Episode 189: A Simple Framework for Shipping Sustainably with Jesse Genet of Lumi

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

I'm actually a firm believer that people are good. Like, this might sound just like really basic or something, but I believe people are good. They're trying to make good decisions. And so the way that we think about sustainability at Limi is people just need tools. They just need tools to actually do the stuff that they're trying to do. And if you give them better tools to be sustainable and you train them on how to use them, then they're going to use them.

Jesse Genet. Is co-founder of Lumi, a Los Angeles company that makes custom packaging for some of the most notable brands in the world, like Parachute, Tuft Needle, and a whole lot more. Lumi makes tools that simplify the complex workflows, data, and language of packaging so that brands and manufacturers can work better together. But it's far more than that. They're a resource, an educational tool, a sourcing center, and a company that is challenging our wasteful patterns of consumption by helping us learn how to package more conscientiously and more sustainably. But let me back up a little bit. Jessie's first entrepreneurial venture was printing t-shirts in a basement at age 16. The company became known as Inkodye. She would become the CEO in 2010. She later attended the ArtCenter College of Design, but it was that experience around packaging for Inkodye that led her and her business partner to their next step. It was when they were on Shark Tank pitching their ink product to Lori and to Mark Cuban that sparked a pivotal moment. Lori and Mark asked, is there something bigger you want to do? And after the show, that question made a deep impact. And from that experience, Lumi was created. Since Lumi's ambitions are to make us all far more conscientious about packaging and sustainability, that's the topic of our conversation today that I wanted to talk with Jesse about. We talk about how sustainability and packaging is about creativity first and thinking critically. We talk about where we're at now with the industry and what happened last year. We talk about a way forward sustainably and what that looks like. We talk about the tension between corporate visions and supply chain teams that have to execute their initiatives. And then I asked Jessie to share with us a simple framework that we could use to talk about shipping or to think about our shipping projects with 2 or 3 simple points, and she sums it up beautifully. I also often ask guests what's on their desk right now. Jessie shares the best idea I've heard yet. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at Common Skew. Before we get to the interview, we just announced literally today that Skew Camp is back, a signature event for many of you as well as us, easily one of our most loved events. In 2017, we launched the first SCU Camp at this magical event in Palm Springs at the Ace Hotel. Our goal was to create a boot camp experience that was fun but inspirational and challenging, and one that would bring together the brightest in the community to share with each other and learn. Since then, we've hosted SCU Camp in New Orleans, Pittsburgh, but now we're returning to Palm Springs. Not with just a reboot, but with a fresh and original vision. But let me give you a little behind the scenes because you, our dear friends, our podcast audience, is a very special community inside this wonderful community. We were heartbroken to have to cancel SCU Camp Austin, and I'm not kidding, everyone on our team loves SCU Camp. It's one of the industry's most loved events. And so over the past several weeks and honestly over the past several months, we've talked about it off and on. But over the past several weeks, Mark, Kate, Ali, myself, Musa, our designer, does so much wonderful work, and Catherine. We've all been wrestling with what to do. There was ambiguity around vaccines, when things would open up, but things began to open up quickly both in Canada and the US. But because these events start in the planning stages a year out, we weren't really sure if we could pull it off in time. It was as little as a week ago when a few of us on the team got on a call to make some final decisions and said, you know what, We know it takes a year to do all this, but damn it, we love this event. And we had folks like Sam Cates and many of you saying we've got to do SKU Camp. And of course we couldn't say no. We launched a preregistration site at skucamp.com. Now we're doing things a little different this year since SKU Camp sells out so quickly. You go to skucamp.com if you want to learn more and preregister. By preregistering for free, there's no cost to preregister. There is a cost for the event, but there's not a cost to preregister. Right now, what preregistration does, it gives you a 24-hour window before the official registration opens up where we'll notify you and give you an opportunity to secure your ticket before it opens to the public. And I hope, I really hope to see you there September 27th through the 30th. Mark your calendars now. Ace Hotel, Palm Springs. You can learn more at Skucamp.com. This episode is brought to you by CommonSkew, the work from anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more or to begin your free trial now, visit commonskew.com. Now here's my conversation with the brilliant Jesse Genet.

The first thing I wanted to ask you is kind of where we're at now. McKinsey called it the quickening in 2020, where, where we had this e-commerce growth of in 3 months' time, we had 10 years' growth. UPS's annual revenue in 2020 was up 20% over the previous year. The quarter this year was up 30% over last year's quarter. The cardboard box industry took in $67 billion in 2020. This is— last year, correct me if I'm wrong, was an epic shift in shipping and packaging. And can you comment, like, as someone who's deep in the thick of that, on the state of the industry last year and kind of where we're at right now?

For sure. It was a really incredible time to sort of be alive, and incredible can be both a positive and a negative connotation. But I think on the packaging front, we saw really fascinating things. On the brand side, what was incredible is to watch so many brands explode in their growth. So, you know, like Lumi works with wine subscriptions and other companies where they just had a massive spike in growth. And I think that, but then there was other product categories that unfortunately really took a hit, luxury products, and people were not, things like dress rental or tuxedo rental was, when you think about it, just went to almost nothing. So it was hard to watch the uneven sprinkling of fortunes, basically. I think from our perspective, like we make packaging, and so we got a much, we got a broader exposure to the risk, basically, of 2020. And as much as there was so much positivity, because e-commerce itself was growing, there's also a lot of supply chain disruption. So I think what's not represented in those numbers of growth is just how disruptive it was. Because it's true that from a raw numbers perspective, the packaging industry grew, e-commerce grew. That's amazing. And it was really— and it is a quickening. It is a really— just acceleration of a trend, inevitable trend of retail consumer spending going online, which just accelerated massively. Like, you know, I'm not sure if it was quite a decade in 3 months, but it certainly felt like it. And so just, you know, accelerating. But I think that the piece that's probably less seen in those figures is how hard it was. You know, we had manufacturers who were, you know, had, they would have a single team member get COVID and have to shut down an entire plant. They were overwhelmed. Overseas, we work with Chinese manufacturers who had team members who were quarantined for months and couldn't come to work. And so then there was skilled— it's skilled labor, like machine operation. And so they really couldn't operate their plants the same way. So packaging was put into the essential category in almost all regions almost the full time. So it was never actually ground to a halt, which some industries were told actually like you're done, like at restaurants or something, right? So, so there never was this like awful moment of like ground to a halt because it was viewed as essential. Packaging helps the world go round, whether it's medical supplies or food, etc. But, but I do think that the raw growth numbers do obscure, um, the toughness that was supply chain disruption and manufacturers dealing with a lot of struggle as well.

Yeah, and you're speaking to a lot of entrepreneurs in that space where we're importing a lot and also domestic production here. So supply chain, the supply supply chain woes are continuing as we are moving forward.

So what kind of feeling— The ripple, maybe if there's a quickening, now there's a slowing. The ripple could be a decade. The ripple could be a decade of like a raw, just companies no longer know how to forecast. All of their models are broken. The models, it's a Black Swan effect effectively, if you've read that book, where now everything that people thought they knew about their own models and projections, everything is broken. And so that just has a massive effect because the supply chains don't run— the supply chain balance is extremely precarious in the world. And the reason why you can get a box that actually requires complex equipment and paper pulp and someone else growing trees this year so you can have boxes in 7 or 8 or 9 years, all of these things are a precarious balance of investments. And so when you have a black swan event happen like COVID, that balance is thrown off. I think that we will have several years of effects of that, actually.

Yeah, it's a great point. Thank you for saying that, because I think we need to hear that. I will put a link to Taleb's book, "Black Swan," in the show notes, but it's a brilliant book. So there are, as you've lined out then, there are amazing opportunities here and also some incredible challenges. So this massive increase in shipping and packaging is also making us far more conscientious about our waste. I think a lot of folks who retreated back home like many of us did, we're suddenly in touch with a lot of the waste that happens in our own world. For some reason, it opened our eyes, which the, the real thrust of our conversation this morning is going to be about that topic because it's so timely for us. We just finished a sustainability conference yesterday, and it was a real hungry attendance for folks to— because I think this issue now has reached mainstream and it's no longer a fringe topic. So my question to you as we move forward in the conversation is, what is a more sustainable way for forward with packaging look like?

Yeah, I think it's an excellent question. And I completely echo your sentiment that all of a sudden we're all at home and our purchases were right in front of us. It was like we always saw them, but all of a sudden when it was sitting in our den and we were also trying to work in our den, and then there was like a kid climbing on a box, like all of a sudden it just all became very real. Like the chaos and the packaging and like the, just the on topness of it all. And so I think that there was a lot of sentiment commitment of actually thinking through, thinking through how that, what effect we're all having. And so I think that the way that I think about sustainability cruising forward is, we talked about balance as it relates to supply chain. Sustainability is also incredibly about balance. And something that we work on very hard at LUMI Lumi is effectively a software platform where brands can find the packaging they need, but they can also rely on data about specific plants and specific packaging specs to make their decisions. And something that I reflect on as a human being a lot is that you can't improve what you can't measure. And I think this is actually like one of the core themes that we think about at Lumi that I'd love people to spend a little bit more mental energy on. You can't improve something when you don't know the baseline. Like, how much are you using now? What is the true effect of plastic versus paper? And so there's just a lot of— you can't improve what you can't measure, I think, is a baseline of conversation. And we can go from there. But it is actually a really important point.

That's such a great point. For those that missed the sustainability conference yesterday, that was one of the key points because we had both agency and distributor side folks on panels, as well as manufacturers. Manufacturers who were putting out things like sustainability reports. And what I sort of learned through this process, the reason why things like that are so important is because they're self-assessment tools about where we're at. You can only improve if you know exactly where you're at. So that was a real refreshing way. And so the way forward, first of all, is to know exactly where we're at in terms of packaging and sustainability. Another thing you just mentioned too is we all suddenly started receiving boxes at home in a pretty significant volume. And what But we, as in our industry, who is in the business of selling branded merchandise to large corporations and businesses all over the world, we want to encourage, and of course our audience wants to be this, is to be very conscientious about that and to think about packaging as not as an afterthought, but as packaging as a forethought, which is why I think this conversation is vital. So you're talking to this audience of entrepreneurs running businesses on both factory side and agency side. The audience represents $26 billion in revenue. How do you begin to make sustainability and packaging a forethought? I know that's a broad question, but you would be able to answer that to some degree.

100%. I think that, one, there's a couple core tenets that I'd share. One, in the age of e-commerce, packaging is just actually a part of your product. So I think that that's just something that you need to internalize, and it relates to the product experience, but also the product development process. And this is something that I think that turning this on its head allows brands to start acting more conscientiously right away. The love and care and attention that gets put into products. If you just extend that to, I can't launch this product until it has packaging that can ship to someone's doorstep, all of a sudden you've wrapped the packaging into the product development process and it has become not an afterthought. So easier said than done, you know, like I'm not saying just like you snap your fingers, but I do think that that What I see is brands actually doing that and succeeding massively in their packaging strategy and their sustainability. I'll give an extreme example of this. There's a couple companies actually in the cleaning product space where they have tabletized cleaning products where you add water at home. So like, it's like Windex, you know, it's not branded Windex, but it's like a glass cleaner. But instead of, you know, buying 12, 24 ounces of it on Amazon and getting it to your doorstep. It is, you get a spray bottle on your first order and then you fill it with water from your tap and you drop a tablet in it and it makes the same concentration of like a Windex-like product. This, to me, the reason I'm sharing this is that packaging development and product development are like one to such an extent that some products are like, create a different form of packaging. If you, you have to think, you have to truly think more expansively, right? Like why just look at a bottle of Windex and go, I need to put this in a box. I better throw this in a box, surround it with packing peanuts and call it a day. You've shipped water from like Minneapolis to Austin, Texas or something. And you know, for a bottle of Windex so someone can spray it on a wall or on a piece of glass, it's just hugely inefficient. So I think that what we're gonna see in the age of e-commerce and what brands need to be thinking about is How do you consider your packaging strategy from the moment that you're inventing your product, creating your product, deciding what to ship, what to sell? Because that's the real product, that's the real innovation that we're gonna see over the next decade is that every single product category, this might sound dramatic, but I actually believe this, every single product category in the consumer products, in consumer products will be rethought for e-commerce. Like the product category will be rethought. So let's pick on another product to the chagrin of some large Fiji company. Let's look at like big Tide, the big like squatty fat Tide bottle. Why does it look like that? It looks like that because it was for a shelf. It was for a shelf to look like the most attractive little root, you know, like laundry detergent you could buy. It's also mainly water. It weighs a ton. You pick it up, you put it in a cart. Um, but it's, it's like this kind of gorgeous like, like art object almost, you know, when you think about what it looks like. That in 10 years, they've already redesigned it to be fair to them. They have an e-commerce version that is actually just a completely cubed out corrugate shipper with a spigot. Over time, as we go from 17% e-commerce wallet share to retail spending to like 80%, you know, over the next decade plus, there will be no more squat Tide bottle. There will, every product category will actually get reinvented where the packaging for e-commerce is part of the product itself, no longer distinct. So I would— that would be one big thing I would just have brands think about is like change the way your brain is even working around what packaging is because it's going to become integral to every product and it's all going to be built for shipping.

I love this comment. I love this comment too because it allows us to engage our clients on a very intelligent level about the subject of sustainability in a very practical way. So to treat the packaging on par with the product development because it is one and the same. We all know this from the Apple experience when, you know, we all know it from an unboxing special moment experience, but now we need to put that into context with sustainability. And you're talking to someone who once ran a fulfillment company for years, and I know the waste that can happen when you don't think conscientiously about packing. All you think about is efficiencies and throwing things in the box. And this is why also UPS and FedEx started charging for dimension Remember when they started charging back then and it was a big uproar? Yeah. And so they started charging for dim weight and we saw this massive surcharge. Well, it's because of the waste and the fuel. And we all got a lesson in that. You know, it was— but I do love what I think is a very, very positive thing is that we get to engage our clients and customers and brands with this conversation in a very positive way and say, look, we can make an impact here. We can also create special moments still. And I think it can be very special. I just got a package yesterday from a cosmetic company. And on the very bottom of it— and it was packed tightly. I've noticed the packaging has gotten better. And on the very bottom was a QR code that went straight to a page. There was a sticker on the bottom of it. It was very simple. But there were things like that, that there was such forethought that I really appreciated. Speaking of this, then, are there other consumer brands? I'm sure you've got tons of stories because you highlight these a lot on your blog. Where you're seeing— what are you seeing the most progressive brands do with their packaging in addition to some of the stories you already shared?

Yeah, right. So I think that there's this front edge where it's like the packaging is considered as part of the product. And then I would say just as another rule of operation or rules of engagement on sustainability, the good news I have for people is that the other end of it is just extremely practical. Like, I'm talking about some of the most innovative things, but the other thing is that most of the massive changes that we see brands make that have the biggest measurable difference— back to measurable differences— where they're cutting down on tonnage of material used each year, cutting down on transit miles, these things are real waste cutters. They're usually very simple changes. Changing a board grade of corrugate to a thinner board grade, changing, getting rid of a piece of plastic in the supply chain that's not necessary. So I would draw attention to a couple simpler and more behavioral-oriented things. One would be the brand Glossier, a cosmetics brand. They have a reusable pink bubble pouch that's actually iconic to the brand. And it's iconic. People love it. But it is a plastic pouch, basically. Speaking to the pros of it is a reusable component. They encourage people to keep it. People do keep it. A little makeup bag they travel with it. And so I think packaging that gets used beyond the throwout moment, the like rabid unpacking moment, has another life. It has more utility. But the thing I wanna draw attention to is something very practical. They, in the past year or so, they've rolled out a feature at checkout where you can click a box and say, I order from you all the time. I don't need another one. Like I already have a plastic pouch at home and you can skip that piece of packaging. This is, we see this as a trend. There's several other brands that are, that I'm personally aware of that are doing this where you can effectively say, I'm opting for simpler packaging or more sustainable packaging and you get more of a brown box experience, but you've chosen it. And I think that giving, this is a really basic example where like you're trying to create a beautiful packaging experience for your brand. But keep in mind that if you have a product category where people reorder, like once a month, every 60 days, people maybe get that burst of like your brand. And then to be honest, maybe they don't keep needing that. So maybe they don't need the giftable experience every time. And maybe they'll opt for it again when they buy it as a gift or they're giving it to a friend. But like maybe once they fall in love with your product, they're like, hey, you know what? I respect you. I respect the planet. Like I'm good. And I don't need to keep receiving that. And so I think that behavioral change, I think is quite profound, giving people agency. And this is, 'Cause the reason I'm explaining how like basic this is, is these brands are actually doing nothing on packaging innovation. They're adding a checkbox to checkout and then they're having a big effect on their packaging sustainability. We've heard of brands who have like 30% uptake on that, 40% uptake. So you are, and it's also conveniently a huge money saver, right? So like if you have this beautiful printed packaging and all of a sudden only 70% of your customers customers are opting for it, you have peace of mind knowing that you've lost 0% brand value. In fact, you've probably gained in the eyes of your customers because the people who are opting out of it already love you, respect you for offering the option. So, so like you've, you've lost nothing, you've only gained, but maybe you cut 20% off your packaging budget like magic, like voilà.

Yeah, I would argue that not only have you, have you gained, But that emotional engagement with the customer, the fact that both sides know that they're doing something positive is such a boost. It's such a boost. I just have a question now that I'm sure a lot of folks are asking themselves, and it begs to be asked. Why is a packaging company focusing so much on sustainability? I love this. Obviously, you're very passionate about this.

Yeah. To me, it's just not a zero-sum game. I think as a human being, I don't believe in zero-sum games. Speaking of books, I'm not gonna remember off the top of my head, but there's a great one about how every innovation period in human history, like, zero-sum is not a mentality that actually serves anyone. You never get further, you never build a great business that way. So I just don't believe in that mentality, like, oh, if I tell people they don't need packaging, they're gonna use less packaging. First of all, the world is using gobs and gobs of packaging. There is no sea feeling on Lumi's growth by me going around saying be efficient. So it's just kind of silly to think about it that way. And in reality, I think that as a forward-thinking software platform where we help people procure packaging intelligently, find exactly what they need, you know, use less materials, it only helps us to build better and better tools for that because all the brands who want to work work on Lumi and buy packaging through Lumi, that's what they want. So I like it. The most basic version I can tell you is give people what they want. Give people tools to buy packaging efficiently. And if we're a lonely voice in that, and there's a bunch of other packaging companies over-specing things— I mean, I have seen this. I would say that the vast majority of people in packaging are just extremely upstanding people who also care about sustainability. So there's no lurking gremlin, but I have actually seen companies overspec boxes, usually not because they are anti-sustainability, but because they try and make more money. Like if you tell a brand that they need a thicker grade of corrugate to protect their product, 'cause maybe they're shipping wine and you're like, hey, better safe than sorry, use double wall corrugate, it's thicker and more expensive, blah, blah, blah. But it also conveniently costs 40% more. You just boosted your take on that account by 40%. I see that behavior all the time. And so that— it's not someone being anti-sustainability, but the business motive got just too wrapped up in their process.

This may be too big of a question, but is there a basic framework that we can look at when we're shipping, like 2 or 3 basic questions we can ask when we have a project? And we're about to ship it, or you may have even covered it already.

No, I think there's— I would go to extreme practicality. We— I shared with you that Lumi has that the sustainability properties. There's a few— it's a properties framework. There's more than— there's more than 3 of them, but I can draw our attention to a few of them that are just commonly, like, overlooked. The sustainability properties are all the different things that you could focus on in terms of sustainability, like volume reduction, print reduction, I would say that the key takeaways I want someone to look at are volume reduction. Volume reduction is simply, can your package be smaller? Like, just before you get too fancy in your footwork and you start researching, like, mushroom fiber, and like you start like going off the rails, like searching crazy materials and stuff, just ask yourself, can this be smaller? Can I use less material? So That would be my second one. Volume reduction, material reduction. Material reduction is kind of like, I went to design school, it's like a classic design principle of like, finish your design and then take one thing away. Like, just always try to take one thing away. That would be my tip on material reduction, which is look at your packaging, get it to where you think it's perfect, take one thing away. So maybe you've got like a void fill, you've got a pocket, postcard, you've got, you know, your box, and you've got this little sticker, just take one thing away. Your customers actually won't care that much. Like take the postcard, like maybe you don't need the postcard. Maybe you can communicate what you're trying to say in the postcard on the sticker and the box and take the postcard away or take the sticker away. Like basically usually brands can take one thing away. 'Cause you get a little overzealous probably. So volume reduction, material reduction. And then the thing I think is maybe the most overlooked is transit. Reduction, geolocating production as close to fulfillment as you can. So this is something that Lumi does automatically. Like, you type in a packaging spec, you type in your fulfillment location, like, oh, I ship everything from Austin, Texas, and then we're going to show you packaging quotes within a radius of there first and show you how many miles away the production location is from where you're going to I'm gonna use this stuff. And that's huge. People usually compare pricing, like, and there's like no geography, like, thought. They're like, oh, they just compare pricing, like, which is a unit cost and a shipping cost. And they might choose something that is like, oh, I'm in Austin, but I'm gonna buy stickers from New York because between the unit cost and shipping cost, it's $10 less than this other one, even though the other one is in Texas. Texas. And it's like there's a mismatch of priorities there because distance has a huge impact on sustainability of the item you just purchased.

Um, one of the things that you are very passionate about, speaking of factories and folks that you're getting quotes from in a geo-specific location to where you're shipping from, is transparency. It's such an important part of the work that you do. Um, do you have an example of some of the transparency you're starting to provide with some of your Lummi partners?

Yeah, for sure. I would say that one of the clearest, um, clearest things to explain is, uh, what we on the platform called certifications. If you go to Lumi.com/certifications, there's, uh, there's a lot of certifications that individual plants have or don't have as it relates to what they offer in that plant. So certifications around does that plant have— have some of their energy coming from renewable resources? Does that plant, let's say it's a box plant, offer FSC-certified corrugate, like sustainable forested corrugate? Basically, what we're trying to do is create a non-guessing environment. And I think this is really key to sustainability as well, back to, like, act on what you can't measure. Can't improve what you can't measure. Because you will often see a brand say, I want to use FSC-certified corrugate. We want our corrugate to be more recycled or more sustainable. But even what I just said is sort of like, they'll just say things like that, more sustainable, more recyclable, like just a lot of words. But it comes down to actually measuring what a specific plant you're going to order from can do. And so trying to action a decision like we're only going to use FSC-certified corrugate There's actually only a certain amount of facilities in the United States or in North America that have it. So you have to actually get quotes only from them. And this is, even though it sounds easy, like, oh, okay, just do that. Um, like, it's like a cascade of like a bunch of phone calls, like asking around. There's no database of this stuff. So I think that something really simple and powerful that Lumii is doing is, um, scraping away the guesswork. You can click a button like, I just want to get quotes from facilities that have FSC certified corrugate. Button clicked. Now you quick quote and every facility that sees it has that product. Like you just don't have to think about it anymore. That to me is the power of software. It's like, just take something you want to do and just click a button and action it. And it's not like you don't need to hire McKinsey consultant to search it down for you. Like, you know, just you can actually just action your priorities. And I think that that is probably one of the underbellies of sustainability right now is that at the corporate level, board level, these big initiatives are announced. And then the reality is that supply chain teams are grumbling behind the scenes being like, how do you do that, guys? Like, who do you just magically go to to get, you know, 'cause I'm being told I gotta keep my price pricing within 2% per year, or I also am supposed to use only FSC-certified corrugate. And by the way, our current partners, they don't have it. Like, it's just the execution arm of these sustainability decisions. Lumi is trying to be the execution arm, but it's missing out there.

Jessie, I'm really curious, what brands do you follow for inspiration?

I just— so many. It's hard because I'm like, I am brand— I feel like I should admit that I'm like more loyal just to like a couple of brands or something, but the truth is I love e-commerce. And so I love, I like, I'm buying from new brands all the time. So I think that that's kind of fun. I can mention a couple of things. I'm always intrigued when I just see brands do things that are a little surprising but highly functional. So an example, that's kind of a small example, another beauty brand, called SAE, S-A-I-E. They, when you order from them, the void fill in their packages is actually a little glassine bag filled with cotton balls. And so instead of using void fill that is like peanuts or paper that you recycle, it's just really nice cotton balls in a little glassine bag and it keeps everything protected. And then you, you just ordered makeup and now you have cotton balls And I'm sure that they price that out and it's like actually probably on par. You can probably buy cotton balls in bulk the same way you can buy, you know, void fill in bulk. And so I think that it's touches like that that I really, I really appreciate people thinking about how can packaging be functional? How can I make an impression on my customer? But it's, it's, it's at the end of the day, it's simple. Like it wasn't some insane packaging innovation. In fact, It's not packaging at all. It's cotton balls. Like, so I would say I respect those kinds of decisions a lot because I know that they take a little bit of creativity in general. So that would be one answer. I'm curious if anything has caught your eye these days or if anything, because I'm, as again, I'm just kind of like, I find new brands all the time and I just love their approach. Like another brand that I discovered recently is called Clove. And it's actually like, um, I ordered from them, but apparently they make shoes for nurses.

Okay.

And I was like, okay, sign me up. They're basically extremely, um, comfortable shoes that you're supposed to be able to stand in all day. And I just was thinking back to my pregnancy and I was like, I wish I had these. Like, this is what you need. Like, you need to be wearing shoes that nurses wear, like, when you're pregnant. And, and so I bought them And the packaging is just so great. And the touches that I appreciated about them, really compact. So I feel like they really dialed in that the volume reduction, there's no waste in there. And then instead of including any additional materials that I'm gonna throw out, like postcards, et cetera, it's only things in there that I need if I'm a nurse. Like they give me a cute pen that says like, if you're holding this, this, you like, you need to give it back to me. Like, I'm sure nurses always get their pen stolen. Um, and then they included, um, like a little name tag badge thing, which— so I, I'm not a nurse, like, so, so technically I don't need this stuff. I'm just admitting that I really appreciate that attention to detail because they're taking their packaging budget and giving me things that are like extremely on point for what I just ordered and what I need from this company. Uh, and so I, I would say that That's the experience I appreciate the most these days. And then the core packaging itself is just easy to recycle. Like that, like, it's just like the core packaging is easy to recycle and easy to deal with. And then the things I'm left with are all functional.

It's like, I love that. Such great, great words for this audience. Um, I love to ask this question because you're talking also to a bunch of entrepreneurs who are running businesses. What's, what's on your desk right now what's next for Lumi? What, like, what is the fire you got to put out today and what you're thinking about?

Is this like a literal what's on my desk right now, or is this— I, I didn't know how to interpret that question. I'm gonna try to do both. So basically, one thing I keep on my desk is actually like a real old-school hourglass. Oh, I love that. Yeah, and you can just get these. This is like not fancy. This is— they're not actually that expensive. Um, but I sometimes, when I'm like I'm like really struggling on a project or to focus, I just give myself like this much time. It's actually a single hour hourglass. And I give myself this much time to get something done. And I tell myself like, just in this next period of time, don't check your phone. Don't, like, you don't need to look at anything. Just try to get this task done, try to get this project done. And I would say as an entrepreneur, just the ability to try to focus is probably one of your hardest internal battles, like to just try to get some— try to actually focus on what matters and get something done.

So I would say that, um, I love the analog of that, by the way. So I've used the Pomodoro technique for years. The problem is it's on my— it's on my phone. The apps are on my phone. I love the analog version of that. Okay, go ahead.

What else? Yeah, so that— so that to me, it was like a fun, a fun one. Um, I don't have any other like really interesting objects on my desk. Like, it's all pretty mundane. It is I've still got my phone here. Right.

Now that knocked it out of the park.

Yeah. And things like that. But I would say from a more metaphorical, like what's on my plate, what's on my desk standpoint, as an entrepreneur, probably something else that is relatable is just really trying to balance, balance, especially during the time of COVID what my team needs and what I need to be doing as an entrepreneur internally versus an entrepreneur externally. And I think that sustainability really relates to this where something that we're focusing a lot on at Lummi internally and externally is training. So this is a great topic as it relates to sustainability is I'm actually a firm believer that people are good. Like this might sound just like really basic or something, but I believe people are good. They're trying to make good decisions. And so the way that we think about sustainability at Lummi is people just need tools. They just need tools to actually do the stuff that they're trying to do. And if you give them better tools to be sustainable and you train them on how to use them, then they're going to use them. And so I think that we've built a lot of tools, but something I'm more focused on now is training. Like, tools are only as useful as people who understand how to use them. Like, if they don't know how to use them or you haven't done a good job training— and I think of this internally, like our own employees need to obviously know Lumii software and stuff backwards and forwards, but also externally. Have you taken the time not just to say, hey, we have a cool platform, but to to host things where you really bring people in and train them how to use it or train them how that could impact their sustainability. So I think I'm thinking a lot about training these days as a general subject.

Yeah, that's really good. Well, last thing I want to know, and we could talk forever, but last thing I'm curious about is you have built this amazing business. You're obviously a strategic thinker. But what would you— what was 10 years ago? What would you encourage the entrepreneur in Jessie to look forward to or do? If you had to sit down and have a cup of coffee with your 10-year-younger self as an entrepreneur, what would you— what would you say? What would you—

how would you encourage her?

I think so. I think it's a wild question. Something I joke about is that I feel like I barely recognize myself every like 4 to 6 months. Like there's just so much change and so much that you learn that you look back at your, your previous version, but like not 10 years, but like 6 months, and you're like, who was that person? Like, what were they even doing or thinking? So I think 10 years is obviously a huge time gap. I think that the core thing that I would communicate to that person is probably just a message of perseverance. I think that things in business take a remarkably long time. It takes a remarkably long time to build a career, to create value in the world, to create tools other people use. All of these things I think we really aspire to as entrepreneurs. And I think that there is a level of patience that you really have to have. Like, I think when you first start in your entrepreneurial career, there is a little bit of like, I will— like, it'll be a year, right? I will, not just some random milestone, but I will be affecting the whole world or it will be very quick. And I think that what I've appreciated about myself and the team that I have around me over the past decade is just the extreme perseverance everyone has knowing that if you're really working on a hard problem and you keep on unpacking that problem, and working on the next hard thing, the next hard thing, next hard thing, you really are having an impact. Uh, even when day to day, um, you're so close to it, it's kind of like hard to see. And I think that I would just remind myself of that because I probably, uh, struggled with that more 10 years ago, more like frustrated with myself for why I didn't just like 6 months into a new business or something, just have like an enormous impact or enormous results.. And, um, and just, there's a slow build, enormous. Cause the thing that I know now that is like more wisdom is enormous of 10 years ago is the small of today. Like the problem with entrepreneurialism is like, if I told myself 10 years ago that I was running a business that had the number of employees and the amount of revenue and like growth or whatever that we have now, that person would've been like, oh my gosh, it's incredible. Like you've made it. I did it, or whatever, you know? And then, but when you're this person, you're like, you're sitting at the base camp of Mount Everest and you're like, oh, the world is a really huge place. Um, and there's so much more to do and I've barely scratched the surface. And so I think that you, neither thing is true. Like you shouldn't be just like blown away by your own success. And you also shouldn't be demoralized by how far there is to go. You just have to actually keep working. Like there is no magical other solution. If you want to keep having impact, you just actually have to keep going. And that would be, I think, my core. I would like share more of that wisdom. So I spend less time frustrated early in my career.

I think I love that. That's such a brilliant advice. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for thinking about that. And Jesse, thank you for joining us today and sharing your wisdom and inspiration with this audience.

Yes, of course. I'm glad.

Thank you for having me. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SkuCast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SkuCast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.