Video Transcript
- Doing what we do is
nothing magical, right?
Anybody can take a
product, put it in a box,
and give it to a carrier.
It's really about the relationship
that you build with those customers
and being able to follow through with
what you say you're going to do.
(mellow jazz music)
- We've known each other for many years.
You were a customer,
then we went through a process,
acquired your business,
and now we work together to
make sure that this building,
where we are today in Salt Lake City
is a world class fulfillment center
for our eCommerce clients, right?
- Absolutely.
- So first of all, thank you
for the journey together.
So talk to me about how you
got started in this business
and what that journey's been like for you.
You have an interesting story.
- Yeah, it's been quite a
roller coaster to say the least,
that my journey started
back in 2004, 2005.
My brother actually started
his own fulfillment company
focusing specifically on
eCommerce order fulfillment,
which again, at that time,
Amazon was still a bookstore
and eBay was really the,
you can actually buy stuff online
and have it shipped to you,
so there wasn't a whole lot of
pick-and-pack competition at the time.
And that's really kind of
where I got my roots started.
And through the course of that business,
it ended up getting acquired,
and that's what gave me the motivation
to start my own business,
which became Golden Egg Solutions
which I started in 2016.
Again, with the focus on
eCommerce, small parcel,
direct-to-consumer pick-and-pack services.
But I also wanted to be a
little bit more omnichannel
to focus on B2B replenishments.
You know, Amazon FBA, hazmat products,
wholesale order fulfillment as well,
to try and bring all of those services
consolidated under one roof.
And it just quickly
grew, quickly blossomed,
but not to say it didn't come without
its own share of roadblocks and headaches
to try and overcome
throughout the process.
- Yeah, but you did go from
startup to pretty successful,
grew pretty quickly, sold
a business, you know,
pretty short amount of time.
So, and I know a lot of people,
they wanna achieve that, right?
They're starting their 3PL today,
or they started it a couple years ago
and they're they're trying
to grow to that level.
What was it that allowed
you to acquire customers
and grow so quickly when you started?
- If I were to narrow it down,
I would really say it had to
be the attention to detail
and the customer service approach.
Because really doing what we
do is nothing magical, right?
Anybody can take a
product, put it in a box,
and give it to a carrier.
It's really about the relationship
that you build with those customers
and being able to follow through with
what you say you're going to do.
The communication is a
huge portion of that,
because when you are
starting a small business
and when we're bringing on new customers,
oftentimes that client,
that is their livelihood.
That's how they pay their bills.
That's how they put food on their table,
that they don't want to just feel like
another number in the
books to a bigger company.
They wanted to feel like this vendor,
this provider actually
has their best interest
and their best benefits in mind.
And that's kind of the way
that I approached my business
and grew it with kind of a
white-gloved, so to speak,
customer-centric approach to it.
- Yeah, and Golden Egg always had
a great customer reputation.
And I know you had good success
like the nutraceuticals category.
And from what I remember,
maybe there was some
word of mouth there also
where you served one person
and it's an industry, right?
- Yeah.
- People talk and then they're like,
"Hey, who are you using?
Oh, I'm not too happy."
"Oh, well my guy's actually pretty good.
Let me just give you
Randall's cell phone."
And some clients come from there, right?
- Yeah, so that's part of
where my brother's company
had a lot of success in,
was in the affiliate marketing industry,
specifically related
to health and wellness
and nutraceuticals.
So finding our foothold
in that industry early on
was very critical to that success
of being able to build a early reputation,
a strong reputation of being
a solid service provider
within that industry.
And yeah, if you do good with one client,
then word does get around that,
"Hey, who's your guy that
you use for this services?"
And you know, luckily I was that guy.
- Right, yeah, no,
reputation's everything, right?
And you had a great reputation.
Let's talk about what technology you used.
So when you started start
with ShipStation, right?
How long were you there?
What was that journey like?
- Oh, it was a struggle.
So, you know, just for lack
of options and ease of use,
you know, ShipStation is a great platform
to be able to print a label.
But that's really the extent of it.
And when you're starting a
small business, that's really,
you know, kind of the main focus
is just getting product out the door.
There really isn't a big
attention to detail on inventory,
slotting, the accuracy
of when it comes in.
But as I continued to grow my business,
those problems became very real
that a lot of feedback and
pressure from our clients
of wanting more visibility,
an actual customer portal
to be able to log into
to submit order requests,
to run inventory reports,
to run general reports, just didn't exist
within the ShipStation platform.
So through my own journey of looking at
different WMS software
and different systems
that's fortunately where
I stumbled across ShipHero
and it was absolutely a
game changer, you know.
From the first demo
that I had on the system
compared to other big providers
that were already available,
just the function and
ease of use, you know,
the learning curve was next to none
because it did have a lot
of that same user interface,
at least, you know, from
a aesthetic standpoint
that made it very simple
to navigate the system
and implement it in real time.
And being able to roll
that out to our customers
was very quick, very painless,
and nothing but positive
feedback from that point.
- That's great.
So how many employees
were you when you decided,
"Hey, I need to get a WMS?"
- There was only four of us at that point.
- Four, wow, okay, so
it was early to switch.
- Very early on.
I think it was within
the first year and a half
of starting up Golden Egg is when
we started to experience the
limitations with ShipStation.
- And was part of that you thinking like,
"Hey, this this business is growing,
I'm four now but I'm gonna
be eight, I'm gonna be 16,
I'm gonna be 32.
I need a game plan, I need
to get ahead of this."
- A lot of it was actually based on
the ability to segment client profiles
and have an easier integration
with their store profiles.
Fortunately, you know, the scalability
from a user standpoint kind
of came with the package,
but that's really what
was driving that decision
was making sure that there's
the segregation of inventory,
portal logins from a client standpoint,
and making sure that we
did the process differently
from picking orders to actually packing.
Because, you know,
ShipStation doesn't provide
that same type of visibility.
It's just a paper pick ticket,
which then comes up to
the employee's memory
of where product is slotted,
versus having the system actually tell you
to go to a specific
location to pull an order.
- Okay, so today you're
running a nice-sized building
with a good number of
customers and a lot of volume.
What's your favorite ShipHero feature?
- My favorite feature is probably
the newest one that we've been using,
which is the WorkforceHero feature.
Just from a labor standpoint
and a supervision standpoint,
it gives you so much visibility into
what is happening on the workforce floor
without having to be involved
with everything myself.
I can simply pull up the dashboard
and I can see exactly which employees
are clocked into which specific task,
how long they've been there,
whether or not they're idle in it,
and it gives us that much more power
to focus our labor efforts
into tasks that really need the attention.
- Yeah, I know sometimes
easy to check that
when you're not even
in the building, right?
- Yeah.
- Just like gives you a little,
like, what's going on there?
- Exactly.
- Yeah
- Exactly, so from a
management standpoint,
that is absolutely a
game-changing feature.
- So let's talk about people.
So we track SLA and CPP, right?
We have to hit our service
level agreements to our clients
and we wanna do that at
lowest cost per package.
This building excels at that.
Last several weeks been top of the charts,
consistent high performers.
So that mostly comes down to,
it's people and process, right?
- Absolutely.
- So let's talk about the people side.
Good team.
Team's been here for a while.
Leadership's been here for a while.
What do you attribute the success
of building and and
maintaining that team here?
- A lot of it does come
down to the culture
and the environment that
we try and facilitate
here within the building.
Treating people the way that
they want to be treated,
giving them opportunities for advancement
and, you know, hearing their feedback,
actually listening to their concerns
and trying to implement
changes where we can,
where everybody benefits.
And that's kind of what
has really spearheaded
the retention that we
have with our employees.
And a lot of them came to
us with zero experience,
with not the best backgrounds.
And now some of those are
the ones that are supervising
and leading the teams, which
has really kind of solidified
that culture that we do
care about everybody,
that we try and give everybody
an opportunity to succeed,
to grow within their
own professional career.
And it, it shows with
the team that we have
and their dedication and
commitment to working hard.
- Yeah, and I've seen that firsthand.
Some leaders here who you
gave 'em a second shot, right?
Maybe some other businesses
wouldn't have taken a shot at them
or given 'em a shot to
succeed, and they came from,
they're just picking
and packing through now
managing all the pickers
and packers, right?
- Yep.
- So I've seen that,
and they're super happy.
Like you could see there's
some people where it's like,
"All right, they believed in me,
they gave me the opportunity,
they treat me with respect,
and I'm gonna bust my
ass for the company."
And you guys kick ass at that.
Talk to me about Tyler.
How'd you hire him and and why did you?
And Tyler's one filming this, right?
- So that's easily hands down my best hire
that I've made to date.
But it was very conscious, the decision.
You know, when I was
looking to grow the company,
I was doing it very strategically
by building a solid foundation.
And really the only way to
do that in a startup company
is to document and solidify process.
Because otherwise, like,
everything has to come from up here.
And then it's a peer-to-peer
training program.
And that's what I really
wanted to pull myself out of
was working in my business
to be able to work on my business.
And in order to do that,
I needed somebody with
operational experience,
you know, a good head on their shoulders,
that was willing to take a chance
on a young and growing company
to document process and procedure,
train people on that, roll it out,
and then start measuring and
tracking the success of that
to ensure that we're still moving forward
in the right direction.
And you know, fortunately
Tyler was one of those people
that applied to it.
And you know, funny enough,
I almost didn't hire him
because he blew me off
for that first interview
from his previous job that
he wasn't able to make it.
But, you know, my big heart
gave him a second chance.
- There you go, you're Mr. Second Chance.
And now Tyler does that
same role nationwide.
So it worked out.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- It worked out for Tyler.
- Good job, Tyler.
- It was a good thing he showed
up for the second interview.
So if there was someone here,
I know you help a lot of
other business owners,
but let's just, for the
people that are watching it,
who don't have the opportunity
to talk to you one-on-one,
someone who's a new 3PL owner,
just starting, just scaling,
what advice would you give 'em?
- Focus on the process, you know.
Stick to the basics and don't worry about
trying to grow too quickly.
That is definitely the thing
that I've found is, again,
once you can hold your
end of the agreement
and follow through with what
you say you're going to do,
the reputation builds itself
and word of mouth starts getting around.
That a lot of business owners, I feel,
kind of get lost in the weeds
of either continuously
working in their business
and don't focus enough time
on building a solid foundation
and a solid process that
bigger, larger clients
can actually have a
stable base to grow from.
- Yeah, I mean I think
the one thing I would,
well, I've learned from
watching you run this business
is you didn't pick like, "Oh,
I'm gonna take this one thing
and it's gonna be this
super sexy, flashy thing."
You just like, step by step just built it
with just solid, no, you know,
I mean it's like Covid,
which was a little crazy,
but you know, no 100% growth years,
no hiring a ton of
salespeople, none of that.
Just like every year,
just a little bit better,
a little bit better, fill up the building,
make sure you have good
customers that are happy,
they stick around, and it's
a successful business, right?
- Absolutely.
- Not overnight, but
pretty quickly, right?
- Yeah.
And that's I think where having culture,
the people behind it, having the process
for those people to manage the process
rather than managing the
workload is all key to success.
And then once you add in the
technology piece of that,
a system like ShipHero
on top of that foundation
of processes and people
that operate it, I mean,
that really is kind of the secret sauce,
if I ever were to say one, is
people, process and systems.
- And what I love about when
we talk to the people here,
shift supervisors, managers
here about a process change,
they all understand it and they
all have critical feedback.
So they clearly understand
the value of process
and also feel like they
have a respected voice.
'Cause they're coming back with like,
well, what about this situation?
What about that?
How do we handle it in a productive way?
Just making sure.
So I think you've been
able to instill in the team
the value of them thinking
through process, not just,
"Okay, I do what I'm told."
Right?
It's more like, "I understand
what I'm gonna do."
So clearly you've you've
explained it to them
multiple times, they understand it,
and when there's a change,
they understand the framework
of how the business is gonna run,
and could say, they
sort of hang this change
on that framework and say,
"Okay, yeah, this makes sense.
I get it, but here's some
concerns, here's some challenges."
Which is a rarity, I think.
In a lot of buildings there's
a little bit too much,
you know, pushing down of like,
"Hey, here's what we're doing."
- Yeah.
- And it's the same
thing that you are doing.
It's just maybe you're just
bringing 'em along in the
process a little bit more,
and then it makes them super,
instead of fighting the change,
it's sort of like, "All
right, how do I understand it?
How do I make it better?
What does that affect me?
How's my job gonna be different?
What am I looking for on day
one when we implement it?"
Which makes everyone win.
So yeah, I'm always
impressed with the team here
and how they understand process.
- Yeah.
- Thank you.
Appreciate the conversation.
- Absolutely.
