167 - Transforming the Shipping Industry with Innovative Solutions with ShipPlug's Nick DiNatale

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Nick DiNatale, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the CEO and founder of a company called ShipPlug. Which can be found at Shipplug.com. Thanks for taking some time out today to talk with me and, and, uh, my listeners.

Thanks, Doug. We're excited to be here.

Great. So how about a little bit of your backstory? I know that you, you worked for FedEx for a long time before you started Shipplug. Tell, tell me a little bit about the whole story.

Yeah, actually, prior to FedEx, I, I even worked in public accounting at KPMG and then my college roommate actually got me into FedEx. He started working in the sales department, thought that with my background in, in accounting, I could really help business owners understand their costs. So that's really where I started thinking about helping people with cost, but then started at FedEx. Um, 6 promotions in 12 years, had to move around the country for that, and Got to see a wide variety of businesses, but more so people have friends typically everywhere I go now because of the experiences I had at FedEx. And then that's when I settled down here in Miami and started Shipplug almost a little over 2 years ago at this point.

Hmm. So what was the impetus to start Shipplug?

Also working at FedEx. It was eye-opening to me that how hard it was for customers to manage the invoicing, the claims process, understand their cost, where really it became so confusing because of the surcharge increases, the GRI increases, and how many surcharges customers have. The carrier invoices, UPS and FedEx, sometimes can look like a phone book. They're so large, so people truly never understand their cost. They believe the processes of filing claims are difficult. So I saw a real need in the market to simplify that, and that's why we started FedEx, to truly help customers of all sizes, from the startups to the largest corporations, truly understand what they're paying or what they could be paying in shipping costs.

So how does Shipplug work?

So what we do, we first connect with the carriers' billing system. So we'll connect with FedEx, UPS, DHL, and then we download customer data and we mine the invoices to make sure shipments are on time, to make sure they're billed correctly, to make sure that everything that was negotiated with the carrier is on your invoice. Countless times, almost every single invoice we find a billing error in some format or fashion, and then we index those and help you fight with the carrier to get a refund. Then once we get you a refund for a miss, a late shipment or a billing error, that, that's the only time we charge for any, any fees on our end. So there's no upfront cost. And that's how it works. And then from there, we give customers portals to really see the data. And then we have monthly conversations to make sure that you understand truly what you're paying for shipping. One mistake for a customer in mischarging, and especially an e-commerce order, could be the difference between making and losing money if your margins are tight.

Wow.

That's why it's so important. Sometimes the carriers can upcharge as much as $1,000 for a shipment with one surcharge if it went wrong. So, so that can really make or break a company. Now, they're not all that dramatic. Most of them, the difference in the upcharge could be, you know, $3, $4. But if that happens 1,000 times on an invoice, now that matters for the mistake. And that matters to companies of all sizes.

Right. So as I, as, as you just explained it, you, when a, when a company, when a customer signs up for Shipplug, they put in the credentials in order to log in to their carriers. And then Shipplug is able to emulate the customer, go in, grab all the data, and then pull the data out and analyze it with your algorithm.

No additional work. We call it mailbox money. They'll start getting checks, credits on their invoices, really everything that you're owed. And the carriers make mistakes and they're late when they have guarantees on shipments. That's where we try to get the customer everything that they're entitled to. And no one wants to overpay, right? Right. You start a business and that, that, that's how we feel. We want to make sure that everybody gets what they're actually paying for. You wouldn't want to pay your cell phone bill, your any bill, if it was wrong. And that's what we're here to help with.

It sounds like the back end of this is pretty complicated when you think about it. To your point, all the data points that go— that a shipping company might utilize in billing a customer. How did you figure all that out?

Well, through the 12 years of working at FedEx, we saw countless billings. So having to truly understand it and get in the weeds because of the issues we had, then from there trying to automate it, right? So we can— we have a development team. Half of the people that work at our company are developers. So we really automated the if and when statements to replicate a shipment to make sure that they are getting charged. Then we even take it one step further where we can connect with our customers' WMS systems through a variety of ways. And if we can get the quote on the front end, we can also match up to what you got quoted by the carrier so we can see what they said they were going to charge you, what they actually charged you, and then we can verify that you actually got charged correctly based on your negotiated contract. So that's not only the discounts, that's address corrections, that's late shipment refunds, that's dimensional weight impact. There's 220 surcharges that UPS or FedEx could charge you.

Wow.

You manage to make sure that you've gotten charged every correct— correctly every time. Now, it's easy if you have one package, right? But how many of the listeners out there have one package?

Well, yeah, if you're an e-commerce, you hope you have hundreds of packages every day.

Yeah. Different orders. We're upselling customers, right? That's the ideal e-commerce. Right, business. And, and that's where you're fighting on margins, especially if you're fighting with Amazon, right? If you're competing on an Amazon marketplace, you sell on price mostly, right? If you're 1 cent cheaper, there's softwares out there that do millions of dollars just making you 1 cent cheaper. Well, you fight price, pictures, and ratings, right? That's, that's really on a marketplace what you're selling on. So every penny matters. Now If you get mischarged by $5, did you make any money on that shipment? Probably not.

Right.

You'd have been better off not shipping it. So we're in the business of not only helping customers lower costs, but then price appropriately online to gain sales. That's why the conversations with our customers to help supply chain improvements are so impactful. And that's why our customers love doing business with us.

You seem really excited about this. And my next question is, what is it that gets you so excited? What gets you out of bed in the morning? You go to work.

The team that we have. So some of my closest friends at FedEx left and started the company. Now we've built a true team of people that work hard, but mostly care about each other. We love getting together as a team. We love building something that we know can truly help customers. We've seen businesses go out of business because they don't understand their shipping costs. We're changing lives here, not only our lives internally, right? We're, we're also thankful to have a company that we love, but our customers as well. And that's why I get so excited about it.

Where do you, where do you, where do you think the— what do you think it's— what's unique about you that brings you to the— that you bring to the table that has made Chipplug so successful?

I think a few things. I think the diversity I've seen throughout my many roles at FedEx, but moving throughout the country, working, leading hundreds of people from different backgrounds and then truly understanding the supply chain from a perspective of working with a wide variety of customers. That's what's different. I've got a chance to see the largest customers down to the smallest. I've got a chance to lead some of the most high-performing sales teams at FedEx. And then the relationships we've had with customers, with our internal contacts. So I mean, that's a game changer compared to anybody else that, that would start a business similar to ours. Every single person in our customer company that is in sales and supply chain consulting has over 10 years of supply chain experience.

Wow.

And then we've taken that and automated it. Wow. Where our software, we can give the customers to type in and see what an impact would be of a certain surcharge reduction, how many shipments are late. They can type in to find the reasons why. We've taken our experience and we've then automated it. And that's the difference between what we've done and our competitors.

So you're the only company out there that has really fully automated this whole process.

The ability to benchmark as things change and communicate with our customers on an automated basis of what needs to be updated. Yes, we're the only one doing it automated. Wow.

Game changer, huh? So where do you see the company? Is 2 years old. Where do you see it going in the next 5 to 10 years?

I see us to not only get into the space of helping customers understand what they're paying for shipping, but there's a big opportunity to help find refunds on Amazon shipments that are, that are misinvoiced by Amazon on warehousing fees that are erroneous. So we really want to help the whole customer understand what they're paying throughout the supply chain, because right now it's the most comp— it's one of the most complicated pieces of business to understand what you're truly paying from duties and taxes. What's your all-in cost on a particular item? Are there any opportunities to lower the cost? Are we getting charged correctly? Throughout the supply chain, that's a mystery to most customers. So I think we're gonna focus on what we know best right now, but then that's where we're gonna look to scale.

Wow.

That doing that for Amazon, big, one of the biggest retailer in the world.

Yeah.

I mean, it's already out there, but I think it goes hand in hand to what we're doing. We'd be the only company doing everything right.

Wow. Good for you. And right now your, your company is, is fully remote.

Yes, we're fully remote. So we believe in having personal relationships with our customers. So we like to put our sales consultants in the area where their customers are. So then they can have that one-on-one relationship because some of our customers are very large enterprise type customers and they still believe in that relationship, especially when you want to consult on the supply chain side.

Right. And you got people all over the world working for you.

All over the world. Yeah, we're in 4 different countries now, so it's, it's exciting.

So tell me about what it takes to lead a company of the type that you've got.

Well, right now, because it's so spread out, you must be very organized. So Every single day we try to send, review what we're gonna do for the next day, meaning myself and, and our operations team. And then that way we can prepare through making sure the agenda's set, making sure that we're prepared because we really want to prepare to, and I know we're getting into the listening side of it.

Mm-hmm.

But to make sure that when you have the communication that it's as clear as concise as it's going to be and having people a chance to give people a chance to think about what you're going to talk about prior. Like an example on the podcast with the 5 videos that really is helpful and that makes the conversations more impactful and that helps you listen with a more thoughtful mind.

Yeah, just, just so the audience doesn't know, my listener, my guests on the podcast have to jump through a lot of hoops to get, to get here. And one of the things that I've done is created 5 2-minute videos to help my guests understand where I'm coming from and kind of what the expectation is. So I think that that's what you're referring to. That's an example of clear communication.

And that's how you have to be prepared to run a company where you have a global reach. You also have to put in the time, right? If you have people in all different time zones, As a leader, you're gonna have to work sometimes some hours, but as you build out the team, right, through coaching, through giving feedback, that becomes more and more fun, right? I love getting up early for our morning call to talk to the team in India. I love staying late to talk to the team in the Philippines. That's, that becomes passionate because then you see a global reach of people getting excited about your business. And that's, that's what's awesome. But again, you still have to be so prepared and calculated because you're leading multinational different cultures, right? And that's where listening also becomes impactful, is really listening not only with your ears but through body language. We believe always have your camera on for Zoom because then you can see body language, you can pick up on inverbal communications because cultures are so different.

Right. So tell us about the importance of listening in leadership.

Well, I think I'm a big basketball fan, John, where you can tell by the paintings above me here. But John Wooden, who might be the most successful basketball coach ever, debatably the greatest, always had the quote, no one cares what you know until they know you care.

Right.

The easiest way to have people know that you care is to listen to them, to get to know them. Right. You need to share with them appropriately too. But to have that relationship, it all stems from listening to understand what's important to them.

What do you think, in your experience in both corporate America and now in your own company, what do you think the biggest failing of listening is, especially when it comes to leadership?

Listening with the intent to give an answer before the person is finished, because then you subconsciously aren't truly hearing and digesting what they say. You've already formatted an opinion, and at the time, that also then can make people feel that you don't care, because you can tell when someone's doing that, especially as they get to know you.

How do you, how do you, I completely agree with you. That's what I call Type 1 listening. When you're listening in order to formulate an answer and tell somebody what to do, it's Type 1 listening. It's not really listening, or it's a listening from the listener's agenda, as opposed to what I call Type 2 listening, which is where you're listening in order to understand the speaker's frame of reference before you do anything else. And you want the speaker to feel validated and heard before anything else. How do you, you, you distinguish, not using that terminology, but you just obviously understand the difference. How do you learn the skill of listening to somebody for their, for, in order to validate and understand them before you formulate any kind of response? That's a rare skill. How did you develop it?

So what you want to consciously do is always remember that you're listening to truly understand what they're saying. So key one is to let them finish, right? Not cut them off, but then to be very present. You have to make sure that when you're having a, a conversation, especially in leadership, that you first send the agenda ahead of time. It's up to the leader to be prepared to listen. Right? So now you've put some thought into the conversation. So you're really prepared for this. Then on the next, on the side, you always want to coach so that the person thinks that they came up with the idea. The easiest way to do that is to keep asking questions. But the only way to keep asking questions is to truly understand what they said in the first place.

And how do you—

I was gonna say, I didn't mean to cut you off, but how do you demonstrate that?

So when you ask the questions, you then ask thoughtful follow-up questions on what they said because you can hear them in the entirety, right? You first wait for them to finish, then you ask thoughtful follow-up questions because you truly did listen. And the only way you're gonna ask, ask more questions and not tell someone— see, a clear sign when you're not listening is when you start telling people. Right? If I start telling you, I know personally that I'm not listening.

Wow.

So if I can answer the question with a question, that's how I know that I was listening. Right? Typically people, when they tell a story, especially my situation, we're coaching mostly salespeople. They don't give you all the details. Salespeople are very optimistic people. Right? We're excited. We, we, that's just the tendency of a salesperson. So if you're coaching that person, you know, you need to ask questions. Now, when you're coaching someone new, brand new, yes, you want to ask questions, but sometimes a brand new person, you need to tell things too, right? But you need to listen more so than ever because you need to pick up when they're typically people that are new. Aren't as apt to share because they don't trust you. So that's why listening becomes twice as important. But there's sometimes you still do have to tell, right? In leadership, that's also why listening is so important because you have to understand who you're talking to. You typically aren't gonna coach everybody the same, but you want to coach everybody fairly. Everybody gets coached fairly, but everybody gets coached how they want to be coached. And the only way you can pick up on that is by listening, by asking questions, and then tailor your formats to coaching them, right? The best coaches, if we, including the Harvard Business Review, treat coaching like a, like playing golf, right? Sometimes I need my putter, sometimes I need my driver, but the only way to pick up on what you're gonna know is you have to pay attention. You have to listen. And that's how you can coach in leadership.

I would add one thing. I love the idea of asking questions. The only thing I would add to that is I would acknowledge what the other person said and then ask the question so that it doesn't— so that you don't fall into the trap of sounding like a cross-examination, right?

You have to make it natural and in the moment.

That's right.

You have to to make it relatable because everybody wants their boss to, to, like I mentioned, care about them, right? And if I just question after question, that would make you feel like you're getting exam, you know, cross-examined. But if you do acknowledge it and make it natural, and, and that comes over time, right? And in my work experience, 3 years have been an individual contributor I've been in a leadership position than the remaining 15. So, so that's, that comes with practice. And at times, like I mentioned, you have to, sometimes you still need to tell people things.

Sure.

Right? Sure. If the comp— if the company, like an example, if the building was burning down, you would tell people to run out.

Yeah.

You wouldn't ask him a question, right?

That— but the, but the key here is that when you're listening to people, you can listen to them first. Or in my world, where I work with conflict and high emotion, de-escalate, then problem solve. And so if I were to take that and put it into your world, I would say listen, then explain.

Absolutely.

But listen first. And the acknowledgement is, it's interesting that you say it, if you, if you don't have a coach, if you don't have somebody to teach you how to do it, then yeah, it, it'll take a lot of trial and error. But I happen to teach that skill. And what I, what I actually teach people to do is how, is acknowledge emotions. So when I'm, when I'm working with a sales team, for example, I'll say, when you walk into a sales call or you're on a Zoom sales call, First thing you're going to do is ignore their words, ignore the prospect's words, and just focus on what are they feeling right now. And then you want to reflect those feelings back to them. And what the science shows is when you do that, they, the, the prospect feels deeply, deeply validated. And that's how you build trust. Then as the conversation progresses, do exactly what you say. Acknowledge what they're feeling, ask a question, acknowledge what they're feeling, ask a question and the questions are thoughtful. It's not some rote script that some sales guru teaches you. You have to really care.

Yeah, absolutely. Everybody can tell when their boss really cares about them.

Right?

Right. And leadership, you can tell the best. If you think about the best people you've ever worked for, the reason you probably think that is because they cared about you.

That's right. And, and the problem that so many people have when they get into a leadership position is they might care, but they don't know how to show that they care. And that's the trick, is that's why the acknowledgement becomes so important— knowing how to acknowledge what somebody has said in a way that makes them feel like they've been validated and heard, which then allows you to ask another question that gets the person, the speaker, to be thinking deeper about whatever it is you're talking about.

And when people know that, that you care about them and they know you're listening, they work harder.

That's right. Instant trust and loyalty.

Instant, instant. And then it helps with employee retention.

Yeah.

Helps with the commitment to the company. That's, that's what it's about, is developing that type of coaching and that type of relationship with everybody in, in the company. And then teaching people how to be leaders.

That's what the next question— yeah, yeah. How do you propagate this into the, into the culture of the company?

Well, I think with the culture of the company, it definitely starts at the top, but you have to be intentional about the coaching. The most successful companies coach their leaders to coach people, right? I think that's a big miss in some companies is is understand how to develop and coach your people to coach other people. As you scale a company, you're not always able to talk to everyone, right? So you really have to develop that. It's, it's, and anytime you build a culture, I think one, you need to talk about culture. I think sometimes companies fail to talk about the culture. And define it. And so that's, that's really important. And then make sure that with your leaders that you inspect what you expect, right? Have that conversation with them. How's it going when you're coaching Doug? What do those coaching conversations sound like? Role play, I think, is even important, especially as a new leader. So I think as you scale a company and, and a new founder and you're not so hands-on because now you have more people, that becomes the key role. And then also making sure that you put the right people in leadership positions.

That's right.

Just because you're the best individual contributor doesn't mean you're the best leader.

That's right. That's right. You made another— it's really interesting talking because when I do leadership coaching, I always tell my clients that you have to be not only coaching the people that are your direct reports, you have to be coaching two levels down, and they have to be coaching two levels down. And you need to be coaching people to replace you. You need to be telling your people, I'm coaching you to replace me. And they need to be telling the people below them, I'm coaching you to replace me. And if you don't have a secure enough self-awareness to be able to do that, then you're going to have real problems with that because you're going to be threatened by the competition. But the fact of the matter is Imag— if you're a really good leader and you have coached a team how to replace you, and they've coached their teams how to replace them, and iterated all the way down to the bottom of the organization, just think how powerful the organization is going to be.

Exactly. You're, you're defining, and I know you know this, a Level 5 leader.

That's right.

So that's, that's the ultimate leader, is someone that has the ability to coach in the moment, but really they're They're looking to develop the person that's going to replace them. And I also think that helps with active feedback.

Oh, yeah, totally.

And it helps develop the whole company, right? As people have— feel empowered to coach, to lead, to own, right? To have that owner mentality, they feel that they can give upward and downward feedback.

That's right. And then— and the trick is knowing how to give the feedback. I teach a process known as coaching for improvement. So there's no judge. We never, I never criticize anybody. What I say is, what's the one thing that, Nick, you did today that I really like and I want you to keep doing it? Nick, when you got back right to that customer within 15 minutes and solved that problem, that was amazing customer service. Next time you might think about, and then I give a suggestion for improvement.

Exactly.

And that's the way to coach, not saying, you idiot, why'd you do it that way? You really screwed this up for whatever, you know, whatever the typical judgmental, critical way of giving feedback just doesn't work.

So you want—

and you want to coach for incremental improvement. I don't want you to be 100% perfect today. I want it— I want you to just little tiny little incremental steps, and a year from now you're going to be awesome.

1% better every day makes 37 times better in a year.

That's right, exactly.

And yes, absolutely, a good leader just helps move the needle.

That's right.

Little by little. If you can move the needle every day a little bit, you're exponentially better.

That's right. Well, this has been a really interesting conversation. I have one more question before I let you go. What's one thing about yourself, Nick, that we wouldn't know about unless you revealed it to us?

I think most people don't know that, you know, when you start a company, everybody says, oh, I want to start a company because I don't want the typical 9 to 5.

Yeah, right.

So I don't think most people know how much you have to love the process, but I truly do. I, you know, I get up early, we're excited to, to start the day, and I don't think people know how much I truly enjoy what I do, and I never feel like I work. So I think as much as the hours we do put in because we are a scrappy startup, It's just I don't think people really know how much I enjoy it.

It's a blessing, isn't it?

I love it every day.

Well, thank you so much. I really enjoyed the conversation, Nick.

Thanks, Doug.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast. Doug Noll, D-O-U-G-N-O-L-L.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll.

Thanks for listening.

And we'll see you on the next show.