Leading with Integrity: Sam Hancock on Easypost’s Vision and Growth

welcome to the know your ship podcast presented by ehub I’m your
host Frank Dolce welcome back to the podcast I I’ve known this guy for a long
time I’m super excited to have him here and it took a it took a minute to get
him scheduled because he’s so busy all of the time just a facade that I put
on vacationing yeah exactly and working at the same time but this is the one
and only Chief Revenue officer at easy post Sam Hancock do you get this
question all the time by the way with your last name are you related to our
one of our founding fathers I do I mean I can give you the story is there a
story well sort of a perfect this is the perfect start to a podcast John
Hancock never actually had kids um so there’s not any like true descendants
of John Hancock really however my whatever great grandfather at one point
adopted John Hancock um he was his uncle and so he adopted John Hancock so my
my ancestors or whatever were his kind of Uncle cousins you know everything
like that oh my gosh that’s unbelievable do you feel it necessary for you to
have a very stylistic signature now that you know that that that’s in your
past I think you should do I think you should probably should but um
especially because I I feel like all my job is now is signing contracts for
vendors and and sales contracts like that’s pretty much like 24 hours of my
day is just like signing NDA signing contracts signing vendor agreements
that’s all that’s all cro do at this point buts you have to sign our lease so
well let’s do that today I mean you have a real opportunity here because you
know how you’re I don’t know what how that would be related he’s not your
uncle but well let’s just call him Uncle John yeah okay you have an
opportunity because Uncle John’s signature is like that’s everywhere yeah
it’s iconic I think there’s you know it’s up in Boston right like there’s a
big sign of it in Boston and you have a real opportunity here yeah I mean you
you never know one I should just pay somebody to give me a standard signature
yes I think AI can do that now right yeah yeah why not just give me the John
Hancock signature with my name on it you know another interesting fact about
the founding fathers is that George Washington never had children oh I didn’t
know that yes he had adopted children but he never had children of his own
and apparently he had some health issues yeah that uh so he couldn’t pass
down yeah um so my whatever ancestors owned all the Merchant Marine stuff
back in the day in Boston and gave it he gave it to John Hancock who then he
lost everything in the Revolutionary War so there’s a famous story that you
know the Britain were there in Boston and you know they were going to bomb
Boston to try to you know kick the Britain out and basically John Hancock
stood to lose everything because they were going to destroy all the ships and
yeah you know he’s like yeah like bomb bomb away you know like go do it and
so he pretty much lost everything and then he was you know if you really
follow us history there’s Articles of Confederation which was the first form
of government they set up and he was in theory the the president under the
Articles of Confederation so he in theory was also the first president of the
newly formed United States of America until they got rid of put the
constitution in and George Washington became the president there we go give
us just a you know the 30,000 foot view of what is easy Post Yeah so easy
post started in 2012 our founder Jarrett strebin um was looking to uh create
a shipping API similar to what stripe is for the financial industry uh
Banking and and you know taking payments and stuff like that um wasn’t a lot
out there uh that was available uh so he created easyy post which was really
a it’s a headless API and that’s Semite technical term for what we do um I’m
sure you know Engineers will probably you know respond to this and be like
that guy’s an idiot I’m not a technical guy at all so um I always describe it
as but you’re in good company yeah I always describe it as a middleware that
we help connect e-commerce companies uh whether direct shippers or even just
softwares that provide logis Solutions uh to a wide variety of carriers if
you were to go and say Hey I want to ship with UPS today it would take you 3
months to build the integration another 3 to four months to get certified by
UPS to make sure your labels actually work in their you know their machines
and everything their processing plants and everything um where with easy post
it takes you I mean in theory you could set it up in 5 minutes uh you put in
your UPS account and you can be off in shipping your labels are certified you
don’t really have to do much yeah um so we really take that technical
integration work down help take the certification stuff down and then and then
moving forward it’s um you know we we handle all the compliance carriers
change a lot of what they’re doing um you know I think a great example was
last year uh the FCC came out and changed Hazmat requirements um so all of
these carriers who ship stuff on planes had to change all of their Hazmat
classifications and kind of how they handled Hazmat packaging MH um then they
go into their apis and they change everything and a customer will then have
to go in and update everything that they’re doing with easy post we just
handle all that for you and you don’t have to worry about it anymore yeah um
and so we really save a lot of engineering time a lot of engineering effort
you know I always say this to people I I don’t think I’ve ever ran into a
company who said we have too many Engineers that work here um you know it
it’s it’s a talent pool that’s you know sometimes light um everybody wants
them it’s hyper competitive so really a lot of what we try to tell people is
is that hey you’re probably using three to four Engineers to maintain your
carrier stuff just let us handle it you can take it down to maybe a half an
engineer’s time and take those engineers and do something else do something
cool build other cool projects right or you know build you know a better
website you know better marketing right what whatever you need just just take
those resources and move somewhere else alleviating pain for your customers
in that in that area by the way I always say about e-hub that we have too
many Engineers work here well I’ve met some of them so I can see why no but
then but then we’re always in a situation where like why can’t can’t we get
people to get this done they’re like well we need more Engineers so like okay
yeah Road road map is always full yeah and you can never move fast enough
that’s so true well it’s a it’s a fascinating business and Jarrett is is he’s
a he’s like he’s a genius level kind of guy if you’ve ever well I’ve had a
chance to visit with them obviously and you graduated from the University of
Utah so a lot of people are genius level to you so very very very well said
just for everybody’s edification I graduated from BYU so yeah we won’t hold
that against you though and look look what I did for you today I mean I’m
like all I’m all blued out here today just honor of your presence welcome I
appreciate it colors don’t Define me but I I just like the story about how
Jarrett saw this opportunity in the market yeah this great entrepreneurial
spirit and and went after it and has built this really amazing company how
many how many people do you have at easy post now um I think we around 450
people the last time I looked um I’ve stopped looking because I I think I
start hyperventilating a little bit um specifically around how many people are
in my organization and I’m like I I you know I feel like I’ve probably only
met 30% of them and you know probably only interact with about 10% of them
but you know all these people are making sure that I make the right decisions
at times and you know it can be overwhelming to think about that yeah well
you you must have a lot of good people on your team the shipping and
Logistics industry is Ever Changing always evolving how do you stay on top of
everything that’s happening I mean you work directly with all of these
carriers and who knows on a weekly basis if USPS is going to Institute some
new program or there’s going to be a new fuel surcharge with UPS or FedEx and
or DHL is going to introduce a new program you guys have to be on top of all
of that it’s critical for you and for your customer yeah and to be honest it
was actually really hard even like four or five years ago um so so I been an
easy post for about six years and when when I first started carriers did not
like us they actually looked at us as an impediment to their goals um they
didn’t like the idea that somebody else might own the customer relationship
um and so they looked at us as like some middleman that was you know gonna
take their baby and you know um and and so and that’s evolved over the years
over the last four or five years um actually it was probably about three
years ago that we created a very specific like carrier management
relationship team uh with the idea of how do we start building bridges with
some of these carriers uh and it was funny because when we built the team you
know the first thing was this is going to take years Sam before you know we
make any progress like UPS FedEx USPS right DHL these are Behemoth companies
I mean thousands upon thousands of people that work for these companies they
don’t move fast you know we don’t even have contacts at some of these
companies right now and you know so so it was a big investment by the company
and you know over the last four or five years I think technology is involved
and even carriers have invol evolved in in terms of kind of understanding
that if they want to be successful they actually do have to start working
with technology providers because they’re not technology companies right
they’re they’re logistics companies and they’re really really really great
logistics companies I’ll never be a logistics company I I you know will’ll
never right be as efficient as moving a package from point A to point B as
somebody like FedEx right but what we can be really great at and where we can
actually help carriers is you know helping Bridge the technology Gap that a
lot of e-commerce companies actually do have um to help them get more
packages into their system and so we created that team and it’s you know it
was it was a very slow process for us to start working with the fedexes and
the UPS’s and the usps’s of the world um but now we have really great
relationships with them and you know it’s less about us trying to pull from
them and now they’re starting to you know push stuff to us and so that’s very
very helpful um not saying it’s always perfect but um but yeah it it is hard
I mean you know to to the point about the road map I mean we essentially have
80% of our road map built out for FedEx is going to change whatever
compliance stuff they’re going to change this year and we have to adapt to it
yeah and USPS is going to change some stuff and and so you know we have to
stay on top of that and it is challenging and there’s tradeoffs right like
you know sometimes we have to make a decision of we’re going to do this thing
for FedEx versus this thing for USPS or vice versa or whatever it may be
gotcha well the carrier piece is really interesting because way back when
especially before technology was really prevalent in the industry carriers
could kind of own the customer and they weren’t interested in offering some
sort of M multicarrier solution I mean UPS isn’t going to say hey you can
ship all the other carriers on our platform too it was you you’re going to
use UPS yeah and here’s our platform volume discounts absolutely all of that
stuff well and then so and it was just kind of a natural evolution in the
market that multicarrier platforms developed and came around carriers found
themselves kind of at the back end of that and now how do we manage this Tech
technology in the marketplace and so utilizing the distribution platforms
easy post ehub right to give the customer the best experience the carriers
have to get kind of aligned with the with the platform so that’s where you
guys have been really successful that’s something that we think that we’ve
done pretty well yeah in in the marketplace and just managing that constant
Evolution I’m curious what do you think where where is it where is it headed
I mean it seems like there’s there’s always change that’s the constant in in
the industry there’s always change so where is this where is this headed are
we are we looking at like what we see in college I know you love college
football I love college football are we are we looking that like college
football Mass Sports drops on Monday so how about that so you know like okay
so the Pack 12 went away and now it’s the big 12 the Big 10 and the SEC and
are we Florida State and Clemson are rumor to V to join the Big 12 so so is
this where we’re headed with with the logistics industry are we going to have
like a couple super conferences yeah yeah just a couple mega mega shippers um
they’re just going to snatch up I yeah I mean I do think maybe there’s
eventually going to be somewhat of a consolidation in the market um lots of
regionals out there I mean easy post supports domestically 80 carriers right
I don’t think people realize that there’s 80 carriers to even be had and
that’s parcel carriers that’s not even Freight Carriers right so you had
Freight in and then it gets into the thousands and thousands because anybody
with a truck and a CDL license can can be a car be yeah um but yeah I I could
see a consolidation coming you know I think one of the things I’m interested
in right now is on track is you know they they were they did the merger with
uh laser ship and you know so they had the east coast and the west coast and
now they’re launching in Chicago and and in Texas to try to become like the
first you know domestic Nationwide carrier uh to go compete with the big guys
so so that will be interesting to see how successful they are uh moving
forward but um you know I think that there’s going to be a kind of continuing
to inch towards the middle between the carriers and all the technology
providers to kind of figure out how do we actually work together I think a
lot of that is actually going to be driven by the actual e-commerce companies
themselves not necessarily easy poost or e-hub or FedEx or UPS I think a lot
of these e-commerce companies are realizing that there is a lot of savings in
shipping there is a lot of things they don’t know right now um you know I
always give this example to people we we have several customers who are
shipping you know anywhere between 50 to 100,000 packages per month which is
that’s that’s nothing to sneeze at right that’s a L of and they’re single
threaded and they have like one guy who’s managing their shipping right and
you talk to that guy about going multicarrier you talk about you know what
his time and transits are you talk to him about you know how much how he’s
performing in Florida and like if he’s seeing delays and they’re kind of like
I I don’t know man like I I I spun up a UPS account and and that’s that’s
what it was right um but I think realizing now that it’s like hey we actually
have to start looking at this data and that’s where a lot of decision-making
is coming through of like oh hey if we actually supplemented you know our our
shipping in New York with something like onra we could save a dollar a
package right and that could represent 20,000 shipments a month at $20,000
you know you’re talking about you know quar million dollars a year just just
in one area of your shipping business um and you know there’s more analytics
coming out more platforms like e-hub who providing information to to
customers to make better decisions um same thing with easy post and and so I
think what’s going to happen is that these e-commerce companies are going to
keep driving these carriers as well as technology Partners to be better and
to give them more information and to have them make better decisions which is
going to make the carriers and and the technology Partners really come
together and say Hey how do we solve problems for for these e-commerce
companies and how do we do it together so that neither one of us are out in
the cold kind of holding the bag and and you know realizing that we kind of
miss the boat yeah well it it’s interesting too because with the you mentioned
you you have you work with 80 different carriers small parcel carriers
domestically alone yeah and if you’re just looking at the small parcel Market
there there is a level of sophistication that needs to be in place to manage
all of that so you could look at all the data and and we provide all that
data of like okay you know in East Coast if you were shipping this way then
you’re going to save whatever per package and your Transit time’s going to
improve but that’s not the same carrier that’s going to be your most
efficient for Texas or for California or somewhere in the midwest but now
you’re looking at are we going to incorporate 17 different carriers into our
warehouse to try and drive the maximal efficiency and and price reduction
that we can that’s difficult that’s challenging having enough dock doors and
and everything else so at the moment it is a little bit of finding that you
know compromising a little bit finding the right mix of carriers that you can
manage to gain as much efficiency as possible price reduction as possible and
still be efficient in the warehouse yeah I would say for on the easy post
side like the most carriers that we see being utilized are somewhere between
that like 8 to 12 range um and you know and these are Big sophisticated
shippers a lot of 3pls are multicarrier and you know several distribution
centers as well right so you know you know they’re they’re not going to use
uh you know an on track maybe on track’s a bad example better trucks that’s a
Midwest kind of small partiel carrier like they’re not going to use their
California warehouse for better trucks right like you know they’re just going
to ship it out of um their their Midwest facilities but um you know so so
yeah 8 to 12 on the really large scale but I would say most common is you
know they have one of the big four and then they’re supplementing some of
that volume with a regional in some area where maybe they have one of their
distribution centers right that’s probably the most common um you know I I
think too where the industry might be headed is right now there’s a lot of um
specifically and you know easy post is more geared towards Enterprise type
shippers um we don’t we don’t really support the SMB uh segment of shippers
very well um and you know I think where some of the industry is headed as
well is is a lot of Legacy kind of on Prem software that’s in those
facilities and those shippers are using yeah I think it’s they’re realizing
it’s slowing them down absolutely right like you go on Prem because you have
a little bit more control and the speeds are a little bit faster but then in
this new world we live live in UPS decides in 2021 I’m not going to pick up
your packages mhm right and all the sudden you’re like oh no what am I going
to do and and fair to UPS right like they everybody was overloaded right and
yeah so they had to figure out how do we actually deliver packages and we
can’t deliver everything because we just don’t have the capacity to do it so
a lot of customers were stuck saying oh man what do I do like I’m
single-threaded ups and they may not come to my door and pick it up um um and
now I have this on-prem Legacy shipping software and adding a new carrier is
a kind of a nightmare challenge Y and I have three distribution centers and
so I have to go to each single distribution center and roll out changes and
so you know I I think where a lot of people want to get to is maybe sacrifice
some of the speed stuff in order to be more Nimble in the larger decisions
and being able to deploy really easily across your network to say okay hey
we’re going to add DHL in and we’re going to deploy it right now across four
distribution centers really easy really simple so that they can make faster
decisions and and be more Nimble in what they do yeah absolutely no no
question well it’s it it’s a fascinating industry and I we could we could
talk all day about that but I would like to get into some other things with
that easy post is doing and spec and more specifically about your background
um I’m I’m fascinated by the tour to France and I watch it every day and of
course uh easy post is a sponsor of the EF education easy post team yeah and
and so I like to walk I like to watch those guys I I have a question for you
and your personal background I know you we know you graduated from BYU
because you came in here like trumpeting that the first first thing you said
when you walked was like cou and then you did this hand signal I didn’t know
what it was I thought we were going to like fight but did you did you grow up
thinking that you were going to be a chief Revenue officer shipping and
Logistics industry I mean is that which you were playing yeah that was like
in my diary as a putting mail and packages when you were a kid and dressing
up as a postman stuff like that that was your funny enough my grandfather was
a Postmaster General at his local post office in Chico California which is
near where I grew up but um anyway that besides the point he he was a letter
carrier for a long time speaking of the Postmaster General you know the first
Postmaster General yeah in the United States was also a founding father if I
get this wrong you can edit it out right yeah it’s Ben Benjamin Franklin oh I
didn’t know that either yeah first Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin there
you go okay so bringing it all back to the hand so um you know what I grew up
in a really small town in California um a very poor Community as well um and
my idea of like being wealthy and affluent was actually teachers like that’s
because we grew up in a poor community and they were seem to be the ones
driving nicer cars yeah um as you get older you realize wow teachers don’t
make anything um which is you know always a shame but absolutely um you know
so so no I I I I didn’t know what software was I didn’t know you know what
sales was I didn’t know anything and um I you know I graduated from high
school um I I am LDS so I served a mission and you know there’s always that
weird kind of Gap year um you know where you graduate you don’t go on your
mission until you’re you’re 19 and um so I kind of just hung around I think I
took some classes at a community college nearby until I went on my mission I
you know I came back and um I was working pushing grocery carts at the
grocery store because again there’s just no industry in Orville where you can
you know get real you know highp paying jobs or anything like that and um my
brother who’s about s years older than me was out here in Utah and he was
working at a startup company that nearly went bankrupt um so he called me up
and said hey would you want to come out here and work for me for free I’m
only going to pay you based on commissions and you can live in my basement
until you start getting some money and and you can you know support yourself
and move out of my basement cuz I have two kids and I don’t really want you
living in my basement um that sounds like an amazing offer yeah did you jump
at it immediately no I actually did cuz I’m like well you know I’m just pushing
cards like you know it can’t get much worse than this hey Kurt Warner before
he won the Super Bowl was working in a grocery store I mean maybe that’s
there’s something there so I moved out to Utah this was like February of 2008
and I started working at a at a software company doing sales um and you know
it it actually started going really well and you know I wasn’t like the most
amazing sales rep but I wasn’t terrible either and um in 2008 I mean this is
really where like software as a service was still relatively in its infancy
like it wasn’t like you know you know it was really starting to gain momentum
um and they came to me and said you know we had gotten to the point where we
had sold so many contracts and they were always up for annual renewal that it
was hard to renew current contracts while selling new ones and so they came
to me and said hey would you be interested in moving into kind of like some
kind of account management role so again this was well before customer
success was a thing in software and you know I always enjoyed the
relationship side of things versus like the cold killer sales guy guy tight
side of things yeah and so I said yeah sure that sounds great and so I did
that for about 3 years and and then um I actually moved back out to
California CU they moved the headquarters to San Francisco so I lived there
for about a year um and you know I was 25 at the time and feeling like maybe
I wanted to get on with life a little bit cuz you know I I came home from my
mission it was just kind of a Mad Sprint um doing all of this stuff and I
wasn’t married married and you know I kind of wanted to do that so I actually
quit and went back and moved back to Utah and you know applied to BYU and
started attending BYU and I had always had a dream to be a broadcast
journalist that was yeah that was what I wanted to do so that’s what you grew
up sorry long answer to to the to the original question I love it I love it
and so so you came back from your mission typically well not I guess not
typically but you go on your mission you know graduate high school kids will
go to college for a year then go on a mission come back and immediately go
back to college yeah you didn’t do that didn’t do that I worked for four
years you started working and then you went back to and then you went back to
school and you decided you were going to be a broadcast journalist and I know
on your LinkedIn page you produced like the cougar hour kbyu Channel 11 yeah
yes I think I had that right brother Curtis who was the teacher if I got that
wrong I do apologize if you watched it it was so meaningful I can’t remember
the name how did you like that by the way oh I loved it um you know I I
thought it was so much fun like I I loved I you know when I was there um I the
elections were actually going on so this was the 20 sorry I’m trying to
remember when my son was born um the 2014 election cycle was going on so this
wasn’t a presidential but like there was a Orum race and I covered that oh um
and I just thought it was so much fun in fact actually a quick story about
that there seemed to be a prohibitive favorite in the orm Mar race uh at the
time and so I actually went to the guy who everyone thought was going to win
to his celebration party and to to film everything to get the story and
everything and um as a night went on it was like oh the numbers aren’t the
numbers aren’t as what everybody thought they were be and then it just kind
of kept going and going and it was like you know the room just was getting
quieter and quieter and then finally I’m like I got to go to the guy who’s
actually going to win and I’m like packing up and they’re like oh where are
you going and I’m like well I got to I got to go to to the guy who’s going to
win um so I went over there I I tailed it across town and you know set up my
camera and you know got some sound bites and and everything but no I really
loved it and I and I did an internship at at Channel 2 news here in Salt Lake
and I was just doing some producing type stuff um I did a couple of stories
for him where I wasn’t the actual reporter I just kind of wrote it and then
you know the actual reporter read the story um Lov that um I actually got a
job offer from Channel 2 again this was 2014 and to produce the 4 a.m news um
didn’t know that there was 4 a.m news news I was going to ask that question
400 a.m. news yeah had no idea um and you know the news director at the time
there are a lot of people that were pressuring me to take that job actually
um you know people at BYU some of the other internships that I had done were
really pressuring me to take that job because it was like a feather in their
cap that like oh hey one of my we placed this guy yeah we placed this guy
especially in the top 30 market right like that’s not super common um and the
news director I you know I actually don’t remember his name but like I’m
almost every day very grateful for him he he actually sat me down and said
hey look we think you’re great we want you to work here but if you don’t
absolutely love this please do not take this job he’s like it’s long hours
it’s low pay mind you that what they offered me was less than what my wife
was making as a teacher at the time so she was teaching up in you know West
Jordan yeah and he was like it’s you know the news has changed so much like
it used to be you know huge contracts people get paid a lot of money now it’s
bare bottom you know don’t you know but you’re still working just as hard I
think he told me at the time like people in the news had the high highest or
third highest divorce rate after like police officers in like the Army oh my
gosh and so he’s just like just just don’t take it if you’re if you don’t
truly love this and you know lots of conversations with my wife and you know
we actually had a baby on the way uh like two weeks away from being born and
I had worked in software and I had loved software like it wasn’t like it was
my dream growing up to do it but I liked it enough that I knew I’d be happy
doing it um and so I turned down the the job offer much to dismay of some
people in fact you know I I really did have some people who you know were
were pretty upset with me um um and you know I I went and interviewed at a
local tech company here in Utah got a job as a customer success manager and
and that was kind of it right and and um I took that job and you know
everything you know not easy but it’s you know it’s you know life feels very
fulfilled even though it’s not necessarily what I wanted you know I think
most people realize as they get older you know your your best day at work is
never better better than your even your worst day at home you know and and
you know that’s kind of what matters is you know being able at times to just
come home and relax and not worry about things be able to live a lifestyle
that is good for me and my family and um and so so that’s kind of you know I
very grateful to that that director that boss you know many years ago who who
you know was very honest and real with me well I when I when you’re talking
about that I just keep thinking of an an man and how glamorous being you know
being in The Newsroom but it was in the 70s right or you know whenever Anchor
Man was set right yeah in the 70s oh do you do you think it was really I
think it was really like that yeah yeah no I mean he he he like sat me down
and was like yeah we used to pay reporters like $150,000 a year and we’d give
them like this $20,000 wardro budget and he was like now I basically offer
reporter like 60 Grand if that and like there’s no budget for clothes and and
you know and he’s like it’s just it’s just changed it’s changed over the
years people don’t get their news from watching the TV as much anymore it’s
all about you know Google and you know getting on the web and your phone and
and Twitter and and getting your news yeah unfortunately I fall into that
category I rarely and I felt like I was a long time hold out I but I rarely
watch local news anymore it’s just I was like in a hotel the other day and
they had the New York Times like the actual physical paper and I was like oh
wow wait what’s this this it’s like an antique display this is what we used
to do yeah and I was I was actually like I was like oh like somebody’s still
printing these yeah well okay so you you transitioned then from you had a big
career in the broadcast industry decided to move away from that got into
customer success yeah and what what did you what was your was your degree in
broadcast yeah it’s Communications with a broadcast journalism emphasis
basically okay uh but you got into this customer success area did you find it
with that software company and that role that you that kind of fit your
personality your strengths or how did that develop to where you are today
because I people look at a chief Revenue officer and they would say oh yeah
this guy probably has some accounting or Finance or business or some kind of
background that doesn’t seem like it’s necessarily the case no not at all um
you know it’s actually funny because um customer succ