Emmalou Penrod 0:00
I’m talking to Lee Torres today. And he is a founder, CEO and logistics concierge. Lee, welcome.
Lee Torres 0:11
Thank you. Thank you, Emmalou. I appreciate it. Happy to be here.
Emmalou Penrod 0:15
And Lee, I need to tell you, I have been so impressed with what you’ve done. You were one of the thousands, who found themselves unemployed, because of this pandemic. And you rose above. You took a lemon and you made lemonade. You didn’t just, and I’m going to quote one thing you said, then I’m going to let you tell your story. But you made the interesting point that you got to thinking, “Well, I have the experience, the knowledge, why don’t I just start my own business?”
Lee Torres 0:55
Yeah, thank you. Emmalou. Yeah, it’s a blessing. Sometimes I frankly feel a little bit guilty, because I know that right now with the pandemic this year, 2020 has been crazy for a lot of people, and has been the demise for others. And so sometimes I feel a little, a little guilty, because it’s been very bittersweet. You know, in April of this year, April 3, I got let go from a company that I was working with, well established a worldwide company, they’re headquartered in Spain. When I got the job, it was an accomplishment for me, it was a great thing. And aside from the the hit to my ego, it was a time that I was like, What am I going to do? Right? What am I going to? What can I figure out? And, you know, through God’s help, and my family’s support, you know, the over, the last 10 years, I’ve had the opportunity to stay inside the same industry and just became resourceful and started to think about, well, I’m not really getting that much traction on the interviews that I’ve been conducting, you know. I would talk to, you know, I’d be on level two or level three of this interview and all of a sudden, it was like, Okay, well, let’s, uh, we’ll get back to you, you know, when things kind of calm down. And I think a lot of people said that for a long time, but things have yet to kind of calm down, right? So I, I, you know, it went from April 3 to may 10. In between that time, I stayed up late and invested and started my company Bellhop Logistics, which was founded with many of the evolutions that occurred through my career. Because I’ve always been in logistics, and I’ve always been on the sales side of it, but it’s never, it sounds weird to say this, but it’s never been my baby. So there’s a different care that went into creating this and a different, just a different persona that the company took. I really wanted to be very service oriented. As far as other companies are very price oriented, how competitive they can be in that and that’s important, but it’s also important to me to give people something they deserve, right? And really, it’s kind of living the extra mile and go above and beyond. So, but yeah, this was a situation that I think that a lot of us are still going through it. And I use a phrase recently that I heard that says, you know, through the ruins, we rise. And I think that for the American public and for me to be blessed to live in this country. You know, we’re the kind of people that don’t give up and I wasn’t about to start doing it, you know, in this situation. And from it, this pretty little flower kind of grew and now although I’ve only had the company and the company name Bellhop is brand new, Lee Torres has been helping a lot of people for over a decade now. And so it’s, it’s kind of, I kind of brought it all home and, I feel like very fortunate. And I’ll tell you a little bit more about it in a bit but very fortunate to be only five months in and all of a sudden be profitable and go from a guy who was unemployed to all of a sudden now, you know, having a company that is doing okay. You know, starting to do okay. So, I’m thankful and just want to get out there and push it forward, right? Pay it forward for people and help them in their businesses and see if there are ways that I can help them, decrease their costs and put more profit in their bottom line.
Emmalou Penrod 4:27
So, explain what Bellhop Logistics is all about. You mainly serve businesses. Is that correct?
Lee Torres 4:37
Yeah, so we’re focusing on the small and medium size company. So anybody that is an entrepreneur, we want to help anybody that has a small you know, maybe anywhere from 10 to 50 employees all the way up to a couple 100 employees. We we can take care of every every size. So I’ll give you one example, and that’s one of the reasons that I was talking about the blessing in disguise that COVID was for me. Just a couple of months ago, this was a relationship that I had from previous positions with the other employer. Long story short, we got this client, they’re doing two and a half million dollars in revenue with us now. It’s a huge step in the right direction for Bellhop. And I bring that up not to gloat but more so to say that’s the clout and also the strength of the negotiating power that we have, to be able to help the company. We’re helping them save $18,000 a month. And that’s money that goes directly to their bottom line, right? It’s able to help them. So I bring that example up because I want to give what we’re doing for this medium-sized company or this large company, right? I want to do that for small to medium companies also as be able to bring them more money and more profit for every single item that they ship. So the way that works is Bellhop has access to deeply discounted programs with all the carriers, you can think of the USPS, even FedEx, UPS, DHL, and I can go on and on about a couple of other things. But I’ll focus on that for a moment. So any small package, whether it’s documents, maybe you’re a legal, maybe you’re an attorney, and you have to send documents to the courthouse, they have to be next day. Maybe you work in an escrow office, and those documents need to be turned around pretty quickly. Or maybe you send, you have a candle company, you know. We have somebody who sends out, they actually make and manufacture at home, here in the US, ukuleles. And we ship those for them as well, right? So it can be any type of product that you would typically take to FedEx or UPS and the post office and whatnot. The difference with us is that you get to skip the line, if you will, and not pay the retail right at the counter. But getting a very easy to use system, which I’ll show in just a second. But a very easy to use system where you can create labels from home, from your office, from your warehouse, what have you, and get access to these rates and easy ways. Really, really our goal is to give you more time in your day. So you can focus on making those sales or focus on making those calls or focus on, you know. So aside from being able to save people a ton on their shipping expenses, our goal, and the reason that we call the company Bellhop, is we want to be able to elevate your experience when it comes to logistics. We want to be able to help you thrive, help you grow, but also not at the expense of having to deal with an 800 number. For instance, calling FedEx, UPS, whatever it might be, you get service when you need it, when you want it. And for people that you know and can build a relationship with, they’re going to have your back that are going to be in your corner that can take care of you and your needs in the highs and lows, right, in the good and the bad, if that makes sense. So that’s really where we live is we want to be able to help people not only save money, but also increase and elevate the experience that they have with shipping.
Emmalou Penrod 8:05
So for the example, maybe you have a family who’s decided to start a family business. They’re going to be working out of their home, you know, then they’ve got to ship to their customers. Could you help them?
Lee Torres 8:18
Yeah, absolutely. So we have, and I’ll share this on the screen here in just a second so you can see it. But we have a system. Like I said, that’s very, very easy to use. I’m actually bringing it up on the screen right now. And this system allows you to create labels very easily. And basically, I’m gonna scroll down here, you can see this customer happens to use FedEx and the USPS. You can come in here, you can grab your rates, you can create your labels. But here’s the important part that I want to show these people now. You’re doing an at home business, a lot of people know the names like Shopify, WooCommerce, ShipStation, things of that nature. Our system will actually integrate with all of these systems. So you’ll see Amazon here, you’ll see eBay, you’ll see, you know, even QuickBooks. You know, Shopify is on here. I think you mentioned Etsy. I mean there’s, there’s a huge amount and what this does is this makes it all the all the easier for them to access the program, access the rates, and kind of move on with their life in the sense of let’s get on to the next project. Let’s get on to the next sale. So if you’re a mom and pop or you’re a home based company that is selling, you know, or a lot of people even now Emmalou do what’s called drop shipping, right? They purchase products from overseas, perhaps and then they create an e commerce website. And they kind of ride this wave, right, and they ship products and they sell products. So we help a lot of people that can do that as well. So, small and large, quick and efficient. We want to help people be more efficient and obviously profit more every time they’re shipping.
Emmalou Penrod 10:00
That’s, you know, when you were showing your screen that’s what I thought of was ecommerce. Anyone with an ecommerce business needs to talk to you. And I know that several families right now, they need a little extra income. And I think we’re going to see a lot more home businesses.
Lee Torres 10:18
Yeah. And a thing that I would say that’s, that’s really interesting also that we do that kind of separates us from the rest is that, a lot of the rates that you’re able to access, like if you’re a an ecommerce shipper right now, and let’s say you use Etsy or Shopify, a lot of people, because they don’t know where to go or don’t want to spend the time to find out where to go, take the bundle that Shopify and Etsy, their bundle might have shipping, and it might have their products on there, and it might have their website engine on there. So they say this is easy, I’m just going to plug into this, which, for most people, that might be a great solution. But let’s just say you start to grow. And one day you’re like, you know what, I don’t want to use Etsy or I don’t want to use Shopify, or I want to create my own website, or I want to go big and go on Amazon. You can’t take the rates that are inside that. Pretend that Etsy or eBay, or even Shopify, you can’t take those with you, you don’t own them. So one of the things that we do is that our programs are authorized, and we can set you up with actual account numbers that are actually tagged to your business. Meaning that if you, wherever way you go, you can take those rates with you. So it’s also not only being efficient and helping you with the price, but it’s being consistent in the sense that you can take this with you. It’s not a program that you, oh, I don’t want to, I don’t want to stray away from Etsy, or I don’t want to stray away from Shopify, because if I do, then I lose the rates that I have. You don’t have to worry about that.
Emmalou Penrod 11:50
So they can work with you, get those lower rates, and then no matter how their business changes, or grows, they still have those rates.
Lee Torres 12:02
Right. And the great thing about these programs, too, which I didn’t mention Emmalou. And I want to make sure to make that, is these don’t have any volume requirements, they have no minimums, and they have no contract. So in the industry, when you work with the FedEx, when you work with the USPS, if you start at zero, you get almost no help, right? If you have a little bit of volume, you have to retain that volume to be able to retain those rates. And if you dip the discounts dip as well. So that’s one of the things about our program is, aside from being able to access it easily, get access to rates that are not normally available to the general public, you also get to work through our system and our negotiating power and not have to worry about, Oh my god, do I have to send a minimum of 10 packages a bit? No, no problem. You sent one or none, you’re still going to save every other day that you do ship. It’s not going to go away for you.
Emmalou Penrod 12:57
So that’s a perfect solution for the home business just starting out and building their client base. I think that’s wonderful. Well, I love your story. I love how you found a way, and I love your “Through ruins we rise” and you certainly did.
Lee Torres 13:18
Yeah, thank you. Let’s just say, I mean it’s kind of crazy looking back at the last five or six months, but we want to pay it forward and we want to help other business owners get out there and profit more, you know. And a lot of people, until we create a teleportation device, shipping is always going to be an expense for us, you know. So why not save on it? Why not have somebody that has your back through it? And that’s what we want to be that’s what we want to offer to our customers.
Emmalou Penrod 13:49
And of course you can help anyone nationwide.
Lee Torres 13:53
Yeah, yeah, actually, we have we have clients even worldwide, but yeah, nationwide. Absolutely. Anybody we’ve got just to name a few. We’ve got a few in New York, a couple in Florida, Las Vegas, and I’m located in California, but But yeah, we can we can help anybody in the country.
Emmalou Penrod 14:11
Wonderful. I love it! So how do people contact you?
Lee Torres 14:15
So the website is www.bellhopship.com. I can actually, give me a moment I’ll bring up this just in case . . .
Emmalou Penrod 14:28
And we’ll have all of your links on my post on my website.
Lee Torres 14:33
Yeah, so you should have it there then, in that case. But it’s www.bellhopship.com. We have a Facebook page, which is https://www.facebook.com/BellhoplogisticsUSA/ and then our phone number is 855-623-5546, or it’s also known as 1-855 bellhop. And aside from that, info@bellhopship.com so well, we’ll have those, I think on the links you said. But otherwise, it’s been a pleasure. And I thank you so much for the opportunity and I hope that we can help the masses through through this message.
Emmalou Penrod 15:13
Well, you know, with people with your kind of a positive attitude, we’re gonna be okay.
Lee Torres 15:20
Yeah, I agree. Thank you, Emmalou. I appreciate that.
Emmalou Penrod 15:23
Thank you, Lee. You have a great day.
Lee Torres 15:26
You too. You guys take care.
