SPEAKER_04
0:37
Welcome into another episode of Everything Is Logistics, a podcast for the Thinkers in Freight. We are proudly presented by SPI Logistics, the best freight agent or freight agency in North America for more than 40 years running. I'm your host, Blake Milligan, and we are back with our second edition of the 2026 uh Freight Friends series because we haven't recorded together since January over at no February at Manifest. And so welcome back in, Gray Sharky of Ortiful.
SPEAKER_01
1:07
Oh my God. It's like it's like a whole year. You know, Manifest is trying to sign up, make me sign up for like 2028 events right now. So it's like twist my arm. Yeah. Six months in the logistics world is like, where have we been? It's great. Hey, is this a Christmas episode?
SPEAKER_03
1:23
Oh I mean, by the time next time we record, it might be.
SPEAKER_04
1:25
I mean, who knows? It's it's one of those things. I think we both like, especially my speaking on for myself, the first six months of this year were just insane on a personal and professional level. Um, so kind of getting back into the groove of recording regular episodes like this. Um, I'm I'm very much looking forward to it. Just got back from a trip over overseas, over abroad. I said, oh I can't even, I don't even know if I can really like talk yet. So this is going to be my first foray into um having a coherent episode again. So I appreciate you coming back. And uh, we got a lot of good stuff to get into today.
SPEAKER_01
2:02
Yeah, like how you went to Tokyo Disney without me. Let's just start there.
SPEAKER_04
2:06
You know, more on that later. Oh, but yes, I I had uh just I guess a brief overview. I had um my cousin was getting married in Sri Lanka. Um my husband and I, we wanted to take a honeymoon. We got married almost uh, you know, two and a half years ago, uh, but we didn't take a honeymoon yet. We tried to take it on our one-year anniversary, but weren't able to make uh trying to hack the system with our credit card miles. Um, wasn't able to make it happen for our one-year anniversary. And so when my cousin was getting married in Sri Lanka, we said, well, why don't we break up that long ass flight and you know, hit Japan for, you know, one week and then we'll go over to Sri Lanka for another week uh to take part in the wedding and explore a little bit of the country. And um, yeah, it was uh an incredible trip. I am now broke. Um, so please nobody asked me to go anywhere.
SPEAKER_02
3:01
We're back.
SPEAKER_04
3:03
We're back broke.
SPEAKER_03
3:05
I need to make some money, so that's why we're recording today.
SPEAKER_04
3:08
And this episode is brought to you. It's brought to you by SBI Logistics, who keeps the lights on for this entire operation. Get in touch with me if you want to sponsor the show because we need the cash.
SPEAKER_01
3:22
They're the agent model, right? Yes. Well, and we love the agent model. I think that's the new frontier, baby. So I will back this to SPI way way to go. I see.
SPEAKER_04
3:32
And I I think we had this discussion a little while ago, a couple of years ago, about how the freight agency model, I think, is one of the best in all of logistics because you can work with a hand, it's very much you own your own business, you can work with a handful of customers, and uh you get competitive splits, and you can bring your own technology or you can you know build off of SBI's technology stack, and they they high they have everyone. They they have every kind of you know technology that you could imagine, or you could bring your own and take advantage of it. But one benefit that not a lot of agencies have is that SPI does have is that they don't have an in-house brokerage. So typically at you know, a lot of 3PLs or or brokerages, they'll have you know a dozen agents or so, but they have them in addition to the in-house brokers. And so what when that happens, like other brokers in-house can see your customers, can maybe take your customers. Um, you know, they're I'm not saying that's all agencies, but um, with SBI in particular, they have been around for 40 years. They pioneered the freight agent movement and they got started in the early 90s. Um, we have a whole bunch of interviews, a whole bunch of, you know, um case studies uh over on the Everything is Logistics website. If you want to check out conversations from their agents, um, but yeah, that you don't have to compete with in-house brokerages or in-house brokers like you do at other brokerages if you were to take on um an agent role with them. And so that's just something to keep in mind um if any freight agents are out there and they're shopping a new opportunity. If you have an existing book of business, um, definitely hit up the uh SPI page over on Everything is Logistics, and you can hear from those agents and the executive team themselves. So thank you for helping me uh keep the lights on and pay my bills. So an awesome just people.
SPEAKER_01
5:21
That leadership team I've met a number of times, and they're just really good people too. And uh that's really it's a relationship industry, you know that matters.
SPEAKER_04
5:29
All right. Well, let's get into it. I mean, speaking a little bit uh, you know, about you know, resources and and you know, content and you know, the last big thing before I took this trip is uh conducted a series of interviews for the sister site to everything is logistics called Cargo Rex. And so basically a directory building the Google search of logistics over on that site, and um wanted to start taking an editorial approach to content and making resources and guides for folks who are visiting the site because for a lot of folks, they don't they don't know what to look for, they don't know what to search for, and so our content is really starting to get off the ground over there on focusing on the problems that are existing in the industry and who's trying to solve some of those problems. Um, and that's where we came up with the AI use cases guide. And it's essentially, you know, I I think you probably hear this a lot too, where you're you hear the phrase AI, and most folks don't even know what they're referring to when they talk about AI. Are you talking about a large language model? Are you talking about a boring process? Are you talking about uh, you know, smart filtering, like uh, you know, even God, uh spell check for God's sakes, is you know, could be considered AI. And so with that phrase, it comes with a lot of connotation. It comes with, you know, some fear around that word, but then it also comes with a lot of opportunity around that word. And and so from my lens of what I wanted to find out is who is actually skipping the marketing fluff of agents and uh you know, bots that make phone calls and things like that. Like I want to know like what is actually moving the needle. And come to find out, after having these eight discussions, we talked to bot auto, we talked to Good Ship, we talked to Envoy AI, Hey Bubba, Cute, EPG Americas, Seteria, and Sifted. And a lot of what they're solving are boring problems. And I think that that's what gets lost in a lot of this discussion is it's the boring stuff that is at most benefit to AI kind of coming in where you're rethinking your processes and replacing it with a robot where it makes the most sense, or you're replacing it with a process that can be automated where it makes the most sense. Now, I talked specifically to vendors. I did not talk to because it was very hard to get people to submit their stories of how they're using AI if they're not a business owner. But I believe you had a post around the same time that uh the guide released in that you wanted to talk to people who are actually using these tools to find out what is the fluff and what's not. So if you if you want to hear the vendor side of the conversation, who they have plenty of customers who they've talked to and have, I mean, they have customers for a reason, but then on the flip side, what about the users that you have spoken to or even during your own sort of buying processes and um with Ortiful? What have you sort of seen at the the ground level of where the conversation is shifting to when it comes to AI?
SPEAKER_01
9:37
Yeah, you know, I think um well, one thing I I I hit on that post because it was around the time we're seeing Uber and a lot of large enterprise technology businesses as well kind of pulling back on their AI strategy. Um and and I think there's a number of reasons for that and and and kind of um the deployment of exactly how those strategies get into that a little bit here in a second, but I think what's interesting to me is just as generally, you know, in the role that I I'm in my marketing era now, you know. Um my goal, right, is to attract buyers and to find buyers at their buying moment, right? And I think what's fascinating is I I wouldn't or I would be surprised uh if other people in the freight tech space are experienced this, but as the clauds of the world became available over the last six or so months, right? We had ChatGBZ, but I think Claude in particular really started pushing people into like, oh, uh my regular employees could start using this. As that started to happen, I think we saw across the board a lot of executives getting pushed from, of course, their leaders. We all have a boss. A lot of times you might think that they don't, but a shareholder is still a boss. But getting pushed to not invest money into new technologies, but to try to lower costs and and avoid those investments by like bringing it in-house through like a an agentic type of way, right? Um, and it makes sense. If I was a business leader right now and someone came to me and said, Hey, listen, our quoting tool is trash. I'd like to buy a new quoting tool. My first question would be to you is have you attempted to build that same quoting tool in Claude? I would probably hit back with that immediately. And I think that people across the board are seeing that right now from a buying standpoint. And so they're really trying to like figure out okay, where do we have the expertise to build something and and where do we not? Right. Um, what I really love about the companies that you specifically just listed off, I think all of them are focused on tackling, like, like you said, one of those really boring problems. Whoops. Hey, whoa, Cargo Rex, what's that?
SPEAKER_04
12:10
I'm trying to uh do a screen share really quick. Uh, but yeah, here we go. This is the one I wanted.
SPEAKER_01
12:16
Everyone go to cargo rex. Is it Io?
SPEAKER_04
12:20
Oh wait, yeah, cargo rex.io. Yeah, cargo. And there we go. That's there's the guide. If you're watching live on on YouTube, we got the guide up on the screen.
SPEAKER_01
12:29
Everyone should go look at that site right now.
SPEAKER_04
12:32
It is, I mean, it is we got we got some work to do, you know. Website is never truly done. Um, but yeah, we the eight companies you're talking about. Um they're doing some pretty great stuff. I think um I probably might if I had to choose favorites from it, uh, we do have to choose friend of the show, Nick Boston. Um, Michelle McBride was another conversation I loved. Um Sateria uh was Sarit, she was awesome. And then Tom, of course, is I've been wanting to talk to Tom over at Cute for a long time. And you know, with these interviews, I really wanted to structure them around. You know, if I'm a buyer, what this is how I would maybe have the conversation and then just give the information out and try to keep, I guess, my opinion away from it as much as possible and save the opinion for a show like this. Um, and so for a lot of these interviews, there it's very much like cut and dry, like here's the questions I would ask as a buy as a potential buyer. But I mean, admittedly, I'm sure there's some questions in there that um are missed, and you know, and that's where I would really look to, you know, someone like yourself who's on the other side of those conversations as well of you know, how are people approaching you about you know these kinds of conversations?
SPEAKER_01
13:48
Yeah, well, all of these, if you look across the board, one, they are yeah, they are boring problems. They're workflows, to your point, that happen daily, that happen often, perfect, perfect re perfect uh place to attack AI, right? And all these companies are using AI within their products. That would be something I would be concerned with. If if a company isn't talking about AI at this point, it's like, why aren't you? Um, which is odd. I think sometimes that scares people in other industries, but um I I just I I will stand on the fact that shouldn't scare a buyer, that should actually impress a buyer at this point. Um, two, they're all kind of nuanced issues, and a nuanced issue needs a lot of data behind it and a lot of testing behind it to make sure it works well. And as someone who may be an executive looking to be the final decision maker on something like this, you have to ask yourself, is that nuance something I'm willing to discover and find and invest in myself? If that is something you're gonna build in-house, oftentimes it's not, it's gonna take you a while, there's gonna be huge technical debt to it. At that point, like I always what's interesting is like when I hear people are doing that and they're like not also building that product to like sell at some point, it's like gross. Like, why are you doing that? It doesn't make any business sense. Like buy or build and build with the with the thought process in your head that you will exit that build at some point. Um so that's one thing I'd say too. Um and and also like when I talk about the data aspect, like you know, I think the one thing I've learned really also through orderful, but also just like using AI tools myself is like the how do I say this? Learning how data is stored and rev and re looked back to or remembered right. Like, here's a perfect example. I uh I have a droid. I use my little droid because I build things now, Blythe. I've got a little droid that I have that goes back in time, pulls event leads, seees how often they were followed up on, gives me a report of what's changed in the past. Um, and if like for it's it's if if someone hasn't been followed up with a certain amount of time, it sets a task for that individual inside Salesforce to make sure that they follow up with them that week. Um, it's how I can keep up with like where event leads are sitting, um, how I'm you know managing campaigns to to maybe touch them again, etc. Um but when I was building that droid, what I started to realize in building it is that if I wasn't storing what it was what the outcome was of like the first time I ran it, I was never gonna be successful in pulling the change because I wasn't clocking the first poll somewhere, right? So if for instance, and and listen, people, I'm a tech nerd, I'm not a techie. So I know there's like really smart people listening right now, and it's like that's not how you explain that. But you know what? Get in my DMs and tell me how to explain it because I'd love to learn, but this is like me dumbing it down. So, like, let's say I wanted to uh keep track of our of you know rain levels in in Lansing, Michigan. I'd have to be storing what the rain level was yesterday somewhere, right? I can't be like, hey, compare it to last week because I it never actually like clocked last week. So like I when I'm pulling like this this drawing and this event data, I'm also reverting it back and storing it in something like Obsidian so that I can pull back and remember, you know, what it pulled two weeks ago, so it can actually keep track of of the change over time. And so like that's something very small, but it showcases too, like, and I think what a lot of people are learning right now about how difficult it is to build these tools and have them be accurate. And and any and so like that's that's something I'd say to you too. Like, if you're looking at these new tools, if you're seeing AI some everywhere, um start investing in like really asking questions of like what their roadmap looks like, how they're managing this, where the human involvement is interacting. Because most oftentimes, and even with orderful, right, we have a lot of AI agentic AI in the behind the scenes that's doing certain things. Um, but we also have points where humans are monitoring that as well. Um, so I think just generally speaking, like one, if you're looking to start getting into AI tools, play around with Claude and play around with that stuff yourself. You're like you'll you'll learn like practices that actually will revert back to poor, I think, technology experiences you had in the past. Because you'll start to realize, oh, that's why that's not working, because I don't even use that field, right? Like in my TMS. Or oh, that's why this poor behavior of operation that I've been doing, or this this like revert around isn't working because I'm not I'm not, you know, doing that correctly. And and so yeah, I guess I kind of went off topic of your original question, but uh I think right now it's about exploring. I think you've told me this often, but like no one really knows AI is like too early and and it's too new to like be an expert at it at this point, right? I think we're seeing that across the board on how AI is being deployed. Um, so just like get your hands in it, get dirty, play around with tools, learn what's working, learn what's not, start with the workflows that you know best, like those eight stories you just touched on, right? We all know how to use retail links, and we all know it sucks to go in there every single day. Thank God Q'd figure out a way to take care of it for us, right? Um, but you also at the same time, probably invested in Q'd, understood fully how awful that problem is, and realized throughout the last so many months of building your own tools or playing around with it that you're not going to be able to duplicate that well enough to be worth worth your time. Um, so yeah, like get your hands dirty in AI first and then start, you know, talking with companies and talking with the founders and how they're using AI inside their four walls. And I think you'll be surprised on on how good these products could work for you and how well they are working for their customers now. Every single one of those you just listed off are brands I would like totally stand behind and have heard wonderful things from their from their customers too.
SPEAKER_04
21:00
And I think, you know, speaking of cute, and and and Tom over there, he talked about in during our conversation about how when he talks with a company, he wants to talk to the biggest skeptic in the company and he wants to sit with them specifically to understand what their processes are and where they think that it won't fit in and where it that has a potential to maybe fit in. And I I think it's you know, it's sort of very much like a lot of things in life where it's a pendulum. And I think for you know, the last year, there's been a lot of people who have been, include myself included, who have dove headfirst into this new information layer, this new way of thinking and working and figuring out where, and just I mean, just figuring it out, trying to figure out where it's gonna make the most impact and where it's not. And there's some areas where I'm just like, God, I wish I could just, you know, me myself could just be cloned. And I have spent probably the last year and a half trying to clone myself, but it doesn't turn up in the numbers. And then it's like, well, maybe that's not the right application to clone myself. Because if you think about from the AI lens, AI is based on data. Data inherently is past tense. And so where our strength comes from as a human is that you're able to use all of that information that's in the past to come up with a solution that will benefit you in the future and in the present. And I think that's where you know the machines and the bots will always fall short, is that lack of creativity that gives humans, you know, so much more, you know, sort of superpower. Okay, so if we take that lens and then we kind of, you know, massage it a little bit where, okay, well, I don't need to actually transcribe this conversation that we're having right now. I don't need to personally do that. A machine can do that because it's a set goal, it's a set endpoint. It doesn't require um it maybe a little bit of judgment after the fact to, you know, just make sure that the spelling of companies is correct. Make sure the the people who are, you know, very minor things that could be corrected using human judgment. But it the argument has always been that it'll get you, you know, 80% of the way there, but it's getting to that final 20% that's really going to move the needle as far as impact is concerned. And, you know, and Nick, you know, talked about this during our conversation that where you know it used to take hours. For their customers to be able to pull the data and pull the information to create a report to send to their customers. But now they can do that in 15 seconds. And so that theoretically will free up that employee to spend more time with the customers and spend more time on problem solving. And I brought this up in my Everything is Logistics episode, covering, you know, sort of my overarching opinion on all based on all of those conversations. And then I think remains to be seen is that if what does what does work look like when we automate away the boring? What does it look like when we don't have that bandwidth or we're using all of our bandwidth to focus on the hard things? And I think that's a conver that's a conversation that will probably be had more and more in the next handful of years as work continuously, you know, starts to evolve. Anyone who says that they know where this is going is lying to you because we don't. You know, if Uber Freight knew, you know, where this was going, they wouldn't have blasted through all of their token allotment in the first four months of the year when they had a budget set aside for 12 months. Um, which is, you know, kind of a good thing that their employees are, you know, experimenting in that way. But it just, it's almost like a, you know, a modern problems require modern solutions. And that, you know, as we adopt these new solutions, there are going to be new problems that pop up, but that doesn't mean they're not worth solving. And it doesn't mean the technology itself is not worth adopting. Um, so I think it's it's very much like a mindset shift when I mean, to be honest, the majority of the country is so fearful around this topic. And it's largely in part because of, you know, sort of the doomsday, you know, jobs apocalypse that a lot of these, you know, large language model fountains, Sam Altman and um God, the guy who leads uh not RJ Andre Carpathi. It's um Dario Amade. Is that yeah, Dario Amade with Claude, he was the CEO of Claude. But they talk about how these tools are so life-altering, so chant, you know, life-changing, and you know, oh, you can find out how to make a nuclear bomb, you know, with the you know, these tools and things like that. And it's they've created a level of fear around these solutions. And now I think it's kind of coming back to bite them in the ass. Uh, so it's it's it's just a level of you know, resistance, I think, too, that is I I think that that delta is only going to increase from the people who are willing to adopt these tools and the people who are staunchly against it, especially if they see it as you know something that's going to take their job. We we've I think we've talked before on on this show about this is a common problem with robotics, that when robotics are being introduced inside of a warehouse, they have to go through a level of psychological training with the employees to allow the employees to see the robot as a friend, as something that's going to help you do your job versus take your job. Um, and so there's there's a lot of there's a lot of fear-mongering around the loss of jobs. But I would argue that jobs will always evolve and they will always change. Um, but I do believe that, you know, for a lot of sort of white-collar workers and even some blue-collar ones, that embracing this stuff is not embracing your own doom. I think it's actually setting yourself up for the future in a low-risk environment where you're learning a new informational way of discovery, if that makes sense. I know that was very long-winded, but it's just I have an overall positive outlook on these solutions, mostly because it's process optimization and it's just figuring out like where the human plays a role. I think at the core of it, it's your processes and figuring out where human judgment needs to play a role. And if you automate the a key part where human judgment plays a huge role, then you do that at your own peril. Um, so that you know, using uh what is that software called Hey Gen, where it like makes uh like a video copy of yourself. And it's like at a high level, it's like, damn, that sounds kind of cool that maybe I could, you know, write up all these scripts and make an avatar of myself. And then you look at it and it's like, I don't even want to watch this. So who else would want to watch this? Like, I think we have to go through these these things of like, okay, is this a good idea? Is this something you want to adopt? Or it if not, I think that you were also seeing it too a little bit with like um the the meta glasses, where it's like at first you're like, damn, those are super cool, but then on the flip side, you're like, I don't know if I like these things. And you know, it it changes as you know, I guess you you figure out where these new tools and technologies uh has a place in your life.
SPEAKER_01
28:41
Yeah, you know, it's um there's an article I was reading this morning, I'll share this with you, and then and you're gonna love this too because it it is on Twitter as we were just talking about the fidelity of Twitter. But uh it's it's well written, and the guy is kind of he's talking about um actually shout out to Eric Johnson because he had posted about it, um, and and I went and read it. And he's taking the AI look from like a legal from a lawyer standpoint, right? Like um there's he's the guy who's writing it is like a lawyer consultant and he's consulting how uh legal firms can start using AI inside their business. And um at some point in the article, he brings up Coca-Cola during when refrigeration became a thing. And he talks about how, like, of course, a refrigerator, uh refrigerator or whatever, I think it was General Electric, was like one of the first to start putting it out. And and Coca-Cola could have said to themselves, like, oh, let's build our Coca-Cola refrigerator, you know. But instead, what they focused on was now let's change our messaging that everyone loves having a cold Coke in their hands because now we live in a world where they can all have a cold Coke in their hands. And I think the problem that we're seeing is in technology right now is that people aren't sure what their cold factor is, or they aren't they aren't focused on figuring out what to do about the new cold lifestyle. Instead, they're like, How do we build refrigerators too? How how do we build our own refrigerator? Instead of saying, Well, what is life now like with everyone having access to refrigerators? And I think that's where, and I think we're gonna get into a little bit and I can dive deeper into it. I think that's like one area where Orderful in particular is like really figured that out, uh, and especially from like a lawyer perspective, right? Because the problem he's seeing, right, is that a lot of lawyers are like avoiding using this because of the fact that you bill on billable hours, right? So, like, okay, why would I so now you want me to like use tools in order to keep my customers? I have to now use tools that are gonna have me bill less. Like, that's not great for the business model that we've created.
SPEAKER_04
31:18
Which is so crazy because uh e-commerce and you know, sort of online services went through I I went through this myself, you know, years ago. They they tell you, you know, all how much as a business owner, when you first go out, well, how much do you want to make an hour? How much do you need to make an hour in order to earn a living? But then you come to the the con or the mindset of like, well, why would I punish myself for working more efficiently? And so it it switched from, you know, you build on you bill on value, you don't bill on the hours that you're working. And if you're uh if you have a an age, a law, a lawyer firm, lawyer firm, if you have a law firm and you're billing on hours, I would argue that you are already 10 years too late for modernizing your firm because you should be billing based on outcome and not on the amount of hours because then you're punishing inefficiency.
SPEAKER_01
32:12
Clip it, yes, a thousand percent. Execution of law gets cheap, judgment becomes valuable, judgment is what you bill on now, and I think that right now is kind of like where people are lost and confused and trying to figure things out. Is like, no, it's not about you figuring out either how to resist the change and say it's taking germs, you know, it's taking our germs. Um, which I will say was that I was at a trade show recently where someone said that they're like they were like afraid of the jobs that RAI would take. Okay.
SPEAKER_04
32:55
I mean, the the the truth is is that the that phrase of you know, AI is not going to take your job, but someone using AI will. And that is uh that is something that I believe, but it is it shakes up, it does shake up a lot of industries. Uh uh on my end, digital dispatch. I mean, we historically have built websites and we manage them. The people that that were coming to me to have me build them a five-page website, though, that market does not exist anymore. And it hasn't existed in about a year, a year and a half, unless you're just completely living under a rock. Um, so me as a business owner, I have a responsibility in order to keep the business afloat to learn how I can pivot my business and how to stay in business. And I have to evolve with it. And I use a social media as a perfect example where social media managers, social media in general, brand awareness around social media didn't exist 15 years ago, but people evolved with it. And jobs emerged from that. And so, you know, it's it's just the I think it's the level of uh the fear that comes from you know, change just in general. We've had just such an enormous amount of change that's been forced on us really since 2019, um, right before COVID. And I would argue it COVID was a, you know, a mass, I guess, sort of uh it was a method of changing radically, um, where I don't think a lot of folks were comfortable with that change. And I think that the level of acceleration for change is only going to it continue to increase. And people are going to blame AI for this. They're gonna, you know, blame a lot of things on just sort of the natural evolution of business and of roles and things that that should exist and things that won't exist, but the market will tell you of what should exist, and you can either choose to focus on it or ignore it. And you can try to come up with solutions for it. I mean, we're doing that over at Digital Dispatch of you know, testing out these own, you know, our own AI agents and finding out a lot of them are worth worthless, a lot of them are bullshit. Uh you can't tell. I spent a week. Have you tried to build like an AI agent for yourself yet?
SPEAKER_01
35:11
Yeah, it's my event with droid.
SPEAKER_04
35:14
Well, that's I I yeah, I would argue that that is a very good use case. I spent a week trying to build a damn email bot to summarize my emails and filter the ones that are important. It was a giant waste of time. Um it was infuriating getting it. I tried to bully Claude so much uh to get me something that I actually could use. And it I just said it's worthless. Let's just go back to our Gmail labels and we'll just continue to just filter the labels ourselves because human judgment, I think, plays such a larger role in something like email versus another task where it's transcribing a podcast. Yeah. Um, so it's learning where these things make sense. But to, you know, to your point earlier, if you have not started changing your business to go from hourly and to become more efficient, uh there's a I forget who actually put this photo out, but it was a photo of an invoice and it listed a screwdriver as 15 cents. And then the next line item was knowing where to put the screw, $15,000. Yeah. That's where we're moving as a business, where relationships matter more than they ever have before. Um, communicating in person matters more than ever before. Personalization matters more than ever before than ever before. And when you can increase efficiency in other areas of your business, it's going to be up to you to find out and determine where human judgment, human creativity is going to play the most important role. Um and it's not getting a video avatar to send out, you know, 10,000 spam emails because the spam filters are just going to become that much better, anyways.
SPEAKER_01
36:57
Oh, 100%. No, I yeah, it's that knowledge. And even like when you talk about the digital dispatch aspect, it's like, but I'm sure what you're finding though is that everyone's building their website the exact same way. Little baby font, big font. I think I sent you guys a picture the other day. I was like, wow, look at this Claude website.
SPEAKER_04
37:17
They're all built, yes, they're all built the same, they all look the same. I hope you realize that. And that's for that. Well, have you heard about the epidemic of you know, club flyers and how they all look the same? And and it's you know, if you think about it from the lens of okay, well, that's Claude, Chat GPT, they're gonna reach, if they haven't already, they're gonna reach a level of parity where they all have scraped all of the same information, they're all using the same sort of code bases, and it's how you use that information and then become more creative. Like, you know, on a on our side of things, you know, especially from a content perspective, I know that my take and my opinion is what makes me unique from somebody who's just gonna go to Hey Gen and you know, come up with, you know, a podcast episode and make up, you know, fake hosts. And I've known of logistics companies in particular who have done that, who use notebook LM to you know feed it sources and then come up with a podcast. I mean, I love notebook LM and I've I've used it for some content. Um, but I don't know that I would willingly listen to somebody else's notebook LM, um, if that makes sense. Like I would rather just do it myself and get my own sources and then listen to it myself. But I I have noticed that even when I do that, I don't retain the same amount of information as if I were to go to a YouTuber and that I have watched for years on a topic that I, you know, I think before we hit record on this conversation, I was watching like the, you know, this the spice road trade and you know, seeing a video, and it was made using, you know, AI videos uh and probably use completely made with AI, but I still enjoyed the content.
SPEAKER_01
39:03
Yeah.
SPEAKER_04
39:04
But if I had the choice to pick a YouTuber that I've followed for years that is going to cover the same topic versus this AI generated content, then I'm going to the YouTuber that I've known for years. And I think that that it kind of goes back to a theory that I have where I don't think that people will care that they're watching AI content. I think that they will care if they're watching you make AI content, if that makes sense. Like if they've developed a relationship with you and they know you're a real person, then they want to hear from you. And they almost feel a little betrayed if you were to go to a, you know, not to pick on Hey Jen, but to go to them and to have that create, you know, a fake avatar of yourself and what you might say. Um, I think people are going to just crave more and more realism as you know, just all of this content is just sort of flooded everywhere.
SPEAKER_01
40:03
Yeah, I actually think that we'll see more, I think we'll see a push back into events as well, right? Yeah, because it's and even more so, like what something I'm looking more into for the third and fourth quarter is just like customer dinners. Like let's get people in a room together and just like chat. And that has a payoff too, because yeah, at the end of the day, there is a level people understand, like, listen, I know that you're probably using some type of email tool, right? These days, your or your SDRs are or some type of automation. So before I sign a dotted line, I want to at least know who I'm doing business with, right? Um, so I think that is also part of it as well, is that aspect. Like, I want to it drives, it makes seeing someone more face-to-face even more valuable. And so now it's like now when I'm face-to-face, you better not drop the ball either, right?
SPEAKER_04
41:00
Yeah, it's a it's a crazy world that we have to sort of navigate through. But I I, you know, I think I think especially with coming up with and having the conversations around this guide and you know, finding out where it's actually working, I think that that's sort of the exciting sort of frontier part of it as well, is like, you know, the folks who are elbows deep in this stuff and they're trying to come up with solutions, and then they come up with a solution and you know, it might not work, but they might have to tweak it a little bit, or you know, they another customer might have another problem that, you know, it's sort of a maybe a whack-a-mole where you you solve one problem, but then a few more appear. I think that's that's sort of the nature of of being in business and trying to problem solve and put fires out, and it's the nature of logistics in general. It's you know, you're you're always going to have new problems to solve. And if some of these tools could help surface solutions and data that help make you solve those problems better and faster and more efficient, then that's that's the whole name of the game since you know, since the container was first invented, since we had merchant ships, you know, that it used to sail across the you know the oceans. And you're always trying to find a little bit better way of getting the stuff that people want. Um, and I think that that you know, technology and AI solutions are not going to take any of that away, but they are going to evolve it. And it's not something to be scared of, it is something to be embraced, but your human judgment of where you choose to embrace it, I think matters more than ever. Um, this doomerism around, you know, it's taking all the jobs, it's taking all of our water, it's, you know, all of these things that are myths, but people still believe them. And it's a perception that has been put out there by these large language model companies, maybe to their own detriment. Um, so I think are you guys experimenting at all? And maybe you don't have to answer this, but I would be curious if you are experimenting with like your own sort of, you know, maybe like internal large language model, or because that's where I I'm gonna go next is getting the reliance off of, you know, like a chat GPT or a Claude and building it into my own models and my own, you know, system and structure. Because especially as you know, Cargo Rex evolves, it, you know, data is our moat, and I don't want to hand all of that proprietary data over to you know, Claude and then have them steal it all and you know, then be able to I think that's what we're gonna see happen next.
SPEAKER_01
43:35
I won't get too much into what we're doing behind the scenes, but I think that's where this goes next is is the build yes, your own language models, right?
SPEAKER_04
43:47
Well, did you did you hear about the Figma example? Yeah, there was um so a a high executive within Claude was on the board of Figma, and they brought them in and they were like, yes, let's you know, let's adopt AI and let's integrate it into our you know the core of our systems three days before Cloud Design was announced. The Claude executive resigned from the board of Figma, and they basically created a Figma clone. And Figma, the stock price, Adobe stock price has plummeted since then. Um, the entirety of their business is being called into question and and called into uh yeah, just on the previous thing.
SPEAKER_01
44:35
So I suck at graphic design. It's all all it's all in here, you know, it all comes out of here. It doesn't come out of here. Um I hate Claude and Figma together, like they piss me off. Um now, but it's like back to kind of like what we're talking about. A graphic designer, it's probably faster for them not to use Claude, I would assume because they're just so good at it. Um I'm even I'm honestly kind of getting to a point where there are some instances where I'm like, Claude, I can do this 10 times faster by now. But it's like again, I it I kind of think back to that too. It's like like shareholders do again, like you're panicking way too fast. Like I I just think that there is and I also just think like I wonder behind the scenes, like if the design aspect of things. Even that important to them, you know?
SPEAKER_04
45:32
Like well, I think it it was. I I I guess I brought it up for more the lens of like Claude is billing themselves as something more than just a collaborative work tool. If you put your systems into these large language models, there's very real chance that they will gut you, they will cut you out, and they will steal your business and just look past walk on past your dead body lying on the side of the road. Um, and I think that that is where it's fueling this adoption into more like open source models and building your own models and protecting your own data. Um I think Claude and Anthropic, in and of itself, uh, you know, they've made a very big misstep in that regard from the business enterprise community.
SPEAKER_01
46:25
I I totally agree with you. I think that I think it's a big overstep on their hat. I like I it's it's a short-term decision I think is really gonna hurt them in the long run. Um for that exact reason. Like people are it's and it's because you didn't bring to a market a good valuable tool. You brought like a you can corporate espionage, really. It's it's corporate espionage, and it's just twitter, it's bad quality. I mean, it's the same thing you saw happen with Amazon, right? They they you have to submit your manufacturing information to them so they can know exactly how that your tools or your product is legit, and then they just take that manufacturing info, and then they thought they could be smart and they could, but I actually think that's what's gonna hurt them from dominating in the future is that they moved way too fast on that. People figured it out way too fast. Um, you know, we had just recently like a town hall where someone was like bringing up um Amazon supply chain, and I just I think do they have like on paper, could they be a monopoly for sure? I think they've already bitten that foot off, though. That's gonna stop them because of because of those exact moves. These like, and and let's be honest, I mean you and I know this because we've been in this it's that's the funny part about the investment of everything that's like just seems so clueless to me. It's because they get they get all this money so fast and they have to deploy it. You can't raise the money that that you get. Like the point of even someone like Ortiful raising 35 million dollars isn't isn't to keep 20 million of it in cash reserves, like you know, it's it's the same. So they're like, we gotta deploy it on things, and then you move too fast. I'm gonna get into a capitalism anti-capitalism comment, and it's hard to side. You know, it's it's like you guys fell for it. You fell for the the the good old you took too much money, now you need to deliver, and you bit yourself in the foot. And you're a hundred percent right. Instead of like maybe partnering with Figma or actually like building a strong relationship to make integrations that uh that would make these tools actually valuable and make you an ecosystem tool. Yeah, you've like created this like mass hysteria that people are saying, oh, wait a second, maybe this is something we can get around if things continue. Like you actually kind of made a really funny point there, but uh it's it's like you you you went so it's like when they say you go so right and you're gonna left now, right? It's like that that aspect you went so hard, which you had to because you raised too much money, and now the long it's like yeah, I would love to see the long-term effect of it. So I I do get nervous that the the bubble will pop because I think that will shareholders will start to realize that faster than they think. I mean, for my 401k, I hope it doesn't pop, but you know, like it just feels like that's naturally where this is going.
SPEAKER_04
49:19
Yeah, I I I would tend to agree because I I think that that is just such a fundamental business misstep that Anthropic made was was damaging that relationship with Figma. And uh especially when they had made so much so many strides to integrate you know, Claude into all of the different Microsoft Suite products and integrate it as a layer on top of tools that people were already using. But when you then take that tool and straight up copy it and then make, you know, it just reeks of, you know, we don't want to, I guess it's not the corporate espionage, but it's just from the lens of well, it is corporate espionage, but then it's it's from the lens of like doing business long term requires, you know, a good relationship. And I I probably will never know what it's like to do business at that high of a level. I just could not see myself as a business operating in the way that you know Anthropic has has sort of operated, you know, over the last you know, sort of few months. Um, and so it I think that they've damaged their their credibility. I think from the folks who were using, you know, AI, you know, in day in and day out, they have now forced that, especially me as a as a business. I I cannot overinvest into one large language model now. I will diversify just to protect myself. And then I'm looking into solutions where I control the data and I control who scrapes the data and who doesn't. More importantly, who doesn't scrape the data, you know, in order to keep the livelihood of my business intact, um, because you damn sure can't partner with somebody like Anthropic anymore. I mean, look at the Microsoft and also OpenAI partnership that has kind of ceases to exist now. Um you can't get in bed with your potential partners and then try to throw them out when they're not useful to you anymore and just bad business. And I think for a lot of businesses, they are discovering that you know, the the hype was a little too much hyped and that also at the same time it was their own internal inefficiencies, but also combined with the value of their own human judgment, that they have to sort of factor into all of these things on where they choose to make their investments, uh, not just from a monetary standpoint, but where teens are spending their time. Um, because it it does it AI might save you time in some respects, but if you spend a goddamn week trying to build an email agent and it does nothing but waste you time and credits and tokens, um, then you know, there's a loss there as well. And so it's, you know, we're all trying to figure this stuff out. Um, but it is, I guess, sort of to to close out this hour-long segment that we've been talking about. That was probably supposed to be, you know, around 20 or 30 minutes um for this discussion, just to sort of round it all out is that there are a lot of solutions that are being created using these tools, but they're boring. And that's where boring shows up, I think, more in your profit and loss statement, more so than, you know, I, you know, we wasted all of our token budget. I mean, your token budget, of course, is going to show up in your profit and loss statement, um, but the benefits of it won't. Uh, and so it's just weighing the pros and cons. And I think realizing I think we're we're coming, the pendulum is swinging back to, you know, valuing the human judgment, valuing in person, um, and valuing creativity, and then, you know, kind of having a better idea that, you know, it's not all doom and gloom. They're not gonna take all of our jobs, they're not gonna send us into water reservoir droughts. Um, you know, there are modern day problems and require modern day solutions. And so you you you had just brought it up.
SPEAKER_02
53:10
Yeah.
SPEAKER_04
53:11
But let's get into the next segment. And that's Ortiful just raised $35 million. Uh, AI native EDI? Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_01
53:22
And API for EDI that's also AI native. We said, let's stack her up. No, I'm I'm really excited about this round, in particular because of the investors that are a part of it as well. So our friends over at Coke, the Coke Disruptive Technologies, and our continued friends over at New Road Capital um have backed us on this one. Um, and in big time with uh $35 million. And for everyone out there, Coke, I mean, you probably know Coke Industries pretty well. Um, I was talking about the other Coke later, but yes, Coke with a K. Um, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_03
54:03
Gotta specify which Coke.
SPEAKER_01
54:04
Yes, the few. Yeah, yeah, the big oil ones. Um, and and actually KMX, so Coke, uh Coke's logistics arm, has been one of uh a long time customer of Orderfuls, one of our first, to be honest with you, especially from the supply chain and logistics standpoint. Um, and and what's really great about this too is you know, Coke has from a commercial standpoint, there's gonna be a lot of really interesting um other investments and other platform connections that we'll make because of this. So I'm really excited for that. Um, strengthening our relationship even more so with um the N4 team over at Coke as well. In4 is an ERP that's owned by them. Um and then of course New Roads, who doesn't know them? They've big investments platform science, um big relationships with transportation companies as well.
SPEAKER_04
54:55
Well, well, real real quick for for folks who don't know what EDI is, because I I read uh even in our show notes, I was sending you stuff about ELDs because my brain is still like kind of jet lagged where I was conflating ELDs with EDI. But for folks who don't know what EDI is, electronic document standard that was quietly run or that has quietly run global trade for over 40 years. Every purchase order, every shipment notice, every invoice between retailers and their suppliers and carriers, that's EDI. It's the least sexy, most load-bearing tech in freight. And uh yeah, or with the the new raise with orderful. And you we talked about this about a year ago, but for folks who who uh may not remember, may not have caught that episode, basically orderful, all of these, and and stop me if I'm wrong, but all of these different retailers have different ways of classifying their carriers, their shipments, their products, and things like that. And what Orderful does is that they have already worked with a lot of these retailers and they've templatized a lot of those different integrations. And so whenever you're looking to switch EDI partners, because I believe that uh the recurring contracts, if you sign with an EDI company, 96% of those companies stay with you. And that is a crazy, like in the SaaS sort of tech world, to have like less than 10% of your customer churn every year is insanity. And so EDI really is that that quiet technology that has been powering the logistics industry for you know the the last 40 years or so. Um so orderful creates these templates so it makes it easier for retailers looking to make the jump to make the jump a lot quicker than probably a painful process that they maybe went through previously.
SPEAKER_01
56:50
100%. And and here's the thing, it's I mean, God, you sold that so well. Um yeah, like what we like to how we like to call kind of our our our prospects or customers here is like it's usually a leader and a follower situation. So a leader is one that creates those guidelines, a follower is one that's following those guidelines. So um from different perspectives, if you are a liquid death who is a customer of ours, you're likely following the guidelines of Target, Walmart, uh any store that you're in, right? Grocery stores, etc. Um, and then you also have the leaders, so like the targets, the Walmarts, the Coles, the all of those who are you know telling the items on the shelves how to send that information back and forth. And and another piece to that puzzle, too, that people don't always understand until uh they get hit with it when their full invoice isn't paid, is if those things are wrong, you get what's called a chargeback. Um, if those if that information comes over incompletely, uh there that is taken from your invoice. Uh so not only does it need to be correct um to avoid those situations, but you also need to be able to fight those situations, showing that those things are correct. Oh, I love this use of this case study. Oh my god, I'm so happy we put this out. Perfect timing for this, too. Um, and and what's fascinating about it is you're absolutely right. I mean, actually, we'll talk about it in regards to the everyman jack situation. Everyman Jack is a company that's under uh the Carlisle group, they own a bunch of brands. Steve Fox became a new CFO of the company a few years ago, and uh they didn't like their TMS. I think they're an SAP1, uh or sorry, their SOR system of record. Um, and also did not like their EDI provider, who I want to say was True Commerce. SBS and True Commerce are probably the ones we come up through the most. They're the largest SBS is publicly traded. We'll get into that later. Um, and so you're right, Blythe. It's it's very much I like to contribute it to wow, I'm gonna show my age on this one a little bit. I like to contribute to like your cable provider or your internet provider, right? You choose the one that you've heard of the most that you know is in your neighborhood, and you probably never move because even though you don't really love their service, the the service is gonna be shitty everywhere you go, per se. And so you just kind of stick with them and deal with the hard times, even though you absolutely hate it. As Steve puts it in there, it's kind of like dealing with the IRS, it's gonna suck no matter what. And that's how EDI has always kind of been treated. And are the legacy players out there? Um, another thing that you don't realize unless you are probably working in the EDI or have signed uh EDI contracts before is that you're usually paying uh well, some will pay make you pay per transaction, which is kind of crazy, uh which means as you scale, the bill goes up very fast. Uh we charge and and most modern will charge closer to like trading partners, but on top of that, they oftentimes will charge a managed service fee because, like you said, those guidelines change often. And sometimes they're sent the guideline changes are sent in email. Sometimes those emails go to spam, sometimes those I'm not gonna lie to you. There's some people out there who send those guideline changes snail mail, like and I'm not gonna expose those guys because I know who they are, but they're bigger companies than you think they would be. Um, so you know that letter gets missing or something happens, your stuff breaks, you get charged. So, what these companies do is they they grow off of the fact that they they know you're gonna need them for that smaller fee that they're charging per transaction, but they also know that they're going that you're gonna pay an extra $15,000 on top of that to make uh to have us manage it. And that's the call out point that I'm really excited for because that is what orderful has always pointed to and said honestly is bullshit. And I think what's happening now is that people are realizing, oh, like I've literally was talking to someone the other day, someone we know very well, who was like, Listen, I want to talk to you guys because I don't want to pay this fee anymore. I we shouldn't be paying because that fee is sometimes like way bigger than what you're paying just for the EDI service. You might be paying like $2,000 a month, but then you're paying like $7,000 just to like make sure it doesn't break. It doesn't make sense, especially when it is something that can be managed by modern technology. Now it's gonna be hard for you to probably do that yourself, yeah, but you're gonna look at that ten thousand dollar invoice every day and say, that seems like a problem I'll try to figure out how to solve. And back to like the whole Coca-Cola point and everything, like and and and how are people using AI appropriately, it's just like a lawyer situation. And and you can see it in SPS's stock because they've just collapsed because their shareholders get it. They're like, oh wow, like this extra fee, kind of like the billable hours that we've always you know had revenue off of, is going to go away. And instead of sitting back and saying, Hey, like let's kind of move forward with the times, which is hard to do for a company of that size, I'll be honest. Like, even if they wanted to do it, they're not gonna do it.
SPEAKER_04
1:02:24
Yeah, that's the change, the change management aspect in uh this whole first hour of discussion is probably the biggest bottleneck.
SPEAKER_01
1:02:31
Yeah, like those people aren't gonna do it fast, but there are smaller players in this industry that, like I've recently heard, are now building themselves with different language models because they don't want people to be able to access. I know a logistics EDI provider that's very ERP specific. Uh I'm gonna say it Trimble. And if you're a Trimble user, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. They actually don't even let you see your data because they don't want you to see it because they understand that you could probably that's the like how they're holding on to you, right? And if you move away from us, you lose all of that too. So you're right, they have this 96% hold on you because they make it harder to leave than anything else. And that we just we just don't believe in that as a company at orderful. Like we Eric has never believed in that, we don't believe in that. Everyone's moving towards this open source plug-and-play lifestyle experience that can happen and should happen in EDI. So we look at it from like the two aspects that we talked about earlier, right? Like with the whole like lawyer situation, there's there's this technical jump that you could say. Like, okay, we could use AI um to now read a partner's implementation guide, map fields, uh, catch anything that's ill, ill formed, explain why maybe something was rejected. That's like the fast one we'll see. Now, the slow clock, the clock that I think that we've jumped on that other people are like avoiding is the extra fun stuff, the cold aspect, right? We talked about like, all right, I'm gonna sit back, or or if we look at the lawyer aspect or the aspect you're talking about, the knowledge. How do we now make money off the knowledge?
SPEAKER_04
1:04:20
Yeah, I was about to say, like, oh, how do you guys actually make money then?
SPEAKER_01
1:04:23
Yes, like how do we make we do we do charge by training partner? But now what we do is we have we've built which is mosaic that now fixes these extra things that really, really make uh that make that fee possible. So, what does that look like? So we can now fix onboarding checklists, like the the tasks that need to happen to onboard a new trading partner, and those tasks can take up to 90 days and often do with those providers. Um, so when someone like everyman jack that you brought up is looking to switch systems and move over 57 trading partners within six months.
SPEAKER_04
1:05:04
Real quick, what do you mean by trading partners? Is that like a your carrier, your broker? What does that what is that?
SPEAKER_01
1:05:10
Uh all of the above, depending on who you are. So for like an every man jack, that's gonna be uh potentially like it could be actually suppliers for them. It could be the targets, the Walmarts, the Walgreens, uh C S C uh, CS CX, CSV or CVS, CVS, there we go. Uh it could be like the shelves, the comp the stores that they're at. Um, oftentimes, so like US Express is a customer of ours now. Um, so theirs is gonna be like uh their the shippers, they're connected to the shippers' TMSs, so they can tender over loads to them. Um, shippers are the same way, they'll they'll tender over um loads from like their logistics units. Uh, we call that I believe a series 400 or the transportation series. There's an 800 series, which is more like purchase orders. Look at me, verbiage. Um, but yeah, so when you hear like, okay, one trading partner could take 90 days, and you know you're an every man jack that needs to do 57, okay, so you're telling me something that's gonna take like years to do, um, that's awful. That's that's why that's why they never switch because they're like it's it's hard. And so we've used Mosaic to to fix all of that stuff. So we we now create onboarding checklists, and oftentimes, based off of information that we've already received, already know the steps that we need to take the moment you tell us who you're training with. Um, the EDI teams who trust more of like the manual review over a model output, we've developed enriched more of that aspect into our models too. Um also, like we said, the pricing models built around that, like you shouldn't need that anymore. That's how we bring cost savings right back to the customer. Um, so it's realizing like what you can do behind the scenes, um, and in particular for us, right, is like the guideline changes. So once we know from customer A that Walmart's changed a guideline, we don't have to change those guidelines for every single customer we work with. So they don't have to like worry about missing that Walmart information. We have that. Um, and it's it's just doing it for you behind the scenes. So the points where, like, you know, it's it's fun because uh it's something that oftentimes our customers especially the users you know like oftentimes an edi the person that's buying it is gonna be like a cfo or c level but like the edi analysts themselves will get our product and they're like oh my goodness because not only do we uh we often take like x12 uh and we put it into json which is like hum it's just a human readable uh for you so you don't have to like have to figure out what the code per se is like trying to do so that's a big part of it but like what our our uh customers see when they log on is just like the human aspect that they might need to change or the they just like the question it's very much almost like a cloud experience where they might log on and say like this is broken is it a or b you click a and now it's fixed where in other legacy models that is being done via email behind the scenes you don't have any control over it you're just like okay hold on I guess so if you needed reports on that you'd have to wait for that too we have reporting available for you that stuff's easy to to give out so I think what's interesting is I think like if you asked us maybe even a couple years ago like have we met the market maybe not quite yet but like I think we've now finally Oriful's met this market.
SPEAKER_04
1:09:00
We've raised this money and now we can just execute on building those commercial relationships and building an even more intelligent product and and moving this industry forward to the point where I mean at the end of the day it's like we talked about the lawyer situation those costs will come down that that world will exist where you don't have to spend that um and you can actually versus the competitors that are you know you get a $15,000 invoice and you're you're thinking hard about well what does this actually everybody is looking at their tech stacks and wondering like what makes sense and what doesn't and I think when you get a bill like that that is a a good that it creates an incentive for somebody to look for a different solution.
SPEAKER_01
1:09:46
It really is crazy to me and and honestly sometimes it's like I'll be I've seen deal situations where it's like they are just like they are gonna they they want to handcuff you to them so bad that they will make even that transition awful and that's what's awesome is that we've we're even like building technology to avoid that experience to avoid even when you want to leave them making it hard for you to leave because there's certain numbers there's certain ISA IDs there's certain aspects that you might need to get from like a legacy provider that you've been with for 10 years but they're not gonna they're gonna wait four weeks to send you that info right likely from how we can consume your data and that's like the that's the secret sauce I will tell you on air that what we're doing there I think is what's really gonna change the game. I mean we are like I'll openly say this because I mean if we're talking we talk about manifest earlier on this for sure by next manifest. Honestly I think I'll I'll be able to showcase this at events no later than like September. Oh well is we'll get to a point where you can drop your uh training partner agreement like in a drop box we'll tell you hey come back to us tomorrow come back to our booth tomorrow we'll show you that you're set up like and and I'll openly say this because I'm telling people this as well there are some ERPs that we are a hundred percent onboarding people in 48 hours. So it's like and and what I'm talking about in a world where that person has been told by legacy providers that it will be two months. Like we it will be ready to go in 48 hours. So um I get really excited when I see stuff like that because I know we're taking a lot of the headache out of EDI and I'm not it's not so much that like we want to make it sexy like it's we want that plaid experience that I've talked to you about where it's just like you know that you could switch ERPs you know that you could move systems you know that you could add a trading partner at any moment but do not want to yeah and well and it's not gonna be a headache and you're I think what's really fun is like you know we are just at an event uh called Summer Fancy Food in New York City and it's an event where actually if you like food go to this event if you're logistics something you like food figure out how to convince your manager to go to this event because there's not a lot of us tech people there's only like a there's only like 10 of us there because I think we people just haven't figured it out. Oh you're giving away the secret sauce now well the eye companies are gonna show up yeah except no they were there they're just not as good you know um but so at the event the point of it is to you know make your food make your products retailers walk around restaurants walk around they test them and the point is to hopefully put you on the shelves so it's like a perfect trigger point for us because like for us it's like awesome did you have a good show you did perfect the first thing they're gonna ask you for is edi. They probably don't even know what that is yet um but you as a business right want to get on that shelf as fast as possible this technical step is going to is going to kill you on making that happen in the timeline that you want and so that's what I get excited for too is like we have a product called Web EDI that's more for like those businesses that just got their first trading partner. Maybe they don't have much of a technology stack but it's the same thing it gets you set up right away you actually don't even need to talk to any of our sales reps you could go on our site today put in your credit card and you'd be connected right now um but it's like that's the experience we want people to have it's like no matter how big their business is it is they could make that switch right away without a problem.
SPEAKER_04
1:13:49
Yeah yeah I was gonna just ask but you just answered it is it sounds like it as you were talking it sounds like an enterprise solution but if you templatize it and you're creating this level of efficiency that is what you're talking about, then it naturally will trickle down into you know the SMBs of the world.
SPEAKER_01
1:14:06
Yes, 100% yeah we've got if you're a small business like in and looking one or two train partners like go to our website today you're gonna have a great time it's so easy to use your I can use it like you don't need to know what EDI is um but now our job is to make that same exact experience for the enterprise level and we are well on our way there.
SPEAKER_04
1:14:31
Well that's awesome. I mean I definitely from like a job security standpoint it's like it it sound especially from from having these these conversations with you and you know your your your time previously at Freightwaves covering a variety of companies and then now being able to go inside and and work for a company that you can use those media talents for I mean that's on like full display right here where you're able to you know explain something that you know I've worked in logistics for a long time and I've heard the phrase EDI but I until we started having these conversations I couldn't tell you what the hell it was um but you know here we are now understanding or having a full understanding fuller I guess I should say of of what this quiet you know the notes called it you know the quiet technology that's been powering the logistics industry for 40 years.
SPEAKER_01
1:15:20
Yeah to the to like the every to the job aspect too I want to touch on because we touch on that in the everyman jack case study we just put out too um funny enough uh when we started that project uh there was they're using a technology consultant to kind of help them guide them through that process and at the time at Everyman Jack Raina and James were working in the EDI um department uh Raina actually does not work at Everyman Jack anymore she now works for the consultant themselves making more money enjoying her life doing you know the same EDI aspect to a number of other custom companies as well and James hasn't had to hire someone because of the efficiencies and now James instead of worrying about mappings all day long spends his time because this is the fun part now that you we've fixed your chargeback issue now when you get chargebacks now you know that you can fight them because you can prove that it wasn't sent over wrong. So now it's like James gets to now focus on the chargeback there's so many different things that he can do now in his job in regards to automation and things of that nature with the EDI data that it's like it's it's why I was like so I had so much fun doing this case study because one they were like one of the first customers I got to work with when I started here so I've seen them on board and go through like a full year of being a customer they actually won us an award at NRF for that work as well. So shout out to Steve he's the best um but what I think really cool is not only through that experience we saw someone increase you know their livelihood in terms of what they're doing for their own family. And now James isn't stuck like dealing with mapping headaches all day that he absolutely hated he can focus on bigger tasks that actually help the company make more money for the Carlisle group um and can you know email chat with me whenever he wants us to so shout out James love you my dad the ROI is everywhere. Yeah the ROI really is there and so that's why even the whole like job thing I push back because if anything it like allows them now to use that data to like improve their business in different ways.
SPEAKER_04
1:17:36
Yeah no that that all sounds like good stuff and I I I think it's just one of the the hidden areas of logistics that doesn't get talked about a lot but it I mean it's definitely especially from the landscape of what you the the jump is it James that you were just talking about you know he has a real dollar amount now that he can go back and it directly impacts the bottom line and he can prove the value of his own job and prove the value of the technology investments that in the technology partners that he in the decision making that he the human judgment that that he is being able to to make and he gets to reap the rewards. So um that's pretty cool that where it's like a modern day that that whole segment and orderful's take really I guess sort of bring you know I guess an extra exclamation point um for the value of like the the boring task of AI and how it's impacting and where human judgment really uh plays a role and and shines brightly um for for somebody like that. Let's move into our next segment and that's um a hidden supply chain speaking of like hidden aspects of logistics and supply chain um but I just got back from a trip to Japan and Blythe Milligan here, Grace Sharkey and uh this is everything is logistics presented by SPI Logistics and I wanted to talk about this story because everyone's talking about AI everyone's talking about you know sort of the uh the chip environment uh and you know who the chips shortage and how chips are in AI chips are in everything and there's one company in Japan that is famous for heated toilets and they're now a critical link in the AI chip supply chain. This is not a metaphor it's the same company the same kilns used to make their ceramics is the same ceramic craft that's used to or lithography I think machine is is the way it's it's phrased um but at the company is called Toto and I want to bring up really quick the best toilet ever did you have some did you use a Toto? Uh listen my obsession now with bidets like I have a the Amazon like attachment bidet to the toilet and but it's not heat it's first of all what changed my brain chemistry over in Japan is the fact that the toilet seat always stays warm. Love that there's also another aspect of the bidets in Japan that they have um privacy music. So if you're in a public restroom and you don't want to hear other noises from other people or maybe you're doing something and you don't want other people to hear your noises you can turn on the no the the privacy music and it's like nature like water running, you know birds chirping, you know things like that. And you can turn the volume all the way up to where nobody else can hear what you're doing or it's just you know kind of it kind of drowns out the the gross noises that go on in a public restroom. So that blew my mind. I would say the warm toilet seat because I always like to get up in the middle of the night to go pee. This is probably TMI but whatever um I always get up in the middle of the night once to go pee. And when I was doing that in Japan because it takes you forever for I don't know that your body ever actually adjusts to that kind of time difference. But that was such a pleasant experience to be able to sit down on a warm toilet seat.
SPEAKER_01
1:21:17
You don't even live in the cold like imagine can you imagine my winters and the the warm water that instantly comes from it.
SPEAKER_04
1:21:24
Anyways um so yeah the the Japan is uh far and away the best toilet maker in the world but because they are so good at making ceramics there are now um a key component or a key part of the AI chip manufacturing. So I'm gonna play this video from Nick Conley and hopefully you guys can hear the audio from it. Hold on.
SPEAKER_00
1:21:47
Somebody that makes Japan's most famous smart toilet is secretly one of the most critical suppliers in AI chip manufacturing and almost nobody knows it. Meet Todo, founded in 1917, the company spent decades perfecting the ceramics inside their washlit toilets. That same ceramic expertise turned out to be exactly what the semiconductor industry needed. Since the 1980s Toto has been manufacturing electrostatic trucks, precision ceramic components that hold silicon wafers perfectly still while microscopic circuits get carved into them at extremely low temperatures during a process called cryogenic etching. One slip and the chip is destroyed. And that is where every other material had failed. Toto's ceramics stay stable under temperatures and thermal stress that would cause other materials to warp or crack, making them the dominant supplier for the tools that manufacture 3D NAND memory chips, the same chips powering AI data centers worldwide. Here's where it gets insane that ceramics business now generates over 40% of Toto's entire operating profit. UK investment firm Pallister Capital just took a major stake and called Toto the most undervalued and overlooked AI memory beneficiary in the world. The stock is already up nearly 40% in 2026. But the craziest part, the market still sees a toilet company the chips inside every AI system you have ever used were built using parts made by the same company that perfected the heated toilet seat.
SPEAKER_04
1:23:04
If you want to stay updated with the latest tech news following incredible right I that I I would have never had any idea that that a toilet maker from Japan would have play a key role in our AI chip manufacturing.
SPEAKER_01
1:23:21
But yeah it it it definitely does and Grace you used to live in Japan and so did you did you have were were the the toilets like this when you lived there so I don't okay so yes they weren't all Totos I'll say that so I when I lived there I actually lived which is like perfect because it's it was about the same as my family but I lived in a with a more middle class family where a couple of my other students like a couple of uh United States students that came with me were definitely a little bit more upper class um but we definitely did have that type of toilet like it definitely had a heated seat that's like very norm. I'm trying to remember in school if we had those I don't think we what were you there for it was just like an exchange program? Yeah I was there for an exchange program. So how old were you uh seventh grade? Oh seventh oh wow I thought you were about to say 17 so seventh grade seventh grade yeah I sent you lived over there for what a year yeah if you look at your phone I sent you some pics last night too I I did see those photos I didn't live there no I didn't live there for a year it was about a month um okay and then and then they came and lived with us for the same amount of time oh interesting so it was like really cool oh yeah my mother let me tell you yeah this she she she would like yell things I'm like she's not deaf she just doesn't speak anything like but my to to my mom's credit she ended actually doing she ended up becoming a leader in the program so I went I did it for one year but she did it for four years in a row um so she's been in Japan way more than me but uh yeah so uh like we would go there so for a whole like year almost two years we'd write to each other so our ja we'd take Japanese and then we'd write letters back and forth to each other and then um we spent like a basic basically a whole month going to school there. Um and then they would come they came and like I think four or five months later and came to school here. Um and actually unfortunately I don't even know if they come over here anymore because they did not like a lot of like the they're big against guns. So during it was right around like COVID and stuff like they just uh because of some of the big shootings they stopped letting their kids come over I think this past year they finally turned it back on. But it was awesome because we like full on went to school with them um took Japanese classes. I'll say I was awesome at math because you know what numbers are the same everywhere. But it was really interesting too because like the one thing I take out of it that I'm like wow it'd be we had a lot more people so it'd be a lot more expensive. But like in their schools I I first off their overall school situation I think is 10 times better. By the time you get into high school you have to kind of figure out what trade or like what you want to do and then you go to a high school for like that thing. Like you actually have to apply to high schools in in Japan you don't just like go to the one in your district um which I think is really smart. And but also you like you go the dentist comes once a month a doctor comes once a month because there was like a day where like we didn't even it's like we basically had to go to like our own class because they were all like in line to see the dentist um we had like wood shop we had like some classes like we didn't really have here so that was really cool but yeah like we straight up just like lived at their house you know had breakfast lunch dinner there um like on the weekends as a group we would go to like Kyoto um or like some because this was in the Shiga Prefecture so I think it's in the prefecture south of where you were um but it's almost like a set like not a subdivision but like a suburb like a Brooklyn to New York kind of oh well I guess so with how big Japan is a prefecture is like a state so like we're like a state underneath you um and actually my the town it used to be Konancho but it got bigger so now it's like Kokashi I think like instead of a town it's a city um and so it's it's closer to like uh me trying to use my hand as a map hand's kind of like this like Tokyo's more north than we were but uh no it was awesome and you really have to like you know I mean I we had chaperone so like in terms of the house it was just like it was a it was a really great learning experience to like be on your own you know and like know that you could like survive without your parents at seven in seventh grade you know like um but we even saw like little kids in school uniform like walking to school and come to find out you know they just learn from you know like very young ages like under five years old of you know how to you know be self-sustainable and how to walk yourself to school and they don't really have to worry about you know crime or anything like that.
SPEAKER_04
1:28:42
Because it's just you know it's it just it's unfathomable for you know something to happen to I guess a child. You know in in I don't know how many families would allow their kids to you know walk a few miles to school but it it seemed to happen there. Not maybe not a few miles, but no to the closest school.
SPEAKER_01
1:29:01
Especially in the United States now it's like my parents live across from school at three o'clock there's more cars than I've ever seen. These kids they're not even allowed to like cross the street in a suburb without like an adult. It's crazy. Safe yeah and and we had to you we had to wear the uniforms too it was it was really fun. Um and but what I think what's like was super cool about was just like well I I you know I'm interested from your perspective too because I I remember being Clearly a kid and be like, oh my god, I'm not gonna have any idea what these people are saying. Like, I was okay at Japanese, but like I can read it, and still today I can read it 10 times better than I could say it. Um but then I like got there and I was like, okay, as long as I know like I know like where like where, when, and why, so you know, like where are you taking me basically? I could figure it out. And it's just like the language barrier wasn't anywhere near as bad as I had maybe expected it to be at that age. Um and the food is oh god, the food is fantastic.
SPEAKER_04
1:30:07
The sushi and wagu was, I mean, we stayed re uh next to the Tejuski. I I'm probably mispronouncing that uh fish market. And it was one of these fish markets that uh closes most of the shops start closing down at around noon, so you got to get there early. Um, but you can pay four bucks and you know get the best steak that you've had. You can get a giant crab leg um for 20 bucks. You can, you know, get this sushi platter, you know, with like uh this fatty bluefin tuna that's the best sushi you've ever had in your life.
SPEAKER_03
1:30:41
And you can for you know, half hour.
SPEAKER_01
1:30:44
That's what I wanted to ask you because until honestly, probably like the last couple years, and I mind you, I went in seventh grade. I the sushi American sushi is so like I don't know how to explain it, but I just remember like for the longest, I was like, none of this tastes good. Like it was just Japanese sushi was so good and so fresh, and like I don't know how to explain maybe not just like soaked in spicy mayo and eel sauce that like it's was more edible, but it took me so long to like eat American sushi like on a regular basis, let alone like at all, because it was like just so fresh, like the fast food was delicious.
SPEAKER_04
1:31:31
Yeah, we had McDonald's while we were there too, just to taste it. You could actually see because I'm I have grown up on McDonald's, I loved McDonald's, but the last couple of years uh we've gotten it maybe once or twice, and it's just been gross. Like the chicken nuggets are just I don't know what they're putting in them or what they're not putting in them. It just hasn't been a good, I always get a McDouble, and because I love the little onions on a McDouble. Same, dude. I love a McDouble, but the patties are like so thin now, like paper thin, where you can barely see it. You eat a McDouble in Japan, and you are actually getting a quality burger over there, and it's like these people have just been in, you know, just pushing it and pushing it just to see how much they can charge us, how much they can do the shrinkflation. And they're I think that's finally like speaking of we we talked about this earlier, you know, of just overextending yourself and seeing how much you can just sort of you know pull from the American consumer. And McDonald's is a perfect example of that of how much can they charge you, and then how much can they decrease the quality of their products? And it's uh I think they're that's definitely biting them in the ass.
SPEAKER_01
1:32:53
They come back like twice a year with like, hey, we have a new product, and they just threw like barbecue sauce and like like um fried onions on something, the fillet of fish or the mcrib.
SPEAKER_04
1:33:04
And it's like, I if you can't get thank god that they've never done anything to the fries, and the fries tasted the same. I will say that. But uh Japan had the spicy chicken nuggets, the spicy chicken nuggets were incredible. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.
SPEAKER_02
1:33:19
Don't they have like a shrimp?
SPEAKER_04
1:33:20
I saw it, but I know I I we were also like the thing with Japan is that we wanted to eat so much that we didn't even have like an omakase experience. For folks who don't know, an omakase experience is like where it's like a 12-course meal that you go to a really nice restaurant um and and you get that full big meal. We were eating so much, but we weren't eating a lot. Um, so when we did like, okay, we're gonna spare a little bit of like stomach room for McDonald's, um, we did we we split fries, one order of chicken nuggets, and one McDouble. And it was incredible. I should have taken a photo of the actual like beef patties because I was shocked that they you could actually view them and you could actually view each one because it just hasn't happened, you know, here in in the States in in quite a while, to the point where I'm like, I don't even want to eat this. Like it's not, it's not even a guilty pleasure anymore because it just doesn't, it's not pleasurable to eat it. Um so I think that the you know that to your point, like the food is just so fresh and just the level of ingredients. I will say something that was slightly disappointing was some of like the strawberry snacks. I thought the strawberry would be on point in Japan, especially from like um like a 7-Eleven. Like I loved their egg salad sandwich. I'm actually going to um the grocery store tonight so I can try to replicate like the egg salad sandwich that I got from there, which is phenomenal. Um, but uh the like the strawberry donut and things like that. I think my American taste buds just weren't there yet. Cause I'm like, I feel like it needs some red dye for it. Like it needs something, it doesn't taste sweet enough. Um, so that would be my only like mild complaint. But then on the flip side, I don't know if you had like the fluffy pancakes while you were there. No chef's kiss, like all worth all the hype.
SPEAKER_01
1:35:13
I kind of make I know how to make now, and I I wouldn't do it on camera because it's not gonna be like great clean. You know, you can get like the egg where they like cut the egg and then it like unfolds. I can like do that now, like that. I think is fun. Um one other thing, too. I wanted to ask. Well, one, I saw you discovered how good the air food can be. Um, maybe that was your post. Did you post uh flying over there getting food on the plane?
SPEAKER_04
1:35:42
Oh my god, Japan Airlines, which shout out to them. They gave me a little model plane, the best airline I've ever flown. Yeah, so nice, hospitable. I mean, just I think we got four meals on that flight. Like it is good food, yeah. Yeah, it was damn good food. We actually had very good food on most of our flights because, especially that area of the world and not just um the Japan Airlines, even though we flew like you know, uh Air India, Air Canada, things like that, I would not put them at the same level as Japan Airlines, but their food was still phenomenal because it was like curry everything. And it was like eggs, but you're gonna have curry sauce on it, and here's some roamy bread. Like it's it's curry everything, um, which I loved. But if you if you're like my cousin who was over in Sri Lanka with us as well for a wedding, um, because we did Japan and then we did went to Sri Lanka um for a wedding. My cousin does not do seafood and she does not do uh spicy food. So she was um poor girl Sri Lanka. Yeah, you know, they're an island off the southeast coast of India, and so uh there it's a lot of seafood and it's a lot of curries.
SPEAKER_03
1:36:51
So she was she was struggling a bit.
SPEAKER_01
1:36:54
That and then the other thing too is the vending machines. I don't know if that situation's still happening, but you can just you can get in what's it was like gambling, uh not just from like a phone. You can get booze, you can get I mean I love the pop aspect of the machines. I think I might still have might be downstairs. Um I remember getting like a great soda, and I was like, this is the packaging is just so cool.
SPEAKER_04
1:37:18
Like what's everything's kawaii, everything's cute, and yeah, see, you know, you're learning you got the language down. Yeah, I got kawaii and I got ergato no go goze.
SPEAKER_03
1:37:35
So yeah, it's just thank you very much after every conversation that I speak in English.
SPEAKER_01
1:37:39
So gozay mas says he was nice there, but yeah.
SPEAKER_04
1:37:44
There was um you you had kind of touched on it earlier, but I did just want to briefly bring it up because um there's um Big Disney, Disney head and living so close to Orlando, I've grown up going to the parks. This was my first out-of-the-country park that I'd ever been to. And for folks who don't know, um, Tokyo has two Disney parks. They have their Tokyo Disneyland and then they have Tokyo Disney Sea. And Tokyo Disney Sea, if you've been to the Walt Disney World area or familiar with the brand, it's kind of like their Epcot instead of countries, though, like what Epcot has is different countries with different food and drinks and shopping from like nine different countries. Um, Tokyo Disney Sea centers around ports. So it was, I mean, it was perfect for me to go to because number one, they had a food and wine festival going on, which was a little disappointing, I'll be I'll be honest, um, because it wasn't anything like Epcot's. Um they didn't have like the carts and the different experiences, you know, outside of each country. Um, you know, this all of the the food and the snacks and things were built into existing restaurants. Um, so it just kind of it was a little lackluster for the food and wine experience. Um, but they made up for it by celebrating their 25th anniversary. And so um back to like the ports, I brought some like little.
SPEAKER_01
1:39:02
Did you know that it was all ports oriented, or did you just show up?
SPEAKER_04
1:39:06
Oh, you did. So I I did know because um I was like, well, instead of like drinking around the world, we can just do like drink around the ports.
SPEAKER_01
1:39:13
Um, but it was so your husband was like, like, you didn't know, and he just showed up. He's like, Oh god.
SPEAKER_04
1:39:20
No, I told him in advance because they also they have it. I I bought this um a few little like merch things. They have a mermaid lagoon. And so I sent him a video of like the mermaid lagoon as like one of their ports. Um, so I don't know if you can see a little bit, but that's the mermaid lagoon. I'm showing an image up on the screen of like these little bags of like each port. So they have um these like main ports, and so it's like air ariel growing up a Florida girl. Like, I freaking love Ariel, like Ariel is like top three Disney princess for me. She might be like 1A. Uh or I think she's one B. I'm gonna go Bell 1A.
SPEAKER_01
1:39:56
Still here, you know, like very mid conversation right now. Well, you know, we have a Bell girl, so I that's my follow-up question.
SPEAKER_04
1:40:03
Yeah, I I think Belle is is one A, Ariel's one B, and then Jasmine, and then Tiana, and then Aurora. That's my top five. And I think this is a flawless top five if I do say so myself.
SPEAKER_01
1:40:14
Um especially big for Aurora in that good job.
SPEAKER_04
1:40:17
I so I I friggin saw this TikTok of like it all being like ports themed, and then they have an aerial port. I sent it to my husband, and I was like, I'm gonna crash out. Like and I indeed did um at some of the different shopping experiences, especially in the mermaid lagoon, it's all kind of under the sea vibes, and there's a lot of like little kid rides, of course, because it is Disney. Um, but they had uh Little Mermaid Player.
SPEAKER_01
1:40:43
If you've been to Disney World, you know that Ariel's ride is shit. I actually love that ride. But compared to the experience you're talking about right now, like a whole situation of Ariel, like Ariel's an afterthought at Disney World, you know? Like it's Snow White is now the owning that area, that property. And so I'm sure. Yeah. Sorry for all the Snow White girls, girlies out there.
SPEAKER_04
1:41:11
There's no, I've never met a single person who's like Snow White's in my top five.
SPEAKER_01
1:41:14
It's just like Belle. Like Belle now has like a little castle and restaurant, but she doesn't have a ride. But did you get to it?
SPEAKER_04
1:41:22
She does at uh Tokyo Disneyland. I know.
SPEAKER_01
1:41:24
Um that's why I want to go there so bad.
SPEAKER_04
1:41:26
I I chose the Tokyo Disney C because it was like kind of like Epcot. I, you know, I'm not interested in going to like a copy paste of you know a park that I've gone to, you know, a ton. Um, but uh you what is crazy though is that you can see the castle from the highway in Japan. Like we were on the way to the airport, and I was looking at this hotel and I was like, oh my god, that's such a fancy hotel. Where is that coming from? And then boom, it's the castle. And so for folks who may not be aware, um, Tokyo Disney C also opened up in 2024 an area called Fantasy Springs. And so Fantasy Springs is one of their newer ports, but it basically is all of the princesses and all of like sort of the fantasy elements um of Disney into one area. And so that was a really beautiful area. It used to be like a separate ticketed place that you needed an additional ticket in order to get into. Um, but they they removed that rule earlier this year. Um, and so getting back, I guess, to the the other ports, in case you guys were were curious. Um, so they had the mermaid lagoon, I showed you that, but here is the Arabian coast, too. So if you walking around these areas are so beautiful, they're so detailed. Um, the other one that whenever you first walk into the park is um the Mediterranean harbor, which hopefully it kind of clears up. If you're watching this on the screen, I'm showing up these little bags of like what is the theme of that different port. And then the other one is the Lost River Delta, so very like Central South America themed. So trying to get you know the Arabian coast, um, obviously, you know, Japan and you know, the Asia area, and then um South America is all the that's what the entire park is themed around. So, of course, I went there, of course, I had a fantastic time, but I just thought it was kind of goes back to the saying of, and I guess maybe to sort of round out this um Japan segment, is that I heard this quote once is that Japan is everything you know but more. And it doesn't quite make sense until you're there that everything you kind of like fandom-wise, um gosh, I I mean, I think fandom culture is just so huge there in a variety of ways. I mean, we talked about the toilets for God's sakes, like you know, everything but more. So everything that's a part of your like sort of daily life, they've kind of spent yeah, they have people there that have spent years perfecting it. Um, ceramics comes to mind, of course, because of you know the the the toilets, but even like Disney, like a Disney park like that, so incredibly detailed. Um, the storytelling that goes into the park. Um, and then even from you know, the the gas stations or the convenience stores, you know, everything inside of it. The food is impeccable. Um, they you know, you they sell cups of ice in order to mix like, you know, this all of this maybe like drink culture where you grab all of these different types of drinks to make your own custom drink and um from skincare, uh, you know, shopping for God's sakes. I mean, and and probably my my favorite souvenir from the entire trip, something completely free is they have all of these different stamps that you can get for free at, and I don't know if they had this when when you were there, but all of the um like the train stations, um, pop-up shops, uh they have all of these like little stamp kiosks where you can take your little book, a little notebook, and they have a stamp right there, and you can stamp your notebook. Um, so a perfect use case was uh like uh different temples have their own stamps. And so if you go inside the temple, you find the you find the stamp stand. And um, of course, you know, you stamp your little book and you can kind of move on. They do it at all the train stations. Um, and then there was like some, you know, if you follow like anime, there's like a there was a one piece, you know, pop-up that had their own stamp there as well. And so it's a kind of a way to get people to come to your pop-up store, not that they needed a stamp in order to do that because it's so incredibly popular. Um, but it was, I thought it was just such a creative way to get people to explore different areas of the city. And you have, I have one of the coolest souvenirs I've ever gotten from any city I've ever been to that I can look back on. Um, and they even had like um, and I don't know that the you know, Japan or like any government entity created this, but they have a an app that was like, you know, stamps, you know, in Japan. And you could pull up wherever you are in the city or in downtown Tokyo. I don't know if they did it statewide, but in tok any part of Tokyo, you could pull up this app and you could find all of the nearby stamps and go in and check out that business or that check out that temple that you might not have known was even around the corner, because that was another cool aspect, is like you just had these shrines and temples that you know are just existing in like downtown areas. Um, so you know, it was it was definitely um super fun trip and there were a lot of logistics, you know, kind of tied around it. Um, but I thought those are probably two of the the bigger like kind of pull stories is you know, the the port-themed theme park, which I don't know exists anywhere else, and then the secret supply chain of ceramics and how they play a role, how a toilet maker from Japan plays a role in modern-day technology where you know AI chips uh or just chips in general, semiconductors, you know, all that is involved within that supply chain that powers our everyday life. Um key component of that comes from Japan too.
SPEAKER_01
1:46:54
Which is so crazy because I think we've talked about semiconductors before, and I almost wonder if like uh Toto has like a um ceramic like uh IP or something that like no one else could get because of how they're explaining that, you know.
SPEAKER_04
1:47:12
Well, I think it's two companies total that um that control essentially that entire supply chain. And I think I I got an image um that's up on the screen. I had uh all of my notes, I felt I filtered it through uh ChatGPT, and it came up with um this image that to use for this uh for this episode to talk about all of the different, you know, sort of toilets in the chip supply chain. So if you're if you're just listening, it's just basically an image that kind of talks in detail about what we just talked about, just in a slightly you know more condensed way. Um, but it talks about this company in particular, founded in 1917. Um, a washlet maker turned chip supplier. Um I think they actually had lost money for like 30 years until they started doing chip manufacturing and not, you know, not investment advice, but um the the stock price. I would um I know I immediately went to that's I immediately added it to my Fidelity account because they're only one of two makers. And if uh hey the I have a the philosophy of uh investing in the the picks and the shovels. Um, and so this was one company that I was like, well, it sounds like this is something I'm gonna invest in. Um so yeah, you can feel not investment advice. Uh I have to give that caveat, but uh it's definitely something I'm looking into.
SPEAKER_01
1:48:31
What toilet advice? It is not pressure, it is not investment advice, but it is toilet advice.
SPEAKER_04
1:48:37
Yes. And did you know that you can, if you too have invested in a very affordable Amazon bidet attachment, that Amazon also sells, and I'm sure there's other people that sell this as well. I just haven't looked that far. Um, but that you can get a heated warm seat and you can also get instant heated water. Um, I'm not sure how exactly they do that, but it's only a few hundred bucks. I would have expected that to be, you know, added, you know, an extra zero on the end of that. Um, but I probably still would have paid it. But the fact that it's, you know, you can get the same, mostly the same thing as the the two biggest features that I love, the heatedness, a few hundred bucks.
SPEAKER_01
1:49:19
They're not even that expensive. Low key, I low-key too. I feel like I need a new toilet. That's weird. Come back. No, I just I I cannot I cannot come back from that comment. I don't even know what to say.
SPEAKER_04
1:49:40
I think anybody who's been understands. Like they they just understand, and if you don't, soon. Soon you will understand. Amazon has a return window that that you can take advantage of as well.
SPEAKER_01
1:49:53
Yeah, exactly. No, they're really not that expensive.
SPEAKER_04
1:49:57
It's only a few hundred bucks, and I say only with the caveat of it brings that much. It's like what people say whenever you're investing in a mattress. Like if you spend that much time sleeping, then you should invest in something that's gonna give you a better quality. And I I I'm gonna girl math it with uh a you know a toilet seat as well.
SPEAKER_01
1:50:17
Yeah, I actually same for pillows, same for pillows.
SPEAKER_04
1:50:21
Yes, which Japan is also famously known for like making custom-made pillows. I bought a hairbrush from Don Kyote. I bought a lot of things from Don Quixote, but I bought a hairbrush that has changed my life. Uh, it and I did not think it would be something that would change my life in that regard, but it is the best hairbrush I have ever purchased. Um I'll put a link to it maybe in the show notes if if anyone's interested.
SPEAKER_01
1:50:46
If you like golf too, I'll tell you, I I haven't bought them, but I there's a couple of YouTubers I've seen that go over have gone over for this. If you're a big golf guy, you can get golf clubs for the low in Japan. I know a lot of people go over there, they'll buy a set of clubs, they'll ship them back to America. Um, but you can get like a good set of clubs for a fraction of the cost in Japan as well. So there's a hack you can also get. Take your life to Japan, get yourself some golf clubs.
SPEAKER_04
1:51:18
You'll love there's so many things that uh, you know, it I think with any country you go to, there's always gonna be things that you wish you could have done more of or done again. And this I mean, Japan is the is. Definitely up there. One thing that I wish I would have gotten that I didn't get was um jeans because they're just known for some of their textiles, jeans in particular. Um, I probably wouldn't have been able to wear them, you know, for living in Florida, you know, for like six more months. It's dreadfully hot. I'm even sweating inside of my office right now, and I'm wearing shorts and a kind of somewhat of a tank top, but it's it's yeah. So jeans were one of them, eyeglasses were another. Yes. All right. Well, let's uh I I think we've kind of um we we've talked about, you know, Japan, we've talked a lot about you know different supply chains. Let's move into our last couple of segments here because um we've got I I've got a good one for uh favorite freight marketing. I can I can kind of go through this one pretty quickly. What about you? Did you pick out a favorite freight marketing?
SPEAKER_01
1:52:19
I don't have a favorite, actually, I do have one. It's not really marketing, but I do have one. Um, but I I do have also a port, a source to port. Okay, good. A source to porch. Porch, yes. Yes. Well, you have you all ported out, you know.
SPEAKER_04
1:52:37
Well, I bought that domain name, and so that's why I I you know I'm I'm thinking about it because I I gotta do something with that. And you know, especially when we've done a lot of these stories, which speaking of which, I I do believe we have a freight friends landing page or we have a source to porch landing page on the Everything Is Logistics site, and you were featured there quite heavily because of all of these stories that we've done over the years for Source to Porch. Um, but since you don't have one, I I have one really quickly that I wanted to talk about in the favorite freight marketing. And that was, you know, the depending on when you're listening to this, America just celebrated a huge July 4th anniversary, 250. And so, because of that, there were a lot of celebrations all over the country that were taking place. Um, a few of these different celebrations were in the works for a while because it required, you know, a lot of time and uh investments to be made in the graphics part of it. So let me show on the screen right now is all of these different companies from around the country that outfitted their fleets, either their trains or their trucks, with you know, sort of a 250 design. Um, one of them we have up on the street screen right now is from Mac Trucks. Um, they said uh tribute to the land of the free and home of the brave to celebrate the historic 250th birthday of the United States. We created a custom-wrapped commemorative truck that you can see on display at the Macworld headquarters in Greensboro, North Carolina. Um so they say stop by all month long. You can take a selfie with the truck. Um, but you know, just some cool, you know, designs on the truck itself. It's wrapped really nice. Um, another company that did this as well is uh the Grand Canyon Rail locomotive that was outfitted with all of these different wraps. And I would love to see like the DIY behind this of how they actually did this. Um, but really cool. But I'm gonna save the best for last because there was what well, before I do that, I do want to share this video of how this kind of came to be because one of the locomotives um that was uh I guess created for this um or for this camp for this 250 campaign. Why am I showing um all these subtitles in a different language? Um, anyways, uh we're showing up, we're showing our captions in a different language here. So I'm gonna turn this off. Um, let's see, we got some sound now, but it's a quick 30-second video on one of the trains that was outfitted. It's from Norfolk Southern, and um, they did the whole rap thing as well, but it was also one of their trains that originally hauled the Liberty Bell. Um, so I thought it was pretty cool in order to share with you guys I'm gonna play this quick clip. You don't play too much on um Twitter, but this the tall ships, did you see any of that footage that came out?
SPEAKER_02
1:56:11
Oh wait, hold on, you're muted.
SPEAKER_01
1:56:15
No.
SPEAKER_04
1:56:19
Uh no. So okay. So for the 250, so let me um let me go back to my notes really quick because for the 250, New York Harbor, July 3rd through the 8th, um, it just wrapped. It was the largest peacetime maritime gathering in American history. Tall ships from 20 nations sailed from the Verazio Bridge, passed in review at the Statue of Liberty, and then went up to the Hudson to the George Washington Bridge, and it was flanked by 40 plus naval vessels in only the seventh international naval review ever had. Um, it was a hundred-plus aircraft led by the Blue Angels. Um, it was a direct callback to what's called op sale, and it took place during the bicentennial in 1976, so 50 years ago. Um, but it was, you know, just ship tours and it was all these ancient ships that you've probably heard about, you know, in storybooks and things like that. First, I want to show this one tab because it's so beautiful. This is real footage that I'm showing on the screen right now. That is real footage of these ships in the harbor in New York. And tell me that does not look like an oil painting. Like, this is a real video that was Game of Thrones from two weeks ago. Isn't it incredible? Like these are all like these replica ships that were uh created, you know, sometimes decades ago. Um it it's super scary, in my opinion. But the could you imagine being someone, you know, uh 500 years ago to get on a ship like this and sail off to a country, you don't even know if it exists or not. Um you know, the dark of night, um, you know, you know, you got to deal with like scurvy and uh, you know, rations and things like that. But um that so, anyways, all of that to say that all of these ships from all over the world came together in order to have what's called like a tall, it's called Sail, it was called Sail Forth Um for the 250. And that was the campaign. So I'm just gonna play a short video um and it just shows all of the different ships that came and what country they came from. Um, but we got ships from all over you know, South America, Central America, Europe, um, Italy, Spain, of course, because obviously, you know, they they have a big sailing history, Portugal as well. This man pissed me off. Is it this? I mean, uh to me, like they they did such a terrible job of like marketing this. I even saw uh Sal Marcogliano, friend of uh of the show, make a note of this of how he had no idea this was even going on, and that there was no live feed of it. And so for a lot of these like recaps or to learn more about these ships, you really had to rely on the folks that were there live in attendance and see the footage that they recorded. And so that's where a lot of this different um footage is all coming from. But it was it was the largest one since you know the bicentennial, um, you know, 50 years ago. So I just thought that that was a really cool display of, you know, not just uh, you know, the the trains and the trucks that are, you know, have you know a wrap that's put on them, but all of the effort that went into the logistics of coordinating all of these historic replicas and these ships to come to the New York harbor and kind of you know just emphasize, you know, the sort of the story of America. Um, so I I thought it was um really, really cool. I think that was my favorite part of the fourth, besides fireworks, of course. Um, but to be able to see all of those tall ships, you know, and kind of you know, be on full display.
SPEAKER_01
2:00:04
I will say I will say, well, I'm kind of pissed because I miss uh Anne Taylors with wedding by one day, you know, so close. No one wants to go to that wedding. Yeah, because a lot of people like lively did. Um that's some hot cost. But no, it's funny, like our hotel was literally across the street from it. We just missed that. Oh, dang. Yeah, sad. But I will say, big Liberty Bell fan finally went there. Um, in about what, two months ago, month ago, May, two months ago. Um Liberty Vell's awesome. Go check out that museum. Uh, and also Philly, right? Yeah, the Constitution Museum is sick too. And if you want this hat, you can go and get it there.
SPEAKER_03
2:00:51
So I'll say Yeah, that hat is pretty awesome.
SPEAKER_01
2:00:53
Yeah, this hat is freaking awesome. I saw it from across listen, I'm a sucker for a museum gift shop, okay?
SPEAKER_04
2:01:02
Yeah, if you're just listening, uh, she has a baseball cap on and it has um an eagle with a tail and wings on the the hat on the main part of the hat. So um not just a a little imprinted thing. This is a full-on like 3D eagle built into the structure of the hat itself. So that's why you got to watch these types of episodes over on YouTube. Go find us, everything is logistics, and you'll be able to see this at about the uh two-hour mark if you're not watching this as an isolated segment. So um, yeah, I I thought the the tall ships crews, if you're you're interested in in seeing more videos from that, highly, highly recommend um going and looking at some of you know the the top videos. Um, a lot of these things have gone viral and it just like it just makes you appreciate, I think, too, like all of the old school like oil paintings that you saw from that era, and then you compare it with that video that we showed earlier, and it really is incredible of you know just how accurate a lot of those oil paintings were. Um but yeah, I I thought it was uh pretty cool. So let's move on to our final segment.
SPEAKER_01
2:02:07
And that is can I drop my freight marketing thing? Oh yeah, I thought you didn't have one, but go ahead. I I thought of one last minute. And that's it's I'm gonna give a fast shout out to Toy Story 5 because you brought us a container. We needed a container, a situation in a Toy Story movie. Not only did you bring us a container, you brought us a container in the first minute of the movie. And uh it immediately reminded me of the ducks situation. Uh, except for instead of ducks, it was Buzz Lightyear. That's not a spoiler alert, you can still see the movie. Um, but yeah, I saw that and I was like, life needs to see this movie. We got containers and Toy Story. We love it. So shout out shout out to you, Disney, for thinking about us.
SPEAKER_04
2:02:53
Yeah, and it's very selfishly. I'll have to go now and watch skip all of the other ones that I I've only seen the first one. I I haven't seen the rest of them, though I hear that they are all very good.
SPEAKER_01
2:03:03
Uh yeah, I would actually suggest you watch all of them.
SPEAKER_04
2:03:08
Do you have to watch them in order? No. Is it a continuous story?
SPEAKER_01
2:03:13
No, you wouldn't, but you would be like, what's going on with Woody if you just skip to the last one? You would like like you I guess I spoiled that Woody's still alive, but like theoretically, you're gonna be like, well, what you if you didn't see four, you're gonna be very confused by what Woody's up to. But uh no, you could watch them independently for sure. Especially you could just watch the first 10 minutes and you'd get the container reference, you know. Yeah, that's probably all I just and probably just I I would also argue though with you that they're the best sequels ever made in in the history of movie sequels outside of Lord of the Rings. I know. Calm down, calm down. Outside of Lord of the Rings.
SPEAKER_03
2:03:56
Yeah, I said outside because I knew we're the caveat and the extra, you know, examination, you know, pushing up the glasses.
SPEAKER_01
2:04:04
That's that's immediately the eagles could have probably saved them the whole time, but you know we don't have enough time for this. That's a lortering show. Just know you're wrong, but for a very small audience. That's just a trigger I like to put on.
SPEAKER_04
2:04:18
Matthew Leffler, friend of the show, will appreciate that. And he will also appreciate me just shutting it down and being like, You're wrong.
SPEAKER_01
2:04:27
Um, do you do you want me to do my source to porch?
SPEAKER_04
2:04:31
Yeah, let's do that now. Um let's uh Blythe Milligan here, Gray Sharky, everything is logistics, probably presented by SPI Logistics. And uh, this is our favorite segment of the Freight Friends episode, and that is Source to Porch, where we each pick a product and trace how it gets from point A all the way to your porch. Um, so I've got a Sri Lanka story. I've saved that for you know the end of the show, but you have one that I want to get to first.
SPEAKER_01
2:04:59
Yeah, let's do yours last because yours is gonna be pretty good. Mine is an interesting source to porch story, and it's mostly the porch exists in the middle of Antarctica. So this is actually Antarctica. I knew you would, I knew you loved this, and I think you were gone when this happened. So I I almost wonder if you missed this situation happening. So about a month ago, there's an iceberg hanging out in Antarctica, and it just had a couple containers on it. And people were like, Where did these things come from? Because they didn't wash up on container or onto an iceberg. They were just sitting on top of an iceberg, and that's when we all got to learn about a little something called the, and I'm gonna say this wrong, probably the new mayor station three, which is a German Antarctic research station run by specific institute inside of Germany. Well, outside of Germany, I guess you could say. Um, so basically, what this is is it's a port theoretically, it's a location where they can drop containers off for all the researchers that are in Antarctica and use this like port or station to move things around. It's uh the first of two stations now that are in the area. Um, and it's moved repeatedly because of clearly the area it's in. So oftentimes I've shelves move, which spoiler alert, let me tell you how this story ends. Um, and or often snow just buries them completely. Uh, and they're used year-round for again, polar science, not just people hanging out. It's about 50 people that are stationed at this uh specific location, and it uses uh around 15 or so uh hydraulic legs to like lift itself up uh during times of the year where the snow gets like too high. Uh so it's basically like standing on stilts. And I can I can send you pictures later if you want to like put them up. Um, but if you Google it, you can see some cool pictures of it as well. Uh they focus on ozone monitoring there, of course, uh Earth's magnetic field, all that fun stuff. Um, but what's actually a fun fact about this is uh once a year this uh snow gets so high uh and the Empire penguins start like colonizing in the area. So every year, like the the crew gets a good time to just watch all the penguins migrate and hang out. Um, trying to remember what that penguin movie was called, but it's those same penguins in Antarctica. If you're looking for it, it's it's N-E-U-M-A-Y-E-R station. Um, and it's used for yeah, moving things around in that specific area. So usually they bring extra spare parts, food, fuel. It's a big fuel spot in particular. Um, and again, oftentimes can be buried. So they use this like legs to actually lift itself out of the ground. Uh, it freezes over every winter, and that's when the nice penguins come and hang out. And during that winter time, too, as you know, as we talked about the opposite side of the world in the past, uh, it has polar nights, right? It's just no sun from basically right now, late May to July, uh, the end of July. So right now they're uh they probably think it's nighttime if they were listening to this. So shout out to all the new mayor station people who don't know what time it is. And uh so basically, uh uh what happened originally was in January, uh they had moved uh, I think six or seven containers uh about a couple hundred meters from the coast just to get them ready for a waste pickup. Uh and then all of a sudden uh shelf broke and they had a big blizzard that came through. And when it cleared uh about eight days later, the staging place was just gone. The whole shelf of ice, about 500 meters, actually just you know caved off and fell into the sea, taking seven containers along with it. Um, and of course, they were able to chase that down. They had it get the big problem with these is that there was again fuel and waste in them. So they were really, I think, nervous about there being some type of like spill or situation. So they're able to finally track them down. A few of them did fall off and sink, uh, a few of them were still on there. Uh and now uh there's new regulation that basically uh they they have the the ship has to be a certain distance away moving forward, um, just in case an ice shelf falls off again, which you know warring, who knows? Uh, but it is cool. If you look at the pictures, like it's like they're just like little baby ants of containers that sitting on this giant ice shelf. Oh yeah, you found it perfect. Um and then I think if there's like a fuel container, like trying to pick it up in there too, yeah. So hey, you know, there's I just think that's so silly. Like there's hanging out. Imagine like being a polar bear and you're just like it's just me in these little containers. So yeah, why are they down there? Because everything and everywhere is logistics, and even those doing the science down in Antarctica, whether or not you want to believe, you know, that's the end of the earth, that's up to you. You know, maybe it's flat, maybe that's where the wall is. But uh, we're down there doing research, and uh that's how they they send them, of course, things. And beforehand, as of a couple months ago, whenever they have waste, they would just move it to the side, but now they gotta wait till ships are close in order to do so.
SPEAKER_04
2:10:41
So yeah, I I think one of the coolest parts about Anarch, literally and figuratively, about Antarctica is that they don't necessarily have, from what I understand, they don't have a traditional port. Um, and so they these icebergs are essentially the port. And so they put these containers as close to the edge as they can because the ships that will pick them up, they get as close to the iceberg as they can, and then they have a crane that comes off of the ship in order to either pick up or deliver. And, you know, they're probably in, you know, with with this image that we're seeing, you know, picking up waste, picking up um things that are no longer needed because they can't leave anything there, you're not even, from what I understand, you're not even allowed to um like pee on the ice because it's just such a scientific zone that it's so cold that it your your pee is just going to just stay there because it's not gonna get like washed away by any rain or anything like that. It's just gonna stay there for forever.
SPEAKER_01
2:11:43
Um if you go to that other picture that shows it from like above, it's imagine just like there being a blizzard and waking up and being like, hey, where'd that go?
SPEAKER_04
2:11:54
Ernest Shackleton remembers or he did. And it's like a great book if you love logistics and you love Antarctica type stuff. Um Ernest Shackleton uh was the captain of the endurance ship. They famously uh were trying to do a South Pole mission. Um they crashed before they could even you know reach the the South Pole, but they survived every single spoiler alert. It's probably one of the greatest survival stories of all time. A great 10 out of 10 book. Um sorry, go ahead. I just have to see that as an opportunity because that book is so good.
SPEAKER_01
2:12:26
No, it's just like, you know, you know me, the ocean already freaks me out a little bit. Like I can't imagine waking up and being like, oh, okay, that's fun.
SPEAKER_04
2:12:35
Well, he in a lot of the the book they talk about, you know, the ice flows and how you know that you could be on top of an iceberg like this, but because there's so much of it that you don't see, um, something could impact it, something could, you know, crash into it, and the whole iceberg could flip. And so for Shackleton and a lot of his crew, you know, this happened frequently where they would set up camp. Like imagine like losing, you know, imagine your ship just being, you know, just stuck in the ice. And then imagine it just being crushed by the ice to the point where like one day it's just gonna sink to the bottom, which the Discovery Channel actually just recently discovered it within the last year, um, and had like this uh, you know, this special edition where they they showed the ship and what it looks like at the bottom of the ocean. First time it's been seen since it actually sunk. Um, but he imagine like all of that happening and then being like, okay, I'm gonna set up camp, and then you set Up camp, and then you have to have people watch guard 24 hours a day because if the ice starts shifting, then everybody immediately has to get up and grab everything that they can in order to move to the area where the ice isn't shifting. It's just a constant, just like mental game. And I I I love Antarctica, so I love that you you brought this story. Um, because I think it's just such a fascinating look into the human psyche, too. And I think that what happens a lot on Antarctica, we're gonna see a lot of these uh situations happen in space. So I think that, you know, we're from whatever these issues that are happening in Antarctica, you're you're gonna, I mean, that there's what's to say that this won't happen on like a meteor um or you know, part of a planet, uh, you know, trying to set up these different like ports and ways to deliver supplies and how you know the in just extreme environment impacts all of that. So yeah, super cool.
SPEAKER_01
2:14:29
Just imagine like the bunch of buzz leg years just walking out of those containers.
SPEAKER_04
2:14:34
Or like what is it? Like a King Kong or Godzilla. Um that's where you enter the uh the other world, I think is I don't know the exact phrase that they use, but yeah, that that's how you enter the the upside down world that King Kong lives in.
SPEAKER_01
2:14:49
Yeah, you're right. I love Godzilla. Don't get me started. That's like that's a low-key thing people know about me. I am a big Godzilla fan.
SPEAKER_04
2:14:58
Oh, so from uh they had some epic merch in Japan, obviously, around Godzilla. So we got we did get a couple things. Um, because they had this entire like mall, like a you know, seven-story mall, and one of the floors was like Nintendo and Sega and Godzilla and just all of those like different fan franchises, a bunch of stamps too, which is cool.
SPEAKER_01
2:15:21
Don't you love how they put the food like when you go to restaurants and stuff, they put the food like already made so you can like see. Did you do you know I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_04
2:15:30
Yeah. Yeah, they do that in Miami too.
SPEAKER_01
2:15:33
Oh yeah. That's real south for me, dude. You could be there once.
SPEAKER_04
2:15:39
He wasn't as far as maybe we should do a a a story on this in the future, too. But there's a whole like market for um it's it's like the fake food that you can show as a display for customers walking by. Like it's it's an actual like craft that people you know try to eat. Looks it obviously it doesn't look as good as like the real thing, but it looks pretty freaking close to where you have to like touch it just to see if it's like real or not.
SPEAKER_01
2:16:05
At that show, I met a girl who like that's when she was there getting leads to take photos for of food for like their you know websites and stuff like that. I I go, let me ask you this is the mashed potato ice cream thing legit? And she's like, she she basically like read me for Phil. She's like, Yeah, if you're not a good photographer, and I was like, Whoa, shots fired. I guess it's true.
SPEAKER_04
2:16:32
I I've heard glue too. Glue is another one that like you show like melting ice cream, and yeah, ugh, ugh. Okay. Speaking of things that are not ugh, I want to talk about Sri Lanka because it was probably one of the I I've been very blessed enough to visit, you know, a few different countries in Sri Lanka. I didn't know what to quite expect, um, but it was blown away at the hospitality, at the food, at um also just the affordability, especially as an American coming there and being able to, you know, take part in certain activities. It's, I mean, it's it's if you think of like if you've been to like a Caribbean island, imagine like an Indian Caribbean island. Um that that's essentially what we got to experience with like the best seafood, the best curries. Um, and this is also an area of the world that has thousands and thousands of years of trade history. Um, one of those, and one of their top commodities, especially from a historical standpoint, is tea. Um, the country used to be called Ceylon based on the Ceylon tea. And that's what what uh uh Britain called it. And that was um I I don't know how many folks are aware of like the opium, the original opium wars um that took place between Britain and uh China, but China held on to like the tea dominance for uh, you know, hundreds, maybe thousands of years. And so a lot of the secrets around like cultivating tea and brewing it and um you know, not just shoving it and grounding it in a powder and putting it into you know a bag, which is how most of us experience tea, um, but like hand rolling it and picking off different leaves during different parts of the you know the cultivation process and how it makes white tea. And then if it oxidizes, it makes uh you know green tea. If it oxidizes even more, it's black tea, it's all of these different variations that are all grown in a very hyper-specific climate. And so when Britain did their corporate espionage, they actually sent a botanist, um, made him like grow out his hair and shaved it in like a way that traditional Chinese men uh shaved like most of their head and then had braids, you know, coming out for like one um area of the head where the the hair was allowed to grow. This botanist from Britain like grew his hair out, um, posed as a traitor from another part of China and was able to infiltrate, you know, certain parts of the country to find out where foreigners were not allowed, to find out the cultivation practices, uh, in order to be able to take this these tea secrets, which this drink was exploding in popularity over in Britain, because I think one of the kings in Britain had married uh a woman from Portugal and she was already in the tea game, which Portugal obviously has a very you know complicated colonial past and colonial history. Um, and they were in you know, sort of the Southeast Asia of the world uh long before Britain was. And so because the queen was, you know, drinking this tea and and loved it so much, uh naturally other people started, it started becoming like a fashionable thing. So the demand for tea just exploded through the roof. But China did not want to give up the secrets of growing it and cultivating it because that was their, you know, an economic powerhouse for them. So Britain gets the spy, they he infiltrates it, spends years with the different tea experts that and he found documented everything on how they were growing it, the environments they were growing it. It requires a specific like uh altitude and humidity, and so then they took all of those trade secrets and then they brought that to a certain part of India, but mostly Sri Lanka. Um, and so it a lot of people will think, well, oh, all the tea farms were just brought over to India. India is a big ass country, yeah. Um, but Sri Lanka, the entire island, has the perfect uh growing environment for tea. And so it used to be that the country, I think in the 1800s, they grew coffee, but disease wiped out all of the coffee plantations. And so that's when they switched over to tea, and it was called Ceylon. Um, I don't think that I think it was around the 70s, uh 1970s that uh the country's official name was changed to Sri Lanka. They also went through a bunch of like um internal issues, civil war, things like that um over the last hundred years. Um, but tea has become their number one commodity, well, yeah, their number one commodity in addition to cinnamon. Um, so uh for folks who may not be aware, like cinnamon is also like just one of these products that really only grows. And in Ceylon cinnamon in particular, uh is used in a lot of cooking, used in a lot of uh spice trade. In fact, the spice trade was around um was originally was the first trade route that was established before the Silk Road. Um so the spice trade, you know, uh pepper and um uh God, cloves and question is is cinnamon like come from the ground?
SPEAKER_01
2:21:59
How does it like grow? Is it good question?
SPEAKER_04
2:22:02
It comes from a tree, and so uh basically the the the tree grows, and if you chop it off, um the way it's sort of manufactured is that you you chop that part of the tree off and then another one will sprout up, but it's the bark. So I have some some Ceylon tea here that um we bought there, and basically what it is is that it's the outer layer.
SPEAKER_01
2:22:25
What's up? Does the tree like smell like cinnamon or cinnamon or is it kind of so it smells like cinnamon?
SPEAKER_04
2:22:31
And if you look at you know the uh a piece of like raw cinnamon, so this is the the bark from around the tree, and so what they do is they make a small after they chop the tree down, they make a small cut into the side of the tree and they rip the bark from from the outside of the tree itself, and so that you can kind of see like the shape of a cinnamon stick, it's from that bark that has been cut off of the outside of the tree, and then when it dries out, it shrinks. And so the middle of it is also other parts of the tree that they kind of stuff in there. So that's it's the manufacturing process of both tea and cinnamon have to mostly be done by hand. Um, but it also requires these very specific growing environments, and um, you know, the the people of Sri Lanka have spent, you know, hundreds, probably thousands of years, you know, perfecting a lot of, especially the cinnamon process, um, but uh a lot of their other spices, uh pepper is another one that fueled the the spice trade as well. Um, I know that there's a couple of other spices that cloves is another one. Uh I'm blanking on the name, but I know it starts with a C. Um, but a lot of these different spices all originated in Sri Lanka. And for I'm also, I guess, you know, caveat. I'm reading this incredible book. So it's called A Splendid Exchange, and it basically talks about the history of supply chain and how all these different trade routes were started. I'm only I'm less than a hundred pages in. I don't know if you can see like how many dog ears. Oh wait, here, like how many dog ears I've already made. But apparently, like the furthest China is very much has been famously in like an isolationist type of country. Um, but when they did start sailing, the furthest west that they will they would go was Sri Lanka. And so they would essentially bring, you know, their silks and their teas and all of their different commodities. They would bring them to Sri Lanka. And then from Sri Lanka, um, they Sri Lanka is like seven, even modern day, like 70% of the country is all transshipments. And so things are brought to Sri Lanka, and then Sri Lanka is a divvying up point. And so freight moves through um the Suez Canal, freight moves through India, um, especially from you know China to the Middle East. That is um like Silk Road Heaven. And so where the spice routes originally formed also fueled where the silk trade took place as well. And what I think is like the the coolest part of uh you know this story is like not only you know how long this country has spent, you know, cultivating and perfecting um some of these commodities that are just staples in our homes, but it's also from the lens of how they used all of the different trade routes and how other countries discovered all of these different spices that it just fueled public interest into this area of the world. And so it's just um I was blown away at like the hospitality of the country as well. Uh just I will say doing Japan and Sri Lanka on the same trip, like the Japanese people were not by any means rude or uh not welcoming, they were very, very friendly. But I would say that the Sri Lanka people were uh just they wanted you to be engulfed in their culture.
SPEAKER_02
2:25:53
Yeah.
SPEAKER_04
2:25:54
Yes. So they wanted to teach you, they wanted you to learn. Um, whereas like Japan, you can almost I don't want to say that I don't want to be, I don't want to sound rude. Um they and because they weren't rude by any means, but it it didn't feel if I had to compare the two, one was very welcoming and one was just kind of reserved.
SPEAKER_01
2:26:14
The niceness I think of Japan is almost a tourist niceness because I because they under I think they understand their economy kind of runs on that. Yeah. That makes sense. So it's like I'm not saying that they aren't be they're being nice as they have to, but I think it's like it's that that's the sense. It's like your visitors, we treat visitors this way, where I it sounds like um like yeah, like well, and I and I I was also gonna ask you too, like Sri Lanka that going there with family, you know, seems like very interesting as well. Like being a that's like a country where I would almost like want to go with someone I knew who lived there or something, so I could like fully be in it. So that's awesome.
SPEAKER_04
2:26:55
And then just um I showing another uh image here from the Sri Lanka, like then versus today sort of uh history, their textiles are also incredible. So like think like linens and um things like that, like buying like quality products, coconuts as well. Like I if you go to the the the Caribbean, uh coconuts are they've become so much of a a standard com not a standard commodity, but a high demand commodity where it's very difficult to like just walk through the jungle and like find a random coconut kind of you know sitting on the ground to the point where like you can regularly have access to to coconuts if that makes sense. And Sri Lanka are freaking everywhere. Uh we have my cousin is is from Jamaica and he was talking about um how in Jamaica like if you see coconuts on a tree, like someone is climbing that freaking tree and taking down all of the coconuts and keeping them. Um but in Sri Lanka they were everywhere. So coconut trade was uh, you know, another like huge thing for them. Um, gems and jewelry, so there's a lot of like sapphires that you know are only found in Sri Lanka. Um tea is obviously what's up.
SPEAKER_01
2:28:05
It makes sense too. It just makes total sense to, I mean, India is quite small on this map, but like it is the center, you know, and not having to go completely inland to India to like for trade, like especially I think it's like 50 nautical miles that separates the two countries.
SPEAKER_04
2:28:22
Like, obviously, you know, this is an AI generated image of what's on the screen right now, but it's um it's much smaller, obviously, than than India.
SPEAKER_01
2:28:30
It is like a center of like Southeast Asia, Arabia, etc. Um, it'd be interesting as you like read that book too, if like um the politics of it all, because like uh you could use Sri Lanka as this like like um like kind of safe haven, right? Not have to worry about like getting too deep into India or too deep into you know something and and refuel whatever they would consider that back in the day.
SPEAKER_04
2:28:57
Yeah. I mean, I I definitely think there was a lot of like uh you know complications as well, um, especially under British rule. For I think that kind of goes without saying. Um, but there's I I guess from like a big business standpoint, it still feels like a country that has largely been ignored, um, with the exception, I would say, of tea manufacturers. And there was one um video that I was watching before this um that was talking about how, you know, like Lipton, like the the guy who like Mr. Lipton himself, like had a uh had a farm, had a tea farm in Sri Lanka. And but what they did is that they took all of the tea and they just sort of mass produced it. But now there's a movement that's going on within Sri Lanka because harvesting cinnamon, harvesting tea is very labor intensive. And like we've seen with other commodities, especially cocoa, um, like we've talked about on this show, where the farmers are the ones that are making the least amount of money. That is very much the case here um with Sri Lanka too, where it's it's I think it was the quote was is like you look around at different tea farms and it's all older people that are doing this job. Younger people are not doing this job. But one association that is trying to um make a difference in that is called uh CADA, and that is the Ceylon Artisan Tea Association. So they're trying to teach the not to get your tea in like these small little ground up powdery bags where it impacts the taste, but to go to our the artisan route of that supports you know actual farmers, actual people who are taking the the time and dedication of you know thousands of years of knowledge, and then to be able to keep that practice still alive. So um I'll I'll put a link in the show notes, um, but it's C-A-T-A dot L K. Um, but that is for the Ceylon Artisanal Tea Association, and they aim to elevate tea farming communities, uh promote environmental sustainability, deliver exceptional quality artisan teas or artisanal teas. Um, and that was one of the big things too that I wish I would have been able to do like in Sri Lanka is like take a tea tour. But just driving throughout the countryside, all we saw were like these farms of of tea, of cinnamon, rice patties. Uh, another amazing thing, too, is you just have freaking elephants just walking around everywhere, just like wild elephants off the side of the street. Uh they have safaris there too. So it's very much like this um the this this country that I I didn't know would like touch my soul in the way that it did. But it it just uh this one of those places where it's like I will absolutely be back um in order to to be able to take part in stuff like this, you know, though with the you know, the tea plantations and things like that. And it I think um I'm not alone in this sentiment as well, as like especially with um a country that sort of like just hits you at a a soul level, whereas like Japan, I loved and I had a fantastic time. Didn't hit my soul like the Sri Lanka trip did. And going with family definitely helped a ton. Um, but with I shared a picture standing in in the their capital, which is Colombo, and their port city of Colombo. You can see like the port and the trade lane in the background, and friend of the show said that a lot. We're we're lucky enough on uh everything is logistics to have a lot of friends of the show, and one of those is uh very near and dear to both of us, and that's Janet Labuda. Um, she is the head of trade and customs, I believe, at Mirsk. And she shared with me that she has um, she she commented on the on the LinkedIn post and she says, I have a wonderful dear friend there that I've known for 40 years. She is a holy family sister. Right now I'm doing a fundraising for her to help a destitute family get a house built and a place where village children can gather for studies and extracurricular activities. Um, she talked about, you know, I'm glad you had a chance to visit, uh, but they had a devastating cyclone hit earlier this year, which flooded much of the country. Um, and so she has been working with this organization, uh, Sisters of Sri Lanka. Uh, I guess she met them about 40 years ago when customs transferred me to the Netherlands. My job was to sew goodwill in the European Customs Services. Um, I just had to, she had completed a tour of various ports and border areas in Italy, uh, but she was flying back to the base and she shared her flight with the two holy family religious sisters, Sister Rita and Sister Rainey from Sri Lanka. And they were on their per on their way to Peru, another great country, uh, to do missionary work. Um, but she was she developed a relationship with these people. Um, she has since helped to raise a lot of money for different causes. I think, you know, one girl she talked about was going blind, so she helped, you know, fund surgery in order to help her. Just, you know, an organization that she likes to partner with and raise money where, you know, if you donate a hundred USD to Sri Lanka, and that that could make, you know, that's we're I think the average we looked it up where like the average citizen in Sri Lanka earned about 450 USD per month. And so when you think about like how much the dollar could go, um, this was a a perfect use case. And I just wanted to shine a light on it because Janet was talking about how they're raising money um for this um small area of the country where they had the cyclone hit. And then also um, you know, for uh this particular story, the husband left one family and all of the children now, they they don't necessarily have a place where they can live in an appropriate way. It's just basically a bunch of cinder blocks, no roof on the house, um, things like that. So it's, you know, it's if you have any means, um I'm gonna put an address in the show notes of where you can send a check in order to help. Um, but Janet kind of Janet, I think is I I would say one of the more trustworthy people in this industry. She is probably my favorite interview of all time. I think she's featured like on the home page of everything is logistics. Um, but she talks about is you know, it's very much a grassroots effort in order to raise money on her part. A dear friend is donating $5,000. So wanted to make sure I had a connection to a 501 here in the States. She's gotten some other friends to help out with this. So folks are making checks out to the poor Claire monastery she sends them she sends the checks to the monastery and then they do a grant to the sisters in Sri Lanka. I mean because you have to understand like you know some of these folks like don't even have a bank account. So for a lot of these organizations like the the the logistics of getting funds to the people that need it um they rely on a string of uh a string of people to to help and Janet is one of those people um that wanted to be able to help not just now but she's helped them out previously um so I will put um an address in the show notes in case you wanted to help out with this particular cause I mean it Janet is more than willing I think to to help shed light on additional information if you have any um but I just it she's she even says herself it's kind of convoluted but it works and three CPAs have weighed in on it just to make sure that she's doing everything on sort of the up and up of you know donations and making sure that they're getting to the right place and you know all of all of those different logistics Janet's job for the longest period of time was to like go to on site in China and make sure that place was legit. So I you're a thousand percent right if anyone's gonna tell you a legit charity it's gonna be Janet so but I just thought it was so sweet that she you know shared that story and you know just the the fact that uh I mean being in that there were some Uber rides girl 13 cents is all that we were charged.
SPEAKER_01
2:37:01
I was just about to say they have Uber too well they it's called Pick Me um but it works just like Uber.
SPEAKER_04
2:37:07
They have you know even like the delivery for food and things like that all within the app and you can order a tuk tuk which is like those you know oh yeah almost like a I don't want to say like a golf cart but it's like the the driver in the front and the seats in the back and um I I don't know why we don't see more of those in the States because I think they're superior to golf carts. I would love to I even looked up earlier like on Timu to see if I could find like a tuk tuk. Because I don't I don't know if you've seen like any of um like the mini boats that Timu sells and like a bunch of rednecks are trying them over the July 4th weekend. They worked surprisingly well and so I said let me let me see if they do tuk tukks as well and they do um but it's you know thinking about getting my aunt a new golf cart for her cottage too I'm just I get her a tuk tuk instead she'd hate me for that but I thought they were fantastic. So I think it's awesome and like I don't know if you're getting to it but you got to like to see that the port too like how old that port was like well it actually looked fair it so um Sri Lanka is also like 250 I'm sure you go to places like that and you're like wow this is like this is cool you know yeah I it definitely I mean I think just traveling in general unless it like challenges you and Japan didn't really challenge us in that way but Sri Lanka did where it's like you land and you got a there's a bunch of international flights landing all at the same time. It's freaking chaos at the airport whenever we first land um but as soon as we get out of the city or not we get to the city rather um because the airport that you land in is about an hour 45 minutes to an hour um from the city of Colombo but once you get to Colombo like it is just it's I would say very comparative to like uh like a big South American city where you have some some beautiful parts but then you also have you know some parts that you know just uh you know a little questionable um but I I never felt unsafe um the people were like I said were incredible um they could not wait to like share stories about their country most of them speak English um which was a difference from Japan frankly um where we were in a major city at like Tokyo and there were a lot of people that you know their English wasn't great and you know obviously that's on the tourist in order to learn their language but I, you know when you experience something like that where it's almost you feel a little bit lonely in Japan when it's just the two of you like just me and my husband versus when we go to Sri Lanka and most people speak English in addition to family being there. And so it was like we had this like really interesting group of family and locals and we got to see a different side of the country that not a lot of people I think get to see. So I just 10 out of 10 can't wait to go back um I was super happy friend of the show too uh Eric Johnson who's gonna be a guest on the show soon too he called Sri Lanka his favorite country in the world he talked about a traveler that guy has been there and that's awesome that's that's cool.
SPEAKER_01
2:40:26
You know it's it's sad too because I think like my only relation to Sri Lanka would be like the tsunami right of like what was that three four 2004?
SPEAKER_04
2:40:38
2004. Yeah and so it's like you know from like a Westerner's viewpoint you're like I hope that country's still surviving and it's like oh they're thriving honey like oh my god the waves are this because for folks who may not know um uh especially in the Indian ocean for six months out of the year the the winds flow one way and then for the other six months they flow the opposite way and the side of the island that we were on we were on the um western side of the island for the most part those winds are no joke and I grew up going to the beach I know what you know tropical storm and hurricane waves look like that was it that it was hurricane level type of waves you're not stepping a foot in I mean I I dipped my toes in just a tack um but it wasn't five minutes after doing that that another giant wave came in and soaked half of my pants like up to my knees like that is how aggressive the ocean was so I did not take a step out outside of that one time. But there was no swimming in the ocean um I I know Sri Lanka is also like a surf haven as well but that was probably on the other side of the island and damn sure wasn't on the side we weren't because you would literally die. It was scary like it and I don't I don't mess with scary waves uh it was very scary. Yeah well happy to have you still here and yeah it looks awesome the wedding looks great the dress looks great I showed my mom too she's like wow beautiful so uh yeah congrats and shout out I'm I'm excited to try uh some of the Ceylon tea I didn't get a chance to to show you guys on the screen but look how cool that little tin is little elephant looking tin.
SPEAKER_01
2:42:22
Um I was gonna ask you the cinnamon have you tried it yet like does it taste better I always thought cinnamon has like a very artificial taste and I'm just wondering if it's like I would say so I haven't tried the the cinnamon yet I was waiting to to do this this episode first.
SPEAKER_04
2:42:41
I actually opened it right before um we we started hitting record um but it doesn't taste as it doesn't smell as strong as I guess other variations. And I wonder because Ceylon you can only get Ceylon cinnamon in from Sri Lanka because of the environments and the altitude and all of the different components that you know you can actually grow um that particular tree. But I will say that they put cinnamon on so many things. They even make like cinnamon toothpicks that are apparently perfect to use after eating any kind of curry dish because it gets rid of the curry taste in your mouth and then you can actually eat the toothpick as soon as you're done with it. So we brought back some toothpicks as well lots of different spices that I can't wait to try we're actually um as soon as we you know get done with this recording which is any any minute now we're gonna go over to um the Asian Mart and we're gonna try to pick up you know a bunch of things so we can recreate the things that we had there. Egg hoppers is one of them. There's also this like coconut relish that was to die for they put on everything it's called Pulse and Bowl I'm gonna try to get the ingredients to to make that um just so I can have it in the fridge and start putting it on everything. So yeah it's uh we're gonna do some green curry too. So yeah we're we're we're gonna have a little adventure time um trying to recreate our Japan and Sri Lanka experience and try to get some of these get some of these staples in in the house but I guess that's my um my my tourism plea uh to any folks that are considering in Asian country uh choose think about Sri Lanka because it is it was incredible and like I said the people were even better sold me also maybe maybe we'll we can convince like a you know a customs official over there their customs department um anyone involved in global trade if you want to have a freight friends episode we are available yeah mayor sponsored Janet takes us over there we do dude a girls trip with Janet dude a girls trip with Janet would be fire you know that would be so fun she probably knows all the spots too that we need to hit up that exactly like she would she would take you into like a corner or something and we'd have like the best career in the world I love that I'm sorry I just got goosebumps like Janet finish that book and let's go to Sri Lanka. Yes awesome well I I think that that about does it for this show uh a new record almost three hours for this episode we told ourselves we were going to be done at 4 30 um and yet here we are starving at 7 p.m I don't know if I'm speaking for you but I know I'm freaking starving and I am starving here's here's I I'll I'll end it with my where you can find me you can find me at LinkedIn also head to orderful.com to keep up with us and watch out because next week our which is probably the same I don't know when this is coming out so it's probably out right now our second series second season of the integration hub is starting retail series focused uh we'll actually be talking to every man jack and some leaders in the space as well um so hey retail season around the corner catch up with what's going on with me as well yeah and uh last last plug for all the things if you want to hear any about any of the content that we've talked about or see more stories like this head on over to everything is logistics.com and if you want to add your own use case of how you're using AI, how we talked about it in the the start of the show, we are accepting commentary submissions. That's one thing I forgot to mention is that if you found a great use case for AI within your organization you work in logistics supply chain, we want to hear we want to feature you we're going to be doing quarterly updates to this AI use cases guide. And so that's a good way to get your solution or to get how you think about AI in front of uh you know a a bigger audience. So thanks again for tuning in and uh we will see you next time
