Grow Your Business by Creating a Wow Experience With Fulfillment & Drop Shipping | Joe Foley | 389

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October 2, 2023

Joe Foley is the Founder, President, and Client Experience Officer at Disk.com, a company providing manufacturing, fulfillment, and shipping services for e-commerce and Shopify business owners. With over 39 years in business, Disk.com ships approximately 10,000 packages a week. Joe has worked with prolific authors, speakers, and leaders focused on creating a global impact. Before Disk.com, he was the VP of Sales at Print Technology.

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

  • Joe Foley talks about his early interest in printing and fulfillment
  • How Joe personalizes the client journey with fulfillment services 
  • Top fulfillment and media mistakes 
  • Strategies for optimizing and streamlining fulfillment and media 
  • The future of shipping and fulfillment

In this episode…

As today’s sales environment becomes increasingly demanding, companies must have swift fulfillment and delivery capabilities to meet client needs and scale. How can you implement a strategic and reliable shipping system to retain clients and maximize sales?

When managing tight shipment and delivery times, many businesses either expend their resources to fulfill demands or partner with companies that don’t align with their growth objectives. Joe Foley, a leader in printing and fulfillment, emphasizes personalizing the client experience by acquiring a team of experts and collaborating with reputable partners. Disk.com provides 1-2 day delivery services, allowing you to offer exceptional services that encourage more referrals and sales. 

In this episode of Growth to Freedom, the Founder, President, and Client Experience Officer at Disk.com, Joe Foley, joins Dan Kuschell to discuss how you can scale using fulfillment and drop shipping. Joe talks about companies’ top fulfillment and media mistakes, the future development of shipping and fulfillment, and how to streamline fulfillment and optimize media.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode…

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com.

Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall in growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. You can do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com.

In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com. That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com.

If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

Episode Transcript

Dan Kuschell 0:04

Welcome to today’s segment, we asked you this, how would your business improve grow exponentially, maybe even with quantum growth, if you are able to accelerate your client experience, if you’re able to provide better fulfillment, better media opportunity better, better opportunity, with printing even, right, it sounds crazy. But today’s segment is all about your client experience and how you can help him specifically if you’re in the health space, or you’re in the education space, or you’re in the wellness space. Stay tuned, because we’ve got a lot of great insights to be able to share with you. And imagine, like, what could you learn if you had been around 40 years? 40 years? And on average, we’re shipping over 10,000 customers every single day. During that time, on average, right? What would you learn from the body of work that had been done? Well, if that’s intriguing to you, regardless of the industry that you’re in, you’re gonna love today’s segment, today’s guest expert is someone I’ve gotten a chance to know over the last decade. His name is Joe Foley. He’s the founder and president and runs a company called Disk.com, with over 40 years of experience, where they’re the leader in printing, fulfillment, and most importantly, media, along with helping you tune in your client experience. He’s worked with prolific authors, who are focused as speakers, leaders who are specifically focused on having a global impact in the world. And he can help you too. So Joe, welcome to the show. How are you, brother

Joe Foley 1:46

antastic. Thanks for having me. Dan, I’m excited to visit with you today.

Dan Kuschell 1:51

As I mentioned in the opening, like 10,000 customers a day 40 years like what could you learn from all of the insight on creating and amplifying client experience, the things that work the things that don’t? So we’re gonna dive into some of those things today, Joe, we’ll get into some strategies here in just a couple of minutes. But like, you’ve been in this for a long time, like for two years, a long time, like, why are you so fascinated by the experience printing fulfillment media like what’s, what’s the backstory here, Joe,

Joe Foley 2:19

I am very enthusiastic and excited about it. I’ve been involved in printing and fulfillment, my my whole life. And the story starts so exciting. Before the internet, there was this company called InstallShield. They were one of our first ever software companies that we duplicated their software, they worked with Microsoft. So every time Microsoft needed a new version, like if you went from you might remember windows 3.0, or Windows 95. Every time they switched to a new version, the InstallShield software would need to be updated. So we updated their software, duplicated it printed all their books and shipped it around the world. And every software developer that was running their software on Windows needed to update their software. So I mean, we grew exponentially, we learned so much about printing and fulfillment is so exciting. Then we had a blessing. About 15 years later, we did the very first Jeff Walker Product Launch Formula, physical product. And we sent that all around the world. And those two customers alone, the referrals were just amazing. So we we just focused on providing the best client experience, and to those guys, and then we just kept getting new clients. And we’ve been very, very fortunate.

Dan Kuschell 3:48

I have to do that. It’s amazing. I mean, Microsoft, Jeff Walker, and if you haven’t heard of Jeff Walker, no big deal. You know, one of the things I love about our work together, Joe, is that, you know, it’s beyond shipping, right? It’s beyond fulfillment, yet those are critical pieces. And most importantly, it’s about you know, amplifying, and putting a stamp on the client experience most importantly, you know, overall and you know, and what does that mean? It usually means you get more business you grow, you get more referrals, you grow, you get more retention, which means greater profitability. So like, beyond Jeff or beyond Microsoft, like what’s, what’s a client example where they maybe came in a little uncertain about working with, say, you versus someone else decided to work with you and then like, get like, what have it like and how did you help them either grow the business with more new business clients, referrals or retention, for that matter?

Joe Foley 4:44

Okay, well, we do have lots of examples, but when when that comes to mind is one of our large inker accounts that they’re the number one weight loss supplement on the ClickBank platform You know, where all those affiliate marketers sell all their their products. When we first were contacted by that, that client five, five years ago, they were struggling with their current provider, they just didn’t feel like they, they got the client experience they they were looking for. And they specifically had problems with late orders and it challenges their business is so up and down. It’s just crazy, you know, depending on the offer the affiliate, the weather, the holiday that I mean, their volumes go from once, regularly, like the low is about 500 orders a day, which is still lots. Once we did 23,000 orders in a single day. I mean, they were, they’re raving fans, and they’re so happy. They’re with us today, they have three different platforms and two, in addition to Clickbank where the orders come from, and they have a variety of products, so, and lots of upsells. So it’s really complicated. Our IT staff team is really one of the cool reasons that make them super happy. Besides the concierge services, we have, like the printing and all the transparency on our cool portal. But they’re definitely an example. They started with pain and now now they’re just happy and in love.

Dan Kuschell 6:33

Yeah, and I think you’ve got a very unique situation to where if it’s a fit with with somebody, you will actually pay to switch them into your platform, give you a test drive, so you can prove that your fulfillment, your it your portal, all the things that you do really is a needle mover for them, which is like, you know, pretty much unprecedented in your type of industry, because there’s a lot of lot that goes into that. You know, so health, wellness, you know, education, you work with speakers, you work with authors, you print books, you print, you know, there’s still people that are sending out DVDs and DVDs for good reasons or CDs and DVDs for good reason on top of USBs and all kinds of other stuff, the nutrition product cetera. So like if you were to sell this may be like a weird question. But like, if you were to sum up, maybe if you can it, you know, a short window, like what do you think makes you unique? versus others out there that, you know, others might be looking to have? Do fulfillment media and shipping for that?

Joe Foley 7:37

Well, so some of the things that that that we hear from our raving fan clients sound? I don’t know, to me the words. Yeah, they don’t sound like magic, but they just sound like regular words like they, they love our flexibility. And I’m like, Well, gosh, wouldn’t everybody be flexible if you’re in the service business, but we pride ourselves on listening to what our clients want, and then figuring out a way to get it done. I mean, we don’t believe in having rules like, you know, do it our way, we’re the we’re the supposed to be providing the service. So we listen to what the clients need. And we, we stay a step ahead of them when when clients say their will if we ever have to say we don’t carry that particular product, or we don’t do that service. Boy, a bell goes off and we go, we got to figure out a way of getting that into our toolbox. You know, the other thing people really like is they really feel like they’re working with a team that they trust, you know, complete integrity, transparency, you know, there’s no nobody’s selling you stuff here, nobody making anything up, everything is just so open, transparent. That’s what people want. They want to feel their trust in their orders, most important part of their business to get delivered. And they’re trusting us for that. So I think that’s what makes us you know, different.

Dan Kuschell 9:19

That’s amazing. And what’s amazing Joe is I’ve referred you to some clients and I would consider them to a degree in the beginning kind of small, like you’ll just one comes to mind right now good friend Mike ag Mulero who is a client of ours and now a client of yours and their company, like you’re printing a bunch of materials but you know in bigger picture like 10,000 orders a day of the big one you mentioned earlier you’re still serving with call it a couple 100 for an event they’re hosting and you know even for our stuff I said hey, can you print up like 65 of these books with you know, just pretty intensive to 300 Plus page book and some inserts and some different things and you have the flexibility as I view it to print On Demand small, but also you can support companies doing, you know, 20,000 orders a day, which is just boggles my mind, like what it can take to do that, you know, in your manufacturing facility, which is you know, 10s of 1000s of square feet and all the machines you have in your 100 Plus staff members. So, like, there’s a lot of mistakes people can make, like in their fulfillment process or delivering experience, in call it in the follow up or delivery of that stuff, like what are some of the top mistakes you see, that a lot of people make with call it their fulfillment, their media, their client experience, etc?

Joe Foley 10:37

Well, there are, there are a lot, a lot of mistakes. One of them comes to mind, because you mentioned how we, we offer to pay for somebody to move their stuff from another provider, sometimes people feel stuck, I hate to use an analogy of like a bad marriage, they stay kind of stuck with their current fulfillment provider, because it’s just feels too messy to move. And that’s not not the case. I mean, if you’re not, in love, totally overwhelmed, happy all the time. You know, if you can’t talk about it, you don’t have incredible communication with your, your service provider, you should think about moving. So that’s a mistake. And I think what other people do, as when they’re getting started in the early days, they’re, they’re tight on money, which makes total sense, but you don’t want to be using your your high price team members doing kind of everyday work that packing and shipping products, you know, when when you get super busy, that’s not the time to have your marketing director packing boxes, you know, that that’s, that’s when you should be doubling down on your marketing efforts. And those a lot of mistakes you can make. And one thing we have is super high tech security, you know, for all of our IT and servers, and then we have videos all around the warehouse, I had this client tell me as horrible experience before he came to us that he saw his product lists his customer list for sale on the internet. I was like, somebody at the former fulfillment place, disgruntled employee was selling that guy’s product list on the internet. That’s so sad. I mean, everybody that works here has been here, super long time they’ve grown with us, you know, through lots of pivots in the, in the economy, and all these years that we’ve been together. So those are some mistakes.

Dan Kuschell 13:03

I mean, the list could go on, and you’re just making several, several things. And, you know, what I appreciate to Joe is like, again, the speed, whether you’re big or small, how you can serve at the highest level, I actually checked in this morning with a client that I had some stuff that you shipped for us to that client, you said you shipped it Friday, and he said, Oh, we got it yesterday, which was Monday at the session. So literally one business day it was there. I mean, it wasn’t like a super small thing. You got a lot of work to get done to get that out. And yet you were able to make that happen, you know, again, creating a wow experience creating and like, what’s it worth, like? You know, you think about like what you said about the marketing director? Like there’s another thing about mindspace, right? Where you’re worried about it, or you have anxiety over it? Or you’re wondering, like, Is this getting done not getting done? You know, what’s it worth to have peace of mind to know that if you just have it set up, that it’s done, and it’s handled and excellence, and you know, it’s going to be delivered all the time, every time and you’re essentially open 364 or 365 days a year? 24/7. And, like, that’s amazing. In what what we’re doing so I mean, I can go on and on about some specific examples, Joe, but if someone’s you know, like curious and they they’re interested, like, you know, they want to help with their client experience. They want a fulfillment company they can rely on or look to make a move to adjust maybe because like you said, maybe they’re feeling a little bit stuck or their company isn’t serving them at the highest level or I think another big understated mistake is most companies don’t have the ability to scale with them either. Right? And that becomes a hold back. One of the clients we’re working with right now that we’ve gotten connected to, part of the reason they hadn’t grown is they felt like, you know, I can’t deliver what I can’t provide, and you open the door to go Well, we can help you provide 10,000 to 20,000 a day. So like that no longer becomes like imagine driving through like, let’s, I’m going to use a weird example here, McDonald’s. Imagine it McDonald’s, you go in, right? This is a big mistake for a lot of business, you drive into Mecca, you put your order, and then they say, Okay, we’ll pull in, and we’ll have your stuff you’re on a week from Monday. And wait, like, you can’t sell what you don’t have. And it makes it hard to sell what you don’t have from a mindshare point of view, and you give people the ability to open their mind globally, or, you know, just bigger if that’s where they’re at versus globally, to make a bigger impact. So like all that being said, Joe, where can people go? Like if they want to learn more about what you’re up to get more information and maybe get a quote, get some comparisons? understand a little bit more? Where can they go to learn more about you?

Joe Foley 15:54

Well, well, of course, of course, we have our URL back from the early 90s, that Disk.com. used to mean discounts, of course, but now it means delivering inspiration and specialized knowledge so that that’s easy place to go. Although, the best way is really to talk to us, you know, schedule, schedule a consultation. It’s no, it’s no pressure, no cost. And we want to develop a relationship, you know, there’s no rush, you don’t call up and say, Okay, will you start next week, you know, the, you know, take your time, discuss, learn about different features, start small, you know, maybe a little test, or that’s, that’s all it takes, we do have a lot of resources, a lot of samples, we could send you and we definitely have stories of things we’ve learned over the years, we’ve been so blessed to have amazing clients, you know, they’re doing, they’re the amazing people where we’re a service, you know, they’re the creators, they’re the brilliant entrepreneurs, we’ve just grown, doing the basics, like listening and serving, you know, so we’d like to share some of their, their successes with you. So just call up, let’s talk.

Dan Kuschell 17:24

So I encourage you to go to disk.com, at the very worst disk.com. And also in the show notes, there’ll be the phone number listed, we’ll put it on the video, we’ll put it on the page below, you can go to the number on the on the page on the site, wherever it is here, I don’t know if it’s up here or over here, somewhere on here, but then you can go to have that conversation, schedule a consultation and or go to disk.com. And, you know, fill that out. So, you know, Joe is, is we kind of wind down here a little bit. Yeah, there’s a couple of directions, I really wouldn’t really want to take this. As you you know, really look at the bigger picture 10,000 to 20,000 a day, like, again, I can’t I’ve like just amazing to wrap my head around what you learn from that, like, you know, the process of even setting it up, let alone like, you know, these are clients you’ve worked with for a long time. So it also means they retain clients, it also means they have a good process to make sure that their orders are on time, it also means that they also don’t have a lot of refunds, and they’re still in business X number of years or, or months or years later, all these sorts of things. So like, so if you were to give somebody some strategies or tips walking away here today, on what they could do to make their experience or fulfillment or media, or shipping processes better, stronger, faster, like what would be a couple of strategies or tips that you could give, give walking away today.

Joe Foley 18:57

At first Iowa, I was thinking about your question, and I was thinking, man, it’s start with having an amazing team that that was the key to our success. And we have everybody cross trained to do multiple jobs. We work 24 hours a day, seven, seven days a week. So so for us that was it’s really the core of our our the client experience that we deliver is having a good team and having people that you know, just care care like crazy. The tips that I would say to listeners are the one we mentioned, please don’t hesitate to call Disk just talk to us. And we mentioned focus on the client experience. I mean, everybody should do that. It’s all Fashion, you know, provide good service, things like that. But we’ve we’ve been doing it for 40 years, and we have have got 70% of our new business from referrals. And that, that can be tracked over that entire period, we’ve been in business. And so providing good service and client experience works. I mean, it’s, it’s for sure, um, the other the other big tip, I really have for people as, don’t be stuck with the wrong partners, when when your business hits the big dream moment, you’ve been waiting for your whole life, I mean, don’t be stuck in the wrong place, be at a place that where you can grow, grow and scale and work with somebody you can, you can trust, and you want to be friends with for life, you know.

Dan Kuschell 21:00

Yep. And I just want to say, as you’re watching or listening right now, you know, if you’re looking for a true partner, in fulfillment, in shipping in your media stuff in creating a wild client experience, reach out to Disk.com and learn more, go to Disk.com, you can, you know, again, the number is somewhere here on the page where you can contact them get more info, you know, find out what they can do for you, where you identify where you’re at, where you want to go, and then come up with a custom solution, whether you’re small today, or emerging, or you’re on the cusp of like 10 to 20,000 orders, you know, a day, I mean, you’ve worked with so many different types of industries from nutraceuticals, nutrition, golf companies, shipping, you know, different accessories in the golf industry, to, you know, prolific authors, speakers, and leaders, with their packaging with books, etc. Don’t underestimate the power of a great partner like Disk.com. And so I encourage you to go go learn more now, Joe? Yeah, here’s a little bit of a weird question. You know, a lot of people are fascinated by the future, right? AI and technology and all these sorts of things. Where do you see that, you know, the, the progression in the future of, you know, fulfillment and, and shipping and creating the client experience what comes to mind for you, as you project out, you know, the next 12 to 36 to five years from now even?

Joe Foley 22:24

Yeah, I don’t know, how things are going to be delivered, you know, by robots or, or spaceships. But I do know that people are going to always want, you know, some type of physical product delivered. Books, I mean, sure, it’s great. A lot of so many things are great to see on line. But it’s also really nice to enjoy a book or write in a workbook. And it’s really fun to get a box that where you have that wow experience where you open it up the bat is so much fun when when you get something from like, join a mastermind group or some kind of loyalty program, it’s fun to get those packages. And I think stuff like that will will will never change and focusing on the client experience will will never change here. Your AI might be writing some of your copy. But you better as an entrepreneur be focusing on the client experience, no matter what happens in the future.

Dan Kuschell 23:33

Totally agree they I know why I’m kind of fascinated by your world, Joe. And what I love about our partnership and working together, as long as we have is my dad started a printing business when I was 13. And I’ve talked about this before. And so I was in the his shop doing typesetting when before computers did it for us. And like laying it out manually and putting it in this big press, it’s probably the size of this, this room here, this video studio. And like and now to see like you mentioned to me, you just got a new piece of I’ll call it technology as I view it, you know, this, you know, or you know, some would just call it a printing press, but it’s tech built in that allows you to print on demand certain types of things. And you’re like you’re telling me about how you can drop in like gold and broil, like, you know, stuff on there. And like, as a little bit of a tech geek myself, like I get fascinated by this because of seeing where it went and where it’s, you know where it started, you know, where I got that firsthand experience that 13 And now like you can put these three dimensional kind of objects on a book or on a pack and like that’s customed to a client which is and you can do it like today so it’s shipping out in the next 48 hours or less like it’s just so fast. Anything you want to say to that I’m just curious,

Joe Foley 24:50

no except but it is. It is a lot of fun that that that equipments like proximately the size have a big, you know, a 18 Wheeler and you do, it is kind of magical, you know, you, you send the PDF file over to it. And it, it has to know the, you know, the brand of paper, the weight of paper, It studies the atmosphere, I mean, it’s unbelievably complex, but the volume that it cranks out, and the speed is, is just unbelievable. You can watch through a window kind of like, like a kid and, you know, walking down the busy streets in the old days looking in the picture windows, and you can watch it Franken through there, it’s just amazing day and you would love to see it.

Dan Kuschell 25:48

I know. And you know, by the way, I know that if you want to go deeper with Joe and you become a client of Joe, you may just find yourself getting an invite to go to their amazing facility, warehouse, etc. to kind of see this stuff firsthand. It’s it’s unbelievable what they do. And by the way, if you’re looking to take your shipping your fulfillment your client experience to the next level, then I encourage you to go learn more about what Joe and what his entire team and their entire team Disk.com is really doing to help you and us and all of us to help simplify, save money, save time ultimately, and also say worry and anxiety to be able to provide a first class experience. Joe, as we wrap this up, like what? What’s something I should have asked you that maybe we didn’t we didn’t cover yet? I’m curious.

Joe Foley 26:38

I said I think you are? You did great. I can’t think of anything you didn’t ask you, you covered all the important parts of our business. And we talked about our great clients or team or systems. You got to cover Dan.

Dan Kuschell 26:56

Awesome. Well, then what would you say? You know, as you kind of summarize today’s you know, the segment, right? If you were to say, you know, here are the key action steps to take as a result of our time together, what would you hope that someone watching or listening right now would do as far as action steps from today’s segment?

Joe Foley 27:15

Well, I want everybody to to think big and dream about possibilities and contact us and and think of something gifts, give something a try, like one of my other huge accounts, friend, John, John Bowen as a company, and we met once and he started with direct mail piece, total failure. 1000, he talks about all the time, sent out 1000 letters, not a single call to action in. Nobody contacted him. But now he’s now he’s a huge client. And we’re we’re shipping stuff every day. So I want everybody to give it a try. Explore the worst case, contact us and we’ll become friends and send you some referrals. And we’ll be friends for life. And we won’t do any business. But either way, well, we’ll, we’ll dream big and look towards the futures.

Dan Kuschell 28:18

So I encourage you, as you’re watching, as you’re listening right now, go learn more about what Disk can do. Joe, what you see here is what you get. It’s like you’re with Uncle Joe. That’s how I always feel about Joe. And I’ve described him that way to many people. And, you know, the truth is, is he can help you with your client experience, either giving you perspective, or just giving you a permanent solution where you can rest easy at night knowing you got the fulfillment, the media and the shipping, just dialed in and handled along with the printing that goes along with all the music. So go to Disk.com or click on the number, reach out and have a conversation learn more and let them know that you heard about this process through us and or it helped to be off the fence to learn more as well. Because I think there’s a lot of value here. So with that, I’ve got about six pages of notes here. From what Joe has shared, you know, from talking about what he learned from Microsoft, what he learned from working with Jeff Walker, what do you learn from shipping over 10,000 orders a day, from focusing on your client experience, create that wow, to be able to save time to save money to be able to let me just look at my cheat sheet and notes here to be able to extend the conversation with your clients in a really elegant, cool way to be able to focus on them first, right? How do we increase retention? How do we increase referrals? How do we increase more business right again, client experience, all of those things and most importantly, I hope that you’re inspired today with Disk. What is Disk stand for? Again? Joe stands for

Joe Foley 29:54

delivering inspiration and specialized knowledge

Dan Kuschell 29:57

if you want that towards Someone who’s a legend in this industry who has worked with a lot of legends in the industry and you’re looking for an option, and an ANA solution, then check out what Disk.com has to offer. Take action with what Joe has shared, seize the day and make it a great week. 

Outro 30:13

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com. Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall and growing your business? Let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. Do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com. In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free Small Business toolkit. You get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com and activate.breakthrough3x.com. If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com Hey, it’s the anchor show click the buttons over here on the lucky girl watch these other couple videos as well as make sure to hit the subscribe button so you can get access to the latest insight strategies and wisdom giving you more clarity, confidence and direction for exponential business growth. Hit the button now

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