Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to the Victory Podcast.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: Hey victors. Welcome to this episode of the Victory show. If this is your first time joining us, I'm Travis Cody, bestselling author of 16 books and the creator of bestseller By Design. I've had the privilege of helping hundreds of business consultants, founders and entrepreneurs write and publish their own best selling books. Along this journey, I've discovered a really fascinating pattern. A lot of businesses hit a revenue plateau and struggle to break through it. On this show we sit down with some of the world's most successful founders, CEOs, leaders and business owners to uncover the strategies they use to overcome those plateaus and scale their business to new heights so you can do the same. So get ready for some deep insights and actionable takeaways that you can implement in your life and business. Starting now. My guest today is a modern day entrepreneur who's redefining how global brands source, scale and stand out. Jason Wong is the founder and CEO of sase, a global sourcing and logistics powerhouse, helping brands move smarter and faster across borders. Under the SASE umbrella, Jason launched Packing Duck, a custom packaging division that delivers factory direct innovation with world class design. Today, Packing Duck supplies packaging from for some of the most recognizable brands on the planet, including Starbucks, Nutrition, Mad Happy and many many more.
Blends supply chain mastery with brand building creativity. Rare combination that's helped countless businesses unlock speed, savings and presentation in a crowded market. So if you've ever held a product in your hands and thought wow, this package is really amazing, there's a pretty good chance that Jason had something to do with it. So Jason, so happy you're here to have this conversation. I gotta ask, what, what's the naming your company Saucy is just like, it has so many connotations and I really like it. So where did the, where, where did that come from? Was what was the inspiration behind that?
[00:01:56] Speaker B: It's just play on the word sourcing. You know, we, that's funny. Source products from overseas and when I look at other firms on the market, providing they have really just old school names run people who are doing an amazing job, right. Like I, a newcomer coming into an industry filled with veterans and I'm like how do I stand out? So I think our approach is a bit more modern, it's a little bit more approachable. We, we leverage a lot more media to promote ourselves. We use a lot of technology to make our process easier. You know, as a new kid on a block, I want to make a name that really is relatable and catchy.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Well it's certainly, certainly catchy. I mean, that's the first thing that stood out to me. So I'm always curious, like, what you're doing is, it's, it's very niche. I guess niche is what somebody would say.
I'm going to assume that you did you have some sort of experience in logistics, in the packaging before you did that, and what was it about that that led you to see this need that you've built?
[00:02:51] Speaker B: I actually built this out of my own need. So I started my first e commerce store when I was 16 years old. I was dabbling into online marketing. I was an affiliate marketer and I was like, wait, why don't I just sell my own product? And so I already was pushing traffic to other companies. Companies were hiring me to push clients to their web stores. And I'm like, you know what? If they're paying me for this, clearly my traffic is worth something. So let me try to build my own store. So I built my own apparel store and eventually sold that, built my own home decor store, built a stationary store, exited those brands. And amongst those brands was a core product team that I had. I had a team in China and other parts of Asia who are handling production, inspections, logistics, and it was the same thing that followed me from one brand to the other. And so one day I was like, you know what, obviously what we're doing here works because we're having so much success with it. And from talking to a lot of other friends in the space, they have a lot of trouble with sourcing logistics. Imagine you, you're in Las Vegas and you want to source them from China, from Vietnam. Unless you're really flying over there and you know exactly what to do, it's quite a challenge to do, right? You go on Alibaba, you Google a water bottle, and there's 8,000 suppliers out there who do you go to? So we fil very unique need. We have a very particular strength that allows us to serve our customers well. And that's really how the business came to be, was really from our own need.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: So listen, I want to walk back a little bit because. So you started doing e Commerce at 16 and what was it about E commerce that was appealing to you at that age?
[00:04:21] Speaker B: It was my ticket to make money. I would like to walk you back a little bit more. At 8 years old, my mom and I came to America from Hong Kong and we didn't have too much money. We were staying at relatives house. I was working in restaurants since I was a kid. And so in off time, outside of working in restaurants, I had a computer and I had access to the Internet, for better or worse, could have gone other way. And so when, when I look at what I'm doing right now, really cultivate from me being on the Internet at a young age and observing transactions, observing businesses being done, observing how people do marketing. And e commerce for me was a great way to leverage my roots in China. I speak Chinese, I have f family there. I've had this fascination of selling things. I don't know, maybe I was a merchant in the past life, but something told me that, hey, I'm probably not smart enough to be a doctor. I'm probably not that good at school. And from my grades you can clearly see that I just couldn't pay attention in class. But I'm really damn good at selling things online. So E commerce was my ticket out of whatever I was.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: And you mentioned a key piece to this, which was out of your own need, you start having to figure out traffic. And I've done my background's direct response marketing and I think 95% of my clients, they've never figured out the traffic gain. So how, what was your sort of, I guess, journey in those first couple of years of figuring out how to generate and using either organic or paid ads to drive your, your sales and your e commerce?
[00:05:47] Speaker B: I actually came from blogging.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: 11 years ago. There's obviously a lot of blocking blogging platforms and the, the medium back then was long form content, long form blogs. There wasn't the TikToks, there wasn't short form content. Twitter wasn't really that popular back then as a, as a medium. And so the platform that I was using was called Tumblr, which is a multimedia blog. A lot of people write text, a lot of people post pictures. And a friend approached me in high school saying, hey, you need to get on this because you can make money on AdSense. Just make a blog. I'll help you grow your blog, I'll share your stuff, I'll bring you into these Facebook groups where everyone just sharing each other's content, help each other click on ads and, and start there. And so I just became obsessed with it from the first year I got 100,000 followers, started making money with 100,000 followers on my blog, took that money and started buying other people's blogs who didn't really know the value of it. You could buy a pretty high traffic Tumblr blog for thousands of dollars. I bought mine for a thousand and I just kept acquiring them. Because a lot of people back then, Taken this is 11 years ago, people back then didn't really knew how to monetize their blogs. People were making content for the sake of making content. A lot of content creators today are making content for the sake of making money. And so they knew there's a value to their accounts, but back then there wasn't. And so I just kept buying accounts, building alliances with other networks and eventually got up to 32 million followers in the next few years. And through that I was able to create traffic sources that I'm sending over to clothing companies like Shein, to Fashion Nova, who were paying me cents on a dollar for these type of traffic. And that's how I got.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Wow. And so when you say affiliate marketing, were you doing affiliate marketing for all those guys or did you eventually start moving into bigger stuff or were you all just affiliate marketing in the E commerce?
[00:07:34] Speaker B: That's affiliate. I mean clothing was probably our biggest channel. And then other ones will be nutraceuticals, will be surveys.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: How old were you when you had your first six figure year?
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Oh, probably too young to have that level of money. 17, senior year of high school. 17, give or take.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: And how, and how long did it take you from that point to hit your first six figure month?
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Six figure months I would say come in around like 19. After I moved to LA, I moved to LA when I was 18 and I think just through moving to a new country in a new city where I was literally the smallest fish in a giant pond, opened my eyes to what was possible. Because taken I was living in Toronto in high school and I was the only kid in my school making money. And so my exposure to people was really my proximity and then my Facebook group of people. And so my earning potential was really capped at who I knew was making the most amount of money. So if that guy's making 50k, I'm thinking that's probably the most I'll make. Move to LA, change that completely. 50k a month is like okay, you're doing okay, but you're not anything in this city. And so I really think a year after moving to LA at 19 exploded, I hit that six figure month.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: So how did you remember how you felt when you had that first figure?
First six figure month especially, you know, having come from where you did and what, you know, what you want you and your mom were dealing with the first several years you were here.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: It was crazy. I mean money, money on a PayPal account just didn't seem real. I grew up watching My family working in restaurants and, you know, their paychecks is a pay stub, whatever it is. 1500 a week, 2000 a week.
And that was, like, what my idea of money was. And so having this Internet money at a young age was just unfathomable to me.
Um, but, you know, so what was.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: That conversation like with you, with your mom when you're like, hey, mom, my business just made a hundred thousand dollars in profit this month.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: I actually didn't tell her I was doing business on. On the Internet. I was still working, believe it or not. I was a sushi chef in Newport Beach. Fashion island, if you know where that is.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: I do. That's.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: So you were.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: That was your. That. So was being sushi chef your. Your side hustle?
[00:09:36] Speaker B: Yeah. It was actually a period of time when all my accounts got banned. I took my. I took a job in. In Newport beach as a chef, and through that job where I was just standing there for eight hours, had some savings from the money that I made. But all my accounts were banned at that time because Tumblr was acquired by Yahoo for some. Some billion dollars. And all the accounts got shut down. They started to become a lot prohibitive of what kind of content to be on there. And it was that job where I was standing there for eight hours rolling sushi when I thought of the next idea. And that's how I got really deep into E commerce.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Wow. So I want to back up, because people who haven't done any work online don't. I don't think they can really fathom how what PayPal could actually do. So, like you were saying, right? You. You could have six figures, seven figures in a PayPal.
You do something that they don't like, they will just seize that account. So even though it's legitimately a million dollars cash to you, PayPal can take it, and there's no. You have no recourse. There's no. Nobody you can contact. And it's all up to them of whether. And then if they think you did something fishy, they may just take all that money and say, well, it's ours now. It's like, yeah, it's. I just. For people watching this, I don't think people understand that, like, that's what PayPal can do. I've had multiple clients that were running businesses off of PayPal, and, you know, they had a good month where they did 300,000 in sales, and PayPal's like, hey, that seems weird. And they just seize the account. They freeze the account and seize It.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Yeah, we had a. We had in a store 19 that was doing. We went from $0 a month, first store, new store, to $1.3 million the next month. And PayPal was like, hold on, hold your horses. This is way too much, too soon. What's going on? So they place a hole on our money. I think it was $50,000 at its peak, just frozen there. They said it will be review over the next 180 days. You cannot touch it. It doesn't matter if you need to use six months. Yeah. If you need to pay vendors, doesn't matter. Payroll doesn't matter. We're just gonna hold it. And they really could just do anything they can because PayPal has such a monopoly in seamless payment at the time. Now you have Apple Pay, which I think creates the same level of convenience as PayPal back then, because before then it was either PayPal, you're punching your credit card number and so you kind of have to offer the option. And now with Apple Pay, it's a little bit better. But yeah, it goes to your point. You can't be too dependent on these providers.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: All right, so walk me through. How did you go from nothing to a million dollars in a month? Was it because you chose the right industry, or is it just because at that point you had had so much experience doing all this, you knew exactly what to do to turn on the faucet?
[00:12:01] Speaker B: 2019 was roughly four years after I moved to LA. And by that time I had some time learning about what products work, how to do marketing. I built our own influencer strategy out of very well, robust pay media strategy. And so at that time, we have the framework and it was just missing the product. And this is a time when we have our own product team, which is what became saucy today. I had a product team that can source anything at any time. Most people will take three, six months for a new product. I can get it in a week. And so we just had.
We had so much speed under our wings that if I see something working on the Internet and I feel like I can sell it better or there's a new angle, or I can change it and customize it. Maybe instead of selling to women from 22 to 34, I could sell it to women from 34 plus with a different benefits added into it, maybe change the button, change the color. And so we just had so much resources to launch and scale fast that zero to a million a month became the norm.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: So was that the company that you then scale and was that. Was that your first exit?
[00:13:03] Speaker B: No, actually I closed that store down.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: A million a month wasn't good enough. So you're just like not worth your time.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: It's actually a really good story for picking partners, you know, for the time I was a sole entrepreneur, and I think this speaks to a lot of other founders in my interview who can speak on this is that picking the right partner is just as important as picking your wife.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: Your.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: Your husband is someone who you're tied to in so many aspects that run wrong person in a partnership can really ruin the whole bunch. It doesn't matter how successful your business is. And that was my first time having partners. Right before that, I was a solo guy running a blog, making some money here and there, running my own brands, perfectly fine. And this is the time where I joined forces. You know, it wasn't just me. There' geniuses from another marketer, another person operating. There's a few people in the kitchen and the challenge of working with other people who are maybe similar in age, who doesn't have a lot of experience, maybe don't know how to communicate properly, you know, big, big cause of divorce is just miscommunication. And second thing, or maybe even the first reason is finances. And you combine these two things in the business partnership, it could lead to a disaster. And so that was really my first time learning what it's like to work with others. And so even though we had a successful business because of bad partnership, because of misappropriate spending, it just go blew up. So good lesson, expensive lesson.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: So did you, did you. Were you the one that pulled the plug and shut it all down?
[00:14:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm just like, you know what? There's other things I can better be doing than stressing over who I'm working with.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Right. I think what's interesting about this though too is I think in marketing world, he who controls the traffic really has all the power, especially online because again, vast majority of people don't know how to get eyeballs to something. So, you know, the fact that you know how to get eyeballs, it's like, yeah, let me just go to the next thing and just do what I'm doing, but not have to deal with the hassle.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: It really is a key. And especially with the resources that we had, like we could do it once, we could do it again, you know, so where did.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: Okay, so, so what was your. What was the first company then that you was the first company you grew and scaled. Was that the company after this partnership or where did that come just curious.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: Of like after that partnership was what led me to start Saucy.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:09] Speaker B: I said, you know what, there's clearly a big market for it. A lot of my friends were asking me, Jason, how can I find this supplier? How can I do this? Can you help me translate? There is clear demand in the market and people want to pay money for consistency. For peace of mind that Saucy became a supply chain logistics company. We're helping companies move products from Asia to the US in containers. We were working on the freight. We're helping them negotiate with their suppliers. We're shipping from China to minimize tariff impact and whatnot. And that's really the story start of it. But I will say the fastest growing business out of all of this is Packing Duck. The packaging manufacturing business I started a year or so ago.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: Okay, so let's, let's talk about that. Where, where did that come from? Was that because of your current Saucy clients were then like, hey, we need to put this in a box and we don't know what to do.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: It's a little bit of that and a little bit of just wanting to focus on one thing and doing it really well. So when you think about a supply chain business, we're very general. We're not just working on electronics traffics. You can tell me to source the chair that you're sitting on and we'll source it for you, or the headphone or the lamp or whatever. We source thousands of products across many different categories. And it sounds great in theory, but then you think about our business model is that with volume, we're able to get better pricing for you. So if you want a chair and a client, another client wants a chair, we can get you better pricing because we're able to bundle your stuff together. Because our clientele is so diverse, there is really no way for us to have that much advantage over any business categories. And as a result, we have this conversation of what is that one thing that every single consumable in the world needs? What is that one thing that is recurring and extremely sticky? And what is that one thing that everyone needs but not everyone's thinking about? And it was packaging. Think about it. Whether it is a fork, whether television, whether it is a shampoo bottle, every single consumable in your life comes in a form of packaging. But not a lot of people are thinking about that. Right? If you're a brand selling anything in the world, it doesn't matter what you sell, you always need packaging. So there's that recurring Revenue. It's very sticky. Packaging is usually the first impression that you make with your customer. Right. When you ship them a package from Amazon. When they open the water bottle, it is the first thing that people touch. But it's often the thing that most people don't think about. Right. Like you don't think about the bag that you throw away. You don't think about the water bottle that you're holding. But I would say the big shift in this narrative was Apple. Apple created a packaging that is so superior to any of their competitors that people keep iPhone boxes all the way from the last few years. They keep their MacBook Pro boxes, they keep their iPhone boxes. Why? Because one, it's premium. It's so expensive that you almost don't want to throw it away. You know what is, what if one day you just need it. It's a great protection. It's also a great display. It doesn't look that ugly when you put it on your shelf. It's like, okay, it's a great piece of box. And so we got into this business because of all these thesis being met. And to do so we're like, okay, we don't want to start factoring from scratch. Let's just buy one. And so we took all the money that we made from the supply chain logistics business and bought a piece in a couple factories in China and that's how it sold our company.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Wow. So like, what was the pitch for like somebody like Starbucks or Quest Nutrition? Did you, did you go to them and pitch or did they, they find you?
[00:18:32] Speaker B: We actually never pitched a customer. We have never ran paid ads. We don't do email outreach. We're almost entirely word of mout asset right now.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: And we don't plan to ever spend money on paid marketing. It's almost like a little fun thing I want to do. It's like, how far can I push?
I would say the reason why we're able to grow so fast, it's a little bit of the advantage that I have being a brand founder. You know, I've been building beauty brands the last few years. I've built a lash brand, I've built a nail brand. I've ran stores for celebrities at major music labels. I have a Rolodex of contacts of people who are basically my ideal customers, who are now my friends, that when I start this B2B business, I immediately have 50 people I can call. And from those 50 people refer me another 50 people. And from those 50 people, some of them might know some guys at this company. At this company. And so every single client that we have ever had since the beginning of the company has been a referral.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: Wow, this is such a fascinating story. So let's talk a little bit about you going from solopreneur to, you know, running an international company with however many employees. Like, how have you. What have been some of the challenges for you personally of having to, you know, go from just being a blogger to a CEO.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: I think the biggest challenge was building the company during COVID Complete remote workspace. Right. There's a challenge of building culture, there's a challenge of working coordinately. Right. Our team is in China, it's in Malaysia. We have people in Russia, people in the Philippines, and people in Canada, Middle East. It's very, very hard to run at full speed when there's these things happening. But it also became our strength because now we cover 24 hours with people across the world working. And so it is a little bit of a caveat because I feel like there's more that I can do with a team that I can just talk to who's next to me. But it also allows us to be a lot more global, a lot faster.
And I would say building a company in China when I'm in the US means that it's either I hire someone really good there who's overseeing a lot of business functions for me, or I have to fly back there quite often. And now I kind of do both.
And the other thing is, I would say being in this type of business, where we're essentially the backbone for a customer's product, right? So it doesn't matter if you make the best phone case in the world. If the box doesn't get done properly, you can't sell that. So we're such a crucial part of most people's business functions that when we make a mistake, there's a huge impact to our customers. Businesses lost revenue, customer complaints, negative impacts to the brand image. So there's a lot of weight to us making a mistake. And you multiply that by the hundreds of customers that we have, it is quite a weight to hold on your shoulder. Right.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: So, yeah, that's a lot of. That's a, that's a bit of a pressure.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure. But I would say pressure makes diamonds. We were very fortunate to make a lot of the big mistakes earlier on in the company where, you know, the impact wasn't too bad. Maybe $10,000 here, $50,000 here, was a million dollar orders that we getting today. It was when we first started where we had a lot of opportunity to stress test the team and our functions.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: Wow. What's the next five years look like for you? Is this something you're going to keep growing and then do you eventually want to exit or you just want to see how big you can do this and this is, this is your ride?
[00:21:53] Speaker B: I think I have a knack for just starting new companies where I feel like there's a missing piece so it's not the end all, be all.
I do like to exit in the next few years, but also before I do that, to transform our company into a different type of company than what it is today. Today it's a manufacturing company, but I think in five years we'll be a tech enabled manufacturing business. And what I mean by that is that most manufacturers are quite dated, you know, for, for good reasons. Right. Like the machines that people use should be as simple as possible to reduce mistakes. But a lot of these companies are not leveraging AI to speed up communication, to reduce errors, to reduce human dependencies. And, and I think our pitch is that we're young, we're tech savvy, we're able to come into this industry and disrupt because we're able to leverage these tools in a way that most people don't know how to. Our competitors, I wouldn't even call them our competitors. Our friends in the space, you know, people who are providing the same level of services. The average age of founders there are in their 40s and 50s. Factoring is not really a business that a 20 year old can really just get into. And I was fortunate enough where I was able to get into it by, you know, my, my background.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: Find my way into it. I, I think that's our moat. We really do have a moat there.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: I, I just love the fact that kind of the experience you had working with blogs where you're like, oh, I don't need to build a blog, I can acquire a blog. So when you moved into this industry you're like, oh, I don't need to build a manufacturing company, I can just go buy one or I can buy a piece of one and have ownership in it. And it's the same thing. Right. I think most people don't, at least Americans don't really think that way. We're very much like gotta, gotta bootstrap it from the ground up sort of thing. And yeah. What a, what a fascinating. What Jason, this has been fantastic. So if somebody is listening to this, maybe they're in E commerce and they, they need help. With packaging or logistics. How do they, how do they find saucy? How do they find packing duck?
[00:23:43] Speaker B: Packing duck.com P A K I N G. Not P A C K.
Play on the word pecking duck. If you ever had the dish in trans.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: Yep, it's funny.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: Packing.com you can email us at team T E A M packingduck.com we'll take care of it. I'll be on every single project. Personal. I'm in every single conversation.
If you through Travis, if you come through our website, you're in good hands.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: You're involved with every conversation. I mean, are you still in your 20s or what? That'll end when you get to be 35.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: I turn 28 in a few days and I wake up to four or 500 messages a day just across every conversation. I check slack, I check email, I check WhatsApp, my iMessage scam DMS.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: And we're having this conversation at the end of the day and you have all this energy.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: What is your secret natural energy? You know, sleep. Well, I really prioritize sleep. I think when I was in my early 20s, even late teen years, I really was sacrificing health in pursuit of, hey, maybe I work 18 hour days and I'll be more productive. And then you realize that it's actually counterproductive because the next day you just feel like. You just feel like crap. And so now I'm very good on fitness, on supplements, on sleep. I think that your body is a machine and it's really about how you maintain it, how you oil it. And if you do it properly, you can really do extraordinary things.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: Awesome. Can end on a better note than that. Jason, thanks for your time.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: Of course.
