September 23, 2025 • 31 mins
What if your business could grow by 15 to 60 percent without adding more people, equipment, or warehouses?
In this episode of the Business Roundtable Podcast, host David W. Carr speaks with Adrian Betts, founder of Expander, who specializes in helping mid-market companies unlock their hidden operational capacity.
Adrian shares his journey from leading large-scale distribution centers to advising $300M+ businesses on breaking down silos, optimizing space, and getting more from existing resources. He explains the three most common problems plaguing operations—people, silos, and space—and how to turn them into opportunities for growth.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Connect with Adrian Betts:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-betts-3236237
Company: https://expanderoperations.com
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/business-roundtable--6049255/support.
Watch more episodes on YouTube and subscribe here:
https://www.youtube.com/@steward_your_business
Connect with Steward Your Business:
Website: https://stewardyourbusiness.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwcarr
In this episode of the Business Roundtable Podcast, host David W. Carr speaks with Adrian Betts, founder of Expander, who specializes in helping mid-market companies unlock their hidden operational capacity.
Adrian shares his journey from leading large-scale distribution centers to advising $300M+ businesses on breaking down silos, optimizing space, and getting more from existing resources. He explains the three most common problems plaguing operations—people, silos, and space—and how to turn them into opportunities for growth.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why documenting every process step prevents costly mistakes
- How to protect your business from “single point of failure” employees
- Why silos destroy performance and how to align cross-functional teams
- How to forecast seasonality and transitions for smoother growth
- A simple framework to align CEOs, departments, and staff around one clear goal
Connect with Adrian Betts:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-betts-3236237
Company: https://expanderoperations.com
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/business-roundtable--6049255/support.
Watch more episodes on YouTube and subscribe here:
https://www.youtube.com/@steward_your_business
Connect with Steward Your Business:
Website: https://stewardyourbusiness.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwcarr
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
All right, everybody, welcome back to the Business Roundtable podcast.
I'm your host David Gart here with Adrian Betts, a
new guest of the podcast who I'm excited to have
on here because you guys know, I love people, but
I also love to pair up with somebody that's really
good with systems, processes, an organizational strength, and that's where
(00:51):
Adrian comes in with Expanded We're gonna get into it
today and for those of you are watching the podcast,
you can see his warehouse background. He's got a great
experience working on a large warehouses. I'm gonna let him
share a his background here. But you know, here at
the Business Table podcast, what I do is bring people
together every week that we can share and help educate
(01:12):
you as a business owner or a leader wherever you
might be in the business. And Adrian is one that
has started this company a while back, and we're gonna
have him share his journey before we get into it.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
But welcome.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
First, I just want to welcome you Adrian for being
on the podcast here today.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Hey, thanks for having me, David. I'm excited to be
here as always.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Awesome awesome. So you and I were connected to another
mutual friend Chris Felton, who was on a podcast recently,
another amazing business owner. But I would love to have you, Adrian,
share with our listeners your journey as a business owner
and why did you get into creating Expander and talk
(01:51):
us a little bit about who are the folks that
you're serving today? Who are the folks that you're really
helping in their business.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Yeah, So the company is called expand her because we
expand to operational capabilities. So primarily grew up in distribution centers,
f fillment centers, and last mile delivery stations. I've been
with some of the fortune five hundred, fortune one hundreds
in the W two world.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Right now, I'm playing pretty good in the upper mid market.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
So the least couple of projects have been three hundred
million in annual sales six hundred thousand square feet to
a million square feet. And I really just enjoy coming
in and hearing all the things that are broken, and
it sounds horrible to everybody, and it's.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Music to my ears, right yep, yep, And I say, hey.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
If we just tweak this a little bit, turn this
up a little bit, and dial this a little bit
to the right, we can actually start to get you know,
anywhere from fifteen to sometimes sixty percent more out of
the same operation using.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Your existing resources.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
That's impressive, Adrian.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
And that's why I love having folks like you're on
the podcast, so that we can have folks listen in,
lean in and say like, how could I improve my
operations in such a capacity with with that? You know,
just it's making these pivots and adjustments. And I think
that's why you and I find the same synergy because
I do the same thing with on the people side
of things, I'm like, how do we leverage your team
(03:22):
and expand and and and actually scale?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
So you know, you and I are passionate about.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Building resilient businesses and making sure that they can you know,
all be in alignment and uh address So tell me.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Where from you know, where do you like, where do
you start? What do you see?
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Like you're listening to these problems, So tell me a
little bit about some of the common problems with challenges
that you're hearing Adrian right now in this space.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
The there's three big problems, right, and I primarily tech
this three buckets.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
The number one is the people piece.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
Right, It's very easy to it's easy to think that
moving a box is easy. Just move a box, But
it is very complicated, right, There's a lot of steps,
and we take for granted that a warehouse management system,
you basically have to if I had to tell you,
(04:18):
David W.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Carr, how to get up out.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
The bed, step by step, go to the kitchen, make
a bowl of cereal, eat it, get dressed, then drive,
just get in the car.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
There's a lot of steps to that.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Yeah, and so documenting those steps, training the people, finding
the right people, making sure they.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Understand, and then cross training. That's one. The second largest
thing I see is just the silos. No single.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Player on the team wins or loses. Either the team
lens or the team loses. And if you like vehicles
and you see a V eight V twelve whatever, you
know that as one piston goes down, the other piston
goes up. And so not a single piston on a
V twelve can move without the other eleven being impacted.
And we have to understand that. Now, the third thing
(05:10):
that I see the most of is people have no
understanding of their space. I'll just go ahead and put
it out there. It's been a while since I've been
eighteen years old. Now, when I was eighteen years old,
I was not trying to fit in the same clothes
I had when I was five. So many operations try
to when they grow, they still try and they try
(05:33):
to fit, you know, a mature sales volume, yep, into
the size of their warehouse when they just started, and
then they wonder why it's an uncomfortable fit. Those are
the top three things that I have seen consistently across
the many organizations I've worked with over there.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
So no, you bring up some great points, and I
love the analogy of like documenting all the steps, what
are your standard operating person? What I found and I'd
love to hear your thoughts on the stage is sometimes,
like you said, it goes to your salary too. Is
like you have one person, perhaps maybe more, but usually
I found one person that's like the keeper of all
the information. They kind of hold that like almost like
(06:14):
in an unhealthy way, Like I want to hold all
this information so I can kind of leverage something the
business owner, you're kind of held hostage, like that person
knows everything about your system. But what happens if that
person goes away? Now, what do you do? What happens
with the whole operation. Talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
In two thousand, two thousand and fifteen ish we would
say if this person, what would we do if this
person got hit by a bus?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
And the reason?
Speaker 4 (06:40):
And so now we for the last ten years we've
been saying, like, what happens if they win the lottery?
Because fundamentally we have this stigma that we only take off,
we only miss work because something bad happened and I
have vacation and you knew it was coming, right, So
how do we how do we replicate this person right
(07:04):
so that when this person is gone, the customer is unable.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
To tell right.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
And the way I get people to understand this is
I asked them, you know, when you drove to work today,
who was in the car with you? They said, it
was just me. And then I asked them how many
tires does your car have?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
And they say four? I said, well, why does your
car have four tires if it's only you? Well, if
you want the car to move in any kind of
manner it was designed to move, you need all four
of those tires operating at the same level of performance
to get you from point A to point B. So
here's exactly. That's more than just an analogy.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
You need to have four people who are competent at
any one of those critical functions. Because the first person
can be on vacation, which you knew about. The second person,
life is going to happen to them, The third person
is going to be on jury duty. Now, fourth person,
they may only operate an eighty percent of efficiency. However,
(08:06):
eighty percent is eighty percent more than.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Zero zero, right, So important, Adrian, I mean, and I
the reason I bring this up is because I see
this like, so I want business owners to hear this.
Adrian is looking and opening up your business and saying
where are you having these gaps?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
And so that you don't have that drop in productivity?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Right, You're like, oh, man, we have to won't be
able to meet our client's delivery date or because we
don't have nobody's being around. And if that happens on
our consistent even sometimes one time, it could be a
one time depending on the client. How critical this is, right,
how critical this delivery or whatever? They got to get like, sorry,
I'm not gonna be able to do it. Well, I
might got to go to somebody else that can do it, right,
(08:49):
And like, so you know, there's a lot. I mean,
so it's loss of It could be more than just
that one. You know, that repeating client, right, they may
go somewhere else. So how do we keep the clients
engage and feeling likely? You said it seamless and they
might not notice, Like I said, even eighty percent. I
feel like people are pretty forgiven if they're knowing like, Okay,
this person's not what I've got somebody to take care
(09:10):
of you, instead of those like well, we'll just have
to wait, you know, and then eventually somebody will come
back like where where am I in your list of priorities?
How important am I to you?
Speaker 4 (09:23):
Now? For that? You know, I've seen companies with two hundred,
five hundred and one thousand people, companies that have half
a billion, a billion or more in revenue still have
that same issue. Your average tenure is five years. Your
average tenure is five years, and one person out of
two hundred goes on vacation and your operation suffers until
(09:47):
they get back. If you have people that are fearful
of taking vacation if you have, and more so because
they know they're going to have a week's worth of
stuff when they come back, plus the week of work
that they have to do. There are ways to get
around that that don't cost you any more money and
they really allow you and your.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Team to have a peace of mind at any time
of the year.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Mm hmmmm, so so important.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
It's like what you're saying right here, you're saying is
if you're doing these proactive things rather than being reactive,
and you're you're what I like say is you're looking
underneath the system and you're like saying, hey, you're doing this,
but this isn't as effective. How can we adjust that?
And that's what I love having you on, Adrian is
like you no getting at that. So tell us a
little bit about you know, talked up some of these
(10:34):
challenges that the business owners are facing. Can you walk
me through because I know we talked before we were
one of this podcast, but you have a great framework
of that you look through and how you address issues.
You walk us through a bit of that about what
kind of what you do at a commander.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
So if we were to look holistically at the company,
and you know, my sweet spot is from today to
the next twelve months, twelve months and one day after
I could care less about but Once you know how
to operate a year, then it just becomes year over
(11:11):
year times the growth percentage.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Right, So we.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Would start with the CEO. You know the fish stink
from the head. It also smells good from the head.
I don't care how you say it, but what specifically
do you want us to accomplish over the next twelve months?
Speaker 3 (11:26):
And specific is the keyword.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
You write it out, you say it down, write it down,
you say it out loud, then you send it to
the heads of all the departments. At the next meeting,
you say it out loud again, and then you have
them repeat it back.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
To you, all of them.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Now everybody's heard it from the CEO's mouth, your mouth,
and everybody's heard it out of their own mouth, so
there's no realignment throughout the year. Now that we've said
what everybody is expected to do, we ask each department,
what are the top three things you need to support
this goal. Everybody's going to say, I have one hundred things,
(12:03):
don't care.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Top three. What's the most important? It's hard, right, you
got a priority.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
We'll start with the top three, the biggest three, and
if it's only one, it's one.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
We do this for all the departments.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
This becomes our meeting agenda so that when we every
time we meet, we know we're only talking about what's
most important for every single department, supporting the overall goal.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Now, things are going to go wrong. Nothing I can
do to stop that entirely.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
But because it's the most critical thing, we are very
quick at identifying what went wrong, who needs help, who
can help, how long that help is.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Needed, and when we anticipate a full recovery.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
And we have this meeting up to four times a day,
five days a week, four weeks out the month. And
you know some of your team or even you may say, well,
eighty times a month is excessive to meet about the
same thing.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Well, let me ask you this.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
If you lost a million dollars or more last month
and didn't ask these questions any what's what's successive, right
the amount you lost or the amount of times we
asked about it. I'm not going to look up and
be surprised that I lost a million dollars.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
I'm going to ask along the way.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Now, here's what your team will naturally get better at.
It's almost impossible to not get better at this. In
four weeks, people will start to identify what they do
well or we do well when the situation is like this,
and where they can do better.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Hey, when these conditions are here, we kind of struggle.
Now you look forward four weeks to say.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Ooh, here's all the days where the good situation is
going to happen, and here's the days when the bad
situation is going to happen.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
How do we all plan for it so where we
get the most out of our good days and we
also minimize the negative impact when situations are different than
we would like them to be. That is how you.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
Get that cross functional alignment, that feedback loop to actually
get more out of every single department. And we still
haven't added a single person, a single piece of equipment,
or a single piece of technology.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
I want to I want to just tie in that, Adrian.
I think it's so valuable what you said was, you know,
you came up with the plan with the you know,
the business owner and saying okay, here it is, and
we got buy in. At least you've got everybody to
acknowledging that that this is important, this is want.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
To make this happen.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And I think sometimes just just like you said, just
having coming in and doing that is a game changer
because people just kind of diverse. They all have their
own kind of agendas and what they think is important,
not unified, like you said. And so you're saying, hey,
let's keep the main thing, the main thing. Let's focused
on this. And what I also heard you say and
(15:00):
in this, in this regular meetings and checking in with
each other, is that you're keeping in alignment and you're
not drifting.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
You're like, hey, look, we've got to get it.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
And we're looking at what I heard also, Adrian, we're
looking after each other like, hey, no, we're going to
have this.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
How do we they can.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Help us in in in the in the office or
in distribution or whatever whatever part where you are in
this in this process right because you've documented the process,
you're saying, oh, they could help us here. We're weaker
here and we need so. But if you if you're siloed,
if you're not paying attention to that, you don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Should I call them or.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Who should I lean onto? Or no, I guess I'll
just have to figure out on my own.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Right right now, this is what we're doing.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
And I tell people I primarily work more with actual
intelligence as opposed to artificial intelligence. So artificial intelligence takes
what your normal thought process is and it just starts
doing it over and over on its own. Now, this
is a this is a you know, advocatest way, pen
and paper long division.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Way of doing it.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
But you know, even if the power goes out tomorrow,
this frameworks toll, it works, never goes.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Out of style.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Absolutely, So I mean it's so powerful your way You're
you're talking about you know, guiding folks in this and
really you know, developing this s op and you know,
making sure that you have the right people in the
right places. Again, you're not added, like you said, you're
not any equipment, Newton people. It's just getting that you know,
(16:34):
set up and everybody's working aver together. And I like
that you said, you know, you're looking at a year,
so you're you know, I know there's seasonalities to any business, right,
and so you're looking at that whole year of like
what does that look like?
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Because then you said you're.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Then you're you know, should have a pretty good sense
of what does that seasonality look like and how to
plan and prepare accordingly, right yep.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
So yeah, And the reason is like, so I can
give you a strategy that's going to speak to what
to do for twelve months, but it's it's best to
actually go through all four seasons. And here's why, right,
because we have to get there's a couple of things
we have to get to before we get to the seasonality.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Right.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
First, we have to understand what we're shipping. That's our
product mix, right, And then we have to understand our space.
So like behind me, this is three hundred and thirty
five thousand square.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Feet with fifty five thousand locations. Know your space right.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Then the product so you know, back to school is
pens and paper. You know there's a palette of nope,
notebook paper. You sell one hundred thousand packs of that.
You're talking about several palates. Back to college also happens
at the same time of the year, but it's microwaves,
and many fridges sell one hundred thousand of those. We're
talking about several containers, so one hundred thousand doesn't always
(17:57):
take up the same space.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Depending on the product.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Mm hm.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Now, once we take that basic formula, we say, okay,
what are we going to do for this quarter? The
busiest quarter general merchandise is typically quarter four Okay, if
we bought all of this based on the dimensions of everything,
and we know I have a million cubic feet.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
I said, well, it's going to be four million cubic feet.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
Okay, Well, let's break the purchase orders down into fifths
or smaller chunks. And the reason we do that, David,
is we want to make sure that while we're bringing
all this money in for quarter four, while you're bringing
it all in, that none of.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
It has to go back out to pay for storage
trailers or a.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Second warehouse because you've filled up the one that you
had before it's time.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
M M.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
What you're gonna have to do.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
We're gonna have to go down to finance and ask
for money that's not in the budget. And I ain't
finna get cussed out by myself right now.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
It's June. I know this should be an.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Every ring post, but most people, almost everybody talks about
Peaks plan a quarter four. But halfway through the year,
how much have you heard people talk about the planning
they did for quarter one or the planning they did
for quarter two?
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Very little.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
We keep that same intensity with you through each of
your four seasons. Yes, they may be less challenging, but
they each have their own unique profile.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah right, Yeah, And then you know.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
It doesn't go from winter to summer. There's a season
in between, so temperatures gradually rise, they gradually fall. There's
a transition between those seasons. And give you an example.
The biggest transition is from quarter four to quarter one.
Go from peak season to week season, and you go
from needing three hundred people to one hundred and twenty.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Right, So what we do is.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
We know how to contract the warehouse footprint. So you
go from needing one hundred and ten percent of your
space you need one point one million square feet, you
only have a million.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
What do I do?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (20:03):
No? Then Black Friday, you only need six hundred thousand
square feet because it's back to toilet, paper, diapers, and water.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Mm hm.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Now we know how.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
To keep that forty percent of the space together and empty,
and that sixty percent that you need in the tightest
sixty percent possible.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
What your competitors are.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
Doing is they're traveling all one million square feet to
pick their work, while you're only traveling six hundred thousand
square feet.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
So what does that.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
Mean in dollars for every one hundred people you have
on your floor. That's a one point five million dollars
spend in payroll over ninety days. And if we can
do forty percent less travel, we're talking about a potential
savings of six hundred thousand dollars. And that's in your
lightest qure. And we can squeeze that kind of blood
(20:53):
from a turn up in quarter one, we can do
it in two and three, so by the time you
get to quarter four, it's not so much pressure for
quarter four having to save your bottom line for the
fiscal year.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Well, what I hear a lot here is whether you're
in the warehouse or not. Are you doing forecasting? Are
you looking seasonality for these changes, because there's transit. Like
you said, Adrian, there's transitions there. But I'm that's what
I'm here, and so let's not ignore the transition. Let's
be prepared for the transition. Let's be proactive and and
(21:29):
you know, like you said, you know, and also look
at the new opportunities that might.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Be out there.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
You know, I like the here analogy of the paper
versus the refrigerators or whatever. This is there something different
that you're potentially bringing a service up. I'm in the
professional services, a new product or something. What does that
look like in transitions so you're not totally thrown off kilter?
And do you have the ability to flax like you're
(21:56):
mentioning adrians so that it's it's more seamless versus just
like if we were just you know, if it's like
you said, I like alliot, where you kind of turn
up the dial or turn down the dial. That's easier
than like trying to flip a switch, like go from
your up and down and that that's very hard for everybody,
right when you're trying to go from boom and the stop, go,
(22:17):
you know, hit the brakes, hit the gas, Hit the brakes,
hit the gas. That's really hard. Can we like lightly
touch the brakes? Can we give it a little bit
more gas? Like that's what I hear you saying, Like,
how do we do that in a less jerky way?
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Absolutely?
Speaker 4 (22:31):
And if we go back to the all the departments
and the V twelve, I'm actually in operations like the
fifth person to even.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Know that the product, what the product is going to do.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
Right the person with the furthest view out is marketing,
then sales, then procurement, then transportation.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Then me and operations.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Right, So if I want to know what that transition
looks like, all I have to do is go ask marketing, Hey,
what are you guys doing for a couple of seasons out? Oh? Man,
remember last Christmas and we did like ten million of sales.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
This year we're going to do fifteen.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
So now I know I need to plan for a
fifty percent increase in whatever we did last year.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
I don't care how successful it was. I have to
do fifty percent more and plan for that.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
If they tell me it's going to be soft, then
I say, okay, well, you know, I know I don't
need to go as hard on overtime for that same timeframe,
and now I can respect the financial budget. Right. So
it's again, if you listen to the complete sentence of
a business, you can understand exactly what you need to
(23:43):
do from now all the way as far out as
twelve months.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Anything beyond that is really starting to speculate.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
No, well, I think that's so important, Adrian. And I
feel like sometimes people like you mentioned earlier, get siloed
and they're not asking those questions. I just this is
just where my end and I'm not being proactive like
you said, if if you kept marketing and salespeople are like, boom,
we got some new products we're selling. We're selling, we're
selling it, and we're not communicating. And then now now
(24:12):
the actual order is coming in or we're gonna sending
this're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
We didn't. I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
I wasn't clear on this. I didn't understand how this
is going to impact me. And so, like you said,
it's like a cascading thing. And what I found was,
I know I've been on the side of the sales
and market They love to sell the obviously they're getting
from commission. They're not really considering the impacts to operations
per se. It's not But if they're like, hey, I
could I want to make sure the client fulfillment process
(24:39):
actually works through so they'll buy from me again, I
got to I should let these guys know, we should
be very thinking about this.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Yeah, it's it's really just a hits up, man, because
it's and I want to be crystal clear when I
go back to the twelve departments and say, hey, guys,
one piston moves, the other living are responding in a
similar fashion, right, So you know, it's not just me saying,
oh man, those sales guys didn't.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Tell me, well, I'm just moving the boxes.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
Right, if you sell forty percent more and you don't
share that information, now, HR is behind on hiring forty.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Percent yep, right there too are.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Our employee experience is going to start to suck. Our
turnover is going to go up if we, aside from
the people, let's say.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
HR is able to keep up.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
What if we now we need forty percent more devices,
What if we need forty percent more wireless access points.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
I've seen companies where.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
The system actually starts to shut down because they had
a headcount plan of one hundred.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Now they're using one hundred.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
And fifty and it's too many users. They didn't buy
enough licenses, or it's too many users and they're overloading
the access points. So everybody's getting that little spiral of
death on their device and no orders are going right.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
So these are the things that why have you on
the podcast, Adrian, because it's it's it's not that they
don't care. I think business owners are just getting busy
and they get silent. They just get going and it's
like you're having somebody like you Adrian come in kind
of lift the hood up, like look at seeing what's
we're asking what's working and what's not working.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
And that's why, you know, it's so important to have an.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Outside perspective, and particularly Adrian, because you're working not just
with one company, you're working with many companies.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
You're seeing you know, these things, these.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Blind spots you will or like, hey, you guys, this
is this is like you just gave a great examples
of like, oh, I didn't I didn't even think about that.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
I wasn't. I was just you know, I was just
thinking that like you.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I like the analogy you said before, like I could
just fit into the clothes that I had before what
I was doing. Well, no, not not if you're you know,
you're going to increase your revenue. And this is one
thing I've seen with business owners, Adrian. They get excited
about increased revenue like, oh man, we're gonna make more revenue,
but at the end of the day, actually make less money,
less profit because of what you're talking about. So it's like,
(26:58):
what does it, what does it you to increase your revenue.
It's kind of like an ego trip only to actually
in the end make less money than you did previously.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
Yep, it's called you know, we say this phrase outside
of business all the time, it is getting too big
for your bridges, right, So companies can and have absolutely
collapsed them in their own weight. And it would have
been as simple as just saying, hey, guys, you know
we're growing at this level. Okay, cool, we need to
(27:30):
hire at this level, We need to add access points
at this level, we need to acquire equipment at this level.
We need to you know, acquire more freight lanes, trucks, brokers,
whatever it is, but we need to It's a it's
like a three legged race, but it's it's twelve departments.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
So it's it.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Takes a lot of effort, but the more you do anything,
the better you get at it.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Absolutely and having somebody come along like you Adrian, that
is looking at these things, asking the tough questions, helping
them and I think, you know, you've broken it down
really well to gain and know we're getting to at
the end of the podcast here, but I want the
business owners to know, you know, Adrian and I are
you know, are collaborating together.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
You can reach out.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Adrian's connected with me on LinkedIn we'll make sure Adrian
expander and all the notes are put it in our
in our show notes here as to how to connect
with you. But I think you know, listen, if you're
a business owner and you're working in this space of
a good friend, that's whether you're you know, whatever that
capacity might be from the from the warehouse, distribution and such.
(28:33):
You know, Adrian is a man that can walk you
through and help strengthen you in your team. That like
breaking down the silos and really what I heard YouTube
Adrian is like making every square foot count everyone, make
sure that it's it's who it's you know, working to
its best. And that's why I love to come in
with Adrian because this is a you know, breaking this
down and getting a plan and getting the system and
(28:55):
then of course you know I work with teams and
strengthening that development and the relations to your leadership. It's
all intentional, but it takes time, right and this is
like something that just happens overnight. You're with them with
the you're with them in this process. You're walking them
through week after week, month after month. Get that get
that dialed in, really see the results.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Absolutely when I walk away, when I leave everything is
still going to operate as if I never left in
the first place.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
I love that you're you're leading, You're leaving with lasting
change and impact. So Aidan, as we're getting close to
mend here, you know, if if, what would you say
is kind of a you know, a key takeaway. I'm
a business I've got a lot of challenges. You listen
a lot of them. You know, what's the what's the what?
What can they do? What's the proactive thing that they
can do today? As we're listening to like make make
(29:51):
the positive change be positive.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Have a structured conversation.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Hey guys, we're gonna have to sit down and we're
gonna have it at this cadence.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Here's the agenda. Know what you're gonna come there talk about.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
We can dump all the pieces on the table and
then we'll start to sport them out.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
And every time.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
We meet, we have to come with solutions because we
already know what the problems are.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
So I love that.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
So here's a Adrian thank you for being on the podcast.
Adrian's like he's gonna walk you through there. Break put
down all the puzzle pieces, lay down our arms, come
to the table.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Like and so that you.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Can actually you know, scale without like I said, happened
to like you know, go crazy with the budget or
adding more people, like just literally looking at what you
have right now, the problems they have been breaking it
down and really getting through but with your current team
and space today.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
So I think encouraging people.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
If you're listening to this and this resident is connect
with Adrian, happy to do an introduction myself as well.
Leave comments as to what your taking always were, your
feedback thoughts. We always love that and we want to
hear from you and Adrian. I want to just say
thanks again for being on the Business round Table podcast.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
With you today.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Thanks for having me David.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Thanks everybody for listening and of course we appreciate you
liking and subscribing being a part of the journey with us.
And until next time, be well, take care everybody, Thanks
for listening in
All right, everybody, welcome back to the Business Roundtable podcast.
I'm your host David Gart here with Adrian Betts, a
new guest of the podcast who I'm excited to have
on here because you guys know, I love people, but
I also love to pair up with somebody that's really
good with systems, processes, an organizational strength, and that's where
(00:51):
Adrian comes in with Expanded We're gonna get into it
today and for those of you are watching the podcast,
you can see his warehouse background. He's got a great
experience working on a large warehouses. I'm gonna let him
share a his background here. But you know, here at
the Business Table podcast, what I do is bring people
together every week that we can share and help educate
(01:12):
you as a business owner or a leader wherever you
might be in the business. And Adrian is one that
has started this company a while back, and we're gonna
have him share his journey before we get into it.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
But welcome.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
First, I just want to welcome you Adrian for being
on the podcast here today.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Hey, thanks for having me, David. I'm excited to be
here as always.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Awesome awesome. So you and I were connected to another
mutual friend Chris Felton, who was on a podcast recently,
another amazing business owner. But I would love to have you, Adrian,
share with our listeners your journey as a business owner
and why did you get into creating Expander and talk
(01:51):
us a little bit about who are the folks that
you're serving today? Who are the folks that you're really
helping in their business.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Yeah, So the company is called expand her because we
expand to operational capabilities. So primarily grew up in distribution centers,
f fillment centers, and last mile delivery stations. I've been
with some of the fortune five hundred, fortune one hundreds
in the W two world.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Right now, I'm playing pretty good in the upper mid market.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
So the least couple of projects have been three hundred
million in annual sales six hundred thousand square feet to
a million square feet. And I really just enjoy coming
in and hearing all the things that are broken, and
it sounds horrible to everybody, and it's.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Music to my ears, right yep, yep, And I say, hey.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
If we just tweak this a little bit, turn this
up a little bit, and dial this a little bit
to the right, we can actually start to get you know,
anywhere from fifteen to sometimes sixty percent more out of
the same operation using.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Your existing resources.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
That's impressive, Adrian.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
And that's why I love having folks like you're on
the podcast, so that we can have folks listen in,
lean in and say like, how could I improve my
operations in such a capacity with with that? You know,
just it's making these pivots and adjustments. And I think
that's why you and I find the same synergy because
I do the same thing with on the people side
of things, I'm like, how do we leverage your team
(03:22):
and expand and and and actually scale?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
So you know, you and I are passionate about.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Building resilient businesses and making sure that they can you know,
all be in alignment and uh address So tell me.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Where from you know, where do you like, where do
you start? What do you see?
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Like you're listening to these problems, So tell me a
little bit about some of the common problems with challenges
that you're hearing Adrian right now in this space.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
The there's three big problems, right, and I primarily tech
this three buckets.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
The number one is the people piece.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
Right, It's very easy to it's easy to think that
moving a box is easy. Just move a box, But
it is very complicated, right, There's a lot of steps,
and we take for granted that a warehouse management system,
you basically have to if I had to tell you,
(04:18):
David W.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Carr, how to get up out.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
The bed, step by step, go to the kitchen, make
a bowl of cereal, eat it, get dressed, then drive,
just get in the car.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
There's a lot of steps to that.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Yeah, and so documenting those steps, training the people, finding
the right people, making sure they.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Understand, and then cross training. That's one. The second largest
thing I see is just the silos. No single.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Player on the team wins or loses. Either the team
lens or the team loses. And if you like vehicles
and you see a V eight V twelve whatever, you
know that as one piston goes down, the other piston
goes up. And so not a single piston on a
V twelve can move without the other eleven being impacted.
And we have to understand that. Now, the third thing
(05:10):
that I see the most of is people have no
understanding of their space. I'll just go ahead and put
it out there. It's been a while since I've been
eighteen years old. Now, when I was eighteen years old,
I was not trying to fit in the same clothes
I had when I was five. So many operations try
to when they grow, they still try and they try
(05:33):
to fit, you know, a mature sales volume, yep, into
the size of their warehouse when they just started, and
then they wonder why it's an uncomfortable fit. Those are
the top three things that I have seen consistently across
the many organizations I've worked with over there.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
So no, you bring up some great points, and I
love the analogy of like documenting all the steps, what
are your standard operating person? What I found and I'd
love to hear your thoughts on the stage is sometimes,
like you said, it goes to your salary too. Is
like you have one person, perhaps maybe more, but usually
I found one person that's like the keeper of all
the information. They kind of hold that like almost like
(06:14):
in an unhealthy way, Like I want to hold all
this information so I can kind of leverage something the
business owner, you're kind of held hostage, like that person
knows everything about your system. But what happens if that
person goes away? Now, what do you do? What happens
with the whole operation. Talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
In two thousand, two thousand and fifteen ish we would
say if this person, what would we do if this
person got hit by a bus?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
And the reason?
Speaker 4 (06:40):
And so now we for the last ten years we've
been saying, like, what happens if they win the lottery?
Because fundamentally we have this stigma that we only take off,
we only miss work because something bad happened and I
have vacation and you knew it was coming, right, So
how do we how do we replicate this person right
(07:04):
so that when this person is gone, the customer is unable.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
To tell right.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
And the way I get people to understand this is
I asked them, you know, when you drove to work today,
who was in the car with you? They said, it
was just me. And then I asked them how many
tires does your car have?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
And they say four? I said, well, why does your
car have four tires if it's only you? Well, if
you want the car to move in any kind of
manner it was designed to move, you need all four
of those tires operating at the same level of performance
to get you from point A to point B. So
here's exactly. That's more than just an analogy.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
You need to have four people who are competent at
any one of those critical functions. Because the first person
can be on vacation, which you knew about. The second person,
life is going to happen to them, The third person
is going to be on jury duty. Now, fourth person,
they may only operate an eighty percent of efficiency. However,
(08:06):
eighty percent is eighty percent more than.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Zero zero, right, So important, Adrian, I mean, and I
the reason I bring this up is because I see
this like, so I want business owners to hear this.
Adrian is looking and opening up your business and saying
where are you having these gaps?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
And so that you don't have that drop in productivity?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Right, You're like, oh, man, we have to won't be
able to meet our client's delivery date or because we
don't have nobody's being around. And if that happens on
our consistent even sometimes one time, it could be a
one time depending on the client. How critical this is, right,
how critical this delivery or whatever? They got to get like, sorry,
I'm not gonna be able to do it. Well, I
might got to go to somebody else that can do it, right,
(08:49):
And like, so you know, there's a lot. I mean,
so it's loss of It could be more than just
that one. You know, that repeating client, right, they may
go somewhere else. So how do we keep the clients
engage and feeling likely? You said it seamless and they
might not notice, Like I said, even eighty percent. I
feel like people are pretty forgiven if they're knowing like, Okay,
this person's not what I've got somebody to take care
(09:10):
of you, instead of those like well, we'll just have
to wait, you know, and then eventually somebody will come
back like where where am I in your list of priorities?
How important am I to you?
Speaker 4 (09:23):
Now? For that? You know, I've seen companies with two hundred,
five hundred and one thousand people, companies that have half
a billion, a billion or more in revenue still have
that same issue. Your average tenure is five years. Your
average tenure is five years, and one person out of
two hundred goes on vacation and your operation suffers until
(09:47):
they get back. If you have people that are fearful
of taking vacation if you have, and more so because
they know they're going to have a week's worth of
stuff when they come back, plus the week of work
that they have to do. There are ways to get
around that that don't cost you any more money and
they really allow you and your.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Team to have a peace of mind at any time
of the year.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Mm hmmmm, so so important.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
It's like what you're saying right here, you're saying is
if you're doing these proactive things rather than being reactive,
and you're you're what I like say is you're looking
underneath the system and you're like saying, hey, you're doing this,
but this isn't as effective. How can we adjust that?
And that's what I love having you on, Adrian is
like you no getting at that. So tell us a
little bit about you know, talked up some of these
(10:34):
challenges that the business owners are facing. Can you walk
me through because I know we talked before we were
one of this podcast, but you have a great framework
of that you look through and how you address issues.
You walk us through a bit of that about what
kind of what you do at a commander.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
So if we were to look holistically at the company,
and you know, my sweet spot is from today to
the next twelve months, twelve months and one day after
I could care less about but Once you know how
to operate a year, then it just becomes year over
(11:11):
year times the growth percentage.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Right, So we.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Would start with the CEO. You know the fish stink
from the head. It also smells good from the head.
I don't care how you say it, but what specifically
do you want us to accomplish over the next twelve months?
Speaker 3 (11:26):
And specific is the keyword.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
You write it out, you say it down, write it down,
you say it out loud, then you send it to
the heads of all the departments. At the next meeting,
you say it out loud again, and then you have
them repeat it back.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
To you, all of them.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Now everybody's heard it from the CEO's mouth, your mouth,
and everybody's heard it out of their own mouth, so
there's no realignment throughout the year. Now that we've said
what everybody is expected to do, we ask each department,
what are the top three things you need to support
this goal. Everybody's going to say, I have one hundred things,
(12:03):
don't care.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Top three. What's the most important? It's hard, right, you
got a priority.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
We'll start with the top three, the biggest three, and
if it's only one, it's one.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
We do this for all the departments.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
This becomes our meeting agenda so that when we every
time we meet, we know we're only talking about what's
most important for every single department, supporting the overall goal.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Now, things are going to go wrong. Nothing I can
do to stop that entirely.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
But because it's the most critical thing, we are very
quick at identifying what went wrong, who needs help, who
can help, how long that help is.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Needed, and when we anticipate a full recovery.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
And we have this meeting up to four times a day,
five days a week, four weeks out the month. And
you know some of your team or even you may say, well,
eighty times a month is excessive to meet about the
same thing.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Well, let me ask you this.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
If you lost a million dollars or more last month
and didn't ask these questions any what's what's successive, right
the amount you lost or the amount of times we
asked about it. I'm not going to look up and
be surprised that I lost a million dollars.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
I'm going to ask along the way.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Now, here's what your team will naturally get better at.
It's almost impossible to not get better at this. In
four weeks, people will start to identify what they do
well or we do well when the situation is like this,
and where they can do better.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Hey, when these conditions are here, we kind of struggle.
Now you look forward four weeks to say.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Ooh, here's all the days where the good situation is
going to happen, and here's the days when the bad
situation is going to happen.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
How do we all plan for it so where we
get the most out of our good days and we
also minimize the negative impact when situations are different than
we would like them to be. That is how you.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
Get that cross functional alignment, that feedback loop to actually
get more out of every single department. And we still
haven't added a single person, a single piece of equipment,
or a single piece of technology.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
I want to I want to just tie in that, Adrian.
I think it's so valuable what you said was, you know,
you came up with the plan with the you know,
the business owner and saying okay, here it is, and
we got buy in. At least you've got everybody to
acknowledging that that this is important, this is want.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
To make this happen.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And I think sometimes just just like you said, just
having coming in and doing that is a game changer
because people just kind of diverse. They all have their
own kind of agendas and what they think is important,
not unified, like you said. And so you're saying, hey,
let's keep the main thing, the main thing. Let's focused
on this. And what I also heard you say and
(15:00):
in this, in this regular meetings and checking in with
each other, is that you're keeping in alignment and you're
not drifting.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
You're like, hey, look, we've got to get it.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
And we're looking at what I heard also, Adrian, we're
looking after each other like, hey, no, we're going to
have this.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
How do we they can.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Help us in in in the in the office or
in distribution or whatever whatever part where you are in
this in this process right because you've documented the process,
you're saying, oh, they could help us here. We're weaker
here and we need so. But if you if you're siloed,
if you're not paying attention to that, you don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Should I call them or.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Who should I lean onto? Or no, I guess I'll
just have to figure out on my own.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Right right now, this is what we're doing.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
And I tell people I primarily work more with actual
intelligence as opposed to artificial intelligence. So artificial intelligence takes
what your normal thought process is and it just starts
doing it over and over on its own. Now, this
is a this is a you know, advocatest way, pen
and paper long division.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Way of doing it.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
But you know, even if the power goes out tomorrow,
this frameworks toll, it works, never goes.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Out of style.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Absolutely, So I mean it's so powerful your way You're
you're talking about you know, guiding folks in this and
really you know, developing this s op and you know,
making sure that you have the right people in the
right places. Again, you're not added, like you said, you're
not any equipment, Newton people. It's just getting that you know,
(16:34):
set up and everybody's working aver together. And I like
that you said, you know, you're looking at a year,
so you're you know, I know there's seasonalities to any business, right,
and so you're looking at that whole year of like
what does that look like?
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Because then you said you're.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Then you're you know, should have a pretty good sense
of what does that seasonality look like and how to
plan and prepare accordingly, right yep.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
So yeah, And the reason is like, so I can
give you a strategy that's going to speak to what
to do for twelve months, but it's it's best to
actually go through all four seasons. And here's why, right,
because we have to get there's a couple of things
we have to get to before we get to the seasonality.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Right.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
First, we have to understand what we're shipping. That's our
product mix, right, And then we have to understand our space.
So like behind me, this is three hundred and thirty
five thousand square.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Feet with fifty five thousand locations. Know your space right.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Then the product so you know, back to school is
pens and paper. You know there's a palette of nope,
notebook paper. You sell one hundred thousand packs of that.
You're talking about several palates. Back to college also happens
at the same time of the year, but it's microwaves,
and many fridges sell one hundred thousand of those. We're
talking about several containers, so one hundred thousand doesn't always
(17:57):
take up the same space.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Depending on the product.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Mm hm.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Now, once we take that basic formula, we say, okay,
what are we going to do for this quarter? The
busiest quarter general merchandise is typically quarter four Okay, if
we bought all of this based on the dimensions of everything,
and we know I have a million cubic feet.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
I said, well, it's going to be four million cubic feet.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
Okay, Well, let's break the purchase orders down into fifths
or smaller chunks. And the reason we do that, David,
is we want to make sure that while we're bringing
all this money in for quarter four, while you're bringing
it all in, that none of.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
It has to go back out to pay for storage
trailers or a.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Second warehouse because you've filled up the one that you
had before it's time.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
M M.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
What you're gonna have to do.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
We're gonna have to go down to finance and ask
for money that's not in the budget. And I ain't
finna get cussed out by myself right now.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
It's June. I know this should be an.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Every ring post, but most people, almost everybody talks about
Peaks plan a quarter four. But halfway through the year,
how much have you heard people talk about the planning
they did for quarter one or the planning they did
for quarter two?
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Very little.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
We keep that same intensity with you through each of
your four seasons. Yes, they may be less challenging, but
they each have their own unique profile.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah right, Yeah, And then you know.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
It doesn't go from winter to summer. There's a season
in between, so temperatures gradually rise, they gradually fall. There's
a transition between those seasons. And give you an example.
The biggest transition is from quarter four to quarter one.
Go from peak season to week season, and you go
from needing three hundred people to one hundred and twenty.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Right, So what we do is.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
We know how to contract the warehouse footprint. So you
go from needing one hundred and ten percent of your
space you need one point one million square feet, you
only have a million.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
What do I do?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (20:03):
No? Then Black Friday, you only need six hundred thousand
square feet because it's back to toilet, paper, diapers, and water.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Mm hm.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Now we know how.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
To keep that forty percent of the space together and empty,
and that sixty percent that you need in the tightest
sixty percent possible.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
What your competitors are.
Speaker 4 (20:23):
Doing is they're traveling all one million square feet to
pick their work, while you're only traveling six hundred thousand
square feet.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
So what does that.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
Mean in dollars for every one hundred people you have
on your floor. That's a one point five million dollars
spend in payroll over ninety days. And if we can
do forty percent less travel, we're talking about a potential
savings of six hundred thousand dollars. And that's in your
lightest qure. And we can squeeze that kind of blood
(20:53):
from a turn up in quarter one, we can do
it in two and three, so by the time you
get to quarter four, it's not so much pressure for
quarter four having to save your bottom line for the
fiscal year.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Well, what I hear a lot here is whether you're
in the warehouse or not. Are you doing forecasting? Are
you looking seasonality for these changes, because there's transit. Like
you said, Adrian, there's transitions there. But I'm that's what
I'm here, and so let's not ignore the transition. Let's
be prepared for the transition. Let's be proactive and and
(21:29):
you know, like you said, you know, and also look
at the new opportunities that might.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Be out there.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
You know, I like the here analogy of the paper
versus the refrigerators or whatever. This is there something different
that you're potentially bringing a service up. I'm in the
professional services, a new product or something. What does that
look like in transitions so you're not totally thrown off kilter?
And do you have the ability to flax like you're
(21:56):
mentioning adrians so that it's it's more seamless versus just
like if we were just you know, if it's like
you said, I like alliot, where you kind of turn
up the dial or turn down the dial. That's easier
than like trying to flip a switch, like go from
your up and down and that that's very hard for everybody,
right when you're trying to go from boom and the stop, go,
(22:17):
you know, hit the brakes, hit the gas, Hit the brakes,
hit the gas. That's really hard. Can we like lightly
touch the brakes? Can we give it a little bit
more gas? Like that's what I hear you saying, Like,
how do we do that in a less jerky way?
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Absolutely?
Speaker 4 (22:31):
And if we go back to the all the departments
and the V twelve, I'm actually in operations like the
fifth person to even.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Know that the product, what the product is going to do.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
Right the person with the furthest view out is marketing,
then sales, then procurement, then transportation.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Then me and operations.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Right, So if I want to know what that transition
looks like, all I have to do is go ask marketing, Hey,
what are you guys doing for a couple of seasons out? Oh? Man,
remember last Christmas and we did like ten million of sales.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
This year we're going to do fifteen.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
So now I know I need to plan for a
fifty percent increase in whatever we did last year.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
I don't care how successful it was. I have to
do fifty percent more and plan for that.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
If they tell me it's going to be soft, then
I say, okay, well, you know, I know I don't
need to go as hard on overtime for that same timeframe,
and now I can respect the financial budget. Right. So
it's again, if you listen to the complete sentence of
a business, you can understand exactly what you need to
(23:43):
do from now all the way as far out as
twelve months.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Anything beyond that is really starting to speculate.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
No, well, I think that's so important, Adrian. And I
feel like sometimes people like you mentioned earlier, get siloed
and they're not asking those questions. I just this is
just where my end and I'm not being proactive like
you said, if if you kept marketing and salespeople are like, boom,
we got some new products we're selling. We're selling, we're
selling it, and we're not communicating. And then now now
(24:12):
the actual order is coming in or we're gonna sending
this're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
We didn't. I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
I wasn't clear on this. I didn't understand how this
is going to impact me. And so, like you said,
it's like a cascading thing. And what I found was,
I know I've been on the side of the sales
and market They love to sell the obviously they're getting
from commission. They're not really considering the impacts to operations
per se. It's not But if they're like, hey, I
could I want to make sure the client fulfillment process
(24:39):
actually works through so they'll buy from me again, I
got to I should let these guys know, we should
be very thinking about this.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Yeah, it's it's really just a hits up, man, because
it's and I want to be crystal clear when I
go back to the twelve departments and say, hey, guys,
one piston moves, the other living are responding in a
similar fashion, right, So you know, it's not just me saying,
oh man, those sales guys didn't.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
Tell me, well, I'm just moving the boxes.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
Right, if you sell forty percent more and you don't
share that information, now, HR is behind on hiring forty.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Percent yep, right there too are.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Our employee experience is going to start to suck. Our
turnover is going to go up if we, aside from
the people, let's say.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
HR is able to keep up.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
What if we now we need forty percent more devices,
What if we need forty percent more wireless access points.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
I've seen companies where.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
The system actually starts to shut down because they had
a headcount plan of one hundred.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Now they're using one hundred.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
And fifty and it's too many users. They didn't buy
enough licenses, or it's too many users and they're overloading
the access points. So everybody's getting that little spiral of
death on their device and no orders are going right.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
So these are the things that why have you on
the podcast, Adrian, because it's it's it's not that they
don't care. I think business owners are just getting busy
and they get silent. They just get going and it's
like you're having somebody like you Adrian come in kind
of lift the hood up, like look at seeing what's
we're asking what's working and what's not working.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
And that's why, you know, it's so important to have an.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Outside perspective, and particularly Adrian, because you're working not just
with one company, you're working with many companies.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
You're seeing you know, these things, these.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Blind spots you will or like, hey, you guys, this
is this is like you just gave a great examples
of like, oh, I didn't I didn't even think about that.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
I wasn't. I was just you know, I was just
thinking that like you.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I like the analogy you said before, like I could
just fit into the clothes that I had before what
I was doing. Well, no, not not if you're you know,
you're going to increase your revenue. And this is one
thing I've seen with business owners, Adrian. They get excited
about increased revenue like, oh man, we're gonna make more revenue,
but at the end of the day, actually make less money,
less profit because of what you're talking about. So it's like,
(26:58):
what does it, what does it you to increase your revenue.
It's kind of like an ego trip only to actually
in the end make less money than you did previously.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
Yep, it's called you know, we say this phrase outside
of business all the time, it is getting too big
for your bridges, right, So companies can and have absolutely
collapsed them in their own weight. And it would have
been as simple as just saying, hey, guys, you know
we're growing at this level. Okay, cool, we need to
(27:30):
hire at this level, We need to add access points
at this level, we need to acquire equipment at this level.
We need to you know, acquire more freight lanes, trucks, brokers,
whatever it is, but we need to It's a it's
like a three legged race, but it's it's twelve departments.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
So it's it.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Takes a lot of effort, but the more you do anything,
the better you get at it.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Absolutely and having somebody come along like you Adrian, that
is looking at these things, asking the tough questions, helping
them and I think, you know, you've broken it down
really well to gain and know we're getting to at
the end of the podcast here, but I want the
business owners to know, you know, Adrian and I are
you know, are collaborating together.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
You can reach out.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Adrian's connected with me on LinkedIn we'll make sure Adrian
expander and all the notes are put it in our
in our show notes here as to how to connect
with you. But I think you know, listen, if you're
a business owner and you're working in this space of
a good friend, that's whether you're you know, whatever that
capacity might be from the from the warehouse, distribution and such.
(28:33):
You know, Adrian is a man that can walk you
through and help strengthen you in your team. That like
breaking down the silos and really what I heard YouTube
Adrian is like making every square foot count everyone, make
sure that it's it's who it's you know, working to
its best. And that's why I love to come in
with Adrian because this is a you know, breaking this
down and getting a plan and getting the system and
(28:55):
then of course you know I work with teams and
strengthening that development and the relations to your leadership. It's
all intentional, but it takes time, right and this is
like something that just happens overnight. You're with them with
the you're with them in this process. You're walking them
through week after week, month after month. Get that get
that dialed in, really see the results.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Absolutely when I walk away, when I leave everything is
still going to operate as if I never left in
the first place.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
I love that you're you're leading, You're leaving with lasting
change and impact. So Aidan, as we're getting close to
mend here, you know, if if, what would you say
is kind of a you know, a key takeaway. I'm
a business I've got a lot of challenges. You listen
a lot of them. You know, what's the what's the what?
What can they do? What's the proactive thing that they
can do today? As we're listening to like make make
(29:51):
the positive change be positive.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Have a structured conversation.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Hey guys, we're gonna have to sit down and we're
gonna have it at this cadence.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Here's the agenda. Know what you're gonna come there talk about.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
We can dump all the pieces on the table and
then we'll start to sport them out.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
And every time.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
We meet, we have to come with solutions because we
already know what the problems are.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
So I love that.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
So here's a Adrian thank you for being on the podcast.
Adrian's like he's gonna walk you through there. Break put
down all the puzzle pieces, lay down our arms, come
to the table.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Like and so that you.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Can actually you know, scale without like I said, happened
to like you know, go crazy with the budget or
adding more people, like just literally looking at what you
have right now, the problems they have been breaking it
down and really getting through but with your current team
and space today.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
So I think encouraging people.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
If you're listening to this and this resident is connect
with Adrian, happy to do an introduction myself as well.
Leave comments as to what your taking always were, your
feedback thoughts. We always love that and we want to
hear from you and Adrian. I want to just say
thanks again for being on the Business round Table podcast.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
With you today.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Thanks for having me David.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Thanks everybody for listening and of course we appreciate you
liking and subscribing being a part of the journey with us.
And until next time, be well, take care everybody, Thanks
for listening in
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