The Fulfillment Formula: Scaling E-commerce Success with Juan Meisel - 94

In this episode of D2Z, Brandon sits down with Juan Meisel, the visionary founder and CEO of GRIP, an innovative e-commerce fulfillment platform specializing in perishable goods. Discover Juan's insightful reflections from his tenure at Butcher Box and the pivotal challenges that inspired the creation of Grip, revolutionizing the landscape of e-commerce fulfillment.

Brandon and Juan explore the intricate balance between transparency and focus within a team, unveiling the secrets to fostering genuine connections and propelling business growth. Juan's emphasis on transparent communication underscores the importance of aligning organizational goals while avoiding information overload, igniting a discourse on the transformative power of personal relationships in professional environments.

Juan imparts invaluable wisdom for budding entrepreneurs, advocating for a customer-centric approach to product development and embracing rapid iteration cycles to fuel relentless innovation. From transparent communication to customer satisfaction-driven growth, this episode offers a treasure trove of insights for those embarking on the exhilarating journey of entrepreneurship.

Timestamps

🌟 Juan's Background and Butcher Box Experience (00:00:43)

📦 Identifying Market Gaps for Perishable Goods (00:01:58)

🔧 GRIP's Technology and Fulfillment Services (00:03:13)

🚀 Dynamic Shipping Engine and Order Management (00:04:16)

🌦️ Impact of Weather Events on Fulfillment (00:06:04)

🛍️ Customer Experience and Reduced Shipping Costs (00:08:40)

💰 ROI and Lifetime Value for E-commerce Brands (00:08:58)

🔍 Challenges and Opportunities in E-commerce Attribution (00:11:07)

👥 Empowering Teams and Scaling Company Culture (00:12:58)

🎯 Setting Clear Goals for Team Alignment (00:16:33)

🔍 Balancing Transparency and Focus (00:17:29)

🤝 Importance of In-Person Interactions (00:20:09)

💼 Significance of Personal Relationships in Professional Settings (00:22:23)

💻 Challenges and Benefits of Remote Work (00:24:02)

📈 Leveraging Customer Referrals for Business Growth (00:26:05)

🌟 Providing an Exceptional Customer Experience (00:25:39)

🎓 Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs (00:30:17)

Juan Meisel:

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/juan-camilo-meisel/

Grip - https://gripshipping.com/

Butcher Box - https://www.butcherbox.com/

Brandon Amoroso:

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonamoroso/

Web - https://brandonamoroso.com/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bamoroso11/

X - https://twitter.com/AmorosoBrandon

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

I'm Brandon Amoroso and this is the D2Z podcast Building and growing your business from a Gen Z perspective. Hey, everyone, thanks for tuning in to D2Z a podcast by using the Gen Z mindset to grow your business. I'm Gen Z entrepreneur Brandon Amoroso, founder and president of Retention as a Service Agency, Electric, as well as the co-founder of HR Tech Platform Scaleless. Today, I'm talking with Juan Maisel, founder and CEO at Grip, which is an end-to-end fulfillment platform for e-commerce companies with perishable goods. Thanks for coming on the show.

Speaker 2: 0:41

Thank you for having me. Good to see you.

Speaker 1: 0:44

So before we dive into things here, can you give everybody just sort of your background story and how you came to start Grip in the first place?

Speaker 2: 0:52

Yeah, totally so. Born and raised in Columbia, south America, that's where I lived my early years in law, all the way through high school, and then from there I moved to Boston for school and then, while in Boston, I joined a very early team of this company called.

Speaker 2: 1:11

Butcherbox where we do grass-fed beef direct to consumers all across the country, as well as heritage bread, pork and organic chicken and then some seafood items as well.

Speaker 2: 1:22

So I did direct to consumer a company of frozen meat, basically and then at Butcherbox, I let the logistics of the company help scale all the way from zero to 600 mil in yearly revenues, and bootstrapped with an amazing team and leadership in the company as well.

Speaker 2: 1:41

So while there, we noticed that there was a massive hole in the market for companies that were specifically doing perishable goods through e-commerce, where a lot of the solutions that have been built before that were specifically guided towards non-perishable goods companies.

Speaker 2: 1:59

So all the different you know datasets and dynamic shipping that you need to be able to adjust the way that you fulfill and ship your goods and get to your final customers were basically just not there. So it was things that we had to somewhat so for Butcherbox manually, and then I started advising other companies on how to do it, based on our experience at Butcherbox, and that's where we basically saw these massive hole in the market where this segment was just underserved because there was just no technology or service specifically built for it. So that's when I decided to step down from my role as head of logistics at Butcherbox, and then same thing with our head of data at Butcherbox, jimmy Cooper, who also stepped down and is now, you know, cto and co-founder at GRIP, where you basically ask a question of like, hey, what is it that we did not have while starting Butcherbox, that we wish we had to be able to ship boxes in the mail at you know, a much better rate, a much more optimized performance.

Speaker 2: 2:59

And then, what are other companies missing in this space? So we, you know, stepped down from the role and put together these amazing tech platform that uses a bunch of you know, different datasets and millions of data points to dynamically decide what's the best way to ship something in the mail, and then from there we expanded into actually doing the fulfillment and shipping for our customers as well.

Speaker 2: 3:19

So we've now become the you know, real end to end platform for our customers, where we allow them to focus on what they do best, which is creating amazing products, and the marketing aspect of it, while we focus on the back end of that operation.

Speaker 1: 3:32

So are you purely technology? Are you also providing the infrastructure as well, like a 3PL, where brands will be hosting their products with you and you're shipping it out?

Speaker 2: 3:43

How are the infrastructure as well.

Speaker 2: 3:45

So we created these order management system internally that connects straight to the point of sale of our customers and orders drop from their point of sale into our platform and then, once the orders are in our platform, we run what we call our shipping engine that dynamically decides what's the best way to ship all these orders based on, you know, a specific product, where it's going to temperature through the journey, major weather events, what type of insulation we're using, what type of complaints are they getting from their friend and customers that we use all those data points to decide what the best way to ship is and then we ship it for them. So you know we launched the tech platform about two years ago. We launched the full end to end fulfillment services about a year ago, but it's been pretty cool to see how having everything within the same platform just gives like so much. You know data traceability to customers and convenience, and you know research optimization that really allows them to focus on actually creating amazing products and you know the sale and marketing aspect of the business as well.

Speaker 1: 4:50

Yeah, I know, like with you, know, with our clients at the agency, the brands that had perishable goods, it was always quite a pain when it came to fulfillment, especially the costs, the time dealing with, like hot temperatures and things like that. I mean we had some kombucha clients, had some wine clients and all of that just adds an extra layer of complexity and headache to the process.

Speaker 2: 5:19

So makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 2: 5:21

It's so sensitive, like there's so many variables that impact it, that, like you as a human, you can't really get a hold of all these variables without a system that allows you to do so, because there's just so much data that you can process by yourself. There's just so many like well, there's just so many Excel spreadsheets that you can handle yourself and try to adjust to the fast changing conditions of the network and the market. So that's why there was a space for these platform to just do that for you and essentially you basically like set up what are the different variables that can impact your shipments and then you just let the platform make those decisions for you.

Speaker 1: 6:04

What are some of the like sort of key learnings that you took out of Butcher Box that have helped shape and grip, like what was there, like one really specific pain point that you were sort of fed up with that led you to want to start this?

Speaker 2: 6:19

I mean, I think one of the things that we build first was how to deal with major weather events, because major weather events are those things that, like, if you send a thousand boxes to a wildfire in California and you're not proactive about it, you can have a hundred thousand dollars, just like you know, on the road at risk, and that, of course, is a major hit for any direct to consumer company where you can have a very, very real impact in your piano and that's like one event, right, but like how many of them happen to the year throughout the country.

Speaker 2: 6:54

Like you know blisters, hurricanes, just like extreme hot temperatures, you know, like what tires? I was saying where, like it's really not, you're really not so infrared, but just going to weatherchannelcom and trying to like pair that to logistics because, like you know, just getting the data to understand what zip codes are the ones impacted and then to which ones of those zip codes are you actually sending orders or you're happening orders to. It's like different data sources coming from different places where it's not really built for these logistics decision making.

Speaker 2: 7:26

So some of the most stressful days at ButcherBox for me were like hey, you know, we did not notice there was a wildfire here and we were really shipped to thousand boxes like what are we doing with this?

Speaker 2: 7:36

And because it's just so, so much I mean. So it's one of the first solutions that we built where we basically now, when one of our customers gets an order, we run into the shipping engine and the shipping engine automatically flags orders that are impacted by major weather events and it also gives up the detail of the event, like when they start. When it's done, what are the zip codes impacted, like what facility are you shipping that order, from? What carrier? It gives you, like, basically, other details that you need to know to be able to practically, you know, do something with that order, which means either hold it and then ship it a couple days after to the customer and keep them happy, or, if you already made a mistake of shipping it, then you can try to, you know, fix the area by understanding where the order is going, what carrier has been shipped from, what facility shipped from as well or did the customer say, hey, you know we notice that there's a wildfire or a blister where you are at.

Speaker 2: 8:24

Let us know there's a problem with your order and we're happy to receive that order and provide you a refund so you know, of course you take the head of the order or the refund or the receipt, but you keep the customer happy and you maintain the large time value of the customer, which is what matters most of the day.

Speaker 1: 8:41

Yeah, and when you're, when you're actually proving out, you know ROI for the businesses that are using your platform. Are you able to show sort of the you know the amount of money that they've saved because you know they didn't ship to that wildfire or they avoided? You know X, y and Z scenario.

Speaker 2: 8:58

So there's two direct impacts that we've seen that are like very measurable day one, which are a reduction in shipping costs, because your dynamically deciding how you're shipping that box, based on the specific box characteristics and where it's going, but then also the reduction in damaged shipments or reships. So we've seen about a 30% reduction in shipping costs in shipping costs and 25% reduction in damage shipments. You know as soon as you start using the platform.

Speaker 2: 9:28

But what I'm most excited about, and what I even think is most impactful than that, is the second half of that equation, which is, you know, how much more happy my customers are and how much more likely are they to keep buying from me when I am providing a good experience for them. That's like the lifetime value equation, where you really get to see over time how much happier your customers are, and how much you know of a higher lifetime value. You have your customers that on the forefront.

Speaker 2: 9:58

If you spent the money on marketing to a car that customer, but then you are losing the customer after the first or second box, then you basically already paid up front for that customer acquisition cost and then you're not getting the returns on the back half of that equation, so you can extend that tail of the customer and just have them stay with you as a customer for longer.

Speaker 2: 10:18

I think that's where the real massive benefit to the bottom line comes from. So you know, to summarize, that there's like two fronts, right, like immediate benefits, you know, savings in shipping costs, savings in damage, shipments that you don't have to re-ship, or a refund the customer. But the second half of that is what I think is the biggest savings or improvements to the company, which is improving the lifetime value from customers.

Speaker 1: 10:42

Yeah, that's definitely, I think, the sort of the gold star metric that all of our brands are trying to know tractors, and. But attribution within e-commerce is such a such a challenging area, especially when you have a bunch of apps. I mean, if you added up all the revenue that every single app is telling you that you made, your business would be like five times more than what it actually is.

Speaker 2: 11:08

So yep, everyone wants to take the credit right.

Speaker 1: 11:11

Yes, the especially one. You know the pricing is based off of percentage of revenue that that app is driving to the site. So like percentage of revenue might seem really great at first. Once you dig into it you might be better off of like just a flat fee for some of the software we see.

Speaker 2: 11:29

We see very interesting metrics with customers that have a delayed or damaged shipment related to lifetime value or ROI, from a current a customer versus customers that don't and of course you know it varies company to company, but there's at least like a 2x improvement in lifetime value with customers that don't have a damage yeah, I can imagine that is not a great customer experience.

Speaker 1: 11:56

I know I was. I was getting a washer dryer delivered from from Costco and it got damaged in transit and it's just a nightmare. And then it's like another four weeks until you can get one here and it's just been a rather unfortunate customer experience.

Speaker 2: 12:12

So yeah, and now imagine if you're dealing with food or you know other perishables, like it's usually something that you would want to feed your family with, or something they were ordering for a party, or something that was basically like your meal plan for a week or the month, and if you don't get that delivered on time on a good state then like completely misses all your plans.

Speaker 1: 12:34

Yeah, yeah, agreed. Well, stepping back a little bit from the actual sort of like tactical offering of what you guys are doing, what has it been like growing and scaling the team? How have you thought about sort of shaping the company and I think you're sort of hybrid, right like a little bit remote somewhat in person how are you thinking about growing and scaling the team as you, as you continue to bring on more customers?

Speaker 2: 13:04

So I think the first thing for us is like empowering people to deliver a plus work internally, because companies like ours, you know, grow so fast, or so destructive when things go right, that you can't really have this management strategy where all decisions are made at the top.

Speaker 2: 13:28

That just doesn't scale for a company that's trying to, you know, keep this pace of growth right, because then you're gonna have a bottleneck in some areas of the company, whatever that department is, that you're trying to get to the top two to make the decisions. So we empower people to make decisions and to basically be accountable for their work and we trust people to deliver a plus work, because if we're not delivering a plus work in some area of the company, then we just need to fix it one way or the other. But we really trust people to grow exponentially with the company and, to you know, always be bringing solutions to whatever they're putting together. And you know that, of course, like you know, that has some impacts on, like, how you're managing the company and the day to day and what type of culture you're setting in the company. But then, also before that, it's like, okay, how are you hiring people? You know what's your hiring process, are you?

Speaker 2: 14:18

being clear about expectations and what it takes to work at a fast-paced company like this.

Speaker 2: 14:23

Because if you want people to perform, you know, a plus work, but you're not clear about that in the company and people think that they're just coming to a regular 9 to 5 job. That's just not. Expectations are not going to be reality. So, you know, being very clear on the forefront and how we're hiring people and then just creating that high growth. You know, empowerment culture internally it's also very important. So when we match those two, then we allow the team to scale with the company and then we allow people to, you know, basically own their job and just be responsible for what they do.

Speaker 1: 14:58

I think that empowerment is a big thing. You're giving people the autonomy to be able to actually put forth, you know, change an impact in an organization. But it definitely can backfire sometimes and you give somebody too much autonomy and then you know, maybe it doesn't necessarily pan out as well as you would have thought.

Speaker 2: 15:19

Yeah, totally. I mean, it happens for sure, and sometimes it is. You know, maybe either they were not the right fit for the role or you didn't give that person or that department guidelines to. You know understand what was like the goal, the end goal of what they were working towards. So I think those two things need to be aligned and you know, of course mistakes happen on both parts, but they need to be corrected as soon as possible and just giving people clear guidance and goals towards like what's the company working, you know, towards?

Speaker 2: 15:50

and that also comes like all the way from the top right. It's like, hey, how are you setting goals for your company, like what are the overarching, you know, like three, four, five goals that you're setting up for the company for the year, and how are you making sure that you know, people know, understand and want to drive?

Speaker 1: 16:08

towards that goal, like how do you get?

Speaker 2: 16:10

full buying from your team for the goals. So something that we do internally, for example, for that is, we crowdsource goals from everyone in the company at the early offside, where we ask three questions. We say what went right last year, what did not go as well last year, and then what can sink us as a company? So we basically like ask those two questions to everyone.

Speaker 2: 16:36

Everyone participates on, you know, a session and throws ideas at a whiteboard and then from there we understand hey, what do we need to double down on? Which is what's working well, what do we need to improve? Which is, you know what's not working well. And then what do we need to basically like find a solution for or remove as a risk for the company, which is what would sink us. So you know, by doing that we basically understand what's going on across the country, what do people think went well, what didn't go well. And then after that we set up company goals as a team as well and from there, like, everyone just understand and knows what are we fixing or what are we working towards with the goals. But I think getting that full buying from the team just helps. You know, everyone go in the same direction and just take out the risk of like oh no, there's no clear guidance or no clear expectations from what is A plus work?

Speaker 2: 17:27

for me.

Speaker 1: 17:29

So, when it comes to, I think there's like a fine line between giving the team a lot of transparency but then maybe not necessarily distracting them. Like how do you balance that? Because for me I prefer to just be as open as possible, but then you know there's also a lot of value in being focused on what you're responsible for and Not, you know, just sort of brain dumping everything that's going on in your head into everybody's lap, because then you know it can be destabilizing. I think, yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2: 18:03

I mean I tend to act on the side of transparency With my team and people that I speak with. But, as you're saying, it's a fine line because you also don't want to be saying everything that you think, not necessarily because you're having stuff, but because it might just not add value to the team and it might be distracting. So you know, it's the same thing as, like you know, someone that holds an important role in your company, right, like you know, want them to be coming to you and like saying everything that they're working on or everything that they're, you know, thinking through. There's like stuff that you know, you know, that's going through that through their head, or problems that they're trying to solve, that they don't necessarily need your input or would add value, you know, to your role as CEO of a company or like whatever other role you're holding in the company.

Speaker 1: 18:44

So you know there's a fine line and a lot of it is, you know subjective and and you know you like making the calls and what adds value to the team or not.

Speaker 2: 18:53

But I definitely tend to tend to act on the side of transparency With communicating stuff, but then also when someone asks me something inside the company, then like open book internally for anything.

Speaker 1: 19:07

Mm-hmm. No, that makes a lot of sense. Are you primarily hiring, like within the Miami area, or do you look around?

Speaker 2: 19:18

Mostly Miami. We, I believe in working with people in the same place, especially like these early stage of company where things are happening so fast and changing, and we need to build that like high collaboration culture. You know, there's like specific roles, of course, that you know not really impacted that much with being in office or no, but I strongly believe we build in the relationships With your co-workers and the people that you're basically, you know, working with like almost 24-7, which it just like allows you to move faster and and just make sure that everyone is drawing, you know, in the same direction. Like much about early days, right, like I think about, hey Well, we have been able to build what we built with like people dispersed, you know, across the country and just communicating through screen then, and like super teams or, you know whatever it is like. I don't think so, I mean.

Speaker 1: 20:11

I don't know, right, I don't because that was not the case.

Speaker 2: 20:13

Like we're in the office and we were building this thing together very fast-paced, but I just don't, I just don't see how we would have been able to do it, you know, basically through a screen and through chat because a lot of the most valuable conversations like Don't actually happen, while you are like you know in your desk at the office, but they happen when you stand up and you go to the other person's desk, when you are having lunch together, when you go and like see each other in the coffee room or whatever it is, or when you're getting like beers or coffee or water, whatever it is like after work as well.

Speaker 2: 20:47

But the you know, that can only happen if we're working together, like if you work in an opposite size of town or like these cities or or different countries. You don't really open the door for that to happen because you work together, like you know, through a screen through the day, but then, as soon as that's done, then you're just like not speaking with each other, which is when you know the best ideas come come across.

Speaker 1: 21:07

Yeah, I think that's an important component to any sort of thriving business is the ability to connect and interact, like outside of the workplace as well. You know, some people might want to say that they like to have the two completely separate, like personal versus work, but I think that's an unrealistic expectation in 2024. There is that overlap Inherently, and it shouldn't be a problem if you enjoy what you're doing.

Speaker 2: 21:30

Anyways, it's like some of the most fun.

Speaker 1: 21:33

Fun times we ever had was, you know, doing stuff together Outside of the office, like after work or things like that, and being able to build real relationships. That's, I would argue, almost impossible to build that Personal, like one-to-one relationship if it's purely remote, like you don't have any sort of physical, you know, interaction at all, because it's such a human experience that can't be replicated by like a zoom call.

Speaker 2: 22:01

Yeah, I read. I mean, I remember our early days when we hit our first Like million dollar year butcher box. When we got to that metric, we all of us went to Charlie's kitchen in Harbour Square like under the office and like happy years together, like that connection that you like a accomplished something, and then you go and do that and like have fun together and celebrate together.

Speaker 2: 22:23

It's just like so tough to to get through through a screen and, you know, building those personal relationships. As we were saying, like you know, we just Like five or six of us just went to Utah together which were basically like very early team at butcher box and you know Like some of us are not there anymore, but like when we got together in Utah like three or four months ago.

Speaker 2: 22:44

It's like you know friends for life, basically like hey, we went through this thing, building this thing together, like long hours, that mixing work and personal life, like non-stop, and it just gets like you know the connection level that you get. I think it's very hard to get through through some more screen.

Speaker 2: 23:00

You know like not to say there's no benefits to it. Right, like there's also benefits of being able to get a lot of, you know, talent from different parts of the country and the world. But I think that you definitely sacrifice some things and it's very hard to make those personal connections.

Speaker 1: 23:18

Yeah, definitely, and people don't necessarily want fully remote either, especially the younger they are. I've noticed, you know, remote is actually a negative, not a positive. So, like we've had, since electric and drinks are fully remote now, definitely difficulties or challenges when it comes to, you know, not only getting the team together but building, you know, real rapport amongst the new team members, like it's not as it's not as a Much of an issue for the team members that were there pre-going remote, but for team members that are joining now, when it's fully remote, there is, you know, inherently, some, some sense of a disconnect. But for, like, younger team members, if you're just coming out of college, you know, maybe you're still living at your parents house. Do you really want to be waking up and working in your house and then just Signing off and like you don't have.

Speaker 1: 24:11

I think most people I know a lot of their close friends are those that they worked with, like right when they got out of school and and that's part of the experience. So you know, we're definitely At least on our end with, with scaleless, focused entirely on on Miami, with some like Latin America as well. It's not a terrible flight and, you know, going once a month, or going once a quarter and doing like a week. There Isn't the isn't that big of a deal, but outside of that not really, you know, entertaining. Oh, we're gonna be in 25 different states and and not really care where we hire anybody because, as you mentioned, I think you know the best conversations do happen in person, when you're not necessarily like on a zoom call.

Speaker 2: 24:51

Totally, totally. And you know, I think what you said is very important in terms of like starting off your career, like I wouldn't advise for anyone to do so from your couch, or like your parents house. I think that you need to get you know out there and speak with people and get to see what's out there and how build those Relationships and like work at a dynamic, you know paste environment and solve things with a whiteboard with someone else. I think that that gives you like that sense and that touch for business that is very, very hard to get from. You know the same for a wall, that you're like sleeping and you know having breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Speaker 1: 25:27

Yeah, I agreed, agreed. So, as you're thinking about, you know, growth For 2024, what are some of the main levers that you're looking at for GRIP?

Speaker 2: 25:40

The main one that we've used up to date and we're going to keep doubling down on, is providing an A plus customer experience. I think that that's like the main thing that we can use for growing this company, because that's one what's missing in the industry. With the technology that we have, and then numbers speak by themselves, if we have customers that are happy, they're just going to bring other customers from the industry that are happy as well, and that's how we've grown as a business. We basically have our same customers saying hey, I know these other companies that ship X and Y and I know that they would benefit by working with you guys. So what am I going to do? Put you both in touch. And when it comes from there, I think I don't think there's any other best way of getting a great lead for working with, because it's coming from someone who has the real life experience of what it is to be working with your company.

Speaker 2: 26:36

So that's something that we're going to keep pulling, and we just hired a director of kind of experience. She brings like 10 plus years of experience in the industry and she's added great value to the company, where we're just like so focused on making sure that we are providing value for our customers, that we are developing products with them not necessarily for them, but with them in the product development cycle and just making sure that they know that it's they're getting an A plus experience working with us and that they're just getting tremendous value out of it.

Speaker 2: 27:09

That's definitely what's going to be the main lever for keep scaling this company.

Speaker 1: 27:14

And are you incentivizing those referrals at all, or do they all just happen organically?

Speaker 2: 27:21

Organically, which has been pretty fun to see, and I think it's because we built such great relationships with our customers that they know that if they do well, we do well, if we do well, they do well as well. Like, it's basically an issue cycle where, like, if we both grow together and we both, you know, improve our companies together, then we're just going to keep providing a good service for them because we're going to have more resources to develop our products, to create more technology to, you know, keep providing a plus experience. So I think that we get this sense with our customers that, like, we are in this, you know, in this together with them, and that's why we care so much about what they're doing, right. So we ask questions of like, hey, how else can we add value? Or like, we even spot things that they might not be doing, that we learn across the industry.

Speaker 2: 28:11

We go and we say, hey, you know, have you tried X and Y to improve your customer experience this way? Or, like, having tried X and Y for your marketing channels as well? Like, we're very proud of them because, like, we need them to be successful, right, if they're not successful, we're not successful. So we need them to be growing. We need them to be having a good experience, we need them for their customers to be happy. We need them to be profitable, very importantly, but then we also need them to like don't spend a lot of resources working with a company like us so that they can spend those resources on growing their companies, because if their company grows, our company grows.

Speaker 1: 28:45

Yeah, definitely, and the CPG community, I feel like, is very connected as well. They all have like groups, whether it's like startup CPG or some of these other you know groups that have formed in Slack or you know they'll have newsletters, things like that, and everybody knows everybody. Especially in their little regions, like in the West Coast, there's a, there's a group of like the CPG founders and the CPG brands, and the same goes for the East Coast and whatnot, especially with like things like Expo West and East. I feel like those are all highly relevant and you know, the best way to grow is word of mouth, but it's very difficult for a lot of businesses to be able to do that and to actually, you know, have something that's so valuable that their customers want to, you know, share it, even without, you know, like a referral program or incentivization.

Speaker 2: 29:38

Yeah, totally, Totally. I mean, first thing is having a great product, right Even having a great product like. Sometimes it doesn't even matter how much you incentivize people, but they just don't want to share a product that they don't want.

Speaker 1: 29:50

Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I think this was really insightful. It sounds like you guys are growing really quickly, so I'm looking forward to you know watching the journey progress. But before we hop here, are there any sort of last tips or tricks that you would give any other aspiring entrepreneurs and founders out there as they go out and do their first venture?

Speaker 2: 30:17

I mean. I think, something that has helped us a lot is with the product development cycles, like having this mindset of you know, doing it fast, with quick improvements, and having your customer very close to you, like we see very often companies that basically just lock themselves in the room for way too long, and then they put a product out there that might not necessarily be sold at the main point that they thought it was going to sell.

Speaker 2: 30:42

So how we have approached that is just bringing the customers to the forefront of the equation since day one and just building products with them. So, yeah, that usually takes less resources because you're building products, like with quick iteration cycles and with revenue basically almost since day one. So I highly suggest a fast innovation cycle approach versus putting a lot of resources into something and then go, try to go out there and sell it. So definitely something I suggest for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Speaker 1: 31:17

Awesome, thank you. Before we hop, can you let everybody know where they can connect with you online?

Speaker 2: 31:24

A little game, Juan Camilo Meysel, or Twitter. I got back on Twitter after like 20 years. I'm not using that thing, probably not like 15 or whatsoever. So, yeah, any of those, or you can also look for our website. You know groupshippingcom. You want to get in touch with us if you're shipping, you know first, or if you're in the mail. But yeah, happy to chat and, of course, thank you for having me and I hope that I see you in Miami again soon.

Speaker 1: 31:51

Yeah, yeah, I'm just down the street from you. Well as always. Thank you everybody for listening. This is Brandon Amoroso. You can find me at Brandon Amorosocom or electricmarketingcom. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.