Jason Kanner: CEO Of Kwibble.com | The Business Blast Podcast #510

Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by WagsMedia. WagsMedia provides you with everything you need to generate more customers and grow your brand. Head on over to wagsmedia.com, W-A-G-S-M-E-D-I-A dot com, to enter a contest where you can win a free, done-for-you custom website valued at $2,500 for a limited time only. Now let's jump into the episode.

Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Jason Kanter with us. He is the CEO of Quibble.com, which has simply revolutionized B2B online buying and bidding. Generating huge savings on their clients' purchases of products and services. Jason founded several other successful companies, is a procurement innovator and creative mentor to entrepreneurs. So welcome to the show, man.

Thank you, Tyler. Great to be on the show.

Of course, man. Grateful to have you here. We'll jump into it. The first one I have for you, Jason, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

Wow, that's a great question. You know, when I'll pick one, when my child, 6 kids, believe it or not, but when my child was 2 and a half years old, little boy, big curly hair, very skinny little guy. He was so excited. So he broke into his brother's room and he got a big baseball mitt, put it on his hands, a big baseball hat. Right, he had the bat in his right hand, he comes running into the room with a bunch of adults. So we're sitting there, we see this cute little boy with oversized baseball uniform on. And of course, we start laughing because he's so cute. But he wasn't looking for that reaction. He was looking for, yeah, this is a big guy, right? So he literally stopped in the middle of the room with all the adults laughing, not to hurt his feelings. And he stopped. And I'm telling you, this felt like it happened in slow motion. His head slumped over, the mitt dropped out of his hand, and then a second later, the bat fell out of his hand, right? And then his pants, the big oversized pants, fell down to his knees. And the entire room was like, oh my God, I feel so bad for this little boy, right? So in that moment, there was a certain feeling of empathy that everyone had. I certainly did 'cause he's my child, right? And so, you know, it really jolted me into his shoes. And I felt like at that moment that, you know, if you could feel what other people feel, whether it's in your life or in your business, you're gonna have empathy for somebody. You can really do yourself a service in creating real relationships with people. And I guess at that moment, it was a trigger point for me that I recognized I am capable of truly feeling what other people feel. And so I always say, you know, we're all just a bunch of big babies. And what I mean by that is we're big babies because we all were babies and everyone has empathy for a baby. So if you could think of adults as just being cute little babies that are older and sometimes a little more grumpy, you'll have better relationships in all your life's, whether it's business or personal. So that's one story I'd tell you, yeah.

I like that, man. Thanks for sharing that. And the next one I have for you is, what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

Yeah, so if you're responsible in your organization for buying stuff for your business, you're a procurement professional, we can help you buy cheaper, better, and faster. So there are two basic services that we offer. It's really, uh, no one's doing what we're doing. Quibble.com is our e-commerce site for businesses. You can go there and shop B2B suppliers simultaneously. So, um, a lot of the companies you might be buying from already, whether it's Amazon Business or HD Supply or Staples, you shop in one single site. You have one login, there's one cart, and you're going to generate thousands of savings because we get better pricing across the board. And the system's always directing you to better, uh, better pricing if you put something else in the cart or something cheaper from another vendor. So it's really an e-commerce platform geared specifically for businesses. Um, and then the other service we offer is, uh, what we call Quibble RFX, where it's a live managed reversed auction technology. So if you've got a usage of, let's say, $10 million worth of medical supplies or office supplies, so we actually have a technology that's capable of taking that information and getting other suppliers to compete for your business, generating incredible savings. So really, we help people who are in the business of buying for their businesses to save them time and money and we do it faster and better. That's what Quibble really is.

Got it. Okay. And so, you know, my next question is like, what's your best piece of overall business advice? But if you'd like to, and it's up to you, you could answer that. Or like with your space, like I'd love to learn more like how you even came up with this idea. And like if somebody wanted to— not, I'm not trying to create competition for you, but if somebody wanted to just like start out and create something like you've created, because it seems like There was a lot of moving parts. I mean, you got technology, obviously you had to get it out into the world for it to become successful. So, like, what would you tell somebody just starting out?

Yeah, that's a great question. So, we got into this because we were doing, for the last 10 years, been doing direct buying for businesses. So, we got into the nuts and bolts of how businesses buy and how they should be buying. So, a lot of companies that have huge, you know, spend items that haven't really investigated how to save money, how to buy better because their business isn't about buying. Their business is whatever it might be. They could be a summer camp and their business is taking care of kids. It could be a senior care facility. It could be taking care of old people. It could be a manufacturer of things that happens to buy stuff. So every business buys, but they don't necessarily know how to do that. So that's our business. Someone starting out in this area. So yeah, there's a lot that goes into— and maybe this really does answer your, your question about best piece of overall business advice— but there's a lot that goes into what we do. We have hundreds of suppliers. We have to deal with each one. We deal with the data. There's a technology platform. We had to make a technology platform that the suppliers are interested in being a part of and not afraid of it. So there's so many moving parts to this to present to our client a very simple interface. If someone were looking to get into the business, I think it would be hard to accomplish what we've done if they weren't absolutely— and if you, if you asked me, by the way, 2 years ago when we began to build the technology, uh, and again, we had this in our mind for 10 years, if you asked me Hey, would today, would you do this again? I would say absolutely not. There's so much that goes into it. But that's not the attitude that you start with. So really to me, the 3 things that go into the business, overall business advice would answer the same question. You have to have an attitude. It's about attitude, effort, and ethics. To me, attitude, you are not gonna fail. You have to make up your mind that it's not if, but how am I going to accomplish this, period. And you're going to do it. And you're always going to be met with issues. There's no question about it. The question is, are you deciding to do it? You just make up your mind and you do it. There's no two ways about it. So to me, if you have the right attitude and then if your effort— effort isn't I have to move the world today. Effort is a little bit every single day. You're just plugging away. You're just plugging away. And then in terms of what I would say the last piece, which is the most important, which colors everything, and that has to do with ethics. And doing right is so much sweeter than getting more, right? So you might get more if you try to game the system or try to be dishonest, you might, but that, first of all, that's short-lived, but you're, and you're never gonna win that way. So to me, it's about ethics. You have to do what's right. You know, and I'm telling you, it's so much sweeter. I know you know this. It's so much sweeter than getting more because nice guys finish first all the time, every time.

Yeah. And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

Yeah, so that's a great question. I guess it depends on which younger self, you know. I might tell one of my younger self, you know, hey, buddy, you're gonna lose hair. You better get yourself married quickly, you know. I might say that to my, you know, self at one point, which I did do, thank God, before I started losing some of my hair. I got myself married to a beautiful lady. But honestly, I think the real advice I would give is, you know, the younger self of everyone is— there's this soundtrack that we hear in our minds that is— call it anxiety. But basically what it's saying is something's coming, something's coming, something's coming, and it gets louder and it's just happening in your mind in one form or another. So there's this anxiety that everyone has that's created by an unknown future. So if I would speak to any younger self, not only my younger selves, but every younger self in the world, I would say nothing's coming. There's nothing that's coming. Right? I literally tell every younger self there's nothing that's coming. Because in the end, if, you know, the universe is scheming to do right by you, not to hurt you, that's my feeling.

And in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?

Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question, too. So I would say that most people have all the elements of happiness in front of them. You know, there are 10 million— well, there are probably 10 trillion, maybe more bugs on the planet, right? And every single bug eats. Every single bug gets food, right? We're all— everyone's working and trying to make a living and everything else. But if you look around you, every single little gnat, every single little insect has food, right? All the elements are there, I believe, not just for the bugs, but for every human being to be happy. And I would say that happiness does not occur from some external stimuli. It occurs from cherishing the things around you. I once asked a cab driver, I said, hey, is it harder to make $10 million or to work on not needing it? And I was expecting, for some reason, I thought I was going to get a wise response. So he said to me, I don't know, give me $50. He was looking to get paid. I think that's an interesting question you might want to ask yourself when it comes to happiness too, is, hey, go make $10 million, go for it. But, you know, what's it for? And do you need it? And my sense is if you don't really need it, you'll probably be more successful in making it.

And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?

Best book? There's so many great books. There's a book called The Ethics of Our Fathers. The main principle there, I would say, and there are tons of them, would be, I think wanting to be good is a natural desire by most healthy people, but actually being good requires a definition of what good is and then deciding every day to be good. So I would say Ethics of Our Fathers is a great book to read.

And what is your favorite quote and why?

So actually, this comes from that book. The quote I would tell you is, if I'm not for myself, who will be for me? But if I'm only for myself, who am I? And if not now, when? And I think there's a lot to unpack there, but I'll just tell you simply, it indicates that there is a distinguished self between— there's an I If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And there's also a me. And I think with social media and LinkedIn and all the different platforms, it's a very important point to know that there's a self that you have that is your deepest, truest self. And that's the place you want to try to connect with who you truly are. And sometimes people get confused because with social media, there's an online self, there's a social media self that people are trying to present. And I found that if it's the same thing, and ideally if it's your true self, if it's the same persona that you have online, that you have in your social media, that you truly are, then you'll be wildly successful on social media platforms. You just have to merge the self into the true self.

Yes, man. Dude, thank you so much for coming on. This was such a valuable episode. The last question I have for you, man, before we let you go is where is the best place for people to find you online?

Yeah, so kwibble.com, K-W-I-B-B-L-E dot com, and then our LinkedIn page has a lot of great posts and things like that. And if you want to email info@kwibble.com, we can get you information. I, you know, I appreciate the opportunity, Tyler. If there's anything we could do for you, you know, I listen to a lot of your, your podcasts, some incredible podcasts. I'm just honored to be amongst all the people we've had on.

Amazing, man. Thank you again for joining us.

Thank you, Tyler. Have a great day.

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