WEBVTT 00:00:33.262 --> 00:00:39.634 Hello and welcome to the Bootstrapper's Guide to Logistics, the podcast highlighting founders doing it the way that doesn't get a lot of attention. 00:00:39.634 --> 00:00:44.070 We're here to change that by sharing their stories and inspiring others to take the leap. 00:00:45.200 --> 00:00:48.010 It's a roller coaster ride that you might ultimately fail. 00:00:48.600 --> 00:00:50.567 That's when I kind of knew I was on to something. 00:00:51.281 --> 00:00:52.146 It was very hard. 00:00:52.620 --> 00:00:54.567 It truly is building a legacy. 00:00:55.240 --> 00:00:57.789 The more life you live, the more wisdom you have. 00:00:58.340 --> 00:01:01.751 Because we are where we're supposed to be kind of answering the call. 00:01:02.280 --> 00:01:04.709 Don't shoulder entrepreneurship on your own. 00:01:04.709 --> 00:01:06.655 I'm your host, nate Shoots. 00:01:06.655 --> 00:01:09.701 Let's build something together from the ground up. 00:01:09.701 --> 00:01:15.069 Hello everybody, and welcome back to the show. 00:01:15.069 --> 00:01:19.596 We are getting started with Season 3 of the Bootstrapper's Guide to Logistics. 00:01:19.596 --> 00:01:23.203 Somebody asked me what's going to be different about Season 3? 00:01:23.203 --> 00:01:25.305 And I said absolutely nothing. 00:01:25.305 --> 00:01:45.474 We're doing the same thing we've always done, and trying to shine a light on people building good businesses, and doing it in a way that is ancient, almost as a simplistic way of saying it, but bootstrapping is not a new phenomenon. 00:01:45.474 --> 00:01:50.421 It's the way everything used to be started before fundraising and venture capital and private equity. 00:01:50.421 --> 00:01:51.947 Before any of those things were things. 00:01:51.947 --> 00:02:03.474 Bootstrapping was a thing, and so I am always excited to get to share another story, and this week we have my friend, hisham Khaki, who is the founder and CEO of ShiftSwap in Atlanta. 00:02:03.474 --> 00:02:05.384 Hisham, good morning, how are you today? 00:02:06.066 --> 00:02:07.730 Good morning, nate, I am doing great. 00:02:07.730 --> 00:02:09.465 Thank you so much for having me on the show. 00:02:09.465 --> 00:02:17.992 I've loved following your podcast and I know our relationship goes even before you started the podcast, so I just feel honored to be on this today. 00:02:18.840 --> 00:02:24.384 Well, I am grateful to get the chance to unpack your journey a little bit and maybe we jump right in with. 00:02:24.384 --> 00:02:41.829 One of my first questions is you began Happy Gig before Shift Swap, so this is your second iteration, so why don't we start with the beginnings of your entrepreneurial journey, when Happy Gig was the first thing that you were building? 00:02:41.829 --> 00:02:45.663 What was it and what was the impetus for starting it in the first place? 00:02:46.985 --> 00:02:47.567 Good question. 00:02:47.567 --> 00:03:04.496 So Happy Gig was the first company I think going before that, just kind of talking about my purpose of helping improve the lives of warehouse workers, which kind of leads into Happy Gig. 00:03:04.496 --> 00:03:07.259 I think that story is good. 00:03:07.259 --> 00:03:22.090 So I began my career working for a large 3PL and actually started in engineering 3PL and I actually started in engineering and one of the big things we were doing was rolling out lean within our distribution centers. 00:03:22.090 --> 00:03:25.663 I don't know, did you ever have experience with lean in warehousing? 00:03:26.084 --> 00:03:26.384 I do. 00:03:26.384 --> 00:03:27.889 I have a black belt myself. 00:03:27.889 --> 00:03:35.009 Oh okay, and I'm a process engineer at heart and did some industrial engineering too, so I think we're cut from the same cloth. 00:03:35.009 --> 00:03:36.875 Did some industrial engineering too. 00:03:36.955 --> 00:03:38.479 So I think we're cut from the same cloth. 00:03:38.479 --> 00:03:42.460 Exactly so. 00:03:42.460 --> 00:03:44.625 We were rolling out lean and, as you all know that understand lean. 00:03:44.625 --> 00:03:45.848 The big piece of lean is employee engagement. 00:03:45.848 --> 00:03:48.552 And one of the big things we were doing was rolling out Kaizen events. 00:03:48.552 --> 00:04:00.082 And Kaizen events just to summarize real quick you get employees that are actually working on the direct processes, so floor associates. 00:04:00.082 --> 00:04:08.895 You take them away from the operation anywhere from one full day all the way to a week, and they're actually working on continuous improvement. 00:04:08.895 --> 00:04:11.343 So they're not doing any of their day-to-day jobs. 00:04:11.343 --> 00:04:24.072 They're literally in a conference room out on the floor crunching numbers with other engineers and other continuous improvement people and they're the ones figuring out how to make their processes better, which obviously makes sense. 00:04:26.382 --> 00:04:36.019 And when we'd finish up a Kaizen event, we'd have this kind of ceremony where we would give the associates that participated these certificates. 00:04:36.019 --> 00:04:37.164 And they were so nice. 00:04:37.164 --> 00:04:38.800 There are these framed certificates. 00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:44.973 They were signed by executive leadership and we'd hand them out one by one. 00:04:44.973 --> 00:04:55.709 And I'll never forget I was doing a Kaizen event in McDonough, georgia, actually and I'll never forget the employee's name. 00:04:55.709 --> 00:05:12.151 His name was Dennis Gilpin, and when we handed him his certificate, I looked over after he grabbed it and he literally had a tear, like I'm not, it wasn't not being like figurative, he literally had a tear dropping down. 00:05:12.151 --> 00:05:14.783 And I went up to him and I was like Dennis, are you all right? 00:05:14.783 --> 00:05:30.053 And he just looked at me and he was a bit choked up and he said, man, I've been working in warehousing for 25 years and my wife is going to be so proud of me when I go home with this certificate. 00:05:30.053 --> 00:05:38.848 And man, like, at that moment it just clicked, like it did something to me where it was like okay, this is my purpose. 00:05:38.848 --> 00:05:44.552 My purpose is to find ways to help improve the lives of the hourly workforce. 00:05:45.920 --> 00:05:53.887 And you know, with the 3PL, I eventually went into operations, because operations you can impact more people's lives. 00:05:53.887 --> 00:05:57.735 And then eventually, at some point, I found I could impact even more people's lives. 00:05:57.735 --> 00:06:09.507 And then eventually, at some point, I found I could impact even more people's lives by starting up Happy Gig, which, in essence, that company was one of the pioneers of gig labor within the warehousing industry. 00:06:09.507 --> 00:06:28.747 So the premise is you've got great warehouse workers that are already working, that may be looking for extra hours, and you've got employers who need flex labor to help deal with variability, and there was really nothing out there back at that time that made that connection so founded Happy Gig. 00:06:28.747 --> 00:06:31.288 It had a tremendous amount of success with that. 00:06:31.288 --> 00:06:32.822 We began in. 00:06:32.822 --> 00:06:51.690 2018 is when we began recognizing revenue and then, of course, through COVID and all that, we saw a lot of success and then eventually that kind of morphed into ShiftSwap, which I know we'll get into a little bit more, but that's kind of the story of Happy Gig and how that started. 00:06:52.259 --> 00:06:59.862 Well, right off the bat, we're just leaning into the people side of things, and I love that because I have a deep fondness for warehousing. 00:06:59.862 --> 00:07:03.966 I've been in it for, I'd say, the last eight years. 00:07:03.966 --> 00:07:11.271 I've been responsible for at least one site usually many and it is not a place where cameras typically go. 00:07:11.271 --> 00:07:19.677 There's not a lot of podcasts being done inside of a warehouse and that workforce is generally not getting a lot of recognition. 00:07:19.677 --> 00:07:30.574 And yet they are the ones that do the work and without them, anything that's on the store shelf at Target or that shows up to your front doorstep would not be there. 00:07:30.574 --> 00:07:41.315 And I think there is a lack of awareness, maybe more than a lack of appreciation. 00:07:41.399 --> 00:07:58.910 I think if folks had a chance to spend time in more warehouses and see what it actually takes to do that kind of work I work in furniture, so you know I get to see folks lifting sofas 20 feet up in the air on a cherry picker, and it's a different stress. 00:08:00.019 --> 00:08:04.338 You know there's a physical component to it that most people assume is all automated. 00:08:04.338 --> 00:08:09.661 Nowadays they get an idea of a conveyor type system in an Amazon facility and they think that that's what warehousing is. 00:08:09.661 --> 00:08:10.483 It's not. 00:08:10.483 --> 00:08:28.064 That's some of it, of course, but for the most part it is hardworking men and women getting up at really early hours 4 am, you know, 3.30 am to get to a shift in the dark and working a very demanding job for long hours on their feet all day long. 00:08:28.064 --> 00:08:40.648 And so when I come across someone like you that has that same not just awareness but a deep appreciation for the people that do the work man, like right off the bat, it reminds me of why we hit it off when we first met. 00:08:40.648 --> 00:08:45.245 So I love the heart that you bring to it, and that is the heart of Lean. 00:08:45.245 --> 00:08:49.519 Also is it's about the people, and those folks generally. 00:08:49.519 --> 00:08:56.494 Again, don't get asked, hey, what can we do to make your work easier, more efficient or safer? 00:09:18.960 --> 00:09:22.559 no-transcript. 00:09:22.559 --> 00:09:33.889 My first job was actually in cement manufacturing and I was a process engineer at a large uh cement uh factory and it was a union. 00:09:33.889 --> 00:09:37.118 You know union operation's all I really knew. 00:09:37.118 --> 00:09:57.953 I did that for a little less than two years before I went to the 3pl world and during my interview, um, I was walking through the warehouse and it's really the first real warehouse I've been in and I'm interviewing for a logistics engineer job where my job, my, my role was to make things more efficient. 00:09:59.341 --> 00:10:19.407 And the VP of ops, one of my mentors, he's walking around with me, interviewing me, and my eyes are huge because I'm seeing all these people on these clamp trucks and they're driving backwards and they're moving, like you know, at a very high speed, they're honking, I mean it's, it's crazy in the warehouse. 00:10:19.407 --> 00:10:29.582 And he looks at me, the VP of ops, uh, and he, his name was Ralph Price and he goes yeah, sham, and he had a really raspy voice, shammy. 00:10:29.582 --> 00:10:33.003 Tons of opportunity over here, right, you can probably see it everywhere. 00:10:33.003 --> 00:10:36.850 And in the back of my mind I'm like, oh my God, like where's the opportunity? 00:10:36.850 --> 00:10:38.313 These people are all working. 00:10:38.313 --> 00:10:49.899 I came from an environment where, unless the factory was in shutdown, meltdown mode, you know, operators would have their feet kicked up, just waiting for something wrong to happen. 00:10:50.159 --> 00:10:51.322 Totally the opposite environment. 00:10:52.066 --> 00:10:54.821 Completely, and you're right, like people don't. 00:10:54.821 --> 00:11:02.888 Most people have never really been inside of a warehouse other than a Costco, but a true warehouse. 00:11:02.888 --> 00:11:12.235 They've never seen how efficient it really is and how hard people are working in there and how much weight they're lifting and the motions they're going through. 00:11:12.235 --> 00:11:20.140 It's a lot going through. 00:11:20.160 --> 00:11:20.400 It's a lot. 00:11:20.400 --> 00:11:22.447 It's a wonderful ecosystem is sort of the way I picture the four walls of a warehouse. 00:11:22.447 --> 00:11:23.067 Every warehouse is different. 00:11:23.067 --> 00:11:38.735 It could be the identical product, racking, equipment and everything, but you just add different people and it becomes a different organism altogether and it evolves and changes over time and that you can't understand it unless you experience it. 00:11:39.240 --> 00:11:42.770 And observing will get you some insight. 00:11:43.500 --> 00:11:44.885 Participating will get you more. 00:11:45.120 --> 00:11:55.701 Doing the work will get you the most, and that means being there for the 6 am stand-up meeting, not just flying in in the afternoon, and after all, the work is mostly done and everybody's on their way out. 00:11:56.081 --> 00:12:22.629 And again, not a lot of folks have that level of appreciation for it, and so maybe part of this episode really is going to just be about highlighting the people, because I know that's a big reason why you do what you do now is it's obviously you're in a company to make a profit, but you're also adding elements to that of I want to do it in a way that's going to have an impact and be good for others. 00:12:22.629 --> 00:12:38.075 So you, beforehand, I asked you a handful of questions and you shared with me some of your values that you run your business by and we'll at some point we'll get into what Shift Swap does too, but this is such fertile ground. 00:12:38.075 --> 00:13:02.465 The two that really stood out to me right off the bat were simplicity and effectiveness, and I'm curious how you landed on those as two of the values that guide your decision making that guide your decision making. 00:13:02.485 --> 00:13:44.760 Yeah, so simplicity is something I've always been extremely fond of, because I I've always felt to actually create something simple is extremely complicated and you know, no matter what you're looking at in life, whether it's a person training to be an athlete or someone in the warehouse trying to pick orders and get it onto a truck, for whatever reason, lots of people overcomplicate processes and I still don't understand why a lot of the times, and I just see it. 00:13:44.780 --> 00:13:46.265 Once you start seeing it, you can't stop seeing it in so many things. 00:13:46.265 --> 00:13:59.820 So I've always been kind of obsessed with what's the simplest way to accomplish the goal at hand, and whether that goal is creating a software that's actually effective or creating a process that is efficient. 00:13:59.820 --> 00:14:06.592 If you have kind of that goal of simplicity, a lot of, and it takes a lot of work. 00:14:06.592 --> 00:14:23.062 By the way, like that, when you say, create something simple, it takes a lot of work to get there, but once you do, the impact usually is very clear and it's tangible, so that I don't know. 00:14:23.062 --> 00:14:25.890 That's always just been something that's been near and dear to my heart. 00:14:27.580 --> 00:14:32.947 You seem to have design instincts at your core, then is what that is telling me? 00:14:32.947 --> 00:15:16.140 From engineering processes to visualizing flow, you are a process designer seeking the shortest path between a and b, or the most efficient or the most effective. 00:15:16.140 --> 00:15:21.873 Is that something that you discovered about yourself as an adult, or were you? 00:15:21.873 --> 00:15:24.265 When you were younger, you shared? 00:15:24.265 --> 00:15:25.708 You know that you're a bit of a troublemaker. 00:15:25.708 --> 00:15:36.133 Were you always looking for a creative solution to a problem that maybe didn't fit within the academic world, or has that always been a part of your DNA? 00:15:38.440 --> 00:15:39.662 Yeah, that's an interesting question. 00:15:39.662 --> 00:16:04.993 I almost think it started more when I was younger, just sometimes feeling dumb, to be honest, right when you hear complex things being thrown at you and you're not grasping it, you feel a bit dumb, but I always want to figure it out or find the truth. 00:16:04.993 --> 00:16:09.564 So my mind would always go to okay, this is what I'm being told. 00:16:09.564 --> 00:16:23.724 How can I simplify this to where I understand it and then I can communicate it to other people and my mind will just break down complexity and figure it out the simplest way possible. 00:16:23.724 --> 00:16:26.931 And maybe I didn't really understand that. 00:16:26.931 --> 00:16:33.530 That's how I operated until my professional career, but looking back as a child, I think that's what it was. 00:16:33.530 --> 00:16:47.811 I almost had a fear of looking dumb, so it made me really peel the layers back in whatever I was trying to understand or look at and then be able to explain it in a very simple way. 00:16:49.161 --> 00:16:58.414 Yeah, I hear curiosity in that then as well, Not accepting something at face value, but wanting to peel it back and understand it more. 00:16:58.414 --> 00:17:04.069 Once you tap into that, you had a bunch of success in your career. 00:17:04.069 --> 00:17:06.195 You had a bunch of success in your career. 00:17:06.195 --> 00:17:19.393 You rise to the executive level of a very large and successful organization and gained a lot of experience, I'm sure on the people side as well leadership, strategy, management. 00:17:19.393 --> 00:17:34.030 And then one day you decide, okay, I'm going to go out on my own and give up the golden handcuffs, the seeming security and structure of a large organization, and try to build something from scratch. 00:17:34.111 --> 00:17:45.543 So you must have had aside from wanting to have an impact, you must have had a very high level of conviction that there was a need and that you were the right person to solve it. 00:17:45.543 --> 00:17:47.885 There was a need and that you were the right person to solve it. 00:17:47.885 --> 00:18:00.844 Then, as happy, gig started to morph into shift swap, you know and some learning happened in between there that caused you to choose a slightly different direction. 00:18:00.844 --> 00:18:05.135 Can you help me understand what that learning process was of? 00:18:05.135 --> 00:18:15.537 Okay, we're going to go this direction slightly different now and I see a new opportunity that I have equal conviction in, yeah, and maybe you can explain what shift swap is too. 00:18:15.537 --> 00:18:18.939 We're 20 minutes in and I haven't even asked you that. 00:18:18.939 --> 00:18:19.421 My bad. 00:18:20.789 --> 00:18:23.432 So and I'll get into it a little bit more. 00:18:23.432 --> 00:18:26.255 But happy gig is external labor. 00:18:26.255 --> 00:18:35.263 So imagine you've got a warehouse, you need some flex labor and you're basically going to the outside to bring labor in. 00:18:35.263 --> 00:18:41.391 Shift swap creates almost that gig economy or flexibility within your own operation. 00:18:41.391 --> 00:18:45.900 So and we'll we'll get more into exactly what that means. 00:18:45.900 --> 00:18:57.818 But you know how it morphed from HappyGig Flex and HappyGig Flex is still around, by the way but how that really morphed more into ShiftSwap is. 00:19:00.142 --> 00:19:04.286 Iteration is the key to any startup, any business. 00:19:04.286 --> 00:19:06.757 I believe the key is always iteration. 00:19:06.757 --> 00:19:10.476 Things change so quickly, needs change very quickly. 00:19:10.476 --> 00:19:14.314 You've got to be able to iterate in a very smooth, controlled way. 00:19:14.314 --> 00:19:17.217 Um, in a very smooth, controlled way. 00:19:17.217 --> 00:19:22.702 So what we started finding was that a lot of like after COVID. 00:19:23.124 --> 00:19:34.881 After COVID, after things started stabilizing a little bit, a lot of our customers started saying this is great, we love being able to tap into your workforce, but honestly, we need something for our own workforce. 00:19:34.881 --> 00:19:48.624 We're struggling with retaining our workforce and we're starting to believe that the key really is to figure out how to retain them, and we're hearing from them that they need a little bit more flexibility. 00:19:48.624 --> 00:19:53.000 So I started listening to that and hearing more and more customers say that. 00:19:53.000 --> 00:20:05.466 And then what happened was one of my largest customers came to me and said hey, we love Happy Gig, but we have a corporate initiative. 00:20:05.466 --> 00:20:06.674 This is a billion-dollar company. 00:20:06.674 --> 00:20:22.182 We have a corporate initiative to create flexibility within our workforce and we want to explore the opportunity of you actually building it, your team building it for us, because everyone loves the user experience of of happy gig. 00:20:22.182 --> 00:20:26.667 So we said yes to that and we built it. 00:20:27.731 --> 00:20:39.038 And, uh, we built like an MVP rather quickly within a couple of months, started rolling it out to pilot sites, started taking feedback and then we just started seeing it work. 00:20:39.038 --> 00:20:40.701 Site after site was loving it. 00:20:40.701 --> 00:20:45.975 They were immediately seeing improvements in their metrics and then it just started taking off from there. 00:20:45.975 --> 00:20:51.196 And my North Star has always been how can I impact the most lives? 00:20:51.196 --> 00:21:05.712 So whenever I'm thinking about where to pivot to next whether it was engineering into operations, operations to Happy Gig, happy Gig to ChefSwap it's always how can I impact more people's lives? 00:21:05.712 --> 00:21:14.240 And I quickly realized ChefSwap can, has the potential to impact the lives of many more people than Happy Gig Flex, and that's why it's become our number one focus right now. 00:21:14.809 --> 00:21:17.680 And can you explain what the primary use of it is? 00:21:20.309 --> 00:21:22.314 focus right now and can you explain what the primary use of it is? 00:21:22.314 --> 00:21:22.615 Absolutely so. 00:21:22.615 --> 00:21:26.643 It actually it'll work for any hourly workforce and there are really three, three big values to it. 00:21:26.643 --> 00:21:37.798 The first one is um, let's say I'm an associate somewhere and let's say I don't have childcare this coming Monday morning. 00:21:37.798 --> 00:21:45.120 Typically what would happen is I'd wait until Monday morning and I'd call out sick, like that's. 00:21:45.120 --> 00:21:52.130 That's the way it works, especially in warehousing, and I'll take you know the hits I'll take from an HR perspective. 00:21:52.130 --> 00:21:57.420 I'll get you know another point and I get one step closer to being terminated. 00:21:57.420 --> 00:22:05.222 But it's the way I get a little bit of flexibility for myself and what ends up happening is I'll eventually get terminated. 00:22:05.222 --> 00:22:06.753 That's what happens in warehousing. 00:22:06.753 --> 00:22:25.882 With shift swap, I would actually be able to post that portion of my shift and then someone else from another shift if I have a multi-shift operation can grab that shift and cover it for me and that feature you've seen a tremendous amount of reduction in turnover. 00:22:27.052 --> 00:22:30.221 The second big value is all of your dynamic shifts. 00:22:30.221 --> 00:22:39.611 So any kind of overtime, any kind of voluntary time off, time off If you have part-time workers. 00:22:39.611 --> 00:22:53.573 Traditionally the way we do in warehousing is an ops manager or a supervisor walks the floor, collects volunteers, or they'll put a break room sign up sheet or they'll just call mandatory overtime or mandatory cut to hours, and none of that is good. 00:22:53.573 --> 00:22:58.422 That creates problems, lots of problems With ShiftSwap. 00:22:58.422 --> 00:22:59.663 All that becomes automated. 00:22:59.663 --> 00:23:11.756 I'm an operations manager, I need six people to stay a couple hours longer, I post that I need six people and it all happens in a seamless way where everyone gets the notification, they can grab the shift. 00:23:11.756 --> 00:23:13.676 It goes back to leadership for approval. 00:23:13.676 --> 00:23:14.900 Good to go. 00:23:14.900 --> 00:23:18.000 And the third big value is just messaging. 00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:36.662 Messaging so a way to keep in communication with your workforce, whether it's departments, skill sets, individuals, the entire team, you know, just a simple way to communicate with your workforce what's interesting is the difference between white collar work and blue collar work in the white collar world generally speaking. 00:23:36.721 --> 00:23:39.873 Hey, I've got a, my kid has an event at their school. 00:23:39.873 --> 00:23:45.113 I'm going to be a couple of hours late and it's sort of uh, as long as you get the work done, totally cool. 00:23:45.113 --> 00:23:46.115 You have the flexibility. 00:23:46.115 --> 00:23:48.380 You know we're not clock watchers, yeah. 00:23:48.380 --> 00:23:56.057 And yet the blue collar workforce that's paid hourly doesn't receive that same flexibility. 00:23:56.057 --> 00:24:08.184 And you hit the nail on the head as soon as an hourly associate gets on the point radar hey, you were 20 minutes late or something happened. 00:24:08.184 --> 00:24:11.913 The relationship changes to one. 00:24:11.913 --> 00:24:13.216 It almost feels punitive. 00:24:13.216 --> 00:24:16.643 Where they just had something in life happen, it wasn't. 00:24:18.154 --> 00:24:18.977 I live in Minnesota. 00:24:18.977 --> 00:24:20.652 We have blizzards, you know. 00:24:20.652 --> 00:24:23.080 Some people can have a snowblower, some people don't. 00:24:23.080 --> 00:24:31.343 That might mean you're shoveling for an extra hour and of course you'll make acts of God type exceptions for attendance issues. 00:24:31.343 --> 00:24:49.135 But that kind of impact is felt much more severely by hourly workers and they generally unless it's a unionized workforce they don't have as much of a voice typically to stay off of that radar or build processes and policies that are more accommodating. 00:24:49.135 --> 00:24:55.955 So if your goal is so, this is me riffing and just learning as we're talking here, because this is helpful for me. 00:24:55.955 --> 00:25:01.813 I still run a facility today and this is good reminders for me. 00:25:01.813 --> 00:25:05.259 If your goal, oh, go ahead. 00:25:05.881 --> 00:25:07.364 No, I mean it, just it. 00:25:07.364 --> 00:25:14.318 The white collar workforce had the flexibility even before COVID to a certain degree. 00:25:14.318 --> 00:25:21.736 But after COVID, I mean white collar workforce went through revolution where the amount of flexibility now is unbelievable. 00:25:21.736 --> 00:25:33.532 Right, like most, you know, most companies allow a lot of flexibility for the white collar workforce and still zero for the hourly workforce. 00:25:33.532 --> 00:25:45.460 I remember being in operations where there were train tracks, you know, right next to the facility, and if you got caught behind a train and you were 10 minutes late, you still got. 00:25:45.460 --> 00:25:46.743 The points Didn't matter. 00:25:46.743 --> 00:25:57.384 So imagine like you're going into your job, nate, and you have to worry about not getting stuck behind a train to potentially lose your job. 00:25:57.384 --> 00:26:01.215 Like how are you able to focus on anything else other than that? 00:26:01.978 --> 00:26:05.474 And then how do you not feel that that's somehow unfair and again punitive? 00:26:05.514 --> 00:26:18.091 I recall in the beginnings of COVID the very, very early days where all of a sudden everything started shutting down and we have hindsight now to know kind of the severity of what COVID turned out to be. 00:26:18.612 --> 00:26:45.923 But in the moment nobody knew, everybody was afraid and a bunch of folks generally were like I'm not going into the office, I'm staying home, I don't have a choice, you can't do warehousing remotely, and so there was a big disparity in how risk was absorbed in the population. 00:26:47.307 --> 00:26:50.778 And again, I'm going specifically to that period where none of us knew what was happening. 00:26:50.778 --> 00:27:14.850 And I recall being in a facility at the end of the day and we had bleach and all of these cleaning supplies and we had not full gear on but we were like disinfecting the soda pop machine and wiping down sinks and all the pack stations and the mouses at the ship station and we didn't know if we were gonna, you know, get really, really sick and have to go to the hospital. 00:27:14.850 --> 00:27:18.775 Meanwhile a whole other group of people was just tucked away safely at home. 00:27:18.775 --> 00:27:35.941 And it really does highlight the differences of why one rule can't apply effectively to everybody, and then how you do need to adapt to, in this case, who your customers are and who the people are that you're trying to impact their lives. 00:27:35.941 --> 00:27:40.190 How do you measure how much impact you're having? 00:27:42.413 --> 00:27:43.355 Yeah, great question. 00:27:43.355 --> 00:28:01.265 So the beauty of ShiftSwap is that it's literally improving the lives of the workers that are registered with ShiftSwap and are using it and at the same time, it's helping the employer's bottom line. 00:28:01.265 --> 00:28:02.975 It's like it's a win-win. 00:28:02.975 --> 00:28:16.457 So, you know, if you pitch something to a traditional warehousing company and it's just pitched as hey, this is going to make your employees' lives better, their first question is going to be well, what's? 00:28:16.457 --> 00:28:18.353 You know, is this going to cost me more? 00:28:18.353 --> 00:28:21.299 You know, is it going to inflate the cost per unit? 00:28:21.299 --> 00:28:22.041 What's going to happen? 00:28:22.041 --> 00:28:30.632 So when you find something that really helps employees and, at the same time, helps the company's bottom line, that's when you've really got something. 00:28:31.253 --> 00:28:45.437 And the way, the way we measure our impact for employers is simple it's reduction in turnover, reduction in absenteeism and reduction in cost per unit. 00:28:45.437 --> 00:28:49.853 So those three things are used from the employer's perspective to justify it. 00:28:49.853 --> 00:28:53.059 And then the associate's perspective. 00:28:53.059 --> 00:28:56.373 I mean, of course, for me it's number of users. 00:28:56.373 --> 00:29:03.605 Our goal in the next few years is to literally impact the lives of a million hourly associates. 00:29:03.605 --> 00:29:04.875 That's where we want to get to. 00:29:04.875 --> 00:29:10.423 So that's, that's our high level number metric of how many lives we're impacting. 00:29:10.423 --> 00:29:22.582 But then from there, you just see how many, how many hours people are able to take off without getting pointed, how many times people are able to give up a portion of their shift to take care of something at home. 00:29:22.582 --> 00:29:28.843 How many times am I able to grab overtime or a little bit of extra money to support my family? 00:29:28.843 --> 00:29:31.438 So there's many, many different things. 00:29:32.551 --> 00:29:34.015 When you think of a million people. 00:29:34.015 --> 00:29:41.153 It's too big of a number to actually comprehend A million people in one place at one time. 00:29:41.153 --> 00:29:42.275 There are a handful of concerts. 00:29:42.275 --> 00:29:44.961 I think Garth Brooks in New York in the 90s. 00:29:44.961 --> 00:29:47.699 They said that he had a million people at his concert, or something like that. 00:29:47.699 --> 00:29:52.561 And so we like those really big numbers, but even smaller numbers. 00:29:52.561 --> 00:30:00.303 If you make a post on LinkedIn, for example, and it gets 500 impressions, somebody would be like, oh, it's only 500. 00:30:00.303 --> 00:30:01.205 It's not that big of a deal. 00:30:01.205 --> 00:30:03.817 You know how many people 500 people is. 00:30:03.817 --> 00:30:08.882 It would fill up your local high school gym that you go to a basketball game. 00:30:08.882 --> 00:30:12.597 Every single seat would be completely full, packed to the gills. 00:30:12.597 --> 00:30:15.003 And that's 500 people. 00:30:15.003 --> 00:30:19.552 And it's hard to imagine large numbers. 00:30:19.552 --> 00:30:32.460 So when you say something like hey, if you've got 1000 users, or you've got five or 10,000 users and you putivities or something, and every single one of them was a user of yours, do you ever just imagine? 00:30:32.460 --> 00:30:51.999 Because it's just a number on a screen sometimes, but it's not, that's an actual person. 00:30:53.543 --> 00:31:22.277 Yeah, I always think that way actually, and it's funny you refer to that, because I was reading something last night and I can't remember where I was reading or what it was, but it and I don't even know if it's true, so it may not be true to ever play since 18, whatever, they won't even fill up one stadium. 00:31:22.277 --> 00:31:23.422 And I again, I don't know if that's true, but uh, it was. 00:31:23.422 --> 00:31:24.346 You know, it was giving all the numbers. 00:31:24.346 --> 00:31:31.363 It said something like if you took every player since 1887 or whenever major league baseball started, it would account. 00:31:31.363 --> 00:31:37.221 It would be like, you know, 40,000 people that wouldn't even fit in one stadium. 00:31:37.221 --> 00:31:39.166 That's generally packed. 00:31:39.166 --> 00:31:54.261 So, yeah, whenever I think about any numbers and you know impressions or users, you always start thinking of, like, you know, I'm, I'm in this room right now and it feels packed and there's only 300 people in here. 00:31:54.261 --> 00:31:57.653 So imagine what 3 000 people in here feel like. 00:31:58.976 --> 00:32:16.519 So if you work your way towards a million I mean, that is such a theoretical number how do you, as an entrepreneur, stay focused on what you can do today to make the number bigger, while having this really ambitious goal way off in the future? 00:32:16.519 --> 00:32:24.237 That's going to take a thousand, while having this really ambitious goal way off in the future, that's going to take a thousand small decisions over and over and over. 00:32:24.237 --> 00:32:26.783 How do you stay motivated in the long-term nature of what it is that you're building? 00:32:30.691 --> 00:32:37.203 Yeah, I think what always keeps me motivated is the crazy big goal. 00:32:37.203 --> 00:32:46.842 To be motivated is the crazy big goal, and then you have to have that, just so you know what you're working towards and that you really can make a gigantic impact. 00:32:46.842 --> 00:32:59.428 But then if you don't, if you're a founder or you're leading a big business and you're not able to break that down into realistic short-term goals, then you're you're never. 00:32:59.428 --> 00:33:02.820 I mean you're just going to burn yourself out and feel like you're never doing enough. 00:33:02.820 --> 00:33:08.163 So you've got to set realistic goals, whether they're, you know, monthly or quarterly. 00:33:08.163 --> 00:33:10.615 You know you at least need quarterly. 00:33:10.615 --> 00:33:11.758 I think that's the minimum. 00:33:12.559 --> 00:33:20.738 Um, you've got to have quarterly goals that are that you can truly believe in right, that you can actually see it and you can create a plan to get there. 00:33:20.738 --> 00:33:25.394 You know, if I said, hey, we're going to get to a million users by the end of this year, that's there's. 00:33:25.394 --> 00:33:27.259 No, I don't believe that. 00:33:27.259 --> 00:33:44.360 I don't believe it yet, but I do believe we can get to our current goal that we're aimed at at, and just that belief will get me there and then that'll unlock more belief and I think that's that's kind of like the process. 00:33:44.360 --> 00:33:46.443 You've got to truly believe it. 00:33:46.443 --> 00:33:51.643 You get there and you have to understand that once you get somewhere, it'll unlock further beliefs. 00:33:53.070 --> 00:33:53.511 I dig that. 00:33:53.511 --> 00:33:55.258 What are you most excited about right now? 00:33:55.258 --> 00:33:56.672 What are you most? 00:33:59.495 --> 00:34:00.355 excited about right now. 00:34:00.355 --> 00:34:07.104 Um, I just I love, I love the simplicity of shift swap. 00:34:07.104 --> 00:34:11.128 I love, I'm super excited that we were able to kind of pivot towards it. 00:34:11.128 --> 00:34:19.695 We've literally had zero attrition from customers starting it to leaving it Like it just doesn't happen. 00:34:19.695 --> 00:34:23.480 So the impact is there, people love it. 00:34:23.480 --> 00:34:24.674 The experience is great. 00:34:24.674 --> 00:34:31.422 So it's just really exciting to see something that works and is truly having an impact. 00:34:32.150 --> 00:34:53.896 With Happy Gig Flex, that was tough, that was trying to implement a different thought process for a lot of employers out there and what we'd see a lot is that we were losing almost as many clients as we were gaining every year, and it's demoralizing. 00:34:53.896 --> 00:35:08.357 It wasn't for lack of performance on our end, it was just companies were using us as a band-aid because they had a shortage of labor and once they were able to get staffed up, you know they would stop using us. 00:35:08.357 --> 00:35:18.382 So whenever year you're looking back, you're like oh, you know, we got 25 new customers this past year but we lost 20 demoralizing, right. 00:35:18.382 --> 00:35:25.822 But having a platform that really is sticky and is constantly improving value, learning curve, change curve is low. 00:35:25.822 --> 00:35:27.534 I think that's what I'm most excited about. 00:35:28.699 --> 00:35:36.739 I'm also imagining the warehouse manager that has the experience of. 00:35:36.798 --> 00:35:45.610 They have to go around and ask for volunteers for a Saturday shift and they've got to do the attendance write-up and all of that and that's just kind of part of their normal. 00:35:46.552 --> 00:36:00.173 And then you have somebody who's on your platform and that low level friction is all gone and they're spending their time on more strategy or more kaizen events or people development, etc. 00:36:00.173 --> 00:36:13.771 So I I don't I'm not surprised at all to hear you say you have zero percent attrition, because the, the people that are stuck in the old way can't imagine that there's a solution for the new way. 00:36:13.771 --> 00:36:18.041 And then, once they get there that they are probably saying to themselves man, why didn't we do this years ago? 00:36:18.041 --> 00:36:20.539 I didn't know that there could be a solution to this. 00:36:20.539 --> 00:36:33.579 And, going back to this idea of simplicity and lean, you have redesigned an entire process and removed all the waste from it. 00:36:33.579 --> 00:36:42.974 That waste used to be walking and talking and documentation on attendance, and now it is streamlined, it's efficient. 00:36:42.974 --> 00:37:05.052 Do you find joy in that Of knowing you've applied all of your engineering thinking and your care for people into something that, if it's going, really really well, nobody even notices. 00:37:05.072 --> 00:37:05.612 It makes me so happy. 00:37:05.612 --> 00:37:06.134 It makes me so happy. 00:37:06.134 --> 00:37:35.559 I had a customer tell me, um, this is probably about a year ago, and this was a three PL customer, and they were telling me that they were on a phone call with their customer, which their customer huge, you know, fortune, probably 100 company and this Fortune 100 company is on a call with all of their three PLs managing all their distribution centers across the country and they were having some sort of an emergency. 00:37:35.559 --> 00:37:46.891 And they were having some sort of an emergency and they're telling all their three pls hey, you know, you've, you have got to get so-and-so product out the door, you know, by tomorrow evening or whatever it was. 00:37:46.891 --> 00:37:53.083 And we strongly recommend you get an extra 20 people to work overtime. 00:37:53.083 --> 00:37:55.072 I'm making up numbers, but it's something like that. 00:37:55.072 --> 00:37:57.296 You know, you get an extra number of people, um, to work overtime. 00:37:57.296 --> 00:37:58.980 I'm making up numbers, but it was something like that. 00:37:58.980 --> 00:38:00.862 You know, you get an extra number of people to work in order to make this happen. 00:38:00.883 --> 00:38:13.177 And our customer, of course, the general manager, right away he gets on shift swap and he posts the shifts and within minutes, if they're all filled, and he speaks up. 00:38:13.177 --> 00:38:21.764 Right, I can't remember what happened, but on this call with this huge company, it gets out that, hey, we've already filled all the shifts. 00:38:21.764 --> 00:38:24.409 And they were like, what, how did you do that? 00:38:24.409 --> 00:38:28.099 Did you already send your supervisors to walk the floor? 00:38:28.099 --> 00:38:30.858 You already put a break room sign up sheet? 00:38:30.858 --> 00:38:31.378 What did you do? 00:38:31.378 --> 00:38:34.909 And he's like, oh, we've got the system that does it automatically. 00:38:34.909 --> 00:38:36.751 And he's like, oh, we've got the system that does it automatically. 00:38:36.751 --> 00:38:41.873 And it was like, when I heard that story, it's just like the values of mine you were talking about earlier. 00:38:41.873 --> 00:38:43.934 That makes me so happy. 00:38:45.335 --> 00:38:51.697 Just being effective and efficient at physical work. 00:38:52.878 --> 00:39:00.541 Yeah, it is simple stuff, but you hit the nail on the head so well that we overcomplicate it. 00:39:00.541 --> 00:39:16.668 That is our nature is to overcomplicate it, and so this struggle towards a simpler solution that is both cost effective and good for the bottom line and good for the people, no wonder you're having fun. 00:39:16.668 --> 00:39:24.791 No wonder you're having fun, no wonder you're having success. 00:39:24.791 --> 00:39:26.117 Um, I can keep talking to you about this for hours. 00:39:26.117 --> 00:39:26.940 Now I just want to do my own. 00:39:26.940 --> 00:39:27.099 Let's. 00:39:27.099 --> 00:39:46.505 Let's blueprint out some workflows, and I need to get back in and redo some racking in a facility now, because that's I love that part of fulfillment myself, and so it's always good to be able to talk shop with somebody who is clearly a pro at it and has that same level of love for the subject matter. 00:39:49.775 --> 00:39:56.521 Yeah, I love it, but what makes it really work is our developers, our development team. 00:39:56.521 --> 00:39:59.700 I have no clue how to code anything. 00:39:59.700 --> 00:40:02.378 I don't know anything about computer science. 00:40:02.378 --> 00:40:08.978 I struggled in college with the couple classes I took and that was actually one of my biggest fears starting up a technology company. 00:40:08.978 --> 00:40:09.920 It was like what? 00:40:10.882 --> 00:40:11.423 Understandable. 00:40:12.451 --> 00:40:14.539 I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I've got the idea. 00:40:14.539 --> 00:40:32.193 But our development team, they're incredible and you just give them the vision and they create the most streamlined experience ever since the Happy Gig Flex days and they've just gotten better and better and stronger in making that vision a reality. 00:40:32.193 --> 00:40:45.266 So I love it and I love how I get to watch these incredible computer science engineers develop this stuff and be experts in their subject matter. 00:40:45.266 --> 00:40:50.818 Yeah, yeah, they love seeing how many people they're impacting. 00:40:50.818 --> 00:40:52.943 It's fun all around. 00:40:58.210 --> 00:40:58.471 Well, I dig it. 00:40:58.471 --> 00:40:59.112 I shared this with you before. 00:40:59.112 --> 00:41:10.382 But I never know where we're going to go in a conversation, because I am fascinated by everyone's journeys and the turns that they take and the things that motivate them and the deep why behind what they're building. 00:41:10.382 --> 00:41:15.081 And it's been seven and a half-ish years for you on this run. 00:41:15.081 --> 00:41:18.200 I can't wait to see what the next stretch of the road looks like for you. 00:41:18.200 --> 00:41:21.298 I have no doubt you're going to continue to grow and be successful. 00:41:21.298 --> 00:41:22.340 We have to stay in touch. 00:41:22.340 --> 00:41:31.280 I want to hear an update from you in a year on the latest goings on with ShiftSwap and in the meantime, just know that we're all rooting for you, thank you, Nate. 00:41:31.851 --> 00:41:35.481 Yeah, you've been a huge supporter ever since we met. 00:41:35.481 --> 00:41:39.612 You've been a huge supporter ever since we met. 00:41:39.632 --> 00:41:39.793 When was? 00:41:39.793 --> 00:41:40.755 I think we met three, four years ago, probably. 00:41:40.755 --> 00:41:42.938 Yeah, I love, I've loved watching your journey as well. 00:41:42.938 --> 00:41:53.094 Just, I mean, you do so much from you know, even last time we were talking, you noticed that the furniture in my office came from your facility, right. 00:41:53.094 --> 00:42:14.362 So you make all that happen and you do this really, really cool thing where you're getting the stories of founders out there for other people to hear, because it's daunting, like being a founder, especially bootstrap, I mean, everything is challenging, right, even if you raise a bunch of money, that has its own problems, but you focused on bootstrappers. 00:42:14.362 --> 00:42:19.293 Uh, it's really cool that you're getting people's story out there and I applaud you for doing it. 00:42:19.934 --> 00:42:23.311 Thank you, I appreciate that and I receive it in the spirit in which you shared it. 00:42:23.311 --> 00:42:27.922 So thank you again for sharing your story today and we will catch up soon, my friend. 00:42:28.931 --> 00:42:29.333 All right, buddy. 00:42:29.333 --> 00:42:30.237 Thank you so much Nate. 00:42:33.030 --> 00:42:41.302 Thanks for listening to another episode of the Bootstrappers Guide to Logistics, and a special thank you to our sponsors and the team behind the scenes who make it all possible. 00:42:41.302 --> 00:42:45.621 Be sure to like, follow or subscribe to the podcast to get the latest updates. 00:42:45.621 --> 00:42:51.775 To learn more about the show and connect with the growing community of entrepreneurs, visit logisticsfounderscom. 00:42:51.775 --> 00:42:56.662 And, of course, thank you to all the founders who trust us to share their stories.