Iron Margin stands out for three reasons. Aligned Incentives, market intelligence, carrier relationships. Those three ingredients enable us to save shippers 10-30% without burning bridges or sacrificing customer experience. Let's dive into each of our three differentiators. --> #1 - Aligned Incentives Think of Iron Margin as your outsourced VP of Transportation. Rather than acting as a middleman, we fully align our incentives with our clients. This means that the rates we negotiate on your behalf are what they are - they don't have any secret markup fees. Our pricing is completely transparent and comes with a 100% savings guarantee. --> #2 - Market Intelligence We've conducted dozens of audits and reviewed hundreds of rate cards for shippers across all carriers, locations, and commodity types. So we can quickly assess if you are overpaying or not. We know the unique strengths and weaknesses of each carrier, and constantly are staying up to date on this evolving market. --> #3 - Carrier Relationships Although our incentives are fully aligned with the brand, carriers benefit from having someone who can honestly convey their value prop to shippers and make partnerships happen. In any negotiation we engage in, we make sure to understand the shippers point of view and maintain good will and mutual respect, even if we don't make a deal. — In a market as dynamic as last mile delivery, I feel like our service is much needed. Before starting Iron Margin, I sat in the seat of the shipper, and know what it feels like to try and navigate the nuanced transportation world while also managing competing responsibilities. Transportation itself is a full time job, but most do not have a dedicated transportation role. Self-fulfilling brands, 3pl's, and FBM distributors, if you are wondering if you are overpaying or what options are out there, I'd love to talk to you.

5 rules for development with AI #1 - Subtract and consolidate more than you add. #2 - Share a design mockup before coding. #3 - Use API keys for backend development. #4 - Don't overuse slow in-app browser checks. #5 - Don't code from scratch. Use open source.

I think I went overboard with API keys and agents. The maintenance cost is too high. I believe I'll be better off in the long run by deleting all the slop and working slower & more intentionally. My moat will be having a digital footprint that is actually thoughtful, clean and logical for when AI is actually intelligent.

I'm shocked by the amount of financially successful business out there that are literally just sales front end engines who outsource, white-label, or rely on other vendors for work.

Should brands have one 3PL node or two? I'm running an analysis for a brand with an average parcel weight of 40.93 lbs Their one node zone average is 5.51. By using two nodes, their zone average is 4.29. For lightweight parcel, the difference between zone 4 and zone 5 rates are minimal. But for heavier weight parcels, I've noticed the difference can be more dramatic. This brand saves 17% on shipping just by lowering their average zone by 1.22. Every brand is different.

I did work I was proud of tonight. I took a new customers September shipping export and told them exactly what they would be paying with a prospective new shipping account. They gave me a file with ship dates, origin zips, destination zips, weight and dimensions. I took a carrier cost matrix table, which shows the base rate for every zone/weight pair. That's column 1. Then, since this customer ships 100% DTC, I applied a residential surcharge as a second column. Then, additional columns for applying additional handling surcharges, large package surcharges, DAS/EDAS/AK_DAS, and fuel, retroactively calculated based on the actual historical fuel surcharges. This is an analysis I am 100% confident in, and I feel good presenting it to my client. Why do it this way? 1) This type of work could be done with AI, but if I did it with AI, I'd have to check it's work anyways, which often takes longer than just doing it myself. 2) You could probably build software for this, but each analysis is so different, that I actually think excel/google sheets is the best tool for the job. 3) It was fun. I love deep work. It was the only thing on my mind the past 20 minutes. 4) When I discuss it with my client, I will explain it more clearly and confidently because I actually did the work. If I used AI, even if 100% right, I wouldn't know how to explain the process. I love to educate my customers. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.

Constraints are the key to inventory planning. Start by determining the maximum PO that cash flow will allow. That's your upper constraint. Then your worst case sales projections, that's your lower constraint. That parts math. Then, pinpointing a value in between is more nuanced. One tip on that, your storage costs are usually lower than you think. If you are confident that your product will sell through, placing a bigger PO and getting the unit costs down, not to mention the upside of selling through quickly, is worth the extra couple of months sitting on inventory.

Being punctual is a lost art. Stop cramming so much into your day. It feels great to be early, prepared, and intentional.

I want to hire a contract-based recruiting researcher/sourcer for a senior US-based role. Who are the most talented people you know in the recruiting space?

Hiring is the #1 thing on my mind. Right now, I estimate that I'm at about 35% utilization. My service is relatively procedural. There is some customization, but every time I add a client, I refine my process and get more efficient with my service. But even if I could, reaching 80% or more personal utilization wouldn't be the best use of my time. The best use of my time is to attract A+ talent. The two functions I need to scale are sales and ops. Sales people will be brought on board to hit revenue targets. Ops people to create customer satisfaction and retention. This feels like phase 2 from the business where I go from doing everything myself to building a real business where each individual contributes at their highest level.

I just closed out my biggest revenue + profit month. Primarily driven through referral and WOM. Shout out to my early customers who took a chance on me before I had much proof of concept. I worked my ass off to get them results that I would want if I were the owner of their business. Starting to forecast out now more into the future. Me 24 months ago would have been shocked to see what's unfolding.

Anyone been to Shoptalk? Thinking of going this week, but the ratio of brands to service providers doesn't seem good. Would love to hear other people's experiences.

I spend $1490/mo on SaaS for Iron Margin Instantly $337 OpenAI $360 Google Workspace $142 Supabase $149 Apollo $200 LinkedIn $70 Vercel $50 Pipedream $45 Tella $26 Slack $23 Fathom $20 Obsidian $20 Wispr Flow $15 Paper $20 1Password $6 X Premium $4 What should I add or delete?