Logistics, Football, and Reluctant Entrepreneurship with Bulu’s Paul Jarrett

Episode Overview

Our Guest: Paul Jarrett- A Transition From D1 Football to Subscription Business Success

Paul Jarrett is not just the CEO and founder of Bulu; he is a testament to the power of transforming personal passions and adversities into substantial business successes. Growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska, Paul was embedded in a culture obsessed with football, leading him to play D1 college football at Iowa State. Despite facing significant challenges, including injuries that ultimately ended his sports career, Paul’s resilience and determination saw him pivot from the gridiron to the world of entrepreneurship. His journey into business started unexpectedly when he, on a whim fueled by necessity after quitting football, bought a Mac computer and began selling items on eBay. This marked the beginning of his transition from athlete to entrepreneur, setting the stage for his future endeavors in the subscription box industry.

Paul Jarrett’s entrepreneurial spirit is characterized by a blend of honest pragmatism and innovative thinking, traits that have fueled the growth of Bulu into a major player in the fulfillment and subscription box services sector. After completing his education at Iowa State, where he not only played football but also deepened his understanding of team dynamics and operations, Paul held various roles that honed his skills in marketing and business development. His experiences range from working in ad agencies to handling marketing for nutritional supplement companies, each role building his acumen for understanding consumer behavior and digital marketing strategies. His approach to business is heavily influenced by his sports background, emphasizing teamwork, strategy, and the long-term vision necessary for enduring success.

Under Paul Jarrett’s leadership, Bulu has become renowned for its innovative approach to the subscription box market, focusing on custom box solutions that help other companies manage and distribute their products effectively. Paul’s insights into the challenges of logistics and supply chain management, drawn from personal experience, have shaped Bulu’s service offerings, making it a preferred partner for prominent brands like Disney and GNC. His ability to integrate lessons from the sports field into business operations has been a key factor in Bulu’s success. Paul is also a sought-after speaker, known for his engaging talks that combine personal anecdotes with practical business advice, resonating particularly with aspiring entrepreneurs and business students. His talks often focus on the realism of business hardships mingled with the thrill of overcoming them, a narrative that inspires many to pursue their ventures despite the odds.

Episode Transcript

Paul Jarrett: it’s not whether things will live or die. It is what is the evolution of that era. that’s where I think people have to look at it. I just I’m so tired of people being like, what’s your blah, blah, blah strategy? And I’m like, do you mean like, what’s the most pain-free way to deliver our product to a customer? Because that’s what you’re asking, that’s ultimately the answer

Kevin Rosenquist: Hey, everybody, welcome to PayPod, where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments and fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenquist. Thanks for listening. My guest today is Paul Jarrett. He’s the CEO and founder of Bulu, a fulfillment company focusing on disrupting traditional models. We chat about college football, his career path, and how he ended up becoming a reluctant entrepreneur. He’s an honest and no-BS kind of guy, and he truly believes people are way more scared of logistics than they need to be. Joining me now from their Lincoln, Nebraska warehouse, Paul Jarrett. So you were born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and went to Iowa State to play football? Was that hard on your family who I can only assume were Husker fans?

Paul Jarrett: I think they were just shocked that I was welcome to any longer educational facility. I don’t even know the terms of them. Just to continue education, they were thrilled about it. I think deep down, everybody in Lincoln is a little bit like, “Man, how do we lose?” Husker. Somebody grew up a couple of blocks from the stadium, but since then, everything’s fine. I actually, married Husker royalty. I think I’m good. It’s been so long. People just kind of assume I played for the Huskers anyway, so I just roll with it. I’m too old. I used to fight it, but you were not going to win that conversation in Lincoln, Nebraska, so you might as well just nod.

Kevin Rosenquist: I would imagine so. But I understand, too, wanting to maybe go elsewhere. Was it a conscious decision, or was it a scholarship decision? What would it end up being?

Paul Jarrett: Well, I feel enough time has passed where I could probably just say it because it’s funny. I don’t think I’ve ever said this publicly, I was offered a lot of D2 scholarships. I was offered at three D1, big, actual sports schools. I think it was Colorado State, Iowa State, and then Nebraska, they had said kind of yes. They had coaching changes. Then they kind of came back and said, “Well, that shoulder surgery that you have, we’re going to gray shirt you.” Which meant basically for a semester they weren’t going to pay. Then it was a full ride. I got off and I told my parents and my dad said, “How do they know you’re getting a shoulder surgery?” I was like, I don’t know. It turned out my doctor was their team doctor. He has since then been busted for plenty of other things. But looking back on it, I’m like, that was a big, big HIPAA violation. It was one of those things where man, when the Iowa State head coaches coming down to visit you and they’re rolling out the carpet. my keywords were “I can play sooner. I don’t have to sit around for four years. It was on. I wouldn’t change a thing. It was an amazing experience. It was fun to be on your hometown field and there were signs, chanting and people yelling, you trainer, when you walked out, it was like, what is it in pro wrestling? Like, play the heel. People in Nebraska take that seriously. So I got a kick out of it.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s awesome. Was that kind of the Nebraska heyday or a little after the Nebraska heyday?

Paul Jarrett: 96, that was the back-to-back years. Then this would have been 2000. So it was pretty close, pretty fresh. Were they still?

Kevin Rosenquist: Were they still that Eric Crouch days?

Paul Jarrett: Yes, I helped pull his helmet off. Claim to fame. I sucked Lord but what’s funny is I’ll see Crouch around and he does some facilities stuff for the children’s playground. He’s got an awesome business himself. We’ll run into each other, here and there. I always make a point to be like, “I was that guy and whatever.” He still gets fired up. He’s ready to go. I’m just laughing. I’m like, “Man, that is a competitor.” Because he’s still upset about it, still holding on. He remembers every detail. I was half-concussed the whole time. I don’t remember anything. Jason, Stars, on there. It was fun. He had some big dudes blocking for him. I think the guy I went against was a six-time Pro Bowler. So I had my work cut out for me in that game.

Kevin Rosenquist: I would say, so. Well, speaking of that, you played defensive line for two years. Then you decided to end your career because of injuries. Was it the concussions?

Paul Jarrett: The thing is, I never had a great excuse. At that time, I was playing injured neck, shoulder surgery, partially, torn Achilles, which I didn’t know was a thing that you could still play with.

Kevin Rosenquist: I didn’t know that either. That sounds awful.

Paul Jarrett: There was no concussion. You get knocked out of a game unless you’re running to the opposite sidelines, which happened to me once. It had to be career-ending. What I would say, is I was so tired of being in pain all the time. I wasn’t built to be 315 pounds. It just kind of there was a point at which I just thought “Who am I doing this for? Wait a second, did I ever football to begin with? Did I ever sports?” I think my wife nailed it. She looked at me one time and she goes, “You’re just the biggest nerd trapped in a jock’s body that I’ve ever met.” It was just that I happened to be big, fast, and aggressive. You just get pushed into it, But I was more of a like, I wanted to play an instrument and I was into Magic The Gathering. It was like, you get nicknames along the way. Everybody be like, I was the water boy where I’m just in my own world and then the game starts and it is like, rip people’s heads off. So I just woke up one day and I remember going out through the tunnel on my very first game that I started, and I remember seeing before the locker room, after the locker room, all these people would come to visit, mostly men, and I was like, “Man, what do these guys do? Then it dawned on me that if I don’t do something, and there’s nothing wrong with this, it just wasn’t for me. I’m going to be in Ames, Iowa, selling insurance or hovering around the field trying to live glory days, maybe I’ll get a couple of years in the NFL.

Paul Jarrett: But I don’t even know if, at that point, my physical would check out for the NFL because I was so beaten up and I just thought, “Man, I gotta make this decision, “Am I going to decide what I want to do with my life or am I just going to take direction which seems drastic.” But I think a lot of us, if we self-examine, we all do a lot of stuff that we would probably prefer not to. So I did what any wise ex-football player with no scholarship or college on the horizon after quitting would do and got a credit card, bought a Mac computer and I thought, well, now I have to learn how to use this and started doing the eBay thing. That’s what triggered it. I can trace everything back to that moment of sheer panic. No money, no support, gave up a full ride in Ames, Iowa. I better become a computer guy. That was literally how I thought then, I better become a computer person, whatever that meant. eBay was, I enjoyed selling stuff online, and that’s what triggered a lot of things.

Kevin Rosenquist: That story of people tired of being hurt, especially, defensive. I feel defensive linemen are a big one for that. I can understand that. Doing anything when you’re hurt sucks. But I can’t even imagine chasing down quarterbacks with a bad shoulder, a bad neck, and a bad everything.

Paul Jarrett: I tell people, you gotta understand, I was in a neck brace all week. I was in a boot. I had an electric stem going through my body all week. Painkillers shot up before the game. Who knows what they gave me? Then they take it all off and you go play, and then you just start the whole process over. If you do, it starts to feel like you’re cattle. I understand that’s nothing against me. That’s the system. That’s not the coaches or players or anything at Iowa State. They were amazing. But high school sports is the last pure time to play. It does become much more of a business after that. If anything, I’m glad to see players getting paid nowadays. That’s cool and I think it’s the correct thing to do. To me, my biggest takeaway was, you get a good team and you get everybody paddle in the same direction at the same time. You have a process in place, you track missed tackles, tackles, it’s all kind of the same. It just takes a little bit more effort to find how this applies to the business. I was always more interested in the operations of the team versus the actual outputs. What is the difference between a missed tackle versus somebody not clicking something on your website? You have to troubleshoot that.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s a good point. That’s a good analogy. That’s a good segue. You’re not only an entrepreneur, but you’re a keynote speaker now as well. you’ve been very successful in your ventures. What impact did your experience of playing a high-level sport D1 college football, have on your professional career?

Paul Jarrett: I would say, that if you’re at an event or a keynote, that attitude of like, we’re on the same team here, how can we make this work? How can we make an experience? Because I think so many times the speakers or whoever, they walk in the door. They act like they’re Tom Cruise or something. They’re expecting you’re a keynote, you’re probably not getting paid, or whatever. so why don’t you go to work for the event? Why don’t you help them out?

Kevin Rosenquist: You’re staying at the Best Western up the street. Give me a break.

Paul Jarrett: It’s that lineman mentality. It’s like, dude, you got to do it. There ain’t no help coming, You are the at last line of defense. I think also that once you play in front of, I don’t know what the biggest crowd was, had to be A&M. But you know once you play in front of the big, let’s say, 75,000, I don’t know.

Kevin Rosenquist: I think that’s more towards 100 if I recall.

Paul Jarrett: You feel that crowd, that vibe, you do understand that you’re a maestro, you’re an orchestrator. The crowd will react. You still have a job to do after all that, I think that has played a role. But what’s interesting is that a lot of it, I think, comes from childhood, not being afraid to do what you have to do to be noticed. If you want to have enough money to buy shoes, you have to figure out a solution and get that in front of people. So I would say, not having a whole heck of a lot growing up and having parents that were like, hey, if you want to go get it, that’s definitely what spurred it. I just kind of take everything as a rising tide raises all boats. It’s all a team effort. If it isn’t, you’re probably working with the wrong people.

Kevin Rosenquist: A lot of people dread public speaking. For a lot of people, it’s their nightmare. You joked before saying that you were kind of a nerd, but you seem to thrive you do well. Speaking to people, being an extrovert, I would say, at least, from what I could see, from what I know of you.

Paul Jarrett: I got you all fooled. It’s crazy because I know that this was at me a little bit. But I think I’m very similar to most people, leading up to it, trying not to check your calendar. You’re trying not to focus too much on it. You don’t want to overanalyze, you don’t want to underanalyze. When I was logging in, I was like, “Oh man, I want to spend some time on his LinkedIn profile.” “Nope, he might have this background.” No matter what, if it’s a game or if you’re speaking, that opportunity to psych yourself out is always there. But here’s what I do know. It’s cool because after 12 years my team gets this, I am putting myself out there for the team. My preference would be don’t use social media, don’t use keynote, don’t do speaking events. But I’ve just seen what a positive impact it has. So that nervousness, that anxiousness, honestly, the outcome truly does have an impact. So I can come back to the office and be like, “Oh man! Thanks for holding it down here. I was able to do X, Y, and Z, and look at this brand calling us now.” The team, I think, is now in a place where they see my schedule. I have kids now. I think anybody would prefer not to fly out at God knows what time and come back as soon as they can or just have that travel schedule. But at the end of the day. it just has developed, also it’s a total privilege complaint. “Oh, me, I wouldn’t recognize that.” Complaining about travel is ridiculous. But there’s some truth to it.

Kevin Rosenquist: Especially, as you said, when kids come along, that changes things too.

Paul Jarrett: That’s the thing. I don’t want to be here. I want to be with my kids. I want to be a dad. But I think at the end of the day, I do know that when I’m up there, on stage, I do have something to offer people, and I do believe that I can talk about it in a way that you would talk about it with somebody if you were just hanging out on your porch with one of your friends. I think that authenticity mixed in with a little bit of “I’ve got my butt kicked plenty of times at work.” It’s okay. Here’s a couple of things that I did. But sometimes it’s just hard and that’s the answer. Some of my best presentations that I’ll get paid for literally, I don’t know, I’m figuring it out y’all. But sometimes that’s what everybody needs to hear because I’ve been in the back rooms of Disney, I’ve worked in New York City, I’ve been all those.

Paul Jarrett: If I could download everybody on one thing, it would simply be this, “Don’t worry. Everybody’s just kind of figuring it out too.” It’s comforting. It’s also a bit terrifying. But it’s true. Working with the global CEO of BBDO, the biggest, most awarded ad agency in the world, you’re scratching your heads at two in the morning, I don’t know Alex well enough, hopefully, they don’t ask questions about it. That happens on every level that I’ve ever worked at. I always want to just share that. I’m like, it’s okay, you probably deserve it but you’re just not asking for it. I think that resonates with people. I’ve been quiet for the past two years because we’ve been getting our stuff together here at work, and we just started doing podcasts, events, and I’m shocked at how many opportunities, it’s weird, but taking being pretty quiet for two years did incredibly awesome things where people want to know what happened. So it’s been cool.

Kevin Rosenquist: I think that approach, someone you can have a beer with kind of keynote speaker versus the person you feel is going to try to sell you a six-week course on “How to be a better you”, I feel like, most of us can see through that BS, and and it’s always refreshing to have someone who is just like, “Hey, man, this is hard. It’s hard for me too.

Paul Jarrett: I intentionally do a lot of work where people are like, you shouldn’t do that. I’m like, I got to stay. I’m in the warehouse. This is real, I want to see it. I want to be part of it. When I have time, try once a month, go, pack boxes, go, share some blood, sweat, and tears with your team. I try to be that almost, and this might come off as condescending and I mean it, in no way, shape, or form, but I’m kind of a bit of a connection between the white-collar and the blue-collar and I can walk in both worlds. Being able to communicate, we might go over confusing strategic planning with different metrics, goals, and KPIs and looking at the room and going like, what the hell do I have to do in a week? I just got to get that number of phone calls. Is that what you just tried to explain in 30 minutes? Just say that. The interesting thing is the smartest, happiest people I know and I’ve been part of groups where I spent a week out at MIT.

Paul Jarrett: I’ve spent a week with Brian, the CEO of HubSpot. I just pick up the phone and say, yes. But the one common thing that I have seen with these smartest, happiest, quote-unquote successful people is that they speak in a manner that everybody can understand. It’s almost a dead guy. We’re talking professors at MIT, in the nerd building at Microsoft, they have a saying there that’s, “Explain it I’m a golden retriever.” This is kind of the “Explain how I can vibe. Having those folks at that level saying, if I can’t explain it to you, then I don’t know the content. So just little things that. There’s just a buffer level of people in upper VP, maybe C-suite management that are just full of BS. They’re just scared of getting fired. How do we cut through that? It’s almost cutting a step out of the supply chain. It’s not efficient. Do we need to have that layer? I feel that resonates with people because most conference attendees still do the work or they’re in sales or whatever it is, the money people are staying back in the office or whatever.

Kevin Rosenquist: Exactly.

Paul Jarrett: But it’s fun, I dig it. I love just meeting people, and I think everybody has a story and sharing and giving it all. Then honestly, after an event, it’s like, don’t talk to me for a week. I’m going as people think, but I learned to be with sports for sure.

Kevin Rosenquist: For sure. I talked to a lot of serial entrepreneurs on this show and, founders who keep on founding and founding and founding you spent a good amount of time in the corporate world before founding Bulu in 2012. When did you get the entrepreneurial bug, if you will?

Paul Jarrett: I was a reluctant entrepreneur. Entrepreneur is still a dirty word to me. It’s what you put on LinkedIn when you can’t find a job. I told you my favorite is Hustler. I’m like, what do you sell, drugs? Because I know that’s a hustler.

Kevin Rosenquist: I like Hustler, too. When I left my day job, I started telling people I was an entrepreneur/bum because I felt it was a little bit of both.

Paul Jarrett: There are groups. It has the word entrepreneur. Is that a how can we find a job?

Kevin Rosenquist: It has an out-of-work connotation to it. You need money, you know.

Paul Jarrett: So I’m going to ask you though, can you rephrase the question that I got? I started thinking about all those groups.

Kevin Rosenquist: What gave you the bug, the entrepreneurial bug? When did you decide that “Hey, I got this idea”?

Paul Jarrett: The entrepreneur thing knocked me off. I would consider myself a reluctant entrepreneur. When I was little, just having to make my own money, watching my parents fail as entrepreneurs succeed or fail. There was nobody in my family that was like, “Go, start a business.” They’re like, “Man, you don’t know what you’re getting into.” I would say, they were like, it’s closer to a virus. But I’d say, entrepreneurialism is closer to a virus than it is a way of life. Once you get it, it’s hard to get rid of. But my story, this is, I think, interesting. I was working at a place called Complete Nutrition, and I still as much as I can, just because I’ve had to do classified sales where I had to rip off 80 calls a day, classified advertisements, and knowing that they’re just trying to hit a metric. I do if somebody calls or emails, and it’s probably why I have an inbox that nobody would want. I try to just say thank you or, I got templates that are like, hey, I appreciate the hustle, but take me off the list or just mark me as whatever in your metrics.

Paul Jarrett: I’m always curious about how people are selling. I had this guy emailing me and he said, I’ll be at this event or whatever and went to the event, forgot about him. There’s this little guy in the corner with a booth, and I go over and he goes, hey, Paul, Bulu, and I’m talking. He’s got a card table. it was not impressive. “I have a report for you”, he handed it over and told me all of the places that complete nutrition stores didn’t have a correct address on Google. It was all of our franchises that we knew, but we’ll fix that someday. But this is back, a while ago, I don’t even know what 2007 maybe where it’s like, we’ll fix that someday. Nobody knew how important it was to be located on Google.

Kevin Rosenquist: Different times. For you younger listeners, different times.

Paul Jarrett: I’m at this event, I don’t want to be there. I’m talking to this guy and he’s kind of getting the vibe, I just hide out at this booth. I was told to come here, I don’t want to be here. He’s like, he’s looking at me, looking around and he’s like, so what do you think about the software? I looked at him. I go, dude, I’m not going to buy your software. We don’t have 30,000. I appreciate it, but let me just shoot you straight. He started talking about some other stuff and then he looked at me, he goes, dude, this conference is terrible. Do you want to just go bail and have a drink? I was like, that sounds amazing, let’s go. It’s awesome. We both just leave. We go somewhere close and start having a drink. Didn’t think anything of it, shake hands, whatever. But he kept coming back to me for some insights. One thing leads to another. Fast forward, seven or eight years later and I’m in San Francisco, living there, and I think he emailed. His name is Brian Distrover. He emailed me and said, I’m going to be in town here in San Francisco when I grab a drink. It’s been seven years or whatever. I was like, hell I don’t even think I had a job at the time. I was just floating around figuring out what the next thing to do was.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s an expensive city to be floating around in.

Paul Jarrett: Luckily, I did okay. Also, my wife was burnt out and she just looked at me just hey, I got your back, take a break. You do need to figure this out. I’m eating lunch with Brian and I get a text from my buddy, we’re at a place called Manifest. He says, hey, do you know Brian Distrover? Then all of the signs hit me at once. I was like, look up and I go, what’s going to happen if I Google you, Brian? He turned bright red and I went, oh, shit, you’re rich. He goes, what? I go, that’s what rich people do when they don’t want people to know who they are. He kind of chuckles and I’m like, oh, this is going to be great. So I Googled him right in front of I was like, you just spoke at the Mosconi, as the keynote. So Brian owns a company called yext.com.

Kevin Rosenquist: I know Yext.

Paul Jarrett: He’s one of the co-founders and I had no idea. The whole lunch conversation was about like, what are you going to do? He was the one that was like, you just have to go for it, you just have to do it. He said, if you needed to start today, what’s three months? I told him. He’s like, boom, money’s yours. What else do you need? I was like, wait, what? He just was there to answer questions when I was like, hey, we’re raising capital, what are the pros and cons? Embarrassingly simple things. He just treated me like a human and broke things down for me that were digestible. I would say, he believed in me. Frankly, Stephanie, my co-founder, and I and he was the one that put in, it wasn’t much at all. It was just to get us started. Then he taught us you need to talk to this person. I’m not going to be the lead, but here’s my role. I’m forever grateful. I talk to him every once in a while, but when it does come up I make it a point to be like, we would not be anywhere close to here if it weren’t for him. Even bringing us out to the Hamptons and introducing us to all these other startups and, not caring that were a sample box or, wasn’t a cool slack or whoever was hot.

Kevin Rosenquist: You weren’t the next big tech operation.

Paul Jarrett: He is 100%. I felt I was looking off the edge and Brian came up and kicked me. But he did say this, you darn Midwestern entrepreneurs. You’re so worried about things, you just almost need a push off the edge, now you have the money. Now what’s your excuse? and I think there’s some truth to that. We call it being humble in the Midwest, but I think it’s fear of embarrassment that holds a lot of people back from becoming entrepreneurs in the Midwest. What am I going to tell Dad? What am I going to tell others? I’m doing a little study helping Gallup kind of look into what is it that holds people back. They said, there’s a lot of weight in the whole thinking about messing up and how to explain that. That is where a lot of people get stuck.

Kevin Rosenquist: I’m not surprised to hear that. I’m from Chicago originally. I’m a Midwesterner myself. There you go. I’ve never thought of that, but that’s an interesting it’s an interesting thought. Fear of failure. that could definitely that could definitely play into the Midwestern roots.

Paul Jarrett: Absolutely. It’s everything is small and everybody will know. You know everybody will. It’s not hard for things to get around. It feels in the Midwest.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s true. Chicago is the biggest little city.

Paul Jarrett: Canada feels that too. Something happens in Canada, everybody knows about it. They feel very Midwestern too.

Kevin Rosenquist: There’s a similar sentiment there for sure. Yep. So let’s talk about blue. The first time I heard of subscription boxes I guess maybe outside of CDs from Columbia House when I was a kid. I don’t know if that counts.

Paul Jarrett: But my first hustle, man.

Kevin Rosenquist: It’s a different model, but it was. Guess it kind of was the same thing. But I remember my wife got an LA tote subscription, which for those of you who don’t know, basically they they would send her clothes, she would wear them and then send them back and pick out new ones. monthly for a monthly fee. I thought it was fascinating. She enjoyed it. It was funny because her friends were like, man, she’s always got a different outfit on. She’s doing well, you know but like, before it seems before blue subscription boxes were mostly beauty and fashion products. How did you kind of come to the realization that there was room to expand on that and do something different?

Paul Jarrett: My experience at Complete Nutrition, which was a bricks-and-mortar franchise, is like, I think high-end GNC, That’s kind b was. Okay. being the seventh person hired there and kind of understanding what they’re doing and helping them scale. I was shocked to learn how much really, vitamins and supplements are fast followers to make up. So if people are using coconut oil or vitamin E and it’s popular in makeup, usually some form of that hits supplements about a year or two later. I always say, if they put coconut in, makeup for moisturizer, well, they’re going to have all this excess coconut left. Well, grind it up, put it in the pill, make a probiotic or whatever out of it. Mhm. so, I did know that there were six subscription boxes that were all made up. I thought, man, that’s only a matter of time before, the vitamin. People are like, hey, what is that so that was a lot of it. Then I think the other big insight was complete nutrition, hands down, the way that we converted people over was just by getting a sample packet in their hands. So we wanted to solve and I’d argue that we did. What is the value? What is the return on investment for a sample packet? Because everybody knows it’s hands down the biggest way to get you to transition to another brand or a flavor. But it’s next to impossible to track, and then that second part of just knowing that vitamin supplements health is a fast follower to makeup and beauty.

Paul Jarrett: We ran a half marathon together. My wife and I went to sign up for a service it, which was crazy because you just become so accustomed to Google whatever idea you have. There are ten of them on Amazon or whatever, so I’m, I keep typing, I’m like, how do you spell supply? I remember going like, how do you spell supplement one p or two because and nothing, nothing came up. Then it was a dead sprint of get everything up, get it going. As insane as it sounds, it was like. I think it was between 35 and 65. I think it was right around 48 days. We had raised a million and a half bucks in capital. were like, we’re going to our investors going before. We decide we just want to be real clear. We have a nonfunctioning website collecting emails. But what I didn’t think through was that complete nutrition had taken off so fast, and I was in charge of the marketing and a lot of stuff. So people and Stephanie in her own right, my co-founder slash wife, she was a user interface developer or I’m sorry, designer at Pixar. So what we didn’t get was like, people are going like, okay, Paul and Stephanie have worked together in multiple capacities, done well. Now she’s at Pixar. He’s coming off of this 3 to 83 million in a year or two.

Paul Jarrett: Now they want to go do something. So now I look back and I’m like, man, we should have been more aggressive with our terms. But that’s just stuff I thought it was a bum entrepreneur in San Francisco. You it’s all just how you frame things, right to yourselves and others but we took the capital and got it going and man it was it’s crazy because in the moment we just always thought it’s not good enough. You’re just so hard on yourself. I look back now and I’m like, we had no clue what a rocket ship we had. You knowit was just it was, there’s it’s just a thing where you would redo a lot of things if you could. I CEO, I always make it a point. I’m like, it’s all on me. I accept fault for whatever it was. But I look back and I go, man, had I been talking to any investor and this isn’t a bang on our investors, but an investor that understood retail and consumer packaged goods, we just had a lot of software or green investors, we had we had a tiger by the tail. I would argue twice with two variations of our company. But when you’re like, we got to invest 30 million in the warehouse, yadda yadda yadda yadda. They’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa what about the software? Shopify has got that covered now.

Kevin Rosenquist: I don’t need that.

Paul Jarrett: I’m not going to beat them. But it was a phenomenal experience. all things lead to what we’re doing now. so you just wouldn’t change it for the world. I definitely would if we could reduce the length of pain. That would be nice. But also just now doing what we’re doing, it’s easier to just go everybody just go home. It’s fine. We’ll just pick up where we left off tomorrow. Nobody’s dying, you know? Nobody’s not hospital.

Kevin Rosenquist: We’re not curing disease. So what was in the first Bulu box?

Paul Jarrett: The first Bulu box, I believe I get the first two mixed up because we screwed up on both of them. Go figure. One of them, we shipped chocolate when it was hot out. The other one a company had sent us samples that had too much carbonation, I don’t know why they did this. They’re little shots, and it was almost an oily substance. So half our users received their box that was exploded oily. So the first boxes had I think it was I remember something called a shower pill, which I think might have been the dude’s wife’s first attempt. Then there was a probiotic chocolate. There was a mineral energy shot. Then I think a multivitamin. One of them had inhalable caffeine.

Kevin Rosenquist: What?

Paul Jarrett: It was funny because we wanted to go a certain route with it more kind of this, bullet nutrition on it, Alpha brain kind of Joe Rogan vibe. But the reality is nobody was interested in giving us those products early on. So we had super fascinating products. But what people don’t know is it was because, for the most part, we couldn’t find a lot of we couldn’t find anybody else. It took us probably 3 or 4 months before we started getting real brands from real companies. But my favorite was a bunch of Harvard scientists got together and they thought let’s I’ll leave the name out of it, just not throw them under the bus. But they thought let’s create this device that you snap open, pull, and it gets air in it, and then you put it in your mouth and you kind of shot it a gun, And all the marketing and everything was a shot to the head, a shot to the. It was at the time that were just thrilled to have this thing where you pump it and it was a burst of, powdered caffeine. but now I look at all the marketing and it was, put a gun to your head and pull the trigger. When you know everybody was taking them, they would puff it. Then they’d all breathe in and everybody would just hack because he got powder. So the product was phenomenal. You could tell scientists made it because the product itself was phenomenal. But the actual delivery and the marketing, I’m sure they’ve changed it to something.

Kevin Rosenquist: The method of ingestion was maybe not quite what they should have done.

Paul Jarrett: I look back too, because I’m like, nobody would talk to Squatty Potty. We put information in there, dude wipes. Nobody would talk to them. Liquid IV was struggling they had no clue what they were like. It was just some college guys and all these brands snot there are quite a few, but it’s fascinating to see the companies that make it and the companies that don’t, because I would argue the best products in my experience. We sampled 5000 brands over the years the best products, the actual quality, best never, ever make it to the store shelf. Mhm. for, for a multitude of reasons. the stuff that makes it to the shelf is usually there’s a marketing kind of gimmick or angle or they’re filling a gap in the market and they have the distribution figured out. So when a store somebody does say, I want you in 2000 targets, it’s ready to go. That’s the Betamax versus VHS. I don’t know if you know that.

Kevin Rosenquist: I do know.

Paul Jarrett: Betamax’s far superior product, or even streaming services got Netflix to where they are. They got a coupon and all the VHS, and DVDs at Best Buy sold. so a lot of those things, there is some sort of a hack or an angle or something that puts it over the edge.

Kevin Rosenquist: A lot of times, it’s marketing.

Paul Jarrett: I feel I’m always that guy where a lot we get calls all the time, probably two, three a week where somebody calls me up, they try to get through and they’re like, I was told to call you. I’m part of some emerging brands or new product development groups, and it’s so fun to see what people come up with.

Kevin Rosenquist: You guys started started smaller with smaller products. Now you’re doing boxes for huge companies like Disney and GNC. Monstrous stuff. how how did that’s quite the pivot. Now you’re talking you need way more warehouse space, way more employees to do the kitting, the fulfillment, the shipping. Everything’s harder. You’re doing international the logistics seem daunting. How was that step up to that point?

Paul Jarrett: But my favorite question is about this. My answer is that we didn’t know any better. We started the company as a consumer goods e-commerce, direct-to-consumer subscription. We didn’t think through the part that nobody tracks samples for Blue Box. Nobody was good at subscriptions, let alone returns. Kitting things together is expensive. So we arguably picked the opportunity was there because it was so difficult to pull off. Then we this is a little side note, but we built and sold a software that became range Me.com think LinkedIn.com for consumer packaged goods, so I could see if they wanted it on their shelf. I Walmart or whatever. Then we did the so we had we, were running those two companies at the same time. So a software company with a e-commerce company and honestly, we had what I would say, two tigers by the tail Blue Marketplace, which became Rangeme, I think 2300 subscribers before we ever launched. but were sitting there going like, oh, crap, we’re burning money. We’re growing both companies exponentially, but this just isn’t going to work.

Paul Jarrett: What are we going to do? And I just kind of thought the biggest issue with both of them is the customer acquisition cost. The customer acquisition cost keeps rising. So the first person to. Call me and show any interest in acquiring Bulu Box or Bulu Marketplace. I just got to take it and I had a number set in my head where if they hit that number, we would take it. unfortunately. First, call Bulu marketplace. I want are you going towards you? Going to buy it? Name a number. I was like, yep, that was literally my lowest number. We’ll do it. so we sold that off and we’re kind of sitting there going like, man, the customer acquisition cost for Bulu Box. I’m not joking. It started off at $0.52 because there was nothing else out there, and everybody was searching for makeup and were just being blessed by the Google gods. I remember the day it went over $10, were all shocked and mortified. That was when I went, you know what? I’ve worked in advertising. I know that big brands have so much added value marketing that they just don’t use.

Paul Jarrett: What if I just call them up and if we can put together a model where they just plug in, how many stores and how many this and we take the work off of their plates? Then we come back to them maybe that will work, because really, all we’re kind of asking for is like, pay for the cost and fill in 3 or 4 areas on this Excel document or just email back the answers. We’ll put together a projection for you. We won’t make money until we’re shipping 5000 of your boxes. So it’s hard for people to just say the way that you get big brands is, number one, you pick up the phone, and number two, you always make the next step. Super simple, Like, okay, great. Here’s what we’re going to do next. When they try to veer off of it, you have to fight hell to bring them back because they act. That’s what they want. They want the best of the best leading the way. But they’re also used to getting their way. So there’s a little friction there.

Kevin Rosenquist: We did that.

Paul Jarrett: We worked with Disney, Crayola, GNC, American Express, etc. etc. frankly, in the pandemic it was such chaos and there were so many companies not paying their bill, and overpaying. It’s hard to describe to people what happens when a forklift driver goes from an hourly wage to like, hey, I need 80 K plus benefits plus this. You’re like, literally, I would give you that. But a model, a business model with logistics and fulfillment isn’t set up to support that. So just hold tight. But it was in the midst of all of that chaos. We pretty much I’ll give the short version. We pretty much made an offer on the company, and we acquired 100% in October of 2023. so, you know. It was it was the good kind of buy. Even now I get nervous. I’m like, I’m just going to watch my words. It was good. We’re happy. Everybody we worked with was great. so we kind of looked up. Stephanie, my co-founder, and I were like, okay, in the pandemic, those big brands were super chaotic and and God bless them. But in a moment of chaos, big global brands just don’t pay you and you can fight and you can have. We had tight contracts, But what are you going to do, fight the Disney lawyers? it’s like, get in line, you know what I mean? or fight the GNC. I can neither confirm nor deny that. was awesome, but when you’re in that situation and you’re like, okay, it’s chaos here. even though logistics is great for everybody, there’s still just it was a we didn’t do the type of work that people just wanted to ship masks. I say, had we been shipping a bread maker or whatever, one item of something, it would have been very different. But were shipping it. Innovative product. even if you hit 50 million in sales for a big global brand in the chaos of the pandemic, that 50 million is nothing, you know? There were some places we worked with where they literally cut departments of 3000 people. So like, we didn’t even know who to call to get paid, you know? And so we just decided that, hey, if we acquire the company 100% and we truly have the ability tosolve a hard problem for a group of people, maybe it’s not big brands.

Paul Jarrett: As sexy as it is and as amazing and cool and whatever. what about bringing that knowledge from the big brands to every brand, So really, within kind of the start of the year we’ve started to slowly transition, started to slowly share. Yes, we do the subscription box thing, but we also are helping any consumer brand, we call it the tricky ship or ship a major brand. what that means is for kind of the traditional cost of fulfillment, we’re able to now do e-commerce shipments, do drop shipping, sell through social media. But the coolest part is we can help brands ship to physical bricks and mortar retail stores that are smaller, and they don’t have to ship a pallet or a case. They can ship exactly what the store orders. so that’s been cool. It almost feels full circle because Blue Box was helping a lot of those same brands just be noticed by buyers.

Kevin Rosenquist: Get out there, sure.

Paul Jarrett: Then we learned like, oh my gosh, distribution is where most brands go to die. Nobody knows how to use this space. The biggest brands in the world have paid the bill for us to learn and set up everything. Can we crank the dial? And instead of one of our account managers having one global brand, they have 30 small brands. It’s cool because it’s been working exponentially well. To, these brands that you worked with forever ago like, hey, go sell to your corner store, go sell to that retail bricks and mortar chain that has 20 stores, 500 stores. It’s a game-changer for people. It’s we just love helping people that are growth minded, have the entrepreneurial spirit, remove the roadblocks go, you go sell. We will deliver. We’re not going to like, screw you on fees and all that. Because the one thing that we have in common with our clients is we all want more shipping labels, And so that’s the thing that we focus on.

Paul Jarrett: There’s just something to getting a local brand in target and they can’t believe it. It does look cool. You’re like, dude, you’re on the shelf like, that’s crazy at target. I think that’s that, that’s going to be probably the path that we stick down and, and grow and scale with. It’s exciting to share it. The, the hardest part is people go, no way you can do that. I’m like, why does everybody think it’s so damn hard? Like, it’s just the address. It’s just inventory. But systems were all set up for logistics way back in the day. nobody wants to, touch any of the knobs or the levers because they’ll break something where we’re like, screw it, get rid of that software, redo everything, everybody recount ever. we did that three times over in the pandemic. So, you know counting all the inventory in 120,000 square foot warehouse. It’s a weekend, get over it, but.

Kevin Rosenquist: I think people have this inherent fear of logistics, fear of fulfillment, warehousing space. I it’s just I think it’s just such a large scale operation in most people’s minds. They’re just like, no, I don’t want anything to do with that. I’m not going to lie. logistics, it’s sounds hard, it sounds confusing and and and and difficult to wrap your head around.

Paul Jarrett: It’s not. It’s all a long con, I swear, and went along, honestly.

Kevin Rosenquist: Hang on. Let me make a new note. Start fulfillment company, Okay?

Paul Jarrett: Right. Because we started and we kind of crushed the first two fulfillment companies that we worked with and kind of we just never found what were looking for, Like, were always like, well, when we find somebody and it’s crazy, 12 years later, you’re like, we literally are solving the problem that we had day one with Blue Box, and it just took us 12 years to kind of look up and go like. it is not everybody, but most people are full of BS in this industry, and it’s nothing more than I always say you have a physical product and you have a digital version of that product, and as long as that stays tied together throughout all the systems you can do, that’s logistics.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s a good way to put it.

Paul Jarrett: I get invited to conferences and I get challenged all the time. I’ll be in rooms with people. There’s that moment with a lot of them where like, I’ll just have to go like, all right, sorry, we just have to stop the meeting. Bob over here. I just need to talk to Bob for a minute here. Bob, we can do this in front of everybody, or we can go somewhere else and have a quick talk. They’re always like, I got a PhD in logistics. You’re like, whatever. Bob, here’s the thing. You’re not fooling anybody with those acronyms. You’re not like, what is receiving? It’s whatever you’re going to define it as it’s customer acquisition costs. what is it really? And people kind of go it’s customer acquisition costing a no kidding, Chuck. But like, what does it mean to you? Because when I see it, I see money spent or projected. Money spent. and what is an acquisition? Is it to your website? Is it an email? Is it a paying customer? Because let me tell you, you can go read the IPO, SEC filings for a lot of companies and they all define it differently.

Paul Jarrett: So let’s cut the BS in this logistics meeting. You tell me exactly what you’re trying to do. I know that fee is BS. I know these acronyms. just being able to go that smoke and mirrors doesn’t work on me anymore. I remember when it did and now I’ve done the work and I’ve showed up and I had to take over being in charge of 250 people running the actual kidding lines with zero experience. For three months. You’re like, yo, I’ve done the work and it all you’re doing is confusing things to be able to take a little bit of margin in another place. We just, we just don’t we aren’t cool with that. So who, who ever thought I always say any time anything in supply chain or logistics called and I saw on my phone, I just nobody wants to talk to a three PL, nobody wants to talk to fulfillment logistics. Here’s the thing though. Us being like, we get that pay open door policy, I’m in the warehouse. We can go walk around right now.

Paul Jarrett: You can come for integrations just having the total opposite. What do you want to know? Here’s our rate sheet. Here’s how much we’re making. don’t charge somebody. Tell them like, hey, before we do this, we’re going to have to charge you. Do you want us to do it or not? everything that you wish that a three PL would be. What if we did that? And here’s the outcome. You can’t have sales reps on commissions. Sorry guys. You know that’s one of the things that you learn, the next thing you learn is like, you have to bring in UPS, Fedex and physically meet and negotiate. You just learn these things and and what it net net, what it becomes is you have a set of clients that either fully understand logistics and they appreciate you, or you have some smaller clients that are like, well, I’m still scared of logistics and everything, but at least I know if Bouloux gives me an answer and I pick up the phone and cross-check them with anybody what they’re saying is like, correct, It’s very transparent.

Kevin Rosenquist: You’re not blowing smoke.

Paul Jarrett: That’s different in this industry because it is about it’s a in this world, it’s a if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it and just don’t get fired. so to have innovation and to try to shake things up, you do need incredible people on the floor that say like, no, we’re all going to ditch this way of doing it and we’re going to do it together. That’s what I think so many times is the difference is it’s a very team atmosphere. There’s no corporate offices here. We’re all using the same bathroom, same restrooms, and whether we’re 500 people or 1000 people like that is how it should be done. crazy idea. Treat people like humans.

Kevin Rosenquist: Right.

Paul Jarrett: Not an Amazon warehouse where people are literally dying. What you come to find is the best brands in the world begin to understand that fulfillment, supply chain, and logistics are probably closely related to legal and finance, where you get what you pay for with lawyers. Sure, there’s a Rocket Lawyer app out there, but really, is that the tool that you want to use for this thing that you’re trying to do? and so, it feels good. being disruptive where woman-owned businesses diversity-owned. I’m a bad representation of the actual majority of people. The owners of the company would be Stephanie and a guy named Marcus. So like, even if you were to walk into our warehouse, and you, you see, I don’t know what I can say in 2024, but at any blond-haired woman on a forklift is uncommon, and like, doing logistics where you go B2B, D2C, it’s fun to disrupt everything and every which way. people go, wow. either that isn’t already a thing or thank God it’s about time, So we’re having a lot of fun right now.

Kevin Rosenquist: It sounds like it.

Paul Jarrett: Who would have think? I always say, logistics is the last place anybody would look to scale a business. I’m like, I would argue everything else has been burnt out. If you can get distribution into anything and you can just go get the approval or sell via TikTok or whatever, that might be the best way in consumer goods to grow right now.

Kevin Rosenquist: Well, I have one more question for you. I’m curious to get your opinion on. I’ve heard people predict that consumers will want to go backwards a bit younger generations meaning they will go back to retail and want to go out shopping rather than ordering online. I even heard a marketing guy say, go so far as to say that he he could see the return of things magazines and print media and things that. Do you, do you do you agree with that sentiment in younger generations, and if so, how? How would that affect e-commerce subscription box, that kind of stuff?

Paul Jarrett: So I think about this obsessively. Because I also I tend to I invest a lot and I like, focus in on e-commerce and retail and consumer goods, and and I do. All I think the thing that matters is. This will change, but right now. It sounds ridiculous, but what is the fewest amount of ways that I can move my thumb like, literally like, can this pop up because I drove by Walmart and it says, hey, do you want deodorant or erasers? Go to the store or whatever. So, there’s all this talk about omnichannel, And there’s the quadrants and whatever. I’m like, you all are thinking about it wrong, because when I drive by somewhere there’s enough data that I think that every website should basically have a button that kind of assumes with, I what you need and where you want to get it, but everything should have purchase. Okay. Do you want it to your house? Do you want it to your work? Do you want to pick it up from here on the way home? Do you want to pick it up in a locker? so. I don’t even view it as, going to the store, not going to the store. I view it as like, what’s the fewest amounts that I can use my thumb. just in route, back and forth somewhere. I would just honestly, I would look and if I wanted to know, I would probably look at the book industry. So there’s still libraries, there’s still all this talk is exactly what everybody was talking about when Amazon initially hit with books. You know this I’m like, there’s I have a five year old kid who like, loves to carry this little book around that’s choose your own adventure style book and I was shocked because we haven’t pushed him on it or whatever. I look at him, I was like, his nickname is lo. I go yo lo. he got the book with you, man. I was like, you got a switch? You got an iPad? he’s seven, and he looks at me and he’s like, I don’t have to carry a charger or wires around. I was like, I was so honest and direct.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s awesome.

Paul Jarrett: Because then you think about he’s just escaping the car ride with a book, and he just got tired of figuring out USB-C and whatever. He’s like, well it’s just easier you know. So the word is it’s not whether things will live or die. It is what is the evolution of that era. that’s where I think people have to look at it. I just I’m so tired of people being like, what’s your blah, blah, blah strategy? And I’m like, do you mean like, what’s the most pain-free way to deliver our product to a customer? Because that’s what you’re asking, that’s ultimately the answer, right?

Kevin Rosenquist: Great chatting with you. Thank you very much for being here.

Paul Jarrett: Hey, Kevin. Thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate it.