WEBVTT 00:00:33.262 --> 00:00:39.634 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. 00:00:39.634 --> 00:00:44.070 We're here to change that by sharing their stories and inspiring others to take the leap. 00:00:45.200 --> 00:00:48.010 It's a roller coaster ride that you might ultimately fail. 00:00:48.600 --> 00:00:50.567 That's when I kind of knew I was on to something. 00:00:51.281 --> 00:00:52.146 It was very hard. 00:00:52.620 --> 00:00:54.548 It truly is building a legacy. 00:00:54.548 --> 00:01:01.751 The more life you live, the more wisdom you have, because, we are where we're supposed to be kind of answering the call. 00:01:02.280 --> 00:01:04.688 Don't shoulder entrepreneurship on your own. 00:01:04.688 --> 00:01:06.643 I'm your host, nate Schutz. 00:01:06.643 --> 00:01:09.671 Let's build something together from the ground up. 00:01:09.671 --> 00:01:16.751 Good morning, everybody, or good afternoon, depending on when you're listening to this. 00:01:16.751 --> 00:01:19.346 Welcome back to the Bootstrapper's Guide to Logistics. 00:01:19.927 --> 00:01:22.522 We are doing exactly what we've been doing for years. 00:01:22.522 --> 00:01:26.111 There's really no change to the structure or format of Season 3. 00:01:26.111 --> 00:01:43.423 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. 00:01:43.423 --> 00:02:01.346 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. 00:02:01.346 --> 00:02:03.552 But it doesn't mean they've got small thinking. 00:02:03.552 --> 00:02:18.480 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. 00:02:18.480 --> 00:02:21.987 So I love getting to do this with everybody each week. 00:02:22.368 --> 00:02:25.622 Thank you for all of those that have followed us. 00:02:25.622 --> 00:02:32.183 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. 00:02:32.183 --> 00:02:35.531 I couldn't do it without you and without our sponsors. 00:02:35.531 --> 00:02:36.831 So this week we're going to do the same sponsors. 00:02:36.831 --> 00:02:48.110 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. 00:02:48.110 --> 00:02:49.593 Casey, good morning. 00:02:49.593 --> 00:02:55.510 First, it's great to finally get a chance to go deep on a subject that I love warehousing. 00:02:55.510 --> 00:03:00.948 I know you're an expert, but it's also our first chance getting to really meet and talk in person. 00:03:00.948 --> 00:03:04.562 So, good morning, how are you, and thanks for being here. 00:03:05.022 --> 00:03:12.631 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. 00:03:14.140 --> 00:03:15.223 So why don't you start, casey? 00:03:15.223 --> 00:03:19.914 Just give us a little bit of overview so our listeners know who you are, what you've done. 00:03:19.914 --> 00:03:24.888 You know kind of career-wise, leading up to what your life has been like as an entrepreneur. 00:03:25.248 --> 00:03:27.061 Sure, yeah, I mean, I came out of the gate. 00:03:27.061 --> 00:03:32.551 I went to school for management information systems at Penn State. 00:03:32.551 --> 00:03:39.163 That morphed into getting an internship at GE up in Erie, pennsylvania, where they made locomotives. 00:03:39.163 --> 00:03:55.364 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. 00:03:55.364 --> 00:03:57.810 I built some products after I moved on from GE. 00:03:57.810 --> 00:04:02.943 Reverse auctions for procurement that was something that was done in Pennsylvania. 00:04:02.943 --> 00:04:09.903 There is like a Commonwealth nonprofit that turned in and spun out as a startup. 00:04:10.085 --> 00:04:27.826 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. 00:04:27.826 --> 00:04:32.524 So that was my first taste of warehouse management systems, parcel manifesting systems. 00:04:32.524 --> 00:04:52.403 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. 00:04:52.403 --> 00:04:54.069 So I did that, built those out. 00:04:54.069 --> 00:04:54.971 It worked really well. 00:04:54.971 --> 00:05:06.052 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. 00:05:06.052 --> 00:05:20.836 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. 00:05:20.836 --> 00:05:30.432 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. 00:05:30.432 --> 00:05:33.762 I didn't understand the concept of warehouse management system. 00:05:33.762 --> 00:05:35.386 It was just these systems we built. 00:05:35.386 --> 00:05:36.988 They were business systems in my mind. 00:05:37.911 --> 00:06:04.242 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. 00:06:04.242 --> 00:06:09.362 I had a background in it that I didn't appreciate for it and that gave me the opportunity to move into management. 00:06:09.362 --> 00:06:11.108 So I instantly went in. 00:06:11.108 --> 00:06:29.083 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. 00:06:29.083 --> 00:06:32.372 No one really understood it until they went live and things didn't work. 00:06:32.372 --> 00:06:39.490 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. 00:06:39.490 --> 00:06:43.321 And then I followed a mentor to a 3PL in Canada. 00:06:43.321 --> 00:06:46.067 Like there you go, they're going to expand into the US. 00:06:46.067 --> 00:06:51.307 I'm going to learn the outside part of the vendor equation Still lots of clients coming and going. 00:06:51.307 --> 00:06:53.880 So there's a good mix and I did that. 00:06:53.880 --> 00:06:54.523 I learned a ton. 00:06:55.225 --> 00:07:07.247 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. 00:07:07.247 --> 00:07:10.940 They were used to all these turnkey systems on their side, more planning up front. 00:07:10.940 --> 00:07:16.083 Where you have a problem, turn the lights off at five, come back in at nine o'clock next morning and deal with it. 00:07:16.083 --> 00:07:22.004 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. 00:07:22.004 --> 00:07:23.387 Everything's going to fall apart. 00:07:24.050 --> 00:07:31.958 So it was an awesome opportunity for myself and two other guys that I knew to hang our shingle and start a consulting business. 00:07:31.958 --> 00:07:37.151 So my first business and we had no grand plans, it was just opportunistic. 00:07:37.151 --> 00:07:46.487 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. 00:07:46.487 --> 00:07:48.891 But I fast forward five years. 00:07:48.891 --> 00:07:51.685 We had about 60 people working for us. 00:07:51.685 --> 00:07:54.470 We were doing, we were on pace to do about 12 million the year. 00:07:54.470 --> 00:08:01.771 That that I pulled away and I it just kept growing, you know so you you for help me understand this then. 00:08:01.790 --> 00:08:19.766 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. 00:08:19.766 --> 00:08:36.747 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. 00:08:36.747 --> 00:08:37.831 And it was scary. 00:08:37.831 --> 00:08:39.764 Did you guys just like sit around it? 00:08:39.764 --> 00:08:46.104 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? 00:08:46.104 --> 00:08:52.805 Was that day like when you and your partner or partners said, okay, we're going to do this? 00:08:54.060 --> 00:08:55.024 It played out like that. 00:08:55.024 --> 00:08:58.431 So I guess the backup. 00:08:58.431 --> 00:09:05.244 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. 00:09:05.244 --> 00:09:15.160 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. 00:09:15.160 --> 00:09:19.667 I got this little bit of traction here with one client, let's figure out what we do. 00:09:20.240 --> 00:09:26.289 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. 00:09:26.289 --> 00:09:28.488 It's just one of those like when do I do it? 00:09:28.488 --> 00:09:29.503 And I had actually. 00:09:29.503 --> 00:09:38.682 So I guess I had a business before this, one client, a little bit of work. 00:09:38.682 --> 00:09:39.985 I made like 10 great 10 grand and it was awesome. 00:09:39.985 --> 00:09:40.605 I'm like it felt so liberating. 00:09:40.605 --> 00:09:46.927 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. 00:09:46.927 --> 00:09:49.232 And I had one client, a little bit of work. 00:09:49.232 --> 00:09:51.604 I'm like I can't feed my family, so I put it away. 00:09:52.104 --> 00:10:01.870 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. 00:10:01.870 --> 00:10:13.326 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. 00:10:13.326 --> 00:10:50.390 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? 00:10:50.390 --> 00:10:55.225 And then we spent probably a couple weeks just trying to figure out what we call ourselves. 00:10:55.225 --> 00:11:02.252 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? 00:11:02.252 --> 00:11:04.545 There's a story that's the. 00:11:04.545 --> 00:11:10.348 You know it's the, it's the cliched, you know, uh, bar back of a napkin story, and we're partners. 00:11:10.528 --> 00:11:14.081 So there you go, let's not, it was a brew house yeah, yeah exactly yeah. 00:11:14.642 --> 00:11:16.748 So lots of guinness and you know whatever else was. 00:11:16.748 --> 00:11:22.024 You know the local stuff as well, but I yeah, that's how it came to be that's a fantastic that. 00:11:22.165 --> 00:11:31.156 So there's a storytelling framework that explains most movies and books that we've all read. 00:11:31.156 --> 00:11:36.447 One of my favorite is the Hero's Journey, and that is the story of the Matrix. 00:11:36.447 --> 00:11:39.004 Is Hero's Journey Lord of the Rings? 00:11:39.004 --> 00:11:40.569 Is that as well? 00:11:40.569 --> 00:11:46.364 And there is a storytelling element inside of those called the watering hole. 00:11:46.364 --> 00:11:59.555 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. 00:11:59.555 --> 00:12:00.736 It's a scene in all these movies. 00:12:00.736 --> 00:12:10.382 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. 00:12:10.402 --> 00:12:35.413 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. 00:12:35.413 --> 00:12:39.852 And then it gets real and the danger starts. 00:12:39.852 --> 00:12:46.894 So the first month that you and your partners are the safety is now behind you. 00:12:46.894 --> 00:12:52.426 Did you like hit the ground running and things were happening how you thought they would? 00:12:52.426 --> 00:12:55.803 Or was it crickets and you couldn't get a customer to say yes? 00:12:55.803 --> 00:12:58.531 Like what was the really really early stage? 00:12:58.531 --> 00:13:02.060 Like when you were fully committed? 00:13:02.581 --> 00:13:02.941 Gotcha. 00:13:02.941 --> 00:13:05.885 Well, before I dive into that, I want to back up just for a second. 00:13:05.885 --> 00:13:15.656 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. 00:13:15.656 --> 00:13:20.240 And her brother was an entrepreneur, basically like right out of high school. 00:13:20.240 --> 00:13:23.090 So I talked to him and he couldn't envision anything else. 00:13:23.090 --> 00:13:28.222 So he's like, yeah, bet on yourself, you know the sky's the limit, envision anything else. 00:13:28.222 --> 00:13:29.807 So he's like, yeah, like, bet on yourself, you know the sky's the limit. 00:13:29.807 --> 00:13:37.548 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. 00:13:37.548 --> 00:13:40.481 We don't care, you know, and that was like freeing, you know. 00:13:40.481 --> 00:13:44.868 I teared up, I'm like, okay, I get to get to know, chase my dream here. 00:13:45.429 --> 00:13:58.731 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. 00:13:58.731 --> 00:14:05.487 And the other one had his second, his youngest, the daughter, literally that month, or maybe, maybe July, just before August. 00:14:05.487 --> 00:14:12.333 So like we're all like, like we're in it, but at the same time, like stakes are high, we're nervous, uh. 00:14:12.333 --> 00:14:14.400 But first month it went, it went awesome. 00:14:14.400 --> 00:14:21.741 I mean, it was one of those things where, uh, the one partner had already broke into a 3pl and they were insatiable. 00:14:21.741 --> 00:14:26.251 You know, just more projects, more projects, tons of work. 00:14:26.251 --> 00:14:27.934 Our rates weren't great but they were. 00:14:27.934 --> 00:14:31.531 They were feeding us and we were doing all the work and we had one contractor at that point. 00:14:32.201 --> 00:14:45.086 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. 00:14:45.086 --> 00:14:50.995 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. 00:14:50.995 --> 00:14:52.867 It was crazy. 00:14:52.867 --> 00:14:54.206 We were working 80 hour weeks. 00:14:54.206 --> 00:14:55.485 We were killing ourselves. 00:14:55.485 --> 00:14:56.408 It was. 00:14:56.408 --> 00:14:59.309 It was not fun, but fun at the same time. 00:14:59.309 --> 00:15:00.785 I mean, the money was awesome. 00:15:00.885 --> 00:15:03.027 Seeing that come in like it just opened my world. 00:15:03.027 --> 00:15:03.667 We just opened my world. 00:15:03.667 --> 00:15:04.488 We were all making low six figures. 00:15:04.488 --> 00:15:07.070 Before you know we had moved up to director roles. 00:15:07.070 --> 00:15:14.895 So it was like we're quickly surpassing that, wow, okay, uh, we're gonna need to hire at some point. 00:15:14.895 --> 00:15:17.057 So I mean we can kind of get into that piece there too. 00:15:17.057 --> 00:15:21.087 But it was just gangbusters and we started getting other clients coming in and they wanted something. 00:15:21.087 --> 00:15:26.106 But by and large we had dhl where it was excel logistics. 00:15:26.166 --> 00:15:27.849 At that point DHL turned into. 00:15:27.849 --> 00:15:32.706 I mean, you know, they're massive, so we would work for one director. 00:15:32.706 --> 00:15:36.088 Another director will pull us in more projects, clients coming and going. 00:15:36.088 --> 00:16:03.045 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. 00:16:03.065 --> 00:16:04.868 Very much, yeah, very much yeah. 00:16:04.868 --> 00:16:24.090 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. 00:16:24.090 --> 00:16:33.253 And so how did you and your partners think about cash flow and keeping the lights on as the business started to grow? 00:16:33.253 --> 00:16:36.029 And okay, now we've got to make a couple of different decisions. 00:16:36.029 --> 00:16:38.929 You're getting paid a little bit, but now we've got to take a risk. 00:16:38.929 --> 00:16:47.640 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. 00:16:48.522 --> 00:16:51.887 Yeah, well the beauty of what we were doing. 00:16:52.248 --> 00:17:00.640 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. 00:17:00.700 --> 00:17:13.144 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. 00:17:13.144 --> 00:17:34.269 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. 00:17:34.269 --> 00:17:41.271 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. 00:17:41.271 --> 00:17:45.251 So we had this stuff set up so we could put the contractors in there as well. 00:17:45.251 --> 00:17:49.041 And suddenly you know we could. 00:17:49.041 --> 00:17:55.166 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. 00:17:55.448 --> 00:18:01.474 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. 00:18:01.474 --> 00:18:04.401 So instantly we got that going, uh. 00:18:04.401 --> 00:18:06.582 So that was, that was one piece that helped. 00:18:06.582 --> 00:18:09.424 But, yeah, we avoided most of the overhead. 00:18:09.424 --> 00:18:19.572 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. 00:18:20.073 --> 00:18:23.756 Now, one other thing that we did have in our back pocket was one of the partners. 00:18:24.276 --> 00:18:29.124 His dad had had a business for years and he knew some accountants down in our area. 00:18:29.124 --> 00:18:35.866 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. 00:18:35.866 --> 00:18:38.882 So that was helpful for the distribution thing. 00:18:38.882 --> 00:19:04.351 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. 00:19:04.351 --> 00:19:06.584 So we have these things in our favor. 00:19:06.584 --> 00:19:11.534 I didn't really appreciate them at that moment, but it worked out great. 00:19:11.534 --> 00:19:22.828 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. 00:19:23.660 --> 00:19:36.282 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. 00:19:36.282 --> 00:19:38.987 You have great ideas together. 00:19:38.987 --> 00:19:57.052 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. 00:19:57.052 --> 00:20:10.333 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. 00:20:10.333 --> 00:20:35.900 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. 00:20:36.923 --> 00:20:39.411 You mentioned your co-founders having young children. 00:20:39.411 --> 00:21:09.721 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. 00:21:09.721 --> 00:21:14.746 Now you have all of that knowledge and maybe we can unpack some of that in the next part here. 00:21:14.746 --> 00:21:31.152 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. 00:21:31.353 --> 00:21:34.081 What percentage of equity is everybody going to own? 00:21:34.081 --> 00:21:37.861 What are your responsibilities going to be versus the other person? 00:21:37.861 --> 00:21:40.638 Who's going to be responsible for being the tiebreaker? 00:21:40.638 --> 00:21:53.101 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. 00:21:53.101 --> 00:21:58.386 It sounds like, based on what you shared, that you may have found some challenges down the road. 00:21:58.386 --> 00:21:59.510 So what actually happened? 00:22:00.312 --> 00:22:02.917 So we never envisioned it to get as big as it did. 00:22:02.917 --> 00:22:06.304 In fact we were talking about the equity piece you just mentioned. 00:22:06.304 --> 00:22:09.019 So we had accelerators in there. 00:22:09.019 --> 00:22:13.522 So the first month getting started we were all making low six figures. 00:22:13.522 --> 00:22:15.835 A lot of us had some kind of savings. 00:22:15.835 --> 00:22:24.835 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. 00:22:24.835 --> 00:22:30.537 So that was a cash flow piece to get us through before we started paying ourselves, and the typical net 30. 00:22:30.537 --> 00:22:38.420 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. 00:22:38.420 --> 00:22:40.036 So that got us through it. 00:22:40.036 --> 00:22:49.232 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. 00:22:49.232 --> 00:22:51.099 You know, a couple million here, a couple million there. 00:22:51.099 --> 00:22:56.840 We hit those and then ratchet up and then we're pretty close to all evenly splitting the pot. 00:22:56.840 --> 00:22:58.804 So that happened. 00:22:58.804 --> 00:23:00.092 That happened pretty quickly. 00:23:00.092 --> 00:23:04.660 So then we revisited the operating agreement to kind of play with what looks like longer term. 00:23:04.660 --> 00:23:06.764 But so we did this for five years. 00:23:06.764 --> 00:23:08.735 Tons of clients. 00:23:08.735 --> 00:23:11.658 We eventually grew to 60 people. 00:23:11.658 --> 00:23:19.856 That first hire was really scary that first year because you know, suddenly we're on the hook for somebody else's livelihood. 00:23:19.856 --> 00:23:27.438 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. 00:23:27.438 --> 00:23:31.701 We were on track to do somewhere close to 12 million the year 2018. 00:23:31.721 --> 00:23:46.380 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. 00:23:46.380 --> 00:23:51.879 But at the same time, I was also starting to chase something called managed services. 00:23:51.879 --> 00:23:59.657 So we have SLAs and they're paying us for peace of mind effectively to jump in when things go sideways. 00:23:59.657 --> 00:24:01.414 In a warehouse world. 00:24:01.414 --> 00:24:02.700 That's really important. 00:24:02.700 --> 00:24:08.718 Vendors can't do it or if they do, it's just to fix defects and maybe some data, not to understand your operation. 00:24:08.718 --> 00:24:11.063 So I got into that. 00:24:11.243 --> 00:24:17.997 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. 00:24:17.997 --> 00:24:21.346 So I'm like that's probably our future. 00:24:21.346 --> 00:24:22.109 I like that. 00:24:22.109 --> 00:24:28.959 It really kind of plays with the implementation side plus supporting it long-term, but there's always gaps when you're doing something. 00:24:28.959 --> 00:24:30.102 So that's the software realm. 00:24:30.102 --> 00:24:31.511 So we started doing that. 00:24:31.511 --> 00:24:35.351 We didn't know how to sell, so we were burning cash on employees and all that. 00:24:35.351 --> 00:24:39.862 And we got great insights for early customers who didn't turn into early customers. 00:24:39.862 --> 00:24:45.314 And it was just this dividing piece here where it's like, okay, five years in, what do we want to do? 00:24:45.314 --> 00:24:50.759 I like the idea of stepping back to an extent, maybe trying something different and, you know, being a sign of partner. 00:24:50.759 --> 00:24:57.506 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. 00:25:02.110 --> 00:25:04.939 So middle of 2018, they decided that they were going to buy me out, and you know it was. 00:25:04.939 --> 00:25:05.782 It was bittersweet, you know. 00:25:05.782 --> 00:25:14.331 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. 00:25:14.331 --> 00:25:16.895 So you know I couldn't stop. 00:25:16.895 --> 00:25:33.142 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. 00:25:33.142 --> 00:25:34.437 You know, in my mind theirs came back very low, which great you know, it's. 00:25:34.437 --> 00:25:34.846 Just it's the bottom part of it. 00:25:34.846 --> 00:25:39.410 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. 00:25:39.410 --> 00:25:50.798 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. 00:25:50.798 --> 00:25:56.743 So he came back with all this other information and it was like double the valuation. 00:25:56.743 --> 00:26:02.282 So it took probably this was the middle of 2018. 00:26:02.282 --> 00:26:07.523 We probably didn't finalize the negotiation until sometime in November, december. 00:26:08.631 --> 00:26:10.356 So it was frustrating, right? 00:26:10.356 --> 00:26:13.738 Sure, I bet you know, am I getting paid? 00:26:13.738 --> 00:26:14.480 What's going on? 00:26:14.480 --> 00:26:18.802 I can't talk to people inside the company for valid reasons. 00:26:18.802 --> 00:26:20.797 I mean, I'm not throwing anybody under the bus, I get it. 00:26:20.797 --> 00:26:23.674 But it really sucked because I couldn't tell my story and I just kind of disappeared. 00:26:23.695 --> 00:26:25.630 But it really sucked because I couldn't tell my story and I just kind of disappeared. 00:26:25.630 --> 00:26:30.802 And then actually the same day, I was told that they're like hey, we want to buy you out. 00:26:30.802 --> 00:26:35.422 My mother-in-law had a stroke and then she ended up dying two weeks later. 00:26:35.422 --> 00:26:42.975 So it was just awful, right, like we were like Alice falling down the hole, no power thing, our world just getting ripped apart. 00:26:42.975 --> 00:26:44.740 And so we got through that. 00:26:44.740 --> 00:26:49.340 We got through the year and this is something that no one knows, my partners included. 00:26:49.340 --> 00:26:57.304 We ended up getting life insurance that kept us afloat, so I couldn't negotiate for it and have to take a smaller deal. 00:26:57.304 --> 00:27:00.015 So it was a blessing, huge blessing. 00:27:00.015 --> 00:27:17.724 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. 00:27:17.724 --> 00:27:19.756 But what do you want me to? 00:27:19.796 --> 00:27:20.337 unpack there. 00:27:20.337 --> 00:27:26.984 Well, I mean, first, what I'm picking up on is just how human all of that is. 00:27:26.984 --> 00:27:35.623 That has nothing to do specifically with logistics, it has nothing to do specifically with finance. 00:27:35.623 --> 00:27:50.591 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. 00:27:51.173 --> 00:28:04.019 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. 00:28:04.019 --> 00:28:17.725 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. 00:28:17.725 --> 00:28:22.782 There's not a lot of people that can understand that kind of pressure and stress. 00:28:22.782 --> 00:28:39.999 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. 00:28:39.999 --> 00:28:41.891 That is. 00:28:41.891 --> 00:28:44.101 I mean I'm not going to spend too much time on the storytelling part of our narrative and how that all works. 00:28:44.101 --> 00:28:44.323 Uh, that is. 00:28:44.323 --> 00:28:48.620 I mean, I'm not going to spend too much time on the storytelling part of of our narrative and how that all works. 00:28:48.620 --> 00:28:59.054 But yeah, these are quote life and death and from a financial standpoint, uh, stakes they're not um fun, they are terrifying. 00:28:59.496 --> 00:29:04.692 Oh yeah, yeah, it's, and it's the typical thing when you've had a business for a few years lifestyle creep. 00:29:04.692 --> 00:29:06.955 Yeah, I bought a new, bigger home. 00:29:06.955 --> 00:29:08.457 I had a daughter in college. 00:29:08.457 --> 00:29:12.460 I had, at that point, I think, I had my two younger kids. 00:29:12.460 --> 00:29:31.586 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? 00:29:31.586 --> 00:29:33.593 And I had a lot of guilt actually too. 00:29:33.593 --> 00:29:35.477 I mean, here's the other human person. 00:29:35.577 --> 00:29:39.875 Part of it is for those five years and then years before it I traveled like crazy. 00:29:39.875 --> 00:29:47.081 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. 00:29:47.081 --> 00:29:56.020 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. 00:29:56.020 --> 00:29:57.852 So there was that coming out of it. 00:29:57.852 --> 00:29:59.975 So it was relief on one end, you know. 00:29:59.975 --> 00:30:06.984 But you know friendships are kind of getting pulled and pulled apart, ending, you know, uncertainty about what's coming next to me. 00:30:06.984 --> 00:30:07.884 So there's, there's all those. 00:30:07.884 --> 00:30:15.064 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. 00:30:15.410 --> 00:30:18.237 So I think it was, I think it was December 31st. 00:30:18.237 --> 00:30:31.382 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. 00:30:31.382 --> 00:30:32.431 So what do you do next? 00:30:32.431 --> 00:30:33.953 And you have to reinvent yourself. 00:30:33.953 --> 00:30:39.251 Or, uh, and and honestly, I did sensationalize entrepreneurship. 00:30:39.251 --> 00:30:45.755 There was a lot of relearning, unlearning at that point, cause I thought my stuff didn't stink. 00:30:45.755 --> 00:31:02.614 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. 00:31:02.614 --> 00:31:05.321 You're starting from scratch so much harder. 00:31:07.250 --> 00:31:09.094 There's also a loss of status. 00:31:09.094 --> 00:31:09.996 That happens. 00:31:09.996 --> 00:31:16.317 You're used to being in a room and having influence or authority and the network. 00:31:16.317 --> 00:31:27.269 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. 00:31:27.288 --> 00:31:38.690 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. 00:31:38.690 --> 00:31:48.365 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. 00:31:48.365 --> 00:31:50.934 And so I'm I'm pretty private that way. 00:31:50.934 --> 00:31:56.019 I overshare sometimes in other spaces, but I've been quiet in this in terms of detail, but I think. 00:31:56.038 --> 00:32:01.902 Thank you for for trusting me and our audience with a very vulnerable insights. 00:32:01.942 --> 00:32:07.283 I mean, this is part of why I do what I do is I? 00:32:07.283 --> 00:32:20.490 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. 00:32:20.490 --> 00:32:22.756 Hey, you're going to need to get really good at accounting. 00:32:22.756 --> 00:32:33.988 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. 00:32:33.988 --> 00:32:53.354 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. 00:32:54.118 --> 00:32:57.529 Now you can tell somebody else hey, don't make the same mistakes I did. 00:32:57.529 --> 00:33:03.519 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. 00:33:03.519 --> 00:33:12.738 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. 00:33:12.738 --> 00:33:14.141 So let's shift then. 00:33:14.141 --> 00:33:20.173 Second time founder, new organization well, for new name? 00:33:20.173 --> 00:33:21.616 Where did full stride come from? 00:33:21.616 --> 00:33:29.740 What does it do and what are you doing differently now in your next venture, gotcha? 00:33:30.001 --> 00:33:38.009 so in between starting full stride and exiting McGregor Partners, I had a two-year COVID the ugly part. 00:33:38.009 --> 00:33:39.814 I actually took a job. 00:33:39.814 --> 00:33:46.176 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. 00:33:46.176 --> 00:33:54.053 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? 00:33:54.053 --> 00:33:54.975 Does it make sense? 00:33:54.975 --> 00:34:00.596 Here's different vendors, where are they better, worse for you, based on what you're trying to achieve. 00:34:00.596 --> 00:34:05.945 And then just structuring all that and I did a lot of that with fixed fee arrangements. 00:34:05.945 --> 00:34:12.228 So no longer per hour, you know where this, this, this messy part of we want more, they want less. 00:34:12.228 --> 00:34:16.615 You know, and then we're fighting over inputs and outputs versus like, what are we achieving? 00:34:16.615 --> 00:34:18.498 So I did that for a year and a half. 00:34:18.498 --> 00:34:19.159 He retired. 00:34:19.159 --> 00:34:24.664 I didn't really mesh well with the rest of the executive team, so part of the ways. 00:34:24.664 --> 00:34:30.518 But taking all the things that I learned there, I wanted to put into full stride. 00:34:30.518 --> 00:34:35.257 And full stride really is like you start slower and you ramp up and then you're running right. 00:34:35.257 --> 00:34:36.771 So that image in your head. 00:34:37.648 --> 00:34:50.713 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. 00:34:50.713 --> 00:34:54.111 So I'm like there needs to be somebody there advocating for them. 00:34:54.111 --> 00:35:11.570 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. 00:35:11.570 --> 00:35:20.095 So with McGregor we were going high, six-figure, low, seven-figure implementations versus the five and six-figure we did at the beginning. 00:35:20.095 --> 00:35:22.072 Same thing with the other company I worked with. 00:35:22.072 --> 00:35:27.027 So these other ones, these clients, were getting the scraps, the ones coming. 00:35:27.027 --> 00:35:38.275 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. 00:35:38.275 --> 00:35:45.594 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. 00:35:45.594 --> 00:35:48.302 So we started looking at that company. 00:35:48.322 --> 00:35:52.771 In between, I started looking at other vendors that were maybe a tier lower, didn't have the partner. 00:35:52.771 --> 00:35:58.099 Ecosystems really wanted to grow, wanted some outside influence partnerships to go. 00:35:58.099 --> 00:36:01.331 So I took those agreements and I literally one of them. 00:36:01.331 --> 00:36:02.134 I wrote an email. 00:36:02.134 --> 00:36:03.706 My wife was like how did that work? 00:36:03.706 --> 00:36:06.793 It was maybe six, seven lines. 00:36:06.793 --> 00:36:12.492 After I talked to the CEO of one of those vendors and I said, hey, I made the case, you want partnerships. 00:36:12.492 --> 00:36:14.396 You felt like you missed the boat on that one. 00:36:14.396 --> 00:36:18.450 What if I build a business that didn't outgrow you and we can talk? 00:36:18.450 --> 00:36:20.590 And he's like, let's do it so instantly. 00:36:20.590 --> 00:36:21.012 There you go. 00:36:21.012 --> 00:36:22.135 I had my first partnership. 00:36:22.135 --> 00:36:25.094 Then I went out and I started the LLC and all that. 00:36:25.094 --> 00:36:27.367 But she was kind of dumbfounded Like, how did that work? 00:36:27.367 --> 00:36:29.289 I spoke his language. 00:36:29.970 --> 00:36:31.952 You know if I can deliver great. 00:36:31.952 --> 00:36:33.434 So you closed the deal in one email. 00:36:33.434 --> 00:36:34.054 Is what you're saying. 00:36:34.235 --> 00:36:36.137 Yeah, more or less that's really what it looked like. 00:36:36.137 --> 00:36:47.931 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. 00:36:47.931 --> 00:36:52.967 As you know, I went back to being the guy who was turning the wrenches and configuration and talking to clients. 00:36:52.967 --> 00:36:56.708 So that was that was that was me, my, my deal. 00:36:56.708 --> 00:37:03.412 I was going to be an implementation partner for midsize businesses, midsize vendors, right Connecting the dots there doing? 00:37:03.432 --> 00:37:04.313 what does midsize mean? 00:37:04.313 --> 00:37:05.592 By the way, can you define that? 00:37:05.592 --> 00:37:08.255 Yeah, so going back. 00:37:08.275 --> 00:37:09.934 I mean anyone that's probably doing. 00:37:09.934 --> 00:37:16.097 I guess it's more, so much that I'm trying to get back to that original thesis because it was a little fuzzy. 00:37:16.097 --> 00:37:25.862 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. 00:37:25.862 --> 00:37:36.691 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. 00:37:36.691 --> 00:37:38.575 A mid-sized business is great for them. 00:37:38.575 --> 00:37:40.259 It's a quicker implementation. 00:37:40.259 --> 00:37:41.246 It's the first one. 00:37:41.246 --> 00:37:42.710 Land and expand as they grow. 00:37:42.710 --> 00:37:45.255 If you do well, it's virtuous. 00:37:45.255 --> 00:37:51.025 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? 00:37:51.025 --> 00:37:56.041 They outgrow me and I celebrate it Like that's not something you see in a typical consulting firm. 00:37:56.041 --> 00:37:56.403 That's just. 00:37:56.403 --> 00:37:59.030 That's just the business model that doesn't exist. 00:37:59.590 --> 00:38:07.077 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. 00:38:07.077 --> 00:38:09.766 So I started doing that. 00:38:09.766 --> 00:38:34.686 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. 00:38:34.686 --> 00:38:41.030 They were typically first-time buyers and we were the ones that were level setting after the fact. 00:38:41.030 --> 00:38:43.378 The vendors kind of liked it, but they didn't like it. 00:38:43.378 --> 00:38:48.876 The clients appreciated it, but didn't like it because we were delivering bad news. 00:38:48.876 --> 00:39:01.217 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. 00:39:01.217 --> 00:39:08.746 They were tethered and there was no real leadership on that side of things. 00:39:08.766 --> 00:39:19.980 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. 00:39:19.980 --> 00:39:23.250 I'm like this is this is enough, it's, it's, it's a lot of money, it's great money. 00:39:23.250 --> 00:39:32.373 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. 00:39:32.373 --> 00:39:33.885 I'm like I don't want to do that. 00:39:33.885 --> 00:39:34.970 I want this to be meaningful. 00:39:34.970 --> 00:39:40.909 I love helping people and I want to help American businesses effectively. 00:39:40.909 --> 00:39:47.375 The mid-sized mama pops getting bigger, maybe getting into private equity, but I want to have a meaningful impact there. 00:39:47.375 --> 00:39:54.056