magazine. He needs to get it done right away.” So we’ll step up and get it done for him right away. Yeah, a lot of word of mouth, a lot of stuff like that happens. For me personally, just trying to think of going to that investor. For a long, long time we’d sit down as a management team after work and discuss how the day went and we would just bounce ideas around and that was crucial in the beginning because we took care of things. If there was a problem, we’ve had to let people go, unfortunately. Some people don’t fit the mold and they’d prefer to sit on their phone and lay games on it and then wait for someone to call.
It’s like, that’s not what this is. I guess I learned that at Lagoon. I had a good manager and what he taught me was, “Hey, if I come around, I don’t want to see you swinging the keys for the machines. If you’re helping someone, that’s great. If you’re not, grab a bottle of Windex, pick up a broom, just look busy. If you look busy when I’m there, I’m happy. It’s not the same way. I hate to see people milling around when there’s things that can get done and if we can all work together and get those things done …” I don’t know how this got to that, but anyways, then it’s less work for someone else at the end and it’s done. Okay. What were we saying? We were talking about other people. Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
No, I love it. I think it’s really good advice for people and we’re running out of time. I wanted to ask you just a few more questions and then I’ve got a lightning round set of questions too. So what do you feel like your superpower is? I mean, I would say just from the outside looking in, it’s hard work, but do you feel like you have some kind of superpower, some kind of super talent that you bring to the table at Aspen?

Scott Robbins:
I used to, it was waking up at four in the morning and going to work and picking up another job at four in the afternoon and working until 9:00 and then doing the same thing the next day. It is just, the amount of effort you put in is the amount of whatever you are going to get back, whether it’s good or bad. If I put in a lot of good effort, a lot of good things happen. If I go to work and all I’m doing is picking up a broom, we have a clean place, that’s it. Yeah, I hope that helps.

Kyle Knowles:
It does. Is there a book that you recommend to people?

Scott Robbins:
I’ve been asked this before. I’ve read a lot of books, a lot of self-help a long time ago. I don’t do it so much now. I think if I was to read a book now, I’d rather just sit down and read Harry Potter. That’s one of the books that I’ve enjoyed and can actually read through and relaxing. Now, I’ve had other books and other people that I’ve taken courses from and it’s funny because a lot of these guys, they’re good teachers, but they really don’t have in a trench experience. So for me, and I’m listening to them like, “Well, wait a second, I wouldn’t do it like that. I would do it like this. If you do it that way …” For example, in sales, the hardest part to do is to get past the gatekeeper, the secretary at the front desk, right?
I mean that’s really, you got to get past that person to find out who you actually need to talk to, if it’s not a referral. If it’s a referral, it’s easy. Hey, I’m supposed to meet Jack. Okay, no problem, but if you’re making a cold call, there’s several ways to do it, in my opinion and a lot of the guys that write books do it wrong. I mean, for me, for one, this is a trick, is you go in before the gatekeeper gets there, doors are usually unlocked because decision makers are there. “Hey, I’m not sure who I should talk to. Can you point me in the right direction?” So you just skip that step without making them look bad.
Two, you just bounce in and say, “Hey look, I know you’re busy. This is what I have. I’m a printer. I’d love, if you could pass this along to someone. That’s all I ask.” That works too, but I don’t know, the guys with the books, they do it differently. They try to leapfrog that person. Well, then what happens is it pisses them off and you’re never going to really go far because they’re there for a reason. I don’t know. So reading books and I’ve gone to seminars. Now, I mean, Tony Robbins great. He’s a good motivator and he’s done a lot of good. He’s done a lot of good for a lot of people, but I don’t know. It’s good for me. If I listen to that, then I’d go out and hit the road and knock on a lot of doors. Yeah, I hope that … I don’t know how else to answer that. I don’t-

Kyle Knowles:
Well, you learned by doing.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
So school of hard knocks, working hard. That’s how you learned how to build a business.

Scott Robbins:
True.

Kyle Knowles:
It’s amazing. It’s an amazing story. So here’s a lightning round set of questions for you.

Scott Robbins:
Boy.

Kyle Knowles:
Scott, I think you know these are coming, because you’ve listened to a couple of podcasts, but what’s your favorite candy bar?

Scott Robbins:
Milky Way.

Kyle Knowles:
Favorite music artist.

Scott Robbins:
I like the 80s stuff. As far as artists, probably Pet Shop Boys, that’s a go-to for me and more recently, I enjoyed Coldplay quite a bit.

Kyle Knowles:
So from the 80s, the new wave stuff that you were listening to when you first-

Scott Robbins:
If I get in my car, it’s-

Kyle Knowles:
When you first met your wife-

Scott Robbins:
If I get in my car, it’s Alt Nation, it’s 80s or it’s Chill. I like Chill sometimes after a day of work. That’s a good one to listen to.

Kyle Knowles:
I love Alt Nation.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Favorite cereal?

Scott Robbins:
Cinnamon toast crunch. Isn’t that everyone’s?

Kyle Knowles:
I think it’s been mentioned before on the podcast. Mac or PC?

Scott Robbins:
Mac.

Kyle Knowles:
Google or Microsoft.

Scott Robbins:
Microsoft

Kyle Knowles:
Dogs or cats.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah, I have one of each. I prefer the dog. Cat is pretty cool too. She’s fun to tease

Kyle Knowles:
Phantom or Les Mis.

Scott Robbins:
Phantom. Phantom for me.

Kyle Knowles:
What’s something that most people don’t know about you?

Scott Robbins:
Well, I guess that they don’t know, they don’t need to know. Gosh, that’s a good question. I like cars. I’ve had a few. If you name a car, I probably had it because that’s something I enjoy. I also enjoy collecting sneakers. A lot of people don’t know that. If you work closely with me, you do. Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
Like basketball sneakers, like-

Scott Robbins:
Jordan’s, LeBron. Penny, those kinds of things, I just stick in my closet. I got way more than I need.

Kyle Knowles:
What’s the favorite car you’ve ever owned?

Scott Robbins:
Gosh. Okay. You help me out here because they’ve been a lot of fun. I’m driving the Audi RS 5 right now, which is really fun. Had a GTR and that was fun. You know what, I think the funnest car I’ve ever had was a Challenger and Hellcat Redeye, particularly an 800 horsepower. I had that one going on a closed course, 201 miles an hour.

Kyle Knowles:
Wow.

Scott Robbins:
That was fun. I’ll show you a video after if you’d like to see it.

Kyle Knowles:
I want to see it. Is it on YouTube? Can we share it with the audience?

Scott Robbins:
You know what, I think I did put it on there at one point, but I probably took it off.

Kyle Knowles:
Okay. You didn’t want anyone knocking on your door?

Scott Robbins:
No, no.

Kyle Knowles:
All right, well thank you Scott, for being so generous with your time. I’ve learned a lot from our discussion. Your entrepreneurial journey is just amazing and I loved hearing about how hard you’ve worked your whole life. I guess my last question for you would be, what’s next for you and Aspen Press and over the next 10 to 20 years, what does that look like for you?

Scott Robbins:
I think we’re just going to keep going ahead at a certain point recently, so I was the CEO for the first 20 years of the company. January of this year, I asked my longtime friend, a business partner, Mark Mandell, to take the reins, and I think he’s done and is doing an amazing job. It’s things that he just does, just a little bit different than how I did, but because of that, it’s allowed me to have more time. So I’m out meeting with sales reps again, going out and meeting customers. I have some of my own customers now that I’m starting to try to build some sales again. And it’s less stressful that way. Sure, I still own a lot of the company.
Yeah, the lion’s share of the company, but it’s fun to see what Mark’s going to do. I can’t wait to see what he’s going to do. I guess answering your question, I’ll probably stay involved, but just slow down a little bit and someday I’ll probably say, okay guys, I’m going to come in four days a week. I mean, we will figure it out as we go along. Yeah, that’s it.

Kyle Knowles:
You’re still planning on working.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
As much as you can over the next 10 years.

Scott Robbins:
I still enjoy it. Yeah.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s awesome.

Scott Robbins:
Yeah. Still enjoy it. Still enjoy meeting with all the fun people down there.

Kyle Knowles:
That’s really cool. So again, Scott, thank you for being generous with your time and I wish you so much continued success in the coming years with all your personal stuff on the side. I hope you can break 210 miles an hour at some point, but I also hope that Aspen Press continues to grow and you keep enjoying your job.

Scott Robbins:
No, I appreciate that and Kyle, it’s fun to see you be successful as well. It’s fun to be … like I’ve seen you do several things through the years and it’s fun to see you keep growing too, so keep going.