S3E53 – Cameron Black – Growing a Concierge SaaS to Over $2.5M

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Key Timecodes

• (00:51) – Show intro and background history
• (02:35) – Deeper into their background history and business model
• (06:21) – Some company numbers
• (07:33) – Deeper into the business model and strategies
• (13:30) – Understanding the hiring process of the company
• (13:59) – Deeper into their marketing strategies
• (19:44) – What type of certifications does this activity need
• (25:59) – How the company raised capital
• (26:31) – More about the company numbers
• (40:40) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:04.540] – Intro

Hey, this is Sean Tepper, the host of Payback Time, an approachable and transparent podcast on financial independence. I’d like to bring on guests to hear authentic stories while giving you actionable takeaways you can use today. Let’s go. My next guest created a SaaS business that is similar to DoorDash, but helps with more than food delivery. They consider themselves a last-mile concierge service, which can deliver food, medications, dry cleaning, and more. They launched in a few cities in the US, but found strong traction in Ohio, of all places, where their projected revenues are in track to exceed 2.5 million in 2023. In this episode, we talk about how they market the company and how they will scale this SaaS in the B2B space. Please welcome Cameron Black.

[00:00:51.680] – Sean

Cameron and Paul, welcome to the show.

[00:00:54.540] – Cameron and Paul

Thank you very much for having us.

[00:00:55.400] – Sean

All right, we’ll start with quick introductions here. Cameron, if you could, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background?

[00:01:02.290] – Cameron

Well, my name is Cameron, as you know. I’m the CEO and founder of the Swifly Group, a 24-hour on-demand consumerage platform. My background is I studied computer science back at university. I worked a bunch of IT, consultative roles, research analysts, businesses, and I fell into last-mile logistics towards the end of my career after taking a voluntary redundancy. I found the biggest frustration was the gap in the market was we wanted things here now and yesterday, and the current technology available in the market wasn’t offering that, so we just embarked on a journey to try and solve that problem.

[00:01:38.750] – Sean

Nice. We’ll jump into, swiftly, here in a moment. But Paul, I need to know, what is your background?

[00:01:44.190] – Paul

I started out as a graphic designer for broadcast. I got really interested in the technological aspects of a lot of things. I worked in did some aerospace, medical, dental. And as things progressed, I was already drifting into the technological space as far as apps and social. But then COVID hit and then you’re met with the practicality of using technology to help you live your life. And then, Fortunes happened and I got introduced to Cameron and I was really struck by the mission and how human it is. And so that was really attractive. And I’ve been on board on the Swiss team for about a year.

[00:02:28.310] – Sean

Got you. Okay, a year. So let’s go back to the beginning here. What year was Swiftly founded?

[00:02:34.630] – Cameron

2018.

[00:02:35.700] – Sean

2018? Okay. And what does this company do?

[00:02:39.240] – Cameron

So we provide, in a normal world, you’d call it Last Mile Logistics, but we like to coin a phrase, On-demand concierge services. And the reason being is that we don’t just deliver a product or a package to you, we cater for you as the individual or a busy professional your needs. So Sean, you’re coming into town, what do you want? You want a nice meal, you want us to grab your luggage for you so you can go and see a show at the theater. Plus, you’ve got a flight the next evening. You need all of these errands run, but you want to enjoy your day in London. We come in and we fill that gap for you so you can just do what you want to do. Effectively, what we are almost selling is one thing that no one can really buy, which is the quantitative of time. We take care of not just delivering a product or service to you, but all the other things that would make your life more easy and efficient.

[00:03:32.520] – Sean

Got it. Can you give us an example of some of your top competitors?

[00:03:36.360] – Cameron

There are, I wouldn’t per se call them competitors. There are other businesses in the industry that do similar things. The crowd gig community, is ever growing in landscape. But right about now, what we’re doing is really unique to the market because there isn’t any business you can, without naming any competitors in detail, that do exactly what we do. And if you did want to mention, let’s look at DoorDash. For example, yes, they can do… They can pick up your CVS or whatever for you, but can they also take your package to the post office? And can they also perhaps maybe grab your medication and do a few other things that you need to do? No, they can’t. Everything is like in a box and then inventory listed. And whereas us, we’re actually slightly outside the box. Do we have the same riders and drivers? In some cases, we do. But what we offer is giving you that ability to just say what you want, where you want it, and when you want it, and we’ll make it happen for you the best we can.

[00:04:39.860] – Sean

Got it. And are you a monthly membership model or a SaaS?

[00:04:44.520] – Cameron

We have two revenue models, and one is the monthly subscription model. So you pay and you get that service. And also we do offer the what we call the ad-hoc, but the on-demand service where you don’t have to subscribe to our services, but you can use us as of when you need to.

[00:05:01.600] – Sean

Got it. It’s like a pay-per-use model.

[00:05:04.830] – Cameron

Exactly.

[00:05:05.850] – Sean

Yeah. Can you break down the fees for us?

[00:05:08.180] – Cameron

It’s slightly complex because it depends on what you need, right? How I like to call it, how I like to coin it, which is very simple, is for a day it will cost you $12 to use our service. That’s roughly just without taxes, just shy of five grand, right? So for that in membership, you get what you need, everything and anything within your subscription. If you were to come in and say, Right, I just need your services for a train of the show shop and grab me some flowers. Depending on distance and mileage and time will charge you based on that. But the average cost per use would be just shy of $20.

[00:05:44.910] – Sean

$20 per use. Okay, do you have some calculator built into your software that calculates based on distance and any other variables?

[00:05:53.870] – Cameron

Yeah, we do. We have a model which calculates distance and time, and also we have a base fee as well similar to some of the ride-sharing platforms you left, City of Uber, but just not so heavy in cost because you’re not traveling from a point A to a point B. You might do three or four errands, but the reason why we’ve done that is so we can reward our gig economy staff equally and ensure that they’re being paid right for the amount of tasks that they do.

[00:06:21.560] – Sean

Got it. I like to drill in the pricing here. We do have a lot of customers that are data-driven that listen to this show. I heard 5,000 before. Did I hear that right?

[00:06:33.510] – Cameron

Five grand, yes.

[00:06:34.500] – Sean

Five. Is that a yearly membership?

[00:06:36.260] – Cameron

That’s a yearly membership, yes.

[00:06:37.910] – Sean

Got it. Is that unlimited use?

[00:06:40.980] – Cameron

Unlimited. We do what you want right across. So you say you’ve got a family of four, you pay five grand a year. Your son or daughter may be at university, he or she can utilize our services. The household can use it as well. And we just do what you need to get done. And how we came up with that? If you look at some of the other businesses, New York’s competitors, let’s look at some of the concierge services out there. Some charge $20, $30, $40, $1,000 a year for equally the same services that you can deliver for a fraction of the price, which is booking a hotel for you, getting you the right price on your flights, bringing in your groceries and all the other errands, and just knowing what you like and providing that lifestyle for you. Our motto is lifestyle is having everything on demand. We’re in the game of trying to make luxury affordable and not pricing people out of the market.

[00:07:33.880] – Sean

Now, before we hit record, we’re talking about working through businesses a little bit. As your play or my perspective, and you can crack me here, you’ve got two different ways you can approach this. You can sell directly to consumers, which is a one-by-one-by-one process. It’ll take you a while. But the business play, I assume you probably want to build a relationship with a larger corporation and this would be almost like a benefit to the employees, to the corporation pays. Is that your play?

[00:08:02.380] – Cameron

Correct, yeah. And it falls back through the funnel because once we see the corporation pays, you get to know who we are, you would want to use us on an individual basis or recommend us to your friend. And that’s where our growth will come from.

[00:08:14.690] – Sean

Got it. You say will come from. I assume you haven’t sold any corporations quite yet.

[00:08:19.180] – Cameron

We have a few. We had a few. We started a business out here in the UK. So a little bit of background, I started a business out here in the UK. As I said to you just offline, if I had come to you back in 2019 or 2018 and said, Let me run all these errors for you, you probably would have thought I was crazy. Covid hit, we beta tested and beta launched roundabout the early part of March within three or four weeks, we were in a full shutdown. The business and the investments that we had at that point in time, we didn’t really have much to go with because we relied on Fort Four coming into the country to be able to service, we didn’t have it. We had to make do with what we had. At the full lockdown, everything was closed. We worked with some of the Kroger equivalents out here to service voluntarily through that. We had a fleet of just shy of 300 drivers at that time, but we couldn’t continue to run the business out here based on the amount of shutdowns that we had. So we pivoted and decided to launch the business in North America.

[00:09:27.560] – Cameron

And so relaunching the business in North America, what we did last year was we decided to focus on growing the business through some large-scale events, and that was one, the Arizona Gulf Open, NASCAR, Super Bowl. So whereby we weren’t actually working directly with these service providers, but we knew that footfall was coming into Phoenix. And so if we could tap into that footfall, it would allow us to springboard the business back to where it should be. And that’s exactly what we did. And so in about three weeks’ time, we’re moving into Cleveland and then Columbus. We’ve got some really good players out there. We’ve got an event with over 120 delegates that are coming known to our business. And some of these are already clients. And through that, we hope to continue to grow our footprint in North America.

[00:10:21.940] – Sean

Got you. Do you have any business operating in Europe?

[00:10:25.470] – Cameron

We don’t. We shifted the whole entire operation. Got it. And the idea was to just try and continue to build out here, out in North America, and pivot back into Europe once things have quieted them down. Because what did happen during the COVID-19 was a lot of investment money was being thrown around. So you had everybody and their auntie setting up a delivery business. It was very hard to differentiate yourself from the other when London is very small and you’ve got eight or nine businesses that are just here now. This one’s got 200 million here, 20 million there, and half a billion of dollars here, Amazon’s invested. We did have an offer. We had an offer to take part of our business from one of the aviation companies and a large retailer who wanted to take seven % of our business and in return, partner or JV with another business that they invested in. But I didn’t feel it was right and I didn’t feel that it was the direction that Swiftly wanted to go into. Hence why we just said, Look, we’re happy to remain in the current phase that we are because we have bigger coming and better for us.

[00:11:35.470] – Cameron

The direction the business wants to go in isn’t last mile logistics or just delivery. We want to solve a problem and that’s the gap in the market, which is on-demand concierge. That’s what we did.

[00:11:46.240] – Sean

Now, I look at a business like DoorDash and some of these other food-specific niches where you have your drivers trained to do one unique thing and then rinse and repeat. They are literally delivering food. Now, you have a unique model here where I feel like probably your employees or your drivers have to be able to make some heads-up plays, which would require probably more—you correct me here if I’m wrong—but a little more rigorous interview process, people that you can throw into the mix and be like, Okay, so today you could be delivering food, you could be delivering medications, you could be delivering maybe toys for a pet. I don’t know why that jumped in my head. I have a pet at home. But is that correct? Do you have to go through a little more rigorous hiring process?

[00:12:30.500] – Cameron

We do. Exactly. Yeah, we do. And we have our Chief Operations Officer and her team, they meet every single person. With the Cleveland launch, they meet every single person that’s coming on board. The reason being is not because you’re a 1099, the reason being is we want everyone to understand we’re a business that cares about the people on both sides, and we want to know who’s representing us, but we also want to represent the business well at the same time. You could be a plumber and you could join our business or you could be an Uber driver and join our business if you can fulfill the tasks that we need you to fulfill. Because eventually what we want to do is move from the 1099 and just have our staff in locations as in locations, as swiftly, concierge. This is who they are. You can come pick up our team and take them anywhere you want within your jurisdiction. We need to go through that process to understand who’s coming on board and who eventually we can train up to stay with us. That’s definitely.

[00:13:31.140] – Sean

How long is the hiring process? From interview day one to, Hey, you’re operational making money for Swifly. Are we talking a one-month, two-month process?

[00:13:41.760] – Cameron

It depends because we have to run background checks as well. Once you’ve had that, you get sent a link and you go for a process which depends on the information you provide. It could be more or less instantaneously or it could take a few weeks. But we try to get it done as quick as possible.

[00:13:58.690] – Sean

Okay, all right. Let’s jump into marketing here. This might be more for you, Paul, but Cameron, feel free to answer. A lot of entrepreneurs in our audience, this seems to be the biggest challenge. It’s like, sure, you can come up with an idea and you can come up with pricing and you can put tech together, but a lot of people get stuck with marketing. How are you getting this out to the market?

[00:14:22.030] – Paul

Primarily, we started with the Notion and then did our market research, found out what was out there. And then we already had a unique selling proposition, which is not necessarily we don’t just do one thing, we do a lot of things, and we do things differently than many of the competitors. We just spoke to that. We just said, and you can easily relate that to our consumers, our users, and even our businesses. You can say, Look, consumer, you love DoorDash. You love Instacart, you’ve used this for the last two years.

[00:14:54.020] – Sean

But.

[00:14:54.640] – Paul

You have to admit, Instacart gets it wrong sometimes. What happens when you got to take something back? What happens when you didn’t get it right? That’s where we step in. That’s where we provide the answer. We say we execute just how you would with your interest in mind. So our unique selling proposition writes itself. It’s just you speak to people-quickly and you speak to people frankly and you speak to people clearly. I believe that that’s the best way to connect with your marketing, is to just make it plain.

[00:15:22.910] – Sean

So that’s your messaging. Are you using any channels? Do you work through, I’m thinking about city organizations, if you like launching a city, do you connect with the Chamber of Commerce and go from a more hands on approach, or do you use targeted ads?

[00:15:38.460] – Paul

Yes, we’ve done both. We’ve done regionally targeted ads, and we have done Chamber of Commerce, and that’s been very successful.

[00:15:46.710] – Sean

Right. On anything else? Any other channels you use?

[00:15:49.840] – Paul

Yeah. Sometimes you just go through and see what’s out there. It’s just like Google Maps. You can find out on Google Maps on how much competition there is in a certain area. And then you can reach out to an individual small business and say, Look, you’re the leader in the area. How would you like us to take responsibility for adding deliver to your small business? And most of them have been thrilled.

[00:16:13.830] – Cameron

Cool. Okay. Just to add to what Paul was saying, in addition to that, we’ve done a lot and we are doing a lot of events as well. So that’s road shows. Like I said, these are people who are interested. So you’ve had a conversation with me, you know about the business, come along, let’s have dinner, let’s have some wine and cheese, whatever. Come and learn about who we are, who we serve, how we can help you. We’re doing a lot of that. This quarter, we’ll probably do about four or five events we got in the budget. As I mentioned, we’re doing a city launch in Ohio, that’s Cleveland, Columbus. We’re going back into Phoenix and hopefully if all goes well, we’ll be in Dallas next year as well doing some events. I’m all about contact, people, handshakes, and show me, not tell me is the motto. So we show you, you jump on board. And that’s how we’ve been really winning our business. And also just to mention organic marketing, Paul and Gerald, who also heads up our marketing, have done a lot of this organic outreach on LinkedIn and other social channels. And these podcasts, I mean, they work a tree.

[00:17:20.790] – Sean

Yeah, podcast placements like being on payback time is good. Outreach on LinkedIn. Can you walk me through? What are you doing there tactically?

[00:17:29.530] – Cameron

I mean, it’s a little bit away from me, but it’s just the conversations of people know, like and trust you, right? Say, know, like and trust you. We talk about what we do. We meet, video conferences, our online meetups, these events, coming into apartment buildings and just doing a once intro, if you want to join us for a beta in your city, just literally just hitting the channels that people speak to. Like Paul said, just tell the story. You have a problem, we’re here to solve it for you. I mean, what’s the worst you’re going to say? No, right? What you’re going to lose? Nothing. It’s just time you’re giving us.

[00:18:07.560] – Sean

Yeah. When I look at your audience, this is my perspective. I always like brainstorming, so this is where I’m going with this conversation is I look at two audiences that probably need the most help with an all-purpose concierge that can run errands and get food and pick up stuff. The busy professional is one, so going through corporations is one. But I’m also looking at senior living centers. You have people that maybe they sold their car, now they’re in a senior home and their kids are in their 40s or 50s and they’re working, they can’t run errands. So what do they do? They go to you guys. I’m assuming you’ve tackled that segment?

[00:18:47.460] – Cameron

Exactly that. So Phoenix, as you know, a lot of people go to retire out in Arizona, which is why one of the reasons why we’re gradually just working our territory out there to ensure that they know us, they like us, they trust us, and they allow us to serve them within their days out there.

[00:19:05.170] – Paul

There is also the opportunity. There are several apps and organizations that do contracts with Delivery Services and rideshare services. And so they support the senior living, people who have medical needs, people who have specific transportation requirements. That’s another business opportunity. So it’s not only the consumer level thing, but it’s also the service oriented thing. And you can partner with existing organizations as well.

[00:19:31.490] – Sean

There you go. That’s more of that business play where you could be running errands for the business or like an extension of their business running those errands.

[00:19:43.750] – Paul

Right.

[00:19:44.330] – Sean

Quick segue here. Do you guys have to have any unique certifications or anything you have to take care of before you allow people to run errands? What I think of, like medications or anything that can be a little more sensitive?

[00:19:57.300] – Cameron

It’s becoming a bit more regulated now, but it’s just for me, in the initial stages, it was just being careful. But we have the right insurances in place now. People are getting background checks. We’re ensuring that we have the right types of people. And when you look at pharmaceutical, for instance, it may be that the pharmacist, him or herself has their own people they want to deliver, but they just don’t have the necessary tools or technology to do so. So we come in and as Paul quite mentioned, look, that small plugin API is fulfilled by us because obviously we’ve got the infrastructure, you’re not being charged hefty fees and you’re not being restricted to what you see is what you get. And it’s a big market out here. If we look at Concierge, we also look at the the logistics or the last 10th of the mile logistics. The bigger players in the market, yes, they own it, but they have a challenge. And the biggest challenge is they don’t understand the landscape like people like us and they don’t have a fleet like us. So they go out and they hire a fleet. What better person to do business with is a business that has the fleet, a trained fleet, understands it and can fulfill that last part of it for you.

[00:21:10.730] – Sean

Last mile. Yeah. Like you said at the beginning, yeah, I hear you. The last mile is always a difficult problem for a lot of people to solve. You are there with… You’re utilizing a company and a team of not employees, but these are independent contractors and their own vehicles. They have the right insurance. You go through the right hiring rigor to make sure you’re bringing on trustworthy people with some good experience and they can handle multiple responsibilities. Yeah, I could see you going to a business that they’re like, Hey, we don’t have the money to invest in a whole fleet of vehicles or the ability to train a whole bunch of employees. Can your business solve this last-mile problem?

[00:21:51.830] – Cameron

There you go. And that’s literally what happened in 2019, 2020. As I said, at the time we got that our first investment or potential first investment, we were in a second lockdown. We were in June 2020, we had to say no to near enough $400,000. No, we can’t take your money because we can’t fulfill the business. We need to start again. You can imagine what my face looked like when you have companies like Gorilla, and I’m going to mention them, Gorilla, Getir. What are these guys called? The college guys out of Pennsylvania that are now GoPuff. I mean, these businesses have been around for a long time, but that was a pivotal time for them where they just exploded. There’s little us knocking on people’s doors, 100 doors a day saying, Listen, we could do this for you. And people thought we were crazy. When this blew up, for me, it was like, ha-ha, I told you so. But no, we’re not going to give you part of our business. We’re going to sit back and rebuild our business. And that’s what we’ve done. And us going into Cleveland and people say, why did you want to make it in Ohio?

[00:22:56.590] – Cameron

Because we can make it in Ohio. We can make it anywhere in the US.

[00:22:59.850] – Sean

Midwest, Play. Yeah. I’m based in Milwaukee, and that’s the rule. If you can start a business and it can survive in the Midwest, it can survive anywhere. Right. Yeah, you’re just a few hundred miles away from me. No, I take a step back looking at this business. I see the B2C play probably a harder effort, much harder than that B2B. You get with the right senior living care centers or organizations or the right businesses. That’s where the needle really moves in your business. That, in my opinion at least.

[00:23:33.110] – Cameron

Exactly. You’re totally right. The apartment buildings, we’re serving concierge. You’re in a big building, there’s 400 people. I live in an apartment building. Let’s say when I’m in Phoenix, there’s a ton of things I need. I don’t always want to be out. It’s hot. I was there a few months ago. It was so hot. It was like just over 100. You want ice cream, you want water, you want whatever you need. How do I get these things and continue to run my business and manage a team? You need someone to just come in and fill that gap, a PA, a personal assistant, an EA, and they’re expensive. But if you get Swift now, we can make that happen for you with just a few clicks.

[00:24:11.070] – Sean

I almost look at it like an all-encompassing go-to person in organizations is like a project manager, somebody that you can throw at multiple problems and just get it done. I don’t have to worry about you, get it done. You’ll figure it out. It’s almost like a project manager with wheels, essentially.

[00:24:30.380] – Cameron

Yes.

[00:24:31.040] – Sean

That’s what you’re looking for. That’s your ideal candidate.

[00:24:34.520] – Cameron

And as you mentioned here, we have the personas, the busy professionals. The consumer to business model, is it difficult? Yes, it is. But is it impossible? No, it’s not. But how do we get to the consumer? We need to go through the businesses. That’s why, as you mentioned, the apartment buildings, the hotels, the corporations, they start doing evangelization for us and everybody else tells their mom and their aunt and away we go. Yeah, that’s what supported us to today and that’s what’s going to continue to help us grow.

[00:25:05.460] – Sean

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[00:26:07.290] – Cameron

It’s all been friends and family, private funding at the moment.

[00:26:11.630] – Sean

Okay. Are you willing to share a fundraised number to date?

[00:26:15.990] – Cameron

I don’t have all the numbers with me, but I’m quite happy to just post that in the chat so you can put in the show notes if you wish.

[00:26:23.570] – Sean

Sure. Yeah, offline. We can add it to our main promotion as you’re featured on our site. That’d be cool to feature how much you raised. Then what are your revenues today? Annual revenues.

[00:26:34.690] – Cameron

I’ll give you our projected revenue for the annual for Ohio. It’s just shy of three and a half million USD.

[00:26:43.850] – Sean

Nice. Okay. And your net profit on that? The ideas?

[00:26:50.770] – Cameron

I do have about 25-ish-plus margin.

[00:26:57.240] – Sean

Okay, and decent because I’m thinking about contractors, insurance. Yeah, that’s where I was coming. So about 25 % profit margin there. That’s decent. Yeah, great. So it sounds like Ohio. That’s your flagship market.

[00:27:10.100] – Cameron

It is. As I mentioned, Phoenix is a very close and dear to my heart because of the community that it serves. So we’re continuing to build that. And in Phoenix, we’re looking hopefully double that in the 2024. Yeah.

[00:27:23.950] – Sean

And the majority of your business in Ohio, is it primarily through businesses or is it consumer?

[00:27:28.970] – Cameron

It’s businesses, but we got a healthy or we’re getting a healthy traction of consumers coming in.

[00:27:35.590] – Sean

Great. Okay, just that organic word of mouth, I’m sure, is how it’s working. Yeah, that’s great. Okay. And you’re in, it sounds like you’re in Columbus? Cleveland, right?

[00:27:45.960] – Cameron

Cleveland, Columbus.

[00:27:47.270] – Sean

Yep. Phoenix?

[00:27:48.640] – Cameron

Yes, Phoenix. That’s Scottsdale and Phoenix, downtown.

[00:27:52.610] – Sean

Got it. Dallas is coming soon.

[00:27:54.820] – Cameron

Fingers crossed. Correct.

[00:27:56.170] – Sean

Yeah. Any work on Florida?

[00:27:59.310] – Cameron

Well, yeah.

[00:28:00.740] – Sean

Can’t work?

[00:28:02.240] – Cameron

No, the thing is we had Florida on the roadmap. But last year, hurricanes will come in and so, yeah, we put them on the back burner for now, but it is something that we will consider again. But it just depends on where the drive comes from. This goes back to when you asked, how do we do marketing? One of the reasons why we did the Super Bowl and the golf and the NASCAR was we’re trying to find out where people are coming from. So where is the interest coming from? Is it coming from Orlando? Is it coming from North Carolina? Who wants to talk to us? And so where we’re getting the biggest bites is where we’re coming in first.

[00:28:42.360] – Sean

Yeah, that’s smart. Those events are like that almost you whet the appetite, if you will. You get people like, Hey, are you interested in this? Let’s see what the conversation goes from there. That’s smart. To the audience, listeners are starting to business. Yeah, I always like going to live events, shake as many hands, talk to as many people in a compressed time period, and get their temperature on the interest. Yeah, exactly. That’s great.

[00:29:08.380] – Paul

We had a rare opportunity to develop a partnership with a local semi-celebrity, Vick, Gideon, in Cleveland, who has done a remarkable amount of community outreach. And so Cleveland happened quickly, and we were thrilled with the integration. And not only that, but he introduced us to a bunch of institutional clients, like you were saying, the senior apartments and stuff. One of the things that we hadn’t considered his market is early residency medical students. They get out of medical school, and then they’ve got literally apartment buildings where they all live to set up a medical resident city. So these people are working 12-hour shifts. They don’t have time to go pick up dry cleaning. They don’t have time for anything. We’re like, Yes, those are our people. And that has been really exciting. So, that’s another thing that lends itself to us developing the market.

[00:30:02.000] – Sean

Right on. I didn’t think of that. That’s brilliant. I’m thinking about there’s a large hospital in our city, Milwaukee, Freydert, and they have campuses that are with nurses, doctors, everybody involved. What you have there is a huge community that’s super busy, they can’t run errands, and they have consistent paychecks. That’s key. That’s what you’re looking for. That’s another great example of a target audience.

[00:30:28.460] – Cameron

Exactly. Same problem in Seattle with GoDaddy’s, your Microsoft, and so forth. That guy, they don’t have enough time to do their own dry cleaning, so just assume here we go. Right.

[00:30:40.330] – Sean

How many employees in the business today?

[00:30:43.660] – Cameron

As a team, we have just shy of 25 as a Swifly team, and that’s dotted around North America. That’s myself, Paul, Kevin, Gerald, and so forth, and in various creative facets, but they’re more creative and tech than sales. Sales sales itself. The product can’t not sales itself, but sells itself through market. We don’t do heavy biz dev. You won’t get a cold call from someone trying to get you a meeting or whatever, but we do it organically. Fortunately for us, we’ve had some ambassadors like Paul mentioned who have just wanted to support us through the process. As you mentioned, I did a podcast a few months ago with a local comedian, and just so happens, he’s a former firefighter, now a paramedic, and same issue, constant paychecks in the hospitals and nowhere to do these, just get in a decent meal because they’re on a late shift. We don’t do hot food, but we service everything else. These introductions are like gold.

[00:31:43.740] – Sean

Yes, that’s great. I was going to say you’re at about 25 employees and your projected revenue is just in Ohio, or I think you said earlier, 2.5 to 3 million somewhere in there for the year. Yeah, that’s solid for just 25 employees. Great work. And how many drivers?

[00:32:01.750] – Cameron

In Ohio right now, we have on the books, I think we’re at 72.

[00:32:07.970] – Sean

72, got it.

[00:32:09.760] – Cameron

We’re very fresh to the market. The goal is probably to quadruple that. But again, it’s not just having drivers in the box, it’s having activity. It’s not just, Well, we can sign up 1,100 drivers. That’s not a problem. We can sign up those drivers, not a problem. But it’s Who’s doing business with us? We don’t want dormant drivers. That’s one thing we learned in the first rendition of Swiftly is we had a fleet of 292, but we need to give them consistent work. And how we won that fleet was if you look at some of the ride businesses, they’re not always giving their drivers work, so they’re now dormant. And so we come in and say, Right, hey, when you don’t pick up passengers, please go and deliver this package or go and pick up this parcel. That was the conversation. And that’s the same model that we’re following out in North America as well.

[00:32:57.140] – Sean

What I could see happening, that huge inflection point is going to be you’re going to hit something big, whether it’s in the senior living care space, whether it’s a large corporation like a Microsoft or Go to Addy or a Netflix or whatever, or a hospital system, and then you’re going to be known for serving that, Mitch, and then it’s lights out because the other businesses like them are going to be calling you. I heard you did this for that company. We want the same thing.

[00:33:25.390] – Cameron

Exactly. Which is a problem. I won’t say it’s a problem that we’re trying to avoid, but it’s a problem that we want to have and don’t want to have because we want to serve the people. So if it’s medical supplies, we build a medical fleet. I get it. And we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here, Sean. There’s a lot of joint ventures. We’ve got a lot of partners in play here as well that have been in business that may not have the traction that we have or the network that we have, so they can tap into ours and we tap into theirs. And it’s all about sharing and growth.

[00:33:57.800] – Sean

Yeah, right on. Cool. All right, let’s dive into the rapid-fire round. I’m going to bounce questions back and forth between the two of you. Let’s start with you, Cameron. What is your favorite podcast?

[00:34:11.010] – Cameron

There’s too many. There’s too many. But I actually liked the Ed Mylet podcast. I like Ed Mylet. He’s like my foundation and the inspiration to build it swiftly.

[00:34:22.710] – Sean

Yeah, I think I’ve had one or two people mention him before. Paul, how about you?

[00:34:27.900] – Paul

I’m a big fan of Alex Hormozy. I just find that his business development stuff and just the work ethic that he promotes is fantastic.

[00:34:38.000] – Sean

Yeah, he’s a good marketer. I will say that for sure. All right, back to you, Cameron. What is a recent book you read and would recommend?

[00:34:46.320] – Cameron

I literally just bought The 48 Laws of Power, and I’m still reading it. Okay. My favorite of all time, one of my favorite of all time books is The Alchemist. The way he wrote that book takes you on a journey, and it’s so inspirational. I always refer to it that any dream is possible. If you’re building a business, you need to read that book. It’s not related, but it just inspires you to follow your dreams.

[00:35:15.500] – Sean

Right on. Paul, how about you? Favorite book, a recent book you read?

[00:35:18.830] – Paul

The one I’ve got literally in the room with me that I keep just going back to are Tools of the Titans, Tim Ferris. Literally, you can open it up. You can wake up in the morning, have a cup of coffee, just crack it open. You get something out of it every single time. And a lot of times it’ll be that repetition that’ll help you develop a good habit.

[00:35:42.380] – Sean

I like to recommend.

[00:35:44.700] – Paul

As far as I love reading fiction, but I read a lot of music history books. I just got done with the Dr. John biography, and it’s about an iconic ’70s musician who came out of New Orleans and, boy, is it grimy and dirty, and if nothing else, you’ll be thankful that you have a normal life.

[00:36:06.890] – Sean

The life of a musician is never glamorous.

[00:36:10.530] – Paul

Oh, my God. I mean, the guy’s been shot. He shot his finger off. He’s been to prison. I mean, it doesn’t stop. But it ends on a nice high note and you get to feel good at the end of the book. That’s awesome. Under Hootoo Moon.

[00:36:25.650] – Sean

That’s awesome. The circle back here, audience, Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris highly recommend. It’s one of those books where Tim interviewed all these different people, whether it’s somebody in business, there’s movie stars. Arnold Schwarzenegger, I know, is in there. One of my favorites in there was Jocka Willink, The Navy Seal. That case, like all the things, the compressed knowledge you learn through that book is impressive. And that’s going back to what you guys do with those events, is how many people can we meet in the shortest amount of time? That book is How much can I learn in the shortest amount? It’s like compressing all this wisdom into one awesome book.

[00:37:09.110] – Paul

I totally agree. Yeah. And you look at it on the shelf and you see it and you could be really intimidated. It’s big. But just think of it as like going to the Costco of knowledge. I mean, yeah, you’re going to get like a shrink wrapped of worth of something, but it’s little bits and pieces. Each thing is two or three pages. You can knock it off while you have your coffee in the morning. I really encourage people to check it out.

[00:37:32.750] – Cameron

Sure. I think that’d be great. And Paul, I think you should add, Who moved my cheese onto that as well.

[00:37:38.230] – Paul

Yeah, that was a good one. And it’s been a while on that one, but.

[00:37:41.940] – Sean

Yeah, I think I read that one a long time ago.

[00:37:45.060] – Paul

I’ve.

[00:37:45.990] – Sean

Got two more questions for each of you. I’ve got a fun one here. I’m a total movie nerd. Cameron, what is your favorite movie?

[00:37:53.190] – Cameron

Oh, there’s so many. I love action. My favorite all-time movie, to be honest, is Greece. Really?

[00:38:00.410] – Sean

Okay.

[00:38:02.040] – Cameron

Greece.

[00:38:02.600] – Sean

John from the.

[00:38:03.400] – Cameron

Goldsay, yeah. John, he’s my guy. But I like most of all the movies. But Greece is one of my all-time favorites.

[00:38:11.060] – Sean

Yeah, nobody’s mentioned that before on Z, a unique one. We know something new about you here.

[00:38:17.320] – Cameron

Yeah, everybody wants to be Danny, Zouko. Come on.

[00:38:19.790] – Sean

Yeah, right. All right, Paul, how about you?

[00:38:25.240] – Paul

I have some sentimental favorites. The one I literally cannot pass up without watching some of it is The Big Labowski. I just can’t stop. And anybody who knows that movie, you save things from the ground. It’s part of obviously you’re not a golfer, but it’s part of your life. My other big ones are Apocalyptic Now, Blade Runner. Another sentimental favorite that I really put, if you’re going to talk a specific genre and film, The Last Walls by Martin Scorsese, big music fan. And that, hands down, is one of the best… No, it’s the best music documentary ever made. The second one is not making sense. But Last Walls captures a moment in time that has pathos, it has happiness, it has joy, it has super memorable performances of iconic musicians. And I just love it. And drama. Oh, boy, it had drama.

[00:39:25.460] – Sean

Yeah. I’ve never seen it before in Scorsese. Yeah Nailed it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, oh, yeah. I’ve never seen it. It’s a joint scourgezy.

[00:39:30.960] – Paul

Yeah, nailed it. It’s very good at that. It’s actually locked off. And he snuck at… The drama comes. It’s all behind the scenes. And he was making a movie, and he was contractually forbidden to make any other movie while he was making this movie. He made it secretly. So there’s that. He could have gotten himself fired. And then the other part was he got Muddy Waters to be in it. And up until Muddy Waters and Bob Dylan stepped on the stage, they didn’t know whether they were going to be in. And all of a sudden, Muddy Waters is coming and there’s only one camera with film in it. So in that particular shot, in that particular segment, it’s one shot, and that’s all they got. I love that. It’s a hit-strom-one. Cool story.

[00:40:09.550] – Cameron

This is Paul Forte. So you’re speaking to his language right now.

[00:40:14.850] – Paul

This is- Oh, this is what I love.

[00:40:16.320] – Cameron

This is the guy who sees Ohio as a tourist destination.

[00:40:20.760] – Paul

Rock and roll, Hall of Fame, baby.

[00:40:22.210] – Sean

Right.

[00:40:23.290] – Paul

On. Right on.

[00:40:24.830] – Sean

Well, no, guys, I really enjoyed having you on the show. A little tag team effort here. Appreciate the insight about your business. Really cool business model talking. There’s this tech component mixed with cars, this hybrid play. I think you guys are really onto something here. But Cameron, why don’t you let the audience know? Where can they reach you?

[00:40:44.520] – Cameron

Www. Swifleyteam. Com. That’s the URL. And if you ever want to drop me an email, Cameron@swifleyteam. Com.

[00:40:52.490] – Sean

Awesome. All right. Right, guys. Well, thank you so much for your time. We’ll see you.

[00:40:56.650] – Cameron

Thank you, Sean.

[00:40:57.420] – Paul

Thanks for having us.

[00:40:59.840] – Cameron

Hey.

[00:41:00.960] – Sean

I’d like to say thank you for checking out this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts you could be listening to, so thanks for spending some time with me. Also, if you have a moment, could you please head over to Apple Podcast and leave a review? The more reviews we get, the more Apple will share this podcast with the world. So thanks for doing that. And last thing, if you do hear any stocks mentioned on this podcast, please keep in mind this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Please do not make a buy or sell decision based solely on what you hear. All right. Thanks for your time. We’ll talk to you later. See you.