From Dirt Bikes to Leading Supply Chains: Aaron Bezzant of Zonos

You need an anchor in life. You need a number one priority
that’ll give you that that focus and that compass of what’s really important.
Because if you if you’re artificial and you’re just worried about only
chasing the glory, I know that’s not the only thing that’s important to you,
right? Um, and when things go things things things are okay, when
everything’s going well, but when things go sideways and you don’t have that
kind of moral compass and that focus and priority in life, then it it becomes
really difficult. Welcome to the Know Your Ship podcast presented by E-Hub.
I’m your host, Frank Dolce. Aaron Bezant joining us here on the Know Your
Ship podcast. I got it right, didn’t I? Yeah. Good. There’s so many different
ways to say your your last name. There is. I’ve heard them all. I’ve heard
them all. What’s the most interesting way? Uh none of them are very
interesting. Um to be honest with you, they’re just all wrong. This is all
incorrect. But Bzant, Bzant, Bezant, I’ve heard that one. I That one I don’t
understand. Yeah. Would you like to change it to something else if you could?
Like, do you like the bizant? Look, I have two A’s in my first name and two
Z’s in my last name. How cool is that? I didn’t even think of that. Yeah, you
hit the whole alphabet right there. I’ve got a kid that has an X in his first
name, a Y in his middle name, and the Z’s in his last name. XYZ. X in his
first name. Savior. Jackson with an X. Oh, okay. Jackson. Yep. And then Ryder
with a Y. Ryder. Peasant. Nice. X, Y, and Z. There. I like that. So, so did
you did you, by the way, head of global trade at Zonos. It’s not Zonos
International. It’s not Zonos something else. It’s just zonos. Zonos.com.
Correct. I just want to give the people an idea of where to go find Yep. the
company. We’re going to talk about that as we go along, but I I do want to
follow up on this. You you’re an you’re an off-road dirt track motorports
guy. Did you grow up in Utah? Yes, sir. And you you developed that. Was that
because your parents did that or No. The actual story is my I mean my dad
grew up on a farm and stuff and they had the the motorcycles they rode around
but then but then we got out of he we never really had it as kids and he
didn’t want my us to have it but my brothers really wanted to buy that dirt
bike for 100 bucks down the street from the neighbors and my dad said no. So
what would any good son do? Start a paper route, earn a hundred bucks and go
buy the bike. You just go buy it anyways. And then you think you can hide it
from your dad like in the back shed like he’ll never find out. Who? Wait, who
thought they could? I mean, now that you say that, I was going to say, who
thought that? But then I would do the same thing. Yeah. You just go buy it
anyways and think that you’re going to somehow be able to ride it out in the
fields and stuff without dad finding out, right? Because it’s you’re so
because you wanted it so badly. Yep. Yep. Okay. So that’s that’s what they
did. And then my dad realized, you know what? If that’s what my kids want to
do, I’ll buy a dirt bike, too. So he got a a dirt bike and it just turned
into a whole I was a little brother at that time. And how many kids in your
family? Uh six. I’m the youngest. Oh. I’m the baby. Yeah. You are. Yeah. So what
does that what does that mean? Did you get all the attention? Did Or were you
the Were were you like the punching bag? Well, see the second youngest was
also the only girl. So it’s five boys and one girl. So she took some of my
thunder a little bit. But what it also means is my wife’s also the youngest
of six kids. Uhhuh. So what happens is at home is we’re both waiting for
someone else to do something for us and nothing gets done. Is that is that
the way you approach your work as well? Absolutely. 100%. Absolutely. And
that’s why I actually have eight kids and that’s because I want other people
to do stuff. I love it. That’s very logical. Mh. I love the I love the
strategy. What were some What are some of the things I mean I know it’s a big
part of your life, the the outdoors, being out on a track, out on the trails.
Why Why is that so meaningful for you? Um, do you want me to get real with
this then? I can get real with this. Okay. Yes. So, all growing up, I’m I’m
spending every weekend out riding dirt bikes at the races with my dad and my
brothers. Mhm. While and especially during my teenage years, all my friends
are goofing off, getting in trouble at home. Mhm. So, it kind of kept me on
the straight and narrow a little bit. Right. And then um also just the the
bond like in the in the motocross community, families are like they are
traveling together and doing everything together and they’re really
close-knit. And so I think I just love spending time together with family.
And so like to me that’s it kind of defines like my family relationships as
well as I have so many friends and stuff from that community now. That’s it’s
it’s it’s your tribe. It’s my tribe. Absolutely. Yeah. Did you did you have
aspirations of utilizing that skill that you were developing to make a lot of
money one day? No. No. It was more of a hobby. I mean, I got to kind of the
the highest level here on a local level, but I was never like driven to to
just try to go big with it cuz it takes a lot of time and money. To me, it
was more just a a sweet hobby to I try to get good at the best I can. And
that’s really all it was was a a fun hobby. Do you And you do it still today.
It’s still something you do. Yeah, I’ve got a race next week. So, with your
And your kids participate as well? Yeah, we have uh my We had to go through a
few years without I had a son that had a bad accident and we’ve kind of been
out of it, but I’ve got a younger kid that’s really wants to get into it. And
uh I’m Yeah, we’re going to I’m going to take part of my tribe. Next week’s
actually just a fun team race where we we race for eight hours and we trade
off and and just Oh, wait. Is this the Is this the mountain bike? No, this is
a motorcycle version of that. Is it in the same area? There’s one down near
St. Jo or Hurricane. Yeah, that’s a different one. They do the bike. It’s
like 24-hour. My My nephew actually did that and they won their class. Yeah.
That’s amazing. So, it’s a relay and you just take laps and you ride as many
laps as I guess you can manage and then you jump off and someone else takes
over. But you ride this as a relay for 24 hours. You got it. And you’re doing
it in 8 hour. Did you say 8 hours? 8 hour. And it’s a it’s a motocross. Yeah,
it’s a it’s a motocross and it’s about a six mile desert loop in the sand and
it gets nasty. Nasty. How? Like deep sand whoops and stuff that gets just
chewed up from people just coming over all day long. a technical term. Uh, in
my world it is. And whoop-dedos. You know, in whoop. When I hear whoop, I’m
thinking of that song like whoop. There it is. That one. Not that one. Yeah.
No. But it gets of course rough. Could you describe what a whoop is? Yeah.
It’s It’s a whole bunch of Think of it kind of like mogul and skiing, but a
whole bunch of bumps in a row that you got to you got to go through. And do
you go over each of those or do you just jump over? I mean, is that a thing?
Uh you can you can jump through them or you can uh skim them. That’s the
other term which is you go fast, you just skip across the top of them. Do you
have a preferred method? It all depends and how big they are, how rough they
are. Gotcha. Well, or sometimes when you’re really tired, you just roll
through them, you know. What are the chances that you’re going to win this
race? Well, I did it last year. So, we we sign up and we race in the old old
person’s divisions, right? Yeah. They break it up by age and with the
combined age of your team. Last year we got third and that was with my friend
forgetting to put gas in his bike and he ran out and had to run back on foot.
So we started with the deficit and came back up to third. So that was good.
How do you manage the whoops when you’re running? Same technique. It’s not
good. It’s not good. But we’ve got a we’ve got a pretty good team. But we got
a whole bunch of people coming this time. So I’m going to be racing against
some other friends and and my brothers and stuff. So it’s going to be
interesting. Do you consider that a full contact sport? When you’re racing
against friends and people you’re familiar with, do you do you mind trading a
little paint a little bit? Yeah, that’s okay. You like to do that? Sure.
That’s a thing. Yeah. But not not in a not in a dangerous way. Little little
bump to get past him or something like that. Just to get some attention. Just
to get someone’s attention. Sure. Would you You also said mountain biking. Do
you prefer motorized or nonmotorized sports out on the trail? Oh, motorized.
Absolutely. Why is that? It’s a little more adrenaline, a little more fun. Is
it? Mhm. Mountain biking is awesome, too, but I’ve got an e- mountain bike,
too, so I had to put a little motor in it, you know. I’m one of those guys.
Oh. Is your motor gas powered? Did you put that kind of motor on it? No. No.
It’s an electric one. So, okay. So, let me let’s let’s talk about this really
quickly since it’s such a big part of your life. Can you tell me about some
of the lessons you’ve learned? Uh yeah, when you fall down, you get back up.
That’s a good lesson. And you’re always going to you’re always going to fall
down. You just know it. That’s just part of life. You just know it’s going to
happen. Absolutely. And it’s how you deal with that afterwards and you learn
from it and you get better. How do you deal with it? What is the what is the
proper way to deal with that? Well, I a understand why you fail. M. Yeah. And
then this is good. Get back on the saddle. Do it again. Yeah. That’s how you
improve. You mentioned that one of your kids had a had a gnarly accident. Do
you can you talk about that? Sure. Um, this is where it gets real, right? So,
um, went with a friend some friends and my boy, he was he was he was starting
to get faster and faster. He was at this time he just turned 15 and we went
down to California for a visit uh to a track just to ride for the weekend
just practice and uh he had just a weird crash and it happened to be right in
front of me and uh just knocked out and never woke up for uh his first memory
was 18 days later. But it was we got we were going to get lifellighted, got
rushed to uh ended up going by ground cuz the helicopter wasn’t coming in
time. Uh they did emergency surgery on him. They cut out the whole half of
his skull on this this side, pulled it out, put it in his his abdomen uh to
store it uh for and that was a little over a month before they finally put it
back together. But that was just to allow the brain to have time to swell.
But in the scans that is is uh there was a bleed on the brain and some
shearing. It was it was they didn’t know if he was going to live or not. And
then if he did, they didn’t know what kind of life he was going to have. They
figured he’d be in the hospital for months and months. And then he ended up
uh there’s a lot of miracles along the way. And the kid once he kind of came
18 days later kind of was learning to walk, had to go through a lot of
therapy, relearn to walk and do a number of things. Um and then he just
started just picking things up and just he got out of the hospital in just
over a month. and um which was blew everyone away. Nobody expected that. And
then uh kind of had to learn like he’s not the same, right? He has he has
damage to his vocal cords from the breathing tube. So sounds like he’s been
to a concert the night before. That’s that’s what he’s going to be the rest
of his life. He’s had a few surgeries on that since. And then he uh uh but he
was just determined. Had a good attitude and just um school work was harder.
Obviously certain certain things are harder, mental fatigue, all of that. but
he’s now serving a mission for his church. Um, so he’s he’s recovered quite
well and uh he’s he’s not going to let things slow him down. Is he stateside
or is he he’s in St. Louis? Nice. Good for him. You you mentioned shearing
that you said there was some shearing. What does that mean? Uh so like the
tissue in the brain if it you know that that impact that rotational force it
it shears it kind of rips it in in part of it. So my gosh and then so like if
you look at his brain there’s at a scan of his brain there’s actually like a
dead spot in the brain currently. And so his brain had he had to just rewire
relearn how to do things. So, like for example, even even months later,
months and months later, he’s trying to learn how to uh ride uh what was it?
It was our onehe. We had a onehe. So, and obvious we’re big on helmets. We
always have been. And he had a really good helmet on at the time or else he
wouldn’t be here. Um so, that’s my message to everybody. If your kids riding
your bike around, always have a helmet on. Always. So, anyways, um but I
remember on that one wheel, you have to lift your foot up, right? Um to to
kind of take off the the sensor. Y he could do he could do his things fine
with one foot, but the other foot he like couldn’t and he had to sit there
and just focus on it and like retrain his brain how to do that and then once
he did he was good. But it was lots of little things like that of just having
to relearn how to do all sorts of things and it started with walking and the
basic things and then kind of evolved in just little quirky things here and
there that he has to kind of re relearn how to do. Wow. You’ve been in
involved in this sport for a long time and that sport has a history of wild
accidents and crashes and injuries. Have you ever been have you ever
experiencing experienced anything like what your son went through? Um I had I
mean I have had some broken legs and you know few broken bones things like
that. some I did have when I was a kid. I I was knocked out once and woke up
as they were strapping me to a stretcher, but I ended up being fine. It was
just a a concussion and wasn’t even that bad of a concussion on that one. But
two years ago, a year and a half ago, I was out just riding in the desert.
Had a really bad crash and l luck, it was very similar to my my son’s crash
and the way I hit the ground and stuff. actually broke my helmet and
everything, but um had a bad concussion, broke uh my upper jaw. Thought I
still might lose my teeth. I don’t know. But um overall, I got really lucky
with it. But yeah, that was that was probably when it comes to hitting your
head, that was that was the worst one I’ve had. Oh, your teeth still in
question? Yeah, they they seem to be like they’re fine. I think they’re going
to be okay, but the dentist tells me that like it’s there’s a chance they
could still end up dying and then I have to go in and get new teeth. Yeah. If
you had to get new teeth, would you get new teeth or would you just leave? I
keep telling my wife I’m just going to go without them. They’re overrated,
right? I can chew at the side, but she she’s not buying them. I I’m with your
wife like they’re not overrated. I I think you should go back and get your
teeth for they were really sensitive for the longest time and I learned how
to to eat food without my two front teeth. So Oh, I figure I’ve got those
skills. Like why do I need to spend the money on getting adapt and overcome?
Okay. I want to go back to your son’s story cuz it’s fascinating. Yeah. And
I’m glad that he’s he’s doing so well. And you should see a scar. He’s got a
pretty wicked scar by the way. Oh, his whole head like massive all the way
around and a big old scar in his stomach where they That’s the fascinating
part. You could see the skull in his stomach is they put part of his skull in
his abdomen. Yeah. To just keep it to store it. Mhm. That’s crazy. So, the
other option is to send it to cryo and I’m glad they didn’t do that. I’ve
heard horror stories since then, but just kind of getting infected and in
cryo. Really? Mhm. And this was just with him all the time. And we were in
California. We were in the hospital there for uh it was about 18 days. Uh and
then we talked him into flying us up to Salt Lake because we thought he was
going to be in the hospital for multiple months and uh it just came went with
him. We’d have to try to get it from California or anything like that. It was
quite convenient. Wow, that’s amazing. I’ve never heard of anything like that.
Yeah. You know, one thing we talk about on this podcast quite a bit, and I
didn’t think we would get to it here, but I I was hoping we’d talk about
maybe an obstacle that you over overcame in your life and how that has
affected your your professional life and the lessons that you learned, but I
think maybe we’ll just talk about this is the obstacle that you had to
overcome. I mean obviously it’s an obstacle for your son and he probably has
as he reflects on it many many lessons that he can that he can take from from
that horrifying experience. But as as a dad and as parents and his family as
you look back on that how did you manage it? Are there things that you would
have done differently? What are the things that you look back and still use
today in in your in your life or in your professional life? Yeah, I mean um
as far as doing things differently. A I’m not one to live with regret. It
doesn’t do much good. Um learn from it absolutely, but don’t dwell on it. Um
leading up, you know, as far as anything leading up to it, no. I It’s just
life. Things happen in life and you just have to learn to deal with it,
right? Um, and then going through it, it was odd because that experience,
especially those, especially the initial days afterwards, um, it’s it’s
humbling to recognize how many people are there to support you and how good
people are in this world. Um, sometimes you get you see a lot of things on
the news that just try to divide us and tear us apart. Absolutely. And I call
BS to that. I think humans are good as a whole. There might be some bad
actors out there, but when you see complete strangers doing everything they
can to save your child’s life, like that’s pretty cool. And I I’ve always had
a um I’ve always had a deep respect for law enforcement, first responders,
etc. Whole new level now. Whole new level. Um and people are pretty rad and
uh the community we had around us um from a spiritual standpoint, the amount
of support and things we had was unbelievable. So it was odd as we went through
that that period. One of the most horrific things that’s ever happened in my
life, I also had some of the sweetest and most amazing experiences of my
life, too. Yeah. Did would you say that changed your perspective on on some
things? Um, I can’t really say it changed it more um confirmed and deepened
my my understanding of of many things. Gotcha. Well, it’s a it’s a
fascinating story and congratulations. I don’t know what the right word is
for for getting through that and getting over that and coming out on the
other side. And I’m glad everyone’s Yeah. Well, and the other side of it is
it it puts a lot of things into perspective for you, too. Yeah. There’s a lot
of stuff in life that just doesn’t matter. Let’s talk about that. What are
what are some of those things? I mean, you probably I I’ll have a tendency to
let crazy little things drive me bananas. And maybe it’s not even Maybe it’s
not even worth it. Maybe that’s some of the stuff you’re talking about. Yeah.
Yeah. Like I mean, look, uh we all do it. We all get frustrated over stupid
things. I’ll tell you a story from those. I mean, I’ve got a bunch of kids
and I have the family is like number one to me. Um, but sometimes you just
you don’t have your best moments, you know, like on Saturday. We had our our
side by side, our razor parked in our driveway. Mhm. And my truck was parked
behind it and my 2-year-old somehow got in the razor and popped it out of
park and it rolled back and put a giant dent in my truck. in those 30 seconds
after that happened, I did not handle myself appropriately, right? Um, and I
look back on that, I need to learn from that. So, my 2-year-old did not know
what he was doing, and I I acted like he should have known what he was doing.
So, um, it sounds like the apple doesn’t fall far from that little boy will
be on two wheels 247 if you let him. He’s got a little strider bike. He’s
going around the house. He’s he just loves to be in the dirt and just he’s
always moving. So yeah, he’s he’s fun. Um but yeah, things in life um a job’s
a job, but you might as well enjoy it while you’re doing it, right? And you
enjoy who you’re working with and and but it’s there to support more
important things in life. So I I my motto is um I work so I can live. I don’t
live to work. And so you got to have good work life balance and and family
and um other things in your life need to be more important and that’s where
true fulfillment happiness comes from. Nice. Love it. Well, let’s talk about
let’s move into your work life. Let’s talk about Let’s do it. Let’s talk
about what you’re doing currently and what led up to that. We we got to know
each other when you were at Rocky Mountain ATV. Now, that seems like very
aligned Yes. with with your Yes. with your lifestyle uh and and then decided
to move on and and head into work with Zonos, which you’re which you’re doing
today. But tell us about that experience with with Rocky Mountain ATV. You
were there for a long time. You kind of rose through the ranks and you you
ended up in a pretty lofty position there. How was that experience? It was
awesome. No, it was great. Um, and by the way, my boy that had the accident,
you signed a one of your football pictures for him. I gave it to him years
and years ago. That was for him. That was for prior to the accident. Oh,
yeah. This was way way before that. Yeah. So, does he still have that hanging
on his wall? I should find out. Better find out. It’s probably worth
something. It’s probably enshrined somewhere in his room is what I’m thinking.
Maybe we could just slide it into his abdomen. He can store it there. So, uh,
back back to back to work. Um, so yeah, obviously I grew up, um, thing odds
and end jobs and stuff. Um, I went and served a a mission for my church. And
then, um, one of my jobs I had was I went back I went and worked at a
motorcycle dealership. Go figure. Selling bikes and stuff. Then went and
worked at another company that was better for getting through college in a
call center area. And then I ended up um someone in my tribe that that worked
at Rocky Mountain that I grew up racing against uh had a job opening. So I
came in there as more of technical support. We worked with some of their
product development and things like that. And then um eventually they asked
me to after a year or so of being there, they said, “Hey, do you want to
do you want to come run our shipping department?” I’m like, “I
guess I took an operations class in business school. That’s about that’s
about it. Why not? Sure, let’s go and do shipping.” So, um, yeah, I I I
went and, uh, jumped into the shipping game, learned everything kind of on
the fly on my own, and, uh, ended up spending I was there about, I think it
was 12 and a half years is what I worked there. Mhm. And it kind of went kind
of evolved from the shipping and we did a lot of our own software stuff. So,
we’re talking all of your pick, pack, ship, everything was like I was
involved in all the development of all of all of those processes. And as we
grew and scaled, we had to to get better and negotiate rates. And we that’s
where we got came in with you guys. You helped us get some rates and stuff
for for some of our our shipments. And then uh it eventually evolved into to
being the operations manager over um all of the uh all of the warehousing
operations. And we had two different distribution centers in one in Utah, one
in Kentucky. Um but along that journey um there was an international play. So
it used to be the experience was hey if someone wanted to from outside the US
wanted to order from from Rocky Mountain, they would have to like call into
the call center or email in and someone would put together an order and then
respond to them what it was going to be and then place the order and then
they they kind of had to deal with their own shipping, their own duty and tax
like everything. Yeah. So the idea was, hey, we need to figure out how to get
this put on our website so that way they can just check out and we want to
make sure there’s duty and taxes are to be paid up front at the checkout so
that way it can just go deliver because as you from your own experience and
and we deal with this as well, but that can be you don’t often realize when
it’s going from one country to another, it instigates all of these actions
and they’re not they’re not always that simple to And especially if you’re
saying to the to the customer, hey, you go manage that on your own. You have
you have to figure that out. That’s that’s typically the approach people take
is like, hey, I’m just going to ship it, but whatever duties and taxes and
clearance fees are are assessed, that’s on you. And then what’ll happen is
it’ll get to that country. Uh duty and tax will get assessed. And then the
carrier, you know, if you send it with like a typical DHL, FedEx, UPS,
carrier will reach out to the the recipient and say, “Hey, uh, we’ve got
this bill that you need to pay before we’ll deliver your package.” And
then sometimes they’ll say, “Screw that. I’m not paying that.” And
they’ll refuse the package, send it back. So now all of a sudden, as a
retailer, you got a mad customer. You got a package on the other side of the
world you got to deal with. And then sometimes that customer will do a charge
back, and then you have no money to to show for it, and you have a customer
that’s never coming back again. Yeah. So, this was way back when before
people really did a lot with that. This is this is the earlier days. And so,
um, most people just kind of dealt with that was the experience shipping
internationally. Mh. Um, so the owner of Rocky Mountain said, “Yeah, I
want to have the duties and taxes collected at checkout and everything.”
And so I said, “What’s what’s duty and tax?” Like, I don’t I don’t
know what you’re talking about here. They’re like, “But you figure it
out.” So, I look around the room. I’m like, “I guess it’s I guess I
got to figure this out.” So, we didn’t know what we were doing and I had
to just dive in um and figure it out. I had to learn what HS codes were and
start assigning that to our products and came up with my own um math on doing
duty and tax calculations. And we did that for a while and then eventually I
I’m like, you know, I just want to get a a dynamic duty and tax calculation
from a third party so I don’t have to deal with maintaining this stuff. And
that’s when at the time it was called Global, now it’s called Zonos. Mhm. A
guy named Kermit. Yes. like Kerma the Frog, the very same the very same one.
Yep. Um uh chatted with him and eventually got that integrated into our
checkout. So now when someone came, they’d be the ones calculating the duty
and and tax at checkout. They’d be able to pay that up front and then
everything would deliver like normal and then we would be the ones that would
uh you know pay the bill. So can you give us a simple definition of the HS
code? Yeah. So, it’s uh you know, a t-shirt is going to have it’s you know,
when it comes in into a country, a t-shirt’s going to have a code 610910.
That’s not made up, by the way. So, um as it comes in, that was impressive. I
like that it categorizes the type of product it is. So, if you think of it
for a country, they use that for uh assigning a tariff rate. So, steel might
get charged one thing, te clothing another, etc. And so it’s uh it’s
standardized the first six digits. So that 610910 all the countries that are
a part of the WTO all kind of use the same the same categorization. But then
in the US we can then do an eight or 10 digit code that might further
classify it as like a men’s t-shirt or cotton t-shirt or whatever it may be,
right? More detailed for that country’s purposes. Um, and so it’s really just
a way of tracking what types of goods are moving across borders and be able
to sign tariff rates and uh and so on. So yeah, and and run statistics, those
type of things. Well, and another interesting thing about international
shipping is it’s not it’s not standardized across the world. So if you’re
shipping something to England, the process of bringing that package in and
where it sits before it’s cleared and then off to the consumer is different
than if you’re sending that to South America or to Asia. And so those are
also issues that you have to deal with. And the other issue that you probably
have to deal with or you’ve learned that you have to deal with is fraud in
international shipping. And those are all things that uh the the you you
don’t want to put back on the consumer. You try and alleviate that pain for
the consumer. Absolutely. The uh the idea, you know, for us is to localize
the experience as much as we can for the consumer. So that and also for the
retailer. So if a retailer selling domestically, it’s pretty straightforward.
You know, slap a label on the box and ship it to them. they’re going to
you’re going to charge your your VAT or sales tax at checkout like you do for
any other order and away you go. Package delivers like normal. International
all of a sudden both parties have to kind of understand there’s some extra
complexities there and we try to go in and solve those. So that way for the
merchant it feels like they’re selling it to someone domestically. We take on
all the complexity uh on their side as well as the the shopper. Um we try to
make it easy for them as well. So that way the transa So that way they can
pay the duty and tax upfront. Um and everything can just deliver like as if
they ordered it from a local store. By the way, I need to backtrack a little
bit. We jumped right into Zonos. We were just finishing up your career at
Rocky Mountain ATV and it see sounds like that’s where you became interested
in this the the international solution. You had to develop that uh with with
Rocky Mountain ATV. Yep. uh became familiar with Zonos and and developed this
interest in the on the on the international side and and life whatever life
circumstances. So, how did I get to Zonos too? Right. Correct. There we go.
Uh honestly, I instigated that. So, for whatever reason, as I’d worked with
uh Kermit and and Clint and the Zonos team, there was just always something
like I kind of their business model and the way they did things was a little
different. Um, and it just kind of caught my eye. Uh, and the reason why I
thought it was different was at the time it was actually called 51, then
turned into Border Free, which then got bought by Global E. And you know,
there was all these different solutions that carriers were bringing to me.
FedEx had a beta solution they were trying to come to me for duty tax
calculations. I used Landmark. They came, they had something they were
putting together. But all of these solutions were tied to the logistics. So,
if I wanted to use their their checkout solutions, I had to ship with them,
too. Correct. And I’m I don’t I mean I’ve got all these I got Frank. Yes.
I’ve got Frank. I can’t I can’t I mean, you don’t That’s right. No, I can’t
do that. Right. I feel like I’m part of your tribe. Yeah. Yeah. In a in a
way. And I don’t I don’t want to kick you out of my tribe. No, I don’t want
to. So, having that the ability to just say, “No, just take care of the
duty and tax piece. I own my logistics.” Uh that was very valuable to
me. Right. Mhm. So, um, anyways, along the way, I I I kind of had my eye on
that’s that’d be kind of an interesting place to work someday. I’m like, I’m
ready for a change. So, I just I called Kermit and said, “Hey, do you
have Clint’s number?” So, he gave it to me and I just called Clint out
of the blue and said, “Hey, are you hiring?” And you know what he
said? He said, “No, but we’re going to make a spot for you.” No, he
didn’t. That’s that’s how it went. So, I Here I am. I guess I have a
follow-up question to that. I mean because you knew you started working with
Kermit and then you worked with Kermit fairly regularly and but that didn’t
dissuade you from wanting to go. Kermit’s pretty awesome though. You know
Kermit, come on now. I wish I feel I just I feel terrible about myself now
for saying that about Kermit because I don’t know if there’s like he’s one of
the guys that you put in the class of there there’s