Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Noble Purpose Leadership: Zak Hancock's Employee Ownership Revolution at FST Logistics

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Noble Purpose Leadership: Zak Hancock's Employee Ownership Revolution at FST Logistics · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
• 0:08
  where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
• 0:12
  their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
• 0:15
  adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
• 0:18
  today's guest is Zach Hancock, Chief Operating Officer at FST
• 0:23
  Logistics. They are an employee owned third
• 0:26
  party logistics provider founded in 1995 and focused on helping
• 0:31
  grocery and retail brands with warehousing, transportation and
• 0:36
  supply chain solutions. Their mission is to offer
• 0:39
  proactive communication and flexible services so customers
• 0:43
  can streamline their operations. Now.
• 0:46
  Zach joined FST Logistics in October 2019 and has made a
• 0:51
  significant impact by improving operational efficiencies and
• 0:55
  guiding teams under his noble purpose leadership philosophy.
• 1:00
  He has held various leadership roles in logistics and
• 1:03
  operations management, including positions at Geo, Dish and UPS.
• 1:09
  Under his leadership, FST continues to champion employee
• 1:12
  ownership and customer satisfaction, earning
• 1:15
  recognition for its commute commitment to reliable service.
• 1:20
  Now, Zac's dedication to mentorship and team development
• 1:22
  has also set a strong foundation for growth across the
• 1:26
  organization. But before we get into all that
• 1:29
  good stuff, today's episode is brought to you by my company,
• 1:32
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  To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at
• 2:00
  AD back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
• 2:03
  today, the COO of FST Logistics, Zach Hancock.
• 2:08
  Thanks for making the time to Share your story today.
• 2:11
  Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm I'm really looking forward
• 2:13
  to the conversation. I think it's going to be good.
• 2:15
  So, Zach, I got a psychology degree from The Ohio State
• 2:20
  University, which is what I think everybody going into a
• 2:24
  transportation and logistics career does, right?
• 2:26
  Yeah. Well, you know, you might be
• 2:29
  surprised actually. Is that right?
• 2:30
  Yeah. It's, You know, I was sitting on
• 2:34
  a panel one time and it was at Ohio State University, actually.
• 2:37
  And somebody in the audience asked me why I picked this
• 2:41
  industry for my career. And you know, I kind of said, I
• 2:47
  think I'm speaking for more people than you would imagine
• 2:49
  that I didn't pick this industry, this industry picked
• 2:52
  me. And and it kind of once you get
• 2:55
  into it, it really is an incredibly interesting and
• 2:59
  fulfilling industry to be in. And here in Columbus, OH there
• 3:03
  is a robust presence of transportation logistics, supply
• 3:07
  chain companies. And so it just kind of was one
• 3:09
  of those one thing led to another type deal for me.
• 3:13
  Why is Columbus have such a robust network of TNL?
• 3:17
  Yeah. So it it all has to do with
• 3:20
  geographic location. So, you know, the epicenter of
• 3:24
  the, I guess the center of gravity of the population of the
• 3:27
  United States is directly in between Columbus and Cincinnati.
• 3:31
  And so when you're looking for a place to put distribution
• 3:37
  centers in, in warehouses and transportation companies and
• 3:40
  things like that, being able to reach the most of the population
• 3:44
  or a huge amount of the population in the shortest
• 3:47
  amount of travel time, it is obviously very advantageous.
• 3:50
  So Columbus is a natural fit because of that.
• 3:53
  So how did the first opportunity at UPS come about?
• 3:58
  Yeah, So, you know, like most college kids, I wasn't exactly
• 4:04
  swimming in cash, I would say. And believe it or not, there was
• 4:09
  a, a, a flyer on a telephone pole.
• 4:13
  And it was, you know, come work at UPS and unload trucks and,
• 4:17
  you know, that that didn't catch my interest.
• 4:19
  But underneath it, it said, you know, tuition assistance
• 4:22
  offered. And I said, OK, well, that
• 4:26
  actually is something I might be interested in.
• 4:28
  And so I actually was, you know, raised in northern Ohio in
• 4:32
  farming communities. And I'd been baling hay and
• 4:35
  straw since I was about four. And so I had a good idea.
• 4:38
  That's what I said. I said, you know what?
• 4:40
  I probably can go in and unload these trucks faster than most of
• 4:43
  these city slickers down here. So, yeah, so I gave a shot.
• 4:47
  And. And, you know, again, one thing
• 4:48
  led to another. It was about a month after I
• 4:53
  started, they needed another supervisor and they asked me if
• 4:57
  I was interested in my response was do I get a pay raise?
• 5:01
  And and they said yes. And so that's kind of the rest
• 5:04
  is history. It's it's really.
• 5:06
  You were still a student, they you took on a a managerial role
• 5:09
  there. Yeah, So I was going to school
• 5:12
  full time basically all morning. I'd try to fit in a a quick
• 5:15
  workout session and then I would get to work at about 5:00 PM and
• 5:19
  I'd usually get back home to my house between 1:00 and 2:00
• 5:22
  every day, five days a week, so. And you were sleeping like in
• 5:26
  your classes. Or yeah, well, as much as I
• 5:29
  tried to avoid that, I'm sure that did happen more than my
• 5:31
  professors would like. But but yeah, it was, you know,
• 5:35
  it, it, it was actually instrumental in kind of building
• 5:39
  me into who I am really, because I had to master time management
• 5:43
  and time blocking. And I can remember very
• 5:45
  specifically looking out two or three weeks at a syllabus in
• 5:50
  saying, well, I have a test on this day in this 1 1/2 hour
• 5:54
  window in between this class and going to work is the only time I
• 5:58
  can study. And so I got really good at
• 6:01
  that. And, and it was, it ended up
• 6:03
  paying extreme dividends, I'd say, you know, as I made my way
• 6:06
  through my career. You know, say that level of
• 6:09
  planning does not exist for the traditional college student.
• 6:12
  Yeah, they may wake up that morning and remember that
• 6:15
  they've got the exam. Like, oh.
• 6:17
  No, Yeah, yeah, There was, you know, and, and there was I, it
• 6:21
  wasn't easy there, there's no doubt about that.
• 6:23
  And there was a lot of times, you know, I'd get back to my
• 6:25
  apartment on Thursday night and there would be, you know,
• 6:29
  somewhere between 10 and 30 people there.
• 6:31
  And they'd all been having a great time since 4:00 or 5:00
• 6:33
  that afternoon. And it was one or 2:00 in the
• 6:35
  morning. And I've been working all day.
• 6:37
  But, but I, you know, kind of a delayed gratification thing.
• 6:42
  I thought that it would probably pay off and it did.
• 6:45
  Nice. And so you eventually went to
• 6:47
  work at Geodisc, another very large logistics company.
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  What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome there, Zach,
• 6:55
  and what lessons did you take away from that experience that
• 6:59
  are helpful now? Well, so, so my time at GEODIS
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  was easily, it's kind of that part of your career where you
• 7:09
  learn how to actually do your job right.
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  It was, I was a young manager. I was brought in as a manager
• 7:16
  there I was in my mid 20s and I had a phenomenal mentor, thank
• 7:20
  goodness, who who to this day I still credit to most of my
• 7:23
  development during that time. But it was, it was a tough
• 7:26
  account that I had to kind of learn the industry very quickly.
• 7:29
  The account was a fast growing e-commerce direct to consumer
• 7:33
  account and it was growing very, very quickly.
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  Things were not being handled appropriately, I'll say at the
• 7:42
  time. And I had to learn very quickly
• 7:45
  from for some pretty brilliant people how to do my job really
• 7:49
  at a pretty high level. And I ended up being there
• 7:52
  promoted several times and and we added probably close to 5 or
• 7:57
  600,000 square feet of operational capacity.
• 7:59
  Through that, we increased our staffing from 1 or 200 up to a
• 8:03
  high of about 1000. For this one account.
• 8:06
  For one account, yeah, yeah. And we had to do a warehouse
• 8:10
  management system, WMS, we had an upgrade while I was there for
• 8:13
  that, which is kind of a a big deal.
• 8:16
  And so I really, I got to see all elements of, you know,
• 8:19
  redesigning warehouses in, in, in planning labor for a huge
• 8:23
  growth and dealing with the ebbs and flows of a peak season.
• 8:25
  And, and I ended up running the facility by the time I left.
• 8:29
  And so throughout that time, it was again, I, I credit those,
• 8:33
  you know, 5678 years in there where every day was a challenge,
• 8:37
  quite honestly, for a long time. But it ended up again, was one
• 8:42
  of those things you look back and you're like, thank goodness
• 8:44
  that I got to experience all that so early in my career in
• 8:47
  such a short time. You cut your teeth on so many
• 8:50
  different things in in that short time period, no.
• 8:52
  For sure. For sure, yeah.
• 8:55
  And you said that there were people who were helping you
• 8:58
  along the way, people that you had to learn from very quickly.
• 9:01
  Yeah, well, and and it was it was the beginning of me
• 9:04
  realizing the importance of having a mentor in your career,
• 9:07
  right. And this guy, you know, he never
• 9:10
  was my formal mentor. He was just my boss.
• 9:14
  But he taught me so much and he, you know, I, I would, I would
• 9:18
  just sit back. We thought very similarly.
• 9:20
  We approached things very similarly.
• 9:22
  Our focuses and our priorities were very similar.
• 9:24
  And so that set a good groundwork to where I could
• 9:26
  really, you know, learn and absorb from him.
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  And oddly enough, I, I, we, the, the customer had a, a brilliant,
• 9:34
  brilliant leader over the division who was very, very
• 9:38
  tough to work for. And, and that's ended up being a
• 9:41
  huge learning opportunity for me too, because he didn't, he
• 9:44
  didn't accept anything other than pretty close to perfect
• 9:47
  and, and learning how to deal with situations like that and
• 9:51
  striving for, you know, that type of performance.
• 9:54
  Again, that was that was fundamental to where I am right
• 9:57
  now. OK, so let's talk about where
• 10:00
  you are now. How did that opportunity to join
• 10:02
  FST Logistics come about? Yeah, so I was, I just got a
• 10:08
  random message on LinkedIn. If I'm being perfectly honest, I
• 10:10
  was feeling pretty good about my job.
• 10:12
  I had just I had a little baby. He was about 6 months old.
• 10:15
  He's now close to seven or just turned 7 actually.
• 10:20
  And, and I just got a random message from a company called
• 10:23
  FST at the time, she's now our chief administrative officer,
• 10:27
  Jill Kuhlman. At the time she was the VP of HR
• 10:30
  and she said, hey, you know, I was looking at your your
• 10:32
  LinkedIn profile and it looks like you've got some pretty good
• 10:35
  experience in the warehousing business, leading change,
• 10:39
  creating processes, procedures, improving profitability,
• 10:43
  whatever. And we need that.
• 10:46
  And so are you interested? And I said sure, you know, I'll
• 10:49
  have a conversation. And yeah, so that was about
• 10:52
  July, I think is in nine in 2019 when they reached out and then
• 10:55
  ended up starting in October. So you were already in Columbus
• 11:00
  at that point with your previous employer?
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  Yeah. So when I once I moved down from
• 11:04
  Northern Ohio to go to Ohio State, I, I stayed in Columbus
• 11:07
  ever since I've been here since about about 18, when I was about
• 11:10
  18, OK. All right, so we touched a
• 11:13
  little bit on it in the intro, but let's hear in your words
• 11:17
  more specifically what you guys do and who you service.
• 11:21
  Yeah. So, so at the high level, we're
• 11:25
  a full service 3 PL. third party logistics company.
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  And basically what that does or what that means is we have
• 11:33
  customers that pay us to manage not the manufacturing of their
• 11:37
  product, but quite literally from the minute that that
• 11:40
  product is loaded onto a trailer to be shipped anywhere, we pick
• 11:43
  it up, we'll bring in all the freight, house it in our
• 11:47
  warehouses. We have multiple different
• 11:50
  services that have to do with less than truckload orders, full
• 11:55
  truckload outbound orders, a full warehousing capability,
• 11:58
  e-commerce direct to consumer. And we're kind of a niche within
• 12:03
  a niche within a niche within a niche, which is which has been
• 12:06
  one of the reasons why the business has been so successful
• 12:08
  because what where we really found ourselves is temperature
• 12:12
  controlled food beverage and pharmaceuticals.
• 12:17
  And so when you start to look into the, the vast array of free
• 12:22
  PLS out there, every one of those niche becomes a little bit
• 12:27
  more difficult and a little bit less players involved.
• 12:29
  And, and it's been very successful for us.
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  And that that's, you know, one of the reasons we've been so
• 12:35
  successful is because we know what we're good at.
• 12:37
  And quite frankly, there's not a lot of competitors in that very
• 12:40
  specific space across the country.
• 12:43
  Why, why, why is why is it so competition light?
• 12:48
  Because it's really difficult to be honest, you know, if you, if
• 12:51
  you open up a warehouse and the only thing you're putting in
• 12:53
  there are tires, nobody really cares a lot about what the
• 12:58
  inside of the building looks like.
• 12:59
  But when you start to get into temperature sensitive food
• 13:04
  beverage, you have to worry about obviously temperature,
• 13:07
  which is expensive, you know, to have a, you know, our, our
• 13:10
  largest air conditioned warehouse is, is nearly 350,000
• 13:14
  square feet. That's more expensive than an
• 13:17
  ambient warehouse. You also have to monitor the
• 13:19
  temperatures. In a lot of cases, you have to
• 13:20
  monitor humidity. And then when you start to look
• 13:23
  at the fact that you're handling people's food, there's a lot of,
• 13:28
  you know, certifications and, and quality inspections that
• 13:31
  come along with that. There's allergens that you have
• 13:33
  to be afraid of and, and, and manage the inventory in
• 13:36
  different ways. And so when you start to again
• 13:38
  layer in all those complexities, it's once you get in it, it can
• 13:43
  be very, very good business. But getting into it is, is
• 13:46
  difficult. It's it's a pretty tall barrier
• 13:48
  to entry honestly. And because of that, I'm going
• 13:50
  to guess that your margins are probably better than companies
• 13:53
  that aren't able to offer this refrigerated food handling level
• 13:57
  of service. For sure, yeah.
• 13:58
  And, and, and, you know, and it's, you know, one of the
• 14:01
  things that we are honest about with our customers too, is our,
• 14:05
  our prices aren't also as cheap as a lot of the other providers
• 14:07
  out there because there are just different variations of service
• 14:10
  offerings and things that we have to pay attention to.
• 14:14
  You know, if you have a, a product that is organic, then
• 14:17
  your entire warehouse has to be organic certified.
• 14:20
  If they're kosher, then you have to have a full kosher
• 14:22
  certification for the entire facility and you have to do
• 14:24
  things differently. And so, so there it, it, it is
• 14:28
  a, it's, it's a good business. Again, it's tough to get into,
• 14:31
  but if you can deliver the service that the customers need,
• 14:34
  they actually understand and appreciate the fact that it does
• 14:36
  come at a little bit more of a price tag because they're not
• 14:39
  shipping tires to people, you know, they're shipping food in,
• 14:42
  in beverages and in pharmaceuticals, drugs in, in
• 14:45
  the containers that you put the drugs in.
• 14:48
  Was was this already the focus for FST when you joined in 2019
• 14:53
  or did that kind of come later? Yeah.
• 14:56
  So it was, it was when I showed up, it was already like that.
• 15:00
  We we had about 1415 years ago the business kind of changed
• 15:09
  where we we were trying to figure out what our unique
• 15:15
  specialty was going to be. And then we signed a, a, a
• 15:17
  customer and at the time it had 2500 pallet positions, which is
• 15:23
  comparatively not that large. Well, that customer grew with us
• 15:26
  to be one of the dominance forces in their industry.
• 15:30
  They had close to 40,000 pallets with us at that point.
• 15:34
  And so as they grew, we grew and that was the, the industry they
• 15:38
  were in was temperature controlled food warehousing,
• 15:41
  distribution, supply chain. And so that once we started to
• 15:44
  help them grow and mutually benefit each other, it opened
• 15:49
  the door for so many other customers when they would hear
• 15:51
  that we did this for this customer and we were successful
• 15:54
  with this customer, then all of their friends in in a lot of
• 15:58
  their, you know, compadres I guess in that industry became
• 16:00
  very interested in dealing with this.
• 16:03
  What was the state of the company when you joined in 2019,
• 16:06
  almost six years ago, What what were you kind of first brought
• 16:09
  in to to work on? Yeah, so it was, to be quite
• 16:13
  honest, it was a little rough. What what what was going on is
• 16:18
  that large customer had grown so quickly and so fast that we
• 16:22
  actually had their product in Central Ohio spread across six
• 16:27
  different facilities, which is not a good position to be.
• 16:30
  And you really want to try to things back to my other story,
• 16:33
  how we added 5 or 600,000 square feet of operational capacity
• 16:37
  when I was at Geodus that was all in one building.
• 16:40
  We didn't have the ability, FST didn't have that ability at the
• 16:43
  time and or building to grow into of that size.
• 16:46
  And so they had. Just didn't have a facility that
• 16:48
  large. That's right.
• 16:49
  Yeah. And and, and those are kind of
• 16:50
  rare. You know, there's, there's some
• 16:52
  men 1 or 2 million square footers out there, but they
• 16:54
  didn't have one in their portfolio at the time.
• 16:56
  And so, So what they attempted to do in early 19 was build a
• 17:02
  brand new building and then consolidate all of these other
• 17:06
  buildings into that one building.
• 17:08
  And for various reasons that did not just did not get executed
• 17:13
  well. And it was, it was a very, very
• 17:15
  rough spot. And so that's actually that was
• 17:17
  the, that was the. Facility was late being ready or
• 17:22
  you started to move everything in there.
• 17:23
  It was a combination, you know, when you when you it's, it was
• 17:27
  such a fundamental change in the way that the business is going
• 17:30
  to need to be run to consolidate everything into one building and
• 17:34
  you only kind of get one swing at it.
• 17:36
  If you don't, if you don't get it all in perfect right at off
• 17:39
  the get go, the orders and the customer demands don't stop.
• 17:42
  And so if you mess up anything, it's a very, very hard to do
• 17:47
  quite honestly. And if you have any little
• 17:48
  misses, again, the customer orders don't stop.
• 17:53
  And so you fall behind very quickly and things can get out
• 17:56
  of control really quickly. And unfortunately that's what
• 17:59
  happened. And so that was the kind of
• 18:00
  behind the scenes comment when Jill reached out to me and said,
• 18:04
  hey, we're having a couple issues in the warehouse.
• 18:07
  Could you be? So that's what I was walking
• 18:09
  into, yeah. And so how did you fix it?
• 18:11
  How did you clean it up? That obviously along with your
• 18:15
  team, but yeah. We, you know, we, we could talk
• 18:19
  about that for a long time, You know, the, the, the state of the
• 18:23
  business was in the morale and the culture was not good at all.
• 18:28
  They, they, they were doing everything they could and it
• 18:31
  just wasn't enough. And that's, that hurts, you
• 18:35
  know, that, that that really puts a damper on things.
• 18:38
  And so one of the first things that I did was try to bring a
• 18:47
  little bit of life and light back into, into the the culture,
• 18:51
  into the morale. I mean, there was from a, from a
• 18:53
  actual operations perspective, we needed to consolidate out of
• 18:58
  six or seven buildings down into three.
• 19:00
  We had to, unfortunately, there was a riff during that time.
• 19:05
  And, but while all of these things were going on behind the
• 19:08
  scenes that were, you know, fundamental to the survival of
• 19:11
  the business. I, I can remember sitting in a
• 19:14
  board meeting and I laid out my return to profitability plan.
• 19:19
  And one of the board members said, well, how are you going to
• 19:21
  do that? And my answer, similar to your
• 19:24
  question, my answer is the heliotropic effect.
• 19:28
  And she said the what? And so everyone, I think most
• 19:32
  people, they've maybe never heard of the heliotropic effect,
• 19:36
  but they know what it is. And so if you have you ever seen
• 19:39
  a video or a picture where you've got flowers or plants and
• 19:45
  the sun comes up in the east and the flowers point themselves
• 19:47
  towards the sun. And as the sun goes across the
• 19:49
  sky, they follow them, right? You have plants in your house
• 19:53
  and they do the same thing. They point themselves towards
• 19:54
  the window. That's called the heliotropic
• 19:57
  effect. And so it's it's, it's the
• 20:00
  natural tendency of living beings to be.
• 20:04
  Pulled towards light and positive energy and radiance and
• 20:08
  it works for people too. And that's the part that most
• 20:11
  people don't make the kind of understanding.
• 20:16
  And so that was my answer was the heliotropic effect.
• 20:18
  It's I'm going to, I'm going to come in and I can remember
• 20:21
  saying at one point I said you're going.
• 20:22
  To be the sunshine. Yes, and, and, and what I
• 20:24
  actually said to everybody was let me be your lighthouse.
• 20:28
  And I raised my hand and I said you were you.
• 20:30
  There's a whole bunch of ships out at sea right now.
• 20:34
  It's rough waters. You don't know where you're
• 20:35
  going, you don't have any direction and it's scary and I
• 20:39
  get it. And so I'm going to be the
• 20:41
  lighthouse. What I need you to do is give me
• 20:44
  all of your problems and give them to me and let me take that
• 20:48
  on and help with the prioritization and help with the
• 20:51
  solving and help with the solutions and the analytics.
• 20:55
  All you need to do is just continue to paddle towards me.
• 20:58
  And, and that was that was insanely difficult because it
• 21:02
  was to, to be that energy and that that presence during times
• 21:08
  of, of disarray and, and challenge.
• 21:10
  It is, it's emotionally fatiguing.
• 21:12
  There's no doubt about it. But that was again, we could
• 21:17
  talk for hours about everything that went into that.
• 21:19
  But that's kind of my short version.
• 21:22
  Well, this might be a good lead in to something we referenced in
• 21:25
  the intro. Noble purpose leadership.
• 21:31
  Yeah. What is this?
• 21:32
  Why is it important to you? Yeah, so first of all, noble
• 21:37
  purpose leadership is not my phrase.
• 21:39
  I kind of stumbled upon it. I think honestly on, again, on
• 21:43
  LinkedIn, I saw a random picture or something about it, but
• 21:50
  everyone has heard of being a servant leader, right?
• 21:53
  And, and that's, that's kind of always considered a good way to
• 21:55
  do it. And I agree that that is, you
• 21:57
  know, getting out there and getting your hands dirty, so to
• 22:00
  speak, and working along with your team and, and showing them
• 22:03
  and demonstrating them that you're, you know, wanting to be
• 22:06
  a part of the processes and all that stuff.
• 22:08
  It it goes. And doing what you can to set
• 22:10
  them up for success what they need.
• 22:12
  Absolutely. And that's servant leadership
• 22:14
  and that's it's amazing and, and, and it works for a lot of
• 22:18
  people. And so throughout my career,
• 22:21
  there was this really weird disconnect though, when I felt,
• 22:26
  when I looked at what I was doing and how I was approaching
• 22:30
  leadership. And I, and I never told anybody
• 22:33
  this, but I, I wasn't a servant leader.
• 22:36
  That's not what I was doing. And so when I, when I read noble
• 22:40
  purpose leadership, I didn't even need to read the
• 22:43
  explanation of it. I knew that's what I did.
• 22:47
  And So what noble purpose leadership is, is from what I
• 22:50
  can tell, pretty not as nearly as common, but basically sitting
• 22:55
  down with a person or a team and conveying to them the reason why
• 23:00
  you're doing something. What is the noble purpose?
• 23:03
  Why are we here? Why is this special?
• 23:06
  Yep, the why and where are we going?
• 23:09
  What is the vision? What is the goal?
• 23:11
  What is what is the meaning of what we're doing right now?
• 23:14
  And once you get their buy in on that, then your goal and your
• 23:19
  role as the leader becomes encouraging them and empowering
• 23:24
  them and teaching them and mentoring them and helping them
• 23:29
  if they if they kind of drift a little left of center, getting
• 23:31
  them back into where they need to get to.
• 23:33
  All the while doubling down on the fact and rewarding results
• 23:38
  that show us getting to where we need to.
• 23:42
  It's very similar kind of to, to the lighthouse thing, right?
• 23:45
  It's like if, if the boats swim a little closer to the
• 23:48
  lighthouse, you reward that. Like that's the goal, that's the
• 23:51
  purpose. And I have had such a tremendous
• 23:55
  amount of success with that type of leadership technique.
• 23:59
  And again, as soon as I read it, I said, that's me.
• 24:01
  That is what I've done my entire career and and it works very
• 24:06
  well for me. You're getting the Y and you're
• 24:09
  mentoring them along the way. What does the mentoring actually
• 24:12
  look like? Yeah.
• 24:13
  So it, it can take all shapes and sizes, right.
• 24:17
  I mean, I, I have quite a few mentees that, you know, that
• 24:24
  work at FST and I set up monthly meetings with them and we have
• 24:28
  development plans that we're working on.
• 24:30
  And so that's very tactical. That's kind of using your
• 24:32
  scalpel and, and it's very specific and very personalized.
• 24:38
  It also can come, you know, every Thursday I host a company
• 24:41
  wide call. It's the Thursday huddle and
• 24:45
  it's a great kind of message board for the company.
• 24:48
  We, we have all of the key departments, marketing and sales
• 24:52
  and, and operations and everyone just kind of gives, gives
• 24:55
  everyone an update over the course of 1/2 hour about what
• 24:58
  we're going, what we're doing, how, how are things moving and
• 25:00
  whatever. At the very end of that.
• 25:02
  And I've done this for the entire time that I've been in
• 25:05
  FST. At the very end, I always give a
• 25:07
  quote. And the quote is something that
• 25:10
  I've come across in my years that had an impact on me that I
• 25:15
  think is relevant to personal or professional life development,
• 25:20
  focus, mentality, outlook, perspective.
• 25:23
  And so I share that and for about 5 minutes after I read the
• 25:27
  quote, I explained to the entire business why I think it's
• 25:31
  important that everyone ponders that for a couple days.
• 25:34
  And so that's another version of it, right?
• 25:36
  And that's, that's touching. There's, there's hundreds and
• 25:38
  hundreds of people on that call every morning.
• 25:42
  One of the most rewarding things that happens is it's not every
• 25:46
  week, but there's a lot of times where I'll just get one off a
• 25:50
  one off little e-mail or a message or a text or they'll
• 25:55
  catch me in person, you know, when they see me next time and
• 25:58
  they'll say, my goodness, that quote that you shared two weeks
• 26:01
  ago changed my life. I needed, I needed to hear that
• 26:05
  that day I was going through something.
• 26:07
  I hadn't told anybody about it in the way that you spoke in
• 26:11
  the, the wisdom that you were, you know, and, and that's
• 26:14
  mentorship, that's noble purpose leadership.
• 26:17
  What was the quote this week? The quote this week was, I'm
• 26:22
  going to paraphrase it, it was by Coco Chanel and it was, we're
• 26:27
  going to be, we're going to meet many defeats in our life, but we
• 26:32
  have to remember to never allow ourselves to be defeated.
• 26:36
  That's very close to the quote. But, and I think so obviously
• 26:41
  you can take that a lot of places personally and
• 26:43
  professionally, right? And there's a lot of people out
• 26:45
  there that heard my voice who they need.
• 26:50
  They, they're going through something and, and they, they,
• 26:54
  they won't share that. But when they hear that, that
• 26:57
  can be the, you know, that they need to make it through that day
• 27:01
  and, and, and really, you know, attack the day again.
• 27:05
  And for that one-on-one mentorship that you provide some
• 27:09
  of your team members when you meet, are you mostly focusing on
• 27:13
  sort of their professional, like here's their work duties, how
• 27:17
  can I help them achieve those? Or does it expand to things sort
• 27:21
  of outside the work environment? What's going on in their
• 27:24
  personal lives? Yeah, both for sure.
• 27:27
  Right. And, and, and, you know, that
• 27:29
  kind of brings up an interesting point.
• 27:30
  I was asked the other day, how do I feel about work life
• 27:34
  balance? And I said that doesn't exist
• 27:38
  really. I in my mind, it's life.
• 27:40
  Life is life and what we do at work carries over to our home.
• 27:45
  What we do at our home carries into work and it's just life.
• 27:48
  And so I, I do make a point when I'm mentoring there, there's a
• 27:52
  lot of times where what the person wants to talk about or
• 27:55
  what they need to hear. I think during that session,
• 27:57
  they may ask me about how to approach a customer from a sales
• 28:00
  meeting. But if I can tell that maybe
• 28:03
  they aren't really in the right frame of mind or I can tell
• 28:06
  maybe they're not in the great spot.
• 28:08
  Sometimes they elicit the information.
• 28:10
  Sometimes I have to ask, I'll say what's going on?
• 28:11
  How are you? You know what, what you seem a
• 28:14
  little off today, what's going on?
• 28:16
  And that there's often times that that's our entire
• 28:19
  conversation for the rest of the time.
• 28:21
  We're that right? And because sometimes mentorship
• 28:24
  and coaching and leading and developing is listening and
• 28:27
  that's it. And, and maybe they're going
• 28:30
  through something tough that I've gone through before or, or
• 28:34
  maybe the both of us have, you know, we're, we're sharing in
• 28:39
  different elements of what we're going through with the company
• 28:41
  together and. Sometimes just talking about it,
• 28:44
  just kind of getting it off your chest and letting somebody else
• 28:47
  hear it, getting it out of your mind and you know, out into the,
• 28:51
  the space that that that can be helpful just on its own.
• 28:53
  For sure, and it it's very therapeutic, you know, and so
• 28:56
  there's a so often they're they're you know, most of the
• 29:01
  time the conversations are work related, right.
• 29:03
  It's not like I'm, I'm a therapist on the sidelines,
• 29:05
  right? But it's, but life is life and,
• 29:10
  and what people are going through personally and
• 29:13
  professionally in the way that they think about things.
• 29:15
  A lot of times I talk about your psychological perspective on
• 29:17
  things. That's where that degree comes
• 29:19
  into place. And so maybe an outlook on life
• 29:22
  or if they're really, really struggling with something and
• 29:24
  you know, and I say, well, you know, potentially look at this a
• 29:27
  little bit of a different way, or maybe it's just your
• 29:31
  perspective that's got to change right here and everything else
• 29:33
  is perfect, but your perspective might just be a little off.
• 29:37
  And, and those are powerful conversations and very
• 29:39
  impactful. Yeah, I think that's really
• 29:41
  important because, you know, sometimes we can get so task
• 29:45
  oriented, so task focused. You know, we show up to work,
• 29:48
  we're here 8 to 5, nine to five, whatever the shift is.
• 29:51
  And while we're here, we got to focus on work.
• 29:54
  We got to get our stuff done. And then when we're outside
• 29:56
  these walls that that's where we can deal with the personal
• 29:58
  stuff. But we're not robots, right?
• 30:01
  And if you're familiar with the Apple show Severance, like we
• 30:04
  don't like, you know, get the switch like into these different
• 30:07
  mode. We, we don't get to set all that
• 30:09
  aside, but we're human beings. We carry our baggage with us.
• 30:12
  And if that baggage is too heavy, it's going to affect
• 30:14
  what's going on at work. It should affect everything.
• 30:16
  And so when you can kind of help with those personal elements
• 30:20
  too, everybody's going to win. Yeah, for sure.
• 30:22
  Yeah. And, and again, that comes back
• 30:24
  to as a leader, then you're developing trust, you know,
• 30:29
  you're developing a relationship with those people.
• 30:31
  They, they're, they are turning to you now, not just for how do
• 30:36
  I increase my whatever KPI performing key, key performance
• 30:40
  indicator, right? Like they're turning you just as
• 30:43
  a mentor and as a person who, who might be able to help them
• 30:46
  get to where they want to in life.
• 30:48
  And, and it's, it's just very, it's very powerful.
• 30:52
  So Zach, the company was started by Art de Crane, now sits on the
• 30:59
  Board of directors. Can you talk about how the
• 31:02
  company transitioned to being employee owned?
• 31:07
  Yeah. So it's a it's a fairly simple
• 31:10
  story, but unfortunately it's a story that doesn't get told too
• 31:13
  often, I think in terms of companies in general.
• 31:15
  And so basically what happened is Art who, who's again still
• 31:19
  sits on our board and is still very active and it's just
• 31:22
  amazing. He founded the company, grew it
• 31:26
  to where he thought that, you know, he kind of wanted to start
• 31:29
  to step off into retirement. And when you're an owner
• 31:33
  founder, there's a couple options that you've got.
• 31:36
  You can sell to private equity. You're a venture capitalist type
• 31:39
  stuff you can OfferUp to a strategic buyer.
• 31:42
  You know, maybe like AG Otis, a much larger company could come
• 31:45
  in and, and be interested in, in, you know, there's a couple
• 31:49
  other less common options, but the other one is sell back to
• 31:52
  the employees. And so that's what art did.
• 31:56
  And, and, and I think that I, you know, not speaking for him,
• 31:59
  but he is FST grew very quickly and but started very small.
• 32:06
  And there were a key group of people who had been with him
• 32:10
  since the beginning. And I think that he knew that
• 32:14
  they were just as responsible for his success as anybody else.
• 32:17
  And the ultimate kind of thank you was I'm going to sell it
• 32:22
  back to you guys and now you run with it, right?
• 32:25
  And, and it's turned out to be what I think is fundamentally
• 32:29
  one of the most game changing, impactful decisions that's ever
• 32:32
  happened to FST because being an employee owned company is
• 32:35
  something that we leverage in every single minute of our day.
• 32:41
  We focus on that and it creates A tremendous amount of positive.
• 32:44
  And so again, kind of a simple story, he just chose to sell it
• 32:47
  back to the people and reward them for everything that they've
• 32:50
  done with helping him. And, and it's it's proven to be
• 32:52
  a phenomenal decision. Kind of get into some more of
• 32:56
  the details here. Why has this been so impactful?
• 33:00
  How does it show up on a daily basis?
• 33:02
  Yeah. So if you, if you were to get on
• 33:04
  my LinkedIn right now there the banner behind me says own your
• 33:07
  impact. And and so you know, one of one
• 33:11
  of the comments that I make about the ESOP, the employee
• 33:14
  stock ownership program is I refer to it as a force
• 33:19
  multiplier for all things good. And when you are able to
• 33:23
  leverage the fact that you've got everybody from a warehouse
• 33:27
  worker all the way up to is the CEO, all of us have unique jobs.
• 33:33
  We all own the business. What we do impacts our share
• 33:38
  price. And so the way that an ESOP
• 33:40
  works is once a year you get evaluated by a third party
• 33:44
  evaluation company and you get a share price that comes out.
• 33:47
  And so the owners of the business every year just by kind
• 33:50
  of showing up and and doing their job, they're awarded
• 33:52
  shares every year in FST. And so as they're working hard
• 33:58
  throughout the year and they're taking care of themselves and
• 34:02
  each other and the customers and doing everything that they need
• 34:04
  to do. And what we focus on when we,
• 34:06
  it's coming up in July here, when we release our share price
• 34:09
  and it goes up, it's, it's the most amazing reward that you can
• 34:14
  possibly give these people because they say I did that, you
• 34:18
  know, that was me. And, and it's very, very
• 34:21
  powerful. And, and you know, when you,
• 34:23
  when you share an ownership of anything, there's a lot more
• 34:26
  pride there. And there there's a lot more
• 34:28
  focus on doing things the right way.
• 34:29
  And there's a lot more kind of internal accountability, right?
• 34:33
  There's, there's people around the business that are not
• 34:36
  leaders of, of anything. And yet if they see somebody
• 34:39
  else doing something that doesn't align with our traits
• 34:41
  or, or maybe wouldn't lead to our share price going up, kind
• 34:45
  of they call them out and they say, look, this isn't the way we
• 34:48
  do it here. We, we, we are, we are the best
• 34:51
  and we act like it. And, and what we're what you're
• 34:53
  doing isn't a part of our culture and the way we do things
• 34:56
  and it it is so powerful. It is so powerful.
• 34:59
  That's really interesting. That last part that you
• 35:01
  mentioned hadn't occurred to me. It, it sort of creates a, a
• 35:05
  different level of accountability.
• 35:08
  I mean, a lot of work environments, you could kind of,
• 35:10
  you know, walk by somebody who's doing something the wrong way
• 35:13
  and you're like, not my department, not my.
• 35:15
  Problem. Right, like I got other things
• 35:17
  to focus on. Now there's a real reason, you
• 35:20
  know, that person's actually invested, literally invested in
• 35:24
  the company. Yeah, it it, Yeah.
• 35:27
  And it again, it's a force multiplier for all things good.
• 35:30
  Because if you can look at somebody and say what you just
• 35:34
  did is actually gonna make our share price go down in your
• 35:38
  shares that you've been given and that are yours and you've
• 35:41
  been here for 1520 years. They're, that doesn't help us
• 35:45
  that and they, they get it immediately, as soon as they see
• 35:48
  their share price and their, their ownership statement every
• 35:51
  July, that's them, That's, that's theirs.
• 35:54
  And, and it's, it's, again, it is very powerful.
• 35:58
  It's the it's the greatest structure that I've ever been a
• 36:00
  part of when it comes to the state and morale and
• 36:03
  accountability. So anybody who's been there at
• 36:07
  least 12 months. Yeah, Yeah.
• 36:10
  So you're after you've worked for a year, you're entered into
• 36:14
  the ESOP and then every year based on just your overall 1099
• 36:19
  income, you're awarded shares in the company based on that.
• 36:23
  And so we have a certain amount of shares that come available
• 36:25
  every year. And we just, there's a quick
• 36:27
  math problem that the, you know that the, the trust does that
• 36:31
  award shares to everybody based on what their income was that
• 36:34
  year. And you said 1099 income, so
• 36:36
  these are independent contractors I'm.
• 36:38
  Sorry W2, I said the right. Sorry.
• 36:40
  Yes W2 Yeah, sorry, wrong one. Gotcha.
• 36:43
  Yeah. And so then how do people
• 36:47
  actually take advantage of the financial aspect of that is that
• 36:51
  whenever they leave the company, then they sell the shares back
• 36:54
  at whatever the valuation most recently was?
• 36:57
  Yeah. So it functions as a retirement
• 36:59
  account, right. So it's it's qualified money
• 37:02
  that they don't do anything for. They just are giving it right.
• 37:05
  And so, but after they've been there for a certain period of
• 37:07
  time and all Esops are a little bit different, but once you meet
• 37:10
  the retirement criteria for the ESOP, you retire and you
• 37:15
  immediately then start to draw back on those shares.
• 37:17
  And some of them pay out over five years, some of them pay
• 37:20
  immediately if you're with the company and leave and you don't
• 37:24
  retire, you just roll it into your 4O1K, you know.
• 37:28
  And so, but, but there's, you know, there's countless stories
• 37:33
  out there where and we're about ready to reach this milestone,
• 37:36
  which is just so exciting as you have somebody who is operating a
• 37:41
  forklift or as a truck driver and they've been a loyal
• 37:45
  employee owner of FST and they're about ready to leave and
• 37:48
  we get to hand them $1,000,000 check and say thank you so much
• 37:53
  for everything that you've done and they.
• 37:54
  Million. Dollars $1,000,000 and and it
• 37:57
  and there's a we are so close with a couple of our most
• 38:01
  tenured employees that it's going to happen any year now and
• 38:05
  we're going to be having someone retire and it's going to be a a
• 38:08
  person who maybe their entire family has been a truck driver,
• 38:11
  their entire family is working on the warehouse floor.
• 38:14
  We're going to make them a millionaire when they retire
• 38:16
  just because they're an ESOP. Yeah, it gives me chills just
• 38:20
  thinking about it, honestly, I was.
• 38:21
  Going to say that's the kind of thing, you know, there's like
• 38:24
  employee privacy laws and stuff, but that's the kind of thing you
• 38:26
  want to turn into APR event, right?
• 38:28
  For sure. Giant $1,000,000 checks.
• 38:30
  I mean, that's exciting. Yeah, well, you know what's
• 38:32
  what's funny? The interesting thing about
• 38:33
  Esop's is they actually aren't really good for attracting
• 38:36
  employees because they're so rare that a lot a lot of people
• 38:39
  don't know what they. Don't know what they are, they
• 38:41
  don't understand it. And so, so we put a tremendous
• 38:44
  amount of effort and focus. When new people come in, they go
• 38:49
  right into training and education about what did you
• 38:52
  just walk into with this ESOP and why is it so special and and
• 38:56
  what can you do to be a part of the future and to help
• 38:59
  collaborate and achieve the success that we're all moving
• 39:01
  towards. Oh, that's fascinating.
• 39:03
  That's. Yeah.
• 39:04
  I got to understand why that gives you chills.
• 39:06
  Yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing for sure.
• 39:09
  Zach, in your previous roles, you know you've done a lot of
• 39:13
  different efficiency improvements.
• 39:16
  What's 1 specific process innovation that you've
• 39:21
  introduced at FST that you're really proud of?
• 39:27
  So this, I guess this will, there's been a lot, you know,
• 39:31
  but one of the things that because it was so successful, it
• 39:37
  isn't, it isn't like this miraculous new thing that no
• 39:40
  one's ever done before, but it's very difficult to do
• 39:43
  successfully. And we instituted a labor
• 39:46
  management system. And so basically what that is,
• 39:50
  is a system that allows us to track the work of the people
• 39:54
  across all of our facilities. We have 2,000,000 square feet of
• 39:58
  facility or so. Track the work that they're
• 40:00
  doing and see how efficiently they're operating.
• 40:03
  And so the reason why that becomes really difficult to roll
• 40:06
  out is because if you don't do that the right way, everybody
• 40:10
  views that as Big Brother is watching and, and they don't
• 40:15
  like that. They don't like to be watched.
• 40:16
  They don't like to, you know, nobody does.
• 40:18
  That's kind of, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's very intrusive
• 40:20
  if you do it the wrong way. We have a great engineering
• 40:25
  team, a great engineering leader.
• 40:27
  And the, the story that we told, which was real is we're not
• 40:32
  doing this to get rid of you or make you go faster or create
• 40:37
  hostile work environments or watch what you're doing.
• 40:40
  What we're doing, it is we're trying to leverage this
• 40:43
  technology to allow us to run as efficiently as we possibly can,
• 40:49
  maximize our profitability. But then also because we're so
• 40:52
  efficient, we don't have to charge customers as much to make
• 40:56
  a profit because we're so efficient.
• 40:58
  And so that was the sales pitch, which was the reality of the
• 41:01
  thing, and there was it. It has saved us millions and
• 41:09
  millions and millions of dollars in labor.
• 41:13
  And how it just it, it looks at like where and when you need to
• 41:17
  have folks scheduled and does a better job.
• 41:19
  Yeah, Well, so and let's say that someone is operating on a
• 41:22
  warehouse floor and throughout the day they have to fulfill 10
• 41:28
  orders, right? This, what this allows you to do
• 41:30
  is it creates a database that suggests fulfilling those 10
• 41:35
  orders should take X amount of time.
• 41:39
  And so if you don't do it within X amount of time, you have an
• 41:43
  employee labor score associated with it and that percentage goes
• 41:47
  down. So if they do it instead of 10
• 41:50
  hours, they do it in 20 hours, they would get a 50% efficiency
• 41:53
  rating. And so again, what we, we did
• 41:56
  not approach this as you all need to go faster.
• 42:00
  What it allowed us to do is say, why did it take so long to do
• 42:04
  that? You know, what did the did the
• 42:06
  person or is their equipment not appropriate?
• 42:09
  Is the way the warehouse floor set up is not appropriate is all
• 42:15
  the other various reasons that could take place right?
• 42:17
  Maybe that person was just having a really bad day and,
• 42:19
  and, and they just, you know, didn't.
• 42:21
  It's a one off for them. Yeah, right.
• 42:23
  I mean it's not their normal. That's right.
• 42:25
  But that data set that we never had access to ever at the
• 42:28
  company allowed us to quite literally re engineer our entire
• 42:32
  warehousing dynamic. Our training programs change,
• 42:36
  the actual layouts of the facilities change, the equipment
• 42:39
  that we use changed. And as a result, as we got more
• 42:42
  and more efficient in order to make a profit as a business
• 42:45
  again, we didn't have to charge as much because we were doing it
• 42:49
  with less people more efficiently.
• 42:51
  So that, that caused us to have more customer growth and happier
• 42:55
  customers and higher service levels because we, you factor in
• 42:59
  things like accuracy and safety metrics and things like that
• 43:02
  into these scores. And the, the goal was never to
• 43:06
  punish people for not going fast enough.
• 43:08
  It was to get them to buy into the fact that if, if you really,
• 43:11
  truly want to have an impact on this ESOP, let's work together
• 43:16
  and get these numbers to where they need to be.
• 43:18
  And it, it worked so well. And it it has been the single
• 43:21
  greatest investment, I think in the history of the business.
• 43:24
  Wow, Yeah, wow. Couple of big force multipliers
• 43:28
  there. The labor management system
• 43:30
  you're talking about, you know, it's switching over to an ESOP.
• 43:34
  That's some pretty cool stuff. As you look forward to say like
• 43:37
  the next five years, what do you think are going to be the
• 43:41
  biggest changes coming to your industry?
• 43:46
  And how are you guys preparing for some of those shifts now?
• 43:49
  Yeah. So speaking from a both a
• 43:52
  warehousing and a transportation perspective, I think the most
• 43:58
  general phrase is just labor. There's less labor availability,
• 44:05
  you know, the, the trucking industry as in general, I think
• 44:08
  the average age of, of a truck driver is approaching 60 years
• 44:11
  old. It's not a very glorified role
• 44:15
  that people fresh out of high school want to step into, right?
• 44:18
  And so now eventually they may make their way to it and realize
• 44:22
  that they really like it, but it's not something that people
• 44:24
  typically set out to say that they want to do.
• 44:27
  It's an aging population within the warehouse.
• 44:29
  You know, that people are buying more and more and more things
• 44:34
  online instead of in stores. And that isn't direct to
• 44:39
  consumer order. Fulfillment is incredibly labor
• 44:42
  intensive. And so when you see these huge
• 44:45
  spikes of consumer activity, you, what you can't do is just
• 44:50
  go out and grab another 400 people to fulfill orders.
• 44:53
  And so when I say labor, it's, it's not just how do you find
• 44:57
  people, it's how do you introduce technologies that help
• 45:00
  minimize labor needs? How do you structure different
• 45:03
  technologies and and mechanisms within your facility that
• 45:06
  requires less labor to do it? And also what?
• 45:10
  It's one thing to say, hey, we need an extra 400 employees this
• 45:13
  year. It's another thing to say we
• 45:14
  need an extra 400 employees this month, right?
• 45:18
  Because it's really hard to scale that up and then say, oh,
• 45:22
  sorry, OK, we don't need you anymore.
• 45:24
  Yeah, and, and you know, and we all do it.
• 45:26
  So, you know, I always, it's the, the, the, the weight and
• 45:30
  the pressure associated with direct to consumer in, in, in,
• 45:33
  in specifically, as soon as, if you ever buy anything on Amazon
• 45:37
  or you ever buy anything on a store, you buy it and you begin
• 45:41
  to look at your phone every 5 minutes to see if you get your
• 45:44
  order confirmation. And then for the next day,
• 45:47
  you're checking to see if it's shipped.
• 45:50
  And then you're tracking it across the country and you're
• 45:53
  waiting for that package to show up at its door.
• 45:55
  And so when you've got that type of customer expectation and
• 45:59
  demand, we, we had a, a customer that went wacko viral on Tiktok,
• 46:07
  I think, and they had it was, it was literally like 1000%
• 46:13
  increase in orders for a month. And how do you approach that?
• 46:18
  How, how, if you have labor models and you have technologies
• 46:21
  and systems and, and, but then you have 1000% increase, that's,
• 46:25
  that's detrimental, right Then Yet those customers are all
• 46:28
  looking at their phone and they're saying, why hasn't it
• 46:30
  shipped? And, and so it really is a very
• 46:33
  interesting dynamic. And so when I look over the next
• 46:36
  five years, I don't think those trends are going to go away and
• 46:40
  I don't think they're going to change.
• 46:41
  And so, you know, there there's robotics being introduced a lot
• 46:45
  in the warehousing side. There's even, you know,
• 46:47
  driverless trucks now driving across the country in certain
• 46:50
  testing environments. And and so how do you stay ahead
• 46:54
  of that because consumer demand is not going to change.
• 46:58
  And you need to keep up with that, even during the viral
• 47:01
  episodes of TikTok. Are you guys leveraging robotics
• 47:04
  or AI in any way currently? Yeah, absolutely.
• 47:08
  Yeah. So we're, we've, we've been
• 47:10
  speaking to a couple different robotics companies about
• 47:12
  deploying things across. We have, we already are working
• 47:15
  with an AI company that helps things get streamlined across
• 47:18
  the, across the facilities and quite literally everybody in the
• 47:23
  industry. Is it it really when you go to
• 47:26
  some of the big trade shows for the industry, I mean, there's
• 47:31
  all kinds of crazy robots floating around and, and some of
• 47:33
  them are humanoid and some of them aren't.
• 47:35
  And so it's, it's a little trippy sometimes, honestly, when
• 47:38
  you look at this robot that looks just like a person and
• 47:40
  they're picking up totes and walking them across an area and
• 47:43
  setting them down. And, and that's the future of
• 47:46
  the industry, right? And, and so how do you, how do
• 47:48
  you make a determination when to deploy those types of
• 47:51
  technologies to where it makes sense for you and your customer?
• 47:54
  And, and how do you start to bridge that gap until it does
• 47:57
  make sense? That's that's kind of what the
• 47:58
  next five years is going to be. Interesting.
• 48:01
  So you don't have any robotics in place currently, but you guys
• 48:04
  are evaluating some options? Yeah.
• 48:06
  So we, we, we have a great relationship with a robotics
• 48:10
  provider that we very, we're very close to deploying their
• 48:16
  technology and and couple things went awry with some of the
• 48:20
  things we were expecting and planning from our overall
• 48:23
  business volumes and things like that didn't quite materialize.
• 48:25
  And, and, and that's kind of the catch 22 is those are expensive
• 48:29
  technologies and you need to make sure that it makes sense
• 48:32
  for your customer and that it makes sense for you.
• 48:34
  And so it was kind of a three-way agreement to say,
• 48:36
  look, these are coming, we're going to do this.
• 48:39
  But the customer and us and the provider all kind of basically
• 48:42
  said let's just just wait six months and re evaluate them and
• 48:47
  so. What does AI currently look like
• 48:50
  at FST? Yeah.
• 48:51
  So at a high level customers from all over the world, this
• 48:59
  isn't an e-commerce account and from all over the world and
• 49:03
  country are making these orders into our systems.
• 49:06
  And so one of the things that's very difficult for a WMS or
• 49:10
  warehouse management system to do is to the, the order flow is
• 49:16
  so dynamic and so unpredictable and, and so varied that a system
• 49:23
  that is written on sequel code has a hard time analyzing very
• 49:28
  critically, where do these orders all come from today and
• 49:31
  where are they all going? And so we have a relationship
• 49:35
  with an AI company that takes a look at our entire order profile
• 49:39
  and then applies their AI to it. And it thinks through all of our
• 49:43
  open orders in a very logical way that allows us to present
• 49:47
  them to the pickers out on the floor far more efficiently than
• 49:50
  a standard WMS ever could. Because again, when it's when
• 49:54
  it's written on just, it's kind of like an A to B to C to D type
• 49:58
  methodology within inventory management systems and warehouse
• 50:01
  management systems. This AI just kind of sits over
• 50:05
  top of that and provides a little bit of a different
• 50:07
  methodology to to properly group in in wave orders to the floor,
• 50:13
  which increases our efficiency significantly.
• 50:16
  Zach, what's a serious challenge that you've overcome either
• 50:19
  personally or professionally? How'd you get through that and
• 50:22
  what did you learn? Well, there's been a bunch, you
• 50:28
  know, I'll, I'll, I'll share going back to when I started at
• 50:33
  FST actually. So again, think things were not
• 50:36
  exactly going very well, you know, the, the standing up of
• 50:39
  the facility and the consolidation of everything.
• 50:42
  And there were a few hiccups there in, in the, in the
• 50:45
  warehousing division in particular, but the company in
• 50:47
  general was really not in a good spot.
• 50:50
  And I will never forget this where so I basically said, I
• 50:55
  wonder, we were losing a lot of money as a business.
• 50:58
  And I looked at our cash position and I looked at our
• 51:03
  burn rate and the death cross happened in the not too distant
• 51:07
  future, right? And, and it was like, my
• 51:10
  goodness. And I had just started at the
• 51:12
  company. I've been there two or three
• 51:13
  weeks and so that's, that's not a good, that's not a good
• 51:17
  feeling, right? That's a very, that was pretty
• 51:20
  crazy. And so I was driving home that
• 51:23
  day and the whole way home, I have about a 35 minute commute
• 51:28
  at the time. The whole way home I'm thinking,
• 51:30
  how do I tell my wife this? I have my 6 month old baby.
• 51:34
  I just started this job. I just left a great job and this
• 51:38
  company is is struggling to the point where there's a potential
• 51:41
  that it might not make it much longer.
• 51:44
  And so I got home and I did all the, you know, and I walk into
• 51:52
  my kitchen and on my kitchen, I couldn't see my wife anywhere.
• 51:56
  On my kitchen of all things was a pizza.
• 51:59
  And written in little like Lego letters on the pizza says you're
• 52:03
  going to be a daddy again. And it blew my mind.
• 52:10
  It blew my mind. I went from the position I was
• 52:15
  in the whole way home to the polar opposite of Oh my
• 52:22
  goodness, we're going to have a baby.
• 52:25
  And so is. That a feeling of elation or is
• 52:29
  that extra pressure now because of the financial future that was
• 52:33
  uncertain? Both.
• 52:35
  But it it was, I can't even describe those emotions in those
• 52:39
  thoughts to be quite honest. But what I will tell you for
• 52:41
  sure is that I actually did not tell my wife about what was
• 52:43
  going on at the business. OK.
• 52:46
  I, I, she popped around the corner and we celebrated and
• 52:51
  loved each other and, and you know, my son was about a year,
• 52:55
  year, you know, a little bit of over a year at that point.
• 52:59
  And I didn't tell her. And but that began then the
• 53:03
  pressure set in and it was, I've got to make this work.
• 53:07
  I've got to, because now not only do I have a little baby
• 53:10
  already at home and an incredibly supportive life, but
• 53:14
  now I've got another one coming. And, and I, that was, that is a
• 53:18
  pressure where, and then again, just taking into consideration
• 53:22
  all of the other lives of everyone who worked at the
• 53:24
  business and, and the care that I was giving them and what I,
• 53:28
  what they were relying on me and the teens, not just me, but
• 53:31
  everyone right to the leadership team to fix this problem.
• 53:35
  One of the most unbearable, unbelievable situations when it
• 53:39
  comes to just it, it was a master class and emotional
• 53:42
  stability. Let me tell you that because how
• 53:44
  did you push through that? Yeah, well, to be quite honest,
• 53:49
  I, I discovered the power of journaling.
• 53:54
  Journaling is something that's changed my life forever.
• 53:59
  I of all things, I actually stumbled upon Stoicism as a ran.
• 54:05
  I read a random quote by a guy named Epictetus.
• 54:10
  And during one of the darker times where I was really trying
• 54:13
  to kind of struggling to figure out what we need to do as a
• 54:15
  business. One of his most famous quotes is
• 54:18
  how long are you going to wait before you demand the best for
• 54:21
  yourself? And when I read that, it punched
• 54:24
  me in the chest like nothing ever did.
• 54:26
  And I said, who is that guy like that?
• 54:29
  That is a profound question and, and it, it basically set me on a
• 54:36
  journey of understanding thought processes and perspectives and
• 54:40
  understanding how to control your emotions and your thoughts
• 54:42
  and how you're reacting to things.
• 54:44
  That allowed me to actually balance everything that was
• 54:47
  going on in the world because during that time also COVID hit.
• 54:52
  My daughter was born in July of 2020.
• 54:54
  So we went through COVID with all that stuff.
• 54:56
  And so there was just a series of events there during a a nine
• 55:00
  month stretch that were really, I will never forget those nine
• 55:04
  months. I will tell you that it was the
• 55:05
  hardest thing that I've ever done.
• 55:07
  It's quite an emotional roller coaster.
• 55:10
  Obviously as you're going through this, you want to put on
• 55:14
  a good face for your employees, but there are certainly other
• 55:19
  members of the leadership team that are in tune and aware of
• 55:22
  the same thing that you are and you're working together.
• 55:27
  You guys are talking about this I'm assuming is, is that kind of
• 55:30
  a helpful process? Oh, of course, yeah.
• 55:32
  I mean, we, it was the beginning of the, IT was the foundation
• 55:38
  for what is the greatest team I've ever been a part of now,
• 55:41
  because that, that type of that type of anguish that we, you go
• 55:45
  through and that type of work and that type of pressure, it
• 55:49
  builds bonds that, you know, you just don't get in times of
• 55:53
  plenty. And we, that during that time,
• 55:56
  our CEO currently started Matt Hartman.
• 55:58
  He started phenomenal leader, the leadership team underneath
• 56:02
  him. We didn't really lose anybody.
• 56:04
  We just repositioned a couple people and we were buried in
• 56:07
  rooms together all the time talking about the strategy of
• 56:10
  the business and what do we need to do to take care of the people
• 56:13
  and what do we need to do to protect them and what do we need
• 56:15
  to do to protect the future. And those types of deep
• 56:19
  strategic conversations in the amount of when things aren't
• 56:24
  going well, those are those are shaping they, they shape a
• 56:27
  relationship and a team. How long was it before you felt
• 56:31
  like you could breathe again? We're on a good path.
• 56:34
  And what was the biggest lever that you guys pulled along the
• 56:39
  way to make that happen? Yeah.
• 56:40
  So before I really felt like, what's funny is right before
• 56:47
  COVID hit, we actually had fixed just about everything.
• 56:52
  And literally in February of 2020.
• 56:55
  So I started in October. It was a, it was a grueling 6
• 56:57
  months. Things were getting fixed.
• 57:00
  We were turning profitable. Things were going really well.
• 57:03
  And I remember sitting in my TV in our living room and looking
• 57:07
  up at the TV and sending our HRVP and saying, do we have a
• 57:10
  pandemic policy? And she said no.
• 57:14
  And I said, I think we might want to make one.
• 57:17
  And, and at the time, that was like 15 days to flatten the
• 57:19
  curve. And you know, we were there were
• 57:22
  this weird thing moving West across the world.
• 57:25
  And, and then when COVID hit, that was really tough because
• 57:28
  there was a lot of, if you remember when they shut the
• 57:30
  country down, essential employees couldn't stop coming
• 57:36
  and everyone else was living at their house.
• 57:37
  Well, everything that we do is essential and, and we and it's
• 57:42
  not a hospital type environment. And so we have people who were
• 57:45
  trying to create an ecosystem for them where they felt safe to
• 57:51
  come in working and loading and unloading trucks and driving
• 57:54
  trucks and, and, and when at the time we didn't know what was
• 57:59
  going on in the world, right. And there was a lot of fear
• 58:01
  associated with that. And so leading through that was
• 58:05
  difficult. As soon as that started to break
• 58:08
  is when we all said, thank goodness, now we can get back to
• 58:11
  business as usual. We had during that time
• 58:15
  consolidated our networks. We built our culture back up to
• 58:18
  where it needed to be. There was trust in the business
• 58:20
  now and trust in the executive leadership team.
• 58:23
  And we hit the ground running in 2021 and, and, and it was I
• 58:27
  believe 21 was the most profitable year we've ever had
• 58:30
  as a business and that we've beaten it every year since then.
• 58:33
  It was, it was basically from when I started through the end
• 58:37
  of COVID, when we started to get immunizations out and
• 58:41
  vaccinations out and all that stuff and heading into 21 into
• 58:44
  that summer, that's when the we really were able to celebrate
• 58:47
  that we made it. Yeah, going through hard times
• 58:50
  like that together, like you said, build some bonds that are
• 58:54
  virtually unbreakable and also builds resiliency within
• 58:58
  yourself, for sure. You mentioned something specific
• 59:01
  about the power of journaling, something you discovered along
• 59:05
  the way. Why do you think this was so
• 59:08
  helpful to you? Well, I start, So what was it?
• 59:15
  9 years ago, my father passed away unexpectedly and that was
• 59:20
  ironically enough, about a year before my wife was pregnant for
• 59:24
  my first son. And so when my when I found out
• 59:28
  that my wife was pregnant for my son, I was kind of lot of
• 59:33
  thoughts and emotions and, and everything that comes along with
• 59:36
  that. And so I literally opened up a
• 59:38
  book and just started writing and I wrote page after page
• 59:45
  after page after page and just brain dumped into this book.
• 59:49
  And when I was done, it almost felt like I was like intoxicated
• 59:54
  or something. It, it was, it was this
• 59:56
  unbelievable relief of, of, of pressure and stress.
• 1:00:00
  And, and I had clear thought and I had, and I said, man, that is
• 1:00:05
  wild just from writing. And I had never stopped it.
• 1:00:10
  It writing is thinking. Right.
• 1:00:13
  And so when you how many times you know you get you, it's
• 1:00:17
  things are stuck in your mind and you can't really work out
• 1:00:19
  the situation. You don't really see the end
• 1:00:21
  result or whatever. When you begin to write yourself
• 1:00:25
  through that. And it, it's, there's, I've read
• 1:00:28
  studies where it's like, it just unlocks this interconnectivity
• 1:00:32
  in your mind that allows things to make way more sense way
• 1:00:35
  quicker. And you think of things that you
• 1:00:37
  wouldn't have normally thought of.
• 1:00:38
  And if you are going through deep, dark emotional things,
• 1:00:43
  writing about them creates this sense of fresh air afterwards
• 1:00:47
  because you've, and it's, it's, it is unexplainable, quite
• 1:00:51
  honestly, unless you actually really get into it.
• 1:00:53
  But I started then and I have never stopped.
• 1:00:55
  It is, I can tell when I go a little bit too long without it.
• 1:00:59
  And, and I've learned to just, it's almost like when you feel
• 1:01:02
  like you're burnt out a little bit.
• 1:01:05
  And I'm like, I just got to sit down and I got to write for a
• 1:01:07
  while and, and I will. And after it works every time it
• 1:01:09
  it's, it's incredible. Yeah, I love what you just said,
• 1:01:13
  Zach, 'cause you know it when you've got sort of those, those
• 1:01:16
  deep, dark thoughts that are kind of happening, if you can
• 1:01:19
  get it out, talking to somebody I think is probably the best
• 1:01:23
  way. Writing it down when maybe
• 1:01:25
  that's not accessible or doesn't feel like the right move,
• 1:01:29
  doesn't feel safe. It's just another way to hit
• 1:01:33
  sort of like a release valve, right?
• 1:01:35
  You kind of releasing some of the pressure.
• 1:01:37
  It doesn't have to stay trapped in here anymore.
• 1:01:38
  You got it down on paper or, you know, in a, in a electronic
• 1:01:42
  notepad. And the other thing that you
• 1:01:44
  touched on is, you know, you're trying to sort of like figure
• 1:01:47
  out problems. Sometimes journaling can help
• 1:01:49
  with that, because now you can go back and reread what it was
• 1:01:54
  that you wrote down and you can kind of see where the gaps are,
• 1:01:57
  start to connect the dots in ways that isn't as easy to do
• 1:02:01
  when you've just got it swirling around up here in your Gray
• 1:02:04
  matter, right? Yeah, there's there's a the
• 1:02:08
  getting things done is the book and his name is David.
• 1:02:11
  I can't remember his last name, sorry, but he has a great quote.
• 1:02:16
  The the mind is for having ideas, not holding them.
• 1:02:19
  And it part of the, the, you know, the architecture of the
• 1:02:22
  getting things done process is to just write down tasks and
• 1:02:27
  items and whatever. And so, but that's, that's what
• 1:02:29
  you're talking about, right? When you've got the problem of
• 1:02:33
  all problems in front of you, the situ, you know, and it is
• 1:02:36
  this monster of a, of a issue that you've got to think through
• 1:02:40
  and solve and lead A-Team through.
• 1:02:42
  I don't know how else I could possibly approach those things
• 1:02:45
  without writing things down in front of me on a piece of paper,
• 1:02:48
  creating maps and links and arrows and circles and
• 1:02:51
  correlations and you see it and you just, you get through it
• 1:02:56
  better and differently and more efficiently by writing on paper.
• 1:02:59
  Yeah, getting things done. The author is David Allen.
• 1:03:03
  David Allen, Yeah. It's a good book, Zach.
• 1:03:08
  What's your superpower? We kind of talked about some
• 1:03:10
  hard times you've pushed through.
• 1:03:12
  What's your superpower? Yeah, so I'm going to admit I,
• 1:03:17
  I, I got, I asked for help on this one actually in thinking
• 1:03:23
  you know about. Sometimes it's hard for us to
• 1:03:26
  look at ourselves and kind of boost ourselves up or pat
• 1:03:29
  ourselves on the back. So.
• 1:03:30
  So you went to a third party? Yeah, so, so I, I asked my wife
• 1:03:34
  actually. And so I'll tell you what my
• 1:03:38
  answer was going to be and why. And I'll tell you what she said
• 1:03:41
  her answer is. And So what I went through this
• 1:03:43
  process at Geodus with CEO came in and his word for superpower
• 1:03:48
  was genius. What's your genius, right.
• 1:03:51
  And it's, it's, what do you do better than everyone else?
• 1:03:53
  Whatever. And I was the leader of the
• 1:03:55
  facility and there was about 20 people in the room and everyone
• 1:03:57
  went around the room and they said what their genius is.
• 1:04:00
  And it got to me at the end. And he said, OK, what's your
• 1:04:02
  genius? And I said, I have no idea.
• 1:04:05
  I, I, I hate to make it seem like your presentation wasn't
• 1:04:08
  great, but I have no idea what my genius is.
• 1:04:10
  And one of our engineers, a really good friend of mine, he
• 1:04:13
  said, Oh my gosh, I, I, I can't believe you don't know what it
• 1:04:16
  is. It's so obvious.
• 1:04:18
  And I said, well, what is it? And he said, you're a
• 1:04:20
  cheerleader. I said a cheerleader.
• 1:04:23
  And he goes, yeah. And he said, you have the
• 1:04:25
  ability to motivate, inspire, empower and align people in
• 1:04:31
  teams like nobody I've ever seen.
• 1:04:34
  And that is what you do best. And that actually translates
• 1:04:38
  into the noble purpose leadership, right?
• 1:04:40
  So, so and I and I agree with him.
• 1:04:43
  After I kind of realized that, I said that is that is what I do
• 1:04:46
  very well. I don't do a lot of things very
• 1:04:48
  well, but that is a good one. That's I, I'm good at that.
• 1:04:51
  I can cheerlead. What my wife said actually is
• 1:04:57
  the ability to, in the midst of chaos and confusion and
• 1:05:04
  uncertainty, I do a very, very good job of staying very calm
• 1:05:10
  and focused and deliberate and sifting through problems and,
• 1:05:16
  and issues and, you know, coming up with very good solutions to
• 1:05:20
  them without allowing emotional interference and without
• 1:05:23
  allowing some of the frenzy going on around me to impact me.
• 1:05:28
  And so that, that was her answer.
• 1:05:29
  And I, I do agree that that's a strength as well.
• 1:05:32
  But so there's a 2 Fer. Yeah, it's a it's a powerful
• 1:05:35
  combo there. That's your leader, plus sort of
• 1:05:37
  staying calm in the eye of the storm, which you you were able
• 1:05:41
  to do when you came home, found out you were having a second
• 1:05:44
  baby and you withheld that. Really stressful.
• 1:05:47
  Information that you have known to.
• 1:05:50
  You know, Zach, I've heard you talk so much about the
• 1:05:54
  importance of your team members, the folks that work with you.
• 1:05:58
  I'm curious from your experience, you guys got a
• 1:06:02
  pretty good sized team there. What do you guys do from a
• 1:06:07
  recruiting standpoint and and once you've got them sort of a
• 1:06:11
  retention standpoint. You talked a little bit about,
• 1:06:13
  you know, the mentorship and the the ESOP are sort of like good
• 1:06:17
  ways, but what are the things have you guys have found or sort
• 1:06:20
  of effective ways to get people in the door and then hold on to
• 1:06:24
  the good ones? Yeah, that's a good question.
• 1:06:26
  So what I'll say actually is before we even reach out to
• 1:06:34
  anybody, I think the most important first step when it
• 1:06:36
  comes because our turnover is, is remarkably low.
• 1:06:39
  We, we've lost almost nobody in prominent positions across the
• 1:06:43
  business since I've been there. It, it's almost 0.
• 1:06:48
  But that starts before you reach out to your very first
• 1:06:52
  candidate. And I think the most important
• 1:06:55
  part in determining factor in the success in that is you have
• 1:06:58
  to know who you are as a company, as a leadership team,
• 1:07:04
  as a collective group of employee owners or or employees
• 1:07:07
  or associates or whatever. You've got to know who you are,
• 1:07:11
  what you value, what you focus on.
• 1:07:14
  And you can't negotiate on those things.
• 1:07:18
  There have been a lot of great people when we talk to them in
• 1:07:21
  our resumes, look at the resumes and talk to them in interviews
• 1:07:25
  and they are perfect. But if there is any indication
• 1:07:30
  of maybe a misalignment on some of these core principles and
• 1:07:32
  values and thought processes that we have, it's unfortunate,
• 1:07:36
  but they're not meant for us. And and that's OK, right?
• 1:07:39
  We'll find the right one. And so that that is a critical
• 1:07:44
  process that I think a lot of companies overlook because they
• 1:07:47
  will find the person who speaks well, answers the questions well
• 1:07:51
  and has a resume from heaven. And they will hire them because
• 1:07:55
  they look and sound and feel amazing.
• 1:07:58
  But that's you got to hire the right person regardless of all
• 1:08:02
  of those things. And so that then directly leads
• 1:08:04
  to retention because if you hire the right person that will fit
• 1:08:10
  to your culture and your values and your focuses, they will feel
• 1:08:15
  at home so much quicker than someone that is misaligned to
• 1:08:19
  that. And so they don't leave.
• 1:08:22
  How can you check for that in the interview process?
• 1:08:25
  Well, it's, it's not a, yeah, it's certainly not a, a, a, you
• 1:08:28
  know, bat in 1000, right. But you can, you can get an idea
• 1:08:31
  for it. I think, you know, one of the
• 1:08:32
  interesting ones in this, this, this came into play, not so much
• 1:08:35
  anymore, but over a couple years.
• 1:08:38
  We were fully in person as a business.
• 1:08:43
  And so and, and we would explain to candidates, This is why.
• 1:08:48
  It's because we want you to be a part of us and this, and we want
• 1:08:51
  to talk to you and we want to, you know, be a team and, and
• 1:08:54
  collaborate and interact. And there's a lot of people who
• 1:08:57
  didn't prioritize that. They, they said, well, actually,
• 1:09:01
  I would, I'd prefer to work from home.
• 1:09:03
  I can still do all the job and they can, but that's not, that
• 1:09:08
  doesn't align with what we were really pushing for, right?
• 1:09:11
  And again, we haven't seen that as much lately, but especially
• 1:09:13
  coming out of COVID, we were back in office almost
• 1:09:16
  immediately, 100%. And and that was kind of a line
• 1:09:20
  that we drew where he said, we feel that we have such a
• 1:09:22
  beautiful culture here and such a beautiful thing going.
• 1:09:25
  We want people in here to be a part of it.
• 1:09:28
  And and so that there's a lot of great candidates that honestly,
• 1:09:32
  I wish we could have hired, but they, they just didn't meet that
• 1:09:35
  moral the same kind of value to that right.
• 1:09:38
  So that's kind of a hard example, but that's that's and
• 1:09:40
  and and again, you don't bat 1000.
• 1:09:42
  There's people who we've hired and they don't work out.
• 1:09:44
  But but I think it it I I still would say it's that's the most
• 1:09:49
  important thing is, is know who you are as a business and as a
• 1:09:52
  team and as a how to get that culture fit for sure.
• 1:09:55
  Yeah, because if not, nothing else matters.
• 1:09:58
  Zach, I've just got one more question for you.
• 1:10:00
  But before I ask it, I want to do 2 things.
• 1:10:02
  First, I'm going to invite all listeners to go ahead.
• 1:10:05
  Take a moment. Just hit that follow button on
• 1:10:06
  your favorite podcast app. Had a great interview here today
• 1:10:10
  with Zach Hancock from FST Logistics.
• 1:10:13
  I want you to continue to get more great content like this in
• 1:10:15
  your feed. Zach, I also want to let people
• 1:10:17
  know the best way to get in touch with you or to follow your
• 1:10:21
  story. What would that be?
• 1:10:23
  Yeah, LinkedIn for sure. I've, you know, I, I, I post on
• 1:10:28
  their semi regularly. And, and I, you know, I've got
• 1:10:32
  my own little series that I'm calling the logistics of
• 1:10:35
  leadership where I once a week or so.
• 1:10:37
  I'll just put up a little quote similar to what we talked about
• 1:10:39
  earlier, a little phrase and a little bit of a leadership
• 1:10:42
  coaching mentoring type situation.
• 1:10:44
  And so I would love to connect with people there and and talk
• 1:10:46
  if they're interested. That's great.
• 1:10:48
  We'll include that link in our show notes.
• 1:10:51
  The last question for you, Zach, You and I reconnect a year from
• 1:10:54
  now and you're excited you're celebrating something.
• 1:10:57
  What's that thing that you're celebrating a year from now?
• 1:11:02
  Well, I would say two things. So from a professional
• 1:11:05
  perspective, you know, we are in hyper growth mode.
• 1:11:08
  You know right now we're we're hoping for probably at least one
• 1:11:13
  more acquisition as a business and also moving into another
• 1:11:17
  region. Right now we're in Columbus and
• 1:11:19
  in Fort Worth, Texas and so hoping to be into a different
• 1:11:22
  region by then. And so I'd be really happy to be
• 1:11:24
  celebrating that I'd like to be operating further increase in
• 1:11:28
  our share price as an ESOP from a personal perspective.
• 1:11:32
  So in about 3 weeks, it looks like right now my wife and I are
• 1:11:37
  going to be moving, We're going to be uprooting our kids and
• 1:11:39
  putting them in a new school district and new everything and
• 1:11:43
  my daughter's starting kindergarten.
• 1:11:45
  And so I'm very hopeful that, you know, we're, I'm looking
• 1:11:48
  back at, you know, this process and our new house and I'm, and
• 1:11:53
  I'm feeling very blessed and very happy that it's everything
• 1:11:55
  that we think it should be right now.
• 1:11:57
  That's a tough transition for kids and and parents.
• 1:12:00
  It weighs on your mind because you want your kids to to learn,
• 1:12:03
  to have fun, to have friends, to fit in.
• 1:12:06
  Yeah, I get that. Yeah.
• 1:12:07
  So my son is going into second grade and he's far more
• 1:12:10
  emotional. He's he's, he's not a big fan of
• 1:12:13
  this right now. My daughter is starting
• 1:12:15
  kindergarten and she's a bit of a free spirit, so I think she's
• 1:12:17
  going to be fine. But but you know, I'm hoping
• 1:12:21
  that my family feels very happy where where we are in a year.
• 1:12:24
  Yeah, Zach Hancock from FST Logistics.
• 1:12:28
  I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time
• 1:12:31
  and your story with us today. Yeah.
• 1:12:32
  Thank you so much. It's it's been an absolute
• 1:12:34
  pleasure. Thank you.
• 1:12:36
  Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
• 1:12:39
  podcast. Thanks for learning with us
• 1:12:41
  today.