Scaling Fulfillment Efficiency Down to the Minute

What really helped us to make that jump to the fulfillment side of things was being able to really get it down to the minute. Like how many people are supposed how many are you supposed to do in a minute? Rewarding the people that do the job and then really refining a process that would say, “Okay, hey, this was costing me 27 cents. I’ve got it down to 15 cents. So now I’m making money on it.” Welcome to the Know Your Ship podcast presented by EHUB. I’m your host, Frank Dolce. I probably ought to introduce you first. Okay. Jeremy King FB Solutions. You have a long and interesting work history. Well, I mean, it’s interesting, but

it’s only with a couple different companies as we were talking about leading into this. you kind of worked with a a print shop, printing company for a long time and then found an opportunity to transition into into FFE and and had some similar experience that allowed you to jump into FFE with a little bit of background. I’m sure that was helpful. Definitely. Right. Because understanding manufacturing, the flow of print jobs, the flow and the management of flow and the management of cells gave me a great foundation of okay, it it’s it’s the same, right? in printing, it’s you’re moving thousands of pieces uh a day, you know, millions of feet of paper a day. And

so it’s just it’s it’s the same thing. It’s the same concept of how do I get it from raw material at the back of the facility to package out the the front of this facility. So lot of expertise in that that helped, you know, set the standard for what we do at FF. I’ve been in printing shops before and the amount of paper that is stacked around and going through machines and everything. It’s a unique aroma in a in a print shop. Yeah. When I started in printing, uh the person that hired me says, “Hey, ink’s going to get in your blood.” And you and I’m like, “Dude, I just need a job.” Right? That

was it. I just wanted a job. I was going to school. I just recently returned from an LDS mission and so I just needed a job. And so I’m just like, I took it. And but it did it became it was amazing. I enjoyed the experience. It’s uh it’s very robust. I worked for the largest commercial printer in Utah, you know, and we were regional printer and you know is a $40 million company and got to manage that and but it was it was definitely rewarding. Yes. I’m sure a lot of your customers and and even you are interested in like carrier cost, shipping cost, actual shipping costs and margins associated with that and you

know whether or not you’re going to make money on those things. That’s an important piece of it. But in the whole scheme of things, there’s a lot of opportunity to lose money in the fulfillment process. Yes. Can you talk about that? Yeah. I mean there’s so many of the additional services. you know, you call it a value added service, but it’s like it’s only a value if you collect money on it, right? And so, like for us, when we were doing a lot of the hand assembly, it’s you quote a project that each unit’s going to cost, you know, you’re going to charge them 25 cents a unit. Mhm. Well, if all of a sudden

you’ve got 70 people and it’s costing you 29, 30 cents a unit and you’ve had 10,000 of them, you’re upside down really quick and you’re stuck. So, what really helped us to make that jump to the fulfillment side of things was being able to really get it down to the minute. Like, how many people are supposed to how many are you supposed to do in a minute? Rewarding the people that do the job, and then really refining a process that would say, okay, hey, this was costing me 27 cents. I’ve got it down to 15 cents. So, now I’m making money on it. And and kidding is one of those things if not managed really

well, those value added services. I think a lot of in the logistics space if they’re not managed well they just become money pits and money drains and without a good way to measure and do matrix on those you can go upside down on that and wondering why why is this looking so bad because for us at the at the end of every month when you’re looking at a P&L the difference when we have a big month where we do a lot of kitting is definitely adds a lot to the bottom line uh because we also utilize our people right so if it’s a light day we transfer people over to the kidding, we can bring

in early so we can start an hour or two late. So, we’re always maximizing our employees in there. And I think that’s one of the things where I think for us has been an advantage is we maximize our employees with some of those kidding projects and those handling projects is because you don’t have downtime with your employees. You have them beginning of the day if there’s it’s a slow start or if it’s a light day at the end of the day. So, they know they can go over there. So, from a labor standpoint, it kidding helps for us. the value added services help offset some of that labor for as you’re adding clients growing, you

know. Yeah. On the kidding side, how easily can it go sideways in terms of are you spec so specific in the kidding that you say we have to produce one package every 37 seconds and if we don’t do that then our costs are just going out of control. Very much so. I mean, we when we take on a kidding project, we’ll time trial it. So, I’ve got my supervisor, you know, he’ll time trial it, he’ll do it four or five times, how much it does, how many touches. And so, for us, it comes down to how many times do I have to touch it? Mhm. So, the more I touch it, obviously, the higher the

cost, but then it does come down to like, okay, I want to make X number of dollars an hour. So, how many units at that rate do I have to get done in that time frame? So, each person is expected to do so much per hour. Mhm. And then there are gamifications there. We’ve we’ve added automation around that. Can you have break it up so one person does a complete project or is it faster to say okay you just do this you do this and then the next person finishes it out. So there was a lot of refining in that process to be able to do that. But where in the beginning we started just

doing kidding, we were so hyperfocused on that because as we were growing and bootstrapping, it’s like we had to we we couldn’t afford to to have one go sideways. Yeah. Or then I mean you just like you said you just start bleeding money. Yeah. And it’s hard to hard to recover from that. Okay. Let’s uh let’s jump into I I want you to give uh we we talked about this leading in a little bit, but give us a 30,000 foot view of FFE today. So FF for us, I mean, we’re we’re growing. We’re we’re we’re really invested a lot into automation. We’ve always had a lot of technology, a lot of automation from the beginning.

We’ve always been focused on technology because techn is going to drive it. The faster, the less people I have to touch it, the less people have to think. Our philosophy is we want you to think but not have to think. And so from 30,000 ft it is about, you know, expanding into automation. We know automation is there. It’s being able to, you know, expand on the carrier pool, being able to be able to get to the right carrier to the right location at the right time zoned out correctly. And so for us, that’s for us, we feel like that’s the next big thing for us is being able to really centralize our carriers and make

sure that we’re able to hit everybody in a time frame at a good rate uh and and then with reliability and uh all are all of your customers, clients, e-commerce customers, or is there kind of a mix of customers in your warehouse? Uh we have a mix of customers. We do have some that is just storage, short-term storage, long-term storage. Um, as we’re filling out our new space, we we have some stuff, a lot of a lot of customers that are short-term that that’ll continue to move out. Um, I’m paying rent, so I might as well get somebody to pay for it. So, um, but yeah, I mean, it’s it’s a mix of customers and

you kind of have to have that. Um, and we do a lot of B2B type shipping, too. So, there’s a lot of LTL carriers and stuff like that involved. We have a great network there. Um, it’s not a lot of it’s the the B2B side is not something that a lot of 3PLs like to live or fulfillment centers like to do because it is very back to the same thing. It’s very labor intensive. You make a mistake, you put a label on upside down, the wrong label, it’s $250. You do 10, you know, 30 boxes that way, all of a sudden those dollars add up. And so we’ve kind of taken the same process we

did to kitting into the business, the B2B side of shipping. And so I feel like for us that’s been another anchor for us that’s really helped to solidify a lot of accounts because we have a great expertise in that and we really are always refining our process around that B2B shipping. Gotcha. Okay. Well, that’s good background on FF. We’re going to leave that there for a second and we’ll we’ll come back and hit that. I don’t think I hit your question very well later on. No, no, no, no, no, no. That’s great. I think, you know, we just want to give our listeners a sense of what FFE does and where what the customer mix

looks like and and then we’re going to dig into that a little bit. Okay. We’ll dig into that a little bit more. So, but I do want to get an idea of how you how you got here and where you started. So, are you a are you a Utah native? Are did you grow up somewhere else? No, I actually grew up in Colorado and I spent uh I went to Adam State College there and I’m playing basketball, loving life and you know, woke up one morning going, “Hey, you’re not going to get what you want out of life doing this.” And so I took a 180 and decided to go on an LDS church mission.

Started in Honduras, then got moved to California. And um my mission president was actually the owner of the printing company and he said, “Hey, when you’re done, you want to come back?” and I I couldn’t go back to my old friends because that environment wasn’t conducive for growth and prosperity. And so came out here and um just just love Utah. And so I’ve been here 30 years. Okay. So your uh your mission president was Blaine Hudson. Hudson Printing here in Salt Lake City. Yep. Okay. And at that point, well, what was it? Were you just like, were you such a good missionary? Were you such a good guy? Or did he just feel terrible for

you? I don’t know if he felt sorry for you. He thought you didn’t have any prosthetics. Yeah. He’s like, “This guy needs all the help he can get, so let’s give him a job. We can throw him on the floor at the printing company.” No, I wor I actually worked with him. I was his assistant. So, I was his assistant. So, I spent and he I was put in an asant a month before he got there. So, I was there the first seven months. He kept me an extra month and I stayed in the office with him the whole time. So, that was kind of that transition. And so literally I’m sitting in his office,

the mission president’s office doing an interview for a job back at the company at Hudson printing who his sons were running. He’s just like, “Hey, if you don’t know what you’re going to do here, let me get you on the phone.” So So he snagged me up and that’s how I got into printing. Came out here. I was going to the U to get a marketing degree. Um, and then got into the printing side of things and and I actually loved it. I enjoyed printing. If there would have been a leadership change, I probably wouldn’t have ever got into this field to be honest with you because I enjoyed it. I loved it. I love

the people I worked with. Um but then you know went from customer service, shipping and receiving and then I as soon as I jumped then I had an opportunity to jump into sales one day I went to the sales manager and said hey what’s it take to get into sales? What do you what do I got to do? I want to get there and he’s like well tell me when you’re ready which I I was expecting I was expecting something else. I said okay so I’ll let you know. So I went back the next day and so I wasn’t expecting that answer and so I jumped in and then yeah so that’s kind like let

me weigh my options and then the next day you came back I can keep pushing pallets back here or I can go do sales and so now I’m doing sales and pushing pallets so it’s all good. Tell me about how valuable that was uh for you to to start in you know kind of a beginning area in the business and work your way through. I I think it’s absolutely very valuable for me because I learned different skills along the way. Mainly a lot of customer interaction, how to deal with clients, how to satisfy clients, how to make sure they’re taken care of, and then work with a very diverse group of people. So, as I

continue to move up through the different things, the different positions, it gave me the opportunity to really know from the ground up a business. U and that’s when we started FFE. It’s like, you know, we’ve had lots of weekends for my families, hand assembly, shrink wrapping, doing that, but it’s it’s really we’ve built it from the ground up. And so, it’s been very valuable for me because it’s it’s really being able to create the fabric of the business, the culture of the business, and then grow up from there. There’s a lot of good things in there. uh one is the value of learning all of the positions moving up through the organization and then when

you’re find yourself in a leadership role you have a deeper understanding of what everybody is going through yes in each of their individual positions. Do you think a leader can gain that kind of knowledge without going through the same kind of path you did where you actually experienced all of the different levels rising through the organization? I definitely think a leader can, but it it’s definitely a leader that has to be patient and understanding and willing to get out on the floor, willing to understand it. Uh not dictating from above, but really getting it. And I think really what a leader can get it is if he understands the culture where I for me move

moving up through each of the positions really gave me an idea of the culture of how the business of what works what people like what people don’t like what works what doesn’t work and so really I think it’s more based on the culture of it. Uh like we talked a little earlier it’s like leaders come in and think they want to just change everything and sometimes I think that’s where that’s where things will go sideways. Um, but definitely a leader can come in without having those things. But I do think it’s a value if the leader does, it has to go back to the culture. What’s the culture of the company? What really works really

well? Why do people work there? Why do people like to work there? Why do the customers do then improve upon that versus just come in and like, “Oh, you guys are dumb. I’m going to put a new stamp on this thing so I can put something in my portfolio till I move on to the next thing.” Yeah. It’s maddening when there is leadership change. And I understand that people want to put their stamp on something, but it doesn’t always feel thoughtful. Yeah. And and I think culture is one of those things that can really be damaged. And maybe that’s something that you’ve experienced as well. You’ve mentioned c culture a few times here. Is this

is this something that you developed during your work career? Is this something that maybe you recognized growing up and that was part of your family life regarding culture and how to how people work well together? Um, I think it’s how I grew up. I played sports a lot. I was a loved love basketball, played basketball, played a little college basketball and I really just that culture of team like everybody working together and that and the fun around that, right? to celebrate the wins, learn from the losses, and and I think I take that into business and a lot is like really with the team, it’s like, okay, celebrate your wins. You know, when people are

winning, let’s let’s celebrate those wins, and when we’re losing, let let’s let’s make corrections. It’s just like a basketball team or a football team or any other team. And I think that’s where a lot of that came from, from culture is what’s the culture of the teams that you’re putting together, you know, and we have different teams within the warehouse, obviously. you have a shipping regime, a a fulfillment team, a picking team, and you know, working to foster a culture for each of those as well. So there’s a good working nucleus within that culture, that group. Yeah. Have you have you had experiences where you you struggled with culture within an organization? Uh yeah. Uh

at the at the printing company I was at, there was a change of ownership. And when that change of ownership, it really disrupted the culture. And and I learned for myself, right? Because I fought really hard to keep the old culture. And so I I really learned at that point in time as a leader. It’s like, okay, there is an embrace there. Sometimes this is a way we’ve always done it. That tribal knowledge that’s there’s good in there, but there’s also some some history there that’s may not be as profitable. There’s some be other ways, some lack some tired thinking, I guess, is the best way to put it. And so being able to infuse

additional insights and stuff adds to that. Yeah. You’d been at Hudson for how long when that ownership changed occurred? I mean you’re you were deeply ingrained in the culture. I’d been there about 17 years. 17 18 years right in that time frame. So definitely ingrained in the culture from day one. Okay. And I don’t I I don’t mean to diminish Huts and all. That’s not I’m just asking questions out of curiosity. So I I hope it doesn’t come across that way. But uh when that when that change of ownership occurred, did the new individual who was in charge, had that person been a part of the culture at all previously? Yeah, he had been in

the business 30 years, but he had he had his vision of where he wanted to take the company and it was a little too far to the right, I guess, is he tried to move the culture and this a little too far, I think. Mhm. So, I kind of lost my thought on that one. Do do you think do you think um at that point in your career, 17ish years in the business, as you look back, do you think a culture tweak would have been meaningful in the business? Definitely. I definitely a tweak to the culture would be very meaningful because I think with any culture long-standing business that’s been around many years there’s really

good things and there’s a lot of very valuable assets in there but also it becomes very stagnant at some point in time. So there has to be a transition point where you have to start edging in new culture to continue to grow and and keep a vision moving forward. Sure. And things change. I mean, technologies change and and you have to evolve with with that. I I just I think it’s I think it’s really interesting because we’ve been we’ve experienced that and big culture shifts are well, you’ve seen it. They can be devastating and if they’re not devastating, then it takes a long time to recover from that. So you’re you’re super thoughtful about that

when you’re running your current organization and as you were starting the organization. Yeah. Like literally from like the first business meeting that I had with my partner when we said okay we’re going into business together. Let’s stretch let’s strategize this. That’s where FF came from. It was just like it’s got to be fun fast and easy because I did I just came from a huge culture shift and it it was it used to be fun and but it then it changed and it’s like so that was always kind of been our driving principle. and it’s got to be fun, but you got to be fast, but then you got to make it easy. Because I’ve

also been in a culture shift where it was hard, like you’re just trying to do hard things. And it’s it was a huge shift. And so that’s always been for me, it’s like you you got to keep that balance of fun for the employees, but productive. It’s got to be fun for your customers, but you also got to deliver. So, and then it’s got to be the fast has always been around, okay, you’ve got to be nimble. This industry is ever evolving, everchanging with new automation, new software, new carriers, all of these different things that are coming. That that’s where the the fast to adjust, fast to correct mistakes, fast to move forward. Mhm. And

fast to respond to your customer. Right. Right. Yeah. Because customers don’t like to wait. No. Exactly. You definitely have to be able to respond very fast to customers. And you know, that’s why for us, you know, back to the kidding piece, we have a lot of it because we act really fast. Someone’s all of a sudden has the ability to get into a new retailer, but they have to have this kitted this way and it’s got to be this and you got 5 days. Can you pull it off? That’s always a challenge. And that’s one thing we’ve built within the company. It’s like we like taking on those type of challenges just because it makes

us better as a company. It exposes weaknesses and it shows, you know, it shows us, you know, that willingness to to try new things and and usually we’ve done a few things for clients that now benefit our other clients in the way we pick things, the way the processes work. So, yeah, tell me about working with customers and any challenges associated with that. For me, I’m the I’m the sales side of the organization and so I I enjoy working with customers. I love back to I love being able to solve the problems, the challenges, those things. Those are always fun and engaging and in the logistics space, it’s really not a customer, it has to

be a partnership, right? I take very a lot of pride when I see emails coming from my customers that says, “Hey, team, right?” So, we definitely work with customers to try to develop that we’re your team. We are your fulfillment center. we we are you and we try to impress that unemployer upon our employees that this is a reflection how you pack that box is a reflection of that brand and and that that’s important to that brand and so working with customers there is a delicate balance because in the logistics space there’s errors there’s delays there’s tariffs there’s a million things and there’s a lot of variables that you don’t even control right but your

but your customer wants you to be in control yeah exactly they’re their delays come turn into my emergencies, right? And so that that’s the thing. It’s like working with customers and having that open communication, you know, it it does have to be the the analogy that we’ve always used because my business partner, he’s a huge cowboy. We’ve always taken an open approach like, okay, yes, it’s our farm, we have the farm, but they’re your animals on our farm. Come see your animals anywhere you want. We’re taking care of them, but if you ever want to come in and visit, please come in. And so that’s one of the things we’ve always had is a very

open door policy with all of our clients. If they want to come in, we allow them to do some projects internally because they have some employees they want to do. We let them take tours. We let them shoot video. We we’re very accommodating in that aspect because I want them to think if I had a warehouse, this is I would I could go down there and do that. Mhm. Now obviously there’s parameters and you you have you just can’t let them overrun you, but at the same time that’s part of how the philosophy has always been. It’s like it is a true partnership and we have to see it as a partnership. I can’t see

you as the customer and me as the 3PL. We we really have to work really tight together for it to work for all of us. I I really like that philosophy. The the the thought of customer is a partner. It’s not um it’s not like uh it’s an aligned relationship. It’s not two separate individuals. It’s not just a transaction, right? It’s not a transactional relationship. It’s an aligned. Yeah, absolutely. And and so how how do you think that has affected the company in terms of growth, retention, referrals, whatever it how are the positive aspects of building relationships with your customers that way? It it’s it’s invaluable, right? Because we have a lot of customers that

have stayed with us a long time. Some of them we’ve outgrown, some of them have, you know, a few of them have left, right? as as as attrition happens, new new people new people come on and they want to put their stamp on it and move somewhere else. Um, but that’s been valuable for us to keep customers, retain customers. Um, you know, we’re five years 5 years into doing the e-commerce fulfillment and our original customer is still with us very happy, very satisfied and and continuing to work with us. And so that’s uh and you know, a couple of our customers are referral-based. Yeah. And I I do a lot on referral base. Uh we

don’t to put a lot into marketing partly because we’ve been growing it and and we’re trying to not we’re managing growth because I think a lot of people can get in trouble trying to grow too fast and then they get overextended or they just get in like they can’t handle the volume. So we’ve paced our our growth to make sure that as we’re growing we don’t jeopardize our our our partners that we have already. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing you mentioned about working with your customers is an open communication and which is which is critical. And do have do you have have you had any experiences where you had to communicate something to your customer

but it wasn’t very comfortable or it wasn’t good news and rather than you know hiding under the sheets you just went down and faced it. Yeah. That’s one of the things, you know, um, back to a partnership in a team, it it is about transparency. Mhm. Um, because there are you’re you’re going to miss a shipment, you’re going to pack something wrong, you’re going to forget to send something out, and it’s going to you’re going to miss a show. We you have those things. And so I I’ve always trained my sales guys and my customer service, just pick up the phone. Like, just be honest. It’s it’s a mess. So, let’s not try to hide

it. We messed up. So, you know, I’ve always trained and I think with a customer going to them, it’s like, “Okay, here’s what happened. Here’s what we can do to solve it.” And I think if you go to a client with solutions that you can do, Mhm. then they at least understand that, hey, you guys messed up and and sometimes we have to pay for those mistakes, right? We have to ship stuff out next day air. We got to fly stuff out. We got to do stuff. And that I think is also part of the valuable partnership is if we make a mistake, we have to step up. like that was our fault. You shouldn’t

take that dime. And so, um, that is just a huge key to it is that open communication and it’s it’s it’s just news. It’s not good news, bad news. It’s just news. So, let’s just deliver the news and then what’s the solution moving out of this? Yeah, that’s like a very stoic way to think about about delivering news because that a stoic would say exactly what you said. There’s not good news, there’s not bad news, there’s just news and your perception of it, right? Like so that’s what makes it that’s what makes it good or bad. Uh I think that’s really I think that’s really interesting. Um okay so you started did you start FFE

with a couple partners? Yeah I we started with two partners. So I have two partners. We have uh one is in charge of IT one is operations and then I oversee sales customer service side of things. And the three of us work very well together. Okay, this is my question because you know somebody has a great idea, they get aligned with a couple people and then whatever happens it doesn’t work out. The idea was fantastic, people couldn’t get to what whatever the thing is people couldn’t get together. How did you determine who would be a good partner and how do you make that work to this day? So my original partner uh when we started

FFE he was operations I was a sellside and he was like okay we have to in the in this in the e-commerce and fulfillment logistics world you have to have a strong IT and he said okay I know a really good IT guy so we split up equity and brought him in but part of the our thought process at the beginning too is two of us can get out of alignment we can get sideways with each other we can get off track and so that was the other reason of having a third partner number when we needed the technology side and understand the importance of that and the our partner on the technology side is

absolutely amazing. The guy is a whiz. I love him to death. But it’s it gives us that keeps us in alignment because very rarely do all three of us get sideways with each other. But if one two people get sideways, there’s always a third person to kind of mediate, moderate, kind of keep the vision of everything going. And so, um, it is, you know, you have to spend a lot of time together, you have to have some meetings, you have to be on the same page. There’s a lot of planning and structure that goes into it. But I’m grateful that there are three of us because it does help us keep that business going and

keeps the flow. Did you have any trepidation in the early days about going to business with those guys? I did not because I’d worked with one of the partners uh when I was working at the printing company. We did a lot of business with them, had assembly stuff. So I had some knowledge worked with him and then I had actually transitioned all of our freight over to the his brokerage and so I was working with him on the freight basis. So we had probably six or seven months of you know really good communication as a working relationship as me as the customer. Um and then literally we decided to like he and I decided to

go into business together. And the funny thing is as you ask that question is his dad sat him down. He’s like do you even know this guy? Have you even has has your wife met him? like, “Oh, I guess we should go to go introduce our lives and go have dinner together because I cuz him and I I don’t know. It’s just kind of one of those things like we clicked right from the beginning. We just kind of was meaningful. We were two competitive guys. We’re both competitive in a good way and it was like we just clicked from the beginning and so we’re just like I don’t know if we were just dumb in

the moment. Just said what the heck, let’s do this.” But we just kind of had a vision and felt I mean it was just one of those things that just worked really well. I know it’s worked out and it’s working out which is amazing, but as you look back on that, would you do anything differently? I mean, would you say, “Yeah, maybe I should dig into this a little bit more. Maybe we should or did you just I mean, was it a gut here we go?” It was more of a gut feel, right? Because I I think both he and I are pretty open books with each other. We’re pretty transparent. And I mean I

think that Rob, you know, reflects in the company and or with how we interact with our clients. So we pretty knew each other. There wasn’t really much going on there. So I think no, I wouldn’t I probably No, I wouldn’t do anything different because if I tried to overthink it, I it was just one of those things. It was just like, okay, jump and uh hope the parachute opens kind of philosophy in the beginning. Yeah. So a lot of people say partnerships, work partnerships are a lot like a marriage. And so what are the things that you do as partners to maintain really productive highlevel relationships as you continue to build the business? That’s a

dynamic that’s ever evolving and working because it is you have a lot of people. You know, as we started the business, I I was still a full-time print salesman and doing the business. So I was working two jobs. uh our operations guy, we were making enough money to have him be 100% on and our IT guy, same thing. Our IT partner, he was working two jobs and we were all just kind of filling in around there. And so that would be the one thing I think from a learning perspective as I would have done more stuff together like done more more dinners, more family interactions, some of those things where um I think could have

outside of the business, right? because we we worked Saturdays and Sundays in the beginning and our whole families were there. My family and kids and his family and kids and parents and cousins and so we really developed a family like a really working relationship together because you’re spending 10 hours on a shrink wrapper together. You you you learn a lot you learn a lot about a person. So sounds like a book. I mean maybe that should be 10 hours on a shrink wrapper on a shrink. I’m going to I’m going to take that. That’s interesting feedback. Being more thoughtful about spending time outside of the office together and and because the culture inside inside the

office you can control a little bit, but it sure makes it better if you know everybody is engaged in what’s happening. Correct me if I’m wrong. It sounds like not only are you business partners, but you you have a a nice friendship as well. Definitely. We’ve developed a friendship over this time. Like we have a great time together. We do stuff together. We And and it and and I think that’s a key dynamic a lot for for us is there’s that friendship because we’re both pulling. It’s like he’s not above going on a sales call. I’m not above going and wrapping pallets. It’s it’s that um shared shared caring for each other. Probably not the

best way to say that, but you know, the mutual respect for each other just as not just as a business partner and business owner, but as as a person. Do you feel like it’s more difficult or does it make your work relationship easier to have a friendship? Uh, I think it makes it easier in the fact because um you can be really straight with someone. You’re not so worried about it. It’s just kind of like if you’re talking to your brother, you can tell them, “Hey, you’re an idiot, right? Sorry, we got to cut that part.” Unfortunately, those come back to me more often than Exactly. But I I do think that friendship does help

because there’s that shared vision and you both know you’re working. You have your own roles and responsibilities, but you’re working for the same thing. And and he’s invested in my family being financially successful and taken care of. I’m invested in his family being financially successful and taken care of. And so, uh, it makes a lot of those, you know, the growth and the learning of the business. It’s definitely makes it more rewarding having someone that’s not only a business partner but also as as a as a friend and someone outside of that. It feels like you’ve made an almost seamless transition from someone who had a leadership role in another company into like a true

ownership leadership role in your own company which can be a difficult transition to make. So, what are some of the things that you think you did well in thinking about taking on or starting this new business? The things I think we did really well is we started with a mindset of back to the fun fast and easy like that was our grounding principle and I think what we did really well that made it successful it it is that culture like do I enjoy going to work? Do I am I love doing what I do? Do I, you know, it’s I love putting boxes in boxes. Watching boxes go down conveyor. It just makes me happy.

Okay. Inks in your blood. I inks in the blood. Now boxes are in my blood, right? So it changes. So yeah, I kind of forgot the question. No, just stuff that you maybe lessons learned along the way that you were able to transfer into your new role with FFE. So some of the things I think the lessons learned was um prior prior leadership responsibilities I was never 100% responsible for the P&L the bottom lines the growth of the business some of those major decisions like I was involved in them but I never had to sign on the bottom line I never had to do the the the discovery the implementation I always had pieces of

that and I think that’s been the greatest challenge as a leader is taking on those things, new roles, new responsibility, new challenges, new insights. Uh, you know, the actual feeling of like, listen, I got 30 people out here that are, you know, counting on me to pay them so they can do Christmas kind of thing. So, taking on those responsibilities, you know, for myself, spending a lot of time in mentor groups, personal development, just immersing myself in that world because knowing that I’ve got to be better, I can be better. where can we improvement? That constant state of improvement is definitely been something that’s caused me to grow. Yeah, let’s not forget about that. I

want to talk about that as we wrap up the podcast because I think this this idea of continual continuous improvement is important and I so I’d like to dig into that with you a little bit. Did you have a full head of hair before you started the business? I had a full head of hair before I got into printing, but I rubbed it all out. I rubbed out the middle. The stress of the stress of life has rubbed it out the middle. Yeah. Well, as a fellow, I mean, we we know Yeah. We know how that goes. Thank goodness. So, we look good though without him, right? Yeah. Okay. If you were to describe your

leadership style, would you say you’re more Napoleon or George Washington? I would say George Washington just from the fact of I think one of my gifts and talents is I I’m really good at motivating people, getting people to laugh, getting people engaged. Um I’ve learned to control my emotions over the years like as a business owner. That’s one of the things before when I was just an employee uh or had leadership roles, I I used to be very mad, upset, frustrated, like problems happen. It was like very ignite. And now as a business owner, I’ve really learned to take a step back and and then teach and basically teach and instruct an employee versus being

upset about it because now it’s my employee like like I’m not just responsible for it but it’s like really my employee that ownership thing and so that’s been one of the things is so I think like that’s why I say George Washington it is more about that leaderships inspire uh make it fun, make it enjoyable. Uh but then they also know that when I’m upset like we got we got to get to work here like it’s no more messing around town. So you you have these leadership qualities of like you want to motivate you want to inspire you want to engage with your people and with the people who who look up to you. And

when something needs to be done, something needs to get done or an issue needs to be corrected, you don’t have a problem stepping into that role as well. Correct. Yeah. I mean, and I think people need to see that. I don’t like to wrap pallets, but I will wrap a pallet. And I think it’s good for employees to see that, hey, when it we’re in the soup, I’m in the soup with them. If we’re behind on orders or we’ve had a mechanical function, that they’re willing to see the leader to willing to roll up his sleeves. Now, I don’t want to do it every day and if I’m doing it every day, I’ve done something

wrong. But at the same time, I think from that motivation is they know you’re willing to do it. So, when you ask them to do something, they know that you’re not asking them to do something that you’re not willing to do personally, right? So, you’re invested. When people see you’re invested, they’re invested. Yeah. Or it’s easier to be Yeah. invested. And and I’ve learned over the years as maturity wise goes, less emotional about that. being able to think clearly in those moments, be able to if tensions are high around me, not escalate them more. And I, you know, as I’ve grown in this role and uh that’s one thing I’ve really learned is not to

escalate it, but to deescalate in some cases. And most of the time it’s me that needs to deescalate, not the employees. And so that’s been a lot of learning and growth right there. That self-awareness is can be that can be challenging. Yeah. Especially if it’s like the anger thing because I have a little bit of that too and that can be really hard to overcome. Yeah. So, good for you. I I’m good at saying I’m sorry because I’ve had I’ve learned I’m losing my cool. I’m well practiced at saying I’m sorry. So, I I’m good at cleaning up messes in some of that cases. So, now it’s like just don’t create them now. Yeah. Absolutely.

Okay. If uh if I were to ask you what is the best movie or best song or best band of all time, would you have a thought on any of those? Um my favorite show of like all time is like Remember the Titans? Oh, just because like leadership reflects attitude, Captain. It’s like that is like ingrained in my head. Yeah. and and and just that that show obviously it’s a great show but it’s it it does show like how you have to come together as a team and how when you come together as a team um that’s how really the magic works and I think that’s back to your question we were asking for the

leadership that is a dynamic of who’s who’s in what role I think that movie really show like I think that’s kind of some of the philosophy in that movie it’s like the head coach had to step down and go hey listen I can’t do this I need some help and the assistant coach had to do that and I so I That’s one of the there’s so many lessons that I enjoy out of that movie. It just uh so that’s my favorite movie. Well, what are the best things about the company? What do your customers love? I think the one thing that I think the main thing that customers love is the transparency, right? The transparency

and flexibility. I always try to I don’t want to get so rigid that I can’t meet my customer needs. So between being transparent, flexible, being able to add the kitting and creating that partnership and value, that’s the main thing that I think sets us apart. And I think we do have a lot of secret sauce on our technology and how we think things and how we the way we process orders, the way we rate shop orders, the way we move orders down through the system. There’s a philosophy to that because I think a lot of people think, oh, how hard is it to stick a label on a box? It’s not like anybody can stick

a label on the box, but try to do it 15 20,000 times in a day on the right box to the right product at the right time and at speed. That’s really where the magic comes from. And I think we’ve got a lot of uh like my like I said my business partners got a lot of extensive experience in the industry and so they’ve seen a lot of things done well and not not done well and so we’ve kind of picked best practices and so we have a little bit of secret sauce and as we moved into our new facility we’re trying a bunch of new different things. Uh we took out we had a

fixed conveyor, a lot of automation and it was starting to bottleneck the business and so we’ve really moving into our new facility. We’ve really changed our thought process, our philosophies and already we’re already seeing dividends. We’re already picking orders. You know, we’ve been fully operational in our new facility for two weeks and we’re already at about 95% speed of where we were at in our previous thing with a full automation conveyor system and everything. And so we’re seeing a lot of that come together. And so I think one of our secret part of the our growth and what makes us different is we’re always innovative, looking to innovate, growing smart, growing, how do we improve?

My business partner that’s in charge of operations, the guys always look at how can I take three steps out of this person’s day? Like how can we maximize this? And so being able to, you know, I think that makes us different. Some people I think get stagnant, get stell, and hey, hey, I have the best rates. I have the cheapest rates. I have the biggest facility. I I you know, some of those things. And so, uh, and for me personally, I love being innovative and creative and growing. It it that’s what keeps me alive and going and fueled and stressed. Absolutely. And stressed. Yeah. You know, you were talking about your secret sauce and I

think uh the way that you’ve built your technology is absolutely meaningful. You have to have the right processes in place. But I would also say that your ability to connect with your customer is a differentiator in the market. Like that means everything to people. People want to work with people they feel like they have a relationship with and someone who’s going to take care of them if the chips are down. Yeah. So you guys have done an amazing job with that. I think that’s one of the things that that we think is really valuable here as well at at e-hub is uh our customer support team is is top-notch and we we feel very proud

about that. Okay. As we as we talk about we we mentioned this earlier but you you said that you spend time working on yourself and improving yourself as a leader um as an individual so that you can show up every day. What are some of those things? What are some of the the secrets in your arsenal to improve yourself? I I enjoy all kinds of personal development from reading, you know, the common books that everybody reads to I even like the woohoo stuff, right? if you want to get into quantum physics and you know neural linguistics programming and so I think as a leader it’s somewhat my responsibility to try to educate myself not just

in okay this is a business book and the business side of things but all kinds of avenues of personal development to be able to number one to make myself obviously improve myself my knowledge but then also being able to in infuse that into the company and and that’s where like the motivation and the growth goes uh it just brings it’s just an important key element for me personally but I also think for the business it’s not just a business seminar it’s not just another uh rahrrah seminar I mean those are valuable and they’re important and they do place a place but there’s also some of that deeper work that you need to do for yourself

personally that then moves the business forward absolutely is there any one self-improvement business foundations or as you called it, woo woo book that you would say you this is this is one you should put on your list. Um right now I’m reading a book by Dr. Moore house which talks about he was in the CIA program back in the day where they were doing remote viewing. So how they were using their mind to remote view to go look and they used to use them in the I mean he has stories that he was telling us as I was in a seminar for 5 days with him and it was talking about how they would remote

view into drug boats to be able to say where it’s at. And so that’s the kind of woohoo stuff, but it’s like, okay, that also pushes me to to think a little harder, think a little different. And I think sometimes personal development can get so focused into one pinched into one point that that doesn’t open up those other options. And so that’s the book I’m reading right now. So it’s definitely on the woohoo out there side, but it’s fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. Yeah. I I happen to be reading one right now on Shackleton and the endurance, the story about trying to find the Northwest Passage and crossing Antarctica. And if you want a lesson in overcoming

obstacles and leadership, like that that’s a good one. You might if you haven’t read that one, you can put that one on your list. Definitely. I’ll add that one to my list. Man, I sure I I really enjoyed this conversation. I can’t believe it’s been an hour. It just flew flew by like that. So, come back and see us. We want to know what’s happening and and how the business is going and what you guys are up to. And it’s a great company. Congratulations on all you all you built. Jeremy King, the king of fulfillment. That’s right. Fun, fast, and easy fulfillment, baby. Where can we find you? Uh fesg.com. All right. Well, thank you.

Come back and see us. Okay. Sounds good. Take it. Thank you for listening to the Know Your Ship podcast presented by e-hub. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review.