Noble Purpose Leadership: Zak Hancock’s Employee Ownership Revolution at FST Logistics

Anthony Codispoti : Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti, and today’s guest is Zak Hancock, Chief Operating Officer at FST Logistics. They are an employee-owned third-party logistics provider founded in 1995 and focused on helping grocery and retail brands with warehousing, transportation, and supply chain solutions. Their mission is to offer proactive communication and flexible services so customers can streamline their operations. Now, Zak joined FST Logistics in October 2019 and has made a significant impact by improving operational efficiencies and guiding teams under his noble purpose leadership philosophy. He has held various leadership roles in logistics and operations management, including positions at Geodesh and UPS. Under his leadership, FST continues to champion employee ownership and customer satisfaction, earning recognition for its commitment to reliable service. Zak’s dedication to mentorship and team development has also set a strong foundation for growth across the organization. But before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. Alright, back to our guest today, the COO of FST Logistics, Zak Hancock. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Zak Hancock : Thanks for having me. I’m really looking forward to the conversation. I think it’s going to be good.

Anthony Codispoti : So, Zak, got a psychology degree from the Ohio State University, which is what I think everybody going into a transportation and logistics career does, right?

Zak Hancock : Well, you know, you might be surprised actually. Is that right? Yeah, it’s, you know, I was sitting on a panel one time and it was at Ohio State University actually and somebody in the audience asked me why I picked this industry for my career. And, you know, I kind of said, I think I’m speaking for more people than you would imagine that I didn’t pick this industry. This industry picked me. And it kind of, once you get into it, it really is an incredibly interesting and fulfilling industry to be in. And here in Columbus, Ohio, there is a robust presence of transportation, logistics, supply chain companies. And so it just kind of was one of those one thing led to another type deal for me.

Anthony Codispoti : Why is Columbus have such a robust network of TNL?

Zak Hancock : Yeah, so it all has to do with geographic location. So, you know, the epicenter of, I guess the center of gravity of the population of the United States is directly in between Columbus and Cincinnati. And so when you’re looking for a place to put distribution centers and warehouses and transportation companies and things like that, being able to reach the most of the population or a huge amount of the population and the shortest amount of travel time is obviously very advantageous. So Columbus is a natural fit because of that.

Anthony Codispoti : So how did the first opportunity at UPS come about?

Zak Hancock : Yeah, so, you know, like most college kids, I wasn’t exactly swimming in cash, I would say. And believe it or not, there was a flyer on a telephone pole. And it was, you know, come work at UPS and unload trucks. And, you know, that didn’t catch my interest.

But underneath it, it said, you know, tuition assistance offered. And I said, okay, well, that actually is something I might be interested in. And so I actually was, you know, raised in Northern Ohio in farming communities. And I’d been bailing hay and straw since I was about four. And so I had a good idea. That’s what I said. I said, you know what?

I probably can go in and unload these trucks faster than most of these city slickers down here. So, yeah, so I gave a shot and, you know, again, one thing led to another. It was about a month after I started, they needed another supervisor. And they asked me if I was interested. And my response was, do I get a pay raise? And they said yes. And so that’s kind of the rest of history.

Anthony Codispoti : So why you were still a student? You took on a managerial role there.

Zak Hancock : Yeah, so I was going to school full-time basically all morning. I’d try to fit in a quick workout session and then I would get to work at about 5 p.m. And I’d usually get back home to my house between one and two every day, five days a week.

Anthony Codispoti : And you were sleeping like in your classes?

Zak Hancock : Yeah, well, as much as I tried to avoid that, I’m sure that did happen more than my professors would like. But, yeah, it was, you know, it was actually instrumental in kind of building me into who I am, really. Because I had to master time management and time blocking. And I can remember very specifically looking out two or three weeks at a syllabus and saying, well, I have a test on this day in this one and a half hour window in between this class and going to work is the only time I can study. And so I got really good at that. And it ended up paying extreme dividends, I’d say, you know, as I made my way through my career.

Anthony Codispoti : I’d say that level of planning does not exist for the traditional college student. Yeah, they may wake up that morning and remember that they’ve got the exam like, oh, no.

Zak Hancock : Yeah, yeah, there was, you know, and there was, it wasn’t easy. There’s no doubt about that. And there was a lot of times, you know, I’d get back to my apartment on Thursday night and there would be, you know, somewhere between 10 and 30 people there and they’d all been having a great time since 4 or 5 o’clock that afternoon. And it was one or two o’clock in the morning and I’d been working all day. But, you know, kind of a delayed gratification thing. I thought that it would probably pay off and it did. Nice.

Anthony Codispoti : And so you eventually went to work at Geodis, another very large logistics company. What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome there, Zach? And what lessons did you take away from that experience that are helpful now?

Zak Hancock : Well, so my time at Geodis was easily, it’s kind of that part in your career where you learn how to actually do your job. It was, I was a young manager. I was brought in as a manager there. I was in my mid-20s and I had a phenomenal mentor.

Thank goodness who to this day, I still credit to most of my development during that time. But it was a tough account that I had to kind of learn the industry very quickly. The account was a fast growing e-commerce direct to consumer account and it was growing very, very quickly.

Things were not being handled appropriately, I’ll say at the time. And I had to learn very quickly from some pretty brilliant people how to do my job really at a pretty high level. And I ended up being there, promoted several times and we added probably close to five or six hundred thousand square feet of operational capacity through that.

We increased our staffing from one or two hundred up to a high of about a thousand. For this one account? For one account, yeah, yeah. And we had to do a warehouse management system, WMS. We had to upgrade while I was there for that, which is kind of a big deal. And so I really, I got to see all elements of redesigning warehouses and planning labor for huge growth and dealing with the ebbs and flows of a peak season. And I ended up running the facility by the time I left. And so throughout that time, it was again, I credit those five, six, seven, eight years in there where every day was a challenge, quite honestly, for a long time. But it ended up again was one of those things you look back and you’re like, thank goodness that I got to experience all that so early in my career in such a short time.

Anthony Codispoti : You cut your teeth on so many different things in that short time period. For sure. For sure. Yeah. And you said that there were people who were helping you along the way, people that you had to learn from very quickly.

Zak Hancock : Yeah. Well, and it was the beginning of me realizing the importance of having a mentor in your career. And this guy, he never was my formal mentor. He was just my boss, but he taught me so much. And he, I would just sit back. We thought very similarly. We approached things very similarly.

Our focuses and our priorities were very similar. And so that set a good groundwork to where I could really learn and absorb from him. And oddly enough, the customer had a brilliant, brilliant leader over the division who was very, very tough to work for. And that’s ended up being a huge learning opportunity for me too, because he didn’t accept anything other than pretty close to perfect. And learning how to deal with situations like that and striving for that type of performance, again, that was fundamental to where I am right now. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti : So let’s talk about where you are now. How did that opportunity to join FST Logistics come about? Yeah.

Zak Hancock : So I was, I just got a random message on LinkedIn, if I’m being perfectly honest. I was feeling pretty good about my job. I just had a little baby. He was about six months old.

He’s now close to seven or just turned seven actually. And I just got a random message from a company called FST. At the time, she’s now our Chief Administrative Officer, Jill Kluhman. At the time, she was the VP of HR.

And she said, Hey, you know, I was looking at your LinkedIn profile and it looks like you’ve got some pretty good experience in the warehousing business, leading change, creating processes, procedures, improving profitability, whatever. And we need that. And so are you interested?

And I said, Sure, you know, I’ll have a conversation. And yeah, so that was about July, I think is in 2019 when they reached out and I ended up starting in October.

Anthony Codispoti : So you were already in Columbus at that point with your previous employer?

Zak Hancock : Yeah. So when I, once I moved down from Northern Ohio to go to Ohio State, I stayed in Columbus ever since. So I’ve been here since about about 18, when I was 18. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti : All right. So we touched a little bit on it in the intro, but let’s hear in your words more specifically, what you guys do and who you service. Yeah.

Zak Hancock : So, so at the high level, we’re a full service, 3PL, third party logistics company. And basically what that does, or what that means is we have customers that pay us to manage not the manufacturing of their product, but quite literally from the minute that that product is loaded onto a trailer to be shipped anywhere, we pick it up. We’ll bring in all the freight, houses in our warehouses. We have multiple different services that have to do with less than truckload orders, full truckload of outbound orders, a full warehousing capability, e-commerce direct to consumer. And we’re kind of a niche within a niche, within a niche, within a niche, which is, which has been one of the reasons why the business has been so successful. Because what where we’ve really found ourselves is temperature controlled food, beverage and pharmaceuticals.

And so when you start to look into the vast array of 3PLs out there, every one of those niche becomes a little bit more difficult and a little bit less players involved. And it’s been very successful for us. And that’s one of the reasons we’ve been so successful is because we know what we’re good at. And quite frankly, there’s not a lot of competitors in that very specific space across the country. Why?

Anthony Codispoti : Why is it so competition-like?

Zak Hancock : Because it’s really difficult, to be honest. If you open up a warehouse and the only thing you’re putting in there are tires, nobody really cares a lot about what the inside of the building looks like. But when you start to get into temperature sensitive food, beverage, you have to worry about obviously temperature, which is expensive. You know, to have a, you know, our largest air conditioned warehouse is nearly 350,000 square feet. That’s more expensive than an ambient warehouse. You also have to monitor the temperatures.

In a lot of cases, you have to monitor humidity. And then when you start to look at the fact that you’re handling people’s food, there’s a lot of, you know, certifications. And quality inspections that come along with that.

There’s allergens that you have to be afraid of and manage the inventory in different ways. And so when you start to, again, layer in all those complexities, it’s once you get in it, it can be very, very good business. But getting into it is difficult. It’s a pretty tall barrier to entry, honestly.

Anthony Codispoti : And because of that, I’m going to guess that your margins are probably better than companies that aren’t able to offer this refrigerated food handling level of service.

Zak Hancock : For sure. Yeah. And, you know, and it’s, you know, one of the things that we are honest about with our customers too is our prices aren’t also as cheap as a lot of the other providers out there. Because there are just different variations of service offerings and things that we have to pay attention to. You know, if you have a product that is organic, then your entire warehouse has to be organic certified.

If they’re kosher, then you have to have a full kosher certification for the entire facility and you have to do things differently. And so, so there it is. It’s a good business. Again, it’s tough to get into. But if you can deliver the service that the customers need, they actually understand and appreciate the fact that it does come at a little bit more of a price tag because they’re not shipping tires to people. You know, they’re shipping food and beverages and pharmaceuticals, drugs in the containers that you put the drugs in.

Anthony Codispoti : Was this already the focus for FST when you joined in 2019 or did that kind of come later? Yeah.

Zak Hancock : So it was, it was when I showed up, it was already like that. We had about 14, 15 years ago, the business kind of changed where we were trying to figure out what our unique specialty was going to be. And then we signed a customer and at the time it had 2,500 pallet positions, which is comparatively not that large. Well, that customer grew with us to be one of the dominance forces in their industry.

They had close to 40,000 pallets with us at that point. And so as they grew, we grew and that was the industry they were in was temperature controlled food, warehousing, distribution, supply chain. And so that once we started to help them grow and mutually benefit each other, it opened the door for so many other customers when they would hear that we did this for this customer and we were successful with this customer. Then all of their friends and a lot of their compadres, I guess in that industry, we became very interested in dealing with this.

Anthony Codispoti : What was the state of the company when you joined in 2019, almost six years ago? What were you kind of first brought in to work on?

Zak Hancock : Yeah, so it was, to be quite honest, it was a little rough. What was going on is that large customer had grown so quickly and so fast that we actually had their product in central Ohio spread across six different facilities, which is not a good position to be. And you really want to try to things back to my other story, how we added five or 600,000 square feet of operational capacity when I was at Geodes. That was all in one building. We didn’t have the ability, FST didn’t have that ability at the time and or building to grow into of that size.

And so they had just didn’t have a facility that large. That’s right. Yeah. And those are kind of rare. You know, there’s there’s some men, one or two million square footers out there, but they didn’t have one in their portfolio at the time. And so so what they attempted to do in early 19 was build a brand new building and then consolidate all of these other buildings into that one building. And for various reasons, that did not just did not get executed well. And it was it was a very, very rough spot. And so that’s actually that was the that

Anthony Codispoti : was like the facility was late being ready or yeah, to move everything in there.

Zak Hancock : It was a combination, you know, when you when you it’s it was such a fundamental change in the way that the business is going to need to be run to consolidate everything into one building. And you only kind of get one swing at it. If you don’t if you don’t get it all in perfect right off the get go, the orders and the customer demands don’t stop. And so if you mess up anything, it’s a very, very hard to do quite honestly.

And if you have any little misses, again, the customer orders don’t stop. And so you fall behind very quickly and things can get out of control really quickly. And unfortunately, that’s what happened. And so that was the kind of behind the scenes comment when Jill reached out to me and said, Hey, we’re having a couple issues in the warehouse. Could you be so that’s what I was walking into. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : And so how did you fix it? How’d you clean it up? That obviously along with your team.

Zak Hancock : But yes, we you know, we we could talk about that for a long time. You know, the the state of the business was in the morale and the culture was not good at all. They they they were doing everything they could and it just wasn’t enough.

And that’s that hurts, you know, that that that really puts a damper on things. And so one of the first things that I did was try to bring a little bit of life and light back into into the culture into the morale. I mean, there was from from a from an actual operations perspective, we needed to consolidate out of six or seven buildings down into three. We had to unfortunately, there was a riff during that time.

And but while all of these things were going on behind the scenes that were, you know, fundamental to the survival of the business, I can remember sitting in a board meeting and I laid out my return to profitability plan and one of the board members said, Well, how are you going to do that? And my answer, so what are your question? My answer is the heliotropic effect.

And she said the what? And so every I think most people, they’ve maybe never heard of the heliotropic effect, but they know what it is. And so if you have you ever seen a video or a picture where you’ve got flowers or plants and the sun comes up in the east and the flowers point themselves towards the sun. And as the sun goes across the sky, they follow it, right? You have plants in your house and they do the same thing.

They point themselves towards the window. That’s called the heliotropic effect. And so it’s it’s it’s the natural tendency of living beings to be pulled towards light and positive energy and radiance. And it works for people too.

And that’s the part that most people don’t make the kind of understanding. And so that was my answer was the heliotropic effect. It’s I’m going to I’m going to come in and I can remember saying at one point I said you’re going to be the sunshine.

Yes. And what I actually said to everybody was, let me be your lighthouse. And I raised my hand and I said, you were you there’s a whole bunch of ships out at sea right now. It’s rough waters. You don’t know where you’re going.

You don’t have any direction. And it’s scary. And I get it. And so I’m going to be the lighthouse. What I need you to do is give me all of your problems and give them to me and let me take that on and help with the prioritization and help with the solving and help with the solutions and the analytics.

All you need to do is just continue to paddle towards me. And and that was that was insanely difficult because it was to be that energy and that that presence during times of disarray and challenge. It is it’s emotionally fatiguing. There’s no doubt about it. But that was again, we could talk for hours about everything that went into that. But that’s kind of my short version.

Anthony Codispoti : Well, this might be a good lead into something we referenced in the intro. Noble purpose leadership. Yeah. What is this? Why is it important to you? Yeah.

Zak Hancock : So first of all, noble purpose leadership is not my phrase. I kind of stumbled upon it. I think honestly, again, I’m LinkedIn. I saw a random picture or something about it, but everyone is heard of being a servant leader. Right. And that’s that’s kind of always considered a good way to do it. And I agree that that is, you know, getting out there and getting your hands dirty, so to speak and working along with your team and showing them and demonstrating them that you’re, you know, wanting to be a part of the processes and all that stuff.

Anthony Codispoti : It goes and doing what you can to set them up for success.

Zak Hancock : What do they need? Absolutely. And that’s servant leadership. And that’s it’s amazing. And it works for a lot of people. And so throughout my career, there was this really weird disconnect, though, when I felt when I looked at what I was doing and how I was approaching leadership. And I never told anybody this, but I wasn’t a servant leader. That’s not what I was doing. And so when I when I read noble purpose leadership, I didn’t even need to read the explanation of it.

I knew that’s what I did. And so what noble purpose leadership is, is from what I can tell pretty not as nearly as common, but basically sitting down with a person or a team and conveying to them the reason why you’re doing something. What is the noble purpose? Why are we here?

Why is the Y and where are we going? What is the vision? What is the goal? What is what is the meaning of what we’re doing right now? And once you get there buying on that, then your goal and your role as the leader becomes encouraging them and empowering them and teaching them and mentoring them and helping them.

And if they if they kind of drift a little left of center, getting them back into where they need to get to all the while doubling down on the fact and rewarding results that show us getting to where we need to. It’s very similar kind of to the lighthouse thing, right? It’s like if the boats swim a little closer to the lighthouse, you reward that like that’s the goal. That’s the purpose. And I have had such a tremendous amount of success with that type of leadership technique. And again, as soon as I read it, I said that’s me. That is what I’ve done my entire career. And it works very well for me.

Anthony Codispoti : You’re getting the Y and you’re mentoring them along the way. What is the mentoring actually look like?

Zak Hancock : Yeah, so it can take all shapes and sizes, right? I mean, I have quite a few mentees that, you know, that work at FST and I set up monthly meetings with them and we have development plans that we’re working on. And so that’s very tactical.

That’s kind of using your scalpel in its very specific and very personalized. It also can come, you know, every Thursday I host a company wide call. It’s the Thursday huddle and it’s a great kind of message board for the company.

We have all of the key departments, marketing and sales and operations and everyone just kind of gives everyone an update over the course of a half hour about what we’re going, what we’re doing, how are things moving and whatever. At the very end of that, and I’ve done this for the entire time that I’ve been at FST at the very end, I always give a quote. And the quote is something that I’ve come across in my years that had an impact on me that I think is relevant to personal or professional life development, focus, mentality outlook perspective. And so I share that and for about five minutes after I read the quote, I explain to the entire business why I think it’s important that everyone ponders that for a couple of days. And so that’s another version of it, right?

And that’s touching. There’s hundreds and hundreds of people on that call every morning. One of the most rewarding things that happens is it’s not every week, but there’s a lot of times where I’ll just get one off a one off little email, or a message, or a text, or they’ll catch me in person, you know, when they see me next time and they’ll say, my goodness, that quote that you shared two weeks ago changed my life. I needed to hear that that day. I was going through something. I hadn’t told anybody about it in the way that you spoke in the wisdom that you were, you know, and that’s mentorship.

That’s noble purpose leadership. What was the quote this week? The quote this week was, I’m going to paraphrase it, it was by Coco Chanel. And it was, we’re going to be, we’re going to meet many defeats in our life, but we have to remember to never allow ourselves to be defeated. That’s very close to the quote. But, and I think so, obviously you can take that a lot of places personally and professionally, right? And there’s a lot of people out there that heard my voice, who they need, they’re going through something.

And, and they, they won’t share that. But when they hear that, that can be the, you know, that they need to make it through that day, and really, you know, attack the day again.

Anthony Codispoti : And for that one on one mentorship that you provide some of your team members, when you meet, are you mostly focusing on sort of their professional like here’s their work duties, how can I help them achieve those? Or does it expand to things sort of outside the work environment? What’s going on in their personal lives?

Zak Hancock : Yeah, both, for sure. Right. And, and, you know, that kind of brings up an interesting point. I was asked the other day, how do I feel about work life balance?

And I said, that doesn’t exist really. In my mind, it’s life. Life is life. And what we do at work carries over to our home.

What we do at our home carries into work and it’s just life. And so I do make a point when I’m mentoring, there’s a lot of times where what the person wants to talk about or what they need to hear, I think, during that session, they may ask me about how to approach a customer from a sales meeting. But if I can tell that maybe they aren’t really in the right frame of mind, or I can tell maybe they’re not in a great spot, sometimes they elicit the information. Sometimes I have to ask, I’ll say, what’s going on? How are you, you know, what, what, you seem a little off today?

What’s going on? And that there’s oftentimes that begin, that’s our entire conversation for the rest of the time we’re there, right? And because sometimes mentorship and coaching and leading and developing is listening.

And that’s it. And, and maybe they’re going through something tough that I’ve gone through before, or, or maybe the both of us have, you know, we’re, we’re sharing in different elements of what we’re going through with the company together.

Anthony Codispoti : And sometimes just talking about it, just kind of getting off your chest and letting somebody else hear it, getting it out of your mind and, you know, out into the space that can be helpful just on its own.

Zak Hancock : For sure. And it’s very therapeutic, you know, and so there’s a, so often there, you know, most of the time the conversations are work related, right? It’s not like I’m a therapist on the sidelines, right? But it’s, but life is life. And, and what people are going through personally and professionally in the way that they think about things. A lot of times I talk about your psychological perspective on things. That’s where that degree comes into place. And so maybe an outlook on life, or if they’re really, really struggling with something, you know, and I say, well, you know, potentially look at this a little bit of a different way, or maybe it’s just your perspective. That’s got to change right here. And everything else is perfect, but your perspective might just be a little off. And those are powerful conversations and very impactful.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, I think that’s really important because, you know, sometimes we can get so task oriented, so task focused, you know, we show up to work, we’re here eight to five, nine to five, whatever the shift is. And while we’re here, we got to focus on work, we got to get our stuff done. And then when we’re outside these walls, that’s where we can deal with the personal stuff. But we’re not robots, right? And if you’re familiar with the Apple show severance, like we don’t like, you know, get the switch like into these different modes, we don’t get to set all that aside. But human beings, we carry our baggage with us.

And if that baggage is too heavy, it’s going to affect what’s going on at work, it’s going to affect everything. And so when you can kind of help with those personal elements too, everybody’s going to win.

Zak Hancock : Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And again, that comes back to, as a leader, then you’re developing trust, you know, you’re developing a relationship with those people. They are turning to you now, not just for how do I increase my whatever KPI, key performance indicator, right?

Like, they’re turning you just as a mentor, and as a person who might be able to help them get to where they want to in life. And it’s just very, it’s very powerful.

Anthony Codispoti : So, Zach, the company was started by Art Decraine. Yeah, he now sits on the board of directors. Yeah, can you talk about how the company transitioned to being employee owned?

Zak Hancock : Yeah, so it’s a fairly simple story, but unfortunately, it’s a story that doesn’t get told too often, I think, in terms of companies in general. And so basically what happened is Art, who again still sits on our board and is still very active and is just amazing. He founded the company, grew it to where he thought that, you know, he kind of wanted to start to step off into retirement. And when you’re an owner founder, there’s a couple options that you’ve got. You can sell to private equity, your venture capitalist type stuff.

You can offer up to a strategic buyer, you know, be maybe like a geonest, a much larger company could come in and be interested in, you know, there’s a couple other less common options, but the other one is sell back to the employees. And so that’s what Art did. And I think that, you know, not speaking for him, but he is, FST grew very quickly, but started very small. And there were a key group of people who had been with him since the beginning. And I think that he knew that they were just as responsible for his success as anybody else. And the ultimate kind of thank you was, I’m going to sell it back to you guys.

And now you run with it, right? And it’s turned out to be what I think is fundamentally one of the most game changing, impactful decisions that’s ever happened to FST, because being an employee owned company is something that we leverage in every single minute of our day, we focus on that and it creates a tremendous amount of positive. And so, again, kind of a simple story, he just chose to sell it back to the people and reward them for everything that they’ve done with helping him. And it’s proven to be a phenomenal decision.

Anthony Codispoti : Kind of get into some more of the details here. Why has this been so impactful? How does it show up on a daily basis?

Zak Hancock : Yeah, so if you were to get on my LinkedIn right now, the banner behind me says, own your impact. And so, you know, one of the comments that I make about the ESOP, the Employee Stock Ownership Program, is I refer to it as a force multiplier for all things good. And when you are able to leverage the fact that you’ve got everybody from a warehouse worker all the way up to as the CEO, all of us have unique jobs, we all own the business. What we do impacts our share price. And so the way that an ESOP works is once a year you get evaluated by a third party valuation company and you get a share price that comes out. And so, the owners of the business every year just by kind of showing up and doing their job, they’re awarded shares every year in FST. And so as they’re working hard throughout the year and they’re taking care of themselves and each other and the customers and doing everything that they need to do and what we focus on, when we, it’s coming up in July here, when we release our share price and it goes up, it’s the most amazing reward that you can possibly give these people.

Because they say, I did that, that was me. And it’s very, very powerful. And when you share an ownership of anything, there’s a lot more pride there and there’s a lot more focus on doing things the right way and there’s a lot more kind of internal accountability. There’s people around the business that are not leaders of anything and yet if they see somebody else doing something that doesn’t align with our traits or maybe wouldn’t lead to our share price going up kind of, they call them out and they say, look, this isn’t the way we do it here.

We are the best and we act like it and what you’re doing isn’t a part of our culture and the way we do things. And it is so powerful. It is so powerful.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s really interesting that last part that you mentioned hadn’t occurred to me. It sort of creates a different level of accountability. I mean, a lot of work environments, you could kind of walk by somebody who’s doing something the wrong way and you’re like, not my department, not my problem, right? Like I got other things to focus on. Now there’s a real reason, you know, that person’s actually invested, literally invested in the company. Yeah.

Zak Hancock : Yeah. Again, it’s a force multiplier for all things good because if you can look at somebody and say what you just did is actually going to make our share price go down in your shares that you’ve been given and that are yours and you’ve been here for 15, 20 years, that doesn’t help us. And they get it immediately.

As soon as they see their share price and their ownership statement every July, that’s them. That’s theirs. And it’s, again, it is very powerful. It’s the greatest structure that I’ve ever been a part of when it comes to all of her morale. accountability.

Anthony Codispoti : So anybody who’s been there at least 12 months, they get to participate or how’s that work?

Zak Hancock : Yeah, so after you’ve worked for a year, you’re entered into the ESOP and then every year based on just your overall 1099 income, you’re awarded shares in the company based on that. And so we have a certain amount of shares that come available every year and we just, there’s a quick math problem that the trust does that awards shares to everybody based on what their income was that year.

Anthony Codispoti : And you said 1099 income. So these are independent contracts.

Zak Hancock : I’m sorry, W2. I said W2. Yes, W2. Yes, sorry.

Anthony Codispoti : Wrong one. Got you. Yeah. And so then how do people actually take advantage of the financial aspect of that? Is that whenever they leave the company, then they sell the shares back at whatever the valuation most recently was?

Zak Hancock : Yeah. So it functions as a retirement account, right? So it’s qualified money that they don’t do anything for. They just are given it. And so, but after they’ve been there for a certain period of time and all ESOPs are a little bit different, but once you meet the retirement criteria for the ESOP, you retire and you immediately then start to draw back on those shares and some of them pay out over five years.

Some of them pay immediately. If you’re with the company and leave and you don’t retire, you just roll it into your 401k. But there’s countless stories out there where and we’re about ready to reach this milestone, which is just so exciting as you have somebody who is operating a forklift or as a truck driver and they’ve been a loyal employee owner of FST and they’re about ready to leave and we get to hand them a million dollar check and say thank you so much for everything that you’ve done. A million dollars. A million dollars. And there’s a, we are so close with a couple of our most tenured employees that it’s going to happen any year now and we’re going to be having someone retire and it’s going to be a person who maybe their entire family has been a truck driver. Their entire family is working on the warehouse floor. We’re going to make them a millionaire when they retire just because they’re ESOP. It gives me chills to get about it honestly.

Anthony Codispoti : I was going to say that’s the kind of thing. There’s like employee privacy laws and stuff but that’s the kind of thing you want to turn into a PR event, right? For sure. There’s giant million dollar checks. I mean that’s exciting.

Zak Hancock : Yeah. Well, you know, what’s funny, the interesting thing about ESOPs is they actually aren’t really good for attracting employees because they’re so rare that a lot of people don’t know what they are. They don’t know what they are.

Anthony Codispoti : They don’t understand it. And so we put a tremendous amount of effort and focus. When new people come in, they go right into training and education about what did you just walk into with this ESOP and why is it so special?

And what can you do to be a part of the future and to help collaborate and achieve the success that we’re all moving towards? Oh, that’s fascinating. Yeah. I got to understand why that gives you chills. Yeah.

Zak Hancock : It’s amazing for sure.

Anthony Codispoti : Zach, in your previous roles, you’ve done a lot of different efficiency improvements. What’s one specific process innovation that you’ve introduced at FST that you’re really proud of?

Zak Hancock : So I guess there’s been a lot. But one of the things that because it was so successful, it isn’t like this miraculous new thing that no one’s ever done before, but it’s very difficult to do successfully. And we instituted a labor management system. And so basically what that is is a system that allows us to track the work of the people across all of our facilities. We have 2 million square feet of facility or so.

Track the work that they’re doing and see how efficiently they’re operating. And so the reason why that becomes really difficult to roll out is because if you don’t do that the right way, everybody views that as big brother is watching. And they don’t like that. They don’t like to be watched. They don’t like that nobody does.

That’s kind of, it’s very intrusive if you do it the wrong way. We have a great engineering team, a great engineering leader. And the story that we told, which was real, is we’re not doing this to get rid of you or make you go faster, create hostile work environments or watch what you’re doing. What we’re doing it is we’re trying to leverage this technology to allow us to run as efficiently as we possibly can, maximize our profitability. But then also because we’re so efficient, we don’t have to charge customers as much to make a profit because we’re so efficient. And so that was the sales pitch, which was the reality of the thing. And there was, it has saved us millions and millions and millions of dollars in labor.

Anthony Codispoti : And how it just, it looks at like where and when you need to have folks scheduled and does a better job.

Zak Hancock : Yeah. Well, so let’s say that someone is operating on a warehouse floor and throughout the day, they have to fulfill 10 orders. Right. This, what this allows you to do is it creates a database that suggests fulfilling those 10 orders should take X amount of time. And so if you don’t do it within X amount of time, you have an employee labor score associated with it and that percentage goes down. So if they do it instead of 10 hours, they do it in 20 hours, they would get a 50% efficiency rate. And so again, what we did not approach this as you all need to go faster, what it allowed us to do is say, why did it take so long to do that? You know, did the person, is their equipment not appropriate?

Is the way the warehouse floor set up is not appropriate? Is all the other various reasons that could take place, right? Maybe that person was just having a really bad day and they just, you know, didn’t. It was a one off for them.

Anthony Codispoti : It’s not their normal. That’s right. But that data set that we never had access to ever at the company allowed us to quite literally re-engineer our entire warehousing dynamic. Our training programs changed. The actual layouts of the facilities changed. The equipment that we use changed. And as a result, as we got more and more efficient in order to make a profit as a business again, we didn’t have to charge as much because we were doing it with less people more efficiently.

So that, that caused us to have more customer growth and happier customers and higher service levels because we, you factor in things like accuracy and safety metrics and things like that into these scores. And the goal was never to punish people for not going fast enough. It was to get them to buy into the fact that if, if you really, truly want to have an impact on this ESOP,

Zak Hancock : let’s work together and get these numbers to where they need to be. And it worked so well. And it has been the single greatest investment, I think in the history of the business. Wow.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah. Wow. A couple of big force multipliers there. The management system you’re talking about, you know, it’s switching over to an ESOP. Yeah. That’s some pretty cool stuff. As you look forward to say like the next five years, what do you think are going to be the biggest changes coming to your industry? And how are you guys preparing for some of those shifts now? Yeah.

Zak Hancock : So speaking from both a warehousing and a transportation perspective, I think the most general phrase is just labor. There’s less labor availability. You know, the trucking industry as in general, I think the average age of a truck driver is approaching 60 years old. It’s not a very glorified role that people fresh out of high school want to step into, right?

And so now eventually they may make their way to it and realize that they really like it, but it’s not something that people typically set out to say that they want to do. It’s an aging population within the warehouse, you know, that people are buying more and more and more things online instead of in stores. And that is a direct to consumer order fulfillment is incredibly labor intensive.

And so when you see these huge spikes of consumer activity, what you can’t do is just go out and grab another 400 people to fulfill orders. And so when I say labor, it’s not just how do you find people? It’s how do you introduce technologies that help minimize labor needs? How do you structure different technologies and mechanisms within your facility that requires less labor to do it?

Anthony Codispoti : And also what it’s one thing to say, hey, we need an extra 400 employees this year. It’s another thing to say we need an extra 400 employees this month. Exactly. Because it’s really hard to scale that up and then say, oh, sorry. Okay, we don’t need you anymore. Yeah.

Zak Hancock : And, you know, and we all do it. So, you know, I always it’s the weight and the pressure associated with direct to consumer and pertin specifically. As soon as if you ever buy anything on Amazon or ever buy anything on a store, you buy it and you begin to look at your phone every five minutes to see if you get your order confirmation. And then for the next day, you’re checking to see if it’s shipped. And then you’re tracking it across the country and you’re waiting for that package to show up at its door. And so when you’ve got that type of customer expectation and demand, we had a customer that went Waco viral on TikTok, I think.

And they had it was it was literally like a thousand percent increase in orders for a month. And how do you approach that? How if you have labor models and you have technologies and systems and then you have a thousand percent increase, that’s detrimental, right?

And yet those customers are all looking at their phone and they’re saying, why hasn’t it shipped? And so it really is a very interesting dynamic. And so when I look over the next five years, I don’t think those trends are going to go away and I don’t think they’re going to change. And so there’s robotics being introduced a lot in the warehousing side. There’s even driverless trucks now driving across the country in certain testing environments. And so how do you stay ahead of that? Because consumer demand is not going to change and you need to keep up with that even during the viral episodes of TikTok.

Anthony Codispoti : Are you guys leveraging robotics or AI in any way currently?

Zak Hancock : Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So we’ve we’ve been speaking to a couple of different robotics companies about deploying things across. We have we already are working with an AI company that helps things get streamlined across the across the facilities. And quite literally everybody in the industry is it really when you go to some of the big trade shows for the industry. I mean, there’s all kinds of crazy robots floating around and some of them are humanoid and some of them aren’t.

And so it’s it’s a little trippy sometimes, honestly, where you look at this robot that looks just like a person and they’re picking up totes and walking them across an area and setting them down. And and that’s the future of the industry. Right. And so how do you how do you make a determination when to deploy those types of technologies to where it makes sense for you and your customer and in how do you start to bridge that gap until it does make sense? That’s that’s kind of what the next five years is going to be. Interesting.

Anthony Codispoti : So you don’t have any robotics in place currently, but you guys are evaluating some options. Yeah.

Zak Hancock : So we we we have a great relationship with a robotics provider that we very, very close to deploying their technology and and a couple of things went awry with some of the things we were expecting and planning from our overall business volumes and things like that didn’t quite materialize. And and and that’s kind of the catch 22 is those are expensive technologies. And you need to make sure that it makes sense for your customer and that it makes sense for you. And so it was kind of a three way agreement to say, look, these are coming. We’re going to do this. But the customer and us and the provider all kind of basically said, let’s just wait six months and reevaluate them.

Anthony Codispoti : And so what does AI currently look like at FST? Yeah.

Zak Hancock : So at a high level, customers from all over the world, this is in an e-commerce account and from all over the world and country are making these orders into our systems. And so one of the things that’s very difficult for a WMS or warehouse management system to do is to the order flow is so dynamic and so unpredictable and so varied that a system that is written on SQL code has a hard time analyzing very critically, where did these orders all come from today and where are they all going? And so we have a relationship with an AI company that takes a look at our entire order profile and then applies their AI to it. And it thinks through all of our open orders in a very logical way that allows us to present them to the pickers out on the floor. Far more efficiently than a standard WMS ever could. Because again, when it’s written on just, it’s kind of like an A to B to C to D type methodology within inventory management systems and warehouse management systems.

This AI just kind of sits over top of that and provides a little bit of a different methodology to properly group and wave orders to the floor, which increases our efficiency significantly.

Anthony Codispoti : Zach, what’s a serious challenge that you’ve overcome, either personally or professionally, how’d you get through that and what did you learn?

Zak Hancock : Well, there’s been a bunch. You know, I’ll share going back to when I started an FST actually. So again, things were not exactly going very well. You know, the standing up of the facility and the consolidation of everything. And there were a few hiccups there in the warehousing division in particular, but the company in general was really not in a good spot. And I will never forget this where, so I basically said, I wonder, we were losing a lot of money as a business.

And I looked at our cash position and I looked at our burn rate and the death cross happened in the not too distant future. And it was like, my goodness. And I had just started at the company.

I’ve been there two or three weeks. And so that’s not a good feeling, right? That’s a very, that was pretty crazy. And so I was driving home that day and the whole way home, I have about a 35 minute commute at the time. The whole way home, I’m thinking, how do I tell my wife this? I have my six month old baby. I just started this job. I just left a great job.

And this company is struggling to the point where there’s a potential that it might not make it much longer. And so I got home and I did all the, and I walk into my kitchen and on my kitchen, I couldn’t see my wife anywhere on my kitchen of all things was a pizza and written in little like Lego letters on the pizza says, you’re going to be a daddy again. Oh, and it blew my mind. It blew my mind. I went from the position I was in the whole way home to the polar opposite of, oh my goodness, we’re going to have a baby.

Anthony Codispoti : And so that feeling of elation or is that extra pressure now because of the financial future that was on cert? Both.

Zak Hancock : It was, I can’t even describe those emotions and those thoughts to be quite honest, but what I will tell you for sure is that I actually did not tell my wife about what was going on at the business.

Okay. I, she popped around the corner and we celebrated and loved each other. And, you know, my son was about a year, a little bit over a year at that point. Um, and I didn’t tell her and, but that began then the pressure set in and it was, I’ve got to make this work. I’ve got to, because now not only do I have a little baby already at home. Um, and an incredibly supportive life, but now I’ve got another one coming. And, and I, that was a, that is a pressure where, and then again, just taking into consideration all of the other lives of everyone who worked at the business and, and the care that I was giving them and what I, what they were relying on me and the teens, not just me, but everyone, right?

To the leadership team to fix this problem. Um, one of the most unbearable, unbelievable situations when it comes to just, it was a masterclass in emotional stability. Let me tell you that. Because you pushed through that.

Yeah. Um, well, to be quite honest, uh, I, um, I discovered the power of journaling. Um, journaling is something that’s changed my life forever. Uh, I, of all things, I actually stumbled upon, um, stoicism as a random, I read a random quote by a guy named Epictetus.

Um, and during one of the darker times where I was really trying to kind of struggling to figure out what we needed to do as a business. Uh, one of his most famous quotes is how long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself? And when I read that it punched me in the chest like nothing ever did. And I said, who is that guy? Like that, that is a profound question.

And, and it, it basically set me on a journey of understanding thought processes and perspectives and understanding how to control your emotions and your thoughts and how you’re reacting to things that allowed me to actually balance everything that was going on in the world. Yeah. Because during that time also COVID hit my daughter was born in July of 2020. So we went through COVID with all that stuff. And so there was just a series of events there during a nine month stretch that were really, I will never forget those nine months. I will tell you that it was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done.

Anthony Codispoti : It’s quite an emotional roller coaster. Obviously as you’re going through this, um, you want to put on a good face for your employees, but there are certainly other members of the leadership team that are in tune and aware of the same thing that you are. And you’re working together. You guys are talking about this. I’m assuming is that kind of a helpful process?

Zak Hancock : Oh, of course. Yeah. I mean, we, um, it was the beginning of the, it was the foundation for what is the greatest team I’ve ever been a part of now, because that, that type of, that type of anguish that we go through and that type of work and that type of pressure, um, it builds bonds that, you know, you just don’t get in times of plenty. Um, and we, that during that time, our CEO currently started Matt Hartman. He started phenomenal leader, um, the leadership team underneath him. We didn’t really lose anybody. We just repositioned a couple of people and we were buried in rooms together all the time talking about the strategy of the business and what do we need to do to take care of the people and what do we need to do to protect them and what do we need to do to protect the future. And it, those types of deep strategic conversations in the amount of when things aren’t going well, those are, those are shaping, they shape a relationship and a team.

Anthony Codispoti : How long was it before you felt like you could breathe again? We’re on a good path. And what was the biggest lever that you guys pulled along the way to make that happen? Yeah.

Zak Hancock : So, um, before I really felt like what’s funny is right before COVID hit, we actually had fixed just about everything and literally in February of 2020. So I started in October.

It was a, it was a grueling six months. Things were getting fixed. We were turning profitable. Things were going really well. And I remember sitting in my TV and I live again, looking up at the TV and sending our HR VP and saying, do we have a pandemic policy? And she said, no.

And I said, I think we might want to make one. And at the time that was like 15 days to flatten the curve. And, you know, we were, there were this weird thing moving west across the world. And, and then when COVID hit, that was really tough because there was a lot of, if you remember, when they shut the country down, essential employees couldn’t stop coming and everyone else was living at their house. Well, everything that we do is essential. And, and we, and it’s not a hospital type environment. And so we have people who were trying to create an ecosystem for them where they felt safe to come in working and loading and unloading trucks and driving trucks. And, and, and when at the time we didn’t know what was going on in the world, right? And there was a lot of fear associated with that.

And so leading through that was difficult. As soon as that started to break is when we all said, thank goodness, now we can get back to business as usual. We had, during that time, consolidated our networks. We built our culture back up to where it needed to be.

There was trust in the business now and trust in the executive leadership team. And we hit the ground running in 2021. And, and it was, I believe 21 was the most profitable year we’ve ever had as a business and that we’ve beaten it every year since then. It was, it was basically from when I started through the end of COVID, when we started to get immunizations out and vaccinations out and all that stuff and heading into 21 into that summer. That’s when we really were able to celebrate that we made it. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : Going through hard times like that together, like you said, build some bonds that are virtually unbreakable and also builds resiliency within yourself. For sure. You mentioned something specific about the power of journaling, something you discovered along the way. Why do you think this was so helpful to you?

Zak Hancock : Uh, um, well, I start so, uh, what was it? Nine years ago, um, my father passed away unexpectedly and that was ironically enough about a year before my wife was pregnant for my first son.

And so when my, when I found out that my wife was pregnant for my son, I was kind of a lot of thoughts and emotions and everything that comes along with that. And so I literally opened up a book and just started writing. And I wrote page after page after page after page and just brain dumped into this book. And when I was done, it almost felt like I was like intoxicated or something. It was, it was this unbelievable relief of pressure and stress. And I had clear thought and I had, and I said, man, that is wild just from writing and I never stopped. Um, it, it writing is thinking.

Right. And so when you, how many times, you know, you get, you get, it’s things are stuck in your mind and you can’t really work out the situation. You don’t really see the end result or whatever. When you begin to write yourself through that and it’s, there’s, I’ve read studies where it’s like, it just unlocks this interconnectivity in your mind that allows things to make way more sense, way quicker. And you think of things that you wouldn’t have normally thought of.

And if you are going through deep, dark, emotional things, writing about them creates this sense of fresh air afterwards because you’ve, and it’s, it is unexplainable quite honestly, unless you actually really get into it. But I started then and I have never stopped. It is, I can tell when I go a little bit too long without it. And, and I’ve learned to just, it’s almost like when you feel like you’re burnt out a little bit. Um, and I’m like, I just got to sit down and I got a right for a while. And I will. And after it works every time it’s, it’s incredible. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : I love what you just said, Zach, cause you know, when you’ve got sort of those, those deep dark thoughts that are kind of happening. If you can get it out talking to somebody, I think is probably the best way.

Writing it down would maybe that’s not accessible or doesn’t feel like the right move, doesn’t feel safe. It’s just another way to hit sort of like a release valve, right? You’re kind of releasing some of the pressure.

It doesn’t have to stay trapped in here anymore. You got it down on paper, you know, in a, in an electronic notepad. And the other thing that you touched on is, you know, you’re trying to sort of like figure out problems. Sometimes journaling can help with that. Cause now you can go back and reread what it was that you wrote down and you can kind of see where the gaps are. So let’s start to connect the dots and ways that isn’t as easy to do when you’ve just got it swirling around up here in your gray matter, right?

Zak Hancock : Yeah. There’s, there’s a, uh, the, um, getting things done is the book and his name is David. I can’t remember his last name, sorry. Um, but he has a great quote. The, the mind is for having ideas, not holding them. And part of the, the, you know, the architecture of the getting things done process is to just write down tasks and items and whatever and so, but that’s, that’s what you’re talking about.

Right. When you’ve got the problem of all problems in front of you, the situ, you know, and it is this monster of a, of a issue that you’ve got to think through and solve and lead a team through. I don’t know how else I could possibly approach those things without writing things down in front of me on a piece of paper, creating maps and links and arrows and circles and correlations. And you see it and you just, you get through it better and differently and more efficiently by writing on paper. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : Uh, getting things done. Uh, the author is David Allen. David Allen. Yeah. Yes. Uh, it’s a good book. Um, uh, Zach, what’s your superpower? We kind of talked about some hard times you’ve pushed through. What’s your superpower? Yeah.

Zak Hancock : Um, so I’m going to admit, I, I, uh, I got, I asked for help on this one, actually, um, in thinking, you know,

Anthony Codispoti : about sometimes it’s hard for us to look at ourselves and kind of boost ourselves up or pat ourselves on the back. So, so you went to a third party. Yeah.

Zak Hancock : So, so I asked my wife actually. And so I’ll tell you, um, what my answer was going to be and why, and I’ll tell you what she said her answer is. And so when I went through this process at Geo, this was the CEO came in and his word for superpower was genius. What’s your genius? And it’s, it’s, what do you do better than everyone else?

Whatever. And I was the leader of the facility and there was about 20 people in the room and everyone went around the room and they said, what their genius is. And it got to me at the end and he said, okay, what’s your genius? And I said, I have no idea. I, I hate to make it seem like your presentation wasn’t great, but I have no idea what my genius is. And one of our engineers, a really good friend of mine, um, he said, oh my gosh, I, I, I can’t believe you don’t know what it is.

It’s so obvious. And I said, well, what is it? And he said, you’re a cheerleader.

I said a cheerleader. And he goes, yeah. And he said, you have the ability to motivate, inspire, empower and align people and teams like nobody I’ve ever seen. And that is what you do best.

And that actually translates into the noble purpose leadership, right? Um, so, so, and I, and I agree with him after I kind of realized that I said, that is, that is what I do very well. I don’t do a lot of things very well. Um, but that is a good one. That’s, I’m good at that.

I can cheerleader. Um, what my wife said actually is, uh, the ability to in the midst of chaos and confusion and uncertainty, I do a very, very good job of staying very calm and focused and deliberate in sifting through problems and issues and, you know, coming up with very good solutions to them without allowing emotional interference and without, without allowing some of the frenzy going on around me to impact me. And so that, that was her answer. And I do agree that that’s a strength as well. But, uh, so there’s a two for that.

Anthony Codispoti : It’s a, it’s a powerful combo there. Does your leader plus sort of staying calm in the eye of the storm, which you, you were able to do when you came home, found out you were having a second baby. And you held that really stressful information

Zak Hancock : that you know, Zach, I’ve heard you talk so much about, um, the importance of your team members, the folks that work with you. I’m curious from your experience, you guys got a pretty good size team there. What do you guys do from a recruiting standpoint?

And, and once you’ve got them sort of a retention standpoint, you’ve talked a little bit about, you know, the mentorship and the, uh, the ESOP or sort of like good ways, but what are the things that you guys have found or sort of effective ways to get people in the door and then hold on to the good ones? Yeah. That’s a good question. So what I’ll say actually is before we even reach out to anybody, I think the most important first step when it comes to, because our turnover is, is remarkably low. We’ve lost almost nobody in prominent positions across the business since I’ve been there.

It’s almost zero. Um, but that starts before you reach out to your very first candidate. And I think the most important part in determining factor in the success in that is you have to know who you are as a company, as a leadership team, as a collective group of employee owners or, or employees or associates or whatever. You’ve got to know who you are, what you value, what you focus on, and you can’t negotiate on those things.

Um, there have been a lot of great people when we talked to them in our resumes, look at their resumes and talk to them in interviews and they are perfect. But if there is any indication of maybe a misalignment on some of these core principles and values and thought processes that we have, it’s unfortunate, but they’re not meant for us. And that’s okay.

Right. We’ll find the right one. And so that, that is a critical process that I think a lot of companies overlook because they will find the person who speaks well, answers the questions well, and has a resume from heaven and they will hire them because they look and sound and feel amazing. But that’s, you got to hire the right person, regardless of all of those things. And so that then directly leads to retention because if you hire the right person that will fit to your culture and your values and your focuses, they will feel at home so much quicker than someone that is misaligned to that.

Anthony Codispoti : And so they don’t leave. They feel you check for that in the interview process.

Zak Hancock : Well, it’s not a, yeah, it’s certainly not a, you know, bat in a thousand, right? But you can, you can get an idea for it. I think, you know, one of the interesting ones, and this, this just came into play not so much anymore, but over a couple of years, we were fully in person as a business. And so, and we would explain to candidates, this is why it’s because we want you to be a part of us and this and we want to talk to you when we want to, you know, be a team and collaborate and interact.

And there’s a lot of people who didn’t prioritize that. They said, well, actually I would, I’d prefer to work from home. I can still do all the job and they can, but that’s not, that doesn’t align with what we were really pushing for, right? And again, we haven’t seen that as much lately, but especially coming out of COVID.

We were back in office almost immediately, 100%. And that was kind of a line that we drew where he said, we feel that we have such a beautiful culture here and such a beautiful thing going. We want people in here to be a part of it. And, and so that there’s a lot of great candidates that honestly, I wish we could have hired, but they, they just didn’t meet that moral, the same kind of value to that, right?

So that’s kind of a hard example, but that’s, that’s, and again, you know, about a thousand, there’s people who we’ve hired and they don’t work out. But, but I think it, I still would say it’s, that’s the most important thing is, is know who you are as a business and as a team and as a hot, How to get that culture fit. For sure. Yeah. Because if not, nothing else matters.

Anthony Codispoti : Zach, I’ve just got one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. First, I’m going to invite all listeners to go ahead, take a moment, just hit that follow button on your favorite podcast app. We’ve had a great interview here today with Zach Hancock from FST Logistics. I want you to continue to get more great content like this in your feed. Zach, I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you or to follow your story. What would that be?

Zak Hancock : Yeah. LinkedIn, for sure. I’ve, you know, I, I post on there some I regularly and I, you know, I’ve got my own little series that I’m calling the logistics of leadership, where I once a week or so, I’ll just put up a little quote similar to what we talked about earlier, a little phrase and a little bit of a leadership coaching, mentoring type situation. And so I would love to connect with people there and talk if they’re interested.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s great. We’ll include that link in our show notes. Great. Last question for you, Zach, you and I reconnect a year from now and you’re excited. You’re celebrating something. What’s that thing that you’re celebrating a year from now?

Zak Hancock : Well, I would say two things. So from a professional perspective, you know, we are in hyper growth mode. You know, right now we’re, we’re hoping for probably at least one more acquisition as a business and also moving into another region.

Right now we’re in Columbus and in Fort Worth, Texas. And so hoping to be into a different region by then. And so I’d be really happy to be celebrating that.

I’d like to be operating further increase in our share price as an ESOP from a personal perspective. So in about three weeks, it looks like right now, my wife and I are going to be moving and we’re going to be uprooting our kids and putting them in a new school district and new everything and my daughter starting kindergarten. And so I’m very hopeful that, you know, we’re, I’m looking back at, you know, this process and our new house and I’m feeling very blessed and very happy that it’s everything that we think it should be right now.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s a soft transition for kids and parents. It weighs on your mind because you let your kids to learn, to have fun, to have friends to fit in. Yeah. I get that. Yeah.

Zak Hancock : So my son is going into second grade and he’s far more emotional. He’s, he’s not a big fan of us right now. My daughter’s starting kindergarten and she’s a bit of a free spirit. So I think she’s going to be fine. But, um, but, you know, I’m hoping that my family feels very happy where we are in a year.

Anthony Codispoti : Zach Hancock from FST Logistics. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. Yeah.

Zak Hancock : Thank you so much. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Anthony Codispoti : Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.