The Unconventional Journey to Packaging Success with Jeremy Miller

Brent Peterson (00:03.054)
Welcome to this episode of Uncharted Entrepreneurship. Today I have Jeremy Miller. He's with Pax Solutions and a new member at EO Minnesota. Jeremy, go ahead, introduce yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and maybe one of your passions in life.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (00:19.333)
Sounds good. Sounds good. Well, thanks for having me. As you mentioned, my name is Jeremy Miller. I'm with PacSolutions. I started the company back in 2016. My day-to-day operations includes mostly sales and then

just general business growth, kind of the dreamer slash integrator. Um, if you're familiar with the EOS terms. Um, so that's really what we do is, is just to, um, Yeah, really are mainly sales and then just focusing on processes and growth and things along that line.

Brent Peterson (00:59.47)
That's awesome. And so we'll get into EOS as well then, since you've said the buzzword. How about passions? Do you have any passions that you have that are outside of your business?

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (01:04.676)
Yeah. Oh yeah.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (01:12.261)
I really like sports activities. I've been getting into the pickleball craze right now. When it's summertime I like golfing. We've been doing some fishing as well. A family member of mine just got one of those big ice castles and so we're getting out in a couple weeks. The weather hasn't been very accommodating for ice fishing up till now but a lot of stuff like that activities and

I also have a family, I have two kids, so I spend tons of family time and traveling for my daughter's volleyball. That's also a big time consuming thing.

Brent Peterson (01:54.478)
That's awesome. Again, for the listeners outside of the Minnesota area, we depend on cold weather to get out and fish on the ice. We lug out giant homes, the equivalent of park model trailers onto the ice that have big screen TVs and power and everything you can imagine for modern amenities and a hole in the floor to go fishing. So...

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (02:20.773)
Oh yeah, and they'll actually, you just drive them out there and then you crank them down and you just set down on the ice and you got your stove, you got everything there. You cook them fresh.

Brent Peterson (02:22.734)
Just crank them down.

Yeah, so where more than half the country is hoping for summer, there's a very small group of people in Minnesota that are hoping just for good ice.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (02:41.765)
Yeah, yeah, it's uh, that's just it though. Other than that, I'm, I'm for the moment. Yeah, exactly.

Brent Peterson (02:47.886)
Yeah, we're all for summer. And we'd probably be okay with just summer year round if we could.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (02:56.741)
Well yeah, I mean you can still fish without the ice obviously. So ice is not required.

Brent Peterson (02:58.478)
Yeah, right. So Jeremy, tell us a little bit about PAK Solutions and maybe the journey you got to it, how you got there.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (03:09.541)
Sounds good, sounds good. Yeah, no problem. So, Pack Solutions, we provide custom packaging solutions, a whole gamut of solutions, everything from your paper products of like corrugated folding cartons.

rigid set up boxes as well as we do a lot of thermoform trays. I'm sure you can see some of the stuff in the background here. So, I mean, you're talking 12 packs for beverage companies or takeout boxes for restaurants. Again, if you're in the Minnesota area, you know, like my burger, you go there, you order your to go burger and it's going to come in a carton that we provide. So, as far as the journey of how I got here,

It's a little bit different of one. It's kind of a risk adverse journey is how I would describe it. So in 2013, I left my job in the fun world of accounting. I did sales and use tax for KPMG and I left to go and help my dad sell packaging for some other companies. And I did that for three, four years. And

since I was in it every day selling packaging for these other companies, I saw like a gap in between what these companies were providing. And I was like, I might as well create a company to fill that gap. I could use, you know, the income and all that stuff to kind of fund it and just build it up slowly without rolling the dice and just 100% going for it. So it

slowly building it up and then over time we started to hire some help, some more salespeople, get a you know our office space and a warehouse and it's just been kind of a slow-grow process except for like the last year or two is really things have started to pick up as we put more resources and attention towards it.

Brent Peterson (05:15.054)
I like what you said about risk adverse journey or risk less journey or risk, low risk journey. That's typically not what you hear from an entrepreneur, but that's a great way to describe it. So would you, so it was sort of like you grew into it and then pretty soon you were able to just shed your job and all of a sudden you had this snowball that's continuing to get bigger.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (05:19.877)
Yeah.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (05:39.237)
Exactly, exactly. And I mean, even till now, you know, I had some really nice customers with these other companies. And because I'm not really competing against them, they're all kind of married. So it's not like I just said, you know what, I'm, I'm stopping there, 100% in this, my whole day is filled with packaging and packaging related sales and things like that.

But I'll still have all those other relationships. I still sell that ongoing business, because in the world of packaging, it's all about kind of annuities and having just long-term ongoing business. All the work is at the front end, getting it set up, and then it kind of just flows. So I've been able to kind of still do all of that and get people on board for my company specifically to help grow that without me having to just do everything.

Brent Peterson (06:34.99)
Have you seen more of a challenge on the organizational side of your business, putting it together, or the people side of your business?

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (06:45.541)
Because of our unique setup, or my specific unique setup, where I'm still kind of selling packaging for other companies, I would say organization was definitely the hardest part to start.

just kind of being able to explain the setup with people because sometimes we'd be like, what do you mean? I thought viewers with this company and now you're saying this company. So there's kind of like a learning curve on how to kind of properly explain that and just to keep all of the different things organized. As we were starting to grow, that's when it kind of shifted over to more people and trying to find the right people for what my company needed to grow.

Brent Peterson (07:27.79)
Before you discovered EO or before you started to getting more engrossed or involved in the entrepreneurial community, did you have some particular challenges that you were overcoming that you had or did you have a resource you could go to before you met the EO folks?

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (07:48.581)
Um, you know, I have a lot of business relationships, so I could go and kind of ask some of these people.

you know, different suppliers and different customers and things that I've worked with. But it always felt a little shallow. I guess it's kind of the way I would describe it where it's like, you know, they don't fully understand your business. And so they would talk to you and say, well, we can, you know, this is what I would do or give you some advice. But not really. The funny part is I actually didn't even.

I didn't even, so I started doing this with my father and he always was like, no, don't start a company. Don't, you don't want to mess around with that. Uh, just, you know, sell and do it that way. So I never even told him I did this until I had an office space and a proof of concept that it was, it was working well. And so now, now he looks back at it and he agrees it was a smart decision, but at first it was, uh, he always just kind of like, oh, you don't want to, you don't want to.

to risk it, you don't want to do that stuff.

Brent Peterson (08:56.878)
Do you think there's a challenge for somebody that's been in the corporate world for a longer amount of time or somebody that doesn't understand what it is to kind of go off on your own to either A, pull the trigger and do it or B, understand like you said if one of your siblings or your son or daughter is doing that, to kind of embrace that and support them?

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (09:25.349)
That's a good question. Because when I look back at the corporate world, I definitely picked up some really good skills from having that experience. But it definitely is a completely different game when it comes to learning and growing and just kind of having the grit it takes to do this.

It was nice to have that kind of middle ground. So when I left and I was just selling packaging, that was more, it was kind of like a middle. I mean, I essentially had my own company as an independent contractor. So I had some responsibilities, taxes, things like that. But I didn't really have all the skills. And so I would say for people coming out of that.

You probably want to really think about it and have mentors when you are doing something like that Because I think if you were just going at it 100% alone It would be very challenging

Brent Peterson (10:25.838)
My grandma always described my great grandpa as one of the worst business people in the world because he left his, after 50 years in business, he retired and left a whole bunch of uncollected, he was a butcher, he left a whole bunch of uncollected bills. Yet she and my grandpa also then opened a grocery store. And when I opened my first business, she said, oh, don't open a business. All we did was work hand to mouth for whatever, 70 years.

Has your father now been supportive in what you've been doing and kind of see your vision?

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (11:00.901)
Yeah, 100%. It took some convincing. But I would say even after a couple of months when he saw it, it really saw what we were doing and the needs we were filling. He was like, yeah, you know, and actually it is good to have something like that. Because, you know, we are able to provide value to our customers and offer some really unique solutions. So yeah, it took a little convincing. But now now he's fully supportive.

Brent Peterson (11:30.286)
You mentioned EOS in the very beginning. Tell us a little bit about how you discovered it and why you're now looking at it.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (11:41.093)
So, I don't think I mentioned this earlier, but I've actually been part of the Accelerator program too. So I had reached out to someone on LinkedIn. It might have been Brent Peterson or I'm blanking on the name now.

But I was kind of at that spot where I didn't know what to do. Like, things were going OK. We had cleaned up. We were kind of organized. And I really was like, well, what's the next step? I don't know where to go at this point.

And so I was just reaching out to people looking for help on like a business operating system. And someone responded and was like, well, I'm part of this entrepreneur organization. You should consider joining and we use traction or EOS. I forget what the current name is now. And really spoke highly of it. I didn't jump on board right away. I actually got on board to join the EOA.

And just because I wanted to meet people and talk to people face to face. But then as you, I was more involved with that organization. Again, that's the language everyone spoke and everyone spoke very highly of it. So it really convinced me to dig into it and, uh, you know, get fully involved with that process.

Brent Peterson (13:00.75)
Yeah, so I'm gonna I'm Brian Peterson, I'm gonna have to go and look and see if you contact me a long time ago about it's pretty possible that we did talk on LinkedIn.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (13:08.645)
No, it wasn't you then. And maybe that's just because I was reading your email. Because I remember what the guy looked like. And we had a conversation right at the beginning. And then I never saw him for like two, three years until like recently at an ice bath event. But for whatever reason, your name still does stick out to me. Like when I first started.

Brent Peterson (13:11.726)
Ha ha ha!

Brent Peterson (13:32.846)
Yeah, we've. So just going back to the EOS, and actually going back to Accelerator, because I also started in Accelerator, and I think it's a fantastic program. What was your first experience? I'm assuming you went to a quarterly day. And did you find that experience enlightening?

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (13:53.733)
Yeah!

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (13:57.957)
Yeah, they let me sit in as a guest on a quarterly day, and it got me thinking about a lot of different things that I hadn't thought about. The first day I went to was people, and...

even just like coming up with core values and thinking about what your company actually stands for. You know, you kind of think about those things, but you don't actually put it down and put it onto paper. So I found that very valuable. And then I just spoke to a couple of people and asked what it was about the accelerator program and it sounded very interesting, kind of what I was looking for.

Brent Peterson (14:34.926)
I think the exciting thing for me at the time was the fact that they didn't just give you a bunch of theory. I did a cash day, I think, and my very first experience with a ledger sheet was handing my accountant a printout of my QuickBooks rather than a file. Anyways.

The fact that they gave us a whole bunch of really good action items out of that quarterly day was such a fantastic experience. I'm like, I did the same thing at where it was a guest and they invited me to just sit in for the day. And I was like, wow, this is fantastic. And it was kind of launched me into where I am or not where I am. Yeah, it helped me be where I am now. But going then from Accelerator to EO, tell us a little bit about.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (15:15.429)
I don't think so.

Brent Peterson (15:27.438)
Well, you had a little bit more of a precursor into what you think you could expect, and now you've gone through forum training. Tell us a little bit about what you expect now out of EO going into this next year.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (15:42.981)
Prior to my training yesterday, you know, I thought it would be like a 50-50 mix of like personal and in business Having the training yesterday it feels like it's Heavily on like how you feel about both, you know, it's not necessarily as

I guess objective as I thought it would be where it's like, hey, here's your numbers. Here's, here's a good answer. Here's a solution. It's more about talking through things and coming to the solution yourself. That is a big part of it. Just when we were even doing like.

like a test or kind of like a run through of what a forum meeting would look like. It looked very different than I had expected, but in a way that I actually prefer, because I like to go deep into topics and more deep into just like what that means to people on like, you know, an emotional level and to them and their background, all of that stuff. So I actually liked it and it got me more excited to find

to Forum.

Brent Peterson (16:55.31)
Yeah, I think that one thing that a lot of people make a mistake about business groups is they think it's all about business and they forget that you have a personal life and a family life. And in Forum, it depends on which forum you join, but our forum is pretty evenly weighted to family business and personal. And we give an update on all three of those sectors. Where if you talk to some other just...

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (17:16.005)
Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (17:20.037)
Mm-hmm.

Brent Peterson (17:23.086)
networking groups or something like that. There may be, it's all about business and, you know, maybe personal is meant to be personal, not part of what you're doing. And one of the things that's for me anyways, in my experience in being an EO is that overlap between your personal life and your family life and your business life really affects your whole life, right? That's like...

I guess the only thing we don't talk about is our sleeping life, which is a third of our life, but the rest of that is all part of how you do business. And if you're stressed out at home, it really affects your business. And if you're stressed out in your business, it plagues your family or whatever. So I think that balance, and a lot of people don't understand that why we do that in our forums. So, you know, just kind of looking forward, what

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (17:53.989)
Hahaha

Brent Peterson (18:16.174)
What would you expect out of, what do you expect out of EO? And if we were to come back, you know, thinking like, what would you, what would you see the future Jeremy Miller in six months to a year if we revisit this conversation around how your form experience is going and how your EO experience is going? What would be your expectations?

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (18:42.981)
You know, again, I think it's looked at as like everything's about the business, but I think the thing that I'll experience the most is just personal growth and like understanding, which I think will translate into business growth. Um, but I really think the thing that I'll get out of there is to understand myself better and then also, um,

Like in that be able to prioritize and be like more confident in the business decision to make You know realize that no one has all the answers and it's all about just testing out some different things So I'm hoping six eight months from now You know, I have that growth and it translate into more success for the business Was there I think there's another part of your question. I might not have been

Brent Peterson (19:37.262)
No, that's great. I mean, I think we just like expectations and that you've already talked about that. So that's perfect. So Jeremy, as we kind of finish off our conversation today, I give everybody a chance to just kind of plug what their business is and how do they get ahold of you and why they should get ahold of you and can I get a coupon for some MyBurgers?

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (19:43.973)
Yeah.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (19:55.237)
Thank you.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (20:03.045)
Yeah, I wish. Uh, they, uh...

Brent Peterson (20:06.318)
Ha ha.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (20:07.973)
That one's a cool project because some of the things we do is very visible. You could go and you'll see it at a liquor store or at a grocery store. Some of it's more B2B on the manufacturing side where you put the package, your product in this package and it gets unloaded and no one ever sees it. But as far as what we do, we help companies develop packaging and also kind of

packaging operation. So sometimes people will come to us and have us just look at one specific item where they want us to improve upon it or

You know, really, it's based off what their goals are. Maybe they're trying to remove plastic from the packaging. Maybe they're currently producing the packaging in China and they want to figure out how best to make that type of packaging in the United States. So we take kind of a consulting approach, either on like a project by project basis or we'll review your entire packaging operations and see what makes sense. But yeah, we provide all

types of custom packaging solutions and we really help companies understand what drives those decisions and what they need to do to make the smartest decision in the end.

And how you get ahold of us, you can get ahold of us through our website. It's packs dot solutions. There's no dot com or anything. The dot solutions is the dot com. Um, or you can reach out to me and my email, which is Jeremy M. At packs dot solutions. And, you know, if you go to our websites, our phone numbers all over there or contact us for them. Um, but any of those waves are a great way to get ahold of

Brent Peterson (22:02.894)
That's great, Jeremy. Thanks so much for being here today. And I look forward to a conversation in six to eight months and seeing how your journey's going.

Jeremy Miller | PAX Solutions (22:11.877)
Yeah, that'd be great. I look forward to it.