178 - Navigating Corporate Relationships: The Key to Building Trust and Innovation with GoBolt's Heindrik Bernabe

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 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.

Hi, Enric Bernabé. Welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the co-founder and CTO of a company called GoBolt, which is found at gobolt.com, and I am just First of all, welcome to the show. And second, thanks for having me. I'm really curious about you guys are in logistics and delivery.

Yeah.

And so tell me how you're competing against UPS and FedEx.

Very good question. A very tough question to answer. Well, I'm gonna start first by saying, like, you know, logistics is a very supply chain, very complex industry. At a very high level, you're thinking it's just moving items from A to B. Sounds super simple, very hard to execute. We live in a space where we're trying to simplify logistics. So we're a last mile carrier, but we're all— we also have our own facilities where we pick, pack, and ship. So very similar to Amazon is probably a better comparison. Now UPS is primarily— FedEx is primarily like a last mile delivery carrier, but they also have sometimes like third party logistics. So how do we compete with them? Well, one, we're a technology-enabled supply chain company. And, and we're trying to essentially electrify the last mile fleet and, and be one of the first and be the standard operating system for electric last mile delivery. But we do all the other stuff too. We'll do pick pack delivery. We try to partner with, with a lot of different merchants and help them do the end-to-end and, and hopefully get them to electrify their last mile delivery as well.

So when you say electrify, you're meaning electric vehicles.

Yeah, electric vehicles, charging networks, building the software, the operating system that would run that new world, be the operating system on the transition because we know we're transitioning now and ultimately become the standard for when the world is fully electric.

Right. Wow. Well, how did— so tell me the backstory. How did you get there? Oh man, where you are now to where you were, from where you started.

Oh, that, that's definitely a very interesting story and a very interesting journey. So my co-founder and I, Mark, Mark Gang, he and I met during university. I was studying computer engineering. He was in, in, in commerce. And he had this idea back then. We were a valet storage company, so we were called SecondCloset.com. We were probably one of the largest valley storage companies in, in Canada. And, and we grew it to that before we pivoted into this new sustainable logistics world. And it was a natural transition. It wasn't like, oh, let's change our strategy and, and, and like switch the whole company up. We're no longer a to-do list company and let's become fully AI. No, it wasn't. It was actually a natural transition. So Mark and I met, it was his idea. He came up to me and he's like, you know what, I need the tech guy to build you know, the portal and all this. And I said, yeah, I know tech, I study that. I can be your partner. We weren't friends before this, but ultimately we became very good friends throughout the journey because it's been very, very fun building this company and scaling it up very quickly. But the too long didn't read from the transition. So we were a value storage company, essentially we pick, pack and store people's stuff. They would, book online, hey, let's, hey, I want to store my golf bag for the season. We book that, our truck shows up and then we bring it to our warehouse facilities. Now the two key words there is we had trucks and we had facilities. Well, what happened as we've started to scale this company and moved into four Canadian major, major Canadian cities is that we started to see customers of ours have more than tens, twenties, fifty, hundreds of addresses. And we're like, there's no way unless this person's a real estate mogul, like, what, what, what is this person doing? Like, why do they have so many addresses that we have to deliver? And we found out that we were actually delivering for a B2B client who, who was like a, at that time they were a D2C mattress company. And, and when we saw that, we saw the potential, our board saw the potential that we can actually move into this space because we have the key ingredients to do it. And we inherently just built a fulfillment network through our trucks and our facilities. We just needed to connect them more. So from there we were like, okay, we've hit scale for our, our, our B2C business. Let's start to invest and then use leverage the software that we built to start building a B2B business. And then, you know, 5, 6 years later, blink of an eye, we're here and we're like one of the front runners for, uh, for supply chain. So very, very interesting journey for us.

You're primarily in Canada right now?

No, we're actually in the US as well. So we operate in 10 different cities. So 5 in Canada and 5 in the US.

Wow. And, and you're the Chief Technology Officer. You're the guy behind the scenes to make sure that all the, all the, your engineers and managers and everything are all focused on getting projects done.

Yeah.

You improve the, the—

Well, that's my role now. So, you know, as, as you're growing as a company, you obviously wear multiple hats. I was one of the first drivers. I was one of the first customer service folks with Mark. But now my primary role as the Chief Technology Officer is actually running product engineering. And because I'm the resident tech guy, I also kind of run IT as well. But, you know, that's the peanut side.

Are you guys running, are you guys running in person or are you remote or hybrid?

Right now we're, we're hybrid. 2 days a week in the office. Most of the folks are local.

In Toronto, in the Toronto, in Toronto.

Yeah.

Exactly. So you've been doing this now, but you've had this comp— this part of the company has really been going for about 6 years and you're really starting to see results. What is it now that gets you up in the morning and gets you excited to go to work and make things happen?

I think it's, it's, it's the, it's starting to feel like we're at the later half of the journey of like scaling this business to like the billion dollar mark.

Wow.

And scaling it is truly like a different problem from when we were bootstrapping back in 2017. You know, we were just like fresh graduates in 2017 bootstrapping. I've learned that perfection is the, you know, is the enemy of getting stuff done. So we started bootstrapping MVP, read a lot of books, just got it done. When you're scaling, the stakes are a little bit higher. You can't make as much mistakes. You have to really strategize and think beyond the short term more. And the thing that gets me up is like, that's a new challenge for me. And the person I am is I like solving problems. I didn't wake up and grow up to and said that, hey, I want to solve and simplify logistics, right? Like, that was my dream, but I was definitely a problem solver. So this space Solving the company's problem for the first, like, you know, 6 years to what it, what the new problems are for the next 6 has been like a very interesting problem and challenge that, you know, gets me up and excited.

How is it for— Yeah, this is just bubbling in my mind. You have grown a lot in 6 years personally.

Yes. How is, how is all, how is How, tell me about that growth.

What have you, what have you gone through to get to where you are today? Because I, I can see it. I can see when you're just a tiny little startup and you're scrabbling for capital and you're trying to put things working, you're bootstrapping and 3 of you out there working all hours of night and delivering and doing everything yourself to today where now you've got a successful company and success is, is not now not defined on can we get it done, but how big can we get?

Yeah.

And how do we control our growth in a way that we don't grow too fast but we don't grow too slow. How do we manage all that? And that's a totally different kind of experience. So obviously you had to go through a lot of growth. What happened?

Yeah. So I mean, I mean, would you want me to walk you through like the first bootstrapping all the way to scale?

We're interested in how you as a young man from college, now you're a CTO, second guy, you know, your partner and you're running a company that's doing a lot of money, 1,000 employees., you know, 10 different cities in North America. That's a, that takes a lot to, to be able to do that. What happened to you?

Yeah. Um, I've learned a lot and I think the way I see it is like I've gotten my MBA, MBA, like I've, I've, I've gotten my MBA like 3 times over. Um, starting the business, you know, as a co-founder of a smaller company, you get the title CTO. Did I feel like I was a CTO? Not really. I felt like the first developer. You know, as we grew to 10 people, I felt like the software development manager. It's not until like the last 2 years as we scaled to 1,000 people, over 9 figures of revenue that I feel like I, I, I am a CTO, like I have to be more strategic. And back then, a lot of people talk about strategy. What should I do about it? Like, do I need to strategize the next 5 years? Back then, it didn't really matter as much. You could think about it. But as you said, you just have to get stuff done and start making money. Now it's, you know, it's a very different mindset about, okay, now that we take it to 9 figures, how do we get it to 10? And that's a very different style of thinking and strategic thinking with a larger company as well. Like, you can't just roll up your sleeves and do everything yourself anymore.

It's—

I started learning a lot about the Eisenhower Matrix. Like, you know, what do I delegate? What do I do now? Those are things that, you know, I've evolved as an executive and truly started to sit in an executive role as we've grown the last 6 years.

How do you, what was your comfort level then going through that growth?

To be honest, because I'm a problem solver and I like to tackle things head on, I was pretty comfortable like adjusting and reinventing myself. I always want to iterate and get better, learn new things. So this transition was, it felt pretty natural to me. It doesn't happen to everybody transparently. Like some people can operate, you know, as we've gone through a lot of different folks working in the business, some people operate at the, you know, the 0 to 1, some people operate in the scaling and some people operate at scale. Those are like sort of the 3 executives that I've come across in my past. And, and today. So I feel like I'm very good at like transitioning because I'm learning more about, okay, what does it mean to start scaling the business? What did, what did it mean to go from 0 to 1? And then now I'm transitioning from this to like, okay, what does it mean to get to scale and start operating at scale? Transferredly, I don't think I can operate at scale. Like I think I would have, I would want to restart, go to 0 to 1. I think my sweet spot, 0 to 1 and scaling a company. But going all the way to the end with just, I'm at scale, grow at 5%. I don't think that's for me. I think I've worked at companies at that pace and that's, that's just not for me.

Yeah. It's very interesting. You should talk about that. And there are people who are cut out for doing the growth and scaling but aren't cut out for doing the management work.

Yeah.

And then there are people who are cut out for doing management. They've got a company at scale. They got all the systems around them. They're not interested in creating new stuff. They want to take what they've got and just mature it and grow it.

Yeah, exactly.

And become efficient.

Interesting.

So, so what is it about you, Hendrik, that is unique that has brought you, that you bring to the table that has helped make the company so successful?

Yeah, again, like, I think, I think it's the problem solving. Like, I've thought about it a lot. Like, you know, how did we get here? I don't even like, to be honest, you don't really think about all of this stuff until somebody like stops you and say like, what do you like?

What did you, what was What's the secret sauce?

For me, I fundamentally believe it's just like my, you know, how I define an entrepreneur is someone that can be thrown problems and then how do they react and how do they solve it in terms of like my leadership style and the way I've operated. It's like there's like two pillars that I put it on. So one of it is like lead by example. I think you should be able to do it yourself if you're, truly gonna like inspire a team to get to a, you know, a very ambitious destination. And then I don't blindly give orders. And what do I mean by that? I mean like if I tell someone like, hey, this is the direction we need to go, this is the strategic direction. I'm not just gonna say like do it because I say so. I'm gonna give them the reasons and how I actually formulated that. So I think those two pillars is what made me like very successful in this company and like got it to where it is because I use those pillars to remain calm in, like, the toughest of the scenarios, manage the chaos, and allow me to make proper decisions, whether it's right or wrong, and then adjust to getting the company to where it is today.

I wanna pivot a little bit and talk about stakeholders. I've been writing and thinking a lot about stakeholder management and stakeholder relationships. And the challenge that executives have in, one, identifying the proper stakeholders, and then two, managing those relationships in an appropriate way. Tell me a little bit about your story about how you've learned to manage all these different relationships that you have at the level where you're at right now.

Yeah, stakeholders. Yeah, I think stakeholders is definitely You know, if I, if I take off my CTO hat on, I put my product hat on, it's like the center point of everything and it's understanding and dealing with stakeholders. I think it's actually, if I was to add another pillar to like the success is like you have to know how to navigate around communicating with stakeholders and extracting the problems that they're trying to solve. There's this one thing like in, we started to use a philosophy called Shape Up by Basecamp. And the whole idea with like stakeholders is trying to understand like, what is it? What is the root problem that they're trying to solve? Why are they asking for certain aspects? So I think I always go back to that whenever I'm in meetings and there's, I'm hearing a lot of different chaos, different opinions. And they're asking me to do different things. There's different expectations. I always go back to like, what, what is the problem? Let's get to the root problem. And I, I don't know if it's because I have a, computer engineering degree. So it's my engineering brain going like, okay, I see your pipeline. I see how your, what your talk track is. I don't really understand what your problem is. Let's, let's focus on that. So that's how I've dealt with a lot of different stakeholders, different opinions, different agendas. I've always tried to either directly bluntly ask what is the problem or use a series of questions that would lead me to, okay, now I understand where their mindset is, where they want to go. I can help them now with, with that issue.

So, so that, that kind of leads into the next question. How important has listening been in your work?

Oh, so important. I think, you know, I've learned a lot as a, as, as like a young executive growing and dealing with different types of folks. I tend to be like, when I was an intern, I was like tons of, you know, golden retriever puppy energy. I want to change this. I want to change that. I want to change this. This is wrong. This is that. And as I've grown, I've learned to be patient to try to like understand like the person on the other side of the table and try to like empathize and relate to like, okay, why, why is this the problem? Why is, why are they bringing this up? And it, and in order to achieve that, you really have to listen, right? Like you have to, and it's not just, you know, let me listen to the words, it's understanding the why they're making the point. What's the point of like their talk track? So I 100% think that it's like a key part to growing as an executive and being an executive in a company is essentially listening to any of the stakeholders I have to deal with.

I teach people how to listen to emotions because I've learned as a lawyer turned peacemaker that when you can hear somebody's emotional experience, that tells you everything that you need to know about what's going on with them.

So absolutely, I agree.

Somebody's really frustrated or pissed off, or they're scared or anxious. Now, now, they may not— they're not going to say that. Yeah, because, you know, in the business world, we're all tough. We got— nobody can see a sweat, right?

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's all BS. But, but if I can— if I'm having a conversation with you and maybe you're an investor or a board member, or maybe you're an important customer. And I say something like, Hendrik, man, you are really frustrated, man. This thing is, you're anxious about this and really worried about whether it's gonna work. And right now you don't sense that anybody's really listening to you. And you say something like that and all of a sudden they say, wow, you really get me. You understand exactly what I'm going through. Yeah, absolutely. To me, that does 3 great things. One, it builds loyalty. Builds trust and it builds safety. And once you've got those 3 things locked in with your stakeholders, you're good to go. And I don't, I don't think there are many, I don't talk to many people who really get that, but I think you do.

I, I 100% agree, Doug. Like, the number 2 is like the key part, the trust, right? Like, in, in corporate world, there's a lot of politics sometimes, and that can be like the biggest blocker for innovation, progress, etc. And to like stop that politics, you kind of have to build trust. So you, you see the brass tacks. This is what it is. This is the problems we need to solve, etc. So I 100% agree. I think you need to do those 3 things and incorporate that in your communication skills as an executive in order to solve the right problems.

Right. I mean, I don't think you can— I teach a course in decision-making under stress and uncertainty. Graduate school at Pepperdine. And oh, awesome. We teach, I teach my, I teach my students about, first of all, I say there's no such thing as rationality. Nobody ever makes a rational decision. It's always emotional. So we have to learn about emotions to understand how people are processing information. It's processed through an emotional filter, not a rational filter. And then what are all the things that get in the way of good decision making? And I teach that we can never control the outcome, but we can control the process. So we really want to focus on what, what, what is the optimal decisional process we're going to go through when we're trying to solve a problem. And then it kind of goes from there. And, and, and I, I think that's a, an effective way of looking at these sorts of, when you're looking at problem solving, obviously defining the problem, you know, what kind of solutions are out there that might be possible, and then weighing the solutions with a, with a process that avoids cognitive biases and distortions in decision-making is, you know, the process you go through. And I know that in engineering it's a little bit different. A lot of it's just trial and error. Well, let's try this, let's try this, let's try this.

Yeah, yeah, iterate.

And early on doing, you know, the MVP, the, you know, minimum viable product, and seeing seeing what floats and what doesn't. And sometimes you can afford to do that, but sometimes the stakes are so high that you just can't afford to do that. And I think you're seeing that now as you're beginning to scale global that—

Yeah, absolutely, 100%.

It's not gonna work. You could lose the— You'll bet the farm and lose and it's a bad and make some bad decisions. So you have to have a bit more of a disciplined process, not disciplined, different process.

Yeah. Yeah. You, you kind of have to evolve as a company. It's like I'm growing up with the company.

There you go.

And And, you know, like some folks just don't grow up with the company and they're stuck in this level. And then that's why, you know, they need to self-recognize. This is where I play my best game. And for me, I think, you know, part of that, you know, in order to continuously succeed with a growing company, you have to reinvent, not really reinvent, but just evolve as they adjust.

And as we were saying earlier, there are people who are really suited to this. I've talked to a lot of people on this show who, they freely admit, I like to create things. Once it's created, I'm done with it. I don't wanna, I don't wanna manage. I just wanna create. Yeah.

Yeah.

And I run it and I talk to other people who say, you know, I really like stability and I really like taking an organization and managing it well and, and serving customers and making money at it. But I'm not a creator. I'm a manager.

And, and that's okay.

Absolutely.

It's absolutely okay.

You just need to know where you're at and, and what the right fit is.

Yeah, exactly. It's kind of like a, like the way I, I think about it is it's kind of like if you're playing basketball, right? If you're really good at shooting the 3-point, at shooting, shooting the 3-ball.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

3-ball. You don't have to try to force yourself to manage the team as the point guard. Do what you're good at and you'll succeed. You'll get the stats.

Exactly. Exactly. Right. Interesting. One more question for you and I'll let you go. What's one thing, Hendrik, about yourself that we would not know unless you revealed it to us? Not know.

Good question. I'm mostly transparent about like, you know, the way I run my processes and my decision matrix on things, but not know. I don't, I don't know if I have an answer for that, but I do have a funny story about like, you know, how I've learned a lot from my mistakes growing as a company and having like the resilience to bounce back. But yeah, I can talk a little bit about, about that, but I don't think a lot of people know that.

One of the things that you wouldn't know about me is that I'm a jazz violinist.

Oh, wow.

And you wouldn't know it because I don't— Very cool. Yeah, I don't perform much. So you wouldn't know that, that, that I, that I play jazz violin. But that's the kind of thing I'm looking for with some personality.

Okay.

Um, okay, my, my dream, my dream job, and people close to me know this already, but not everybody knows. My dream job was to be a pilot. I watched Top Gun. Well, my, my dad showed me Top Gun. And that's like, ever since watching Tom Cruise, play Maverick. I've always wanted to be a fighter pilot. And then obviously I've toned that down a little bit. Okay, maybe an airline pilot. That was my dream in high school. I wanted to always be a pilot.

There you go. I am a pilot. I fly airplanes and helicopters.

No way. That's crazy.

My own little airplane. And yeah, certified instrument-rated private pilot.

So, oh wow. So you played like jazz?

I played jazz.

Jazz Wilson and you're a pilot.

You are an aviation Doug. I start telling you about all the things that I've done in my life and you wouldn't believe half of it.

But it, that's crazy. You know what? I'll believe it today. Like this is insane. Yeah. So I wanna be a pilot. I've started learning. But you know, balancing, you know, this, the founder duties and this has been, especially in Toronto.

Yeah.

Where there's not always a short window to fly because what you have 3 or 4 months when it's decent weather to fly.

Yeah, exactly. And then in the, in the, in, in, in the winter, it's mostly overcast and sometimes you can't fly in overcast.

So yeah, different here in California where we can basically have 330 days of sunshine.

Oh, I would love that. No, I would love that.

This has been a great conversation, Henrik. Thank you so much. This was awesome. Been a lot of fun.

I really appreciate it, Doug. This is, this is amazing.

Oh, you're welcome.

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.dougnull.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. Wanna 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.