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Blaine Bolus
00:00:05 - 00:00:43
Hey everyone, we're super excited to announce the launch of our Slack community for D two C pod. This is a space exclusively for D two C founders and operators to connect, share ideas, ask questions and support each other. You'll be able to engage with the best minds and operators and consumer. And currently we're on a waitlist and it will open up the community once we reach 150 members. So apply using the link in the description and we hope to see you on slack. So before we kick off today's review recording, ive got one more for you. Keeping up your momentum this year starts with the right selling tools. And if youre looking to increase revenue, grow faster, build more pipeline, and close more deals, check out the all new sales hub from HubSpot.
Blaine Bolus
00:00:43 - 00:01:36
Youll be able to manage your whole sales process. Plus my favorite part, the reporting, its super intuitive, powerful and customizable. Plus the whole thing is powered by AI, so your teams can spend less time on tedious, time consuming stuff and more time on developing relationships. Also, no one likes a clunky platform that takes months to onboard onto, but getting set up on saleshub is really quick and easy. It's free to get started. The pricing will scale with your business, and with more than 1300 integrations and add ons, you can tune it to your exact needs. Visit HubSpot.com sales to start selling with sales hub what is going on? DTC pod. Today we're joined by John Morgan, who is the founder of Pelagic, uh, which is an operations and supply chain, sort of, uh, network of the best people in the field.
Blaine Bolus
00:01:36 - 00:02:09
So we're really excited to be able to talk about operations on this episode. But prior to starting Pelagic, uh, John was the VP of ops at Seed Health, uh, which is one of the largest health and probiotic supplement companies in the world. And before that, he was at SpaceX. So, John, I'm going to let you kick us off. Why don't you just tell us a little bit about your background, how you got so involved with supply chains, operations, and what kind of took you along your career journey to get where you are in logic, logic today.
John Morgan
00:02:09 - 00:02:42
Great. Thanks, Blaine. And really happy to be here. So, yeah, to go way, way back, I guess I did not come from a family of entrepreneurs or any background like that. I had two doctors as parents and so when I told them I was interested in this career path, they were like, cool. We have no clue what that means, how companies are built, but go for it. And, um, a really pivotal discovery was from my time in undergrad at USC, I found an entrepreneurship minor and got to hear directly from these founders building their businesses. And I thought they had the coolest jobs.
John Morgan
00:02:42 - 00:03:38
They, they taught, like, one unit classes and would go in and talk about what they were doing and then, uh, run their businesses on the side. So I think that was the first time I, I even knew that was a thing. But on top of that, I got very lucky and did a MBA level supply chain internship from one of the gurus in the space, Jimmy Anklesaria, a mentor of mine out of San Diego. And that experience put me on the map when I applied to a role fresh out of college at SpaceX, and it was originally in procurement, we were a fast growing company. SpaceX has had a few different chapters. Now, as a thing, it's been amazing to watch and be a part of. But at that time, they were perfecting the design of the Falcon nine rocket and just coming out with like, here's how we're going to launch humans into space. So that was around 2014.
John Morgan
00:03:40 - 00:04:58
The company grew very, very quickly. From there, I got handed a lot more responsibilities in all different ways, shapes and forms, but I found this niche skillset of working with engineers to outsource carbon fiber assemblies or sub components of the actual structure of the rocket across Falcon nine and dragon. So imagine just very complicated designs and some of the most brilliant engineers in the world constantly iterating on and trying to get Falcon nine fully reusable as a product or just like, to work and, like, fly. There were definitely a couple of times where we, you know, blew up a rocket on accident in different ways, shapes or forms. That was tough to swallow as a company. But overall, I think what I got out of that was just getting to work on kind of products that were first in, first of their kind for human history in a really amazing way. Making rockets fully reusable and then learning how to problem solve in a really intense work environment, but also amongst, like, a pretty passionate culture towards those problems. Everyone was like, we're going to Mars or bust.
John Morgan
00:04:59 - 00:05:39
We're going to figure out everything. There was no such thing as, no, we can't figure it out. It was, yes, but, and this is what it's going to take. So that was where I think I really learned or got very lucky, kind of setting the bar with supply chain. And I have nothing but wonderful things to say about SpaceX. I think a lot of people got burnt out or just couldn't handle a lot of the pieces of that culture. But I left after befriending and getting to know one of the two co founders of Seed and starting to hear about this really exciting space called the microbiome. Um, and.
John Morgan
00:05:39 - 00:06:05
And he's the very technical R and D oriented founder of the two, one of the. The smartest people I've ever met. Um, and he. He was like, the microbiome is going to change everything. Like, it's just like outer space. Like, you're gonna. You're gonna wish you were part of this. And so, um, Raja really, like, took a bet on me, but we found a way to say, yeah, these products are gonna be very innovative and hard to manufacture.
John Morgan
00:06:05 - 00:06:17
Like, I need you to come on and start figuring out our operations and our suppliers chain. I'll pause there if you want have any questions so far, Blaine, but I'm happy to go straight. Straight through into seed. Seed experience next.
Blaine Bolus
00:06:18 - 00:06:39
Yeah, no, absolutely. I'd love to. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about seed. So, kind of when you came in, what was the status of the company? What did everything look like and where, you know, where did you start being able to apply your expertise to seed? Like, what were the first action items? What did you see and what did you do?
John Morgan
00:06:39 - 00:07:45
Yep. So, I was. I was one of the earliest full time hires. We were a team of interns and contractors. We had raised a pre seed round of about 2 million, and we were getting ready to launch a very delayed launch that a lot of people were pretty stressed about getting out the door. So our manufacturing network and supply chain was a bit chaotic, and we didn't have any operational data defined, organized, anyway, very vague understandings of our cogs, very approximate targets on our margins, and a whole lot of, let's say, wonderful chaos in the office and in how people were working on what they should or shouldn't be working on. I was very quickly handed the supply chain, the finance, and some internal human operations or HR work to. To dive into, and, um, had really amazing people to support me in that over time, especially as we picked up sales and got a lot more traction.
John Morgan
00:07:45 - 00:09:37
But, um, look, the thing I'll tell everyone is that we changed manufacturers and our entire, like, supply chain system, like, four to four, like, really four to five times across very, very rapid growth, where we continued to have a fantastic brand and market ourselves appropriately and stack subscribers. But we were always iterating on the format to achieve a higher viability or ensure that what we were telling our consumers was meeting with the label said, and that we were hitting these very potent, clinically proven living cell counts at the probiotic level. For those of you who run supply chain, and especially for being in charge of 24 unique, clinically kind of studied strains from around the world, keeping those bugs away from heat and humidity and from activating before they actually got to the right part of the customer's digestive system was like my entire challenge. It was like, how do I keep these things alive? How do I test them? How do I make sure they're perfect quality? And ultimately, through a lot of searching, hard work, hard lessons, a couple stock outs that people may or may not remember in which the whole company is looking at me. To make sure we had enough capsules in time, we landed on a really innovative technology we called the Viacap, or a cap in cap system, which was these probiotics being engineered for the journey. They had to go by being protected by a dried, super low humidity prebiotic, pomegranate extract and powder. And once we found that product format, the whole company, I think, really started to click. We saw people feeling fantastic biological effects.
John Morgan
00:09:37 - 00:10:38
We felt the supply chain was scalable. And then Covid hit. And so I think for the first time, supply chain became a thing in the global context. I think when Covid occurred, people remember it for being shut down, for the horrible effects and the unfortunate deaths of the illness itself. But it also tipped the global supply chain system all one direction. I was heavily involved in trying to import PPE devices and coverage, just trying to help my cousins and doctors in hospitals at the time because I had relationships. Supply chain in China, really wild things occurred, and I could literally track Covid impacting our global manufacturing and supply chain as that all went down. So a lot of our strains were fermented in Italy and Spain, which was a heavily hit area.
John Morgan
00:10:38 - 00:11:46
Our manufacturing on the capsule level was done in the tri state area, which was also heavily impacted. Imagine just having tens of thousands of subscribers expecting and depending on you for their biological daily health, suddenly becoming even more aware of microbiological beings wanting their probiotics even more. And you can barely keep it afloat or supply them. And so we had to get very scrappy. We learned a lot of different things. I think there's a whole category of seed that was really innovative as well. That was our ultra sustainable packaging formats that we invested really heavily in to stand out as a brand that also suddenly became really complex, from our paper foam trays to our algae based cardboards. So I would just say seed was a unbelievable experience of a trial by fire, but getting through Covid and keeping all of our customers supplied and happy and continuing to grow very fast as a business is something I'm very proud of today, but also something I saw as that something incredibly difficult to navigate.
John Morgan
00:11:46 - 00:12:32
And I use that word navigate to then prompt kind of where we are today, which is what pelagic is as a brand. It's. It's a service to help founders and or early stage employees navigate extremely difficult challenges that supply chain can create for your business. From just lower cost or higher cost, lower margin at an early stage, to as you're growing and scaling, the things that tied up inventory or cash flow problems can really create for your business. And, um, over the last year and a half, I think we've been perfecting a model that's. That's really starting to find some traction and work really well for brands in terms of how we can service something so complicated that is your supply chain operations in a, in a white glove way.
Blaine Bolus
00:12:32 - 00:12:53
So I think, John, I think that's actually a great place for us to start. Um, because I want to talk about what are, like, the core fundamentals for founders who are launching brands. Like, what do they need to know about setting up, you know, an initial basic supply chain?
John Morgan
00:12:53 - 00:12:54
Right?
Blaine Bolus
00:12:54 - 00:13:15
Like, you've got a product that you're likely importing some component of. You've got packaging, got a place to where you've got to assemble it, and you've got to, like, ship it to a customer. So if you could just talk to us a little bit about what is the. What does the MVP look like for getting supply chain right from the get go?
John Morgan
00:13:15 - 00:14:25
Yeah. Each supply chain is its own fingerprint. It has its own very unique design experience problem. And we do have a really good simplified framework for approaching supply chains. We kind of break down your operations into these 16 unique categories, which sounds like a lot. At the most fundamental layer, it's kind of your packaging, your raw materials, your manufacturing, how your raw materials are synthesized or turned into the product you want to provide, your inbound logistics or transportation infrastructure necessary to move all these pieces through the supply chain, your quality systems, to make sure you're producing what you need to create. I could go on and on with what those key categories are ultimately through three pl or in source distribution and then delivering to your end customer. I think a huge mistake that people make at the earliest stage is that they skip over or don't ask hard questions or look into the details of their supply chain.
John Morgan
00:14:26 - 00:15:09
I've seen a lot of great marketers or super brilliant PhDs, and they just don't want to worry about the details. So they outsource everything to, like, one shop, one turnkey manufacturer sounds great. And I think a lot of times people are giving up way more than they ever expected in having it all be bundled under one house. Like, hey, I will go source your ingredients. Hey, we'll do manufacturing. You don't even need to check us on the quality side. We got that in house, too. And there are really wonderful pressures that occur when you start being able to manage some of that as the brand and own different pieces of it in terms of how much you give up for the sake of simplicity.
John Morgan
00:15:09 - 00:16:19
I think the other thing I'll point to that I think is so wonderful about supply chain operations is that it's humans doing business with more humans. And I think a lot of times people just say, like, I just want to put the money in and then have the product pop out. And I would not have survived building anything at seed if I had treated my supply chain and those relationships that way. And so another really, like, fundamental lesson I would tell everyone is like, go see them in person. Like, if those manufacturers or people are going to be, like, relevant or important to your business, go treat them like humans. Go actually ask about their lives. Get to know who they are, because things are going to go wrong or break, and you're going to need their help to unbreak it. And honestly, one of the most full circle moments is my most trusted co packer, the team or business that put the capsules into our very weird, long, narrow necked pouches that are the refill pouches of seed.
John Morgan
00:16:20 - 00:17:10
They bailed me out so many times, they would put capsules into pouches within a day because I was about to stock out on subscribers, like, two days later. And he, he actually now works with and for me at Pelagic, and he's absolutely amazing and has this, like, insight into how manufacturing runs and operates and how to build those operations fundamentally in a scalable way. But, um, also is just like a great human and, and persons, and we did that right. And I think a lot of founders are just like, oh, like, I'm going to smash you down on price and over negotiate and get the lowest cost ever. And you just kind of have to remember that these people have their own businesses, too, and they're torn, like, 50 different ways. And so understanding them and listening to them and building those relationships is something that's fundamental to your success at that early stage.
Blaine Bolus
00:17:10 - 00:18:02
I think that's a really good point, because at the end of the day, like you said, it's not a question of what goes wrong, it's like something will go wrong and you're going to need people there to help you out. But another question that I had kind of in that vein is like, how do you think about setting up a supply chain in the beginning, do you think of it as an iterative process? What's the trade off? Because obviously there's certain partners that you're going to be able to work with where you know, you can achieve scale. But in the beginning you need to be able to create product, get it to your customer and, you know, kind of be able to like check the box before you get enough capital to get your next PO or your next raise or something like that. So how do you think about building out supply chains or operations in terms of like an mvp, right. Like starting simple and, but at the same time giving yourself enough leeway to scale up when you're ready.
John Morgan
00:18:02 - 00:18:25
Yeah, I think it's a great question. So a lot of these things, the product itself will dictate, right. The complexity of the product, the number of ingredients you're putting into it, the difficulty of the machinery or the tooling it takes to actually go create. But you know, I think the, I totally just lost my train of thought blame. But you said the, I'm just asking.
Blaine Bolus
00:18:25 - 00:18:56
About like scalability, right? Because in the beginning, like you said, you want to obviously work with the right people, but like maybe in the beginning you don't have the budget to do that, but like you're trying to test market demand, you're trying to bring a product to market. So, you know, kind of what does it look like in terms of managing both the ability, the ability to get a product to market in a way that like works and, you know, building out the supply chain for the business that's doing, you know, several, several million dollars a year worth of revenue. That's like a flywheel that's just coming along.
John Morgan
00:18:56 - 00:20:26
Yeah, you keep breaking up on me, but I'm just going to get after it. So that, yes, supply chains are fully iterative, but I think, and I think you should always think about them that way. Something that's been really cool to witness at Pelagic, you go from I'm embedded in the high complexity level of the seed operation to now getting to see tens to a couple hundred different operations and how they're built is that you can actually start to map almost these like very distinctive volume or complexity or growth moments and be very honest with your supply chain and your, and the brand builders on like when it's time to shift or when it's time to add redundancy and another like piece of your supply chain into your system. And so, yeah, I could tell you like, yeah, like there's certain three pls that are capable of working with you at a very low moq. And that's, that's super early stage and they're very high touch. There are other ones I would say you should only be talking to once you're in like a 50 million and up revenue like category and moment. And so within every vertical or category of your operation, I think there are like distinctive and flexible changeover moments or ways you need to start considering new partners. Aside from on top of just the supply chain, fundamentally and your product, they also have to think about your changing channel strategy and growth.
John Morgan
00:20:26 - 00:21:13
So many of our clients come to us saying, holy crap, we just got approved for a target launch or sprout said yes, or we have some new growth potential that we're really worried about. And if we don't service it or have the operational systems internally to keep up with it, we're going to break or we're going to fail or we're going to run out of cash. So yeah, those moments, ideally you are anticipating those moments three to six months ahead of when they happen. So you can build, find and set up the systems you need or the, the partners you need to grow into that. But you know, if it happens like in the next two weeks to a month, you can just call us and we'll make it happen.
Blaine Bolus
00:21:13 - 00:21:54
We are really excited to announce that DTC pod is officially part of the HubSpot podcast network. The HubSpot podcast network is the audio destination for business professionals. And we're really excited about being part of the network because we're going to be able to keep growing the show, bringing you guys amazing guests, and obviously helping you guys learn from the best founders, marketers and builders of the most successful consumer brands. So anyway, keep listening to DTC pod and more shows like us on the HubSpot podcast network@HubSpot.com. podcastnetwork. I love that. My next question was going to be, you know, obviously it's great. We can just pick up the phone, call you guys if we're having somewhat scale that we need to get things figured out.
Blaine Bolus
00:21:54 - 00:22:31
But for most people who are getting started, how do you see things playing out with operations? Is it typically the founder that's taking that on? Is it a certain hire that you're making? Is it a consultant you bring in? Like, what does success look like, especially for an early stage founder who may not, you know, have the background or experience in dealing with supply chain. They know how to build a brand, they know how to build a product, they know how to speak to their customer, they know how to build an amazing landing page and run a social strategy, but maybe they don't have the technical chop. So do you think, you know, what are some of the options on the table to like really flush out and make sure you're going about your ops the right way?
John Morgan
00:22:32 - 00:23:41
Yeah. In the market today, you know, we, we built our model to be flexible that way because we want to be like founder oriented at any size and stage. So we have this like crawl, walk, run optionality. That is, if youre very early stage we can engage as advisors and just hour for hour give you our perspective on what to do if youre very non technical with your supply chain, if you want to be budget conscious. But you know, theres a lot of value to unlock in just like tactically resourcing or finding a new three pl or auditing your cogs. Right. Like we can do a project basis and then a lot of brands who scale very quickly, we will or expect to scale very quickly based on they're backed by influencers or they're going to spend a lot of marketing dollars. We can run your daily operations turnkey and we've done that for brands for a year or more in the market more broadly, if I put myself in the shoes of the founder, you can work with, plagiarize in any of those ways.
John Morgan
00:23:41 - 00:25:13
Um, you can run it yourself and try to figure it out, which I think doesn't work for very long. Like you, you're so valuable in other areas that I think, um, you, unless the supply chain is fundamental to your technology or your product or your differentiation and you want to own that yourself, um, you should be handing it off. Uh, and I think as of the last three to six months, we're really starting to compete with like a full time hire. And so what I tell founders is like, at least let us audit and tell you very transparently, like you, what level of hire you need to run these operations. So we could save you from hiring a COO and you just kind of hire a great ops manager who can cover a lot of the basics with really fantastic tooling and a starting operational infrastructure on top of that, I am blown away by the AI age that we are now living in and its implications and the power of some of those tools in the math. Fundamentally that is supply chain. And so our fractional operators are starting to be, on a cost basis level, actually more competitive than you would pay in terms of, let's say a small amount of equity and a salary range for that full time operator, which is what I overall, I see the most capable talent in the venture ecosystem moving into this fractional model more and more because there's so many tools out there to like market yourself and become accessible. It's a different lifestyle.
John Morgan
00:25:13 - 00:25:57
But look, I have an incredible team and those people are able to deliver the same value across many different clients. And so I'm challenging founders to start thinking about us in the same commoditized way that they do accounting services. So everyone starts out and you pay for your fractionalized accounting like we want to be your fractionalized supply chain operations who can help you make sure you dont make any bad decisions at the early product development and design level, and then ensure that at least in that zero to 50 million in scale, like your supply chain is going to be on time, low cost and high quality.
Blaine Bolus
00:25:57 - 00:26:12
I love that. John. My next question was going to be kind of what we talked about in the iterative stage. But as youre launching a business, how do you think about profitability and when it comes time to like optimize the supply chain for cost versus, you know, get the right product out?
John Morgan
00:26:12 - 00:26:12
Right?
Blaine Bolus
00:26:12 - 00:26:35
Because I think there's a lot of founders who, when they think about their business, it's like, sure, in that first PO, we can fully optimize for cost, or we might optimize a little bit less for like profitability just to, you know, make sure we're getting the right product in people's hands, uh, and, and that sort of thing. So I, how do you think about that when it comes to like cogs and financial optimization? When it comes to supply chain?
John Morgan
00:26:35 - 00:27:41
Yeah, I think, look, I'm, I'm still looking for the client that is willing to pay us a percent of cogs savings in the way that some of these like growth marketing agencies have set up their, their engagements. But um, look, cogs is the other half of, of the, you know, the most important part parts of your business. It's, it's really what defines your, your margin, your growth. I think there was a, a time and place where margin was less important in the venture or e commerce world, but margins have made a huge comeback and are now being looked at in a very intense way by founders as they should be at seed. We definitely invested in the brand that way. We would maybe pick the slightly more expensive packaging solutions to be sustainable or walk the walk in that way to stand for something. And I always want to support those decisions. And we're really just here to just be very refined on the data behind those decisions.
John Morgan
00:27:41 - 00:29:33
To say, here's what you're giving up in terms of dollars in the bank of what you could do with to have a much higher quality product or to make sure it's going to be on time every time. On the financial decision framework side overall, the other big question I would have, and I think there's a lot of like creativity in how these business models are built, is, you know, cogs is just one piece of the whole experience. If you're a subscription business, you know, LTV matters more than just like that initial margin on that first product bought, right? So if, if you can validate those higher costs over time or find ways to bring them down across the customer experience or the journey through the product overall, then it's something we're totally down to support. But look, cogs will always be a focus, and if not now, then in the future. And people, I think, make the mistake of sometimes saying like, oh, cogs will get better as we scale with climbing volume of orders, we're going to get all the cost savings we need. And I would just argue that you're leaving so much opportunity on the table there, like actually leveraging and negotiating those volumes and shopping them out to many other very capable, high trust, super experienced manufacturing partners, is what you should be doing at many different steps along that build and scale journey. And yeah, I mean, look, like this morning we saved a really exciting pre launch client and entering the colostrum space like 50% on their initial cogs. Like out the gate.
John Morgan
00:29:33 - 00:29:52
They haven't launched yet and we already just unlocked those dollars for them and how they can go hire like two more people. So yeah, we always try to validate our costs very quickly through those cost savings. And I hope I answered your question about the importance of them overall, but absolutely fundamental.
Blaine Bolus
00:29:52 - 00:30:26
Yeah, I think that's a great framework to think of. My next question is going to be about importing. Right. There's a lot of supply chains that deal with other countries or manufacturers outside the US, whether it's packaging components, whether it's inputs or the whole product itself that you're importing. If you could just give us like the TLDR or like the download on what founders need to know when it comes to importing products that they're selling in the US, like what do we need to know and how does it work?
John Morgan
00:30:26 - 00:31:23
The TLDR I love it. Yeah. So look, I love tracking this stuff just at the macroeconomic level, like the trends, the shifts. I think the Flexport founder and CEO talks about this stuff all the time. Like when the. So as canal gets blocked, what happens are there's attackers in Yemen, but in general I've seen a slow but steady shift away from China. It obviously depends on the market or commodity or product sector you're talking about. Reshoring of manufacturing intentionally from government incentives down to just convenience or risk overall to North America is of a lot of interest to a lot of founders these days, specifically Mexico.
John Morgan
00:31:24 - 00:33:02
What I will say is that similar to a lot of your supply chain, there are high quality and low quality brokers that exist in terms of compliantly and cleanly moving your, your products through us customs and border patrol. And, and I think like, I think it all, you should always just be very conservative to start with how that stuff goes. I think you should always lean on experts who understand exactly what import codes you should be using or how to keep optimizing those solutions. I would maybe then, like, the best kind of guidance I can give is like, it's not worth it to do it yourself and it'll always go slower than you expect. Uh, I know specifically one customer of ours, we did everything completely right. We prompted and answered and, uh, moved a very critical on pre order shipment through customs in the port of LA, like as effectively as possible. And unfortunately, turns out there was a giant backlog on rail cars leaving LA that we didn't know about, couldn't know about, and ended up kind of causing a huge headache in terms of messaging customers and timing of that delivery. And so, yeah, I would say lean on experts, seek experts in moving products into the US, especially with a lot of changing tariffs and political things occurring internationally.
John Morgan
00:33:03 - 00:33:06
And then give yourself extra days every time.
Blaine Bolus
00:33:07 - 00:33:55
Yes, the extra days. One, I think that's really important because it's really hard to hit a deadline and if you don't and you've got customers waiting for it, that's just cash that you're leaving on the table. So as we wrap up here, just a couple last questions that I wanted to get through with you. The first was going to be, I think we covered it a little bit before, but I'd love to talk about other common mistakes that you see from founders or brands setting up their supply chain in their ops, whether they're at the earlier stages or even at the later stages when they're scaling up. What are some of the biggest mistakes that you've seen across other businesses that if you could avoid them now, you would be in a much better place for it.
John Morgan
00:33:55 - 00:35:02
I think one mistake, I can speak very specifically to it in a certain category, but I think just to speak more broadly, is not being afraid to entertain, or explore, or seek or source other options at every level. I think one of the highest friction, or most fear causing changes to make, if not your manufacturer, is your three pl or your outsourced manufacturing partner. There are so, so many options out there, and they are all, I don't know why, but they're very complicated. They're priced very differently. They have all different competencies, or ways they were created, or ways they run, or advantages or disadvantages. And so we find ourselves helping. A lot of people just feel like they can actually switch to a new distribution warehouse and partner, and it's usually only once they're creating acutely awful problems for their customers that they consider making that switch. And I would just encourage people to think about changing that up at a much earlier stage ahead of your problems.
John Morgan
00:35:03 - 00:37:02
The other one is that was hugely power, like, impactful at seed, was this idea of building a really powerful dashboard that works for you, that consolidates all of your purchasing, your cogs, your inventory, and your supply data, and really taking the time to define those inputs and trust the supply side of your organization just as much as you do your demand. So I see all these technologies and tools and solutions out there that combine all different fractured data sets on how efficient your marketing is. And then people are like, yeah, I have no idea what my cogs are, nor do I track it more than quarterly. And all my pos and what I actually spend or what's in what location is all just pure chaos, and I don't track it anywhere or have any one place to look at it. That is a very, very powerful tool that we call Ops hub, that we encourage and build for clients very frequently, that I would encourage people to do sooner rather than later, before you start having to untangle a lot of historical spend and a giant mess that your future acquisition partners don't love seeing and has to get cleaned up eventually. So, yeah, what we call Snop, and really understanding your supply in relation to your demand as things change, is the other area I'd really encourage people to take a look at and also just don't overengineer it. A powerful spreadsheet can cover you a very, very long way. There's a lot of great software out there, but forcing yourself to be proactively organized and build that tool early on is something I definitely encourage.
Blaine Bolus
00:37:02 - 00:37:18
I guess that was going to be my last question on the topics of tools and tech. Are there any other tools or tech that you rely on in your workflow? It could be anything from custom to just standard operating procedure that you like to see businesses run on.
John Morgan
00:37:18 - 00:38:29
Yeah, we work with a lot of different partners. Operations is very central. We work with a lot of different pieces of software. We've seen a lot of different wmses out there. We've seen a couple different light erps, we've seen a couple of different inventory or forecasting support tools. I think nothing's really stood out. And honestly, I'd love to maybe chat chat again in like six to eight months in terms of what we have in the world of AI enabled workflows and how the future may be actually avoiding these very feature set heavy, extremely complicated, difficult to use operational SaaS tools that exist in the world today and actually just copy and pasting certain prompts to get AI to do very time intensive historically tasks that you can then get done in seconds and keep that supply chain brain oriented on the strategy and on the human level, that is negotiating or working with your partners to deliver outcomes and a scalable product and business.
Blaine Bolus
00:38:29 - 00:38:42
Sweet. I love that and I think that's a good place for us to end. As we wrap up here, John, where can we connect with you? Are you on LinkedIn Twitter? Why don't you shout out your socials, email, wherever we can contact you.
John Morgan
00:38:42 - 00:38:56
Great. Yeah, you can find us on LinkedIn, Pelagic and Pelagic Co. Pelagic Co. Or shoot me an email. John pelagic.com, that's the best ways to get us.
Blaine Bolus
00:38:56 - 00:38:56
Thanks John.
John Morgan
00:38:56 - 00:38:58
Thanks for having me. Blaine.
Blaine Bolus
00:39:01 - 00:39:19
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