Explosive E-Commerce and Technology-Driven Fulfillment: B2B Brilliance from CEO and Founder of ShipMonk, Jan Bednar

 It has to start somewhere. It has to start some time. What better place than here? What better time than now?
 Hey guys, what's up? It's Ryan Alford. Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. It is getting through March of 2021 here and we've had a spectacular list of CEOs this year.
 It seems to have been the CEO podcast. I think we might need to rename the podcast, the CEO cast. I'm not sure. We've had some incredible CEOs joined by another one here today.
 Jan Bednar, CEO of ShipMonk. What's up Jan? Welcome to the show.
 What's up Ryan? Thanks for having me.
 Yeah man, excited to get into it. This is like right down my alley. Sometimes I got to admit we have guests. We run a digital agency here and you know, the podcast has been become a big part of the agency.
 We do have guests occasionally that it's like out in the left field, like trying to talk about a topic. But when you want to talk about fulfillment and e-commerce, let's get after it. This was right down the buddy hole for us. I appreciate that from this standpoint.
 I know we can get after it, but excited to talk some ShipMonk with you.
 Awesome. Yeah, same here.
 So let's start. Let's just get right into it. I like to give everyone and kind of give you that opportunity to kind of set up your background and your story.
 I know it's out there. ShipMonk's been around for a number of years, but for our audience, I'd love to give them just that entrepreneurial story.
 How things have started and the origin story, if we call it, of Jan and everything ShipMonk.
 Yeah, happy to share. From the Czech Republic originally moved here when I was 17 to play hockey and just go to school and saw the land of opportunity and I've always wanted to give it a shot.
 So I moved here when I was 17 by myself to just going to jump into this crazy wild, you know, American Dream type lifestyle.
 Originally, it was, you know, I just went to high school and then went to college, started my first business at a college.
 It was a package forwarding company, which, you know, doesn't really tell you anything.
 But what we actually did was we bought products that people couldn't get back in the day. So this was 2008 and you know, you had like Victoria Secret under armor, Abercrombie, like all these brains that were kind of starting to figure out online, but not a lot of them have actually shipped Europe.
 We would be buying them in bulk and then sending them over to customers in Europe to kind of create this cross bridge, you know, between the US and Europe.
 And it was a good business at the time, but it was just kind of an arbitrage of buying a bunch of random stuff and selling it in Europe.
 It works, you know, it worked great as a side business when I was in school, made some extra money, some beer money, you know, wasn't a massive business, but it was, I think it gave me a pretty good foundation of just entrepreneurship.
 And I really, you know, for the first time I realized that it's not as easy as some people make it seem. I think there's this illusion that entrepreneurship is like, you know, hey, you still work for yourself and things just going to come your way and you're going to make all this money and then you don't really have to work.
 That's kind of how I grew up like I thought in this that like entrepreneurship is the way to go and it's going to just be like this fun journey with a lot of obstacles and I think that, you know, it's for those of you guys that have started business, it's anything but that.
 Contrary to the promotion, there is not an app for that.
 That's exactly right and I think, you know, I think a lot of people will kind of see obviously the story on the outside right and I think I even when I talk about I'm guilty of it of like just sharing that a lot of the positive stuff of.
 Like hey, this is where I started and this is where I am, but like a lot of the tough journey that I've gone through right a lot of the kind of 20 hour days and you know days where I just thought the whole business is going to go out of business.
 I don't spend a lot of time on it so I can maybe not right now but in a bit I would love to kind of dive into it a little bit because I think it's important for people to.
 You know understand what entrepreneurship is about and be aware of kind of the things that they're getting into when you know before they're starting a business.
 So, you know, kind of through our college it was a really sort of understanding kind of the basics of business right like just got basic understanding of accounting and marketing and sales and.
 You know, development or engineering and just kind of it was actually really helpful for me even school because I could relate to everything I was learning and I could apply to business I went to business school so it's just like a really, really good exercise in real life and then when I was graduating I was deciding what do I want to do after school decided that I want to kind of start a business full time.
 I won a couple of business bank competitions which was an amazing start to the career because I didn't really you know I didn't have any money I mean I have somebody saved up but.
 Not a ton in this business bank competition it was actually two of them and an accelerator program I got into and they got me think overall probably like 45 or 50 K in cash and then a bunch of other like awards for services and you know and a free warehouse space for a year because they had this new.
 You building the reopening by the university so it took advantage of it got some mentorship through the program and really started kind of doing this full time not.
 Not what ship on yesterday with the package for any business and then you know about I would say six months later the US dollar started getting really strong and suddenly started being a lot more expensive for for brains for for people internationally to buy products in the US and so the business started declining and I just was losing customers and.
 You know I pretty much thought I'm going to go out of business and have to shut it down and so I kind of look at like okay what what am I doing here I've got you know warehouse I ship some stuff internationally.
 Let me try to just go talk to other people and like see what makes sense if I can kind of somehow get some additional business in the US and I completely randomly I got a call from this guy that just raise a bunch of money for his internet of things company and they were looking for a fulfillment partner and I didn't even know what fulfillment was at the time it was basically just like hey you got to store our stuff we're going to send you orders and you're going to ship them and you know they were projecting like 2000 orders a month at the time and you know I was shipping a couple hundred and.
 You know I was making a lot more money on it it was just like it's not an exciting like sign up one customer and they would give me all this business and so I started getting more into why they're coming to me and like what this market looks like and what it really is is that you know this is massive opportunity in the SMB market e-commerce space where you know with Shopify it's just 2014.
 So Shopify was certainly really big and it opened up a lot of opportunities to anybody to just kind of come in and open their own company and really start selling their products online directly consumer and there wasn't anybody on the fulfillment side or very few that would be actually servicing that type of customer on the fulfillment side because most people when they come up with a product they're amazing marketers they might be great product development people very rarely though they're like logistics supply chain people because that's not typically the most exciting part of the business.
 So they'll look for somebody like ship long through basically outsource or the fulfillment logistics and because there was nobody at the time that was doing it we kind of like jump straight in completely naive about the you know the like we just thought it was going to be so easy right like you take a product you put it in the box and you ship and that said well it sounds very easy for me outside once you kind of dig into it and start dealing with multiple customers and it becomes really really painful and you know one kind of thing that not a lot of people that figured out in the past.
 So brought in a co-founder who was kind of an engineer to really build out the first tech platform that we wanted to give to our customers to be able to manage inventory and their orders and also kind of create the warehouse management system to really operate the building because we were in just like one customer right we had tens of customers that we needed to service in the building.
 Long story short I don't want to spend too much time on this but you know started bringing on more customers bootstrapped the business from day one so we haven't raised outside capital so that the first 50,000 that I won from this business bank I'm just going to basically put into the business and you know every day we were just making just a tiny little bit more money and putting that back into the business and completely organically grew.
 You know month by month year by year brought some amazing team members and and really we became you know a couple years became the largest SMB mid market fulfillment solution for for companies out there and you know we've obviously been writing this wave of e-commerce where it gives so many brands the opportunity to go directly consumer and really build a massive company basically out of you know a garage in a way because they you know they don't really have to have a lot of infrastructure.
 To build a ten hundred million dollar company and so I think that's been the most exciting part of seeing all these brands that we started working on early on and you know in two three four years they just started growing exponentially and building massive businesses with you know originally just an idea and so being part of that was really rewarding and so yeah long story short you know we've last year we partner out with summit to brought in basically three hundred fifty five million of of kind of growth equity capital.
 To really just continue to dominate the fulfillment world and do some acquisitions enhance the technology do some more geographical extensions and just ultimately bring the best fulfillment solution to this fast growing Shopify world and not just Shopify right like we're doing a lot of other channels that we're working with as well but that's the vision is to really kind of democrat democratize that word is tough one.
 To democratize fulfillment for small businesses to enable them to compete with larger brands that might have a lot more infrastructure I love it I'm going to I'm going to recap for our listeners exactly what ship monk does so I am a small to medium business I've decided to get into e-commerce from any commerce and I've made a wonderful product and I want to sell starting small fifty a hundred two hundred
 how many ever that is I can sell in my first few months but like you say on your website which is a hundred percent true working with e-commerce brands the hardest part of e-commerce is getting the product to the customer so you guys will accept I let's pretend I'm a mug maker I send custom mugs whatever I I send you five hundred custom mugs ish whatever you put them on the shelf
 and when my customers order on my e-commerce Shopify site I'm sure you have a lot of other integrations big commerce others magento all the major platforms I'm sure and when that order takes place
 that software talks with your software to let you know that Jan Smith in Utah just ordered this mug and you take it off the shelf you box it package it and you ship it to Jan and you take care of all of getting the product to the customer for a reasonable cost for new business
 is that correct there it is that's absolutely right thanks I'll sure got this before I could have I could have told my story in a no you're you're your story in your background made was much more interesting you know for what took the business but I want to make sure people understand because a lot of people want to get into commerce are getting into commerce they don't understand you know not to mention the entrepreneurial journey you've gone on with to do want to get down and talk about that but the
 but the the realities of taking you know great ideas great products and everything that happens with that Shopify is kind of democratized the web experience and there's other platforms workshop partner we push a lot of clients to Shopify because of their ease and simplicity and other things and you know you guys kind of are the you know it's not the last mile the all the miles getting in there.
 We like to think about ourselves as you know when you think of the commerce right you've got kind of the Shopify or magento big commerce platform right which kind of manages the front end of the experience and then shipment is everything on the back end of the experience so you know the platform you fill this not just a solution that takes the orders and then processes them and then you know we physically ship the products but it also does a lot of like inventory management order management reverse logistics
 planning and management a lot of reporting so you know for small business that doesn't necessarily have like this supply chain or an operations team in place we try to kind of be the operations supply chain team through our technology to really give our customers the the ability to forecast inventory and really kind of remove the barrier of of we want to add transparency into the entire process so we want to make sure when you ship us your inventory right like you just put your life savings into a product
 when you ship us your inventory we want to make sure that we're allowing you to track it through the process you know exactly what's going on with it what the status the orders are in and you know we want to be kind of transparent as possible to kind of give you that like view into the warehouse without actually owning the warehouse and you know and and at the same time give you the absolute scalability to be able to go from you know zero sales when you start to like let's say thousand sales a day right within a month and we've done that before for for customers and
 that's again I think that's that would be very hard to do right the few shipping out of your garage and so having that that infrastructure of you know not just one facility that kind of facilities around the world is what ultimately brings up the the levels up to playing field compared to the big guys and it's tough that you know you know budding entrepreneurs or creators don't think about and you know we work with you know new startups or whatever and they have an amazing
 idea amazing product or we work in cosmetics and and organic beauty and things like that and the products are amazing but that what they don't think about is you know they know they've got a ship it they've got to get it out but they don't realize that nothing can kill their amazing product faster than it taking 17 days for it to get to the customer you know like it's just we live in an Amazon world and you know even though people recognize
 especially now with COVID that slowed things down a bit think people have maybe gotten a little this much more patient with with shipping and fulfillment they're still very impatient we have a very you know we have a very spoiled consumer dynamic here in the US probably everywhere but definitely in the US and you can have this amazing product and you can spend all this time and you got a beautiful website and then it all falls apart getting the product to the customer you've never heard that story right
 haha you build a multi million dollar business on that very premise but it is a very important part of the process so talk to me about how you guys I'm always curious you know we're a marketing and business podcast I'm always curious you know the the nuts and bolts of how you guys acquire customers I mean how do people find you what's what some of the if you could share it the marketing recipe for for ship for ship monk
 yeah so I think you know one of the one of the first things that I mean I'm a very passionate marketer and and and brand or that's a word but you know we we sort of ship monk is actually called bed a box fulfillment originally I guess bed a box was the original company and then we just kind of added fulfillment and then soon realized that is not a great branding experience so we really wanted to come up with something different I give a three chairs to have made that ship the change the ship monk from braining perspective
 smart move you know so so what happened was when you look at the space when I look at the space back in like 2015 right the everybody we were competing with where these like really really old school logistics companies back from like the 80s the 90s all of them had like three letters as their name like you know BCG or you know k k p a and psych what the hell is any of this mean
 acronyms from the periodic table yeah exactly I was like the most boring brand like like like if you think of probably any other industry many mining and oil might be more boring but like logistics at some of the like the exciting brands that that you would ever come across and so we're like well we're you know we're targeting people like us right like millennials people that are starting their businesses entrepreneurs people that
 want to work with a brand that they can some some would relate to and not like you know a six year old brand that that their grandfather would use and so we kind of like that we're like okay we got to do something different right logistics is very stressful it's very
 integrated we want to build a brand around like harmony piece and and kind of taking distress out of the equation so a lot of people logistics is very stressful and so you know we want
 something is that and so we kind of came up with the concept of a monk and then you know ship monk obviously just kind of was playing well with it and build a whole brand around you know the monk who we've kind of designed back like 2016 and what we really you know what we love about the
 monk was that it was very flexible in in in the way that it was provided like give us a lot of ability to play with the brand so I don't know if you've ever seen any of our like modifications that we're doing to the monk but like every holiday season every
 um you know like all kinds of like we basically changed the monk to whatever the occasion is and so it gives us kind of an amazing like branding opportunity to really customize it to whatever like we're doing right if it's uh you know
 uh if it's a Halloween uh we we would like change the monk to have like scars and and you know carry like a pumpkin and stuff like there's a bunch of so I'll send it out because I think it's pretty interesting um and so anyway so we came up with this brand and you know I think that was kind of the first step um and obviously you know we
 uh relied on the fact that and Kevin my my co-founder who is kind of the the mastermind behind all of our marketing and sales uh he is you know he could talk a lot more details around kind of our sales strategy marketing strategy but we we you know we didn't really have a lot of money to just kind of throw my marketing so originally we were extremely frugal um to really try to get the biggest bang for the buck and you know when Kevin started um he was one of the first employees and we basically he said look like we you know we don't have a lot of capital
 we have to start with something that's the most economical so we started just doing like a ton of organic free SEO basically so you know started publishing a lot of white papers started publishing a ton of like block articles uh posting uh in in different um uh forums to really build like you know more of the uh more of the uh like being an authority right on the on the subject we started building this this uh academy for e-commerce companies to really give them all the tools that
 they would need to start a business so we were you know and bringing in some different like guests for um uh you know for packaging for uh transportation for other kind of parts or product development sourcing and we would just write these like really targeted articles um on on different topics and so that really started like you know it took about a year six to twelve months to really start uh driving a lot of traffic
 and uh and then at the same time obviously we're doing you know some paid stuff social media not as much actually because you know our business is more V2V so social is not huge for us but um it was you know something that we were doing a little bit of like trade shows uh more kind of just visiting and like putting our name out there we built this costume uh of a monk that actually a person can go into right and so we would just take that um and run it across uh all the different shows and you know just getting a lot of people's attention and just kind of build that brand recognition
 um so that definitely wasn't driving like specific uh leads to the website but it was just better for brand recognition um and so like our you know our marketing budget has been like extremely slim uh ever since the beginning we really started kind of increasing the budget i would say about like the year year and a half ago uh but most of the leads that we get are organic so about 80% of our leads are organic 20% paid um and you know and and that just so we continue to kind of build on that foundation of really trying to be helpful first
 um and then selling second right because you know we want to make sure that we can explain to people um everything that they need to know the start the business and then obviously target it's kind of the the small customer right that's starting um and then the bigger you know the other piece of this equation which is um I guess more like sales strategy is is really about referrals and building a community of people that um really like reserve service and they're referring it to other people so that's been probably the biggest uh the single biggest uh business kind of source because like especially in our industry
 when you look at for a phone partner you go to your friends you ask them like what you know what who they should use and so building a really good network of partners and and customer kind of referral programs was crucial and really allowed us to build like an amazing community of people um that every time somebody asked them they just sent them to us and and that's been a massive driver of our um of revenue and just new customers growth
 I love it a lot to impact there um on the on the marketing side the um what do you think you're you know thinking about through some of that you know heard a little bit you guys have fun with the monk but like if you were and I know you've got like the stress less grow more but is there like a brand persona that you guys think you are like you know is it is it we work hard play hard as it like is there kind of a persona that that you think the brand has
 yeah that's a good question uh we I mean definitely work on a play hard is more of my personal moto uh I don't think you really we don't really bring that to work but uh that's you know that's the one one thing that I live by personally uh I think the brand itself like our moto has been stressed less grow more so that's kind of the key um really decision like we're really trying to take the stress out of fulfillment and uh and and allow customers to really focus on growth um so we're you know it's just like we're trying to take the stress out of fulfillment and uh and and allow customers to really focus on growth um so we're you know
 trying to be and and you know it's it's it's interesting because our place is very um you know you work with a lot of people and so there is a lot that can go wrong in logistics like the the inevitably is and so trying to create an amazing brand experience right in an environment
 where inherently a lot of things are going to go wrong is is very challenging and so building uh that type of mindset of like hey well you know things are going to go wrong inevitably um a lot of the times outside of our control sometimes in our control but we're always going to be there to fix it and make sure that you worry your partner in growth um so I don't know if there's like a you know a say that I would summarize that and but again kind of goes back to like stress less grow more uh which means that we want to take that stress on and allow you to really focus on on your business um to to an
 able it to grow yes well you make the the complex uh easier uh it might be how I would yeah yeah right because there is a lot there what um you know if you're pretend I'm a uh a business owner or someone that's you know getting in the e-commerce game or a brand that's getting into it you guys work with so many you've seen kind of the the ups and the downs is there like I know there's always a million things and and you can't be in their shoes for every
 thing but is there like if if I'm someone listening to the podcast and I'm thinking about getting into e-commerce is there like a couple notions or tips or anything like hey just be aware of this or just consider is there is there anything like that that just comes naturally top of mind
 yeah you know I try to uh I try to look at our some of the best customers that uh we not well the highest the best performing customers that we've been lucky enough to work with and I think at the end of the day it does come down to I would say core two or three things uh number one is the product uh you know if you have a shitty product it's never gonna sell no matter how good of a marketer you are uh so I would say that's kind of the first thing right and and it doesn't necessarily have to be innovative
 you know I think a lot of people get hung up on uh I need to build something that nobody's ever done before um like completely new category and I think you know not that I mean copying is a whole another subject that I think uh I would strongly discourage from from doing that but um I think like taking um you know like you don't have to reinvent the world to have a successful brand like I think you know when you look at a peril like it's very difficult to innovate in a peril yet there's new successful a pair of companies that are watching every single day and so but I think it's really important is
 is building that amazing product and understanding your audience of who you're really going after um and then the second piece of this is the marketing part right so some of the best uh products that we've worked with that did not have that marketing component to it completely fail kind of you know felt a belly flop then just didn't really ever take off and uh you know we actually had products that I would question their quality or their their potential for success but they were run by amazing marketers that would take the products and just uh
 market the hell out of them and made a lot of money right and so I think it when you get the when you get both right they become
 ultimately uh kind of that like I don't want to call it a recipe for success because that's such a cliche but
 it is something that I think is the most important um uh kind of elements are formula for for starting
 an e-commerce company right um and then I think it's really building it surrounding yourself by people that can
 um you know really help you kind of scale the brand so I think given you know like some people just naturally really good marketers
 they don't know anything about product design so you should bring in amazing product designers to help you kind
 of cover your blind spots right if you're not very good at marketing that doesn't mean you can't launch an e-commerce brand
 like one of my uh one of my best friends who's also a really good customer or is uh sort of company go brumate right
 like even you're nothing about marketing is maybe doing marketing for the first you know a couple of months
 use amazing product developer but you just brought in the best marketers that you could find and
 and you know help them through that journey so I think self awareness and identifying your blind spots
 and really understand where you personally because in the beginning it's going to be most of you um
 identifying where you can bring in people to fill in those gaps is um absolutely crucial to uh to
 ultimately be a success of the company I'm going to have to make a note to my producer Riley to
 send you an extra a couple grand for uh calling out the importance of marketing as additional
 latency like I'm sitting here going this is like music to my ears I thought I was like it uh
 Michael Jackson concert hearing the the the his greatest hits like why you were talking right there
 you can send me a Vimbo request you know you don't want a self promote on your own podcast but
 but when you're you're playing up the importance of marketing and we tend to agree here at radical
 with that notion but no in all seriousness but it is funny we my uh my creative director
 now we're talking this morning um you can put lipstick on a on a pig sometimes but it is hard
 nothing kills great marketing faster than a shitty product sometimes like like you gotta get if
 you get both of them right then then you uh you probably have a 98% chance of success so uh
 anyway I love all that um I do want to transition back you know here in the latter part here
 of the interview uh to your you know the entrepreneurial journey for you and I like to ask
 you know entrepreneurs this I asked Michael Loeb who uh started uh price line and some other
 gigantic companies uh and you know if there's an entrepreneurial gene if there's like a characteristic
 I know and not gonna ask you to put that on everyone or you know exactly what it is but is there
 is there something in you that's innate or is there a characteristic that stands out to you
 being an entrepreneur yeah I think there's definitely I don't know if it's a gene uh but I think
 there's a certain personality type uh that you want to be when you want to start a business and
 not that there isn't successful entrepreneurs that are kind of unlike most other entrepreneurs but
 uh I think generally speaking there's definitely um a little bit about like when I was a kid I've
 always known that I kind of wanted to start my own business although I knew nothing about it I
 was completely naive to just kind of think how easy it's gonna be right but I always wanted to
 and not because I didn't want to work for others or because I didn't you know I like it was just
 something that I felt like if I can kind of put a bunch of things together and and make something
 great whatever that was I know that was gonna be really exciting I love building things as a kid
 which I think was also like an additional kind of things that was that was that was adding up to
 that experience um you know I think there's entrepreneurship can't really be taught uh you can learn
 a lot to be a better entrepreneur but I think there's something about the risk taking the being
 comfortable with the uncomfortable um the ability to recognize patterns um and and hire the best
 people that you can hire there's something about that that I think makes things a lot easier you know
 if you if you're not handling stress well or um you know you you don't like you need support from
 others all the time like editing entrepreneurship is really for you uh and I think there's a lot
 of you know other amazing jobs that probably a lot of people can do but I think the the reward of
 entrepreneurship is probably one like none like there's not a lot of other things you can do that
 would give you the same type of reward um so I don't know if that answers the question but no I think
 it does I think you know I'm being an entrepreneur myself you know a few times over I think you
 just nailed it I never heard it put that way but I think you really nailed it I think I have a blind
 spot and I think a lot of entrepreneurs do for risk and the the negative side of risk I think I
 have a blind spot for like I can take risk and not worry like it's it's less that I am heartless
 or something like that but I just somehow there's a blind spot somewhere in me for the other side
 of risk you know I think that that a lot of entrepreneurs must have that because you would get you
 I see other people and you get so paralyzed you get paralysis from analysis because you see
 the other side of the risk you see the downside so much it just encompasses you and I've just
 I've never had that it all since that new but I've never thought about it that way but I think
 that's a huge one yeah I know I you know I think about this a lot because I kind of look back
 in my journey and I look at back and I'm like okay what makes me different or what did I do right
 to to get to where I am and where the company is and you know I get this this like syndrome
 imposter syndrome a lot of the times because I'm like I'm not special in any way like I don't have
 some sort of a secret skill that would allow me to do all these things right I'm not you know
 an amazing marketer I'm not an amazing sales guy like I can do a little bit of everything and I
 just enjoy learning about it and then putting it together but maybe that's kind of that like
 the thing that has allowed me to get to where I am because I try to find the best people that I could
 find and I was wrong a lot of the times right and and you know some people are an amazing fit for
 an early part of the business some people are great fit later there's so many things that we could
 be hours here to kind of talk about a lot of these different mistakes that I made but you know
 I think ultimately it's it's you know you don't need to have like a very specific skill set to be
 an entrepreneur like I think a lot of it is just understanding the world we live in be gold like
 purpose driven right to try to identify like okay what am I trying to do here and build a plan
 around that goal and ultimately force and get enough people around you to be able to get to
 that same goal and share you know whatever it is that you're trying to achieve right so I was
 really really lucky one of the you know early on my kind of two three co-founders that I brought
 in I kind of in year one didn't have any money to pay them so I gave them a little bit of equity
 a little bit of cash and you know I like and they took the risk like they went from a hundred
 thousand dollar paying you know a job and they're all young guys but they left those jobs left
 those jobs to come work for me for basically free and some equity and some like crazy vision that
 I had for this business right and so I what I had to do a really good job on is selling them on
 the concept of hey this is what we're doing this is where we're going this is what if everything
 works out this is where we're going to be right like you never going to be able to make the money
 anywhere else and have as much fun building something from scratch and if they're going to be
 like no this is really enough for me then they're not the right person right you've got to find
 somebody that has that same mindset of risk-taking and you know and and that's going to be completely
 it's going to change the game because I couldn't ever get here without those those people that
 join me early on I think I have like this natural curiosity too like it's like it's like I have
 this I don't know what it is like I don't consider myself always the best listener necessarily but
 like I'm all I'm I think entrepreneurs just have this curiosity of deep curiosity and a lot
 of different things and it's not just and it's like in that drives like either learning about
 you know a system of process to solve an issue that you find or I don't know what it is I think
 it's I think that's another one of those there's several characteristics but kind of heard that
 and some of your things it sounds like your partners do as well so I mean we're where's this all
 going Jan what's what's the next five five years look like or five minutes depending on how you
 think what's where we're going with with ship monk and yeah let's say the last couple let's say
 the last couple months I've I've had to do a lot more of that five year thinking rather than the
 five minutes because I think that's you know by the way one of the hardest things for an entrepreneur
 thing especially one without a prior experience like me like you know going from that super micro day
 to day operational stuff to more of a macro strategy it's it's really really challenging and the
 ability to go really deep and then really high up to the macro viewpoint is super important especially
 as the company gets larger and I've never really done a great job at it but I think I've been
 getting a little better and you know as you as I build out the team I've been able to take a
 little bit of a step back to be more strategic but to answer your question the number one focus
 right now is to really like bring in some of the top talent that we can from around the world so
 we've I can't yet share who it is but we're about to bring on a COO who comes from a you know a
 really really impressive background so that's you know really excited about that higher as well as
 chief product officer and a couple other kind of key roles that we're trying to fill in
 we're trying to you know we're looking at a couple of potential acquisitions to expand some
 strategic kind of value ad services geographical expansion things like that we're looking to open
 a European facility this year and then kind of open couple more facilities in the US and then
 just continuing to do what we've been doing over the last couple of years so really just you know
 trying to build the best possible experience and and enable brands to stress less and grow more
 hey man you're really doing it they say by 2040 95 percent of e-commerce will be all sales
 so all sales 95 percent will be e-commerce so I think you're a well-positioned brother
 and I already changed in the game and I see big things ahead for shipment and look forward
 to continuing our dialogue and and learning more about you and stuff like that you've you've
 done a lot that I can see big things coming for you guys let's do one thing before we leave
 Jan working everybody keep up with you and everything shipmunk where are the good channels
 yeah some on instagram Jan underscore and underscore shipmunk you know we also have a shipmunk
 Instagram page at shipmunk or the shipmunk and on LinkedIn just Jan Bednar and our website
 www.shipmunk.com I think those are kind of the best best channels awesome so you know where to find
 Jan you know where to find Shipmunk if you are an e-commerce brand starting you need to worry
 about fulfillment and getting it turned turn key and you should consider Shipmunk we really
 appreciate Jan Jan Bednar coming on today thank you Jan you know where to find us we're at
 the.rad.cast on instagram theradcast.com and you can find me at Ryan Alfred on Instagram almost
 all day anytime because I'm just seem to be addicted to Instagram but what do you do anyway thank
 you Jan we'll see you next time on the radcast