Mondays suck. Especially if you hate your job. But the day doesn’t have to be a total waste. You can now look forward to reading about ReadyMakers who have worked their way into f*&%ing awesome jobs—and maybe find a little inspiration to jumpstart your own career in the process—right here, every Monday.

Have you ever wondered how to start a letterpress print shop? Vivian Leung did it, launching her design/print business 9SpotMonk in an apartment in Hoboken. (That's her above left, with sister and business partner Tiffany.) Eight years later, she attests that growing your own creative business is possible, if you've got a head for research---and a stomach for lots of hard work.

VITAL STATS

Occupation: Designer, Printer and Founder of 9SpotMonk Design
Location: Glen Rock, NJ
Age: Oi. 36.
First Job: First job was in college, worked at a small women owned children’s book store in the town where I lived. My commute was a block from my house. I recommended and sold books, wrapped gifts and vacuumed the floor at the end of the day. I only worked Saturdays. Mostly it was me and the owner and for the holidays, both owners were there. I had no idea about children’s books but I learned fast. Sales (still) was not my forte.

Parents would want recommendations and then they’d say ‘no’ and pick out their own stuff. I ended up manning the register mostly and that meant wrapping a lot of gifts and making baskets for birthday kids. That I loved and eventually became the go-to person to create baskets and wrap stuff. I ended up doing their window displays long after I stopped working there. I think it’s also there that I picked up my obssession with children's books. My kids have over 300 books and neither of them can read yet.
Best Job: The two I have now---running 9SpotMonk with my sister Tiffany and being a mother to two kids aged 5 and 3.
Greatest Professional Challenge: Knowing when to stop working. It’s terribly hard to separate my personal time and work time. After 5 years, I am still working on that.
Salary During 20s: Ranged from $7.00/hour at the bookshop and my last corporate job (acd at advertising agency) $115k. 

Hi, Vivian Leung. How did you get that f*&%ing awesome job?
It was late 2001, and I had just come back from my honeymoon and my interactive department at the ad agency shut down due to the internet bust. Sat at home for about a week figuring out next steps and then registered my business name, 9SpotMonk Design, without knowing exactly what I was going to do. So for the next three years, 9SpotMonk was a design studio doing interactive and print design projects. Then I was asked to design a wedding invitation and I thought, “wouldn’t it be great if I could produce what I created as well?” So a month of research brought me to letterpress, which I’m a little embarrassed to say I had heard nothing about until that point. I needed machinery that I could have in our tiny Hoboken apartment.

I drove up to Chicopee, Maschussetts with my grandmother (the only one who would hang with me on that Saturday) and brought back my first piece of letterpress history, a 6 by 10 Craftsman tabletop press. I got a couple of books in hand and taught myself how to use the press. It was an interesting time. I found out how awesome letterpress was and in a few months got another press, and then another. My husband, little 8 month old daughter and I moved out of Hoboken to the 'burbs and then the big monsters came: two Heidelberg Windmills, two Vandercook SP-15’s and an electric cutter. And that’s how 9SpotMonk Letterpress started.

How did you get started working with letterpress?
I needed a way to produce what I designed. Through research, I found I could purchase a fairly small machine, teach myself and start a small business printing invitations and greeting cards.

When did you know you wanted to own your own business?
It was really the economy that ‘forced’ me to go on my own. Internet jobs were few and far between and knowing we’d want to have kids, I wanted to be able to spend as much time with them as possible. Working a ‘real world’ job with long hours wasn’t going to let me do that.

What’s in the name 9SpotMonk, anyway? 
Our company name came from my love of monks as a child. I spent my summers in Hong Kong since I was 2 years old and was exposed to a lot of kung fu movies. The cool togas, all that kung fu fighting, I wanted to be a monk! When I was thinking of ideas for the company name, all that good stuff came back to me. There was one monastery of monks in China who, using incense, burned 9 dots, 3×3, on their foreheads to signify devotion, sacrifice, etc. So the 9Spot part of the name signifies to me my devotion to the company and the craft of design and letterpress. I was a little nervous that the name was too abstract or weird. But it’s weird in the way where people remember. They may not remember the whole thing, but they remember.

What were the steps you had to go through between having the idea for 9SpotMonk, and making it real?
Oh man. Lots. I had to quickly learn how to run a business, get lots of clients and figure out where to take the business. Did I want to stay small and custom, working face to face with clients, or did I want to be in stores? It took a LOT of trial and error to get the company where it is today. We’re still doing a lot of trial and error but now our choices are smarter than they were five years ago.

What is your typical day like?
6am - I reluctantly roll out of bed, make a cup of coffee and get on the computer to answer emails and see what’s on the schedule for the day. 7:30am - Wake kids, get daughter ready for school, make breakfast, get them dressed and teeth and hair brushed. 9:00 am - Back from dropping off daughter at school, make second cup of coffee and sit down for daily  meeting with Tiff. 10:00am to 6:15pm - Meeting wraps up and we both start the day’s work: doing estimates, managing custom jobs, going on press, answering emails, getting custom and packaged orders out the door, managing whatever else comes in. 8:00pm - Kids are in bed, I’m back on the computer doing work until about midnight and it all starts again in the morning.

What are the biggest pleasures of the job? What could you do without?
The biggest pleasures would be to see the product go from concept stage through production to seeing it in the stores. Another great pleasure is when my sister Tiffany came on board. We run the business together. We are extremely close (not without daily sibling bickering but there’s love in that) and nothing is better than growing a family business. What could I do without? Drama!

Letterpress printing seems to have had a huge resurgence in the past 5 to 10 years. In your opinion, is the market getting saturated—is it harder to start up a letterpress business or to thrive than it would have been some years ago? I do get asked that question a lot. When I started the business, there were a handful of really good lettepress companies out there. Now there are a ton of letterpress companies but there are still only a handful of ‘great design, great letterpress’ companies out there. Some have come and some have gone and the good ones continue on.

What advice would you give to someone who wanted to do something similar to what you've done?
Be ready to devote all your waking hours to your business for the first 5 years at least. Listen to all the advice you’re given and then go with your gut. Research, research, research. Don’t let anyone tell you ‘you can’t.’

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