Iq Fulfillment Login

[Lottie Dedinas]

Wehelp you determine optimal inventory placement across our growing fulfillment network to improve delivery speeds and reduce shipping costs. You can scale efficiently by distributing inventory into additional warehouses over time.

Even from just one fulfillment center, ShipBob provides 100% 2-day shipping coverage across the continental US. Meet expectations around speed and convenience, and drive loyalty through reliable and fast shipping.

ShipStation streamlines order fulfillment providing you complete control over your shipping operations from one place. Easily import orders from all your selling channels, automate shipping tasks, find the best carrier rates, and deliver a better customer experience with our industry leading, feature rich platform.

Hello everybody! Welcome to Awakening the Entrepreneur Within. I'm Michael E Gerber speaking to you from Carlsbad, California in my little home office just dying to bring the knowledge, the wisdom, the passion the energy that's needed for you to grow beyond where you are to do things you in fact haven't even imagined you have the capability of doing. As always in awakening we have our guests and our guest here is quite astonishingly successful he's Justin Singletary and he's the founder of fulfillment dot-com. I don't know how in the world Justin you acquired the name fulfillment but maybe you can tell us the very beginning how you do that. Absolutely it's good to be on with you Michael. First off by God's grace is how we acquired that domain name. So I'll tell you a little bit of our story and that'll help fill in the gaps on how we got that wonderful domain name because it's opened so many doors for us. My story is I was brought up in Savannah, Georgia; beautiful Savannah Georgia by the way and I was brought here due to the fact the military station been here. I joined the army and became a ranger at 1st Ranger Battalion and became a sniper team leader so is it what it is. Justin, you join the army became a what it's an Army Ranger 1st Ranger Battalion now everybody doesn't get to become an Army Ranger right? They don't they don't there's this turn ring yeah they don't get to become and I mean you don't go to the Army's I want to join become an Army Ranger. So I'd love to just talk about that for a second here get on to fulfillment.com because becoming an Army Ranger in my mind has something to do with your enormous success. When you left the army to come on the street and go into business for yourself. mm-hmm. The two don't seem to fit but they absolutely do based on the conversation you and I were having just before we came on. Absolutely we get people to care. How do we get people to want to? How do we get people to desire to? How do we get people to do the impossible work that it takes to do? You become pre-eminently successful and you became an Army Ranger. So tell me what an Army Ranger is, tell all of our guests feel like. Well an Army Ranger is simply a glorified grunt. We the operation is really it used to be Airfield seizures but our mere agents. They're , it's a special operations unit and we just do a lot of great and creative missions and the people we work with are really high speed top-notch guys and that's what I probably miss the most about it is is the guys that we served with. So I mean it was just a joy to be able to be around comrades you know, that that have that went through kind of that sacrifice to get there the US Navy SEALs but in the armies and and we don't do a lot of swimming. And you're like the Top Gun pilots in the Air Force . I would I would say we're we're not at the top you know we're quiet professionals you know we have a good time doing what we're doing but we're very mission focused. But every time I speak to a Navy SEAL or every time I speak to a Top Gun guy he sort of downplays how extraordinary they are so I completely understand when you do that but I simply want people who are listening to us your that absolutely variance of working with the best guys on the planet. Absolutely. There was a lot of people that tried to be you know an Army Ranger and I'm not just saying graduating Rain Ranger school but being into a Ranger Battalion there's a lot of guys that tried to do it. The guys that made it were the guys that had a bigger y-you know, they they had a bigger purpose it wasn't that hey I'm gonna go try out for this. It's this is just one stepping stone in my journey of life that I'm gonna be an Army Ranger. That's just what I'm gonna do. There's no quit there so you tend to find guys that have that sort of attitude are the ones that actually make it through to become an Army Ranger. So it wasn't a little bit of a gap on, you know what it takes, you know it's it's some prayer and you know you know just being able to put one foot in front of the other and enjoy it. Yeah yeah yeah . But it's how you put that one foot in front of the other Justin, let's not diminish that because the same thing is the greatest entrepreneurs of all time. When they just in codes put one foot in front of another. It's not just that they put one foot in front of another. It's that they're on fire. That's where it's their ability to focus is what I think. Focus on the outcome you're looking for instead of the activities, you're focused on the outcome. So I think I learned that early on is really as where you put your focus that's where your Energy's gonna flow and if you put your focus on the pain that's where your energy's gonna go, that's that's what you're gonna be thinking about. If you put your focus on well this is this is what this is. My outcome that I'm going to achieve that's what you're thinking about you put your folks there it's a lot easier to achieve it and the way you speak about it sounds easy but understand no it isn't what that outcome is. Absolutely. It's seeing it you your business you see it before it ever happens you already know what's gonna happen and they they're just like I said put one foot in front of the other until you get there. No I got it, it's really hard to describe that to people and you you know more than most Michael, it's it's it's really first I feel like you got to work on the way that you see the world you know, the lens in which you see the world and if your lens is a negative type of lens then that's how your life usually turns out if your lens is always seeing that glass half-full then usually your life just turns out a little bit happier than the next guy and I think that really says a lot about the guys we served with. They were always more positive than the rest you know they focused on the good. I got it and of course we can then talk about Steve Jobs and we could then talk about Bill Gates and we could then talk about Ray Kroc and we could then everybody whose cup wasn't half full have whatever absolutely completely full bring their vision, their purpose, their mission the picture they have had an internalized in their minds eye as the outcome. They're there to produce. That's right. I think it's something I've been writing about, speaking about teaching about and doing all of my life and what I understand and what's so staggeringly painful to me is how difficult it is to get people to see it. Absolutely that mental preparation is one thing that people like to skip over, they just like to get into it. Well there's you've got to be mentally ready for what's to come or you know you're not gonna be prepared for it. Do you see a lot of these greats that they drop out of college because that vision is so it's they don't need college anymore it's it's already happened in their minds they know how to execute. Okay so we sort of get what is to be an Army about. Getting fulfillment time, okay so I started after the military a couple things happen. What's important to discuss is I jumped into internet sales of health and beauty products. I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I wanted to make money when I sleep because I had so many other goals and aspirations that were outside of money that I thought you know being an Internet retailer really helped me accomplish that so I did really well with that but I had a pain point to where I couldn't find a good fulfillment solution. The fulfillment solutions that we were using and I was back in 2011 they didn't really have the transparency I needed, they didn't have the follow-up, I need to have somebody I could talk to about if something went wrong there was a lot of issues I was dealing with so I decided to do my own fulfillment. Now wait a second because define for everybody what you mean by fulfillment. Absolutely, so fulfillment the way I'm defining it is is ecommerce order fulfillment. Let's say you have a product that you sell online and somebody orders your product. Well they buy from your website the information comes to a fulfillment center possibly like ourselves and then we ship it out to the customer that purchased the product and we send you back the information tracking number all excess so it's it's really we handle your product for you. You never even get you don't even have to touch your product, we receive it from a manufacturer and we ship it out to your customer. So we store, we pick pack and we ship your product. That's what the fulfillment that I'm talking about is defined as. Got it and the problem was as you began to sell stuff. Mm-hmm. You said you couldn't find a fulfillment capability that was too much neater. To be honest when he went to my standard we were doing our own fulfillment we're like okay we got to scale this thing. When we got to about fifty to hundred orders a day it was like okay well, let's have somebody else do this so we can focus on other areas of our business the marketing side of the house, customer service side of the house, there's so many relationships you know that we wanted to to entertain that we were busy packaging packages and you know and just dealing with the fulfillment and the poster side of the house that we're missing opportunities so at about 50 orders a day or so maybe maybe it was a hundred orders a day we said okay well it's time for us to outsource this. It was a good time for a sound source and when we did we searched around for a couple of good fulfillment centers. They were good for a couple of months and then you know we started having problems, people weren't getting their packages, there was mispacks, the packages were coming in late. There was numerous things and we couldn't, I couldn't really take one invoice and reconcile it to exactly what happened, what got shipped out it was really hard to see what we're paying for, so at the end of the day I decided you know what I see there's a void in the marketplace. There's this this isn't I don't know somebody other than Amazon that is doing a great job at fulfillment right now . This is something that we can really do a good job at. Well that's interesting when you said other than Amazon yeah this happens to be the biggest fulfillment center on the planet. For their own products. For their own products that's right right, so you decided you're gonna create a fulfillment center as excellent as Amazon's for other people's products for independent online retailers people that have their own website and they're they're not using Amazon and they're selling it amongst other means I mean right now we have 65 different ecommerce platforms that we support so there's a lot of different ways to sell products these days so really to make a long story short it was called at cost fulfillment right, so we charge less than all the competitors around and we got a large percentage of the marcus year i had eight hundred square feet above a pizza shop and and we were we had so much product in there i thought the floor was gonna cave in and going on top of the pizza shop. But it was were the good days man you know we were we were actually trying to figure out a way to have a shoot from the second-story out of the window into the delivery or the the USPS truck when it came everyday so it was a fun time but we really focused on. I had a ranger buddy of mine that actually become a developer and we spent many a nights you know working on our art technology so that we can add more value to internet retailers or our clients so we actually we're the cheapest guys on the block Michael and soon we figured you know we don't want to be cheapest guys. We want to spend more time and development. Spend more time developing this business out to where we were adding more value to our clients so we were like well this name act cost fulfillment isn't gonna fit anymore. So you didn't want to be the cheapest guys you want to be the best guys. That's right that's right. You know if we got into the game being the cheapest guys cuz honestly I didn't have the bankroll you know to build an Amazon or something that could compete with another large fulfillment center so we're like well let's just guys they just don't care you know where they care but they just they want the cheapest price on the block let's help them out and their friends so we'll know we'll take care of them and let's just grow this business how I like to say slow is smooth smooth is fast. Let's not grow it too fast to where we self implode let's not take on we have no debt still at this time so we just wanted to do it in a way that was methodical, in a way that we knew we can build a very strong foundation so the business can grow and still be strong at the end of the day. So you essentially utilized your determination to be in quotes the cheapest cars to make access readily available to folks who didn't understand the difference between the cheapest guys and the best guys. Yep they wanted the cheapest and they gave you an opportunity then to go to work on the systems through which one achieved the result that you wish to achieve on your way to becoming the best we are still supplying the same the same service or maybe in a better service because we didn't have that many clients at the time but with 800 square feet there you don't have a lot of bills, and when you have to or you know one two three four employees you know you don't have a lot of payroll so you can charge a lot less for your services. We're doing with that handful of people that handful of space . Yeah was figuring out the mechanics of it way that enabled you to rise above everyone else right because you were working on it the e-myth phrase that we continually use because we invented it what just doing it doing it doing it doing it that's right I was in the business every day I was in the business you know and try it trying to troubleshoot and trying to figure out what systems can we put in place so we can move to a new activity in the business and eventually you know so I can be working on the business. So I spent a lot of time working in the business and and there was some times where I probably should have outsourced where I didn't if I if I would have known what I know now I probably wouldn't be able to do it two or three times faster. Yeah but Justin when you speak about that I want to give you just an insight about it when you speak about it working in the business in my vernacular the way you were doing what you were doing was literally working on the business inventing the systems of the business . You're exactly right here never enable the systems to liberate you feeling it doing it doing it that's right. I had to be in the weeds listening to what the customers were the clients were saying you know seeing how all the operations were going in though is kind of in the trenches working on everything but you know you're right while I was working on everything you're also building systems to make those things and fix things forever and make things more efficient, faster for for future projects or future shipments and that's a very very very important thing for everybody listening in because that's really what the e-myth is all about when I talk about working on it not in it I mean not being the system yourself but inventing the system that's going to ultimately make you an ordinary person significantly more effective at what you produce which means you can then attract novices to do the work that needs to be done because it's already orchestrated and was system that produces that result that's right in people and attract people that are that are prepared to do what I need them to do that's they're at in their life cycle you know I mean maybe it's it's something that is very easy for them to do but that's what they want to do you know yeah so I absolutely that we were working I correct myself you know on the business it seemed like at the time we're in the business because you know everything's being thrown at us sure absolutely of course you were but you got to understand this language we're using yes we're literally designing a business to work that's right in a way that would make that business significantly more effective than the competition that's correct you were designing a role for your company in the world so that you would become fulfillment calm innards that's right when we felt like we had the right tools or we got to the point where we added enough value we decided that we didn't want to be the cheapest guys in the block anymore so it's it's hard to make money be the cheapest guys in the block unless you know it's at scale but we decided well we really want to change the way that fulfillments done we see a lot of things or we're anticipating things that are coming down the road where one facility is just not going to be enough so let me backup but based on the fact that we thought we had enough value it's like okay we got to change your name now at cost and film it isn't gonna work it work anymore for the for the well what we stand for then our name was at cost fulfillment then cost fulfillment which represented us perfectly at the time yeah so we found that um you know at the time I had a business partner and we talked about it we're like you know what what could be what's the best name out there that we you know swing for the fences on this you know and we found that eBay enterprises just I believe they acquired GSI commerce and brought along a domain name fulfillment coms so they're holding this domain name not really doing anything with it so we offered him $50,000 for the domain name and we didn't get a response from him so we went back to the drawing board I want this domain name how do we just get their attention you know I I mean we're we're thinking about throwing a blind you know bid not even having the money to figuring out how to get the money so we're excited ok what's the number where they'll get back in touch with us they'll call us back so we threw a number 500 thousand dollars for that domain name they called us right back and it we ended up doing the deal and I think you know I think at the end they said okay just as long as you don't sell the Amazon in the next 24 months we'll do the deal but it was funny how you know we got no response and then we got a call right back so I'm sure we overpaid for that domain name but it has paid us dividends based on the fact dollars come from all over the place the sofa you know grandma you know I mean we pulled it together we needed to get it , we got it but you know between me and a partner. That's right that's right so we had assets that we had a good internet , a good online nutraceutical business at the time so you know we found the money you know eventually and we paid for it and it was like okay now we've got to deliver on where fulfillment.com now . Now we have to be the best you know we're making ourselves be the best with that domain name. That's incredible I just absolutely love that I hope everybody heard that I hope everybody took that in, guy picks an impossible name finds out who's got it offers them an outrageous amount to buy it and they don't even respond so you develop ten times that amount no one you would get the response and they immediately call you. That's right that's right. There you are without $500,000 having offered $500,000 and I've seen amount of money for a name lady yes is mm-hmm because our Ranger knew that name would become who he was. Well I'm gonna tell you, you know in theirs I understand there's a lot of people that have different religious preferences but I like fulfillment.com Jesus fulfilled the Scriptures and I believe there was a lot of Prayer that helped us get that domain name. Wonderful okay so now I know you got the name now everybody knows how you got the name you bought the name. Absolutely. You've paid through the nose for the name. We did, it was we had big shoes to fill now if you google fulfillment I mean just the word fulfillment we would sometimes be above the dictionary the dictionary definition so as far as just the organic traffic from the search engines when people are searching for us it's helped us out tremendously, it's helped us in the beginning, it helped us seem like we're a much bigger company than what we actually were and it really. What's that of course, yeah. Does it attract an enormous number of leads of people who want your services? Let me say I think it's just the right amount because we've adjusted to the lead generation, we've adjusted the business to it and it's allowed us instead of to spend a lot of money on pay-per-click ads and you know social media and other marketing tactics that people just throw a lot of money at. It's allowed us to spend that money in kind of other directions on yeah I'm getting the know you have standards that you've already established yes signs of customers you will accept that's right we've got a target we tend to see a lot of people aren't truly ready for a fulfillment center it depends on your product of course we tend to see is about 50 orders a day when we have people that we used to you know our doors rope and we'll take anybody when people are ship one or two orders you know a day or they're shipping one or two orders a month you know we restored a lot of product here and we've got to charge them for that product so we feel like under about 50 orders they may not be a win-win for them we're actually developing out so we can widen our funnel to help those people that are not shipping 50 orders a day we're actually launching hopefully this year a program that's that's a posted printing platform so people can actually if they're at their office or in their garage they can go to film accom and print postage and then when they get to that 50 orders a day they're still in the same platform and they can use us for fulfillment maybe on the other side of the country that they're not on or they can use us for you know all of our locations so we're going to be expanding that funnel probably this time there sometime this year so does everyone who is shipping 50 a day get to use your fulfillment center we we've I would say we ship everything from pills in a bottle to beds in a box so we've got a very wide range of people well we've what we tend to look for is independent online retailers what that means is if somebody has a website and they've got a product a tangible product that they ship out and it's about 50 orders a day and they're connected to an e-commerce platform and even if they've got their own custom code we've got all restful API so we can really integrate with anything that's really our target market and do they have to fill out a questionnaire when they contact you we we like people to go through our request a quote on fulfilling comm it helps give us a little bit more information and see if there's the right fit but we tend to like to reach out to everybody at the end of the day we like to place them in places like or give them access to our education blog that we have on phone comm that'll help them maybe get to that 50 orders a day there's a lot of great vendors in that free education vlog that they talk about their services not only allowed vendors on there that are actually helping clients that we already have so I know they're legit so we try to try to help them in other ways they can get to that volume I got it so that's a critical part of your company yes I'm in short the way in which you move someone from here to there that's right understanding that it's not as easily done as I've just said moving somebody from here to there because in order for somebody to become in quotes a ranger to the qualify to become a ranger they have to go through a very very specific process that's right that enables them to do that Mike well I didn't do it on my own yes I'm saying the guys around it we helped each other right we helped each other get from A to B so starting out in an e-commerce I needed the help and it's not like who I knew it's it's I like to say it's not who you know it's who knows you so the network that I tried to establish or even in Ranger Battalion. That the guys that I hung out with were the guys that were gonna succeed those are the guys that I went to when I had a problem where I wanted to to talk through things with I made sure that the people that I hung around with especially in e-commerce were people that were successful that people that that knew what what to do now and not what to do five years ago because the landscape is changing so fast. No I got that but let me suggest another piece of this puzzle, then we're not really talking about that there is a very specific process one has to go through and there's a very specific process one has to go through to become a ranger to be kind of a US Navy SEAL even if I'm a Top Gun to become whatever a true entrepreneur absolutely epic set of skills and and systems that are critical for one to move through that process the Quran says somebody it's not just getting motivated and jacked up by somebody it's getting motivated and jacked up by somebody who's in fact paid the price of going through that very critical process and has the right system for you to follow that's right you've got it and so I'm going to that without even knowing because we haven't done a lot of work together you've only spoken a few times together um you were attracted to what we do and we were attracted by what you've done yeah and we ended up in this conversation together but what I really want to suggest is there is a significant way to go beyond where you are by in fact developing what it is you possess internally by developing that in people who haven't a clue what that is mm-hmm another sand they haven't a clue what that is because nobody's ever even suggested it to them there was no method to that madness so I'm gonna suggest not only do you Justin but to everybody listening in that's really the work we've been doing for the past 40 years that is truly determining what it is that transforms a company of one to a company of 1,000 what it truly takes to awaken the blessed entrepreneur within the Creator within to go beyond where he or she is and we love to say that um if we're born in the image of God as it said and I know you believe this if we're born in the image of God then we were born to create mm-hmm and if every single human being is born to create then the question that drives them to create what well to create a world fit for God mm-hmm and each of us are called to do that in one specific way mm-hmm so effectively you found your calling leaving the military coming to good earth planet USA you discovered your calling and began to be a US Ranger in the work that you set out to do mm-hmm but in your heart in your heart you know you were born to create you know you were born in the image of God you know that's what in fact your work is telling you to do and that's the great result that you're setting out to produce absolutely he wants us to do the best at whatever we do no matter what we no matter what we touch we need to have passion for it we need to do we need to do it our best and I'll be honest with you what I've seen people around me what I've seen successful entrepreneurs what I notice if somebody gives if somebody shows me their last 24 hours or a 24 hour period I can tell you or you can tell if somebody's gonna be successful based on where they spend their time they spend their time in educating themselves mentally preparing themselves you know those are the guys that are gonna or guys and gals that are gonna be successful the ones that spend their time wisely like I think it was Arnold Schwarzenegger said sleep faster you know I mean he said that he spends like six six hours of sleeping and if some people need eight sleep faster so I it's just like where do you spend your time if you're not spending your time in a program or if you're if you're not actively doing something you need to be preparing to do something and you know what this brings me to I read the e-myth your book after your your beautiful wife handed it to me at Board of Advisors I went on my honeymoon and I brought the book with me and I shouldn't have you know I shouldn't have read started reading a book because it led me on my honeymoon to start developing a new blueprint for the next three years of filming calm I was I was doing that on my honeymoon so I don't think my wife will be watching this I think what I was working on she knows now but you know it's it's really I learned a lot from reading your book Michael and exactly what you're saying there there's there's systems that I didn't think that I didn't think I was doing the things that I was doing in the beginning but when I read your book I realized I was doing those things and I realized there's more of those things need to be done in order for us to get more efficient more SOP we need to have a product that it that can be duplicated and can be improved upon so I just want to say you know that story as far as readi