By Lemay Sanchez, Co-Founder and CEO of PlanProphet

I was recently put on the spot with a deceptively hard question during a recorded discussion. “What’s the ONE best trait of a great print business operator?”

I only had a moment to respond, so I chose “discipline”. I knew I went for the convenient and safe answer, not the honest one. Lately that question has been on my mind a lot.

Over the last 25 years, I’ve worn a lot of hats in this trade: design, machine operator, salesperson, sales manager, owner, and now consulting. In addition, during the past five years as PlanProphet CEO and front-of-the-house workflow consultant, I’ve had a rare window into the behind-the-scenes of over 1,000 print operations from all sizes across the word. I’ve been in countless conversations with owners, sales teams, and production crews, trying to contribute something useful.

Every so often, I’d land on a shop so well run I felt I might not have anything to add. These plants made me feel like a fish out of water, like a poser.

These shops were unicorns. After you’ve spoken at length with hundreds of operators a year, you start spotting them fast. Work flowed. People knew their roles. Customers were happy. The team was happy. The business was making serious money. And the wild part was that leadership still asked, “What else should we be doing?”

That question is the tell.

Before I share what I’ve learned, let me define what I mean by “best”, because I’m not talking about the biggest shop. In this context, “best” is a shop that stays highly profitable year after year, sits at or near the top of its market or peer group in revenue, and still keeps customers and employees genuinely happy. That combination is rare. That’s excellence.

So here are the three traits I saw most consistently in the owners running those unicorn shops. There are more, but these three showed up so often that they felt like pillars.

1) They played to their strengths (and hired for their blind spots)

I kept meeting three “types” of owners.

• The sales-driven people person
• The operational wizard who can run production in their sleep
• The finance brain who knows every ratio, cost, and metric that matters

For a while, I was convinced one of those types had a clear edge. I was wrong.

The best shops were split across all three, almost evenly (trust me, I made a spreadsheet for this note). The difference was not which type they were. The difference was self-awareness.

These owners knew exactly what they were great at, and they were not embarrassed by what they were not great at. Then they hired the best they could find to fill the gaps.

Sales-first owners hired elite production leadership and tight financial support. Operations-first owners hired serious sales leadership and built a real sales engine. The numbers-first owners ran the business like a CFO would, and empowered leaders in production and sales to own the day-to-day. Different styles, same pattern: don’t pretend. Build the team.

2) They stayed open to new ideas (from anyone)

The unicorn owners had a humility that showed up in a very specific way. They listened. Real listening. With humility (and I wish I could use this word more without coming across repetitive). 

They were unusually receptive to ideas from everywhere, from a brand-new hire with zero print experience just the same as the from the occasionally overpriced consultant. That mindset creates a cascade of benefits: they adapt faster, they drop what isn’t working sooner, and they pivot into new markets or offerings without dragging their feet.

The biggest downstream effect I saw was loyalty. Teams stuck around because they felt heard and trusted. Customers stayed loyal because the staff had the freedom to take care of them without fear. When a culture is built on “bring problems and ideas,” instead of “don’t rock the boat,” you feel it in the building. And the customer feels it too.

3) They cared a lot about profit (and they did not apologize for it)

This one might get me some heat, but it was consistent.

Every owner I put in the “excellent” category cared deeply about making more money this year than last year. Not because they were greedy, but because they treated the shop like a business, not a job.

They valued quality of life: family time, vacations, not living at the shop every weekend. And instead of sacrificing that to “save every job” or “please every client,” they focused on improving the business so the business could support a better life.

Here’s what stood out most: they cared about dollars taken home, not just margin, not just revenue.

They understood something many people miss: high margins on low revenue is easier. High revenue with thin margins is also easier. The hard part is growing revenue while protecting and expanding profit at the same time. That’s what they chased.

And that’s what pushed them to invest in better people, better workflows, better equipment, and better software. Yes, including PlanProphet. I had to sneak that in somewhere.

For our next user conference, I’m going to try to convince five of these owners to join me on a panel, not to brag and not to sell, but to give the industry a real, honest look at what excellence actually looks like. I’ll ask them as a sincere favor, because most are so humble and focused that even reading this, they won’t realize I’m talking about them.