The Transcript Is Auto-Generated And May Contain Grammar And Spelling Errors
Announcer 0:01
You’re listening to biz ninja entrepreneur radio. This show was created for entrepreneurs, business owners, marketers and dreamers who want to learn from the experts of today and drastically shortcut their own success to build a business that supports their dream lifestyle. Since 2011, Tyler Jorgensen has been interviewing business thought leaders from around the world, a serial entrepreneur himself, Tyler also shares his personal insights into what’s working in business today. Welcome to biz Ninja, entrepreneur radio.
Tyler Jorgenson 0:41
Welcome out to biz ninja entrepreneur radio. I’m your host, Tyler Jorgensen. And today I have the honor and pleasure and privilege of interviewing one of my good friends, Matt fru, is the CEO and other important titles of ship zoom, calm ship, zoom, is a fulfillment company that makes ship happen. But more importantly, Matt is an awesome human and great friend. And I’m excited to have you on the show. Matt, welcome out.
Matt 1:09
I’m excited to be here. I always love talking to you, Tyler.
Tyler Jorgenson 1:12
I don’t know what your actual title is. Is it like channel title
Matt 1:16
officer? Might? No, we don’t we try not to do any of the makeup titles type of things. So I am CEO, Chief Executive Officer and owner of ship zoom. Awesome. Yeah.
Tyler Jorgenson 1:29
So I like to start at the very beginning. And I know your story is a little different than some companies. But when was the moment that you first realized that you’re an entrepreneur,
Matt 1:39
the moment that I first realized that I was an entrepreneur was when Well, I was probably 17 years old, in high school. And so in high school, you have the opportunity when your junior or senior to leave campus and go eat lunch. And there’s not great options on campus at school. And I decided, you know what, I’m going to raid my parents fridge and freezer, and I’m going to go ahead and cook up hotdogs and hamburgers and sell them in the parking lot. And so that’s what I did. And then again,
Tyler Jorgenson 2:14
way cool, like take on the old lemonade stand idea is Oh, yeah, the high school hotdog stand. I love it.
Matt 2:20
Yeah. And unbeknownst to my parents, they didn’t realize that they were a funding a business on campus of the high school. And then again, probably about when I was 25 years old, there was an issue, I worked for ups for a little bit during the recession, just to get some good benefits and stuff. And there was a time that the vending machine guy, he increased the price of the soda to 55 cents, you’d have thought that somebody had killed somebody. And the whole ups crowd was like all up in arms. So I decided, you know what, I’m going to go ahead and buy all of the soda at Costco, all of the, the candy bars, and I’m going to sell it out of a bag out of the back of my car. So I was making while I was you working at UPS, I had a side hustle in the parking lot, selling, you know, all of the vending machine stuff. So I mean, it’s it’s, there’s a problem, you see an opportunity, you fix it, and you capitalize on it. I think
Tyler Jorgenson 3:23
that is one of the core tenants of what makes an entrepreneur different than somebody who may be a business owner. Or maybe entrepreneurs see problems. They don’t see problems. They see solutions where they see problems, they see opportunities, where other people complain, you see there’s a path right? How did you get involved in ship zoom.
Matt 3:42
So I got involved in ship zoom, at the age, the rightful age of 15. So I it’s funny because I’ll share with people when they asked me what I do and how long I’ve been here. I’ve been here for over 23 years, I started working for who now is my business partner at the age of 15. where his nephew who was a friend of mine in high school approached me and asked if I wanted to come help his uncle ship leather coats to nordstroms because he had about 5000 leather coats that he had to get shipped out. And I said absolutely I love making money. Let’s go. And I found myself being invited back by my by by the owner at that time, every single day. And I saw my friends dwindle away and I’m like, Wait, where did everybody go? So I’ve been I’ve been doing I’ve been making ship happen for over 23 years since I was 15 years old. And we’re just watching the whole evolving world of e commerce. It wasn’t called e commerce then it was direct to retail and sending it to the retailers and and getting the shipments sent out that way. But then watching it evolve after PayPal came on board and scraping all of that data.
Tyler Jorgenson 4:58
That’s interesting. I mean for Those of you that have been around ecommerce for its evolution to realize like it was really hard to sell stuff online till PayPal made it a little bit easier. I mean, a lot of people got started on eBay and started just kind of introducing it that way, but you’ve been in the shipping side of it. So at a high level, what does ship zoom do? How does it? How does it add value in the marketplace,
Matt 5:18
our business model is considered to be what the the market calls a third party logistics company or three PL, I hate that term. I don’t call ourselves a three Pl. Because I don’t want to be considered a third party who doesn’t really care about somebody’s product, we try and call ourselves a partner shipper where we are your partner, and we ship your products for you. And if we see something that you could be doing differently, we’re going to let you know. And so that’s I don’t know if that’s a high enough level for
Tyler Jorgenson 5:49
you. That’s good. So when people buy stuff online, that stuff has to get shipped. Not everyone’s shipping out of their garage, and not everyone has their own fulfillment center to fulfill products, the people in between work with ShipZoom. And you guys make all that happen. So yeah, so when people buy stuff online, if you bought a Christmas ornament last year, it probably came out of mats. Yeah, exactly. But all right, so now we’re going to get into the nitty gritty of stuff. What was the the first big, like, life changing challenge that you faced as an entrepreneur? And how did you overcome it? The very, the biggest, biggest or first your your choice? Yeah, so
Matt 6:32
the biggest probably the biggest decision, as an entrepreneur as a business owner that I had to make was trying to figure out how to construct a buyout of one of my partners who I did not really want to be in the business anymore. That was a full that was a gut, gut wrenching, full year of trying to figure out how do I do this, because one of the one of the things with me, and and i this is kind of a fault of my own, sometimes is that I’m big on relationships, and they matter. And I don’t like burning bridges. But at the same time, I know exactly what I want. And I need to construct something so that there were no bridges burnt. And so that was probably one of the biggest struggles that that I have seen as an entrepreneur, of managing those partnerships. And, and yeah, getting getting old. And
Tyler Jorgenson 7:28
I’m like you that relationships are really important to me, it is fascinating how hard it is when you need to break up with a customer with a partner. But anything like it can be like going through a divorce, or it can be like it’s a major thing, especially if you spent a good amount of time with that person. What advice do you have for people that might be in one of those hard situations of how to move forward?
Matt 7:54
Yeah, the advice that I would give to anybody going through a negotiation with a partner is this if you are on the offensive, and wanting to do the buyout, be very cognizant and aware of what it is that you’re really asking about this person. And don’t ever offer something that you aren’t willing to take yourself. And that that was something that really helped me navigate through this partnership. And this buyout with with my partner is I was able to construct something that I would be willing to take myself Why? Because when that negotiation happened, I was able to say at the end of the day, at the end of the conversation, hey, if you’re not going to take this offer, I’m willing to take it. And that splits the partnership. And that creates that that communication creates the fact that, hey, this guy’s he’s really looked at what he’s doing to me. And we can work through
Tyler Jorgenson 8:56
this. I have been in a partner conversation very similar, where they presented what they wanted for me and I and as we got down to like the end of it, and I said, Okay, so you guys all think that this is fair, right? Yeah, this is fair, like cool. Then I’m offering the same deal back to you. Yeah. And they’re all of a sudden, like, Well, no, no, no. And I’m like, no, that’s not fair. And then what you’re doing is saying this is a good deal for me. Not a good deal for Tyler, because you wouldn’t take it right now. There’s obviously emotion involved and things like that you were at a place you were willing to leave in that the emotion adds a lot into it. But I think that’s really good advice. If you approach it from, I sometimes don’t like the word the term Win win. Because that’s not really possible. It just needs to be fair. If it’s fair and balanced, then you’re right. either side of the agreement should be able to take it. So you went through that. And you guys I mean, you ship a lot. There has been a lot of changes in e commerce and in shipping. What are some of the big changes in the industry. And how have you guys approached those? Yeah, so
Matt 10:02
one of the, probably the biggest change in the industry in the last, probably in the last five years it, it’s this. So 10 years ago, or so, Amazon came out with well is probably longer than that. Now I can’t remember. But Amazon came out with the product called a Kindle, right. And what they did with that was they took physical books, and they put it digitally. And so now you’re reading off of a Kindle. In the last five years, the biggest flip that we’ve seen is that consumers love to see and touch books, there’s there’s, there’s something to a book where you can see it, you can touch it, you can smell it, you can like you can feel the wind of the pages, you know, go across your face, like they’re all of the senses are, are triggered in a physical product. And so the sales of books in the last five years has absolutely just gone through the roof. And that’s probably one of the biggest changes that I’ve seen with in regards to a product, a physical product being shipped out. Now, in the last little bit, I remember the days where I was logging into people’s PayPal accounts and scraping the data, and then pulling us putting together a CSV file and then uploading it into ups worldship. And, and shipping products. That way, we have the amazing tools these days of you have this ecommerce platform a lot like Shopify, or clickfunnels, or WooCommerce, or whatever it is, they can tie directly into another software like shipstation. And we can easily take that data of the orders and ship it like that that has been the biggest change in e commerce, I feel in the last in the last 10 years.
Tyler Jorgenson 11:54
I was talking with somebody today who has their their ecommerce store built on WordPress. And it was very clear the person was a little bit old school. And I’m not anti having a store on WordPress, but like I build most of my sites on Shopify, and I’ve done both, but his entire perception of the market was what I feel a little bit outdated. Well, it’s nice because I don’t have to keep paying for the app. Once I’ve paid for it. I’m like, well, you also realize that means they’re not going to maintain or upgrade that app for you. And so the big change I’ve seen even just in the last, you know, 12 years since I’ve been building e commerce websites is how much is like hard coded has to be figured out by the entrepreneur, and how much is just an integration, you can plug and play. And it’s gonna work. And like I mean, if I need to get have, you know, shipped zoom shipping my product, it’s not super tricky. There’s software and there’s technology, and then there’s repeatable processes. So you can focus on the parts of the business of selling stuff, instead of all the things behind the scenes and those automations. I mean, when I built my first e commerce store, it was PayPal buttons on a WordPress site, right, like and then it would actually was a front page site. And then WordPress was next. And then big commerce and now everything’s on Shopify, but what was your very first ecommerce product? So I did an info product first, for real estate agents. And then I launched a diet product and that product took off
Matt 13:17
was it was HCG. Can you even see that now? Is that legal to stake?
Tyler Jorgenson 13:21
It was it was a we had actual health Health Canada approved licenses. Um, so it was hc six, which if you if you look at a six, it looks like geez a lot like something else. So yeah. But we had natural product numbers and everything. And so but that was all stuff that I learned if going through that process was like how to stay legal when other people are willing to not. Because wasn’t a world I was willing to play in.
Matt 13:46
No, you don’t want to go to jail. True.
Tyler Jorgenson 13:49
How many team members you guys have now? Right now
Matt 13:53
we are right about 30. Team members,
Tyler Jorgenson 13:55
we usually fluctuate during the holidays to around 5560. And what are some of the challenges of leading a team that size?
Matt 14:04
The biggest challenge is this. When we see an influx of orders throughout a holiday season or a launch of some sort, the hardest challenge is getting the labor and the manpower to move that much product. We can do it. It’s just a matter of it’s the rubber band effect. It’s pushing as hard as we can to get as many bodies in this physical location as possible. And then
Tyler Jorgenson 14:32
retract right. Yeah, that’s I know you’ve got you found a kind of a cool solution of that rubber band how to, I think even have a name for that team that you have come in, right?
Matt 14:41
Yeah. So those are those are, those are our we call them our reserves. So that it’s our reserves crew. And we kind of modeled it a lot like I mean if you look at the US Army, they have the the reserves and this reserve crew that we’ve put together is 99% stay at home moms who are looking for flexible hours and looking to just work when they they can. And it’s usually at a time from 10 until two in the afternoon when the kids are at school. And so the stay at home mom workforce, if you have a business, and you can tap into that, they’re absolutely amazing.
Tyler Jorgenson 15:23
Yeah, there’s a there’s a company that i a lot of people I knew worked for that they were like a flashlight sales company. And their entire team was stay at home moms that worked between 10 and two. And that’s the everything they built now then as you if you if you moved up, you ended up working more hours. But that was their model. And it was it was pretty neat. I thought it was a cool way to do it. A lot of those people are massively overqualified, but looking for something that keeps them flexible.
Matt 15:48
Yep. Because ultimately, what they want to do is they want to be home with their kids. And still, you’ll have the flexibility of having some extra money to spend.
Tyler Jorgenson 15:58
Absolutely, Matt, let’s, let’s pretend that you can see the future. Okay, maybe you can, I’m going to pretend you can, you can just do it. What is something that’s coming for physical product, ecommerce entrepreneurs in the next couple of years that they need to be ready for?
Matt 16:16
So that’s a really hard question to answer just because we just went through this whole COVID-19 thing, where we saw, basically the advancement of e commerce in a short window of time in about nine months, which we saw probably about five years worth of growth right now. And we were all anybody in e commerce was drinking from a firehose, and somehow we all survived. I, I truly think that we’re going to just continue to go off of what we’ve learned through this last year, and we’re gonna see a lot more ecommerce, it’s just going to keep growing, I think that there’s going to be there’s going to be services a lot like Uber and lift that will be delivering the e commerce products directly to our homes, instead of the UPS, FedEx, and USPS and Amazon, I think you’re gonna have a lot of growth within the private sector of being able to warehouse products locally in their own neighborhoods, and have, have these people get paid for it and deliver these products.
Tyler Jorgenson 17:33
Yeah, there’s no, it’s interesting how we go and Amazon such a great example of what has happened where we go from centralizing everything, right? Oh, let’s get rid of all these bookstores, it’s all gonna come from us. And then all of a sudden going back into a decentralized manner like we’re but it’s adjusting, it’s not an exact replication. But Amazon now has local small, almost like bodegas like little small stores. But the data that they’re used to be able to make sure they have the products that neighborhood wants, the things like that is remarkable the amount of data that’s out there.
I think there’s a big shift in even just in the info space where I I’m a big believer of blending the digital with the physical, I think like you like you, the way you describe books is really a big deal. And I think it’s it’s great if somebody is in the physical or the info space, how can you add physical products into it? You have a lot of customers that ship a lot of stuff. What are some of the commonalities of the people who are that seem to be successful and keep shipping?
Matt 18:34
Yeah, the the number one commonality is this. If you want to have success in e commerce, develop one product, focus on that one product until you make a million bucks, then then you can focus on the next product until that first product hits a million dollars, do not try to expand your skew count until that one product has hit the million dollar. It is amazing to me if you’re familiar with with Organify and Drew Canole and what he’s done with Organa phi, it was absolutely amazing to me to watch him prove this concept. So many times they didn’t really change the concept when they’ve come out with a new product. So their green juice just crushed it they hit a million dollars then they created their the next one which was red juice, right? But they they they matched it they said okay, we’re not going to grow we’re not going to have another product Come on until this red juice now does a million dollars. And so they just did that over and over again. And they saw like okay, this product is going to hit a million dollars. Let’s scrap scrap it. Move on to the next one.
Tyler Jorgenson 19:42
That’s I think I hope that people realize that are listening how powerful that advice is. So many times I have clients who are like, okay, we have this website and I want to get 5000 skews on it. And I’m like, What are you talking about? Like, you don’t know what people are coming to your website for at that point, like You and you’re manufacturing this product, let’s sell that right or you’re importing this product. Let’s focus on that. And I heard once the saying that every skew you add to your business, like adds an order of complexity by like, by seven or something like that. And so, but basically, it’s not just one plus one is now two products are two areas a breaking point in its amplification, there’s that it’s significantly harder. And you and I have talked before about people who started and they spent hundreds of 1000s of dollars on inventory of all these skews. It’s beautiful, they have it all figured out. But then they don’t even know how to sell one of them. Right? So it also has like a risk balance, right? Like, we’re not going to get stuck with $10 million of inventory, because you did 30 products or 100 products, you started with one
Matt 20:45
focus. Yeah. And that’s one of the saddest days for me. And the hardest days for me is to see companies just spend hundreds of 1000s of dollars on a product or a on their company on their business on their e commerce business. And I, I’ve had to throw so many products away into the trash into the dumpster. And just like, it rips me and tears me apart.
Tyler Jorgenson 21:12
Yeah, it is. I’m all about failing forward. Right? Like, okay, we made, you know, we tried something, it didn’t work, we tested it. But it’s really hard when you see that failing, like, where the test wasn’t done intelligently or cautiously. Right. So then you’re just seeing waste at that point. And that’s super hard. What are some of the common Now, obviously, other than doing more than one product?
Matt 21:35
What are some of the commonalities of the people who come in guns blazing with you and then just fizzle out? Yeah, that fizzle out, that don’t just never take off? Either way? Yeah, I’m not really truly understanding that if you are going to do an e commerce, or own your own business, for that matter, that no and I always tell people this, for the first three years, expect to work minimum 80 hours a week on your business for the first three years. And those those companies are those entrepreneurs who come to us with a product and don’t realize this and like this is just a side hustle. I it’s almost guaranteed 99% of those people will not succeed, because it’s they’re not their heart isn’t into it.
Tyler Jorgenson 22:23
Yeah, and you have to have you have to have grit because you will face challenges as an entrepreneur, you will face challenges, especially in e commerce. And if the first time that you you get a new Google algorithm or the first time there’s an iOS update, you’re done. Well like if you don’t have if you don’t have grit and perseverance, you didn’t really committed to it, you’re not going to make it through and I haven’t, I’m a big believer of starting things as side hustles but there is a point pretty quickly, where you have to decide you’re either going to try to make it work, or it’s just gonna sit there as an idea. It’s very hard to scale something as a side hustle. You have this really cool lens and it’s similar to us with our agency where we get to see what’s working inside business to see commonalities of what’s working and also what’s not. And you get to see you get to see even more with really the trends of what’s happening in like in shipping and then rates and like you guys get impacted by fuel embargoes and all kinds of stuff in all kinds of things impact you are there any success stories of clients that you just think this I wish everyone knew this story?
Matt 23:25
Who that put me on the spot a little bit?
Tyler Jorgenson 23:27
I know and it’s always arguments like a specific client. But I just think I mean you you get to see a lot of really cool things and even if you don’t want to talk about the
Matt 23:36
client, honestly, so one of the and what comes to my mind right now, this was an amazing story for me, is that one of my clients, and I’m not going to name names, but but I am going to give the concept is that she was an artist. She came up with a very niched coloring book, and she sold that coloring book, like crazy. And when the wood coloring book first hit our docks, you know, I, I saw it and I’m like this, I don’t I don’t see it. I don’t see it. But it was it was so well put together, specifically for that niche that she sold them like crazy. And it just blew my mind how many coloring books were leaving the warehouse, going to this specific niche. That just, she crushed it. And that was that was probably one of the biggest in the last year. One of the biggest products that was like, holy cow.
Tyler Jorgenson 23:47
I didn’t realize this demographic needed coloring books. Yeah. And I think that continues to surprise me. And I’ve seen those types of things almost every year, where it’s like, there’s no way that there’s there’s this many people interested in paying this much for this random thing. And then there are and then there’s other things that you think are going to take off They don’t the joys of testing, but the old perfect formula, right? Find an irrationally passionate market, ask them what they want, and then give it to them. Right? And I and I think the lesson of finding that niche, and then staying simple with the product is really, really powerful. I think it’s hard to underestimate just how powerful or hard to overstate just how powerful that is. to really stay focused on a narrow business. You just the the opportunity to win is so much higher. And I think a lot of people get addicted to the idea of coming up with a new idea. I found a new product to sell. It’s like cool, the last one isn’t still selling, but now you have two things on your site that aren’t selling what’s what’s next for shipzooom and what big stuff is coming.
Matt 25:41
Um, big stuff that’s coming down the pipe. We just purchased two laser engravers. The laser engraving of products making them very specific to people and to your customers is big right now. If you can give them almost that’s, that’s the irresistible offer, right is if you can customize that directly to them. We’ve we’ve seen some success there. And then also tapping into a print on demand sublimation printer for for t shirts, and mostly just to test a T shirt or two to see what is going to sell. And if it’s going to take take flight there. So it’s just it’s constantly I kicked myself all the time, I think about probably about 15 years ago. Yeah, so I’ve been shipping for Russell Brunson for for quite some time. It’s about 15 years ago, he he called me and I don’t remember he called me from an airport. He said, Matt, you need to buy a DVD burner. I said a DVD burner, why don’t we want those? He’s like no, no, like a DVD burner that can burn like 70, like 70 DVDs at a time, right? If you can get that, like, you’re gonna be golden, and have the time like, this
Tyler Jorgenson 26:53
guy’s crazy. Like, I’m not gonna do that. It’s that’s not my lane, right? And I realized I left so much on the table by not listening to that advice and taking action. Because all of a sudden, what, what blew up courses, you know, on the but on the contrary of that, right on the flip side is you staying focused in your core competency, right allows you to stay more agile now, like magic to you, you did a lot of things during that time that you may not have been able to done and you made the business more complex.
Matt 27:24
And that’s very true. And thank you for bringing that up. Because at that time, it was your own advice. I’m just believing it back. Yeah, we weren’t, we weren’t doing a million dollars in revenue on our core offer, right, which our core offer was shipping and fulfillment. And so now we’re at a point where we have our core offer, we have our systems and processes in place, and we have a team in place that we can look at these other avenues to generate more profitability.
Tyler Jorgenson 27:48
Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of really good lessons for anybody in anything e commerce or, or business, really, but really enjoyed that. To me, business isn’t just about business. It is not only about relationships, but it’s about creating the lifestyle that we want. What is one item on your personal bucket list you’re gonna accomplish in the next 12 months.
Matt 28:09
In my next 12 months, I personally, I want to help and guide my wife to hit her first million dollar year. And that’s probably my biggest goal for for the next 12 months that she’s at school.
Tyler Jorgenson 28:29
She’s going to brocation with Tyler, but that’s good, too, I guess. Well, we could do that, too. Yeah, that’s pretty awesome. And so why don’t as we wrap up, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what your wife’s doing and about your guys’s show?
Matt 28:42
Yeah, so my wife, we’ve started a business together called the bold logic, which is a loving, boldly company. We host a podcast called the husband in law, which is a podcast hosted by myself, my wife and her ex husband. And we just share stories of love marriage, divorce, ex love, you know, and going through that, that life together. One of the things that my wife is she’s become an amazing inspiration to me of being able to look at people in a lens of how can I love this person more instead of being judgmental towards the person vitual she’s, you know, she’s putting together a lot of a lot of courses and materials of, of how you can take yourself out of the drama and accept people for who they are and show them love. So
Tyler Jorgenson 29:39
super awesome. So people can find that at ship zoom.com. They can find him on Instagram, they have ship zoom. Also you can find his personal one at Matt frew. And where can they find more about the bold logic? What’s the website for that?
Matt 29:51
The website Well, you can find us on Instagram, the husband in law. There you go. On Instagram, that’s probably the easiest way to find us.
Tyler Jorgenson 29:58
Beautiful Love it now to all my biz ninjas wherever you are listening, watching tuning in streaming whatever it is, it’s your turn to go out and do something.
Announcer 30:10
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