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Hire Attitude, Not Experience with Jose Li · Founder Mode

• 0:00
  You're entitled, that's the keyword.
• 0:01
  You're entitled to get 100% of your money back.
• 0:04
  Now to your point before Jason, you know there there are some
• 0:07
  APIs. So if you're if you're sign up
• 0:09
  for for for tracking, for example, you're going to get an
• 0:12
  e-mail that says hey Jason, you know your package with tracking
• 0:15
  number 123 was actually delivered at 3:41 in the
• 0:19
  afternoon, OK. What you don't get is you don't
• 0:22
  get an e-mail that says, hey, Jason, because.
• 0:24
  You're entitled to a refund. With our guaranteed time
• 0:27
  commitment, here's a refund for 49, $9.43.
• 0:31
  You know that's you do not get that.
• 0:33
  So, so a, you have to know about the policy.
• 0:35
  Most people don't, you know, $2 billion with the B are left
• 0:39
  unclaimed every year. You're listening to Founder
• 0:56
  mode. Where we breakdown how real
• 0:58
  businesses actually get built. Today's episodes about turning
• 1:01
  everyday frustration into an opportunity.
• 1:03
  Kevin, I get frustrated. You get frustrated.
• 1:06
  It's not about a new market, not a new idea, just fixing
• 1:09
  something that's been broken for years.
• 1:11
  Yeah, and the best businesses often come from problems people
• 1:15
  tolerate. And the difference is someone
• 1:17
  deciding not to tolerate it anymore.
• 1:19
  Kevin, before we bring Jose out, you've known him a very long
• 1:22
  time. Talk about how you guys first
• 1:25
  connect in the origin story of your relationship.
• 1:27
  So it was random FedEx connection.
• 1:29
  I connected Jose like he ended up was building this business
• 1:32
  and I ended up being one of his first kind of early Angel
• 1:34
  investors. He sent me like A1 pager with an
• 1:36
  IP address. Yeah.
• 1:38
  And you know, it's a small check, but I think like the
• 1:40
  craziness is to see like most of the checks of that vintage of
• 1:44
  either exited or folded, most folded as you would imagine for
• 1:47
  Angel investments, you know, 14 years ago.
• 1:49
  But the fact. That he's right now.
• 1:51
  He's built a real business. It's kind of incredible.
• 1:54
  So yeah, really interesting and excited to sort of talk to him.
• 1:56
  But I mean, Jason, we're we're talking about founders who just
• 1:59
  don't give up. Like what's your take on those
• 2:02
  or the sort of the difference between those that stick it out
• 2:05
  and then those that maybe throw in the towel?
• 2:07
  Yeah, well, I mean, I'm thinking about those Angel investments
• 2:09
  you made, right? You probably, what, 90 plus
• 2:11
  percent of them did not make it and probably not for lack of
• 2:14
  trying. But we we talk about this all
• 2:15
  the time on the show. And there's just something about
• 2:18
  resilience. Like founders tend to be built
• 2:20
  different. The ones who make it like they
• 2:22
  even if the first company in the second company failed the third,
• 2:24
  you know, I mean, they just keep they're like, no, no, no, I'm
• 2:26
  going again. And some of them try to solve
• 2:28
  the same problem over and over again, right?
• 2:30
  And that's to me is crazy. But we were talking about this
• 2:32
  this morning in the context of like, you know, you look around
• 2:35
  and we're in these founder communities and there's people
• 2:37
  that have just just been grinding for years and years.
• 2:39
  And if you try something, try to do something for long enough,
• 2:44
  your odds of success go up. It's just like surface area.
• 2:48
  And we had one of our earliest episodes of founder motors like
• 2:50
  Lux surface area. So for me, it's, it's a reminder
• 2:52
  that like for all of you listening and watching, they're
• 2:55
  out there just grinding and they're like, man, is this ever
• 2:57
  going to get easier? No, it's not going to get
• 2:59
  easier, but you're more likely to succeed the next day.
• 3:02
  You do it just one more day, one more hour, one more prompt, one
• 3:06
  more e-mail. Just don't give up and if and
• 3:09
  sometimes don't give up means shut down the startup that's not
• 3:11
  working, but don't give up on the idea or the problem that
• 3:13
  you're solving. And I, what I'm excited about
• 3:15
  with the conversation with Jose is like, I think he's going to
• 3:17
  tell us something similar to the fact of this and like talk
• 3:21
  through the things that he's done to, to stay energized and
• 3:24
  live through, you know, lots of potential deaths of this
• 3:26
  business and idea and, and, and survive and come out the other
• 3:29
  side and have like a business that's still working, right?
• 3:31
  Yeah, it's pretty incredible. I mean, Jose is a founder who's,
• 3:34
  like, built a company about solving one of these kind of
• 3:36
  obsessive problems and been doing it now for the good part
• 3:40
  of a decade and a half. Yeah.
• 3:41
  And he? He's done it by aligning
• 3:42
  incentives and removing friction, right?
• 3:44
  Should we, should we bring him out?
• 3:45
  Yeah, let's do it. Jose, welcome to Bounder Mode.
• 3:58
  You saw a broken system. Most people just accept it and
• 4:01
  turned it into a product. Today we're talking about how to
• 4:04
  spot that kind of friction and actually build something around
• 4:07
  it. Yeah.
• 4:07
  Thank you Kevin for having me on the show.
• 4:09
  Yeah, Jose, great to have you here.
• 4:12
  You've been. You've kind of seen shipping
• 4:14
  from both sides and people don't know yet, but that is a pun and
• 4:17
  we'll get to it. What was the exact moment that
• 4:20
  you realized there was a huge gap?
• 4:22
  Nobody was fixing. Interesting question, Jason.
• 4:24
  So back in the day, I used to, I used to work for FedEx, I used
• 4:27
  to work in the dark side, you know.
• 4:29
  So I ran Fedex's retail and e-commerce practice for a number
• 4:32
  of years and I came across a research report that identified
• 4:36
  the largest pain points that companies had in regards to
• 4:39
  shipping #1 pain point regardless of size.
• 4:43
  Small companies, medium companies, and large companies,
• 4:46
  they all want to save money on shipping.
• 4:48
  And as you can imagine, that goes against what FedEx wants to
• 4:51
  do and what UPS wants to do. And then #2 pain point in
• 4:54
  regards to shipping that companies and people in general
• 4:58
  have is they don't understand their shipping cost.
• 5:02
  I don't know when the last time you guys took a look at your
• 5:05
  FedEx or your UPS invoice, but my guess is it hasn't changed.
• 5:09
  It's deja vu to 1994 because the carriers have no incentive to
• 5:14
  change it. They have no incentive to make
• 5:16
  it easy to understand. There's only two players in the
• 5:20
  market, FedEx and UPS. I'm going to say 2 and A half
• 5:22
  with the USPS. Well, now with Amazon, you know,
• 5:25
  shipping coming into the, into the equation, maybe another one,
• 5:28
  but very difficult to understand invoices, very difficult to
• 5:33
  understand shipping cost and, and I, you know, I thought that
• 5:36
  there had to be a better way. So I left FedEx, I started 71
• 5:40
  lbs. And there's only two things that
• 5:42
  we do at our company. One, we help companies save
• 5:45
  money on shipping, and two, we give them data, dashboards,
• 5:49
  reports, API's, information so they can make better decisions
• 5:53
  from their shipping cost. Why do you think such an obvious
• 5:56
  problem just stayed unsolved for so long?
• 5:59
  Well, I think that there's two £800 gorillas in this market and
• 6:03
  there's only two, you know, like, you know, I can draw
• 6:07
  analogies to banking very difficult as well, but there's
• 6:11
  hundreds of providers. So there's more competition.
• 6:14
  You know, you go into your Wells Fargo app and yes, it's
• 6:17
  difficult to do or to look at it.
• 6:19
  You go into your into your TD Bank or, or Bank of America and
• 6:23
  there's companies that have actually tried to solve this,
• 6:26
  you know, so in parcel shipping there's only two and it's been,
• 6:30
  you know, a little bit of, you know, behind the scenes kind of
• 6:33
  scenario. So.
• 6:34
  So that's one of the assumptions on my end.
• 6:37
  Jose, you took something messy and very manual, and you've made
• 6:41
  it pretty invisible to the customer.
• 6:43
  What was the hardest thing about that transition?
• 6:45
  What's what is still the hardest thing about that transition,
• 6:48
  Jason? Well, you know.
• 6:50
  You haven't. You solved it yet.
• 6:51
  You Come on, Jose, You've been. Solving it, you know, so a lot
• 6:54
  of people think that that FedEx and UPS have APIs that it's easy
• 6:58
  to code into and they actually don't I mean, they have APIs for
• 7:01
  shipping, they have APIs for creating a tracking number, but
• 7:05
  they don't have an invoice API, which is a lot of what we do.
• 7:09
  So we kind of built the plate for shipping if you kind of if
• 7:13
  it kind of makes sense through a lot of manual processes that we
• 7:18
  identify that we've automated over the years.
• 7:20
  And you know, through a lot of trials and errors, we've we've
• 7:23
  built a system that you know, to your point, Jason is really
• 7:27
  invisible to the customer. But what we do at the end of the
• 7:30
  day is, is we provide savings to our customers, you know, and
• 7:34
  that's, that's what we that's what we will continue to do.
• 7:38
  Yeah, I think one thing that, but I think about the early
• 7:41
  version and I remember like our first e-mail, we we connected
• 7:44
  over Angel list and an e-mail in 2012, January 2012.
• 7:48
  So it's been a minute. And I remember your when you
• 7:50
  sent me like your one pager and we were sort of looking at it.
• 7:54
  The there was an IP address. It wasn't even a website.
• 7:56
  It was literally an IP address. It's like, hey, here's the demo
• 7:58
  on this IP address. And then and I have to only
• 8:01
  imagine if the IP address was the front door, like think back,
• 8:05
  you know, 14 years ago, what was the rest of the code sort of
• 8:09
  like the app looking like at that point.
• 8:10
  And you know, what did this look like?
• 8:12
  You know, sort of that first kind of automation step where
• 8:15
  we, you know, today we're talking about agents and crazy
• 8:17
  stuff. But I'm curious, like reminisce
• 8:19
  with us for a minute. Yeah.
• 8:20
  So let me tell you, I used to do part of the coding.
• 8:22
  So so my tech team doesn't let me code anymore.
• 8:25
  So how's that for for a transition?
• 8:27
  If. Only if only Kevin's tech team
• 8:29
  could could be as as as kind of strong with their boundaries,
• 8:34
  yeah. You know, I, I used to do sales,
• 8:36
  my sales team doesn't let me sell anymore.
• 8:38
  So, you know, look, there's been a lot of, a lot of, as you say,
• 8:41
  Kevin iterations over the year. We, we've, we've made so many
• 8:45
  mistakes. We can write 1700 books about
• 8:47
  it. But you know, at the end of the
• 8:49
  day, what, what we're still trying to do is we're trying to
• 8:51
  keep the carriers honest. There's, we haven't talked about
• 8:55
  the services that we offer yet, but you know, there's, there is
• 8:58
  our, our bread and butter has always been the, the money back
• 9:02
  guarantee policy. So this is the policy that both
• 9:06
  FedEx and UPS have had for the last 30 plus years.
• 9:09
  So not sure if you know Jason before you learn about 71 lbs.
• 9:12
  Any time FedEx or UPS delivers late, even by 60 seconds, you as
• 9:19
  the owner of that FedEx or UPS account, you're entitled to get
• 9:22
  100% of your money back. You know how many times that
• 9:25
  I've ever gotten any of my money back from FedEx or UPS?
• 9:28
  Probably 0, right? So I'll give you an example.
• 9:32
  You know Kevin, I'm assuming you're in the Bay Area.
• 9:35
  You ship a package from San Francisco, you want it in New
• 9:37
  York City tomorrow at 8:00 in the morning or 10:30 in the
• 9:41
  morning or 3:30 in the afternoon.
• 9:43
  These are time definite overnight today or international
• 9:47
  shipments if the UPS driver delivers late, so let's say 1031
• 9:52
  and then or later 331 in the afternoon or later.
• 9:55
  You're entitled. That's the keyword.
• 9:57
  You're entitled to get 100% of your money back.
• 10:00
  Now to your before Jason, you know there there are some APIs.
• 10:03
  So if you're if you're sign up for for for tracking, for
• 10:07
  example, you're going to get an e-mail that says, hey, Jason,
• 10:09
  you know your packets with tracking number 123 was actually
• 10:13
  deliver at 3:41 in the afternoon, OK.
• 10:16
  What you don't get is you don't get an e-mail that says, hey,
• 10:19
  Jason, because. You're entitled to a refi.
• 10:22
  With our guaranteed time commitment, here's a refund for
• 10:25
  $49.43. You know that's, you do not get
• 10:28
  that. So, so a, you have to know about
• 10:31
  the policy. Most people don't, you know, $2
• 10:33
  billion with the B or left unclaimed every year.
• 10:36
  You know, you have to do the research.
• 10:37
  You're like, OK, hey, I bought a service for 3:30 in the
• 10:40
  afternoon and got there at 341. Yes, it was.
• 10:43
  OK. What do I have to do?
• 10:44
  I have to call FedEx. I have to file a claim.
• 10:47
  By the way, you only have two weeks to file a claim.
• 10:49
  OK, so there is a time window and.
• 10:51
  And look, you're gonna as a as a one person shop or one person,
• 10:56
  you know, filing a claim. You know, you're gonna take 30
• 10:58
  minutes, 45 minutes on the phone.
• 11:00
  The carriers are gonna ask you for information that you're not
• 11:03
  gonna have readily available. So now you're upset.
• 11:06
  I don't want to use an occurred source here.
• 11:08
  So you're now you can. Curse all you want, this show
• 11:10
  has Kevin Hendrickson on it. It's fine.
• 11:11
  All right, so look, you're gonna be be pissed and you're going to
• 11:13
  be like, OK, look, I don't have the, I don't have the invoice
• 11:17
  number. Where do I get my invoice number
• 11:19
  where the invoice actually gets sent to you a week later?
• 11:22
  OK, so now you gonna have to you have to make a decision, OK?
• 11:26
  Do I wanna do, I wanna, you know, take the time next week to
• 11:30
  spend another 30 minutes, 45 minutes on the phone.
• 11:33
  Is it really worth it for maybe it is for $49.43, but if it's,
• 11:38
  you know, an $11.00 shipment, maybe you don't do you give it
• 11:41
  to your assistant? Do you give it to your you know,
• 11:44
  do you, do you do you whatever a number of things.
• 11:47
  And, and that's why a lot of people A, don't know about the
• 11:50
  policy B, don't have time to claim it.
• 11:52
  It's cumbersome, it's manual, inefficient.
• 11:55
  And you know what we did to your point, Kevin, is we built
• 11:57
  software automation and we offer this on a contingency pricing
• 12:01
  basis. So you know, company signed up
• 12:04
  with us for free or they give us their FedEx UPS credentials.
• 12:08
  We do all the work behind the scenes and then we just give you
• 12:11
  unexpected money into your bottom line.
• 12:14
  Everybody loves finding free money.
• 12:16
  So, Jose, this sounds too good to be true, right?
• 12:18
  So what almost killed it in the early days?
• 12:20
  Like, why? Why?
• 12:21
  You know, you guys are still cooking, You're still going.
• 12:23
  What was the stuff that like almost put you out of business?
• 12:26
  What are some of the things that almost put us out of business?
• 12:28
  Yeah, I'll give you one example. It was called COVID.
• 12:30
  So COVID happened and back in the day we were A1 product
• 12:35
  company. So we only had money back
• 12:37
  guarantees as as a business and you know the carriers suspended
• 12:41
  the refunds during that during the Covic time.
• 12:43
  So 90% of our business, we were down 90%.
• 12:47
  And you know, we decided to nobody knew what was going to
• 12:50
  happen. We decided to continue with the
• 12:52
  business. You know, we appreciate the PPP
• 12:56
  programs that the government provided to us, which allowed us
• 12:58
  to break even. And then we said, OK, what do we
• 13:00
  do? And then we said, OK, we have
• 13:02
  all this data from from our customers.
• 13:05
  And that's what led us to build product #2 which is contract
• 13:08
  negotiations. So we use benchmark data to help
• 13:12
  our customers negotiate better FedEx or UPS agreements.
• 13:15
  And I can tell you today that contract associations does more
• 13:19
  than 50% of our Business Today. So that's one example, Jason, of
• 13:24
  things that you know, gone. I mean, it's pretty cool, right,
• 13:27
  to see that sort of, you know, turn around and I think, you
• 13:29
  know, you're you're not unlike a lot of businesses, right?
• 13:32
  COVID sort of created this massive shock in just the world,
• 13:36
  right? And and being able to have to
• 13:37
  react to that. How do you think about sort of
• 13:39
  the next thing, right, which is like we talk about AIA lot on
• 13:42
  the show, like people are talking about AI that's all the
• 13:45
  rage. Like how do you sort of see your
• 13:48
  business or or either of those two products, right?
• 13:50
  I'm curious, has you think about the things you have built over
• 13:53
  the last how long has the business been around 15 years
• 13:55
  now. Going on 14, yes. 1415 years,
• 13:58
  yeah. And so it's like, how do you
• 13:59
  think about the areas where like, oh, this is what you know,
• 14:02
  is not just tricky, but it's really going to be hard for AI
• 14:04
  to do it and, and sort of where AI maybe has helped you and the
• 14:08
  team and, and that could be a new opportunity as well.
• 14:10
  Yeah, a lot of a lot of great questions there.
• 14:12
  I'm going to try to answer some. Yeah, you know, so, so one I can
• 14:16
  I can see, I can see as we build our portfolio of products
• 14:23
  bundling would be a good strategy that we would pursue.
• 14:27
  So I can tell you that the money back guarantees is our go to
• 14:31
  market. It catches people's attention.
• 14:34
  To your point question, Jason, look, we have to create
• 14:39
  awareness because a lot of people are not aware of this
• 14:42
  policy, right? But once we are in front of
• 14:44
  them, whether it's in person or through our digital programs, we
• 14:48
  create the awareness, we educate them and we get them on boarded.
• 14:53
  And I can see refunds being potentially a lost leader in our
• 14:58
  portfolio and and using refunds. So today we charge a percentage
• 15:02
  of the savings on on the refunds, which is, you know,
• 15:05
  very good margins by the way. But I can see a scenario where
• 15:08
  we offer refunds 100% for free and we use that as customer
• 15:12
  acquisition because we know that we're going to upsell you on
• 15:16
  product two or three or four or five down the road.
• 15:19
  Today we don't do it because you know, looked at the numbers on
• 15:22
  refunds are really, really interesting.
• 15:24
  So, so today we don't, we don't have a need to do it, but I can
• 15:27
  see that down the road as an example of the company building
• 15:30
  more products over time. Well, great.
• 15:35
  Speaking of customer acquisition, just for a minute,
• 15:37
  because you, you, you kind of triggered something for me.
• 15:39
  How did you get those first 10 customers?
• 15:41
  You know, you're talking about this awareness problem being
• 15:43
  fundamental to the business that people aren't even aware that
• 15:46
  they can do this. Like what was the what was the
• 15:48
  thing you did to? Get those first.
• 15:49
  A lot of it was cold calling and, and reaching out to my
• 15:53
  personal network. I mean, look, I went to, I went
• 15:57
  to Carnegie Mellon for, for, for grad school and I reached out to
• 16:00
  people like at, at CMU and they said, hey, by the way, this is
• 16:03
  what we're doing. Who do I need to talk to?
• 16:05
  Yeah. And Carnegie Mellon was probably
• 16:07
  your #3 customer, you know, and then, you know, so a lot of it
• 16:12
  was, you know, I'm going to call it grassroots, you know, kind of
• 16:16
  word of mouth, just just reaching out and, and contacting
• 16:19
  different people. And then over time, you know, we
• 16:22
  build a team. We built we, you know, we've,
• 16:24
  we've, we've, we've, we built a sales team, we build marketing.
• 16:28
  You know, I can tell you today that on, I'll, I'll give you a
• 16:32
  stat on, on, on 11 leads that we get.
• 16:34
  We're going to get a refunds customer.
• 16:36
  So we are continuously working on refining our messaging and
• 16:41
  trying to get better conversion and and you know, so, so we
• 16:46
  manage the business very, very aligned to what AB2B SAS
• 16:50
  business and those metrics are. And I'm jumping on some of those
• 16:54
  answers, Kevin, I can see a scenario where, you know, our
• 16:57
  data is something that we would definitely leverage and I can
• 17:01
  see a scenario where we either bundle our existing data with
• 17:07
  third party data. Yeah, look, I'll give you an
• 17:09
  example whether weather is a good source, whether it's
• 17:12
  looking at at a Google weather API, mapping it to a tracking
• 17:17
  number as an example to a shipment origin is in San
• 17:20
  Francisco, weather in San Francisco.
• 17:22
  If it's a FedEx shipment, it has to go through Memphis.
• 17:25
  What's the weather like in Memphis?
• 17:27
  And the destination is New York City.
• 17:28
  So there's a weather data point in in New York, in New York
• 17:32
  City. And I can see as an area where
• 17:34
  we'll put a score or a probability on a shipment.
• 17:37
  Now today shipping is, is purchase on primarily 2
• 17:42
  variables. It's really price and, and, and
• 17:47
  time, you know, hey, I want a shipment to be delivered
• 17:49
  tomorrow at 3:30 in the afternoon.
• 17:52
  Carrier A gives me $15, Carrier B is 17.
• 17:55
  OK, they're kind of both the same.
• 17:56
  OK, I'll go with the $17.00 or the $15 shipment.
• 18:00
  I can see a scenario kind of like Speedy A back in the day
• 18:02
  where they would actually add a, a percentage of probability or
• 18:06
  confidence to your, to your, to your trip where because it's
• 18:09
  going through Memphis and because there's a weather storm
• 18:13
  or something. And that that score, that
• 18:15
  confidence level goes down to, you know, 81 versus, you know,
• 18:19
  UPS because it goes through Atlanta is a 92.
• 18:23
  And even though the cost is higher with one, now I have
• 18:27
  another piece of data to make a decision whether I want to buy
• 18:31
  the cheaper or the higher option because I have a different data
• 18:35
  point. So as an example, Kevin, that
• 18:37
  that's something that that that that I can see as build over
• 18:40
  time. Yeah, no, I like that a lot.
• 18:42
  And I'm curious like where where that goes.
• 18:45
  Like you you mentioned like, hey, I you know, I'm I'm going
• 18:48
  to get a new customer one one out of 11 times.
• 18:51
  How has that changed? I mean, is the team still cold
• 18:53
  calling? Do you guys use a lot of paid
• 18:55
  media? Like how do you go reach?
• 18:56
  I mean, this is the thing that honestly any e-commerce small
• 18:59
  business, like there's a wide variety of people that obviously
• 19:02
  use FedEx and UPS depending on their scale.
• 19:05
  And I'm curious like, how have you guys decided to attack that
• 19:08
  market today? And it's one thing that, you
• 19:10
  know, Jason's kind of in the growth business, I've been doing
• 19:13
  a lot of kind of selling AIB to B SAS and like the tactics that
• 19:18
  we've used in the last, you know, year, very different,
• 19:21
  right, in terms of like how we go to market, how we approach
• 19:24
  that, how an AI enabled that is. And I'm curious, like for your
• 19:27
  business, how do you reach all these small businesses, right?
• 19:30
  I got these people are busy, right?
• 19:31
  Like they're they're, you know, and in a big company, the
• 19:34
  decision makers probably hard to get to, right?
• 19:36
  They're not picking up the phone.
• 19:37
  You're checking on new rates or something.
• 19:39
  Like I'm curious like where you guys have thought about that
• 19:41
  today? Yeah.
• 19:42
  So, so, so we use a number of customer acquisition programs,
• 19:46
  right. So, so we dial for dollars.
• 19:48
  I mean, look, we have a sales team, we have SDRS, we buy a
• 19:51
  list without for dollars. We ask for an appointment.
• 19:53
  Hey Jason, can I get, can I get 10 minutes of your time tomorrow
• 19:57
  at 10:00 in the morning so we can share more about how we can
• 20:01
  give you money into your bottom line, right?
• 20:03
  And yes, there's a percentage of those that convert that, that
• 20:06
  take the appointment and there's a there's a percentage of those
• 20:09
  that actually become customers. Look, we.
• 20:11
  Look like practically is that like somebody making 100 calls
• 20:14
  and getting 2 appointments a day?
• 20:15
  I'm always just like, you know, we have a buddy, Jason I, who's
• 20:17
  like does this for a leg. And his thing is web services,
• 20:20
  they literally call hundreds of people per person per day with
• 20:23
  auto dialers and they book a couple appointments.
• 20:25
  Like it's pretty low percentages but it works.
• 20:29
  Yeah. So that's been a learning
• 20:31
  experience. So we've tried outsourcing
• 20:34
  overseas. We've done it in the house.
• 20:36
  We hired the junior guys, we hired the very senior guys.
• 20:40
  Where we are today is we're doing this in house, we're using
• 20:44
  the auto dialers. So we're using the data, you
• 20:46
  know, the data company, that's the Zoom infos of the world and
• 20:49
  we're making, I'm going to say in 2000.
• 20:53
  Is it between 2 and 3000 phone calls per week per person per
• 20:56
  SDR. OK. And yes, we're getting I don't
• 20:59
  have the numbers off the top of my head, but but yes, it is.
• 21:01
  It is converted into the funnel. OK, as as an I wouldn't take it.
• 21:06
  I wouldn't take it alone and just do SDRS and Co calling
• 21:10
  because it is so so there's a little bit of a machine going
• 21:13
  on, right. So we have the dollars we have,
• 21:15
  we have a workflow with, with hotspot that that emails this
• 21:20
  prospect, you know, day after gives them information, you
• 21:24
  know, if they if they attend the, the the call, it gives them
• 21:28
  a message number 2. If it doesn't, it gives them a
• 21:30
  different message. So there's been a little bit of
• 21:32
  a workflow there that we built over time.
• 21:35
  And yes, today I'm going to say that that I, I was very, very, I
• 21:43
  was very pro outsourcing this, but no, today we're doing this
• 21:48
  all in the house. You've built the machine in
• 21:50
  house it sounds like. A you know the other thing we
• 21:54
  haven't, you didn't touch on this Kevin, but look, we use, we
• 21:58
  use the ACRS, the SDRS as the minor leagues into the sales
• 22:02
  team. So we have, I can, I can go 3
• 22:05
  episodes on the mistakes that we made hiring salespeople, OK.
• 22:11
  It's hard and. We just and you know, look, it
• 22:13
  could be, it could it could be a guy or a gal from FedEx or UPS
• 22:17
  with the best perfect resume and it just doesn't.
• 22:21
  Work yeah, we've had so many episodes as they talking about
• 22:25
  building great teams whether it's teams of AI agents or teams
• 22:28
  of human employees and it's it's there's there the art and
• 22:31
  science of hiring is is for real.
• 22:33
  What I want to touch on is something you said earlier in
• 22:35
  the show that is true founder mode.
• 22:37
  You basically have fired yourself from all these
• 22:40
  functions that you're talking about these systems you've built
• 22:42
  right. You know I'm not selling things
• 22:43
  anymore I'm not coding anymore what are you doing Like how are
• 22:46
  you how are you doing this Are you architecting these systems
• 22:49
  Tell me about your role now as founder of this business.
• 22:51
  It's been around, you said 14 years.
• 22:53
  Where is your leverage at this point?
• 22:55
  Yeah, great question, Jason. I'm still trying to look for
• 22:57
  that leverage kitten. Look, it's, it's a lot about
• 23:00
  building our new products. So it's about build, building
• 23:02
  our our pipeline. You know, I'm still speaking how
• 23:06
  products should be done. You know, I work with the with
• 23:09
  the tech team on, on trying to be that liaison between what our
• 23:13
  customers tell us and what we think we should be building and
• 23:16
  then being that project manager with the tech team.
• 23:19
  So, so there's, there's a lot of that that I spend my time on
• 23:24
  and, and yes, I don't have, I mean, look, the team still most
• 23:27
  of them reports to me, but but for the most part, I have a very
• 23:30
  good team that that takes ownership of the different
• 23:33
  functions. So that's a little bit of the
• 23:36
  mix between my time today. I like it.
• 23:38
  No, I think it's cool. I mean, and so I want to keep, I
• 23:41
  think it's kind of fun because so many people, they listen to
• 23:43
  this show are building new businesses.
• 23:44
  And I think to see Someone Like You with the amount of
• 23:47
  experience you've accumulated selling into a space that's
• 23:50
  already really noisy, right? People calling on small
• 23:52
  businesses are trying to do something other than cold
• 23:55
  calling. What other sort of tactics have
• 23:57
  you either tested or sort of landed on that are working for
• 24:01
  you in 2026 that you're like, hey, if I was going to, you
• 24:04
  know, take all my accumulated scars and be like, hey, I'm
• 24:07
  going to clean sheet this, It sounds like build a cold calling
• 24:10
  team in house with a good HubSpot workflow.
• 24:12
  What are the other ones that you'd recommend to somebody
• 24:15
  listening? Yeah.
• 24:16
  So believe it or not, trade shows is one of our best go to
• 24:20
  market. So you know, I mentioned to you
• 24:23
  the beginning, you know, a lot of people had that reaction.
• 24:25
  Oh, wow, this is too good to be true.
• 24:27
  I had no idea. You look, we should get our
• 24:30
  marketing department, I'm talking to myself, we should get
• 24:32
  our marketing department to videotape the reactions of the
• 24:35
  people at a trade show because that that would be a whole
• 24:38
  channel that we can build. But yes, trade shows is is a
• 24:42
  very good ROI for us. So we're going to go to a trade
• 24:46
  show. So, you know, we're going to get
• 24:47
  between 100 and 200 leads. Now, over the years, we've
• 24:50
  learned how to do trade shows better.
• 24:53
  You know, we were just joking with our team here.
• 24:55
  And I can tell you 98% of the people at a booth are very
• 25:00
  reactive at a, at a show, for whatever it's worth, people are,
• 25:03
  are sitting down at the, at the booth waiting for somebody to
• 25:07
  come in and say and ask you, Jason, a question.
• 25:10
  Look, we've we, we are in your face and we ask you, you know,
• 25:15
  hey, Jason and the Sirbo FedEx or UPS and look, are you?
• 25:18
  The guy at Costco when I walk in, who's like, who's your phone
• 25:22
  carrier? And he's selling me the AT&T at
• 25:24
  Home Internet service. Is that, you know, the
• 25:26
  difference is most people know who AT&T is, right?
• 25:29
  They've never in our case. People like 71 lbs.
• 25:32
  OK, but BS. So we have to create the
• 25:34
  awareness. We have to create the awareness.
• 25:37
  And I think we've gotten very, very good at what one liner to
• 25:41
  use that is. So when people are walking and
• 25:44
  they literally have 3 seconds in between a booth because they're
• 25:47
  looking backwards or they're paying attention to the phone or
• 25:50
  whatever. And look, we're going to get X
• 25:51
  percent of those 10 that walk by to have a conversation.
• 25:55
  And a lot of times they're like, no, I don't, no, no, no.
• 25:59
  And look, we ask one more question and they're like, oh
• 26:02
  really? And it starts a conversation and
• 26:04
  all of a sudden, you know, they're, you know, very
• 26:07
  interestingly, that becomes ideally a customer after that.
• 26:09
  So trade shows is one source. So I'll tell you, Kevin, last
• 26:15
  year, between last year and this year, we're doubling the number
• 26:19
  of traitors that we did last year, OK.
• 26:21
  And we're very thoughtful about which traitors we go to.
• 26:26
  So look, we'll, we'll take anybody as a customer, any
• 26:31
  industry, because we don't discriminate as long as you ship
• 26:34
  with FedEx or UPS. But there's a number of
• 26:36
  industries that are top five or top 10 for us, right?
• 26:39
  So we know what industries to go to.
• 26:41
  And look, we also don't go into, into trade shows where there's
• 26:46
  ten of our competitors. You know, we just don't.
• 26:49
  And we, we, we, we're, we try to look at what we do, what we
• 26:52
  don't do. And there's literally thousands
• 26:55
  of trade shows, you know, a year.
• 26:58
  So that has been, that has been a program that we are continuing
• 27:04
  to get better at, but we are doubling and and putting in more
• 27:09
  resources into. It Jose, what is what is keeping
• 27:12
  you interested in this very specific problem after 14 years,
• 27:16
  you seem still super fired up man and like we talked to
• 27:19
  founders who've been doing a long time and they're burnt out,
• 27:21
  but you're still like you're. Look, I got a chip in my
• 27:24
  shoulder, you know, Kevin is, is one of the, you know, a few guys
• 27:29
  that said, yes, I'm, I'm interested in, in being part of
• 27:32
  your journey. You know, I don't want to tell
• 27:34
  you how many, how many investors I talked to a whole bunch of
• 27:37
  them. Look and, and, and look, I don't
• 27:40
  keep a list of the, of the, of the 800 and 900 that said no,
• 27:44
  but I have one that, that kind of represents the, that group.
• 27:48
  And I'm like, OK, this, This is why we do it.
• 27:50
  So that's one of the reasons why we do it. 2 is the, look, we,
• 27:54
  we, we want to help the, the Davids go against the two
• 27:58
  Goliaths out there. And, and we feel like, you know,
• 28:01
  the small business guy, the medium sized company doesn't get
• 28:04
  the same level playing field like the large guys.
• 28:07
  And, and we're trying to add our, our, a little, you know,
• 28:10
  grain in the, in the sand here that can help.
• 28:13
  Look, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to, I
• 28:16
  don't want to flatter what we do.
• 28:17
  But we're very, very proud. I mean, we helped 5000 customers
• 28:21
  or upwards of $80 million in savings that we give customers
• 28:24
  over the years. So look, we, we made a lot of
• 28:27
  mistakes, but we're also helping a lot of customers.
• 28:29
  And that's, that's what I, that's what we continue to do,
• 28:32
  you know. Jose, I think that's a great way
• 28:34
  to close it. And I mean, this is this is, I
• 28:36
  mean, this to me is pretty inspiring because I think again,
• 28:39
  you know, one of my first Angel investments, right, that I made,
• 28:42
  you know, many, many years ago. And I think it's incredible to
• 28:45
  see you. And I was telling Jason before
• 28:47
  the show, like we've, you know, we still touch base periodically
• 28:50
  a couple times a year, you'll have a question, I'll ping you
• 28:52
  on something. And it's just amazing to see
• 28:54
  sort of entrepreneurs just putting the work in, but also,
• 28:57
  you know, doing something that's so tricky.
• 28:58
  And so, you know, for the listeners out there, like, where
• 29:00
  can they find you? Where's the best place to follow
• 29:03
  you? But more importantly, you know,
• 29:04
  sign up and try the service if it if they do shipping with UPS.
• 29:07
  Or yeah, so thank, thank you, Kevin for those for those words.
• 29:10
  I appreciate it. You have no idea how much I
• 29:13
  appreciate you and, and the people that that believed in,
• 29:18
  in, in our journey when we were a PowerPoint presentation, when
• 29:22
  we were, you know, a very early IP address that you mentioned.
• 29:28
  I don't even remember that one, but OK.
• 29:30
  I'll forward it back to you. It's incredible 1 shooter, I
• 29:32
  love it. But yes, so 71 lbs will come is
• 29:34
  our website, most of our almost all of our information there,
• 29:38
  you know, and on social everything is at 71 lbs.
• 29:40
  So that's how we, that's how we, that's how we connect with our
• 29:44
  customers. Jose, this was practical, it was
• 29:46
  clear and is full of real world lessons.
• 29:49
  Thank you for joining us. No, thank you.
• 29:51
  I appreciate the time. Man, I've known Jose forever and
• 29:53
  that's still one of the best breakdowns I've heard on
• 29:55
  building a real business in a category that no one pays
• 29:58
  attention to. 2 1/2 giants in a shipping $2 billion in unplanned
• 30:02
  claimed funds every year and Jose just decided to go pick it
• 30:06
  up off the floor. Yeah, I loved this part where he
• 30:09
  was just really honest about hiring.
• 30:11
  Right. Like the perfect resume from
• 30:13
  FedEx or UPS never actually worked for them.
• 30:16
  He had to build his bench of, you know, SDRS completely by
• 30:19
  hand. Yeah.
• 30:21
  I mean, totally. And he's got the chip on his
• 30:23
  shoulder of like the 8 or 900 investors, he said, who passed,
• 30:27
  I mean, 14 years and 1000 customers, $80 million refunded
• 30:31
  back to his customers. And he's still spicy, man.
• 30:34
  He's just got that founder mode energy.
• 30:35
  That's right. All right, Kevin, what are the
• 30:37
  founder mode top five from this one for you?
• 30:39
  Yeah, I mean, friction nobody fixes is just a business in
• 30:43
  plain sight #2 I think align incentives or just don't bother.
• 30:47
  And then third is like this one product is fragile and COVID
• 30:51
  sort of forced him to move to that second product and now, you
• 30:54
  know, that sort of leading, you know, in terms of how he's
• 30:56
  driving the business forward. 4th is one thing we've both seen
• 30:59
  with this idea that trade shows and we've heard from other
• 31:01
  guests how cold called were really working for them in 2026.
• 31:05
  And then you know the minor leagues are really in your own
• 31:07
  org, right? I think we've done this today.
• 31:09
  You've done this on your teams is hire sort of new, unproven
• 31:13
  but hungry people and then let them sort of earn their way to
• 31:16
  sort of work through the rest of the company and really turn into
• 31:19
  some of your stars farther down. Yeah, if this episode made you
• 31:22
  look at a boring problem in your industry differently, send it to
• 31:26
  a founder who's tolerating something that they shouldn't
• 31:28
  be. And if you're shipping anything
• 31:29
  with FedEx or UPS and you've never heard of the money back
• 31:32
  guarantee, go check out 71 Lbs. Links to Jose's work are in the
• 31:37
  show notes. And subscribe to Founder Mode,
• 31:39
  leave us a review and share it with someone on your team.
• 31:41
  It helps more operators and builders find the show.
• 31:43
  That's it for today. Because the best businesses
• 31:46
  aren't built on new ideas, they're built on old problems
• 31:49
  nobody else was willing to fix.