Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network with great shows like Business Made Simple.

Today we'll be breaking down how Zip Fox solved the supply chain and the trade war by connecting US buyers to Mexican factories to drop these value bombs.

We brought rain, MADI into EO fire studios. Rain is the founder of the B2B product sourcing platform Zip Fox. He shares mind shifting ideas on leadership culture and the future of the global community.

And today we'll be talking about the exact moment that rain knew we had to build this company.

We'll talk about why production has moved from China, the advantages of Sorsion products from Mexico.

We'll talk about the competition with Ali Baba and so much more when we get back from thinking hours sponsors the gold digger podcast hosted by Jenna Koocher helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks and inspirational stories.

A recent episode shares her best advice for multi passionate business owners listen to the gold digger podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

And she's saying say what's up to fire nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with what's up fire nation.

Well, what most people think about becoming successful I think is that it's more complicated than it really is.

And you make up all sorts of barriers to entry like it takes money to make money or you got to be some super smart MBA type of person and I just don't think that's true.

Like I started my last business with 75 bucks and I sold it a few years later for millions and I didn't even graduate high school.

I didn't even really know a lot about the industry before I started I just think you need to find something that people need and that you can do better or easier or cheaper and it can be as simple as like just offering better service I might if I was going to start a new business of small business today I might like just start scouring through Yelp and let's say you find that there's like two

hand scapers in your area and both of them have three star reviews read what their customers are complaining about you know they show up late they don't finish the job they don't clean up their root there's your game plan bar your uncles lawnmower get whatever tools you can get you know get your hands on get a friend if you have one and start handing out flyers with a big old smile walk up to people's houses knock on the doors here's a flyer be super friendly and when you do get a job asked them for a review do a really great job and ask for a review.

And within the next three months six months you'll be the number one landscape in your area it's as simple as that so that's the thing that I think is that people just think it's more complicated that you need to be smarter you need to have money you need to know people and it's just not true you just need to serve and need and do the best job you can.

Fire Nation really can be just that easy and today we're talking about how zip fox sold the supply chain in the trade war by connecting US buyers to Mexican factories which by the way

with everything is going on in Russian in Ukraine right now this actually is playing even a bigger role than it did prior to this so I think it's going to be a really interesting conversation fire nation with rain and I want to start with the exact moment that you knew you had to build a global product sourcing platform take us to that moment.

Well john I knew since the time I was six that one day I would start this product sourcing marketplace.

I was a buyer myself and I think it's like the the typical way that you should arrive at a business that you want to start is by noticing a problem so I was a buyer myself and I know what it feels like to scroll through allie pop up nervous about getting ripped off but you want to save money I also know how devastating it can be when you actually do get ripped off.

I lost $20,000 dealing with the Chinese supplier that was supposed to be a verified seller on allie baba because I didn't know what I was doing and there was nobody there that could protect me.

There's no system in place I had zero protection when they took my money.

You know and I think it's just weird because we buy a pair of jeans today and we expect a guarantee and we want free shipping if we have to send it back but we'll wire $50,000 to a stranger in another country without even so much as a reliable review to go off of and we just kind of cross our fingers so I just I knew there had to be a safer way I knew there had to be a better way when the trade war happened I was importing a lot of stuff from China.

I tried to find sources outside of China so I could avoid that 25% import tear if it was nearly impossible it was like uncharted territory trying to find a factory in Mexico or anywhere else.

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