Billy Malady Podcast
Summary
Billy Malady we talk about warehouses supply chain and all that stuff. Host by Ben he is from warehouse underground podcast and he has another counterpart. Billy shares his journey through warehousing (COO), VP of operations, wrote a book, and is now about to give back to the community. He takes his job first selling Cokes then waiter, then in the police force then full time supervisor and is now still in warehousing with a unique way of deescalation. Billy says there is When it comes to turning around a struggling operation, there are a few key steps to follow. The first step is to do a thorough walk through and diagnose the issues within the operation. This may involve talking to employees to find where the gaps are and what can be improved. The next step is to stabilize the operation and systemize processes. This includes developing standard operating procedures and implementing key performance indicators. Then, teams can start working on scaling and utilizing technology. It's important to remember that the: There is a new book that s out called nobody told me it would be like this, 100 stories from the front line of ops and customer service. It was written by someone who has over 30 years of experience in various industries such as law enforcement, retail, restaurants, and distribution. The book is a field guide on how to handle various situations in these industries, as well as a manual on how to manage and lead people. The author emphasizes the importance of being able to incorporate: I think the supply chain industry is a great career choice for young people. It offers a lot of opportunities for growth, and it's not going away anytime soon. There are also many different roles within the industry, so people can find something that interests them. It's open for people with diverse backgrounds and skills, not just those with specialized degrees. I've seen many people start at the bottom and work their way up to high-paying positions. People would be amazed if they walked into a modern Billy Malady, VP of operations at Newark element14, shares his experience in the e-commerce industry, discusses the different trends and challenges that the industry is facing today, and talks about the importance of investing in technology and employee training for a successful supply chain management. He also shares his thoughts on Amazon's impact on the industry and how it has influenced customer expectations.
Transcription
Ben Hopkins
[00.00.07]
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to another episode at the Warehouse Underground podcast, Real Talk or Warehouse DC and FC professionals of all levels around the globe. I'm Ben, the host of the show, and joining me on the show today is Billy Malady. Now he's someone that I follow on LinkedIn. He's putting out a lot of great content about warehousing, operations, supply chain, and he's been in the industry for a long time and done a lot of different things from chief operating officer, VP of operations. He's written a new book, which we will talk about a little bit in the show. And all in all, fantastic resource who is looking to give back to the community now. And this podcast episode should be a great chance for him to do that. So with that, I will bring him on the stage right now. Billy, sir, thank you very much for joining the Warehouse Underground podcast. How are you today? Man?
Billy Malady
[00.01.04]
I'm great. Very excited to be here. I've been following the show for a while and it's exciting to be home.
Ben Hopkins
[00.01.09]
Yeah. Always good to have listeners and followers on the show appear on the show. I really do appreciate that. And we connected on LinkedIn and I follow you on LinkedIn. So like I do with a lot of guests. It's just neat. It's really neat when you finally get to meet somebody and chat with somebody face to face in person. So I appreciate you doing the podcast. Really neat.
Billy Malady
[00.01.31]
Really cool. Excited to be
Ben Hopkins
[00.01.32]
here. Yeah, you got it, man. So before we get too deep into ops and what you do and what you've done and all that, let's learn a little bit more about you. Because I know that you've had a long career in distribution, but that's not the only thing that you've done. I know that you did some things other different than that before you did that. So you just tell the audience a little bit about your journey, your background, and what led you to where you are
Billy Malady
[00.01.58]
today. Okay, good. It's, you know, I, I think I took a very weird road, uh, to get to where I am, to get to where I'm at. But I think it's made me a better operator and a better leader. So, uh, I've been in some version of customer service, uh, since I was 13 years old. Uh, I started out, my dad got me a job at the
Ben Hopkins
[00.02.17]
local venue,
Billy Malady
[00.02.19]
uh, at 13, selling Cokes. We had the little red white striped jackets in the little tray, and we walked around and, you know, at the circus into concerts and Monday night wrestling codes. Uh, so I did that. That's my first job. I moved into a restaurant, a local grocery store where you could work if you were under 16. That times have changed. You know, it's a little dark these days, I guess. Uh, but at 16, I got into retail, and I did that through, uh, high school and then, uh, retail. But after I graduated college, uh, my dad sent me down, and he's like, how much is a semester of college? And I don't remember the numbers. I'll make them up. It was 2000. Dad, how much is books? 800. Dad. He goes, all right, that's 2800 divided by how many weeks? Eight weeks. Okay, that's a lot of money per week. You need to make and save if you want to go to college the next semester. I've got one semester for you. The rest is on your own. Um, well, that's where warehousing came in. Uh, it.
Ben Hopkins
[00.03.15]
Yeah, yeah. So I got into warehousing. Uh, is a is a way is an ends to a means to get through college? Um, didn't plan to stay in warehousing. In fact, I, uh, I
Billy Malady
[00.03.25]
majored I started out majoring in criminal justice, um, because I always wanted to be a police officer. Uh, midway through that, I changed the business because it really didn't matter if you majored in criminal justice or not. Uh, graduated college, uh, kept the job part time in a warehouse. Well, I was a police officer for three years. Very cool. That really shaped how you see people, how you interact with people, because the lessons you learn as a police officer is like de-escalation. Right. You, you you learn very quickly that your demeanor changes the situation. And so I think that really helped shape, uh, how I was, uh, you know, how I operate with people. And, uh, after about three years, including a close call with, let's say, a very motivated drunk with a screwdriver. Um, I had an opportunity to go full time as a supervisor in the warehouse, and I had to make a career decision, and, uh, I figured, okay, the worst that happens in the warehouse is, you know, you lose a fingernail every once in a while versus getting zapped. And, uh, I really enjoyed the warehousing piece. I enjoyed the people I worked with. I enjoyed it so many. It's so much about goal setting. And I love goals, and I love to achieve goals. And, you know, in warehousing you have daily goals, you have weekly goals, you have monthly goals. And um, so that's what drew me, drew me to operations was the people that you work with and and the metrics and the winning. And, uh, yeah, I stayed in warehousing, you know, supervisor all the way up to head of operations. So it's been a great career and I encourage anyone to look at it. Yeah, it's always neat and I always enjoy when you meet people in the industry who have a background in something different. They've got experiences and lessons learned from something different because, uh, it brings a different flavor. Everybody brings a different flavor. And what they did, and it's great to have different set of eyes and a different viewpoint. And everybody develops that viewpoint and those eyes from what their experiences are, their background. So I think that's definitely a good thing for the industry to have sort of different viewpoints in there. And I, I really like I really like that, that that's cool that that you have that background and you've had a long, a long career, uh, now in warehousing and outside of the police force. So now let me ask you this question. And this is one of the things that you and I talked a little bit about before.
Ben Hopkins
[00.05.48]
Sometimes some people, and I think you're one of these people, tend to be the one that gets the call when things need to be fixed, whether it's the operation on the floor or warehousing or performance from the team or whatever. So you get the call when things need to be fixed. But why do you think that sometimes there's such a gap, whether it's real or perceived, between where the ops team is today, where they are operationally, and where the check rider or the where the executives want them to be, where they think they're should be. What do you think that that gap exists there. And you know what? What have your experience has been like as the person called to
Billy Malady
[00.06.32]
fix it? Yeah, I love that question. And I have made a career out of being redeployed every 90 days or so to go fix an operation. And I think that I think the gap exists because the dashboard is not the floor.
Ben Hopkins
[00.06.47]
Right. The executives are looking at a dashboard, but that's not what's happening on the floor. And executives tend to underestimate the intelligence of the frontline workers. I mean, they're they think sometimes they think perception that we're not coworkers are are dirty and dumb and all they want is a paycheck. But that's not true. Uh, you know, most of them, they care. They want to know what's going on. They want to know where the company is going. They want to know how they fit in, what their role is. But you can't always get that from a dashboard, right? And if you're treated like mechanical, it goes back to that old adage of, you know, you leak people and you manage processes, but when you start managing people, you get this systematic compliance, but you don't get creativity and you don't get, you know, above and beyond type stuff. And I've said, I've said in boardrooms of when I deploy to an operation, listening to them brag about their KPIs. Oh, we're, we're 98.2% accurate. And I'm thinking, well, I was just on the floor last night at 10:00 on second shift. And I can tell you. Right. You know, I can tell
Billy Malady
[00.07.54]
you right now that you are creeping little by little and by the end of the month that 98.2 is going to be 97.1, and in the next month it's going to be 96.5, because they're only looking at one piece of the puzzle and not the whole piece of the puzzle, because usually nothing breaks. You know, nothing. Ben breaks loudly. It's just a slow creep. You do have those. You do have those times where everything blows up, but that's rare. It's usually just a slow creep. And next thing you know, what you thought was good is no longer good. And I've got a good example of that. I remember an operation where there were plenty of numbers. Look great. But the floor was producing 70 pallets of restocks every single day. And. But if you looked at what was getting replant our 100% replant. Well, you're actually about 150% replant. Uh, and you're and you're putting stuff out. But the dashboard didn't tell them that. So, you know, we got to the root cause of that problem. We fixed it. And it was a very simple problem. The printers were reprinting, uh, repainting tickets after every jam, instead of instead of reprinting the one and replant the whole batch. And the guys just kept pulling and kept pulling, and it's just to let them do it. So, you know, the board thought everything was great. Or the board room and all the floor. It was a different reality. So to me, man, it's it's a it's a disconnect. It's yeah. Looking at metrics and not looking at people. Yeah. I think I think people are making a big mistake. And I know this from personal experience and I know you do too. There are okay, there are some turds every now and then in warehousing. Right. You find a couple of them. But guess what? They're they're in the C-suite too. Because I've met them. I've, I've I've interacted with them. I want people to know that. But I think people are making a big mistake if they make assumptions about people that are working in distribution, whether it's a distribution center, warehouse or whatever. Because I and I flew F-15s in my career before I got into warehousing, and I've met some of the sharpest, Smartest, most articulate, incredible people in this industry that you never would have known. You never would have known that or learned that unless you really took the time to talk to them and get to know them and that whole thing. So I think you're right on that. I think you're right on that. And and I also agree with you that it's rarely a big boom where everything goes bad. It's almost always like, you know, it's like if you start gaining weight, you don't really notice or you don't really perceive that you're gaining weight. You know, it's happening a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time. But you're getting you're getting unhealthy. You're by the day unhealthy or unhealthy or. But because it's so slow, you look at yourself in your mirror and you convince yourself, I'm still good. I'm still fit, right?
Ben Hopkins
[00.10.43]
I'm still I still got it. Until you, until you're not. Until you go to the doctor and you get the terrible news. And then that's the that's the cold water that gets thrown on you. And I think operations is probably that same way. I mean, would you agree with me? It's just like a slow burn. Uh, you don't really perceive until it until it until. Yeah,
Billy Malady
[00.11.05]
that was a great analogy because that's exactly how it happens. It's, you know, you degrade 2% one week and then a 1% the following week. Uh, next thing you know, you know, in three months, you're nowhere where you need to be. It's a different it's a different looking operation and you're trying to figure it out. And the best operators are the ones who see that gap early and close it.
Ben Hopkins
[00.11.25]
Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree with you on that. And it takes a trained eye. I mean it takes a trained eye. You can't you can't see these things from the C-suite, from the Eiffel Tower or from the ivory tower, because it takes a train guide and know what's happening underneath the surface, you know? Well, that you that you can't always see. You gotta know. You gotta know it's there to see it. And when I talk about, you know, the people when we're talking about closing these gaps, um, you don't do a tour because on a tour, when I go now, you know, you see what you see, what they want you to do, and you don't talk to the director because he's got a script, right? I, I look for the guy who's been there less than four months, and I ask him, hey, what was hard last night or what was hard yesterday? And they haven't been around long enough to know what they're supposed to say and not supposed to say. And
Billy Malady
[00.12.16]
I mean, and that's where you get the true story. What was hard, uh, what what can be better? And they'll tell you flat out, um, but you got to get to that level before they're trained to, because you have about a window of about a year with an employee when they're acclimated and they see they see the things the way everyone else sees things. So that's why when I'm trying to turn around an operation, I seek out the new guys.
Ben Hopkins
[00.12.43]
Yep, yep. A funny a funny side story here. So I was a brand new director of distribution. I had just become that. I just got into that role and one of the customers that we were, we were B2B, so we were B2B shipping to them. So we were shipping with our customer and their ops director, which is sort of my counterpart. He would never he would never contact me. He would never contact customer service at our company. He would always bypass them and just figure out how to get in touch with my dock clerk on the on the outbound ship dock. So this VP level person always wants to talk with my dock clerk. And it was sort of that same logic. He goes, I don't want to waste my time with you or your customer service. I know exactly you guys are just going to give me a bunch of baloney, a bunch of hot air. The dock clerk, who is your guy? And the warehouse in there? He's. He's going to tell me exactly what I need to know. It's not filtered. It's not. It hasn't been, uh. There's no script. It hasn't been. There's no talking points. It's a real thing. So that's why he would always call that guy, which I thought was
Billy Malady
[00.13.46]
funny. Yeah, yeah, I don't I don't know how to care for that.
Ben Hopkins
[00.13.50]
Well, I don't like it with the
Billy Malady
[00.13.52]
customer calling it, but, you know, you as a director, you know, that's where I'd say don't talk to your managers. That's when you go find the employees if you want to get to a problem. Yeah. Uh, metrics and dashboards will tell you where the problem is. It just won't tell you how to fix the problem. That's what. That's when you got to be on the floor.
Ben Hopkins
[00.14.10]
Yeah, I definitely didn't like it. I told him not to do that, but he just said, nah, I'm gonna do whatever I want. I'm gonna call him. I like, I like
Billy Malady
[00.14.15]
Carl. The reason why he did it, it was the same thing, right? Uh, they're they're unfiltered and they're honest.
Ben Hopkins
[00.14.22]
Yeah, that's what he wanted. And Carl was very raw. He was very unfiltered. So he he gave him the real thing no matter how much I coached him. So. Yeah. All right. So let me ask this question. Yeah. Anybody who's been in that position knows exactly what I'm talking about. They call your Doc Clark. You're you're worried about what he's going
Billy Malady
[00.14.39]
to say. He's going to say the real thing.
Ben Hopkins
[00.14.41]
So, uh. All right. Cool. So let me ask this. So you go into all these different operations that you're going in to fix. So what's your blueprint? What's your general blueprint for how you are going to turn the ship around? Once you go into a struggling operation, how do you handle it? Okay.
Billy Malady
[00.14.57]
Uh, well, I, you know, I, I tell people this, when I first came in, I said, you think your problems are unique. They're not. Everybody's got the exact same problems. Right? And it usually boils down to, uh, communication, clarity and accountability. And, you know, you those are buzzwords. You hear them all the time. But that's buzzwords for a reason, right? That's the thing. So I tend to go in and, uh, whatever my time frame is, if I have months or if I have weeks, uh, my first step is always just step back, do that walk, don't do the tour. Listen and diagnose. Right. I want to find out what's going on. I asked employees questions. Like. Like I said, what was hard? Um. Tell me what you think we can do better. I just listen, and I diagnose, and I find those gaps. Uh, the second phase is you stabilize and then you systemize, and that's where the boring stuff comes in. But they're non-negotiables. Uh, you got to have the core SOPs. You got to have your your basic KPI dashboards. Uh, you got to have the communication structure. All this stuff is the unglamorous. And everybody, everybody has SOPs, but they don't look easy. When we go back to we were talking about managing people and are leading people and managing processes that when things get reversed, when you start managing people and leading processes, that's where things get chaos, right? It's just, oh, the SOPs mostly, right? No, the SMP is is it? That's that's the process you follow. And so and if it's not right, we have to make those those processes accurate. So that's that's kind of the boring part. Listen and diagnose uh stabilizing system as the process. And then what you have all that then you can start scaling. You can start thinking about technology. You start working on the teams, uh, capabilities, uh, to make them better. And I've got, there's a whole model around how you make a team more capable. Uh, and then you start closing the gaps, and it just starts still falling and gets better and better. But on the on the people side, um, you have to at least I have to, uh, like, on this last, uh, team that I just was hired to come in and do something with that, uh, he's like rush, rush, rush, let's get this done. And I was like, look, I can come in and fix this in ten days, but when I walk out the door, it's going to revert back to exactly how it was. You want an operation that doesn't require me to be here. And we've got to start with the culture and the people. That's the clarity, communication and accountability. Right? We've got to fix that, that base foundation, and then we can build upon it. And that can be I think that was the right thing. And it works. And it always does work.
Ben Hopkins
[00.17.33]
Yeah. Yeah. I think I think there's definitely something to be said about how powerful the basics really can be, and kind of building up from there. I think the the industry has a lot of new things, technology and innovation and robotics, and there's a lot of new buzzwords. But I think it's important for people to remember that all those assume that you have the, the, the foundation there. I mean, when I was in the early 2000, I was much more athletic than than I, than I am now. And when I was younger and I remember, uh, there was all sorts of fads out there about, you know, you should take this supplement and you should do this training and you should do. And every time you turn around, there's a new thing. And, and people would try to dabble into them and get into them. But I remember I had a coach one time, he's like, listen to me. He's like, you'll remember what I'm about to tell you your whole life. If you eat a balanced and healthy diet, if you drink enough water, if you get enough sleep every night, you will be healthier than 95% of the people, and you will outperform 95% of the people just by doing the basics. He's like, don't overcomplicate it with all this fad stuff. And I think to some degree, I think some of that applies to warehousing too. Like if you get that down, then everything can can flow from there. So
Billy Malady
[00.18.49]
I agree completely. And to keep using your analogy, uh, it doesn't do any good to take creatine and all this other stuff. If you're, if you have a garbage diet and you're not sleeping, you know, you've got to build your foundation to make anything get better, to get strong. If you want to scale it, you gotta have a good foundation. And you know, there's a lot of talk. You were saying, you know, buzzwords now like AI, ai, ai, ai, AI will you can't just implement AI. If you just implement something, you're just going to get more chaos of what you've already got. Right. Get your processes straight. Get the foundation, get the culture right and then start systemizing our, you know, doing it.
Ben Hopkins
[00.19.31]
Yeah, but it's not. It's not exciting, right? Like it's not sexy. Like, if you go to a trade show pro map mode, there's no booth for SOPs, there's no booth for employee engagement, employee feedback, and. And how. Right. Like, they're it's not the booths. The sexy stuff is robotics. And look at all this whiz bang things and everything and it's all there. So I think that's why people will glob on to that. But there's a lot of power in focusing and really nailing down all the basics. And I mean, that can take you that can take you very far in your career almost all the way, honestly. Like if you were a seller at all, the just the basics, you go, you know, you go just as far as somebody else who who was into all the new stuff. So. All right. Um, so you have a new you have a new book out. And so tell us about the book. So the title of the book is nobody Told Me it would be like this, 100 stories from the Front Line of Ops and Customer Service. Now this this sounds like a very spicy title of a book to me. It makes me really want to dive in and figure out what some of these stories are, if I can relate to them or not. I'm sure I can relate to many of them, as many people in the industry could. But tell us about this book. What's, uh, what's the deal with it? Well, you know, after a 30 year career, uh, spanning law enforcement, retail, uh, restaurants and mostly distribution, uh, you have a lot of experience. And, um, I feel I've been very successful, but early on, I think I've been successful because early on, I think I probably messed up everything. You could probably mess up. I made everything I made, uh, I made wrong decisions. I made wrong people decisions. And, you know, uh, some companies have good training programs. Some. Companies don't. Most of the time in distribution, you're you're pretty much. You get a little bit of hands on training. And so the book was I learned a lot of lessons over the years. And I've been teaching, uh, when I come into an operation or get a new staff, you know, I love the coaching part of the business. And, uh, any adventure, uh, adventure that you get into, you want to help people learn from your mistakes. Right. And so I started writing all these stories down on notepads and scratch pads, and I said, you know, one of these days I'm gonna write a book on this. Uh, and I just, I just never I just never did. But now that I've gotten more into, uh, coaching and talking, I was like, you know, it's the right time. And there's a lot of stories in this book. And most people, if you're in operations, any type of operation, you can probably relate to 80% of these stories because, uh, the one thing constant across every job, whether it's restaurants or, or, um, retail or operations, it's people. Right?
Billy Malady
[00.22.18]
Uh, dynamics change, buildings change, the uniforms change. But people dynamics are pretty much universal across, uh, how it goes. And, um, I've told a lot of stories in there, song that I probably should have told because they, they paint me in a very bad light. But, you know, uh, truth and honesty is what you learn from. And, uh, the first story in the book is now. And I put this story first because it was the worst professional moment in my career. And it was, uh, it was a very high end jewelry client, and I, I think I was a general manager at the time. I've never been a director. I don't I don't remember that piece, but I was I was very justified in what I was upset about, but I was completely wrong in how I handled the situation. And I was suspended for a week for that. Rightfully so. Probably should have been terminated. Uh, but, you know, uh, they gave me another chance. And that was a, a very valuable lesson about how you handle yourself. And I should have already noticed I was a police officer. I already learned about de-escalation. But this particular, you know, this particular incident caught me, and I was like, there's a lot of people that can learn from mistakes in my career. 80% of the book is all me firsthand. 20% is, uh, listening to peers stories and and things like that that I remembered and said, okay, we all could learn from what you learned from and, uh, it it spans the police department. And as simple as pulling people over and how people react. Uh, because you do this, you do the same thing in operations. You ask somebody that they're wrong and you ask them about it. And there are those people that have, um, you know, they're contemplating the story as soon as they know they're wrong. As soon as you turn on the blue lights, the cars already are. You. He's coming up with this story, right. And there's the people that cry. You have that in operations and there's the people who dislike. I'm wrong, you know. And the book tells the stories, and it talks about how you would apply the lessons that I learned to that situation. And where are you going to see this situation and the best way to handle it? It's it's not really a book. It's more of a field guide, an operations manual on how to handle certain situations. Yeah, I really like that. When people that are veterans in the industry in any format put themselves out there, whether it's LinkedIn or podcasts or whatever, but especially books, because somebody to write a book, you have to put a lot of thought into that. It's it's not like making a LinkedIn post where you can just kind of do it in five minutes. I mean, a book is somebody's heart and soul. I mean, they they, they really thought about it. And this industry is not as good with community and connecting and networking, I think, as other industries are. And there's also hard to find a lot like unless you have a good mentor or you have somebody who is your is your advocate or is your guide, you might not pick up a lot of these lessons learned from other people. There's no there's no textbooks out there. You don't really get taught this in college for supply chain. And a lot of times the only place you get it is just from people like you who have that experience. And if you if you read books like this and you learn that, I think you're you're ready like your
Ben Hopkins
[00.25.34]
condition to know how to handle the situations which are almost 100%. It's going to happen to you at some point in your career. Why? Because it's people and they don't. They don't change. It's that way in the 80s, the 90s, 2000. It's just going to happen. So kudos to you. I think it's a really great idea. I'm really glad that you did it. I'm really glad that you put it out there. And I hope that other people will pick it up and really benefit from some of the good stuff that's in there. So awesome job I really like.
Billy Malady
[00.26.02]
I think us, us veterans in the industry have a an obligation to mentor the next generation of supply chain logistics professionals. You know, I was lucky I got a chance to work with, uh, six master's degree students from Boston University. And, uh, they they had all the theory down, but they were so overwhelmed in practical application. Right. And and that's why that's what we miss. And they were just so eyes wide open and just absorbed it and said, you know what? I learned more in my six months in this program with you than I did in the in the whole years of, of master degree supply chain. And that's true.
Ben Hopkins
[00.26.42]
Yeah. In in in in warehousing in warehousing. Billy. Like the spectrum. You know this, the spectrum of people that you deal with. The diversity is huge. I mean, it's it's probably the biggest of any industry out there. I mean, if you go if you go see ten accountants in a office, they're going to be relatively the same, you know, generally speaking. Right. There's differences, but generally speaking. But in a distribution center. Oh my gosh man. I mean I mean you get all walks of life in there, all shapes, sizes, creeds, you name it. So it's so important to have the skills of how to manage and lead people in that environment. Even more so than in any environment, I would say it's probably the most important.
Billy Malady
[00.27.24]
And not only that, I feel that operations, if, you know, if you were to look at the hub and spoke model, I think operations usually is the hub. We have to deal with the people, the quality people, the the customer, the executives. I mean, everyone finance. I mean everyone kind of looks at operations and you have to talk to all those people. And, uh, we're kind of a hub. So. Yeah, it's it's a good, um, it's a good training ground. And I just wanted people to, uh, learn from my mistakes.
Ben Hopkins
[00.27.57]
Yeah, yeah, I didn't
Billy Malady
[00.27.58]
I didn't write it to become a bestseller. I just want to be a coach. Right? Uh, yeah. So.
Ben Hopkins
[00.28.04]
Yeah. Yeah. Like. Yeah. I don't think Stephen King is looking over his shoulder. Uh, no.
Billy Malady
[00.28.10]
No, I don't think my 66 copies are really gonna burn a hole in it. Yeah, but you you you did it for all the right reasons, so. All right, so let me let me bring this up because we're we're we're having. I'm. I made a joke about Stephen King. Right. But I'm not exactly a comedian. But I've seen you post about this I love it. You're not afraid to incorporate humor into leading right? Leading the people. And what I, what I have seen in the industry in general is it's very it can be very serious because there's a lot of pressure to perform. There's metrics and KPIs and ceremony, like there's so much stuff that sometimes people just it's just so
Ben Hopkins
[00.28.54]
serious all day. But I've always said it's okay to laugh and joke and cut up and everything. I mean, you got to get the work done, right. You got to be professional. But do you think there's a place for that relief valve? Um, and in this industry, how do you see that? I think, and for me, it's required. Uh, I mean, this industry, this business is so stressful sometimes for absolutely no reasons. Right. It's, you know, and you you tell yourself, I mean, we're not, you know, we're not we're not shipping a lot of organs for transplant. I mean, is there really such a thing as a furniture emergency? But, you know, in the, in the business there is. Right. So, yeah, for no reason and, um, and and I'm not talking about turning the floor into a comedy club or anything like that, but, you know, the, the people on the floor need to understand that you're human and that and they can relate to you. And if you create this mechanical, uh, there's fear And what happens with fear is they don't bring the problems to you as early as they should. Right. Wait. Or maybe to resolve himself. And when you create an atmosphere that. It's a very tricky thing. Right. And in this business, as a manager, uh, you can't get too warm and you can't get too cold. You gotta find that that happy warmness. You can't be hot, you can't be cold. You gotta find that warmness, right? That people feel comfortable. Yeah. But you can still make objective decisions. Right. And and I think that's where comedy comes in a little bit or just humor. Um, it it makes you. It makes you human. It makes you approachable. Uh, it it's a signal that says, hey, I'm a I'm a person, too, not just a position. And when they feel that, like, something bad happens or something that doesn't go exactly right, you know, you make a little joke
Billy Malady
[00.30.42]
about it, you ease the tension a little bit. So therefore you can talk about it, uh, like two adults and not Big boss, little guy or whatever the situation is, and it makes them more comfortable and you'll get honest answers.
Ben Hopkins
[00.30.56]
Yeah, I agree with you. And I think it's just people. You have to be aware when you are in a leadership position of how you may be perceived. You may not perceive yourself this way, but somebody who is underneath you, right? Or who is an hourly or who is a junior manager or lead or something, they're going to be intimidated just by your position. So I think it's your job to kind of like release that, right? Like release them of that burden. You don't need to be like, I'm human. I, you know, I have family, I cut up, I have a beer on the weekend, like, you know what I mean? Like, I'm just a normal guy. But, you know, we're here to do a job and everything like that, so I think that's really important. But you're right. I think it's a balance. It's a fine line. You can't go over the line and it's a delicate. But I want ops leaders out there to know it's okay and in fact advantageous. If you use a little bit of humor in leading your folks because they're going to find you relatable, they're going to find you approachable, they're going to find you credible, and then they're comfortable coming to you with problems, which is your job as a leader. If they're not coming to you with their problems, then that's not their problem to fix. That's your problem to fix. You figure out why that
Billy Malady
[00.32.09]
is. Absolutely. And like I said, you want people to bring you problems as early as possible, not be afraid to approach your position. Yeah. And and that's what it helps with. And you've heard the one 1000 rule. Right. Let's spend an hour fixing now versus letting you get 10 hours or 100 hours. And by the time it's 100 hours, it's usually a customer impact. And then everyone's involved. And that's. Yeah, that's what we don't want. Is everyone involved?
Ben Hopkins
[00.32.34]
Yeah. No, no. Absolutely not. Right. Like, we got we got our own dirty laundry. We don't want other people seeing our dirty laundry in our in our home. Right? We just say that's what we're talking
Billy Malady
[00.32.45]
about. You know how people see us, right? And we know we're people. We know we're human. We know what we do on the weekends. But you're right. They don't. And, uh, and if you don't think they if if your employees, if you don't think your employees are watching you, you are so you. Right. Um, I told a story of I. I was talking to a young lady. Uh, I was a director, and I just stopped by. She was in QA or something like that. And mid-conversation, she stopped and said, you know, you wore that same shirt last Tuesday.
Ben Hopkins
[00.33.16]
Mhm. Ha,
Billy Malady
[00.33.19]
ha. Yeah. She goes, do you have a you have a clothes rotation. I was like no I don't. And I walked away going oh man. She knows more about what I wear than what I know what I wear. And that's how much they're watching us right. It almost makes you uncomfortable to think about that sometimes, that you're being watched that closely so you can't tell your team, hey, don't walk over trash. Be clean. Don't do this. If you go out there and walk over trash. And then what you said means nothing. So it's absolutely you gotta you gotta you gotta walk the talk, man.
Ben Hopkins
[00.33.55]
Yeah. You gotta lead by example. Well, you don't know is I have a duplicate shirt that looks exactly like this one, and that's what I'm wearing now. It's not the same shirt. Go back to your station. Oh,
Billy Malady
[00.34.06]
yeah. It was just. It was just random for me. It just it just happened to be random if I don't have it just came up in the wash cycle. But that taught me a lesson about how much we're watch.
Ben Hopkins
[00.34.15]
Yeah. Yeah. No. Absolutely. You you you gotta you gotta lead by example. I mean people people watch what their leaders do and they'll follow what their leaders do way more than they'll follow what they say. Yeah. And I think that's important. So all right so let me ask this. So what's your overall thoughts about the industry right now. Because you like you people that listen to this show, some people are veterans. Some people have been in a long time. Some people are new and emerging and they're trying to learn. So what would you say about the state of the industry right now? I know you mentioned in the beginning that you think that supply chain is a great spot, a great career field for people to get into. But, you know, what's your opinion on it as an option for young folks and picking it as a career choice, good or good or mediocre? Well, I think it's a great choice. And I'll give you a few reasons why I like I didn't know I fell into it because I needed money for college, you know. now they have you can get degrees in logistics and supply chain. They didn't. They didn't have that back when I was younger. Right. So but I, I tell my guys and I and I do this and when I, when I come to an operation because you want to find out who's serious and who's not. It's the only career that I know of. No, that's not completely true. There are some others, like electricians and stuff, but it's the only career I know of that you can have a high school diploma and end up making six figures, right? Sure. If you apply yourself and and you're curious and you have a good work ethic and you are going to move up the ladder, and it's a great career, it's a growing career. Uh, and it's not going away. So blockchain moves the world, man. Uh, whether it's in the trucking industry or the fulfillment industry or the cargo shipyards. I mean, the world moves off of supply chain, right? And it's such a broad term, and there's so many specific areas you can get into. You can find something of interest in the supply chain world that you're interested in. And I just think it's a great career. And I felt I tell the young kids, get out of the floor. Stay curious. Uh, you know, there's it's such a diverse. You mentioned this earlier. It's every background imaginable is out there. And you can learn so much stuff from so many people. Um. If you're if you're looking for a 9 to 5 career, it's probably not the right career for you, right? Uh,
Billy Malady
[00.36.36]
yeah. Because I still got. Yeah, we know when we're starting. We just don't know. We just don't always know, right? Uh, we get off with the job is complete. Uh, but it's a rewarding career. You meet people you can grow in the career. Uh, it's evolving with AI and automations. And, you know, the way we used to work back in the 80s. It's not how we work now. And, uh, it's it's just fascinating. And I think it's a great career. And I wish more young people, uh, when they're trying to decide what they're looking to do, would take a look at it and, um, yeah, like I said, I think it gets a negative connotation due to, like I said, uh, you know, it's a dirty warehouse, man. You don't find those. You don't find many of those dirty warehouses anymore, right? It's just that that's something you see on TV today. They're clean, uh, you know, and automated. And it's just a great place.
Ben Hopkins
[00.37.28]
Yeah. I think, and I've said this before on many podcasts, the average citizen would be shocked if they went into a big time distribution center fulfillment center today. They would be shocked at how it runs, how impressive it is, how efficient it is, how clean it is. But most importantly, I think they would be shocked at how sharp the leaders are at all levels who are in that building. I mean, and you're talking like very, very sharp, impressive people. And it's all open, right? It's an open playing field for anybody because it's not it's not a specialist career. Right. It's not like you didn't get an accounting degree to become an accountant or it's not medical or it's not. It's it's broad. Yeah. You that to your advantage that means it's open for the taking. If you can lead people, if you can produce results, if you can learn as you go and keep pushing your boundaries. I mean, the sky's the limit for you in that career. So that's something I think people need to remember. If you if you feel like, man, I'm good at a bunch of different things, but I'm not great at any one thing. And what's my thing? Could be this, right? Could be this. It could be waiting for people that are that are just like that, who feel like they're a jack of all trades, but a master of none. Boom. I'm in the distribution center. You will find out that that is a very valuable skill to have as you come in there. Absolutely.
Billy Malady
[00.38.50]
I had a young female. She was a picker. I was a general manager and, uh, had great work ethic. Again, she was curious and she approached me and said, I want to be like you. And, uh, so, you know, we I gave her a path and I said, this is what you need to do. We laid it out and we had check ins. And, uh, eventually she moved on to another company and I moved on to another role or another company. But, you know, she's a general manager today making six figures. And so there was a young lady that was a picker, never went to college and had a great career. And you can just you can just do that.
Ben Hopkins
[00.39.28]
Yeah, there's. And there's many people like that. Yeah. You can point out more people. I know many people like actual names, not myth. No, it's not a guarantee for you. And there's no quid pro quo. There's no, uh, if I do this, this, this, I will become a six figure GM. It doesn't work that way. But there are plenty of people who have the story of I came up as a temp, or I came up as a warehouse worker, and now I'm a general manager. So plenty of them out there. I mean, that that was me I started. Yeah, at the lowest level, unloading trucks. And, uh, that's why I can relate to the, the warehouse workers so much. And I care for them so much because I was. Yeah. And, uh, you you said something that that made me, uh, had a false, um, that if people walked into a modern distribution center, they would be amazed at how things look. Right? So I at one point, I was a, uh, a delivery courier for Fedex, and I delivered a package, knock, knock on the door, and the guy came to the door and I gave him his package, and he goes. Wow. I just ordered this yesterday. You must have drove all night to get here. And I was like, mind blown. This guy thought that I got one package from Phoenix
Billy Malady
[00.40.43]
and then drove all the way into Louisiana to deliver his package. That's for you, sir. Yeah. So I was like, that's great. You know, he thinks he's really special. And, uh, but that's how that's how, uh, uninformed people are about supply chain and logistics. And, um, I think Amazon has done a great job of bringing that to the forefront in there today. I'm still amazed, uh, at Amazon and and how efficient and crazy good they are and mad at them and how they have put pressure on the rest of the industry to perform two days. Right. You have you have clients that won't personalization. They want special packaging special this and wrap and they want it in two days because Amazon can do it in two days. And you're like, yeah, you really have to educate them, right? Amazon's made it hard on everybody uh because of that. But they inform the industry for sure. Yeah.
Ben Hopkins
[00.41.38]
You say well you know Amazon doesn't make that much money off their fulfillment, right. Like they're making their money from AWS and a lot of other things. So.
Billy Malady
[00.41.46]
And have you seen the boxes?
Ben Hopkins
[00.41.48]
Retail doesn't have that luxury. You know
Billy Malady
[00.41.49]
you're shipping to come in three different boxes that they're oversized with maybe dunnage and nothing special. But yet the high end clients They want the same level of service and you just have to excel. It doesn't work that way, right? Um, that's what makes it fun.
Ben Hopkins
[00.42.04]
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Right. Yeah. Well. So, Billy, man, where can people find out more about you? Because I know you're you're speaking. I know you've done some speaking engagements. You do some leadership training for some people. So you're all doing all kinds of stuff like that. But where can people find out more about you? And what do you got cooking up for 2026 and beyond? Maybe.
Billy Malady
[00.42.25]
Well, the best place to find me is on LinkedIn. Uh, like you said, I, I post I post content uh, daily and, uh, just just what's going on in the industry, our leadership lessons and things like that. Um, uh, my content posting kind of led me to, uh, people contact me and ask me to come speak. I never intended to be a speaker. Uh, I mean, you know, as a VP and above, you're always giving presentations to boards or company all and you're always speaking. And, uh, so I really wasn't counting on that, but I really enjoyed it. And, uh, where you can find me, you'll find me on the floor somewhere and some operations. Uh, I'll. There you go. Uh, that's that's still, uh, my base. I will continue to train people, um, to go do some coaching. Uh, you know, I do some, uh, fractional coaching right now. Just some companies in my in my spare time, and, uh, but I'm, I'm dedicated to the to the job I have, and, uh. I just like to work. So, you know, I find time to do these other things. Find me on LinkedIn.
Ben Hopkins
[00.43.29]
That's where I. That's where I hang out, Billy. I mean, the LinkedIn greets, you know that. That's where it is. So cool. Well, I hope people will reach out to you. I think you're very cool, very interesting guy and have a ton of value to bring to the industry and other people. So for you, you know, I'm happy when people put it out there in the universe and send it. The more people do that, the better off everybody is, the better we feel. So you're one of those. Uh. I appreciate it, sir, and I appreciate you being on the podcast. It was awesome. I'll show you around.
Billy Malady
[00.44.00]
I thank you so much for having me. And, uh, I wish you the best success. I enjoy your podcast and continue success.
Ben Hopkins
[00.44.08]
Absolutely, man, I appreciate it. I will see you around next time, sir.
Billy Malady
[00.44.11]
Thank you very much.
Ben Hopkins
[00.44.13]
Bye bye. Thanks again for Billy Malady appearing on the podcast. Awesome guest I always love talking with people in the industry about the industry, things going on at the floor level. Leadership. Employees love it. Always game for that. So Billy, I appreciate you appearing on the podcast As the Warehouse Underground goes. Please sign up for the community. We have over 300 people that have signed up for the community. Thus far, it's free. At the warehouse underground and inside there is message boards, networking resources, live events that you can check out. We've done in the past, and we have one that we're working on at the end of this month that you will want to be a part of. Very cool things going on inside the community. Check out the other show I do, the Tiger Team show with my co-host Jordan. We have released ten episodes. We're hoping to get episode 11 out this month, but it might be next month. That is the show about life in warehouses, distribution centers and fulfillment centers, but with some wit and humor and sarcasm draped all over it. If you listen to the show and you work in this industry, you will know right away what we are talking about. So check it out today as this podcast goes, I will see you guys next week for another episode. Thank you very much for listening. Bye bye.
