0:02

So we had this like decent sized truck pull

0:04

into this small road, backing up into my

0:06

parents' garage. The driver was so confused.

0:08

He's like, this is your warehouse? I'm like, yeah.

0:11

And he's like, okay, where's your people unloading

0:13

the truck? I'm like, it's me. What do you mean?

0:15

And I spent, I think it was like six hours unloading

0:18

the truck. It was definitely

0:20

an interesting experience, but

0:22

how it works, like you know nothing in the beginning

0:25

and eventually... So

0:26

I didn't know how

0:28

to build it.

0:30

I just found something

0:32

that did. It was really bad

0:35

in the early days, like it sucked, but

0:37

it was good enough to work. And

0:39

when once there's traction, you take some of the profits

0:42

on the revenue, just reinvest it.

0:46

So I think that's

0:47

the attitude I took. Like

0:49

I'm going to come to work every day. I'm going to give it my everything

0:52

and I'm not going to stop. I'm going to be persistent and

0:54

I'm going to grind and I'm going to adapt.

0:56

But at the end of the day, this wasn't

0:59

meant to be, then it won't be meant to be. And

1:01

if it was meant to be, then it will be meant

1:03

to be.

1:07

My name is Izzy Rosenzweig. I am 34 years

1:10

old and I am in Toronto, Canada.

1:12

Nice. And Izzy, I-Z-Z-Y,

1:15

is that your real first name? Yeah.

1:18

My real name is Yisrael, which

1:20

is Hebrew for Israel

1:22

and Izzy short for Israel. So I had to

1:24

bring on by Izzy my whole life. So people

1:27

know me as Izzy. Makes sense. It

1:29

makes it a lot easier too. And then, yeah, how old are you? Well,

1:32

yeah. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your business?

1:35

So I'm the founder and CEO of Portless.

1:37

Portless essentially is a

1:40

very different way of doing supply

1:42

chain logistics

1:42

for direct to consumer companies. So

1:45

for someone to properly understand what we do, it's

1:48

good to kind of get to a high level in what most

1:50

companies do. So if you're a DDC business,

1:53

traditionally you're, let's say, manufacturing 5,000

1:55

t-shirts. You're putting

1:57

it on a boat. It takes usually at least-

1:59

30 days, most likely closer

2:02

to 60 or 90 days to land in the States.

2:04

You're bringing it in bulk, you're paying import duties,

2:07

then you bring it to a 3PL location or

2:09

your warehouse, and then you ship it to your customer.

2:12

Simply from when you manufacture to when

2:14

you can start selling, you need a lot of cash

2:16

to be sitting in the water or in the container

2:19

on the water at any given time, and then

2:21

you can start selling to your customers. In

2:23

our model of portlaces, our fulfillment

2:25

center is in Shenzhen. So it's

2:27

near most factories that people

2:30

manufacture apparel or many other products. We

2:32

do the pick-pack in Shenzhen, so right next to

2:34

people's factories, so people can send us stuff

2:36

days post-production, usually two days post-production,

2:39

we can get people stuff in our fulfillment center. And

2:41

then we ship it right to the US, and

2:44

it's delivered to the customer within six

2:46

days of the order coming in. So if the customer

2:49

creates an order, within six days, a USPS driver

2:52

is delivering it to that customer's front door. So

2:55

speed is great. From a consumer

2:57

perspective, it's a fully local experience.

2:59

It's a USPS tracking number. It's an American

3:02

driver dropping it off. Everything is in English.

3:04

Packaging is based on the customer, custom

3:06

packaging. But the brand that

3:08

used us, it is, I call it, game-changing

3:11

to their business. So instead of them having money

3:14

stuck for two to three months at a time in

3:16

inventory, and lead times being

3:18

two or three months, they could turn inventory

3:20

to cash, two days post-factor

3:22

production. They could be more agile in their

3:24

inventory. They could constantly restock because we're right

3:27

next to their factories. And there's a ton

3:29

of other benefits, including if your

3:31

order for your customers is worth under $800 value,

3:34

it is duty-free. So you have lots of duty

3:36

savings. Container costs go away,

3:38

and shipping rates are super cost effective. So

3:41

half a pound, $5.86, anywhere in continental US, our pick and

3:45

pack rates are just a buck per order for up to three units.

3:48

And warehousing, we don't want to ever charge

3:50

you warehousing. As long as we

3:52

are shipping your products within 60 days,

3:55

you won't see any warehousing fees on your bill.

3:57

If you need to store with us beyond 60, not a big deal.

4:00

We get very cost-effective browsing rates. But

4:02

by doing this model, customers, our

4:05

brands, could have cash in the banks,

4:07

the cash that's stuck in the water. They could use that

4:09

to hire, use that for marketing, and there's

4:11

immediate savings with great shipping rates,

4:14

no import duties, and no container costs. It's

4:16

just immediately game-changing for their business.

4:19

And for expanding international, it's the turn

4:21

of the button. You turn on Shopify

4:23

markets, you turn on United Kingdom, turn on Europe,

4:26

and we could ship it to those customers directly

4:28

from our performance center, fully local experience.

4:31

Yeah, I guess you kind of answered my question there at the end, if

4:33

it was just for someone... Again, I like making

4:35

simple examples. Like you at the teacher

4:37

company, you're saying if they made $5,000, we're assuming that they probably

4:40

made it in China, right? So

4:42

that's what you're talking about. But let's say if my product

4:44

was made in Mexico or South America,

4:48

it can still work the exact same way? Great

4:50

question. So for us, we're only

4:52

based in China. We do have infrastructure

4:55

being built in Vietnam that would be ready

4:57

in 2024. But for now, we

5:00

can help people that manufacture in China mainly.

5:03

I'll add one caveat there. We do have customers,

5:05

let's say 70% is manufactured

5:08

in China and 30% is manufactured in Vietnam

5:10

or Thailand or India. What we

5:12

do is we help them bring their product in those countries

5:15

into China so you have all your product on the one

5:17

roof, service international markets

5:19

and service US markets. Do you have any other

5:21

examples of savings? That

5:23

way, I think the more examples we can probably give up front

5:26

might help anyone who's brainstorming. So

5:28

yeah, go ahead and give us some. Yeah. So

5:30

container costs just disappear. That doesn't even exist. Dry

5:32

off costs disappear. Import duties

5:35

disappear. So right away, just from that,

5:37

there is immediate savings. Then you could look

5:39

at what are you currently paying your 3PL? Like

5:42

what's your pick and pack rate? Like we've seen on the low

5:44

end, maybe $1.50 but a lot of it at $2.50, that a lot of 3PLs

5:48

charge inbounding fees, label fees,

5:51

like a million fees. Your housing fees

5:53

are expensive. So even from

5:55

like an apple to apples, you look at our costs

5:58

versus what you're currently paying. the

6:00

immediate savings and that's besides

6:02

the benefits of all this additional cash

6:04

flow and opportunity to go into international

6:06

markets. Okay. Well, so

6:09

what does it cost for someone to start using Portless?

6:12

It's no commitment. It's basically you only pay

6:14

us if you use us. So if someone reaches

6:16

out, we kind of jump on a Zoom call. We

6:18

get to know you like, hey, what's your product? Is

6:21

it manufacturing China? If it is,

6:23

most of our customers are using on Shopify. We

6:25

have a Shopify app. In 15

6:27

to 20 minutes, they're integrated from a technical

6:30

perspective. They send usually like,

6:32

hey, let's check out 50 units, 100 units. We

6:35

usually ship it for them. They get blown away

6:37

and then they just keep sending us more products and we keep

6:39

helping them fulfill for their business. So

6:42

what was the smallest amount? Is there a dollar

6:44

wise or quantity amount? Like again,

6:47

give us some other examples other than like t-shirt companies.

6:49

Yeah. So apparel is a big one. We also

6:52

do let's call cosmetics, jewelry,

6:55

phone accessories, small kitchen

6:57

appliances. Anything I would say, if

6:59

your product is under three pounds, you're

7:02

going to have besides for great cashflow and

7:04

access to international markets, you're going to have day

7:06

one savings. As your product goes beyond

7:08

three pounds, I would say our prices

7:11

might be a little bit more when you look apples to apples.

7:13

You might be paying, let's say someone like deliver 12

7:16

bucks and we might be $14, but then

7:19

you have cashflow benefits, access

7:21

international markets, as well as

7:24

import duty savings in our model. So

7:26

basically it sounded like you said you can get

7:28

rid of like import tax or tariffs as

7:30

well. Yeah. So that basis

7:33

under is called section 321, the diminished

7:36

rule, and almost every country in the world has it,

7:38

which is if an individual package

7:40

is being sent to an individual customer in

7:42

that country, as long for the United

7:44

States as the order value of that order

7:47

is under $800 is duty free and import duty free.

7:51

So you still got to charge your sales tax. Like you got

7:53

to pay your state, your sales tax, but import duties,

7:55

which for example, apparel could be anywhere

7:57

from 20 to 30, 8%. That

8:00

just doesn't happen in this model. You don't need a paper

8:02

duties because the individual package is

8:04

worth under $800. Australia has

8:06

a thousand Australian dollars. So every

8:09

country has their threshold, but I would

8:11

say almost every single country in the world has some

8:13

version of this. Different thresholds, the same idea.

8:16

And so if I wasn't using you and I

8:18

was going directly from, let's say,

8:21

the factory, if I ordered like $1,000 worth

8:24

of shirts because let's say that I'm selling

8:26

them to a thousand customers, or just a dollar a piece

8:29

or whatever it is, that because I got

8:31

over that $800 threshold and I'm

8:33

not sending it just to one person, I

8:35

would have to pay tariffs. But using section 321,

8:38

using your model, I don't have to. Exactly.

8:41

Okay. Seems like it's killer all around. I don't

8:43

know if I'm missing anything else as far as you

8:45

did say about inventory and having money

8:48

instead of having it tied up in inventory. Yeah,

8:50

I'll go deeper in that. So basically,

8:53

if you think of traditional

8:55

boats, which is the way people bring

8:57

in product today, they have to

9:00

wait probably, let's say it'll be saved two

9:02

months before they can sell that inventory, which

9:04

means you never want to be out of inventory.

9:07

You never want to overlap. You never want to be out of stock and

9:09

then wait two months to get that inventory. So

9:12

very often brands will buy four months

9:14

of inventory. So two months buffer plus

9:16

two months of bow time, and they're always

9:18

sending out four months of inventory. Now, that

9:21

only exists because it takes probably around two

9:23

months to get your product. But if you don't need

9:26

to wait two months to sell your product, rather you could

9:28

sell it two days after the factory is

9:30

done, then all of a sudden what happens is

9:32

you don't need four months of inventory. You could

9:34

just look at how long does your factory

9:36

take to per production. Let's say it's 10 days.

9:39

Then you say, okay, you always want a two week buffer.

9:41

So you could have 30 days

9:43

of inventory, right? And then you're constantly

9:46

going, as you're selling through, you're telling your factory

9:48

going to production or you're buying it from your factory

9:50

in 30 day cycles. So instead of needing

9:53

to put, sometimes people put millions of dollars

9:55

in inventory for four months at a time. That's

9:58

dead money. It's not doing anything. It's just sitting

10:00

in dead inventory. And we're saying there's a better

10:03

way. And back in 2021 or 2020,

10:06

when money was cheap, all right, who cares? Money's

10:08

sitting in inventory. But now it's 10%, 15%, depending

10:11

where you're borrowing from. So

10:14

that money, A, is anyways dead

10:16

money. It's not doing anything. It's expensive

10:18

money. Better to put that money into

10:20

hiring people, paying for marketing,

10:23

building partnerships. So that's

10:25

what we mean when there's better ways to

10:28

use money rather than inventory

10:30

sitting in your warehouse in the States for far

10:32

longer than you would really need. And if someone

10:35

wanted to learn more, where would they go

10:37

and contact you? Yeah. So we

10:39

have a great website, portlist.com. We

10:41

have case studies. You can learn all about us there.

10:44

Right there, you can reach out directly through our contact

10:46

form. Me or some of my team reach out to

10:48

you, book a call, learn more about your business.

10:51

I'm also on LinkedIn and Twitter. I'm always posting

10:53

supply chain and factory related information

10:56

that I find fascinating. And anyone that

10:58

DMs me, we always get back to them.

10:59

So it looks like if I'm doing like, write

11:02

us a message, you kind of ask like, how many monthly

11:04

orders do you ship? I think it's that how

11:06

you kind of qualify if you can work with somebody

11:08

or not.

11:09

Yeah, exactly. Okay. So if they're

11:11

doing underneath a thousand monthly orders, is

11:14

it not worth it? Yeah. If it's under a thousand,

11:16

in most cases, it doesn't make sense for us

11:18

to onboard. We tell everyone to reach out to us

11:20

anyways. We'll see based on

11:22

how many people are currently onboarding at that moment.

11:24

But yeah, if you're on the smaller size

11:26

customers, that's not our typical

11:29

customer. The ones that are typical

11:31

size customers in north of a thousand dollars a month. As

11:34

far as like pricing structure. So, I mean,

11:36

you told us all the benefits, but obviously people have

11:38

to pay you to use you. So what would

11:40

they be looking at? We make our pricing

11:42

structure, like we try to make it dead simple. So

11:45

unlike other 3PLs, there's inbounding fees

11:47

and label fees and printing, that all goes away.

11:49

There's only three things you got to know about. We charge

11:51

a pick and pack, which is $1 per order, which

11:54

includes up to three units in that package.

11:56

Every additional unit beyond three is 25 cents. Then

11:59

we just. charge a shipping rate, which is basically

12:01

the USPS delivered to your customer's

12:04

front door. So from our performance center on

12:06

a plane delivered your customer's front door, that

12:08

is basically based on shipping

12:10

weight. So half a pound, roughly $5.88.

12:12

UK and Europe is even cheaper. And then for warehousing

12:17

fees, if you send us inventory

12:20

and we're shipping it out within 60 days,

12:22

there are no warehousing fees. You only get

12:24

two charges on your invoice. But

12:27

if you need a warehouse with us longer than 60 days,

12:29

that's fine. We have what

12:31

you'd call a typical warehousing feed, the way

12:34

you would pay locally in the States

12:36

as well, which is basically by cubic thought. And

12:38

so do you consider yourself a 3PL? Yeah,

12:41

traditionally, we're essentially at our base for

12:43

a 3PL business. And we're

12:45

a very American English speaking

12:48

3PL, but with all our infrastructure

12:50

in China. So you get all the benefits of this

12:52

cross-border model, but you're having to experience

12:55

like your talk to us in Slack, we have Slack groups with

12:57

our customers, everyone speaking English,

12:59

you know, you need custom packaging, we're helping

13:01

you with custom packaging. But fundamentally,

13:03

we're 3PL that uses a different

13:06

model than your typical 3PL. So we

13:08

call it direct logistics and direct shipping, where

13:10

you don't need to go on a boat, you know, you don't

13:12

hit the shipping ports, we want you to go for a list with us.

13:15

And hence the name, huh? Exactly.

13:18

And so I'm looking at the integration. So

13:20

is the easiest way if someone already

13:23

has like a Shopify account, or if

13:25

they're selling on Amazon, there's

13:27

like kind of the two that I've seen, or WooCommerce,

13:29

I've seen a lot too. So maybe those, I

13:31

see Squarespace, but that kind of just depends on how

13:34

big your website is. But maybe those top three

13:36

that I'm just even looking at are gonna

13:38

feel for, you're selling on those platforms, and

13:40

you're doing over a thousand units per

13:42

month, then just give you a call and

13:45

see how much it costs, it sounds like. Exactly.

13:47

And there's no commitments, right? Like there's no contract

13:49

that you have to give us, like there's no money

13:51

up front, you only pay us as we ship

13:53

your product. So what we say, we encourage

13:56

customers crawl, walk, run, test us out.

13:58

This is intriguing. we're confident we'll

14:00

be, we'll just keep growing our business with you.

14:03

You'll save more money, have better cashflow. And

14:06

from a tech integration, it's one Zoom call.

14:08

You download a Shopify app, which is almost as simple

14:10

as downloading an app on your iPhone. And

14:12

within 30 minutes, you're fully integrated. Sounds

14:14

so good to be true. Yeah,

14:16

you know what? And what's interesting is it wasn't always like

14:18

this. So I've been doing this for 10 years.

14:21

The first, I would say, seven to eight years,

14:24

it wasn't very efficient. It used to be like

14:26

a two week delivery. And the tracking

14:28

numbers weren't USPS, they were Chinese

14:30

tracking numbers, which is why people never

14:33

use this space. And very often

14:35

people know about this space like, oh, the dropshippers

14:38

use this space, or sheen uses this space.

14:40

And they're not wrong, meaning, A, in

14:43

the first eight years, delivery was

14:45

really hard and very confusing for customers because it

14:47

was Mandarin. And the people that took advantage

14:49

of it were mainly people that didn't take quality

14:52

control on their brand. So we say, first

14:54

of all, A, it is 10X better

14:56

now, we're talking about under 60 US under

14:58

five days to Europe. And the brand,

15:00

the quality of the product is all based on the

15:02

brand. So if you have a great kids clothing brand,

15:05

or a kid shoe brand, or a jewelry

15:07

brand, etc, you're obviously controlling

15:10

the quality. So as long as you're controlling

15:12

the quality of your brand, the magic

15:14

here of running a really efficient

15:16

business is really in the logistics.

15:19

And that's where we come in and help you can help you just

15:21

crush that part of the business. So say

15:23

I have a Shopify store again, and

15:26

I'm doing well, I already have my connection in

15:28

China, I'm selling 10,000

15:30

units, right a month, how would

15:33

it normally work? Did they already have a 3PL

15:35

in America, then they're paying all these extra fees,

15:37

and that's kind of how it's coming in. But if

15:39

we started using you, just tell us the

15:42

difference, like just the transition of someone

15:44

listening? Yeah, great question. So

15:46

essentially, it's exactly as simple as that. So in

15:49

today's model, the guy that makes 10,000

15:51

t shirts, he would arrange for a pickup

15:53

for either broker would arrange to get picked up

15:55

from the factory drive it to the shipping port, put

15:58

on a container and probably two months later. later,

16:00

it's getting added to your 3PL in

16:02

Missouri. But in our model, the only difference

16:05

is that truck that picks it up is not taking it to ship a container,

16:07

it's taking it to our fulfillment center in Transn.

16:10

And then we inbound it. The app that we're connected

16:12

immediately updates the inventory to

16:14

the customer store. So all of a sudden, they went from

16:16

zero inventory to 10,000 t-shirts, and they

16:18

could start marketing it. And they could start

16:20

selling it to their customers. And then they make a transaction

16:23

with the customer within a business day. That

16:25

tracking number that sinks back to their

16:27

store, and they take that tracking number and shop

16:30

it, does this automatically, and sends an email

16:32

directly to the customer, your product is en

16:35

route. That customer looks at it, looks like

16:37

it's coming from LA, or New York, or Chicago,

16:39

and it gets delivered in six days. I know

16:41

you talked about the transition and what happened, but maybe

16:43

you can just go in a little bit more detail, using

16:45

that same example of 10,000 t-shirts. Yeah,

16:48

so I mean, it's funny. The context

16:50

of why I even started this business is because

16:52

I was actually, I was a brand. I

16:54

started as a home and kitchen

16:57

and home decor brand in this cross-border

16:59

model space. So I've been doing the cross-border

17:01

side for 10 years, and

17:04

we would sell kitchen accessories, and home

17:06

accessories, and home decor, all shipped

17:09

right from China. In those early days,

17:11

we still have tons and tons of borders

17:14

in this model, because we were able to reduce our prices,

17:16

because we had great cash flow, and we had great margins,

17:18

and all these savings. But the delivery times

17:20

weren't the best. So even our customers

17:23

in that brand, they would have to wait two weeks for

17:25

delivery. They would get a tracking

17:27

number that wasn't in English, or was there often in Mandarin,

17:30

or it stopped working. So that was the early

17:32

days of this model. But then over the last

17:35

two years, because of the volume, the

17:37

sheer volume of this model between Sheen,

17:39

Tammam, and Quincy, more and more companies

17:41

start adding better and better efficiencies to this model.

17:44

So ready to go back two years, all of a sudden

17:46

delivery times start to massively improve. And

17:48

there was no longer any Chinese tracking numbers. It

17:50

was all USPS-facing tracking numbers. So

17:53

all of a sudden, what happened was, it went from like,

17:55

oh, I'm getting it from overseas,

17:58

and it's gonna take me weeks, and I don't know. what's going

18:00

on to all of a sudden a very normal local

18:03

experience. You're making a transaction, you're having

18:05

a USPS number, it is delivered

18:07

within six days to anywhere in the States. That's

18:10

like a very traditional experience for a

18:12

DDC brand. So we saw that

18:14

transition and as we saw that transition,

18:16

it was incredible for our customers

18:18

and incredible for us as a business. So what happened

18:20

was our investors said, hey, can you

18:22

talk to the other portfolio companies, we have

18:25

other companies we invested in that manufacturer in

18:27

China. And we start saying, like, hey, would

18:29

you want to leverage our infrastructure? Because

18:31

it took us over two years to build that infrastructure.

18:34

We know it's very difficult to build

18:37

legal entities and bank accounts and partners

18:39

in China. We've been doing, we were there

18:41

for 10 years and we had our own performance done up over two

18:43

years. And everyone said yes. And then

18:45

we was like, huh, that's interesting. You know what,

18:48

instead of just doing this for our own

18:50

brand and spending tons of

18:52

money on marketing and running branding,

18:54

we saw the bigger opportunity of like, hey, let's

18:57

help thousands of brands leverage this

18:59

because consumers love

19:01

DDC. There's $176 billion of

19:04

DDC revenue United States in the

19:06

stores that service them. And there always will

19:08

be stores to service demand, have

19:11

hard cashflow. And what we're saying is it

19:13

doesn't need to be bad cashflow. There's another way

19:15

to do business. And that's how

19:17

we kind of evolved into this space. And

19:19

now we're basically doing this at a hundred percent. Now we only

19:22

service DDC brands. So that's

19:24

kind of been the evolution of the space for us and

19:26

how we service customers. What was the name of

19:29

your furniture brands? It was a home

19:31

kitchen accessory brand. So it was called browse. We

19:33

are WSE. We are O

19:35

W Z E dot com. Okay. Gotcha.

19:37

Is it, are you still running it? So we have

19:40

like two, three products and we don't run it as a

19:42

brand. What we do is we test new

19:44

partnerships, new carriers, we're testing

19:46

Vietnam. So whenever we test

19:48

a new infrastructure, we just test it with

19:51

our internal products, not at any

19:53

crazy scale, just to make sure we get out all the kinks

19:55

and everything's working smoothly. And

19:58

then we introduce it to our customers. Listeners,

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21:25

So I know you say you just kind of use that as

21:28

a training for whatever, but I mean,

21:30

are you still personally like making money off that too? No,

21:33

like it's very low scale. It

21:35

doesn't lose money. Like there are often many brands

21:37

will lose money in the first transaction and

21:40

then make money over transactions

21:42

over the coming months. It doesn't lose any money,

21:44

but it doesn't do any real scale. You

21:46

know, there's a few hundred orders a month just

21:48

so we're testing always new channels,

21:50

new carriers, new countries. It's

21:53

not a revenue driver. At any point,

21:55

was it like a revenue driver for

21:57

you? Oh yeah. I mean, back in the day,

21:59

we were... doing millions, we would

22:01

do in our highest, we did about 50 million

22:04

of revenue. But what happened was 2020 obviously

22:07

was the craziest year. We did almost 50 million of

22:09

revenue. That was A, during COVID times

22:11

and B, before Apple released

22:13

their privacy update. So what happened was

22:16

Apple released their privacy update. I think

22:18

that was maybe end of mid 2021. And

22:21

all of a sudden, marketing that

22:24

was very efficient before that

22:26

privacy update was pretty bad

22:28

after the privacy update. So we had our

22:30

unit economics, how much money we make every

22:32

transaction very down top. But the

22:34

moment that Apple changed that, all

22:37

of a sudden marketing efficiencies changed. And

22:39

we couldn't make as much money as we were anymore,

22:41

which is why we went deeper and deeper into

22:43

supply chain or fulfillment centers and reducing

22:46

costs across the board. And that kind of

22:48

led us further and further into this model.

22:51

But yeah, at its heyday, we're growing 100% year

22:53

over year, millions and millions of shipments before

22:56

we went full fledged into poor list.

22:58

And as you said, us a couple times. So who

23:01

do you mean by us? I mean, me and the team.

23:04

So we're like, I think the magic happens with

23:06

the team. I'm a small founder and CEO, but

23:08

I have people that you know, that have been with me since

23:10

the beginning and us as a team that

23:12

make all this happen. That makes sense. I mean, even

23:15

when I started my own like brokerage company, and it was just

23:17

me, I always say us to anyone listening,

23:19

because I always had a virtual assistant at least anyways,

23:21

and make you sound bigger. And, you

23:23

know, but I was just kind of asking on that scale.

23:26

So how many clients and customers

23:28

do you have today? Yeah, we have dozens

23:30

of customers. So just kind of give you

23:32

the timeline here. We were doing this for ourselves for

23:34

over 10 years, millions of millions of shipments, we

23:36

have our infrastructure, we've been doing this business

23:39

for a very long time, then about eight months

23:41

ago is when we started to open it up to other brands

23:43

originally was just our investors, other portfolio companies.

23:46

And then we really just opened up to

23:48

the market at large. So we work with

23:50

companies that do 200,000 orders

23:53

a month, and as low as companies that do

23:55

or smaller companies to 1000. But

23:57

that's like the range of customers we serve.

23:59

us.

24:00

And where are they located?

24:02

So interesting, I would say most are

24:04

in the States, but we do have a decent amount in Australia.

24:06

Australia has been an interesting one. I think Australian

24:09

DTC brands, because they're so

24:11

far away from the core

24:14

market of the US, and Australia is

24:16

a smaller opportunity to begin with, they

24:19

think international very quickly. So we have quite

24:21

a bit of Australian customers we service.

24:23

We have a few UK customers. I would say

24:26

most of our brands are based in the States.

24:28

Can you just tell us about the experience from

24:30

when you're working on your own company and kind

24:32

of building this back in, and then how many

24:34

clients you helped in this portfolio that you said

24:37

with your investors? And then like you said, it

24:39

sounds like maybe you have 20 or 30 customers today?

24:42

Yeah, so again, going back

24:44

to say about a year prior to that, we

24:46

didn't service anyone outside our own business. Then

24:49

we got introductions from our investors

24:51

with portfolio companies. That we added eight

24:53

originally in the first cohort. And what we

24:55

saw was pretty much everyone in that cohort was

24:58

just increasing their business with us. So in the beginning,

25:00

like, oh, let's try the US market. Like, hey,

25:02

how does it work? How do we go international with you guys? And

25:04

it started from a subset of their SKUs

25:07

to now essentially onboarding 100% of their

25:09

business. And when you see customers

25:11

like that, that kind of taste out

25:13

the opportunity, and then go and

25:15

dive in because the savings are so

25:17

large, and the cash flow is so good, and the

25:19

opportunity is so good. We're like, okay,

25:22

let's just not only do this for portfolio companies,

25:24

let's open up to essentially everyone. And

25:26

that's like six months ago, we opened the portless.com

25:28

website, named the Portless brand,

25:31

built its own entity. And now since

25:33

then, it's been all, like we haven't done any marketing

25:35

other than joining podcasts and being

25:37

a content creator on LinkedIn and Twitter. But it's

25:39

all been CEOs recommending

25:42

to other TTC founders to reach out

25:44

to us, or people finding us through our organic

25:46

posts or content. And now

25:49

it is, I would say just under 40, either

25:51

live slash also more being onboarded.

25:54

Yeah, that's where we're holding today. Yeah,

25:56

well it seems pretty interesting. I mean, it sounded

25:58

like you kind of went from like a product guy

25:59

where you're making your old product browse,

26:02

B-R-O-W-Z-E. And

26:04

then you went to kind of being a tech

26:06

guy, it sounds like, if that's the right

26:08

way to put it, you building kind of this backend

26:11

and then helping your company first and then

26:13

helping these other companies. Does that sound about

26:15

right? Exactly. We went from essentially brands

26:17

to being tech enabled supply chain. And

26:20

just to go on there for a second, if you think about

26:22

the pillars of direct consumer businesses, Shopify

26:25

solved proper. And

26:27

I was running our e-com business before I started

26:30

off, I was very big. The day I'm in Genta, WordPress,

26:32

all that type of stuff. But Shopify made it dead simple.

26:34

Then Stripe made credit card processing

26:37

dead simple. But supply chain is still

26:39

very messy. And that's where we were living

26:41

in for such a long time. And we see such

26:43

a clear opportunity where we want to keep people's

26:45

supply chain as a dashboard solution.

26:48

So, you know, integrating your factories, our performance center,

26:51

constantly restocking quickly. You don't need

26:53

to have that much inventory risk. And really

26:55

being a pillar of the direct

26:58

consumer toolbox for brands

27:00

that want to grow at very

27:02

cash efficient strategies. Well, when

27:04

you're building this backend, can you just

27:06

maybe go in a little bit more detail? It's like, do you

27:09

have any tech experience or what

27:11

did you need to know in order to build this

27:13

versus building a consumer brand

27:15

like you did before? Yeah, great question. I actually

27:17

think there was no better, let's

27:20

call it experience, to serve a consumer

27:22

business than being a consumer business for 10

27:25

years. So, I've lived, I would say,

27:27

to every single pain point.

27:29

Because originally when I got started, I wasn't doing

27:31

cross border in the early days. I was bringing

27:34

in containers. And every time I brought

27:36

a container, I brought it in. I

27:38

would sell the product. We did well with it.

27:40

But it was a very stop and go experience. So, I felt

27:42

the pain points of containers. I felt

27:45

the pain points of not being able to

27:47

scale aggressively because there's only so much inventory

27:49

risk you could afford at any given time. In the traditional

27:52

model, I felt the pain of going international

27:54

when I went from Canada to the US and

27:56

then the US and beyond that. So, as

27:59

a brand, I was excited. exposed and we had to

28:01

build our own tech. So I spent a bunch

28:03

of years building consumer brand facing

28:06

tech for our customers as a brand owner.

28:08

And I had all the pain points and leveraging

28:11

that and we built really deep, right? Which

28:13

is why I built a performance center and technology for

28:15

assorting packages in advance and

28:17

how we get it from factories. And to me that

28:20

was like, there is no better lessons to learn

28:22

to service your customer, which now is

28:24

brand owners. Like I've been in your shoes,

28:27

I've built all of that. And I've built all

28:29

the pain points. And this is why I sold it for

28:31

us and kind of really excited to solve it

28:33

for you guys as well. Well, how did you build it

28:35

though? Oh, we had an engineer. Like I didn't actually build

28:37

myself, I'm not an engineer myself, but we had software

28:40

engineers that would build the tech side.

28:42

We had our team in China that built the infrastructure

28:45

side and that comes back to the us, right?

28:47

It's like a team between tech,

28:50

supply chain infrastructure, then it all

28:52

has to work together. So we built

28:54

it for ourselves with software engineers and

28:56

who's on the ground.

28:57

And did you have money backing you in order

28:59

to do this?

29:00

Great question. So we're venture backed. When

29:02

I started the business, I grew it organically

29:05

to about 5 million of revenue without any outside capital.

29:08

You're talking about browse, right? Exactly,

29:10

right. So we grew that to 5 million of revenue

29:12

without outside capital. Then we started getting venture funding

29:15

and we're growing like a hundred percent year over year. So

29:18

once we took outside capital, it gave us more room

29:20

to start innovating around tech, around

29:23

investments in supply chain. But yeah,

29:25

we're venture backed. So it gave us the ability to

29:27

invest in all these areas. And browse,

29:29

you started basically 2012, I'm looking. Yeah,

29:32

so that was early days. I mean, there was definitely

29:35

evolutions of this business. In the early, early

29:37

days, funny enough, we started as

29:39

a daily deal site in Canada and it

29:41

was importing products by

29:43

containers. So like a very different business. Then

29:46

it evolved to a marketplace model. Then

29:48

it evolved to the cross border marketplace. So

29:50

it kept evolving over time, which is why

29:52

I lived in so many different parts of the pain

29:54

points of a brand owner. Back from the container

29:57

importing to marketplace model.

30:00

taking product ownership and doing QC

30:02

and photography and copywriting. So

30:05

yeah, starting 2012 and I just kept

30:07

evolving until we're in the model we were today.

30:09

Okay. Well, yeah, we'll get into details

30:11

a little bit later, but just general

30:14

outlook of it. So if you started this in 2012,

30:16

let's just say beginning of 2013, the Braille's

30:19

brand that we discussed. How

30:21

many years did you do it where you were

30:23

doing it the same way as everybody else? Was it

30:25

like three years, five years, or

30:27

what was the timeline of that? Yeah,

30:29

so I would say from 2012 to 2016,

30:32

I was doing

30:35

it the same way as everyone else was doing it. Then

30:37

from 2016 on, it

30:39

went cross border.

30:41

Okay. So let's just talk about the differences

30:43

real quick again. Like so 2012 to 2016,

30:46

you're basically buying a lot of product from

30:48

China, having it shipped to your

30:50

own personal 3PL and

30:52

like where. Can you just tell us what that process

30:54

was like? So at least even people listening

30:56

who don't know at least understand the differences.

30:59

Totally. So we were buying

31:01

in bulk, being shipped through containers. It

31:04

would come to Toronto, Canada. I had a fulfillment

31:06

center in Toronto, Canada, and a

31:09

3PL that I was using in Pennsylvania

31:11

to service our US and Canadian

31:13

customers. So I have to lay out a lot of money

31:16

to buy product in bulk, have

31:18

it in Canada and the States, and

31:21

we would sell it on our website and ship

31:23

from those two locations to our Canadian customers

31:26

and US customers.

31:27

Were you on Amazon as well?

31:29

I never did Amazon actually. I was

31:31

always running it on my own website. I

31:34

got pretty good understanding of the marketing side of the business.

31:36

So I always drove around traffic. Were

31:38

you just doing that through like Facebook ads and

31:40

stuff? Exactly, Facebook, Instagram,

31:43

all that stuff. Okay. So or

31:45

if I saw it on X today, like I see that that's kind

31:47

of the only social media I really use. But you'd

31:49

have been one of those consumer brands where I click on

31:51

it. Exactly. Okay. Gotcha.

31:54

Exactly. So you're doing it normal 2012,

31:56

2016, and then in 2016, do you just decide,

31:59

hey, I need to do it?

31:59

a little bit differently? Yeah,

32:02

I know I got very lucky. So I met

32:04

the former CFO of Alibaba. He's

32:07

retired, lives in Toronto, and I met

32:09

him through a networking event. He's like, by the way,

32:11

there's like this really interesting space of

32:14

cross-border commerce, gotta look into it.

32:16

And he was one of my earliest advisors in this cross-border

32:19

space, and he also became an investor. And

32:21

that introduction got me to other like really top

32:24

operators in the space, which also

32:26

joins his advisors and operators

32:28

in our business. And that's how it started. So like

32:31

just from like a chance meeting, I'm like, oh,

32:33

I gotta look into the space and understand it better to

32:36

being the core business pretty much not long after

32:38

that. And what was the name of that Alibaba

32:40

guy? His name is Samuel Yed. He's the former

32:42

CFO of Alibaba. Oh, CFO? Yeah.

32:45

Yeah, cause I mean, didn't the CFO, isn't Chinese

32:47

government still having locked up or something like that? No,

32:50

no, that's the CEO. He's

32:52

not locked up. I think people didn't know where he was for a while. I

32:54

think it was under the radar. That's Jack Ma. I

32:56

think now you see pictures of him going around,

32:59

but I think for a while he was pretty under the radar.

33:01

Probably by force. Or just like,

33:03

yeah, like maybe stop talking against us. Right.

33:06

Not sure the details there, but no, this

33:08

is the former CFO that's since been retired

33:11

for a while. That's what I said as CEO, but I was making

33:13

sure I was just like, wow, I've said to God, who

33:15

went over there, you know? Yeah, I gave his

33:17

location. He said, Toronto, go for dinner. I

33:20

was gonna delete that portion. That's what I was making sure,

33:22

you know, just to make sure that your guy's good,

33:24

but okay. And then so after you met

33:27

him at a conference thing, that's

33:29

when he started integrating like, okay, maybe there's

33:31

a way to make things more efficient,

33:33

shipping, and then that's what you've basically been working on

33:35

ever since. Exactly. Okay, cool.

33:38

All right, well, yeah, we can get more of the details, but I appreciate you

33:40

kind of giving that general outline. So why

33:42

don't we go ahead and rewind it back to wherever

33:44

you want in your story, obviously before

33:47

browse, and then just kind of tell us how

33:49

old you are and what you're starting at, and we'll kind

33:51

of just go from there. Yeah, so for me, I

33:53

definitely wasn't on this path of entrepreneurship.

33:56

Definitely entrepreneurship is in my family, and I'll cover

33:58

that in a second. about my grandfather.

34:01

But I was actually, I'm an Orthodox Jew,

34:03

and I grew up in a path, let's say,

34:06

where I'm actually an ordained rabbi. So

34:08

originally, my path was really being an ordained

34:10

rabbi at a synagogue somewhere. But

34:13

growing up, I've always had

34:15

a passion for business. I

34:17

ran small businesses growing up. I used

34:19

to import different stuff, like

34:22

decor stuff for Jewish holiday, which is

34:24

kind of how I get into, I guess,

34:26

importing to begin with. And I just always

34:29

enjoyed it. So even though I was

34:31

going down this path of potentially being a rabbi,

34:34

I was also running a business between

34:36

breaks and after hours, and I just loved

34:38

it. And essentially, this is

34:40

other than the side hustles and side businesses,

34:43

browse was really the first business I started

34:45

when I was 24. Prior to that, I

34:47

was in school and I was learning and

34:50

ran side hustles. And then from,

34:52

you know, 2012, really just starting

34:55

this, which was meant to be a small e commerce

34:57

business, and just compounding and growing

35:00

and adapting. Well, why don't

35:02

you touch on your family, the entrepreneurship,

35:04

and I knew you're going to say something about that. Yeah,

35:06

so it's definitely my blood. So my

35:08

grandfather was originally from Poland,

35:11

survived the Holocaust, his entire family

35:13

was like, Oh, he had one sister in Canada.

35:16

So he immigrated to Canada, like 1945

35:19

or 46. And then he started working

35:21

in a factory. And what's interesting

35:24

is, if you think about the evolution of manufacturing

35:27

in general, in the 1950s, most manufacturing was

35:30

done locally. And in Toronto,

35:32

there's probably like, I prefer Canada at large, probably

35:35

100 factories that dealt in the clothing business. So

35:37

he started working in one, and then eventually

35:39

started his own maybe 1955.

35:43

And he started to build his own factory

35:45

business. And he was doing really well,

35:47

right. And he brought his family into it, my dad

35:49

joined eventually. And what happened was,

35:51

in the 1980s, that's

35:54

when shipping containers became industrialized.

35:56

So prior to the 1980s, ships

35:59

existed. but they were difficult

36:02

to move product around. They didn't have it

36:04

in containers. So you would load a ship

36:06

or come to a port. They would spend up

36:08

to two weeks unloading a boat, which

36:10

is like very inefficient. And

36:12

it took a long time and boats and ports

36:15

are backed up. And then finally, like, you know what?

36:17

If we just made every single

36:20

shipment in a container, right? 20 feet

36:22

or 40 feet, and now we could pile hundreds

36:25

or thousands of these containers in these monster boats, that

36:28

unlocked this massive opportunity,

36:30

manufacturing overseas and cost efficiently

36:33

to bring in in bulk to countries

36:35

around the world. And when that happened,

36:38

all of a sudden competitors are coming up and these

36:40

are really the same or better

36:42

products that my grandfather was manufacturing for

36:45

much better pricing. And my grandfather,

36:47

we didn't get upset. We're like, you know what? Customer

36:50

needs to win. The customer needs to get the best product and

36:52

best price. So they end up going very niche.

36:55

They got very niche in their manufacturing and they end

36:57

up going on for a whole bunch more years. But

36:59

fundamentally, most factories made

37:02

three choices. Either they fought

37:04

the change that was happening and they went out

37:06

of business. Or they went very niche and

37:09

they stayed in business. Or they saw

37:11

the change that was happening and they

37:13

jumped with that change. They went overseas,

37:15

they found partners, they found partner

37:17

factories, started their own factories and did extremely

37:20

well. And I know people, you know, in all

37:22

three buckets, I know families that refuse

37:24

to pivot and no longer around went

37:27

niche like my grandfather or people in writing

37:29

the 70s and 80s start partner factories and did extremely

37:32

well. So I grew up where

37:34

supply chain totally disrupted

37:36

an industry. And for me, this

37:38

is, and you know, that's first of all, my family's

37:41

been an entrepreneur, my father and grandfather.

37:44

But to me, most importantly was watching

37:46

how this one change disrupted

37:48

entire industry. And for me, this is

37:50

1980s all over again. So this new

37:52

model, instead of containers being industrialized,

37:55

it's cross border air logistics

37:58

getting really good and efficient. All

38:00

of a sudden, again, this is not for

38:02

everyone. Meaning if you're a retail store, if you're

38:04

Walmart, you're Amazon, you need to bring in by

38:06

boats. But finally, a DPC

38:08

owner could compete because you could

38:10

play a different game. You don't need to play in the same

38:13

arena as Amazon because

38:15

you have a different supply chain. And for me, this is the

38:17

early days and the brands and

38:20

the businesses that jump on board early

38:22

will get the upswing of this opportunity.

38:24

So yeah, that's a little bit about my family history,

38:26

but kind of seeing history repeat

38:29

itself. My last name,

38:31

which is a very renowned last

38:33

name on the island, there are only two branches

38:35

of this family. One is extremely

38:38

rich. What I mean by rich is this

38:41

family, they're billionaires. So

38:43

that's you? I'm the other branch. Hahaha.

38:53

That's what you want to be. Hahaha. So

38:58

if you want to jump on a call with yours

39:00

truly and discuss how to become a billionaire,

39:02

well then join Patreon today. So

39:07

you were born and raised in Toronto? I was

39:09

born and raised in Toronto. Okay, and that's where

39:11

your granddad started his company. I

39:14

know you said Canada. Yeah, Toronto. Okay.

39:17

And I guess the dad eventually. So what was

39:19

the name of the company that he

39:21

started? Yeah, it was called New

39:23

Fashion Dress. It did wedding

39:25

clothing for Mother of the Bride. That was their niche

39:28

area. Originally, they were much broader

39:30

clothing manufacturer, but as competition

39:33

got tighter with containers, they

39:35

went into Mother of the Bride wedding dresses. Okay.

39:38

So before he did all types of like

39:40

women's clothing? He did all types. He did like

39:42

sports jackets and they did leather

39:44

jackets and trendy clothes. But

39:47

for the more mass market, that got much

39:49

more competitive. They went very niche

39:52

and ended up going wedding dresses, Mother of

39:54

the Bride, high-end wedding dresses, Mother of the Bride.

39:56

And I used to help. I used to go to the factory.

39:58

It was right around the corner. my house or 20 minutes

40:01

of my house and I would go on Sundays very often and

40:03

lay out the materials and help the people with the

40:05

sewing and the buttons and all

40:07

those details. But yeah, that's

40:09

where they went niche with new fashion dress. Okay,

40:12

but your grandfather started his

40:14

own factory in Toronto. He wasn't using a Chinese

40:17

factory. Exactly. In the 1950s,

40:19

that's the way it was done. No one was using overseas

40:21

factories because there wasn't an official way to move

40:23

inventory. Right. So now that's where I want

40:25

to hear even the transition for your grandfather. I know

40:28

you said he went more niche into this, but did he

40:30

go find a factory in China and start making

40:32

the same thing y'all were doing in Toronto? No,

40:34

he never did that. So my grandfather

40:37

and father, they just went niche.

40:39

So instead of competing for

40:41

mass market clothing, they stayed

40:43

in Toronto, their factory

40:46

wasn't as big as it used to be, and they end

40:48

up servicing a niche market of

40:50

high-end wedding dresses for Mother the Bride. And

40:53

that started in the 80s. But again,

40:55

the business rental probably

40:57

about 2015, and that ended up being their

40:59

niche area. Makes sense. So

41:01

I mean, how big was his

41:03

company, I guess, at his pinnacle, as

41:06

far as just even employees or just an idea?

41:09

Yeah, he wasn't massive,

41:11

massive. So in those days, there were tons

41:13

of these, let's call it midsize factories. I

41:15

think he had maybe 20 people working for

41:17

him. Their main market was Toronto,

41:20

Montreal, a bit of New York. But

41:22

even those days to sell in New York was such a big deal.

41:24

You have to drive there, you have to meet the sales people,

41:26

you had a broker. It was like business

41:28

was just so much harder or so much less globalization.

41:31

But yeah, I would say like, I wouldn't know

41:33

the revenue numbers, but I knew he had about like probably 20

41:35

to 30 people working for him. So those times? Yeah,

41:38

I mean, that sounds like a pretty good size, you know, especially

41:40

back then. And then, you know, I just feel like it's much

41:42

easier trying to figure this stuff out with internet,

41:45

you know, building a company back then, honestly,

41:47

it's like, maybe people went to the library to figure

41:49

stuff out, I don't know, or it's just hard knocks. Yeah,

41:52

I mean, he worked in it. He started as a worker

41:54

in a factory for 10 years, until

41:56

he decided to go on his own. But yeah, I

41:59

guess if you're getting into new, you either got to get the

42:01

experience under someone or you got to get booked.

42:04

Yeah. Well, it sounds like you got kind of that because

42:06

you were born in like 88, right? End

42:08

of 88 or so. So that was already kind

42:10

of established, but it seems like, yeah, you said all the way up

42:13

to 2015, he had this business that eventually

42:15

you close it down. Yeah. So

42:17

my dad took it over. My dad ran it 2015. And

42:20

then eventually again, like competition gets harder and harder,

42:22

but he wanted also not to be on the

42:24

factory, like hard physical work as well.

42:27

So my dad got out of it in 2015.

42:29

But it's pretty neat. I guess anyone who's listening now

42:31

and starting a business, it sounds like you've learned a lot just from

42:34

being a fly on the wall of going into the factory

42:36

and trying to understanding this type of stuff. Because

42:38

if you don't have someone in your family who's

42:40

in business, I think it's kind of hard to learn, at least when

42:43

we were growing up. I mean, maybe it's a little bit

42:45

easier to look at YouTube and all the fake millionaires

42:47

telling you what to do, right? But yeah, I guess

42:50

it sounds like it was an awesome experience for you. So

42:52

I guess maybe that's a great thing for people to think

42:54

if they're building their own business and hopefully successful

42:56

that your kid could also kind of be interested

42:58

in being able to show them how things

43:01

kind of work.

43:01

Yeah. And I think that's why a lot of people are such

43:03

huge fans of intern trips. Either your

43:06

family's in the business and you're learning from them, or you'll

43:08

be like, hey, I want to help your business grow. You

43:10

don't have to pay me a lot. I just want to learn. Because

43:12

experience is like they're often worth more

43:14

than the salary or whatever that they pay,

43:16

which is obviously less for intern trips. But that's where

43:19

knowledge investments made, right? That's

43:21

worth more than any amount of salary.

43:23

Well, and it's cool because even though you said you've just

43:25

been doing the browse thing for like the last 10 years,

43:27

really, you've been understanding this stuff since

43:30

you were basically born. I mean, we're talking about

43:32

almost 30 years of experience of kind

43:34

of seeing these markets and everything. So

43:36

I think that definitely helps anyone who is

43:39

kind of understand like when you say you had like dozens of clients,

43:41

maybe 40 today. And I really think

43:43

like I believe you on what you're saying because you said

43:45

you've seen all these things that yeah, you might

43:47

only have like, quote unquote 40 clients right now, but

43:50

I could easily see how this

43:52

is the beginning of a tipping point to make things easier,

43:54

less inventory and whatnot by using

43:57

your company, Portless today. Exactly.

43:59

Like for us, these 40 clients, like some of them

44:02

from like a volume perspective are very large,

44:04

but we see this could help thousands

44:07

of customers in the future. So we're just getting started. We're

44:09

just scratching the surface. Like we don't do any marketing. We

44:11

go on podcasts, write content, but

44:14

we know that what we're offering to DVC

44:16

brands are just such a big

44:18

opportunity to them to be better run

44:21

businesses built from inventory and cashflow and profits

44:23

that there's thousands and thousands of brands that we're going

44:25

to service over the next couple of years.

44:27

Well, let's jump back to your story. So I guess

44:29

when you were in Toronto and growing

44:32

up, you said, again, you're doing kind of stuff on the side,

44:34

but after graduating high school, did you

44:36

decide like, Hey, I want to be a rabbi? Yeah.

44:38

So it kind of, I grew up in that like Orthodox

44:41

community where a lot of us, a lot

44:43

of my friends were pursuing that studying

44:45

advanced Talmudic law, like I have a BA in

44:47

Talmudic law, doing advanced studies

44:49

around that. So it was kind of like going, obviously

44:51

with the trend of what my class and

44:53

what my friends were doing. And as I was doing it, I loved

44:56

it and enjoyed it. But I'm like, you know what, I

44:58

think my passion might be elsewhere. And

45:00

that's where like, you know, started dabbling on

45:02

the side, but went full force, I

45:05

guess around when I was 24. Okay.

45:06

So would you graduate high

45:08

school at 18, right? Were you a good student?

45:11

Yeah, I was always a good student. I won't say I was like the top,

45:13

you know, 1%. But I love to learn. I

45:15

love reading. For me, it's just always been

45:17

curious. I'm always a curious person, doesn't give it some

45:19

business or learning. Love asking questions,

45:22

love understanding how things work. Yeah, you know

45:24

me the same. And probably anyone who's listening, honestly,

45:26

because like, even if you want to get into business, like, there's

45:28

parts where it's fun, and you're like learning. And like,

45:30

I can go forever when I'm learning. For me, when

45:32

I start slowing down in business, it's like, because it's

45:34

getting kind of monotonous, to be honest, and it,

45:36

you know, I'm just like, feel like I'm not learning anything.

45:39

And you're just fucking just, you know, trying

45:41

to make things go. Because it doesn't have to be just about

45:43

business, it can be about health, or it could be about wanting

45:45

to travel somewhere, or maybe you want to

45:47

learn deeper psychology, which also can,

45:49

you know, help in business and stuff. So it doesn't always

45:51

just come back to business. But yeah, having that growth

45:54

kind of mindset, if you will. So you're graduating 2006,

45:57

right? So I guess the economy is doing well,

45:59

I guess.

45:59

at that point. Yeah, it's pre-2008.

46:02

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so but it's

46:04

about five years before, right, you turn 24 or

46:07

so and I don't know the correct term.

46:09

Is it Rabbi School or? Yeah, I

46:11

went for a biblical College of America. It's like an advanced,

46:14

let's call it college for rabbinical studies

46:16

where I spent four years, let's call

46:19

it undergrad for this kind of

46:21

space. Then I did another two years of

46:23

advanced rabbinical studies to

46:25

get my full rabbinical degree. So

46:27

I guess after undergrad you still

46:29

think you're gonna be a rabbi. Yeah, I was still

46:32

pursuing that, yeah. I was doing it again, I had

46:34

these businesses running on the side because they

46:36

were seasonal. So I would run them usually this

46:38

time of year like September or October

46:41

which was a Jewish Holocaust to go to.

46:43

So you got to live in like these outdoor kind of attend

46:45

structures and many Jewish

46:48

people around North America by

46:50

these structures. So back in the day these structures

46:52

were built really going to Home Depot, buying

46:54

wood panels and like building these outdoor structure. And

46:57

I start working with the distributor

47:00

that was manufacturing like a better version

47:02

of it, like easily built. You don't have to go to Home Depot,

47:04

you don't need to start building with nails and hammers. It's kind

47:07

of like a modular type of product and

47:09

kind of an easier to build version for this holiday

47:12

which was manufactured in China. And I'm like, hey,

47:14

let me be your core distributor in Canada.

47:17

This guy I met was in the States. So I think

47:19

I was 18 when I started and it was

47:21

seasonal but we would do a lot of revenue, we had to deal

47:23

with importing, we had to deal with taxes and containers.

47:26

So I learned a lot of those early lessons

47:29

of moving stuff around cross-border

47:31

during that time. And then when I finished

47:33

my degree, I'm like, you know what? I think I'm gonna

47:36

jump a little deeper into cross-border

47:38

and importing. Was this called a Suka

47:41

S-U-K-K-A-H? Am I saying that

47:43

right? That's right. Suka, exactly. See

47:45

again, I'm learning right now. Well, it's kind of cool

47:47

because then I just looked at Google Images. I'm like, I

47:49

didn't know if this was exactly what you're talking about. So

47:52

as an Orthodox Jew, you're supposed to use

47:54

one of these? Yeah.

47:56

So there's a holiday called Sukkot during

47:58

this time of year. And during that

48:01

time, when orthotics choose, we eat

48:03

in the sukkah and we celebrate in the sukkah. So

48:05

imagine every family needs

48:08

to, you know, orthotics family builds a

48:10

structure in their backyard. So if you would go

48:12

to Home Depot, it would probably cost

48:14

you, could be up to $3,000. These stuff last

48:16

like 20, 30 years, but you gotta get one time

48:18

investment of like 3,000 bucks. But

48:21

then you gotta build it yourself and you're buying

48:23

these wooden panels and you're building

48:25

frames. It's just like really annoying way of doing

48:27

it, but that's how it was done for a long time. And then

48:30

I met a guy in Florida

48:32

that was importing. He started doing like

48:35

kind of a no tool way of doing

48:37

it. Like you just, it's a mechanism that kind of attach

48:39

these walls of the mechanism or you could build

48:42

it with a material base. And it just simplified

48:44

this holiday for people. He

48:47

was importing from China for a while. I'm like, hey, could

48:49

I import it through you from China directly

48:51

to Canada? And let me tear it to the

48:53

Canadian market. He's like, great, I haven't touched

48:55

the Canadian market or the Jewish community

48:57

here. And I started doing that for a whole bunch of years

49:00

for like six, seven years. And interesting

49:02

enough, the business still runs. I gave it to my brother and now

49:05

actually my nephew is running it. So I stayed

49:07

in the family. It still runs till today. Okay,

49:10

and do you just eat dinner in one of these sukas?

49:13

Yeah, so we do dinner, we

49:15

do lunch, we invite family, kind of think of

49:17

like a Thanksgiving dinner and lunch. So

49:19

it's like big celebrations, but it's all outdoors.

49:22

It looks like like seven days or so? Yeah. Okay.

49:24

It's like a gazebo, I guess, if anyone's googling,

49:27

but just the three walls and one open spot. Exactly.

49:30

That's probably the best way to describe

49:33

it. Okay. So yeah, you were doing

49:35

this. Was this your first thing like out of grad

49:37

school that it seems like you were actually making, because when

49:39

you say side businesses, I don't like people say that

49:42

too. And I'm like, I don't know. Were you just making 10, 20,000 net profit

49:44

a year? No,

49:47

we're making pretty good money. We're doing like a few

49:49

hundred K of revenue because they're expensive items,

49:51

right? We wouldn't do that much of volume,

49:54

but every sale was quite large. The

49:56

reason why it was side, because it wasn't full time.

49:58

It was just the seasonal. that season.

50:00

So while I was studying, I would take off

50:03

six to eight weeks to deal with the imports, warehousing,

50:06

delivery, sales, marketing.

50:08

So it was like a full-fledged business in like

50:10

a eight-week timeframe. And that's

50:13

it. Then you're kind of done to next year. Oh,

50:15

what's the name of the brand? It was actually called Suka.ca.

50:18

Those are Canadian. So S-U-K-A-A-H.C-A is

50:21

the Canadian website for the brand. I

50:24

gave it over to my brother and then eventually I have

50:26

a nephew that's early 20s and he

50:28

took it over. Why didn't you just keep doing it? For

50:30

me, I was getting into the other business, which was

50:33

taking up all my time and ended up being a larger

50:35

business than the side hustle. And I loved that.

50:37

I was happy to give it over, like, hey, you

50:39

guys run it and make some money. And

50:41

my only ask was if this keeps running, just

50:44

keep in the family. So it kind of went from brother

50:46

to nephew. And I said, once you're done, just

50:48

give it to the next. We've got a big family and

50:50

just keep in the family if we can. All right. So

50:52

you said the other business was doing better

50:55

or are you talking about Browse? That's

50:57

when I got, exactly. So then I eventually started Browse,

50:59

which wasn't a seasonal business, it was a full-time

51:02

business. I was working on it every single day. We were

51:04

doing pretty strong revenue. There's just a bigger

51:06

upside than a seasonal smaller business. So

51:09

I essentially gave it to my brother at

51:11

that point. Okay. That was 2012. You're 24

51:14

years old at that point. I guess maybe you were

51:16

in college the whole time during the recession, if

51:18

you will. So I don't know if you're seeing downturns

51:20

even when you're trying to sell the Sukkas

51:22

online. Was that business just growing the whole time

51:25

and it didn't matter that there was a

51:27

recession? It's a great question.

51:30

Yeah, 2008 was tight for everyone. But if

51:32

you think about it, so a lot

51:34

of people travel for this holiday to

51:36

be Florida, New York, or Israel. And when

51:39

the recession came, a lot of less people

51:41

traveled, people stayed home. So

51:43

historically, they may have traveled overseas

51:45

or to the States for the holidays, like,

51:48

oh, we got to stay home, we got to buy Sukkas.

51:50

So there was definitely that part of the market that opened

51:52

up. And also, in the early days,

51:55

when I got started a little before 2008, I didn't

51:57

know what I was doing. So I was like, didn't

51:59

really know what I'm

51:59

market. I didn't know how to create partnerships

52:02

and put up samples. So I

52:04

was new to the game. So by the time 2008 came

52:07

around, I knew what I was doing better. So

52:09

I was able to... I was constantly growing that business,

52:12

even though it may have been tighter times.

52:15

So less people traveled,

52:17

which was good for me. And I just

52:19

knew what I was doing a little more by

52:22

the time 2008 came around. But yeah, that

52:24

was definitely crazy times. Well,

52:26

how did you figure out how to do all this, even with the

52:28

suka thing and then going into browse?

52:30

I mean, the answer is I didn't know what that... I didn't know

52:33

at all what I was doing. For the first time,

52:35

I imported a truck from

52:37

the States for these sukas. These things are large, right?

52:39

Like they're very heavy. Tell us the weight and size.

52:41

So just a general... Yeah. So they're...

52:44

I mean, it ranges depends on what type of suka

52:46

you have. There's a few types. If you have a material

52:48

based suka, probably weighs about 70

52:52

pounds, the box, because it comes with

52:54

metal poles and you got the material that goes around

52:56

it. And if you're using the wood panel ones, I would

52:58

say each panel weighs maybe 20

53:01

pounds, but lots of panels. So

53:03

the first time I... So I ordered a truck. It

53:05

was the first time I ordered a truck. It wasn't a huge

53:08

truck, but I had my garage,

53:10

my parents' garage. So we had this decent

53:13

size truck pulling to the small road, backing

53:15

up to my parents' garage. The driver was so confused.

53:18

He's like, this is your warehouse? I'm like, yeah. And

53:20

he's like, okay, where's your people unloading the truck?

53:23

I'm like, it's me. What do you mean? And

53:25

I spent, I think it was like six hours unloading

53:27

the truck. Oh my God. And every

53:30

single piece of heavy stuff, I'd say my brothers

53:32

to help me. It was definitely an

53:34

interesting experience, but how

53:37

it works. Like you know nothing in the beginning and eventually,

53:39

you eventually learn. So I didn't know

53:42

anything. Made lots of mistakes, hurt my

53:44

back. I've actually had like back pain for years since

53:46

that first shipment, but you just got

53:48

to try it and do it.

53:49

But I guess we always have these,

53:52

whether you're doing your first deal on your new business

53:54

or whatever else, basically just having the balls

53:56

and confidence to do it. Like even if you don't end

53:58

up making money on it, that you...

53:59

took that first step where especially

54:02

it's scary because you're having big things come that

54:04

way and you're like, am I doing this right or am

54:06

I getting screwed up? But I know you said you didn't know anything,

54:09

but whatever you learned, were you just Googling

54:12

or going in? I don't think there were really too much Facebook

54:14

groups or maybe that just started like how did you

54:16

learn educationally how to even

54:18

set up a website for this and all that other

54:20

stuff? Oh yeah. A website came years later.

54:22

I didn't have a website for the first four years.

54:24

It was all paper advertisements. So

54:27

first it was asking like, again, anything friends and

54:29

family. So, hey, I need to import time from

54:31

the States. Who do I talk to? And they

54:33

would say, you need a customs broker. How do I find a customs

54:36

broker? I know a guy that imports a

54:38

lot of them. You should talk to him. Call that guy. All

54:40

right. That's like the custom side. Marketing.

54:43

I didn't do any online marketing. I was doing

54:45

paper marketing and I was just printing

54:47

flyers, like not fancy

54:49

flyers, black and white, and just going

54:52

around to every grocery store in the area, go around

54:54

to every store that made sense. Actually,

54:57

my first year, I think I had one of my most

54:59

amazing lessons. I think as

55:01

an early business owner, I knocked on

55:04

the door of a two-day store.

55:06

So they sold like other Jewish

55:08

books and stuff like that. And I said, Hey,

55:10

like, could I, you know, hang up my sign in your store?

55:12

I am just starting this new business. The guy that owns

55:14

the store, it's exactly as he kept it. He

55:17

passed away since he's like the nicest human being in the world. And

55:19

he's like, Hey, come to my office. He's like, you should know

55:22

I also sell suit guys. I'm your competitor.

55:24

She's like, I'm not going to let, I can't let you hang it up in

55:26

the store, but I want to give you a blessing. You should

55:29

do so well because there's enough business

55:31

out there for everyone to do well. And that was

55:33

my first year. I had no idea what I was doing. I knocked on the door

55:35

of, you know, so-called competitor in this space. But

55:37

you know what, like if you work hard and that was the lesson

55:40

I always told, you know, my brother took over and

55:42

my nephew took over after him. It's like

55:44

you start a business. There's going to be competitors. Don't

55:47

be afraid about it. There's a big world out there.

55:49

There's a lot of money to be made and just

55:51

do the hard work. But that was an early

55:53

lesson first year of like, maybe

55:56

don't knock on the door of the person selling it as

55:58

well. When you do

56:00

this, I had no idea what I was doing. But to me, these are all

56:02

lessons, like things you make mistakes

56:04

on, things that you do while you build it, it's

56:06

all lessons and you compound that.

56:09

It's important for everyone to know, like, yeah, you didn't start

56:11

off knowing this website stuff. Like

56:13

we're seeing stuff for like 15

56:16

years in the making of where you are today

56:18

and how you kind of have portless. And it was nice,

56:20

I guess, of the guy to sit down and even talk to you

56:22

or sounds like you became a friend with them too,

56:24

right? Yeah, I never got very close to them. But to

56:26

me, that was probably the most one of them pack full things

56:29

as a young entrepreneur because you're because

56:32

it's not it's not always all or nothing. It's

56:34

like you work hard this business for everyone. And

56:37

another thing it taught me was working with

56:39

good people. So again, I didn't actually work with them. I'm like,

56:42

in general, when I hire people

56:44

and when we grow our team, I want to make sure

56:46

that you're a good person that want to actually work

56:48

on this business. Sure, you could do business in

56:50

a way which is cutthroat and nasty

56:53

and everyone hates you. And there's a lot of

56:55

big businesses built that way. I'm just don't want

56:57

to be in that business and work with those types of people. And

56:59

when you meet someone where so-called your competitor,

57:01

but super respectful and excited for

57:04

you as well, that to me was just such an impactful

57:06

moment, both from lessons and learning

57:08

from him and repeating that story. Whenever

57:10

I meet other entrepreneurs that are like scared of competition.

57:13

So what did you learn when you started

57:15

browse and kind of maybe the first few years there?

57:18

Yeah, so browse. Browse a

57:20

lot of its own learning, you know, as God is

57:22

the business like, Oh, I have this side hustle. I've

57:24

thought some over cross for all the time. There

57:26

was a lot of big lessons. I'll

57:29

give you some early big ones. One

57:31

is in the bucket of thinking outside the box. And

57:33

one of the bucket is, you know, so-called balls

57:36

or I call it hotspot is like not being afraid

57:38

to knocking on any door. So one

57:41

lesson was I learned early on

57:43

when I was in Canada. Let me give you an example.

57:46

I live in Toronto to ship something down

57:48

the block in Toronto costs $8 to

57:51

ship something to the West Coast. Like Vancouver

57:53

or whatever 12 to 15 bucks. You

57:55

can't territories even more than that. However,

57:58

if you ship something from Buffalo. New

58:00

York, USA to Toronto,

58:03

it is like five bucks and

58:05

not much more to ship to British Columbia. So

58:08

I somehow fell into that because I was working

58:10

cross border for a US 3PL

58:12

and us. And I'm like, one second, it

58:15

is cheaper to ship into

58:17

Canada from the States than

58:19

from within Canada. And when I saw that,

58:21

so my first cross border

58:23

move was... That's why you got that 3PL,

58:26

right? Well, even before the 3PL, when I

58:28

was... This is before Pennsylvania, I was printing

58:30

USPS labels in Toronto, putting in a

58:32

car, driving to the States using

58:35

section 321, import duty free, dropping

58:37

off at USPS and shipping it back to all

58:40

my Canadian customers, which sounds crazy.

58:43

And it blew my mind of like, one second, there's

58:45

cross border world here. And why was this a story?

58:48

And essentially what the story was is Canada Post

58:50

by its mandate for the local Canada

58:52

Post infrastructure needs to be a profitable entity. So

58:55

Canada Post generates profit every year versus

58:58

USPS is not a profitable entity. It actually

59:00

loses a few hundred million dollars a year, but it spurs

59:02

the massive economy for e-commerce

59:05

and there's billions of dollars generated in taxes,

59:07

et cetera, et cetera. But USPS had

59:10

its own agreement coming into Canada

59:12

that allowed us to get better rates

59:14

shipped from Buffalo to the States. So to me,

59:16

it was like, just because everyone ships

59:19

within Canada with Canada Post, it doesn't mean you

59:21

need to. And if you think outside the box and

59:23

you question everything, and honestly, just

59:25

to be curious, if you're curious,

59:27

you'll find opportunity. And

59:29

that's what I was, I was curious. And then now it's

59:32

a huge business. Now there's a company called

59:34

Tishat Express. And they do what I did by

59:36

myself in a van. They do it with

59:38

trucks, they pick up pallets and pallets

59:40

of packages and people drive it above, drop it off,

59:43

comes right back into Canada. It's a massive

59:45

industry today. So to me, that was a lesson

59:47

of don't take anything for the way

59:49

it is, be curious, ask lots

59:52

of questions, and don't be afraid to try anything

59:54

out.

59:55

Yeah, like trying out portless.

59:57

Exactly. Exactly. That was, you

59:59

know, we don't know what you tried. And we tried and for

1:00:01

us it's way bigger than our consumer business. Then

1:00:03

another big lesson was

1:00:05

having the balls to do stuff. I like to

1:00:08

call it hotspot. So it was

1:00:10

actually 2020, and we were scaling

1:00:12

like crazy. We were doing insane revenue

1:00:14

in Q4. I think at one point it was like almost a million dollars

1:00:16

a day during Q4, during like a tight period,

1:00:18

Black Friday, second Monday. And if

1:00:20

anyone has experience with Facebook advertising, especially those

1:00:22

days, it's a huge pain in the ass.

1:00:25

So you have these bots

1:00:28

that would scan your account. If

1:00:30

for whatever reason they thought that you were doing

1:00:32

something wrong, they would deactivate your

1:00:34

account. There's not a human doing it. It was

1:00:36

literally a bot that Facebook put together

1:00:39

to decide if your account is good or bad. And

1:00:42

it was the middle of our craziest time,

1:00:44

and our account went down. Like, oh my gosh, we're

1:00:46

going to lose literally millions of revenue because

1:00:49

you've got to submit paperwork, you've got to submit

1:00:51

this, and it goes to review. So I was talking

1:00:53

to actually one of my cousins that is

1:00:55

actually an investor, one of my angel investors back

1:00:57

in the day, and he's like, why don't

1:01:00

you email Cheryl Sandberg? I'm like,

1:01:02

I don't know Cheryl Sandberg. She's like, who

1:01:04

cares? It was actually during this time,

1:01:06

it was actually during the high holiday season of Russia,

1:01:09

China, and Yom Kippur. And he's like, just

1:01:11

Google her email, see if you can find it, and cold email

1:01:13

her, and like wish her happy holidays,

1:01:16

and hopefully she opens an email. So I did that,

1:01:18

and I was going online. I put like 10 email

1:01:20

addresses in a BCC, and I'm

1:01:22

like, happy holidays, you know, thinking

1:01:24

maybe she'll think it's like one of her friends, wish her happy holidays.

1:01:27

Literally, I don't remember if 10 emails, like let's say 9

1:01:29

out of 10 bounced, but one email went through.

1:01:32

Because we were big advertisers, we weren't small,

1:01:34

we just didn't have an account rep. And she responded,

1:01:37

and she introduced me to her

1:01:39

group of staff, which introduced me to the head of Facebook

1:01:42

account management in Austin, which then eventually

1:01:44

signed us an account manager and kind

1:01:46

of got us going again. And to me, that was less

1:01:48

learned, like one of the many lessons, like you

1:01:50

can't be afraid to try stuff.

1:01:53

The worst thing she would have said was no.

1:01:55

Well, I've been kind of listening for a while. I did

1:01:58

listen to your first Patreon call.

1:01:59

And there's a couple guys in there

1:02:02

that what they did or what they were doing kind

1:02:04

of intrigued me. And then I've heard

1:02:06

a couple of the commercials or whatever that so-and-so

1:02:08

is going to be on there, clicked on your new episode

1:02:11

the other day. And I'm like, you know what? I'm here. I got to

1:02:13

do this.

1:02:17

Great stories again. I think we're

1:02:19

cut from the same cloth. I'm the exact same

1:02:21

way. Like you don't know what you don't know. Don't be scared

1:02:24

to send an email. Worst thing is going to happen. They

1:02:26

write something bad to you like FU, F

1:02:28

off, whatever. And you're like, okay, well, that's

1:02:30

just not a happy person. So if you don't

1:02:32

try, then no one's going to try for you.

1:02:35

Your brother's not going to try for you. Your

1:02:37

grandpa, your dad, it's kind of like they showed

1:02:39

you the way. It's like, this is what I have to do to be

1:02:41

successful. It's like, okay, if I have to lose weight, I

1:02:43

have to probably stop eating as bad as I have

1:02:45

been. Or I need to start going to the gym or

1:02:47

both, right? So it's like doing these things that

1:02:49

you know you have to do in order to get to where you want to

1:02:51

go. So exactly. And by the way,

1:02:53

it's a muscle, right? Like when you get started, it's

1:02:55

brutal when you get told no. Or someone

1:02:58

says like, I don't want to invest in your company or

1:03:00

F off as a brand. It's a muscle

1:03:03

and it's like your point, like what's the downside, right? The

1:03:05

worst thing is that guy, you know, is a miserable person.

1:03:07

He sold his report center. And he said no,

1:03:10

but it's definitely a muscle. You got to start

1:03:12

it to gain that muscle. Right. And so over

1:03:14

those first five years, it

1:03:16

seems like things were going great. Yeah. So

1:03:18

the first five years of the consumer

1:03:21

business, even a bit long than that, we were

1:03:23

scaling over a hundred percent year over year. So

1:03:25

I didn't take any outside capital, agreed

1:03:27

to a five-line revenue. That was a

1:03:30

hundred percent growth for a couple years. And I took a small

1:03:32

amount of outside capital and kept growing it

1:03:34

pretty much a hundred percent. Took a larger venture

1:03:36

funding after a needle round. And

1:03:39

then, so the big thing

1:03:41

is, what's the punch in the face, right? Things

1:03:43

don't go good forever was Apple

1:03:46

privacy updates. So if anyone has been living

1:03:48

through direct consumer marketing from 2020,

1:03:51

2021, you know, on beyond Apple released

1:03:54

this massive privacy update that companies

1:03:56

like tech talk, acts, Facebook,

1:03:59

Instagram. they can't track you anymore. So

1:04:01

you used to be, you go on Facebook, you

1:04:03

click a link, there's a cookie on the website,

1:04:06

Facebook knows exactly what you did on the website, knows

1:04:08

what you purchased or knows what you looked at, and

1:04:11

they're building this data on you and then like, okay, because

1:04:13

the next time they saw you clicked on

1:04:15

a bunch of shoe companies, they're gonna

1:04:17

send you more shoe companies and they know if you made

1:04:19

a transaction and they know if you added to cart.

1:04:22

So data was incredible for marketing companies

1:04:24

and then Facebook did that release and

1:04:27

everything changed. Facebook had no idea

1:04:30

which customers were clicking or not that

1:04:32

they could add, if they made a transaction that. So

1:04:34

they didn't know which customers were buying, they didn't know what

1:04:36

they're interested in, they didn't know how to give you

1:04:38

a feedback loop that your ad was even successful.

1:04:41

So it was like an entire, I would

1:04:44

say really industry, I would say anyone that

1:04:46

has been in DTC during that time, that

1:04:48

ran paint ads. So not Google, Google

1:04:50

never got affected because Google search intense

1:04:53

based marketing and it never needed

1:04:55

cookies to know what the customer wanted because

1:04:57

it was keyword based. But if anyone did marketing

1:04:59

on any of these social platforms, it was just

1:05:02

a massive change. And that's

1:05:04

when we start going deeper into supply chain.

1:05:06

So I think another important lesson was when

1:05:08

things don't go your way, you could again, fight

1:05:11

it forever and fight it to

1:05:13

your company's dead, or you could pivot because

1:05:15

you've gotta be agile. You gotta be like, okay, this

1:05:17

is a new world today. What do I gotta do different? I

1:05:19

gotta increase my margins. I gotta have better cash flow.

1:05:21

I gotta access new markets. And honestly,

1:05:24

thankfully, it led us to portless because

1:05:27

we just went deeper into supply chain, deeper into logistics,

1:05:30

which allowed this model, allow

1:05:32

us to do it for all these companies. Yeah,

1:05:35

but before you made that transition, I guess that's why I said the first

1:05:37

five years of your company here, you

1:05:39

weren't doing any of the supply chain stuff, right? It's

1:05:41

about year six or so. Well, after you

1:05:43

met the Alibaba CFO, right? Yeah,

1:05:46

so I was doing until 2016, I

1:05:48

was importing my container. Then

1:05:50

from 2016 on, I was doing cross

1:05:52

border stuff. And that's when things really

1:05:55

start taking off. So we didn't start

1:05:57

with an infrastructure right away. We started...

1:06:00

bringing on sellers, kind of on a marketplace

1:06:02

model. But we started going deeper

1:06:05

into out of marketplace

1:06:07

and what I call controlled marketplace, and

1:06:09

then over the coming years, I would say, starting 2019, we

1:06:12

got deeper and deeper into logistics. And then

1:06:14

when iOS 14 came out, Apple privacy

1:06:16

update, we went full fledged into logistics

1:06:19

and kind of took over the entire supply chain. Right.

1:06:21

But before that, right when we're putting our

1:06:23

toes into the logistics water of what

1:06:25

eventually became portless, what it is today, but

1:06:28

again, it was just for your company when you were

1:06:30

doing that, just walk me through. Cause

1:06:32

earlier on, you said you're working with people in China,

1:06:34

then some of the developers. Just tell me

1:06:36

how that process goes on. Cause again, at least

1:06:39

it's other stuff before now that I'm looking

1:06:41

back and understand it's like you kind of understood

1:06:43

manufacturing a lot, but if you're building

1:06:45

like some type of tech to put

1:06:48

on top of your website to help the

1:06:50

marketplace, like, just tell me how you figured

1:06:52

that out. Great question. So I'm

1:06:54

not a software engineer. I'm not even, or

1:06:57

wasn't originally a logistics expert. I know

1:06:59

a lot more now to get started. It's

1:07:02

back to the us. It's the team. It's the people.

1:07:04

So early on, I went to

1:07:06

networking events and I met a guy that

1:07:09

was a co-founder and a CTO of another company. Real

1:07:12

details. So like what networking events? You

1:07:14

know what? It was meetup.com. I don't

1:07:16

know if they're still popular, but it was

1:07:18

a Toronto tech scene.

1:07:21

I remember a little deeper. I think it was under

1:07:24

the bucket of retention

1:07:26

marketing. So you had markers, I went through

1:07:28

your software and engineer went there and I was getting into brand

1:07:30

place and I was trying to learn more about retention marketing

1:07:32

from a tech perspective. Well, I met essentially

1:07:35

this guy that was a CTO. He

1:07:37

just left his other company and he was

1:07:40

learning to learn more about the consumer

1:07:42

space cause he wasn't a CTO in a e-commerce

1:07:44

business. He was a CTO in a kind of an

1:07:46

online fast business. So I was telling him

1:07:48

about what I was doing and how like I'm going to

1:07:50

be raising money soon. And he was just like floored

1:07:53

about, cause this is still the advantages

1:07:55

of cashflow. And again, the delivery

1:07:57

times weren't as good those days, but all the advantages.

1:08:00

still exist. And he's like, that's incredible.

1:08:02

He's like, if you ever decide to go and start building

1:08:04

a full tech stack, let me know.

1:08:07

That's when I got sophisticated in tech. Prior

1:08:09

to that, I found one developer

1:08:12

that lives in my community that I paid

1:08:14

him for after-hour work. Sorry, I'm

1:08:16

going even further back now, back to 2012, when

1:08:19

I really got started. He used to work

1:08:21

after his main job hours. So

1:08:23

he would start late at night. He would start at 10 p.m.

1:08:26

after he put his kids to bed

1:08:28

and he worked till like 1 a.m. and

1:08:30

he used to have to stay up to work with him. So that's

1:08:33

our reason I started. He was one developer and he

1:08:35

made a lot of mistakes. He built my original website

1:08:37

on WordPress. WordPress is not built for e-commerce.

1:08:39

She hacked a WordPress site. So within like probably

1:08:42

six months, we busted out of that, which then

1:08:44

we moved to Magento. So I

1:08:46

started with like a random developer that happens in my

1:08:48

community and I'm like, could you do this for me? And he

1:08:50

made lots and lots and lots of mistakes. He just, again,

1:08:53

wasn't an e-commerce expert. But then eventually,

1:08:55

when I started to get more revenue, he was

1:08:57

able to get me to let's call it a minimal viable product.

1:09:00

And then once there's a revenue coming in, I start hiring

1:09:02

a better firm that took care of it. So

1:09:04

I didn't know how to build it. I just found something that

1:09:07

did. It was really bad

1:09:09

in the early days. Like it sucked, but

1:09:11

it was good enough to work. And when

1:09:13

once there's traction, you take some of the profits

1:09:16

on the revenue and just reinvest it. And then

1:09:18

eventually, when I start going really deep

1:09:20

into tech, I was able to recruit a CTO, from

1:09:23

another company.

1:09:24

Yeah, but let's just say that first guy, after you

1:09:26

started building on Magento, right, instead of WordPress, the

1:09:29

tech stuff, like what was that even doing versus

1:09:31

before?

1:09:32

Yeah. So before Magento,

1:09:34

on WordPress, like the site would just crash. Because

1:09:36

WordPress is built to be a blog site, not an e-commerce

1:09:39

site. But there was like this one WordPress extension

1:09:42

that someone hacked to make it work. So WordPress

1:09:44

was the wrong decision. And when it was crashing, I

1:09:46

said, listen, you built me on

1:09:48

WordPress, it sucks. It is

1:09:50

what it is. I said, you got to pick a platform

1:09:53

for me, that's going to work as I scale.

1:09:55

And this is even before Shopify for me, what

1:09:58

wasn't really on the radar. And I

1:10:00

always wanted to be outside Canada. I always wanted

1:10:02

an international play. So I needed

1:10:04

a platform that A, I said, it's gotta be

1:10:06

scalable and it's gotta be sold to other countries. So

1:10:09

the next major platform that had a lot of history

1:10:11

behind it was Magento. So he's like, okay,

1:10:13

I found Magento. I'm gonna build

1:10:15

it on Magento. I'm gonna build an MVP on Magento.

1:10:17

He built the MVP on Magento, but he wasn't

1:10:20

really a Magento expert. But he got

1:10:22

it enough to be live. Then

1:10:24

I went on a site called Upwork.com

1:10:27

and I found a developer based in Pakistan

1:10:30

that was a Magento expert. So I ended

1:10:32

up hiring him to take over my local

1:10:34

guy. Cause my local guy's like, I'll be honest, I'm not a Magento expert.

1:10:36

I'll get you live. I can't build custom stuff on this.

1:10:39

But then I found on Upwork.com, this one

1:10:41

developer based in Pakistan. And then I used him

1:10:43

for years. He was with me all

1:10:45

the way until we transitioned to Shopify eventually. But

1:10:48

we ended up building a ton of customization

1:10:50

on Magento. And people that are familiar with

1:10:52

Magento understand the pain of that because Magento

1:10:55

is very connected. Every

1:10:57

time you do a custom update, everything

1:10:59

could get affected. Unlike Shopify, which is

1:11:01

like download an app and upload an app. It's like, it

1:11:03

doesn't affect the main infrastructure. Magento

1:11:06

was, it was scalable. It

1:11:08

was just very painful from a tech stack

1:11:10

perspective. But that was the evolution of how

1:11:12

I went from piece to piece.

1:11:14

We can turn and look at the positive. The good thing is if

1:11:16

he was great at first, you probably wouldn't

1:11:18

have learned all the tech stuff. Like that WordPress

1:11:20

sucked or that Magento is good. But then like,

1:11:23

I just learned like, oh, okay. If you make one update,

1:11:25

it could still screw up everything. So

1:11:28

if you find someone who's just ahead of you, when

1:11:30

you're getting started, no matter what, we all don't have a lot of money.

1:11:32

So you can't just go get the best guy, but you're

1:11:34

also learning. And then that way, when you talk

1:11:36

to the next people, you have way more education

1:11:39

to understand like, okay, this is what

1:11:41

I can do. This is what I can't do. So yeah, it's

1:11:43

good to be able to figure that out. And then like I

1:11:45

said, when this guy was just building it for your company

1:11:48

or the next firm that you hire, that's

1:11:50

a little different than if you start building portless

1:11:53

for these other companies, even if it was the first

1:11:55

seven or eight, like you talked about. I'm

1:11:58

sure it was just one extra company at first. And then you had more and more.

1:11:59

but I mean that has to be totally different

1:12:02

than what you had on your back end just

1:12:04

for your company at the time browse. Yeah,

1:12:07

but this is years later. I had a pretty

1:12:09

decent understanding of technology and Shopify

1:12:11

and integrations. So Shopify is

1:12:13

a great platform to connect apps to.

1:12:16

So we just basically created a private app. Okay,

1:12:18

gotcha. That could easily integrate. So like Shopify

1:12:21

makes this very easy because Shopify is built

1:12:23

for partners like us to build very

1:12:26

effectively on their platform. We do have some

1:12:28

customers that are not built on Shopify. We have customers

1:12:30

built on NetSuite or SellerCloud

1:12:32

or ShipStation or all these other types

1:12:34

of stacks. We have an API

1:12:36

site for business. But all

1:12:39

of that, this is because I was a consumer

1:12:41

of Shopify eventually for a bunch of years. I

1:12:43

understood the tech stack a lot better. So

1:12:45

we knew how to build towards it.

1:12:47

Everyone can tell that I don't have a huge e-commerce

1:12:49

background, but I understand the basics of

1:12:51

it. Yeah, I mean, you'd be able to do an app and

1:12:53

just build it on top of Shopify and then basically

1:12:55

just rename the app if you want it or have

1:12:58

it be the same app and just use somebody else use it, then

1:13:00

that's awesome. Then that makes it much easier. It

1:13:02

wasn't like you had to redo everything from scratch

1:13:05

kind of. Exactly. It's much easier

1:13:07

to build on top of. Okay. And so I guess

1:13:10

that's kind of where you've come today, like

1:13:12

you said, as far as the transition

1:13:14

to doing portless full-time. I

1:13:16

don't know if you have anything else as far as that transition or

1:13:18

anything else we can learn from here as we kind of close

1:13:21

down the story.

1:13:22

No, I think to what you said, you always got

1:13:24

to be open to trying new things and one

1:13:26

door closes, that means opportunity for

1:13:28

others. That's the attitude and the project tips

1:13:30

of the business. And for us, it's

1:13:33

hard to see it. In hindsight, it's 2020. In the moment, it's

1:13:36

tough, right? Building any business is so

1:13:38

hard, but you've got to basically have persistence

1:13:41

and be able to push through the tough times

1:13:44

and usually opportunity comes out of that. And

1:13:46

that's what for us, like again, we built this massive

1:13:49

consumer business. It was tons of

1:13:51

lessons for us. Marketing got hard,

1:13:54

but it just made us go deeper into fulfillment.

1:13:56

And now we believe we have the opportunity

1:13:59

to really just. disrupt direct-to-consumer

1:14:01

businesses. Like they could not

1:14:03

disrupt, really enable making every

1:14:05

DVC business better, healthier,

1:14:08

past-filled businesses. So persistence,

1:14:10

take the learning, apply them, adapt, and

1:14:13

then have the hotspot to keep knocking

1:14:15

on doors and trying new things. I

1:14:17

think that for me was the key lesson in this transition.

1:14:20

Well, how about personally, as far as staying

1:14:22

motivated? Because, you know, as a solo founder,

1:14:25

and I know we use we a lot in this interview

1:14:27

and whatnot, but do you ever have times where

1:14:29

you aren't as motivated versus you

1:14:31

are super motivated and like what's your work week look

1:14:34

like? Just kind of walk me through the entrepreneurial

1:14:36

experience as a solo founder even

1:14:38

today. Great question. I would say there's two

1:14:41

things that's very helpful for me. So it's why

1:14:43

I find entrepreneurs like

1:14:45

to control, like to control their destiny,

1:14:47

like to control the business. Maybe not end up doing

1:14:49

everything. But when things don't go well in

1:14:51

business, you feel like you're losing control. So

1:14:54

what I did personally was when things

1:14:56

were so-called, it felt like during

1:14:59

iOS, Apple 14, like marketing was like

1:15:01

you're losing control. How does that work? I actually

1:15:03

went very heavy into controlling my health.

1:15:06

So I started going to the gym every single day. I started taking care of

1:15:08

my physical health, which is really, really

1:15:10

good for me. So one was for me, that

1:15:12

was an outlet that was super healthy. And

1:15:14

another thing for me personally was, again, I'm

1:15:17

actually a rabbi, right? We're a pinnacle degree

1:15:19

and Orthodox Jew. For me, I also

1:15:22

took the approach of there's only so much

1:15:24

you can control. So if you're giving your

1:15:26

all, you're doing everything, you're being persistent, you're doing

1:15:28

the work. For me, you could only do

1:15:30

so much that you could control, but at some point,

1:15:32

it's really out of my hands. So I

1:15:35

think that's the attitude I

1:15:37

took, like I'm going to come to work every day. I'm going to give

1:15:39

them my everything, and I'm not going to stop. I'm going

1:15:41

to be persistent, and I'm going to grind, and I'm

1:15:43

going to adapt. But at the end of the

1:15:45

day, this wasn't meant

1:15:47

to be, then it won't be meant to be. And if

1:15:50

it was meant to be, then it will be meant

1:15:52

to be. So I think from a mental health perspective,

1:15:54

that was the attitude I took, and I started

1:15:56

controlling a little bit more of my physical

1:15:59

health. which was a huge, huge

1:16:01

help during that, let's call it tough times. Yeah,

1:16:04

no, I appreciate you talking about

1:16:06

that. I mean, we didn't talk about, I mean, did you have

1:16:08

any personal hardships at all during

1:16:10

your whole story? I haven't had any personal

1:16:12

hardships on a myriad of three kids. So

1:16:15

to me, that's everything, right? I get to come home,

1:16:17

you have like kids jumping on you, and to me, I

1:16:19

love that. So business is a big part

1:16:21

of my life, but it's not the foundation of my life. The foundation

1:16:23

of my life is my family and my kids and my

1:16:26

health. So having that was really

1:16:28

great because if your entire life is

1:16:30

business, that could be hard when things don't

1:16:32

go well. So for me, I was growing

1:16:34

my family during this time, and it wasn't all hard times.

1:16:37

There was a lot of great times, there

1:16:39

were big, pivotal moments where

1:16:41

after a hard day, I could still come home and be like, you

1:16:44

know, this is what matters to me. So I'm

1:16:46

thankful, at least in a personal life, things were very good. Well,

1:16:48

great mindset, and thank you for sharing

1:16:51

your story here. I guess if someone wanted

1:16:53

to say thank you again for doing the interview,

1:16:55

what's the best way from the reach out? Yeah, definitely.

1:16:58

If you want to learn more about us, portless.com, there's

1:17:01

tons to learn, reach out to us there. We have a team

1:17:03

that will get back to you and learn more about your business,

1:17:05

see if you can help you leverage your model. And if you want

1:17:07

to follow, at least from you from a content perspective,

1:17:10

I'm on Twitter or X, I'm on LinkedIn,

1:17:13

coffee posting, supply chain, inventory

1:17:15

strategy, and just history on

1:17:17

supply chain, all those platforms, and

1:17:20

anyone that messages me, I get back to everyone.

1:17:22

Great. Well, thank you again, Izzy. And then

1:17:24

like he said, you can visit him on all the social

1:17:27

media sites and should get back to you.

1:17:29

So thank you again for taking the time to share your

1:17:31

story. Absolutely. Thanks so much

1:17:33

for having me. This was super awesome. You

1:17:37

know what I'm in the mood for right now? That's

1:17:40

right. More service-based

1:17:42

interviews. If you're in the mood

1:17:45

too, then check out these episodes.

1:17:47

Episode 197 with two maids in a mop. Episode 89

1:17:52

with the author incubator. That's

1:17:55

a fan favorite.

1:17:56

More episode 140 with barbecue smokehouse.

1:17:59

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