#259 - Aaron Rubin - Founder & CEO of ShipHero - Building a Better Supply Chain | The FORT #259

Aaron Rubin

00:00

 The Amazon spending by $4 to get a package to the customer. And these people in General market is spending ten. That's what you need to solve. You can't be spending two and a half times what other people.

Chris Powers

00:12

 Are spending. Welcome to the Fort podcast. I am Chris Powers. And on the show, I talked to some of the most fascinating Minds in business and discuss important topics in the worlds of real estate entrepreneurship. Investing and more to learn more. Visit the fort pod.com. That's the fort. Pod.com. This episode is brought to you by Fork. Capital are you a commercial real estate investment broker or anyone out there with an off-market Class? B industrial deal between 15 and 100 million dollars for Capital offers industry-leading incentives, including a bonus, the ability to co-invest and exclusive partner trips. For those that close deals with us. Join Fort capitals deal. Incentive program today to be eligible for these incentives and more by going to www.4wd.com, backslash connect. This is the final recording of the Year. We're recording this on the 22nd, and we're heading into the holidays Aaron. Welcome to the Fort podcast. Thank you for joining me today.

Aaron Rubin

01:17

 Thanks for having me, Chris.

Chris Powers

01:18

 Why don't we just get started with kind of how you got started with ship hero and came up with this idea that you have been working on now for almost 10 years?

Aaron Rubin

01:30

 Yes. Or so it's my second business. My first business. I started in college just Accidentally sort of and it was e-commerce business. So there's a bunch of things. I was frustrated about running that business. I was like, hey I can do this better, I was programmer, so programming since I was a little kid, so I was like, I am just going to start on these nights and weekends hack something together. Got our first customer after about a year, and they just kept running with it until this became my full-time.

Chris Powers

01:59

 Business and in your notes. Before we jump into that, I have to ask you, put we Everybody always three facts and your second fact was I nearly went bankrupt. In 2008. Can you expand on.

Aaron Rubin

02:12

 That if I have to, yeah, I mean all the s*** that can go wrong went wrong. So I started the business with a family friend in college. I was in college, he's 10 years older. Now it's just I don't beat all my money like just hustling online stuff as a kid. So I thought it's just a way to make a couple extra bucks. It took off, I never had access to the financial center axis, the books. It just sort of like I was the tech and marketing, and he was like the business. I whatever that meant right. I was a programmer like I never got into that, and we went from thinking we had a pretty good profitable business to like just like one of the worst days of my life was my mom when she died of cancer about. 14, 15 years ago at this point. So, she was in the hospital, like, write it like a couple weeks left at that point. And my whole family like me, my brother, and my dad were like rotating, so we're there 24 hours a day. So we'd like work, and be there overnight and like whatever it was, it was obviously, you know, it's difficult is all kind of blur and my business partners like there're some issues. Can you meet at our accountants office? I never met our accounts. In our County was my business. Partners friend is likely me to his office in the city. I am like, all right, I am going to go. My mom was in the hospital in New York City, lives in the suburbs, so I am like, all right. I will just go to their this meeting and then I will go to the hospital because that's missing a hospital that night. So I go there. I like, well, I remember is the basically saying like, hey, this is what we thought the business did like we thought we had this much cash, and we made this much, Profit last year, but in reality like we have lost money. And like, we actually don't have cash, we owe all this money and my God, we're going to go bankrupt. I literally don't remember anything from that. So like the next morning, like, leaving the hospital like that whole bike. I don't know. 12 hours. Whatever is just a blur. I just don't even remember. I remember leaving, I don't know the rest of the meeting. I remember anything. So, basically never figured out quite what happened, but like the accounting was wrong. So, Later that year and that was like, the reason why I can't, you know, like that saying like, hey, you see, got the buffets saying like so you see who's naked when the tide goes out or whatever, right? So it was in 08 when the financial crisis hit because we were selling apparel for martial arts which is 64 kids. Taking karate basically at the time and that market just died because That's the first thing you cut, right? At you kids karate lessons. Like it's not a necessity. So our Revenue went down and that's when it sort of revealed that, hey, all these numbers were sort of fake. So, anyways, I ended up buying them out because my dad, my dad is a college. Professor don't have a lot of money, but his house is paid for. So he mortgaged his house I took that money paid off the debts that we had as much as we can end up hitting everyone in full. Didn't default on any loans but you know just barely eked it out for a few years and eventually turned around and got the business back to the point was really making North and a million a year. But when I say we were close to bankruptcy, I would wake up. Every morning, like full of anxiety, and just check the bank account to be like, did we bounce anything? Like we were so close to its like, we were so close to zero every day like we were, like bouncing off that zero, and so we, you know, eventually rebuilt it but.

Chris Powers

06:02

 That is a sickening just waking up every day. It's like you have five seconds of not thinking about it and then all of a sudden the thought hits you like damn it. Here we.

Aaron Rubin

06:09

 Go. Let us just get on my computer like before I did anything like it again. Up and just check the bank balance and like is a.

Chris Powers

06:16

 Negative. So the Lessons Learned are obviously better accounting for more oversight of accounting. Is that fair? Or like, was there anything that you would kind of said, like we could have done this better and it wouldn't have been such a surprise or.

Aaron Rubin

06:30

 Well, I just trusted someone entirely with the accounting, and we're like, oh, he's got it, right? And I didn't even touch, stick my nose in it. And, you know, obviously, in hindsight like you got. You got to know what's going on with the numbers like, which can't just trust them.

Chris Powers

06:43

 Was there anything you did? Italy that you weren't doing before to turn around the business. Like was there a new skill that you learn through all? That is why you're able to turn it back to a million bucks a year.

Aaron Rubin

06:53

 So we basically reinvented the whole business we switched from selling karate equipment to selling equipment for a martial Uncle, Brazilian jiu-jitsu that was just taken off of the time. It was really out of necessity because we had no money for inventory. So we switch to like a deal. Add a model because I couldn't afford to stock a thousand views. So I was like, I am going to stalk 7 and Subways. Item a day which worked really well and it's still the primary business model of that business today, you know, 14 years later. Those really like just a desperation. He will marry because we couldn't, we just didn't have the money to buy a Mendoza? Yeah.

Chris Powers

07:29

 So is this the impetus for the idea to start s***, hero? And can you explain a little bit about what Shapiro is maybe when you started and what it is today?

Aaron Rubin

07:38

 Yeah, do. So that's how I started ship hero. That company was well back on its feet. The making good money in reserve just traditional e-commerce business at that point. So Shapiro we started as warehouse management software. So basically whether you're a brand that ships your own product or your, a third party logistics company shipping for other people, you need technology to deter run the warehouse generate the labels, all that stuff. So we still do that today, we serve about 8 billion a year of orders peoples in Asia with Waters or ship through our system more than Every 200 packages in the US including Amazon and that too, in that pool of packages ships using our software. So we built it, we got some customers shipping, you know, as much as you know, Clover a million packages a week. We have got some pretty good skill customers, and we're just the software running those buildings. That's how we started about three years ago. We also started opening our own facility. So we have got nine facilities across the u.s. And Canada where we just ship for people who want to Outsource. Us this smaller business. It's about 800 million a year of jimsy or something about a hundred million dollars of customer orders here. It's about ten percent of the size of our cell phone business.

Chris Powers

08:56

 Is there a size where your to like, you shouldn't actually be shipping your own product even though they probably are like, is there a size where you're too small or like, what is the size that you should start bringing shipping in house and not using your facility? I don't know if I am asking that the right way.

Aaron Rubin

09:14

 Well, you see, usually just paste the start shipping your own when you're really small. And then when you get to a million or so a year in Revenue paste, start to Outsource it because you can't ship it yourself. You got to start getting a warehouse in hiring a team. It's just not worth it. You will end up spending more money unless you have some sort of customized product. But, you know, everyone thinks they do most people's products, a pretty (generic) than the day's goes in a box against ship and then, it doesn't become worth bringing it back. Back in house until you're pretty decent scale. So like solo Brands, one of our customers. There are small, public company. I think they have like a million square feet across a bunch of different facilities like at that scale. It starts to the economics of Bring It Back. In-house can make sense if you're if you want to run it but in between that you know one and a couple hundred million dollars in annual revenue, Outsourcing it while far from perfect, is way better than running an in-house and I have done both.

Chris Powers

10:14

 And you Said that you guys ship for Amazon? Did I hear.

Aaron Rubin

10:17

 That right? Now what I am saying is when you look at all the packages shipped in the US we have more than one out of every 200. So basically Amazon has 100 on the 200 and in that remaining hundred we get like one of them so now we don't see.

Chris Powers

10:31

 Friends. I had this, very generic question that you can take a lot of ways and it said, when I say Amazon, what does that make? You think about from your view of the world? Are they a big competitor of yours, or they do not think about them? Um, are they, how do you think about them in relation to what you do every day?

Aaron Rubin

10:48

 There's certainly a competitor. But, you know, there's so much bigger to don't think of them sort of. That way, I think, actually the most surprising thing about Amazon is I saw I will pull this, the twitterverse second a couple people posted today complaining and today's December 22nd complaining that their listings on Amazon or shown delivery after Christmas. And they were like, really raggy on Amazon. I am like, do you know how hard? Is to get something delivered. When you order today before Christmas and there're storms coming across the United States and like it's just funny how they're so good at what they do yet. It's never enough, you know. So just a little but Amazon's the best in the world at what they do. A lot of what we do is honestly just following them. Like we saved Trail. Blazed, the way ahead of everyone else, I think people follow them in the wrong way. So I like Do we also have to deliver in two days or one day? I am like, no, it's actually not the reality but what they do is they deliver for cheaper than anyone else in the world, and that's a good goal. So if it takes three days instead of two, that's fine. But if you're spending for this way, Amazon spending by $4, to get a package to the customer, and these people in General market is spending 10. That's what you need to solve. You can't be spending two and a half times what other people are spending. So we try to close that Gap and you know fortunately we can copy what they do and yeah it's a lot of what we do frankly.

Chris Powers

12:20

 I have them just made it harder for small businesses and folks that can't get that cost like or have you found that customers? Don't really care. If it arrives next day or even two days like their cool with the three or four day delivery or have they kind of reset. Everybody's expectation that mean you just mention the Christmas thing.

Aaron Rubin

12:38

 The two days. Guys as much fooled people as has actually impacted thing. I mean it's caused a lot of big companies to chase to day when they shouldn't be but there's a reason why they're almost 50% of the market for e-commerce, right? Like people like the convenience and they like the fast. Free shipping. Like their Amazon's that stupid, right? They might not make a lot of money on that business, but they sure made. Sure, no one else does either.

Chris Powers

13:03

 When you say you copy them, Like how do you copy them? I am assuming you just obviously are watching what they're doing, but as far as the little nuts and bolts that nobody actually sees like how do you get a good view into what you need to be doing based on what they're doing is they're the things that are obvious like hiding in plain sight that you watch for is it certain data like how do you copy them?

Aaron Rubin

13:26

 So mu copy but a couple of very specific ways that I think people again for the most part of copying the wrong thing. So people think hey Amazon's got all these robots I got to have all These robots, and we have some robots in our warehouses. Amazon doesn't actually use robots for many of their buildings. That's not what you should be copying. The main advantage that. So the way that our business works the way being a 3pl works is 70% of the cost happens outside of your building. It goes to UPS or FedEx that seventy percent. So if you're spending all your time worrying about what happens inside the building The maximum you can reduce it is like 29% crate. If you took all your costs and reduced it by 99%, you're actually reducing 29% of the total costs, right? You need to reduce that. 70%. And how do you not pay UPS and FedEx so much money? The model what we do in our buildings and it's fairly obvious. Once you, once you see it is we tell our customers ship, all your products to one warehouse and say our warehouse in Las Vegas. And we take that product, we put her Iran trucks, we ship it to a bunch of other warehouses when someone orders in Dallas or Fort Worth, we ship it via local carrier because we have the product sitting in Fort Worth, we ship it. Be a local carrier who delivers that, the next day, exactly what Amazon this right? It's very simple model. It's very hard to execute but conceptually fairly simple and the cost savings there. Dwarf, the entire amount spent in the world so you can save more by just shipping It'd be a local carrier in Fort Worth, then the entire cost of picking up hacking. An order in your Warehouse, you just got to make sure you have the product in the right place at the right time. Get easier said than done. The like that is the answer. There is no like, oh, I am going to make my warehouse perfectly efficient, it doesn't matter. I am still I still went on price because I am not paying UPS seven dollars to deliver. I have a local carrier who's delivering at 44 so you can't cover that $3. There's no way to make up that three dollars in the warehouse because the entire Our warehouse.

Chris Powers

15:35

 Goes to. Yeah, interesting. Is there like a, the best product you could ever shipped? It's like, the right size, right? Weight. Like, or there're products that are just terrible to ship for the customer. Like, is there a perfect product out there or just varies? And depends on how much you charge.

Aaron Rubin

15:56

 if there is based on the type of customer. So for me, I need to be able to get the product close to the End customer, which means in apparel customer that has, you know, are the average orders like four different? Sure. So they have got like every color, every size, and every like that, they're not going to give me enough stock to be able to distribute that across five warehouses. Like they're only going to send me like eight extra large green, right? So, how am I going to split that between all the warehouses? Like it just doesn't work well for me. So for me better is a customer that has a relatively small number of skus so that I could get in or all my buildings now. For other people, they would prefer the different profile like apparel for us is too Great. So, like one of our biggest customers is a brand called Momofuku a restaurant, but they also sell food online, and they just sell tons of them and there's only like 35 different skus, right? There's like this type of spicy noodles of that. There's only a limited number, and they're big and heavy which is also good because UPS charges a ton ship thick and heavy stuff. My local carriers like doesn't cost me that much more heavy verse light. So Good profile for me, but different 3pls like different things. Okay, so if I order like a.

Chris Powers

17:16

 T-shirt that's made in lala and you are the you are working with that apparel company, and I am in Fort Worth Texas. How does that product get to me?

Aaron Rubin

17:27

 So the old model would be, they would have a warehouse right next to their Factory and whether you are in New York or Fort Worth or Miami which ship from that warehouse near that factory. And if they want it to go too quick, they put her on a plane and go. UPS. Second, they are and if they didn't care and I will get there in two days, but of course then like $18, and if they didn't care about the speed, they'd give it to like DHL e-commerce, it would cause the, you know, six box but it would take 5 days or more. Those are the two options. So, what we do is we take it, we move it, and it would probably be sitting in the warehouse in Fort Worth and you would get it. The next day, if you're San Antonio, we can get up the next day, new stem and get the next day, if you're further out and you're not in a major Metro They probably take two days and it will cost me less than five bucks to get.

Chris Powers

18:16

 Is there like a common mistake that maybe, you know, startup e-commerce or first time e-commerce companies or just in general make when they're thinking about how they ship product and Warehouse product? Because there a, is there something that is like an easy fastball for if somebody's listening to this, that they could better their business if they stop doing this and did this instead?

Aaron Rubin

18:38

 Yeah, the most common mistake is someone says, my product comes in to the port of LA I don't want to pay to ship it. Into Kansas City or somewhere, right? So, I am just going to stock it, the closest to the port, I can because that saves me, my inbounds free. What they don't realize is, they're spending eight times as much on the outbound Freight as they are in the inbound 48. But it's harder to see, right? Because it's a million little transactions within bounds one, big transaction. So people say it's called Drayage that invent met Freight from the port to the warehouse. And I like, man, the drainage is an extra three thousand. As I ship it over to Kansas City. Like I can't do that, but they don't realize they're paying an extra two dollars on every shipment going out ups. And in fact, they're spending an extra twenty-three thousand dollars shipping it. They're like have enough I have had this conversation directly with people, and they still don't get it. So people won't believe because people see the big number and the small number on every bill is harder to notice. But that's the reality. You want to be close to the End customer not the port.

Chris Powers

19:43

 You want to be closer to the End customer not the port and the their Logic and thinking is, if they're closer to remind me again, why does it seem obvious that you want to be closer to the?

Aaron Rubin

19:52

 Port? So the way you pay for inbound is you pay for the cost of the container moving from China to LA right, which nowadays, it's not that expensive. So let us see if we Grant right? Then you pay the income in Inland Freight or the Drayage, which is the cost of moving that container from the poor to the warehouse. So if that, if that warehouse is in the Empire. I would be less than 500 bucks if that warehouse is somewhere Mill in the country, it will be a few thousand dollars, right? So it looks like it's more expensive to move. It is more expensive to move it there, but then when you ship to New York, you're spending half as much. Because it's already halfway there, right? It's always cheaper to move something in bulk, then individual units. But people don't see it because, no one wants to read their UPS bill because it's a million pages long, and they fall asleep. You.

Chris Powers

20:45

 Know, is it cheaper to ship? Something to a big city with a lot of infrastructure as opposed to, like a rural City and like, the middle of nowhere Montana.

Aaron Rubin

20:54

 So like everything in logistics. That depends. So, you got to be smart with your carrier mix. So there're UPS and FedEx will charge you an additional $13 to get to that little town in Montana per package? So if the list right to ship, it is eight dollars. They will charge you a residential surcharge, a super resolution Until surcharge and then a remote area surcharge. So the remote area, surcharge is $13, and those other surcharges are, like, two and threes or something like that. Like, you end up paying way more than you would think to get it out there. But if you ship that same package USPS, while the base rate might be higher, there are zero surcharges. So you need a like look at every package in real time and make a different decision. So like there's no one in the world who could ever figure it out because there's all these zip codes and it just different carriers treated differently. So if you're not being smart and saying, well this package UPS going to charge me extra, I will go USPS and this package you know, UPS is cheaper or faster like you have then analyzed each one and our WMS does that like it's just built in so it just automatically does.

Chris Powers

22:03

 It automatically picks the right carrier?

Aaron Rubin

22:06

 Yeah, you just say I like I wanted you just if your user software, you just say, I want this package to get there, the cheapest way possible that gets, you an x amount of days, and then we, Advanced look up based on what we think the weight is going to be all the options. And we make a decision as to which method to use.

Chris Powers

22:27

 If your apparel company, are you just kind of hoping that most your orders obviously are going to big cities? Like you're just hoping that you're not getting an onesie here in like the middle of nowhere. Iowa. Then one to Montana like is your model assuming that 90% of product is going to a major Hub that's easier to get to or do you really care? R one way or the.

Aaron Rubin

22:47

 Other. I think most brands are not nearly sophisticated enough to know and frankly, everyone hates Logistics, and they don't want to spend any time thinking about it. So they just pray we just like cover their eyes half. The people who have like these midsize e-commerce Brands, if you ask them to simple questions, how much does it cost you on average per package? And how long does it take to get there on average? They cannot answer what they will say is. DHL charges me 6 bucks and you say but like if you sit a thousand packages last week was your bill, six thousand dollars, and they will have no idea, and then they will look at it I am like oh actually it's 8,000 would you convince them to look because they don't understand what their bills are because they're assuming that every package is going from LA to San Francisco like, oh, that's only six bucks. Not realizing that. Well, if it's going from LA to. Yeah, rural Montana, that's actually like $18. And they didn't Factor. That ain't right. So yeah, no one knows. There's no one spends. The time to look.

Chris Powers

23:52

 I was looking at the ways that you guys make things cheaper for your customers. And one of the things it said, Y'all do three times picking efficiency. That's a that right. Yeah. On our software is.

Aaron Rubin

24:07

 Really good at. What does that mean? People? So we have like a bunch of videos we go on YouTube. You can see how we pick a pack orders, but we're pretty good at getting orders. Pick them path. Well, so we tell people, they should be spending less than a dollar fifty all in on labor to ship an average order which is significantly less than You would get on sort of older school system. So we do that. We have like mobile apps, you scan items, they batch them to group them intelligently, see reduce your walk and have a bunch of other tools to make the pick and packing process quicker. And then, we also have a ton of videos because we do run our own buildings. That are really pretty big scale buildings, and we do a lot of videos for just process Improvement. Like, here's the ideal flow. Actually, I went to a bunch of new ones in January, because we came up with a couple of tweaks to our awesome. Yeah, we can people both the to the software and the flows these and their own warehouse and you can use the Flows In other software as well. Obviously, still watch the videos and learn from them, but we try to help people drive that cost down, and we think we're pretty good at that drones.

Chris Powers

25:19

 Delivering packages by.

Aaron Rubin

25:21

 Drone. Yeah, it's not here yet.

Chris Powers

25:24

 It's not here yet every time I see it like an infomercial, I just imagine either like BB guns coming out and you're popping drones out of the sky or I just I see it as like a huge mess. Am I missing anything? Like is this really going to happen where we have got drones delivering packages? You look up in the sky and there's just Amazon boxes and ship Hero boxes everywhere. Like how does this play out? I.

Aaron Rubin

25:47

 Hope so. I mean it's not gonna happen, okay? It's like it. There's a bunch of intermediate ways to make it happen that I think are actually really helpful depending on the environment. So, you know, in big cities is not necessary. It's not impossible, right? But sort of rural communities, you can think of the idea of trucks showing up to a neighborhood and then, like a bunch of droids dispatching. And just, instead of going everyone's door just flies in there, right? It does, you know, eight at a time or Something like it's not so far you keep even line of sight probably. So I think there will be drones will be part of a future in 10 years from now. It's just we're very far the tech like keeps failing and it's just it's a hard problem solve and very dangerous when it.

Chris Powers

26:38

 Fails or the little robots that are just going down the sidewalk like little they have those little ET.

Aaron Rubin

26:46

 Yeah. Those are live in some Is not doing some but these are very marginal life, very small percentage, and he got to go down and meet them, you know? It's like you really want to go out and meet your delivery drone. Oh you just want UPS to leave it on your front porch. You will get a later right? Like so.

Chris Powers

27:04

 Yeah, I feel like some of its unnecessary. I mean I feel like this is going to be the next lime Scooters or bird scooters. Whatever they just end up, you know in over bridge in the water eventually. But we will see, I.

Aaron Rubin

27:16

 Don't think so because the ROI is Pretty easy to tell Reggie like I don't feel like business-to-business things, don't happen like that because you just pile it, right? Like UPS pilot sit, and they just been like a couple million bucks to try it. And if it doesn't work, they don't scale it out to a billion dollars from line would write it just smarter about it, so it's gonna take forever like again, I think 10 years away. But it will happen, and it doesn't happen in the US because the regulations don't happen on their countries because someone will want that.

Chris Powers

27:48

 Yeah. Let us talk a little bit just about like the current market like you are on the front lines of seeing how the American Consumer is behaving. And we're heading into Christmas in three days. Like what are you seeing right now? As it relates maybe to where we were a year ago or just in general like any high-level thoughts?

Aaron Rubin

28:09

 Yeah. It spends this year was earlier. So I think that also through people off. So November was way better than People thought December's moderated a bit. So I think that's just consumers, just maybe learning to buy earlier, or people running sales earlier, I don't know. So I think that was somewhat of just a pull forward and demand, but we're not falling off a cliff. I think, you know, we seem again, let us go back to amazonas example, they really lock down. A lot of capacity, makes shut people off from the emphasis, and then product looking for because more product hit their docks than they expected. They had Announced that they were subleasing space and firing people in Q3 and then in Q4 they said, we don't have enough space. We're not allowing you to send stuff in, right? How's that possible? Is that we Q3 look bad. Like you three was heading south. Everyone started to cut. Everyone was focused on. How do we deal with the down near keys? For turned out to be an LP are it's not a 25% year, it's not like some gangbusters here but if we're up I don't know. Whatever will end I will pay 10% even if it's a little lower than it was six or eight percent. That's still a pretty good year, considering like, what the feds been doing and just sort of like it looked like it was going to be way worse so it's going to be an okay it's an okay season it's an offseason I am optimally I almost feel like it's really hard to crush the US consumer like we keep buying stuff like you know maybe we're not going to keep growing as fast but like the idea of like hey the US consumer is going to slow down and spend less. It just doesn't seem there, it seems like it's a recession. It's a really, really, you know, mild consumers, that may be more of a business recession, but consumers are still just flew by.

Chris Powers

30:01

 Is there any cracks in e-commerce in general? Like, for a lot of companies, you know, there's been talk, maybe the cost to acquire customers too high. Like, they're not actually as profitable as I thought they were, and that brick and mortar. Actually serves a much bigger need in society. Like, when you kind of hear those kind of, you know, No key statements made. Like how do you think about that?

Aaron Rubin

30:22

 When cost per acquisition to just go up? Like apple did change the rules. Like, there's a reason like meta stock dropped and like, they just made it harder to Target customer. So, that did destroy a lot or it took a lot of marginal businesses and made them unprofitable, and it took a lot of decent businesses and made it more marginal like it did just whack the industry. The a couple other things is hey there was a lot of free money floating around so consumers, buy now pay later. I think that's the biggest risk. That's the one thing I am worried about. I am pretty optimistic overall, but I am a little worried about post-christmas. If people are going to have no money because they have tapped out their credit cards and all their buy now pay later Zoar do, and they just, there's no more debt, right? Like when the debt stops, like, if they were living off that, and then they got to stop spending entirely right now? Do they not have the debt? They don't have the money because they're paying the debt, right? They're not paying with us. So I think there's some of that is affecting Commerce, right? Consumers a little tighter or money so little harder to get that dollar from them. But also the e-commerce businesses were taking these loans from, you know, for different places, right? There's a lot of companies providing debt to e-commerce businesses, and they have been pulling back, so they're not providing that much Dad, right? So even good businesses, right? That's just the way it works when There's pull back. They basically pull back broadly, because they can't really evaluate all these small borrowers, right? So they just pulled back entirely, so it's a little bit less debt. So, there were some companies that, you know, we're growing, we're never really profitable but, you know if you're growing and you could get that, you know, that Trav, right? You grow, if you get that, you grow, you guys dead. And that was a, there's no more debt and you're like, oh s***, I actually have a business here, right? I was just, I was just a hundred percent leverage so some of that some people get squeezed there but I think overall, Were all like the good businesses will be fine, and they also have like the countdowns the world and some other people that just had these like crazy evaluations based on covid spending that we're just never realistic, and they just, you know, crash back or carvanha or whatever they just crashed him back to Earth, but they probably should never have, you know, had the valuation. They have. Yeah.

Chris Powers

32:43

 If you're like me, you like to wake up and get your daily dose of reading for me? A lot of that has to do with commercial real estate, because of the industry that we're in it for Capital and the news is important. But if you're a busy real estate, professional like me, you don't have time to skim through the dozens of dry and add filled media, Outlets each day. That's why I read cre daily. A free email newsletter that cuts through the Clutter and delivers concise, witty commentary on the latest trends and transactions and Commercial Real Estate. I discovered cre daily a few months ago and it's an email I actually look forward to getting each morning if you're Real estate professional. You owe it to yourself to try it out and stay on top of what's happening in the industry. In only 5 minutes to give their free daily newsletter. Try visit cre daily.com that's cre daily.com. I was at a YPO like the global real estate conference recently and a panelist said something that I have kind of heard in different ways. And they were talking about Amazon and all the Innovation going on inside the warehouse. And, you know, one thing that I like about the industrial spaces, there's so much investment going into. How do you get more product through the warehouse? And they just made a case? Now we will see or not, but they just said 10 years from now you could see some industrial rinse as high as $50 a foot because the throughput through these buildings is just going to get so great that the margins that they're able to achieve out of each building. Are huge and $50 a foot isn't going to you know, face them. Now whether that happens or not, you know, we're let us just say in most markets you're at an average of like eight to twelve bucks. I mean that's a big statement to say there's 50. So I guess my question would be if as you think about like what are the leading things that could make, and Warehouse that much more efficient, is it all robotics? Like, how could you possibly get there as it mezzanine levels within a warehouse? Like if I were to say you know, I want to charge $50 a foot and in 10 years I need a tenant that could pay that. How are they going to get there?

Aaron Rubin

34:53

 Yeah, part of it is gonna have to do regulation, not allowing people to build more like in its Canadian dollars. But in Vancouver's, over 25 bucks at this point because you just, you can't deal. So it's about had to be part of it, right? Because if you could keep building people, so throw a buildings and drive that price down, you know, there're some places. Our house that I have been getting way more efficient but other square footage where we really can. So the way basically most warehouses look is half the building is very not, very narrow aisle, pallet racking up to the ceiling and it's hard to imagine getting more dense than that. So you have an aisle, aisle has a wire guide on it. You have a turret truck that drives between it. There's only about, you know, or five inches of clearance on either side of that. And then you have pallet racks all the way up to the ceiling. So I don't know how you get more dense and that's where Overstock area in the pickable areas where you and that's where you keep your Overstock, right? So you get in 10,000 units, nine thousand gold, their 1000 going the pickable areas. The pickable areas have been getting more dense and will continue to get more dense due to robotics. It's only about half the building or a little bit less than half the building. That's that. So I just, I don't see how you can squeeze anymore. Or density out of the Overstock areas because those very narrow aisle. Pallet racks are there full of stock. Like, I am not really sure how you get that any higher. Yeah, through puts going up, but the actual Square through puts going up at the storage. It's hard to make denser.

Chris Powers

36:37

 Yeah. Okay. Some might say that globalization is don't know if the words over but it's on. It's way back to not being a globalized world that has. I mean if the average American didn't know what a supply chain was three years ago. I think every American is heard the word supply chain over and over again. You have been at the center of it. Like let us talk about on Shoring. Let us just talk about a little bit about what you're seeing, like how is the world reorienting itself and from your view of the world like what are you expecting to see The Good, the Bad? The Ugly.

Aaron Rubin

37:16

 Yeah, we discussed this a little bit. It's hard to move Supply. Chains people, if you want to track how many people say they're going to move their supply Chains, It's a lot of contract. Having people are actually moving their supply Chains. It's pretty low. The I forgot the exact numbers. I looked it up the other day. But over the last few years since the Trump Terrace which we thought were going to the decimate imports from China, the growth and imports from China have exceeded and again I got to look up. These numbers gonna be slightly off but have exceeded all our imports from Mexico. They have grown more than the entire imports from Mexico and the importance of Mexico barely grown, you know. You're talking you know 10% a year sort of growth like super slow compared to The Narrative of like oh my God we're on Shore and removing, or we're near to remove everything closed, it's just not happening. I was fortunate enough to speak to Neil rubini not the other day as a few months ago at this point about this, and he was saying, hey, it's going to be not near shore me but still be friend Tori. We're with the government's going to do is Say or exert pressure to make it such that. Maybe it's not Mexico, but it's also not China because we don't like China. So we're going to be importing more from India, or from other places that are more aligned with the us because that was his idea, but To do that requires a pretty heavy-handed government influence, right? It's 25% tariff wasn't enough. So how much pressure are they going to exert? They could do it right. They can make it so that imported from China is so unpleasant that you're going to go find other sources. But outside of some really heavy hand of government intervention, imported from China is still the default not because it's the cheapest. But they know how to manufacture the supply chains exist, the value chains exist and to break those into pieces, really hard, because I just give you example. So we import our martial arts uniforms from Pakistan, Pakistan. If you walk around the block where my factory is right next door to it is another Factory that also makes a similar product and next door to it as another one next door to it on the entire row. That area is all making a similar product and all and right there, is there someone whose full-time job is fixing the equip. His business is fixing the equipment when it breaks, for those factors. So, when something breaks, he's there, I have a friend who opened the factories, making the same product in Maine, wonderful, business person, really devoted American, and he's doing his thing because it's really important to him when his piece of equipment breaks. Instead of a someone showing up in twenty minutes, he pay someone to fly to mean he's down for a day or two, right? And then he's got a huge cause rights instead of costing in your 80 bucks, to get it fixed. It's costing him. Several thousand dollars. He's down for a day because there's no infrastructure, there's no ecosystem there. Same thing for importing the materials he still has to import the materials from Pakistan because that's when the factory that makes the materials. All right, because there's not enough of a supply chain in Maine. So, Moving these things over just requires an incredible amount of hard work and caring about it like this is what Rogue Fitness. There's some people who really care about made in America and that's like devoting their basically their business life to making this business happen and then you can make it happen. But if your idea is, hey, you know, I am going to say, 20 bucks by moving my product to Mexico. I will have a little better supply chain or whatever. If you're not willing to be putting in like 80 hours a week and making it happen it's just never going to happen. Because this way. Too hard a challenge and for most businesses it's not worth it like just sourced from China and of course you 5% more whatever you want with your life, get back to sales and marketing which generates a lot bigger. Lift than the.

Chris Powers

41:29

 5%, if their any incentive that the that you could see the government offering, that would make it to where there is a rush or is it literally just the time and complexity and labor and decision-making that even if the incentive was made, it would still take a decade to actually see a dent in the supply.

Aaron Rubin

41:46

 Chains. Oh, yeah. There's no way to do it in less than a day. Kate, and I am skeptical. Even happen over a decade because you, it takes a decade of hard work. So, yeah, I am pretty optimistic in general. But on this case, like I have just seen so many people try, and we have tried like we have tried to move stuff over and people won't pay a dollar more for made in America, no matter what they say they won't. So you got to figure out how to do it compete with you competitors who are not making America, you have to deal with people that say, they're making American or not very, very common situation to see it. All the time. People import product, Andre and Rebrand it, and they just say made in America. There was a reason criminal, filing, or lawsuit about it, but have seen it happen. So many times and those who competitors, right? So you can't really compete based on made in America. It has the you have to be able to win on cost and the pieces are really hard. So I think if the government push they can make it happen over a decade, I don't think they're going to push hard enough. I think we just it's not the end of the world importing our t-shirts from, you know whether it's China or other Southeast Asian country, like, that's really mad. I know the government cares, a lot of its China or Vietnam, they'd much rather you be important from Vietnam, but I am not sure it matters that much.

Chris Powers

43:02

 So maybe that asks that leads to my next point. If you were reading headlines you would say, like China is they have peaked and Strings heading outside to China and you know, Apple just announced they're moving to likes, I think somewhere in Phoenix and Vietnam like what is really going on in China from? Like the pure data, what you're seeing is a business-as-usual over there or is there a meaningful shift call it globally to for folks trying to move their businesses out of China?

Aaron Rubin

43:33

 Yeah but I think if you look at like the data from Flex board or Freight waves the share of imports from China continues to stay flat or go off, it's not going down. So we asked, Americans buy more every year. So, there's opportunity for a lot of growth outside of China without China going down. You just buy so much stuff. But China is still dominant and, and it's always been a globalized world. It's never been just China, right? Like, we have been importing products from the other Southeast Asian countries for years, right? Like Korea has a huge manufacturing company and Country. It's never been just China and what people don't eat. And the other thing that I think the other misconception is people who have this like narrow world of this china-based China as the world's manufacturer should just Google how much product u.s. Creates and how much we export. We're actually the second largest exporter after China. We export a ton of stuff we do make a ton of stuff so it's not a Chinese Legend world but China's places. The number one exporter in the world is not changing this.

Chris Powers

44:44

 Decking has the covid lockdowns had as big of an impact as we think, or like you just said, Imports are still up. So it can't be that big of an impact.

Aaron Rubin

44:53

 Yeah. Imports are still up. Were there disruptions tons? It was super painful and annoying but the total export amounts never took that big a hit the product. You know ports were closed, created huge backlogs but you know we have one point there was like 45 day. That locks but it's still a war. It all worked its way through and there're no backlogs anymore.

Chris Powers

45:19

 Yeah that was my next question. Any current inflation. Cannot now be pointed towards a backlog of over ordered product or is that still working its way through the system?

Aaron Rubin

45:29

 No we're past that. I mean I have been yelling that we're going to get deflation for to not deflation but disinflation. I don't know where this place is going to go back down to normal for too long. I was, I was early On that call for sure. So I was wrong. But cost to manufacture Goods. In u.s. Dollar has been dropping import prices are dropping, diesel is dropping and regular gasoline has been dropping is actually down a lot. Diesel was the last one that was stubborn and it's finally been coming down pretty significantly over the last month. So I need supply chain fuel related stuff that I think was the heat on the fire for inflation's all over. Now I think it's still work his way through our system, but I think it's mostly just is Wages at this point that are driving all of.

Chris Powers

46:21

 Inflation. And I guess from your point of the world are there, is it only Amazon that can afford the robots or are robots going to make their way into smaller businesses? Like is it an affordability thing? How much these machines cost? I have no idea how much these machines cost, or we go to start seeing more and more of these in the warehouse no matter what type of business. You run.

Aaron Rubin

46:44

 Oh yeah, they're all over the place already. The it's been following a great Innovation curve where we work with the company, India robotics. So I met their CEO at our facility in Jacksonville. I don't know couple weeks ago at this point. They make the robots for dirt cheap. There's a lot of precision that you know Ling longer need to include in the robots that you had to 10 years ago because they adjust with it with Aib adjustments just like a human. So in the past where robot had to be perfect because it was programmed to do, exactly something nowadays, robots are way more like humans are super imperfect, right? When you go to grab something, you don't know what you're going to grab the exactly right. I couldn't tell you how to grab something. Exactly. Except as I am watching it, I just, right? So even though I am very imprecise as a robot, I just constantly keep adjusting. So as the software has gotten better, they now can build robots that are pretty imprecise and still very, very functional because they keep just adjusting just like a person does. So the cost of Warehouse robot in terms of Hardware is probably down to the, you know, sub 25,000 dollars, and continuing to drop really rapidly. So costs are coming down. The reason why they're not a more role. In more facilities is there still complexities with rolling them out or integrate with your other systems and all those other bits? But there I mean it's not that they have gone. To happen. They're happening today.

Chris Powers

48:15

 Yeah. Okay. Well, as we kind of wrap up this year and it's kind of where we started the conversation, but maybe there could be some final thoughts on like leading indicators to where we're going next year. Is there like anything that is kind of top of mind for you in 2023 besides business as usual? Like any interesting data points that you're seeing that kind of, have you thinking about where the world is?

Aaron Rubin

48:43

 Headed? Well, so I think the, We do we know knows that the consumer is going to do, but I think it's going to be somewhere you know in the middle like it's not going to be a stock of the 2008 and it's not going to be you know boom times either right will model long. I think the more interesting question is capital markets pricing assets. I think you know no matter what people say publicly the reality is if you're trying to you know sort of add our scale, you know we're over 100 million dollar a year company. We last time you know we have raised over 50 million dollars in our round at that scale. There's very few investors new investors that are coming into companies and writing checks everyone's afraid to buy at the wrong price. Right? So I think people it's underreported how locked up the elites The Edge growth Equity, private Equity markets, are because everyone's living in fear of looking stupid. No one wants to Write that big check and find out man. I overpaid. So that's why we're in this weird world where you're seeing low one of them in the unemployment numbers. Today, we're great, right? We have low unemployment and tons of layoffs and tap like that's never happened before. You see Tak like Engineers, the last people to get fired, right? But that's changing because no one's getting new Venture dollars and no one knows what price stocks will be. No one knows what the correct value is for tech company these days. He's so everyone's operating an environment where you don't know we next dollars in the comments as you know if you can't price assets it's just nothing moves like everything freezes that we can't sell companies, no one really wants to do anything. So there's this like little bit of a gridlock in Tech and I suspect it's also a little bit broader than just act like just pricing asses in general and you don't know what your thoughts are on that. I like you seen people just afraid to commit.

Chris Powers

50:45

 oh yeah, I mean the real estate markets have They're just pretty much shut off. I mean, we have a little bit more of a benefit of being able to have, you know, a lot of, you know, real estate has cash flow. I am not saying Tech businesses don't, but a lot of these businesses aren't profitable yet. I feel like real estate has a little bit more of an easy way to Value things but it's still shut off. I mean interest rates continue to climb. I think everybody decided in my opinion just like talking to people is kind of like everybody got together in summer and just said, let us take the rest of the year. An off like almost collectively. And that's pretty much what you have seen. I think there was a lot of talk that 0 and Q for, you know, you will start seeing Capital flows come back into the market that really hasn't happened. I saw Jamie dimon talk the other day in Dallas and, you know, he just again, he doesn't have a crystal ball, but he thought will Top out the FED funds rate will Top out around 5% sometime in q1 and that will bring you know at least some more clarity to the market. He thinks they will hold steady if not, maybe creep a little bit more throughout the rest of the year, but.

Aaron Rubin

51:55

 Where.

Chris Powers

51:56

 He said the real estate industry said, I mean from my view of the world like Q2 is maybe when you start seeing some activity again some action because at least in our industry, but a lot, I am assuming in your industry with Venture, there's apparently, 260 billion dollars of committed real estate domestic funds for Real Estate already raised. They have a three-year clock on most of that to deploy it. I don't know how The VC funds work. I am assuming it's something similar either. They're not going to deploy the money, or they are and just knowing human behavior like they're going to they'd rather deploy at the not. So we will see. I mean, leverage in the system tends to be a lot less than it's been at least compared to 08, but kind of what you said, I think the big thing that is interesting to me. And you said like unemployment remains great but Tech is losing jobs considerably as like how big of an impact was the tech world having on the entire economy and you know if we're going to lose half of our Tech workers and it turns out we didn't need them to begin with like what is that going to do to? You know the economy in general attack is just it was like it's LED everything for the last 20 years and now you're kind of having this In a moment where it's like, either a we didn't need all this Tech a lot of stupid stuff. Got funded. That should have never been funded. Be we don't need half the people that we thought we needed to run these companies. I mean Twitter's maybe a good example that I know it's a different type of business but that's kind of what I think from an industrial standpoint will be really interesting is like how will the tech companies perform especially that need warehousing and everything in 2023 and that's kind of left to be like we're kind of figuring that out right now. It's the first time in 20 years anybody's doubted Tech. So I kind of start rambling at the end there. But as far as price Discovery in real estate, it's weird because I think people know what stuff should be priced at, nobody's willing to pull the trigger yet again because it's I think this conscious decision that everybody's taking the year off, especially lenders. Who had a great first half of the Year? Anyway, that's a long answer. I don't even know if I answered your question, but it's kind of what I was thinking.

Aaron Rubin

54:19

 Yeah, I mean, would you basically say is everyone's operating from a like just better to better not to swing a Miss, Right better to just sit here and just, you know, take a few pictures, right? And just sit on our hands. And I think in real estate. I mean, I guess it depends on if you have to refinance or not but you're not a cash burning business. So You probably have a little bit more flexibility to just sit and wait versus in Tech where most of the businesses are cash, burning businesses. So if you don't think enough capitals coming in over a given time line, you have no choice but to cut, right? And if you don't have visibility into when capital is going to come, you don't have a choice but the Cartwright's that's why we have seen all these huge tech companies even ones that are very, very well capitalized cut because they're like this might take two years and like I am going to run out of money two years. So I got a cut. Today. And I think part of them are also saying like, hey we were willing to spend $10 to get this unit of gross because we were, we were multiple was, you know, 50x. Earnings right now. It's like, well, it's actually 5x earnings. So I can only spend a dollars in a $10, right? So just some of those marginal ideas like hey, we can grow our company by doing that since just like well, okay, that makes sense when the market was high. Write your thoughts down 80%, like, There's still things to do, you guys still have a good business but like that, that idea, that move the needle a little is just no longer worth funding and just you got a cutbacks. But you know the one interesting thing about tech is every once in a while you have a massive home run. So it will be interesting to see what comes out in a couple of years as all these. There's finally talents available right for years. You just couldn't really hire any good Engineers because they were all working at, you know, Google or Facebook, or apple. Now that there's some Available be interesting to see if some younger companies get formed and you know you can still build you know 500 billion dollar tech company if you're the next Google or the next apple or the next Amazon, so I suspect they will be some amazing companies formed out of this who they will be I think once that happens tackle come roaring back but yes we're time. What do.

Chris Powers

56:32

 You think happens to like you might be thinking about this with all this Talent on the street, but a lot of these people coming out of these companies. You know, we're making these inflated salaries, I mean, you see some of the numbers YouTube. Making six hundred thousand a million dollar a year salary, they weren't, you know, Kush everything, I got lift cards and meal cards and like they're coming back out. One small businesses, can't really afford that as like an individual employee, so they obviously they're going to give stock options to get them if at all, but I sometimes wonder like, okay. You have a it's not an overwhelming amount of people. It's not like half the country, but you have a lot of People that are used to making 600,000 to a million bucks a year that probably built a lifestyle that supported that and at least for the next few years, like some of them will get rehired, maybe the same amount, but it seems like there's a lot of people that are going to be like, have a Day of Reckoning that they're just not worth that to the market to anybody else but like a Facebook that could, you know, just stomach that it was not even. There was a rounding error for them. How do you think about that? Are these what's going to Happen to those people?

Aaron Rubin

57:42

 Yeah, I mean some individuals are going to be in a lot of pain. Like there's in the people that are let go, obviously companies trying to let go of the people that they actually couldn't get that value out of them, right? So those are, it's not like the best people at Google will still be able to get a job paying a million bucks a year. Right? But a lot of people that are logo were not the best people, and they shouldn't have been getting paid a million dollars a year, and they just got sort of wrapped up in that's what that level pay. Gays and they probably shouldn't have been at that level. So some degree a people are like, I am going to cry for someone who's got to go back for making, you know, 600,000 250, you know, whatever. But also, hey man, you know if you got, you know, you got kids in private school and you have got a house somewhere where you know your property taxes are you know 50 60 thousand dollars a year and it's painful. So like.

Chris Powers

58:34

 Yeah. I don't know, I have never excited for anybody's failure. I think if there's one thing I am excited about in general about what this next Market brings us is it brings a level of work ethic back into the workforce. You have to really be good at what you're doing to exist. You know, it just makes operators, the best shine. It doesn't allow a ton of incumbents into the market that just can raise money and kind of go around and You know, create more kind of chaos than is necessary. I think it hopefully makes people may be more grateful again for what they have. I don't know, I just think we're getting, you can kind of feel it. You're seeing it even the big tech companies. I think Salesforce came out the other day, the CEO who was like the first person to say we're going fully remote work from home. That's the future and like two years later he makes this huge announcement that we're not as productive or slashing our bottom 10%. And we think that the office culture needs to Resurgence. I am not saying off the offices, you know, could be a hot word, but in general, you seen that now, Twitter Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook is kind of said, you're just starting to see a new tone and CEOs voices, which is like, we're going to get back to, like, working really hard. And if you're not adding value, you're not going to be here. And I think, you know, 14-year Bull Run in a lot of cheap. Money made things. Pretty.

Aaron Rubin

59:58

 Lacks. Yeah, my personal experience with that was we bootstrapped up to 30 million in annual revenue. So we were profitable when we had raised four hundred thirty-five thousand dollars to get there, right? So we did environment by making profit and you know, we had, we had a really hard conversations internally because I mean, I own the company, you know, some of our employees have options but no, I own the vast majority of the company. We were profitable, we were big still not growing as fast as we are. Now, we're still growing seventy percent a year, like, it was really solid business and, you know, we sat down leadership wise, and we said, Said that point it's less than now. But like our top three competitors had raised like over a quarter million dollars quarter billion dollars combined in the preceding year, and we looked at each other we're like You know, we think we're building a great company, I will go public one day, and we think we could win as an underfunded relative to the competition. We have the right culture. But can we do that on zero dollars when we're going up against a quarter of a billion dollars? Right? And we answered no, we like we honestly don't think we can win with no money to go up against people that much more money than us. So, we went out, and we got a single investor that wrote a 50 million dollar checked off. Us and we jumped on the DC bandwagon our growth Equity. Like I don't know that in a perfect world where money was more expensive. If my competitors had raised, you know, the more reasonable amount of money. Each they had reached raise 20 million bucks and I had raised 0 I think I could have fought and continue to win in that environment, but I didn't feel like I could do it when they were raising, you know, a hundred million dollar round. So, I think there's a lot of companies like that will may become more to the fore. Now that the money is stop people that had good fundamentals and weren't as high P. So I think that's the one good thing the other maybe good, maybe bad but certainly painful thing you're going to see is there's more fraud out there you have spoken to friends about I am like, hey is this company real? And they're like savings but the people that invested in those companies than their like, I don't know but like value keeps going up. So whatever. I am not going to ask you two questions, right? We have seen sub CEO departures. Theo's, leaving companies that have raised that a billion dollar plus valuation. Usually, you know, there might be some fraud there, right? Something to look at. So, so not just, you know, the big crypto ones, but some other ones that were just super happy. So, I think some of that will go, the whole tech industry will be tainted with that for a while where everyone's going to think all talk is fraud because more frauds, them come to the fore but it had to happen. It was too far off me. People got away with way too much stuff and Needed to wash out. So.

Chris Powers

01:02:48

 yeah hopefully you mentioned going public. Hopefully you see these companies. Go public a lot.

Aaron Rubin

01:02:53

 Earlier. It's just too expensive. Like is the compliance costs to go public like our goal is to go public the first half of 25. So we work in the a plan and think well I think we will get there or not easy but you re like the economics of going public these days, like it's just the overhead, the cost of not just going public but maybe being public. Like, we're still going through, we still do like big, four, accounting Audits and all that like a public company. Good, which is expensive. We still spend a ton of money and compliance. We're going public is even more expensive. So I just I think that's a regulates regulatory mistake that we just made it too hard just to we too expensive to go public, it pays to stay private.

Chris Powers

01:03:38

 Interesting, I didn't realize that. That's why a lot of folks were staying private, so long, especially in Tech. I know it's like a real estate read. They usually say, I think it's, I think it's two billion or five billion. I need to freshen up on that is like the minimum amount of a. Um, I think it to you can do it, but it's still pretty tight. Five is where it makes a lot more sense.

Aaron Rubin

01:04:03

 Yeah, so it's just math. You just look at it and you got to be a.

Chris Powers

01:04:07

 Public company CEO. Which like there're days I am like, I would rather have a hole in my head. Then be a public company CEO but.

Aaron Rubin

01:04:16

 I will I just want to say I was in your neighborhood. A lot this month I was in we have a warehouse in Fort Worth, so I spent a lot of you do Fort Worth in the last month. Yeah. Terminal Road down near the airport then little airport. Yeah I don't know what's got but.

Chris Powers

01:04:31

 Over by over.

Aaron Rubin

01:04:32

 DFW know, there's a little airport in Fort Worth.

Chris Powers

01:04:32

 By.

Aaron Rubin

01:04:38

 It's like a little commercial airport, I can remember it's called, but it's on Terminal Road in Fort Worth, so we have. Wow, yeah.

Chris Powers

01:04:44

 Meechum yeah, up.

Aaron Rubin

01:04:45

 North, yeah, yeah.

Chris Powers

01:04:48

 Well if you are in town any time I would love to host you for lunch or anything. It'd be fun. Thank you.

Aaron Rubin

01:04:57

 All right. All right man. Will appreciate the chat.

Chris Powers

01:05:00

 Yeah, I appreciate the chat. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and we will be in touch have a good one. Thank you. I hope you have enjoyed this episode of the for podcasts. Be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast platform or hop on over to YouTube to watch, full video episodes. If that's what you'd prefer for more information. You can check out the fort pod.com. Chris Powers is the founder and chairman of for Capital LP, all opinions from Chris and guests of the fort podcast are solely their own, and do not reflect the opinions of for Capital LP. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for Real Estate or investment decisions.