Nate Shutes: Hello and welcome to the Bootstrapper's Guide to
Logistics, the podcast highlighting founders doing it
the way that doesn't get a lot of attention.
We're here to change that by sharing their stories and
inspiring others to take the leap.
Casey Winans: It's a roller coaster ride that you might
ultimately fail.
Nate Shutes: That's when I kind of knew I was on to something.
Casey Winans: It was very hard.
Nate Shutes: It truly is building a legacy.
The more life you live, the more wisdom you have, because,
we are where we're supposed to be kind of answering the call.
Don't shoulder entrepreneurship on your own.
I'm your host, nate Schutz.
Let's build something together from the ground up.
Good morning, everybody, or good afternoon, depending on
when you're listening to this.
Welcome back to the Bootstrapper's Guide to
Logistics.
We are doing exactly what we've been doing for years.
There's really no change to the structure or format of Season 3
.
We're just doing the same thing we've always done unpacking the
journeys of founders that are building supply chain and
logistics companies the old-fashioned way, with their
own resources, supply chain and logistics companies the old
fashioned way, with their own resources being scrappy, not
getting a ton of attention.
And I love bringing attention to that myself, because I feel
like it's too easy to get lost in the venture capital world or
the PR, the social media machine that makes it look like
everybody's a unicorn, when the reality is the 99% of businesses
out there are small businesses and they've got small business
challenges.
But it doesn't mean they've got small thinking.
It actually means that they've got really strategic thinking
because they are committed to their own vision, mostly free of
outside influence, and that's maybe one of the most American
dream kind of storylines that's out there.
So I love getting to do this with everybody each week.
Thank you for all of those that have followed us.
We're at the 100 episode mark right around now and if you've
been here from the beginning, I just want to say thank you.
I couldn't do it without you and without our sponsors.
So this week we're going to do the same sponsors.
So this week we're going to do the same thing, but this time
we're going to go deep, with Casey Winans, who's the founder
and CEO of Full Stride, a WMS and tech consulting firm based
in the US.
Casey, good morning.
First, it's great to finally get a chance to go deep on a
subject that I love warehousing.
I know you're an expert, but it's also our first chance
getting to really meet and talk in person.
So, good morning, how are you, and thanks for being here.
Casey Winans: Yeah, great to be here, and yes, I know we've
interacted on LinkedIn for probably a couple years now, so
it's nice to put a face to a name as well.
Nate Shutes: So why don't you start, casey?
Just give us a little bit of overview so our listeners know
who you are, what you've done.
You know kind of career-wise, leading up to what your life has
been like as an entrepreneur.
Casey Winans: Sure, yeah, I mean , I came out of the gate.
I went to school for management information systems at Penn
State.
That morphed into getting an internship at GE up in Erie,
pennsylvania, where they made locomotives.
They may still They've been sold there's a new name on the
outside but effectively that's where I got to really cut my
teeth and I would say, based on that and the next couple of
roles I did, I was more in the software engineering realm of
things.
I built some products after I moved on from GE.
Reverse auctions for procurement that was something
that was done in Pennsylvania.
There is like a Commonwealth nonprofit that turned in and
spun out as a startup.
After that I worked for probably about an $80 million company
that was a middleman and bought print cartridges and old cell
phones, refurb them to an extent and then sold them for other
purposes down the line and we built all our systems in-house.
So that was my first taste of warehouse management systems,
parcel manifesting systems.
In fact, my first gig what were my first, I guess, project when
I started was this 200 page printout of the ups spec and
like build a system that we can so we can create our own labels
and do these uh ars labels, authorized, authorized return
service, uh, and I didn't know that was unusual.
So I did that, built those out.
It worked really well.
But after working there for a couple of years they were
realizing that in-house software was kind of rough to maintain
right, you were always making tweaks versus being strategic.
So they started looking at vendors and, totally
coincidental, they were looking at a company called Red Prairie
and I was looking to move to North Carolina with my family
just for other opportunities and I took a job working for Red
Prairie.
I didn't know that at the time, I didn't connect the dots, but
I mean this whole time this is probably the first few years of
my career I had no idea I was in supply chain.
I didn't understand the concept of warehouse management system.
It was just these systems we built.
They were business systems in my mind.
I was a software engineer that's what I do but taking the job at
RepRary turned me into a consultant on the technical side
anyways, the first couple of years and I was working with big
companies rolling out very complex software, lots of
customizations, integrations, and that morphed into an
opportunity to lead the Parcel Consulting Group inside of the
professional services, because I raised my hand, called out some
things that were happening in the product side.
I had a background in it that I didn't appreciate for it and
that gave me the opportunity to move into management.
So I instantly went in.
I had 15 people reporting to me and I was tasked with fixing
projects across the whole spectrum of different verticals,
because Parcel was seen as getting a tracking number and
all the things that happened behind the scenes in terms of
like the rules out there, interfacing with carriers,
specifications changing.
No one really understood it until they went live and things
didn't work.
So I spent that time teaching my team and getting that all
taken care of and I did that for about a year and a half.
And then I followed a mentor to a 3PL in Canada.
Like there you go, they're going to expand into the US.
I'm going to learn the outside part of the vendor equation
Still lots of clients coming and going.
So there's a good mix and I did that.
I learned a ton.
But right, right about that time about a year and a half into
that so this is probably mid-2013 jda and repair emerged
and the messaging was awful that basically jda came in.
They were used to all these turnkey systems on their side,
more planning up front.
Where you have a problem, turn the lights off at five, come
back in at nine o'clock next morning and deal with it.
Well, on the warehouse, the warehouse management space, it's
24, seven, you're not shipping, you're not making money and
I'll help.
Everything's going to fall apart.
So it was an awesome opportunity for myself and two other guys
that I knew to hang our shingle and start a consulting business.
So my first business and we had no grand plans, it was just
opportunistic.
You know, mercenaries out there for hire until until this new
JDA figured out how to plug the hole and then you know,
basically, you know, eat our lunch.
But I fast forward five years.
We had about 60 people working for us.
We were doing, we were on pace to do about 12 million the year.
That that I pulled away and I it just kept growing, you know
so you you for help me understand this then.
Nate Shutes: So you spend about 10 or 12 years kind of building
the technical knowledge you know both both from a programming
perspective and then you're going out into these various
domains and learning how to apply your technical skills to
different business problems and you fall in love with this one.
But there had to have been a moment where you're leaving the
relative or perceived safety of a corporate job or a W-2 maybe,
and you're like, hey, let's go do this thing on our own.
And it was scary.
Did you guys just like sit around it?
Were you at a bar I'm just picturing you with a cocktail
napkin and you're sketching out a strategy, or was it lunchtime
or how did what?
Was that day like when you and your partner or partners said,
okay, we're going to do this?
Casey Winans: It played out like that.
So I guess the backup.
I was looking to move on from the 3PL because there were some
issues where I just wasn't getting the growth I thought I
was promised early on.
And that's why I went and I talked to one of the guys that
became my partner, one of my partners, and he's like let's
not do that, let's build something here.
I got this little bit of traction here with one client,
let's figure out what we do.
And I went back to my wife and I'm like I've always wanted to
do this, honey, because I used to read business magazines like
crazy.
It's just one of those like when do I do it?
And I had actually.
So I guess I had a business before this, one client, a
little bit of work.
I made like 10 great 10 grand and it was awesome.
I'm like it felt so liberating.
But then the 3pl I worked for got wind of it and told me
either go full, full time on that one or hang it up.
And I had one client, a little bit of work.
I'm like I can't feed my family , so I put it away.
But that was the catalyst for you know just that, that
building it up Like I wanted to do it and I was feeling kind of
trapped after that in a W2 role.
So, having that lunch, and then from there we went, to excuse
me, a place called McGregor's Draft House in Cary, north
Carolina, and we had lunch there .
Multiple times we were drinking beer literally in the back of a
napkin, like what are we doing here, how do we, how do we get
this going?
And then we spent probably a couple weeks just trying to
figure out what we call ourselves.
That would comprise the three of us, you know, and uh, and
more or less we kind of came back and said, well, what about
mcgregor partners?
There's a story that's the.
You know it's the, it's the cliched, you know, uh, bar back
of a napkin story, and we're partners.
Nate Shutes: So there you go, let's not, it was a brew house
yeah, yeah exactly yeah.
Casey Winans: So lots of guinness and you know whatever
else was.
You know the local stuff as well, but I yeah, that's how it
came to be that's a fantastic that.
Nate Shutes: So there's a storytelling framework that
explains most movies and books that we've all read.
One of my favorite is the Hero's Journey, and that is the
story of the Matrix.
Is Hero's Journey Lord of the Rings?
Is that as well?
And there is a storytelling element inside of those called
the watering hole.
And there's a storytelling element inside of those called
the watering hole and at a certain point in the journey,
before it goes from being an adventure where things are safe
and fun into being a quest where things are kind of life or
death, there's this they call it .
It's a scene in all these movies.
It's called the watering hole and it's that moment where all
the friends band together and decide to go off on this quest.
And it's fascinating to me how many entrepreneurs have that
same experience of, okay, we're going to leave the relative
safety of the Shire or RW2 and we're going to go off and try to
slay dragons, and we're in this together and we've come up with
the name for our band of misfits and we raise a couple of
glasses and make a toast and that's maybe the last moment
that things were innocent and fun.
And then it gets real and the danger starts.
So the first month that you and your partners are the safety is
now behind you.
Did you like hit the ground running and things were
happening how you thought they would?
Or was it crickets and you couldn't get a customer to say
yes?
Like what was the really really early stage?
Like when you were fully committed?
Casey Winans: Gotcha.
Well, before I dive into that, I want to back up just for a
second.
Sure, there was this conversation I had with my wife
about doing this and leaving the safety of a W-2, or you know,
quote unquote, safety of a W-2.
And her brother was an entrepreneur, basically like
right out of high school.
So I talked to him and he couldn't envision anything else.
So he's like, yeah, bet on yourself, you know the sky's the
limit, envision anything else.
So he's like, yeah, like, bet on yourself, you know the sky's
the limit.
And my wife said the perfect thing to me at that moment in
time was honey, it's just a house, which really implied that
if we lost everything, we still have each other.
We don't care, you know, and that was like freeing, you know.
I teared up, I'm like, okay, I get to get to know, chase my
dream here.
But one of my other partners, literally that month, I actually
you know what, yeah, I had, I had the one partner had a
daughter that was just a couple years old, so, you know, still
on, probably in diapers at that point, if I get the ages right.
And the other one had his second, his youngest, the
daughter, literally that month, or maybe, maybe July, just
before August.
So like we're all like, like we're in it, but at the same
time, like stakes are high, we're nervous, uh.
But first month it went, it went awesome.
I mean, it was one of those things where, uh, the one
partner had already broke into a 3pl and they were insatiable.
You know, just more projects, more projects, tons of work.
Our rates weren't great but they were.
They were feeding us and we were doing all the work and we
had one contractor at that point .
But then the beauty of where we came out of because we all came
out of Red Prairie, jda, now it's Blue Yonder is we'd worked
with clients for years, so it was reaching out to our personal
networks and we'd get some work here and there.
It didn't have to be big in those days, it was just
something to kind of move the needle, but the it was just.
It was crazy.
We were working 80 hour weeks.
We were killing ourselves.
It was.
It was not fun, but fun at the same time.
I mean, the money was awesome.
Seeing that come in like it just opened my world.
We just opened my world.
We were all making low six figures.
Before you know we had moved up to director roles.
So it was like we're quickly surpassing that, wow, okay, uh,
we're gonna need to hire at some point.
So I mean we can kind of get into that piece there too.
But it was just gangbusters and we started getting other
clients coming in and they wanted something.
But by and large we had dhl where it was excel logistics.
At that point DHL turned into.
I mean, you know, they're massive, so we would work for
one director.
Another director will pull us in more projects, clients coming
and going.
So there was just a whole lot of complexity there and we were
there to pick up the pieces and definitely augment their teams
because we had the depth where a lot of their teams internally
they were closer to operation, they didn't know the systems as
well and we could get in and do just about anything in it, even
the nasty, complex, hairy stuff behind the scenes so you're
doing a combination, then, of kind of consulting,
implementation plus software development, kind of
simultaneously.
Nate Shutes: Very much, yeah, very much yeah.
As a business model, consulting is very conducive to, and that
kind of work is very conducive to bootstrapping, because you
don't have to hire, you're not going to get paid yourself for a
while usually, but you're not having to buy equipment, you're
not having to sign a lease or hire a massive staff.
And so how did you and your partners think about cash flow
and keeping the lights on as the business started to grow?
And okay, now we've got to make a couple of different decisions
.
You're getting paid a little bit, but now we've got to take a
risk.
We've got to hire some outsiders, we've got to maybe
get an office and the expense structure changes, which, for
bootstrappers, can be really, really uncomfortable.
Casey Winans: Yeah, well the beauty of what we were doing.
We traveled all the time so, and all of us lived in the raleigh
area at that point, but we didn't need an office because
there was no no one there to do it.
So we would work from each other's homes, if we had to, to
meet up to figure out something, you know logistically around
the business itself, and just daydream and figure out where
we're going, what's working, what's not working, how do we go
forward.
But some of the things I learned from the 3PL I worked
with since I was one of just a small handful of US employees at
that point is they use something called a PEO, a
professional employer organization, and they take care
of a lot of the HR pieces where we effectively, our employees
of our business, are at least to them or at least back to.
Somehow, I don't know, you can work up PEO, but it was a great
way for us to get benefits very quickly, manage payroll, all
these things.
So we had this stuff set up so we could put the contractors in
there as well.
And suddenly you know we could.
We could out compete with some of the other consulting firms
that were popping up at the same time in our same space because
they didn't know those things.
So yeah, it's going to be something I was exposed to and
you know, wearing my business hat, I'm like that's really
smart.
So instantly we got that going, uh.
So that was, that was one piece that helped.
But, yeah, we avoided most of the overhead.
Really, we agreed at some point for taking smaller salaries,
something smaller than what we had had before, and then we
worked on the concept of distributions.
Now, one other thing that we did have in our back pocket was one
of the partners.
His dad had had a business for years and he knew some
accountants down in our area.
So myself and one of the partners went down and we just
sat with him and he gave us some advice in terms of how to
structure some of this.
So that was helpful for the distribution thing.
And then I also had my father-in-law very much pressing
to get a really good operating agreement in place with buy sell
language in there which we can get to, because that's the other
story, uh, to really make sure that when everything is going
well, you guys can agree on terms, potentially, how things
dissolve all the things that can get hairy later on if there are
disputes or anything like that.
So we have these things in our favor.
I didn't really appreciate them at that moment, but it worked
out great.
And then I think there's probably a lot of companies out
there that don't understand that and to get into it without it
and hope everything just works out and when it doesn't, that's
not the time to be trying to hash this stuff out.
Nate Shutes: It is an unfortunate and sometimes ironic
reality that the people that you trust the most, that you
want to go into business with you, haven't been tested
together in battle.
You have great ideas together.
You maybe have been co-workers at a company before, and those
operating agreements and partnership agreements matter
the most when things go really really well and there's lots of
money to be split, or when they go really really bad and things
get dicey.
And for most first-time founders I guess I shouldn't say
most for many first-time founders those are uncomfortable
conversations to have early because everything's going well.
Why would I introduce stuff that might be sensitive or might
cause us to not be as close with one another and
uncomfortable at well said, and the reality is, over a long
enough period of time and enough interactions with human beings,
one of the core driving forces is self-interest, and that means
something different to everybody.
You mentioned your co-founders having young children.
They would have totally different personal circumstances
and needs than somebody who's already independently wealthy
and doesn't have any responsibilities, and so those
kinds of agreements can prevent lots of future conflict and in
some cases they can even decide hey, you know what, after we've
gone through this exercise, maybe this structure isn't the
right thing before we even get started, and those are some of
the things that happen when you're a second time founder.
Now you have all of that knowledge and maybe we can
unpack some of that in the next part here.
But if you are considering starting a business and you've
got a buddy or some coworkers or something that you think, hey,
we'd be a great fit to go out and go do this thing, Get an
agreement written up on paper, Talk through.
What percentage of equity is everybody going to own?
What are your responsibilities going to be versus the other
person?
Who's going to be responsible for being the tiebreaker?
When you don't agree and you add those things up, put them on
paper, and your likelihood of avoiding significant issues down
the road just multiplies a hundredfold.
It sounds like, based on what you shared, that you may have
found some challenges down the road.
So what actually happened?
Casey Winans: So we never envisioned it to get as big as
it did.
In fact we were talking about the equity piece you just
mentioned.
So we had accelerators in there .
So the first month getting started we were all making low
six figures.
A lot of us had some kind of savings.
But one of them one of the partners had been doing this for
a little longer had some cash and he was able to give us
short-term loans for the first month.
So that was a cash flow piece to get us through before we
started paying ourselves, and the typical net 30.
You work, then you bill and then you wait because they've
come up with excuses of why the invoice isn't ready yet and all
those fun things.
So that got us through it.
But part of that agreement was there were going to be
accelerators in terms of equity based on that and they seem like
big numbers to us.
You know, a couple million here , a couple million there.
We hit those and then ratchet up and then we're pretty close
to all evenly splitting the pot.
So that happened.
That happened pretty quickly.
So then we revisited the operating agreement to kind of
play with what looks like longer term.
But so we did this for five years.
Tons of clients.
We eventually grew to 60 people .
That first hire was really scary that first year because
you know, suddenly we're on the hook for somebody else's
livelihood.
But that worked out well and then we started hiring, you know
, slowly at first, and then we started doing multiple ones, but
so it ended up being about 60 people.
We were on track to do somewhere close to 12 million
the year 2018.
Wow, but probably that fourth year we really started looking
at what do we want to do and two of the partners wanted to go in
and build software and I liked the idea to an extent being
naive, coming into it.
But at the same time, I was also starting to chase something
called managed services.
So we have SLAs and they're paying us for peace of mind
effectively to jump in when things go sideways.
In a warehouse world.
That's really important.
Vendors can't do it or if they do, it's just to fix defects and
maybe some data, not to understand your operation.
So I got into that.
My first client at that point was Advanced Auto and we learned
a ton in terms of how to structure these deals and they
were massively profitable.
So I'm like that's probably our future.
I like that.
It really kind of plays with the implementation side plus
supporting it long-term, but there's always gaps when you're
doing something.
So that's the software realm.
So we started doing that.
We didn't know how to sell, so we were burning cash on
employees and all that.
And we got great insights for early customers who didn't turn
into early customers.
And it was just this dividing piece here where it's like, okay
, five years in, what do we want to do?
I like the idea of stepping back to an extent, maybe trying
something different and, you know, being a sign of partner.
One of my partners liked that for a while, but ultimately, two
of them decided they were going to go double down on software
and I'm nodding, you know.
So middle of 2018, they decided that they were going to buy me
out, and you know it was.
It was bittersweet, you know.
It was one of those things where I knew I wasn't happy, but
at the same time, this is my baby and you know these were my
friends and like this is this is tough, but we had to buy a sale
agreement.
So you know I couldn't stop.
I couldn't stop the sale, but I could negotiate, and one of the
things we had in there that was really good was this concept of
we can each go get our own valuation.
You know, in my mind theirs came back very low, which great
you know, it's.
Just it's the bottom part of it .
They were hoping to get me out quickly, maybe because I'm I'm
pretty past and passive that way , in terms of if it's good for
the business, I would do it typically.
But then I went out and I found a great lawyer on my side who
got me in connection with a great appraiser and this guy
that's all he does.
So he came back with all this other information and it was
like double the valuation.
So it took probably this was the middle of 2018.
We probably didn't finalize the negotiation until sometime in
November, december.
So it was frustrating, right?
Sure, I bet you know, am I getting paid?
What's going on?
I can't talk to people inside the company for valid reasons.
I mean, I'm not throwing anybody under the bus, I get it.
But it really sucked because I couldn't tell my story and I
just kind of disappeared.
But it really sucked because I couldn't tell my story and I
just kind of disappeared.
And then actually the same day, I was told that they're like
hey, we want to buy you out.
My mother-in-law had a stroke and then she ended up dying two
weeks later.
So it was just awful, right, like we were like Alice falling
down the hole, no power thing, our world just getting ripped
apart.
And so we got through that.
We got through the year and this is something that no one
knows, my partners included.
We ended up getting life insurance that kept us afloat,
so I couldn't negotiate for it and have to take a smaller deal.
So it was a blessing, huge blessing.
But at the end of it I had to sign a non-compete for two years
and I got a chunk paid up front and then I got a chunk paid
every year for several years and that kind of got me through
well, pretty much going into COVID, because COVID kind of
really rocked a year later.
But what do you want me to?
Nate Shutes: unpack there.
Well, I mean, first, what I'm picking up on is just how human
all of that is.
That has nothing to do specifically with logistics, it
has nothing to do specifically with finance.
It is just a very intense lived experience of somebody who and
I'm sure if we asked your partners that were there, they
would have a slightly different version of the story and they
would say some of the same things of like yeah, it was
really hard for us too.
But I think we glamorize entrepreneurship I know I do,
I'm guilty of it at times and the realities are it's very hard
, it's very emotional, emotional .
It is a different kind of sleepless night when you're
dealing with equity and distributions and maybe a an
ending, a partnership that's ending that.
There's not a lot of people that can understand that kind of
pressure and stress.
I'm sure your wife vividly remembers every week of that and
if she probably flashed back to when you were all starry-eyed
and like, hey, let's go do this thing, and she said it's just a
house, you know, to get to that full circle moment on the other
end of it.
That is.
I mean I'm not going to spend too much time on the
storytelling part of our narrative and how that all works
.
Uh, that is.
I mean, I'm not going to spend too much time on the
storytelling part of of our narrative and how that all works
.
But yeah, these are quote life and death and from a financial
standpoint, uh, stakes they're not um fun, they are terrifying.
Casey Winans: Oh yeah, yeah, it's, and it's the typical thing
when you've had a business for a few years lifestyle creep.
Yeah, I bought a new, bigger home.
I had a daughter in college.
I had, at that point, I think, I had my two younger kids.
They had been homeschooled for a while for other reasons
medical for one of them, but I think they were in private
school at that point, right, so I was doing all these things
that were valuable to my kids, really pouring into them, that
required a sizable income, and then suddenly the rugs pulled
out and what do you do and what's going on?
And I had a lot of guilt actually too.
I mean, here's the other human person.
Part of it is for those five years and then years before it I
traveled like crazy.
So it was constantly like I'm seeing my kids grow up through,
you know, facetime, talking to my wife, you know, and odds and
ends.
And there was one project I did where I felt like I lived in
Memphis for two and a half years , I mean every week, four days,
four days a week there, constantly.
So there was that coming out of it.
So it was relief on one end, you know.
But you know friendships are kind of getting pulled and
pulled apart, ending, you know, uncertainty about what's coming
next to me.
So there's, there's all those.
It's all that human drama that was in there at the end of it
2019, you know, like the very beginning of the year.
So I think it was, I think it was December 31st.
We signed the papers and I was no longer an owner, got a chunk
of money, got the promissory note for X number of payments
and you know, I that was kind of cut out from everything I'd
done for for years.
So what do you do next?
And you have to reinvent yourself.
Or, uh, and and honestly, I did sensationalize entrepreneurship
.
There was a lot of relearning, unlearning at that point, cause
I thought my stuff didn't stink.
I realized that there was a whole bunch of things around
business that I didn't know, that it was just the perfect
storm of being in a space where there was a lot of demand and I
just happened to be able to build and capitalize on a
network when I didn't have it anymore.
You're starting from scratch so much harder.
Nate Shutes: There's also a loss of status.
That happens.
You're used to being in a room and having influence or
authority and the network.
You get customers, you've got suppliers, you've got clout of a
kind, and then one day you realize it was all situational
yeah, I mean true, there's.
Casey Winans: There's folks I haven't talked to since I left
mcgregor, just because you know we there was that six month
period where separation and even before then, like moving into
different roles, where I didn't talk to as much.
So if they listen to this, this is probably their first, uh
guess, perspective of, or at least my perspective of, what
happened and why it happened.
And so I'm I'm pretty private that way.
I overshare sometimes in other spaces, but I've been quiet in
this in terms of detail, but I think.
Nate Shutes: Thank you for for trusting me and our audience
with a very vulnerable insights.
I mean, this is part of why I do what I do is I?
Lots of folks out there are owners themselves, or are about
to be, or have been dreaming about it for years, and I want
to help prepare them, in some cases just tactically.
Hey, you're going to need to get really good at accounting.
You're going to have to understand what a GL code is and
how a balance sheet and the income statement work together
or don't at times and statements of cash Well, you're going to
learn all that kind of stuff.
Plus, you got to be a part-time lawyer, part-time HR generalist
and you're going to miss a lot of your kids' sporting events
and and and and so to help prepare them for those kind of
rough seas that might come, stories like yours, I believe,
add significant value.
Now you can tell somebody else hey, don't make the same
mistakes I did.
And oftentimes people are like no, I think I want to burn my
hand on the stove myself before I listen to what you say.
But now you've gone through it yourself and then you had to sit
out for a couple of years and now you're doing full stride.
So let's shift then.
Second time founder, new organization well, for new name?
Where did full stride come from ?
What does it do and what are you doing differently now in
your next venture, gotcha?
Casey Winans: so in between starting full stride and exiting
McGregor Partners, I had a two-year COVID the ugly part.
I actually took a job.
I was recruited by somebody a peer that used to be a
competitor and I worked there for about a year and a half
heading up advisory.
So I got to learn a lot of the stuff that happens before they
select a vendor and get an implementation, which meant are
we building business cases?
Does it make sense?
Here's different vendors, where are they better, worse for you,
based on what you're trying to achieve.
And then just structuring all that and I did a lot of that
with fixed fee arrangements.
So no longer per hour, you know where this, this, this messy
part of we want more, they want less.
You know, and then we're fighting over inputs and outputs
versus like, what are we achieving?
So I did that for a year and a half.
He retired.
I didn't really mesh well with the rest of the executive team,
so part of the ways.
But taking all the things that I learned there, I wanted to put
into full stride.
And full stride really is like you start slower and you ramp up
and then you're running right.
So that image in your head.
I wanted to work with the mid-sized businesses that
weren't well served by Blue Yonder, the ones that I had seen
buy them, always choked and they struggled long-term if they
didn't just abandon ship at some point.
So I'm like there needs to be somebody there advocating for
them.
And one of the things that didn't go well with my first
business and the one I was working with afterwards is when
your time and materials and your project-based the ones that get
you going early on to feed you eventually are the ones that you
get the scraps or don't even get any attention because you're
chasing ever bigger paydays.
So with McGregor we were going high, six-figure, low,
seven-figure implementations versus the five and six-figure
we did at the beginning.
Same thing with the other company I worked with.
So these other ones, these clients, were getting the scraps
, the ones coming.
They were coming and looking for, say, blue Yonder and you
can potentially pay the subscription fee, maybe pay for
a small implementation, but you're always going to struggle
with this.
They're going to eat you alive because there's all these
assumptions behind the scenes in terms of how it's structured
for large business, not midsize.
So we started looking at that company.
In between, I started looking at other vendors that were maybe a
tier lower, didn't have the partner.
Ecosystems really wanted to grow, wanted some outside
influence partnerships to go.
So I took those agreements and I literally one of them.
I wrote an email.
My wife was like how did that work?
It was maybe six, seven lines.
After I talked to the CEO of one of those vendors and I said,
hey, I made the case, you want partnerships.
You felt like you missed the boat on that one.
What if I build a business that didn't outgrow you and we can
talk?
And he's like, let's do it so instantly.
There you go.
I had my first partnership.
Then I went out and I started the LLC and all that.
But she was kind of dumbfounded Like, how did that work?
I spoke his language.
Nate Shutes: You know if I can deliver great.
So you closed the deal in one email.
Is what you're saying.
Casey Winans: Yeah, more or less that's really what it looked
like.
You know, there was a conversation before that and
some back channel things with some some some folks that I knew
in the industry, but that was how my first partnership started
with a vendor and I went in and I started working.
As you know, I went back to being the guy who was turning
the wrenches and configuration and talking to clients.
So that was that was that was me, my, my deal.
I was going to be an implementation partner for
midsize businesses, midsize vendors, right Connecting the
dots there doing?
Nate Shutes: what does midsize mean?
By the way, can you define that ?
Yeah, so going back.
Casey Winans: I mean anyone that's probably doing.
I guess it's more, so much that I'm trying to get back to that
original thesis because it was a little fuzzy.
But anybody who's looking for WMS at that point, so maybe
outgrowing an ERP or even in the sense of a 3PL, that's the
first system.
You need A big thing to run your operation but they're not
big enough for the big names in the new half, the vendors out
there that want to grow in.
A mid-sized business is great for them.
It's a quicker implementation.
It's the first one.
Land and expand as they grow.
If you do well, it's virtuous.
And then I'm in the middle of figuring okay, well, how do I do
this profitably where I build a team and I don't outgrow
anybody?
They outgrow me and I celebrate it Like that's not something
you see in a typical consulting firm.
That's just.
That's just the business model that doesn't exist.
You know, like my first one, we just kept growing and then
people fell off the bus as we got bigger and bigger,
unfortunately inadvertently.
So I started doing that.
I did that for several months and then I hired my first
employee, paul Hinman, and we were working together and we
were a great middle where you could see, it was sold to
somebody who wasn't ready.
They were typically first-time buyers and we were the ones that
were level setting after the fact.
The vendors kind of liked it, but they didn't like it.
The clients appreciated it, but didn't like it because we were
delivering bad news.
And then we were always the ones getting the black eye and,
regardless of us being there or not, we could see the ones
getting the black eye and, regardless of us being there or
not, we could see the other projects going on with some of
these vendors and they never, really ever, transitioned to
fully supported live.
They were tethered and there was no real leadership on that
side of things.
So it was coming in and you're asking the customer what they
want versus leading them with some type of process, and so at
the at the very end of 2023, I pulled back.
I'm like this is this is enough , it's, it's, it's a lot of
money, it's great money.
I can probably keep hiring this way, but I hate my life again,
like I don't want to build another body shop and that's the
effectively what you know where I'd worked outside of vendors.
I'm like I don't want to do that.
I want this to be meaningful.
I love helping people and I want to help American businesses
effectively.
The mid-sized mama pops getting bigger, maybe getting into
private equity, but I want to have a meaningful impact there.
I don't want to get them after they've gone corporate because
then I'm just talking to a middle manager who doesn't have
real say.
I'm like I want to talk to the leaders.
So we stepped back and the big question I had in my mind was
what does across my career?
I've been doing this for 20 years what's the commonality?
And my thought process then was no one's ever really ready when
they buy.
Was no one's ever really ready when they buy.
No one really talks about all the stuff at the business level
that should be done.
That would help influence who you're working with but also
impact all the things that come along.
You know, when you get into configuration and design there's
I can't tell you the number of times I've gone into a meeting
and I've asked a simple question at least I assumed it was
simple and you get multiple answers and people look at each
other kind of shocked like oh, you're not thinking the same way
I am and instantly like guess what that derails the project?
We're going to spend more time in design than anyone
anticipated, and unless you get more budget, something's going
to have to give, which is training, testing, go live,
support, all the things down the road that are like forever away
, and I'm like that's, that's the part we need to fix.
So we started brainstorming.
I'm like what have I done that's been successful?
And that's when we started carving up and coming up with
something called Clarity.
First, and it's a framework.
I have three big questions, with questions inside of that,
all geared towards letting people know should you invest
now and most of the time?
If it's not, yes, it's not yet, because if you're growing,
eventually you're going to need one.
And then there's things behind it that are objective.
Another one is where aren't you ready, which is a hard pill for
people to swallow.
So we get into that Unpacking that around teams, process data,
all the things that an ERP doesn't necessarily need or will
probably should.
But you can get away with it because there's another aspect
to the whole operation that way.
But so we started doing that and that's where we went full
into it, and I've walked away from a lot of revenue to get
there.
It was pretty painful and then eventually, since we weren't
getting traction until just after uh, I had to.
I had to let that guy go.
You know which was like losing your right arm.
It really sucked.
And it was at that perfect time though, too.
He was getting married, he was buying a house.
They want to start a family.
He needed stability that I couldn't give him.
Where, where I'm I'm second time I can do this.
My wife works, so there's some cushion there too.
Two of my kids are out of the house at this point, so it's
just different all around.
They weren't then, but they are now.
So I bit the bullet and said, well, I'm going to go double
down on the mission-based piece of this, and so I had to start
from scratch.
I had to get my message out there, figure out how to talk to
people, figure out how do I get in front of an audience.
Podcasts became part of that plan Right on.
Little by little, towards the middle of the year, I started
getting more leads coming in, and so I didn't have to do any
weird consulting gigs anymore.
That kind of kept the lights on , but, you know, divided your
attention Didn't really, didn't really help my mission, and I've
been doing it ever since.
It's not it's not something where I'm getting enough
traction yet to hire a team.
It's like feast and famine I'll get a couple, then there's a,
there's a, there's a you know dry spot, and then I get more.
So it's it's like start and stop jerky.
So I'm in survival mode still at this point, you know.
And then I've been looking for what's in my.
Am I pulling too much versus, or am I pushing too much versus
pulling where clients are coming to me?
And this is a problem.
So I have the.
I guess I'm blessed enough to know that I have, if I can be,
I'm finding the fit and I'm going to have something that I
enjoy doing long-term, that I can build a team around and I
can choose to either sell it or keep going and maybe run it
forever and sponsor other businesses, cause that's how my
brain works.
Nate Shutes: I always see other opportunities, but you got to
pick one and go with it, and well, Casey, I love your honesty
, just the way you talk about the realities of, because
there's a temptation to over-represent size, like for a
lot of startups.
They, oh, we're a global company because one of their
founders, you know, was born in Canada.
You know, no, you're not global .
Somebody's address is another thing, yeah, and sort of like
puff up and try to appear as something that you're not, and
it sounds like your approach is the opposite and it might take
longer as a result, to get, maybe, where you want to get.
But it sounds like you have a much deeper sense of clarity
about how you want to run a business, this time around very
much, and you're zooming out and looking at the whole family
experience and the financial side of it and the the impact on
your employees.
You mentioned the one that had to leave um to start a family
and those are the kinds of learnings that you can't read
about.
I wish we could.
I wish somebody else could just download all of the learnings
and then apply them immediately and increase their odds of
success.
Two or three X, but that's just not human nature when folks are
willing to talk about these things in such a candid and
frank way.
And I don't know what happens next for you, of course, but I
love that you are putting yourself out there, because I'm
convinced that when you show up that way, there are some people
out there that are absolutely attracted to that way of doing
things, and we just try to connect them.
So when we grow awareness for smaller businesses, you don't
have it all figured out.
You're not a $50 million a year thing, you're very early in the
process and we want to offer that support to you.
I also just love talking warehousing and WMS and all that
stuff myself too.
So selfishly we could record for a couple more hours because
I want to know what those three questions are that you ask.
I've implemented a WMS myself.
I've opened new facilities under an existing ERP that had a
WMS module inside of it and I couldn't change anything because
it was a copy paste of all the other distribution centers and
it didn't quite work for the way I wanted to do it, and so I
feel the pain of having been the user of the WMS, and so maybe
you and I we need to have our own McGregor brew house
conversation sometime, and I want to pick your brain on all
the ways to do it more expertly in the future.
When you think now, wrapping up , who is the type of business or
somebody that you would be a great fit for, that should reach
out to you.
Casey Winans: It's funny you say that because we were talking
about the geeking out on the business side.
So one thing I've discovered recently is I had a referral
from another podcast I was on.
This was a small 3PO.
They were morphing from FBA prep into a full-blown 3PO and
they realized they need some help.
They had tried WMS themselves a year before.
It didn't go well for all the reasons of why I do what I do.
So pulled me in and while I was working with them, they were
captivated by the quick wins that I offer, which I just do as
a you know like hey, this kind of helps offset my fees.
Well, they, they drank it up and they were so approachable
and you know they're a small business.
So there's, you know there's not a big budget for consulting.
I'm probably the first one they've worked with, or maybe in
a long time, because they had a bad taste in their mouth.
That's what I'm up against.
But so I'm really thinking about doubling down in that
space of upstart 3PLs, because they need, they need the WMS
right off, right out of the gate .
I've been working with distributors too, but there's
that, that, that milestone of we've finally outgrown the erp
with the module, wms module and everyone is in alignment with
that, or they're at least asking the question where I can come
in and help paint the picture of yes or no.
You should do this, 3pls.
It's much earlier, uh, the organization's more flat so we
can have the conversations.
They enjoy this, this content.
That's where they found me.
I can be real, super real and polished, or corporate, yep, you
know all the things that I, I value, I might, this, I get to
be more, uh it's.
It's a combination of the warehouse management guy but
also the business consultant guy , because I come in and ask like
are you capturing all the revenue you should be capturing?
Because I know in a 3po world, you know labor is massively
expensive, the margins are low and what I'm seeing you do here,
do you capture that?
Because if you're not doing it consistently, you're giving
people free rides and that's killing you on the back end here
, whether you see it or not.
So I love that part and that's really kind of opened my eyes.
How do I get in front of more of those folks?
And I've met so many other entrepreneurs that have networks
in that realm, either like matchmakers or other some other
offshoots of that, that are like oh yeah, we bump into these
folks all the time.
We we don't have any way to help them Like, well, yeah,
perfect client for me, let's, let's, let's help them make them
bigger.
They're good for you, I help them, you help me, so everybody
wins.
So that's where I think I'm really going on that side of
things.
It's it's the smaller upside upstarts, and that might not
just be 3pls, I don't know.
I've bumped into some brands on the e-com side that really want
to get in and do their own fulfillment and they have the
same challenges of yeah, what do we do early on?
What do we do?
We're kind of figuring out and making it work, but is it dumb?
Like you know, are we doing things the hard way, versus like
you come in and tell us to make a change and suddenly you know
we're three times more productive.
So that's the kind of stuff I like now.
My big challenge now is how do I make that profitable for me
long term, where I can build, sure, and not just be limited to
me?
Nate Shutes: so well.
It's a another puzzle to solve and that's what you've made your
career on is connecting the dots, moving the Rubik's Cube
around digitally to support the physical world that needs to be
moved around, and the four-wall ecosystem of a warehouse is so
underestimated and misunderstood .
The complexity inside of it is astounding and also just a lot
of fun.
It's where the real work gets done.
Tons of hardworking people that get up in the middle of the
night, three o'clock in the morning, four o'clock in the
morning, show up at a distribution center an hour
later and get to work and lifting heavy things and walking
long distances and driving heavy and sometimes dangerous
equipment, and they're interacting alongside
technologists and finance professionals and customer teams
, and I always like to tip my hat to them.
I'm responsible for a distribution center right now,
you know, with around 30 or 40 people, and I always love to
honor them because they do the work that doesn't get seen and
if we, you know leadership and technologists and vendors do our
jobs really, really well, they also benefit.
It's a safer work environment, it's more ergonomic, it is less
taxing, it's more intelligent.
How it's done and engaging those folks in that kind of work
is a blast, yeah, and so, yeah, it keeps lighting the fire for
me talking to you, casey, because I it's easy to get lost
in the business of business sometimes and need to zoom out
and say, why are we doing this?
Oh, that's right.
Mostly do everything that we do for people, our families, our
teams, our customers, and so thanks for bringing that full
circle today and we wish you nothing but the best.
Again, I always end by saying we're all rooting for you.
We really are, and I can't wait until you get up to full stride
yourself, and then we can come back and do an update in a year
and say, hey, where are they now , casey, what's up?
And we can hear from you.
But thanks again for being here today.
Casey Winans: Yeah, my pleasure.
Thank you for having me.
This was therapeutic for me.
Just, you know it's in your head, so getting it out there in
intelligible ways.
Nate Shutes: Well you did.
You did a great job, and I know there's going to be tons of
folks that learn a lot from the journey that you've shared so
far and that will be rooting for you too.
Thanks, casey.
Awesome Hope.
So, all right, take care.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the Bootstrapper's
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