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Freedom in Five Minutes


Mar 25, 2020

Although the product is an important factor, at the end of the day, it is customer experience that determines the success of your business. And one of the best things that can lead to great customer experience is through systemizing processes.

In today’s episode of Freedom in Five Minutes, guest George Chen, founder of UBestPacks.com talks with Dean about the importance of offloading tasks, leveraging your VSAs, and the influence of customer service over the success of your business.

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Automated Transcription Below:

Dean Soto  0:00  

Hey, this is Dean Soto — founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com P R O S U L U M . com. And we're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode. Today's topic is this. Systemizing Global Manufacturing the Easy Way with George Chen. That and more coming up.

 

Oh. Today is going to be a treat. An absolute treat! Because I have one of my favorite people here on this podcast. Someone who has taken – oh my gosh, like he not only does – he systemizes in a way that allows his global manufacturing business to run with as few people as possible.

 

He is so creative when it comes to systems and really doesn't hesitate to at least try to systemize pretty much everything in his life as well as with his business. So, that being said, I am here with Mr. George Chen. He is the President and CEO of U-BEST PACKAGING SOLUTIONS. George! What is up, my man? How's it going? 

 

George Chen  1:29  

Hey. What's up, dude? Stoked to be here. Very excited. Yeah. 

 

Dean Soto  1:34  

Awesome. Awesome. So we actually met through — Paul who is a mutual friend of ours.

 

And he introduced us and we started working together. You do some pretty amazing things. I had no idea - when we first started - all of the things that you do. Can you kind of give an overview of what you are in charge of? And really, how did you get to that point?

 

George Chen  2:03  

Yeah. So, what I'm in charge of. So, I run U-BEST PACKAGING SOLUTIONS. We're based out of Brea, California, Orange County. And we do anything branded. So, if it involves putting your brand on it, whether it be packaging, business cards, flyers, to clothing, apparel, we do it all. So, what I oversee is I oversee our U.S. operations as well as our overseas operations. We have manufacturing sites here in Orange County, as well as in Taiwan and China as well. We not only do packaging, but we also do shoe manufacturing as well. So in various different industries. And how I got here. Well, it's funny, I started a sticker company. In college, I traded two DJ turntables for a vinyl plotter. And what a vinyl plotter is — if you look at cars. And they usually have those family stickers where it has a mom, dad, son, whatever. Yeah, so I traded two turntables for a vinyl plotter to cut both stickers. And from there, we moved into different types of packaging. And that's kind of how it started.

 

Dean Soto  3:21  

That's crazy. That's crazy. So actually, were you selling your vinyl cuts to your friends and things like that? What I mean — that's pretty dang cool.

 

George Chen  3:36  

No. I was — originally, I just wanted to make a bunch of stickers for myself. And I was pretty into the car modding industry where you take the parts off of that. So it kind of went hand in hand. And then eventually, we started selling parts. Vinyl, you know, kind of like tinting parts for certain head lamps and headlights. I would sell it to car modding shops. And that's kind of how it started. 

 

Dean Soto  4:05  

That's crazy. That's so crazy. And now, you have a whole manufacturing company in Brea that I have been to a couple of times. You have a staff there, and you do some really amazing things there. So what's out? Give a big rundown of some of the things that you're able to do right now. I know you say you have your shoe manufacturer and you have whatever. What's your favorite thing right now? What's the most innovative or what was your — kind of the thing that you love the most that you're doing right now?

 

George Chen  4:43  

I wouldn't say it's one single product that we do. I think it's more so the gratification of printing something and showing our customers and seeing the look on their face. That's what I love doing. I love — it's not that I love printing or I love manufacturing. I love the feeling of giving my customers a product and having them go, "Holy crap, this is better than I imagined. Thank you for this, like, I'm so stoked." That's usually where I get my gratification. But if you want to boil it down to kind of more so a product, I would say, our paper packaging. Doing boxes and doing retail packaging, or a lot of marketing, influencer marketing packages. So, a lot of times we've worked with global brands and we make special influencer boxes for them that they ship out to all these marketing influencers. And we build like really, really cool custom wooden boxes. Sometimes plastic boxes, clear acrylic boxes and just make the user experience something super cool that they can post online and share with the world.

 

Dean Soto  5:57  

It's amazing. It's amazing. You actually deal with a whole bunch of different industries right? With all of this? And as I've seen your packaging too, and we'll get into some more deep questions in a little bit. But I've seen your packaging. It's funny because when I think of packaging, I think of just — it sounds bad because you're probably gonna be like, "Yeah. That's like totally not what we do." But I actually just think of like, cardboard box around

 

George Chen  6:31  

Brown shipping boxes.

 

Dean Soto  6:32  

Yeah.

 

George Chen  6:34  

Literally what everyone says, "Oh, you do packaging? Can I buy like brown boxes?"

 

I'm like, I mean, we can do that. But that's not our bread and butter. Yeah. And then everyone's like, Oh, yeah, you guys are like... I say no. Yeah.

 

Dean Soto  6:48  

So yeah. I want people to get an idea of all the different things that you have created. Some of the most creative things like for Afters Ice Cream, which is really big over here in Southern California you did some really creative amazing things for them and for some pretty big named companies right? So what are those kind of things?

 

George Chen  7:12  

We're pretty big in the restaurant industry. I would say we do a lot of franchise restaurants nationwide and we do local franchise areas like Afters Ice Cream. We did everything from their wall installation. So if you go on their website, I think it's AftersIceCream.com. You guys can go through their portfolio and see some stuff that we've done. So we do all of their ice cream cups for them. We do all of their wall installations for them. So, wallpaper wraps, signage, photobooth opportunities. We just recently did the Rick and Morty collaboration, and we did all the window clings that go in the storefront. The wallpaper packaging and merchandise quoting

 

Dean Soto  7:58  

The Rick and Morty Thing man was so cool. Like kind of give an idea of what that actually was just because, man. If you guys saw the video of this, you felt like you were in the cartoon.

 

George Chen  8:12  

Yeah. So I think it was at their Pasadena store. And they have this building on the side just solely for a photo op. But once you walk in the door, it's covered in wallpaper of different designs of Rick and Morty and you go in there and you take photos, and with ice cream and whatnot. But, you know, you just gotta go to the website and take a look at it for yourself. It's kind of hard to explain.

 

Dean Soto  8:41  

I love it. Like I always kind of — I always think of what you do as putting ideas and dreams into a physical and tangible product whether it's actual packaging for something. Or you know, wrap or something like that. It gives that whole physical... You're able to put these ideas into a physical form which is absolutely amazing. I love it man.

 

George Chen  9:13  

We like to say we bring ideas to life. If you have an idea and you saw something super cool and you want to recreate it, or you want to redesign it into something that fits around your product, that's what we're good at. We're really good at building packaging around our customers' products — whether it be boxes, bags, or whatever it may be. We're really good at you know, catering to certain customers and making something very memorable.

 

Dean Soto  9:41  

Yeah, I love it. So guys, if you haven't noticed, I'm like, these guys. You guys got to know exactly what this guy does. So that as we go deeper into how he actually gets this done, you'll just be blown away that he's able to do what he's able to do. So with such a lean organization. All that being said, when we first met, I mean... prior to us even meeting, you already seemed to have a mind for systems and operations and you run your business, from what I can tell, very differently than a lot of other people in your industry. And that one of those things is definitely a focus on outsourcing and documentation. So, what is your whole idea when it comes to those two things — documentation and outsourcing? So that you can maintain a flexible but still powerful organization?

 

George Chen  10:51  

Oh, it's funny. Before we met, I actually did not really thinking that kind of way. It might have seemed that way but not really. I did learn from a friend one time. We were — I can tell you, when we started this company, I was typing out invoices on Microsoft Excel and doing inventory counts manually by hand, typing them into Microsoft Excel and calculating our inventory that way. So that's where we started. And we my friend was helping me out. And we were talking about inventory management systems because going through my inventory every week and counting everything was not working. So we found a company called StitchLabs.com. And he explained to us like, you know, you have to catalogue everything. You have to go through and input all this data. And it's going to take a lot of time, but if you put in the work now, it'll be smooth sailing later down the road, because you'll have all this infrastructure that you've implemented. So that was kind of the beginning of where I had that kind of system thought and operations way to do things. But in the like, until we met, that's when it started really kicking in and understanding. They are doing the outsourcing and documenting all of our processes. Because, you know, in the very beginning it was me. I was doing the account managing. I was doing the sales. I was doing the invoicing. I was doing the purchase orders. I was doing the accounts payable, accounts receivable, so literally doing everything. So there wasn't really a way that I systemize everything, it was just Oh, something came up, I had to do it, and I just did it and then we'll go on. But slowly as we met, you know, I started realizing, "Hey, I can document all this stuff. Cuz at the end of the day, how to type an order is going to be the same every single time." 

 

Dean Soto  12:46  

Exactly. 

 

George Chen  12:47  

So how do I document it so that I can pass it along and have someone else take care of it for me? Where I can focus on the more important parts of scaling my company, doing business development to product development. Things that actually I'm very valuable at because at the end of day, my time isn't used best if I'm typing up invoices or purchase orders, right? But yeah systems changed the way I run the company. 

 

Dean Soto  13:12  

That's awesome. That's awesome. What was  the first thing that you put into a system that — not necessarily the first thing... But the first thing that where you were blown away where thought "Oh crap I don't have to do this thing ever again and now that gives me time to do this other thing that's way valuable. What was the first thing where the light bulb just clicked?

 

George Chen  13:43  

Order processing and invoicing. I hated doing that. Like, I absolutely hated it. I don't like typing out invoices and typing out orders. It's such a waste of my time. And once I implemented that package. I was able to focus on sales. I can just talk to a customer and say, "Hey, please process order and these are the details of that order." And never have to do it again. That was the beginning. And that, you know, that snowballed into even... I mean, we've always had a process on how to do some of the printing in our warehouse. Yeah. But once that happened, I was like, "Okay, now I'm starting to look into all of the different things that we do, and how I systemize this?" Coming from a startup company or coming from, like, not having any business background - learning on the fly. Now I have to think, how would a global corporation do this? Right? They have all the standard operating procedures. Now, that made me realize, because I was doing everything myself — I knew that I had my operating procedures. Those are all in my head. 

 

Dean Soto  14:48  

Yeah.

 

George Chen  14:48  

There's no way for me to teach someone and have them replicate it time and time again, without any errors because then it's all subjective. Then it's like, "Oh, you have your way of doing this. I have my way of doing this." I'm teaching you how I'm doing it. But you're not going to be doing it the same way I'm doing it, because there's no documentation.

 

Dean Soto  15:05  

Yeah, exactly. So

 

George Chen  15:06  

I started looking in my warehouse, and, you know, printing facilities. And I'm looking at, how do I systemize this now? So now I went through our printing process and started documenting. Okay, you mix the ink for 16 seconds. And why do we do this? Like, we started listing out all the different reasons why we do certain things, and what to look out for. If the ink is not mixed properly, you're going to get separation and whatnot. And it kind of teaches everyone "Hey, this is the exact way to do it. And if something goes wrong, then we look at that document and say, okay, where did it go wrong?"

 

Dean Soto  15:42  

Yeah. 

 

George Chen  15:42  

And you can easily pinpoint now, at what process something went wrong. And now, we have a much better quality control because now we know, "Hey, this print station is producing something different than this other condition. What's the difference between the two? Or what not.

 

Dean Soto  16:00  

I love that. I love that. That's cool. Especially the the idea that because you have the process, you can see where something breaks down. It's not a person, you know. If somebody messes up and it's just because it's in their head, then it's like, "Okay, well how do I fix that?" And that's not very fixable, especially if they keep on messing up. But if it's the process, it makes it super easy to be able to say, "Boom, there's a problem right there." And to fix it, I love that. Before we get into more of the tactical stuff, walk me through how a new customer comes in. Like what's your entire system from new customer comes in to ideation where you're coming up with strategy and everything like that to actually delivering a product. What's your involvement in all of that?

 

George Chen  17:00  

Now. So in the beginning, I was — beginning to end, I was in everything. Now we started outsourcing a lot of our account managing. So now, when a customer comes in, they call us right? Either whoever's in the office will take the call or if I take the call, I'll get their contact information. They'll most likely give me a brief of what they're looking for to do. "Okay, cool, thank you. And I tell I instantly, as soon as that call is done, I provide my VSAs who the customer is, what their email address is. I say, please send them an intro email. And what an intro email is — it has our customer application form. It also has some of our portfolio and some of our past projects, and it kind of gives you a brief about our company and what we do. So it starts off there. They send the customer application, they get set up and then they respond with what they're looking for. Get a quote for, say it's a very standard product, they'll go through a quote, if it's involved. And then they email us what they're looking for: quotes. So then my VSAs, will go ahead and grab that information and start working on the quote, looking at either where to pull some products from different places, wherever it may be, shoot back the quote to the customer. Quote, good customer start placing the order they'll send us the artwork, my same VSA. So at this point, I haven't touched anything. I'm just monitoring my same VSA will take that artwork, send it to our pre-production department, they'll come out with a proof. The proof goes out back to the customer through the VSA. Customer approves the proof. Then we move into manufacturing that is done either here overseas, wherever it may be. And from there, the product gets delivered. I have not touched this product or talked to the customer. The only time I'm involved is more so product development. So if they're trying to build the packaging around their product, or if they're trying to come up with something new with different types of materials, that's where I kind of jump in. More of the creative side and helping them understand what capabilities — because a lot of times, most, I would say 90% of customers... they have a graphic designer in house or they have hired someone to do graphic designing. But that graphic designer is solely for online. You know how to make pictures, put it on a website and make it look nice. Yeah, they don't have the experience of doing graphic design for packaging or for printing because it's way different. You need bleeds, you need Pantone colors, you need all different check points. So the difference is that's where I come in and I help them guide through that process in doing the understanding of how to build these custom projects.

 

Dean Soto  20:05  

That's the stuff that you enjoy. Yeah?

 

George Chen  20:08  

Yeah. No, it's fine. It's fun. Because then I'm on starting it from scratch, and then bringing these ideas to life. Where at the end of the day, the customers like, "Wow, that was super cool." And for us, you know, we try to provide a five-star experience every time we work with a customer. We know what it's like, dealing with, you know, I don't know someone like... Well, I can't really compare but someone like Vistaprint or someone like youprint.com to do your business cards, right? You just send something online, you hope it comes out and you get your product and it's like... We guide you through that whole process because we know what to look out for. We know that if you're printing a box and it needs to go in the fridge or you're printing a box and it's going to go on something that's what... We know that "Hey, you need to use different types of material to get what you're looking for." That's why we're different from most suppliers in that we will look at your product and try to understand it instead of just trying to sell you something. Yeah, that's not our goal. Our goal is to give you a five-star experience where you can tell us "Hey, this is what I'm trying to go for." And we take the reins, and we guide you along the process. And that's our way of providing a five-star experience.

 

Dean Soto  21:26  

I love that and you have the time to actually do that.

 

George Chen  21:30  

Yeah, I'm not typing out invoices and purchase orders all the time.

 

Dean Soto  21:34  

Man, man. So there was a time where, when you were working with your Virtual Systems Architect, your VSA. She did something where... Because she, you know – obviously you guys had the processes that you guys created. All the documentation. everything got systemized but there was a time where the customer actually sent something to you. Like an image. And she knew right away. It wasn't really through the process, she actually knew that it was wrong and like, slapped your customer on the hand a little bit, right?

 

George Chen  22:21  

So that specific example is when one of our customers sent us artwork that was not print ready. So what it means is that once you send us the artwork, all we do is take it, make a proof out of it and print it. We don't touch it. We don't do anything at all. But what they sent to us was an artwork. But it had text in the middle, giving instructions on what needed to be what size and whatnot. And if we took that and we printed it, that would have went wrong, or it would have had all that markings on there. So what my VA did is that she responded and saying "Hey, we noticed that the artwork that you sent was not print ready. Please make sure you remove all of your markings and resend this artwork so that we can move it into print."

 

Dean Soto  23:11  

Oh my gosh, I love that. I love that. And that was like not necessarily something in the process. But you feel like because you had so much documentation... Because all that – because you know, as your VSA is actually creating all that documentation. They're learning your business. Do you feel that that? That's one of the reasons why that happened?

 

George Chen  23:36  

Yeah, I think more so why that happened is that just copying them a lot on every single email that goes out. I think it's more so just the training process, right? If you have someone with you at all times, and they see how you interact with someone, they'll start picking up on that, right. They'll start seeing "Okay, he treats them in a very professional manner. Very courteous. Certain ways you talk to them. They'll start picking up on that. And that's kind of how we've educated every single one of our employees here. You help. You educate them. Versus telling them to do. Yeah. Help them understand why we're doing what we're doing. And why. Because for us, sometimes, a lot of our customers think, "Oh, I need this today." But we realize, "Hey, if you do something quickly, problems happen." Then you start skipping steps. And then that's why we have such a strict, strict guideline on our processes. They're able to pick that up because of our training. And if you have a good training process and teach people why they're doing what they're doing, versus "Hey, go do this." It help them understand a lot more. And for them to pick up on it, and for them to execute it better.

 

Dean Soto  25:04  

Yeah. Yeah, it's cool because, you know, out of all of the people, you definitely — with your documentation, you know, a lot of people that I know who create this type of documentation whether it's with a VSA or not, they just say, "Here's the process. Go do it, but you really do bring the why. Like, why is this process being done? Why? Even like, during the middle of the documentation, you say,"Mix for 15 seconds." like you'll have things like why are you mixing for 15 seconds? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing it? Why? I've just noticed that because of that, your guys are like superhuman. They're able to take on a lot more that they otherwise, wouldn't. A lot of business owners want this kind of robotic kind of just do as I say type thing. Whereas I can tell with your guys to the point where it seems like you're able to just hand off to your I guess she would be your general manager or ops manager — hand whatever off and she handles a lot of the stuff you're doing. What have you noticed that has come with that "why?" Compared to because you know, other people who do this type of systemization stuff. Do you notice that your staff is better because of that?

 

George Chen  26:42  

Yeah. 100%. So, because for us, you can print the sticker using probably five different methods of printing the sticker, right? You could print a sticker, you could digitally print it. You can silk screen it. You could print it with flexo. There's so many different ways to print a single sticker. But you have to understand what your customer is trying to achieve. Are they trying to put it on a box? If they're trying to put it on a shipper box, you know, the brown cardboard box that you thought we do. You don't need such a crazy sticker for that, right. But if you're trying to put a sticker on a bottle that is going to go through a wash, you want to make sure that you're using a vinyl sticker for that. So, understanding "why" helps them better process on which method to print the product for the customer. And teaching them "why" helps them able to empower them to come up with solutions on their own. Right. If you give them an education, they can now offer that same education to your customers. And that creates so much value added to your company. Very, very rarely do you have these companies think for the customer? Because usually it's all about me. How do I get the sale? How do I make this next paycheck? Whatever it may be. For us, it's like, how do we maintain this relationship? So that, you know, you can count on me? Yeah, every single time we talk. Right? That's the difference between us and a lot of other people. We teach them "why" so that our employees can come up with the solutions themselves. So that I don't have to be answering the same way every single time. If I tell you, these are our capabilities, of course, there's going to be times where it's something that they've never experienced or whatever. But a lot of times, it's how you have to understand the machine. You have to understand our different methods of producing a product and which solution is going to be best for the customer. Because it's going to be different every single time. And if I gave you — Okay, if I told them it's a sticker, then you go misprint it but that's not the way, right? You have to understand if they're printing a sticker, what's the sticker for? Yeah. Are they trying to match certain colors? You know, with printing it. That's why we get a lot of customers — they say this today. I got a call from a customer. "Hey. We're looking for woven labels, and we're looking for bags. What's the price?" You're like, I'd be zero information. You told me two categories and expect me to know what's in your head and give you a price. I can't do any of that. Right. So now I have to ask them all these questions and teaching my employees that same thing. Like, you have to understand why you're doing what you're doing. Yeah. So that you can offer the best solution for the customer.

 

Dean Soto  29:32  

Well, it's cool too because you have the ability to do that. Because of all the things that you've systemized in your operation and stuff. It's cool, too, because you could, I mean, theoretically — you probably could just say it would be this much. But then, say they bought that stuff off you. And it didn't work for whatever application they're doing. Like, that hurts your business big time. 

 

George Chen  29:54  

Yeah, no. They won't come back. There's no way they would come back. Yeah, and they expect you are the professional. You're supposed to know what I'm looking for. Pretty much, you're supposed to read my mind — is what they want.

 

Dean Soto  30:07  

That's crazy. That's crazy. So one more thing I want to touch on before I ask the strategic Five Minute Question. And then get more information about your business and customer base and stuff. So you kind of mentioned this, you kind of alluded to it before,

 

 

 

There was a pretty big shift where you're getting questions like all the time even when you had systems, documentation, and things like that. You were getting questions. And there was a point where we even talked and you're like, "Oh, I should just make it to where they asked somebody else." Can you kind of explain like how you had to make that mindset shift of always being the person who's getting the questions when you could delegate that to say your general manager who, you know, your VSA who runs the other VSAs?

 

George Chen  31:10  

Yeah. So we originally, you know, I mean, during the training process, you're always going to be the one to answer all the questions. Yeah. But if you're training multiple people, you don't want to be answering the same question for the new trainee every single time after that, right? So what we learned is that we created a frequently asked question document for everything in our company, right? So when, you know, when a customer is asking, what is the duty charge from China to LA for a .... Right? Now we have frequently asked... like that's gonna be asked every single time when we have a new account manager that we're bringing on or whatever. So we've created this document where they can refer to that, and they'll know "Hey, if the customer is asking for duty charge, hey, go look in their frequently asked questions." It should be there. And then if it's not, you know, ask who you report to. Ask them the question and if not, then come ask me. So now I've delegated all the questions that are being asked into my main manager. And then from there, you know, if it needs to get escalated, then it gets escalated.

 

Dean Soto  32:16  

I love that. I love that man. You don't do any of the training whatsoever for anyone new that comes on as far as like a VSA like remote person, right?

 

George Chen  32:24  

Not anymore. So the VSAs of Pro Sulum... they come systems trained. I'm sure if you're listening to this podcast, you know that. They all come to some trainings and I hired one in August of last year. I think August No. Two years ago now. Yeah. August two years ago. And then, within three months, I had that VSA training the other VSA. And it was mind-blowing seeing her you know, within three months, be able to train two new people in the same way that kind of I trained her. And she was really quick to pick up on, you know, how you train. How we do training in our company. And since then, I haven't had to train anyone.

 

Dean Soto  33:16  

The best thing was when I talked to you. One of the speaking engagements that we did. When I said, "Hey, how's your new one coming along?" And you're like, "I don't know, my main VSA is..."

 

George Chen  33:38  

Yeah, I had the ability to say, I have no idea what's going on.

 

No, it's not good. But no, I mean, I obviously I did kind of know. But I think it's more so just having that weight off your shoulder and knowing that a task that is delegated and being taken care of. Because the worst thing is, you delegate a task, and then you have to go follow up. and say, "Hey, what's the update?" Yeah. Seriously, that is something that I hate. Yeah. But, you know, with these standard operating procedures, "Hey, you need to report to me after a certain amount of time, because that's our operating procedure now. And I haven't had to go follow up anymore. And it's been handed to me." And I think that's one of the biggest differences now. Systemising all this stuff is that these are my expectations. But it's not. It wasn't in our standard operating procedure. Yeah. So when it wasn't happening, it was making me mad. But that's at the end day. That's my fault. Because I didn't systemize it. I didn't implement it into our process. And now that it is, I get so super hands-off approach now, and I get reports handed to me and that's how a company should be run. Yeah, you know, all right.

 

Dean Soto  34:59  

I love it man, I love it. I love it. So, two more questions. The first one is, if you had...if you were talking with someone, and they said, George, what's one thing that you can tell me that if I implemented right now. We call this like the Five Minute Focus Question. If I just did this one thing and more strategic, not like a tool at all or anything like that. I mean, it could be a tool, but more and more in the strategic level that would improve their life, their business. What would that one thing be?

 

George Chen  35:40  

I think it would just be in stead of trying something, just do it. Because if you think about it, you know, as adults, we don't really fail at things nowadays. Right? We have this level of comfort in our decision making that we're going to take — most of the time, we're going to take the same solution or we're going to decide on something that we already know is a most probable outcome. Yeah, when we have come across something that we don't know, a probable outcome, we usually don't make that decision anymore. We just push it off to the side, or we keep not attending to it. And it just kind of gets lost, right. So a lot of people have a hard time trying new things or being willing to fail because we've taken all of that out of our day to day now that we're older, right? When you were kids, you always fail. You always fall down, you always get back up, right. But now, when's the last time you fell? Yep. Never. Right. So I think just doing it and being being willing to fail again, and just being willing to fall down and see what happens because you're not gonna die. It's not the end of the world if something doesn't go right. But then you learn from it. I think that's the biggest thing and just doing it. Whenever, like something comes up, just, just don't be afraid to fail. I think that's, that's one thing that really changed the way I think and just being confident in moving. Once you move like you can only start winning after that.

 

Dean Soto  37:22  

I love that man. I love it. And that's one thing I definitely noticed about you. You just do things.

 

George Chen  37:29  

Like, my motto is do it first and then ask forgiveness later.

 

Dean Soto  37:36  

Man, I love it. It's so good. It's so good. Yes, so who is your dream client? If someone were to come and work with you. Who would be your dream client and what would they expect with working with you and U-BEST?

 

And keep in mind guys, he works with really big names as well. Like these are huge companies that you're probably wearing shoe-wise right now. But, yeah. Who do you feel that you serve best? Or at least you have the, you know that like, "Oh my gosh, we changed these people's lives all the time." These types of people.

 

George Chen  38:37  

Yeah, that that is a very good question that I have actually not thought about.

 

Dean Soto  38:42  

Sorry. I know. 

 

George Chen  38:45  

That's a great question because for us, when we see an opportunity we'll always go... I would say for a while it was Adidas. For a while, it was trying to work with the adidaa. Either in shoe manufacturing or doing marketing or packaging for them for a while. It wasn't even — I guess it could still be. I think I was really into shoes for a while — being a sneaker head and, you know, trying to go for all the easy stuff. But when I was really into that I think Adidas was definitely on my top priority in trying to do because very few companies do "Made in USA" shoe manufacturing. 

 

Dean Soto  39:34  

Oh yeah. 

 

George Chen  39:34  

We're one of them to supply certain brands that do "Made in the USA" shoes. But the trend has a lot of big shoe pumping brands. They've started moving manufacturing here to reduce lead times and to better serve the changing market nowadays. So yeah, if Adidas was listening. My company would love to work with you. Going back to what you said, what kind of what would they expect? They would expect a five star service, right? Being able to delegate a task to us or a project to us, and letting us take care of it. Because a lot of times how companies utilize us now, when I was the main dealing with all the customers at once...They would be like, "George, this is what I need, go get it done." And then you know, take it, give them the product and have them stoked about it. And that's, I think that's the easiest way to help these brands scale. So our bread and butter is taking a company from either three locations. So in the restaurant industry, our bread and butter taking company from three locate two to three locations and helping them scale in 200 or 500 stores within a short amount of period of time. And the only way to do that is for us to take all their print materials and everything they need printed and taking it off their plate so they could book.

 

Dean Soto  41:13  

Oh, sounds like

 

George Chen  41:15  

there you go.

 

Dean Soto  41:19  

All right, so it sounds like you cut out a little bit. Are you still there right now? I knew this was gonna happen. It always happens at the most inopportune time. Can you hear me right now?

 

George Chen  41:33  

Yeah. I cut out.

 

Dean Soto  41:34  

You cut out right at, like, toward the end of what you were saying like what they can expect...

 

George Chen  41:44  

What they can expect is... they can expect a five star experience regardless if the customer would say "Hey, George, this is what I want. Take it." And then that's what we do. We would take it and then run with it and provide them a product. And that's our bread and butter — helping companies scale and taking away a lot of their tasks to do. So our bread and butter from the restaurant industry is taking a brand with two to three locations and helping them scale to 100 to 500 stores. And how we do that? We help them with all their print marketing & print materials, so that they can go focus on the franchise sales. They can focus on finding their next locations; for their next next door to be open. That's where they're valuable. And utilizing their time not trying to shop for the best or cheapest business cards. That's a waste of their time and working with us they get that five star experience in delegating a task and knowing that it's going to be handled properly and it's going to be executed and the products are gonna come out exactly how they want. And that's our five star experience.

 

Dean Soto  42:56  

And what I've noticed too, for those listening as well is that you're almost actually like a more of a trusted adviser. I've seen where you've taken — I always think of when somebody comes into especially like a restaurant or store where a package is going out. I mean, you know, I'm always proud of my iPhone package when I get it like it's one of the things I look forward to every two years when I get my upgraded iPhone. The packaging and just undoing it. There's something about it that's prestigious and I've noticed that you've actually taken several businesses that had went the cheap route and their packaging has to be wrapped in a rubber band and all this other stuff. And you've made it look like so professional that it takes the brand. It actually does take the brand to another level because people are willing to handle that. It sounds so dumb, but, you know, even just in takeout food. If you have a really cool package. If you have something like, it's like, I'm going to Instagram, I'm going to take pictures of it. There's something about it that you are able to bring to people and it's literally not that much more expensive than going like... They're really paying for you, George. Because you have the time to be that trusted advisor like "Hey, let me help build your physical brand."

 

George Chen  44:34  

Yeah. Well, I mean, what they say is "Camera eats first, right? Yeah. That's the image we live in right now. So everything is instagram every one is taking pictures of food. And yeah, at the end of the day, they get me or they get us. Right? Grant Cardone said it in his book, right? The difference? I can go to this shop down the street and get it at this price. Yep. The difference is you don't get us. You don't get us to think for you and figure out what the best way in keeping your costs low and still getting that wow effect when a customer opens that box or opens that product.

 

Dean Soto  45:14  

I love that man. I love that. So how can people contact you? Work with you? What's the best way for them to actually get to work with George?

 

George Chen  45:23  

Yeah, so our website is UBestPacks.com U as in umbrella. Best B E S T. Packs P A C K S .com. My Instagram is George Chen @georgechen. George with a zero for the O. Yeah, you contact us there through our website or through our Instagram.

 

Dean Soto  45:48  

I love it man. 

 

George Chen  45:49  

Would love work with all of you,

 

Dean Soto  45:51  

Dude. Yeah. And so if you're listening and you want some amazing branding, like I mean if you want to really take your business to the next level when it comes to Physical branding and you want your packaging to look better. I mean, better than all of your competition. You have to work with George it is absolutely amazing. So, George, thanks for being on man. And for sharing all the things that you do. It's honestly amazing. There are so many other ninja stuff that he does. But I didn't want to keep him for so long. But yeah, man, it's so good having you and I appreciate you being on.

 

George Chen  46:29  

No, thank you so much it was, it was a treat getting to share our experiences and what we do. And just trying to try to teach people and giving them a better experience, as we know. I mean, we've heard of so many times, customers like "Oh, I can go on Alibaba and order this. And they order $10,000 worth of product and it gets here in the wrong color." That has happened for us, too. 

 

We help customers avoid it. And it's night and day, their experiences. We've had customers leave us a lot of times and saying, "Oh, I got this wrong, you know?" I remember one time this girl. She was nickel and diming us for five cents off a T shirt. For I think for like 500 shirts or something. She was like, "Oh my gosh, like why can't you just give it to me for five cents cheaper?" And I'm like, I've already done so much for you. Like, this is my price. I'm not making any money. I'm doing this out of courtesy because you are a friend of a friend. Whatever it may be, the next order she ended up going to someone else. And I heard that supplier made her cry. The service and how they would not do everything that she asked. And I was like, "Dude that's what you get." But I think customers always have to understand. It's always better to pay five cents more. Yep. And have that peace of mind, knowing that something else is going to be taken care of, where you don't have to worry about it. To have five cents is for something, you know, maybe not in the millions of quantity. But you know, for something — if it's a smaller, like, trust that you get what you pay for at the end of the day. Yeah, and you would want that peace of mind. And paying a little bit more customers have to understand that at the end of the day. It's all about service. It's rarely about product. Of course, the product plays a factor. But at the end of day, it's the service you get and why companies do so well through customer service, because you always remember when you had that great experience with that one supplier. And you always go back to them and you don't really care as much about what the price is. You really care about how you felt and how it was a piece of cake. Yeah.

 

Dean Soto  48:59  

Yeah. No and that's what's... You're spot on with that because you've engineered it yourself to be able to give that service and you know think of all the not just the money that was wasted by her but the time that was wasted by her and the stress and all that stuff that 

 

George Chen  49:23  

The stuff that you can't put a price on.

 

Dean Soto  49:27  

I know, exactly. For five cents per shirt.

 

George Chen  49:32  

You got actually five cents.

 

Dean Soto  49:35  

Oh, but it's time that she can't get back. She that probably put a huge amount of stress on her. At the end of the day if you find somebody who's amazing at what they do, and as long as they have the systems to stay amazing like you do, you're only making things better. Like all the time. That's what makes what you do so valuable that I can't think of anybody, any other company that's built like yours to where you're just constantly delivering more and more value over time as you figure out more systems to offload.

 

George Chen  50:19  

That's what we learned. High-end value. How not just to take, but to give even as a supplier, right. Like, how do you give to this person? And that's definitely helped us for longer for sure. 

 

Dean Soto  50:33  

Dang, I love it. Well, thanks for being on man. I appreciate it. And guys, go check out UBestPacks.com George is amazing. He is. Yeah. If you really want your brand to soar from the physical design standpoint. you got to go check him out. And we'll have him on again to talk about his other exploits with systems and operations. But until then, guys, thank you. This has been the Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast and I will catch you on the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.