Narrator [00:00:04]:

Welcome to Supply Chain Now, the voice of global supply chain. Supply Chain Now focuses on the best in the business for our worldwide audience, the people, the technologies, the best practices, and today's critical issues, the challenges, and opportunities. Stay tuned to hear from those making global business happen right here on Supply Chain Now.

Scott W. Luton [00:00:32]:

Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be. Scott Luton and the one only Marty Parker with you here on Supply Chain Now. Welcome to Today's show. Marty, how you doing, my friend?

Marty Parker [00:00:43]:

I am excited about our conversation and I'm doing really well.

Scott W. Luton [00:00:49]:

And well, it's great to see you again. I always enjoy collaborating with you on great shows. And we got a great show, a great guest. In fact, it's a special show teed up here today. It's the second installment, a double episode. We had a little fun on the last episode, calling it a double secret double episode. Although we're not keeping secrets around here, today we continue our conversation with an innovative entrepreneur that's tackling some big challenges in global supply chain. In fact, he and the team are working hard to truly and practically change how business is done.

Scott W. Luton [00:01:22]:

I thought the story was so good in the first episode, I just had to bring Marty in to hear the rest of the story, as one Paul Harvey would say on this second episode. So, folks, today we're going to dive into the mind of a tech CEO and Co-founder, including some of his ultimate priorities. We're going to learn more about some of the most interesting customer problems that our guests and his team are out there solving. And we're going to touch on the culture that is powering some really big things for the team and for industry. All of that and a whole bunch more. Marty should be a great show, huh?

Marty Parker [00:01:55]:

Yeah. Excited to learn and to hear what's happening.

Scott W. Luton [00:02:00]:

Me too. I've got my pen handy. I've got my whole notebook ready to go because last time I got about 17 pages of good stuff from our guests. So with no further ado, folks, you want to stay tuned for this informative, enlightening, and entertaining conversation. I'm going to introduce our guest today, Wiley Jones, Co-founder and CEO of Doss. Wiley, how you doing today?

Wiley Jones [00:02:21]:

Awesome. Great to be back.

Scott W. Luton [00:02:23]:

It's great to have you back. We're fortunate to have you back. I really enjoyed that first episode, as I was saying. And now we got Marty Parker here, so it's going to be doubly as good. So I'm going to start. We're going to have fun. Y'all know we liked our fun warm up question around here. Last time, Marty, on the previous episode, we were talking about caffeine, how it fuels global business everywhere.

Scott W. Luton [00:02:42]:

But, you know, one of the things that helps fuel global business, global supply chain, is maintaining that healthy balance of, you know, work life. Right. And for a lot of us, that is diving into the world of sports. And for Wiley, while you grew up in, what, champaign Urbana, Illinois, I say that right smack dab middle state. You're a massive university of Illinois fan, especially when it comes to men's basketball. What's one of your favorite all time Illinois basketball moments?

Wiley Jones [00:03:14]:

Oh, I mean, it's an easy answer because I think it's every Illinois fans answer, which is that they had a comeback against Arizona. This is probably 20 years ago now in the Elite Eight. I was a pretty young kid at the time, but they were down like 15. They came back and won the game. I think it got voted at some .1 of the best March Madness moments ever.

Scott W. Luton [00:03:35]:

Really.

Wiley Jones [00:03:35]:

I was a young kid. Oh, yeah. I was in tears because I was like, they're going to lose. And they came back and won. That was the first real roller coaster I think I ever experienced. I was like, my mind was blown and I still. I'm still reaching for a moment that has that level of euphoria.

Scott W. Luton [00:03:50]:

Oh, I love it. 27 points. That's a bunch to come back from.

Wiley Jones [00:03:54]:

It felt like 27.

Scott W. Luton [00:03:55]:

Okay. Hey, sometimes. Sometimes two point comebacks can feel like 37 points, right? Marty, speaking of golden ages of sports, of course you're a proud bulldog. The University of Georgia has done some incredible things, in particular, their gym dogs, incredible program. But man on the gridiron football team has been on a run, Marty.

Marty Parker [00:04:18]:

They really have. And you knew I was going to bring it in here, right?

Scott W. Luton [00:04:21]:

Bulldog is here.

Wiley Jones [00:04:23]:

Okay.

Marty Parker [00:04:24]:

So I was at the Auburn game, which was fantastic, and I'm going to be there next week with my daughter. But I have to say, I was most excited about watching Vanderbilt beat Alabama. That was historic. And I have to say I have watched the game and the highlights, and I'll probably watch the highlights again and again. I don't like Alabama as much as I like Georgia.

Scott W. Luton [00:04:52]:

I believe it. And our listenership just dipped in the fine state of Alabama. No, I'm kidding.

Wiley Jones [00:04:57]:

Hey, it went up in every other state, Idris.

Scott W. Luton [00:05:02]:

Well, to any of our dear Alabama listeners, of course, y'all's trophy case is full. My father in law is a big bama fan, and I tell you, incredible program. But Georgia also, and Illinois basketball, legendary program. So we got to put all this aside because we got a lot to get into here today that I find equally as intriguing and invigorating as talking about some of our favorite sports. So, as I mentioned, it's a special double episode. This is a second episode in the previous one, if you listen to that. One of the subjects we left off talking about, Wiley, was Doss ARP, not ERp. Doss ARP.

Scott W. Luton [00:05:41]:

And how you're really not thinking about. You're completely redoing ERp from the ground up and offering that out to industry. Now, that is a bhag. Big, hairy, audacious goal. I'm putting out a thing politely that's big. To call this massive wouldn't do it justice. So, for folks that may have missed it, go back and listen to that first episode. But I want to give you get one final thought on this extraordinary mission that you're on.

Scott W. Luton [00:06:10]:

Wiley.

Wiley Jones [00:06:11]:

It's a labor of love of, you know, us being in service of a lot of the companies that are doing what I call the real work and we call our platform, is it's an ERp that was built for the real world. Capital R, capital w, real world. And our customers all love that. Obviously, they think it's. That they're like, yeah, we do have real world jobs, but it is true. And that's, I think, the piece that makes me the most, I would say, proud of everything we do is that it's just 100% in service of that. And so that's why. That's why the big, hairy, audacious goal is something that feels manageable in the day to day, because we just have to keep chipping away at it and making lives better for the customers that we work with who are serving the rest of the world.

Scott W. Luton [00:06:56]:

Yeah, I like that. Wiley and Marty, it is so important that we have leaders of all sorts that are willing to take on these big, hairy, audacious goals that change. Not all of them change across the globe. How business is done. Some of them certainly do. But, Marty, that's part of the zest of life, huh?

Marty Parker [00:07:18]:

No, absolutely. And that is a huge one. I've worked with Erps all of my career. I actually saw your sweatshirt and hope to get one of those awesome things.

Wiley Jones [00:07:30]:

I've got one right here. I'll send you one right after this. Thank you so much.

Marty Parker [00:07:35]:

Because I would put myself in that club, having dealt with the complexity of them. And so the fact that you're tailoring in today's technology, with today's companies and today's challenges, rather than trying to modify something that's 30, 40 years old, I think is absolutely incredible.

Scott W. Luton [00:07:59]:

Well said, Marty. Well said. And I'm glad you called out that club. So, folks, if you're not watching us, if you're listening, you've probably heard us talk about the club in the previous episode, but it's the Anti-ERP ERP club that Wiley and the team founded. And I can only imagine some of the great conversations y'all have there. And you know what? You might have a thousand new members club as we're publishing these episodes. And just for the record, like Marty, I'll take the swag, too. I'd love to wear that, too.

Scott W. Luton [00:08:26]:

All right, so I want to start in a different way here, right. Uh, not only are you co founder there at dos, right, uh, where you probably could have easily rolled out a new ERP, or, as Marty said, kind of a, uh, accentuate current ERPs. Oh, no. You turn all that on its head to roll out a new way of. Of delivering what ERPs have always promised. All that aside, you also serve a CEO, which is a really important, as we all know, important role, um, that your team, your customers, everyone, depends on that CEO, right. Decisions you make and how you balance those responsibilities and the priorities. What would you place when it comes to all that you do day in and day out, week in and week out? What's one of the things you place a high priority on, especially one that you really enjoy fulfilling each week?

Wiley Jones [00:09:18]:

So the easy answer. The really easy answer is, I just like spending time with our customers and talking to them as much as possible. We talked about this in our previous conversation, but it's the same thing. It's just deeply understanding their businesses, understanding them in totality. That is never a waste of time. It's the most high leverage activity I can do when I'm working externally. I think the second, maybe longer answer to make it a longer answer is actually just having to repeat myself a lot, tell a lot of the same stories. I think some, I can't remember who it was.

Wiley Jones [00:09:51]:

An investor at one point said something along the lines of, the founder's job is to repeat themselves over and over and over again. And I do that a lot with our team. And so it's just, you know, restating and restructuring, kind of playing the Rubik's cube of telling our story about what we do, why we do it, how we do it, so that everyone on the team is completely aligned at all times on every piece of our directive.

Scott W. Luton [00:10:12]:

Wiley, man, I've already got something new out of this conversation combined with all I got out of the last conversation. And Marty, two things there is the telling stories part and being on repeat. You know, as you were sharing that, Wiley, I think of myself because there are certain stories I share that they just work. I know it's repetitive, but every time I share an analogy or a story, you can see the other party, that light bulb come on and they get it. And that's probably why a lot of CEO's do repeat the stories, because they are effective. And some of the best ways of communicating and learning is through the use of powerful storytelling, no matter if it's a big book or just a simple anecdote. Marty, I know, I've heard you tell some great stories. I know this resonates with you.

Marty Parker [00:11:00]:

Yeah, I mean, I literally just did a LinkedIn video on storytelling. You know, people remember them and people can then frame them and the things they want to do. And I also want to say on the first thing, Wiley, good for you. I work as a fractional Coo, so my job is to take care of all the details so the CEO can do exactly what you were talking about. Be the chief strategy, sales, marketing and culture officer, and let the folks doing the job do their jobs. And a lot of founders don't make that transition, and it leads to the failure of their company. So good for you for already seeing that's where you need to head.

Scott W. Luton [00:11:45]:

Well said. That's a long title. I hope that fits on your business card, Wiley. But all three, all three of those things, as we all know, is massively important. And to be able to balance that in a thriving and growing organization that's taken on some really complex challenges, that's quite a challenge. One last thing I want to go back to came up in the last conversation, but it's so important. We want, we need to mention again, when you're talking about spending time with customers and understanding their business model in totality. I think it's a phrase you used.

Scott W. Luton [00:12:17]:

Empathy. Empathy. Empathy, right. I don't know about you, I associate empathy with almost, it's a close cousin to, like that natural curiosity, right. That sets so many different people apart. You'll talk to some folks and they don't necessarily have it, and not throwing stones, but they don't lead with empathy, and they're not as naturally curious, and it can stunt the exchange of information, right. And then you sit down with folks that, you know, it might sound cheesy, but it's in their bones. And that's where you can understand so much.

Scott W. Luton [00:12:51]:

And so little bit of time. So, so the empathy, folks, to all of our viewers, listeners out there is so important. Speaking of understanding customers and customer problems, right. Never met a customer without any problems. And that might be a good thing, right? I mean that in a good way too. Suspended time. Deeply understanding customer problems obviously is one of your top priorities. So if you would, we're going to talk, walk through three of the most interesting specific problems that you see regularly.

Scott W. Luton [00:13:22]:

And I want to start with the first one, which I believe is order management. Tell us more, Wally.

Wiley Jones [00:13:28]:

Yeah, so I call it the vanilla Oms problem or the vanilla order manager problem. And the story around it is that broadly, with all of our customers, pretty much every customer we interact with, they have this exact same structure of the problem, which is that they're trying to go out and get an incremental dollar from a new channel or a new place to go and find their customers. And when they go and do that, they have to put in a lot of work to say im going to go and sell on Amazon now, or im going to go and sell wholesale within this geo, or im going to go even sell in a new geo or im going to do d two c and sell online. Thats great to go and find and tap into pools of new customers. However, the operational input that is required to go and execute on that, that doesnt, I would say, make customers angry. And you have late orders or you have incorrect invoices or, you know, whatever the problem set it may be by channel. It's really hard to actually operationalize that when you're doing a lot of things. And what we focus on with them is consolidating that down so that regardless of which sales channel they work on, they can bring together a composite understanding of it really clearly, because that then turns into an understanding of what is my demand, what do I have to go and provide an inventory side in each geo from each of my suppliers.

Wiley Jones [00:14:46]:

It's a completely downstream mechanism sequence. But you have to start by consolidating across all these channels and making it easy for them to flip the switch and turn on a new one. But that's just not the case for most of these companies. It takes a lot of effort.

Scott W. Luton [00:15:00]:

Yeah, no doubt. But when you get it right, you could optimize your growth with current customers. But kind of to your point. And the not so secret thing about scaling is, is how we can optimize how we replicate that right. And systematize bringing on new good business. Marty, what'd you hear there in this first problem of order management. And you pick it on vanilla. Wiley, why you gotta pick on vanilla?

Wiley Jones [00:15:27]:

That's the beautiful thing about it, is vanilla is it's an incredible flavor, but it's kind of this like foundational flavor. And, you know, it's like, this is the problem. We call it the vanilla order management problem because everyone has it. It's in everything. It's everywhere.

Scott W. Luton [00:15:40]:

I was only messing with you. I was trying to find a way of fit in the Baskin Robbins analogy here. But Marty, what'd you hear there in his first problem?

Marty Parker [00:15:47]:

So I helped an entrepreneur launch a new product, and we were blessed to interview the guy that launched Yeti. He told us that was really sort of changed my thinking about what Wiley said. Washington we thought we knew where we were going to sell things. We were wrong and we had to experiment. And so all those different methodologies and customer types and places require flexibility and then scalability after that. So having a solution like Wiley describes that provides for that really is going to help these companies be able to go after different types of companies and all different kinds of channels with all different kinds of products with older ERP systems. I can tell you for a fact that that is extremely difficult. So I think Wiley is really onto something.

Wiley Jones [00:16:46]:

What you said is so important. The word experiment, we see that with our customers is that when they lock themselves into a inflexible system or they don't have any system in place that operationalizes these experiments, then they're missing out on the insights about where they can be selling. And they're just saying, well, I can't go in and run an experiment to see what selling on Amazon performs like for us because it's too difficult for me to operationalize that and like manage the actual getting orders to Amazon so they can go and fulfill to our customers. So they just completely like eliminate a whole subset of possibilities purely from an operational standpoint.

Scott W. Luton [00:17:21]:

So clearly, we're just doing some of our homework. Prior to both of these shows, Marty and Wiley, we uncovered Wiley's passion for experimentation. And you're seeing it in some of these responses here. But it's so important. You're kidding aside, it's so important. You know, Jeff Bezos and Amazon, gosh, their culture drove so many, still does so many different experimentations. There's so much power there. And one other thing I was going to bring up that came up on the last episode that Marty was kind of speaking to, and while we spoke about and Marty's example of the Yeti about, they thought they're going to sell this.

Scott W. Luton [00:17:54]:

But they ended up selling a lot of this, right. Being honest about where there's demand. You know, I don't know about y'all. I've come up with lots of product ideas over the years. Some that would have most, maybe all, if I'm being honest, would have zero demand. But I thought it was a great idea. But being able to be honest and pivot, because, you know, if you hit a dead end here with a product, an idea, a service, a business model, man, if you take the blinders off, you may uncover a massive new opportunity like it sounds like Yeti did. Wiley, your last thought there around being honest with the demand we see out there in the marketplace.

Wiley Jones [00:18:32]:

Yeah. So it's really funny that you asked this. We didn't originally think we were going to build an ERP when I started the company, I actually wasn't initially intending to build the totality of an ERP from the ground up. Everyone I knew, everyone I talked to, they're like, that's a bad idea. That's a lot of work. That's insane. It'll never work. And I was like, okay, that's a pretty good advice.

Wiley Jones [00:18:56]:

Everyone's telling me this. And then with the more time we spent talking to prospective customers, just a few months after really starting to work on it, it became clear. We're like, oh, no, no. We need to build the whole thing. We can't just do part of it. We have to do every single piece. Yeah, that was really scary to see that. That's where the demand was.

Wiley Jones [00:19:13]:

But it was like this black hole that we just got sucked into, and we just had to follow it.

Scott W. Luton [00:19:18]:

Well, you sure are following it. Is a, is Putnam lightly? So, folks, you have to go back to the first episode and dive in deeper. And when, uh, Wiley references ARPs, right, and what the dos ARP could do, go back and listen to the first episode. We're going to touch on more of that here in just a second, too. All right, so the first problem, order management. Let's get into the second problem, full stack operations. Tell us more, Wiley.

Wiley Jones [00:19:43]:

Yeah, so we have actually a really interesting, we actually just published a case study with one of our customers about this. But it's basically if you take the vanilla order management problem and you extend it, I would say, in both directions. If you think about it, going backwards in the value chain, further into their network, through their three pls, their manufacturers, their suppliers, their supplier suppliers, and the role that the business or brand or parent company or whatever it is, whatever role they play in there. There are all of these pieces of data that have to be collected and maintained for them to be able to litigate the state of what had happened in the past, what is happening today and what will happen in the future. That is fundamentally what an ERP is really supposed to be accomplishing for businesses. When we extend that, the order management problem, I would say closer to the customers and then further back in the value chain. That is what I call kind of like the full stack operations problem. And I think most businesses, when they talk about an ERP, that's really what they're looking for, is that end to end solution where they can log into one place if it's a cloud provider or if it's on their desktop or whatever it is, or on their phones, and they just see every piece of information at their fingertips in true end.

Scott W. Luton [00:20:56]:

To end, lots of gaps out there in the marketplace with some of the current solutions. Marty, we were talking earlier before you joined us about how a lot of our listeners out there, viewers out there, know what ERPs are. A lot of them work with them. Plenty of them fight with them, sometimes daily. But the power of full stack operations, the power of an end to end system, right. What I'll call, maybe what I heard is meet the team member, where they are and where they need it. Your thoughts, Marty?

Marty Parker [00:21:27]:

Well, one, I was in a client that had nearly 40 different pieces of software trying to do what Wiley is describing, and you're only as good as your entire supply chain. All of the partners, all of the vendors, the types of customers you have, your return processes. I mean, it goes on and on and on. And we learned that in Covid, right. A single thing didn't work and it didn't work. And companies are myopic and they have blinders on, and they just often focus on themselves. And so a solution that's full stack is in many ways going to kind of force them to think about those three things and integrate them. And I think it's going to be leading to a much higher level of success for those customers.

Scott W. Luton [00:22:21]:

Well said, marty. Man, 40 pieces of software. Oh, my gosh, lots of chefs in the kitchen. Hopefully the bowl of soup was good. But you know what Marty's talking about there. And Wiley, as a fellow history nerd, Marty, in the last episode, while he was throwing Mesopotamia at me, some guy named Boyd and his view on agility, giving me too much credit. But Wiley, Achilles Hill, right, the ecosystem that powers any organization, that blend of all these different entities that allow us to serve the customers out there, meeting them where they want to be with what they want and when they want it, everything could go right. But if something's wrong with that heel, something's going to break down.

Scott W. Luton [00:23:07]:

We learned that, as Marty said painfully during the pandemic for the millionth time, your final word, Wiley on true end to end, and what it means for these ecosystems out there.

Wiley Jones [00:23:17]:

I'll give a short answer to this, because I think this actually is a great segue into talking about the kind of the connective tissue we see as kind of our third problem that we see a lot. You can kind of anneal if, you know, like when you're working metal working, you know, when you heat up a piece of steel. I'm harkening back to my mechanical engineering work. So if you heat up a piece of steel and it takes the crystalline structure and it like, gets it to settle into place, and then you quench it in cold and you dump it in a bucket of cold water and it hardens it to be insanely strong. But that heating up process, that annealing and getting things to connect together properly in order to make them strong, that is required, and that's what gives you a rigid body, a full system that can operate together. But if there are aspects of it that are brittle, which exactly Marty's talking about, I'm sure, and that company is as competent as anyone in the world could be with 40 discrete systems. You're not going to make 100% of them work together correctly. You have to think about the way to build a substrate and a platform underneath them in order to connect them together as best as possible.

Wiley Jones [00:24:23]:

So that's something that we spent a lot of time thinking about, that data.

Scott W. Luton [00:24:27]:

Platform, that connective tissue, which I love that analogy going back to Marty's example, all those 40 different software systems, if you can successfully, I don't know if I'd recommend it. And I'll defer to the technologists out there, the experts, like Wiley, but you build a real effective connective tissue around it. You can make it work. It's challenging. I can only imagine the security concerns and challenges. But Marty, what'd you hear there about, especially that connective tissue that they're helping organizations solve with DOS ARP?

Marty Parker [00:25:00]:

Yeah, so I would think about, like an example. An example would be forecasting and looking out into the future in sort of older systems, you would only have a finite number of variables you could consider and look at. And I'm starting to see, with the kind of technologies Wiley is using, you can now look at hundreds and hundreds of variables that impact how you might do demand forecasting. And you also used to have to do it over longer periods of time. You can now look at this data like Amazon does hourly and make predictions and react to it. So that's just an example of this giant thing that companies deal with every day and connecting the dots, so to speak. So forget about having all the different software just in a single element of the supply chain. There's incredible complexity that a solution like Riley brings really helps to solve.

Scott W. Luton [00:26:03]:

Well said, Marty. And man, when you get it right, whether you're working with Wiley's team or other technology solutions out there that really do what you were describing, what that unlocks for an organization, what that unlocks in terms of new abilities to meet the ever increasing demands of our customers. I know it's really cliche, but going back to those stories, that CEO's repeat Wiley, you know, the Amazon effect, we've been talking about that for what, a couple of decades it feels, but it's still so relevant, right? And these days what I find on about y'all, but it's not just Amazon powering new demands and expectations. It's a handful of other retailers, service providers, you name it. That's just adding to what consumers and customers demand in all sorts of different sectors of global business. So, all right, so we just, we covered three problems there, right? The order management, where we picked on vanilla a little bit. Cause it's so common, as Wiley said, full stack operations, right, that end to end. And of course the data platform, but more importantly, that connective tissue, which I think so many folks can know exactly what we're talking about.

Scott W. Luton [00:27:15]:

It always reminds me of the amoeba, right? The amoeba back was that biology. We learned that within the amoeba you got all these different things, but the connective tissue, or whatever you call that, the protoplasm. Okay, I'm showing why I was a C biology student, so I'll stop with the analogies. All right, your final word, Wiley, we're just walk through those three problems are your final word before we talk about one of your recent accomplishments that you're really proud of.

Wiley Jones [00:27:46]:

Yeah. So all three of those problems are, they're not totally distinct from one another. They're kind of discontinuation. It's kind of a continuum. As a business grows, they encounter more and more systems that either they want to use or they're forced to use. And so at a certain size, every company faces this data platform problem. And so we don't. No one's really safe from it.

Wiley Jones [00:28:09]:

Everyone eventually has to reconcile implicitly with the fact that as a large business, you're going to interact with lots of systems and you need to make a conscious decision about how you weave together that connective tissue in order to make for a strong structure. Whereas I think a lot of companies are like, well, we have an ERP in place and it's good at integrations, and maybe it ends up not being good at those things, or maybe they haven't structured to do those things. And so it's all about conscious decision making, the consequences we talked about in the last episode of what ends up happening as you add more processes, but also that tying it all back. Like you said, the stories we repeat over and over, back to that agility. If you have to move data manually from system a to b, you're now limiting the rate at which you can make decisions as a company.

Marty Parker [00:28:54]:

Yeah, I'd comment, Scott, that in older systems, my experience is, I'm told that all of the things I can't do because of the ERP, if I can provide software that's more of an enabler to allow me to do those things, that's a real game changer, especially if a company is trying to be innovative and they're trying to launch new products and they're trying to get higher margins. I've worked in those companies. There's nothing more frustrating to be a product manager and be told you can't do something or it's going to take a year, or those kinds of things. I think Wiley's thinking about this exactly right.

Wiley Jones [00:29:36]:

One last funny anecdote around that was hearing the words like, oh, well, the system can't do that. Everyone in this industry has heard that. And my favorite story of this, which is actually, I think, really, truly the kernel of insight that led me to wanting to start DOS, was we were running a demand report, and I meant this factory in China. We were just a small little peon in this factory, but it was actually a factory operated by iRobot, and they made a million roombas a year in this factory. And I was alongside working and talking to the project manager at the factory. We're running a material report. And she kept saying, like, oh, the system doesn't run until Wednesday. I was like 24.

Wiley Jones [00:30:10]:

I was like, what do you mean the system doesn't run until Wednesday? Like, what does that even mean? And right next to me is an irobot project manager asking the same thing, and I'm sitting there I'm like, wait, they're making a million roombas here, and I'm making, like, you know, a small amount of things here. Why do we have the same problem? So, like, you know, that that was. That blew my mind.

Scott W. Luton [00:30:28]:

Eureka. Momentous. That's what we call those here. And, you know, smart minds think alike, I guess I'll call it that phrase, the system won't let me do it. That's exactly where I was going as Marty was sharing the constraints we have with that older, traditional technology about what we can't do. Let's change the conversation on what we can do. I've heard lots of stuff. You just took me straight back, both y'all, to some of my days in manufacturing, where we are problem solving or working with, you know, new products, new programs, new customers.

Scott W. Luton [00:30:58]:

And in that meeting, inevitably, you can't do that. The system won't let us. Oh, if I've heard it a thousand, I've heard it a million. But I love the new. New approaches, new conversations, new technologies as we look to capitalize on the new art of the possible that exists out there in industry. One last thing, squinting. So, Marty, this came up in last episode. This.

Scott W. Luton [00:31:22]:

We just talked about those problems. Well, sometimes if you squint a little bit, these problems can look a lot alike, no matter what company, no matter what part of the world, no matter what industry. So I'm going to start squinting a little bit more wily when folks tell me it's a unique problem to us. All right, so, as we established last episode, Wiley, you co founded Doss in 2022, but you don't even got to look at the calendar, folks. It wasn't too long ago, but they've already been moving fast. We talked about the approach they take. Not at a month, not at a couple weeks, in 40 hours. Part of their culture is moving mountains, getting stuff done.

Scott W. Luton [00:32:02]:

So if you think about all the growth, you think about all the team members and what they contribute, some of the accolades. And we referenced some customers here and on the previous installment. What's one accomplishment the company has had that you're most proud of?

Wiley Jones [00:32:19]:

It's actually exactly what you just said, which is the pace at which we can help operationalize the decisions that our customers want to make as they move systems or as they set up new processes. It's all about pace for me. The thing that I'm most proud of, of our team, it's a cultural thing, top down, that we care about, where we structure our incentives to make that possible, not to say the name but the three letter acronym, you know, maybe firm that we're all used to, and they market their solution is, you know, and this is on their marketing website, they say it takes 40,000 man hours to install the median implementation of their product. And they're touting that as like a really big accomplishment, which I think is for the scale of systems they work with is incredible. It makes sense, you know, we're reframing that. It's like, okay, well, if we set a goal for ourselves to say let's do it in a work week, which is a thousand times faster, a 40 hours work week, what do we need to build in order to make that true? And what do we need to do differently as a company to make that true? The fact that everyone retains that every day in the way that we operate is the thing I'm most proud of, of the whole team.

Scott W. Luton [00:33:22]:

You should be. We talk about velocity, Marty, oftentimes, especially as it relates to the velocity of change at that rate. Currently here in October 2024, the solutions come oftentimes. Not that this is not important to call timeout sometimes, right. That's really important. Right. But the, the solution oftentimes, especially new innovative solutions, comes with folks that can deliver and operate at that same rate of velocity. Right.

Scott W. Luton [00:33:54]:

But Marty, would you hear there?

Marty Parker [00:33:57]:

So, you know, my view, and I teach this is people will take as much time as you give them. So if you give them 40,000 hours or 400,000 hours or 4 million hour, they'll take that long. But if you set a goal, you set a target. For example, like brainstorming, which I do a lot in strategy work. You set a team, you give them 15 minutes to go meet, work out some things or meetings. I've run seven minute meetings before. If you give people 2 hours, they'll take 2 hours, but if you give them seven minutes, they'll knock it out. So in how Wiley's, he should be proud of that one.

Marty Parker [00:34:37]:

But two, it forces a lot of work in advance, you know, a lot prep work, and then it'll force a lot of really good communication with your customer so that you can condense that. And so to me it makes a ton of sense. Seven minute means you should write a book about that. I did, I had a meeting.

Scott W. Luton [00:35:01]:

Seriously, you do. You should. That and a lot of other parts of your journey, Marty, because I learned every time I sit down with you, and just like I'm learning from Wiley here, but I'm really bad. I'm meeting, you know, an hour long meeting, you know, and gosh, I'm trying to get better. And you set a new standard. I'm going to pursue a seven minute meeting because when you get down to it, you can knock out most things you gather, especially if you come prepared in seven minutes or less. So, Marty, I'm going to try to hit that target next time.

Marty Parker [00:35:31]:

That'll be a whole nother podcast.

Scott W. Luton [00:35:33]:

That will be a whole nother podcast, I'll tell you. And I. But I bet if anyone's team is doing, I bet Wiley spending a couple hours with them here lately, I bet that's what they do. And also just, just dawned on me, Wiley Coyote, while your name was, was bringing some memories back and I couldn't place where that was. Wow. E. Coyote back in the, um, the cartoons days when they would make up most of the day on Saturday. Remember that? That was a long time ago.

Scott W. Luton [00:36:00]:

Okay, so the accomplishments, your, uh, need for speed, your, the velocity at which y'all bring change and important change, consequential change, I'd be proud of that, too. And you're also adding to the resources that fuel that because you're doing a bunch of hiring. As I was getting ready for our conversation, I've seen a bunch of hiring ads or recruiting that you are doing. When I think of hiring, I think a culture, and I think of the interviews and conversations, you have to make sure folks are good fits that to move at the speed of light. So when you think of the culture that you're protecting, establishing and protecting at dos, what's one of the most important elements? Wiley?

Wiley Jones [00:36:41]:

Yeah. So we test for really only three things, and it's actually just only these three things.

Scott W. Luton [00:36:46]:

Okay.

Wiley Jones [00:36:46]:

And it's, you have to be a high performance person, which means you make good decisions and you have good judgment, and you're just not wrong very often, because we're not really in a business where we can be super analytical. Like, for example, Google the famous stories around how they'll use a bunch of customer data to test what color button you should use. We are not in a position to do that. We have to just use our intuition and make assessments. You have to make really good judgments. Um, number two is you have to be high intensity. That's about the pace, right. Um, you have to just be generative and putting out a lot of con, not a lot of content, but whatever your work product is, you have to put out a lot of it and just very fast.

Wiley Jones [00:37:28]:

And then the third is high integrity, which is that you have to, again, it kind of just the same thing as making good judgments. But if you combine those three things, it's basically just, you get a really earnest person who makes great decisions, and they do it really fast. If you lose any one of those three things, you basically get a toxic work environment. You have really high performance people who work really hard but are horrible to each other. Or you get, like, an academic, navel gazing environment where people are being, you know, too, like, well, what if we did this? Or you just get a bunch of really hard working people who are all really nice, but they do the wrong thing every day. You have to have all three.

Scott W. Luton [00:37:58]:

You have to have all three. You have to have all three. I'm looking at this list of things. I'm not sure if I'd make the cut. The third one, high integrity. I got it, I got it. You got me the first two. I don't know if I can pass that limits test.

Scott W. Luton [00:38:10]:

Uh, but kidding aside, Marty, what'd you hear there? I know you're a fellow very passionate when it comes to culture. Uh, what'd you hear there from Wally?

Marty Parker [00:38:18]:

Well, uh, one thing I heard, and especially true in a startup is, um, you've got to have people that you can count on and people that are able to do a lot of things, and they're able to do them, um, quickly to respond to changes. A friend of mine, Susan Cohen, teaches strategy at UGA and does accelerator work. She says that startups need to rethink their strategy almost on a weekly basis and like a giant kind of company. So she has a board she uses, and you're constantly sort of adapting and adjusting. So you've got to have that performance, you've got to have that judgment, you've got to have that speed, and then you've got to have trust, you know, in an environment like that, with the, with the integrity piece. So it makes a ton of sense. It might be different, Wiley, when you're one day a $300 million behemoth where, you know, where you need more standards, but you're. You're absolutely right with what you're trying to accomplish.

Marty Parker [00:39:25]:

You've got to have people that can move like you're describing.

Scott W. Luton [00:39:29]:

I like it hearing both of you all talk about this. And of course, while you laid out what makes a successful team member at DOS, essentially, both y'all touched on decision making, right? And, you know, some folks are just what I. Just my opinion, they're born with great judgment, right? And all the probabilities, they tend to make a lot of great calls, right? But there's a lot of folks that aren't born with that ability or maybe they haven't developed the processes or the discipline to do that. And I think that's where when you look at technology and you look especially at global supply chain, where arguably more than any other sector, you're making micro decisions every hour. And we've got this immense opportunity to change how we approach technology, to put people in position to make better decisions faster, more confidently. Right. Confident decision making is an under recognized element, in my view. And that's a lot of what Wiley, just like you apply it to your culture, you're applying that to your product.

Scott W. Luton [00:40:33]:

And what I've heard through a couple hours of speaking with you, your final thoughts there. And then we're going to wrap on a couple of cool things and cool places you've been.

Wiley Jones [00:40:42]:

I think exactly what you said. It's not an accident that the culture of the company and what we're working toward and the actual product we build and then the customers we work with, it's not an accident that they're all kind of the same thing. We just view the world through this lens, that you can drive amazing outcomes. If you earnestly approach a problem, you deeply understand people's needs and you rapidly, aggressively, with intensity, apply yourself to go and bend the world to your will and make it meet the shape in which you need it to meet. And it might sound so aggressive, but that's what you have to do in order to make problems go away in such a challenging and complex multi party, multi entity, dynamic environment that the global value chain is today.

Scott W. Luton [00:41:30]:

I like that. Marty, did you hear that phrase, bend the world to your will? That's like superhero powers, super supply chain, hero powers there, Wiley, I like it. It takes you back to that sword analogy used earlier, which, as you were sharing that, you know, strengthen the steel, you know, the mechanical engineering background, some of it you got, what's it, the opening Game of Thrones, right, where they're pouring the molten level, they're making the sword stronger and stronger. We need new season at Game of Thrones, but I digress. All right, let's. Let's wrap on a couple things here. Wiley and Marty. So, Marty, we've established in the pre show that neither Marty nor I have ever been to a CPG conference, right.

Scott W. Luton [00:42:12]:

Consumer product goods. Well, Wiley and the team went to their first one, an event called New Topia now. I kind of like that name, new Topia now. So what were a couple of your key takeaways from that event?

Wiley Jones [00:42:27]:

Yeah, it was. It was an awesome event. Also, just because I think CPG as a, you know, a category of products, it kind of lends itself to a very friendly community. And also, I don't know, you've been to lots conferences, I'm sure, many, many. It's one where you actually get to, like, try the product. You just taste a bunch of food and, ooh, I like it. So that was cool. That was awesome.

Wiley Jones [00:42:48]:

Normally I go to electronics conferences or something where you're like, staring at widgets and they're like, okay, this is cool, but it's much better to just bite off a new beef jerky and be like, oh, that's a good beef jerky. So that's fun. But the aspects of it from a, like, you know, company building standpoint and like, an industry standpoint that were fascinating to me is we approach these things always as kind of apprentices and tourists and students, which is you just kind of have to drop in and parachute in and you have to just admit you don't know anything, and you just are trying to go and collect an understanding of the dynamics of an industry. And for me, the thing that became very evident, I'm like, wow, there's this really very strange power dynamic between brands and retailers and distributors. And I had no idea how any of this stuff worked. And it was really interesting to see how they all interacted with each other in kind of this, you know, like almost like a natural ecosystem. And me as kind of the Darwin or Steve Irwin of the kind of, you know, oh, wow, the brand. Yeah, that's kind of how I felt.

Wiley Jones [00:43:42]:

And so we just approach everything like that. We go to a new conference that's a manufacturing conference or a furniture conference. We do the exact same things every time.

Scott W. Luton [00:43:51]:

Oh, I love it. I love it. And Marty, one of the things he shared there is kind of when different players of the ecosystem come together and how they operate and act around. But, you know, one of the things I've seen in my career is when you bring players of the ecosystem together and really have them talking business and you start to uncover the blind spots that you have about not only your own business, but certainly the extensions of the ecosystem. Powerful improvement opportunities. Right. Powerful of tangible improvement opportunities can come out of those conversations if you make time for them. But Marty, what did you hear from their approach at not just Newtopia now, but other events they've been to?

Marty Parker [00:44:32]:

I heard Wiley's supERPower, which is curiosity. You know, a friend of mine, Carl Libba, curiosity coach, talks about that, and I talk about that in my leadership. And you're going to have to ask the questions and admit, I don't know, just like Wiley described. And then as a group, you'll learn and you'll get to what the real issues and the real problems are. A lot of folks come in, hey, I'm all that and a bag of chips. I know what to do. Here's my tool that's going to solve all your problems. I think the supERPower Wyman has is curiosity.

Scott W. Luton [00:45:14]:

I couldn't agree more. And a second cousin, maybe a curiosity of practical humility. Some folks may hear humility and they may think something, you know, like non confidence. That's not what I'm talking about. But I think some of the most powerful conversations and learning opportunities you can have is when Marty kind of what you're talking about, you check your ego, you check what you know at the door, and you approach it with a sense of humility and respect and empathy. And, man, those conversations have all sorts of eureka moments. Um, Wiley, good stuff, man, good stuff. Let me ask you this, the billion dollar question.

Scott W. Luton [00:45:52]:

In these inflationary times, whats next for Doss?

Wiley Jones [00:45:56]:

You know, the team gives me a hard time about this. Theyre always ribbing me about it, where I always just say, no matter when it is, Im like the next six months. Thats always what Im saying. I will say that 30 years from now, things are ripping for us. Its been fantastic. I wake up every day more energized than ive ever been in my whole life because we have a combination of a few things that are just going really well, which is we have a really broad directive. We're not locked into a specific segment of an industry, a specific size of a company. We can go and help a lot of people with what they have problems with.

Wiley Jones [00:46:32]:

So that's just immensely fun. And we have a really great product and we have an amazing team. And so the combination of those things is letting us just be completely heads down, finding new companies to partner with, putting the work in, folding learnings back into the platform. It's quite mundane, honestly. When I say mundane is in like, it's not like it's boring. It's just that it's really straightforward. We have to just go and do the work now. That's what we're doing.

Wiley Jones [00:46:55]:

So I joke about this also with our team kind of backs them on. That is, well, like, you know, this is like Rocky and like the training montage and stuff, but I have the tigers not playing and like they usually skip over this part in the movies, like, we're just in that part. And so, like, if they really showed it, it'd be like a year of, like, rocky working on his, like, left cross and his footwork and just getting punched in the face a lot.

Scott W. Luton [00:47:16]:

Oh, my favorite rocky. I don't know. Rocky four was great, right? Clubber Lang. Mister T is clubber Lang. And some of the interactions they had, I think that was Rocky two or three. That was an all time classic. But Marty, he also even referenced I, the tiger from Survivor, one hit wonder back in the day. That was my, that was my jam back in the day.

Scott W. Luton [00:47:37]:

Um, but it sounds like to me, Marty, whether he calls it mundane or, or they know what they got to do, but, man, life is good currently, uh, over in the dos world, and, man, the future is bright. We're going to need some shades. Your thoughts there, Marty?

Marty Parker [00:47:52]:

Yeah, it's an incredible, almost, um, unbelievable, insurmountable challenge that you and your team have taken on. And just like when you said at the beginning, people were like, it can't be done. I think folks love the challenge that's bigger than themselves, and I think your product then helps these companies do what they do better and brings a whole lot of good to the world. And so I think it's contagious. I think it's infectious. I think it gives you the energy to get up and do what you got to do. I love it.

Scott W. Luton [00:48:32]:

I don't disagree, Marty. And to pull one thing out, you said they certainly didn't tackle, didn't set out to tackle a small, small issue. This is far bigger than a 27 point comeback that Illinois had against those wildcats. This is a big. This is big, and it's exciting because clearly, you're making progress. You're making progress. And we look forward to our next conversation with you, as we have you back in a month or two, and I think you're going to bring a customer. I'm looking forward to really a neat conversation between the two of you all.

Scott W. Luton [00:49:01]:

How can folks connect with you, though, Wiley? So you're out at conferences, you're probably doing some keynote stuff. You're doing a lot of time with the customers, which is important, potential customers. But how can folks connect with you and have a conversation?

Wiley Jones [00:49:14]:

Yeah, my LinkedIn is an open door. Send me a message. Connect with me. Send me an email. I'm just wileyoss.com. dot w I l e y, which is a different spelling from a lot of people doing Wiley, but just send me a message. I'd love to hear from literally anyone, as long as it's not phishing and trying to get our passwords for something. My inbox is completely open to anyone.

Wiley Jones [00:49:40]:

I love hearing from people.

Scott W. Luton [00:49:42]:

And if you really want to get Wiley's attention, as we established earlier, send a funny meme that will get his attention for sure. Um, all right, good stuff. Wiley Jones, co founder and CEO at Doss. But before we leave here, Marty, really enjoyed all of your anecdotes and your perspectives and your expertise here, especially where at different parts of your practitioner journey, you experience exactly what Wiley was talking about. That's my favorite parts. But what is one of your biggest takeaways here today?

Marty Parker [00:50:15]:

I think the biggest take away is that in the complexity of the world of supply chain and manufacturing, that we can develop systems and approaches and methodologies that cover all aspects of the business, like an ERP, but also use big data, big analytics to allow us to be flexible, to adapt, and to adapt to new products, new channels, new customers. So I think the big takeaway for me is that it's achievable and supply chain is going to achieve great things. And I think, I think Wiley's journey and Dawson's journey is going to be a big part of that.

Scott W. Luton [00:50:57]:

I'm with you. I'm with you. And in a broader sense, that adaptability you're talking about, that reminds me of evolve and how industry is evolving, how our mindsets are evolving, how many folks like Wallye that are driving change in different parts of our industry and in different parts of, I'll even go, it might sound cheesy, but society is. They're asking different questions. And then when they're getting some of the same tired stayed responses, they're asking why it takes a conversation to a new level. And I think in many ways it opens up doors of opportunities for entrepreneurs and founders to reconfigure and reinvent how certainly supply chain is done around the globe. So, uh, Wiley, really have enjoyed this. Marty Parker, really have enjoyed this, Marty.

Scott W. Luton [00:51:42]:

Folks, can, folks need to follow you across social, especially on LinkedIn where I enjoy a lot of your, the videos you drop. That's the best place to, to reach you. Marty.

Marty Parker [00:51:50]:

Yeah, I'm at supply chain dog d a w g on, uh, you know, Instagram, TikTok x, and then uh, LinkedIn, just Google. Marty Parker. And like, uh, Wiley, I am completely open as well to people reaching out that need my help because as you know, I help students and companies grow and succeed. And so I'm on a mission to do that. Since I grew up during the period of Mesopotamia. I'm now at a point where I want to give back, and through these channels is how I do that.

Scott W. Luton [00:52:26]:

That's right. And of course, you'll find Marty Parker here at as well, where we co host all sorts of conversations, incredible conversations featuring change agents and leaders that are changing how business is done. Much like Wally Jones, co founder and CEO of Doss, you can learn more, connect with Wiley at LinkedIn, at events and stuff. You can also learn more at dos doss.com. and I'm sure he and the team will be happy to help you kick the tires on the Doss ARP. Is that right, Wiley?

Wiley Jones [00:52:59]:

That's right. I, it is. The thing I carve out as much time in my life for as possible is, number one, wife and family. Number two, hearing about the most insane, intricate things that every company has under the hood. Cause it's, it's just the best thing in the world to hear what people are working on.

Scott W. Luton [00:53:16]:

I believe ya. I believe you. Squinting all the way to find those common threads and themes. Big thanks, Wally Jones. Big thanks, Marty Parker. Hey, folks, you got homework, man. We heard a lot from Wiley, a lot of great stuff from Wiley and Marty here today. Your homework, though is you got to take one thing, just one thing, put it into practice, right? Share it with the team.

Scott W. Luton [00:53:37]:

We have such a tremendous opportunity to truly change how business is done and empower our team members that have better days, more fulfilling days, right? But it's all about deeds, not words, right? Lip service doesn't cut it. So with all that said on behalf this whole Suppy Chain Now team Scott Luton challenge you - do good, give forward, be the change that's needed, and we'll see you next time right back here at. Thanks everybody.

Narrator [00:54:02]:

Thanks for being a part of our Supply Chain Now community. Check out all of our programming at supplychainnow.com and make sure you subscribe to Supply Chain Now anywhere you listen to podcasts and Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. See you next time on Supply Chain Now.