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Today's Guest: Tom Hauenstein of the LexJet Corporation in Sarasota, Florida
Today's Host: Damien Allen - July 2007
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Tom Hauenstein Transcript Page
Tom Hauenstein Expert PageANNOUNCER: Welcome to the VTalk Radio Photographer's Spotlight with your host, Damien Allen.
DAMIEN: Good Morning and welcome to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. I'm in for the vacationing, John Bentley, today via phone, we have with us in the studios, Mr. Tom Hauenstein from the Lexjet Corporation Digital Photo Consultant. How are you doing today, Tom?
TOM: I'm doing great, how bout yourself, Damien?
DAMIEN: Very few complaints. Beautiful weather up here in the big mitten of Michigan. Enjoying a fine beautiful sunny day. I understand you guys got a tour starting up here? Lexjet Corporation is going out on the road with the Go seminar. Could you tell me a little about that?
TOM: Sure, we wanted to get in front of our customers and educate our customers because we feel that our success is obviously dependent on the success of our customers. So we wanted to start a tour that would give us the opportunity to actually educate our customers in mass and make them more intelligent and make them more efficient in their business and make them a better business person. So we felt this was another way to actually touch our customers besides providing phone support and providing newsletters to them. This was just, you know, another way to get front of them and educate them and make them a better business person.
DAMIEN: Well, that sounds like a great idea to actually partner with your clients to help them better their business which of course is going to help you with yours. What's the time frame for this? Where is this going to take place?
TOM: We're going to be hitting sixteen cities throughout the nation spanning every major metropolis. For instance, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego. All the usual suspects of the bigger cities where we're not going to interfere with the normal running business.
DAMIEN: That's a great idea. Time is money so that is an attractive aspect to that. What cities are you covering for this?
TOM: The exact cities to the sixteen of them we're going to be hitting. First and foremost, we're going to be in Miami, then we're going to be in Charleston, Austin, Atlanta, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Seattle, Denver, San Diego, San Francisco, Richmond, Chicago, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. I think that's all of them.
DAMIEN: So you truly are hitting a vast majority of each region of the country which gives people the ability to get somewhere close anyway.
TOM: Right and the one thing we're going to start to do is get as much feedback as possible and see what cities we missed. I know we were really looking to hit Ohio in the second go around in this because we feel like there is a lot of people in Ohio that just Chicago is just a little bit far and Richmond is a little bit far, so I think that's another city we're going to go into. you know, we want to be able to hit everybody and make it easy for them to attend for sure.
DAMIEN: Now I understand that these seminars are customized for each city. What does that mean? How do you customize a show for each city?
TOM: That's a great question. I'm glad you asked that. What we plan on doing, and I've already built it up, is I've have enough content really that the seminars a one day show, but I have enough content to make it probably a two or three day show, but what I want to do is I want to customize that content to what the attendees' needs are. So, when you actually call Lexjet or sign up for the actually city date you're going to, you're going to get a survey. It's going to ask you what content you want covered. For instance, you can say, "I'd would really like to know what the differences are with the Canons, the HP, and the Epson printers right now, can you give me an unbiased comparison of those three printers?" You can select that, you can select color management, you can select what tools you would like for your digital dark room. So I'm going to take all those surveys and quantify the data and then I'm going to show the attendees before we start and say, "Ok, in this city you selected that this is the most important information to you." And that's the information we're going to cover. So I think that's a pretty unique idea and I think it's going to go over really well and it should really make the attendees feel like we're there for them and that's really what we are. We are there for the attendee.
DAMIEN: That's a great idea in that it definitely being able to customize each presentation to what people are most interested in. Besides what comes through on the preselection poll, what other subjects are you going to cover? What would I learn in general if I was just getting into this.
TOM: That's a great question as well. Basically, the seminar is going to be broken down in three sections. The first section is really going to be covering what tools are really necessary in order to be efficient in the digital dark room. What do you need, what don't you need. You know, it's kinda sifting through all the marketing hype and giving you a core, giving you an idea of what the core products are in order for you to be successful and efficient. The second section is really going to be covering how to use those tools efficiently. How do I print through a driver. How do I set up my color management from beginning to end so that my first print is going to be a useable print, or as I call the one and done method. So it's all about efficiencies in the second section. Really how to hone in and become a user where you're maximizing your time out there shooting and minimizing your time in front of the computer so you're using shortcuts, and your color management is really helping you be efficient. And the final section is going to be on marketing ideas. How to keep your printer running. I really want to get photographers in the mind set that that printer is printing money. They don't, they buy a printer for a specific purpose. Let's say it's photographic reproduction, but they don't realize, with this printer they can enter tons of different markets and during traditionally slow times for a photographer like January and February, they can marketing to different businesses and keep that printer running and think of it as trading money for them and the more that printer's running, the more money they're making and the more successful their going to be in their business.
DAMIEN: That sounds like an amazing idea. Is there a website or address people can go to or a number they can call to get more information about this seminar tour?
TOM: Absolutely, you can call Lexjet at our toll free number which is (800) 453-9538 and you can also find us on the web at www.lexjet.com. That's just our general eshopping website, but if you want specific information on the tour, then you can go to www.greatoutput.com. And that will have all the information on the city dates, information on the outline of what the seminar's going to cover, and you can actually go there and sign up for the tour. It's only like $50 for the day. We really wanted to make it really easy for everybody to come. We're not trying to make money off the tour, what we want is a big audience, so we really made the barrier of entry small so we're hoping we get a lot of attendees.
DAMIEN: We're in the studio today with Tom Hauenstein , Digital Photo Consultant for Lexjet Corporation talking about the Go Seminar. We need to take a short break for commercial announcements. We'll be right back after these messages.
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DAMIEN: Good morning and welcome back to VTalk Radio's Photographer's Spotlight. I am Damien Allen in for John Bentley who is on vacation. Today via phone we are talking to Tom Hauenstein , Digital Photo Consultant for Lexjet Corporation, and we're talking about the Go Seminar that will be traveling all over the country starting in September. Tom, how can attending these shows help make me more money or save time for my work flow?
TOM: That's a great question? And that's really what we're all about. That's the core of this seminar. Making more money. The most important thing is really being efficient as I mentioned before and I know I'm going to say it again because that's what I'm all about - efficiency. My one and done method. If you're able to have a good color manage work flow, then you're making one print. Your not wasting ink and paper and time which all three added up can be very costly. You're minimizing your time in front of the computer by using fantastic software that we have that helps you with shortcuts with color correction and just common tasks that you have to do. Also, we're going to teach you which different materials you can print on and enter into different markets as I mentioned earlier. So when you're printing and you're offering banners to different businesses, you know what you're doing is you're gaining customer sharing, you're increasing the amount of potential customers you have by entering in the different markets. All of those things should wrap up and make you a more efficient printer and make you print more often and make you more money.
DAMIEN: This is based towards the color management and printing, what formats will I learn? What are we talking about as far as which aspects of my printing am I going to be working with here? Or is this what it's going to look like?
TOM: There will be, it's basically everything after capture. I'm going to talk about capture and how important it is to get everything right in the camera first because it's going to save you exponential time on the back end and I pontificate on that and I realize that, but I really think that's important to do it right the first time. Also with digital you have the ability to shoot multiple copies to make sure and bracket shoot with your exposure to make sure you get everything right the first time. After that, that's where we really start to take a look at what you're doing. Are you doing custom crops? Are you using a rip software? What kind of work flow are you doing? How much time are you spending trimming out your prints after you make them? Can you actually have the printer do the majority of the printing or the trimming for you? Absolutely you can, it's just a matter of pricing your offering perfectly so that you're steering your customers towards a job that makes you the most money with your pricing. It's very creative pricing, but it's very simple once you think about it. And once we get into those things, so we're really going to get really into it, into the nitty gritty of printing and really how to cut corners. There's going to be a ton of content that we're going to go over and I kinda consider it's kinda like drinking from a fire hose. So you know I want to take it slow and give the attendees plenty of time to ask questions and make sure that I did go over something that they wanted to go over.
DAMIEN: Now, myself, I just started picking up a digital camera, and this sounds like it's geared towards a professional photographer. You know the wedding photographers, somebody that does senior portraits and stuff like that. Is this geared strictly towards the professional photographer or would you say someone like me who's just picked up a digital camera, would this benefit me as well?
TOM: That's another great question, and the reason that it is because the hobbiest, they have to have some way of outputing their photography. Now it might just be that the hobbiest is just using the internet and the computer to output their photography, and that's fine, but if they ever wanted to do anything on print or get any types of photographs developed, then this is really for them. The reason that is is because there's a huge difference in the amount of quality, the amount of cost of printing in-house as opposed to using a digital photography lab. So if you can do it efficiently bringing your printing in-house really is going to save you a lot of money and add a ton of money to your bottom line immediately if you do it correctly and that's the caveat and that's the whole premise of the tour. So, yeah, I expect there to be a lot of hobbiests there from the beginning hobbiest to the serious hobbiest to the professional and also to the fine art reproducer. I think that we're going to be covering everything. Anybody that's really got a decent camera and really wants to learn how to output good prints it's going to appeal to perfectly.
DAMIEN: Now, Tom, you've been talking about your system and what you're going to be discussing. Are there going to be any other speakers during this tour?
TOM: This first go around, I'm going to be doing the majority of the speaking. Perhaps in every city we're going to have a couple photographers that we've worked with come up and give their advice as far as maybe for living and bit more of the pre-capture session, but the majority of it is going to be your's truly.
DAMIEN: What makes this tour different from the other tours and expos that go on throughout the course? What makes this particular tour different from others?
TOM: I think what really differentiates this tour is that there are tons of tours out there that teach you maybe just color management or they might just teach you Photoshop tricks, but this one is really encompassing everything that has to do with printing in-house. There really hasn't been anything just geared in on how to print in-house efficiently so that's really what we're going after and that's really what I think everybody's going to enjoy is the fact that, ok now that I know my color management is set up, how come I'm not getting these results on my printer? Or what do I need to do to get those results? and we're also going to go really into work flows of printing in-house. How do I eliminate or reduce the amount of time I have to spend trimming and color correcting and everything in order to get a successful, efficient work flow. And another thing that really separates it, I think again, is what we touched on earlier is the way we can customize the tour for each city. I don't think I've ever seen any seminar that really offers that customization aspect to it and I really think that's going to go well for us.
DAMIEN: What hours during the day is the seminar going to be attending?
TOM: The seminar is going to be from 10 - 6. We're going to break for lunch. We're going to be supplying the attendees with lunch. There will be about a 45 minute to an hour break and then a couple intermittent breaks in their so it will be a 10 - 6 tour.
DAMIEN: So for $50 you get marketing instruction, you get color management instruction, printing instruction, lunch, and it just sounds like a great opportunity for anybody and any level of photography that's looking to do more with their printing.
TOM: Absolutely, I think it is .. I think you just hit the nail on the head on the fact that with everything you're getting, of course including the lunch, it is a steal and it's a bargain, and it's something that unless you have a pressing need that day to do something else, I'd would really try to make it. We'd really love to have everybody there. We are making the tours on Mondays which are traditionally the slowest day for a photographer. Many of our photography customers are closed on Mondays and also Wednesdays so the slower days we wanted to pull it away from the weekend because we know tons of people have bookings on the weekends so again just tailoring it to make sure that the photographer has the ability to make it there.
DAMIEN: Tom, can we get the website and contact information for the seminar one more time please?
TOM: Sure. You can call Lexjet at (800) 453-9538 and any one of the representatives answering the phone will be more than happy to help you with information on the tour or you can go to our website which is www.greatoutput.com. There you will find all the information. The tour dates, the outlines, and you can actually register for a specific city there as well.
DAMIEN: Tom, we'd like to thank you today. We have been in the studio via phone with Tom Hauenstein , Digital Photo Consultant for Lexjet Corporation. Their getting ready to go out on the road here in September with the Go Seminar. You can reach them at www.lexjet.com and at all the contact information Tom just gave. Tom, thanks for joining us and letting us know what's going on with Go.
TOM: Thank you, Damien, I really appreciate the opportunity to be here.
DAMIEN: You've been listening to the VTalk Radio's Photographer's Spotlight. I am Damien Allen in for John Bentley; have a great afternoon.
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