Technology Adoption and Trust Building: George Schultz’s Corporate Leadership Evolution

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
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 Codaspote and today’s guest is George Schultz, chief operating officer at Fetch Package Inc. The company behind the multifamily housing industry’s first comprehensive offsite package management solution.

By removing property staff from handling deliveries, Fetch Package ensures reliable service straight to residents’ doors. They have managed over 40 million packages across 27 active markets, serving around 400,000 apartment homes nationwide. They have expanded their services to include a full suite of community amenities like valet trash, storage, the Fetch Market, and even services for off-campus student housing.

George is also a strategic advisor to Parcelping, which is focused on bringing new technology to package protection and delivery verification. By leveraging existing technology, they create an unbroken chain of custody that protects revenue, enhances compliance, and builds lasting trust between merchants and their customers. George joined Fetch in January 2021 after holding leadership roles at major organizations

like Amazon and FedEx. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Adback 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 cashflow 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. Now back to our guest today, COO of Fetch Package, George Schultz. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

George Schultz (02:08)
Andy, thanks for having me. I’m excited to have a conversation today and see where the discussion takes us.

Anthony Codispoti (02:14)
All right, let’s jump in. So you’ve worked for some of the industry heavyweights and fulfillment of shipments to consumers, ⁓ variety of roles at FedEx and then later on Amazon. Can you maybe talk about how the cultures differ in each of those environments?

George Schultz (02:31)
Yeah. And thanks for the question. Really two distinctly different cultures. know, FedEx, the culture was kind of grounded in operational discipline, reliability, strong emphasis on process adherence, team coordination across a really broad, vast network. And it was about steady execution and building that brand trust through consistency. And Amazon, on the other hand, was a high velocity environment.

It’s driven by just kind of this relentless focus on innovation, customer obsession. The pace was intense. The focus was on data-driven decisions and rapid iteration. know, Amazon’s culture rewarded big ideas, but demanded rigorous accountability. ⁓ Both of them helped me grow into the leader I am today, but FedEx taught me the value of structure while Amazon instilled in me a bias for action scalability that I carry into my role today at Fetch.

Anthony Codispoti (03:29)
Starting with FedEx, can you share a story of something notable that happened there that still influences how you approach business today?

George Schultz (03:38)
Yeah, I’ve got a couple. know, when I look back at that time, you know, the first thing that was kind of an epiphany moment for me, I was a part-time package handler while I was in school. And the handheld delivery device was just being deployed across the network. know, Anthony, this was a time where drivers would go out and they’d have their clipboard and a pen and, you know, the package number was written down. The address was written down.

Anthony Codispoti (04:06)
What’s the time period we’re talking

about?

George Schultz (04:09)
This would have been in the late 80s, 87, 88. So you had reams of paper that data entry clerks in the office at night are hand keying into the system. So the handhelds deployed and literally the next day you just plug the handheld in and there’s no data entry.

And it was one of those moments in time where you’re watching it happen and you’re thinking, ⁓ this is going to change everything. So being on that front end of that deployment for me was this epiphany of you had better keep up with advancements in tech. You better learn it. You better get comfortable with it. If you don’t, you choose not to, you will be left behind.

Anthony Codispoti (04:54)
What did the handhelds look like back then?

George Schultz (04:57)
⁓ This is kind of embarrassing, so you can actually look it up and see it in the Smithsonian. So it’s actually in the Smithsonian. It’s old history, ⁓ but you know, it’s you know, handheld symbol device that… ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (05:04)
You’re part of ancient history now.

Was like the size of a tablet? it like a, like a, okay.

George Schultz (05:18)
No, no, smaller, like

three inches wide, maybe five, six inches long with a little tip that reads the barcode. And it’s got a keyboard on it so you can hand key information in.

Anthony Codispoti (05:29)
Yeah. So kind of like a.

It’s like a fat blackberry.

George Schultz (05:37)
That’s a good description. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (05:38)
Okay, all

right. ⁓ You said you had a couple from FedEx. What was another one?

George Schultz (05:44)
You know, these events happen. know, was advancing my career. I was running a really large hub. You know, it’s during peak season, massive snowstorm hits. And, you know, we’ve got thousands of packages delayed. Trailers are backed up in the yard. You know, we’re rerouting shipments manually.

you make a call to bring in extra headcount drivers, dock workers, you’re reassigning routes, you’re trying to reroute trailers in the network. And the lesson for me is, it sticks with me, it’s about over-communicating. At times as a leader you think, I’ve said that enough, I’ve said that enough, I’ve said that enough. But it is a lesson that was ingrained in me that over-communicating.

empowering the team to make decisions and learning to trust the frontline team to make quick decisions when you give them clear guardrails. That experience still influences how to approach crisis management. Clear goals, trust your team and constant, frequent communication.

Anthony Codispoti (06:49)
What was it specifically about that situation that taught you the importance of over communicating? Was it just that people were so frazzled that they just need to kind of keep hearing the same reassuring comments?

George Schultz (07:03)
You can watch the emotional panic filter through the various levels of leaders and into the frontline employees. ⁓ So it’s this real palpable moment in time where you’re watching it happen.

You look out at the yard and you see trailer after trailer backing up. And in your head, you’re like, this is not going, there’s no end in sight. it’s that moment where you think it’s just not gonna be achievable. So at FedEx, when it backed up like that, it was a…

It just demanded that as a leader, you stay calm, you stay focused, and you just reiterate, this is what we’re doing. This is the message. This is the plan. This is how we’re going to do it step by step. You break chaos into manageable bites.

Anthony Codispoti (07:53)
So staying calm, over-communicating and the importance of keeping up with technology. Was that keeping up with the technology? Did that come naturally to you? Some people are more drawn to tech and gadgets or was that something that was a little unfamiliar or uncomfortable?

George Schultz (08:01)
Yep.

Yeah, honestly, for me, it was uncomfortable. You know, my undergrad degree is in philosophy, ⁓ a minor in Eastern religion. So I wasn’t very tech focused at the time. And you remember the decade we’re talking about, this is the late 80s heading into 90s. you’re on the front edge of ⁓ tech. ⁓ It was very much outside of a comfort zone. ⁓ And what I will

complement the FedEx leadership with early adoption, moved fast on the tech side, deploying tech early and often. ⁓ And again, it was about forcing yourself to adapt and forcing yourself to jump in even when it’s uncomfortable.

Anthony Codispoti (08:59)
Okay, FedEx, now Amazon, very different environment. What’s the story there you can share with us that influences how you do business today?

George Schultz (09:10)
Yeah, for me at Amazon, you know, it’s very much a, as soon as you’re there, there’s this immediacy of speed and urgency. And, you know, my team was responsible for the launch of the new robotics Air Hub, just during the time of COVID really. You know, this is cutting edge tech and robotics, but the real challenge for me was aligning teams across.

know, engineering operations, safety, legal, you know, even our government relations teams. And, you you’re dealing with that as well as, you know, potential supply chain disruptions on, you know, the raw materials needed to build these facilities out. you know, the teams at Amazon… ⁓

And I credit the senior leaders with this is we were able to hit launch deadlines by focusing on, again, small iterative wins, daily standups, real time tracking, and just kind of relentless problem solving. It did teach me more fully that the complexity is tamed by breaking it into actionable steps and engaging the right teams. ⁓

And so for me, the differentiator between FedEx and Amazon is FedEx, you’re doing it with a really small couple of people, whereas Amazon, I learned the value in really engaging all those various support teams fully and keeping them as part of the team across the entire project. ⁓ And again, these are still principles I apply.

routinely a fetch while we’re rapidly scaling our business.

Anthony Codispoti (11:02)
So was that more inherent in just sort of the environment at Amazon, or was that more particular to the specific project that you were working on?

George Schultz (11:14)
Yeah, I would suspect as you go through Amazon and talk to people in fulfillment in AWS, the different branches of Amazon, you’re going to hear very similar stories. And I was sharing this with a connection yesterday. One of the most valuable lessons is you’re given these really big complex goals at Amazon and in your head, you immediately think, and this is, guess, a parallel with the FedEx.

hub story, but in your head you’re like, this is inhuman. This can’t, this is not possible. There’s, this is not doable. ⁓ it did teach me to trust like the larger group and the larger team effort. ⁓ and, and, know, that’s a scary thing is, is in it’s, you know, it’s your accountability, but you have to entrust others to drive project work through to the finish line. And, you know, if you surround yourself with the right people and.

you do your homework and you do your rigorous hiring bars, ⁓ and you’ve got that quality team built, you have to trust. ⁓ And it’s hard to build that level of trust, particularly at the speeds we were moving.

Anthony Codispoti (12:30)
How did you do that? What accommodations did you make in your approach to be able to develop those relationships and that trust?

George Schultz (12:37)
I would love to tell you I was great at it it just came naturally. ⁓ It wasn’t natural. It was very uncomfortable. I didn’t do a great job of it in numerous cases. You make mistakes. You try to do too much yourself. ⁓ And that’s a humbling lesson is in your head, well, I’m this big leader at Amazon. I’ve got all this responsibility.

⁓ you know, it’s embarrassing when I look back and think about how I managed some of those moments in time, you know, you’d love to be able to turn back the clock and adjust your persona, you know, it’s FedEx. Here’s the comparison, Anthony. FedEx, you’re surrounded by tons of people who have 15, 20 years knowledge. So with this hub I was running, ⁓

My second in command and the next level down all the way down to your lower levels were very, very competent. Just knowledge was tremendous. And know, Amazon, it’s new leading new. You know, when I joined, was like employee 26,000 something. And when I left, there’s 1.3 million. So there’s this constant layering of new on new on new. So

Anthony Codispoti (13:50)
you

George Schultz (14:03)
You know, building that trust to more directly answer your question is, I screwed it up big time. I tried to do too much. I tried to own too much. I didn’t count on the team enough. And when you’re looking at your clock and calendar and you realize you’re just consumed and there’s no end, are a bit pushed into that corner of, you’d better trust somebody to start doing more.

And, know, I got some really good direct feedback from some of my subordinate team members who were like, you’ve got to let go and let me run this. And I think that’s a lesson for everybody in leadership is, you know, sometimes you got to shut up and listen to your team. And I had a couple of really good second, third level leaders who challenged me to let go a little bit.

Anthony Codispoti (14:36)
Yeah.

That’s great. I appreciate that.

George Schultz (14:56)
Boy, it’s uncomfortable

to think, it’s uncomfortable to think back about those moments.

Anthony Codispoti (15:01)
Well, and that’s how we grow though, isn’t it? Right? ⁓ being able to look in that rear view mirror and say, wow, there’s some things I could have done better. And it’s sort of finding a fine line between not beating yourself up too much for the past, which you cannot change. but being able to understand it and learn from it and become better at what you’re doing, try a different approach going forward.

George Schultz (15:02)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

Anthony Codispoti (15:25)
Before we move on to talk about Fetch, just curious, the robotics that you were working on there at Amazon, was that the Kiva systems that are moving the inventory around on the floor?

George Schultz (15:35)
Sure. Yeah. So it was a combination. it was, you know, with Amazon robotics team, which is warehoused in Boston, and formerly known as Kiva, but now Amazon robotics. ⁓ Can’t say enough good about that team. ⁓ Some of the brightest minds in robotics are there. ⁓ Some have spun off to start their own things. ⁓ But it was the former Kiva.

We were deploying Pegasus drives, which is exactly what you’re thinking. But we also in KLAL, Lakeland, Florida, we introduced for the air team, the very first robotic induction, we called it Robin, know, articulated arm that is inducting packages into the conveyance. So it was.

Anthony Codispoti (16:21)
What do mean by inducting

packages into commands?

George Schultz (16:24)
Well, you bring in the

container and it’s, you know, the arm is actually grabbing the individual package and sequencing it out.

Anthony Codispoti (16:32)
Gotcha. Okay. That must have been really fascinating to be a part of. Frontline of some really cool technology.

George Schultz (16:38)
Yeah,

again, you’re surrounded by these incredibly brilliant minds who are helping facilitate these deployments. you know, it creates this incredible level of complexity with labor planning, ensuring you have the right headcount. You you’re constantly evaluating your math on flow to ensure. All right, Robin can induct X amount of packages every hour on the hour and.

you start flowing it through the entire air hub to determine what your overall capacity is going to be for that hour, that shift, that day, the week, month. it’s a great level of complexity, but it’s fascinating to watch it happen and evolve. And really what happened was our very first robotics facility was Arlington Airfield in Texas. That was Gen 1. Gen 2 was the Lake Lentford.

Florida location. And those were really kind of a footprint to learn and iterate for the larger, ⁓ I call it mega hub ⁓ in CBG, the Cincinnati location where, you know, I think the numbers like 107 67s, can have parked out front of the mega hub. It’s a massive engineering feat. And, you know, when you think about the engineering team and the air teams that structured that and built that, ⁓

It’s an amazing feat of technology that they’ve put into place there. If you’re ever in CVG airport, you have to take a moment to check that out.

Anthony Codispoti (18:15)
All right, noted. Okay, now let’s move on to Fetch. How did the opportunity to join that organization come

George Schultz (18:22)
Yeah, so I made the decision to leave Amazon in November of 2020. Just decided to step back. It’s time to reassess. you know, I was really drawn to Fetch in 2021. You know, I was introduced through a connection to the CEO, Michael Patton, whose vision for solving this package problem just resonated with me.

It was so simple. was brilliant. know, it’s, you know, apartment communities are not in these multifamily dwellings aren’t prepared for e-commerce deliveries. They’re just not designed for it. They’re not set up for it. and, know, when I looked at my experience in logistics, ⁓ you know, the team at Fetch was looking for somebody to scale operations while keeping, you know, the service levels high and felt like my background in optimizing fulfillment, logistics, made it a natural fit and

There was this instant connection with the team when I met him in Austin. ⁓ Michael Patton, the CEO, ⁓ it was his idea. He brought it to life. Boone Putney, our CTO, ⁓ truly one of the best tech leaders I’ve ever worked with in my career. I’d put the tech team at Fetch up against anybody I’ve worked with. They’re fantastic. And Aaron Anderson, the CFO, ⁓ great financial leader.

And there was just this instant ⁓ connection with the leaders of Fetch. And I instantly knew this is where I want to be. Just felt right. was small, just past a funding realm, just getting started. And it was exactly the type of opportunity I wanted to take on in the startup side. Having worked for ⁓ big, established, large. Yeah, I felt like I needed to, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (20:11)
I was going to say that’s a shift for you. Yeah. You went from.

George Schultz (20:17)
I felt like I needed to really explore that part of business and see, you know, kind of build this from not scratch, but nearly scratch.

Anthony Codispoti (20:26)
Yeah, big, big change for you coming from like well established corporate environment, you know, safe job, comfortable benefits. ⁓ Now you’re like, Hey, I want to take all this experience that I’ve built up over the years and I want to put it to work and something that’s, you know, just getting off the ground. So what’s the problem that that fetch was trying to solve in the early days.

George Schultz (20:47)
Yeah, so Fetch really was set up to solve the package overload problem for those communities. know, apartment managers were just getting, and still are, getting buried under e-commerce deliveries. know, it takes hours of staff time, space they don’t have. know, residents want convenience. They don’t want to go to a package room and dig through mounds of packages to find their delivery. ⁓ And really,

What Fetch did is to take that problem off site to allow property managers the ability to do what they’re there to do, which is manage the property, not be packaged concierge. When I first joined Fetch, I’ll give you an example. I went to a property launch in Denver. This is a large multifamily, ⁓ multi-level facility, beautiful apartment homes and

the package rooms or they took a two-bedroom apartment, turned it into a package storage room. So number one, they’re losing the apartment to only packages. They had hired three full-time employees just to deliver and manage the packages in this property. So you’ve got three full-time people additive, which is eating their margins. The residents are frustrated because they’re not able to scale it as effectively as they wanted to. So we came in.

Anthony Codispoti (21:55)
Wow.

George Schultz (22:15)
And literally the next day they’re able to refurbish that apartment, lease that apartment, we’re managing the packages outside. The residents get to via our app schedule when they want that delivered to their apartment.

Anthony Codispoti (22:28)
So how does this work then? When you say offsite, when I first was looking at your website, I thought, they probably set up like a locker system somewhere in the lobby, and that’s where the packages get stored. this is more complex and more white glove than what I had originally pictured.

George Schultz (22:45)
Yeah. So we, we have our warehouses offsite. And when I say offsite, this is an important piece. I’m not a big fan of mega hubs and huge operations. You know, we want to be nimble and close to the residents. Our average distance from the communities we serve is 7.8 miles. So we’re very close, you know, very, for those who know logistics, the STEM miles are very low. So we’re very nimble and close. We keep our facilities small.

Anthony Codispoti (23:05)
close.

George Schultz (23:15)
So for instance, ⁓ you in Dallas, Fort Worth, you know, we have multiple locations, you know, in that whole Metroplex, we’ve got seven locations servicing, you know, Dallas, Fort Worth market. But the process is simple. The carriers deliver to our address. We receive that package, scan it into our inventory. And the moment we scan it into our inventory, the resident receives a notification on the fetch app.

So, know, Anthony, it alerts you on your app. Anthony, your Nikes have arrived, and then you would pick your delivery window. You want those delivered. You can pick day or, you know, you can pick a certain day and you can pick, you know, delivery windows within that day. Or you can have us hold it for an extended period if you need us to hold it. So it’s a convenience for you. For business travelers who are out and about and out of town for a week,

We can hold it for a delivery day when they’re returning from that trip. ⁓ But once they’re notified, they schedule it, we batch it up for our drivers and then our drivers deliver it to them.

Anthony Codispoti (24:25)
So when a resident orders something, say on Amazon, what’s the actual physical address that they’re entering in? Is it the address of their apartment? No, okay, so they’re all instructed, hey, now that you’re living here, if you’ve got anything larger than an envelope that you want delivered here, you sign it to this address. You sign it to a Fetch warehouse.

George Schultz (24:31)
Mm-hmm.

our Fetch warehouse.

And

here’s an important message for you. The USPS is beginning to scale back their services on mail. So one of the services we’re providing currently for ⁓ off-campus student housing is mail sortation. So what’s happening is USPS is no longer sorting multifamily residents’ mail. They’re bringing a bulk delivery and dropping it at the apartment community.

And then the property managers are then having to pay someone to sort the mail to their residence. So that’s a service we’re also offering now. So postal is changing, it’s evolving as a service.

Anthony Codispoti (25:24)
Interesting. So

in some cases, postal mail is getting delivered to the Fetch warehouses as well.

George Schultz (25:30)
Well, the mail, the US mail is still going directly to the property. We need the mail there and sort it for them on site.

Anthony Codispoti (25:38)
Gotcha. Interesting. You know, and I worked as an office manager in a dorm here at Ohio State. And so it was my staff that was responsible and we had to schedule somebody to, you know, sort the mail, you know, deliver it to boxes in three different buildings. And it was the least popular shift. It was the hardest to get somebody to, they just, hated the, the monotony of it. They hated the, was just, it was grueling to everybody. And so I can see how

this would be really an attractive add-on service. once…

George Schultz (26:11)
Yeah, but one of the advancements

I’d like to share with you that Boone and the tech team have deployed and we’re rolling it out across the network is a verified delivery. Now with our core original service, you could demand signature only, meaning we wouldn’t deliver it unless there was a signature. We now have advanced it where you as a resident will get a QR code or a numeric code depending on what you’re more comfortable with.

So if you’ve got a high value shipment coming to your apartment, you can request a verified delivery and that’ll require our delivery personnel to scan that QR code or enter that code before we hand you that package.

Anthony Codispoti (26:53)
Interesting. Okay. So this goes into my next question, which is, so somebody gets a notification on the app. Hey, you’ve got a package, you know, let’s schedule it for delivery. They choose a date and time. And then do they have to meet you at the door of the building? Do you guys somehow have access to the building and you can go right to, you know, their apartment door?

George Schultz (27:05)
Mm-hmm.

No.

that’s a great, great important piece of our puzzle is we partner with those communities so we have access to get to the door. So when you think about these multifamily dwellings, there’s numerous access points. You have to have a fob or a key. So our role with those property management companies is to partner at the level where we have access for our team to get in and out of the property.

Anthony Codispoti (27:42)
Wow. I mean, that’s, there’s got to be a great deal of trust built up, you know, for that for these communities to do that. What kind of assurance like how do you build up that trust with them?

George Schultz (27:49)
We go through a week.

We go through a rigorous background check evaluation of our team before they’re brought on board. So we do a thorough background check ⁓ and review before we put people in that role.

Anthony Codispoti (28:04)
Hmm. Now that you’ve got this access to the building, which is, I don’t know if I want to use the word unprecedented, but that’s in my mind, it’s highly unusual for a service provider to get that. ⁓ Does, does that open the door to more opportunities for you guys?

George Schultz (28:25)
Well, it does. And again, you know, we’re excited about the launch of our new services, fetch market, valley trash, fetch storage. And I’ll use storage as a great example. If you think about apartment living, your space is constrained in some cases. So if you’ve got winter items that you don’t want to take up your space during the summer months, we bring storage bins to your door.

You fill them up, you call us when you’re ready and we retrieve them. You seal them so you know, I’ve got this seal, it’s mine, that’s the number. So no one’s going to access it. So you’ve got some security there. And then we return it to our warehouse for safe storage. If you want it back the next day because you forgot something, we bring it back the next day. If you don’t want to touch it for three months, you don’t have to. So that type of access to the apartment.

Anthony Codispoti (29:19)
That’s really interesting. so what are the size

of these storage containers?

George Schultz (29:25)
We’ve got some that are extremely large. So you think there’s really large storage where you could put up like a Christmas tree. You can store a Christmas tree in that. ⁓ You could put some sporting equipment in it, ⁓ know, winter jackets, things of that nature. ⁓ And then we, you know, we have multiple sizes. You can scale it as you need it.

Anthony Codispoti (29:32)
Okay.

and I can request it to come back to my location anytime I want. ⁓

George Schultz (29:49)
Anytime you want. You got it. No

more trips to the rental unit, the storage unit, no more driving offsite to go get your stuff. You’ve got the convenience of somebody bringing it to your door.

Anthony Codispoti (30:03)
It’s a real white glove level service. How long is that? ⁓ What do you guys call that? The fetch storage? How long has that product been available?

George Schultz (30:07)
Absolutely.

Fetch storage.

We’ve been doing it for over a year in a few select markets and this year we rolled it out nationwide.

Anthony Codispoti (30:21)
Okay, so kind of like a pilot, let’s sort of like learn what we don’t know, kind of iron out the wrinkles. And now you feel like you’ve got the wrinkles ironed out and you’re ready to push it to all your locations.

George Schultz (30:26)
And so we’re.

We’re a big fan of testing before we deploy.

Anthony Codispoti (30:38)
So tell me about some of the other services that you guys are offering now. What’s a Fetch Market?

George Schultz (30:43)
Yeah, so Fetch Market is

one that we’re really excited about. It’s a great amenity for the residents. You have to think about products like if you need tide ⁓ detergent, you need pods for the dishwasher, you want a Red Bull, if you want ⁓ Doritos. So think all those convenience items that you would go to the store for, we now carry in the Fetch Market. ⁓ So through our app, ⁓

whether you have a delivery or not. a package delivery, the market’s not dependent on the package delivery. I you can access the market, you can choose ⁓ what items you want, and then we gather them up and then we deliver them directly to your door. Here’s the biggest differentiator in what we’re doing versus some people in the market like a GoPuff. We don’t charge you a fee for that service.

So if you’re in one of the, Austin, this is our first market’s Austin, so we have 50 properties we’re offering this to. You don’t pay an additional fee for this. You have access to it via that app, and we don’t allow tipping. So all the things people hate about door delivery, the tipping, the added fees, those are gone. You don’t have those anymore.

Anthony Codispoti (32:00)
So whatever the price is that shows up on the app, that’s what they’re paying. That’s it. And so what’s the advantage, wait, sorry, say that again, I was cutting you off.

George Schultz (32:04)
That’s it. No hidden fees. No kidding. Not ever.

No hidden fees, no surprises ever. You pay what you pay, just for the item.

Anthony Codispoti (32:18)
And so what’s the advantage of this over like, hey, I need some Tide so I ordered on Amazon.

George Schultz (32:26)
For us, it’s, again, is that accessibility. So we’re coming right to your door. You don’t have to prearrange it. You don’t have to meet in the lobby. There’s no extra steps for you. It’s coming right to your door.

Anthony Codispoti (32:39)
And is that something what you’re describing are kind of lower value items? Is that something that they have to arrange the delivery time or will you kind of leave just outside their door for them?

George Schultz (32:49)
We can do it however the resident chooses.

Anthony Codispoti (32:52)
Okay, all right. Was there another new service in there?

George Schultz (32:57)
⁓ so market storage, ⁓ we were, we’re again, we’re doing, ⁓ Valley trash, which we’re really excited about. We again, tested that in a couple of markets. We believe that the, for those of them may not be familiar with Valley trash and multifamily living, ⁓ this Valley trash service, you set your trash out at night outside your apartment door. One of our service providers comes by and retrieves it, takes it to the dumpster or to the trash.

collection location, you never have to touch your trash. You just set it outside and then you forget about it. So it’s a great amenity.

Anthony Codispoti (33:34)
And how does it normally

work if I live in that same apartment building and I’m not using your valet trash service? How does my trash get disposed of?

George Schultz (33:39)
If you don’t have ballet trash,

the residents have to carry it, find the dumpster, get it into the dumpster, come back up to their apartment. It’s just a value-added amenity for residents living in these apartment communities. So this industry exists, it’s been around for a while, and what we’ve learned is that the service levels were not great. Frequently missed, forgotten, left a mess.

And we were confident with our tech, our access to the buildings, our knowledge of multifamily buildings, and our ability to use our labor planning and our labor tracking that we could do a far better job. And we tested it in two different markets. One of the best compliments we got was from a resident who said, this is the best trash experience I’ve ever had anywhere I’ve lived, including the home I lived in and the

trash service in that community. So when you have residents giving you that positive feedback and appreciation, you know you’re onto something. And we again, we rolled it out nationwide this year and it’s really taken off. And people are excited about the predictability, the certainty of the fetch service on the Valley trash.

Anthony Codispoti (34:45)
Yeah.

Are there any new services that earn the works that you can give voice to? I saw that smile. Am I ready to talk about it? That’s what he’s thinking.

George Schultz (35:10)
There are some non-disclosures, can’t… ⁓ Here’s what I would say. We’re excited to be offering… I’m a big fan of sweating our assets. So in the business world, you invest in a location, you invest in equipment, you invest in vehicles. Anytime those aren’t in operation,

I see it as a negative. If you have storage space that’s underutilized, I had a great manager one time told me, if you see concrete, you’re not sweating your assets. You’ve got to figure out how to sweat the asset. ⁓ We’re entering into the next ⁓ level of services where we can provide some, we’ve got our core operation hours. So we’ve got ability to handle other volume off hours.

So we’re partnering with some other folks to manage some sortation and package management in our off hours. So think of a kind of a 3PL sortation process. ⁓ So we’re excited to be at the Fetch warehouse, doing it at Fetch warehouses.

Anthony Codispoti (36:11)
And doing it on site at the apartment building? ⁓ at the Fetch warehouse. Okay.

And so who’s paying for all these different services? It occurs to me that, you know, something like the trash service or, you know, the delivery, you know, the Fetch market, that’s something that as the resident I’m paying, but just for the sort of the core service that you guys started with, is that something where all that is provided, you know, directly from?

the apartment building, you’ve got the contract with they’re paying for your services.

George Schultz (36:44)
Our contract is directly with the property management companies who run these multifamily properties.

Anthony Codispoti (36:53)
And so as a resident of that building, I’m not paying anything extra to you guys to get my packages delivered to me.

George Schultz (37:01)
The resident never pays us directly for those. It’s always through the property management company. If they do a pass through fee to the resident, there’s usually an amenity fee for apartment ⁓ homes. ⁓ So that’s a pass through fee that occurs for the residents.

Anthony Codispoti (37:20)
you. And what does the sales presentation look like to a property management company? I’m guessing there’s you’ve got some math that shows, hey, this is probably costing you guys X to manage yourselves right now. We can come in and do it for, you know, 20 % less becomes a no brainer.

George Schultz (37:44)
Yeah,

yeah, for us, it’s for us, the approach is simple. ⁓ It’s about allowing those team members who are managing the property to actually do that role and getting them out of the package business, you know, so they no longer burden with the hours of managing whether they’re trying to take it to a package room. And what we’ve learned is

Some properties invest in locker systems. And what we know about lockers is they get overflowed. There’s not room for oversized shipments and you still, you’ll see the locker bank and you’ll see packages stacked on top of it, around it, on the floor in front of it. So that’s not a great resident experience. In other multifamily locations, you have package rooms.

You can talk to any resident who’s lived in a property with a package room and they open the door and there’s a mound of packages that they’re trying to dig through. And look, this is off season. Then you get to peak season and the holidays and it amplifies those challenges ⁓ even more. So the approach is very simple. We’re gonna come in and remove your teams from the package management business. We’re gonna handle that for you.

We’ll work with you and your residents to ensure that you’ve got a great service. ⁓ And look, one of the things, one of the metrics I’m most proud about is holistically, we’re 98 % customer satisfaction scores for the past two years. We have a service that’s predictable, dependable, and that the residents and property management companies can rely on.

Anthony Codispoti (39:26)
What’s the biggest logistical challenge that you guys run into when trying to scale at the pace that you are?

George Schultz (39:36)
⁓ you know.

think the largest challenge.

When you think about scaling across the markets holistically, we have the regular challenges of facility capacity, driver retention, carriers that are delaying delivery into us until late in the day. And one of the biggest hurdles was stabilizing our 1099 driver network.

large percentage of our packages delivered by 10 to nine gig workers and stabilizing that. And the way we went about that is Nick Preech is one of the VPs that runs everything to do with that piece of our business. Nick’s charged with customer satisfaction, customer experience and innovation for our company. And we tackled that challenge with daily operations syncs.

NICS VP level oversight and streamlining our payment systems to ensure we could improve driver loyalty. And then the other challenge is really the tech piece of it and Boone’s team again has done a fantastic job empowering us with tech that allows us to move at a faster pace. So we’ve leaned on…

fast development and cross-functional teams to roll out those features fast. And keeping up with that and ensuring we’re constantly evolving on that is really a challenge. A lot of the problems are solvable. You can solve capacity, you can solve driver retention. It’s ensuring that your tech and your customer experience moments are kept up with and advancing appropriately. And I’m a big fan of tech, I’m a big fan of AI.

keeping that experience moving at the speed it should for the resident customers and for the property management customers.

Anthony Codispoti (41:46)
Can you dive into a specific example of when you introduced a creative solution, whether it’s technology, process design, team structure, whatever it was, and how it had an impact on Fetch?

George Schultz (41:58)
Yeah, look, Boone’s team created an inbound solution for us. So when those packages arrived, scanning them into our inventory, you we call it logging. So logging those packages in was a very manual process. ⁓ And Anthony, you have to in your head and envision, you know, UPS, FedEx, Amazon, DHL, USPS, all dropping, you know, thousands of packages on the dock.

and you’ve got your team standing there trying to hand enter, typing in information. And it was very laborious. It was very painful. ⁓ There were some flashbacks. ⁓ Boone’s team jumped in. They created this OCR, optical character recognition ⁓ scanning process that

Anthony Codispoti (42:38)
Reminds me of your early days at FedEx where there was so much of that was manual.

George Schultz (42:58)
advanced us immediately. Overnight, we were able to just suck in that volume like it was nothing. I mean, the speed at which we were able to inbound was no longer the bottleneck. So as we layered in that tech solve, it completely changed our inbound processing. the thing I get most excited about is when we have prime events, know, prime sales events, big volume events, back to school events.

we’re able to absorb that volume seamlessly and we’re able to scale up our labor, we’re able to scale up our operations to pull that volume in seamlessly now. So we avoid the delays, we don’t have to delay the processing. And again, it’s due to the tech teams ⁓ innovative approaches to how we do our business. They’re constantly looking for ways to improve how we process and do the work that we do.

Anthony Codispoti (43:55)
And so remind me, how many markets are you in now?

George Schultz (43:59)
27 now. More coming. More coming. More coming.

Anthony Codispoti (44:00)
27 now. And I’m guessing before more coming. And you want to give

voice to we’re recording here early September 2025.

George Schultz (44:08)
Well, we just launched Tallahassee for, and specifically for off-campus student housing for FSU. It’s a huge student housing market. We just launched that. So I think my answer would be wherever you see large student populations, you’ll probably see us launching next. You know, we’ve got some good opportunities in some of the Southeast markets. You know, we’ve got our eye on places like Savannah, Georgia is a great location to launch for multifamily because you can

From Savannah, can touch Hilton Head, South Carolina, which is a massive multifamily location. And then you think about, you know, State College and Knoxville and some other student locations. ⁓ Those are the locations we get our.

Anthony Codispoti (44:50)
Are you intentionally

not mentioning Columbus, Ohio because of your connection to that state up north?

George Schultz (44:55)
Is there a school in Columbus that we should

know about? Columbus is on the roadmap actually. So absolutely. We would love to be the package service of choice for OSU. And we would love to see Ann Arbor on that list as well.

Anthony Codispoti (45:01)
Okay. We look forward to seeing you guys here.

Fair enough. Anything else we should say about fetch before we move into parcel ping? Because I’m really curious to dive into what this is. I can’t wrap my head around.

George Schultz (45:24)
Yeah, I’m excited about that conversation. No, I just think our success is driving and diversifying those services beyond our package delivery. With storage market, ⁓ trash, leveraging our existing network, leveraging our tech with our partners, ⁓ and using data to refine our offerings. ⁓ This is… ⁓

I think the lesson is if you focus on your core strength, you can’t be afraid to branch out and try new opportunities. And that’s the thing that most excites me about Fetch is we want to be ⁓ the type of company that residents and property managers know they want to have come to their location to better serve their community. We just want to be a great community partner for those communities.

Anthony Codispoti (46:19)
Yeah, I think it’s gonna be really interesting to see how this evolves over the next even just 12 months. Because you guys have sort of this unique level of access into these buildings that I think, you know, the sky’s the limit, you know, as much as you guys can think creatively. Okay, part

George Schultz (46:35)
Yeah,

the only other thing I’ll tell you is we’re taking that market idea out of Austin. We’re going to Houston and launching that market next. So that’ll be the next big launch of MarketForce and looking forward to the learnings we get to different locations to see if there’s differentiation in their own product and skews that we need to carry. So excited about that offering coming up.

Anthony Codispoti (46:57)
Nice. Okay, what’s the problem that ParcelPing is aiming to solve?

George Schultz (47:03)
Yeah, look, was a former teammate of mine who’s a professor at Marquette, had some students in the masters of supply chain. They were grads from his program and he wanted me to, he wanted to introduce me to them to see if I could offer a hand and Solomon and Tyler, who were the founders of Parcel Ping, were working on this idea of solve.

⁓ verified delivery. And here’s what happens. Let’s say as a consumer, Anthony, you’ve got your eye on a beautiful, high-end designer watch. Pick your brand. ⁓ A couple of things happen in that moment. You want to trust who you’re getting it from. You want to trust that what you’re buying is what you’re actually going to get.

So Parcel Ping is using a visual AI verification system. So they’ve developed this cutting edge tech that’s going to allow you as a consumer to see that verification at pack. So at the moment that product is packed, if you’ve ordered a phone or a watch,

It is literally taking that AI and confirming what you said you ordered is actually what’s going into that box. So step one from the beginning, origin moment of your shipment, it’s verified. Through the whole supply chain, there are moments and times where it will be verified via scans. And then when you unbox it, you’ll then use that AI overlay and you will verify that that item that you ordered is the item that was passed.

So it uses this technology to verify it. And that doesn’t really exist today. So they’ve created this really unique approach. So that’s on the base level. And then you take it a step beyond, and here’s where it gets interesting. If you’re in the e-commerce business, that…

If you’re an e-commerce retailer, you’re facing fraudulent behavior from consumers to the tune of multi-billion dollar impact a year. So if you look at e-com and retail, you’ve got billions of dollars of fraud occurring every year where consumers are shipping back not exactly what they said they ordered. So what happens with parcel paying? It’s really like this shield that protects you as the shipper too.

Anthony Codispoti (49:45)
Interesting.

George Schultz (49:45)
because it’s gonna

push that tech to your phone as a consumer. So when you go to package your return, you’re using AI to say, hey, that watch you ordered and that you’re returning is the watch that you got. So it gives certainty to that company that you’re returning what you actually said you’re returning.

Anthony Codispoti (50:03)
Okay, let me.

Okay, so let me see if I understand the problem here. Because this isn’t something that I don’t think I’ve experienced this personally. So there have been instances in the past where somebody orders a nice watch. what actually comes, maybe I ordered a Rolex and what actually comes is a swatch. And it’s like, this isn’t what I ordered. And the company says, well, we shipped the Rolex now there’s this whole dispute. And so what’s happening on the company side is when they go to pack that,

They’re taking a photograph, that photograph gets logged and time stamped, right? And then the package is tracked at sort of the different waypoints, the different, you know, delivery hubs that it passes through. And so when it arrives at my home, now it’s sort of the end of that chain of custody, I open up the box and I take a picture to either confirm or deny that this product is still that picture of the Rolex that they originally uploaded on the retailer side. Is that right?

George Schultz (51:09)
That’s 100 % right. you know, as an early engagement on this, they pushed this solution to my phone and I got to see it happen. It was amazing how good the tech was on identifying the product and confirming it. It’s so, I’ve always said this, the person that owns the data and controls the data wins. And it gives certainty.

Look, shipping is kind of chaos, right? You’ve got ⁓ a million square foot warehouse shipping, you know, hundreds of thousands of skews a day. What are the odds that something’s going to get miss packaged? It happens there. Even if it’s a small percentage of defect within your supply chain, it’s a defect and it affects your customer. So it gives the purchaser certainty that, parcel ping. They see that parcel ping logo and shield. They know that

They’re going to get confirmation at origin and they’re going to confirm it at destination. And then for the seller or for the e-comm retailer, it’s a level of certainty for them on returns. And if you have nefarious characters out there who are looking to fraudulently, you know, make some money off your company, they’re going to see that parcel ping shield and they’re going to avoid it. They’re not going to try and scam the company. It’s certainty in a chaotic supply chain.

Anthony Codispoti (52:22)
Mm.

So the advantage in sort of the reverse is so I’m the nefarious actor, I’ve ordered this Rolex, I get it, it’s an actual Rolex. And I think, well, I’m gonna pull a fast one on them. I’m gonna take my old Timex, put it back in the box and say, ⁓ this isn’t what I ordered, or I changed my mind or whatever and ship it back, you know, hoping to get the refund on the value of a Rolex and using the, and so this kind of thing I’ve heard, I’ve read before, this kind of thing happens a lot.

George Schultz (52:38)
Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (52:59)
And so with the parcel ping in place, it’s like, ⁓ you know, we saw you put a time X in that box.

George Schultz (53:05)
Absolutely. you know, again, it reminds me, it’s very reminiscent of the moment I met Fetch and I was like, this is brilliant. This is so simple. It’s like, how is no one else doing this? ⁓ When I met Saul and Tyler and the Parcel Ping team, and again, credit to Tyler and Saul, they’ve also built this incredible team around them.

So they brought in some of the brightest minds in tech to advance the company. you know, Sam Rassner, who was a VP of development for Chewy ⁓ is now the CTO. She was an EMET as well. ⁓ She’s a brilliant mind in developing and helping build out the Parcel Ping Foundation. ⁓ So it’s about bringing the right team together too. And Parcel Ping is absolutely…

100 % done that and built an incredible team that’s going to market with a solution that people are going to be thrilled with.

Anthony Codispoti (54:10)
When is this gonna be available? When do you expect this with your first customer?

George Schultz (54:16)
the end of Q3, Q4 this year.

Anthony Codispoti (54:19)
⁓ we’re right here. We’re September of 2025. This is right around the corner. Is this the kind of thing where you worry about Amazon ⁓ copying your idea?

George Schultz (54:21)
Now. Yep. Yep.

Trademarks and patents are wonderful things.

Anthony Codispoti (54:36)
Okay. And so could you see

them becoming a customer of this service?

George Schultz (54:41)
I think there’s potential for, I think companies like Amazon. I think when you think pharmaceutical, I think when you consider companies like UPS and FedEx who want a different level of certainty. If you think about companies managing returns for the Ecom companies, if you think about companies in the 3PL segment of transportation, this ⁓ is a solution that will…

absolutely, you know, pay off.

Anthony Codispoti (55:14)
Did you see this being used, at least in the beginning, primarily for high value shipments? Like I order a bag of almonds from Amazon, probably nobody wants to go through the trouble of taking a picture and verifying that. Or am I thinking about it wrong?

George Schultz (55:29)
think you’re thinking about it correctly. Until you get to the new ⁓ food supply chain regulations that are gonna deploy that have that next level requirement on verification throughout the supply chain. So there’s some regulation that’s gonna affect the food and beverage industry and the pharmaceutical industry that will demand a different level of visibility to your supply chain. ⁓ And you have to…

to look ahead and think that Parcel Ping is going to be an interesting solution for those companies as well. So that bag of almonds may become more important from a visibility of supply chain forward looking.

Anthony Codispoti (56:10)
Yeah, you know, as I’m thinking back to a lot of the articles I’ve read, ⁓ I don’t I’m not familiar with the problem of, you know, the the merchant shipping fraudulent items, but maybe that’s because I buy most of my stuff from Amazon, I don’t know. But the reverse of people shipping back stuff that you know, and getting, you know, refunds, like, that’s a giant problem. And I think, you know, you put a B like a billion dollar problem. I could see this being

This could be financially huge for companies like Amazon, other large e-commerce retailers.

George Schultz (56:41)
Yeah.

For an e-commerce retailer, having that level of technological certainty and ability to put that shield out there is going to be a game changer and for all intents and purposes, nearly eradicate their fraudulent return behavior. Yeah, I mean, look, if you just do a research on fraudulent returns, you’ll be blown away by the amount of money that’s being spent. And if you talk to anybody that’s in retail on the e-commerce side,

Anthony Codispoti (57:00)
It’s crazy. I can’t wait to see this in action.

George Schultz (57:13)
the number of instances where they’ve had to fight a claim of fraudulent returns. It’s an obvious need in the marketplace.

Anthony Codispoti (57:23)
George, I’ve just got one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to let people know how to get in touch with you. They can find you George Schultz on LinkedIn. If you just search George Schultz and FetchPackage, you’re going to find him. Also, there’s FetchPackage.com and the newest venture that you’re involved with, which is equally as exciting, ParcelPing.us. So FetchPackage.com, ParcelPing.us and George Schultz, FetchPackage on LinkedIn.

George Schultz (57:48)
Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (57:53)
So last question for you, George. Be curious to hear about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome in your life, personal or professional. What was that? How’d you get through it? What’d you learn?

George Schultz (57:56)
Yeah.

Yeah, for me, I think it’s a combination of things. ⁓ know, Anthony, when I started my career, you know, was an hourly employee and, you know, subcontractor is a janitor for FedEx. I was cleaning the toilets in the warehouse for FedEx in the early days. And on my journey, I’ve always had, you know, a little bit of this, ⁓ you know, and a lot of people talk about this, is that imposter syndrome and feeling like, you know,

Do I belong in this room? ⁓ And, you know, at moments in my career, it’s been, you know, ⁓ a hurdle, you know, emotionally, mentally, kind of a hurdle to get through. And at FedEx, again, the challenge was you’ve got subordinate team members, you you’re the boss, you’ve got two or three levels below you, and you’re looking at them going, well, they can run this location as well, if not better than I can. You’re like, I can’t, you know.

So it’s this, ⁓ it’s this feeling of, you know, am I going to be good enough? Am I going to be able to add value? How do I add value to this team? And then you get to Amazon and you’re surrounded by people who are, you know, next level intelligence, skill and ability who, who are coming out of extraordinarily successful careers in numerous industries. And you’re sitting at the table and

you immediately feel like, what the hell am I doing at this table? what value am I going to bring? And, you know, I guess the advice I would share to people for these moments is you ended up there for a reason. ⁓ You know, everything you’ve done to this point in your life has made you who you are in that moment. ⁓

If you focus less on how did you get here or why are you here and more on, you know, how do you solve the problem? How do you, it’s about training your mind to focus on what’s in front of you. And for me, I frequently step back. I’m, I’m, I’m blessed with, with a team of people who report into me who are remarkably talented. know, Kendall Drew leads our Valley trash service. There’s nobody better at that than he is his ability to consume data.

and focus on outcomes and drive outcomes through others is unshakeable. Nick Preech, who runs the customer experience innovation for Fetch, he can do that a hell of lot better than I can. ⁓ And then Justin London, who ⁓ is our VP of operations. So if you think about those 41 locations across the US, A to Z, that’s his job, is to make sure those are successful.

He’s better at that than I am. ⁓ So my job is to look inwardly go, how do I help them? How do I remove obstacles for them? How do I get things out of their way? How do I help them drive more value? ⁓ So it’s always this challenge of like, how the hell did I end up in this role? Am I good enough? Am I smart enough? And at times I’ve over challenged myself. I’m constantly trying to read different books, journals.

stay abreast of what’s happening. So there’s this demand of constant education. You have to stay apprised. So I watch companies like Figure AI and what they’re doing with robotics, the humanoid approach to robotics is fascinating. think ⁓ if you think about the fact that they’re already deployed in Spartanburg, South Carolina for BMW on the floor in the manufacturing, that’s remarkable and more coming. ⁓ I’m meeting with Contour Robotics in Austin.

Monday next week. ⁓ They’re using robotics as a service. Fascinating company. So if you feel that imposter syndrome, go educate yourself. Go learn. Go consume other information. And always challenge yourself to keep learning. But then just ask yourself, how do I add value here and now?

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:22)
I love that. know, I am constantly reminded how common this imposter syndrome is, especially among really high achievers. I talk with a lot of my guests about this. I’ve had a guest on Gary Fry, who wrote a book on imposter syndrome. And I had another guest that and you’re kind of alluding to this a little bit, where he actually learned to embrace that imposter syndrome as his superpower and said, you know what, this is the thing

that kicks me in the butt every day and make sure that I’m getting out of bed and I’m going to do the best job that I can and not getting comfortable with where I am. And I think that’s what I hear you saying, George. It’s like, I feel like I’m inadequate. I’m in the wrong room. Look at all these smart people around me. I got to level up my game. I got to go read. I got to educate myself. I got to make sure I show up with my A game every day.

George Schultz (1:03:02)
Absolutely.

Use it as a catalyst to motivate yourself. Nobody’s gonna motivate you. Nobody’s gonna, you know, if you’re waiting to hear the bell and you’re waiting to hear the, it ain’t coming, you gotta create it yourself. Like you have to take that ⁓ sometimes negative cloudiness and channel it and use it for a motivation to do more. It’s kind of like getting up and working out, you know.

You gotta, or what does the military say, embrace the suck? You have to embrace the discomfort.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:46)
do the hard thing. George Schultz from Fetch Package and Ping Parcel. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

George Schultz (1:03:47)
Yeah.

Anthony, great having the conversation, great meeting you and looking forward to next time we get to meet.

Anthony Codispoti (1:04:01)
All right, folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.