Episode 89: Importing and the Creative Power of Process with Daniel Gardner & Carolina Junghas

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. This is obviously a big project for a big client.

It was really big. Yeah. Yeah. So basically went through the procedure, got the client involved, told them what was going on, gave them our report, and then come to find out it actually helped us. The client was actually so impressed with the way we were able to handle it, not knowing that I was under my desk shivering, not knowing what to do with flipping through pages of it., but it actually gave us more of a standing like, hey, things are gonna happen and we know that you got our back. That was a, a moment for me that I was like, okay, Carolina, this quality stuff we're doing, the, the stuff that we're doing, we're analyzing the clients and these, all these meetings that we have to go over our processes. Here's case in point where it has proven to be successful and where the client, like if you look over where the client was then and where they are now, I mean, they're, way ahead where you could have easily lost them, right?

With $10 million in sales, 22 employees, and 17 years in the business, the brother and sister team of Daniel Gardner and Carolina Jungens lead Nashville-based distributorship Blink Marketing, and for the last several years have experienced tremendous growth. Approximately 40% of their work is importing with high-risk distribution projects. In this episode, I talk with Daniel and Carolina about where the strength in their partnership lies, how product safety has not just become a risk mitigation factor, but actually an incredible client retention and a business development tool. We talk about their work with agencies, from tips on qualifying the type of agency to work with, as well as the right questions to ask. We also discuss the opportunities and pitfalls with company stores and how process, process, process has become the backbone of their success and how that constraint of process actually fuels creativity. And by the way, we're only weeks away from SKUCon, our inspirational kickoff event for the new year, and we are almost sold out. So if you want to know what all the excitement is about, and if you want to kickstart your year with fresh ideas that transform and fuel the progressive supplier and the modern distributor, head over to skucon.com and grab those last tickets. Today's episode is brought to you by CommonSKU, the business management platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders effortlessly and dramatically grow your business. 2019 is your year. Start it right. Begin your free trial now at commonskew.com. And now my conversation with Daniel Gardner and Carolina Jungens from Blink Marketing. So Carolina and Daniel, welcome to the program. Thanks for being on today. Can you tell us a little bit about each of your respective roles in the business?

Go ahead, Daniel.

Thank you, Carolina. So I am managing partner. My roles are I'm in charge of the operations of the company, quality management, and the international logistics supply chain.

Okay.

Carolina? Mine is more the sales and marketing for our clients. Like when we have brainstorming sessions, I oversee those big meetings. And then also for our company itself, just kind of the vision for our brand.

Okay. Folks may not know just listening, but you're brother and sister.

Yes, we are. Been working together all these years and we're both still here.

So what's the age difference?

4 years. I'm older.

All right, so you guys are used to fighting?

Actually, no, we don't fight that much. We always say we know each other's buttons and we just avoid them because it doesn't do any good for anybody for us to push them.

So it works well, you know, after this many years. And I don't know, the listeners probably that don't know us wouldn't know, but we were military brats and traveled the world, and so we were forced to be friends, like when we lived in Germany and lived in Spain. And so we kind of learned each other's buttons, just like Carolina said. Now there has been a few here and there, but it just always ends in a hug. And I'm just great. Those are— I mean, that's kind of the reason when you're forced to be, you know, when you're younger, we were forced to be each other's best friends. And then, yeah, to this day it still stays the same.

That's a great point. Jenny couldn't join us today because she had a baby, but Jenny's also an integral part of your leadership team. Absolutely. She's involved in the web stores and things like that. How did you guys evolve into these roles?

Did you—

was this an evolution? I mean, it sounds like you, you You both do a little bit of everything in terms of sales and working with the clients.

It's actually kind of bizarre because Daniel is the big personality. When he walks in the room, he's the loud one and kind of all the energy is there. So, you would think he would be the creative sales marketing over that piece. And I'm definitely more in details, making sure all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed, but mine's more of a creative focus. It's really bizarre that it's. Gone the way it has, but it works really, really well.

We're each other's yin and yang. I am over the top. Some people say I'm a little extra.

He is absolutely a little extra.

A little extra.

There you go. And Carolina kind of is the other end of that, the spectrum. So we balance each other out even when it comes into reviewing plans, reviewing contracts. You know, I want to be a little bit more risky. Carolina wants to be a little bit more conservative. But when it comes to the creative aspect of it, Carolina is super more creative than I am. It works really well and it kind of is like a perfect little fit. So we seem to check each other off. You know, I bring something to her, she'll be like, are you crazy? And I'll be like, okay, thanks. I'll go back and look at it.

And then he says, why are you being so lame?

Yeah, that's exactly what I said.

And it works so well because we kind of end up somewhere in the middle and it's like on a whole higher level of good.

So maybe this is the case in most businesses, but we've talked about this— Mark and Catherine and I have talked about this a lot— that it seems to be a unique aspect about the promotional products business in terms of distributors particularly, that it seems that many of the most successful distributors in this business are partnerships, and they seem to almost have this same balance between the two, that what the balance that you two bring.

Let me give you a quick example of something that's— yes, you know, so I do a lot of supplier management, supplier qualifications, and processes within the company. I got my head deep in that 24/7. I'll come out and I have this budget that I want to apply, or I need more budget for something. Normally I could just, most, you know, managing partners just say, I'm gonna do this. Right. But knowing Carolina in her head is in a different place and I come over and give her the presentation, she's gonna give me the honest, like, hey, if you really wanna do that, let's look at some other things. And since she's the creative side that maybe you're not, you know, looking at. And the same vice versa for her. She'll come in and marketing and be like, hey, this is what I want to do. What do you think? And I'm going to say, okay, I'm just kidding. And then I'm going to say like, you know, here, here are some of the things that I see. What do you think about doing it this way? It kind of works that way. And so you always have that second person that is kind of not necessarily in your everyday that's going to give you the full and honest opinion and approach. If it wasn't for that, with my risk that I like to take on a lot of stuff, yeah, we wouldn't be where we are. I can say that hands down because I would have taken way too many risk, you know, you know, I need to shut down a long time ago.

And, and on the same— on the other side of the token, we wouldn't be as, as successful as we are because I'm a little bit— I'm— I'll take risk. I'm not like the most prude person ever, but mine are a lot more calculated and take a lot more time. And so it just, it just works. It works real well. And then on a day-to-day level type of thing, in the early days, just on a very practical level, it worked. The partnership works well with the opposite yin-yang type deal because we'd have a client who might not love Daniel's energy level and singing happy birthday on their voicemail and, you know, all of the fun stuff. Some people just aren't into that. So maybe I'd work with that client, and then the other way around, some people were like, she's not as exciting, I want someone who's gonna sing happy birthday, you know, and then Daniel would work with them. So we were able to get a lot of diverse clients out the gate from that point.

Yeah, when you have a customer that's not necessarily liking whoever their customer service rep or sales rep is, or their marketing rep, then it doesn't mean that the person themselves is doing a bad job. It just could mean that the two don't match up and the communication doesn't match up. So we actually have that where we've passed on one customer to another salesperson, not necessarily because that salesperson is doing a bad job, just because maybe that buyer is not having that same kind of— yeah, they don't have the yin and yang.

I love email. Email is my jam, and Daniel loves a phone call. And so, you know, some clients don't want email and some clients don't want phone calls. It just works.

I love how obviously this comes from a position of mutual respect. Absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, most days.

How are we doing today, Carolina? How are we doing?

We are right, we're all right today. I get today a solid B+. A B+?

Kidding.

So what do you do, what do you do when there's— are there impasses? Are there ever impasses?

What do you do when they're When we first started this company together, we only, you know, we were so young, actually young and dumb, I'll be honest, you know, and there's a lot of things we got real lucky at. But one of the things that we said is that we would never make the family relationship, and we were best friends, we would never make that be something that would be jeopardized. And so whenever we got into a position where we felt like it was getting to that, well, that family part, we would actually kind of step back, take a little break, and then reposition it or relook at it at a different angle or take each other's position to see what we were thinking. It's only in Carolina— how many, like, we've only been like maybe 2 or 3 times where it was like, you know, where we're just like, we don't really— I don't see your position. I don't— my opinion, your position doesn't make sense, you're taking too much risk, whatever it is. Almost every time though, it has been something that we were so serious on that it's been very successful because of the changes that need to be made to make the other person feel comfortable, right?

We've also built a really good team. Like, Jenny is a great balance with bouncing ideas off of. My dad, we haven't mentioned that, but he has— he was our who came on as a coach when he retired as the, um, he was a general in the Air Force. So he's a real great strategic leader. And when he came over, he's a— I mean, we brought him over just to come over every once in a while so he could retire and play golf, and we've kind of sucked him in here and don't let him go. But he's a good one to bounce ideas off of as well. So we just have a really, really strong team around us as well.

Let's explain a little bit to our listeners about your— the type of clients you serve and your basic— your unique value proposition in the market. I— Mark Graham and I were privileged to visit at your facility, and I loved it. Such a great team, such a great, uh, energy there, an incredible amount of energy. And the projects you're doing are astounding. So why don't you let folks know what types of clients you serve and the work that you do?

So for the most part, you know, we have a wide variety of clients just from all markets, just like most distributors do. But our focus would be consumer goods, consumer products, and that's the wholesale and retail division, auto, university education, technology. And then one of the things that we actually started with are the two, I guess, markets we started in was ad agencies and restaurants. Okay. So that's kind of like our core. Of course, we have some here and there, but that's kind of what, if you were to say, about 80% of our business goes into those markets, right?

In terms of your clients, I know you do a lot of importing. What percentage of your business is importing?

When it comes to revenue, what percent of our revenue is importing? It's actually a pretty large percentage. As you know, in the industry, you know, a lot of the importing you do overseas is actually larger orders, more complex. So it's roughly, you know, from year to year, it's a little different, but I looked at this last week, we're roughly about 40% of the business is importing. And that can differ from year to year depending on the clients. And also, you know, who knows what's going to happen next year with the tariffs that are coming, but right now we're at 40%.

What concerns you about the tariff, since we're on that subject?

The inconsistencies, the unknowns. I'd rather them say this is what it's going to be and this is how long it's going to be for, not, well, it's 10% now and then it's going to be 25% in January. Just like anything, when you release anything at a full blast and there's thousands and thousands of pages that are very hard to decipher, none of us really in this industry have the resources to sit down or the team to go through 2,000 pages of the third release that just came out. I was just at the Product Safety Summit in D.C. last week, and pretty much the group came to the understanding that I think 70% of all products from China will be covered. And don't quote me on that, but something like 70% of all products from China will be covered in this last one that just went effective. I think it's either— I think this week, and that is at a flat 10% above what the current tariff and duty was. But then it's going to change again in January. So like everybody's kind of scrambling right now to figure that out. So yeah, that's a little bit of an issue that I've— I feel personally right now, I feel that, I feel that burn right now.

Right. That's a great example of the kind of thing that Daniel gets super into and studies it and researches it. And I could— I don't like it. Like, I know it is so important and it affects my business, so of course I want to educate myself on it. But oh my gosh, I could not be less interested.

I've probably sent Carolina today 20 emails on that point. She's probably just put them off in a slide note. Just deal with it.

Like, FYI, check this one out. I'm like, I don't want to. Can you just give me the Cliff Notes next week or something?

Yeah. What a great balance though. What a great partnership. Yeah.

No, it is. I could not be more appreciative that he is so into that stuff.

Yeah. Bobby, it's interesting because it's not just our own importing. I'm really worried about suppliers right now that might not have such a vast knowledge of international importing, that might just stick to just one product or might not have like a variety of products that they offer. Maybe they don't even offer more than just one country. Maybe they don't just come out of China. Maybe they jump— sorry, just maybe they just come out of China and maybe they don't have other options in other countries to import or even domestic options that they've researched. Since this is like almost like a— I mean, in, in the terms of the government, this has happened extremely quick. So I'm worried about that, and I'm reviewing a lot of the, whatever, the supplier emails that are coming in to make sure that, you know, there is some consistency between there. Maybe, maybe there's stuff I'm missing that they picked up on. I just think it's going to be something that if it sticks as it is, it's going— it's a long, painful road that everybody's going to have to figure out the best resources to either for their clients as a, from a supplier side, or for us as a distributor, us distributors, on how to relay the messages to our clients. Because yeah, when you're talking 10%, you know, you might be able to get a little bit out of that. Maybe you can talk to them about give me some more business and we can make that work. And, you know, for reorders, when you're talking 25%, I mean, you can't, you can't just eat that. So, um, I think there's going to be a lot of discussions and, and we just went— it's a wait and see, right? Like, what, what do we do? Um, we just got to wait and see what happens.

Let's stay on this path for a minute. Daniel, help us understand the importance of product safety. You know, most people in the industry, their eyes still glaze over when it comes to product safety, but you kind of had a conversion story, didn't you? There have been moments in your business history where suddenly product safety was make or break or a very dramatic impact on your business, and you woke up, so to speak, to how important that is. And you've done a lot of work with QCA. Can you explain the impact of that on your business?

Yeah, I can give you the long story or the short story, and I'll start off with the long one and then I'll make it short because Oh gosh, I knew that was coming. There are like, there are like these little ticks in my memory of things that I was like, you know, where you've got that, that corny, the path less taken or the path taken that changed the company. On my side and what I managed for the, for Blink, one of those times was an order that we did, and this was like 8 or 9 years ago where, you know, we didn't have like the true contracts in place for, for our clients. And we had an issue with a job that had a force majeure, um, so an act of God, um, right, situation where a typhoon took up, uh, you know, one of the containers of the boat. We had no idea where it was. Well, the client was— it's an international client too, so it wasn't even delivering to the US. So there's— that was part another issue. But we had, um, they were under a, um, gaming law, right? So they basically said that, you know, one in however many hundred thousand would win. And then they got audited and they didn't have the product, so they were being fined every day.

Sorry, back up a little bit. Explain that gaming law.

So it's like, it's like a gaming law or a lottery law, and every state and country has a different name of it.

Um, but it's basically where it is, one in five wins, that you've got to have the goods to— yeah, so one in five win.

If they've already released all the media, the PR, all the, you know, copy that says, you know, whether it's on TV, wherever it was, it says, right, one in ten win.

Oh, right.

Okay.

And you don't have the one in ten during the start of the promotion you will get fined by the gaming— whoever the bot governance body is over that country. So this was a Caribbean promotion, so all the Caribbean islands were receiving it. This was about a million dollars worth of goods. This is about 8 or 9 years ago. Well, we didn't really have these stern, strong contracts like we do now that cover that, right? You don't ever think that an act of God is going to be something that you need to, you know, explain to a client. We, uh, we ended up having to take it. It was a 2-week delay. We had a fine a company that could create a similar bag within each individual country and pay an outlandish price just to make the customer happy. I knew that that's what we had to do to make the customer happy, but I knew that that wasn't right and I had to fix it. And I couldn't figure out the way. Carolina and I were trying to figure out how can we make this not happen again? So we decided, okay, we're going to have to get into contracts. So that started that process. And then you get into the next phase, which was quality. We had some clients around 5 years ago that were asking us, you know, supplier vetting, you know, how is our process management and all that stuff. Now we had things in place at this time. We had, you know, pretty much an SOP on everything. We had processes on, you know, order management. You have nonconformities and how you correct those. Right. But the robustness of it was I thought we had it like way better than everybody else. And then come to find out, man, We need more information. And this is when I started looking for third-party accreditation companies within the industry. I didn't think there was any that could help me. And this is how we stumbled with the QCA, which is the Equality Certification Alliance. So they are a governing body that does accreditation for suppliers specifically in our industry. And that's what separates them from the other accreditations like CEDX, the Four Pillar, all those different types of audits that are out there. This is specifically for the promotional products industry. Once I found that, it was like finding like this, like, I couldn't believe that this is here. And so, I was all in.

Because obviously you have clients that are demanding that you have that type of oversight.

Yeah. It's actually—

I was going to add the, you know, the saying, luck isn't just luck. It's when preparedness meets opportunity, or, you know, that saying. That is what, you know, people are like, oh, you're so lucky. How did you meet with this client? How did you get a meeting with that client? We couldn't even get in the door. And honestly, it is that. We were prepared and Daniel's quality geekiness, you know, and all of that with him researching it and getting all of those things were lined up. And then an opportunity presented itself with a very large client and they were like, well, we can't work with you unless you have X, Y, and Z in place. We're like, ta-da, we do. And so, you know, it is a lot of that. It is a lot of that type of luck where we were prepared to take on the opportunity presented to us.

Yeah. As you're constantly in a field of quality or with us as distributors changing products, who knows where that product is coming from? It really opened up my eyes more of like supply chain logistics and where everything's coming from. And then we then had, you know, a Prop 65 thing that came up that we had to deal with. And we were on, I wouldn't say we were on the cutting edge, but we were on the leading edge with a bunch of other distributors and suppliers that had the same issues. And then next thing you know, guess what? All these new rules came out. Well, we were ready for it. You're putting up all these processes and implementing all these procedures in place for the company. And we're not, you know, this massive corporation that has, you know, hundreds and hundreds of employees. When you're doing that for a company that has 25 employees, you're sitting there going like, why are you putting all these processes in place? Well, then something happens to where you're like, oh, thank God we had that, or I would be having a complete panic attack right now.

Right, right. So the processes actually allow you obviously to stay on track, but also to verify with your customer that this is, this is what we do. This is what we follow, and that, that helps you win business. Most distributors can get their mind around that, right? The product safety often comes from the risk side, but we often don't think of it in terms of the opportunity side.

And that's what you're talking about. Absolutely. Yeah. You can actually have a quality issue from whichever aspect of the process, whether it's, you know, direct from the suppliers in China or wherever, or a domestic supplier, or even inside your own company, that you can actually turn into a positive. And even something that's almost crisis, as long as you have, you know, Carolina said it the other day, well, all we got to do is turn the page, you know, blah, blah, blah, in our manual. And it gives us that outline because your mind might not be 100% there, but you've already thought through it. You just need to get your mind back there and referencing it and it being there. And you've already gone through a mock version of whatever that this issue, it makes it, oh my gosh. And then you be— then you can take this back to your client. And say, yes, we had this issue, here's how we addressed it, here's the protocol, and here's our report, here's what we recommend. I mean, it will— those kind of things can get clients to stay with you much longer than the actual problem itself.

Yeah, that's, that's very interesting, the fact that you just have that validated and a system to follow. Let's back up just a little bit because, you know, we have distributors of all, all types of experiences listening to this. We have folks that are, you know, $30, $40 million distributors. We have folks that are brand new to the business. How do you recommend a newer entrepreneur get involved in more importing, and are there a few basics that they should be aware of? And, and how does QCA play in all that? I mean, and I realize I'm asking a very big question because there is a lot to unpack there.

So, well, first, QCA is an accrediting body, right? So what QCA does is they accredit promotional products suppliers, and from the last time I checked, they didn't have direct factories in China. It was just— doesn't say they're not going to get there at some point. I don't know if they will do too kind of, you know, there might be some conflict there, but right now it's just straight the domestic suppliers. And what they have is they have a process and it takes, you know, can take a supplier 2 years to get accredited that basically says, you know, they have your, you know, responsibility auditing to make sure there's no, you know, child labor, make sure they're, you know, you guys aren't, you know, fair wages and all that stuff. Um, and they make sure that they're, you're not only executing these policies, but you're living them. So they have, you have to actually go through a period of time. What's hard for most distributors to wrap their head around when it comes to the quality management systems is to actually have a process in place that you use for every aspect of ordering. Not just your big orders, not just your overseas orders. Oh, interesting. All aspects, you should be attacking that same process. It makes it very difficult because you try to— a lot of times you'll try to gear your process towards like a budget, a dollar figure, you know. Yeah. For instance, if you have to do auditing or if you have to do any kind of on-site asset or management request where you go in and check what the assets are on site. Those have, you know, there's resources that need to be provided for that, whether it's yourself or a third party. And it's hard to create all of those in the same spectrum. And that's what makes it difficult. When it comes to importing, I would just say, you know, unlike goals where you reach, you, what is it, set your goals for the mar— for the sun and hopefully land on the moon. Did I get that one right? I think I got that one right. Something similar to that.

I, I, I'm not even sure, but it sounded Really good.

Okay, good, good. Well then we'll use that one. Okay. Basically goals you want to, you want to set yourself, you know, a little further ahead than what you think you can reach. So therefore you're pushing yourself to reach those, right? With something like this, you need to look at the resources that you have to be able to attain certain levels of quality management, supplier vetting, whatever that is. And then use a QCA. They have all this information on, on their website and I believe it's qca.com. I, I think it's that easy. I'm not 100% sure, but they have—

I would double check that for sure.

Yeah, definitely. I think it's actually qualitycertificationalliance.com, I think. But they have all this stuff that can kind of give you like a really quick overview and you can get into the weeds of what this means and what it means for the industry and what it should mean for you. And if you have interest in that, then great, go for it, dig in deep. If you don't, right there, find someone that does. Kind of like what Carolina says, some of peo— some people think this can be kind of sleepy. And then some people like me, I, I love it.

Yeah, but it's important even if you think it's sleepy. That's the key. Yep.

Yeah, risky. So since we're on this track, by the way, Daniel, was it you that told me how you slowly got into more importing, that you started adding imported product quotes to every project?

We had a client basically saying, oh, I only want made in the USA. And you're like, okay, well, you have enough quantity, you have enough lead time. If you want made in the USA, here's your made in the USA quote. Here's your made in China or Vietnam or wherever it is quote. Right. And 99.998% of the time they're going to go with the cheaper price. And then how you back that up is with the quality part.

Right.

Right. But we're pushing for made in the USA as much as possible. We don't want— like, we're patriotic around here. It's just, yeah, the price of doing business.

Well, what I love about that too is that you're giving your client options so they suddenly don't just see— in case there's a competitive offer on the table and they're wondering why yours is so dramatically higher and they're not really doing the math on that. And I also love how you slowly worked your way into doing more importing by doing that. Most of us are just trying to respond to the fires that we have and we're just asking whatever the client client, whatever that client asks, we're trying to deliver. Yeah, but thinking beyond that can exponentially grow your business.

Absolutely. Yeah. And then you, you have to also kind of be aware too of the knowledge that the clients have. And so if you say things incorrectly, like I did one time and said USA price and then imported price, well, come to find out the product was from like a Leeds or a Hit that I was pricing. It was just domestically held price. Because it's still made in China, it's just one is held here domestically and one's— then you got to break it out, made in the USA, domestically held, and international.

Uh, great, great distinction. Thank you for that. Since we're on this subject of importing, riskiest project that was a success?

From my experience, the ones that have a very firm date of delivery. Yeah, where you're just right on, you know, you've got like a couple days wiggle room. And I had one that was a trade show giveaway, massive multi-stop trade show, and it was a custom figurine made overseas.

What size order?

I think it was 100. I don't remember exactly.

Several years. Yeah, for sure. That was probably the riskiest one, and it was many, many nights emailing back and forth with the factory because of the time change. And we made it just in time, but those overseas shipments with firm delivery date that are like where you just count it out, you, you need a big pad in there, a big window padding. That's probably the riskiest. But the figurine project worked out great. In fact, they came back and did a round 2 because it got such great feedback. I was like, oh great, I'm kind of excited and kind of dreading this with everything I have because it's— it was such a big undertaking.

Really, fortunately or unfortunately, usually fortunately, success in this business usually comes from a foundation of failures, and that's why you develop the systems. That's why you've done what you've done. Was there another risky project that you had that was a failure, but you learned so much from it that it gave way to success?

Yes, I have one that I have to be very careful with. But so we have a quality— we have a senior quality manager. So we actually have a small quality department here. And I know that's a hard thing to do for most distributors our size, but we have such an interest in it. We actually have a department., and they review testing docs. So a lot of times we ask for, almost every time we ask for testing docs if the ones provided aren't the right ones or don't look right. And we came into a situation where we actually ran into some testing docs that had the wrong governance agency reporting. And it ended up being that the testing docs that we provided to us from the supplier were actually fraudulent. Oh, um, falsified with somebody else's accreditation. Somebody else's accreditation.

Um, is this a well-known supplier? You don't have to answer that.

I would say not extremely well known, but I would say yes, well known. Well known to the extent that you could find them easily with a search, put it that way. Okay. Yeah. And then, so we found this inconsistency, or I didn't—

that your internal department found it?

Yes. And we did some back and forth checks. You know, this is a big call out. Right? You don't just say you found something that's like this, that's incorrect, that could possibly be forged without having some proof. Well, guess what? We turned a page. So this is risk. It was a failure, but it really wasn't because just as we stated before, went to page 27 of crisis management policy for products that could possibly have a recall aspect to it. Come to find out we had a 24-hour procedure, had everybody who would be in the place This is from who's our PR person, who's the person if media gets involved, who's the spokesperson for that, who's—

by the way, this project had already shipped and was already on the way.

Yes, man. Yeah. So you have to inform the client, right? Who's the person who does that? Is it the, is it the sales rep's responsibility? Is it an executive member's responsibility? How's that communication given? And all that's already written in our procedure, and we give ourselves 24 hours to come up with not only the message but the delivery message to the client, everything. 24 hours because because if you have to start filing for recalls, you got to get the CPSC involved and all this stuff.

So this is obviously a big project for a big client.

It was really big. Yeah. So basically went through the procedure, got the client involved, told them what was going on, told them, gave them our report. We had it signed off by our quality manager on what the findings were. And then come to find out, it actually helped us. The client was actually so impressed with the way we were able to handle it, not knowing that I was under my desk shivering, not knowing what to do with flipping through pages. Of it, but it actually gave us more of a standing like, hey, things are going to happen and we know that you got our back. You're going to find these things because you're going above and beyond. That was a moment for me that I was like, okay, Carolina, this quality stuff we're doing, the stuff that we're doing, we're analyzing the clients and these, all these meetings that we have to go over our processes. Here's case in point where it has proven to be successful and where the client, like if you look over where the client was then and where they are now, I mean, they're way ahead where you could have easily lost them, right?

Yeah, because instead of the client coming to you and saying, how could you let this happen?

Right? Yep.

Because you had a plan for them. Not just, not just here, we're sorry, Mr. Client, this is what happened. You actually had a plan for them, for them to handle it, even though they probably had a more than adequate PR department.

Correct. And just for the suppliers that are out there listening, as distributors, it's one step forward, one step back, of acknowledgment. So our job is basically to let the supplier know and say, here's our inconsistency. You have this amount of time to get back to us, or then we're going to have to take further action. So if the supplier doesn't respond to you in a due amount of time, it's our responsibilities as distributors to contact more, get more people involved, basically escalate it to more of an important level.

The scope of the project, the bigger it is, the obviously more hands the product gets into, the bigger deal it is. You know, if you're just handing out a hundreds, whatever, at the local pizza shop, you still want that to be tip-top quality. And that's what we offer our clients. But those large-scale distributions, those are the ones where you've just got to make sure it's all buttoned up, because pulling all together to get those pieces back into a controlled group is a lot more difficult.

How did that project end? Did you end up having to eat a lot of cost on that? Was there something, something you had Yeah.

I mean, as an intern, as a company, you have to make the internal decision on how to facilitate the costing aspects to the client. Our job was to find the problem and then we took the responsibility of the project on our shoulders. So we did eat costs because at the time we weren't getting anything back from Supplier X. We did end up recouping some cost and we were able to, I believe, and I don't know this as for sure, but I believe we were able to recoup almost 99% of all the product that was distributed.

Wow.

So basically very little risk and exposure.

We notified them so early in the process that was it. We were able to, to get a hold of it, thankfully.

Fast responses. Yeah, fast responses. And you rescued, you rescued the client relationship.

Exactly. Although she wasn't, she wasn't thrilled the first day.

No, she wasn't at all, I'm sure.

I'm sure. But we made good. I think we actually ended up producing more. Yes, we ended up producing more kind of out of pocket just as a make-good.

Yeah, yeah. You know, in, in this business, something that's really hard to understand— you finally get it after you work with so many clients, particularly the larger clients— that tension with a client is often normal. Oh yeah, we want to be heroes all the time to our customers, but in the, the ultimately, sometimes there's tension that should be there for good reason, as long as it's mutual, right?

So as long as there's an understanding and respect for the understanding that the client has the right to be angry at certain things. Yeah. And that, you know, we have the right to defend and/or protect our decisions and our processes. As long as that can be mutual and back and forth, then it's a beautiful thing because then everybody gets the best of both worlds. And you can learn a little bit from the client, and the client can actually learn a little bit from you. And then there's an understanding. It's when it's just one-sided, that's when it becomes a problem.

Right, right. Switching gears just a little bit, Carolina, you work with a lot of ad agency clients who value a strong, reliable marketing partner.

Yes.

How have you positioned your brand as a marketing partner in more than just a resource?

Loaded question, because it's good— this goes way back to when I first started in this business. I was in television advertising sales, and a lot of my clients were in advertising agencies. And so I I was able to build some trust just in my meetings with advertising agencies, just saying I've worked with them for years, different division of the agency, but they kind of were like, okay, you get, you get the whole hurry up and wait. And sometimes we just do proposals for our clients and it's not going to turn into anything with, and you're okay with doing that every once in a while. But a lot of it too is just coming to them with the right questions. I think a lot of distributors, first of all, a lot of distributors have a bad taste in their mouth with ad agencies just because they they have the reputation of that, of working you and working you and working you. And then, oh well, that died. And so a lot of distributors come in with a little bit of a chip. Um, I know he's gonna do this to me and they're already kind of sour. The other thing too is asking the right types of questions.

I think. Like what? When you say that?

Well, if you're, if I'm approaching a new advertising agency that does not know me from, from anybody, I mean, from the next distributor down the street, the first question's probably not gonna be, What's your budget for this project? I— that's important information. I need that information to put together a proposal that is going to make sense for them. But if that's the first question out the gate, my mind as a buyer is, okay, she's looking to see if I'm going to make her a lot of money instead of what can you do for me? So, you know, asking the right types of questions so that they can trust you and know that you actually are interested in the purpose of their campaign. The outcome. Yeah, exactly. And then from the get-go, we just don't present the sale of the week type thing. It's just not our jam. We don't do that. We just ask a lot of questions. What's your purpose of this campaign? Who are you trying to target? You know, the marketing questions. And once you start doing that from the beginning, they're like, okay, they kind of get marketing and they kind of get advertising.

And so you just build the trust from there, I One of the questions, Bobby, that Carolina asks all the time to the agency clients that I've actually picked up on over the years is ask demographic questions. Who are you giving it to? How old are they? Male or female? Do we know what industry that most of them are in? Those kind of questions you can then limit who you're actually— you don't have to throw all these ideas at them that don't make sense. You know in advance that, okay, that's not going to make sense for this group of people.

Well, because a lot of times these advertising agencies have these big budgets because Usually when a big client goes to an advertising agency, they've got pretty deep marketing dollars. You know, they're doing a television campaign, they're doing billboards, they're doing radio, and our little piece of it is just a small piece of the big puzzle. And so they're looking to us for some guidance on, on that type of thing. If you can build that kind of relationship, it's like, I get you're doing— you've got all this other stuff that you're working on with this messaging for your client brand. And I'm just going to let you know that I'm your branded merchandise piece of your puzzle is going to fit with the rest of it, as long as I can get the information. Because they come to you with a big budget, you get all excited, and they're like, I need 500,000 pieces of XYZ. You're like, okay, I'm going to put together a proposal. Well, you need a lot more information, right?

Well, then you position yourself as, as an expert as opposed to just a commodity purchase. Those beginning questions, the subtlety and the psychology of that and how it differentiates your brand is so critical.

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, one of our biggest compliments is I've had a more than one advertising agency tell us, I feel like you're like in this department down the hallway from me. And I'm like, yes, that's amazing. That's the best compliment I've ever gotten.

Yes. Yeah, that's a great response. Are there— are you able to tell now after qualifying so many agencies who would line up as a great client partner versus those that wouldn't?

Yes. And not so much by the name on the building, not so much that, but more the buyers as we've worked with a lot of advertising agencies, you start to really notice a personality. Like, you— it's every buyer that's in there, every production manager that you deal with, they might all be different, you know, obviously they're individuals and they're all very different, but a lot of times they'll have the same kind of vibe. And it's— some of them treat their distributor partners as vendors, and they're like, give me the best price, blah, blah, blah, and they kind of beat you up. Those aren't our favorite. And when we work with them, of course we give them the best service and we give them all of our quality perks and everything, but the ones that we I really enjoy working with are the ones that respect what we do and what we bring to the table. Sometimes it takes a few times, you know, you go to, you go to them with the winning idea, the client buys it and says, this is amazing, and they've sold it as their own, which there's no pride in my game. I'm like, yeah, that was your great idea. They come back for more, you know.

We also have it, Bobby, where we have agencies that they actually are like, we need a brainstorming meeting and we need you in the Yeah, so like we sit and we have a conference and they're on the video conference because some, you know, we have agencies in Europe that we work with, we have agencies all over the world, and we're in there and we're like acting as an extension of them.

It takes a while to get into that inner circle of trust though. You've gotta, you gotta kind of grunt along until you can earn that trust to get in there.

Yeah. Carolina, what types of projects do you enjoy working on the most? Is there a couple that come to mind you've done I love the—

it's different. It's the ones that are— they're buying a gajillion items off the shelf. They're throwing a one-color logo on it and they're distributing it around. Those, those are, you know, the bread and butter. Those are the ones that pay the bills, I guess. But the really fun ones are the ones where they come to us, an ad agency, for example, and they will sketch something out literally like on the TV shows on a napkin, take a picture or scan it into me and say, this is kind of what we're thinking. And we start from the very square one together, those are the ones that really get me excited. And I know there are salespeople in this office with me that are like, that is my worst nightmare. But those are the ones that I like.

Is that because too you've seen how obviously building an item from scratch, you eliminate a lot of competitive factors? But also, yeah, also you've seen that— I know once I was— we were on a podcast, uh, conversation with Stephen Musgrave, a director at RiceLeve, and he said, you know, today's a very difficult custom order is tomorrow's commodity sale. I mean, it'll— tomorrow is tomorrow's easy order. Is that because you kind of see through that, that the hard work that you'll spend up front could return fourfold?

I feel like I need to say yes, because that's the right answer. But really, I am so dorky about watching something come from scratch and turn into this big thing. And then, you know, the gravy is when you see it like on a television commercial, or, you know, you're in the other side of the country and somebody's wearing something that you've helped design. That is exciting to me. But what you said, absolutely true. Like, the reorder is beautiful.

Well, I mean, this is tapping into, you know, your creative bent and how much you love creative aspect of the business. Carolina, are there brands— I'm not necessarily asking in the industry, but what types of brands and companies inspire you? And I'm talking retail, from things you like. Are there things you watch and keep an eye on? Because you guys got a very energetic, creative brand. You're obviously working with some very cool agencies. How do you keep that creative pulse?

I used to read Adweek pretty religiously.

Honestly, um, hey, you don't read those anymore?

Well, they're piling up, piling up. My emails and the hard copies that I get are piling up. But really, I look a lot at that and just get the latest. That's one of my favorite things to read, are the Ad Weeks, to kind of keep up with what brands are doing and what the agencies are doing.

By the way, what is your revenue this year? We should be pushing over $10 million. And how many employees? We just had a couple leave.

We're at 22. 22, $10 million in sales. And how many years you've been doing this now?

Carolina, 17 in December. Yep. And the last, I guess, 6 years of that is when we've really started pushing to grow, maybe last 8 years. Before that, Carolina and I were just basically, hey, this, we're making a good living doing this. We don't need to stress ourselves out anymore by growing. And then all of a sudden we were like, you know what? Let's go ahead and grow this.

The timing kind of worked with when our kids got a little bit older. Yeah, right. You know, when they were younger, it's like, oh, we get to do all the things. We get to go to this game and we get to do that. I mean, we still do that. Family is important. That's a whole, you know, that we have that message throughout our building. It's like, you've got to have a work-life balance. It's super important because if everybody here is miserable from overwork, then what are we doing?

To give you an example, Jenny wanted to be on this call and we told her no.

No, Jenny's just had a baby.

Yeah, yeah, she's like, I'll be on the call.

No, no, you're not. Um, no, you're not gonna be on the call.

Again, you'll be listening to that.

It's very dedicated, but no, no. When it was just the two of us, and even three or four of us, that's kind of what we said. We're not going to grow this into something crazy huge. We're just gonna— we're happy where we are. And then we did another 5-year plan And we talked it out. We were like, yeah, let's, let's do this. Let's try to grow it to the next level.

Did you have to shift your role and pivot away from more sales-driven activity to management at that point? Did you realize you had to replicate your energies through others, and was that a difficult transition?

For me, it was almost impossible.

Yeah, it was, it was difficult, but it's— you have to.

You learn a lot about yourself, right, in that process when you, when you have your little baby and then you're just like, hey, I want you to take over this, and I hope you do it right, because if you don't, I'm going to be over here not looking at that. That's a tough thing to do. But you know what? You get the right people in place that want to succeed and move the company forward. They have not only the bottom line vision for the company, which is the financial aspect, not only what the brand of the company is, but they have that future look where they can see into the future and what you want to do because you've been instilling that. Then you have really no problem handing that off to them because you know that their ideals match up with yours.

They care as much as, well, almost as much as you do.

Right. Well, and usually that lesson comes only through the hard ways, right?

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

I, I would love to tell listeners there's shortcuts. There are once you— I think when you, when you do figure out the onboarding part of that process and, and qualifying the right candidates, but it's a lot of trial and error.

Oh man. Yeah, one of the ones Daniel just referenced earlier that's leaving is she's not going to another distributor, she's not going to a supplier. She is an actress and she's this ball of energy and super salesperson that we just— she'd never sold before, but we were like, you would be great. And so she did. She did great for 2 years and she was like, oh, my heart is just in acting. So we were like, go do your passion. You— and she was making a lot of money, but she was like, I think I'm gonna— I think I'm gonna go back. We're like, yes, do what you need to do to be happy.

And then we acted like we didn't want to cry and we walked around. We've had a couple people come to us for that, that have said that. One of our biggest things— and Carolina wasn't exaggerating or making it real, it's actually in our business plan— that family comes first. Everybody here in the office is like family. You're going to be with them almost longer than you're with your family, and so you might as well make the family that they have come first. And it's been hard at times, but basically that has been the motto. If you— if we're not respecting the family aspect of the business, then we're not respecting the business plan and not respecting the business itself. So we've kind of stuck to that as much as possible.

Well, we're hiring kind of people that would never take advantage of something like that, so it works great, right?

There's been a couple. There's been a couple.

Yeah, it happens to everybody. You know, your, your dad would appreciate this, but my mentor was a former military man, and he once told me, if you take care of a soldier's family, you earn yourself a soldier. And, uh, there— that's, I think, such an incredible principle for a business.

So incredible. I wonder if that's just been instilled in us.

It's been instilled of us from subtly. Yeah. Well, one of the things, Bobby, I can tell you is that I don't know about other companies, but we have people that leave us for whatever reasons that still come back to our functions. Yeah. So I mean, in this—

that's amazing.

And it's very cool checking up on us. How are you doing? Hey, how's, you know, you know, how's this client? Or, you know, that kind of stuff. And that's just— that means the world to us because it means like they had their place in the company and they've moved on. But every person that has been here besides us, a few have actually helped the company move forward and then help themselves, right? Now they're in a different position doing better and doing what they love. That, as a business owner, for Carolina and I, that speaks volumes.

It's a tremendous reward. Tremendous reward.

Keeps you in the game. Yeah. Makes you— those nights when you're up at 2 in the morning, makes those nights kind of seem worth it.

Is this part of your dad's influence too? Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of things that possibly he might have influenced from just the quality checks with his military background.

And just, I would say 100,000%. Processes if it wasn't for him smacking us around and saying you need to not— it's basically put a process in place, evaluate that process, test that process, and do the whole process over again. Literally, that's literally— that's what we do constantly. Yeah. And he says that's the only way you're going to find your gaps and your opportunities, right? So where are you spending too much resources and too much time in, where can you can you use the extra time and resources? I don't care how many times you check your process and how perfect you think it is, you're going to find something every time. As an auditor just once told me, I don't care how many times I audit you, I'm going to find a nonconformity. And that's not like— doesn't sound like a Maslow's or somebody, Aristotle. It's not gonna be some pretty quote, but it's true. I mean, they could literally come the next day and I said, well, that's not fair. What if you— if we make the changes you tell us, we should be good to He goes, no, there's always, always, always changes to your opportunity, to your processes that can help you as a company. I don't know if that's necessarily true, but maybe if you come every month, maybe if you look at it every month or every 3 months, or, you know, however many times you have the resources to look. My father was instrumental in reviewing that and also instrumental in reviewing things that Carolina and I felt like we'd reviewed over and over again, right?

Like, and I was going to say, Daniel and I resisted, not, not resisted having processes. But we resisted a little bit on— we were like, we don't want this to be the Pentagon. We have a very—

that's exactly what we said.

We have a very, you know, this is like an ad agency vibe-ish, fun atmosphere, you know, kind of, you know, hiring the right people that aren't going to take advantage of the atmosphere that we have here. We have things in place, we feel good about it. And he was like, but, but this and but that and but that. And so we found if he had his way, it would be the Pentagon, you know, everything would be— there'd be no Blinky, our mascot. There would be— it'd be very very plain. That is another balance thing where we came together and put the key elements of having really strong process in place with sprinkled with our personality and fun and family atmosphere. So I'd say yes, to answer your question, yes, huge influence in our structure.

Yeah, what a gift. And Carolina, that is a great way to put that because often we erroneously believe that creativity is nothing but freestyling. And frankly, even when you look at creative forms from art to music to literature to poetry, form provides constraints, and constraints actually can fuel creativity. So what this has done is given you tracks to run on and actually made you go faster and avoid a lot of messy situations. Absolutely.

And we want to— one of the hardest things for at least me and and I think Carolina too, she just wasn't as vocal as I was, was when you, you don't want to limit creativity as in innovation because you don't want to jump outside the box. And one of the funniest things that you can actually, that you'll see whenever you start going into this process is that you are only putting in processes for the aspects of the things that you're working continuously on. But the creative part, like you were talking before, that's still there. There, and you can still make— take those risks as long as they're conscious risk. You know, you have safeguards in place to protect yourself if those fail out miserably. Yeah.

So you're saying really gives you more latitude?

More. Way more. Yep. And more freedom and willingness to do it because you understand there's a safeguard there just in case. We're going to spend some money, some time into this, but we've all come together and put our heads together, and now we know that if it doesn't happen— and it might not, here's where we're going to be. And that's, that's okay too. It's like going to Vegas, right? Take all them— well, you're supposed to do this— take the money you want to spend and loot and know you're going to lose it. And then, you know, you're fine. You're going to feel okay. Hey, I had fun. I paid for my entertainment. And if you win, great. Then that's it. That's just icing. So if you, if you look at those risks that you want to take with that, then you're good to go. Now, we also as a company do risk assessments, and that's kind of super high level, and that kind of helps us as well. You know, you identify your strengths and weaknesses, you'd kind of like a SWOT analysis, and then you move into the risk assessment review on, you know, cost, cost aversion, that kind of thing. And then that report will generate whether it's a— what level of risk it is. And then as a company, you take it whether you want to do it or not.

Yeah. Now I know Jenny is responsible for a lot of your store oversight, but how critical are web stores to your business?

It's an added piece to the puzzle that clients are requesting. So, you know, 7, 8 years ago, we didn't have any stores, and we didn't want to do them.

Uh, somebody would mention the store 10 years ago, 7 years ago, whenever it started becoming like a real thing, we would turn them away. We would, we would just do everything we possibly could to avoid it because it was terrifying, right?

And now it's one of our driving forces for client retention. So yeah, hey, you do this for us, you do that for us, can you do a store? We don't really like the way our store works. Now stores are interesting to where, as you do a lot of them, you'll find out no store is the You know, you've got a store that you own inventory, store that they own inventory, store that there's no inventory, store that we warehouse, they warehouse, we process warehouse but we don't charge. I mean, all these different caveats. What you have to do, what we learned in the beginning, is don't consider yourself, I can do it all. Find your niche, find your strength, and build off of that. There are many gaps in the web store world even today. That distributors— there's some that distributors are amazing at. I would not tackle that. There's some that are just gaps that everybody we talk to say that, well, this is the problem we're having. If you can find those, and that's what we did, we found the gap, we worked on it, we found, you know, a client that had a niche and a need, and we were like, hey, that's— we can— I know I can do that. We can do that. Carolina, can we do that? I don't know, Daniel. And then we then take that risk. We put a lot of money and into the technology that we have and a lot of resources to be able to make sure we're doing it right. And then the biggest part on the stores is that you need as much feedback from the client. Oh, yes. And more so than you do with any other thing you do in our industry. And that's been the hardest thing to communicate. And that's like one time when there's like that mutuality and understanding. Look, when we say we need this information from you to make this deadline, you can't come back to us and say, well, why are we late on the deadline? Well, it took you 2 weeks to give us this key information. That was kind of the biggest learning curve, I think, for the company when it comes to that. But now, you know, find what you're good at within stores. And if you don't— I'm not saying don't offer whatever part of the store aspect that you don't feel like you're good at, but there's a lot of, you know, third-party people that are willing to assist you. Don't try to take all that in because there's so many parts of it that, that you can really find yourself drowning in or It sounds like the secret then is qualifying those opportunities. Oh, absolutely.

100%. Yes. I would say the first, the first web store we had, we were totally playing office. Oh my gosh, we were walking in with some confidence like we knew what we were talking about, and we were faking it till we made it. Thankfully that worked out, but holy— I would not want to do that again.

No, we came back with so many like call-outs that we were like, gosh, we have to really scratch this. We actually put almost almost— I would say we put at least a year and a half worth of work into store 1 to store 2. Right, right. You know, people coming by saying, you want a store?

No.

Yeah, no, we don't want to do that for you.

Sorry. Yeah, I, I, I'm literally looking out my window at the headquarters of a company that the first store we really sold to, I was in the, the garage of their headquarters, very large oil company, on the phone with the software provider asking questions like, um, do you think I should charge a setup charge?

And walking—

so I totally understand where you're coming from. That customer went on to spend 7 figures. But oh my gosh, what a—

what a— yeah, I mean, what a learning lesson. You look at things and you're like— I remember when I think it was Lindsay at the time, she was our web store coordinator, she came up to me and she was like, so what is this integration thing? And I was like, what? What integration? Yeah, they supposedly— it's going to cost us all this money to have to do what you wanted to do. I was like, I thought this was part of the deal. You know, that was like 6 or 7 years ago when that was the most expensive part about building a web store. Nobody was doing it. And so we kind of got into this, oh my gosh, to do it like I just told the clients we could do it, it's going to cost us an arm and a leg. How are we going to do this? So you kind of just— that part of web stores is scary. But now that we've kind of passed that, we're now— I mean, web stores is, is definitely a, you know, solidifying sell and one of those extra puzzle pieces for our clients. Then the different varieties of web stores now that we offer allows them to kind of pick and choose where they feel comfortable with, you know.

Right, right. Yeah. And it's just about being very circumspect with the type of people you work with. And do you do— since you do a lot of retail work, are you shipping consumer-driven products, or are you finding more success with B2B models? Where are you finding success with those stores?

So we have both models, way more B2B models, but we do have 3 very large B2C. They are a little bit more intricate, so you have, you know, regulations and stuff like that that we are constantly looking at. Um, right. Our corporation is more adapt to whatever the customer and the buyer who's normally business to business, they're, they're normally the ones. Now what we'll have is normally we'll have it and then it'll morph into 2 stores in 1, right? You have your business to business store and then your business, right, right, to client. So you have 2 stores that merge together together. They normally always start with the B2B and then move to the, to the future, to the further one.

What I found fascinating because of my background was when we visited you on site, you had a little pilot program going of your own fulfillment. It was on like an astounding kind of lockdown that I was impressed by.

That's one of those things where you feel like you're playing office, so I'm really excited that you were impressed by that.

I was, I was, I was, because you were, you were, it was a replica. Yeah. What you were trying— it was almost an experiment. You were trying to see if this was something you could roll out on a larger scale.

And guess what?

Yep, we are.

What happened with it? We reviewed it about a month ago after it hit its full phase, and Carolyn and I came to a decision that it was not only successful, but extremely successful. Not only monetarily, but on a client success, a client satisfaction. Like, they came back and were like, oh my gosh, this is how it's supposed to be. So as of last week, we will be expanding that into what we call the medium level. On site, so we actually had an opportunity to do it really close by. It's actually going to be next door.

So is this through a 3PL now, or are you doing— handling the fulfillment yourself?

Or we'll be handling the fulfillment ourselves. Yeah, we're integrated software. I know what the word integrated means now, by the way. Uh, but we're having to do that with our own systems. We already had that with a couple programs here, but we're going to try to push it more onto one program so it's more concise information.

Yeah, and I'm trying to push to wait till Jenny gets back.

Yeah, I need to, I need to reconsider that too and see how fast we push that one.

Easy, take it easy.

How cool is that though, that you actually decided with the client, you know, we're going to pilot this for a while before we decide we're going to jump all in?

Yeah, it was too important. We couldn't, we couldn't let that one go full out, play off too far out to the weeds because—

yeah, I mean, that's one of those, that's one of those things where Carolyn and I literally just had to make a business decision that had a lot of risk. I mean, tons of risk, risk all over the place. But you manage your expectations, you put amount of money in, and if it does not succeed, you're okay with it. That's the gut check, right? You got your gut check in the, in that report and says, this is what we stand to lose, are we willing to do it? And if the answer is yes, then as long as you have everything else in place, you go for it. Take that risk every time. And what a fantastic— unless Carolina says no, then I just run away with the tail between my legs. Try to hide. I said I did all this work and she's telling me no.

Okay, the beauty of being 4 years older, I guess.

Yeah, that's so true.

Yes, guys, was there anything we didn't touch on that you wanted to touch on?

The only thing that I wanted to touch on was how awesome these podcasts are, or SKU Cash, shall I say. You guys are kind of on the cutting edge of information, allowing distributors and suppliers all to be on the same page, uh, and talk freely. Remember, 15, 10, 15 years ago Distributors would never talk to another distributor, and suppliers barely ever talk to each other. And now look at it, we're slowly getting to a point where we're not fearful of stealing one's clients.

That's right. Well, thank you, Daniel. Thanks for mentioning that about these. These are a labor of love for us, naturally. And for like, I've been in the business for a long time, you guys have been in business for a long time, and we remember those days and how painful it was to learn, and it took forever. And so this shared knowledge is empowering and it helps everybody, and we're much less of a competitive threat to each other than we realize.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I have other distributors that I call on a regular basis on help, and they— I have— and they call us. I mean, it's just such a different way of thinking, and, you know, you know, there's no reason to reinvent the wheels that we have all, you know, have gone through. And sharing knowledge is just the best way to do it.

Yeah, well, speaking of, thank you both for being on the podcast, and thank you for being willing to share from your successes and failures. And this can't take I can't tell you how much that means to me and to the listening audience.

Thank you. Thank you, Bobby. I appreciate it, man.

Thanks so much for tuning into 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.comandsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.