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Hey Legend, A couple years ago I found a million dollars sitting in the trash. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration. It wasn’t quite a million dollars (more like a couple hundred thousand) and it was actually sitting in the recycling bin (not the trash). Here’s how I stumbled upon what I call Brown Gold… But before I tell you that story, here’s why this is on my mind. Last night I was reading Ted Turner’s autobiography (Call Me Ted) and he told an eerily similar story about stamps of all things. Years ago (after buying the Atlanta Braves but before becoming the media mogul behind TBS), Ted Turner was strapped for cash. Not surprising really, ‘cause from what I can tell this guy was in like perpetual hyper-growth mode for the first few decades of his entrepreneurial career. Every dollar that came in was reinvested right back into the business. The result? He often found himself in a tight spot. But no worries… because while he might lack for resources, Ted never lacked for resourcefulness. Okay, so what’s this have to do with stamps and Brown Gold? Well, the way you’d monetize products back in the 70’s was through something called Direct Response Ads. You’d run a commercial for some cool steak knives and then say something like “Send $19.99 to XYZ address.” And wouldn’t ya know, people would actually do it! So the boys and girls over at TBS were getting tons of mail at their offices and one day Ted noticed that like 1 out of every 3 letters had a stamp on it that hadn’t been validated by the postal office… Which meant, they could peel the stamp off and use it to send a future-letter. Here’s why this is crazy… Stamps are pretty damn cheap, all told. Even when you add up hundreds if not thousands of them, this practice of reusing stamps likely only saved TBS like $20/month. Not exactly earth shattering sums of money, but that’s not the point. See, whoever can be entrusted with the small things, can be entrusted with the big things. And what could be smaller than saving a couple cents on a stamp? Is it really any surprise that a company with that sort of dedication to resourcefulness went on to become a multi-billion dollar enterprise? Nope, not really. If anything, it just feels inevitable. And it’s that same mindset we took into 10x’ing our manufacturing company (Escape Climbing) in under 3 years. Which brings me back to how we discovered hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting in the recycling bin. See, in the beginning we were shipping out hundreds of packages a day in these nice branded boxes (ya know, so we’d look professional and legit). But these things were wildly expensive and it always felt like such a waste knowing our customers were probably just throwing them straight into the recycling anyhow. Afterall, that’s all WE were doing with the hundreds of boxes we received every day from Amazon and vendors at our warehouse ell, one day, our shipping manager had a simple idea. “What if we reused boxes,” she said, “and just add a small branded label explaining why?” Something like: We believe in being good stewards of the environment and hate to see a perfectly good box go to waste. We hope you don’t mind, but we decided to give this one a second life. That one decision cut our box budget by tens of thousands of dollars per month. No fancy packaging. Just a simple story people actually appreciated. h, and a TON of savings. My partner actually got a little obsessed with the savings… very few days he’d drive around local businessess… dumpster diving for Brown Gold. But can ya blame him? Over the past decade, that Brown Gold has saved us a couple hundred thousand dollars. One man’s trash IS another man’s treasure, I suppose. So, here’s the question you as a founder can never ask too often: Where am I sitting on Brown Gold? Answer that and I promise you’ll make a whole lot more money. Stay Hyperfocused, My Friend. P.S. Most founders only look at their bank account, but there are 4 other ‘hidden’ resources where you’re likely leaking Brown Gold right now. I break’em down here. |
