ATTENTION: Below is a machine-generated transcription of the podcast. Yes, here at Rapport International we talk a lot about how machine translation lacks quality. Here you see an example of what a machine can do in your own language. This transcription is provided as a gist and to give time indicators to find a topic of interest.
Wendy: Hello, my friends. Thank you for listening to the Global Marketing Show. I've got another good episode coming your way. But before I introduce our guest, let me remind you that the podcast is brought to you by Rapport International, a company that connects you to anyone in over 200 languages and cultures by providing high-quality [00:01:00] translation and spoken interpretation services.
We've done a lot of looking into AI and machine translation and all that and can advise you on it. If you want a free consultation on what you might want to be doing to increase the efficiencies of your global communication, certainly reach out to Rapport International. It's Rapportintl.com and you know, we always have a tidbit, and this one also ties into today's guest. There's a sign in Norway that says, and I'm sure it was translated . It's in a cocktail lounge in Norway and it says, ladies are requested not to have children in the bar. How many pregnant women you think are visiting that cocktail lounge to have their babies?
Well, today's guest is a father of a six day old. It's his first child. So we spent a little bit of time talking about that has [00:02:00] nothing to do with global marketing, but I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit because that is something that happens around the world. So Josh Medow is the CEO of Mercury, a company that since 1984 has simplified healthcare and life sciences shipping.
This is a really interesting niche business that they have. And prior to Mercury, Josh was an officer in the US Army and then spent 19 months systematically searching for a business to acquire and lead. And I know from conversations with him that he was thinking global from the start. So Josh, welcome to fatherhood and welcome to the Global Marketing Show.
Josh: Thanks Wendy. I'm excited to be here. And excited to be a new father.
Wendy: Yeah, yes, yes, yes. How's that sleep?
Josh: Uh, not the best.
Wendy: So if you stumble over any words, don't worry about, we'll get the message there. So tell me a little bit about your [00:03:00] military background and how that got you thinking about buying a company.
Josh: Yeah, so I went to West Point for college, became an infantry officer in the army, and I spent just over five years doing that in the army as an officer. I got to spend some time overseas when I was in college. I did a semester abroad in Egypt. I was an Arabic major and that was a Great place to live.
Great place to learn a lot about the world. And what I really liked in the military was leading small organizations. So I kind of had three different times where I got to lead about a 40-person organization. And I just loved that. But with the military with like Most large organizations, you get to do that for a certain amount of time, but then there's a career path and you have to move on.
So in the army, I got to lead organizations for about a year, and then I would have to move on to the next role. And by the end of the year, I felt like I had the organization in a really good spot exactly where I wanted it. And then I had to leave. And so when I got out of the military, I knew I wanted to lead a company for a long time.
That was really one of the things that [00:04:00] drove me to trying to acquire a business. I went to business school after the military, and I learned that there's this whole world of people, retiring business owners who are looking to sell their business to somebody who wants to run it for a long time.
So I was able to get a loan by this existing business that's been around for almost 40 years now. And now I can lead for 20 plus years, lead it through my career, really build the team and the culture and stick with it instead of having to move on after 12 months.
Wendy: I can't even imagine trying to build a team in a year and then moving on.
I mean, that is just a lot of dramatic change. what were you looking for when you were looking to buy a company?
Josh: I was looking for a company that had a great reputation, had been around for a long time, decades or longer, and had employees who'd been there for a long time and really knew what they were doing.
I have some background in the logistics a little bit from the military, but not the specifics of healthcare logistics. But when I came to Mercury, I learned that our company had that, right? We had 40 plus employees who'd been there for a long time. They knew [00:05:00] all of the details of shipping.
And so I was able to learn from them. And that's what I was looking for a company that I could learn from the founder of the company and the existing employees. And I could kind of take over something that was existing and make it even better.
Wendy: Okay. Give me two sentences about what Mercury does so people understand that.
And then I have some other questions for you.
Josh: We help medical device life science research, biotech, pharma, and diagnostic kit companies with their shipping globally, as well as within the US. We offer every different shipping option, so temperature controlled, not temperature controlled, fast, slow, one day, two day, three day.
And we really guide our clients so we have software where they can log in, book and track their shipments, but we also have dedicated teams that offer individual attention to help with these really complicated shipments for our customers.
Wendy: Okay, so you walk in and you look at this and, you know, on average, somebody's going to look at a hundred different businesses before they pick one.
I mean, I was lucky with the first acquisition of Rapport, I looked at one and acquired one. I'm curious, how many did you look at?
Josh: Wow I looked at a lot. I [00:06:00] think I reached out to about 20,000 companies. I think I spoke to over a thousand business owners. So I looked at a lot and I was looking for something that was really unique.
I wanted just a business that was really unique. It was the first one I'd seen that does exactly what they do and Mercury perfectly fit that.
Wendy: And what was your background in logistics that lined up with this?
Josh: Just in the military, I was an infantry officer, so I had about 40 people, but along with that, there's a lot of logistics.
Making sure that people are supplied and figuring out that side of it. So I had the operational background of how to make things happen. That's kind of what junior officers in the army do. We're the ones who just like figure out how to get things where they're supposed to be including people.
Wendy: Okay, so you take a look at this company. They were doing a little bit of global when you came in, right? So what I really want you to tell the story about is how much they were doing global, what your vision was, and then how did you take the actions to make it global? Because so many people are kind of [00:07:00] afraid or they say, we've got so much business here in the United States, why do I even need to do that?
So your story would be really good.
Josh: So there's kind of two ways in which we went global. One is our team. Originally, we were all based in Boston, New York, and Chicago. Today, we have a team in Turkey. We're looking at adding a team in the UK. So on the one side, there's our team and I'll talk about that.
The other side is the business of actually shipping. When I first took over the company, probably about 10 to 20 percent of our shipping went internationally from the US out or into the US. And speaking with customers and spending a lot of time learning, learned that the international shipping was really the most complicated part and the area that customers needed the most help.
There's just a lot of details around customs and different import permits that make things really complicated. And we really leaned into that as a company and we developed a lot more expertise to be able to guide our clients on everything related to international shipping harmonized codes, customs clearance, customs paperwork, and working with different [00:08:00] carriers who can ship internationally.
We use passenger airlines. We have a lot of partners overseas that we work with on the shipping side. So on the one hand for our customers, we just learned that that was the most complicated thing for them was international shipping. Domestic shipping can be complex particularly if it's cold chain, but international is almost always complicated.
And then the second side was on the team. Well, we had a few software developers in the US and there was a small portion of our business, but we really wanted to grow that out. And it's just tough to do that as a self-funded company. You know, we aren't VC funded. We aren't owned by a private equity firm, and it's just hard to have software development in the US without that outside funding.
And really the best way for us to do that was to build a team overseas. And we've been able to build a really impressive team in Turkey. It's called Mercury Technology. It's a subsidiary of Mercury Business Services, which is our US entity. And we work really closely. It's about a seven-hour time difference.
So we do a lot of morning meetings. I've traveled out there a couple of times. We do quarterly meetings out there. And so we've really built that out.[00:09:00]
Wendy: How much of your shipping is now international?
Josh: Probably over 30 to 40 percent.
Wendy: Okay. So you've doubled the amount easily of what you're doing.
Josh: It's a really big portion of our business. It's just the biggest pain point customers have, especially on the healthcare life science side. You know, if you're shipping something that's temperature-controlled, maybe it needs dry ice to stay frozen. Those shipments often get stuck at customs. The dry ice can sublimate and then the shipment can be destroyed.
And so there's just a lot of complications there that we help our customers avoid that situation.
Wendy: Talk to me a little bit more about who are your customers.
Josh: Our customers are all over the world now. Originally they were largely in Boston, but now they're all over the US and all over the world medical device companies.
So making devices, maybe they're selling them or sending them to hospitals or universities or different clinics. Diagnostic kit companies. Those are companies who make some sort of kit. Often they're testing blood for cancer. We did a lot of COVID test kits also, during COVID. Those go out to clinics all over the world.
[00:10:00] Patients get tested, then they get returned back to a lab. And then we work with biotechs and other pharma companies who are doing research. They're collaborating with other labs, maybe with international labs or contact research organizations. And then eventually they're going to go through clinical trials and try and commercialize some sort of pharmaceutical.
Those are the three main buckets, the medical devices, diagnostic kits, and the life science biotech research.
Wendy: So when you started thinking about expanding your international, how did you figure out that that was their biggest pain point? And then how have you leveraged that into your global marketing plan?
Josh: Yeah, the way I figured it out and most of our team had figured it out along with me is just talking to our customers, just getting on as many calls as possible with current customers, potential customers, just listening to their pain points. And time and time again, international shipping comes up particularly the customs portion and the cold chain portion.
And so that just became really obvious that that's our biggest pain point that our customers have. That's what we should try and solve [00:11:00] for them. And then as a result, you know, one interesting thing about shipping is that it goes from one company to another, often from one lab to another. And so another large part of our business is trying to convert those customers or recipients of packages into customers.
Because if there's a lab in the U. S. that's collaborating with a lab in Germany, we want to Do the shipping for both of those labs, and so we've been able to grow organically doing things like that. If we do a great job, the recipient wants to work with us.
Wendy: Okay. And now, are you doing all your marketing in English?
Josh: We are today. We do some people operations marketing in Turkish when we're trying to hire there, but almost all of our marketing is in English today. That'll change over time. We're looking to set up a physical presence in the UK, and then after that, we'll, we'll move to continental Europe. But today, most of our communications i s in English.
Wendy: How do you get clients or attract clients if they're in the other countries and speak the other [00:12:00] languages?
Josh: Yeah, there are certain terms on the SEO, the side that are just common terms. So for example, UN 3373 category B that's an international designation for biological samples.
It's a shipping term. And so, you know, we rank really high on Google for UN 3373 B, because I know if somebody is
searching that term. They're trying to ship biological samples. There's different requirements, triple packaging, different things associated with that. That term exists across the world.
Wendy: Oh, okay. And so they end up reaching out to you because they found you through during a search. And then what's the rest of the buyer's journey?
Josh: Yeah, exactly. There's all these just long-tail keywords that are just really specific things that healthcare life science companies are trying to do, and we know that they're related to shipping.
So companies will find us, they'll read some material on our website they'll reach out to us, they'll talk to somebody on our sales team, learn about Mercury, we learn about their shipping needs if it seems like it's a good [00:13:00] fit, we onboard them which means we set them up in our software. We have the software portal where they can log in, book and track any shipment.
We also introduce them to these dedicated teams. We call them squads and they're dedicated teams for our customers. They work with the same four or five people all the time. They get to know them really well. It's really helpful for companies that shipping similar things. So they don't have to re-explain every time.
So for example, like a medical device company that maybe has to ship a medical device to a hospital has to be uncreated and has to meet up with a technician to calibrate it. Nobody wants to have to explain that whole process every time. Now I've got one going to Germany. Now I've got one going to France.
They get this dedicated team who knows the exact same thing and can help make it a lot easier.
Wendy: Okay, so that would be a U. S. client shipping internationally, you build the relationships tightly and with them, so then the recipient you're trying to convert over to a client too, would that same squad work with the recipient?
Client?
Josh: Exactly. Assuming that that [00:14:00] client is shipping into the U. S., which is most of the time what happens, that maybe a shipment from the U. S. is going there, and then they ship back to the U. S. , import here. And so then they'd work with that same team.
Wendy: And all of that is done in English then?
Josh: It is.
Wendy: Yeah. So you said for right now, do you have plans to translate or will you be able to grow and run your business all with English?
Josh: No, we'll definitely translate over time. Our main focus today is finding U. S. clients. But over time we'll be looking for clients outside of the U. S. who are looking to ship maybe into the U. S., but also to other countries. We do that type of shipping today, but it's just not our marketing and sales focus. So when people find us, we'll serve them as we come to focus on it, we'll obviously have to operate in a lot of foreign languages. One of the things we do also is that we have partners at every major international airport in every major country.
They're the ones who go in and replenish dry ice for us and help with some physical shipping actions. And they speak the local language. Often what happens if you're shipping into [00:15:00] some country, that country's customs will want to reach out to the recipient. And so our international partners will do that part.
And that's always in the local language.
Wendy: Okay. Okay. I was shocked that through all the shipping you could do it all through English. That's why I kept pressing you on that. But that makes sense as your sales and marketing right now is focused on the U. S., particularly in their pain point where they're selling internationally.
You get the partners that are handling that. But the recipients can speak enough English where you can try to convert them because they're already connected into a U. S. company, and then you grow for them. And eventually, you'll start doing your marketing in other languages so you can, can target those markets
more.
Josh: Yeah, exactly. We kind of are organically growing that way. We just look at what countries do we have the most customers in and then, okay, we should set up a presence there. And obviously that'll have to be in their language. So that's our next step is doing that. I think we'll start with the UK because the language is a little easier.[00:16:00]
Also, Cambridge is one of the top five biotech cities in the world. So it's a pretty big target market for us. But after that, Germany, Switzerland, France, Ireland are really large biotech markets as well.
Wendy: I'm really glad to hear you say that UK was not just because of the language because there's so many other reasons not to do that.
But then when you go on to Cambridge is one of the biggest biotech. That's the main reason. And then I think you've studied which markets are the highest probability of life sciences, biotech, medical devices.
Josh: Exactly. Yeah. Target. Exactly. The three biggest in the world are Boston, Cambridge in the US San Francisco and San Diego, and then London and Cambridge. But after that, you know, Zurich and Switzerland and all over Germany, particularly the medical device side.
Wendy: Okay. And so you narrow it down to that. Yeah. So what are your biggest challenges with doing international work?
Josh: One of the biggest challenges is just the time. With our internal team, it's complicated because there's a [00:17:00] seven hour time difference, so we can only have a couple hours a day to do overlapping meetings, but also when we're working with shipments going internationally, you know, if we send a message over to our partner at a reasonable work hour in the U. S., we might not hear back till really late that night because of the time difference, and so that's always our biggest challenge is just the time differences. We do time and temperature sensitive shipping. We want everything to move really fast. But, you know, sometimes other countries customs is closed.
You know, they work their own work hours.
Wendy: Right, right. So that's why you've got to have partners in the ground. I think you were telling me before that the partners will run over and change the dry ice if there's an issue with customs.
Josh: Exactly. Delays happen all the time with international shipments, particularly biological samples and things like that.
And so we have to have teams available to replenish dry ice or cold packs to keep things in the right temperature range.
Wendy: Yeah. Talk to me about how you set up international partners. I actually had somebody ask me the [00:18:00] other day for a partner in the Netherlands. They're a company in Germany. So I think everywhere people struggle to find the right partners.
It sounds like you've done a good job of that. Give us some advice on that.
Josh: One of the advantages we have is we've just been doing it for decades. So we've had so much time to test and vet different partners that the ones we have today we know are really good. But, you know, at first we, we reach out to them, try and establish a relationship, learn about what they do.
And then we like doing test shipments trying some things out, making sure they get with the way we want. Maybe we'll use GPS trackers to make sure they go exactly as we want. And then over time, as we learn who does a good job, then we'll start using them for actual customer shipments. We also, are involved in a ISO. We have ISO 9001. We're working on WHO GDP, which is the World Health Organization's Good Distribution Practices. And so there's some specific processes that are required there, audits that we do to make sure our partners are following the exact processes we want. But we definitely have the advantage to having done it for decades.
If we were to [00:19:00] try and start today, it would take a long time.
Wendy: So you definitely do outreach to them, but how do you even find them and identify them?
Josh: There's a couple different organizations we use. For us, there's an organization called the World Cargo Alliance. Then within that, there's specific categories of different pharmaceutical qualified shipping companies or carriers. And so we'll go through organizations like that. There's conferences that our team will go to. And then sometimes they reach out to us. We'll have international partners who are looking to ship to the U. S. We'll help them with the U. S. shipments, and then they'll help us with shipments to their country. So it's a couple different ways. Those industry organizations are by far the most effective way to start.
Wendy: What kind of conferences do you go to?
Josh: That organization, the World Cargo Alliance, has their own conferences. So there was just a conference in Miami.
We had two people from our team who were down there meeting with all of the partners. A lot of them were people we've worked with for a long time. It's a lot of personal relationships there. They got to meet in person, which is great. And then seeing who else is out there, what else they can offer.
Wendy: Okay. So when you're saying the [00:20:00] industry groups and conferences, you lean on the World Cargo Alliance a lot and you can get right down into the subgroup.
Josh: Them. And then there's a U. S. based career organization and other trade organization. So we use them for a lot of our U. S. partners.
Wendy: Okay. All right. So that's a reminder of people to go out and find their industry conference or industry association to find partners.
Josh: Those are really great. And within it, because people will self select and say, you know, we do pharmaceutical and we do food and beverage related shipping. For us, it helps us know exactly who to work with.
Okay, let's go to the ones who do pharmaceutical. Then let's look at what certifications they have. Let's audit them and test them out.
Wendy: And has the company historically done pharmaceutical life sciences or did they do other things and then dive into that?
Josh: Yeah, it's an interesting story. So the company was founded in 1984.
And the founder was running the mailroom of one of the big Boston law firms. And he had this idea, he can make a company that was the shipping department for all the law firms. Law firms really needed two [00:21:00] things. At the time they were shipping contracts. And so if there was a contract, they needed to be there for a three o'clock meeting what Mercury would do is we would proactively track those shipments. So 24/7, we'd have people looking at the location of the shipment to see if it was where it's supposed to be. Often transportation carriers will just tell you where things were last, but they won't tell you where they're supposed to be.
And so we developed that system to figure out where they're supposed to be. If there's a problem, we'd reach out to the carrier, try and solve it, see if we can bring in another carrier to get it delivered. And then of course keep our client looped in. So that was the first thing we did. And the second thing that the law firms needed was on the billing side, you know, law firms didn't want to pay for shipping.
They wanted to bill it through to their clients. But they would get these invoices from carriers with hundreds of different shipments. They'd have to go through line by line to assign each one to their clients. So we developed a system to subtotal that for them. So that's how we started. We had these kind of two needs that law firms had.
And for about a decade, we were just a law firm shipping company. But then, of course email started, DocuSign. That's when we [00:22:00] started looking at what other industries are similar, have those same needs for proactive tracking and guidance, and, and being in Boston, with Cambridge just right across the river, healthcare life science became really big.
So now, for about 15 years, it's been a large part of our business, and for the last five or so years, it's really been our sole focus.
Wendy: I was just out at the Worcester Incubator that's doing a lot more in biology research. So they're growing leather that could be, you know, grown in the lab and not taking off animals and the whole biologics for food. Is that all something that you could get into too?
Josh: We do. Yeah. We work with a lot of different incubators. We're actually the preferred shipping company for MassBio, which is the nonprofit that serves all the biotechs in Massachusetts. But we work with a variety of incubators and accelerators.
What typically happens is those small companies that you're talking about they might have five or six employees. And they have research materials that they're collaborating with others on, but they're probably scientists. They're PhDs. They don't [00:23:00] know any of the details about harmonized tariff codes and customs and how to ship things internationally.
And so we serve as really an extension of their team where they work with us and we help figure out the logistics for them.
Wendy: Okay, so you're the MassBio preferred partner. Well, that makes a lot of sense with where you're located and what you're doing.
Josh: Yeah, they're a great organization, and I think they have about 1, 600 member companies just in Massachusetts, which just tells you how large the biotech world is here.
We've been working with them for a long time.
Wendy: Oh, good, good. So what are your biggest challenges that you see with growing the company and growing it global?
Josh: There's a couple different challenges. You know, one, as we talked about, as we grow internationally, just on the operation side, things will be more complicated because of language and hours.
We operate 24/7 in English today from the U. S. But that will become much more complicated as we're getting customers who are in France or Germany or China and they're shipping somewhere not to the [00:24:00] US and everything should not be in English and they're probably happening at different hours.
So today we've kind of geared our team to have capacity at all the hours that they're needed in the US. We have fewer people late at night and more people during the workday. We'll have to really shift that as we operate internationally. And then, you know, there's also a whole administrative complication on the finance side, taxes people operations.
So we've been building that out changing the systems we use, really building our team to be able to manage that. But that'll also become much more complicated.
Wendy: Right, so back on the languages, is your platform set up to operate in different languages?
Josh: Today it's just in English.
We're obviously going to add that. It's on our roadmap. We've got some features we want to work on first in English. And then once we get them pretty good at a point where we feel like we can solve most customer needs that's when we'll start adding other languages in.
Wendy: So the technology that you've built will be able to handle the other languages?
Exactly. Good. Good. Yeah. [00:25:00] I've talked to a lot of technology companies are seeing examples of them. One that I'm a huge fan of, but it was not built to have other languages in it. And so that's been our huge struggle since they've been going international. So I'm glad to hear that you've had that forethought to build it that way.
Josh: Yeah. And a lot of our employees are non native English speakers. We have our team in Turkey. So it's something that we think about from the start, being more International company and obviously operating in multiple languages.
Wendy: Yes. And then have you accessed all the resources to help you go international, like the department of Commerce and mass export and all those?
Josh: We haven't actually gone to either of those. We have on the, you know, finance side, we're switching to NetSuite. We're setting it up to be able to have multiple subsidiaries starting with our Turkish subsidiary. In terms of systems, we are, um. But we haven't worked with either of those two entities, actually.
Wendy: Okay. Yeah, I can connect you with the local representatives, but they help companies go international and making introductions. They have some [00:26:00] grants that they offer. They do some consulting, they'll help with research. So it is a huge well kept secret in the U. S. That's what I like to tell their horn.
Every state has a department of commerce representative and they're all there. Like, it's the one thing you don't have to pay into you that you actually get back for being a business in the United States. And then each state has, you know, training and all those additional support. They work well together with the federal and state resources.
Josh: Yeah, that's great. I haven't heard of either, so it's definitely a well kept secret, but I'd really appreciate an introduction.
Wendy: Okay, I will. I'll give you an introduction to mass export and to the Department of Commerce team here. If anybody else is interested too, just go to Rapport Translations dot com and search for STEP grants.
That's the easiest thing to look for on our website and we'll take you right there to contacts. And if you want an introduction or you can't find it, just email me, Wendy Pease. So this has actually been fascinating. You've [00:27:00] done international work through working with the military.
You came into this knowing that you want to. Some people haven't even been out of the country. So what advice to them would you have for thinking about taking their company international?
Josh: Yeah, curiosity is the, main first step there. If you're really curious as an organization that's kind of built into our company culture.
And so we're always looking at what else we can do. Who else can we serve? What other problems are out there? And so that just leads you pretty naturally to solving not only problems in the U S but problems companies have overseas. The other part, I think that I think we did really well at Mercury was we started with having employees who are not customer facing who are our engineering team in Turkey But having that internal team overseas has helped us solve a lot of the challenges that we would have had if we just started with a sales presence overseas, figuring out the different hours languages, how to translate our U. S. culture and still have the same culture in other locations. So I think that [00:28:00] starting out with having our own team members overseas before we started to do sales, I think is going to pay a lot of dividends over time.
Wendy: Oh, that's a very interesting take on that because usually I hear of people starting with the salesperson, distributor, company representative and figuring it out that way.
Josh: Yeah, we thought about that, but we decided that's going to be our second step, but the first step is going to be to have our own team doing some internal work. I think, you know, some of the things we figured out with that, again, is that the meeting schedules, having to adjust our schedules for different time zones and communication our company culture and values.
How do we have the same culture and values in everywhere that we operate? So we do bi weekly, all hands meetings with everyone in our global organization. We set them up at a time that everyone can join. There's a lot of things like that, that we've figured out that will save us a lot of time.
Wendy: Right. And how did you end up opening up an office in Turkey for the technology?
Josh: Oh, we looked [00:29:00] all over our COO. R2 is Turkish. And he knew that there's a lot of great software developers there. And so we started out hiring a few people and it's been fantastic. Um, they've been really effective.
We have a really great team.
Wendy: Yeah, it goes again to show that if you've got somebody on your management team that's from another country, the connections that they have there can really help build out your team in another country and save costs and get some really good talent, if you're willing to work with those time zones differences.
Josh: Exactly. Our C level team, our CFO is Italian or was born in Italy. Our chief marketing and people operations officer was born in Armenia and our COO was born in Turkey. And then a huge amount of our company in Boston and in the U. S. was born overseas. So, we just kind of naturally have that global outlook.
Wendy: That's great. You are naturally diverse.
Josh: Exactly. I think being in Boston really helps with that too. And international shipping attracts people who are interested in that, interested in dealing with [00:30:00] customs and learning about how things move across borders.
Wendy: Right, right. That does. And then you get the advantage of all the problem solving because people have had different experiences or they have different cultures or connections in there.
So that'll that certainly helps the company grow. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know. Since we're coming to the end of our time that most of the times I end with a question for you. And that question is what is your favorite foreign word?
Josh: so I did a semester abroad in Egypt. I was an Arabic major in college.
And I love how they say good morning in Egypt. So in standard Arabic, you'd say sabah alkhayr, which means good morning, but in Egypt, they kind of have fun with that and they'll say things like morning of honey or morning of flowers or different things that are kind of fun. So I always thought that was entertaining.
And I'd always try and come up with like funny words to say.
Wendy: Oh, that's great. So how do you say it traditionally?
Josh: Sabah alkhayr. It literally means good morning, but then they'd say Sabaal and then they'll put in a different [00:31:00] word like morning of flowers, morning of honey. I think it's just an Egyptian thing, but I always found that entertaining.
Wendy: It keeps you awake in the morning because you get to think creatively.
Josh: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. They have a lot of fun with it.
Wendy: The last person I talked to liked the word, French for Scarecrow. So this is what's so fun about foreign words is you never know what somebody's going to catch with so I'm going to have to start saying to my kids, you know, morning of sunshine.
Josh: Yeah, they use that one. They'll say morning of light. That's a commonly used one.
Wendy: Morning of light. Yes. All right. Any final words of advice for our listeners?
Josh: Going internationally has been great for our business. It just creates new challenges. And, you know, at least for us, we like solving problems and doing things in the U S has its own set of challenges, but as we go internationally, it creates more challenges and it's just fun to solve those.
So I won't be afraid of it. I think it's an exciting challenge.
Wendy: Great. Thank you so much. And where can people reach you if they want to learn more or ask you a question?
Josh: You could find me on LinkedIn [00:32:00] or just email me. My email is josh at shipmercury. com. That's our domain.
Wendy: Okay. So Josh, J O S H at ship mercury.
com. That's ship S H I P mercury, M E R C U R Y. com. All right. Well, Josh, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today. And I have full faith that ship mercury is going to just keep growing with the way that it has.
Josh: Thanks, Wendy. I appreciate it.
Wendy: And so listeners, if you know anybody in the life sciences industry or does research or is in clinical trials, certainly share this episode with them so they understand how important it is to find the right person to ship their goods.
And if you know somebody that's been toying with the idea of international share this because that gives a lot of good information for somebody to noodle on if they would like to go international and again, if you want any contacts for your state or federal [00:33:00] representatives in your state, reach out to me, Wendy Pease, and I would be more than happy to directly connect you with the person in your state.
So thanks so much. And we'll talk to you next time. Thanks.
