The Two-Degree Blessing of Being Local and Online

Have you ever heard of “Bacon’s Law” or “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”? This popular trivia game is based on the idea of six degrees of separation, or in other words, that “any two people on Earth are six or fewer acquaintance links apart.” After 30+ years in business, six degrees of separation for me has become more like two degrees of separation, where friends (or contacts of friends) have become clients, and customers have become friends. This two-degree network has never been as noticeable to me as it is now in my local area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Even though the population of Pittsburgh and the surrounding metro area reaches over 2.3 million people, every day I get to foster the connections that earn me the label “local printer.” The Mixing of Business and Personal After many years of building these relationships, I’ve begun to notice personal and business getting closer together and harder to differentiate. But, in my opinion, that is a good thing! It makes our professional lives as printers more enjoyable when our customers become our friends, and the people from our lives outside of work begin to ask us to help with their printing needs. Here’s

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