Meeting Title: Brainforge x Eden Weekly Sync Date: 2025-12-09 Meeting participants: Henry Zhao, Robert Tseng
WEBVTT
1 00:03:10.230 ⇒ 00:03:11.690 Henry Zhao: Oh, I’ll be right there, okay?
2 00:06:02.760 ⇒ 00:06:03.780 Henry Zhao: Hey, how’s it going?
3 00:06:06.350 ⇒ 00:06:07.390 Robert Tseng: Good, how are you?
4 00:06:07.890 ⇒ 00:06:08.730 Henry Zhao: Good, thanks.
5 00:06:11.240 ⇒ 00:06:15.420 Henry Zhao: I’m meeting with CESM right after this to go over, kind of, the deliverables for finance.
6 00:06:16.030 ⇒ 00:06:16.690 Robert Tseng: Okay.
7 00:06:16.870 ⇒ 00:06:20.240 Henry Zhao: Yeah, so we’ll see what she can do in one week.
8 00:06:20.460 ⇒ 00:06:21.010 Henry Zhao: No.
9 00:06:21.010 ⇒ 00:06:34.749 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, that’s… that’s why I spoke with her earlier today, too. So, I mean, I think you’re… yes, you’re, like, kind of managing her on Eden, like, you’re giving her a roadmap, introducing her to Jonah, trying to, like, give her tickets, so…
10 00:06:34.820 ⇒ 00:06:41.140 Robert Tseng: I mean, yeah, I kind of… well, she’s on a two-week trial, two weeks has already passed, but I was fine, we could delay to next week.
11 00:06:41.580 ⇒ 00:06:44.869 Robert Tseng: would I want to be able to make a decision in, do we keep her or not?
12 00:06:44.870 ⇒ 00:06:46.100 Henry Zhao: Okay.
13 00:06:46.290 ⇒ 00:06:49.859 Robert Tseng: Yeah, because if not, then we have other analysts that are…
14 00:06:50.000 ⇒ 00:06:59.679 Robert Tseng: ready to jump in, and I would rather bring in somebody who’s, like, I mean, I think we’re just not waiting that long on analyst decisions, yeah.
15 00:06:59.680 ⇒ 00:07:00.470 Henry Zhao: Okay.
16 00:07:00.650 ⇒ 00:07:02.340 Henry Zhao: Yeah, so hopefully one week is reasonable.
17 00:07:02.390 ⇒ 00:07:03.190 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
18 00:07:06.820 ⇒ 00:07:19.959 Henry Zhao: Alright, other than that, I kind of wanted your feedback on the slides for Eden. I haven’t polished them yet, but that’s because I kind of want to, like, walk you through, kind of, my thought process for what I’m analyzing.
19 00:07:20.020 ⇒ 00:07:36.059 Henry Zhao: Sure. So… okay. So, like I said, the challenge right now is that we don’t have a lot of data on… on COGS as well as SLA, right, because we don’t have that from BASC, but I have, like, proxy data based on what,
20 00:07:36.870 ⇒ 00:07:47.370 Henry Zhao: what Brad and Ryan have sent me, so… I have this, cOGSheets, okay?
21 00:07:47.670 ⇒ 00:07:51.060 Henry Zhao: So, obviously, this is COGS based on whatever the…
22 00:07:52.100 ⇒ 00:08:01.790 Henry Zhao: the vial sizes, which we don’t have, but, like, I have the margins by product and by pharmacy, so what I did was I literally just pulled, by pharmacy, by month.
23 00:08:02.300 ⇒ 00:08:04.539 Henry Zhao: What is the COGS?
24 00:08:04.740 ⇒ 00:08:14.619 Henry Zhao: And what is the COGS per order, as well as… just kind of looking at SLA, right? So, like, how many orders out of these total orders per pharmacy per month?
25 00:08:14.730 ⇒ 00:08:25.240 Henry Zhao: past 2 days, which is, like, close to missing SLA, right? How many past 3 days? Which is, they missed SLA. How many passed 5, which is really bad, and then 10, which is, like, really, really bad.
26 00:08:25.700 ⇒ 00:08:34.919 Henry Zhao: So what I did is I did, like, a percentage of out of SLA, and what I’m trying to find here is I made a scatter plot of, like, each pharmacy each month is a dot.
27 00:08:35.289 ⇒ 00:08:47.049 Henry Zhao: I want to see, like, if higher orders means higher percentage out of SLA, because if that is true, if there’s a correlation, that means we’re, like, overworking the pharmacies, right? We gotta distribute… distribute it better.
28 00:08:47.170 ⇒ 00:08:57.149 Henry Zhao: But since the R squared is .025, that means there’s no correlation. And so, like, missed SLA is not a function of there being too many orders.
29 00:08:57.290 ⇒ 00:09:00.379 Henry Zhao: So, I think what that means is that we can, like.
30 00:09:01.520 ⇒ 00:09:09.770 Henry Zhao: move more orders to pharmacies that have less COGS, like, lower COGS, so that we can lower the cost overall. Does that make sense?
31 00:09:12.920 ⇒ 00:09:13.570 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
32 00:09:15.750 ⇒ 00:09:26.759 Henry Zhao: So that makes sense, and I’m gonna polish it up and try to, like, tell that story in the slides. But for now, I haven’t really, like, made them pretty. So, like, right now, I’ve just put in, like, what I think would be useful, so, like, showing them
33 00:09:26.980 ⇒ 00:09:28.599 Henry Zhao: I’m probably gonna switch the order.
34 00:09:29.120 ⇒ 00:09:37.120 Henry Zhao: showing them that we do have data now that Catalyst is actually better, so Affiliate is this yellow bar. So, out of the intakes started.
35 00:09:37.450 ⇒ 00:09:50.510 Henry Zhao: Affiliates have a higher percentage of checkout started and a higher percentage of order completed, so you can see the yellow bar is higher than CPC, which is the next best, and the email’s the lowest, which I’m not surprised, because email is more like win-back campaigns.
36 00:09:50.510 ⇒ 00:09:58.620 Henry Zhao: abandoned card campaigns, it’s, like, already people that are, like, not that into it, right? And then influencers are actually pretty bad, so…
37 00:09:59.010 ⇒ 00:10:07.720 Henry Zhao: And this, I’ve already cleaned up the data, so before influencer data was all over the place, I’ve already grouped all the influencer data here, and you can see only 6% actually are completing their intakes.
38 00:10:09.200 ⇒ 00:10:09.770 Robert Tseng: Hmm.
39 00:10:10.410 ⇒ 00:10:17.450 Henry Zhao: So we might not want to invest that much moving forward in influencers. And maybe we want to focus more on affiliate channels.
40 00:10:21.020 ⇒ 00:10:28.099 Henry Zhao: And then I was just gonna say that, I don’t know where that other slide went, that we also did heat maps, in Mixpanel.
41 00:10:28.390 ⇒ 00:10:42.469 Henry Zhao: to show where customers are clicking. We don’t have any insights on that yet. I don’t know, like… I think that’s the next step. Once we figure out… once Ryan figures out, like, what intakes are not doing so well, we kind of want to look at where people are clicking to see if there’s some insights we can find out from there.
42 00:10:43.440 ⇒ 00:10:57.519 Robert Tseng: maybe tee up some of the questions that he’s asking from this, like, so that, yeah, like, I think even if we don’t have the insight, then if we don’t have an insight, then we just share, like, these are the questions that we’re asking, or, like, these are the next steps. Like, I think that’s… that’s what should be on every slide.
43 00:10:57.520 ⇒ 00:11:07.059 Robert Tseng: I think the screenshots make sense, like, I think you should have… something visual is helpful, and then, yeah, I mean, like, the title, like, the header should, you know, be, like, a…
44 00:11:07.630 ⇒ 00:11:11.629 Robert Tseng: You know, kind of how we’re doing, just the one-sentence takeaway of, like.
45 00:11:12.850 ⇒ 00:11:16.970 Robert Tseng: what’s… what’s the win, or, like, what’s the… what’s… what’s the takeaway, like…
46 00:11:17.550 ⇒ 00:11:26.479 Robert Tseng: Yeah, so I mean, I think you’re… the general pieces are there, so I think, obviously, would want this to be polished, but I’ll let you do that.
47 00:11:27.100 ⇒ 00:11:28.250 Robert Tseng: Yeah, okay.
48 00:11:28.460 ⇒ 00:11:33.410 Henry Zhao: And then for new requests… oh, somebody put some stuff in here. Okay, that’s cool.
49 00:11:35.320 ⇒ 00:11:44.369 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, this is just Zaron adding… adding more work. Yeah, I think, actually, we’ll just pause here on the new request. I just… I just spoke with Zaron. So, actually, like.
50 00:11:44.560 ⇒ 00:11:56.089 Robert Tseng: you know, Eden is, like, shopping around for tagging and tracking stuff again. I’m like, what the hell is going on? Like, why are we doing this again? I think it’s just… we… Zoran has… I mean…
51 00:11:56.120 ⇒ 00:12:09.200 Robert Tseng: there’s a gap between Mitesh not feeling confident that the tracking is any better. He’s like, well, we’ve been doing all this stuff, but it feels like I’m still in the same position that I was, like, a year ago, which is just…
52 00:12:09.590 ⇒ 00:12:10.650 Robert Tseng: I don’t believe him.
53 00:12:10.650 ⇒ 00:12:12.050 Henry Zhao: Not at all, not at all.
54 00:12:12.050 ⇒ 00:12:17.080 Robert Tseng: I don’t believe… yeah, obviously, I’m just like… you’re… that means you’re… you’re… you’re just, like.
55 00:12:17.510 ⇒ 00:12:21.909 Robert Tseng: You’re just an idiot, you cannot see, like, what we’re doing.
56 00:12:21.910 ⇒ 00:12:23.770 Henry Zhao: Cop around, but it’s gonna be the same results, like…
57 00:12:23.770 ⇒ 00:12:33.400 Robert Tseng: I know, but I don’t want them to do that, obviously, so… I mean, I’ll be on the call with Mitesh tomorrow, and we’re gonna, like, duke it out there, but, like…
58 00:12:33.560 ⇒ 00:12:41.870 Robert Tseng: I do think what Zoran is missing is, I don’t think Zoran is able to really think about analysis. Like, I keep asking him, great, like.
59 00:12:42.090 ⇒ 00:12:43.890 Robert Tseng: I understand, like.
60 00:12:44.000 ⇒ 00:13:00.560 Robert Tseng: yes, tracking is 70% better, and, like, what that unlocks, but then, like, what are the actual things that we need to do to support Mitesh in making better decisions? And I think that that part’s missing. So, I feel like from this team, between you and Zaran, there’s, like, a
61 00:13:01.010 ⇒ 00:13:07.210 Robert Tseng: Yeah, you guys like to talk about capabilities a lot, but, like, I feel like there isn’t enough, like…
62 00:13:08.580 ⇒ 00:13:11.979 Robert Tseng: Kind of formulating the question that, like.
63 00:13:11.980 ⇒ 00:13:12.600 Henry Zhao: Hmm?
64 00:13:12.600 ⇒ 00:13:20.780 Robert Tseng: the stakeholder is asking, or, like, should be asking. So, I don’t know how to, like, kind of…
65 00:13:21.510 ⇒ 00:13:26.500 Robert Tseng: Help you guys do that more, but, like, I think that’s…
66 00:13:26.950 ⇒ 00:13:38.259 Robert Tseng: you know, even these requests, these are just feature requests. These are not really, like, analysis requests. So, you know, maybe he’s just wired that way, but, like, I…
67 00:13:38.790 ⇒ 00:13:54.020 Robert Tseng: you know, if we’re going to… the difference between just, like, an engineering shop that just, like, set up… sets up and leaves, versus, like, what I’ve tried to, like, build this, like, Eden team towards, is we’re supposed to be, like.
68 00:13:54.760 ⇒ 00:13:58.290 Robert Tseng: Kind of in the… in their… in the weeds with them.
69 00:13:58.480 ⇒ 00:14:02.839 Robert Tseng: Helping them to make the decisions, and so…
70 00:14:03.100 ⇒ 00:14:07.549 Robert Tseng: like, that to me is analysis. Analysis is not saying we were…
71 00:14:07.780 ⇒ 00:14:15.309 Robert Tseng: you were, like, 70… like, we have 17% better tracking now than before. Like, that to me is just, like.
72 00:14:18.540 ⇒ 00:14:26.869 Robert Tseng: well, you’re just measuring the impact of, like, what you did, but it’s not… it’s not really analysis, so… it’s just, like, reporting. So, yeah.
73 00:14:26.870 ⇒ 00:14:45.559 Henry Zhao: to do with, like, the pharmacy ops is, like, I was thinking, right? Like, without… with the data that I have, what are we actually analyzing, right? It’s like, obviously we want to send orders to the pharmacies with the lowest COGS, but the question they might have is, are they going to be able to handle that volume? And for me, the answer is yes, right? Like, we’ve ramped up, for example,
74 00:14:45.560 ⇒ 00:14:54.560 Henry Zhao: precision, right? We’ve ramped it up really highly, and they were still able to handle, like, the SLA pretty well. Like, initially, maybe they…
75 00:14:54.560 ⇒ 00:14:58.969 Robert Tseng: Those are 60%, like, yeah, okay.
76 00:15:00.240 ⇒ 00:15:05.870 Henry Zhao: But then it’s like, they got their act together, and, like, we have 16,000 orders, and the only 3% were out of SLA.
77 00:15:06.190 ⇒ 00:15:08.629 Robert Tseng: But then it kind of got worse.
78 00:15:10.020 ⇒ 00:15:26.949 Henry Zhao: Yeah, so we need to, like, kind of work with Eden. So I think this is what you would ask ELTs, right? It’s like, why… why did it get worse, and how can we kind of mitigate that in the future? And this is the same problem we’re gonna have with Honey Stinger, right? I’m gonna have the data for Acosta, and I’m gonna ask, like, why did this…
79 00:15:26.950 ⇒ 00:15:30.919 Henry Zhao: spike, and then why weren’t we prepared for it if, like, the volumes are pretty steady over time?
80 00:15:31.610 ⇒ 00:15:32.180 Robert Tseng: Right.
81 00:15:32.430 ⇒ 00:15:36.669 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, I think this is… this is, like… I was just talking to Amber earlier, so, like.
82 00:15:36.670 ⇒ 00:15:37.250 Henry Zhao: No.
83 00:15:37.570 ⇒ 00:15:43.609 Robert Tseng: From analysis, I mean, there’s probably more than 3 buckets, but I was trying to give, like, a simple explanation. You could…
84 00:15:44.130 ⇒ 00:15:52.260 Robert Tseng: For marketing, like, analysis is very, like, top-down. You’re, you’re, like, your opportunity sizing, like.
85 00:15:52.850 ⇒ 00:15:56.199 Robert Tseng: Where the… like, what op…
86 00:15:56.370 ⇒ 00:16:04.510 Robert Tseng: Where can you move the needle the most? Biggest channel, most important segments, biggest impact, and, like.
87 00:16:04.510 ⇒ 00:16:04.880 Henry Zhao: Huh.
88 00:16:04.880 ⇒ 00:16:12.149 Robert Tseng: You’re identifying that, and then advising, like, this is, like, this is what you need to prioritize, because this is what’s going to move the needle the most.
89 00:16:12.500 ⇒ 00:16:29.539 Robert Tseng: for product analytics, it’s the opposite. It’s more of a bottoms-up approach, and it’s like, okay, well, you have this North Star metric of optimizing for conversions, but, like, how do you get there? Well, you need to find, like, the golden pathway or whatever for, like, a user, and…
90 00:16:29.540 ⇒ 00:16:42.830 Robert Tseng: you, you know, you’re either drawing, like, a needle from a haystack if you just go randomly pick users, or you can have a more principled approach to this. And, like, so I’m, like, talking to Greg, and he’s, like, giving me ideas. He’s like, okay, look at…
91 00:16:42.830 ⇒ 00:16:59.109 Robert Tseng: past 30-day users, 7-day, 14-day, 28-day retention. It’s like, okay, fine. That’s, like, one way of looking at it, where you’re using a co… like, a recency-based cohort to, like, understand, like, what are, early signals of users that are… that are coming onto the platform.
92 00:16:59.110 ⇒ 00:17:04.889 Robert Tseng: But then you can also, like, look at another angle, which is, like, how about you look at your most…
93 00:17:04.960 ⇒ 00:17:20.989 Robert Tseng: your most engaged, longest retained users, and you go back to what they were doing when they just first got onto the platform, and you try to understand, like, what got them to the point where they were really, like, really retained, right? So those are, like, just, like, a couple, like.
94 00:17:21.690 ⇒ 00:17:29.839 Robert Tseng: like, you know, structured ways of, like, trying to not do the needle on a haystack, but at least you have a more principled approach for going bottoms up.
95 00:17:29.980 ⇒ 00:17:39.469 Robert Tseng: For operational reporting, I think it’s neither of those. You know, you’re really just trying to… which I think you’re good at this, which is why I kind of wanted to assign this to you, which is, like.
96 00:17:39.570 ⇒ 00:17:48.939 Robert Tseng: like, finding out what is actually happening here, right, when we’re attacking and tracking. People say this is how it works, this is how it works, but, you know.
97 00:17:48.940 ⇒ 00:17:54.790 Robert Tseng: You know, assuming that they don’t know what the heck they’re talking about, like, you’re… you go in there, you’re understanding.
98 00:17:54.790 ⇒ 00:18:18.260 Robert Tseng: This is actually how the pharmacy API works. When we talk about when an order arrives at the pharmacy, this is what it means. It’s consistent across all pharmacies, or if there are edge cases, like, you’re able to figure that out. Hey, maybe for one pharmacy, there’s a direct integration with BASC, you know, and then, you know, it’s pretty straightforward. The order comes in, and it goes through no problem. But when it’s for a pharmacy that’s out of network.
99 00:18:18.260 ⇒ 00:18:33.669 Robert Tseng: maybe it’s this manual process where they have to, like, export some CS3 from BASC, and then they upload it to another system, and there’s this, like, weird delay, orders kind of get dropped because the file’s not formatted incorrectly, whatever, like, there’s all these, like, different edge cases that you start to build out.
100 00:18:33.770 ⇒ 00:18:51.239 Robert Tseng: But you’re able to, like, recognize what those edge cases are, you’re able to normalize the data, because we start to, like, account for it in our data modeling, or you’re kind of just, like, you know, documenting it and helping… asking them to fix it, because you notice that something is wrong. But it’s a lot more about, like, kind of…
101 00:18:51.240 ⇒ 00:19:10.129 Robert Tseng: comprehensive tracking, understanding that you’re comparing apples to apples across disparate systems, and then you’re able to start to have a standardized way of measuring across all pharmacies, right? Yeah. Like, and… and you need all of that work to get there, so then you can start to make these types of insights, where you’re sharing
102 00:19:11.560 ⇒ 00:19:27.669 Robert Tseng: okay, look at their consistency over, like, over the past year. 3 months out of the year, they were consistent, they, you know, only 5% out of SLA. Before that, it was, like, 50%, and then after those 3 months, it’s, like, a 30%. So, like.
103 00:19:27.690 ⇒ 00:19:38.560 Robert Tseng: What happened to 60%, what happened to 30%? And you’re working a lot more with the business stakeholders. Yeah, you’re calling them out, telling them, you need to go investigate this. Tell us what is the difference between the 60% versus the
104 00:19:39.100 ⇒ 00:19:49.600 Robert Tseng: months. And then, like, you kind of… yeah, you’re, like, trying to build the SOPs with them, or, like, at least help them eliminate outliers.
105 00:19:49.780 ⇒ 00:19:53.710 Henry Zhao: like, kind of the standard operating procedure, it’s like…
106 00:19:54.310 ⇒ 00:20:13.929 Robert Tseng: you know, if… if they’re out of compliance by 60%, like, I mean, I’m just throwing things out there. I… like, okay, I’ll use… I don’t like the standard. I’ll use my example. Like, I was running… I was, like, doing it in a warehouse management software startup. 90% SLA, it was what was our standard.
107 00:20:14.630 ⇒ 00:20:33.269 Robert Tseng: The way we got there, when I first entered, we were at maybe 70% SLA. We wanted to get to 90% SLA. Well, we created a… I created a standard. It was like, look, anybody that’s 3 months under… under, like, 80%, or under… under 70%, they are kicked out of the network. So that was one way we raised the bar.
108 00:20:33.270 ⇒ 00:20:47.659 Robert Tseng: And then for those that are, like, hovering around 85 to 90, like, kind of, like, 80% to 85%, we create an incentive. Hey, if you get your pharmacy SLA to above 90… 90%, you get this type… you get this type of, like, deal.
109 00:20:47.660 ⇒ 00:21:10.659 Robert Tseng: deal with us, we give you, like, kind of our best consistent volume. Like, we started to create, like, different performance tiers within the network, and that actually boosted performance of the 80% to 85%. So within 6 months, I turned a warehouse network of 100 warehouses to get 90%, like, SLA. Sure, we kicked out, like, 40 of the warehouses, and the network shrunk down to, like, 40 to 50,
110 00:21:10.660 ⇒ 00:21:13.300 Robert Tseng: but I also built the case that I was like, look.
111 00:21:13.350 ⇒ 00:21:31.040 Robert Tseng: business owner, like, your warehouse network is not gonna suffer, even if we lose 40 warehouses, because the coverage is actually pretty good. They’re all kind of underutilized. I can show you why, like, this network is still gonna hold… hold together. So, like, you know, those are the types of, like, analysis that I did
112 00:21:31.040 ⇒ 00:21:39.109 Robert Tseng: to kind of, like, help drive the warehouse network performance to 90%, right? So, I mean, obviously, like, we eat it’s very different, but, like.
113 00:21:39.520 ⇒ 00:21:47.249 Robert Tseng: I, you know, I think I’m just trying to give you some ideas of, like, I think that’s… that’s what I think operational reporting is.
114 00:21:47.250 ⇒ 00:21:49.229 Henry Zhao: Great. Yeah. Yeah. That’s very helpful.
115 00:21:50.230 ⇒ 00:21:51.080 Henry Zhao: Yeah.
116 00:21:51.460 ⇒ 00:21:55.990 Henry Zhao: And it gave me some good ideas, and I think I’ll add those to the slides, and then by end of day, I’ll have you take a look.
117 00:21:56.630 ⇒ 00:22:12.190 Robert Tseng: Okay. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, like, this is not just, like, a slide exercise for me, right? Like, I want you to be able to communicate this with ELT, and my most… more importantly is, like, kind of… I want… I want, Brad and Rebecca to be like, look.
118 00:22:12.230 ⇒ 00:22:18.990 Robert Tseng: you know, Henry is indispensable, like, we need to be working with Henry, like, he’s just, like, incredible, or whatever, like…
119 00:22:18.990 ⇒ 00:22:19.420 Henry Zhao: I want to get…
120 00:22:19.420 ⇒ 00:22:30.479 Robert Tseng: That’s the feeling that we’re trying to replicate here, right? Yeah. So, and yeah, obviously, I’m here to try to help you with that, and, like, to kind of nudge you in that direction, because.
121 00:22:30.480 ⇒ 00:22:30.910 Henry Zhao: Yup.
122 00:22:30.910 ⇒ 00:22:31.730 Robert Tseng: I think…
123 00:22:32.060 ⇒ 00:22:42.330 Robert Tseng: maybe you’ll talk to Clarence, or if you haven’t talked to him already, like, yeah, we’re trying to, like, add more language around, like, expectations for client-facing folks.
124 00:22:42.650 ⇒ 00:22:46.720 Robert Tseng: I think we were kinda… even, like, what we’ve been saying with
125 00:22:46.770 ⇒ 00:22:55.279 Robert Tseng: architect, strategist, engineer, I feel like, is still too abstract, so we’ve been having Clarence put together some more language around
126 00:22:55.280 ⇒ 00:23:11.490 Robert Tseng: the types of, like, client-facing responsibilities that we want to tie to people’s performance, and… and, like, obviously, we want to be able to give bonuses tied to these things, too. But anyway, so that’s, like, his… his project that he’s working on to help us better with, like, kind of team…
127 00:23:11.490 ⇒ 00:23:17.540 Robert Tseng: team management and stuff. But anyway, so that’s… that’s kind of… Yeah, alright.
128 00:23:18.000 ⇒ 00:23:27.790 Robert Tseng: I never know, like, if we should spend our time on our one-on-ones talking about bigger picture stuff or tactical things, like, I feel like we could talk for a long time, but .
129 00:23:27.790 ⇒ 00:23:28.300 Henry Zhao: Both, yeah.
130 00:23:28.300 ⇒ 00:23:30.770 Robert Tseng: to give you a bit of… a bit of both, so…
131 00:23:30.770 ⇒ 00:23:31.610 Henry Zhao: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
132 00:23:33.000 ⇒ 00:23:34.319 Henry Zhao: Okay, that’s really helpful.
133 00:23:35.140 ⇒ 00:23:38.870 Robert Tseng: So, yeah, that’s that. Yeah, I guess…
134 00:23:39.570 ⇒ 00:23:42.490 Robert Tseng: I… not to hijack the conversation, anything else?
135 00:23:42.490 ⇒ 00:23:53.660 Henry Zhao: No, so I’ll finish these slides, I’ll polish these slides, and then I’ll probably send you a loom to kind of explain the story I’m telling, and then you can just give me feedback, like, if that makes sense, or if I need to kind of fine-tune the story anywhere.
136 00:23:54.130 ⇒ 00:24:05.309 Robert Tseng: Okay, great. Yeah, I mean, I think what I’d like to do is hopefully that Loom comes in, I might make some edits, ideally. Yeah, and then I’d like to have you send the message via email, so… Yeah, what I’ll probably do…
137 00:24:05.310 ⇒ 00:24:19.980 Henry Zhao: I’ll probably make a pivot table of actually the pharmacy and month by percentage of SLA, so I’ll say, like, in this month, like, we really overloaded Pharmacy Hub, and they were at 65%, but, like, Eden Pharmacy was underutilized, so we should have shifted volumes there, right? So, like.
138 00:24:19.980 ⇒ 00:24:20.310 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
139 00:24:20.320 ⇒ 00:24:27.310 Henry Zhao: I’m probably gonna tell some story like that, and I think that is gonna really help Brad, because remember we said, like, we were trying to help him with the negotiations?
140 00:24:27.550 ⇒ 00:24:43.630 Henry Zhao: This is gonna help him with the conversation of the negotiations. He’s gonna say, look, you got… you want this higher COGS, but, like, you’re not even handling our SLA properly, so we’re not gonna pay you this higher, we’re gonna shift volumes to this other pharmacy, unless you can either lower COGS or improve your SLA, right? So, I think that’s a good story to tell.
141 00:24:44.020 ⇒ 00:24:46.839 Robert Tseng: Yeah. No, I think, I think that’s great, yeah.
142 00:24:46.840 ⇒ 00:24:57.720 Henry Zhao: You can tell ELT, like, this is gonna be… we’re gonna have the data to back it up for Brad to be able to take to the conversations. He already has all this stuff in Tableau, so you can just pull up the Tableau and figure out which pharmacies he needs to have a conversation with.
143 00:24:58.450 ⇒ 00:25:12.069 Henry Zhao: Okay. And then Ryan can easily just adjust the, like, routing to, like, they will literally see their volumes drop if they don’t improve their SLA or lower their COX, so… Yeah. I think that’s the idea that I’ve gotten from this conversation, and I think that’s a good point to present to ELT.
144 00:25:12.420 ⇒ 00:25:13.030 Robert Tseng: Okay.
145 00:25:14.070 ⇒ 00:25:20.080 Henry Zhao: And then once we have violet and all that stuff from Bass, we’ll have the actual data, and then they will be happy and say that Henry’s indispensable.
146 00:25:20.560 ⇒ 00:25:22.580 Robert Tseng: Okay, sure.
147 00:25:22.580 ⇒ 00:25:23.540 Henry Zhao: Yeah.
148 00:25:23.540 ⇒ 00:25:24.020 Robert Tseng: I mean…
149 00:25:24.020 ⇒ 00:25:25.490 Henry Zhao: I’ll keep working on that.
150 00:25:25.710 ⇒ 00:25:28.810 Robert Tseng: Yeah, yeah. No, I, I, yeah, I think we’re…
151 00:25:28.920 ⇒ 00:25:36.530 Robert Tseng: I know that you felt like, okay, like, the week’s kind of light, or whatever, I… I… Yeah.
152 00:25:36.530 ⇒ 00:25:55.429 Henry Zhao: No, no, it’s more like… I’m glad you’re pushing me, because, like, I feel like maybe last month what happened was, like, I was too complacent with, like… because I’ve done analysis before, but it was, like, with a company, right? And so it’s, like, it’s pretty easy to do that analysis. I think you’re pushing me now to, like, get to the next level, which is, like, if you have a client and more ambiguity, how do you actually…
153 00:25:55.850 ⇒ 00:26:07.000 Henry Zhao: pull out an analysis where they will say that I’m indispensable and they never thought about that before. It’s something that I really need to work on more, but it’s like, thank you for pushing me to actually spend some time thinking about that and developing those skills.
154 00:26:07.570 ⇒ 00:26:24.439 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I know, it’s all good. I think, I mean, just to remember, like, you know, for better or for worse, like, this… the way that we operate as a consultancy is… the default is that Brainforge does not exist. So, if we are not, kind of, like, pushing…
155 00:26:24.760 ⇒ 00:26:34.280 Robert Tseng: then we will just… we will just lose our contract, or it will just, like, get smaller. So, there is kind of always, like, this fire under you to, like.
156 00:26:34.280 ⇒ 00:26:47.460 Robert Tseng: we need to be the ones driving our own roadmap, because that’s kind of how it is. And yeah, people will find all kinds of reasons to blame and, like, to… like, even the Mitesh situation and his comment.
157 00:26:47.460 ⇒ 00:27:00.249 Robert Tseng: I think he’s just, like, he’s like, oh, my performance is not good, so I’m just gonna blame that the tracking… attacking and tracking is not good. Well, it’s like, no, dude, there’s no excuse for you anymore. It’s clearly 17% better.
158 00:27:00.250 ⇒ 00:27:16.969 Robert Tseng: like, and yeah, and we just have to, you know, that’s just part of the game. But, you know, if we can back that up with our data, then we’re chilling. Like, there’s no, like, the conscience is clear, like, I have no problem having these conversations. It feels good to advocate for yourself, and like, you know, this ends up becoming case studies and all this stuff, and…
159 00:27:16.970 ⇒ 00:27:31.739 Robert Tseng: you know, it’s not always that, like, clients are out to get us. Like, I think, but it is… it is very much that way. So, like, yeah, I mean, you know, for… it’s not easy to keep a client for this long, like, I…
160 00:27:31.800 ⇒ 00:27:50.579 Robert Tseng: I think there’s a reason why most consultants probably only work, like, 3 to 6 months on a project. We’ve been with Eden for, like, a year at this point, so, I don’t take it for granted, like, especially even what they pay us, and, yeah, like, I, you know, you’re… you’re, you’re kind of… you’re a leader on the…
161 00:27:50.580 ⇒ 00:27:55.040 Robert Tseng: On our largest account, and regardless of all the noise and the other stuff, like.
162 00:27:55.080 ⇒ 00:28:07.410 Robert Tseng: you know, to me, this is an anchor client for you, and I obviously want you to be able to do… do well here, because I think this kind of sets you up to be able to go jump into any of the other projects. Yeah, so I think,
163 00:28:07.500 ⇒ 00:28:13.249 Robert Tseng: Yeah, that is what it is. Yeah, I think that’s kind of where we’re coming from.
164 00:28:13.830 ⇒ 00:28:20.570 Robert Tseng: yeah, I guess, you know, we could say more, but yeah, that’s all it is, so…
165 00:28:20.930 ⇒ 00:28:21.510 Henry Zhao: Yeah.
166 00:28:21.760 ⇒ 00:28:23.770 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I’m not… what… I mean…
167 00:28:23.960 ⇒ 00:28:31.070 Robert Tseng: Utam has his own way of, like, communicating and stuff, like, you know, you… you know how to read. But, like, yeah, I think just…
168 00:28:31.270 ⇒ 00:28:33.490 Robert Tseng: It doesn’t feel great if you’re, like.
169 00:28:34.000 ⇒ 00:28:40.649 Robert Tseng: okay, like, I need to take some time off, I don’t really think there’s that much work anyway, and meanwhile, Utam is, like, working 15-hour days. Like, he’s not gonna.
170 00:28:40.650 ⇒ 00:28:41.180 Henry Zhao: I like that.
171 00:28:41.180 ⇒ 00:28:58.260 Robert Tseng: Right? So, like, yeah, I would just probably not… I would probably not do that. If you feel like you need to take time off, that’s fine, but, like, obviously, try to do it in a way where we are… I mean, you… yeah, just… just… I feel like we’re pretty open and honest about, like, where…
172 00:28:58.360 ⇒ 00:29:10.780 Robert Tseng: what… what we can take on, what we can’t take on, and so, you know, I think we just… like, this isn’t… we’re not really trying to block you from doing what you gotta do. Like, I also know that you have some health things that you’re dealing with.
173 00:29:10.780 ⇒ 00:29:26.110 Henry Zhao: No, I was also just worried about, like, dropping the ball, like, with all the stuff going on this week, so… Yeah. But I can handle it. But I just want you to know that, like, in my… in my… all my time now, I’m thinking about the analysis, I’m thinking about how I can provide more value to the client, so I am taking it very seriously, and I do think that I can, like.
174 00:29:26.680 ⇒ 00:29:33.419 Henry Zhao: provide that analysis that we’re looking for. Yeah. Like, I’m just thinking about it and, like, developing that skill, basically.
175 00:29:33.930 ⇒ 00:29:34.959 Robert Tseng: Yeah, I mean, you can’t…
176 00:29:34.960 ⇒ 00:29:35.529 Henry Zhao: wouldn’t ask.
177 00:29:35.530 ⇒ 00:29:40.540 Robert Tseng: me for feedback, like, I think this is… it’s a good place to be in, like, you’re not…
178 00:29:40.970 ⇒ 00:29:41.920 Robert Tseng: Yeah, like…
179 00:29:42.100 ⇒ 00:29:49.529 Robert Tseng: You know, you’re not in the react… super reactive mode like maybe you were a month or two months ago, when you’re having to just…
180 00:29:49.640 ⇒ 00:29:55.769 Robert Tseng: fight that deadline from… from, from Eden, like, now it’s all proactive. It’s… it’s on us.
181 00:29:55.770 ⇒ 00:29:56.160 Henry Zhao: Yeah, yeah.
182 00:29:56.160 ⇒ 00:29:57.870 Robert Tseng: We kind of set the terms, so…
183 00:29:57.870 ⇒ 00:30:15.710 Henry Zhao: It’s, like, October, though, like, that week that it was really bad, like, I thought I was procrastinating, but it really wasn’t that. It was, like, I didn’t have any ideas of, like, what analysis I could do, but it’s like, talking to Amber, for example, and allowing me to bounce ideas off of someone is something that helps me get these ideas, you know what I mean? Yeah, sure.
184 00:30:16.010 ⇒ 00:30:16.590 Robert Tseng: Yeah.
185 00:30:17.880 ⇒ 00:30:18.850 Robert Tseng: Okay.
186 00:30:18.990 ⇒ 00:30:33.959 Henry Zhao: Like, for example, Honey Stinger, like, it was like, their volumes are very stable, like, what could I potentially… and, like, even just listening to Byron’s meeting, it didn’t seem like they wanted to grow. He literally said, like, my issue’s not growing, it’s, like, growing the percentage of e-commerce versus…
187 00:30:33.960 ⇒ 00:30:43.369 Henry Zhao: you know, overall growth, right? So it was like, how do I fine-tune my analysis with the data we have to give him what he… what would actually be useful to him? And that’s what I was trying to.
188 00:30:43.370 ⇒ 00:31:00.260 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, in the most recent call, you noticed, yeah, he’s just like, well, it’s actually… well, sure, I know that we’re gonna grow 7-10%. Well, they didn’t grow 7-10%. Like, there’s clearly, like, a forecasting problem for them. Like, they just don’t really know how to plant capacity. Clearly POs come in, and then they don’t fulfill them, and stuff like that, so…
189 00:31:00.430 ⇒ 00:31:08.900 Robert Tseng: And I… yeah, I mean, so it’s maybe less an urgent thing to grow, because, you know, they’re… they have, like, healthy 7-10% growth, but…
190 00:31:08.900 ⇒ 00:31:21.719 Robert Tseng: you know, that’s also barely keeping up with inflation. Like, I don’t really think that that’s… that’s great for an e-com business to be only growing at that speed. So, but anyway, like, whatever. He’ll say what he wants to say. Like, I… I think…
191 00:31:21.720 ⇒ 00:31:28.529 Henry Zhao: your honey waffles aren’t, like, expiring that quickly, so why don’t you just have extra on hand to be able to, like, meet the demand if it surges?
192 00:31:30.360 ⇒ 00:31:42.619 Robert Tseng: Yeah, well, I mean, I guess they’re co-packers, we’re just… we’re just not making enough stuff. So, like, I think, to me, it ends up… it’ll probably be more of a finance and an ops client than it will be a marketing, or there will be a lifecycle marketing piece to it.
193 00:31:42.840 ⇒ 00:31:51.020 Henry Zhao: I mean, I don’t know, we’re still kind of exploring. To me, this is, like, we pretty much got, like, 2 months to do Discovery with them. Like, this is not, like, super intense.
194 00:31:51.150 ⇒ 00:31:51.910 Henry Zhao: Yep.
195 00:31:52.660 ⇒ 00:31:56.839 Robert Tseng: But okay, we will… I haven’t jumped to another call, but me too.
196 00:31:56.840 ⇒ 00:31:58.149 Henry Zhao: Alright, I gotta talk to Susan now.
197 00:31:58.150 ⇒ 00:31:59.250 Robert Tseng: Okay, alright, talk to you later.
198 00:31:59.250 ⇒ 00:32:00.339 Henry Zhao: Thank you, bye.