Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: We're here to change that by sharing their stories and inspiring others to take the leap.
Speaker 2: It's a roller coaster ride that you might ultimately fail.
Speaker 1: That's when I kind of knew I was on to something.
Speaker 2: It was very hard.
Speaker 2: It truly is building a legacy.
Speaker 2: The more life you live, the more wisdom you have.
Speaker 1: Because we are where we're supposed to be kind of answering the call.
Speaker 1: Don't shoulder entrepreneurship on your own.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, nate Schutz.
Speaker 1: Let's build something together from the ground up.
Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: We are deep into summer 2025.
Speaker 1: We have shared, I think, close to 20 founder stories so far this year well over 100 now since the beginning of the show, which still blows my mind when I stop finding interesting people to talk to and people that have interesting stories, and I don't think we're going to run out of those anytime soon.
Speaker 1: This week we've got Matt Hertz, who's the CEO and founder of Third Person.
Speaker 1: Matt has a how can I say?
Speaker 1: Maybe one of the most diverse backgrounds of somebody in logistics.
Speaker 1: He has worked in cable TV, he's worked on hedge fund stuff.
Speaker 1: Per his resume, he has been on the brand side multiple times, he's an advisor to startups and he also has his own startup.
Speaker 1: So with that somewhat lengthy intro, matt, there's parts of your story I definitely want to dig into more than others.
Speaker 1: But my first question right off the bat is how did, how have you managed to spread such a wide net in your career of interests?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they, nate.
Speaker 2: I you know when you said that I had experience in cable TV, I was like really, is that right?
Speaker 2: Where do you see that?
Speaker 2: And then you know I had to jog my memory and I did have an internship at CNBC in gosh, maybe 2007, 2008, maybe 0 know, I was never good at school.
Speaker 2: I became good at school when I had to, but you know I wasn't the class clown but school was just really not for me, despite graduating from a good college.
Speaker 2: But the point is I sort of had to pursue opportunities that you know came to me right or that were directly of interest to me.
Speaker 2: And you know I joined CNBC.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned, I actually interned for Jim Cramer for those who are familiar with his show Mad Money because I was interested in the markets and finance and writing.
Speaker 2: I was the editor of our business school newspaper.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's been a fun journey and hedge funds taught me a lot about that.
Speaker 2: Good things can go to zero real fast and there's applications of that to modern day business and startups and e-commerce.
Speaker 2: So it's been a fun journey and excited to dig into some of it with you today, nate.
Speaker 1: Matt, I want to go right to your statement about not being good in school.
Speaker 1: Matt, I want to go right to your question then about not being, or your statement about not being good in school.
Speaker 1: You strike me as somebody who has intentional interests and a somewhat contrarian take on things.
Speaker 1: Was school not interesting to you, like you could do it, but you just didn't, it didn't capture your interest, or was it you were just rebellious or what?
Speaker 1: Because you're clearly successful, you've got a bunch of things working in your favor, but maybe the school structure and system wasn't for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think it was that I was certainly not rebellious, at least I was good at hiding any rebellion from my parents.
Speaker 2: But no, my teachers always loved me, right.
Speaker 2: I was, like you know, the the kid that the teachers love, but couldn't understand why I wasn't studious, right, like you know, when I went home I just wasn't doing my homework and didn't care to do my homework.
Speaker 2: But it was really good at math, you know I'm, you know I'm really good at mental math to you know, to this day.
Speaker 2: So, you know, I was always you know what's that expression Like, you know, very, very street smart, not book smart.
Speaker 2: And you know, as a result of that, I sort of had this epiphany, you know, I guess, sometime during high school and I said, like you know, I'm not going to be that 4.0 GPA, you know, get the scholarships and all that.
Speaker 2: So I sort of have to figure out my own journey.
Speaker 2: Like I knew where I wanted to be.
Speaker 2: I knew I wanted to get that good job out of college and be successful in my career, but I knew it wouldn't be.
Speaker 2: I didn't believe it would happen through, you know, academic achievement.
Speaker 2: It would have to be through, like, figuring out how to get there on a somewhat non-linear path or a non sort of structured path.
Speaker 2: So throughout the different internships that I had during college and, frankly, even in high school when I started my internship for a New York, you know everything sort of built on itself.
Speaker 2: And you know I've always been really good at networking and connecting with folks like yourself and that's always been a superpower for me.
Speaker 2: So it's been, you know I've been, I've been, I've been fortunate in the journey that I've.
Speaker 2: You know I've been fortunate in the journey that I've.
Speaker 2: You know that I see myself on today.
Speaker 1: I also know when you were in high school that you had a business in the early days of the Internet and you were buying and selling baseball cards.
Speaker 1: Unpack that for me because I remember I'm about five or six years older than you, so I remember those really early days of the internet and when people were terrified to buy something on the internet because they thought their credit card was going to get ripped off.
Speaker 1: And yet you at age 14 or 15 were you already had a six figure business going.
Speaker 2: You already had a six-figure business going.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know it's funny, nate, and I appreciate you pointing that out on my LinkedIn.
Speaker 2: I believe you know I haven't put together a resume in many years, gladly.
Speaker 2: But you know, when I was applying for jobs, you know, a little while back before starting my own business, the line on my resume that always provoked the most questions or intrigue was this you know, very small line at the bottom that referenced my 1999 to 2004 sports card and card with a D, not car, but sports card and collectible business.
Speaker 2: And I think I say on LinkedIn that I survived the first dot-com crash, which is sort of tug of cheek, but it's true.
Speaker 2: And to your point, nate, yeah, I started in Canada, where I was born and raised.
Speaker 2: Ebay wasn't even in Canada back in 99.
Speaker 2: Or if it was, it was like no one knew it because I wasn't selling on eBay.
Speaker 2: I was actually selling on Yahoo, had an auction site, yahoo Auctions in Canada.
Speaker 2: This was also before online payments like PayPal or Venmo or Zeller, you know, cash app, you know none of those were around, right.
Speaker 2: So you know I was buying and selling on Yahoo Auctions, literally paying, you know, sending cash in the mail or money orders, you know, Western Union money orders, personal checks, cash Union money orders, personal checks, cashier, like all that stuff, right, literally meeting people in person at you know the mall to like transact and yeah, it was fairly scrappy but I mean gosh, it taught me a lot about e-commerce and you know sort of you know buying and selling and transacting, right Like making money.
Speaker 2: And yes, I, you know, when I went home a few years ago, I still have these like carbon paper stacks of every transaction I made, you know I would keep a copy and then send the, you know, send a copy in the bubble mailer with the card that I sold.
Speaker 2: And you know, I started adding up you know a few of the stacks because I was bored one afternoon and, yeah, it was, it was, it was a healthy six figure business, you know, 25 years ago, as a, you know, teenager, a 13 or 14 year old.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, you know, I'm sure there were lessons back then that I still, you know, can, can still apply to you know running a business today, 25 years later.
Speaker 1: Was there a baseball card or a piece of memorabilia that got away that you still remember?
Speaker 2: You know, the worst part about being a millennial, being a kid of the 80s in the sports card industry is that it was known as the junk wax era of cards, and what that means was that it was just.
Speaker 2: There was so much overproduction in sports cards back then, so none of them are worth anything, or there's very few that are actually worth something.
Speaker 2: Obviously, the Michael Jordan rookie card, you know the Wayne Gretzky rookie card kind of the best of the best.
Speaker 2: But, man, I wish I was born in the fifties and was collecting Mickey Mantle cards, and it was.
Speaker 2: I still have literally tens of thousands of cards back in my childhood home which my parents every day are trying to get me to get out of their house, pick it up and ship it.
Speaker 2: So, um man, I wish it was, you know, mantles and and, uh, uh and actually valuable stuff.
Speaker 2: But yeah, no, it was just a ton of fun and you know, as I said, it taught me a lot about buying and selling, kind of the early days of e-commerce.
Speaker 1: And it was also something that you had a personal interest in.
Speaker 1: It sounds like.
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember we had a baseball card shop four or five blocks from my house and they had the cards behind glass and then you had all the packs that you could buy and there was a wade boggs card that I didn't really like wade boggs, but for some reason this card just spoke to me every time I walked in and I never quite was able to have the self-control to save up and buy the card.
Speaker 1: I would always get 75 cents and I would go, you know, buy a pack and then the next week I'd spend, get 75 cents and I would go buy a pack and then the next week I'd spend another 75 cents, and so I never saved the I think it was $12, if memory serves and so the Wade Boggs card got away.
Speaker 1: But there's a nostalgic part of that and a personal interest that also, I'm sure, fueled some of the business interest part of it.
Speaker 1: And just figuring out, can I actually make money hustling and, you know, being scrappy with this?
Speaker 1: That is the fertile ground for an entrepreneur later in life, like a full-blown entrepreneur later in life.
Speaker 1: But you didn't go that route.
Speaker 1: You went career-wise for quite a while and you had experiences on the brand side, on the advisory side, before ever deciding to do your own thing.
Speaker 1: All in thing, all in, can we unpack a little bit of the e-com and the brand side of your background too?
Speaker 1: Because I think there's a connection for a lot of our founder listeners in today's world of how to leverage your insights being on the brand side and working on the brand side?
Speaker 1: That could really help some of our listeners.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely Nate.
Speaker 2: So, if we fast forward a little bit, I know I sort of alluded to this earlier, but I went to college in Montreal in Canada, moved to New York after college, spent a couple of years at a hedge fund and then, in 2009, I joined what became the first startup.
Speaker 2: I was a part of a company that many of your listeners are probably familiar with, rent the Runway, a women's dress rental business.
Speaker 2: It's now a public company and, yeah, joined them two weeks into that business.
Speaker 2: So I was employee I believe five, you know, five or six, you know an early employee, their first ops hire.
Speaker 2: I had, no, I mean, besides my sports car business doing some fulfillment, I never had any like professional at scale operations experience.
Speaker 2: I think I got a C in my operations management course in college.
Speaker 2: Um, uh, don't tell anyone that Um, but uh, uh, yeah.
Speaker 2: So I, you know, joined Rent the Runway, um, running their warehouse operations.
Speaker 2: Um, you know, couldn't even spell FedEx at the time, right Like it was.
Speaker 2: It was all very new to me, but, um, you know, I, I, I was able to sort of figure it out and you know, uh, being fungible was, continues to be, a skillset that I, you know really pride myself in Um and brand experience, and then you know parlaying that into.
Speaker 2: You know the experiences that I have today or the.
Speaker 2: You know whether it's my own business or you know some of the advisory work I do, some of the investing that I do in in, you know, startups.
Speaker 2: It's all been made better because I've been able to bring these different cohorts together with the experiences that I've had.
Speaker 2: So I spent a couple of years at Rent the Runway and then joined Birchbox, also on the brand side as their first full-time employee, naturally, their first ops hire as well.
Speaker 2: We were a little bit older when I joined.
Speaker 2: We were two months into the business, not two weeks into the business.
Speaker 2: Way less risky that way.
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah, I was able to curtail much of the risks there.
Speaker 2: Um, we're laughing, Um, but uh, yeah, we were.
Speaker 2: We were, uh, shipping about 500 monthly orders uh when I, when I joined the business so still very, very small and when I left four years later, in 2014, we were shipping about a million orders a month and we were operating in five countries globally.
Speaker 2: So it became a really large supply chain, a really large operation, and I was fortunate to have responsibilities in managing that global supply chain a really large operation and I was fortunate to have responsibilities of managing that global supply chain.
Speaker 1: So then you go through the experience of ops being a brand, and then let's now fast forward to what you're actually building today, which is a service for those brands, but you're the service provider now, so tell us about third person.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah.
Speaker 2: So you know kind of some of the origin there Nate is.
Speaker 2: You know, after spending a few years in San Francisco at a logistics startup called Ship, in 2017, I started a consulting business called Second Marathon, which was effectively a fractional supply chain or operations consultancy.
Speaker 2: So helping you know emerging and high growth brands you know, mostly e-commerce brands really solve or avoid a lot of the same pitfalls that I faced when I was in-house as an operator.
Speaker 2: So that was anything from helping brands negotiate their shipping rates, helping them find a new fulfillment partner, a 3PL, helping them refine their own warehouse, packaging, procurement, all that good stuff.
Speaker 2: And then in 2020-ish, when COVID came around, our business was fortunately well-positioned, kind of being at the crossroads of e-commerce and logistics two good kind of markets there and what we saw was that the number one service the brands were coming to us seeking support with was helping them find a new 3PL.
Speaker 2: So you know, long story short, we decided to kind of sunset a lot of the fractional work that we were doing you know, fractional operations work and really kind of dialing in into this one service in particular, essentially leading 3PL RFPs or searches.
Speaker 2: So, uh, did that um successfully for a few years and then again had this epiphany and said, well, this is just kind of a boring old consulting business, right, not very scalable.
Speaker 2: Fun.
Speaker 2: It can be, you know, financially lucrative Um, you get what you put into it.
Speaker 2: But, um, I want to to like help many more brands, right, like the challenge of consulting businesses for those of us on, you know, listening to this, who are doing that today or have done that, you know, you know that you know you sort of cap out on the number of brands or clients you can take on in a given month or year.
Speaker 2: So, in March of 2024, a little over a year ago, about a year and a half ago launched this new business, third Person, which is effectively a platform, an AI-powered platform that helps brands discover and connect with 3PLs.
Speaker 2: So the way I kind of explain it, I know all our listeners, all our listeners are are, uh, you know, know what a 3PL is?
Speaker 2: Uh, after all, it is called the bootstrapper, the bootstrapper's guide to logistics.
Speaker 2: But you know the way I sort of, you know, explain it to my mother, who doesn't know so much about logistics.
Speaker 2: And 3PL is, I, you know, I say it's kind of like a dating app for brands looking to find a fulfillment partner, um, which still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to my mother, but, um, you all.
Speaker 2: So, uh, you know it's kind of like a tinder or bumble for brands come, you know, completely free for brands to use, doesn't cost them a nickel, no credit card, none of that takes a few minutes to share a little bit of information on your brand.
Speaker 2: You know a number of orders a month and skew count and sales channels and integrations need, kind of all that kind of you know baseline information that you would need to start to understand a brand's profile.
Speaker 2: And then what we've built is this algorithm that essentially scores you know Nate's hot sauce company against each of the three PLs on our platform and we've got about 300 different three PLs who have each opted in, who've shared information about themselves, essentially their ICPs, you know their ideal client profiles.
Speaker 2: Our algorithm takes a few seconds to run and then we present the top 10 matches ranked by score.
Speaker 2: So it'll say you know Matt's 3PL in Nashville is a 97% match, you know Sally's 3PL in Minneapolis is a 93% match, and so on down the list.
Speaker 2: And then the brand, and only the brand, can see the 3PLs 3PL in Minneapolis is a 93% match and so on down the list.
Speaker 2: And then the brand, and only the brand, can see the 3PLs.
Speaker 2: 3pls can't see you, but you can see the 3PLs because we want some level of confidentiality there or anonymity.
Speaker 2: And then Nate's Candle Company, or I think I said Hot Sauce Company, can then connect directly with any of those 3PLs.
Speaker 2: You can reach out to all 10.
Speaker 2: You can reach out to none of them.
Speaker 2: You can reach out to all 10.
Speaker 2: You can reach out to none of them.
Speaker 2: You can reach out to four of them.
Speaker 2: You send them a message directly on the platform, like you would message an Airbnb host or an eBay seller, and then the two of you, the brand and the 3PL kind of go about your sales process.
Speaker 2: So really focused on discovery and connection.
Speaker 1: What is it about finding a fulfillment 3PL that is so hard for brands versus, you know, truckload services or LTL or air freight or some other more I'm leading the witness here more standardized services, but why do brands struggle so hard to find the right one?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think that's you know, know, you did, uh, you know, lead the witness, but it's, but it's the truth, right, like and uh, you know I don't want this to come across um, uh, uh, you know, as a, as a pejorative or like dismissive, but like, the trucking market is much more commoditized, right, I mean it is, it is, it is transactional and you know, I probably have freight broker friends who would, you know, kill me for saying that.
Speaker 2: But like it mostly is, it mostly is right, I need someone to bring this freight from, you know, long Beach to Reno, nevada, right, and like, I'm just looking for low cost, right, whereas, you know, certainly I'm biased, but I think there's a lot of truth to my bias.
Speaker 2: The relationship between a brand and a 3PL is like a marriage.
Speaker 2: It is such an important relationship and the market is incredibly fragmented, similar to the trucking market, where there's literally thousands, thousands and thousands.
Speaker 2: Conservatively, there's over 10,000 fulfillment 3PLs in the United States alone.
Speaker 2: Right, and most are highly undiscoverable.
Speaker 2: Right, you know most you cannot discover on Google because they're small, kind of single facility, mom and pop, you know, husband wife businesses, really good businesses, but small.
Speaker 2: They don't have the marketing coffers that some of the larger, you know, venture backed and private equity backed players do have and it's such an important decision because of the amount of community, the daily communication that's required that fortunately for me and my business, but unfortunately for the market brands are really poor at discovering the right 3PL right.
Speaker 2: The most common way is, you know, by Googling or, you know, I guess, increasingly on GPT and other AI tools.
Speaker 2: But you know, the most common question a brand would ask is like hey, nate, I saw that Nate's hot sauce companies are, you know, working with a 3PL.
Speaker 2: Who is it?
Speaker 2: And you tell me, oh, it's Matt's 3PL in Nashville.
Speaker 2: And I say, great, I'm going to work with Matt's 3PL in Nashville.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, nate's got a 20 SKU hot sauce company and Matt's got a 5,000 SKU apparel company with high returns, right Like very and you know I'm doing 10,000 orders a month and Nate's doing 500 orders a month right Like very different profiles.
Speaker 2: Nate's doing 500 orders a month, right Like very different profiles.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, 3pls often say yes to new business, yes, yes, yes, and don't really vet the opportunities correctly.
Speaker 2: So that's what we're trying to do with third person is really help qualify brands in 3PL such that the moment you connect with a 3PL because the score is very high you have a high level of confidence that it's going to be a good fit.
Speaker 1: This is also a.
Speaker 1: I love the topic of brand identities and how five companies can make a fairly similar product at the end of the day, but the brand and the story behind those products in today's world and the narrative that gets built around it is often the differentiator consumers and you've built some kind of community or shared identity with your customers.
Speaker 1: There's a stickiness to that, and that is really the product and the revenue side, and you see a lot of brands invest very heavily in that and creating this perception, and yet when they go out and build their operation side of the business, they struggle sometimes because they may be stronger at the creative side and the product development side or marketing than they are at physical ops.
Speaker 1: And when they partner with the wrong 3PL, there can be a misalignment of the brand versus the execution.
Speaker 1: And so I guess I'm curious as you build out your product further and further, do you seek out certain types of brands that value that alignment between their brand and the ops, or is that not something that you think about at all as being necessary?
Speaker 2: yet yeah, it's not something I focus too much on just yet, nate.
Speaker 2: I mean again, like I said earlier, we're still a young business, so still trying to understand what our ICP is right Like who gets the most value, both on the 3PL side and the brand side.
Speaker 2: I think I mentioned this earlier, but one of the reasons why we wanted to launch this business and make it free for brands is so that we can support many more brands that, unlike our consulting business.
Speaker 2: You know we were charging brands fees, right, and you know I thought they.
Speaker 2: You know I think they're very fair fees, but you know it's a lot of money and that smaller brand cannot afford to pay 10K or 25K for an engagement, even if it's great value that I was providing.
Speaker 2: So, by nature of free, it's somewhat self-selective in that we tend to get smaller brands come into third person than who came seeking our consulting support.
Speaker 2: But we've definitely seen, you know, brands shipping in excess of hundreds of thousands of orders a month.
Speaker 2: So we really have across the gamut, because it doesn't matter whether you're that.
Speaker 2: You know I have friends who are, you know, operations leaders at billion dollar businesses and friends who are just starting a new business, you know, who are pre-launch, and everyone has the same problems of like who is the best 3pl?
Speaker 2: For me it's just.
Speaker 1: The scale of that problem is obviously different depending on where you are what's your favorite part right now about building a company at this particular stage?
Speaker 2: uh, yeah, it's um.
Speaker 2: So this is the first company that I've been a part of that is, you know, truly a software business, and sorry, when I say a part of that, you know I'm leading, or, you know, employed by right.
Speaker 2: You know I've invested in a couple personally, but you know advise a couple that are more software plays, but this is the first that I have significant interest in and it's been fun to build a product right.
Speaker 2: It's hard, no-transcript, I mean.
Speaker 2: You know we're only, at this moment in time, about 16 months old or 16 months young, and we've supported about 1000 brands on their journey of finding a 3PL.
Speaker 2: In the last seven years of my consulting business, I think I probably worked with 150 brands, right, so it's not perfectly apples to apples, right, but you know the point is, is that, like building software, you know, that lives on the internet, right, where you know I woke up this morning and overnight, you know, I had a couple of brands sign up, you know, while I was sleeping.
Speaker 2: And like doing things right, like clicking on our you know respective call to actions right, to do this or to do that, like that's pretty cool, right, and like Matt didn't have to get on a call with them.
Speaker 2: I didn't have to talk to them or send them an email, right.
Speaker 2: It's like it's a software product doing its software thing Right.
Speaker 2: Just like you can, you know, book a fare on an airline.
Speaker 2: Or you know, book a hotel room on Expedia at any moment in the day, right, and you don't have to talk to anyone, right.
Speaker 2: So that's been really thrilling to see.
Speaker 2: And you know we are a lean team.
Speaker 2: You know you are you were talking to our only true FTE.
Speaker 2: You know full time employee here.
Speaker 2: You know I've got a really great team of you know support around me.
Speaker 2: But you know, yeah, we are, we are, we are lean and you know I have this vision of you know where I want to be and you know, every day it's sort of a struggle that we can't get there tomorrow, right?
Speaker 2: So you know whether that's just you know my mantra of kind of staying focused and, like you know, building out a really great first product and not letting others in the market who are doing certain things, you know, conflate where we need to be.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's been a lot of fun and excited to see where we are in another 16 months.
Speaker 1: Who do you talk to when you get stuck?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I have that.
Speaker 2: Um, that's a great question.
Speaker 2: Um, I've got, uh, you know I've been fortunate where I have a lot of um.
Speaker 2: You know friends, peers, mentors, um, who are also running um, I'll say loosely similar kind of at this stage.
Speaker 2: You know early stage kind of bootstrappy.
Speaker 2: You know businesses, also in logistics, you know supply chain, so you know there's a lot of kind of empathy for each other and kind of what we're doing.
Speaker 2: So you know I've got a couple friends there.
Speaker 2: I'm also part of a founders group, couple friends there.
Speaker 2: I'm also part of a founders group you know, similar to the one that you run, nate, called Hampton and tends to be more focused on tech founders than supply chain founders and there's only maybe half a dozen supply chain founders in the group.
Speaker 2: But you know, every month we have a call with, you know, my core group, which is about seven or eight of us and you know just kind of sharing.
Speaker 2: You know wins and losses and you know opportunities and it's been helpful to realize that when you think you're the only one kind of experiencing a particular problem, whether it's personnel.
Speaker 2: You know financial or cash.
Speaker 2: You know product there are, you know everyone else.
Speaker 2: Or you know product there are.
Speaker 2: You know everyone else or you know there's always someone who's been there, done that right and you know where you can learn something.
Speaker 1: So I think just being vulnerable and asking questions and listening is really helpful the phrase that I like to share with founders in particular is either you're going into a storm you're deep in the storm already, or you're coming out of one, and if you don't like where you are, just wait five minutes even.
Speaker 1: Because you can experience all three of those in the same day, and the journey of an entrepreneur is unlike anything else.
Speaker 1: There is more variety and volatility, but also more fulfillment like no pun intended actually of getting to see something that you imagined come to life.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a child that you've created and a different kind of ownership.
Speaker 1: You can still have ownership of results in a career, but it's somehow different when it's your fingerprints and your name that's standing behind it, because there ends up being a sense of personal, healthy personal pride.
Speaker 1: So I guess my last question for you is how do you think about your own identity now?
Speaker 1: Do you describe yourself?
Speaker 1: I'm an entrepreneur or I'm a founder?
Speaker 1: Or are you?
Speaker 1: No, I'm, I'm a builder or an ops guy like?
Speaker 1: How do you think about yourself today differently than you might have 10 years ago?
Speaker 2: uh, I think, I think it depends who I'm talking to, right In, like different circles.
Speaker 2: I don't mean that to sound overly kind of tongue in cheek, but you know, I think there's truth there.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think you know generally, you know, certainly in, you know, within the cohort of folks that I typically talk to, which is, you know, logistics founders, you know logistics leaders, you know maybe even e-commerce leaders, um is, uh, you know, I don't, I don't label myself as a tech founder, right, if I'm at a tech dinner here in Nashville, maybe I do, um, but, yeah, I, I, I, I really consider what we're building here at third person, uh, to be a connector.
Speaker 2: Right, you know, I want to connect people with you know who are like-minded.
Speaker 2: Or, you know buyers with sellers.
Speaker 2: You know I'm always trying to bring together the cohorts that I play deep in, which is, you know, the 3PL market, the e-commerce market and the logistics tech market.
Speaker 2: And you know if I had a nickel, for every time I got a.
Speaker 2: You know a DM on whatever social media or Slack message or a text or an email saying, hey, matt, you know, do you know this guy?
Speaker 2: Or, hey, matt, I'm in the market for an ERP, a 3PL, an OMS, a shipping carrier, like who's the best one or who should I talk to?
Speaker 2: Right, like what I'm trying to do with third person is not only helping brands discover the best 3PL, right, I didn't call this.
Speaker 2: Find a warehousecom.
Speaker 2: Maybe I should have for SEO.
Speaker 2: I'm not a marketing guy either.
Speaker 2: I don't know what I am right, but you know I gave it that fungible name because you know my and vendors, suppliers, can sort of connect amongst themselves.
Speaker 2: Pairing interests and desires is really what I'm trying to do.
Speaker 1: And then and is that the origin of the name, then are you the third person and you're connecting the first and second, or how?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well, you know it was sort of a play on words because you know, my consulting business was second marathon, kind of like the second journey in my career, the first being kind of, you know, being employed and working for others and then.
Speaker 2: So I sort of like the second to third, uh component.
Speaker 2: I also liked, you know, third person, kind of like 3PL, third party, Um and then, but then also uh, you know what, what, what?
Speaker 2: What you're sort of suggesting, Nate, is that sort of third person perspective, right, Like everyone's trying to like ask a friend, like who is the best, who should I talk to?
Speaker 2: Right, and I want, I want to build a platform that helps you make that smart decision.
Speaker 1: Well, let's go right to your ICP, then.
Speaker 1: Who should reach out to you if they need help, and where can they find you?
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 2: So, as I said earlier, we've got about 300 3PLs on the platform, always looking to bring on more.
Speaker 2: We've got single facility 10,000 square foot 3PLs and we've got the largest global you know, billion dollar 3PLs.
Speaker 2: If you're a 3PL, we'd love to have you on our platform.
Speaker 2: On the brand side, you know you can be pre-launch, pre-revenue you know looking at launching your olive oil company in the fall, or you can be, you know, a billion dollar business, or you know, doing tens of millions on Shopify.
Speaker 2: We'd love for you to take a look at our platform and, given that we have three PLs that kind of span the gamut whether you're shipping CBD or alcohol or fresh food or apparel, we've got someone for you.
Speaker 2: So I hate to sound overly cliche, but currently our ICP is basically anyone looking for a 3PL at any 3PL, looking for new leads, um, you can find me on on on LinkedIn, um, so you know, type in my name there Matt Hertz, or maybe it's Matthew.
Speaker 2: We're a little bit more formal on LinkedIn, um, but I, I, uh LinkedIn, but I'm always posting a lot.
Speaker 2: I have a newsletter that goes out every week or so, free newsletter.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, find me there.
Speaker 2: Go to thirdpersonco, not com.
Speaker 2: We were too cheap to buy the M Thirdpersonco.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I'd love to connect with anyone, um, you know, to talk you know logistics and fulfillment.
Speaker 1: Matt, I've enjoyed our conversation.
Speaker 1: I could talk and nerd out on operations with you for days.
Speaker 1: I'm certain, um, and I just I like your straight down the middle sort of dry sense of humor.
Speaker 1: Um, it speaks to me and, like I always say to every guest, that we have and I genuinely mean it we are all rooting for you, matt.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Nate, this has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Thanks for sharing your story, thanks for listening to another episode of the Bootstrapper's Guide to Logistics, and a special thank you to our sponsors and the team behind the scenes who make it all possible.
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Speaker 1: And, of course, thank you to all the founders who trust us to share their stories.