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Firing The Man
THANK YOU TO OUR 25,000+ LISTENERS! We are so thankful to be one of the TOP E-Commerce Podcasts delivering high-quality authentic content to you! Serial Entrepreneur’s David Schomer and Ken Wilson share tips, advice, and insider knowledge about all things Amazon FBA, Walmart WFS, and E-Commerce. Discover how you can create multiple income streams by selling physical products online so that you can have the time and freedom to do what you love - whether that is spending more time with family or traveling the world. Ken and David have successfully created several six and seven figure online business ventures. During the journey, they have had major wins, losses, and lessons learned. This podcast will teach you about selling physical products online through platforms such as Fulfillment by Amazon, building a team, outsourcing, listing optimization, pay per click (PPC) advertising, driving traffic to your listings, and productivity tips / life hacks that will provide a path to be successful in building your online business. It’s a mix of interviews, special co-hosts and solo shows from Ken and David you’re not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.
Firing The Man
Beyond the Cubicle: E-Commerce Strategies with Bill Carlin
Bill Carlin takes us on a fascinating journey from his early days as an eBay seller to becoming a fulfillment logistics innovator and podcast host. What began as a part-time wholesale business in college evolved into a $10 million Amazon enterprise, eventually leading him to found Shipmate Fulfillment when he spotted critical gaps in the 3PL industry.
Through his experiences interviewing disruptive entrepreneurs, Carlin has identified two distinct paths to e-commerce success: the magnetic marketers who captivate customers with compelling messaging, and the innovative product developers who create truly original solutions. Both paths, he notes, share one crucial element – grit in the face of inevitable challenges.
Carlin's "digital real estate" concept provides a powerful framework for e-commerce diversification. Just as physical retailers aim to get their products into multiple stores, online entrepreneurs should establish their presence across various platforms rather than relying solely on Amazon. This multi-channel approach creates resilience against platform-specific disruptions while expanding customer reach through marketplaces like Walmart, eBay, TikTok Shop, and Wayfair.
For those struggling with analysis paralysis, Carlin offers his "B+ principle" – launch when something is good enough rather than pursuing perfection. This mindset prevents the inertia that kills so many entrepreneurial dreams before they begin. "When you aim for the B+, you can celebrate the A's," he explains, highlighting how lowering the bar for "ready" allows entrepreneurs to start generating real-world feedback.
Ready to optimize your fulfillment strategy or explore 3PL options? Check out Racklify, Carlin's free platform dubbed "Zillow for warehouses," where you can explore logistics providers without the commission-based matchmaking that typically drives up costs for sellers.
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts, serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson entrepreneurs, david Shomer and Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of Firing the man podcast, where we bring you the most insightful conversations with trailblazers in business, e-commerce and entrepreneurship. Today, we have a special guest who knows a thing or two about disruption, innovation and challenging the status quo. Joining us is Bill Carlin, the host of the Disruptive Minds podcast, where he sits down with visionaries, thought leaders and industry pioneers to uncover the strategies and mindsets behind game-changing businesses. Bill has developed deep conversations with some of the most innovative minds out there, and today we're turning the tables to learn more about his own journey.
Speaker 2:In this episode, we'll dive deep into what inspired Bill to launch his podcast, the impact it's had on his career, the most memorable guest he's hosted and his insights on where business and e-commerce are headed in the future. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a business leader or someone who just loves hearing from disruptive thinkers, this conversation is going to be one you will not want to miss. Bill, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me Absolutely. So, to start things off, can you share with our audience a little bit about your journey of launching the Disruptive Minds podcast and what inspired that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'm going to take it way back, way before there ever was a Disruptive Minds podcast and what inspired that? Yeah, so I'm going to take it way back, way before there ever was a Disruptive Minds podcast and start at the very beginning, Right? So a long time ago, you know, I was one of those small little eBay sellers, you know, selling some stuff back in 2010, 2011. And then I went off to college and I found myself doing wholesale part-time, right. So I was working with goods being imported from China and sold to small to medium-sized retailers some like Sears right, Ross's, Rose's right and I had this great idea why are we selling this to retailers, right? When we could just sell it on Amazon directly to the public?
Speaker 3:And you know, this is about the time when Amazon, you know, was two years in the prime. So we started selling on Amazon, really quickly ramped that up to about, you know, almost $10 million a year revenue. And then, from there, we were like, well, we're already fulfilling our own stuff. Why don't we fulfill other people's stuff? So that led to the development of Shitmate Fulfillment, which I've been doing for the last 10 years.
Speaker 3:And that's kind of where the Disruptive Minds podcast kind of came from is. I was having these discussions and stuff with people we were bringing on the YouTube channel people we were doing guest blogs with things like that. I was like I have a pretty large network, why don't I just spin up a podcast in my spare time and see where it goes? So that led to the development of the Disruptive Minds podcast and it's been fun. You know we've done I think 40, 50, some odd episodes. I'm a little less consistent with it than I used to be where it was. You know scheduled episodes that came out on a fixed schedule, but we're still releasing episodes and we're still going strong.
Speaker 2:Outstanding. Well, it's fun to talk to another podcaster because I think we share a unique experience that a lot of people don't have. And you know, when people ask me, you know I've been doing it for six years we're at episode like in the yeah 265. And people ask what's it like? And I would compare it to getting like a PhD in business. I mean, you have, I've had 265 professors. I've learned something from everybody and it's been an absolutely outstanding process. If someone were to give me a million dollars tomorrow to stop podcasting, I would not take it, and so I'm curious, like what's been your experience with it?
Speaker 3:So my experience with it has really been the network effects, right. So a lot of these people I've already known. But then I went off and I got on like some of network effects right, so a lot of these people I've already known. But then I went off and I got on like some of the platforms, right. I got on like Podmatch and I started doing some like LinkedIn prospecting and then people just started showing up my email inbox, which was really weird, right, just like, oh, how'd you get that? But okay, I'll talk to you. You know I talked to all kinds of people, right.
Speaker 3:So you know, it got to the point where, you know, I can really choose who I wanted to talk to and why I wanted to talk to them, and it really allowed me to explore topics that either I was curious about or my listeners were curious about, and it really let me, like, choose my own adventure. And that's what I thought was like really unique about podcasting. Flip the other way around, right, like the listener gets to choose their own adventure because they get to listen to different hosts or a different podcast, but the podcast host literally has like that ultimate level of control where it's like I'm going to talk to the guy who has this startup, or this guy made me laugh. I'm going to talk to him and just see what he's about. Right, and that level of control, I think, is what makes the podcaster experience so much different.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I agree with everything that you said in terms of my own experiences, and so with everything that you said in terms of my own experiences, and so you know, as I look back on my tenure as podcast host, there are a couple guests that stand out as they said something or they told a story that changed the course of my life or changed the way I thought about business. Curious, who have been those, like who have been the most impactful guests for you?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I think back to some of like the earlier episodes, and the things that have really impacted me the most as a host have been the story-driven works, right, like people that have had great stories, because you know it's always great to throw back to like an idea or a concept, but if there's somebody you talk to and their story really resonates with you, you seem to remember more of the conversation, right.
Speaker 3:So, like, one of the first guys I had on the guy's name was nicky and he was like a immigrant right who like came to america because he was like persecuted and then started a bunch of businesses, and it was like really interesting to hear like especially like at the time somebody speak positively about the country right, and like actually have like a positive, optimistic outlook based on saying, hey, I was here and now I'm here and I think it was like a really eye-opening conversation because it like made you great right, and I I feel like a lot of times we we have this abundance mindset in podcasts, right, like we're out there looking for like this next nugget, right Mining for gold, and you don't really realize how much of an abundance there really is, because 10, 15, 20 years ago people didn't have these kinds of outlets, people didn't have these channels to engage and have these conversations.
Speaker 3:And that's why that one sticks out to me in particular. Right Like I can go through a name like oh, I learned this lesson from this marketing guru. Or oh, this guy who did this consulting thing. He had this great saying let me rattle it off real quick, but really those like stories and like how people come up with these ideas and realizing that, like everybody has that struggle, everybody has that struggle, everybody has that path right.
Speaker 3:And it really grounds you in reality.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. Now, one of the things that as a podcaster you get to talk to a lot of successful people and over time you start to notice some common threads of things that these successful people have in common. Curious, what have been some of those common threads that you've observed?
Speaker 3:So I've noticed and I'm going to go off on a little bit here because you know I run a business and interact with other businesses all the time right, I go to trade shows every other week, right, like I'm very engaged, and what I've realized is there's two types of people that I think succeed. The first are the marketers, right, and the second are the people who build truly great and original things. And these are the two people that I seem to run into again and again and again. Right, the guy who can captivate somebody with his messaging, with his content, with his story, with his you know, packaging, the colors, the way everything integrates, right, that's the master marketer. That's the guy who has like magnetism Think of him as like your overly social friend that everybody at the party wants to be around.
Speaker 3:Those guys have success in e-commerce. They have success in business in general because people want to be around them. Those guys have success in e-commerce. They have success in business in general because people want to be around them, because they're magnetic. And then you have the other people that are like more of an innovator right, it's that socially awkward guy. You walk up to his booth at the trade show and you go. You built this robot that like calls people and and like he, he's like real shy, but at the same time you're like this is so original, this is so great, that innovation on that product I would have never thought about Right. And these guys also succeed because they just have a truly great product and they outwork people. So in my time around, I would say that probably 80 percent of the successful people I meet fall into one of these two products. Either they're an innovator or they're, you know, your social butterfly marketer type.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. I like that and I've never thought of dividing them into those camps.
Speaker 3:But as I think of previous guests, I can definitely think of those two distinct individuals entrepreneurial bone right that go out there and they buy some stuff and they sell it on amazon. Those guys usually fit in one of those two camps. They're even like this idea is so genius, I'm gonna innovate that, I'm gonna, you know, bring that to the market. It's gonna work. Or they're like you know they could sell. You know they could sell sand in a desert, right. Like that kind of personality absolutely one.
Speaker 2:I've observed I'm curious if you have observed this as well is grit, like you may have, you may think, like the listeners may think, like, oh, maybe an Ivy League education is what leads a lot of people to be successful, which, yes, that does help, but I would say, like more so than that is grit, and like failure in response to failure. What's your read on that?
Speaker 3:So, as somebody with an Ivy league education, I can say that the the grit thing is really interesting, because when you look at people that I know that have succeeded, whether they went to an Ivy league school or not, they're the kind of people that brag about the hard work, right. So you have some people they're just not cut out for it, right. They can't. They don't have that grit, they don't have that determination. They take the easy route. But like I remember, you know, 10 years ago, being in college and somebody waking up and bragging, going well, I was up till three o'clock last night doing that paper.
Speaker 3:And most of those guys now have, like, very, very successful careers, right. And the same thing's true in entrepreneurship. Like these guys who have these battle tested stories, the guys that are like sleeping on the floor of their office. You know one, there's something a little little loose up there, but that's what gets them going Right. That's where they derive the joy they love. You know the whole path to that success, and those are the people that really succeed, are the people that embrace the journey, and they embrace the ups and downs of the journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Where'd you go to school? I went to Penn. Very nice, very nice, yeah, and, and and I should point out Ivy league and grit that is possible and probably the ultimate combination. So not to, not to pick on Ivy League. So now you've put your eggs in the e-commerce basket. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I've been there forever. Why? It's the perfect combination, in my opinion, of immediate success and delayed gratification. Right. So Rome isn't built in a day, but a successful ad campaign is right. Right, a successful product launch is right.
Speaker 3:So you have this like mismatch of short and long term goals that are not always present in other industries and other places, right. So when I think back to the days of selling on Amazon right, I could do one simple thing like lower the price a dollar or get an extra three reviews that day, and I'd feel the instant gratification, I feel that instant result. But at the same time, I had these larger, longer visions. I was developing product lines, I was building brands, brand recognition and seeing Google traffic go up for the brand names that I was introducing at that time. And when you start being able to have both that short-term dopamine spike of wow, that ad campaign went well, or oh, that sale went well, or oh, we did really good on Black Friday paired with the long-term, like I built a brand, I built something that people are using, right, it's like that ultimate sense of fulfillment, because I'm somebody and I think a lot of people in the e-commerce space feel similar.
Speaker 3:These are people that want to make a change, but they're also realists, right, like they like the idea that somebody might be using their product or getting value from it, that they're having that impact. Right Like they might not be a doctor, they might not be a nurse, they might not be, like you know, the big guy on TV doing the political harm movements, but they have an impact and it's a real impact and I think that's what's so attractive about e-commerce is it's like you know, man sells water bottle, person drinks out water bottle. I impacted person Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, Absolutely Now. So when would have? About what year would have you started on amazon?
Speaker 3:so let me go back.
Speaker 2:I think I started in 2015 on amazon okay, I would consider those days still the wild west, uh it's the back half of the wild west.
Speaker 3:But like that's when you still had vendor central and all that stuff still going right like it was. It was like crazy. So funny story with the vendor central program. I think they just continued that like 2018, like we're going way back. We were selling furniture through vendor central by the container load right so the big 40 foot containers that come off container ships. We'd get a container of furniture in, we'd load a 53 foot tractor trailer and Amazon would buy all that inventory right off the bat and then they would sell it and mark it up, rather than like the conventional method where you choose your price and you choose all that right.
Speaker 3:So Amazon was like doing this like hybrid wholesale thing they called Vendor Central. Well, three years of doing that, all of a sudden I hear this truck horn right outside the building and this truck's like I'm here with delivery. Amazon dropped off an entire truckload of returns for that and then took credits back for that entire truckload of you know return furniture, which it's return furniture. I wouldn't I would have paid them to keep it right Like it's. It's beat to death furniture. But it was that kind of time where there was like this weird hybrid mesh going on and you know they were still figuring out their business model, a lot of sellers were still figuring out their business model and like these, like weird interactions, like that were relatively common.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of stories like that of the Amazon Amazon and the Amazon third party seller sometimes being in conflict with each other, and so are you still selling on amazon.
Speaker 3:No, no, I, I ran for the hills, okay, I. So we're selling on amazon. I will give the caveat is the ultimate um mountain, the summit. Right, because you can have unparalleled success. I mean, their buyer pool is amazing, right, you're going to reach so many people that it becomes a necessity to go on Amazon. Build the brand, right, even if you're doing wholesale. Right, you want to build the brand on Amazon so there's some name recognition, so you can get in the X store or Y store and go on the channel and the whole nine yards. But what ended up happening to me was I was lucky enough that when I started doing the 3PL services on top of selling, on.
Speaker 3:Amazon. The revenue for the 3PL was larger than the revenue from doing Amazon. So by virtue of that, it took like three or four years to get out of it, but by like 2020, I was pretty much done with Amazon. So it's funny One of my my last big experience with Amazon was actually the toilet paper shortage. So, like I said, we started in a wholesale area so we had like miscellaneous paper products and stuff like that that, like you know, dollar stores and mom and pop stores would buy. So I happen to have three containers of toilet paper upstairs in the building when the COVID disaster happened, with all the toilet paper shortages, and I happen to have listings built out on Amazon for every product in the building, even if I wasn't selling it. So when Amazon shut that category down, I was able to sell toilet paper. So that was kind of like the last hurrah of our Amazon account was like let's move. You know, half a million dollars worth of toilet paper in a week.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. That's awesome and that is. That would be a cool, cool time to be a part of that.
Speaker 3:It was great we actually got. At that time we only had a couple of employees working at the 3PL, so we actually went to local bars and restaurants and hired the bar staff to come in and pack toilet paper and work part-time, Because at that point things were uncertain and all the industry workers were losing their jobs. We were like hey, if you want to learn how to work at a 3PL.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Come on down, that's awesome. Now you engage with a lot of e-commerce professionals in in what you're doing, and so and we've got a lot of Amazon sellers that listen to this what would be your advice to somebody who's heavily involved in Amazon maybe 90% of their business is Amazon but wants to diversify? What would be your recommendation?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So there's a concept that, as far as I know, I'm the only one pushing it, and I call it digital real estate, right? So the idea is just like how, when you go into a store, you know people pay for certain shelf placements, right, people try to get into more stores, more locations. It's the same thing with your digital presence, right? So if you're just selling on Amazon, that's great. The problem is, you have a problem, you have a conflict, you have something arise. You have a problem, you have a conflict, you have something arise. They can literally cut your cash flow off, right? So a lot of people want to diversify and what you realize is that it's a sum of all these smaller parts, not any one of these smaller parts, that's going to save you. So I used to really preach eBay and Walmart. Well, now times are changing. Now I'm preaching TikTok shop, right, like. But the point is, you know you have these other channels. You still have eBay. You still have Walmart, right. You have Wayfair, depending on what category you're in right. You have all the other marketplaces, like Newegg, right. And then you have these like new emerging social channels, right, where a lot of people are selling through TikTok shop. They are selling through Instagram and they are having success doing it.
Speaker 3:So my big word of advice is to just take up space, right, and that means get on all these platforms and integrate them in a way that it's easy for you to fulfill them from one source, right? So, whether that's a 3PL or in-house, you can use software to consolidate these orders into one pipeline and you're not even going to realize you're on 15 different websites selling, right? So that's my biggest piece of advice. But the other side of this is also to increase the footprint within each of those marketplaces, right? So, if you're selling something, introduce more variations, right.
Speaker 3:Introduce more pack sizes, things that can be easily done, and one of the keys here is kitting and bundling, right. So let's say, you sell something at a 12 pack, why not sell it at a 60 pack? Why not sell it in a 120 pack? Right, you already are selling something in a 12 pack. Why not sell it in a 60 pack? Why not sell it in a 120 pack? Right, you already are selling it in a 12 pack. You can go to the shelf, you can grab five of them off and throw them in a bag.
Speaker 2:It's, it's, it's these little things like this that allow you to grow both on amazon and off amazon I like it, I it and yeah, the kidding and bundling one is one that I've used and it's an easy win, it's an easy win.
Speaker 3:And it takes up space. If you sell one or two more of X-pack size and Y-pack size, that's one or two sales you didn't have?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely no. I fully agree with that. So now, one thing that I've observed being involved in e-commerce and before I go into this, I'm going to preface it with the people that made the most money during the gold rush were the people that sold the shovels. Okay, so here's my observation. Generally, when people start getting into e-commerce, they start as a seller. They may private label, drop ship, but they are doing the thing, they're the seller, and they'll either have success or not, but it seems like the ones that are successful. They may exit their business and you may think, oh, you exited your business. I'll bet that you're just going to go do that again because you have built up this skill set. That is valuable, but I often see that they don't. They go and start a business that is in service of sellers. They are selling the shovels to the gold miners and or Amazon sellers in this example, and I am guilty of that, I and it sounds like that's a similar path to you, and so I'm curious why do you think that is?
Speaker 3:It's. It's the simple age old prof. It's the simple age old process of selling solutions to problems. And I think the problem is that people don't know these problems exist until they live the experience right. So if you never have the struggles of being the Amazon seller with you know, three boxes in your closet, you don't know what kind of problems those people deal with. Right, you don't know about the customer support problems. You don't know about the inventory stock out killing your sales velocity. You don't know what you don't know. And because of this I think it becomes a natural progression for people in the industry to find a problem and go I can solve that problem better than others in the industry. So let me go with a perfect example of how I got to where I'm at now. Right?
Speaker 3:So in the Amazon space I started using a 3PL. I'm not going to name what 3PL I used, but I got that first bill. I realized it was costing me more money to ship from that 3PL than if I just bought the labels myself or I shipped it from Amazon. So I'm like, why am I using a 3PL? And it made me realize that, like, I don't understand what a 3PL is. These guys that I'm talking to don't know what a 3PL is. My other friend that doesn't sell doesn't know what a 3PL is. So I started doing research, I started figuring out how they make money, how does it work? Right. And at that point in time I introduced a pricing model that was actually similar to what ShipBob currently does, and I had it predating them. And you know, now I have a different pricing model. But the point is, you know, I saw a need for adjustment to the way 3PLs were selling and priced and I introduced a 3PL to the market that behaved in a way priced, and I introduced a 3PL to the market that behaved in a way that I would have wanted a 3PL to behave to me.
Speaker 3:And now I'm doing a new thing I call the Racklify right, which is a marketplace that helps people find 3PLs, and I started this because of the matchmaking industry, right. So there's a whole matchmaking industry above 3PLs that sell leads to 3pls. So when you call one of those random guys on the internet that says, hey, I can place you in a 3pl absolutely free, what they're doing is they're calling the 3pl saying, hey, I got a hot lead, you want to pay me a thousand dollars for it, right. And then, if you sign them, let's do a one percent revenue share, right. So what's happening is these merchants are being sold to the highest bidder by the matchmakers, and I think that's yucky right.
Speaker 3:They've tried to get me to buy these leads, so I said why don't I build a platform that's free to use, that has all this information just out there and to an advertising based model? Right, similar to Amazon? Right, you want better placement, you pay for it, but we're not going to incentivize. You know you get the lead, or you get the lead, or you get the lead because you know we shouldn't have sellers indirectly pay for that.
Speaker 2:I like that, I like that. And I, when I remember, I remember signing up with my first 3PL and I probably at the end of that was like, am I getting a good deal? You know, I did some research but there wasn't a place to have you know, one common, you know, like a competitive bidding process or seeing what everybody offers. So I really like that. I really like that. What is so for the e-commerce entrepreneur, 3pl is a tool, you know, a tool in the tool belt, and how you know, with the successful entrepreneurs that you're working with, how are they using that tool or where does a 3PL come in?
Speaker 3:So I'll give you the honest answer and I'll give you the sales answer back to back. The honest answer is the people that are using 3PLs the most effectively are the people that have the highest need, right, so these are people that are maybe in Europe, right, maybe in Australia they don't have a physical building, they can't buy a physical staff right, it'd be really hard to police an employee over here in America if you're over there in Italy, right, these are the people that really really need the 3PLs, same with people that are on the West Coast that need an East Coast facility, or vice versa. Then I'll give you the sales answer, which I think really depends on you as the entrepreneur, which is 3PLs, free up your time and that allows you to do more stuff, which allows you to make more sales, which allows you to make more money. And the reason I say this is the sales answer is for some people that's true, right, like we have clients that come in and because now they don't have to worry about shipping stuff, they scale. But I have other clients that come in and their scale never really grows, and I don't know if it's because they're not redirecting their time effectively or whatever, but the age old sales pitch from the three PL is it frees up your time and it frees up your ability to go do other stuff. So I think that really comes down to what is that other stuff? How likely are you to do it? And, you know, is this a good jump for you and, I think, for a lot of brands that are hyperscale focus, you know, really looking to expand quickly, they want that infinite level of reach, right, almost infinite storage.
Speaker 3:A 3PL is a great solution. But I think people need to ask themselves why am I going for this 3PL? Am I going to go work on a 3PL because I, you know, want to save 30 minutes of packing in my afternoon? Or am I doing this because it's actually going to allow me to scale? I'm going to use that 30 minutes to make some more sales calls. Maybe, you know, engage with some other people, right? So that's my cautionary tale of the 3PL is 3PLs are great. They're going to let you scale. There's a reason why so many people use them, but you want to make sure that, if you're going to go transition to a 3PL, that it makes sense and that you're actually going to take advantage of the benefits that come with that 3PL.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. I like both your salesy and your practical answer and I think both of them make a lot of sense. Now for Amazon sellers that ecosystem has changed a lot since COVID. It always felt like we were handcuffed to using Amazon fulfillment so we could get the prime batch for and there was seller fulfilled prime, but it seemed to be tough to find a logistics network that could actually deliver on that Um and and so, and then they built a bunch more storage facilities uh, in my opinion they probably overbuilt. And then they introduced AWD, uh, which is kind of like a holding warehouse with a lower fee before it goes into an FBA warehouse. Where does a 3PL come in and what's a successful strategy of utilizing a 3PL and ultimately kind of minimizing storage fees?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So one of the things that I want to kind of side tangent on here, because you just hit the nail on the head right, they're just released AWD and the costs are lower, but they're not that low. And there's a competing service that's known as FBA prep. Right, and it's a subset of the 3PL space, right, some 3PLs offer this as an additional service. Some 3PLs just do Amazon prep and the idea is that they have lower storage fees and lower labeling fees and lower bubble wrap fees and lower packaging fees than Amazon. So, theoretically, you send your bulk to one of these facilities and then you send smaller lots over time. So, at our 3PL shipmate this is a large part of our client base is Amazon sellers that are, you know, basically using us to break bulk. Right, we'll take in a container and we'll send two, three pallets every couple months to Amazon, right? So that's the way that I see a lot of like the highly Amazon integrated sellers using 3PLs effectively. Now, what? I think the correct way to use a 3PL is in conjunction with Amazon. So the seller-fulfilled Prime badge is a must Sorry, not seller-fulfilled badge. The Prime badge itself is a must. At this point, we've basically become dependent on it as consumers and, let's face it, that's where the sales are.
Speaker 3:So I see a lot of people employing hybrid strategies where maybe their faster moving goods are sold at FBA with the Prime badge and the long tail is fulfilled from a 3PL. So perfect example. One of our largest clients does nuts and bolts. If you think about nuts and bolts, how often do you need a reverse threaded metric nut for a conveyor belt, right? You don't need it that often. Yeah, we might sell that part two times a year if we're lucky, right. So what happens is he takes his faster moving, like everyday hardware stuff, sends that off to Amazon and his slower moving stuff that, like, he sells one or two lots of a year for, you know, $600. It just lives on a shelf at a 3PL. So that's a great way I see people doing it. And then I also see people using the 3PL to fulfill you know the other marketplaces, right? So like, for example, wayfair, tiktok or Walmart.
Speaker 2:Like I could fulfill Etsy orders with Amazon FBA inventory but like when Walmart came on the scene, that was a big deal. Was you need to have separate WFS inventory or fulfill those out of a 3PL, and you looked at the opportunity and then you looked at the amount of capital you would need for that much more inventory. That would only service this market and so, yeah, I like that. Married up with your digital real estate where you can really go omni-channel, that makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 3:Well, that's the idea is the omni-channelness of it. And, like I said, a place I see for a lot of curious FBA guys is the FBA prep angle right, because if you can save on your storage, you can save on your labeling. It's a great way to get a relationship going and then go hey, I'm thinking about Walmart, hey, I'm thinking about Wayfair, hey, I'm thinking about TikTok shop. And then you can add those other services or explore the rates and see what makes sense while you already have an established relationship that's already benefiting your business.
Speaker 2:Outstanding, outstanding. This has been a great deep dive into the 3PL side of things, and I think for e-commerce entrepreneurs, it's something that's critical to learn about and needs to be part of your equation, and so anything else you want to mention about Racklify before we get into the fire round.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I just want to say that Racklify is free to explore. It's kind of like Zillow for warehouses, right. So you can get on there. You can navigate the map, you can see what's near you. You can check out some of the cool 3PLs in Kansas that are in like mines and tunnels right, they're all on there. So I just encourage people to check things out. You know it's free to browse.
Speaker 2:Awesome. We'll post a link to that in the show notes. All right, Bill. Next is a fire round. This is four questions we ask every guest at the end of the episode. Are you ready?
Speaker 3:I am ready.
Speaker 2:All right, what's your favorite book?
Speaker 3:So my favorite book is called Smart Pricing how Google, priceline and leading businesses use pricing, and it's by John Zhang. He's a professor at Wharton and this book basically teaches you how to price your products for e-commerce right. It tells you the pricing strategies that large businesses are using you know, amazon sellers, how the Chinese factories price their goods, and it really allows you to like dial in and come up with ways to use mathematical formulas to fine tune that pricing. So when I was selling on Amazon, this was like my go-to book and I'd have like notes of it. I'd lend it to everybody I know. So that's a real niche, one that I think your audience is going to love, and I've gotten, like you know, tens of thousands of dollars worth of use out of that book.
Speaker 2:That's awesome and I so I'm going to. I just added that to my Amazon cart. Is this one so there are some books that are good on Audible cart? Is this one so there are some books that are good on audible, some that you want to have in front of you like sometimes like number? Is this one that you would encourage?
Speaker 3:hard copy. I would encourage hard copy. It's an educational book, yeah, so get ready for like the traditional college soft book, uh, kind of read. But, like I said, if you read it and you understand it and you're somebody that's constantly pricing things, this is like the only book I've found that's like about pricing. It's about picking the number at which to sell somebody something which is exciting.
Speaker 2:Nice, nice, all right. Next question what are your hobbies? All right.
Speaker 3:Next question what are your hobbies? So I have a few hobbies. So number one is I am a huge Swifty, so I am Taylor Swift's biggest fan. All right, right, but in terms of hobbies, I like to fish, I like concerts, so I go to a ton of concerts. It was one thing. And you know I love sports, so I go to a lot of sporting events.
Speaker 2:Outstanding. What is one thing you do not miss about working for the man?
Speaker 3:So I've never, worked for the man, fun fact. So I I like to think that you know the extra 15 minutes on the snooze and you know getting the coffee at Dunkin' Donuts and being able to pick my own start and stop time is probably the biggest.
Speaker 2:You're one of the rare unicorns. I'm not sure if we've ever had anyone like you who's? Never worked for the man. That's awesome. That's awesome. All right and final question what is something you think sets apart successful entrepreneurs from those who give up, from those who give?
Speaker 3:up, fail or never get started. I think the initial inertia is the big one right. So I'm a big fan of I call it the B plus principle, and that is I don't like to wait, I like to just do something. I have an idea, I have a thought in mind, a process. I like to act, and the way I determine if something's good enough to put out there or good enough to introduce to the world is what I call the B plus principle, which is, if it gets a B plus I send. I don't shoot for the A minus, I don't shoot for the A, I don't shoot for the A plus. That stuff leads to inaction and that's what causes people to give up on their dreams, their hopes, their, their institutes a degree of fear, like if you're always striving for the A plus, you introduce a lot of disappointment into your life when you don't hit it. But when you aim for the B plus, you can celebrate the A's.
Speaker 2:Nice, nice, all right. Well, bill, thank you for your time today. If people are interested in getting in touch with you or checking out your podcast, what's the best way?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you can always find me on LinkedIn. You can check out the Disruptive Minds podcast. We also have the Racklify YouTube channel, which actually just surpassed 11,000 subscribers and 1.5 million views. So that's the front. Nice that million views.
Speaker 2:So that's the front. Nice, that's outstanding Cool, all right, bill. Well, thank you so much and looking forward to staying in touch.
Speaker 3:Yeah, awesome, nice talking to you too.
