Behind the Scenes: "You're Not too Small"

This week I visited three 3PL fulfillment centers. And then I got sick.

Those two things might sound unrelated, but by the end of the week, lying in bed, I kept coming back to the same thought: I need help. I need to hire. I need to build something that doesn't stop just because I stop.

3PL stands for third-party logistics. It's a warehouse and shipping partner that packs and ships boxes on a brand's behalf. I've been doing my own fulfillment since January. Every Paper Bento box gets packed, labeled, and sent by my own hands. It works, and I love that I can add personal touches to every single box.

But it has a ceiling, and I'm starting to hit it.

So I've been reaching out to fulfillment partners. For a while, most of them said no. "Too small." "Not at your volume." "Come back when you've grown." I heard some version of that so many times that I almost stopped asking.

Then one of the partners I met this week brought me out onto the warehouse floor and pointed to a team in the middle of a packing run for another subscription business. He told me they came to him when they were smaller than Paper Bento is now. A couple of years later, they're doing 200 to 300 orders a run.

I stood there and watched for a little while. It didn't feel like a pitch. Watching another subscription box move through that room, I could see a version of our future, and it felt closer than I expected.

"You're not too small for us."

I've been turning those words over ever since. I think I had absorbed all the rejections a little more than I realized. To have someone say plainly that we're a good fit, and to see right in front of me what a couple of years of that could look like, felt like something loosening in my chest.

Then the second half of the week, I got sick, and Paper Bento largely stopped with me. If I'm in bed, the packing doesn't happen. The emails slow down. The to-do list just waits. I've been the whole system from the beginning, which made sense when it was the beginning. But the 3PL visit showed me what it looks like when things run on their own: when there's a structure in place, and people in it, and the work moves even when the founder isn't standing there holding it up.

I'm writing this newsletter from bed, as one of the things I wanted to check off before I go back to sleep. I think that says something too. I want Paper Bento to get to a place where it doesn't depend so entirely on me being well, being present, being the only person who knows how everything works. That's what I'm building toward. It's not glamorous work, but it feels like the right work.

The owner of that center said one more thing I wrote down before I left. "I put full trust in my employees." He said it simply, like it was obvious. But it's the thing I most needed to hear right now, as I start thinking seriously about building a team of my own.

In the meantime, every June box still goes out the way every box has since January: packed by my hands, in my own garage. There aren't many left this month.

Once again, thanks for reading and being part of this with us.

One question before you go: is there something you've been carrying alone that you could ask for help with? I'm learning that asking is its own kind of progress.