Jay Sapovits is a resilient and visionary entrepreneur whose career is defined by an uncanny ability to turn challenges into opportunities. At 18, he made a bold cross-country move to attend UNLV, setting the stage for a lifetime of unconventional, trailblazing decisions. With a natural talent for connecting with people and a relentless drive, Jay has repeatedly reinvented himself, embracing each new venture with creativity, adaptability and determination.
Questions
- We always like to start our interviews off with our guests by giving them an opportunity to share a little about their journey in your own words, so if you could just take a few minutes and share that with us.
- Now, can you just kind of give us a little overview of what you’re currently working on, actively working on in your life now?
- Can you share a client use case (without naming them) that shows how your company improved their customer experience, reduced friction, and stood out from the competition?
- Could you share with us what’s the one online resource, tool, website or application that you absolutely can’t live without in your business?
- Could you also share with our listeners maybe one or two books that you’ve read, it could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you’ve read recently, but it has had a positive or a profound impact on you.
- As we reach mid-2025, with rising customer expectations and political shifts in the U.S. affecting global markets, what are the three strategic priorities you would focus on to stay competitive through the rest of 2025 and into 2026?
- Now, what’s the one thing that’s going on in your life now that you’re really excited about, either something you’re working on to develop yourself or your people.
- Where’s the best place that listeners can find you online?
- Now, before we wrap our episodes up, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you’ll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track.
Highlights
Jay’s Journey
Me: We always like to start our interviews off with our guests by giving them an opportunity to share a little about their journey in your own words, so if you could just take a few minutes and share that with us.
Jay shared that it’s a crazy journey. It’s cross country and filled with celebrity and being exposed to wealth that he did not grow up being exposed to at a very early age. And just kind of moving forward and taking action against his own experience. And he doesn’t exactly know how to put his life into words, but a lot of people think their life could be a movie, he can assure, his can be. It’s very action oriented and filled with a lot of high profile and interesting characters.
Current Personal Projects and Active Endeavours
Me: Now, Jay, can you just kind of give us a little overview of what you’re currently working on, actively working on in your life now?
Jay shared that the company is called Ink Stores, they’re a full-service promotional company that specializes in on demand web stores. So, they build, host, manage and fulfil company and organization merchant swag stores. Companies hire them to essentially host their website for merchandise, and they produce items with no inventory or no commitments or no costs to drop ship anywhere in the world, to their constituents. So, that’s their business, that’s instore, that’s what they do. That’s what he’s working on now and really have been since COVID.
They were a conventional promotional company prior to COVID, they had a retail storefront, you could walk in, get 1 T-Shirt made. But when COVID hit, the retail side of the business went goodbye, and they had to figure out a new way to operate and do business online, and they quickly reinvented themselves by building swag stores and came up with a model to do it.
Ink has always been about creating an opportunity for the little guy, even though they do serve a lot of bigger clients. They always say, if you’re going to start a business, start it with the problem that you have and find a solution for the problem, because chances are that somebody else has that problem. And for him, that problem was, he was the operator of small businesses, and it was really hard for him to get anything embroidered or screen printed or decorated, because everything had minimums, and he might not have met the minimum quantity. And when they came along, he just said, they’re not going to have any minimums, they specialize in no minimum production.
And what invariably happens is, the people you start with, like the fact that you don’t have minimums grow, and then as they grow, you grow. So, that’s what he’s working on today.
Enhancing Customer Experience: A Real-World Success Story
Me: Now, I always like to ask our guests if they could maybe give us a use case of a client that they have, you don’t need to mention the customer’s name, but just kind of show us how it is that you have managed to, as you mentioned, solve that problem for the customer, navigated an experience for them that made the customer experience better for their end user. Because at the end of the day, we’re all trying to just do business and have pleasant experiences, less friction, no hassle. And unfortunately, that’s not the case consistently with all businesses. So, how has your company managed to stand out and set yourself apart in that sphere?
Jay stated that it’s a good question. He’ll give you a very specific example that recently happened to them over the holidays. A client of theirs came to them and somebody in their sphere had been working with them to sell them a swath of unisex jackets of a name brand.
And so, essentially, in doing that, they would internally gather everybody’s size, men’s and ladies, unisex means there’s one size to the jacket, and then in the one color, they would order those items to be decorated and shipped to the company, and then the company would send them out to each of their employees.
What they (Jay’s company) did is, they gave them an online portal. So basically, it’s webstore where the same jacket could be offered in multiple colors. They approved the colors, men’s and ladies cuts, and they didn’t have to do anything administratively. They sent the link out to their employees, they gave them a deadline to order by.
Obviously, people missed the deadline, so when they closed it, they opened it back up for a few hours. Other people ordered, they then closed it, the company approved all of the individuals who ordered through the portal, and then they drop shipped to them after production, to each individual person who programmed their own color, size, style and address with the company not administering any of it, except for confirming that the people on the list were the correct people, and approving the order in total when it was ready to go.
So, they did that for a holiday pop up, and it’s essentially a build out of what they do on it on an everyday basis.
Me: Wow, that’s brilliant.
Jay stated that he thinks it’s incredibly uncomfortable. The biggest pain point that he’s heard, or at least one of them, from folks in physical HR, like in the office with their colleagues, is they’ll get swag in, and their colleagues will come, and they’ll try it on, whatever the piece is in front of them.
And then when you try something on, you’ll say, “Well, how do you think this looks, or how do you think this feels?” We just live in a world where that’s just not a question that anybody wants to receive anymore, and there’s no win in it.
So, now HR, directors and people managers and coordinators, they don’t have to go through the hell of try on experiences in front of them, because people are programming their own size. And not to mention, he’s had more than one HR person tell him, “This person ordered a large when they’re really a XXL.” And they’re just embarrassed, they’re embarrassed to order the size they really need. And these manufacturers don’t do women any justice.
He knows from his own experience, his wife’s a small woman, and sometimes she’ll tell him the size that she’s wearing, and he’s like, what? The cuts are so narrow, you almost have to not eat to be a zero through four, it’s crazy.
So, he doesn’t understand what these clothing manufacturers, women are their number one audience and it’s like they ideologically and psychologically treat them with disdain by putting these unrealistic numbers on sizes that, especially in a middle to older workforce….few wear, younger companies, sure they wear their clothes tighter because they’re younger.
They talk about those things with their clients. If you have a young workforce, you’re going to have more smalls and mediums. And it’s not always because they’re smaller, it’s just they wear their clothes differently than even him; he’s a little baggy today.
Me: Definitely generational, I quite agree.
There you go, so all these conversations are not meant to be had in HR, and they take those conversations away.
App, Website or Tool that Jay Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business
When asked about online resource that he can’t live without in his business, Jay shared Email. He likes to kid that he runs his business like he’s a stock trader. People email him and like he’s locked up with you and him are having a conversation for a little bit of time right now, that’ll be the longest somebody goes without getting an answer from him. He’s crazy on his email, it’s like a constant back and forth. If you email him, you could get an answer in seconds.
Me: That’s awesome. It’s funny you said that because pre COVID, the global standard for email response time was 24 hours, and post COVID, it’s now 1 hour. So, it’s great you’re responding in seconds.
He shared his lifetime has been like that, so he doesn’t know if he ever fit in any of those surveys.
Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Jay
When asked about books that have had an impact, Jay shared that there’s two. One is, Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty: The Only Networking Book You’ll Ever Need, which is an excellent book about creating a network before you have a need to use that network, and incredibly insightful.
And the other is, and this is his absolute favourite book, favourite author. He wrote to him offline once, and he wrote me back with a signed copy of the book, it changed his life. It’s called, How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients by Jeffrey Fox, and it’s this tiny little, he doesn’t even think it’s 115 pages. But 100 and some page book, each chapter is two to three pages, big words, so easy to read, easy on the eyes, which is more relevant now than when he read it 25, 26 years ago. But it’s all about selling, a lot of it’s what you would consider to be common sense, but he kind of just punches you right in the nose with it, and it’s like, well, that makes sense. Well, just constantly, it’s that makes sense.
So, he’ll get in conversations, he interviews a lot of people like for jobs and for onboarding, and he has his own podcast, and he’ll be on interviews like this. When he’s in sales interviews, and he interviews a lot of like, early stage or young candidates, he always tell them, get that book, that book will change your life. If you follow what that book tells you to do, how to become a rainmaker, you will become a rainmaker. And Jeffrey Fox is a brilliant author who makes it super easy on an audience he knows has very little attention span, sales people. So, that’s his suggestion.
Strategic Priorities for Staying Competitive Amid Rising Expectations and Global Shifts
Me: Now, we’re halfway through 2025, Jay, and there are a lot of customer service trends, I would say, high expectations that customers have. You’re in the United States, correct? And there’s a lot happening, politically in the United States that’s impacting your global partners throughout the world. In terms of just as a business person, and in terms of trying to stay competitive with how the market is operating in the next 6 months, moving into 2026, if there are three things that you could focus on moving into the remainder of 2025 into 2026, what would those three things be?
Jay shared that maybe he’ll get to three. But it’s for him, so talking to his customers, his clients, he’d say keeping up with trends and focusing on his employees and the people who work for and with him. He doesn’t really focus on outside issues, he’s communicated a bunch. He puts it on his LinkedIn. He’s told all his customers he’s not raising prices. People are raising prices to him every day, he’s getting assaulted by a lot of his partners. He’s literally getting assaulted, that’s how he views it 100%, no question about it.
These are companies that he does business with that he’s treated incredibly well. He’s given them millions of dollars in business in the last few years. And they had a tariff announcement, and they announced they were raising prices without hesitation, and then the tariff got put on pause, and they didn’t rescind the tariff price increase. He doesn’t know what you call it, but they’re coming after my pocketbook, he calls it assault. And he’s told them this to their face. So, he’s said to his clients, if you’re loyal to him, your price isn’t going up, your price is coming down.
So, he’s getting barraged by price increases, and he’s not only not increasing his price, he’s lowering to the people who are consistent with him, who are sticking with him, who are sticking with promo items, which are a lot of cases, nice to have, or ideological that they want to continue on that trend. He’s trying to make them be able to do business in a way that’s a softer and gentler, a way than a lot of people in his space are doing where they’re opportunist.
He’ll give you a perfect example. He lives near an outdoor concert venue. So, he drove by the outdoor concert venue yesterday, they were having a concert, parking in a specific lot last year for events was $40, this year it’s $60.
Why?
Because they’re opportunistically gouging people, because people have gotten into the mind-set that everything’s more expensive today than it was yesterday. They didn’t repave the asphalt, they didn’t make it easier for you to leave. You think they gave the three people who work in that parking lot, let’s say there’s 100 cars that go in there, moderately. If there’s 100 cars that go in there and they raise the price by $20 what percentage of that increase in revenue do you think they gave the three people who parked those cars?
Very little, if any, so their costs haven’t gone up, but yet they want to charge you more because you’re used to paying more because everything else is more expensive.
Me: They’re basically riding the back of this.
Jay agreed, correct. So, he’s going the other direction. He’s telling his clients, he’s telling his customers, if you continue to order promotional items from him, you’re not going to have a price increase, and you may have a price decrease. It’s just to him, is good business.
Me: And it’s the opposite of what everyone else is doing, which should hopefully increase some retention and loyalty.
Jay stated that he tries not to go crazy with the daily swings of politics, with the daily swings of the news, he doesn’t watch it. He doesn’t turn it on. He doesn’t read it. All the words on his X feed and other social media are blocked, he just has no interest in it.
His life is going to be impacted, the people in his circle and in his world’s life is going to be impacted by the three things that he shared with you and those three priorities a lot more than they’re going to be shared by any politician. And he’s always kind of felt that they’re all the same, no matter any letter by their name. And every day that he lives and he’s not young, he gets proven correct. So, he just doesn’t pay attention. He pays attention to what matters and what matters is not outside his earns reach, he promises.
What Jay is Really Excited About Now!
When asked about something that he’s really excited about, Jay stated that talking about develop himself, he’s in the process of interviewing candidates to help them develop more formal and advanced technology to aid their customer experience and their sales and service prospects.
So, doing things that he’s uncomfortable with, very comfortable with interviewing somebody to see if they could potentially be an account manager or a sales rep or a customer service rep, but interviewing and speaking to potential developers or data science engineers or computer science engineers or AI technicians, is not something he’s particularly comfortable with, but he has a career and lifetime of being uncomfortable. So, this is just one more aspect of.
Where can listeners find Jay online?
Website – https://www.inkdstores.com/
LinkedIn – Jay Sap
Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Jay Uses
When asked about a quote that he tends to revert to, Jay shared that he doesn’t know if it’s a quote, but he has a fortune cookie saying taped underneath his computer and actually sits right here on the verge of his computer, and it says, “If you promise someone something, keep it.”
Me: Simple, but very powerful.
He shared that “Life is a series of doing the simple things, right.” That’s what this deal is. If you promise someone something, keep it.
Me: What you said, when you were explaining the fortune cookie, you said, life is a series of doing the simple things.
Yes, it’s just doing a series of simple things, the next right thing. It’s just doing the next right thing over and over and over. Here’s the reality of his life, we’ve all done wrong in our life, right? And he’ll take it down to the level of going 60 miles an hour in a 45 mile an hour zone, speeding, right? We’ve all done wrong in our life. Maybe a handful of times, he’s 53, there’s maybe been a handful of times when he’s done wrong and not known he’s been doing wrong. You all know when you’re doing the wrong thing, so just do the next right thing, and if you do the series of the next, but we all do wrong, but if you do the next right thing, your life is going to be better than if you make those decisions that are not the decision that you know should be making.
So, he doesn’t think it’s a function of like, “I made a mistake.” It’s like, no, you made a conscious choice and you knew it was wrong. So, he does believe we know right from wrong at a very base, simple level, we just make choices to do the wrong thing instead of doing the right thing. So, if you start stacking up the right decision, good things eventually will come from it. It’s when you start stacking up the wrong thing, and that’s when bad things come from it. So, not hard formulas.
Me: No, they’re not.
Well, Jay, I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy day to hop on our podcast, Navigating the Customer Experience, and share a little bit about your journey, your organization, the problems that you’re solving, the things that you’re going to be focusing on, and just why you think it’s important to ensure that you’re helping people to achieve their goals and helping them to realize the initiatives that they have set forth, your organization is helping them to get that much closer to that particular realization of that goal. So, I enjoyed our conversation, and I just want to say thank you again.
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Links
- Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty: The Only Networking Book You’ll Ever Need by Harvey Mackay
- How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients by Jeffrey Fox
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