The Dscoop Podcast

Entrepreneur Adam Rich knows how to build things that last — and resonate. As the co-founder of Thrillist, he helped turn a small New York City newsletter into a global lifestyle brand that reached more than 300 million people monthly.

Today, Adam channels that same entrepreneurial energy into advising some of the most forward-thinking companies around, including Klarna, hims, Fi and Retention.com.

In this "Unvarnished" interview with Chris Hyde and Darin Painter, Adam shares his take on what it really takes to build resilient, creative teams in times of rapid change. Leadership today, he says, requires a willingness to be honest, listen deeply and create space for discomfort — because that’s where the growth happens.

As the INSPIRE track leader for Edge Long Beach, Adam will bring his signature blend of wit, wisdom and strategic insight to the event. His Edge session, "Honesty, Listening, and Other Terrifying Strategies for Building Tomorrow’s Workforce,"promises to be an enlightening conversation about trust, transformation and the human side of leadership.

The future of the digital print industry is being created today, thanks to the fresh perspective, skills and passion of young talent around the world. Our profession's rising stars are helping companies transform and shine.

As you'll see in this video, some of these stars are forming early, even as early as their sophomore year of college.

The group interview features four students enrolled in Ferris State University's graphic media management program in the College of Business. Together, Tara Seth, Maggie Lewis, Mackenzie Griffin, Emalyn Nelson and Faith Robinson are a constellation of young talent that presents an energizing picture of the print communications landscape. They care more about future communication than past convention, and they have a burning desire to make a difference.

Soon, Tara, Maggie, Mackenize, Emalyn and Faith will be pioneering new pathways to success in the world of print and marketing communications. Perhaps they will find internships or employment through Dscoop connections. They all networked with Dscoopers at Edge Indy, where during the event Tara also helped to drive an important discussion during an educational session about marketing to different generations.

What are they learning in the Ferris State program? What did they discover during Edge Indy? How might they begin to shape their careers?

Enjoy the conversation and find out.

AI is everywhere, but are businesses truly harnessing its potential? Emma Farquharson, Ph.D., CEO and founder of SharedIntel AI, says most aren't even scratching the surface.

In the latest episode of "Unvarnished," Emma joins hosts Chris Hyde and Darin Painter to cut through the AI noise, debunk common misconceptions and share how businesses can apply AI in a way that actually drives results.

Emma's Journey from Science to AI Strategy

With a PhD in molecular genetics, Emma initially worked on engineering viruses for food and water safety. But after seeing her research struggle against industry barriers, she pivoted — realizing AI’s potential to solve real-world problems at scale. As an early beta tester of ChatGPT, she saw firsthand how AI could transform businesses, not by replacing people, but by amplifying their expertise.

“I believe AI can solve any problem we’re able to articulate,” she said. “But fear and misunderstanding keep many businesses from using it effectively.”

She Sees a Common Mistake

Emma’s AI expertise isn’t limited to theory — she grew up in the print industry. Her father, Bill Farquharson, is a well-known print sales expert, which means Emma spent her childhood at industry trade shows and conferences.

That deep industry connection gives her a unique perspective on AI’s role in print — and she sees massive opportunities beyond content generation or automated design.

“The biggest mistake I see is people using AI superficially — throwing in a one-line prompt and expecting magic,” Emma explained. Instead, she advocates for a conversational approach, where users train AI to ask the right questions before generating solutions.

“If you just say, ‘Find me the best vertical markets for 2025,’ you’ll get generic results,” she said. “But if you tell AI who you are, your specialties, past successes, and goals, it can deliver truly contextualized, high-quality insights.”

She encourages businesses to treat AI like a thought partner — one that can refine ideas, identify gaps and even challenge your assumptions to improve decision-making.

The Urgency: Why 2025 Is the Year to Act

For companies hesitant to embrace AI, Emma has a warning: waiting too long could be a costly mistake.

“If it’s 2028 and you haven’t incorporated AI into your workflows, you’re probably not around anymore — at least not as a competitive business,” she said. “This is the last year where you can adopt AI on your own terms before the market dictates it for you.”

She believes AI will separate companies into two groups: those who use it effectively and those who struggle to keep up. And while she acknowledges the concerns around AI replacing jobs, she argues the real threat is not knowing how to use it at all.

On April 10, Emma Will Help You Build Your Own GPT

Emma is bringing her AI expertise to Edge Long Beach this May with a high-impact session called AI in Action: Supercharge Your Lead Gen. Her presentation will help your team learn how to use AI for market research, identifying high-quality leads and streamlining sales outreach. She’ll demo practical tools that businesses can implement immediately.

For Edge attendees who register before March 31, she’s also leading a preconference webinar on April 10 called Build Your Own GPT: A Step-by-Step Guide for Your Business. It's a hands-on session where she’ll teach attendees how to train AI specifically for their company, eliminating the need to start from scratch every time.

Stop trying to sell, and start trying to educate.

That’s the message Colin McDermott, The Online Print Coach, will bring to Edge Long Beach this May as a speaker in the SELL track. He believes print companies need to shift from a traditional sales mindset to an educational approach — guiding clients, building trust and using content marketing to generate long-term business.

In this episode of the "Unvarnished" video interview series, Colin shares his journey in the print industry, from working in estimating and production to launching and running his own businesses. He has faced firsthand the challenges of losing major clients overnight, navigating economic downturns and rebuilding from scratch. Those experiences have shaped his approach to helping companies grow and become more resilient.

Now a certified corporate coach and founder of The Online Print Coach, Colin works with clients to help them fine-tune their sales processes and build stronger client relationships. At Edge Long Beach, he’ll share tangible strategies to help printers stand out, generate leads and keep customers coming back.

“People don’t want to be sold to — they want solutions to their problems. If you can teach them something valuable, they’ll trust you and eventually buy from you,” Colin says.

Colin is also hosting an exclusive pre-event webinar for Edge Long Beach attendees, "The Top 10 Mistakes Print Companies Make," which will cover key business pitfalls and how to fix them. One of those mistakes, he shares in this interview, is not creating a strong feedback loops with customers. He has seen print companies unknowingly leave millions of dollars on the table simply because they never asked their clients the right questions.

Sustainability in print comes with real challenges, from reducing waste to cutting energy use without driving up costs. Carlos Lahoz has spent more than 20 years at HP tackling these complexities from multiple angles — engineering, compliance, marketing, and strategy. His deep understanding of sustainability's technical and business sides makes him a key figure in helping print companies turn their sustainability goals into measurable results.

In this episode of the Unvarnished video interview series, Carlos talks about the biggest sustainability challenges printers face, the need for clear industry standards, and how HP is helping businesses make measurable progress. By helping to lead HP's Sustainability Amplifier program, he's working to help printers assess where they stand with sustainability, set realistic sustainability goals and take action. It’s designed to work for companies at any stage — whether they’re just beginning to explore sustainability or refining well-established strategies.

One of the biggest obstacles to sustainability, Carlos says in the interview, is the lack of a common definition. Printers, brands, media manufacturers and OEMs often talk past each other, each focusing on different sustainability metrics. For some, it’s about recycled materials; for others, it’s carbon footprint or energy efficiency. Without alignment, businesses struggle to communicate their sustainability progress in a way that resonates with customers.

"Sustainability is about collaboration. It's about sharing transparency," he says. "We need to help our customers assess where they are, give them recommendations on what to do next, and provide data, guidelines, and tools that help them progress."

At Edge Long Beach (May 14-17), Carlos will lead a panel on reducing waste, energy and media use, sharing practical insights on how print companies can integrate sustainability without compromising profitability.

When Denver Annunciation first entered the print business, he had no intention of staying. A second-generation entrepreneur, he originally set out to build a career in IT. But when his father faced health challenges, Janus stepped in — on one condition: that he had the freedom to modernize.

At the time, Janus International was operating with outdated single-color letterpress equipment. But with a forward-thinking approach, he and his brother took charge, focusing on automation, efficiency and scalability. His father gave him the green light, and Denver got to work.

The first major expansion came in 2003 with the addition of a flexo press. From there, the business took off. By 2008, Janus International had adopted digital printing, becoming a pioneer in India’s evolving print landscape. What started as a small, traditional operation has grown into a powerhouse with 13 presses — flexo, offset and digital — serving a diverse client base across industries like cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and food packaging.

Scaling with Strategy

Denver attributes much of his success to a deliberate, step-by-step approach. “One step at a time,” he said — a philosophy inherited from his father and embedded into the company’s DNA. Over the years, he has strategically expanded the company's capabilities, ensuring that every investment aligns with both business sustainability and customer needs.

Today, Denver oversees strategic initiatives, from capital expenditures to long-term planning, with a firm belief in balancing automation with human expertise. His focus is not just on technology but also on empowering employees. “Our systems are designed to enable people to do their jobs better, not replace them,” he said.

Inspired by Global Exposure in the Dscoop Community

A frequent traveler and active member of the Dscoop community, Denver credits much of his company’s evolution to learning from global best practices. He also continually applies lessons from other industries to improve efficiency at Janus International.

His willingness to adapt and innovate has helped the company scale rapidly. In its early days, Janus International produced about a million beer labels per week. Today, thanks to digital advancements and streamlined workflows, they can produce a million labels in just eight hours — on a single press, with seven such presses running.

Looking to the Future

With India’s growing economy and young workforce, Denver sees tremendous potential for the print and packaging industry. “We have 1.4 billion people, with 60% under the age of 30. That’s the biggest opportunity we have,” he says.

His priorities now? Expanding into new market verticals, strengthening the company’s IT infrastructure and advancing sustainability initiatives.

“It’s always about taking one step at a time — but always moving forward," Denver says.

Eric Vessels is a practicing Zen Buddhist and a singer in a hard-rock band called DIRT. He owns a few beard oils and waxes from Germany, and about 300 different bottles of bourbon, though he doesn't use or consume those products often. Het once met Muhammad Ali while working at a Kinko's in Louisville. He writes haiku poetry, beatboxes like a champ (listen to the first 12 seconds of the video) and plays a Japanese bamboo flute. To prove something to his mother and himself, he spent one and a half years at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Nowhere on that eclectic list is the main reason why printing professionals know Eric, which is from his success as CEO and president of WhatTheyThink, where he and a gifted team of industry thought leaders churn out articles, films and videos, commentary and daily news releases. Since 2002, Eric has played a key role in the development and growth of flagship news and analysis site WhatTheyThink.com, as has grown the media brand into a film house, magazine publisher, research lab and podcast studio.

"We want WhatTheyThink to be the place you go to find out what's happening in the industry," Eric says. "We want to be the only answer to that question, or at least the first."

But who, really, is the man behind that wonderful beard and amazing content?

It was a pleasure to dive into the heart and soul of someone so gifted at capturing moments, whether that means uncovering the crux of a print company's success for a WhatTheyThink Films script, or encapsulating the emotion of his child's birth for a line of poetry. To Eric, life is a constant gift that deserves to be studied, respected, challenged and celebrated.

Eric is used to interviewing others in front of the camera, but in this episode of "Unvarnished," Darin Painter and Chris Hyde turn the tables (and the blue couches) for a fun, introspective and wide-ranging discussion about his life and work.

Watch the interview to learn how he and his team have grown WhatTheyThink (as Eric point out, "the content game is a treadmill that doesn't have an off switch"), the deep healing he found in Zen, why haiku is "the most pure form of writing," how he feels when he's at a Dscoop event, where his mind is able to go anytime something seems insurmountable and much more.

It’s busy season, the most intense time of the year for printers, and Anstadt’s hard-working team is in full swing, with long shifts, constant problem solving and relentless production demands.

For them, it's more than just a time to survive — it’s a chance to thrive. A "can-do" attitude is built into the ethos of this York, PA, USA-based family-owned print business, which dates back to 1878. Today, Anstadt is powered by 300 people willing to tackle any challenge, and it's guided by a leader who embraces strategy, innovation and a winning mindset.

Matt Doran is CEO of The Anstadt Company and chair of Dscoop’s Americas board. He joined Anstadt 23 years ago after marrying into the family business. His early career in the pharmaceutical industry now gives him a fresh perspective on leading Anstadt in new directions.

As you'll see in this interview ...

**Matt is a strategist at heart. **He’s the type of leader who’s not content with the status quo. When he took on greater leadership responsibilities, Matt’s vision was clear: Turn Anstadt from a traditional print company into a forward-thinking, marketing-focused powerhouse. His passion for strategy drives him to ask big questions.

**Matt is a coach by nature. **His leadership style is shaped by his love for sports, especially football. As a former college football player, Matt’s approach mirrors that of a head coach — he’s on the sidelines, making adjustments, calling audibles and rallying his team. He’s a strong advocate for cross-training, internal development and culture-building efforts that keep Anstadt’s workforce engaged and motivated.

**Matt is a community builder. **As chair of the Dscoop Americas board, he’s passionate about giving back to the printing community that’s helped him grow. For Matt, Dscoop’s value is clear: shared knowledge and mutual support. “These are my people,” he’s said of the Dscoop network. He’s committed to creating connections that benefit everyone in the industry.

Enjoy this latest episode of the "Unvarnished" video interview series. Along with Matt's reflections on strategic growth and how his team has built an all-digital print production model, you'll see how to properly do the University of Arkansas Razorbacks' "Pig Sooie" cheer.

In this episode, Dscoop Executive Director Peter van Teeseling sits down with Thomas Dahbura, owner of Hub Labels and a self-described "printer at heart." Thomas traces his roots in flexo printing back to his parents' operation in El Salvador in the 1960s, and shares how that foundation shaped his obsession with quality — summed up in Hub Labels' unapologetic tagline: we kick ass labels.

The conversation ranges from the hard lessons of adopting digital printing in 2003 to how Thomas is now weaving AI into his operation — using tools like NotebookLM to make SOPs accessible on the shop floor, and Claude to build a custom project management tool. He's candid about the limits of automation, the frustrations of legacy ERP systems, and why he concluded that his shop isn't built for short runs — and why that realization was actually liberating.

Thomas also talks about culture over credentials when hiring, the myth of the "magic print button," why spot color will always beat a CMYK build for brand consistency, and the surprising ROI of just being generous with knowledge in a tight-knit industry.

For more than three decades, Bob Raus has focused on the idea that automation works only when systems, people and workflows connect effectively. In this episode of "The LINK," he shares perspectives shaped by 35 years in the graphics industry and his current role helping drive automation and integration initiatives across HP Industrial Print.

Throughout the conversation, Bob explores how AI is accelerating the need for smarter integration across print environments. As workflows become more complex and customer expectations continue rising, businesses increasingly need connected systems that allow information, production and decision-making to move more efficiently across the organization. Rather than viewing automation as a single tool or isolated project, Bob encourages PSPs to think about integration as the foundation that allows automation to scale successfully.

The discussion also examines why many companies struggle when approaching automation initiatives. Bob explains that technology alone rarely solves operational challenges unless businesses first understand their processes, bottlenecks and long-term objectives clearly. That mindset has become a major focus of the Dscoop Hackathon, which Bob helps lead at Edge conferences. The Hackathon brings members together to solve real operational problems collaboratively while testing practical approaches to workflow automation and integration.

Bob also speaks about the value of print leaders openly sharing ideas, experiments and lessons learned instead of trying to navigate change in isolation. That same thinking also drives the new Dscoop Automation Club, which creates space for members to continue discussing workflow, AI and integration topics throughout the year instead of limiting those conversations to live events alone.

For PSPs trying to determine how AI, automation and integration fit into their future, this episode of "The LINK" offers an experienced and grounded perspective from someone who has spent decades helping shape how the industry grows.