Nicole Baker walked through the doors of Compu-Mail, a PRINTING United Alliance member, at 24 because a temp agency sent her there. She’d been bouncing between retail and food service, drifting through college majors, looking for something that paid the bills. What she found instead was a company that saw something in her she hadn’t yet found in herself. In this episode — recorded live on the floor of PRINTING United Expo — Nicole talks through a 14-year journey that moved through quality control, machine operating, account management, and inventory before landing her in the director of operations chair. It’s an origin story that had nothing to do with print and everything to do with people.

Nicole digs into what leadership actually looks like in a transactional mail operation — managing personalities that don’t mesh, deciding to be “Nicole 1.0” instead of a fiercer version of the manager who came before her, and building a culture from scratch after a change in ownership. She talks about the COVID pivot that turned a scramble call into Compu-Mail’s biggest client, a four-day workweek experiment that manufacturing reality eventually killed, and why Nicole still starts every single morning with coffee in hand, walking the floor, saying good morning to every person by name. She also makes the case that there are far more places for women in this industry than anyone’s told them about.

1:00 — Welcome and introductions, live at PRINTING United Expo
1:40 — What Compu-Mail does: transactional mail, direct marketing, and why the culture feels like family
2:50 — Two women owners at Compu-Mail — and how they got there
3:15 — How Nicole landed at Compu-Mail through a temp agency at 24
4:30 — Moving through departments: QC, machine ops, account management, inventory
5:20 — The college detour: accounting to teaching — and a company-paid bachelor’s in business
6:20 — Walking onto a manufacturing floor as one of three women
7:45 — What keeps Nicole motivated: she thrives on the days the schedule falls apart by 8:05
9:00 — Mentorship: the fierce manager who shaped her — and why she pays it forward
12:20 — “I wanted to be Nicole 1.0” — defining her own leadership identity
13:20 — Work-life balance as a director and a mom — and why it’s never 50/50
15:00 — The hardest part of management isn’t the people. It’s the personalities.
16:30 — Morning rounds, an always-open phone, and making sure no one feels like just a machine operator
18:30 — Building culture after a change in ownership — and why it’s one of the hardest things to change
19:00 — The COVID pivot that turned Compu-Mail’s biggest scramble into its biggest client
22:00 — The four-day workweek experiment — what they tried, and why they stopped
23:00 — What women don’t know about all the roles available in print
25:30 — Nicole’s advice to her 24-year-old self