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27. How to Unlock Hidden Warehouse Capacity Without Spending a Dime with Adrian Betts · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:00
  What's happening everybody? Welcome to Scrappy But Successful, the show where I sit down with
• 0:04
  your favorite consultants, we take the comedic route through their life, find out if they're
• 0:09
  successful today because they're sophisticated or because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host,
• 0:14
  Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple Consulting Firm, always helping small businesses become more data-driven. Today's
• 0:19
  fun fact, a silverback gorilla can lift over 1,700 pounds. So if you were just
• 0:24
  watching the NFL draft and you're like, all right, benching 500 is pretty good, they
• 0:29
  got nothing on a silverback. But that's neither you nor there. Today I'm joined by
• 0:34
  my friend Adrian Betts. He's the founder of Xpandur. They're warehouse optimizing experts. And the
• 0:39
  cool thing is they'll unlock capacity and they'll drive profitability without adding headcount, without equipment,
• 0:44
  without new tech. So Adrian's got a whole lot of experience with high volume, tight
• 0:49
  margin warehouses and has some really, really cool outcomes too. So dude, I'm pumped
• 0:54
  to get into this. We know you're successful today, Adrian. The question I have for you - do you think you fall more on the sophisticated side or on the scrappy side?
• 1:04
  I am definitely on the scrappy side. Because there's no tech, there's no extra equipment,
• 1:09
  there's no extra people. It's just like, hey guys, this is what we have. So
• 1:14
  there are going to be times where you have everything you need and the company
• 1:19
  is falling short of the numbers. And they say, can I get more people? They're
• 1:24
  going to say no. I need more forklifts. They're going to say no. Well, I need a better software. They're going to say, we just bought one. Figure it out. So it's all scrappy.
• 1:35
  I love it. Yeah, it's hey, this is what we got. We've got some constraints in here and we're just gonna make it work. Taking back to the beginning, where did you grow up? Did you have entrepreneurs in the family?
• 1:45
  Yeah, I grew up in the Atlanta area and I say grew up because since I wasn't born there, technically some people won't let me claim it. Entrepreneurs in the family, yeah, my mom, she's like...
• 1:59
  Growing up, it was always something and you know the one thing that I would - it took me a while to learn - actually in 2004 I started Expand Your Ink
• 2:10
  and one thing went wrong and I said, oh no business isn't for me and then I started again in 2017 and I said this time I will never fold a company.
• 2:20
  I don't care if I screw up every single day and then there were three examples I thought of - Green and Purple Heinz Ketchup, Crystal Clear Pepsi, and the Pontiac Aztec.
• 2:30
  All three of those things were massive failures, but those companies still make billions of dollars, so why should I be any different?
• 2:40
  So closest entrepreneur, it would be my mom, serial entrepreneur. My sister, she does the same thing in marketing, independent. I'm in supply chain.
• 2:50
  And then further upstream, there's family who way back in the day, they owned restaurants, hair salons, and things like that. I mean, we clock in, we can clock out, and then we're still gonna do something for ourselves at the end of the day.
• 3:10
  Nice. That's awesome, man. So the family of entrepreneurs, essentially. Is it just you and your sister or are there more siblings?
• 3:17
  Well, so it's just me and my sister and she's marketing, copywriting, advertising, things like that. If you put me over in her lane, I wouldn't be able to tell you much other than top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. I'm starting to get a little bit better at marketing. My mom's mainly in IT.
• 3:41
  Okay, so do you have this entrepreneurial bug as a kid? Like, do you have a lemonade stand? Are you selling candy at school or anything?
• 3:51
  I didn't have a lemonade stand. I was terrible at the magazine sales. I was terrible at the chocolate sales. When I graduated college, my first job out of college was car sales. I was terrible at that. I am phenomenal at operations. And over time, it's different when you're an operator because you don't know how to sell. The best thing you can say about how things will go is to show them how things have gone. So one of the things that I've done very well is show my work.
• 4:27
  I can say all of this stuff, but if you go look at all of my content, 90% of this stuff is going to be screenshots of things that I've generated.
• 4:38
  There's going to be some generic images that I pull from the ether but they're mainly to demonstrate a point because most people - if I try to explain to them in my terms, I'm going to lose them.
• 4:50
  But when I explain it into an everyday analogy that they experience, it brings the whole point home significantly quicker.
• 5:10
  Okay, that makes sense. It's almost meeting your audience where they're at. Were you the kid in high school that loved to show their work and kind of explain how they got there?
• 5:20
  It depended on what it was. Like chemistry, I was terrible. History, I was terrible. Science, I hated science projects. What's the hypothesis? I'm like, why am I even testing anything?
• 5:38
  But if you say, look, we have two liters of soda in an eight ounce cup. You have to pour this, not spill a drop, and then drink all of it. How do you do it? There's eight ounces in this cup. Eight ounces goes into two liters this many times. So that means after I get so much in, I need to drink it or pour it out. Which is very funny, because a lot of people I deal with try to pour 20 ounces of soda into an 8 ounce cup and they're over capacity.
• 6:11
  Yeah. Okay, that's a pretty good analogy. How are the grades in high school?
• 6:26
  They were pretty good. Those subjects I told you I sucked at - I still did. But I mean, I remember the kids are like, yeah, I get like 50 dollars for an A, like 20 dollars for a B, 10 dollars for a C. So I'm like, okay cool. This is late 90s.
• 6:50
  So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna undercut this. I was like, hey mom, dad, can I get like $20 for an A, like $10 for a B and five for a C? They said, I'm not paying you anything for your grades. You don't go to school to get paid, you go to school to learn. So if I brought home like six A's and one B, the question would be, why'd you get a B?
• 7:20
  Maybe I'm somewhat robotic, but I will say that with this much experience, I've learned to still have the human touch. And I learned it quite a while ago, so I'm glad I did.
• 7:30
  I was very much in the same boat of if I brought home six A's and a B, my dad would say, what went wrong? That's a very perfectionist mindset. I don't know if you have that too. Did you have to unlearn anything from your parents or your upbringing?
• 7:47
  Oh yeah, I had to unlearn so much. I had to unlearn that 100% to expectation does not mean perfection.
• 8:02
  100% to expectation means this is what an average person is expected to do under average circumstances in an average day. So me being exceptional just means that hey look, maybe I'm a little above average. I'm not perfect. And then the second piece is baseball batting average hall of fame.
• 8:30
  Everywhere else we think perfection is 100% no flaws and people beat themselves up if they get a 98 or a 91. But if you're in baseball, you can strike out 70% of the time with a 300 batting average and you're going to the Hall of Fame. So it's a majority of failure - almost two to one failure - and that's exceptional.
• 8:59
  And I started to apply that to life. When I go to these projects, about two thirds of it isn't laid out. Imagine when you dump over a thousand piece puzzle out the box. You're gonna fail. You're gonna put pieces together. Nope doesn't work. Eventually say, okay, here's a corner. Here's the sky. Here's the grass. And then you put the whole thing together, but that puzzle does not come together in a linear fashion.
• 9:34
  That's a really good analogy. I like that, because everybody's been there. You dump out the box. Even a 12-piece puzzle, you're still going to try and fail on the first few. You start with your cornerstones - literally your corners in that case. As a baseball nerd, I've got to ask - I'm assuming you've been to Truist Field in Atlanta.
• 9:59
  Yeah, so I was just there a couple weeks ago. I was invited there for a private event.
• 10:04
  It was the week of MODX. I was unable to make it to MODX, but a gentleman I've known through networking virtually for quite some time - first time I was able to meet him in person. We went to the Home Depot clubhouse, center field. The mascots came up. We got pictures. I even saw at least one other person I have known virtually for quite some time and we were all able to sit there and chop it up in person.
• 10:34
  Nice, chopping up next to the Chop House. What's better than that?
• 10:37
  I've been in that battery area with all the bars going on. One of the cooler stadiums and immediate surroundings I've been to. They did a really nice job. All right, so take me to the start of the business. What happened in 2004?
• 11:07
  So I still had one year left in college. That's three years after September 11, 2001. And it was very tough for the airline industry. They were furloughing pilots, pay cuts left and right, all the airlines were in bankruptcy.
• 11:27
  I'm like, man, I got to do something other than just aviation if that's what I wanted to do. I got to pivot. Wait, you were gonna be a pilot?
• 11:43
  I wanted to. Yeah, I was gonna. I mean, I'll probably go back. As I get back to Clearwater, no matter when, it's better late than never. I still say, hey, look, here's a few hundred bucks. Let's go up in the air and let me do a little bit of this.
• 12:08
  Because if you're from Atlanta, you know how much traffic there is. So when you're up in the air, you can't stop. So 2004, I said, I want my name in bold in the textbooks. And I said, I just want to go around and fix a bunch of companies. I don't want to just fix one.
• 12:37
  Got out of college and I tried to do it. Some of our parents worked one company 30 years and retired. I never made more than five years at any company. And so here I am, about to be nine years old this year as Xpandur, starting again in 2017. In 2017 I tried to be everything to everybody.
• 13:05
  And I got some business and I said, man, I'd have to do like 10 of these a day in order to match what I'm making W2. And it wasn't a Jerry Maguire moment where you just lose your W2 and go all in on yourself. It's definitely been a transition.
• 13:23
  I've had my periods of being Clark Kent and Superman where I was a W2 during the day, consultant at night, consultant during the day, W2 at night. And that flexibility - my willingness to be flexible on the W2 - it's like, he'll go wherever we need him. Whatever time I was not on the W2 clock, I was putting something back for myself. And that goes back to the beginning where I say, once you clock in and clock out, you still got to do something for yourself.
• 13:58
  Nice. So everybody's got a side hustle. You actually did this right. When I launched, I kind of had it on the side and then I went all in. I had two guaranteed clients that ended up both dropping out on my first day of entrepreneurship.
• 14:23
  And so I went in with basically no strategy. You actually did it right - I'm gonna build this up on the side, put a little bit away, do some math, get some strategy. How do you get your first clients on the side in Xpandur?
• 14:43
  Pure luck, right? It's what you put out. Number one, they're going to be people who admire what you do and how you do it. Not the title - like I get it, I could turn around and I feel like I can run a shift - and the goal is to have everybody run a shift as well as I can. So I can enjoy my vacation. And then they will say, hey, you know you said you do this on the side? Yeah I do. Well I got somebody who's looking for that. Word of mouth, word of mouth - by far in the W2 world and 1099 has been the primary source of new business.
• 15:39
  Okay, I'll challenge you a little bit there because I don't think that's luck. I think that's you putting it out there and just - the classic water cooler conversation. I'd give yourself some credit there.
• 15:57
  Yeah. I'm pretty good with analogies. I'll ask the prettiest girl at the dance if she wants to dance. I'll also ask the least attractive one because it's not about prettiness - it's about I want to dance. I do love what I do. I say I'm excited to be here - that's my greeting.
• 16:23
  If a firefighter does not get called to go to a house that's not burning - if you guys didn't have problems, I'd be at home looking stupid trying to find problems to fix. So I'm thankful that there are problems, the same way a lawnmower is thankful that there's an overgrown lawn.
• 16:54
  You are the king of analogies - this is great. One of my questions is, what's the level of risk taking? A proxy in personal life is when was the last time you were actually on a dance floor? Would you have ever been in the middle of a dance circle?
• 17:19
  Wow, it's been quite some time. Maybe a few years since I've been on the dance floor and maybe a decade since I've been in the middle of a dance circle. You know, when you get invited to your co-worker's wedding, you guys aren't just co-workers anymore. We went through thick and thin, brothers.
• 17:49
  We'd get up off work at 4am because we ran an extended shift and we'd all go to Waffle House. And somebody would say, I'm tired. And it's like, man, shut up - you're going to this Waffle House. We're all tired. That kind of brotherhood - you get invited to a wedding and everybody's dancing and everybody's just as uncoordinated as you. So who cares? Just go ahead and do a couple of moves. Hand it off to the next person and enjoy life.
• 18:29
  That's the thing. You do one thing and people are like, and then you move on. You get in, you get out, everybody's happy. Shout out to a 4am Waffle House.
• 18:40
  Are you having the early struggle where you're doing ramen noodle dinners, anything like that?
• 19:00
  Yes and no. I've definitely had my famines. I've had my moments where I questioned myself. Maybe I should go back to W-2. I've gone back to W-2. And every time I went back, the time got shorter and shorter because God, the universe, whatever anybody believes in was like, hey look - you said all the way back then that you wanted your name to be in bold. You said you wanted to help multiple companies. So why do you keep trying to go back to one? Just - you don't have to see the whole staircase in order to take the first step. Trust me. For the last two years, even if I know the whole staircase is there, you can blindfold me. I don't need to see the whole thing anymore.
• 19:54
  Okay, that's pretty good. Did you ever play the credit card timing game where you waited to charge something until tomorrow because that would hit on next month's statement?
• 20:07
  Of course, of course. And then there are plenty of times where I'm just like, I just want to see a zero. I just want to see that zero balance. And yeah, I'm going to just turn right around tomorrow and go buy $200 worth of groceries and $100 worth of gas. But it's like how often can I cycle through it each month. I've got enough sky miles now, I could probably take myself to the moon and back.
• 20:46
  Watch out Elon, we got Sky Miles. What's the original ICP - the ideal client profile - when you started and has it changed to today?
• 20:57
  When I started it was anybody and everybody. I was like a catfish - anything you threw in the water I was getting it. Now I just say no, no, no, no. My ideal is mid-market - a hundred million to a billion dollars in annual revenue. And more often than not the snub I'm going to get is going to be from Enterprise.
• 21:25
  Like, why would I hire you? I can hire a bunch of Adrian Betts. Yes, you can. But let's not get it twisted - that team is made up of people like Adrian Betts. I've been in Enterprise. You guys lose contracts to your competition all the time. I come in as an independent firefighter because I was a firefighter as a W-2, so I know what that's like. SMB, they usually try to get a jack of all trades and want to pay you for just one. And I'm just like, you want to see the growth and the upside and all it takes is one time to get burned and you're just like, never again.
• 22:07
  Yep. That makes sense. So these are mid-market companies with significant warehouse square footage. Is there a typical industry or product that you're working in?
• 22:32
  So this warehouse behind me is from a launch four years ago. New build, one of the rare second story offices. About a hundred thousand all the way up to the standard 1.2, 1.6 million square foot warehouse. I've been in one that's 2.8 million square feet.
• 22:57
  Typically, primarily it's been general retail - like your Walmart, your Targets. And there's two parts: there's a staple stock - what you sell all year - and then there's a variation of seasonal items. Mother's Day, Easter, dads and grads, 4th of July, back to school, back to college, Labor Day and so on.
• 23:39
  Okay, gotcha. Tell me about this situation where I'm in a standard size warehouse. I can't hire more people, we just bought new tech. How do you actually work with clients to find more profit, find more capacity?
• 24:03
  Yeah, that's a great question, because the very first thing is - all right, somebody was here when they bought this system, and somebody knows what the process is. What is their process? Well, you do this. Stop. You get up out your seat, let me sit in your seat, and you make me do it as if I am a puppet. Like, you pull the strings.
• 24:32
  Step one - quick blurb. Step two - quick blurb. Step three - quick blurb. And then I say, so basically, let me make sure I got this. Let me do the next one from scratch. Is this what right looks like? Yes, that is what right looks like. Okay, clean up the documentation. Now - who is your best person? I don't mean who works the hardest. I don't mean who's been here the longest. I mean, who has the competency to learn and to teach?
• 25:17
  And once we find one, we say, okay, if the manager doesn't know who that person's backup is, you tell me who you trust to be your backup.
• 25:28
  Now train them with what I trained you on and use this to train them. And then I want to see them make the cake just like I did and like I had you do for me. And you tell me who you trust. One more time. And so now we have four backups. Vacation, callout, jury duty - I still got somebody. Now if I have a team of 20 people or more, you get five people in each group - you're the pitcher, you're second base, you're shortstop, you're third base. You're my infield. If I need my third baseman to go play first base, he can do it. May not be as good, but he can do it.
• 26:21
  Do you think it's chicken or egg - people first or process first?
• 26:35
  Process first. Without a shadow of a doubt. But you can't yell at you, I can't write you up, I can't fire you, I can't do anything until I've given you - here's what we're doing, here's what right looks like. Watch me do it, I want you to do it, and I'm gonna tell you how well you did and where you can improve.
• 27:06
  How do you measure success? Is there like an efficiency rate or throughput?
• 27:37
  Absolutely. Whatever the rate is - these buildings aren't just thrown up by kindergartners. Somebody engineered this thing and says, an average person on an average day under average circumstances should be able to do this. And it's usually calculated by saying, here's the motion it takes. And then we reduce that by 15% for personal time, fatigue and delay. So we'll say it's a hundred an hour as an easy number.
• 28:13
  The day we start training - first week - I want everybody to focus on the technique. Do not rush.
• 28:19
  25%. Everything's behind and we're all late. I said we've been late on everything anyway. What's one more week? And we've been shipping everything wrong. At least we're late but shipping everything right. Week two we're at 50%. Third week, 75%. Fourth week, 100%. At some point, now we're on time. And as I get people to be above average, that's where we start to chip away at the backlog. And we can say, not only is everything going out right, but now we are on current day.
• 29:02
  And is that a typical timeframe? Can you see significant improvements on a weekly basis?
• 29:06
  Yeah, it's anywhere from four to 13 weeks. The simpler the task, the shorter the window. And even if it's 180 days, one thing is not going to take 180 days. You say, in month one, we want to focus on the two all beef patties. Month two, the special sauce. Month three, lettuce. Month four, the cheese. Month five, pickles and onions. Month six, sesame seed bun. Month six - Big Mac. And I say, guess how much I expect you guys to do this first week? Zero percent. You tell people that and they're going to bust their hump because they're eager. And they're going to try to rush and do half of it wrong. You don't recognize speed - you recognize precision and accuracy. Good job. That looks just like the one on the commercials. And when you recognize that, everybody else will follow suit.
• 30:37
  Okay, how do I know if it's the perfect Big Mac? Is it return rate? Are there certain specs? Is there a quantifiable measurement?
• 30:57
  Yeah. Number one - order accuracy. The three parts of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich - peanut butter, jelly and bread. Did we pick those three items for the customer? Did we ship it in full? Man, I shipped you the bread, but I really just shipped you the peanut butter and jelly. I'm gonna ship you the bread in a separate box. I got all your stuff, but now you're paying shipping charges twice. Then there's cube - that's another one. You wouldn't ship an iPhone in a shoe box. You're going to get charged for the amount of space you take up on that truck. And return rate for sure. But when you do them all on the front end, the return rate is a lagging indicator. The better we are on these leading indicators, the better response we'll have on the lagging ones.
• 32:22
  Okay, that makes sense. Alright, let me hit you with some Scrappy vs Sophisticated. Lightning round. You mentioned all the Sky Miles. What is your airport personality? Are you grabbing a cocktail before the flight?
• 32:48
  Sky Lounge. I'm definitely going to the Sky Lounge. I'll get there at least two hours early. If it's the Atlanta airport, I've got sky priority. So I go through the sky priority lines - I go all the way around to the North terminal. And I'm not dressed like I'm going to a business meeting. I'm dressed like a celebrity trying not to be seen. So I look like a complete bum.
• 33:22
  I bypass the hundreds of people and I just show my little thing, walk right on through, Mr. Betts come on up, go right in the Sky Lounge, let me get an old fashioned, go get $50 worth of food before I get on the plane. And if I'm getting on there first, Stuart is gonna say, you want a drink? Yeah, absolutely.
• 33:48
  Nice. I'm going to have the experience because I've had plenty of C37E experiences. I've earned it.
• 33:59
  There's a baseball player nicknamed 37B - he'll do anything. All right, so you've got a system in the airport. This is pretty sophisticated. If somebody's trying to schedule a meeting with you, are you saying hey I'm free Thursday afternoon, or do you send a calendar link?
• 34:19
  Calendar link. Yeah.
• 34:26
  How many phone numbers do you have? I've got two - business and personal. Yeah, I got a son, he's 19, so he's out of the house. Once upon a time this was my phone and this was his. He said, hey look man, I don't like your rules so I'm just not gonna do them. I said okay.
• 34:47
  He asked me, did you turn off my phone? I said, no, I turned off my phone. He's on his own now. And ever since then I've just kept them both.
• 35:01
  Okay, gotcha. How do you answer the phone? So somebody that you know is calling - maybe a business associate - how do you answer the phone?
• 35:13
  Jack, how are you doing today.
• 35:19
  Very classy. All right, I like it. How often do you work from your couch?
• 35:26
  Right now pretty often. There's a remote component to what I do.
• 35:32
  But there's nothing like watching the NASCAR race at the track. Atlanta Motor Speedway, been there twice. We were in a booth in the FedEx box and the only thing we wanted to do was go all the way down to the front row. And when you can actually feel the cars going by, dude, it's awesome.
• 36:13
  Take me inside the office. How many monitors are on the desk? Right now it's just my laptop. I do have a very sophisticated little mic, camera and everything. But since I got this new laptop in, about a year old, I think I need to get some drivers updated. I've been quite spoiled for the last two years because every project has had the multiple monitor setup. And going back to trying to do everything on just your laptop with the little mouse pad - no. So I'm in the market for the triple monitor quadruple monitor setup very shortly.
• 37:10
  Okay, how many clients do you work on at a time? Is it a singular focus per time or maybe one or two?
• 37:17
  For the most part it's been one, but that's not been the limiting factor. You know, a director does not have just one domicile building - they run multiple sites. So it's all about building that infrastructure out - guys, here's the Big Mac I expect from every single building. And here is the person at each one of those sites responsible for giving me that Big Mac. And here's the frequency I want those Big Macs. And when you say, hey, I don't have any sesame seed buns - what is your plan to get sesame seed buns? So it's that infrastructure where it's more like, hey, here's the infrastructure. Make sure you follow this. Call me if you need anything, but I don't need to be there eight hours a day.
• 38:30
  Okay. Early goings, maybe even today - have you ever sold something where you're like, yeah, we've done this a hundred times, but you've never done it?
• 38:41
  Let's see. So something that almost - when I walk into almost every WMS system, it was the first time I saw it. Sometimes they'll say, well, have you worked with this before? We need somebody who's worked with it. I said, look, man, I've never driven in North Dakota, but I'm willing to bet I know how to drive in North Dakota. All the systems do the same thing. I just need to know how it's done in this system.
• 39:11
  And it's - not gonna lie - every single time I go into a project, they have become more challenging in scope, which is great. And there is still - if you're a boxer and you're 25 and 0, you still worry about getting knocked out in the next fight. That person can hit you back.
• 39:47
  Right. Especially in the world that you live in, the amount of different WMS systems out there is crazy. I'm talking with somebody and we're like, do we pick a single WMS or do we go for all of them? I am shocked at the amount of solutions that are out there. But you've got the systemized approach of - I'll figure out how to do it in this WMS, make it work with the team, still doing phase one, phase two.
• 40:34
  Yeah. Eat, sleep, breathe - and a couple of bodily functions. But no matter where you go, domestically or internationally, those are the basic things you gotta do. And same thing in the WMS life.
• 40:45
  Yep. All right, take me inside the inbox. How many unread emails is too many?
• 40:53
  Let's see how many do I have - seven thousand nine hundred and eleven.
• 40:59
  Oh my god. So there's no limit is what you're saying.
• 41:07
  It could be pretty high. I've recently filtered out my subscriptions so that does not count the subscriptions. But I will say okay, I'm gonna let you keep asking questions because I think you're gonna get there.
• 41:26
  Well, have you ever sent an email that is only in the subject line with no body? Yeah, all the time. I've sent stuff without the attachment. It happens.
• 41:47
  If you copy and paste something into an email, do you make sure that all the fonts are now the same size, same color, or are you just pasting and hitting send? For the most part yes. What I've done is I went back and I said, OK, what's the entire template? Format it all, copy all, paste all.
• 42:10
  What was your inbox thing that you were thinking I was going to get to?
• 42:14
  I thought you were gonna go to the desktop. I do not create files. I don't create the folder. I just - because when I do that, I have to know the folder that I put it in. And then I couldn't remember the folder I put it in. So I couldn't find it. So it's desktop, desktop, desktop. And if it wasn't for technical obsolescence, 25 years of stuff would be on the desktop.
• 42:58
  That does it for me. 100% scrappy. The judge has ruled.
• 43:00
  Yes! If I need to find something, it's Control F. And I do have a system. The first thing is I save it as the year, 2026, then the month, 05. I don't do slash because slash in a file name creates a sub-folder. So it's year dot month dot date, then space dash space, then subproject, then activity dash subactivity. It gets very deep, but when I need to find a keyword - pick, pack, ship, unload, load - I keep it simple.
• 43:51
  I like that though. You're basically creating a folder structure within the file name. And it drives me crazy if somebody does 5 slash 1 slash 2026 in a file name because I want to see it sorted by date, which means year, then month, then day. So that way everything is in line. I am so glad you're on the same page there. Minus the folder structure. A significantly sophisticated file naming structure - I can get behind it.
• 44:31
  Yeah. For my SOPs, I've got a pretty standard format too. Anything - if I had to tell somebody who's never got out of bed and made breakfast before, it's a lot of steps to get dressed. So it would say, 001, get ready. 0.001 get out the bed, 0.002 stand up straight, 0.003 go use the restroom. And then when you get to the kitchen, 002 make breakfast. And so when you save a new file, it automatically numerically sorts in the order that you do things.
• 45:15
  Yup. Alright, I like this. This is a pretty sophisticated system for a guy who is 100% scrappy.
• 45:28
  It's basically the Dewey Decimal System - which for those who don't know, that was the search engine before there was the internet. Remember when you had to go to the library to find something out? Like that's where all the knowledge lived.
• 45:51
  I never got the Dewey Decimal System, but now I think I could probably go back and figure it out, because I think my brain works similar to yours - step one is 001. It's not 1, because later when I get to step 11, 11 is going to be sorted right next to 1. So it's got to be 001 and then 011 for 11.
• 46:13
  Dude, thank you so much for coming on. What do you want the folks out there to know? Anything you're promoting?
• 46:29
  Yeah, so I was doing this thing called Lunch in the Warehouse every two weeks with my co-host. It's kind of served its course. However, something is coming out in the future - it's going to be kind of like the base of a TV show where, like The Office, we know that Superstore is Walmart, we know the guy from King of Queens drove for UPS. This fictitious world is going to be a Fortune 500 company and it allows me to tell stories from my perspective as an operations person, but will also have the interactions with sales, marketing, transportation, finance, quality, HR, and everybody else. If you are any part of an organization then you are likely to be a guest or you're likely to hear a story of me interacting with somebody like you. So that would be in a couple of quarters. Just thought about it earlier this week but it'll be out sometime this year.
• 48:04
  Okay, and is it going to be called Lunch in the Office or that's just the working title?
• 48:13
  Nah, it's gonna be called something different. I can't say what it is yet, because I want to get everything official. I'm pretty good with play on words. It's gonna have a couple double entendres in it.
• 48:04
  Very nice. Okay, I'm excited. Keep me in the loop, viewers. Pay attention. Thank you so much for coming on. 100% Scrappy Man. I love it.
• 48:13
  Thanks for having me, Jack.