Lee Stuart has built a public career around showcasing the work behind a growing decoration business, including Rogue Lab and Rogue Transfers, and has built an audience through detailed shop videos.
In this PrintHustlers Podcast episode, Lee explains what he’d change about the climb past one million dollars in revenue. He discusses key moments such as documenting production, expanding into DTF transfers, using AI as a learning tool, and protecting his capacity as the business grows.
Read on for the episode’s main ideas and a practical plan for turning shop knowledge into a system your team can use.
Growth exposed the operating problem
Lee describes a business that is growing on several fronts at once. His team has six employees, the current production space is spread across the shop, a garage, and a construction trailer, and the combined footprint no longer supports the people or equipment the work requires.
The planned move is from roughly 2,000 to 2,200 square feet across those spaces into a purpose-built 10,000-square-foot facility on commercial property. More room should allow Lee to add people and expand DTF capacity, but the building alone will not solve the operating problem. A larger shop amplifies whatever process is already in place. If job knowledge still lives with the owner, more machines and more employees create more questions for the same person.
Lee learned that when illness kept him out of the shop for about two weeks. Production slowed sharply because employees lacked the information needed to make decisions in his absence. The experience made the risk visible. He did not simply need more effort or another piece of equipment. He needed a business that could keep moving when he was unavailable.
Turn expert knowledge into usable procedures
Lee estimates that roughly three-quarters of the shop’s procedures are documented via Google Docs and are written for someone who has never completed the task before.
His approach is deliberately plain. It is a procedure that helps an employee complete the task correctly in the middle of a loud production environment.
Put the answer where the work happens
A procedure can be accurate and still fail if an employee cannot find it. Lee’s team addresses that problem with large printed instructions in fixed work areas and QR codes attached to equipment. The reclaim process, for example, is displayed beside the work station with photos and labels that match the supplies in the booth.
Longer documents are split by location. A QR code on a press or machine can link directly to the required section, instead of opening a large manual and asking the operator to search for it. Lee tried training videos but found that audio, phone distractions, and the time required to watch them made the format less useful for many shop-floor tasks. Written steps and photos were faster to scan during production. The best format he found depends on the task.
Start with low-risk work and improve immediately
Lee began with ink mixing because it was a relatively contained task that consumed his time. He gave the instructions to an employee who had not done the work before and used the result as a test of the document. When the employee completed the task, Lee had a repeatable model for documenting more of the shop.
This order of operations is useful for any owner who feels overwhelmed by the idea of documenting everything. Start with a recurring task that is easy to observe, has a clear finish line, and does not carry major customer risk. Once the format works, move toward setup, production, quality control, purchasing, sales, and management work.
Lee also follows a stop-and-fix practice. When a team member finds a gap, he updates the process while the problem is fresh. The shop tracks improvements on a shared board so employees can see what changed and contribute their own ideas. That turns maintenance into a daily procedure rather than an occasional project.
Hire before the owner becomes the blocker
Asked what he would change about reaching one million dollars, Lee’s first answer is that he would have hired sooner. He delayed because he believed no one could match his screen-printing skills or the quality his company provided. That belief kept him attached to production work longer than the business needed.
The first delegation steps were smaller tasks, such as reclaiming and mixing ink. As the procedures improved and employees proved they could meet the standard, Lee moved farther away from daily printing. He now rarely runs the press himself. His value shifted toward designing processes, removing constraints, developing new capabilities, and making decisions that affect the entire business.
This shift means separating the standard from the owner’s hands. A healthy production standard should be specific enough to be trained on, inspected, and repeated. If acceptable work depends on one person’s instinct, the shop cannot add capacity without adding risk.
Protect quality without chasing perfection
One of the episode’s sharper moments is Lee’s admission that technical perfection did not always create recognizable value. Early on, he spent excessive setup time chasing nearly perfect registration. Customer reactions showed they cared more about the product, the design, the reliability of the order, and whether the result met the promise they had been given.
This helped develop a new standard: build quality control around observable checks such as registration tolerance, opacity, cure, placement, color, quantity, and approved artwork. Then train the team to consistently meet that standard. A repeatable standard is easier to price, schedule, and improve than a standard that changes depending on who is watching the press.
Expand only when the workflow can carry it
Rogue Transfers began as a way to keep a DTF printer productive when Rogue Lab did not have enough internal transfer volume. The business grew without a major marketing push and now ships a substantial share of orders. Lee attributes the product development to testing different powders, films, and process combinations.
Volume also changed the economics. Larger supply purchases reduced unit costs, while the existing systems allowed Lee to stay involved in a smaller share of day-to-day transfer production. At the same time, space became the next constraint. He has a demand for more equipment and people, but no practical place to put them until the new facility is ready.
The sequence is worth noting. A second revenue stream can help a business increase profits, but it also adds purchasing, maintenance, staffing, quality control, fulfillment, and support work. Expansion is easier to absorb when the core process is already documented, and the owner can see where capacity will fail next.
Use AI to learn and inspect
Lee is also building internal tools and AI-assisted development. His preferred workflow uses tools such as Cursor and ChatGPT for research, explanation, coding, and review. The important part is the loop. He asks one tool to build or inspect something, uses another to explain the result, and studies enough of the underlying logic to identify problems when the generated code fails.
His rule is that AI should speed up learning rather than replace it. That distinction applies beyond software. A shop can use AI to draft a procedure, summarize recurring support questions, or propose a checklist. However, an experienced operator still needs to test the output against the machine, materials, safety requirements, and quality standards.
A practical review process for AI-assisted shop documentation is:
- Draft: Use the tool to organize notes from the person who performs the work.
- Test: Have another employee follow the procedure without verbal coaching.
- Inspect and compare: the result with the approved quality standard and safety requirements.
- Correct: Update the instructions, photos, warnings, and decision points.
- Control: Assign an owner and revision date so the team knows which version is current.
Owner capacity is part of shop capacity
The conversation also connects Lee’s mental and physical health to his handling of business pressure. He describes a period when he had neglected both and felt less capable than he realized. Regular training and stronger routines have helped him manage stress and maintain energy.
The business lesson is that a shop owner’s capacity is finite. A shop that depends on one person’s constant availability is exposed when that person gets sick, needs time away, or simply reaches the limit of a long, busy season. Procedures, trained managers, and visible job information give the owner room to recover without stopping production.
Where Printavo fits in the workflow
Lee’s procedures explain how work should be done. A shop management system provides the shared job record that tells the team what needs to be done for each order. Printavo connects quoting, artwork approvals, product details, due dates, production status, payments, and customer communication, so those decisions are not scattered across messages and individual memories.
That shared workflow can help a growing shop:
- Turn an approved quote into an actionable production plan.
- Keep garment choices, artwork, notes, and customer approvals connected to the job.
- Show each department what is ready, blocked, due, or waiting on a decision.
- Provide sales and customer service with up-to-date order information.
- Preserve order history so repeat work is easier to set up.
- Support consistent handoffs and reduce the amount of delegation by the owner.
A practical systemization plan for print shops
You do not need to document the whole business before the work becomes useful. Use the next recurring problem as the starting point and build outward from there.
- Choose one task. Pick a frequent process that consumes the owner’s time and has a clear pass-or-fail result.
- Observe the work. Record the actual sequence, materials, settings, decisions, and quality checks instead of describing an idealized version.
- Write for a new team member. Use short steps, photos, labels, and plain language. Define terms that an experienced operator takes for granted.
- Place it at the station. Use a printed guide or QR code that opens the relevant section without a long search.
- Test without coaching. Ask another employee to complete the task and note every place where the instructions leave room for interpretation.
- Fix the gap now. Revise the procedure while the issue is specific and fresh. Record the change so the team can see it.
- Connect it to the order. Make sure the job record contains the approved product, artwork, quantities, due date, and notes the procedure depends on.
- Delegate the outcome. Give one person ownership of the task and its quality checks, then review results instead of taking the work back.
Put it all together
Lee Stuart’s growth story is useful because the progress created visible constraints. New systems changed the problems Lee could work on.
The takeaway is to make high-quality, teachable, and job-related information visible. Start with one recurring task, document the real work, place the answer where the question occurs, and improve the procedure each time the team finds a gap. Then hire and delegate against that standard before the owner becomes the shop’s most expensive bottleneck.
Watch the full PrintHustlers Podcast episode, Lee Stuart on What He Would Change Hiring Mental Health and Life Past One Million for the complete discussion with Bruce Ackerman and Steven Farag.
Want a better way to manage quoting, artwork approvals, scheduling, production, payments, and customer communication? Try Printavo and give your team one place to follow every order from request to completion.