The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – George Wojciechowski, Co-Founder and CEO of Manifest Sustainable Ecommerce Fulfillment & Finding Success As An Entrepreneur

Episode Date: November 9, 2022

Manifest.eco George Wojciechowski, Co-Founder and CEO of Manifest Sustainable Ecommerce Fulfillment & Finding Success As An Entrepreneur

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In the LinkedIn newsletter, we just put out an amazing interview we did with some amazing real estate folks. So you want to check that out as well. Today, we also have, as always, the most amazing CEOs and authors on the show. George Warjahowski is on the show. George Warjahowski is on the show and he's going to be talking to us his amazing new company, Manifest. We're going to be getting a nice startup story, a story about entrepreneurism, building your companies and all that good stuff. So we'll be talking to George on the show here in a second. He is the co-founder and CEO of

Manifest Commerce. Manifest Commerce provides sustainable fulfillment solutions to eco-friendly brands and omni-channel retailers. Prior to launching Manifest Commerce, he co-founded ShipBob, a predominant name in the global e-commerce fulfillment space. Several roles in various investment communities, including Goldman Sachs, among others. Welcome to the show, George. How are you? Great. Nice to be here, Chris. Pleasure to be here as well. Well, welcome to the show, my friend. Give me your.com so people can find you on the interwebs.

Yeah, it's actually a.eco. Our company's website is manifest.eco. There you go. And give us a little brief overview of what your company does, and then we're going to get into some in-depth stuff behind it. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So Manifest is a sustainable third-party logistics company based in Austin, Texas. We provide logistics solutions for small to medium-sized e-commerce businesses. So if anyone is familiar with either themselves or perhaps somebody they

know that owns or runs a Shopify store, a big commerce store, a Squarespace store, usually it's a solopreneur or a small team. Typically they have a great product idea, an inspired idea for a product. They produce it, they sell it online, but they don't necessarily have the infrastructure or they want to waste the energy in terms of warehousing, pickpacking, and shipping that product to their customers' doorsteps. And that's where Manifest comes in. We warehouse these products in our facility, our eco-friendly facility down in Austin, Texas. And when the orders come in, we pick, pack, and ship it out on behalf of our merchants. And we do it in a way that's sustainable. Predominantly, we are plastic-free.

So there's no bubble wrap, bubble fill, plastic tape in any of our packages. All of our shipments are carbon neutral, and that's included in our pricing, meaning that we offset the carbon footprint of the delivery from the moment that it leaves our fulfillment center to wherever it gets delivered anywhere around the world will offset the carbon footprint on that shipment and all of the supplies that we use from the boxes to the poly mailers and various other supplies are biodegradable and or curbside recyclable so we're only just beginning we've been in business about a year. The point here is to embed sustainability into the core of e-commerce. The overarching hypothesis, and I don't want to get too far ahead in the conversation, but the overarching hypothesis

of e-commerce is e-commerce is here to stay. We've all ordered packages from Amazon or various online retailers, but the current state of e-commerce is unsustainable. Way much single-use material gets used to accomplish the tasks of shopping from home, buying from home, and we're here to create a paradigm shift so that the baseline going forward in the 21st century is that online commerce is sustainable. There you go. And I imagine you don't do the Amazon thing where you basically ship an item that's this small in a refrigerator box, right? No, you're absolutely right about that. There's a lot of innovations going on right now in terms of sustainable packaging, but I would. It's still packaging. It's going somewhere. least amount of environmental impact at the end of the day. There you go.

So, George, talk a little bit about Origin Story and give a background because a lot of people watch the show. They want to learn about how to be an entrepreneur, be inspired by other entrepreneurs. What's kind of your background? How did you grow up and maybe what kind of founded that sort of entrepreneur spirit in your... Yeah, I grew up in Chicago, Illinois. I was born there and spent most of my life there. I went to college at DePaul University and I felt like, you know, I was always a big reader growing up. I was one of those kids who actually used their library card when libraries were really relevant. So I spent a lot of my time

with going, having my mom drop me and my little brother off at the Des Plaines Library where, you know, I would just get into books and the books were usually about business or sports. And, you know, it kind of helped shape my imagination about what is possible. What, you know, I learned very early on about some of the big things that inspired people had done in their with their lives and in their careers. And I think that inspired me to never really give too much focus or consideration to actually having a job. Of course, I've had jobs and you get out of college and the expectation is, you know, find a job, have a career. And I did that. But in the back of my mind and in the core of my heart,

that never really was what I wanted to do. And in your bio, you talked about ShipBob, which is one of your co-founded companies, and then various investment communities, including Goldman Sachs. But to give us a little rundown on some of that and that journey that you went on. Yeah. So my first job out of college was on the trading floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. Holy crap. really knew was in its final days. There was a kind of feeling that things were moving to, you know, what we called upstairs and the electronic trading and whatnot. But I got in when it was still the floor. So you saw a bunch of, you know, men and women with crazy colored jackets screaming at each other and fiercely signaling trading the trades in the trading pits.

And my first job was getting lunches for these traders, getting lunches for these traders in the trading pits. I was a sophomore in college and I got lucky enough that one of the managers on the desk also went to my, the college that I was in at that time, DePaul University, and decided to take a chance on a kid who, you know, kept coming around asking for a job. And I got in and that was one of the more fascinating seven, eight years of my life, just being in that environment and seeing the highs, the lows, and the changes that ultimately led to the phase out where those open outcry trading floors don't exist anymore in any capacity that resembles what it used to.

The old, is it the CBOE? There's the CBOE, the CME, and the Chicago Board of Trade, CME. Yeah, CME and CBOT. And then there's CBOE. Did you say CBOE? There's CBOE and CBOT, Chicago Board of Trade. I'm going off of memory, so I could be. Yep.

And then across the street, there's also at 440 Southwest Alley, the Chicago Stock Exchange. Yeah, what a crazy place back in those days when, you know, before computers and, you know, NASDAQ was barely coming online or was coming online. Did you ever see the movie Trading Places? I remember my older brother used to show me that movie when I was a kid and we'd get a kick out of it.

Is that what made you attracted? Maybe going to Florida? No, no. I think that if anything, no, that movie was a hilarious movie and a classic. But yeah, I mean, I wouldn't lie that if I was like a sixth or seventh grade kid when I was watching it, I'd be like, yeah, I'm going to grow up and corner the market in a specific commodity. Yeah. But that's easier said than done. The movie definitely fictionalizes

how easy it is to corner a market in a commodity. Oh, yeah. I mean, I came of age when, who were the brothers that cornered the silver market? The Hunt brothers. The Hunt brothers.

And they wiped out my grandmother's investment. There's a wild book called The Big Rich, which is the story of the Texas, basically the people who made the Texas oil industry. And they profiled pretty closely the hunts. And we don't need to get into it, but that was wild what they tried to do, how they pulled it off. Now they basically had like 80% of the world's silver for a long time.

Crazy, man. Did you ever meet anybody? This is, we're just having fun here, but did you ever meet anybody like the Dukes, the Mortimer Duke and Randolph? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, cause I grew up, you know, like I said,

I used to go to the library a lot. Yeah. And you would, there were great books. Obviously we, I would read about the turtle traders. So it Richard Dennis, but there was this great book. and the name escapes me right now, that profiled these supermen of the trading floors in Chicago, guys like Louis Borsellino and a bunch of other names. And so when I finally got on the floor and I read, oh, Tom Baldwin was like the Babe Ruth of Chicago trading back in the 80s. He just literally, poor kid from one of the Midwestern states, young family, had no money to his name

and then went ahead and went head to head with like the likes of George Soros and like knocked their socks off. So yeah, there were like superhuman stories that, you know, captured my imagination early on. And then when I finally got to the trading floor and saw these people, you know, that person, it was kind of surreal, but it was also really comforting to see that they were also human. That's a great place to cut your teeth though, as a kid. I mean, that's really something.

In fact, a funny side note that I've set up is me and my business partner, in fact, I still do this with friends. Anytime we do a bet, we always bet a dollar because it's not about the money. It's about the bet and being right. And trading places. Yeah, and trading places with the Dukes. So we always bet a dollar. In fact, me and my business partner, we bet it.

My business partner would be like, that guy's not going to last three months with us. And I'll go, I'll bet you a dollar. He will. And we bet a dollar. It's not about the money. It's about being right. So we always use that as a joke. So what was your first?

The floor traders were never the dukes, though. The dukes, just from my perspective, and I was very young at the time, were the people who started showing up toward the end from the big private equity firms and big stack exchanges being like, how can we consolidate this? Because now it's all about speed and get these traders out of the way so that we can keep all the arbitrage for ourselves those guys were like in in the in my experience were like the duke-like characters it wasn't the floor traders those guys were regular guys who you know use their own intuition and imagination to make ridiculous sums of money and lose ridiculous sums of money. You know, the loving the trade and then the great movie, what was it? Wall Street from the 80s. And yeah, I grew up in the Ivan Bielski area.

So what it was ShipBob, your first entrepreneurial venture? What got you to chip your teeth on that? Yeah, no, certainly not. I mean, I had been like most entrepreneurial stories. I've started a lot of different projects going back to like a lawn mowing business in junior high. And almost every single one of them has failed. ShipBob was the first project that actually I became a part of that worked out in a really successful way. We had a fantastic team. In a lot of ways, the best seven years of my life, building that company with people that I loved and I cared about and really doing something that was important, something tangibly.

One of the things about having a job is that you're doing tasks regularly. But when you have a business, you can look at the end of the day and each day after day is almost like a step of progress that you can look back and say, yeah, we're building that. We're doing that. It didn't exist yesterday, where I was co-founder, called SceneTap, which was putting facial recognition cameras in bars around Chicago. It would be an app, and the point was to, like, you would be able to look at the app and see, okay, what's the percentage of male to female at this particular bar?

And you would know, like, okay, where to go with your friends if you were looking for, you know... I like that. I like that I'm still single. It got shut down really quick. Probably over privacy, I suppose. Of course. Plus, you know, you don't want the guy or gal to be seen with whoever has their side

piece at the bar there or something, you know, break up some marriages. Exactly. I mean, it was essentially anonymous. It would just read your face and match it up against a database of other faces. And the end goal of that company was to eventually one day provide statistics to companies like Gap as to how many people are wearing their jeans at popular night spots. We give demographic data. So it was all about the data, but the kind of catch was, hey, find out what's going on in the scene tonight, where the imbalance is between

the sexes or among the sex, whatever that you're looking for. There you go. So was ShipBob kind of like what you've built with Manifest or what was the segue there that got you going, hey, this is this Manifest commerce thing is the next big thing. Yeah. I mean, it's along the same lineage. At ShipBob, we achieved the amazing task of democratizing e-commerce for small to midsize e-commerce merchants. If you think back to 2013, 2014, e-commerce was still run by the big brands, enterprise brands, pets.com, brands like that. And so they had the money, the tens of millions of dollars to invest in a logistics infrastructure that allowed them to ship goods to their customers within a day or two. That was kind of the magic of Amazon that really got them, you know, established that trust with the customer that was like, okay, I order something that's going to arrive at my doorstep in two days versus what's the tracking data? When does it arrive? Oh, it arrives two weeks later. And so in 2014, when ShipBob got started, there was this, because of platforms like Shopify that allowed people with great ideas to get a legitimate website up and a payment platform within two hours, there was this appetite among that community for a fulfillment solution, a tech-forward fulfillment solution. And it didn't exist at that time. And the traditional 3PLs at that time kind of ignored these merchants because they were focused on the bigger enterprise

clients. So that was an opportunity for us. We viewed what these, you know, so-called cookie crumbs of merchants, small merchants, one day would add up to be a pretty sizable cookie. And we wanted to dominate that market. And so we went ahead about building a value proposition for that type of merchant profile. We infused it with tech that integrated with all the other apps and tools that the modern e-commerce business owner needed to kind of basically have their information centralized. And we made it really user-friendly, very easy to understand. If, you know, at that time when we were looking at different fulfillment softwares and we built

all our tech on our own at ShipBob, which was a huge accomplishment in itself. But if you looked at what the rest of the fulfillment industry was using, it looked like it was a video game out of the nineties. It was some really crappy software. And so we used tech into space and a value proposition that was very pro-merchant. And we created a business that serves 10,000 plus merchants today who rely on ShipBob for warehouse picking and packing. So Manifest is along that same lineage, but we're doing things a little bit differently. And you guys are based in, where are you guys based in? Is there a reason you're based in Denver, I think it is? Oh, Austin, Texas.

Austin, Texas. Yeah. So I've opened up fulfillment operations around the country, Brooklyn, Chicago, San Francisco, LA, Dallas. In my time opening and operationalizing fulfillment centers around the country, I felt that the best warehouse-ready workforce was my experience in Texas. In addition to that, the Texas is a business friendly state. And as a small business, you're looking for any advantage that you can get. And the city of Austin is a fantastic city with progressive values that we can marry ourselves to and kind of share in the movement to sustainability. I feel like Austin has embraced what we're doing and we embrace kind of the new things being tried and new ideas being bounced around in the Austin community. Don't imagine logistically that's a good place to be in the center of the

nation for shipping and stuff, right? Yeah, you are correct about that. You know, a year ago, everybody needed to be on the West Coast because if you remember, everyone had purchase orders that were set to be delivered in June or July, and they were still waiting on it in October. And so they're like, it's coming through the port of Long Beach, just get it off and start shipping it. So they're like, didn't even want to wait to send it to, but now that things have evened out a little bit, yeah, being central to the United States gives our merchants the advantage of being equidistant to both coasts, as well as hitting the population in the center of the country, which is really important.

And it really is. As a consumer, I can tell you that, I'll give you an example. One of my favorite coffees is Devil's Mountain Coffee. And I know if I order them directly, I'm going to save a little bit of money. They've got a frequent buyer purchase thing and stuff. Or I can order off of Amazon. And I like to buy from them because I can get a little bit better discount. And sometimes if I buy in bigger packages, they don't have available on Amazon. So I have to make a choice. And if I'm

out of coffee, we got to get coffee or fast. And so hopefully a lot of people that are listening to this and a lot of merchants realize that there are people out there like me that are consumers making choices that I know if I order directly from them, I'm going to lose a few days. And so if I need it now, I'm going to order from Amazon. But I'm still ordering from them. But Amazon, of course, is going to take their cut, I'm sure. Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. Having that fast fulfillment, like one of the companies I really

like doing business with is Chewy as opposed to Amazon or as opposed to driving to PetSmart for my dog stuff because Chewy delivers really fast. I don't know how they do it, but they do it really fast. They do it really fast. And so that's a thing that consumers have come to expect, especially with COVID and all the other things that have come, they're like, how do we get this, you know, delivered fast? And so you've got to be competitive in that space if you're a business. Yeah. There's a baseline expectation and it's kind of unrealistic, to be honest with you. You know, Amazon was able to pull it off, but what they pulled off was essentially magic. You know, they spent $60 billion in nine years in Wall Street's patience to develop the logistics infrastructure that allows for that. Most other businesses are not able to achieve comparable economics or distribution when it comes to their, you know, warehousing and how they stock inventory close to their eventual

customers. It's still something that everyone's trying to figure out. How do we keep pace with Amazon? But that's one of the solutions that we unlocked in my previous company. And we've also replicated and unlocked that strategy with Manifest. Not only are we doing sustainable fulfillment, but we're doing it in a way that is quick and efficient and meets modern customer expectations. Yeah.

Makes all the difference. Yeah. And with Chewy, Chewy's interesting. I think Chewy bought Pets.com and they got infused with like a ton of, I might be wrong about this, but they got infused with a ton of private equity capital to basically build a mini Amazon because one of the most on-demand products nationwide from coast to coast is people love buying for their pets, taking care of their pets, buying toys for their pets, medicine,

depression pills for their pets, everything for their pets. So it's like they felt that they had enough of a market to spend a lot of money building out that. So yeah, not surprised that Chewy is always on the money because that was intentional. Yeah. And they can actually get here sometimes faster than Amazon. Like it's really interesting. But yeah, people need to realize that there's, you know, there's that expectation with consumers. You just can't be at your,

you just can't be at your fulfillment center and your warehouse, you know, in the back of your office or something. I'm thinking of, you know, old style businesses, brick and mortar stuff. And you're like, you're like, you know, hey, we need to get this shipped. And, you know, some guy, you know, who's, I don't know, not doing his job this week or whatever. It's like,

yeah, we'll get to that. You know, there's been times where I've called people and said like, Hey, this hasn't gotten here within a couple of days. What's going on there. It's like, yeah, no, it's true. And we don't, and one of the things that people are starting to realize, and if they don't realize that they will at some point, is that it's very unnatural what they've done. And it's putting a lot of stress. And it's not necessarily for the best of society. And this is a conversation we don't need to go off on the tangent on, but what Amazon has essentially done is it creates a lot of value for the consumers. But the stress that it puts on the supply chain, the stress that it puts on others to follow suit, the stress that it puts on employees, ultimately, is not necessarily a good thing. So one of the things that I've seen for the last couple of years is people dialing

back those expectations. I really have where merchants are like, okay, what's the two-day pricing? Great. I'm okay with three, four, five-day shipping because I'd rather have it done in a way that's patient, not rushed, not super stressed out, and my customers will still be happy when they get it, their Sunday order on a Wednesday or Thursday versus arriving at their door Tuesday by five o'clock. So there has been some sentiment toward relaxing that expectation a bit, both from consumers and from business owners. So that's been interesting.

I imagine there's an incredible cost savings because, you know, if I start a brick and mortar sort of company, I mean, it's going to be e-commerce, of course, selling. But, you know, I've got to have an office and I've got to have a place to sell the stuff and run everything. But if I try and build a warehouse behind it that can do fulfillment, there's a lot of costs to that. I mean, I've got to buy forklifts. I've got to buy, you know, all the stuff. And then there's a liability to it too.

I mean, it's kind of a blue-collar sort of area with forklifts. You know, I've got some friends that run forklift warehouses, and there's all sorts of great videos of injuries happening and stuff falling over. You know, we've all seen the videos on TV. And so, you know, liability workman's comp, all those sort of things that you would have to think about when you invest in a fulfillment facility of your own. You guys, you guys kind of take that whole sort of investment and liability out of the out of the picture. For merchants. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a great value because as a business owner selling online, you don't want to deal with those things. You focus on product development,

expanding your market, expanding your audience. So yeah, that's a great point. We do take care of a lot of those things. It's like, well, if I'm a business owner, I'm not necessarily going to be a logistics expert, nor do I want to take on the insurance, the liability, the real estate leases, et cetera, et cetera. And you guys do green warehousing, sustainable package and clear carbon data. You navigate the complicated product carbon labeling and stuff like that. There's a lot of different features I see here on the website, white glove, inbound logistics, intensive article inspection, eco-friendly. We mentioned that. What was the one thing about compliance? Tell us about compliance and how you guys handle that and why it's important. Yeah. Compliance just comes with, you know, our, you know, my two co-founders

were part of the ShipBob journey with me. We've been, you know, in the business together for like 30, 40 years as a team. And so we've And so we've shipped everything under the sun and we've seen it all. So that's one of the competitive advantages of starting this business again or starting a business like this is that there aren't many people walking the earth that have as much frontline logistics experience as we do. And lucky enough that the people who do are, you know, 60, 65 years old and thinking about that house near the beach in, you know, Charleston or something and not necessarily thinking about how they can innovate the industry to model it so that it is both socially and environmentally friendly. And so the compliance goes hand in hand with our experiencing in shipping multiple products, knowing the rule book, knowing what carriers expect, knowing what's allowed to ship, what's not allowed to ship, what needs special designation, what doesn't.

So for us at this point, it's just part of our encyclopedia of fundamental knowledge in the logistics business. There you go. You guys take all the worry out of it and where you're like, oh, geez, do we have the, you know, because people are good at running their business. They're not good at running fulfillment centers. So you guys are pros at it. Yes.

I would say that we are. What is white glove inbound logistics? White glove. So that goes into the detail of when inventory arrives at our fulfillment center. Sometimes it's as easy as, okay, every single one of these pallets is marked. Every single one of these boxes is marked. Check-in, check-in, check-in, check-in, check-in. It's not always that clean.

A lot of times somebody will have clothing, a line of clothing manufactured in Colombia or Vietnam, and it'll arrive in all sorts of boxes and in all sorts of like, you know, mixed SKUs in each box. The make love aspect is essentially we have the team, the knowledge, the time to be able to go through that inventory and organize in a way that prepares it to be warehoused and pickpacked and shipped. And so most fulfillment companies will not even accept inventory that doesn't arrive. You know, if you try to send something to Amazon and it's not perfectly according to their expectations, they're not going to accept it. But if you try to tell your manufacturer in Columbia, this is exactly how it needs to be, seven out of 10 times, they'll get it wrong. And then you'll get dinged to whoever, whether it's Amazon or whoever you're sending it to. So it's essentially that. It's a we'll do the dirty work that oftentimes needs to be done to get the warehouse, to get the inventory prepared in the appropriate way. There you go. And you guys do direct-to-consumer,

you do business-to-business. So if a company is doing business with each other, they can do it. I like the setup there. That's a critical point too, because when we started in this business eight, nine years ago, the market was D2 C. Everybody wanted to sell direct to the consumer. And so the same brands that three, four, five years ago, we signed up and they had Shopify stores and they were doing 2,000, 3,000 shipments a month direct to consumer have now had major retailers like Target and Sephora and Dick's Sporting Goods come calling for what they do. And so it's very important for a fulfillment company to also have omni-channel capabilities

and not only be able to service the D2C orders, but to be able to send pallets of inventory to specific retailers and adhere to those retailers' methods of accepting that inventory. It's actually a big in modern logistics trying to bridge those two things together under one value proposition. And one of the advantages of starting Manifest within the last year and a half is that we can build that capability into our foundation, whereas a lot of the companies from the previous generation of fulfillment startups kind of embedded their processes to be focused on D2C and are now trying to be able to do omni-channel, but are struggling

to do it successfully because they've been set up and scaled to a point where D2C was their focus. So at Anifest, we're experts in both, and we built that into the foundation of our value proposition. There you go. What do you guys see the future of the vision? I mean, I don't want you to give away the secret sauce of what you're planning. Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, we give away everything. We want, our goal here is to not only create a business, but to be the catalyst for change in e-commerce, to embed sustainability into the core of e-commerce. We want to be the leading company that does that, but we want everyone else to join our movement and take the turn to be sustainable. So we're not necessarily, there's no, the secret sauce is making the right decisions, whether that's finding, you know, whether that's paying a little bit extra and taking a little less on margin or, but you know,

the state of e-commerce is unsustainable at the moment. And the only way that we can create real change is by working with partners, working with merchants one at a time to lead a groundswell movement towards sustainability. I think, you know, the started their business as a side hustle or wanted to quit their jobs and start their own business. It's provided the American dream for them. It's an amazing thing. But when historians look back at our generation and they look at the environmental cost of the industry, I don't think we want that legacy hanging on us. And I think that the time is now, you know, you see a lot of commercials for a lot of companies that are like, we're going to be carbon neutral by 2035 or 2030. Can't wait that long. You know, nobody's taking our garbage anymore. It's all going straight to the ocean. You know, so much has changed over the last 15, 20 years in e-commerce yet where, you know, predominantly fulfillment is being done the same way that it was being done 25, 30 years ago.

There's been no innovation in terms of the technical aspects of the X's and O's of fulfillment. And that's what we're reimagining and doing in a way that's socially and environmentally responsible. There you go. And, I mean, people like that. That's an aspect that a lot of the Gen Zers look for when they do business with the companies

and, you know, kind of what they expect of companies. And so you guys help them fulfill that too. You know, another investment they don't have to worry, worry about and invest in. And, and like, like I say, my friend who I have one friend who runs a warehouse and the things they do on forklifts or, I don't know, I don't know about the OSHA friendly thing. They're good people, but you know, it's, it's like, I see some things they're up to and I'm just like, that seems like that might be some trouble right there but we've heard to the all safety standards but yes there's some fun being had well i mean if you if you're if you're

trying to do that yourself and you know i'm just thinking the workman comp claims alone as a business you know owner of myself i'd rather have all that farmed out to someone like me or your company because I don't want my boys doing the whole forklift thing and stuff. You're just like, especially you see those videos where a guy falls asleep on a forklift and the whole thing comes over and you're just like, yeah, I don't

want to have to deal with that hassle. Somebody else can do it. Yeah. No, I've never seen that. In my 10 years in the business or so, I've only seen one forklift accident was when a forklift fell off a dock. No, I've never seen that. In my 10 years in the business or so, I'd only seen one forklift accident was when a forklift fell off a dock. Other than that, there's been no major situations, thank God. Yeah. You just look at the cost of what it makes to build your own manifest system and it's easier to farm it out, in my opinion. Yeah. But you also make a really good point, Chris, that I just want to outline is that now more than ever, anybody, you know, if you've known anybody in your life that's 15, 25, 30 years old, more than ever, that 18 to 35,

18 to 50 demographic is voting with their dollar more than ever before with brands and companies that represent their ethos around social and environmental issues. The shift towards sustainability isn't only the right thing to do, but it's a smart business decision as well. That's the new brand loyalty. Does this brand match my views on how the world should be and whatnot? So yeah, great point. I just wanted to highlight that because I think that's something that when brands look and see, okay, how am I going to get my fulfillment done? Do I go to a provider who's been doing things the same way for the last 20 years and that's just the standard and it's the way it is? Or can I actually make this a competitive advantage and find a company that does world

class fulfillment in a way that's sustainable and that provides me with the data that I can then share with my audience and represent my brand as being socially and environmentally responsible? And that's what Manifest does. We share all that data with our merchants. We celebrate them and their decision to work with us and to make the right choice to be sustainable. Yeah. There's sometimes where I've gotten stuff, and it's important because people talk about it online. I'll see pictures online people post from Amazon where it's a refrigerator box. And then there's another box inside of it. And then there's the, you know,

the origin box from the company inside of it. It's like one of those Russian doll things where you can pull it off the head. And you're just like, what's going on? And people will post about talk online. They're like, look at this waste. It's incredible.

You know, and the product is like one inch by one inch. Yeah. And there's guilt. There's customer guilt too. We've all had that. They go to our cycling bin and the lid is up because of all the boxes that came through that week. And you can't possibly fit them all in one big, gigantic, multi-gallon size recycling bin. It's a sucky feeling. And we're trying to eliminate that. Definitely. Definitely. So what's the best

way for people to reach out to you? I noticed your Let's Talk button that's on your website. I've actually clicked on it. It looks like there's a place there where they can contact a representative to see if they're a fit for you. Yeah, Let's Talk. And anyone that wants to talk with me directly, I love talking with new people like you do, Chris. My email address is george at manifest.eco. Say hello. Let's have a conversation and get familiar.

And then how do people know if they are a fit for your company? Is there a certain size volume they need to be? Is there a minimum or max? Yeah, so we take a boutique approach to working with merchants. We're open to working with everybody. Again, we're trying to create a movement towards sustainability, and we want to share our value proposition with as many merchants as possible. But at this stage in our company,

we're really looking to work with merchants that have been averaging anywhere between 500 to 1,000 orders per month at least, because that will fit the current fulfillment template that we have in the physical footprint that we're working with in Austin, Texas. As our company expands and we add new locations, we'll be able to take on a larger swath of merchants. But ultimately, I would say the baseline that makes sense to work with a company like Manifest is about 500 orders per month. There you go. There you go. More we need to know that we didn't touch on? No, this has been great. I think that I love talking about sustainability and waking up in the morning and doing something that can really... You know, Chris, I think you told me earlier on, you've started 13 businesses. The only real way to start

a business and to grind through the inevitable ups and downs of entrepreneurship is to really do something that you can wrap your heart around and that gets you excited in the morning about the change that you can potentially make in the world and the mark that you can leave on the world. And so this is it for me. I would, you know, to be able to look back five years from now and see e-commerce as the leading model in the globe as a sustainable industry that's doing it in a way that's both economically productive, socially productive and environmentally friendly. That would be my dream and something that I could really be proud of. That's the fun part of being an entrepreneur, you know, being successful and also giving back to the world and making the world a better place. It's everything. Yeah. Yeah. See, entrepreneurs love to do that. And you know, it's interesting, a lot of people

are going to learn from your journey too as well. I, I, my first company hit it at 18 and then there was a few failures after that. And it's interesting how those are just kind of practices where you're actually really learning how to be a good CEO or entrepreneur or founder. And you're, and you finally, you know, you just finally find that button where it hits.

It's almost like you're going through a school where you're going through the thing. And so a lot of, I think a lot of entrepreneurs look at failures and they go, Oh, I'm failing. I must suck at being an entrepreneur. No, sometimes you just, you're practicing. It's almost a warmup phase. Always. It doesn't seem like that at the moment, but when you look at

Shirley, you're like all those experiences taught me where I was sloppy in my first few go arounds. I think one last thing that, you know, has been a realization for me for the last, you know, 10 years or so is that everyone, you know, people been a realization for me for the last, you know, 10 years or so is that everyone, you know, people are pensive to take risks, understandably so. But that risk is what kind of sets you free in your entrepreneurship journey. Because once you do take that risk, make that financial investment, invest that time to start a business, you'll do everything possible to stay alive and to make sure that business succeeds. So it's almost like a catch-22 where it's like, oh boy, I could lose a lot. I could lose a lot of face and I could lose a lot of money.

But once you put yourself in the position to suffer those consequences, you'll do everything you can to not suffer those consequences. And that's when a business goes from being in its starting point to getting up on its legs and standing tall. Yeah, and finding something you love and you're passionate about. It really makes a difference. And I can tell you are your business. Thank you. There you go. Well, thanks for coming on, George. Give us the.eco one more time, if you would. Manifest.eco is our website. As Chris mentioned, there's a let's talk button on there. So feel free to hit that and have a conversation with our team. And if you want to email me directly, my email address is georgeatmanifest.ego.

And this is pretty brilliant. You know, the e-commerce is just going to keep growing and growing. And, you know, I think remote work is going to keep growing and growing and people, you know, people get new more deliveries at home of everything. And they're kind of learning that this is the right way to go. Well, thanks for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Absolutely. Just one last, COVID changed everything. You know, prior to COVID, my 71-year-old mom never ordered anything from online. Now she orders everything, including her groceries online. So this is something that's going to stick with us for at least the next 10, 20 years. So we might as well make it sustainable for the planet and so on.

There you go. There you go. Well, thanks for coming on, George. We really appreciate it. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss. Go to youtube.com, Fortress Chris Voss. All of our stuff we got over on LinkedIn there.

We're even trying to get cool on TikTok, so check that out as well. Working on it. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.