A lot of times we create a business, and as we get awesome at it – people start asking us how to do what we did.
Today’s guest is no different. She’s turned to her tee shirt screen printing empire into an education arm, teaching other entrepreneurs how to start their own business. I am super excited to dive deep into her business day about how to attract and grow this new side of the business where she’s teaching others everything, she knows about creating a profitable business.
Mallory Schlabach
Today, I’m excited to have a strategy guest who’s going to blow your mind she runs two businesses. Welcome to the podcast, Dee!
Deonjala Williams
Thank you for having me, Mallory! It’s a pleasure to be in your space in your home to be a guest in your home, so thank you for that.
Mallory Schlabach
You are so welcome. I have been stalking you for a little bit and you have some really cool things you’re building. So, tell us all about you, what you do and kind of how you got started.
Deonjala Williams
Okay, so I’m probably one of the most down to earth people that you’ll ever meet. I failed miserably at one point in time in other people’s jobs and other people’s businesses. I stumbled upon success when I started working for myself. So, if you saw me today, you definitely won’t see me with a business suit or a briefcase or in corporate America. I actually have a “Shed Quarters”, which is in my backyard. That’s where I report to my business every day. This blessing of being an entrepreneur “slay at home mom”, so to speak, I now have the freedom and the opportunity to do more things that I was never able to do when I worked at 9 to 5. Now that I’m enjoying some of those freedoms, I feel it’s my liberty to give back and show others how to come along and get those success points for their own businesses.
Mallory Schlabach
I love that! So, you run two businesses. Can you tell us about what they are?
Deonjala Williams
Actually, I own three! The first business is the main business and that’s Dee’s Sweet Tees. It is an apparel decoration business, which is my full-time business. This started as a side hustle, but after I had my daughter in 2016, I moved into doing it full time. Using the experience that I got with Dee’s Sweet Tees, I created two other businesses. The first one was Everything HBCU’s which is an online retail shopping platform for historically black colleges and universities. My business partner and I actually graduated from business school at Florida A&M University. I’m licensed to print and sell the collegiate apparel for 11 historically black colleges and universities. My experience with Dee’s Sweet Tees helped us to fulfill the production side of that licensing contract. Since I had skin in the game in my own business, I was able to help us expedite the process for the contract for licensing, which was big to us. From there, using my experience, successes and failures, I started to find a lot of people asking if I taught about this. After you get that nudge over and over again, you start to think, “Okay God, I get it now.”
So, in 2018, I started putting the foundation in place for Heart and a Heat Press. This is an educational and coaching platform, where I serve as a help desk, forum, and support person that goes beyond a YouTube comment section that may be overlooked after a certain amount of time. I’m trying to be a life coach that can work with you one on one inside your tee shirt printing business to help you avoid some of the mistakes that I’ve personally made early on. When you first get into a new business that you don’t know those things can be costly. When you run into too many mistakes in the beginning, it can be very discouraging. That’s why you find a lot of people getting out early and selling their equipment. They hit those snags in the beginning and they didn’t have the guidance that could have kept them going.
So, Heart and a Heat Press helps guide them on what to avoid and how to redirect their energy and dollars. That’s what I’m laying into right now – creating that platform and building up that community brick-by-brick with motivated entrepreneurs. Hopefully later on, this grows out to a broader spectrum. I have a proven formula for success to get six figures printing tee shirts, so right now that’s what I’m focusing on – helping other people jump through hoops that I’ve already jumped through.
Mallory Schlabach
That’s awesome. I love your story, because it follows a trajectory that so many of us fall into as entrepreneurs. We start out doing something we love, and we rock it out. Then you start getting the questions and you think, do I teach this? Can I teach this? How do I turn this into another part of my business? Can we back up even a little bit further? Why tee shirts in the first place? How did you even fall into that when it was your side hustle?
Deonjala Williams
Okay, so a little a little quick history about me. I’ve been drawing ever since I was two years old, and I’m left-handed. I’ve always had it in my heart wanted to draw and I’ve always had this thing for being creative and doing the arts. When I went off to college, I went into business. At the time the business program focused mainly on finance and accounting. So even though I was a good student, there was nothing that was lending to my right brain activities that I wanted to do. I wanted to do more marketing, more logo creation, more jingles and branding. There may have been one marketing class to five or six accounting and finance class. So, about two years into wearing the suit and putting the smile on to go to class I realized this isn’t really where my passion lies. So, on the side, a friend had shown me this little tool called Photoshop. I then self-taught myself how to use the program and started creating these tee shirt designs that match these sneakers and that the college kids were really into. I would take them to the local flea market and have the guys there print them for me. But I was creating the design. I think I might have been paying the people $10 to print and then I would go and sell them for 20. It felt really cool to come up with something in your mind, then physically be able to manifest it and see somebody actually want to put that on and write that. That’s a very good feeling, it’s so cool. Yeah. From there, I did a little bit of graphic design on the side, and more people kept coming to me asking for tee shirt designs. I started researching what it would take to print my own tee shirts, which seemed like a complicated process – especially screen printing. But as everything would have it, I ended up being gifted some equipment. I was able to volunteer at a screen-printing shop and learn a whole lot. So here I am, almost eight years later!
Mallory Schlabach
You’re giving me the chills just hearing your story – that is amazing! You also have a unique or a special way you’re doing tee shirts now, is that right?
Deonjala Williams
Right! I have an acronym that I like to call ELOPE.
That is to Excel by Leveraging Other People’s either Experience, their Equipment, their Expertise, etc.
In my business, I have to find ways to buy back my time. I have two kids and my Shed Quarters are right in my backyard. I had to put systems in place to make my workload easier, because right now I am a one-woman self-employed show. But as I grow, I have to be able to grow without spreading myself too thin. I’m spread thin already. So, I’ve come across certain ways that I can print, spend more time with my family and cover many other things that would normally be bottlenecks and take up a lot of time. For example, I was spending a lot of time answering phone calls, and I was getting the same mundane questions. Since I’m the one printing the shirts, it was taking me away from my order that I’m doing. Time is money, and I need to be more efficient. So, I hired a virtual call assistant. I hooked that up to my Google Voice number, and when people call with those questions that is taken off of my plate. Now that’s been outsourced to somebody else, and they’re that first line of defense so that I can keep working. I try to always have those type of systems in place whether it be in my business or in my personal life. It’s all about setting up things that are going to make life, business, and that work/balance easier.
Mallory Schlabach
That’s amazing! So, tell me about this passion for teaching and about the structure of your courses. How does that side of your business work?
Deonjala Williams
The passion for teaching comes from my family. I come from a long line of teachers – my grandmother and mother were both teachers. My sister is currently a teacher, and my uncle was actually a teacher in Okinawa, Japan. While I come from this long line of educators, I never wanted to go into the traditional school system. I love teachers and I have this great appreciation for them. I feel that they’re very undervalued when it comes to the public-school systems. So, it was never my desire to go be a teacher. However, I found in college, as I helped a lot of my colleagues when we’ve had exam times, that a lot of people would follow my lead and follow my instruction. I enjoy showing them things that came to me easily. When those nudges started coming along and questions about how to start a tee shirt printing business, I knew I had valuable methods and steps to share. I’m able to take my students step by step and show them what I use day in and day out. Even though Heart and a Heat Press is me teaching and coaching, Dee’s Sweet Tees is my bread and butter. That runs in the background. So, I can teach this to you, because this is what works for me. If you follow this step by step, you should be able to get comparable results, but it will depend on where you are, how hungry you are and how hard you are willing to work for it.
Mallory Schlabach
So, who comes to you for this? What type of entrepreneurs are inspired by you? Is that other entrepreneurs? Who is this ideal for?
Deonjala Williams
It definitely wouldn’t be ideal for other screen-printing shops. This would be ideal for somebody who has done their research and knows for a fact that they want to get in a tee shirt printing business. They possibly may even already have a heat press or are getting ready to invest in a heat press. This is also somebody who may already have a heat press but might not know how to go out and acquire new customers or might be looking to find out how to scale. Everybody’s going to be at different stages. But most importantly, they’re going to already have some type of passion or desire to be in the apparel decoration business. I always tell people and suggest that they you just do their due diligence and research. Don’t be so impulsive, because there are a lot of online coaching programs out there. Before you invest in anything, you do have to do your research and make sure that you’re serious it. If you know in the back of your mind that you aren’t going to be so serious about this business, then I wouldn’t even advise that you sign up. I really need to coach people who are serious if they’re looking to really take it to the next level.
Mallory Schlabach
Okay, perfect. So then when someone signs up, walk me through the process. Is it a live course, modules or group calls? What’s the format? How have you structured it?
Deonjala Williams
So, I’ve already gone through and prerecorded each module. In the beginning, we go over the objectives, what you’re going to learn and what you’ll be able to do by the end of the module. Some of the modules even include suppliers and setting up specific vendor accounts. The live part comes in our private group. Once you sign up, you would go through the module content, but then we would have a live group session or private session, depending on what which package you chose. We would have a session and go over all of the content from the modules. Then later on, once we get towards the end of the course, we actually do a live printing workshop, where they’ve already set up their vendor account. At this point, they’re getting their t shirts at the lowest that they can get them. They’re producing their designs the most efficient way. As a part of us ending the course, they’re get to print some shirts live with me. We also do a graduation process! Depending on how much time you have will dictate how long it will take to get through the course. It’s got eight modules and I have it set up so that you are able to do one module per week. But some people can digest it all in a day if they want it to.
Mallory Schlabach
That’s great. That was helpful in understanding both sides of the businesses. This particular Heart and a Heat Press, it’s new this year, correct?
Deonjala Williams
Right, yes. We just did our first soft launch in February.
Mallory Schlabach
Right, right. So, tell me now that we’re kind of, I wouldn’t say we’re at the end of it, who knows where we are in this pandemic. But now that things are maybe becoming more comfortable for everybody, where are you going with it? What’s your goal for Heart and Heat Press?
Deonjala Williams
I actually went off the grid for about a month and a half. In the background, I was getting features in some magazines and working on a few other projects that I can’t mention yet. So, right now, I’ve been working on batching and scheduling, so that I can make sure that I’m getting things to my students and audience on a consistent basis. So, I’m doing a relaunch of Heart and a Heat Press content, starting on September 1st. From there, we’ll be talking about some of the things that I discussed in podcast interviews, and I’ll be making sure to go live once a month with my free Facebook group. But with my students in the private group, we’ll be doing a lot more activities. I also have a segment called “Shed Talks”, and I’m getting more interviews with people who have a lot more skin in the game than me in the apparel decoration industry. Then I want to do another launch for the online course that we’ll be doing in November.
Mallory Schlabach
I love that you have a combination of those things as well. Tell me a little bit about how are you attracting people to you.
Deonjala Williams
I’m just trying to be as organic as possible, and just be who I’ve always been. I’m trying to be an open book and help those who I can help. A lot of people say that they like that I am just this real person. I just want to make sure that I keep that going. Everybody who I’ve talked to on the phone appreciates that I actually call them. I get a lot of comments saying people don’t get this anymore from anybody. I just want to continue to be a light and just draw people in from being my authentic self.
Mallory Schlabach
That’s awesome. I would also love to see you highlight and talk about the big successes. Where can people take this for their business? You’re really inspirational just from listening to you too. But I think that will also help attract those hungry people when they can see how far they can take their business. I don’t think it’s talked about much.
Deonjala Williams
Thank you! That actually does give me an idea, because I do want to reach back out to the first business who sold me my first manual press. Her name was Danny, and I went and bought my first press from her. They were upgrading to an automatic, which is a big accomplishment in the screen-printing world. You’re talking about going from a $2,000 piece of equipment to possibly a $40,000 one. So, I would just like to talk with her and just let other people hear her story. This industry isn’t very selfish. They’re very giving, but you have to be hungry for it. They’re not going to be hungry for it for you.
Mallory Schlabach
I think another idea that just came to me. You have a great personality and you have a wicked sense of humor. That’s pretty understated. I would love to see you do some behind the scenes stuff in your Shed Quarter. I think that would be so cool. It brings that realness to everything that you do while highlighting yourself as the expert in what you do.
Deonjala Williams
So, I actually do comedy! I’ve been doing it ever since I was about eight years old. I’ve done retirement parties, college talent shows and special events. I did it in Bali, Indonesia in 2018. I was listening to meditation recently, and it was saying something about how you needed to reach back to something that you’ve always been good at, that always draw people into you, but you haven’t really touched on it in a while. For me, that meant comedy.
Mallory Schlabach
That’s amazing! Okay, so you’re launching this again in November, you already have content, and you’re going to like to be amazing out there. Beyond November, where are you wanting to go with this? Is this something you want to become like a big part of your brand? This dual concept of running a shop and also training people?
Deonjala Williams
The grand plan and long-term goal would be to have a Dee’s Sweet Tees franchise, so to speak. Then those franchises would also be able to serve as education facilities. If people wanted to come by, we can have in the short term, over the next year, my goal is to work with people and provide custom plans for them based on where they are. One thing I’d like to potentially offer my students is working together to develop a 30-day plan for next steps to get results. For some people that might be filing your LLC or setting up your vendor contacts. Some people are just stuck, and this might not be their strength yet. So that’s what I want to work on in the upcoming year – working with people to come up with a customized plan. That’s why I try to call myself the tee shirt printing coach. Just like if you go to a gym, they tailor a plan to your body type and eating habits. It’s the same thing with this. So that’s my focus for this upcoming year.
Mallory Schlabach
I think that’s fantastic. Not only are you a very smart woman, you know what you’re doing. But also, you have that vibe that people are just going to fall in love with you. That’s something you can’t teach how to do. I’m so thrilled you found me on the podcast! Shout out to people who want to come be on the podcast with me. I’m not kidding. If you find me, you message me. I would love to have you on. I’m so excited you found me that way. I am going to be stalking you for life. I think you’re awesome. I’m really, really excited to see what you do.
Deonjala Williams
Thank you for having me, because not everybody says yes to having me. I just got a rejection email yesterday saying we don’t think you’re a good fit. I appreciate the fact that you even gave me an opportunity to be heard on your platform and giving the opportunity to your listeners to be able to connect to like-minded go getters.
Mallory Schlabach
Yes! If anybody’s listening and you’re curious about screen printing, please go follow her. So, where do people stalk you? Where’s your favorite place to hang out?
Deonjala Williams
My favorite place to hang out honestly, is Facebook. I’m also at Heart and a Heat Press on Instagram and LinkedIn!
Mallory Schlabach
Thank you again for coming on the show. We do have all the links, so you can go stalk her. She just lights up when she talks and you’re going to fall in love with her when you see her brand as well.
Deonjala Williams is the founder of Heart and a Heat Press, an online business educational platform. With over 12 years of entrepreneurial and retail experience, Deonjala teaches her community how to launch their own profitable T-Shirt printing business in 60 days or less. Deonjala, known more commonly as “Dee”, has had years of corporate employment in retail where she gained significant experience in business, processes and people management. But this didn’t really satisfy her sense of calling, her love of teaching and the drive to build something lasting. Unbeknownst to her boss at the time, she had been planning her exit from the 9-5 for some time when she handed in her resignation letter with great satisfaction. She went on to found Dee’s Sweet Tees and develop Heart and a Heat Press, changing her and thousands of other people’s lives in the process.
Connect with Dee:
Links:
www.deessweettees.com
www.heartandaheatpress.com
www.everythinghbcus.com
About Marketing Magic:
The Marketing Magic podcast is where women entrepreneurs trying to do all the things come to get inspiration, business strategy, and on-air coaching on how to get their business noticed and growing. If you have a business that people need to know about in order for it to grow, you’re in the right place. This is the place to uncomplicate your marketing. Be sure to listen, subscribe, and leave a review! Join the conversation of other unapologetically successful women in her Facebook community, The #girlboss Club.
