One day in 2000, Judd Plattenburg realized he was making his boss at Oregon Printing Communications a lot of money.
So he walked into his office and bought the business.
“I didn’t go to school to be an entrepreneur owner. I never really imagined myself doing that,” he shared. “But I also knew I was kind of running the company. And I was basically making the other owner kind of rich. So I went to him one day, and I don’t know what I was thinking, but I just said, look, I’m going to go work for a big company, or I’m going to buy this company, one of the two.”
His boss agreed, so he visited an accountant, and then his banker.
“I must have been having a pretty good day because I talked to bankers into loaning me enough money to purchase it,” he recalled. “It was a dive head-first into real business ownership.”
Judd had been working in the print shop since 1983, but he quickly learned that being the owner was different beast.
“It was not what I expected,” he recalled. “One of the biggest things was, all the people that you had worked with for all these years, that were your good friends and co-workers, all of a sudden you changed the roles, and you’re the guy that signs the paychecks.”
He took strategic planing classes through the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce and Aileron, each time surrounded by peers who also wanted to level up their business ownership.
“I couldn’t describe it at the time, but I knew I wanted to run more professionally, run it with systems as opposed to just on the fly,” Judd said. “A lot of what I learned there is, it’s about the people — managing the people, having the right people, motivating and inspiring the people.”
Printing is a capital-intensive business — it’s easy to drop half a million dollars on a single piece of equipment, Judd said. But all the expensive equipment in the world won’t get you anywhere without the right team, he said.
Today, Oregon Printing Communications has a team of 12.
“For me, 12 is a good size. There was a point where it was just like, grow, grow, grow, but I don’t want layers of management,” Judd said. “I mean, 12 people is a small company. It’s a micro company. But it’s still 12 lives that you’re responsible for getting the paycheck to them. And they depend on that. They’ve got house payments or rent payments to make and car payments, so you take it seriously.”
To keep the business moving forward, an entrepreneur has to both listen and communicate, he said.
“There’s one thing about being an entrepreneur — sometimes we can get pretty headstrong and think, my idea can’t lose, and you know what, it can,” he said. “In the earlier days, I was a little bit more headstrong, we got to do it this way, and I’ve learned to listen.”
Judd has a lot of friends who are retiring, and they keep asking when he’s going to join them.
“I just love making cool stuff,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll look at what we’re doing out there, and it just blows me away. If you would have told me that we’re doing what we’re doing right now 10 years ago, I’d have said you’re crazy, you can’t do that.”
Everything changed with the onset of digital printing — from embellishments to say, printing white ink on darker papers.
“You can do stuff now that wasn’t even thought of 10 years ago,” he said.
Off the clock, Judd is an avid photographer. He has traveled as far as Cuba to capture images. And he loves to paddle Ohio’s waterways and beyond, often with a camera in hand. He has traveled as far as Cuba to photograph He owns Sugarcreek Photography Gallery with four business partners. They display work from more than a dozen artists.
Judd’s main goal right now is to build a team that can run without him — even though it’s hard for him to step back.
“I’m passionate about it, I love being in the middle of it,” he said. “There’s not many printing companies in downtown Dayton that do what we do. And there’s so many nonprofits out there that we want to help.”
I am Judd Plattenburg and I’m an entrepreneur.
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There’s no one way to be an entrepreneur.
You don’t have to look a certain way, operate in a particular industry, or pursue specific education. You don’t have to grow up in a particular household, or spend your free time nurturing any particular hobbies — entrepreneurs grow from all walks of life.
In this series, entrepreneurs, founders, and small business owners from across the Dayton Region share their individual stories to break down pervading stereotypes about who can or can’t be an entrepreneur.
They proudly declare, “I Am an Entrepreneur” — and you can be, too.
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