The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – James Donatossian, Owner of Printech on Building a Multi-Million Dollar Business and Success

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

James Donatossian, Owner of Printech on Building a Multi-Million Dollar Business and Success Printech.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com.

Hey, welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. Be sure to, as always, refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives. The Chris Voss Show, the family that loves you but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your mother-in-law. I love that joke. I like that better than mom. But your mom might not like you as well.

But the Chris Voss Show does love you, so there you go. Also, go to Goodreads.com, Fortune's Chris Voss, YouTube.com, Fortune's Chris Voss, LinkedIn.chrisvoss, all those two crazy places on the interwebs. Today, we have an amazing gentleman. We're going to be talking to him on the show all the way from Australia, as it were. And we're going to be talking to him about his business and his clients and how he built it and all that good stuff. James Leon Donatosian is on the show.

I'm probably not saying that without the proper inflection of the language. He's Armenian. But he is the CEO and founder of Printek. Welcome to the show, James. How are you? Thank you very much and great having you guys. Yeah, so again, we're from Australia, Sydney, and my background is Armenian,

and I was born and raised in Baghdad, Iraq. Oh, wow. Yeah, so I moved to Australia after the war in 2003. So pretty much we've seen everything. There you go. And when you guys arrived, you arrived with just very little, the shirts on your back. Were you escaping the war-tornness of Baghdad? Well, after the war, pretty much we just had to pack our bags and leave the country

because there was a kidnapping situation for me. So people tried to kidnap me because my father is a doctor and he's well known in Baghdad. And in 2003, after the war, we received a letter saying that we're going to kidnap your son. So it's time for him to, you know, it was some kind of an intel job that we received that was someone. Someone is actually was my dad's patient. And probably he heard something going on that they're, you know, working to kidnap me. And we received a letter, and we had to leave the same day to Syria.

Wow. That's crazy. So I still have all my photos, my childhood photos, didn't say goodbye to my friends or, you know, the reigning of the family. We just had to just leave everything and hop in and, yeah. And so you end up living life as an immigrant, escaping war for your family and you're running around and you run into

a lot of different things, discrimination and challenges. Talk to us a little about that and how that shaped you into being the businessman you are today. Look, I think I grew up too fast in terms of what I've seen in the life experiences that what I've seen and where I am today. So when I left Iraq, came to Australia when I was 16, but I was more like 30 instead of 16, you know, so because I've seen it all.

Yeah. And I wasn't educated. So I was just pretty much it's English is my third language. So I came to a country, it's a new language, new opportunities, and coming from a background with an educated family, you know, from doctors and engineers, and I was like, well, I really need to be something here. And the language was really tough to understand it, to learn the physics or biology or whatever, you know, subjects that we had in high school. So I didn't really do great.

However, I really wanted to build something to show that everyone can do it, even though if you have challenges with language, you still can learn and become something. So I really kind of finished my high school. I didn't pass. I was on a very low kind of rates that I had. And then I finished up the high school, and then I started working as a – selling credit cards door to door. So selling good businesses and introducing ING business cards to a Citibank, actually,

a Citibank credit cards to introduce people and just kind of try to sign them up for $50. And it was a pretty interesting job, door-to-door, commission only. And I've done that for six months and I think great at it. And then I decided,

okay, you know what? I'm a people person. So I love talking to people. I think I got the gift of the gap for something very special. So I want to learn about myself more now. So let's see what's next. So when I finished that job, I kind of drifted away from that. I started doing more on the phone now.

So selling life insurance on the phone. So call consumers, moms and dads, introducing them life insurance on the phone, you know, so call consumers, moms and dads, introducing them, you know, life insurance, if you're going to pass away today, how can we protect your family? So it was a very tough gig to sell. So I've done that as well for about three to four months just to kind of get experience in cold calling and also learn how to, you know, negotiate with clients to give them a better deal or to work something to win.

Door-to-door selling is hard, man. That's quite difficult to take and do. And it shapes you. That's one of those hard sales jobs that will shape you in a way that will really make you a good salesman or break you as a person. Yeah, pretty much. Because there's a lot of pressure, mental

pressure, KPIs, it's got to be a reach. It's a race. It's a race, pretty much. It's win or lose. Win the deal or lose the deal. So that's what it is. Reach it, it's a little tough.

Yeah, the deal. So that's what it is. Reach it. It's a little tough. Yeah. I've done that as well and then I was like, you know what? I'm getting really drained by doing it for six months with cold calling and just selling life insurance. I need something more stable.

Then I started working at a telecommunication company as a retention so now I already built my face to face doing communication with people and also on the phone which is pretty much understanding what people want or selling it to them on the phone so we got face to face and on the phone now the only things I didn't have is speaking to angry clients, which is a retention center,

which is I got a job to speak to the worst clients that they really hate the company and they want to leave, which is the telecommunication company. So like everyone who got a massive bill or he had an issue with the network that's not being resolved and they really want to cancel their services, they call us. And I'm basically the person who needs to calm them down and find the solution and retain them and keep them. There you go. Yeah, with Virgin Mobile, actually.

Oh, wow. Yeah, so it was one of the, honestly, it was one of the greatest jobs that I had. I loved it. Why? It's because I was so good at negotiating with clients about the terms they're in, the problems they have, and solve it. So I was pretty much the highest guy who retained clients for the company. Oh, wow.

And I stayed there. I was 21 or 22 when I left the company. Oh, wow. And I stayed there. I was 21 or 22. I left the company because they sold it to Sanktel to Optus, Virgin Mobile Mergers. And then I got a job as a technical support officer,

speak to offshore support team and just to help them and fix things up. And I was like, well, I need to talk to people and get the deals done here. I'm not here to fix things up as a technical like well i need to talk to people and you know get the the deals done here i'm not here to fix things up as a technical guy i'm not a tech guy you know although i saw technical stuff today but uh it was really great so then i was just really bored in the

office just sitting down and it was like both hit a shift it was like christmas with one of my shifts it was like from three uh 3 p.m. until like 12 a.m. it was, and it was on a New Year's Eve. So I still remember I was New Year's Eve in the office. And I was like, well, what's now? What am I going to be doing? I'm 21 years old. I'm stuck here earning $50,000 salary.

Next, you know. I just got this really hunger in me. I really want to do something about it. And then I was like, let me just find jobs. So I just started applying, applying, applying, applying online. And just random places. I just want a job. I just want something better than I am in.

I want to earn more money, pretty much. And I came across a company that they sell photocopiers and printers. And I went there for an interview and it was, you know, December and then January. They wanted something to start in January. And then I got the job. They really didn't really go through my experiences in terms of what I've done and what I've achieved was more like a personal experience. It's what you've done, where you came from, and all that. And I got the job and stayed there for about five years.

And while I was there, I got married. And by the age of 23, exactly 10 years ago, because our 10- year anniversary right now for Printek and I decided to open my own venture which is doing pretty much what I was doing. I gained my experiences and I just kind of tweaked it with my touch a little bit and here we are.

We've got over 1,500 customers, 3,000 devices being leased, and we're running just over a $20 million operation. Nice. That's pretty successful. Are you doing that just solely in Australia? Australia only, yes. That's correct.

There you go. So when we started out, did we get the dot-coms of Printek and stuff? Yeah, so it's www.printek.com. There you go. We're my people of it. Yeah, so it's good. And I do have another podcast. It's under New Age Entrepreneur.

It goes more into details about myself and about the war, what we've done since I was a kid. Because I've been in the war zone for many years, you know, since the Kuwaiti War, the Gulf War, you know, the Iranian War and all that stuff. So since I was 87, and so I've seen it all in the Middle East. So and right now we basically, it's just the hunger that we have as a company and we just want to establish more. So what we've done is three, four years ago, I came up with an idea that I want to open my own finance company as a broker. So I went back to school, to college, to study finance.

And in 2018, I established my company, which is called Finloans, F-I-N, loans.com. So the way it works is we lease the equipments right now to the end of the user and i was using a third-party finance companies to finance my products and they're making brokerage on it which is up to seven percent and i decided hold on a second that's another way of making income how come i haven't thought about it so i decided instead of using a third-party finance company i can bring it in-house. So I'm a big believer in doing everything in-house. From the finance side of it, from

deliveries, from support maintenance, the whole thing, I like to do it in-house. Which is in-house means print tech. There you go. Doing stuff in-house as opposed to out-house is much better. Absolutely. Because I like to keep the money for my people.

So instead of outsourcing to people, they're going to be making the income. I like to grow here, and they give more opportunities to work for me. There you go. So you've built the business over how many years now again? Ten years now. Ten years now. That's correct. What are some of the keys to your success in the business and core values?

Well, the values that we have is ethics is number one. You've got to be very ethical in terms of if you want to run a long-term business, that's first. And also, you've got to be motivated. Self-motivation is the key to success. There's a lot of people, they see a show they might get really motivated from or, you know, they see a car they might get motivated from or quote. That's great. But that's just for a certain time. And then automatically your mind goes back to use on after myth and then you just won't be motivated anymore. But if you're self-motivated, you got to educate and train yourself on a daily basis how you can be positive.

And if you have a goal or a vision, how to reach it, which is you've got to be visionary. It's true. It's simple as that. Goal orientation is great because you can say, oh, I want to earn this much money by end of the year. But if you don't have a vision to reach it, how are you going to accomplish it? So, gold is something that you put on paper that, yes, I want to earn $50,000 by end of the year, but if you don't have the vision towards it, how are you going to reach it? So, that went together.

Make sense? Yeah, if you don't have the vision, I mean, you're not going to reach it at all. I mean, that's the real core. Yeah, yes. And so, one of the things you do is you own a range of luxury cars valued over $40,000. I love cars, yeah. Yeah, so I do have a few cars that since I was a kid, I always wanted to own a Lamborghini. So I did own one when I was 25, and I still have it.

It's actually my second Lamborghini, and I end up, you know what? Well, if I have a Lamborghini, I need a Ferrari, you know? So I decided to buy a Ferrari. And then I was like, well, I need to buy something different. You know, I've got to, you know, taste the English kind of a supercar, you know, instead of the Italian. Let me just, you know, see how it feels. So I ended up buying a McLaren, which is I do have a McLaren. And I do have a GDR Pro

which is limited you can see it through here the yellow one it's one of 15 in the country and GDR Pro AMG and I do have you know bellies and all that and I just love cars

you know it's an expensive hobby yeah yeah yeah so car is an expensive hobby yeah yeah yeah so do you use those to motivate your employees I was reading your bio here and it says you like to park them in the those to motivate your employees?

I was reading your bio here, and it says you like to park them in the office to motivate employees. Well, I'm in my office right now, and that's my motivation room behind me. There you go. Yeah, so the reason why I like to do that is because I've seen a lot of young people. They are so lost in their life, They don't know what they're doing. You know, they just, you know, they, they, they, they just really lost in terms of, Hey, I want a job, but I've interviewed a lot of people by the way.

So I want to, I want to be, I want to be like you. And I was like, well, why do you want to be like me? What have you achieved to be like me? Or what's your goals? What's your visions? You know, what do you want? I like me? What have you achieved to be like me? Or what's your goals? What's your visions? What do you want? I just want to make a lot of money. But they don't have a mindset towards it.

And this is why they just look at a lot of social media. They just look at a lot of Instagram. They see cars. I just want to be like that. Well, hold on a second. What's your vision? What's your goal? Did you write the cons and cons in the paper that getting it is very easy,

but you've got to commit to it. And a lot of people, young people, they don't like to commit these days, my friend. That's true. They don't want to be influencers and TikTok stars. Absolutely, which is, you know, we didn't have that in our days. I'm 35 years old, and, you know and when I was 16 and 15 or 14, I never had an iPad in my life. Matter of fact, I never had a mobile phone because in Iraq we never had mobile phones. We just had local channels, you know, and also no Internet, nothing.

So we just had a soccer ball and kick in and just talk to people face-to-face and be outdoor. That's all we had. Yeah. And so people really need to have a vision for something and build what they want to achieve. Absolutely. You know? So you've got the Caltech or Caltech. Is it Caltech?

Caltech. Caltech is my communication. Yeah, Caltech. So I have Caltech and I haveek, and also Film Loans. Calltech is the telecommunication company that I did work in it, so I know how it works. I know the experiences in it. So I was like, well, we're dealing with B2B here.

B2B stands for business-to-business. So what does a business need these days? They need telephone, PBX system, cloud solution for communication. That's one. Second thing, they need a photocopier to print, you know. And people do still print. And people say, oh, mate, you know, everybody here, they don't print anymore. You know, paperless, been going on for a very long time that the word is going to be paperless.

But still, 85% people, 90% people print. And also finance. Everybody wants finance. Every business needs finance. They need to finance their equipment. They need to lease their equipment, or they need to rent their equipment. That's a huge thing in Australia. So when you sit down with one person and instead

of sitting down with four consultancy people to give you an advice on different products like you're a business owner you don't want to keep sitting down with your telco provider or a photocopier provider or a finance provider you just want to sit with a consultant who's educated and give you one solution to cover everything. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Time-consuming, which is, it's time-consuming. So you need to minimize your time, speak to quality people, and they will give you the best options.

Hmm, there you go. I mean, it's a thing where you've got to understand people and how they work. What are some other factors you think that have led to your success that you try and share with others? What was that, sir? I couldn't hear you. What were some other factors of your success that led to your success that you'd like to share with others? Well, success, you know, just be knowledgeable about the products that you're selling. Okay, so learn and understand what you're selling to achieve it and make it happen.

You know, if you're pretty much selling anything, the product, the product can't sell itself, by the way. But at the end of the day, you're selling yourself, your personality, your knowledge, your relationship with the end user. Again, you've got to be very open about what you're going to be selling. Once you know yourself

and understand what you're going to be selling, the confidence you have, the knowledge about the product, your sales pitch, and being positive, being happy, smile, it works most of the time. And that's pretty much it, yeah. And be goal-oriented. Being goal-oriented is important. And so it helps keep you on track.

So what do you see yourself doing in the future? The future is basically just continue the empire pretty much. You'll have to just continue the growth in terms of finding a niche market or a niche product that you can add into what we're doing. Like right now, we're thinking basically You know, like if you're selling, like right now, we're thinking basically to sell everything to the end user. You know, like for an office, for example, a legal firm, they need furniture, they need computers, they need printers,

they need finers, they need this, they need that. We just tie everything in one and give it to supply to the clients. You know, so just kind of invest in the same business that we have because the growth, it's phenomenally crazy in it. And there is so much potential to growth in the next phase. And just basically investing in the business, investing in the right people. Yeah. Do you see yourself expanding outside of Australia? Hopefully, yeah.

Definitely, definitely. It depends. I was, because my wife is from Toronto, and I went there to kind of be there a few times. I was there last July for three months to understand how it works. There's a lot of competition. Now, competition is healthy. With no competition, there is no business.

You know, it's boring, you know. So there's competition there. There is these finances there. So I think my next step is to kind of learn more about the businesses in North America and see how it works more, understand it and kind of just open a small little branch and test the water and see how it feels. And if it works, then yeah, why not?

But Australia is a big market. Australia is huge here. How many people live in Australia? What's the population of Australia? I think it was about 22 million. There you go. Approximately, you know, Australia-wide, which is the same percentage, I think, in California.

It was 22 million. That was about five years ago? Probably. I think it might be 30 million. I don't know. You can I think, in California. It was $22 million about five years ago. Probably. I think it might be $30 million. I don't know. You can't keep track in California, especially that one center around L.A. I think Canada is about, what, $38 million to $45 million? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I think the population in Australia are more, but don't quote me on it. Yeah, I like my Australian friends, and I like my Canadian friends. They're much more decent people than we are here in America and probably much more healthier because they don't eat all the fatty crap. But the only thing I always tease my Australian friends about is that Vegemite. Oh, Vegemite, right. Yeah, yeah. I'm not a big fan of that, to be honest with you. I can't blame you.

I think you have to grow up on it in Australia. As a baby, they have to start feeding you that stuff. But I always teach my Australian friends. They usually mix it up with, like, chicken or something. They bake it with chicken, I heard. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they use that as a sauce.

They need to read the history of what that stuff is. Stick to hot wings, my friend. It's much, much better. Yeah, yeah, stick to hot wings. That's the way to go. That's definitely the way to go. It's great, man. It's much, much better. Yeah, stick to hot wings. That's the way to go. That's definitely the way to go. It's great, man. It's great.

So what other piece of advice do you have for people who want to start their own business, following your kind of footsteps of success and building something out of nothing? Really, that's what entrepreneurs are great at doing. Absolutely. Absolutely. Start from scratch is always challenging, but once you know the basics and the momentum is right and you got a great plan to execute then go for it don't listen to people okay so there's a lot of negativity these days out there in the world you know so unfortunately we live in a in a place that

everything is negative you know news or you know social media stuff And a lot of young people, when they sit down with each other and they tell you, hey, open your own business. Well, I'm going to open this business. This is the ideas that I want to come with. And they're like, oh, man, don't do it. There's about 30 of them that have done it and they've failed. You can't say that. Matter of fact, when I started my business, my accountant that I still deal with, he was against me to open a business.

Really? We were talking about this yesterday, actually. And I said, do you remember 10 years ago, we were sitting having a coffee. You told me, do not open your business because it's a headache. Wow. And then I went beyond your words and i did it so even family friends some of the people like man don't do it you're not good enough or wow you know you're probably going to fail you're already earning money right now so don't take the risk you know i'm a risk taker i've been taking risk all my life you know and living life

is a risk exactly so i decided to do it and here i am so there you go a risk. Life is a risk, exactly. So I decided to do it, and here I am. So a message to whoever is listening in the podcast and the future listeners, take a risk. Don't be afraid. Just calculate it and understand what you want to achieve and listen to positive people and have positive energy around you and basically execute your plan because you will definitely make it happen. Yeah. You've got to have that vision. You've got to have the positivity. If you've got negative people, I've seen so many people get dragged down.

They start a business and then they get someone in their head who's like, well, you can't really do this. You know, the negative Nancy's. Yeah, absolutely. And they talk you out of it and you end up screwing up deals. I've had business deals where I thought I had a partner on good and then all of a sudden some friend of theirs decided to pile

a bunch of shit in their head and they believed it and you're like, dude. And they'll screw the whole pooch and cause multiple other problems for themselves as well. Absolutely. Yeah, it's just crazy, man. It's insane. It's insane, yeah.

Like, I've seen so many people, they come, you know, they got an idea opening a, you know, digital media company or, you know, content creator or coffee shop or restaurant. They're like, oh, man, I want to do this. But the problem is there's so many restaurants around here and they fail. They keep closing down. I was like, well, hold on a second. Why did they close down? Obviously, they're not really

doing the right thing. There's something that's not working. They should have tweaked it. Even us, when we started, I was basically only myself running the business. I was in a small office, three meter by five. I always just had a phone on me and a laptop and, you know,

no overheads, but I was struggling to build it. But I was like, no, no, it's got to happen because the only thing I had in my mind is this business. So I said to myself, it's got to work.

There's no plan B. This is it. My plan A was having a job and working for someone as an employee. Plan B, having an own business. They ain't got no plan C, my friend. Two plans. So I took plan B, and I had to make it work. And now I created more opportunities for myself.

You know, I come with a challenge. I challenge my – I just don't like sitting down being bored. You know, I can retire tomorrow and just live happily after and, you know, and enjoy life. But – and then what? You know? So I just got to challenge myself, find something different. It's very, very difficult to reach, but I have to reach it.

Finding a new venture. Doing something new, helping people to grow. Finding a niche market, finding some interesting product to sell. Finding people that they want to be successful.

So my vision is not just make money and raise my empire and become a multi-billionaire. No. Money itself, it's nothing because you can't make money if you're really good at making it. If you're really good with people and if you really want to establish your mind to do something, you can do it. Okay? But helping people is the other thing here. As I said to you, you know, earlier, we live in a time right now, it's controlled by social media.

And you said it, TikTok. Everybody is on TikTok. They want to be billionaires on TikTok. They go and stand next to a supercar. That's my car, you know, follow this and do this, and they want to build contentaires on TikTok. They go and stand next to a supercar. That's my car. You know, follow this and do this. And they want to build content. Yeah, great.

But how about us? We never had these things back in the day. You know, like Australia, the U.S., you know, Europe. Everybody had access to computers. Everybody had access to internet early days. We never had these things. Yeah. You know, when we're, you know, controlled by Saddam Hussein, yeah, there was security.

However, there's nothing else we can do. You know, we were just so limited. We didn't have access to the world. Okay. Like today. So when I see young people today, they're in high school, they're just so very, very limited with their knowledge. They're just not brought it. They're just playing online games or creating really stupid content on their social media. They think they're going to be rich and influenced. Well, hold on a second. You should plan your future right now.

You're racing against time. The only thing that's against you is time, my friend. Yeah. Time is everything. Time is everything. And people don't realize sometimes you don't have a lot of it. The other thing about building your empire on TikTok or YouTube or other things is you don't own those platforms and they

can be taken away from you. Absolutely. Back in the early days of YouTube, we made a lot of money off of YouTube every month. And eventually they said, oh, we want to do something different because we're paying these guys a lot of money and we need to figure out a way to not pay them so much money but still get more views. And that's what they did they figured out over time how to do it and ever since then we've seen our residual checks from

youtube dwindle um uh not anywhere near that they were a few zeros missing off the end of them uh what they used to pay so that's right that's the problem with building on someone else's business model and so you've got to own you've got to own your own thing. And so dreaming to be a TikTok star or whatever the latest, you know, these things are fleeting anyway, whatever the bump. You know, building on that

is not a long-term, you know, life sort of project. I mean, you've seen a lot of my friends who built on Google Plus, they've seen that go out of business. Twitter, of course, has not done well for years. It used to. Facebook and Instagram are now on the fence.

TikTok seems to be winning. And probably in a couple of years, something else is going to replace that. So planning to become a star on some of these things is not something you want to build on. I learned a long time ago, especially with partners and stuff, you want to own it. You want to control it. Exactly. Absolutely.

And this is why we do everything in-house. That's part of why we're doing everything in-house. And I did piss a lot of people off that I had to cut them off and not make revenue out of me because they wanted to suck from the revenue that we make. But at the end of the day, well, I'm the one who's generating it. You're getting a cut out of it. So why the hell am I keeping my platform?

I want you to make money out of it. Go do your own thing, you know, for example, suppliers or finance companies or whatever. And so this is what really interesting subject that we're just talking about, working for somebody else's, which is, you know, having a channel on YouTube. What if you grow your, you know, audience or you'd be making millions of dollars and one day they can just say, you know what, you said the wrong thing, my friend. Cut the tap on you. Yeah. And then what?

Yeah. And then what? You're screwed. It's all going downhill. You've got to basically go beg in other platforms to be part of it and do whatever it takes to kind of get into their platform so they can generate revenue. The best way is to start your own platform from day one

and not to rely on anybody else. Have it with them as well, just as a side thing, you know, profit a little bit, but do not rely on it. Rely on yourself and rely on your sources that you have and build up your own platform because, you know what, you can control it. Don't let anybody control you. Definitely, definitely. Well, James, as we go on, anything more you want to tease out about Printek, what you guys are doing over there?

Yeah, look, Printek is a photocopier company, as I mentioned to you before. So we're a leasing company. We lease office equipment, photocopiers, telco stuff, finance. And if anybody wants to see me on my social media, it's james.donatosian. You guys can share it and people can see the successes, the future, and the news of us on my personal Instagram page. And, yeah, that's pretty much it. There you go.

There you go. Well, it's been wonderful and insightful, James, to have you on the show. It's been pretty great. Thank you very much for having me. Hopefully, we inspire a new generation of people to become entrepreneurs. Absolutely. Thanks for everything. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Thanks, Manish, for tuning in. Go to YouTube.com, Fortress Chris Voss, the big 130,000 LinkedIn group, LinkedIn newsletter, LinkedIn, everything on LinkedIn. Just go subscribe to the Chris Voss show. We do so much over there. It's such a great platform. Also, go to Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.