Transcript

Jared Ward: 0:06

what do you guys do to keep sane because, honestly, luminous, I feel like my head is in it all day and all night.

Fabricio Miranda: 0:13

I play music. I I was a musician for a long time of my life, as you guys know, and I go to the studio every day, at least for an hour, and that's my therapy session. What instruments do you play? I play anything, everything but badly.

Fabricio Miranda: 0:26

I'm not great at anything, but I play everything, and I the flute and I have a let's be, more the harp, so I play guitar and bass and drums, keyboards and I sing, I was a singer, so okay, yeah, that's my, that's mainly my thing. So I I use moises, which is a software that is here in salt lake city as base here from a friend of mine and huge software and and they were able to remove the instruments from a song. So you get any song that you like. Uh, and you know that's very low down on moises.

Fabricio Miranda: 0:56

It it separates the song into the tracks, different tracks and you can say okay, so now I want to play guitar with my favorite band. Yeah, and I play the band, remove the guitar and then I play the guitar for them.

Blair Forrest: 1:07

Have you seen the TikTok where, like a drummer, it's like a big time drummer, but they've never heard the song before?

Fabricio Miranda: 1:12

Yeah, and they have like massive beat to it Without the drums, yeah yeah, they have to try to guess how the song was. They immediately get it, but many times they do a different style.

Jared Ward: 1:21

They did the drummer from Red Hot Chili Peppers, yeah yeah, chad Smith, will Ferrell, that's awesome.

Fabricio Miranda: 1:27

For Dua Lipa. Yeah, dua Lipa, but he had produced that song, I mean, he had played on that song, so he knew the song.

Jared Ward: 1:35

There's a viral video. It's like 30 Seconds Tomorrow's Jared Leto's band and then the drummer for red hot chili peppers. He just listens to it and then like, oh, it's so sick.

Blair Forrest: 1:46

I'm starting to see here, oh really, red hot chili peppers what red hot chili peppers? No like I know them, I don't like, I don't, I don't know like if you ask me, I put a gun to my head.

Fabricio Miranda: 1:54

I don't have an age.

Jared Ward: 1:55

One song, it's five years one song difference no, but there is such a difference because, like, think about it, did you grow up with a smartphone? Like, how old were you when you got a smartphone?

Blair Forrest: 2:06

so I had a smartphone, but yeah, I had it in like um grade, like nine basically see, I didn't.

Jared Ward: 2:11

I. I had a flip phone until I was 21 years old, whoa so I didn't have. Like I didn't grow up, I literally grew up with dial up and and a flip phone.

Fabricio Miranda: 2:20

When I was 16 years old I grew up with, like my dad, had the first computer at the first 100 computers that went to Brazil. One went to my dad because he used to work with technology and I used to program in basic like the little games and playing those games in one of those green monitors, you know the black with the green cursor, and that was me growing up, I think, benchmark, benchmark.

Blair Forrest: 2:45

like my first uh game console was we okay, uh, like there was.

Jared Ward: 2:50

So there was a nintendo 64. That was my first n64.

Blair Forrest: 2:52

I remember when you'd like blow into it and then, yeah, put it in. Basically answer your question how do I balance it? I don't. I actually have to learn a lot better. My methodology right now is I'll go six, seven days until I hit like a flat burnout and then I'll take a day off.

Blair Forrest: 3:09

And then that rests me enough, like go to a place where I literally can't. I'll take a day, maybe like a Sunday, completely off and turn it off, and then I do it again. Okay, I don't think it's the best approach. It's not healthy at all. You shouldn't do that. I haven't figured out you don't have anything you like. You don't work out every day, so I'll work out. It doesn't feel like an outlet, though that feels like a job and I treat it like I'm. Like that's, I'm clocking in, okay.

Fabricio Miranda: 3:30

That's my job, before the job, basically. So I don't know.

Blair Forrest: 3:33

I have to figure out what I was. Even telling the wife about it, I couldn't. I haven. I don't know what that is for me.

Fabricio Miranda: 3:41

Yeah, I'm lucky because it's not. Not everybody has that Right. So I'm lucky that I had that in my life. It was not something that I said, oh, I need an outlet and I'm going to figure that out. I just had it. Yeah, I was a, I was like a real musician for 12 years and it was part of my life.

Blair Forrest: 3:57

It was something that was Like everything is off when you're doing that Totally, yeah, nothing matters.

Fabricio Miranda: 4:03

Nothing matters, it's my therapy. I go back up. It's in my basement, I have the studio, the full studio, and then I go back up.

Jared Ward: 4:09

That's so cool.

Fabricio Miranda: 4:10

And then I say to my wife okay, my therapy session is done, I love it.

Blair Forrest: 4:13

You know what the only thing I really enjoy doing is I like building websites, really Love it. I have the bank of domains I have with websites.

Jared Ward: 4:23

What are some of the domains that you have?

Blair Forrest: 4:25

I can't say them on camera.

Jared Ward: 4:27

Oh yeah, People will start looking at it. I'll take you guys off camera.

Blair Forrest: 4:30

But like, I'll build the whole website, I'll build the whole company around it and I'll just never do anything with it.

Jared Ward: 4:35

Dude, one of my friends has the coolest. I also grab domains. I'll say one of my friend's domain names. So he snagged weargarbagecom and he was going to do like a fully like recyclable materials, like sunglasses, t-shirts, but it's just like everything is recycled materials and that was a great idea.

Fabricio Miranda: 4:58

I own inventoryplanningai. I'm all about getting all the ones related to what I do and I just get everything.

Blair Forrest: 5:07

I think I own 45, 50 domains I I tried to get a prepcom oh, half a million, half a million to get it and I was like I've never been like that close to buying one and I like really talked myself off to like yeah, but I was like too much, that would have been really cool. Prepcom Like it just the way it rolls. You guys have to be aware of the new ones.

Fabricio Miranda: 5:30

Do you know the new? No, no, no. So if you go to sheetsnew, it goes to a new Google sheet. You know that, right? No, docsnew is mine. So if you want to start like a po, my dream is that when whoever wants to start a po just go to ponew and it's going to load the po tool. Ah, that's, that's a good idea. Yeah, I, I have those details. What do you do for bern?

Jared Ward: 6:03

Oh, dude, I don't, I don't know Drink energy drinks. Yeah, I just drink, I just keep going. I don't know, I just I work out, I go on a run For me. I always have to be pushing for some crazy goal outside of Luminous.

Blair Forrest: 6:18

Super unhealthy.

Jared Ward: 6:26

Like let's do break a certain time on a marathon, or like uh, I don't know binge press a certain amount, like I always have to be pushing for something.

Fabricio Miranda: 6:29

But that's good. Yeah, I think that's good. That motivates you to do something else. Yeah, I only have goals inside of lever, that which is which sucks. I don't have goals like that. I do well, tied off what I do here I tried to break it down.

Blair Forrest: 6:40

There was a thing uh, sam par, uh, my first million was saying it was like business, relationship, personal, and there's one or two more and it's basically like you, you have your five buckets that you're playing into. So that that was one part of it. The. So the one thing I've been doing is, um, I bought the big ass calendar, do calendar. Um, so there's two things I've done with that, which has been super fun. One I have a thing called a misogi.

Blair Forrest: 7:04

You ever heard of it before? No, no, really cool. So a misogi, uh, it's from like a, it's from a japanese saying of. Basically the misogi came from like one big thing that conquered your world or your lifestyle. And the idea behind a misogi is you have one big theme that happens for the year, uh, so your misogi is one thing that, like your entire year, that's your theme year. So your Misogi is one thing that, like your entire year, that's your theme. So, for example, a Misogi could be you run your marathon. Misogi for me last year was like going to Portugal with the wife or getting a new house or whatever it might. Misogi might be hit a hundred million dollars. So you have your Misogi, whatever that is business or non-business, then I have a thing which are my supplements, so I list down everything that gives me energy I try to do. There's 10 of them, like working out, going for a run, spending time with the missus, going, taking the dog for the walk, which is them.

Blair Forrest: 7:53

So I want to aim to get like five of those a day. Five of those a day, I'm good, I'm happy, right, and that's kind of like my daily supplements. Yeah, and the last part I do is called mini adventures. So you have the misogi, which is on an annual. You have, uh, the mini adventures, which I do four to six of those a year. Okay, the goal of those is like it's just something to break the pattern of what you're currently doing. So, uh, the mini adventure might be that it just has to be something you're not comfortable with are these all on jesse?

Blair Forrest: 8:19

it's his calendar uh yeah, it's all the theme of what jesse itzler does okay, um.

Jared Ward: 8:23

So his this year was like his misogi was going to.

Blair Forrest: 8:26

He went to, like sweden, with a bunch of his friends yeah uh.

Blair Forrest: 8:29

But then the mini adventure could be like, uh, taking the boy to football, yeah, if it, if it breaks the cycle, or going for the hike. That was uncomfortable for you to do, whatever. It is like, uh, I'm gonna take my dad to a soccer game, just a mini adventure. And the idea is like, okay, well, if you do four of those a year and for the next 30 years, right. So now you have, yeah, 30, yeah, a couple hundred mini adventures. It's like, okay, you lived a good life. Yeah, that that's the idea behind them. So you got misogi mini adventures. And then you have your daily supplements.

Fabricio Miranda: 8:53

Yeah, I'm trying to build my world like that. I'm not self-motivated enough. I'm just. I just live life and I have three kids that basically rule what I what, what I'm going to do, I you know. You were just saying oh, why don't you stay one more day so that we can ski? I was like, oh, I have to drive my kids to Boston for a football camp, so there's no, that's my.

Blair Forrest: 9:14

I don't have kids, so that probably helps for sure. Oh, totally.

Fabricio Miranda: 9:16

Totally yeah. Once you have kids, you know Jared probably knows right how that takes over a big part of it For sure.

Blair Forrest: 9:23

How do you balance it with kids Like this whole?

Fabricio Miranda: 9:26

idea you become their, their slaves, basically.

Jared Ward: 9:29

Oh, I mean, life is totally different, like once. It's like my life is before kids, after kids. Yeah, do you feel? And your?

Fabricio Miranda: 9:36

kids are still young, because as they grow, what happens is you become an Uber driver. Basically, you're driving them around and everything is about them, about, like, taking them to different places. So there's not much you can do with your. I mean, it's terrible to say that not what you can do, but it's a lot harder for you to focus on yourself, do you? And if you have a wife, like a partner, for example, it gets even worse, right? Yeah, because it's one more yeah, it's one more person to. Yeah, you have to.

Blair Forrest: 10:05

But do you feel you put your Once you have kids? Do you feel you put your gas off the pedal?

Fabricio Miranda: 10:10

just a little bit, I don't know, because it's different right, because now you have people who depend on you. So I think the pressure grows exponentially.

Jared Ward: 10:22

I just For me, time with friends just like goes away completely. It's like my, it's my time with my kids, and then my career, and then, right, I still have extra curricular activities and stuff, but like not as much, it's just kids work. That's basically it. That's it. Um, that's it. Yeah, I would say it motivates me more, though, so I get. I want to pivot to something real fast. There's there's random questions. I just want to like ask you guys about business. First off, what are your thoughts on SDR to AE, like that motion or just full cycle AEs, because I'm super opinionated about this. Right now I have three full cycle AEs, four, if you include me. I think. Modern day, like SaaS businesses, like Luminous, the SDR to AE model, in my opinion, is dead. I know it's pretty strong and I know you do SDR.

Fabricio Miranda: 11:15

Why do you think that?

Jared Ward: 11:19

Because I think it's a much more profitable arbitrage. I would rather trade instead of paying for an SDR. I would spend all of that money to build that infrastructure of a brand and distribution of media that then, instead of paying 50K to an SDR, I can pay that.

Jared Ward: 11:38

The thing is, what normally happens is companies will try, they'll do paid ads. They'll just do like traditional B2B. They'll bid on a keyword that F***ing Stored was bidding on and it doesn't work. And they're like like ah, paid ad sucks. So many people are willing to dump 50k, 100k, 150k in strs, but if you dump that into media and distribution of that, build up an actual funnel. I the arbitrage on paid ads is arguably better.

Fabricio Miranda: 12:03

you think this is uh, um, just because this market is still growing, is still developing, and when everybody is doing that, you have the same saturation as you see in the other market.

Jared Ward: 12:16

Probably yeah, but nobody's doing it right. I mean, people are doing it, but not very well, not in my market, I agree.

Fabricio Miranda: 12:22

But I also don't think it's that easy too, because hiring an SDR you're getting someone who is a professional at doing that, and that person comes. They have kind of supposedly knowledge about what they're doing.

Fabricio Miranda: 12:34

So the learning curve and the results that you get are much more short term than trying to build a whole practice of content. It's because you guys are very good at that. You are good at that. You are good at that. I suck at content and I don't see myself doing like, oh'm gonna, I'm gonna build myself a content machine and, I'm right, I'm the one who's going to lead this thing.

Jared Ward: 12:56

it's very hard, you know so, but why is that, though? Like is it? Is it just sort of like you're less comfortable and from the camera, or? Uh no, I don't think you're just less attracted it's more, uh, the, the dynamic.

Fabricio Miranda: 13:07

it's not only recording. You know, I love talking, I talk. I could be talking here for three days nonstop, no problem at all. The problem is what happens after the talking, like, how do you, what do you do with that content, how do you distribute it and how do you make it accessible to people, and how many shorts are you going to build out of it and where to put the shorts?

Blair Forrest: 13:35

And what time and right. There's a whole strategy behind it. That's not as easy as hiring a bunch of sdr, so that's why, true, most companies do it. I lost a lot of money doing the initial sdr, so we um go back to like 2022. We spent probably like half a million on sdr, bdrs, whatever you want to call it.

Blair Forrest: 13:45

Like traditional, we brought in like new guys. These, like these, were not trained. Experiences were like my buddies at a university right, yeah, paying a couple thousand dollars a month to go like, okay, go drum up business, basically. And so my opinions change over time. We got burned by that. That did not work at all. Where they went hard, they went straight. The outbound we had a contact list on excel file. Cold call, dm on linkedin didn't work. I think what we've changed? I think one we've become a lot less reliant on our SDR focus. We still have it, but I'll explain. It's a little bit of a different focus of how we're doing it. One our SEO game is insane. Like we are the best in the logistics world for SEO. No one can go head to head with us.

Jared Ward: 14:25

Shipbob is going to be the closest but we're still dominating them on like and we're just benchmarking on like ranking and how do you do it.

Blair Forrest: 14:36

But why is that? Do you million backlinks and blogs? Yeah, like we just we've uh, we over invest into it really early, because the only thing that I really saw fruits of labor on was the like. We're still probably like 70 inbound seo got it okay so we're just like. We've ranked for these keywords over the past three years Okay, but we have a whole team in India doing just SEO. But SEO is a few things, that's interesting. Technical SEO is backlinks. Seo is new content. Blogs Like your game is content out and backlinks in basically it's the entire playbook.

Blair Forrest: 15:02

So we're like. You know, we went on a quest earlier this year to go like, okay, well, what about cold storage? You know, we didn't have the infrastructure for it. But like can we rank for it? And now we are like the top ranked cold storage facility in North America. Dude, like we just like we're. Now we're reverse engineering our solutions based off keywords. Oh, that's anxious. Yeah, so our future services like, like Seller, fulfilled Prime, it's just because the traffic's there.

Blair Forrest: 15:27

Yeah, yeah, we're just trying to arbitrage keywords back in, basically, versus trying to build the product to go out. No, that's cool.

Fabricio Miranda: 15:35

So that's really helped us. Yeah, you're building the product off of the demand instead of trying to build a product and go for it. That's exactly it.

Blair Forrest: 15:44

Yeah.

Blair Forrest: 15:44

So, like we rank for everything thing, so, so that's really helped us. But our um, our bdr team, is now fully like. So we have a team in the philippines. Okay, they're more like I'd call like go-to-market specialists. Yeah, so I recruited a couple like data entry guys like big leagues, philippines, um, they're experts with clay. Uh, lemlist, yeah, all these are the linkedin automations. So they're we. It's. It's still a. I don't call it prey and spray, but a lot of it is like they are running clay, so they'll. We'll take lead lists. We're also going to all of our current uh inbounds that come in. They're doing outbound on linkedin. Uh, they'll do cold emails, but it's also hyper personalized because we use clay, so we're still sending. I go like seven to ten thousand emails a week, and then we have another targeted emails targeted emails or like, for example uh, we use our b2b.

Jared Ward: 16:31

Yeah, we have web enrichment.

Blair Forrest: 16:33

It goes through clay. We'll filter accordingly and then some of it goes to our aes and then some of it goes to the I call it like remote bdr team got it so, I don't know. I think the bdr team is like we're even changing the wording. Uh, it used we have like uh, call like eight aes, but we're converting those to be called account managers. Because I truly think like it is a full sales motion. I also think, like at the moment, our aes, the challenges are like they would sign a customer or a merchant and then they would pass off yeah, right now I'm like no, no, like you're part of this journey for the brand, like yeah, because that's always the discussion in my life that was where to draw the line between the sales and the customer success.

Blair Forrest: 17:11

I don't think we figured it out, but I think what we've done a really poor job is like the expansion of merchants, Like we do a great job with the marketing to bring them in. I think we did a half-baked job. We do that. It's fulfillment If you fulfill an order you technically did it.

Blair Forrest: 17:24

Nurturing for upsell. We did a poor job at that. So now, like the guys we have coming in is like okay, your title is account manager, so that means you're going to field business. It's mostly inbound. You're going to field the business, you're going to close it, but then you're along, you're going to take care of it, yeah yeah, and, and then we'll comp them differently. So we want them as a like a commission. Forever right, perpetuity wait a minute.

Fabricio Miranda: 17:43

can I just go back to the? I got kind of yeah, yeah, uh, intrigued by the keyword okay. Okay, tell me, let's go to you. So in your process do you go and you look for keywords and see which keywords are better in terms of arbitrage, that there's not a lot of people in it? That's exactly what we do, and then you'll define that keyword and say, okay, I'm going to go for it.

Blair Forrest: 18:07

So we think of it like a cluster. So there'll be a cluster of corresponding keywords. So I just use cold storage as a hypothetical. Cold storage is going to have probably like 100 keywords around it. There's going to be local keywords like Alabama cold storage facility, cold storage near me, and there's going to be top 20 cold storage warehouses. How do I need to use a cold storage? So there'll be like informational and then also be transactional keywords. We'll create a whole segment to go like okay, it's kind of like how people look for like products, right? Okay, this is an open segment, no one's competing here and you can tell if that keyword's good because, like, there's usually low search volume but it's a really high cost per click. So you know someone is spending the money to and it's probably some big boy like a storage who has a ton of money or internet. So you get that information from what sim rush?

Fabricio Miranda: 18:53

yeah, sim rush, yeah, it's nothing crazy yes but, yeah, we'll rank there.

Blair Forrest: 18:56

So then we just see that as like a and then we create what we call like an seo pod, so it's a team of three. So there's a pm who does like they're creating new landing pages, design, technical work. There's someone doing content uh, any of the articles, new landing pages for very specific regions, whatever it is and then we have someone just getting backlinks. So some of those are paid backlinks, some of them are there's earned backlinks and there's paid backlinks. But you have three people per cluster of keywords. That makes sense. I and that's where in philippines. No, we have a team in india. So we have an office in india. Uh, probably like 15 in the India office. All just like killers for this stuff.

Jared Ward: 19:33

How is AI going to? Is AI going to totally wipe that out, or that's a good?

Fabricio Miranda: 19:37

question. That's a really good question Because people are talking about the search engine optimization becoming the. What do they call it? They call it GEO. I think that's.

Jared Ward: 19:47

We got our first lead inbound from chat gpt. We asked like we had a few also from chat gpt that they said like when was the last time that you? I don't know. I'm curious about your behavior here, like when was the last time that I haven't searched something on google in so long?

Blair Forrest: 20:01

what I don't search on google anymore. We're designing our strategy for chat. So I would call like 15 of our inbounds coming from chat gdp. Now, no way, because we'll track the source right. So then, like everything I'm doing, we're just thinking about the chat gdp function of what they want to see, or like how people are, the behavior of how they're searching there, right. So, and like if we go through, so we have a little empty box on our website to go like how did you hear about us? And it's not skewed, there's no drop down whatever, it's just like blank box, you tell us, and like a good portion now it's just going up every day. Chat gdp we got one yesterday said gronk, yeah, uh, claude rep recommended you guys when I asked for a warehouse.

Fabricio Miranda: 20:37

So I just think it's changing of how we're thinking about it but is the strategy to understand what people are asking on chat gpt or is the strategy making the content in a way that when chat gpt will search, it will index to your account?

Blair Forrest: 20:51

Yeah, because you can think, like any keyword, they're going to ask on chat GDP. They used to be doing it on Google, right? It's not that they're asking a different thing, they're just using a different engine that's smarter. So in a previous life you're looking up top inventory forecasting tools, right? Or do I need one? Now they're going right to chat and it's actually just giving them. Doesn't just query from bing, doesn't gpt? It depends on what you're doing, but traditionally it's mapping it from everywhere, so it will reference the, the articles, but there's way that the seo team goes. It's just like they're just thinking about that prompt. But yeah, like they're. We need to bring on those guys that is so interesting they're sick at this.

Blair Forrest: 21:25

I, I can give them the directional strategy because I understand the mapping of it. But boy, boy, they just we. So the gentleman Ari who runs that team, he's like Forbes in the India world, he's like the Neil Patel of that world. No one headhunt who's ever listening to this. But yeah, so he's the guy that runs our India office, but he's like he's the Neil Patel of that ecosystem. So I, I don't know. Seo is a hard game, though, like you have to, I don't think if you don't have a right team behind it it's not worth it. But, like boy, I don't think we'll be a third of where we are now if we didn't have the technical SEO game.

Jared Ward: 21:56

Yeah, that's incredible.

Fabricio Miranda: 21:58

Brand helps. Do you guys? Do SEO?

Jared Ward: 22:00

We do, but we don't focus on it too much.

Blair Forrest: 22:04

It's just like changing is. Now it's also becoming video. So like top rank search results, yeah, like if you're on google, majority of them are shorts on the tops, if you can rank for that. You know, I I don't know. I I do think like if we don't figure out video soon, that seo game is gonna it's still gonna be a piece of it, but this is why I'm trying to really figure out video, because it's that has to go with it we are all back-end tools or services for commerce companies.

Jared Ward: 22:31

So Blair's AMZ Prep, so prepping, inventory, sending it all around the place. You're inventory planning. I'm like a system of record. Where do you guys see the most practical applications of AI? Because it's just this buzzword right now where I don't know, I haven't seen too many like actual practical like. Oh, that's cool. What are you guys seeing in the market?

Blair Forrest: 22:53

right now. This is your take.

Jared Ward: 22:55

Not some BS.

Fabricio Miranda: 22:56

God-tier idea In another episode, we talked about this thing, but I think the data mapping part so being able to figure out because I think for all of us in some level you a little less, but also impacted by that Integrations is an important part of the process. Right? How do we integrate with the data, with the data coming in, going out, and up to today, it has been always a group of people connecting APIs your API with the other person's API and then mapping the data manually, and then the API changes and they have to send a message saying, oh, we just changed the documentation and your team has to go back, and that's stupid. If you think about AI, right, because AI, I think one of the biggest things is going to be able to figure out that mapping. Imagine that AI has the documentation loaded. It's incredible and they can map the data. I think that is going to be the biggest breakthrough for our businesses 100%.

Jared Ward: 23:53

We're so integrations heavy and if you have the API documentation for the tool that you're integrating into dude, you can just throw it in chat GPT and just maps all of your endpoints. It's crazy.

Fabricio Miranda: 24:04

As we also spoke before, if you think about a no integrations world where anything you'll drop into like something oh, you have an API, that's fine, just put the key here. Or you have an Excel spreadsheet All right, just upload it. You have a Google Sheets Okay, just put the link. Or you have a folder with Brav, just put the folder and AI is figuring out what that is. Because the context that AI is capable to get out of the big number of data that it that is able to read, uh is able to figure out that those things right. So it's not that hard to think that AI is going to be able to figure out if you're uploading sales, or if you're uploading inventory positions, or if you're uploading a PO, or just by the context of the data that it's receiving, and I think that's going to be completely a changer.

Jared Ward: 24:48

Rate shopping. I'm pretty sure, but that's not really AI, it's just that's normal stuff. Something interesting that I'm seeing is inventory agents or really like order editing agents, like AI agents. So think about ShipStation. If I'm going through my fulfillment flow for the day, there's a bunch of things that I'm going to check for errors in the addresses. There's agents that can do that. Now that are AIs. That's super cool. I'm curious, fabricio, do you actually think? Do you think one day Fliber will be like this all-knowing AI that will make replenishment decisions for you and, like you know, push the po to your to net suite or push the tl, like?

Fabricio Miranda: 25:26

but it automatically does that, you know, one day it's. It's too, too vague. Right, we have to define the time, the the timeline how far out do you think we're from that?

Fabricio Miranda: 25:35

but I don't think in the net it's very hard to say those things because I might look stupid now, but I don't foresee like the next 10 years. I don't think it's possible for AI to get the whole context that is around making a decision for inventory. For example, you're purchasing like 2000,000 units because that was the ideal quantity that you needed to purchase. Then when you call your supplier, supplier says oh, you know, I'm going to be out on vacation. You know, get 3,000 instead of 2,000 so that you're covered for a little longer. And then a PO with 3,000 comes in. How do you get, like, how does AI get the context that you purchased 3,000 because the guy was going on vacation? Okay, you know it might have like an email from the guy or a WeChat from the guy and AI can read that, but I don't think we're even close to that level of connection data connection.

Jared Ward: 26:32

We're making bets on extracting data specifically from email because a lot of times for a system of record, keeping it updated to, for example, like, keep track of your landed costs, the most difficult part is keeping it updated from information in emails or in texts or in WeChat. So where we're trying out AI is like could you reply with a? Could you put Luminous in this thread and could we just, could we just operate on that thread of context and just pull, like, for example, pull out the freight bill and attach it to the bill?

Fabricio Miranda: 27:03

have you worked with flex sport before? We have, yeah, export, does that so? Oh really yeah, yeah, so you have the thread for that view and everything that happens email or message it's automatically updated yeah, it's being fed into that thread, do you?

Blair Forrest: 27:15

do you think?

Fabricio Miranda: 27:15

you actually will need an operations team in the future, though for a brand, brand new, mean, yeah, I think it's going to be a one team, a one person team.

Blair Forrest: 27:22

Like how we think about from like a sales, like we have like one go to market, you might have like one operations specialist.

Fabricio Miranda: 27:28

I think so. I think you know this day like if you use Fliber, for example, you don't have the need for a lot of different people because a lot of what you spend time doing in spreadsheet is solved.

Jared Ward: 27:45

So if you're luminous plus sleeper, honestly, you know a couple people can manage a million dollar brand. I feel like pie in the sky. Idea for um, for ai powered brands, it's like how far are we away from robotics, three pills actually being mainstream is that a real thing.

Blair Forrest: 27:58

That's probably where we're gonna be the closest. So we put I think you saw them in the warehouse. Yeah, we went there. So we look locust robots.

Fabricio Miranda: 28:04

We almost got ran over by one, yeah yeah, they're really cool.

Blair Forrest: 28:08

They're really cool. Oh, you have robots.

Blair Forrest: 28:10

Yeah, so we have like a batch of like 10 robots in the Toronto facility and it's early, it's really early you can tell like this is like the baseline to see. So basically what it will do is like it allows for like a fractional efficiency of, instead of a lady going around grabbing the cart, going and grabbing it, the robot will meet you at your next pack station, it will do 10 different picks and then it will drive it to because the packing workflows it comes to orders come to a bin, you go, grab it from the bin, you do a whole cart and then the cart goes to the team packing which is usually at like a separate station inside the warehouse, and then they pack and ship out.

Fabricio Miranda: 28:47

But the robots are doing this like intervention, intermediary and what I, if I- understood right before, they would go with a cart and get the products and then go to the station and then they would scan the products, every single one, and with the robot it's at the time that they're getting that product they're already being scanned right, yes, you know we have a brand that does like apparel.

Blair Forrest: 29:08

We do like 437. They're a big apparel brand. All their leggings look the same, right, so and it, so you kind of know if you're looking at it, it's like a 1642. So you have to like walk 12 steps. The robot knows where it's going and it's like hey, it's right here, it's here, go pick it. Um, the next thing, I think, is going to be like we're going to start adding like lighting to the corresponding.

Blair Forrest: 29:28

Oh yeah, so it will light up, scan it out and then you can go and continue to process, but I think it's going to change a lot like. The other thing we're seeing is that, um, we're exploring. It is a big challenge with logistics is cycle counts. So, yes, monthly, quarterly, annually. Big merchants will want some level of cycle counts and there's robots that are now in the evenings they'll go through the entire warehouse and scan.

Jared Ward: 29:50

So I saw technology with it. It's like this company called kibzee or something. Yeah, oh yeah. So it's like as long as they have a camera or they have drone counting tools, they'll fly by, and it's like up to like 95% accuracy and they'll do it in the evening.

Blair Forrest: 30:04

So no interruption on operations Versus, like if we do a cycle count now it's nuts. You have to close operation for like two weeks. You have to literally bring down every and it will take like you know we did like one of the aggregators, like a Thrasio, hypothetical it could take like three weeks. Your operations is shut down because you literally have to count every single item.

Jared Ward: 30:22

Well, so does that mean that I mean 3PLs and fulfillment is already a commoditized space, but I mean when robots and everything goes mainstream, does that not mean, like I mean, it's just going to be a race to the bottom?

Blair Forrest: 30:33

Yeah, 20 years away, 20 years, away One of my biggest predictions, I think. Similar to what we saw in the SaaS space, in the Amazon space, the consolidation of warehouse is going to be massive the next two years. We want to be a part.

Fabricio Miranda: 30:46

That's necessary because you know we try to integrate with free PLs and it's a never ending game. Yes, always playing the catch up and always you're like okay, so now I covered what my customers were asking and then tomorrow a new customer comes. Yes, none of the 35 integrations that you'll build it's very segmented.

Blair Forrest: 31:05

So we're going to go through the process of rolling up a few warehouses next year to see. But I, I there has to be. It's almost like a natural. That's like the progression of growth. I think like I don't that kind of looks like you guys know it in the technology space. I just think every industry goes to this level of maturity where you almost have to clean the books because in the future, you're right, technology.

Blair Forrest: 31:23

There's some warehouses that we see now, like um timu, for example. There are jdcom oh, massive undertaking. They're like they're gonna be huge. Their robots are like it's like 80 automated their warehouse. So they only have a person at the packing station.

Blair Forrest: 31:37

Everything that you have one person on receiving to set it up inside of just pictures, huge rack, like it's a technology where it's only bins. You have one person on receiving putting in the bins and then, until the order's getting sent out, you just have people in the packing stations. So what used to be a 40 person warehouse team goes down to four. So I think you'll always have a need for people, but I think it's you won't need the general man. You will need like a technology supervisor and a couple individuals doing packing and the room for air will be so low, because the technology is you can put anyone like they can be blind and pack the orders because they're going to create such, you know, walls of shielded. Yeah, yeah, but it's, it's cool to see. I think the consolidation is probably the biggest thing that we're going to see like it is a very competitive and you can see there Luminous who's AI enabled.

Jared Ward: 32:49

Like I think that's where it's going.

Blair Forrest: 32:50

Think about what that does of like. Okay, so now your warehouse is a fraction of the cost, your team is one third of it. Now these brands are going to have, you know, you know, like 20, 30 percent EBITDA, when it used to be eight. What does that mean? Does that mean that like are like what are they going to you? Are they just going to become cash cows? Are they going to be able to spend money?

Jared Ward: 33:09

thrash, yo coming back, baby start aggregating. Yeah, I think yeah first, it's not gonna.

Fabricio Miranda: 33:15

Things don't happen in the perfect way that we all think they're going to happen, so the other costs are going to come along the way, for sure it won't be people, it'll be technology.

Blair Forrest: 33:24

It'll be something.

Jared Ward: 33:26

Guys, when that happens, let's start our aggregator, raise a billion dollars, pay yourself $65 million $100 million right here Big boss president, it's a weird space that we're in.

Blair Forrest: 33:39

I think all of us are like no, it's it's. It's a weird space that we're in. I think all of us are like it's so funny because all of us touch a different piece of it and it's like our worlds collide, but we're still in our own isolated yeah that's what I was talking today to steve about that, where I think the market is going to be.

Fabricio Miranda: 33:51

What is the exit strategy for fleaver, for example? I think there's no way that we're all going to be. We're operating as we are today. I think there's, there must be, tools that that are more like the more end to end to what we do. So that's, you know, we, we are very close to each other because our tools, they, they. It makes sense to be together, right.

Jared Ward: 34:11

Yeah.

Fabricio Miranda: 34:12

So I think that's going to happen. Going back to the cost by employee, my aim in the past was 250, 000 per employee and now it's 2.0 million dollars.

Jared Ward: 34:22

It's insane it's crazy what ai is iq bar I was just talking to iq bar his 10 million dollars per employee it's uh, that's crazy, oh my god 10 million dollars already, without the benefits and he's. He's still on like google sheetsets and ShipStation and QuickBooks Like it's nuts.

Fabricio Miranda: 34:40

Yeah, it's one of those cases. I think it's not the rule. It's one of those outliers that kind of prove the theory Right, but I don't see everybody doing that.

Jared Ward: 34:52

It's not feasible today to do that we all have these ideas about how AI is going to impact the market. But then you look up and like, for example, an idea that I've always had is like man, you know, somebody should be able to change prices based on you know Inventory availability? Yeah, exactly Inventory availability or like what's happening in the market, but there are AI tools that do this and they're not super successful right now. So it's just like I agree with what you said.

Jared Ward: 35:26

We're like we're 10 years away from ai doing exactly. It's so much context that needs to be understood to be able to make a decision, so it's all going to start with like one layer of context. Yeah, that's I what you were talking about last time ai agents that do one specific thing.

Fabricio Miranda: 35:35

Yeah, like they'll go through your list of orders and they'll identify fraud and they'll edit.

Fabricio Miranda: 35:42

No, but more than that. Imagine that you have a company that sells jewelry and then someone else has a company that sells toys. You might have AI agents that are different for each one of those companies, because I think that there's no reason why we're not going to develop into a world where you have ultra specialized AI agents, Simply because the overall AI agents, the master of all, who's going to be the one, the first layer? For sure, that master of all? It's impossible for it to have the context of every single detail.

Blair Forrest: 36:16

I've seen you post about the amount of new leads you're getting in. Your AE's calendars are full. What are you doing? Like where's this coming from? Where's the source? Maybe it's not this podcast for it. But like how are you, how are you building all this pipeline?

Jared Ward: 36:30

Yeah, it's, it's all about our, it's our content funnel, it's all inbound. So we we've been ramping up inbound for about 12 months now, but we started out just with, I mean, inbound was probably bringing in about like five leads a month. Now, ramped up, we're at about like 150 leads per month?

Blair Forrest: 36:48

How many of those are like go to meeting.

Jared Ward: 36:51

I can't remember the percentage. It's like I think 40% of those end up on a meeting and then from that we have like a 20% close rate, 20, 30%, depending on the source, but it's all from content, like we've gone all in on this video content-led approach. So it's been like the past two and a half years we've been building up the funnel and that's something that Sash and I were really intentional on. It's like the middle funnel, bottom of funnel, the day, and like everything Also, like our sales, embedded content is what we call it. So, in other words, like I just for like a year I just kept track of every single question that it took for a prospect to close and I filmed videos on all of that. And now we customized sales decks at the very bottom of the funnel. It's just like bottom, middle and top of funnel. So it's like bringing all of that together has been beautiful.

Jared Ward: 37:46

And our cost per lead is and it's so the the top of funnel um our top of funnel on top of it, the advertising.

Jared Ward: 37:52

it just makes it where your, your customer acquisition cost is. And we spoke about that. We're in Toronto, we're like, uh, that was good, but organic content, it just helps. It helps in the conversion process. So when you're in the middle of a deal, when you're in the middle of a demo, so you you demo somebody, you show them software, post demo. That's when they make the decision whether or not they're going to choose you. And it helps so much when you have, like high quality, organic YouTube and TikTok content. So we already have a lot of that. But the next step is get damn good at it.

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