BONUS Audio from Live Community Event (Turbo Boost Your FC Career)

February 13, 2026

Different vibe here from a regular TWU podcast, but raw real event with real people from the FC industry and the panel offering as much insight, perspective, wisdom as we could!

Also, these are OUR opinions and thoughts about A way to excel in the industry. We are not saying these opinions are THE way. Take them as you will.

A little bit of everything in this one and worth a listen!

Carlos Cody @ 10:28

Devin Galloway @ 44:25

Ben Hopkins @ 58:51

Episode Transcript

Live Show Audio
Summary
The Warehouse Underground, a community for people who work in fulfillment centers, is hosting an event about how to boost your career in this industry. The community was created in July 2024 and includes a podcast and website. The event will feature Carlos Cody and Devin Galloway, two leaders in the industry who have a lot of insight and wisdom to share. A video of clips from their podcast appearances is shown, highlighting their experiences and views on leadership in the warehouse environment. The event will The speaker introduces himself as Carlos Cody, an operations manager at Amazon with experience in various areas of supply chain and logistics. He talks about his vision of helping others reach their potential and discusses the importance of setting a clear salary goal and making it a standard. The key to career advancement, he says, is to have a sponsor - someone who can communicate your impact and influence decision-makers in higher positions. He also emphasizes the importance of developing people and bringing them along while doing tasks, in order to The speech discusses the author's book "ASK: ASking the Right Questions to Succeed" and how it can help people develop their careers and achieve their goals. They encourage people to find a mentor, focus on impact and results, and ask for the money they deserve. The speaker also addresses a question from a participant (named O'Brien) about how to get promoted in the company they work for. The speaker suggests having a document with data on the results one has achieved and ensuring that the The speaker, who is an operational manager at Amazon, discusses his experience with data and management. He advises the listener, who also works at Amazon, to focus on building connections with colleagues and seeking opportunities outside of their department in order to advance in their career. He also suggests identifying and highlighting their strengths, such as a talent for developing people, in order to stand out and make an impact in their role. Carlos and Devin recommend creating a system to track and document your accomplishments and successes in your job. This can include writing down your biggest accomplishment every day, reviewing these achievements monthly and choosing the top two or three to write in detail. This will create a portfolio of work that you can use in performance reviews or interviews to show your value and contributions. Devin also mentions the importance of consistently following this system in order to see its benefits. The Warehouse Underground community welcomed guest speaker Devin Sardine, an industry expert in operations and leadership. Devin shared his experience and insights on how to succeed as a leader in the warehousing industry. He stressed the importance of being intentional and advocating for oneself in career growth. Carlos and Devin emphasized the need to think beyond just executing and hitting numbers, and instead focus on building strategies and systems for success. Carlos also shared his "warehousing pyramid of success" framework that he uses in interviews, The main part of this post talks about the structures, strategies, and skills that professionals should possess in order to climb the ranks and become successful in the field of operations management. The author, a former Amazon employee, emphasizes the importance of having a strong foundation and prioritizing safety and inventory control in order to ensure long-term success. The post also encourages networking and staying up to date with industry trends in order to stay competitive.
Transcription
Speaker 1
[00.00.13]
Hey what's up guys? I am Ben. I'm the founder and the creator of The Warehouse Underground. I like to welcome everybody to tonight's event of how to turbo boost your fulfillment center career. But I also want to thank everybody for just signing up for the community in general, uh, and for spreading the word. You know, the warehouse underground was started in July of 2024 with the goal of making it sort of a town square for people that work in this industry at all levels. Uh, and so I really appreciate everybody helping grow the community. The community is a big part of the future of the warehouse underground, but it's not the only thing. So if you've had a chance to explore the site, there's a podcast as part of it. It plays on Apple and Spotify and YouTube, and the podcast is where I first met tonight's yes, Carlos Cody and Devin Galloway. Now, I don't want to steal too much of their thunder. And when they take the stage here in a little bit, I'll let them introduce themselves to you. But because I have, I have hiked these guys up super big in the build up to this show. But I
Speaker 3
[00.01.21]
will say that they are two people who have a tremendous amount of insight, knowledge and wisdom and they're ready to share it and spill it with everybody that's here tonight and in the future. So I really appreciate both of them for doing that. So what we'll do is we're going to play about a seven minute video, uh, collage video, if you will, of some of the clips from those podcasts. So that way you guys get a chance to get a feel, a vibe about what we're all about, how we are, how we interact. But I know some of you already know them anyway, so feel free to use the chat at any time during the night. After we play those videos, I'll bring Carlos up on the stage first and then follow up with Devin after him and then me at the end. And whatever Roe, the those to try or want to come up with will be fair game for anybody to use. So thank you again for tuning in tonight and for joining the site. We hope that this
Speaker 1
[00.02.21]
is. Value
Speaker 3
[00.02.23]
added for you. We hope that this is helpful in your career, that you find this very helpful and insightful, and that you can really spread the word about it going forward. So with that, we'll begin. And
Speaker 2
[00.02.36]
that no day is the same. Although we have routines, we have a leadership standard of work. You have your routines, but no day is the same. You don't know what you're going to come into. And the reason I say that is at any given point, equipment can go down at any given point. As a leader, you're always constantly going to be dealing with the the emotions of people. You don't know how people are going to show up for that day. So in that aspect, no day it's the same.
Speaker 4
[00.03.07]
Most leadership advice, if you go out and you look at the best selling books
Speaker 5
[00.03.11]
or search online, most advice is given for a completely different environment. And a warehouse or a fulfillment center is not just an office with worst lighting, right? It's a completely it's
Speaker 4
[00.03.24]
completely different animal.
Speaker 3
[00.03.27]
One thing that I always felt when I was an FC manager was if somebody came with me, came at me with just anecdotes or generic information. I almost immediately wrote them off. If they were trying to give me advice, because it needs to be baked into the entire cake. It has to understand the total person, the total environment that you're in. And FC life is is stressful and the expectation never changes. There's constant pressure from the moment that you come in to work, because there's customer expectation on the other end, and not every environment lives under a steady drip of pressure,
Speaker 2
[00.04.05]
that what burns people out is not having a mechanism for how do we train and how do we build up leaders to get them up to speed? Not in nine in 2 or 3 months, but can we get someone up to speed in the month?
Speaker 5
[00.04.18]
Three. We have two weeks. How do we, uh, take that timeline down? And once you have that, everyone is pretty much working on the same thing because, hey, here's the thing, team. This is where we're going. The team trusts you as a leader because they know that. I know Carlos has my back. I know because he supports me. There's tangible evidence to show that Carlos is supporting me. So I know if I'm uncomfortable, it's
Speaker 2
[00.04.43]
for a reason. There's a
Speaker 5
[00.04.44]
biggest. Difficulty I see, and I've trained hundreds of managers. The most common recurring problem I see is that they still think at their old level.
Speaker 4
[00.04.56]
Basically, I was good at this job,
Speaker 5
[00.04.58]
and so whenever there's a problem there, I'm just going to jump in and do it. And they need to keep in mind that that's not their job anymore. Now that
Speaker 4
[00.05.08]
your success is no longer measured by your personal productivity, but by what your team does,
Speaker 5
[00.05.13]
and that a lot of
Speaker 2
[00.05.15]
leaders are shot when I bring them along, that I'm not just telling people what to do, I'm taking the time to communicate the why. So that's the second thing teaching them how to communicate. And then the third thing is really teaching them to have a different perspective, right. It's not just about your area. Now you have to think, yes, you're responsible for your area, but how does that tie in to the bigger outcome of what we're trying to do
Speaker 3
[00.05.39]
for our students? So I think that's such a great, fantastic point that gets overlooked all the time, and that is the emotional toll that it can take on you. Because you're right, you spend 40, 50 hours a week with these people and say they become like your family, but you you become close with that, right? Like you, you know them at a different level. And so you really, really care about them. But at the same time. What I've always said is there's a limit to how far you go. You can't help one of them out financially, right, like you would a family member, because now you've blurred a HR line. Right now you've crossed a line, and now there's favoritism and and the whole thing. So sometimes you just have to kind of like, feel for them without being able to go all the way. And, and that that can be really challenging.
Speaker 2
[00.06.25]
At the end of the day, if you're in a leadership position, you are there to solve a problem, not just a business problem, but a people problem. And the best thing that you can do is to say, hey, I don't care if it's ten minutes a day, I am going on the floor, I am going to walk, and I'm not going to talk about this as I'm going to walk up to see like how this person, your body language is a little off. Hey, how's everything going? And most of the time the response you'll get is work is great work, work work work work. Hey, I'm not asking about that. How are you doing? And is there anything that I can do to make today a better experience for you? And the reason I came and taught you? I noticed that your body language a little off now could be wrong, but is there anything that's going on that maybe we need to talk through and that I can be a support system for you? And
Speaker 4
[00.07.11]
and so what I have found works
Speaker 1
[00.07.14]
best.
Speaker 4
[00.07.16]
Is when something comes up. Either right then or once you solve it. Take 15 30s not long, but just write down what happened. Had a conveyor jam. This is the location. This is the time. And then every week or two, just go back through your notes and look for patterns. Because that 8020 rule is going to apply here. Most of your problems are going to come from the same things again and again and again. And so when these fires come up, if you pay careful attention to where they're happening and why, that gives you an idea of where to first address your your
Speaker 2
[00.07.53]
solution. You really when it comes to leadership, you really need a system. Um, it cannot be random. Um, you have to know exactly what is needed. Right. And I would say the first thing one is always establishing trust. Um, that trust is not with me coming in, giving commands. That trust is not with me. Um, telling people how to do their job. Exactly how to do it when? The first time I'm meeting. Uh, for me, that trust is established by one spending time. Grant you. How do you build trust? You're not spending time with people. You need to understand how they tick. What are their motivations? What are their goals, right? Uh, and usually I do this in a formatted way, in a very casual way. Uh, I used the framework of growth, which is number one. I want to understand people's goals. Right. Amazon. Pretty much everyone you're going to come across as very ambitious. They have goals. I want to understand those goals. I want to understand the reality of those goals. Where is this person at, where their strengths, where their weaknesses? And how can I support them?
Speaker 3
[00.08.55]
Right. That's a missed opportunity. This is the hardest.
Speaker 5
[00.08.58]
This is the engine, man. Like that's the engine of people. That's. That's what runs people. And so do you want to talk about ROI? How about this ROI? Like you just said, I want to talk with this guy for two minutes to check in with them and boom, two minutes. What's the cost of that? Nothing. And out of it. I get great performance from him the rest of the week. Plus he force multiplies it and he tells ten other people. Plus, when it's time for me to come up for promotion, 6 to 10 months later, I got all these people who are vouching for me, who are backing me for you know what I mean? Like ROI, come on, that I understand that that ROI doesn't show up directly in the Excel spreadsheet, but you know it's there, right? And I help people. So don't don't don't miss out on that.
Speaker 3
[00.09.46]
Well, I have to say it's like much cooler when you are talking and there's music playing behind you. So it's a difficult setup for Carlos. But yeah, like I said in the intro, I had a chance to meet and get to know both of these guys very well. I couldn't wait to feature them on the podcast, and I couldn't wait to have them in a group setting. And and we talked about it for a long time. And so we're really happy to do this. So Carlos Cody will have him up first. I've learned so much from him. He's a fantastic leader. Uh, mentor has a lot of resources out there. Online training book and had a very successful career so far, and we'll continue to do it. And so, without further ado, I'll put Carlos on the stage, my friend.
Speaker 1
[00.10.29]
All right, all right. Appreciate that. Ben. Love the, uh, the intro. Love hearing, uh, all the great things that I just heard on that podcast. Uh, so I do want to start with this, because I do want to be respectful of everyone's time. Uh, so first thing is, um, I just want to make sure you all know who I am. The name is Carlos Cody. Um, currently, right now working, um, at Amazon as an L6 operations manager. Uh, I have been a senior manager at another place. I've been a GM. Um, and I've worked in a three PL environment ecom sort centers, middle mile, first mile, last mile, you name it. Uh, I've pretty much done it, uh, within the supply chain and logistics space. Um, I do want to say this, uh, my vision for life is really to help others reach their potential. Uh, and that's really what this conversation is going to be about. Um, and I want to just start with this. Um. Hard work is common, but the receipts is rare. And what I mean by that is, most of the leaders that I have been talking with on LinkedIn at my job, they're all really after one thing right now. And that one thing is most of them feel like they are underpaid.
Speaker 2
[00.11.43]
They feel like they are
Speaker 1
[00.11.44]
overworked and they feel like they do not have a system. To get to that next step in their career, it's like they're hitting the ceiling. They feel like they're doing more and more and more, but at the same time, they feel like they are not getting to the place that they want to get to in their career. Um, and right now, I just kind of want to walk you through a really quick framework. I'm going to try to be as as fast as I can to give you all as much information as possible. Um, but at the same time, not overwhelm you. Uh, so the first thing that I realized, and we can probably all ask ourselves this, is when we think about getting to that next level, we're normally thinking about the responsibilities. We're thinking about the pay. What does that look like? How my life is going to change if I get to that next level. But how many of us have actually set a number
Speaker 2
[00.12.39]
and really thought about that number?
Speaker 1
[00.12.43]
Um, I was just doing a one on one with one of one of my leaders, and I was asking them like, hey, what is what is your goal? I want to get to the next level. And I started asking them questions about like, what does that next level mean for you? Because I really want to understand the emotions. And the main thing it came back to was pay. And I was like, well, hey, what's your number? And they were hesitant. It was like they didn't want to say a number. And I started to ask, hey, it's okay. Like it's okay to say the number. And they said the number and mind you, I'm in the seat that they're trying to get to and I want to help them get there. But they said a number, and the number wasn't even at the baseline of what the role actually pays and what I wanted to instill and what I wanted to instill in them, and also instill in you, is that in order to get to whatever target that you're at, one, you have to have a number. The second is you have to make that your standard, uh, prime example. Uh, when we all first started working, I'll share my story. Right. I was working and I remember out of college I got a job. It was like ten, 50 an hour, and I was like, whoa, I'm excited. I got 1050. Whoa. This is going. This is life changing. I'm so excited about this. 1050 an hour. And then another job came up and it was $15 an hour, and I about lost my mind. Now we're all on this call today. Who of us would go take a job right now for $15 an hour? Probably probably nobody right now. Right. Because it's a standard. You have hit a certain amount of income. Right. And when you have hit that income, that has now become a standard and you cannot. It's almost like your mind won't allow you to go back to that. And that is the same thing with
Speaker 2
[00.14.27]
hitting six figures in your career. It has to become that standard. It has to become something that is just so tangible. It's so real that you don't see anything else. And the only way it comes as standard is what I realized early in my career is that, hey, I've got to stop taking advice from everybody. I can't take sometimes can't take advice, um, from the water cooler chat. So everyone's complaining like, man, I'm not working. I'm not doing that. This is my job. This is what I get paid for. But that same person is going to also be wanting to be paid more. And what I have found is when I started connecting myself with the right people, I realized that their mindset was totally different from mine. I saw that wait a minute, this person is working list. This person is getting to work on time. There may stay late a couple of times, but it's not the norm. And I saw someone and met someone that was a year older than me, but they were three levels
Speaker 1
[00.15.27]
higher and
Speaker 2
[00.15.29]
I learned something there. It's like, hey, Carlos, you're you're working hard. You you're doing all of the right things,
Speaker 1
[00.15.36]
but you are not communicating your impact. You're not getting in front of the right people. And everything that you're doing is known inside the building. I know because I'm paying attention to it. But if you don't learn how to communicate and you don't learn how to essentially systematize the things that you're doing, delivering data, talking about the impact and getting the exposure, your hard work is not going to pay off in the way that you think it is. Right? And if you really think about it, it it hurts it staying to hear that. But at the end of the day, I realized that, you know what? This person is telling the truth. I can go right now on the warehouse floor, and I can identify a guy or a woman that is out there and they are running 100mph. They're in the task, they're doing the job, and
Speaker 2
[00.16.29]
they're getting overlooked. Because if you if they do not have a leader that recognizes their value, their value will continue to stay exactly where it is.
Speaker 1
[00.16.39]
Now, on the flip side of that. The
Speaker 2
[00.16.44]
steps to that and it's an eight system step to it, right? The number one thing is right, right in getting your target down, understanding that number. The second thing is, is really understanding. Like hey, once I have that number, is that number even possible in my current role or what role do I need to get to to actually hit the number that I'm after? So once you understand that, you move into, okay, there are a set of things that I have to
Speaker 1
[00.17.09]
do, skills of
Speaker 2
[00.17.12]
mindsets that I have to adapt, and people that I meet so that I understand how to become that standard, how to start building the receipts that show
Speaker 1
[00.17.22]
that, hey, this guy is ready. This woman is ready for the next level.
Speaker 2
[00.17.28]
Uh, the third thing that I learned was
Speaker 1
[00.17.30]
that relationships are important. Right. We all want mentors. We all want someone that we can talk to, someone that can guide us, that can hold our hand. Someone that can essentially develop us. And mentors are great. We need them. But if you're after six figures in your career, the most important person that you can have in your corner is actually a sponsor.
Speaker 2
[00.17.52]
And the difference between a mentor and a sponsor is a sponsor is someone that understands the work that you
Speaker 1
[00.18.00]
do. You have communicated well enough that they understand, okay, this is the the impact that this person has made. These are the results. And they go into a room that you do not have access to. And they begin to influence the people at the level that can actually make the decision to get you moved to the next level.
Speaker 2
[00.18.22]
The sponsors are the most important and often the hardest ones to get, because you have to be very intentional and have a system for reaching out to people on a consistent basis.
Speaker 1
[00.18.33]
After you leave the the front line, you move from a lead. You get to a supervisor, the supervisor role. Yes. Hard work. It will get you in the door. But once you start getting to these senior managers, these director positions, it's going to require some type of sponsor. Because here's the thing. If your boss goes and they speak on your behalf, they're
Speaker 2
[00.18.55]
speaking now to a group of
Speaker 1
[00.18.57]
people. What
Speaker 2
[00.18.59]
ends up happening in those rooms because I sit in those rooms, if I'm speaking on something and there's nobody else in that room
Speaker 1
[00.19.06]
that I can influence. Often it's going to be like, hey, we're Carlos, we we like what this verse is doing. We see that they're working hard, but
Speaker 2
[00.19.16]
does anyone else know this person? And if there's no one else in that room, guess what? It's now a results game, and all it takes is for one person at room to have 2 or 3 more people that say, hey, hey, I yeah, man, I know that person. Like, we did a project together. That's it. That one little thing now just separated that person from you because of the exposure aspect. Um, the other thing is, when it comes to really leveling up your career is, what I see a lot is people hoarding a lot of knowledge, and they are not building people around them, because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1
[00.19.52]
you're you're you're getting promoted. It's also going to create nervousness for your boss, because if you're crushing it and you're killing it, why would your boss want to move you if they know, like, man, if if Carlos leaves, who's going to replace
Speaker 2
[00.20.07]
them? Does that mean my job is going to get harder now? Does that mean I'm going to have to start doing a lot more than normal?
Speaker 5
[00.20.14]
So one of the things is that sometimes people do not do is they don't invest, they don't take the time to develop people. And usually that comes down to a time issue. They say, oh, I don't have time. I, you know, I,
Speaker 1
[00.20.28]
I want to develop people. My intent is to develop people. But if you look at that calendar, guess what?
Speaker 2
[00.20.33]
They don't develop people and the process
Speaker 1
[00.20.37]
is so simple. Bring
Speaker 2
[00.20.38]
others along with you while you're doing the things that you do. That is the easiest way to develop someone like, hey, I want you to come along. I want you to come sit in this meeting. You don't have to say anything. I just want you present. Right after that meeting is over. Guess what? Hey, let's. Let's talk through it. What did you learn? Did you hear the conversations? Did you hear the perspectives that were shared? Did you hear the questions they get asked? What did you learn from that? And as you're bringing that person along. Eventually it gets to a point like, hey, I want you to talk on this topic in the meeting, right. What is that doing to the person that's building? The confidence is getting them exposure. Now they're beginning to talk in the room. Your leaders are beginning to see how this person is interacting. That is building trust. And that's also letting them know, like, okay, there there are other people that if Carlos was to leave or get promoted, there are other people that can step in through that mentorship and through that also, uh, sponsorship in a way. And then the last thing is, as you're developing people and you're essentially scaling for impact, which is increasing your leverage, it is to ask for the money. Right? If you're doing the way the system that I have in the book is you're going to have a 90 day systematic approach. It's not you doing more, it's you defining with clarity. What is the one thing? Are three things that I am going to do that has a cost impact, a people impact, a quality impact, whatever the impact is, what is it that I'm going to do and how am I going to drive this? What is my weekly communication going to look like with my leaders? So they know the impact and the things that I'm doing to drive this impact? And then when it gets to a point, your confidence is going to be there because you're going to have this running list of things that you have delivered on things that you can go back and say that, hey, I delivered on this, I delivered on that, I delivered on this. And one thing that I've always found is that when you're doing the work, you're going to reap what you sow. Now, here's the thing you may not reap in the place where you have sown,
Speaker 1
[00.22.49]
but you now have what I call receipts proof. And that builds your confidence. So when someone comes and say, hey, we want to pay you 70,000, in your mind, you're going to know, I know the job, I know the skills, I know the results of the person delivers at that role. My standard is 100
Speaker 2
[00.23.09]
K no list, and you're going to be able to communicate that and you're going to find that
Speaker 3
[00.23.14]
that will happen. Because I have seen it happen in people I've mentored. I have mentored someone that has come all the way from the floor, and they're now making their their past 100
Speaker 2
[00.23.25]
figures that I'm at the yeah, the 100 K there's like okay Carlos, how did I get the 150. How the how what do I need to do to get to this point.
Speaker 1
[00.23.32]
And.
Speaker 2
[00.23.34]
The reason they got there is they stuck with the program. They kept doing the system. They ran the 90 day formula over and over and over and over again. And now their confidence is at a place where, regardless of them having the money, they are moving that way because they have the receipts,
Speaker 1
[00.23.50]
uh, to prove it.
Speaker 2
[00.23.51]
So, uh, that's what I wanted to talk about. Uh, I will kick it over. Um, if you all have any questions or anything, you want to be respectful of the time
Speaker 1
[00.24.00]
here. Yeah,
Speaker 3
[00.24.01]
that was awesome stuff. Now, O'Brien, I think you had a question. I saw that you you raised your your
Speaker 1
[00.24.07]
hand. Uh, yes. Um, actually, a lot of that is what I'm going through right now is, like you, you're putting in a lot of effort, and you're working so hard, you spending hours, countless hours, and even projects for the warehouse to make things better, coming on your day off to try to do the extra mile. And it seems like, uh, you just get blocked all the time. Like, it's like, um, like I've been a ship dock manager at my site for the last three years. I have not moved from ship dock since I've been there, but I've been on every different shift. Night shift. Day shift. Back out. Front half. Um. It's like you just can't seem to get replaced. Uh, it's like they're scared to lose me. Um, I developed a lot of Pas to get to my level that I able to get there. And there's some Pas also trying to get to be AMS as well. Um, it's even hard for me to try to even get them to that point, because it seems like there's a lot of politics going on inside. I'm not sure. I know y'all been in those, uh, in the in the room before where you've, uh, had those conversations, or you're trying to look and see who's going to replace an OEM or something like that or senior. And it seems like people that's internal is getting overlooked. Um, that's putting in the effort. Uh, so those are the things that I, I've seen personally. Um, and I know it's a little frustrating sometimes, but I typically don't let it get to me because then they I care about my associates. I have a lot of passion for my job, so I just continue to keep pressing forward. I believe good things happen to good people. Um,
Speaker 5
[00.25.37]
but at the same time, you know, I'd like to see a lot more, uh, you know, promoting from within. Um, a lot more frequently with the people that put in our work.
Speaker 1
[00.25.47]
So. Yeah.
Speaker 2
[00.25.50]
And and and and is it? Uh. O'Brien.
Speaker 1
[00.25.52]
Correct.
Speaker 5
[00.25.56]
Uh. Yes, sir. Yes,
Speaker 1
[00.25.57]
sir. Okay, perfect. I got your name correct. Uh, man. Yes, it, uh, it happens more than you know. Uh, there's a couple of things that. Man, I would love the, uh, the opportunity to kind of unpack, unpack here. Right. Right. You've been shipped out three years. You've come in on come in on days that weren't
Speaker 2
[00.26.18]
scheduled to work. Um, you have
Speaker 1
[00.26.23]
been on every shift. You're you're doing the training. You're doing the leveraging. Um,
Speaker 2
[00.26.29]
so I do have a question. Who have you let anyone know outside of just applying? Right. Have you let anyone know that you are actively wanting to move up to that next level?
Speaker 5
[00.26.43]
Uh, yes. Um, so I've had my one on one with my Om currently. Uh, him and I actually used to be AMS together. Uh, which is a funny fat, um. And he got promoted. Uh, so he shifted over into my shift, and I explained to him, you know what I'm trying to do? Like, like, where am I trying to be in my life? And, um, I feel like I've put in the work in the time to be able to get into this level, being a proxy and everything. I've been a proxy for a year and a half. Um, so I understand about planning and, um, things like that and balancing operations. So I'm taking the effort and I'm taking the steps. Um, but it's also there was moments because I'm driving about 55, 50 minutes to an hour to work every day. So there's some sites that's nearby, close to me from the house I just built. And, uh, I applied for some transfers or put in for L6, uh, position. And what I get, what I get in return is they say, hey, go ahead and apply for the position after I let them know that I'm interested. Um, they come back and they tell me they look for somebody who's a strong L5 or a strong. They'll sits and it's kind of it's kind of weird because it's like I put it in the word, and I don't been, um, manager of the month three times in the last year. But I don't know what my boss is saying to them, or I don't know what's going on in the back end that I'm not seeing. Um, and then also my thrives in my evaluation just seems not to match what I'm actually doing every day as well. It seems like it's more pencil with, like, you're just trying to get past it every month, but not really taking the time and the details of every little detail thing that I've done every day. Uh, to put that in my thrives because I know that's something that's going to happen for my promo doc. So like on my side, I'm saying that I've, I've connected with a lot of seniors in my past. I'm somebody who was a L1 who moved to a L5. So I'm somebody who's continue to continue to keep moving up and want to continue to keep moving up, um, and make changes, uh, to change this. And I know I can't change unless I get in position. Uh, so it's definitely something that I'm working on, but like, again, my Om or my senior, um, I know they love the work that I do. Um, but then it goes back to what you were saying again about people not wanting to lose that, you know, somebody who's taking a lot off of them. Um, because my own don't even have to be on the floor. If I'm on the floor, I can handle everything. Uh, so it's like if O'Brien takes off to work a day, it's a problem. So if he can't take off a day, then what's going to look like if he's gone forever? Uh, type of thing. So, uh, that's why I'm at right now. I'm just, you know, trying to figure that out. Um, try to be patient as much as I can. But, uh, three years on ship, doc, everybody knows the marathon heart department. If anybody were shipped out. They know, uh, it's a very hard department to work in. Um, especially in peak season. Uh, and I probably have days, so half days always push out, typically the most volume and a little bit more pressure than normal. Uh, so, um, just trying to figure that out. Um, but then that's why I'm also in this group right here trying to network with you guys and get some of your advice and some things that y'all are saying also.
Speaker 1
[00.29.52]
Yep.
Speaker 2
[00.29.53]
Uh, so real quick, uh, just with,
Speaker 1
[00.29.56]
uh, I do want to give you this at least three things. Right? So there's this, uh, formula. It's called pi. Right. It sounds like you have the p bar down, right? The performance. Uh, everything you're saying, the performance. There may be some barriers as far as the thrives. Uh, and I'm going to be honest with you, um, it sounds like you're you're within Amazon. I will be 100% honest with you. A lot of times, people that are not looking at price unless they're trying to use it to performance manage out. To be honest, um, it does sound like the performance is there. Uh, it sounds like the image is there. Like you don't have your managers that are looking at you in any type of way. What it sounds like is what in a 60% of the formula is the E is the exposure. It sounds like the people that you are communicating with, uh, may not be the best points of contact. And yes, it is a good thing that you are reaching out and you are getting those interviews. Um, but I think the most important thing, if you're not already doing it now, uh, do you have like your own document of your results, the things that you have, uh, delivered that has, like, data attached to it. For instance, it would be like, hey, I delivered a CPT of this to from from this to this, uh, 20 whatever percent increase. Do you have a document that has that information in it? Uh, yes. Um, so typically the baseball card, which I'm pretty sure anybody's familiar with. Um, so I played I know, my first
Speaker 5
[00.31.33]
couple years as an Am when I started in 2021, baseball card was like a foreign language to me. I didn't know what the world that
Speaker 1
[00.31.40]
was. It was just all over the place. But as the years went on, I started to understand how to plug the data. Um, especially, uh, Mister Devin, shout out to you. Uh, he gave me some information from acceleration training, uh, that I was able to use for the previous baseball card that I've had actually created. So I do have the data. Um, I try to keep up with it as much as I can, and specifically every month. Um, but I do think, uh, what you said, um, as far as in having a manager that's, you know, in my corner, uh, I really don't. Yeah, I really don't really think I have that right now. Uh, it's been a little rocky. Um,
Speaker 5
[00.32.17]
sometimes I kind of feel like they think I'm trying to overstep boundaries, or if I think I know it all or something like that. Or, uh, maybe I'm trying to step on toes,
Speaker 1
[00.32.27]
but. Part of that.
Speaker 5
[00.32.28]
Disagree commit. That's where I'm at. So like if I'm on a ship dock and I've been doing it for three years, I'm the most tenured dock manager and someone tells me to do something different and I feel like it's going to be a
Speaker 1
[00.32.39]
problem. Like, I want to speak up. Like I'll try it. I don't have no problem trying something new. But at the same time, you know, I guess I'm a little bit more vocal. I don't like to just hold my tongue. Like, not a yes man or nothing like that. Um, I typically like to just, um,
Speaker 5
[00.32.57]
get my give my input what I think is best practice. And I know that that can take it from anyone that can take from my pa to what I'm saying here. It doesn't matter who the information comes from, as long as it works. Um, that's where I'm at. So, uh, it's it's a little as far as in the data. I mean, I have a lot of it. I feel I could, I could do a little bit more projects. Most of my projects have been based. Um, I think the is something I put on. My forte was I need to do a lot more projects for, like, the warehouse overall. Like, how can I make an impact for the entire site? Um, which I think will help me get to the next level too. So that's what I'm trying to get myself into right now, to see if I can bridge that gap right
Speaker 1
[00.33.37]
there. Okay,
Speaker 2
[00.33.39]
I'll. I'll give you this. Uh, before we move on, I, I'll say this two things. Number one, if I were you, I would make a plan to try to get exposure outside of my
Speaker 1
[00.33.51]
building. And what I mean by that is, I'm not saying it's going to be easy. Um, but I would be very intentional with trying to make those connections. I will tell you this, um,
Speaker 2
[00.34.06]
most of the opportunities, even within Amazon I have gotten has come from people that I have never met in other places.
Speaker 1
[00.34.13]
Um, I was a
Speaker 2
[00.34.15]
part of essence of excellence. That's delivery station. I'm middle mile. I met someone through there. They got me involved with leaders. Said someone there got me, got me involved with the site, uh, beta1 that I had an opportunity to to go to. It's a bottom performance site, but all of what I'm saying is most of my connections and most of the opportunities came from outside. And here's the thing. There's you. I don't even want you to think like there's more that you have to do. You've done enough. It may just be how you are framing the things that you've done. Sometimes leaders make the mistake
Speaker 1
[00.34.51]
of. They they
Speaker 2
[00.34.52]
think the results that they've done is small and they just haven't gotten a broader perspective to understand. Like if you're on ship dock man, you affect the whole you're you're affecting the whole ship. If stuff don't go out on time. So guess what? Building the building performance is your performance. It's just how you frame it. And if you frame it right with the right person,
Speaker 1
[00.35.12]
you will get the the opportunities. Because here's the thing. You have to be around people that match your values. If you're around and I don't know your leader, I'm not speaking on it. I'm just going by the things you said. But if you're around someone that does not want someone to disagree because there are leaders that don't want that, they they do not want you to disagree with them if they're around other people. I, I like it, I don't mind, I actually look for people that disagree. I don't want to make the wrong decision. I'm after this, the right decision. But some leaders are not. So it's in a sense the you reaching out, you finding people that match your values. You will find that the interviews that come to you, you'll get tapped. They'll say, hey man, we we I love what you're doing, man. I saw a read your baseball card. We had a really great conversation. Like, I need someone like that on my team. Hey,
Speaker 2
[00.36.06]
what what do I need to do to, like, for us to work? Work this out or. Another thing that happened is you'll get a project and it only be one project. But that project will create enough visibility for you that you make a connection through delivering results within that project. But I would focus like 5 or 5 people a week.
Speaker 1
[00.36.29]
Look for
Speaker 2
[00.36.30]
people to reach out to slack, people that are, you know, in the next role or even the role above that and ask for like, hey, I'm hey, I see that you be on Amazon, blah, blah, blah, this this long. I would love to hear what are some things that you found that are
Speaker 1
[00.36.48]
successful. And, you know, after this call, I have a 20 minute meeting framework that I can give you that it works. Um, and we can definitely connect and dive into this a little bit deeper, especially with you and Amazon. Man, I love to, uh, love to
Speaker 2
[00.37.03]
help and see what I can do to to help sponsor you in some things, if I can.
Speaker 5
[00.37.08]
Hey, I really do appreciate it. That's great information also. Appreciate
Speaker 1
[00.37.12]
that. No problem. I don't know
Speaker 2
[00.37.27]
if anybody else had anything. Um. If not, we'll keep out what somebody else said.
Speaker 1
[00.37.31]
Anything. Is that. Yeah.
Speaker 2
[00.37.34]
Hi. I'm Cassandra. Um, I thought I said hi, but, um, so my question is. So,
Speaker 1
[00.37.42]
um, my
Speaker 2
[00.37.43]
strengths are people. Um, I have a very, like. That is my forte. That's what I do. Um, I
Speaker 1
[00.37.53]
am
Speaker 2
[00.37.53]
good at performance. I've actually been on the dock for five and a half years, so. Yay! Dock. Oh. It is, um, it is realizing and trying to get people to like Amazon. And I'm trying to get people to understand that without the dock working, nothing else works is frustrating. Um, policy 2.0 is my friend. Um,
Speaker 1
[00.38.15]
thankfully,
Speaker 2
[00.38.16]
I actually just got changed. But my question is, um, sometimes I watch. I don't want to bring up any other people, but sometimes I watch, uh, Simon Sinek. And he had the thing that really, really resonated for me was who? Well, you're middle managers. Like you're not gonna like. I want to deliver my deliverables. I want to make sure that my shift runs above OP. I want to do all of that. But that's honestly not my concern. I've had 18 years of retail. That was my biggest thing. I had a bunch of store manager and it's the people for me. I don't even know if I want to be on all six just because of.
Speaker 1
[00.38.57]
I don't
Speaker 2
[00.38.58]
know that the people numbers, um, when I'm there, you know, I also have, uh, imposter syndrome. I don't think I'm great, but sometimes. But, um, it's just, uh, how do you. You had a lot of things that had to do with numbers and your values. Um, and then you do work for Amazon. How would I be able
Speaker 1
[00.39.20]
to make
Speaker 2
[00.39.22]
a baseball card for what I've done with
Speaker 1
[00.39.24]
people? Yep.
Speaker 2
[00.39.27]
So I actually people is my favorite part. Like, I love developing, um, and my boss knows that, uh, I will leave a job if I can't develop people. I'll just be honest
Speaker 5
[00.39.36]
with you. Um, so I
Speaker 2
[00.39.37]
have runway at my site. So
Speaker 1
[00.39.40]
what? So
Speaker 2
[00.39.41]
it's actually a good problem to have, right? Big on developing people. This is where you can get network wide
Speaker 1
[00.39.48]
impact. Um, the leadership, um, the people that are in the lead or the gold space.
Speaker 2
[00.39.54]
They are literally
Speaker 1
[00.39.56]
begging
Speaker 2
[00.39.57]
operation managers to have the mindset that you have. They would love to come in and do trainings. They would love to have something that they could essentially partner with. Um, and if you are a people leader, yes, you have to hit the numbers. It's a part of the job. Um, but that's not where I get my fulfillment from. No.
Speaker 1
[00.40.16]
So you can you really can reach out to some of those leadership coaches, and you can literally work on building out, uh, a leadership development program, like we're in the process of doing that now. Um, I've actually had her name is, uh, Doctor Jackie. She came in and did a situational leadership training, um, with our team because I am big on the numbers, but I am more, uh, big on mental models, so I'm not teaching just people how to do their job. I'm more so trying to teach people how to think, um, how to look at things and how to build systems. I'm really big on that. Um, because if the
Speaker 2
[00.40.58]
business takes care of itself, then for me it's like, oh, I get to do the fun stuff. Now I get to go do the people stuff, need the operational run so I can go do the fun stuff. People stuff. Um, but you can use your connection scores. Um, anything that is, uh, DNI, you can tie that to it. Um, if you get DNI.
Speaker 1
[00.41.17]
What is it? Well, it's not called. It's not called DNI anymore. What do we call it at Amazon? Um, employee led resource group.
Speaker 2
[00.41.25]
That's what we call it. Yeah. My connection scores when people go go up. Yeah. So we're good. Yeah. So if if you're actively developing your team and let's say you go to your connection scores, you can say that as a result of you being intentional with your development. Right. I use the growth model in my thrive so
Speaker 1
[00.41.44]
I can tie back. Hey, the reason this person got promoted was because of this mechanism of growth and coaching framework. Able to understand goals, able to build trust, able to show the win win. And then I just tie that into the numbers because I've been I'm also I've changed teams three times. Um, every three months I've changed teams new management team non new non new people. But the results have stayed consistent. And that's how you tie tie in uh, the people because you and I both know Cassandra. If you have a toxic leader, it doesn't matter. They'll get the numbers. Maybe for a short term, I will say that they can push and get numbers for a short term. But
Speaker 2
[00.42.25]
here's the thing. People going to be on leave. People this connection scores are going to be low. EEI is going to go up. And guess what? If you're the person that's getting the numbers and you're doing it through people, that's your story. That's your authentic story. Like, hey, what you get when you get to Sandra is you get a people leader that is going to develop
Speaker 1
[00.42.48]
people. And
Speaker 2
[00.42.49]
as a result of that, the results of the performance you get and then you give them your ship dock numbers and all the time and all the things that you've done, but you're tying it into how you have led people, how you have developed people. Um, but that's that's how I would do it, because everything I do goes back to back to leadership development. Hire and develop the best. That's going to be my thing. Um, and I just show that on the in the baseball court card and tied into a result.
Speaker 1
[00.43.20]
That's fantastic. Thank you. I appreciate all right. I love that dude. All right, Carlos, my friend, thanks for all the awesome input. I mean, I, I hope everybody will check out the podcast that you and I did. If you guys get a chance, go on Apple Spotify. Check it out. Uh, more good stuff from Carlos on there and reach out to him on LinkedIn. Right. So he's awesome. So with that, I'm going to bring, uh, Mr. Devin Galloway, uh, on the stage now. He is he's rocking the Hawaiian shirt. So that's how you know you can take him seriously. You know, it takes a confident person to rock Hawaiian shirt like this, so I'm all about it. So Devin, also a former guest on the on the podcast. He is somebody that I reached out to on LinkedIn because I followed all of his amazing articles. He's a contributor on The Warehouse Underground, so he's already had 5 or 6 articles that he has published on there that I put on there. So you should check those out in the In the Learning Lab, but very insightful, knowledgeable, been doing this a long time and has a lot of great stuff to offer. So with that, Devin, take it away my friend. Thank you Ben. Uh, so I want to talk about something kind of similar to to what Carlos covered, but focus in on one one part and a little more depth and.
Speaker 4
[00.44.38]
You know, I started.
Speaker 1
[00.44.40]
You know, like, it sounds like a couple of you did as a kind of an entry level employee. I was not really sure this is what I wanted to do. Was just a job I took to fill a few months until I found, you know, a so-called real job and, uh, have ended up working in this industry for almost 15 years now.
Speaker 4
[00.44.58]
But I came in at, you know, entry level. And after a couple of years, you know, I promoted up and was a manager and doing some things. And,
Speaker 1
[00.45.07]
um, time came from my first performance review, and I knew I'd done good work all year. And I went in, I was confident I had done good work and it was going to pay off. And my manager asked me a couple of questions about some of the data and how could I back up and quantify that. I'd done good work and I had nothing. I wasn't prepared, I had, you know, I brought nothing. I came up with, uh,
Speaker 4
[00.45.31]
you know what I did, right? That's basically how that conversation went. And I walked out of that with, uh, keep up the good work, you know, and somebody else that I worked with, that I know I did better work than them. They went in and they had their performance review and they got, you know, like a $20,000 raise in a promotion. And I knew I was better than them. And the difference, this is what Carlos talked about. The difference is that they were able to express it and articulate it and bring the receipts. That's the word, Carlos. The term Carlos used is to bring the receipts and prove and show the evidence of their
Speaker 1
[00.46.04]
work.
Speaker 4
[00.46.06]
And that's what I want to talk about a little bit here.
Speaker 1
[00.46.09]
That's,
Speaker 4
[00.46.11]
you know, it's not enough to do good work. People have to know that you did the good work, or else they might as well not have happened.
Speaker 1
[00.46.19]
And
Speaker 4
[00.46.19]
so I want to take just a few minutes to kind of walk through a system that I've started using. I've been using it for 6 or 8 years now, been a while, and it's been incredibly helpful anytime I've had an interview or a another annual evaluation or performance review. This has saved me and gotten me a lot of good jobs the last, last few
Speaker 1
[00.46.40]
years.
Speaker 4
[00.46.42]
So there's three parts to this. And the first thing is that every day
Speaker 1
[00.46.48]
you write down your biggest accomplishment for that day. And this doesn't need to be in detail. We're just looking for something you know about. As long as a tweet, your biggest thing, the most important thing you did that day that you're most successful, your most and proud of. Write that down.
Speaker 4
[00.47.05]
Keep it short, but you want to capture what you did, why it matters, and what the impact was. Just those three things. Again, nothing long takes 30s two minutes.
Speaker 3
[00.47.20]
And I've been doing this. I have a document on my phone and my notes where every day I go in and record, and I can see back for the last four years the number one thing I did that day.
Speaker 4
[00.47.32]
The second part of this system is every month I sit down, I block out an hour of time, and I sit down and I look at over the last month, everything that I've accomplished, and I just look at those, you know, those 20, 25 tweet length messages. And I'm looking for anything that is recurring or any kind of patterns where I have multiple days where my top accomplishment was about the same project, or
Speaker 1
[00.48.03]
I had different skills, communication or my networking or something that saved some kind of project where it may have been different projects every time, but it was the same skill every time. And I'm looking for any kind of patterns where something has repeatedly, again and again, been one of my
Speaker 4
[00.48.21]
top daily wins. And then once I have that, the third thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to
Speaker 1
[00.48.30]
pull out just my top 2 or 3. So I'm writing one thing a day, maybe two on a good day, but usually it's one at the end of the month. I have 20, 25 things, and I'm going to pick two of those. Out of all 25, I'm going to take two things
Speaker 4
[00.48.47]
that I think were my most important, most significant for that whole time frame.
Speaker 1
[00.48.52]
And I'm going to write those out in excruciating detail. That sounds like a lot. Or most everybody on this is from Amazon. You'll be familiar with, um, like star, I use a little bit different format, but it's the same kind of thing where you want to be very specific with what you did, why it mattered, and go into all the details. Who did you talk to? What options did you explore? Why did you pick the one you did? Just like you would go through in a star story for for an interview.
Speaker 4
[00.49.23]
So I take my top accomplishments for that whole month. I pick two and I write them out in full detail. And what that gives you is if you do this every month, you end up, like I said, with the month you get those 2025 daily winds out of the end of the month, you end up with two. Maybe if you have a really great month, maybe three things, but they're documented in detail and at the end of the year you can look back and you've got 25 full length detailed stories so that when your performance review comes up, um, O'Brien was talking about baseball cards. When your baseball card, when you go for an interview, whatever it is, you have the stories already ready and you're not scrambling like, oh, I've got an interview in three days, I need to prepare. You've already got it. And admittedly, not all 25 of your stories are going to be equal. Some are going to be better than others. But the point is, at the end of this, you'll have a portfolio. And instead of trying to come up with something in the last three days off the top of your mind, you have 25 things you can pick through and find the ones that are most relevant and most applicable for your performance review or your interview or whatever. And if you can show up like. And I loved Carlos's phrase for this if you show up with the receipts and you can say, this is what I did. Here is a whole breakdown. Here's all the data, here's the performance metrics, here's my people scores, whatever it is. If you document these as you go, you can remember the details. And you're not scrambling at the last minute like, I've got a performance review. It's my annual evaluation. My raise depends on this. What did I do? I don't remember. But you have, like I said, that portfolio. You can just flip through and pick out your strongest pieces and submit those. And. The, you know, the the system is it's very simple.
Speaker 1
[00.51.29]
But people get.
Speaker 4
[00.51.31]
People confuse sometimes simplicity for easy to
Speaker 1
[00.51.34]
do.
Speaker 4
[00.51.36]
And it's very important. This doesn't work unless you can do it every day. And it's not complex. But if you do it for a couple of weeks and then you have a busy night and you want to go home because you're tired, suddenly you stop doing it. It's simple, but not easy. And as long as you can do this, it's done wonders for me. Like I said, I can go back for four and a half years and I can see everything I've done on any day that I ever worked. I've got dozens, hundreds, maybe of quality stories that I can pull out in an interview. And once you build that portfolio and you have those receipts, you can show somebody, you can send it, you know, put it on your LinkedIn, put it on your resume, send it to somebody in slack, say, hey, I heard you're looking for to hire. Here's what I've done in the past that might be relevant. Maybe we can talk, you know, and whatever it is, you start building that portfolio and that history that shows that you've done the good work. So, um, we got a couple minutes here for questions.
Speaker 2
[00.52.43]
Hey, Devin, have you ever heard of any. And I've seen people that have used this in the past, and I don't know if it is something that they custom made or whatever, but instead of it being a notepad, just an empty notepad or a piece of paper, they actually had some sort of customizable thing where it was all laid out like the lines on the paper were lined out. So almost like a daily management board is where you have your safety tip here, your process improvement here, those types of things. So that made it even easier for them to do it because they were just filling it in. And literally I saw someone hand in just 30 of those to their ops manager once, and I thought the ops manager was going to reject it. Like, what the hell is this? Just
Speaker 3
[00.53.27]
a stack of papers. But they did not because they're like, oh, right, right away. They they've thumbed through there and they're like, safety right here. The the same line on everyone. Got it, got it, got it. Productivity right here. Quality right here. And that person was the one that ended up getting promoted, even though they weren't necessarily a better manager. I don't think it's because they had the system. They had the receipts, they had a custom made form that
Speaker 5
[00.53.54]
they did. And I think that helped them do it along the way versus just always have an agenda. It's kind of like if people have a hard time, like working out, they want to work out in the morning. Well, put your shoes and your socks and your workout shorts right next to your bed in the morning. And then as soon as you get up, you're like, oh, I'm already in them right there, right here. Versus, oh, I gotta go to my closet. Hell no. I'm not going in there. I'm just going to sleep in. So I think if you already make something ahead of time, you're spring loaded to find the things that you can have the feeling there. So I don't know if that floats around in Amazon, but if not, I would encourage people to just get creative and make your own business. That was very successful. Yeah,
Speaker 4
[00.54.32]
I've never seen that, but it's a great idea. Make it as easy as possible to follow
Speaker 1
[00.54.37]
this.
Speaker 3
[00.54.39]
Yeah. I don't wear them. I don't go that far extender. I don't wear my workout clothes to bed. But I might, I might, I might consider that. So that's a
Speaker 1
[00.54.48]
good one. But I think Carlos and I both kind of the, the point that we want to make is you have to be intentional about your career. If you just think you can show up and be there on time and every day and do the work and you're going to get noticed, it doesn't work that way.
Speaker 4
[00.55.05]
We can debate whether that's fair or not, but the reality is you've got to be able to actively take charge and bring those receipts.
Speaker 1
[00.55.14]
Yeah,
Speaker 3
[00.55.15]
and people say that all the time, but it really is true. I mean, like I said in the text or in the chat, I sucked at this for a long time. So that's why I'm sympathetic to it. I'm a little bit sensitive to it because
Speaker 1
[00.55.27]
I felt I
Speaker 3
[00.55.28]
felt angry back then. Right? Like I felt like someone was intentionally overlooking me and they weren't a good leader and all those type of things and just this sort of like anger and resentment starts to bubble up. But then once that happens, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because then you're sort of filled with that resentment, you know, and then you kind of come off negative and then you don't get promoted anyway. Right? So you gotta you gotta get rid of that resentment and that feeling that the people owe you or they're overlooking you or whatever and say, no, I got to figure out how to put this on a platter for them. I'm going to do the things that I know other people are doing and see how that works out for me. And is this selling out? You know, I don't really think it's selling out. I think it's just being an advocate for yourself, because the truth is, no one else will be. No matter what they tell you. At companies that I've been at, lots of different companies, people are our greatest asset. You know, we've all heard it. I've said
Speaker 1
[00.56.24]
it at
Speaker 3
[00.56.25]
the end of the day, and Carlos said this, when you get behind closed doors and you get in those rooms, there's a certain way that it happens and there's a certain way that it's not. And I'm not telling that that's complete fantasy, but there is a certain level of, you really do have to look out for yourself and find the system to kind of help you do that the easiest way, because, I mean, you still got to run your shift and everything, right? You still have to be out there on the floor. You can't just be sitting there on the side documenting all your wins for eight hours and then go home. I mean, that's not going to be
Speaker 4
[00.56.53]
right. And I think, you know, I, I shared this at the beginning like, I knew I was better than that other manager. And she got the promotion and I didn't because she knew how to talk to people and prove demonstrate her value. And so recording these things is just just the first step. And we don't have time to get into, you know. But like Carlos said, you've got to be able to connect and give those receipts to the right
Speaker 1
[00.57.16]
person. Yep. We just don't have enough time to get into all that tonight.
Speaker 3
[00.57.22]
100% agree, man.
Speaker 1
[00.57.24]
Good stuff.
Speaker 3
[00.57.29]
Anything else? Devin, any more questions for Devin for I jump here and say a couple things. Cool. All right man thanks, Devin. Dude, I appreciate it. Like I said, go check out the learning lab on the site. There's articles from Devin that are posted in there and as always on his own website that he runs in his book that he has published. Please go check those out as well. You can find his stuff there. And, uh, I've learned a lot from him, and I know he's providing a lot of value for people out there, so that's why I feature him whenever I can on the at the warehouse underground, because he is doing good stuff for everybody out there. So I appreciate
Speaker 1
[00.58.05]
it. All right. Cool. Uh, so
Speaker 3
[00.58.10]
a couple things from me, um,
Speaker 1
[00.58.13]
what I'm going to talk about for the group, I was I started out my career as an Amazon area manager. So I was in fulfillment center in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Big. And I got pulled out of there and actually went to become a director of distribution at a family owned company. And so when I first went there to become to become that, I thought,
Speaker 3
[00.58.37]
this is going to be cake, right? Like I worked at Amazon, I worked under the pressure. This is a family run company, no big deal. But I quickly found out.
Speaker 1
[00.58.46]
That executing in a system that is already built is much different than building a system. When the guardrails around you are gone. Right. And the analogy that somebody gave me is they're like, well, if you were at the University of Alabama and you were a trainer on the football team, it doesn't really mean that you can take credit for the national championships that Alabama won. Nick Saban built those right. And so one of the things I realized and now I try to I try to relate to young managers coming up at Amazon or any type of big fulfillment center is you really need to think about not only just executing, because what happens is all the
Speaker 2
[00.59.31]
all the numbers and the percentages, and I improve this 10% and that 15%, and we reduce that. Those numbers matter inside the four walls of your facility,
Speaker 3
[00.59.43]
but outside of it in the big distribution center industry or the big warehouse industry. Those numbers aren't going to mean anything to the hiring managers of those sites, should you choose to go that route one day in your career. They don't know that everybody is putting numbers in front of them, right? And sometimes the knock on people that have been managers inside of a big time FC is, well, when they come to our company, even though this may be more of a lucrative opportunity for us, and there's plenty of lucrative opportunities out there in private equity companies and family owned companies. But we're nervous that we don't have the same capabilities that an Amazon has. So this person was successful there, but would they be successful here where they don't have all the same resources? So what you want to do is you want to start thinking about how can I build strategies versus how can I just execute and hit numbers. And once you start thinking in that mindset of how do I build? How do I build systems, how do I build systems for people, for myself that make things better without just my personal ability to execute? Now you've moved up that ladder a little bit into into the thing. And so this is why the Warehouse underground is a good resource for people. As the community builds and all these things, you get access
Speaker 1
[01.01.07]
to people
Speaker 3
[01.01.09]
and knowledge and insights that you really just wouldn't have inside the four walls of your facility because they're happy to just have you execute in there inside that arena. And so please do that. So I'm going to show everybody one thing. And I've used this framework we're talking about building. When I went for interviews or director interviews or senior ops interviews I would always show this. And it did very well in interviews. And I've always tried to execute this way. So let me, let me, let me share my screen with you guys briefly and show you what I'm talking
Speaker 1
[01.01.42]
about. And
Speaker 3
[01.01.46]
I will spotlight myself. Right? So this is something that I develop on my own that I always try to go in and implement. And it's the warehousing pyramid of
Speaker 1
[01.01.56]
success. So
Speaker 3
[01.01.58]
instead of saying in an interview how well I was able
Speaker 1
[01.02.01]
to execute or number, I say, here is my philosophy, Mr.. Interviewer or miss. Interviewer. So everything that is on this pyramid, the things on the bottom are the foundation. Right? So the foundation of what we do. Before I ever start building anything at your organization, number one, I need to be very data informed with my decisions. Now in the Amazon world, it's data driven, right? Data driven is the mantra that everybody likes to hear. Everybody says that. But there's been a little bit of a changing of the guard where it's like, well, we don't want people to just
Speaker 3
[01.02.41]
be so driven by the data that that's the only thing they can think about. We want them to use
Speaker 1
[01.02.47]
the data to
Speaker 3
[01.02.48]
make informed decisions. So replace data driven with data informed. And that's going to hit a little bit better with a smaller type company. That's not a big type FC. And then transparency.
Speaker 1
[01.03.01]
So you work in a Amazon world or a big fulfillment center world. And there's just data everywhere metrics. But it looks like the matrix right. You open it up and it just ones zeros everywhere. But normal companies don't have that. So there's a lot more I don't want to call it mistrust or distrust, but as a leader, when you come in, you need to set the tone upfront that we're going to be very transparent in everything we do. We don't manipulate metrics, we don't hide bad news. We don't do anything like that because people will begin to assume that maybe, maybe you're tempted to do that, or maybe you do that.
Speaker 3
[01.03.35]
Block in the Middle Foundation. Why are my employees coming to work? And I think Cassandra brought this up earlier, where you have to be a people, a people leader, right? Warehousing world, and you have hourly employees. They don't really care about the vision of the company and where the company is going and all these things that the CEO wants them to care about. We know that. But you as the leader, need to give them a reason that is on their level, right? It is in a language that they understand that matters to them, so that then you can build and engage labor force. Right? It's not so that you can get them to recite the vision of the company and the mission of the company. It's that, selfishly, I want to build an engaged team. In order to do that, I need to answer for them why they're coming to work and why it matters. Right. And that is very important. And that's different. How you do that is different according to your team, the culture of the team, what matters to them, what doesn't, what works at one company might not work at another. So as a leader there, you need to change how you do according to how they are, because that's your goal is to build and engage labor force wives. That's very easy to manage, right. And you can grow a lot of people outside of that. And the third one is very important, and that is are we moving the long term needle. And this is a trap that a lot of amazonians fall for because it's so
Speaker 1
[01.05.01]
execution focused all the time. We come in, we run the shift, we have to hit the number we have to execute, we have to execute in every day is just execute, execute, execute. But at different companies, you want to be doing things on the side that are moving the long term needle, whether that's in investments or that's learning about a new technology or a new type of process for picking or all these things, you want to have your ear out there about what's going on in the network. You know, listen to podcasts and learn because you as the leader, eventually
Speaker 3
[01.05.34]
someone's going to come to you and go,
Speaker 1
[01.05.37]
hey, you know, I know that you came to work and we fit the number and everything, but what have you done to build sort of long term success here? And so that's something that you need to think about right. So all those things need to be laid in the foundation. And you say, hey sir, ma'am, this is my strategy. These are the things I'm going to focus on first. And so this is where a lot of my time is going to be spent. In the beginning when I come to work at your at your company because this is the foundation. Then once you get above that to the level that you can see, different people have different opinions on this. But in my mind, inventory control, inventory accuracy is the foundation of running operation now. At
Speaker 3
[01.06.16]
a big time. Fulfillment centers. You don't always have to worry about that because the system is so strong, right? The WMS or the system or the structure is so strong that it sort of take care takes care of itself. But once you get out of that into, you know, a warehouse or that type of thing, inventory control programs tend to be very lacking because people want to focus on productivity. They want to focus on shifting the shifting the orders and all these things. However you take it from me, there are two things that will quickly get you fired from any leadership role within a company. One
Speaker 1
[01.06.50]
is if safety is an absolute mess, right? Like, we all know that if you have a horrible safety culture, you will be gone quickly. The other is if you write off tons of inventory and you cannot control the inventory in the facility, that is going to get the CEO's attention very fast, way faster than if you were over on your labor budget as an example, right? You lose control of inventory and write off tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars of inventory. You will not be in there very long. So that is why that is on the bottom of the pyramid. And plus, if you don't have that in control, then you can never hold people accountable. Right. Hey, you didn't hit your pick rate or you didn't hit your auto raid. You didn't hit your pick. And they're like, well, you know, the inventory is always off. It's always wrong. So how can you hold me accountable for not picking when I can never find anything? Right? So, you know, if you remove that excuse upfront and you have that foundation, everything can work up from there. And then as the leader, software, system, infrastructure, equipment, all things that you just sort of have when you work out at Amazon FC is becomes very important. And that's the knowledge that I was missing. I did not have when I went from Amazon World to Director World at a company. I was just like, I don't know anything about this. I don't know how WMS programmers work. I don't know about implementation of automation conveyor belt. It's like any of these things, and there's a whole big world out there of warehousing that I encourage you to reach out and network with other people to learn how all of that works, because that's a huge part of what you do. In the middle is
Speaker 3
[01.08.29]
the integration between the
Speaker 1
[01.08.31]
sales. The
Speaker 3
[01.08.33]
ops and the buyer's right. So at big companies, there's buyers, and they're the ones that buy all the inventory that comes into the warehouse. And then the sales team is the one that obviously sells it. Right. But you as the ops in the middle, you're almost like the coffee table. And so the team of your employees is just have the capability to pick and pack and receive and ship and all those type of things.
Speaker 1
[01.08.59]
But buyers can wreck an operation if they completely blow how much they order they over buy. Now your facility is full. There's no place to stow anything in there. People can't work. Right. So you as the leader in the middle of that, your employees look to you to say, hey, you know, you need to be influencing the buyers and you need to be influencing sales in the middle. Here's the thing. All these
Speaker 3
[01.09.25]
things that I just
Speaker 1
[01.09.26]
talked about, if
Speaker 3
[01.09.28]
you want to move up and be a senior ops director type level one day, all these are things that you need to be comfortable with and focus on before you ever even get to operational execution and leadership effectiveness. Right. And that's the one that people always want to jump on first. Well, you know, we miss this order because the employees were not working fast enough or the managers didn't divvy up the labor good enough. And so we got to make some moves with the manager or do some things like that. Everybody always wants to jump right there. But if all the things below it. Are taken care of ahead of time. It makes it way easier to then jump on the the manager or the floor leads or the process assistance or whatever, but if everything under that is complete shambles, frickin good luck to them. You know what I'm saying? Like good luck hitting the numbers and the metrics and all this going to happen is they're just going to be pissed off at you. They're not going to respect you. They're going to think that you don't understand them. And hammering them over the head more and more and more is not going to produce good results. And eventually someone's going to say, hey, you know, you're a bad director or you're a bad senior ops, right? So all those are the things that you want to hit before. And then on the very
Speaker 1
[01.10.45]
top, it's like the top of the food pyramid. Remember that thing when we were kids, we used to be a food pyramid in the very top. You have like a little bit of candy or a little
Speaker 3
[01.10.55]
bit of sugar sprinkled on the top is okay, lean in fives.
Speaker 1
[01.10.59]
All right. But the thing is, sometimes this gets reversed. You ever have like a facility walkthrough or the general manager comes out there or there's like a visitor or something? It's all about cleanliness, right? Like five s over here and tape over here and do that. And that gets the major focus. Hey, we want your facility to be tour ready. It matters.
Speaker 3
[01.11.20]
Right? It matters. But that is not what is going to lead you to the Promised Land. If you have the cleanest, you know, best five EST facility and everything else under your.
Speaker 1
[01.11.32]
You know,
Speaker 3
[01.11.33]
you may be able to fool some people for a while because when they come in and everything looks good and, you know, it sounds good and everything's happy, but eventually it's going to crumble. Right. So this is the type of thing, in order that you want to think about as you progress and move up one day of your structure and your strategy and where your time will be as, as a leader. And then lastly, every single brick
Speaker 1
[01.11.58]
that goes to build in this entire thing is what has safety in mind, because safety and inventory control is the two things that will cause you to lose your job. So you don't want to ever lose sleep on those those want to be on lockdown, right? And so I think if people try to incorporate some type of strategy like this now when you go into an interview and you're competing against five other people, that's like, well, you know, I boosted my TP by 13% and guy number two comes in. He's like, well, I boosted mine by 16%. And then a girl comes in and says, I, you know, the hiring manager was like blah blah blah blah blah. Like. Wah wah wah wah. All the same. Right? They don't know if that's good or bad, but you come in and you start throwing this structure and strategy and pyramid in front of them. Ah. Now it looks like somebody that can potentially lead our operation. And we can really get behind this. There's some meat behind it. I always try to give this vice a young amazonians because. Because they need it. Right? Like they learn to exist inside the system that is there. And then sometimes they can struggle when they don't have to. They don't have to struggle when they leave there, but they're not always prepared. But, you know, if you want to stay where you are and climb the ranks inside your current site, that that's fine too, right? That's fine too. But I always say it's a very lucrative operation out there in the big distribution world. And I think that and Carlos mentioned it earlier to O'Brien, it's okay to network with other people that work at other sites that you should do, that you should be always keeping your finger on the pulse of what's going on out there and talking with people and all those things and learning
Speaker 3
[01.13.37]
because one, you never know when you might need to go. Like something bad may happen, or you never know when you might want to go. Something good might happen. You want to get pulled out. So never have all your eggs in that one basket. And I've learned that lesson the hard way. Well,
Speaker 1
[01.13.53]
yeah. So, uh, I think that'll about wrap it up for tonight. Thank you again so much for, you know, tuning in tonight and being a part of it. I really appreciate it and help spread the word and thank you. And we really do. I love it I know Carlos does and Devin does too. Like, we really love like giving back and helping people. So
Speaker 3
[01.14.14]
you feel free to write us, ping me, message me whenever you want and I'll give you my best advice or best thing on anything. And I know, I know the other people too, so I
Speaker 1
[01.14.24]
appreciate it. See ya. See you next time.

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