Mike Robinson is a Founding Member and the Head of Retail Solutions at The Eighth Notch (T8N), a technology platform enabling sustainable e-commerce delivery for shippers and carriers. With 30 years of executive experience, he has driven an $8 billion P&L and interfaced with the board of directors of a $27 billion public company. Mike also serves as an advisor and board member for several nonprofits, public companies, and startups.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:18] Mike Robinson talks about The Eighth Notch and his decision to launch the company
• [9:38] How delivery density impacts e-commerce profitability and environmental sustainability
• [11:15] Strategies for improving delivery route optimization
• [14:49] Consumers’ emerging acceptance of e-commerce delivery density
• [24:18] The benefits of delivery density for brands
• [31:21] Applying automation and robotics to logistics
• [34:31] How to improve last-mile delivery
• [40:50] Advice for growing a business: fail fast and forward
• [49:54] Mike’s perspective on social media addictions
• [59:51] How Mike met Jerry Seinfeld

In this episode…

Consumer deliveries are often made in multiple trips, with various delivery vehicles fulfilling orders at the same houses numerous times a day. Consumers are becoming more conscious of the environmental impact of these deliveries. One study found that 87% of people are willing to wait longer for eco-friendly shipping. How can brands minimize deliveries to improve profitability and environmental sustainability?

As an eCommerce executive, Mike Robinson advocates for fewer delivery trips by having the two major carriers — the Postal Service and Amazon — consolidate packages for each household. This condensed delivery method reduces packaging, shipping, and delivery costs for brands, saving the e-commerce industry hundreds of millions of dollars each year while reducing carbon footprints. Brands can offer eco-friendly box options at checkout and incentivize customers to select them by promising and fulfilling one delivery date for multiple packages. This also allows consumers freedom of choice and the ability to make a positive impact on the environment.

In today’s episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris welcomes Mike Robinson, the Founding Member and Head of Retail Solutions at The Eighth Notch, to discuss delivery density and optimizing last-mile delivery. He talks about delivery route optimization, the emerging role of automation and robotics in logistics, and his perspective on social media addictions.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• William Harris on LinkedIn
• Elumynt
• Mike Robinson on LinkedIn
• Mike Robinson’s email: mrobinson@t8notch.com
• The Eighth Notch: Website| LinkedIn
• Zach Weiner on LinkedIn
• Emerging Insider
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Quotable Moments

• "I've characterized it as the undiscovered country of e-commerce, right? It's something we better start caring about."
• "When you've got collaboration happening, I think great things can happen, especially in a world where collaboration hasn't been there."
• "If you make that promise, I think people are willing to wait because I know that I've got consistency in the final experience."
• "Failures happen, but how do you fail fast and move forward; how do you learn from it?"
• "You have to put the customer at the center of everything. It sounds trite, but when you make that your mantra, it changes the way you think."

Action Steps

1. Embrace delivery density strategies: By optimizing delivery routes and consolidating shipments, businesses can significantly reduce logistics costs. This approach enhances profitability and addresses the environmental challenge of excessive carbon emissions, making it a win-win situation for businesses and the planet.
2. Prioritize consumer education on eco-friendly choices: Informing customers about the environmental impact of their delivery choices can lead to more sustainable consumer behaviors. When consumers understand the benefits of slower, more consolidated shipping, they are more likely to opt for it, aligning with the growing trend of conscious consumerism.
3. Implement post-checkout optimization: Utilizing post-checkout processes to consolidate shipments can improve delivery efficiency without requiring consumer intervention. This proactive approach allows retailers to streamline operations and reduce carbon footprints, aligning with sustainability goals.
4. Explore B2B opportunities for delivery synchronization: Beyond consumer retail, businesses can leverage delivery density strategies in B2B settings, such as medical supplies to hospitals. This improves operational efficiency and creates significant cost savings.
5. Incorporate consumer incentives for eco-friendly shipping: Offering incentives for consumers who choose eco-friendly shipping options can enhance customer loyalty and reduce logistics costs. This strategy can transform sustainability into a competitive advantage, encouraging more retailers to adopt environmentally conscious practices.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:02  

Music. Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show.

William Harris  0:16  

Hey everyone, I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 100 million and beyond, as you up arrow your business and your personal life. Joining me today is Mike Robinson. Mike is the head of retail, head of retail solutions, and a founding member of The Eighth Notch T8N he has over 25 years of e-commerce experience with significant operating roles at companies like gap. He was the EVP at Macy's, and he has always been a champion for the customer. In addition to his role with The Eighth Notch, Mike keeps himself busy with both nonprofit and public company board service and advises numerous early stage startups. Mike, I've enjoyed chatting with you a little bit before. I'm excited to chat with you now. Thanks for coming on the show.

Mike Robinson  0:57  

Thanks, William. I'm really happy to be here. I look forward to this discussion. And anytime that does, somebody does an intro like that. I always think maybe I'm busier than I think I am, but I always, always room for more,

William Harris  1:12  

always, right? I want to give a quick shout out to Zach Weiner at the Emerging Insider. He's the one who actually reached out and put us in touch. He was like, You got to have Mike on the show. And I'm like, okay, Mike, let's, let's have a chat. And soon as we chatted, I was like, Yeah, I agree, Zach, thank you very much for putting us in touch. Yeah,

Mike Robinson  1:27  

Zach's a great guy, and I appreciate the way that he makes the connection. I'm glad, I'm glad he found this one.

William Harris  1:33  

Yeah, I want to make one more quick announcement, then we'll dig right into the good stuff. The sponsor here This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that ipoed. You can learn more on our website@Elumynt.com, which is spelled Elumynt.com that said, onto the good stuff. Again, we're talking sustainable delivery, how delivery density is improving, e-commerce, profits, as well as the Earth. Here Today I want to, I want to go back a time a little bit you were at this outdoors, Macy's, dot com, now you're into The Eighth Notch. Take me through, what is The Eighth Notch, and why did you start it? Yeah,

Mike Robinson  2:18  

it's a, it's a great question, and I appreciate you giving us a chance to talk about the origin story a little bit. It all started with a walk in the founders neighborhood. He's in a suburb of San Francisco, and we're walking around his neighborhood, and there are these delivery trucks going by, and he's a logistics guy. I'm an e-commerce guy, you know, so I kind of created a lot of the problems that he had to solve over time. And he asked me, said, you know, do you see a lot of delivery trucks in your urban neighborhood? Because I live in the city here in San Francisco, yeah, constantly. I'm on a not well traffic street other than Ubers and and and delivery trucks on a constant basis. He goes, Do you think that's sustainable? And from him, he meant sustainability in a business perspective. And I said, it doesn't seem to be, because it seems chaotic. And he goes, think there's a business in there, and I want to go, I want to go see if we can look at and the thought was, was there a way to minimize the number of times that a delivery truck comes to your home, but still drops off everything that you order. So don't change the behavior from a consumer perspective in terms of the stuff that they want. And I think we all learned this as we went through COVID, right, that we can have just about anything brought to us, but do it in a more organized and synchronized fashion, and maybe you can minimize the number of times that that truck stops there, and whether it's based on days or whether it's based on coordination across retailers that there was, that there was a problem that we felt that there was an opportunity to solve. And what we wanted to do then was go say, did anybody care about this? So we went and we talked to the two largest package carriers in the in the US, I you know who they are, and we, and we said we, we believe that we can build something that will help you. They both said, Yes, we're interested. One followed up on the phone call, and that's who we're in business with. And and over the last few years, we've been working with them hand in hand, in terms of being able to bring this capability to light. And it really is. It's a pretty simple conversation, because what it really requires is a change in the thinking about how you use the time in an e-commerce order. Normally, what happens is you hit, Submit Order, and then the clock starts ticking, and the retailer says, I got to pick, pack and ship that as quick as possible. I got to get it to the carrier, get it delivered as quickly as possible, because we've been conditioned that fast is the most important thing. But what if you use that time a little bit more effectively, somewhere between that three to seven day window, and you use the back end of that to say, are there things already in flight? To Williams house that I might be able to connect it with. And actually, you know, through the predictability of the network, have it enter into the last sword hub, into the back of the truck, and into the delivery truck driver's hands as he walks up to your house with two packages and not just one. And what we found is there's a high, high, high opportunity, just given the volume of what both this carrier does and what the American consumer actually has has brought to them on a consistent basis. So I'll pause there before I go any deeper on that.

William Harris  5:31  

Well, it's it's good. I mean, it is a problem, right? And we don't necessarily feel the problem. Typically, as the public receiving the goods, there's a little bit of frustration, or at least memes of, you know, 50 Amazon boxes or something sitting on my front doorstep. You're like, what just happened here? But, but we don't, we don't feel that problem intuitively, but there's a problem that we maybe should feel as well, right?

Mike Robinson  5:57  

Yeah, you know, I think it's the piece of the puzzle that, you know, I've characterized as the undiscovered country of e-commerce, right? It's the, you know, the we, we we talk about, you know, being better from, uh, and I'll, and I'll take the sustainability angle on this one. When we talk about better from, from the materials we use, from the sourcing opportunities from, from the energy that we use to create and or, or operate the facilities. But when we get to this notion of instant gratification is, you know, I've given you my money, so I want my product as quickly as possible. We don't, we don't seem to care. There are, there are, there are norms in society that are clearly changing. Their studies out there that are saying, if, if you can match value for value, I'm super interested in especially on things that I don't need right away. And what we found is, working with the carrier, is that that they said, we need to do this, right? We need to get the delivery density, because we need to figure out how, how to shift the economics of our operation right. It we can't just keep building, you know, you know, the entire network to match the constant onslaught. I mean, COVID saw a 30% increase in e-commerce, sales, and we've still continued to go in single digits since it but it was that, is that it was that permanent step function up. And so it's this notion of, how do you make it's really interesting, because it's the end of the process, final mile. How do you make that more efficient, that it creates efficiencies throughout the network, both from a financial standpoint, and, as I've mentioned, from a carbon standpoint. So we, we, we said, there has to be more than just technology. You've got to get into the psyche of the problem, right, and break it down. And we, and we offered this, this, this kind of innovative gain share model that said, every time that stop doesn't happen, there's multiple dollars saved. Carrie, are you willing to share that with the retailer to incent the right behavior? Because now you're telling them, you know, if, if you make a change, I'm going to, I'm going to improve your bottom line as well. And what we found is people are willing to listen to that, because when done at scale, it could be pennies of EPs, right? It could be really, really impactful, and especially in a world where carriers are looking at higher costs and they're looking to shift them back to the retail or the retailer still lives in a world of fast and free, even though we know that nothing is ever free, here's a chance to be able to offset some of those cost increases. And then you add, you know, and I like to use the retail term gift with purchase, the carbon savings to this because, again, that every time that truck doesn't stop, the driver get out, have to get back in, move forward and stop again. It's about 800 grams of CO two that isn't created, and and we convinced the carrier say we're willing to share that with the retailer as well. So now you've got collaboration happening. And when you've got collaboration happening, I think great things can happen, especially in a world where collaboration hasn't been there. It's a we, you know, they don't share information, they don't share forecasts, they don't really do anything other than say, Here's everything I got and get it there as fast as you can, and then do it in, you know, as inexpensively as possible. Now, all of a sudden, you're saying, If I cooperate, I've got financial savings, and now I've got a carbon savings. And what, what might I do with that, from from a marketing perspective, in terms of, how do I tell my customers about it, that I'm I'm being a better steward of the earth?

William Harris  9:18  

Yeah, you mentioned, oh, what's the term that you mentioned there, delivery density. How does the concept of delivery density impact both the e-commerce profitability as wires as well as the environmental sustainability?

Mike Robinson  9:38  

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's a measurement that the carriers, you know, live and die by, right, right? It's effectively saying every time that a retailer has a package delivered, how many other packages are delivered with? And it's one point something, right, usually, and and what we've seen and what we've heard and what we've seen or has been quoted by one. The CEOs of the major carriers is saying, you move that number by 10% it's hundreds of millions of dollars of savings, right? And so it's not a, it's not a massive movement because of just the sheer scale, right, right? When you're talking about billion of what, close to six and a half billion packages will probably be delivered by the two major carriers, and you throw the Postal Service and Amazon into that, and you're over 10, right? So, so you know that there's a lot of stuff moving constantly, and if you can find a way of orchestrating some of it, and so, so again, to as I said, and I'll say it a million times, because I repeat myself constantly, is that instead of that delivery driver dropping off one, he's dropping off two. Instead of dropping off two, he's dropping off three instead of coming five days a week. He's coming three days a week, right? Anytime you do that, and you create that delivery density, which is really the holy grail that that the that the industry is chasing here, you unlock just massive, massive, as I've said, financial savings, carbon saving.

William Harris  11:04  

So in order to improve delivery density, one of the things we can do is route optimization. Technology is booming this space, like, what are some of the things that are happening that are improving route optimization? Yeah,

Mike Robinson  11:15  

I mean, I think one of the things that I mean, each of the carriers have obviously worked on that a great deal. I mean, right? You hear about the infinite what left turn that a UPS driver does, right? In terms, I

William Harris  11:28  

hadn't heard on it, but that's interesting. Yeah, yeah, it's, I

Mike Robinson  11:30  

mean, I think there's, I think there's some mythology that goes on with that as well. I don't think the only turn left. It's not NASCAR, right, right, yeah, but, but, but it's, it's, it's about figuring out, you know, and the beauty of that is, and actually, both carriers and FedEx announced it what two weeks ago it is that they're holding, physically holding packages in their final sort hub, waiting for another package to come so those two packages can go in the back of The truck so they can deliver, be delivered at the same time. That's a route optimization. You're seeing rural deliveries being minimized, you know, instead of, you know, I'll go there five days a week. It just doesn't make sense. I'll go there two days a week, right? And so you're seeing it Sure. Amazon's doing this more than more than anyone, right? And it's, really everything that they've made, you know, Amazon day and Amazon delivery day to be right. And now you look at and there's a green leaf next to it, and the green leaf is there, and you click on it, and it'll say, Hey, if you want to do something good for the earth, click this day, because something else will be delivered at that same time. Now the reality is, they're doing it because either something is already coming to your doorstep, or something is coming near you, or something is coming on the route that you're on as well. Now they also do crazy things, like, I ordered something last night to shut up at 7am this morning, which I didn't quite understand. I didn't need it so, so, but, but there must have been a route optimization that the driver was already coming here, and they said, well, we'll drop this off for Mike at 7am this morning. I wasn't quite ready for a package at 7am this morning. Let's, let's just

William Harris  13:09  

put it that way. Were the dogs ready for it,

Mike Robinson  13:12  

right? It woke up the neighborhood. Let's just put it that way. So, so I think that that, I think there's this constant push for that, right? But, but it's also about route consolidation, right, right? You know that I think a UPS driver does, on average, about 162 deliveries or stops every day, right? And, and if you can minimize the amount of space that they have to go in between, or if you could make those stops even, even deeper in terms of the the packages delivered, everything starts to work in the in the direction of you are, you are orchestrating and synchronizing the volume in a much more logical manner then, then that, I think that in most cases today is chaotic, right? Because you're chasing speed when you when you break the back of that behavior, that speed is the only thing, and speed is important, right? For lots of things, perishables, I need something as a gift, you know, I, you know, etc, etc, you know, it makes perfect sense. There always be a space for speed, but, but it's this portion that sits there that says, I can wait a little bit longer take advantage of that, and that's what we're really after.

William Harris  14:26  

You're opening this up nicely. There's a quote that I believe is attributed to Jeff Bezos. I don't know if it was exactly the way that he said it, but something of nobody will ever want their package to arrive slower. What role, though, do you think human behavior has in this? Like, are we going to all of a sudden get frustrated or perceive this differently, or are we going to embrace the idea of improving delivery density somehow?

Mike Robinson  14:49  

Yeah, look, I think there's a changing consumerism out there. I mean, I call it conscious, not consumerism, right, right? It's the and I don't know if it's my term or it's probably Bezos, because. Smarter than I am, but it's this notion that I think that people are waking up to the impact that their choices are having, and the implications of buying things and having them delivered to me. Right? There's a study that came out last year, and it talks about and it asks these very, very, very direct questions, of is speed the most important thing to you? And the answer was, it depends. And so three quarters of the people said, if I'm getting more than five packages a month, I might consider eco friendly practices to be important or very important, right? Saying, you know, so they're starting to feel that that guilt associated with it, right? But I don't want to feel guilty about the things I buy. I'm just starting to feel guilt around around or trying to think, can I be different about how they're delivered? 87% of that same group said that they are willing to wait longer if it's an eco friendly shipping. So if you can tell them that something about this is better for the planet, whether it's the packaging, it's the EV vehicle, or, in the case of what we're doing, it is synchronizing things together that they're willing to wait and then, and then the last piece really talks to that consumer convenience piece, 93% and said, I'm willing to wait longer if I know what the date is, right, if you can give me a commitment on the date. And I think you know. And I think about my own life being here in an urban setting, and, you know, the, you know, you know, the the disincentive of porch piracy, right? I mean, I've had this happen from Amazon as well, right? I'm supposed to get something, you know, that was supposed to come on Monday, and it shows up on Saturday, but Saturday I'm out playing golf, right? And, and so all of a sudden there's a package being delivered to my house, and a lot of people that walk out of Golden Gate Park up to get get lunch or something. That package may, may disappear it, but I thought it was coming on Monday, so So I felt very confident on it. So I think if you make that promise, I think people are willing to wait. Because I because I know that I've got consistency in the in in the final experience as well. Yeah,

William Harris  17:01  

I like that. You know, you and I had talked about this a little bit before, and one of the examples you brought up that I really appreciated was hotels and how consumers are willing to say, hey, yeah, you don't need to clean my room today. You know, put the sign on the door My room's good. That's a small step that we can make. So this is a similar thing where people can say, hey, I don't necessarily need my package in three minutes. Feel free to take a day or two to get it to me. Is it an opt in thing? Because you said three quarters of people is, you know, maybe there's still a quarter people just like, No, I want it now. Or maybe there's certain things you're like, No, I need it now. It's my robot test and my kids coughing. Like, no, I need it as soon as you possibly can get it to me. Like, is it an opt in thing? Do you think, or is it just a thing that needs to be done across the board?

Mike Robinson  17:44  

I think it's the reinvention of free shipping, right, right? I think, I think if I need it fast, I'm willing to pay for it, right, right? I mean, next day, two day, same day, right? Right? That those are all paid, pay to play services, right? I'm willing to pay enough charge, but, but then I think that we've tried to make free fast as well, right? And try to and in many cases, it's a lot of the surprise and delight, right? I mean, I You mentioned my time at Macy's. I mean, there was a program where, you know, we had things that that were committed within three to five days. But because of where we had inventory and where it was being shipped to, we could get it there in a day or two. And so we would go down this surprise and delight offer. But the reality was we didn't need to, right? Because the consumer was thinking it's going to be three to five days, all of a sudden shows up one to two, and they might be confused. I use the I think I use this example with you, but one of the last purchases I made at Macy's, as I left, was the five white t shirts. So, you know, I bought five white t shirts. Five white t shirts came over four days from three different locations and and it made no sense to me, right? And so I get the first one. I call customer service. I'm like, where are the other four? And they're like, well, they're on their way. I get the second one, you know, and I call customer service, I'm like, where are the other three? And they're like, they're on their way, right? What would have been better is if all of them had been delivered at the same time, and that's one of the options that we have, which is if you have split shipments, or things coming from multiple places that will synchronize them to ensure that they're all delivered at the same even though they're in different boxes and coming from different locations. I think that convenience thing is something that people are driving to. I love the hotel example, right? Because you know when it when it first started. I thought they were doing it for the planet. I now know that they're doing it for their operation, sure, right? It makes perfect sense for them to and I've grown so accustomed to it that I'm just fine because I make my own bed at home and probably don't, you know, and if they're willing to change out my towels, I'm okay. I don't need somebody in my room, because sometimes I work in my room as well, right? And so I like the convenience of having that choice and not being kicked out by housekeeping all the time. I think that's what consumers are going to continue to look for. Is, you know, make it make it real. Make it known. Make me understand the implication of it. And that's where I keep coming back to, I think this is, this becomes the invention of free shipping, in terms of, you know, you're going to get it free, but we're going to take a little bit longer, because we're going to try and do the right thing. If you need it faster, there are these very, very fast options, or there might be a slight surcharge that we would charge you as well, because most retailers are struggling to make free and fast work, and it's and it's kind of a race to the bottom. In most cases, they've done they've done it through inventory. They've done it through their own delivery networks. They've done it through regional networks. They've done it through like, I had a delivery from a major retailer on DoorDash the other day, right? I didn't Sure. I didn't ask for it, but all of a sudden, you know, this, this, this giants jersey that I ordered showed up from DoorDash, and I was like, Okay, that's great. Not not, it was not my expectation. So I think they're, I think they're chasing problems that they don't need to chase in most cases. And I think there's a smarter way of really thinking about it, if you take all of the components into play on this,

William Harris  21:06  

yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. You brought up the 5t shirts example, and I like that one too similar, but not exactly the same. There's a trend where people will order things from multiple websites, right? Maybe they wanted a white t shirt, but they're gonna order that white t they're gonna order that white t shirt from three different people, see which one comes to them first and then return the other two. That's gotta be the exact opposite of being healthy for the environment. But, you know, I don't think that this has any way of improving that. But what do you think about the trend, or how could this be improved, even through delivery density? Like, is there anything that could be improving this, yeah,

Mike Robinson  21:42  

there, there are certain things about consumer behavior that I can't take off, sure, right, right? I mean, I, and I'll be honest with you, I'm probably guilty of that myself, right, right? No, you know, I found, you know, I found the same item in two places. You know, one of them gave me free shipping, but I found the other one first, right? So I'm gonna get that, and then I'll just return it. I, you know, it's, it's a, it's a really interesting question. I think, though, I think it, though it speaks more to people being educated about the implication of choice, right, right, in terms of the in terms of the choices that they're making and the decisions they're making. I just did another interview recently. We talked about, is this different on the coast versus the middle of the country, right, in terms of how they think about the environment, right? I don't know. I think so, right, but, but I think also, there are people that I think, I think it's generational as well, right, right? I think that, you know, I'm didn't expect to be in my 50s and being an echo warrior, that that was, that was not on my bingo card in any way, shape or form, but, but, but I, but I have friends with their kids. It's like, you know, some of them are absolutely motivated by speed. Some of them are absolutely motivated but by the gamification of of shopping. Others are motivated by, I want to make the right choice, right, right? I, you know, you know, I've, I've taken a want and turned it into a need. How do I do that and not destroy something at the same time? Right? How do I get better at my choices? Because I think we all recognize we consume too many things, but my, my soul, was at a retailer. So I never want to change that? I just want to help people consume better and and I and the and the original question that you asked around that behavior, I'm not sure I can impact that, but I'm not sure this impacts it, unless they were buying from multiple retailers and I was able to bring them together all at the same time and be able to deliver at the same time, that would, that would be a benefit, right? Then? Then I feel less I feel less guilty for them,

William Harris  23:44  

sure. So, you know, we've talked a lot about how this significantly reduces carbon impact. This increases efficiency in many different ways. You talked about how this improves the profitability to a point of the carrier and how they can shift some of that back to the brands. Talk to me a little bit more about, like, the profitability and the incentive to the brand to adopt certain things, because it sounds like we're kind of agreeing that there's enough people that will probably say, Yeah, I can get on board with this. So if they are, as consumers, on board with it, how does this impact the brand? Yeah,

Mike Robinson  24:18  

I think the brand has to recognize, has to make a conscious decision that the cost of e-commerce fulfillment is something they need to change the dynamics of, right, that they're, you know, I mean, in some cases it could be. And again, the carrier that we work with is positioning this in their accounts in multiple strategic ways, right? One is just a straight I'll give you money back each time you do this. The other one is, I'll give you a percentage off every package that you ship if you hit certain thresholds around the delivery density. Others are saying, you know, the surcharges that are coming at holiday, I won't charge. You for those because you were leaning in on this program, and others are saying, hey, you know, holiday is a hard time to get your packages delivered. We'll give you strategic allocation during that and so. So I think the thing is, is that it becomes another lever. Because I think that the conversation has always been, the retailer turns to the carrier and says, I need you to go faster, and I need you to do it cheaper. And the carrier looks at and turns around and says, I'm not sure I've got all the tools in order to be able to do that. And I, and I'm starting to run out of that. And frankly, you know, my costs are going up at the same time. Here's a way to change the economics of it and actually turn it into a much more strategic conversation and and, I think also it becomes something that could become part of the loyalty discussion as well, because now the brand starts saying, you know, hey, guess what? You know, I have done things from how I source product, how I manufacture. Now I'm doing it in how I deliver, right, and, and, and I can tell you the the carbon impact I'm having associated with, even if they wanted to take some of the savings that they're getting and give it back to I mean, this is, this is, this is how I think Amazon built loyalty around that, right? You would get the digital credit, right? I mean, we did things in Macy's during holiday where it'd be like, Look, if you can give us more time, then we'll give you $5 off your next order, right? And people flock to right? So there's lots of ways of using it, and it becomes, ultimately, I think, a loyalty play, as people are doing. I also think, and the one thing I didn't share with you, where we where we operate right now, is in a post checkout world, the customer isn't involved in this decision. Other than that, they know they've got a window that something will be delivered in, and we're trying to get to the back part. The real value becomes once you move up into checkout and you enlist the customer. And we've got some retailers that we're working with that are really looking at that as an AB test for them to start to understand what their customers care about and whether these statistics that I've mentioned before are real or not, and is it and is it true for their consumers as well? And I think people are going to start to use all these tools to start to understand I can save money, I can save carbon, I can create loyalty, I can create stickiness on the brand. This is just another tool. Yeah,

William Harris  27:18  

so in the immediate term. From a brand perspective, one of the benefits of them is likely going to be they can, they can recoup some of the costs of that shipping to a point, because that's going to get passed back a little bit to them. The carrier can opt in to do that without negatively impacting the customer experience, especially if they've given a range and they say, hey, it's two to three days, and now you're going to opt for three days instead of two. Okay, great. So expectations still being that potentially improving lifetime value of their customers, and I think that would be an important thing to track. I would love to see this. And I don't know if anybody does this, but if a brand listens to this and wants to go ahead and track this as a cohort analysis, I'd love to see the cohorts of those that opted in, because we don't have that right now, but like the cohorts of the people that opt in for a little bit of delayed, more eco friendly shipping, as opposed to as fast as possible shipping, and see if there's a difference in lifetime value in the hunch there is, there's probably gonna be an increase in LTV there. I like where you're going at though, where eventually getting this into integrated at checkout, because I can see where that's really impactful. I like that idea that idea that you just said, where it's like, hey, we can give you a credit back on your next order if you're willing to, you know, select the eco friendly box, versus giving the immediate dollar off right then and there. Because I think, you know, one of the things I talk a lot about is not cheapening your your brand right where it's like, if you're just throwing out discount after discount, but if it's this opportunity where it's like to come back and incentivize that way. I like that incentive better. Yeah,

Mike Robinson  28:44  

you know, you don't have to tell me about cheapening a brand. I work for me, sure, right? So, I mean, we were the king of the discount, right? We kind of ran out of days on the promotional calendar after a while. It's a, it's a, it's a really interesting question on how you create LTV, right, right, and how you really approach that. And I think the levers, and I do believe the levers are changing, right? I mean, I think it's, it's not the fistful of coupons anymore, right, right? It's the it's the experience. It's what you stand for. It's, it's about service level, and it's about if you want to do something novel as well, right, and if you want to, and this is why I, you know, I think many of the customers that were, many of the retailers were talking about, I kind of push this notion of reinventing free shipping Right, right in terms of, you could have two tiers, right? One is, you're going to pay a little bit more, but it's less than an express and the other one is, you're going to give us more time to look for something that you know would still come into the same time frame that you normally would have. It's just on the back end of that, and we get a chance to actually save some carbon at the same time. I think people are going to continue to lean in. And again, every retailer is a snowflake, right? And by snowflake I mean different, not, not, not emotional challenge that. It. It's just, you know, they're they're going to look at the problem differently and how to assemble it and and that's the beauty. And that was the thing. When, when I was in the buying seat, right? And a startup would come in, it would be like, how do I put this in? How do I put this tool in my tool, they'll be able to assemble my consumer, my customer experience better. That's what we're trying to offer here as well. This is just the first step towards and again, if you could see my product roadmap over here, there's about 20 things that we want to do around this very simple problem of changing the conversation around final mile.

William Harris  30:33  

I love it. Let's go. Let's go. I like first step. I also like way out into the distant future. I don't know if you saw the Tesla event last night, but he announced the robo van, which he pronounced as was it the robivin or some I'm still not going to pronounce it robivin, but you know, the robo van and things like this, and autonomous taxis and things along those lines. Is there any any room for something like that to play into, you know, the logistics where it's like, I think there's some efficiency to be gained from like the robo taxi, just model in general, if you've got Robo vans now as well. Do you see a future for that being applied in logistics?

Mike Robinson  31:21  

I do. I mean, you know, since San Francisco is kind of the epicenter of the autonomous, you know, you know, Uber killer, right, right in terms of Waymo and what's happening out here and and watching myself and my friends adopt, you know, using a, you know, a driverless ride share, you know, versus, you know, jumping in a, you know, a stranger's car is interesting, right? I think that adoption will help people understand what it means to actually, and I think it's probably just as useful on the delivery as it is on the return side, right, right? That, that, I think the circularity component of this, it is something that's going to be real. And, you know, the very, very, very first podcast I did, I was talking to a gentleman here in Europe, and he talked about, is this the beginning of how the US starts to think about smart cities, right? Right? In terms of, how do you organize everything so everything is orchestrated and synchronized. I think this, that this concept of autonomous vehicles doing deliveries, doing returns, doing, you know, you know, moving people around is the beginning of that, right? Because it's much more organized and much more understood. I mean, I think we all know the chaos of the streets today, when it's humans doing it, right? You know, so do you change it now? I don't want to. I don't want to go down the dark path of whether it's okay to turn this over to Skynet or not, but, but that's sure, you know, that's, that's a different conversation and a different reference. But, yeah, I don't, I don't see why not, right? Humans would still need to interact with it, right? Right? And I think this was one of the things of when, when we tried to do, you know, smart returns through, you know, through the taskrabbits of the world and other company, and door dashes of the world, somebody coming. People were terrified to go to their door because they didn't know the person, right? But if it's a, if it's an autonomous vehicle, as pulled up in front of your house, and the door opens, and all you need to do is drop off, drop in the package, or pick up the package. I think people are going to adopt it now, what happens? How we move that to you? Don't have to interact with it. That the that it interacts with you in some way, shape or form. I think it's easier than probably flying drones at this point, because I still think flying drones has has other challenges to humans. Have to adopt it first, right? And I think if they adopt it in the ride share, they're going to find a way to adopt it on the delivery and on the return side.

William Harris  33:51  

Yeah, I like that. Let's go on the low tech version of last mile. Stuff you were talking about like we saw a surge in e-commerce in the US here during COVID, and that's, you know, and then it resettled, and then it continues on its nice little trajectory there, but we're still at like, 17% of total retail sales. Is e-commerce, whereas China's, I don't even remember the last number, but it's 85% it's significantly more. And one of the things they do is they've got a lot more bikes and things like that, doing, you know, the last mile. How does that like? Is that a part of the equation here to improving last mile things? Or, yeah, probably less so as we really get into true scale,

Mike Robinson  34:31  

I think it could be right. I mean, I mentioned to you the example where I was surprised when a major retailer delivered something to me by DoorDash, right now, it wasn't a bike messenger, right? It was, it was a gentleman in a car and and he was doing food orders at the same time. So so they had already figured out, you know, on his route, that there was an opportunity to do a retail order and a food order at the same time. And I think that coordination and that synchronization is going to continue. Right? It's delivery density of a different type, right, right? It's the and, and it's just, you know, it, it is, it is, it is one vehicle, one person doing multiple tasks and and doing it in a straight line, instead of, you know, going back and forth to be able to do it. So, so I, so, I think there is, and there's no reason why it couldn't go even, you know, lower tech on that in terms of the type of vehicle as well, right? And is there a green I mean, is there a day that says Mike Robinson, do you want to have your package delivered by, you know, a FedEx vehicle, or do you want to have it delivered by a bike messenger, and here is your carbon impact by doing one or the other? Right? I might choose the bike messenger, right, right. Pray for his wife, but I might sure have have him do it Robo bike. Sure. Here

William Harris  35:47  

first Robo bike. This is the next wave.

Mike Robinson  35:51  

Pretty sure he's got it on his roadmap over time, and he's gonna launch one into space as well. So any I think once and, and I love the way that you're riffing on that, because I think once you start thinking about what is just this very, very simple, small part of the equation, and start thinking through the what if associated with it, it just expands the opportunities. And when you think about it is just, how do I make it better? And is there value creation associated with it? All of a sudden you go, yes, there is why not, this, maybe that. So I so I think this is going to continue to grow and continue to take on different flavors, just because it because we got conditioned during COVID, to have everything brought to us, right? And even though it's flattened and people have gone back into the physical sites, we still want everything brought to us totally. And that's

William Harris  36:40  

only going to increase and it continues. To increase at a significant rate at the current setup in the way that this is working, especially at The Eighth Notch. Is this just for large entities, or is this something that small businesses can really start participating in as well? Yeah,

Mike Robinson  36:58  

I I think it's any any any e-commerce company of any size can do it. We, given the relationship that we have with one of the carriers, and I apologize, can't name, okay, we're still under NDA. We tend to deal with the much larger companies, but we're also talking to, you know, medium sized companies that are in the subscription space, right? Because if you think about the subscription model, it's perfectly suited for this, right, right? You know you have something coming the third week. You just don't know what day, right? And whether it comes on Monday or Thursday, you don't really care. But you know it's coming that day, unless it's medication and things of that nature, you have to time it accordingly. But you know, dog food, dog treats, you know, food services, etc. So, so, so, so there is so there. What we found is that the model is deployable across any any company. We're obviously trying to get to scale as quickly. So we're dealing with some of the biggest retailers in the US, but we're starting to get that next band, and actually it even works on a B to B space as well, right? So, so and actually works better, you know, if you have, you know, a medical supply company delivering to hospitals, right? You know, be being able to combine that so, so they're all delivering on the same day, instead of delivering over three days, gives huge opportunity on both sides to make that work. So, so, you know, I think the size of the company is obviously just because of who we're in business with. We're going to look at the larger company. The goal would be to bring it down to every right. And the way you would do that is through, you know, you know, jump on this program, and there's a different rate structure for you. Every time that we find the opportunity of being able to connect two packages together. That's where we want to take this step.

William Harris  38:44  

Yeah, let's talk results. Is there any business that you could talk about, even if you can't name their name right now, where you could talk about how this has impacted either bottom line or, you know, their carbon offset in some way that you could say, here's, here's some numbers I could put behind that. Yeah, I

Mike Robinson  39:06  

can, I can talk in the abstract of and every one of these, we do a simulation for, and we do an estimation for, and it's about 15 to 20% of the time that we can find another, you know, package to be able to connect it to. And when you explore, when you extend that out over an annual basis for some of these larger retailers, it's millions of dollars of savings. And you know that hundreds of 1000s of tons of CO two, we're still relatively early days in terms of the ones that we're operating with, you know? And we're about to go through our first holiday with a couple of major ones, sure. That's, that's what I want to see, right? I want to see the impact of the big hump, right, right? And because I actually think it's the time that probably the consumer is most conditioned, especially if they're shopping early, that they don't need the product right away, because they've got to figure out what to do with it, especially if they're shopping for others, right, that they can probably. Wait a little bit, and they've been conditioned to know that the time is going to get elongated out because the network is compressed. So so I can't give you specific results, but I can tell you that the promise is is very, very, very strong. This time next year by I should be in a much better position to be able to do that, but I also have large retailers that are leaning in pretty hard on this. Yeah,

William Harris  40:23  

I like that. You again, going back to your background, here you were, VISTA outdoors. EVP, over there at Macy's, you've, you've learned a lot about growth in general and growing businesses. And while this may be a tangent away from shipping and logistics, what's some just good advice that you have experienced or received in just growing businesses in general?

Mike Robinson  40:50  

Yeah, yeah, it's and, and I appreciate the question, because it's always nice to remember where you came from, right? I mean, I'm not a logistics guy by nature, right? I kind of gravitated there, but, but, you know, I look through, throughout my consulting experience, throughout my operating experience on the on the retail side, and my board experience at Vista. You know, failures happen, right? But how do you fail fast and move forward, right? How do you, how do you learn from it, right? You know, look, you got to make sure you're not eating the same issue over and over and over, but, but, but punishment for a first time failure, I think, is a mistake versus you gotta, you gotta dig in and understand what happened and determine how you're going to be better the next time around. Because I, I think, I think significant growth, growth comes through incremental improvement over time, and you just keep building on it, and those incremental improvements all of a sudden become exponential. And every single business experience I've ever had, I think I've always been better when either who I'm working with or people who are working for me as if we go, all right, that's stunk. That wasn't great. What? How are we going to be better, right? And what did we learn from that? So we don't repeat it, it's when you start repeating it, that's when the conversation changes totally.

William Harris  42:08  

So I heard somebody recently talking about interview questions and how they just hate that people ask the question something along the lines, like, tell me something that you failed at and you know what you learned from it, or something, they're like, I hate that, because everybody's going to give like, this really. Give, like, this really, you know, political answer about what's like, I failed at this thing. That's really, not really a failure, but, you know, pat myself. I get it. But, like, the point behind the question is it's like, if you can't talk about something that you actually just messed up, we all have messed up. And if you can't talk about that, you're probably not somebody that I want on the team anyways, because I need somebody who can talk about that. And at least within our team, we've implemented this idea of like a no fault thing. And I stole this from the hospital. As you can imagine, in the hospital, accidents still happen, and this is very sad, but if they do, they amputate the wrong limb, whatever this might be, right? And the only way that those things can be discovered and improved on, is if you have like system where you can say, hey, there's no fault to this. We just need to talk about what this was so we can work through what what took place, how we can make improvements. And I think that that allows you, like you said, fail fast, but fail forward. I really like that idea, because it's like, if you don't have a system in place that allows people to know that they are okay to make that mistake, as long as it's not repetitively that mistake, because that means we didn't open up about it in the first

Mike Robinson  43:29  

place. Yeah, no, I I want people to try right. I want them to learn right. I want them to push right. I don't want them to be tentative Right, right. I mean that there's nothing worse than watching someone who is really smart and really thoughtful just not sure that, that they're that, that they're making the right choice, instead of saying, I will make a choice and I'll learn from the impact of it. And that, to me, I think, is, you know, I know that was my breakthrough as a leader, right, right, right, in terms of just getting over that personal fear of failure just to say I'm going to screw up, right? I'm going to screw up, but guess what? I'm not going to do it twice, and I'm going to be a whole lot better the next time around. Yeah,

William Harris  44:09  

yeah. You You also get some great advice from the CEO of Macy's at the time you were there, you said you talked about how you need to think like a customer every day. Like, how does this apply to growth?

Mike Robinson  44:20  

Yeah, you know, Terry, Terry. Terry was, Terry was James Bond, right? I mean, he was, I mean, you know, great looking guy, you know, totally, totally cool under pressure, but, but the very first thing that he said, and the thing that I heard him say, and he actually changed his title to be Chief Customer Officer over time was, was you have to put the Customer Center at the center of everything. And it sounds trite, right? It sounds easy, but, but when you actually make that your mantra, it changes the way you think, and it causes you and you know, I can tell you one of the things. Things that I would do as as the head of e-commerce at Macy's is, every once in a while, I would take one of our customer service calls and reach out to that customer and say, help me understand you know what your problem is. And the stories I would hear, William, I mean, they would they were baffling to me. And what it found, what, what I found out is, in some cases, we were just we thought we were smarter than the consumer, and made the experience so darn hard. Or we just had this low fidelity amount of problems that we didn't know about, that that that, that many of our, you know, real. I mean, I had this one woman who would say, I get your email every Tuesday, and I religiously go in and shop. I can't buy anything, and I do it every Tuesday, and I still can't buy and this has been going on for seven weeks, and I'm like, we need to get to the bottom of this, because you have A Fistful of Dollars and a fistful of coupons that are trying to figure out how to how to make this work. And what we found out is we just had browser issues, right? Browser compatibility issues because we had made our applications so complicated that that if you weren't, you know, n minus two on on your browser version, it just didn't work. And but it was at such a low fidelity threshold, but it was five to 8% of the time it would fail, and we weren't paying attention to it. And so we started paying attention to that. And these small, you know, fine sewing things. And I remember telling Terry, Terry also would do this to me. Where he'd be. He'd call me up, and he'd be like, Hey, Mike, I'm going on stage in about five minutes. Can Can you give me three things that I should talk about from a e-commerce perspective? And it'd be like, hey, invariably, I'd give him two or three things. And again, he's James Bond. So he was able to

William Harris  46:41  

figure it out he was into the thing, yeah, and I couldn't

Mike Robinson  46:45  

tell if he was using it as a tech tactic with me or not. But, but, but, but, but, it made me very, very clear that he needed to be on top of my business, but I also needed to be able to explain to him things that were very customer centric, that he would care about, that he would talk to a large audience, because he was always in front of large audience. Audiences, and he just loved telling us, telling stories about what we were doing, but, but I think you know that that is one lesson that has just hung with me, right? And it's and it's and it's one of the things that Jamie Sapp, who is the founder of the channel, you know, he wanted to have a retailer come aboard, because he's a logistics guy. He's worked in the retail space, but his bread and butter is the logistics side. He wanted somebody to have the other side of that conversation in mind, and he knows that I also have the other side, which is the consumer perspective. So so I think it's served me well, and it's something that I, you know, I constantly think about, Yeah,

William Harris  47:38  

is there anything that we haven't talked about that we really need to discuss when it comes to, you know, logistics and deliverability,

Mike Robinson  47:45  

yeah. I mean, look, I, I think the point, and you brought it up earlier, it's, it's, it's what's going to cause people to adopt, right, right? And I, you know, I, and I think the thing that I will always come back to is, I think there's this subtle shift that's happening in terms of people understanding the impact of choice. And I think the one of the and I've got an op ed that's coming out pretty soon, about the third time that Amazon is creating a major effect on the retail space. You know that they, they kind of did this around free shipping, they kind of did this around loyalty. And now this third piece is, that they're doing sustainable shipping, because every time you go there, they're trying to figure out how to get you to that Amazon day, right? And now they've got a sustainability message around it, because they recognize that if you pick that day, there's something about rod, about the route optimization that's happening, like the gentleman that showed up at 7am this morning, right? I don't think he I don't think he I don't think he came here for Mike Robinson, he came here for Amazon. But I think as people get conditioned with that, that they're going to look for it elsewhere, and they're probably going to gravitate towards brands that are talking about it and offering it and talking about the impact. And definitely, as we shift generationally, absolutely, I think that's going to happen. I do come back to the question that the gentleman asked me around the coast versus the middle of the country. I I can't solve that, right, but I know the rest of the world is already far ahead of us on this and what we usually lag the rest of the world by a couple of years on major, major trends in this space. I think that. I think the European trends, the Japanese trends, the Chinese trends, are going to push us to think differently about this as we move forward.

William Harris  49:27  

Sure. Yeah, that's fair. Maybe not. Okay. So, so this is a good transition. Then I like getting into the personal side of my guests as well. And so I wanted to learn a little bit more about the person of Mike Robinson, speaking of not being on the coasts. You didn't necessarily grow up in the big cities, though, right? How did your childhood impact who you are today?

Mike Robinson  49:54  

Well, I was, I was born in Nebraska, where I spent all of two.

William Harris  55:00  

Right? I remember you saying you could tell a girl she looked pretty, and that was about the all the more that

Mike Robinson  55:03  

you might, I could, I could, I could tell, I could tell a young woman that she looked nice. I can order two beers, and I could ask where the bathroom was, right? All the, all the basics when you're going to October fest, yeah, voice dito

William Harris  55:16  

letter, right? Like, that's an important way you got to remember to where's the toilet. I gotta go, what's, uh, what's something that makes you cringe, that you're just like, I don't understand what this is, why this exists in the world. We the world can live without this.

Mike Robinson  55:33  

I look the, this is where I'm going to age myself, right, right? But, but I think the, I think the, I think the religion of social media bothers me a great deal. I think social media is something that should be for entertainment, and obviously it's become for business in many cases, but when it becomes the, the your, your only purpose in life, that makes me cringe, right, right? And it's, it's and it's a struggle for me to watch, right, right? I mean, I, I mean, I have, I have, I'm in my late 50s. I have a buddy who is who is addicted to Tiktok, right? I don't understand it, but the algorithm has gotten in his head, right? And and literally, every opinion that he has, every perspective he has, everything that he finds funny, everything that he finds not so funny. Sure, he has one source, right? And and I don't, I don't think that's appropriate, and I'm this world is too diverse and too different than and the notion I had a, I had a really eye opening experience when I was probably as my second or third year at Macy's, and it wasn't necessarily social media, but I was in a meeting with my team, and I was spending all my time on my phone answering emails, and one of them looked at me and said, you know, why is what's in there more important than what's in here? They said, You know, we expect you, as a leader, to be able to look up and meet us in the eye and have a conversation with us. So you answering emails while we're talking to you. You know, it's not only disrespectful, but, but, but it also says that we're wasting our time. So, I mean, I do, I do worry about that. I do worry about the ubiquity of social media and the and the and the and the insidiousness of it. I think there's a purpose for it, right? Because, you know, free speech and everything else that goes along with that. I'm a, I'm a big, you know, supporter of, but man, and I, I worry about, you know, it's the, it's the wrong type of machine taking control, and that's what I'm, you know, probably concerned. So you asked me, What makes me cringe? You know, people who, who live their life on social media, that's the one that probably bothers me,

William Harris  57:42  

it's such a hard problem to solve, I think about the word that I would almost use is maybe like culture on demand, right? We have like entertainment on demand, but this is, this takes it beyond that, because it's not just entertainment, it is. It's almost like culture on demand. And if you don't enjoy having conversations with the people that are immediately around you, then you can just go on there and find the pocket of the people that think exactly like you, and you can find the content that is exactly cater to you. And so you never leave that, you know they talk about this bubble, but you never leave this cycle of this, this repetitive thought process, and it could be a very damaging thought process that we, we miss. And I, you know, let's say, Okay, I'm I'm older now here as well, and so you go back to friend groups. And my friend group, like in high school, was was weird, like, there's, there's no reason that all of us should have been friends, but we were because, for whatever reason, we enjoyed each other. But now when you can have friends that are just exactly like you, because you could just go online and find those people that I think you miss a lot of growth and development.

Mike Robinson  58:46  

Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more, and I think it's, I think it's disingenuous when people believe, but I'm, but I'm looking at social media, so I'm getting the broadest perspective without recognizing that they've just entered into the echo chamber, because it's been, it's been curated for, right? And that's the piece that I struggle with the most, is that it is that, I mean, look, you know, how many, if you write something, you need to get at least two sources to back it up, right? Right? The fact that we, you know that we tend to take one source as being the only source, and it could be, and we all know that there's a lot of inappropriate sources out there, driving information and driving perspective. So yeah, I mean, I didn't mean to get lost in the commentary of social media, but I think that is the one that baffles me a little bit. It's probably the worst usage of technology that I've seen so far.

William Harris  59:39  

Yeah, that's completely fair. Speaking of friend groups that are a little bit different and you're not sure how they all fit together, I understand that you met Jerry Seinfeld one time, and there's a good story to go with that. Yeah,

Mike Robinson  59:51  

it's an embarrassing story, and I appreciate you bringing it up. But you know, like, like many people, you. Yeah, I know. I know. I mean, I I still think Seinfeld is relevant. And if people and if and if the viewers and the listeners aren't, they that they need to go back and just understand the comedic genius of that show, where you've got these three very disparate stories that somehow come crashing together at the end. It's, it's, it's genius writing. But I was a huge fan, and I was living in a suburb of LA at that point, and the recruiter that had placed me at Pricewaterhouse out of industry, used to be a former stand up comic, and he was like, Oh, I know Jerry really well. And it was like, Tom, you're not funny. I can't believe you were a stand up comic. But yeah, he would show me pictures of him and Jerry and him and other comedians. He said, I'm going to take you to a tape of of a Seinfeld show. So we went, we're sitting in the front row, and Jerry comes out and actually warms up the crowd. He comes up, and he came right over to Tom and said, Hey, Tom, how you doing? And I'm like, Oh my God, you know, Tommy goes, yeah, yeah, we're gonna go, to, we're going to go down on stage afterwards, and you'll get a chance to meet Jerry in the cast. Wow. So, so, you know, I'm, I'm watching the show, and I'm getting more and more nervous by the moment, right? You know? Because here's this, you know, it's Jerry Seinfeld forgot, and this was when the show was had exploded. It was number one show on television. It was must see television on Thursday and so we go down and introduces me to Jerry. And unfortunately, I freeze and do the classic, Jerry, I'm your biggest fan. And Jerry, nice, nice. And then turns around and walks away.

William Harris  1:01:37  

That's my meeting. Sorry. Impression it

Mike Robinson  1:01:39  

was, well, I may have told the story a few times, but yeah, he did the complete dismissive and just walked away. And I turned to my friend Tom, and I was like, I blew that. He goes, You have no idea how bad what you blew that, right? He was like, I had talked to you up. I had talked to you up. To Jeremy, we were going to go to dinner that night, and because of that awkwardness, Jerry was like, I can't I can't hang it.

William Harris  1:02:08  

No, okay, so you've had some time to think about it since then, if you were going to meet Jerry again today, what would you say differently?

Mike Robinson  1:02:18  

Great show. Great show. Where are we going to eat, right? Yeah, that's, that's probably, I don't know, I was so starstruck, so Star Trek and, and I think it's a really interesting, you know, that notion of fail forward, right? The type of thing I stood on that one for days, right? Yeah, I've asked this question of, what would I have done differently? And I think it would have been, you know, you know, say less, smile more, type of thing, you know, you know, to quote Hamilton, it's, it was just one of those where I should have just kept my mouth shut, but I babble, babble, babble. I'm your biggest fan.

William Harris  1:02:59  

I I like that idea of almost playing it too cool, kind of like what you just said, where it's like, you could have almost, you know, return it back to him, just like, he's like, Oh, hey, this Jeremy, like, Oh, hey, right, so I'm hungry, and, like, turn to your friend. You're like, so I'm hungry. We want to go eat, right? Just tacos,

Mike Robinson  1:03:17  

that's right. Yeah. Jerry Jeremy, would you like to join us? We're going out for talking, yeah, I mean, in retrospect, and this is, yeah, God, we're, we're, we're talking almost 30 years later, right, right? I could have been a lot cooler, but cool has never been my middle name.

William Harris  1:03:34  

Yeah, that's okay. I'm, I'm really good dork as well. I fall into things all the time. But I also like talking to people, though, about what are areas that they're trying to up arrow in their personal life. So obviously, there are things that you're very relentlessly looking at on business and stuff, but you told me one that I thought was the most interesting, I think I've heard in a while, which is you have tested out at least 15 different pillows.

Mike Robinson  1:04:04  

You and your team does their research. Yeah, I have been, as you get older, sleeping is harder and and I've been chasing a better night's sleep for a long time. So back to social media, the algorithm has learned to offer me pillows right on Instagram, right? And I can tell you that I've probably bought, yeah, probably bought 10 to 15. I was just taking a look at the pile of them that are in the bedroom across the hall somewhere between 10 and 15 different pillows over the last 18 months, trying to find the perfect pillow. And I can tell you, it's usually perfect for a month, until I see the next one, and that one sounds better. So So I mean, if anybody that is listening or watching wants a recommendation on any of the Instagram pillow trends out there, I'm probably your guy. Wow.

William Harris  1:04:59  

Do you want to. Give a recommendation right now, or are you? Yeah, no, no,

Mike Robinson  1:05:02  

no, I know, because I don't think I found the right one. I can tell you none of I can tell you none of them, none of them give you the sleep that the Instagram ad tells you that it will so and then they just be mindful more than anything else, right, right? It could be the mattress, could be temperature just, could just be getting a little older.

William Harris  1:05:23  

Yeah, that's fair. Mike, I have absolutely enjoyed getting to know you, learning more about all of the different logistics, things that we talked about, if people wanted to work with you or follow you, what's the best way for them to do that? Yeah.

Mike Robinson  1:05:38  

I mean the you can find us on LinkedIn at at The Eighth Notch, Eighth Notch we're at t8notch.com as well. Or you can email me directly at MRobinson@t8notch.com we are looking for retailers but, but we're also open to potentially different business models with software companies that are looking to embed this capability in what they do that we're talking to a series of them at this point. Our goal is just to get this as broad as we can. Right? It's a simple change that we think the higher the adoption rate, the better it's going to be for everyone. And the end, you know, frankly, I'm very intrigued to be able to fulfill our promise of trying to take, you know, 100 million tons of carbon out of the system if we can.

William Harris  1:06:27  

Yeah, it's beautiful goal again. Thank you for coming on the podcast, sharing your time, sharing your wisdom with us and everyone. Thank you for tuning in. You have a great day.

Outro 1:06:37  

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, we'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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