Third-party logistics has become a much more important industry given the rise of eCommerce spaces, so if you’re looking to tap into a whole new customer base in the digital sphere, you can’t lag behind. Elliot Begoun is joined by Mike Gammarino, the Founder of Bluprint Partners. Drawing on his breadth of experience, Mike dives into all things 3PL in relation to eCommerce. With Mike’s tips and advice, you’ll be mastering the eCommerce space in no time.

—

Listen to the podcast here

Logistics In The Age Of ECommerce With Mike Gammarino

Joining me is Mike Gammarino, also known as the Kevin Kline doppelganger. Mike is an expert in 3PL, especially around 3PL eCommerce. Given all that’s going on, I thought it would be good timing to bring him in and field some of your questions, things that are top-of-mind around all things 3PL and all things eCommerce. Before I turn it over to Mike to let him introduce himself in a little bit more detail, a few housekeeping things. Either Mike or I can get back to you directly with any responses that we don’t have or can’t get to. We want to make this content as salient and directed to the audience. We’ll also make this available on YouTube. New Hope will make this available. I’ll let Mike introduce himself, tell you a bit about his background, his business at Bluprint Partners. We’ll go from there.

Thanks, Elliot. Thanks for having me. A little bit of background about myself, my experience in the past years has mainly been in eCommerce. I used to come from a hard goods background and dealing with supply chain and efficiency improvements around processes. I worked on founding teams of CPG and product startups as an operator, handling logistics, supply chain, warehousing. Years ago, I started Bluprint Partners to fill a white space that I saw with successful eCommerce and direct to consumer brands and retail brands. Having that hockey stick growth and needing to build a platform ahead of sales rather than having operations catch up to sales and experiencing inventory issues and shipping delays and problems with inventory. We work with a lot of different eCommerce and multi-channel CPG brands, contending with high growth, and wanting to set up strong operational foundations to support their sales.

Mike and I, we both at one point in our careers use the same business coach. That’s how we met. We were part of a mastermind group together, which was funny because that would mean that we would have to be masterminds or not. We’ve been able to collaborate on a few things. Mike, quite honestly, is one of my go-to on all things related to eCommerce and logistics. It’s complex and challenging. Those of you who have read some of my stuff know that I’m pounding this drum that there’s a sea change of foot within eCommerce, not that it’s new. Looking at some stats, Brick Meets Click estimated at 6.3% of grocery was sold online in 2019 with the expectations of that eclipsing 7% in 2020. Most people can agree that we’ve blown that away partly as a response to what’s going on in the world.

Also, as people become more comfortable and familiar with getting food that way, what is going to happen is that eCommerce is going to continue to be one of the more capital efficient, if not the most capital efficient channel for early brand discovery and to drive trials and to build tribes. Brands are going to have to start thinking about that digital strategy and building tribe there and then leveraging the growth of retail as replenishment or phase two in order to remain capital efficient and to do so in a way that sets them up for future investment. My question for you, Mike, to get things kicked-off, if a brand is on this call thinking about, “How do I make this transition? How do I begin to lean into eCommerce?” What steps do you outline as a starting point?

I’ll take this one step back and think about where we are in our situation. This could be eCommerce 2.0. If you’re not online, you need to be. That goes for food, beverage, natural foods, apparel, and all different types of products that may be retail or retail-focused eComm. It’s time to look directly at consumers. When you’re thinking about that, it depends a little bit on the type of product you have. What channels do you want to start with? There is direct to consumer, meaning you either have the product yourself or you use a third-party logistics provider to help ship it directly to your consumer or you use other retailers like Amazon, Instacart, GoPuff, or Thrive Market to deliver your product directly to consumers.

Channel exploration is probably number one. Once you define the best, most cost-effective method to deliver your product directly to your consumer, then it’s looking at the providers within those channels. Some may be more suited for Amazon. Some may be more suited for using your own third-party logistics or partnering with somebody. Channels would be second and then exploring the cost. There’s certainly a different way to calculate COGS if you’re talking about direct to the consumer versus using wholesalers and retailers to sell your product. You’re not dealing with keystone pricing. You should have some margin leftover there to factor in shipping and fulfillment costs that you didn’t have to consider before.

Taking a look at the actual physical methodology of getting your product to your customers and then what do the costs look like? If you’re talking about perhaps a chilled beverage, there are certainly some additional costs and speed to consumers that you have to take into account, perhaps insulating your packages, using your express shipping and not the entire US or not international, but limiting it to a market where you feel comfortable testing. Also, maybe as close to you so the product can reach your consumers as quickly as possible. Once you get your channel set up, your providers, and how you’re going to get it there with your shipping costs, then you’re looking at perhaps packaging, different methodologies of physically delivering your product, and then looking at testing.

You’re a big believer in brand discovery testing and making sure that this is the right thing for your brand. I don’t think we should be jumping feet first into direct to consumer. There’s a testing phase to make sure that it is a channel that’s worthy of exploration. It’s something that your end consumers are looking for. I wouldn’t say it’s a definite win for everyone. If one thing we’ve learned in the past, diversification is key. Those of you that are in retail and maybe you’re seeing a drop in sales due to retail store closures or being pulled from shelves or being bumped off your shelf for essential goods. Having that direct line to your consumer that you have a lot of control over is important.

That’s an important point. It’s another way to diversify your portfolio. If you’re a company in food service that was primarily food service, that channel has all been shut down. It’s critical that you look at this as an omnichannel. It’s not all or nothing. I had a little bit of an argument, tongue-in-cheek, with Bill Weiland of Presence Marketing about an article I wrote because he felt like I was saying eCommerce, is it. eCommerce is not it. It is a spoke in the wheel and it’s an important one. It’s an important one from a lot of the potential of great learning as well as a great revenue. Mike, a question for you in terms of mistakes, what are some of the common mistakes that you see CPG companies, in particular, are making as they roll out into eCommerce or try to expand their eCommerce footprint?

The first thing is not getting a plan in place. You can’t be jumping feet first into that eCommerce pool if you don’t have experience with it. It seems similar to using wholesalers and going to retail, but it isn’t. One of the things that we do for our clients is to help them find third-party logistics providers. We’ve researched and investigated 60, 70, and 80 of them in different parts of the country. We find that few of them have the expertise, knowledge, and service levels to be able to support today’s modern brand. Most brands, it isn’t taking a pencil and throwing in a box, slapping a label on it, and getting on its way. There’s an unboxing experience. There’s a lot of care. This is the presentation of your brand. It’s not only sitting on a store shelf. As it sits on your customer’s front door, how is your brand going to be perceived as they receive it?

Not going in with a solid strategy is certainly a mistake and also not understanding and vetting the providers that you’re going to be using. Even if you’re going into Amazon, Amazon can be extremely expensive. It can be a margin killer so much that you’re upside down. Their storage fees, in particular, can be 10, even 20 times what it would cost you to store it yourself or using a 3PL. Especially during Q4, their storage fees increased tremendously. Inventory management is important as well. I’d say those things in general. Planning is important. Understanding your providers, making sure you’re going with trusted providers. Tapping your network, making sure that the people that you’re looking at have a tried and true track record of providing the level of service that you’re looking at would be the big ones.

I want to follow up on what you said. If somebody is assessing a 3PL, especially a 3PL well-suited to support their eCommerce initiatives, what are the must-haves? What are the things that you would see as either a red flag saying, “This is not one to pursue,” or signals that this is one that’s worthy of further exploration?

We use a three-pronged approach when we are surveying and analyzing a new 3PL. Being a good operator is number one. Having experience in eCommerce is number two. I’ll put 3 and 4 together. Technology is a big one. Warehousing has been around since the dawn of time. A lot of them have jumped into eCommerce or providing eCommerce services, but using technology from the 1990s that they’re using for retail store fulfillment. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t match up. Technology is extremely important.

As a business owner, I want to be able to look instantly at their portal, see how much inventory I have, see what orders are on our hold, what orders they process yesterday, what orders are on backorder. I have a good understanding of my partner and how they’re performing. The last one is customer service. It goes along with that same ethos of serving your clients as a 3PL in the retail store fulfillment space. The customer service necessary to serve a direct to consumer brand is a few levels above that because you’re dealing with individual orders. If you have orders coming into your 3PL and inventory has been received incorrectly, you’ve got to have a direct line of communication to that 3PL and a customer service account manager to be able to correct those mistakes or errors quickly. You’ve probably got consumers knocking on your door and blowing up your phone lines and emailing you about, “Where’s my order?” Those are the four things that we look at. It’s hard to get all four of those right, which is why out of 70, we have a small group that we work with.

Let me jump to one of the questions. One of the things in the natural product space is that not all of our products are ambient. We have the additional challenge of refrigerated and frozen. One of the questions was, do you see pricing on refrigerated and frozen becoming more reasonable as more brands utilize and optimize eCommerce as a channel?

I wouldn’t necessarily say that we’ve seen prices go down. The cold chain warehousing and logistics market is controlled and is becoming more and more consolidated over the past years. It means there’s less competition. A lot of private equity groups have shown interest in the smaller and larger cold chain providers and you’re seeing a lot of acquisitions. We haven’t seen that and that’s probably one of the reasons. Another reason is there are some high-fixed costs for coaching providers. You’ve got heavy equipment, chillers, high electricity bills, and people. There is a floor of fixed and variable costs for these providers that they can’t go below. There are some economies of scale but it’s not as evident as it may be in other industries.

Brands look to that as a solution and understanding. To some degree, consumers understand the difference in the price point of getting something fresh or frozen delivered to their doorstep versus picking it up. What should a brand be considering as they look for packaging, look for shipping? Do they do a hub-and-spoke model where they centralize the vast majority and then move product to spoke DC so they’re always two days ground from their core market? What have you seen is the best practices around that?

I’ll split that up into dry goods versus cold chains. With dry goods, you have to reach a certain volume for it to make sense to split your inventory. If you’re using Amazon, they may do it for you because they have amazing algorithms to do this. As an individual business owner, it’s challenging to split inventory. I always say it’s about ten times harder to have your inventory in two locations than it is in one. It doesn’t seem that way, but it is. The lower your skew count, the simpler it is to do that. If you have a high skew count, it may be different sizes and varieties, it makes it challenging to do that cost-effectively. You have to reach a high threshold of order volume before that makes sense.

We work with a lot of brands in Southern California and the New York area. We usually recommend finding someplace close to you in the beginning because it’s nice to be close by to your warehouse. As problems develop, you can go set foot inside the facility. However, if you’re looking at a single location to serve the United States, if you are a national brand, we tend to look at the Midwest and Southeast. Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, that’s where you’re going to cover 80% of the country in 2 to 3 days and you could have it all in one facility. That’s dry goods.

When we’re talking about the cold chain, you’re going to need to move to an inventory split sooner than dry goods because the cost of cold transportation and trucking from one location across the country is much more expensive than dry goods. In addition, you probably have co-packers here in the US that you’re using. They’re going to also be more effective and efficient when they’re closest to their customers. We usually talk about bifurcating co-packers and cold chain 3PLs at an earlier stage because of the cost associated with keeping these in the cold chain.

I have two follow-ups to that. One is, would it make sense as a brand looks to do that? I’m going to give you an opinion that people can take or leave, but most will leave. As a brand looks to do that and does decide and desires to be able to serve their consumer nationally, is it better to look for a 3PL that has multiple sites that you can keep it all in one family, have one backend to work through, and had them take ownership or participate in the splitting or the moving of that inventory? Does that not matter and you look for the best providers in the given markets that you’re trying to penetrate?

I would go with the former. We rarely place our clients in 3PLs that have a single location because we’re always looking at that expansion. When I say, “It’s ten times harder to manage inventory in two locations,” that maybe is with one system controlling both of those. I’d say it’s fifteen times harder if you’ve got inventory in different locations and it’s being managed by different providers. You can think about Amazon as an example. If you’re using Amazon, a 3PL, and your own warehouse, you’ve got to have a central repository or inventory management system or even an ERP, which can be quite expensive and difficult to maintain. It requires administrative overhead to be able to look at one location electronically to see where your inventory is. We almost always look for providers that have more than one facility into areas where we think based on growth forecasts and their shipping profile would be the best place for them to eventually land.

Here’s my little editorial opinion. As a brand, if you’re in the cold chain in particular, frozen even more so in specific, and you’re starting out or you’re ratcheting up, to try to stick within a two-day ground footprint of your core market or the core market you’re wanting to build is the right place to start until you can perfect that. You can do a lot of good. There’s a lot of population density in certain places of the country where you can accomplish that with better economies and learn. The whole advantage of having an omnichannel approach is to leverage the fact that your product becomes available where people live, work, shop, and play.

If you’re serving and trying to reach eCommerce in areas for the near-term or even in the long-term, you will unlikely have a brick-and-mortar footprint either in retail or alternative channels. It may not be your best bang for your buck to spend that money to try to build an eCommerce logistics network that provides service to those networks. It is because you can double down on your marketing and geofence all of your efforts and be more effective. That’s my editorial. My next follow up question, Mike, was around what can brands do to better design their pack? What can they do to take an active role in trying to strip out as much cost, especially as it relates to cold chain products as possible?

Coaching is tough. This goes back to my analogy. You’re not just throwing the pencil on a box, especially with a cold chain. You’re worried about the quality of your product as it reaches your end consumer. Your comment about being within two days of your consumer, at least at launch, is extremely important in this particular case. You and I have worked on release plans where you’re talking about the West Coast. You’ve got fifteen million people that you can probably reach within a couple of days if your warehouse is somewhere in California. It’s certainly a big enough market to test.

Keeping your release to a smaller portion of the country to start within two days is important because you can get killed on shipping costs. If you’re looking at shipping from Southern California to New York and you’re talking about maybe a five-day window of ground, it could be twice as expensive. Also, you could talk about product degradation as your product starts to fall essentially in warmth. We are seeing clients where we reenact summer shipping rules. It can get 110 degrees to 120 degrees in some of these trucks as it goes across the country, especially the Southern part. The last thing you want is your product to arrive at your end consumer. They can’t use, eat, and drink it. That is one of the risks of direct to the consumer when you’re talking about the cold chain.

Making sure you keep your shipping costs down is certainly important and then being conscious and deliberate about how you insulate and how you test. Don’t assume because you threw some foam in there, it’s going to stay cold for three days. Don’t assume that it’s not going to reach temperatures of 120 degrees when it’s driving across Arizona in the middle of the summer. Installation, packaging, and then location, you’re keeping your target market small at first until you’re ready to expand are important.

There’s one question specifically around cold chain 3PLs and that is, given all the assessments that you’ve done, how many cold chain 3PLs have made you’re shortlist for recommending the clients?

I’d say we’re under five. Let me put a caveat, I’ll put one point on that. I’ll compare the vodka versus tequila. In vodka, there’s a narrow range. The worst vodka and the best vodka, there’s not a lot of range. That’s what we see in the cold chain. The worst cold chain supplier is not that much worse than the best. The reason for that is if you’re a bad cold chain operator, you will not be in business. You’re talking about consumer foods and products that have to arrive in tip-top shape and perfect condition for consumption. Otherwise, you’re going to run into a big problem with contamination. With dry goods 3PLs, I’ll consider that more like tequilas. The worst tequila and the best tequila, there’s a huge range. While I’m only saying there are five, those are the five best. However, we would push that out a little bit in specific situations that there were certain aspects of your particular product that fit one over the other.

Let’s talk a little bit about Amazon fulfillment and the difference between FBA and FBM. One of the things that a lot of brands have learned during this time is that while using FBA, Fulfilled By Amazon, add some obvious upside, it’s simple. It doesn’t take a lot of your bandwidth. Obviously, Prime is a big thing. To some degree, you wind up at their mercy and moments like this when they can’t get orders checked into their fulfillment centers, they’re behind or they’re making mistakes. It is a challenge and you’re beholden to their ability to get your product to the customer. One of the questions is what are the risks of changing from FBA to FBM and offering seller-fulfilled Prime because of that concern about some of the mistakes and some of the fact that you’re limited and at the mercy of Amazon through FBA?

This goes back to diversification. We know some brands that are 100% Amazon. If they’re not essential, they’ve got purchase orders sitting on Amazon stock. They’re not even receiving them. Some of those folks are scrambling to find 3PLs that can do it for them or even doing it in-house. If they were a smaller brand, office space is open these days so they’ll be doing it in the back of their office for a while. Diversification is certainly important. Bringing it in-house or bringing it into a 3PL, we would treat that as if you were starting from scratch. When you’re giving it to Amazon and having them do all the work, it’s hands-off. It’s going to cost you a lot. It may turn you upside down, depending on your sales velocity and how much you have stored there.

The only thing you have that’s probably set up well, in that case, is Amazon is strict about product numbering and UPCs and labeling. Everything has to be set up. You have that down. It’s a whole different set of rules and procedures that you need to set up than to do it yourself. You’re probably also looking at elevating your customer experience and your open box. Amazon doesn’t give you that. They will throw a pencil in a box for you. Set up proper procedures to train if you’re going to use a third-party logistics provider. We spend a lot of time with our brands making sure that procedures are well-documented because you’re giving up a lot of control. You want to make sure your unboxing experience and your brand is represented as well as if you packed it yourself. Those are a couple of things that we look for when we’re moving from FBA and branding them.

Do you look for providers that are already doing fulfilled FBM and have that relationship with Amazon and understand it? Also, you’re capable of doing seller-fulfilled Prime, which is usually your next day delivery and so forth.

There are specific requirements. Amazon is strict with their order processing requirements. We wouldn’t put somebody in a facility that didn’t already have experience with that. There’s the high level of operations excellence that Amazon demands. Also, there’s a decent amount of technology integration that you can’t fumble around with. It has to be working and solid. We always look for experience there.

A paraphrase of another question is, how does a brand assess whether they’re better off or better served by doing Amazon FBA or trying to go through a 3PL and do FBM and control their own destiny, especially if they’re also doing their own D2C too?

It’s a hard question to answer without diving deep. It’s a brand and product-specific. We’ve been kowtowing on Amazon and saying how expensive they are and how you give up control, but the huge benefit there is distribution and getting your brand in front of consumers. You’re paying essentially for that if you’re on Amazon. That’s a huge benefit. I wouldn’t say that you have to look hard at Amazon to make sure you’re not upside down on your costs there.

If you choose between FBA and FBM, how do you make that assessment? Does it have to do with bandwidth? Does it have to do with velocity? Do you recommend that brands start FBA that are smaller or newer to eCommerce? What would your guidance be?

If you don’t have somebody on your team that understands fulfillment operations, it’s a good way to hand off the majority of the heavy lifting to Amazon. You’re going to pay for that but it is getting your product out there and getting the eyeballs on your product. Once you have experience in-house or using somebody like us, we do that a lot, we help brands do that to make sure it’s seamless because you need it. We’re all competing against Amazon. They set the bar, two-day shipping, and one-day shipping. I can’t remember the last time an Amazon package didn’t arrive at or before they said it was going to. The bar is high for doing it yourself. You don’t want to trip over yourself when you’re setting that up. Making sure you have the experience of utilizing somebody outside that can help you is important.

I would add one thing. The stat was shared with me that 62% of American households are Prime. The reality is if you’re going to be on Amazon, you have to make sure that you’re Prime eligible. There’s a filter on the left-hand side that most people click quickly and they’re looking for Prime. We are an instant gratification society. Maybe that’s changing, but that’s important. Speaking of order preference, there’s another question that came up. In your experience and you see it across different categories within CPG and so forth, do you think consumers prefer free shipping and a slightly higher price or cheaper price but expect to pay $5, $10-plus for shipping?

Free shipping, for sure. There is no question.

What I see are best practices that are baseline free shipping and then giving them options to upgrade their shipping for speed or something.

If shipping will turn you upside down and your margins have been depending on your product, having a threshold for free also worked well. You tend to put it right under your AOV or Average Order Value to get them to buy that extra product and get them over whatever it might be, $50, $100 or $150. I would say it always needs to be free. Paying for shipping is like paying for parking. Nobody wants to pay for it because you feel like you’re not getting any benefit from it. If you’re going to hide it, go ahead and put it in there. Perception is a reality in this case.

A couple of other questions and I’m going to bulk them together. This is specifically for younger, earlier stage brands. Do you start a DIY mentality out of the garage, pack, and fulfill? When is the right time in your mind to move to a 3PL? When is the right time to make that delineation between, “Do I go Amazon? Do I go straight to my website?”

We almost always recommend brands start doing fulfillment themselves. There were a couple of reasons for that. One is because you’ll get the process down exactly the way you want it. Having to teach somebody without doing it yourself, think about that statement, it’s hard to do. If you don’t know how to do something yourself and you’re not an expert at it, how are you going to teach somebody else to do it the way you want? It helps to have an understanding of what goes on with order fulfillment. When you’re receiving pricing, your invoices back from your warehouse and they’re coming to you with issues, you’ll have a better sense of what they’re going through. If you’ve received inventory wrong and then they receive inventory wrong, you’ll understand why that mistake was made. Maybe it helps you to empathize a little bit more with what you’re eventual 3PL is going through.

We always recommend, if you can, out of the back of your office, out of the back of your garage or your basement, do it yourself for a little while to get a handle on it. The other reason also is that it’s hard to get a 3PL to accept you as a new client if you don’t have traction. It costs as much for them to onboard somebody that’s doing 25 orders a month as it does somebody that’s doing 2,500 orders a month. They’re not interested usually in brands that haven’t seen some traction. That’s the answer to your first part.

To follow up there, does bringing traction to a 3PL not only helps them get interested but also helps you get a better price?

Yes. We do a lot of selling the dream. What we do is when we’re working with a new brand that wants to go into a 3PL and they’re right on the cusp of, they might not have enough order volume. To limit it to about 1,000 or more is when we like to start approaching 3PLs per month. That’s when their antennas start to perk up. That’s what we look for when we’re searching.

That’s an interesting perspective because sometimes I don’t think from that way. One of the things that I tend to try to tell founders is that you have to be constantly asking yourself, “Where’s my highest value activity?” When you and you’re Cofounder are spending your time taping up boxes, putting labels on, and running to FedEx or the post office, you have to question, “Is that my highest value time?” What Mike’s saying is it is smart. It’s not that you don’t start investing in your fulfillment but that investment instead of it going from you packing it to going into a 3PL might be you packing it to hiring some people part-time to do it in your garage for you to take it to a 3PL. It’s an interesting point that if you can prove traction, much in the same way we talk about it with retailers or investors, then you’re going to be able to drive a better deal.

That’s what I’ve always done as a founder. I used to pack jewelry boxes in my living room and take them to the post office on Saturdays at one of my first startups here in LA. That’s how I learned how to do this. I understood how to train and offload that once I did it myself. You bring up a great point. One of the things that we stress with founders is exactly what you said. At some point, you have to ask every day, “Is this a good use of my time anymore?” It was a good use of your time in the beginning, but is it a good use of your time now? If not, either delegate it internally or delegate it externally. You’ve got to figure that out as you go along.

One of the questions that came up was around 3PL integration with software in particular. What are you seeing as best practices, Shopify, WooCommerce, etc?

Shopify is number one. Woo is such a smaller second player. If a 3PL does any eCommerce and they don’t have a Shopify integration built-in, then I wouldn’t even consider them. Most of them we’ve seen haven’t. I don’t have a WooCommerce integration, some of them do. I feel like Shopify is taking over the world. They’re vertically integrating all the way up and down the supply chain. They have a great set of tools, a strong app store. It would be hard-pressed for me to recommend somebody not use Shopify, except for unique cases.

One of the questions was about negotiating the actual shipping. Is that something that brands should be done directly with UPS or FedEx or USPS? Do you lean on your fulfillment provider to collaborate fair negotiated rates?

It’s almost always on the provider. As a young brand, you’re going to get rates that are hair below retail if you’re working with a 3PL that has a strong relationship with UPS, FedEx, and DHL. The post office is not as much. They don’t discount as much. Usually, you’re going to get 40%, 50%, 70% off of retail if you’re using their carrier. We almost always recommend using their carrier and their account.

I have one question I want to get off and then I want to make sure that we give everybody the opportunity to know how to reach out to you and get ahold of you. What have you seen in the past weeks that have surprised you in terms of change? What do you think is here to stay that brands need to be considering?

We’re fortunate because we work with small companies. The first week of our shut down in California, there was a lot of shock and surprise, “This is for real.” I’ll tell them the 1st and 2nd week, “What adjustments are we going to make to make sure we can survive this? Do we have to go into hibernation mode? How is this going to affect us?” We spent a lot of time talking with our brands and our networks, providing guidance on how to survive in what we’re going through. What does it look like on the other side? How is your brand going to change? You almost can’t go wrong with diversification as long as you can maintain your cost structure across different channels and your overhead. Keep your administrative overhead to a reasonable level. You can survive on multichannel.

Seeing brands adapt has been encouraging. Those are probably a couple of things, the adaptation, how quickly we were able to adapt. Most of our mindsets have switched to looking ahead and not dwelling on today but looking forward. We’ve been talking a lot about, “What is your sphere of influence and what you can control?” While we sympathize and empathize about the terrible things that are happening all over the world, we also need to make sure that we continue to work on our businesses so that we’re around. The people that we employ are around when we’re on the other side of this. It’s a struggle sometimes to think of me versus others, but we need to think about ourselves too. We’ve been trying to help brands do that as well.

The stress that we’re seeing in the economy puts stress on us as individuals and that’s a health risk to us and our families. In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with doing your part to make sure you’re continuing to drive the economy forward. In many ways, that promotes health. Look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, being able to provide for yourself, your family, and being able to provide for those that work with you and their families, that is doing good deeds. Mike, how do people reach you if they have any questions? What’s the best place?

Our website is BluprintPartners.com and it’s Mike@BluprintPartners.com if you want to email me.

Mike, as always, thanks. I appreciate it. Thanks, everyone. Have a great day

Thanks, Elliot.

Important Links

• YouTube – TIG Talks

• New Hope

• Bluprint Partners

• BluprintPartners.com

• Mike@BluprintPartners.com

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! tigbrands.com/tig-talks/