In this Business Blast podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Michael Zinn, Director of Engineering at ReturnLogic. The conversation begins with a sponsor plug for Anchor and Authors Unite, then moves into Zinn’s personal story about boxing after high school, where a match against a national champion taught him that fear and perceived inadequacy are universal and that progress requires taking the first step. Zinn shares industry insight, emphasizing that e‑commerce companies often overlook the cost of returns and that ReturnLogic’s automation can save up to 40 hours per week for merchants. He offers general business advice to persistently put one’s best foot forward despite setbacks, and tells his younger self to view every experience as part of a learning journey. On happiness, he stresses pushing beyond comfort zones and not leaving “stones unturned.” Zinn discusses the book Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, highlighting the power of perception in the workplace—being seen as prepared and ahead of the curve. His favorite quote is Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena,” which encapsulates his belief in continual effort despite failure. The episode concludes with Zinn’s invitation to connect via LinkedIn.
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Thank you for listening to the Business Blast podcast. So for all my listeners out there that have been wanting to do your own podcast, I'd like to introduce to you Anchor. Anchor is a one-stop shop for recording, hosting, distributing, and monetizing your podcast. So before I found Anchor, I had never actually done a podcast because all the research that I had gathered made it seem very complex. Then I found Anchor, and Anchor makes podcasting extremely simple. So if you want to do your own podcast, go to anchor.fm/start. I can't wait to hear your podcast. Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode. Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. I have a good friend of mine on, Michael Zinn. He is the Director of Engineering at ReturnLogic. So welcome to the show, man.
How's it going? Awesome. Good to be on.
How are you doing?
I'm doing pretty good, yourself?
Doing great, man. Pumped to have you here.
Yeah, absolutely.
So let's dive in. We'll go to the first one. The first question I have for you, Mike, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Um, I was actually thinking about this a little bit. I think one was, I think really helped me out in pursuing some of the things I've wanted to pursue in my life is after high school, I started boxing a little bit. You know, it's funny, you hit the heavy bag a lot, you're doing that, and you think, man, I'm so strong, I'm so good. You're about to go in the ring and then you start shitting yourself when you realize the other guy posed across from you is a national champion. And you go in there and this person teaches you a whole ride of how mismatched you are. And he was awesome. Like, I tried to go a little aggressive at first. He knocked me upside my head and let me know that this is the main— that he worked with me. But afterwards he said something that was kind of profound, was that, yeah, every time I'm getting there, I'm still just as afraid as you. And I think I kind of realized that in business as well, is you're always afraid. There's times you feel incompetent. There's times you feel this, but it's not— you think it's unique to yourself. But every single person feels that. And what matters is putting that foot forward.
I like that. And what's the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
I would say right now, there's a lot of e-commerce companies going on. That's really been on the rise. And the piece that a lot of people are overlooking are returns. Because you grow, and when you're growing a business, you're focusing in on the things that are making you money, not necessarily things that are really costing you money. I would say really focusing in on that because even just on the automation end from our company, we've removed the need for an extra 40 hours a week from some companies and really helped them solve a lot of problems with that. I would say if you're in the e-commerce space, really look into returns.
What's your best piece of overall business advice? Not necessarily industry-specific.
I would say, honestly, I think the biggest thing is keep putting your foot— you can do the right things and you're gonna— it's not gonna work out, but you gotta keep putting your best foot forward. I think a lot of people get— try something, get knocked down, and they never get back up from that. You can do all the right things and still lose sometimes, but if you keep doing that, eventually you're gonna— you're gonna end up doing pretty well. Yeah.
And if you could give— I know you are still pretty young. We're both pretty young. But if you could give your younger self, even younger, one piece of advice, what would that be?
It's all part of the experience. Yeah, that's my mantra right there. Everything is just all part of experience. You got to go along with it, whatever you're in, ride it out.
And in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?
For me? I think it's just pushing yourself to do the things that you want to do. Don't leave stones unturned. Figure out— and I think you find out who you are best by always pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone to explore the things that you want to explore.
And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
Um, I think actually that it's a weird book, but it's called Choke. It's by Chuck Palahniuk, and it's basically a guy that he drops out of med school. Same guy, this is the same author that wrote Fight Club, and he would go and pretend like he was choking in very fancy restaurants so people then would pay for him to go to the hospital, but they would pay because they helped save his life and everything, and that was his scheme to get money. But the interesting thing with that is I kind of learned so much in life is perception. So when you're— people perceive that you have power, people perceive that you're on top of it. So applied to like the workplace, always being one step ahead, knowing where we are going and being able to prepare beforehand. And so when people need something, I already have it done. So it always looks like you're on top of the ball. So always knowing how things are perceived in perception. And there they perceived that he was some guy that was choking and was a rich guy at this restaurant and they saved him, really wasn't, he was just the guy scheming. I'm not saying you're scheming at work, but I think perception is really important. I really got a lot of ideas about how powerful perception was from that book.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
The man in the arena. It's kind of along the, you know, the Roosevelt quote?
Ah, yes, yep.
That is my favorite quote, and I think it's kind of the theme of some of the things I've been talking about in here is I really truly believe that you gotta always put yourself out there in life. And I, you know, no matter how smart you are, no matter what, you're gonna get knocked down. It's a matter of you have to keep putting your feet in front of the other. And then, you know, eventually you will get what, you will get the things that you want if you keep moving forward.
Yes, man, thank you. I couldn't agree more, and thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is where is the best place for people to find you online?
Um, yeah, reach out to me on LinkedIn. Just look up Mike Zinn. I don't have anything too fancy, just mostly my LinkedIn is really where people connect with me.
