Episode 89

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Published on:

2nd Jun 2026

Brian Fielkow | Safety and Profit: Business Success Through Value Alignment

Host Dallas Burnett interviews Brian Fielkow, a business leader, author, and safety culture expert, about his path from learning retail and marketing in his family’s Wisconsin stores to corporate law, operations leadership in recycling, and ultimately buying and growing a trucking and logistics company by de-commoditizing through people, equipment, and technology. Fielkow shares lessons on managing risk, building culture through values plus systems and process, and making safety a core value that drives operational excellence, profitability, retention, and customer loyalty, including a pivotal driver committee that gave frontline employees real voice. He outlines his upcoming book, Making Safety Happen, covering mindset shifts beyond compliance, leadership’s role, employee engagement, actionable process, shared accountability, and organizational resilience by learning from near misses and “predictable surprises.”

Connect with Brian = https://brianfielkow.com/

Transcript
Dallas Burnett:

Hey everybody, we're talking to Brian Fielkow today.

Dallas Burnett:

What an amazing guy.

Dallas Burnett:

He's a business leader, author, and safety culture expert who transformed a

Dallas Burnett:

trucking company into a tenfold growth story, was nationally recognized for his

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just culture and employee-first approach.

Dallas Burnett:

He's got some incredible stories about turning safety into a true competitive

Dallas Burnett:

advantage that drives profit and loyalty.

Dallas Burnett:

He's got a great new book coming out called Making Safety Happen, a

Dallas Burnett:

wealth of knowledge and leadership lessons all over the place.

Dallas Burnett:

You don't want to miss this incredible conversation

Dallas Burnett:

And it's gonna go and play, bum-ba-da-da, and so then we're gonna come back in here

Brian Fielkow:

Okay

Brian Fielkow:

Well, thank you, Dallas.

Brian Fielkow:

It's great to be with you.

Brian Fielkow:

I appreciate the invitation to join

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it started within the family really.

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I grew up in a city called Appleton, Wisconsin, uh, right near Green Bay,

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and my parents were in the

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retail business.

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So they

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had

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several different businesses.

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the one that I worked in, uh, was, appliances, furniture.

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Th-think about the days before, before Best Buy, way before an Amazon, right?

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you go to your local store and, uh,

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I started there I was probably eight or nine years old, wanting to go in,

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hang out with my dad on the weekends.

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I mean, being in retail, your parents were working, long hours and that

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was a good way to be with them.

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So I

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learned

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a lot about business.

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I learned a

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lot about customers

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and

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service and

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just by watching, and then by probably 10 years old, I was out on the floor selling

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Oh, it was great.

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great.

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I loved it on the weekends.

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A lot of fun

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it was definitely, learning curve, just know, kind of

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to listen to the customer, to understand a buying signal compared to somebody

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that really was not there to buy.

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learn a lot of that stuff being in the front lines and

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watching some of pros do it.

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also learned the difference between sales and marketing.

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and, I realized over the, pretty early on that my strengths

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probably were closer to marketing.

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me, trip with marketing, the skill with marketing is

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drawing people into your orbit.

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and, that, that's something that, my dad did, like, extremely well.

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would have TV commercials with just crazy ones, with wrestlers,

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and it, was just great.

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But it, it created a buzz.

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I mean, there, there was a buzz around that business just because of

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some of the crazy stuff he would do.

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He was really, um… And people still see on Facebook, remember when?"

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It's like, this is

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40 50 years ago.

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still remember it.

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And,

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you know, I definitely

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learned early on that, creating that buzz around your business and,

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you know, as long as the marketing

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ties to what you really do, as long as it, there's a relationship to your value

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proposition, you know, it, it's important to, to draw the people into your orbit.

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And I, I

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learned that

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early

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on too

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it

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was a

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blast

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Oh, no, it wasn't that.

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It was just hitting an age where it's time to graduate high school,

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go to college, and move on.

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and so some of the skills I, took, that I learned over the years, I I

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didn't know I was applying them, right?

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wasn't conscious.

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But after… I went to University of Wisconsin-Madison, then went to law

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school, uh, practiced law for a while, and then ultimately got into business.

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And every step of the way, um, I, applied those skills.

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I mean, I guess one of the things that people still don't forget is when I

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was in Madison, I was, the president of the student government, and our

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claim to fame was we convinced Rodney Dangerfield's production company

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to, film Back to School at Madison.

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and

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that's… And, and people still talk about that today.

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it's stuff like that.

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it's crazy.

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And that was, by the way, one of the most fun

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three weeks.

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Um, you know, the stories I could tell

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as an extra, like a walk-on, right?

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Not a speaking part, but an extra part.

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But, I mean, the producer called me when they were back in Hollywood, you

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know, putting it together, and said, "By the way, we're gonna put you in

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the credits." And I sat there at the theater till the end, and there I was.

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I was like

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Yeah.

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Yeah, and Rodney Dangerfield was on campus, and he was, you

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know he he was a nice guy, but I didn't know if he really knew me.

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Eight or nine months later, I went to Los Angeles for the premiere,

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and he came up and it's like he remembered me, and I was just

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I was

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shocked.

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I

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was

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absolutely shocked.

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He was talking to me like, we were

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old friends.

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"Hey, how you doing?

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long time no see." and

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he… that, that

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shocked me.

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And it was also

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kind of a that, you know, um, no matter where somebody is, just

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remembering you means a lot.

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I'll never

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forget that, right?

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And that's a lesson I think we

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can all take.

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Yeah, it's just all about throwing the ball down the field, I guess,

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it… All those experiences

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were fun and they kind of form you for the future

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the thing about, practicing law is that I did corporate law.

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I've never set foot

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in, in a courtroom and, uh, hope never to.

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Um, So it was tr- it was contracts, transactions, business advisory.

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So that was a formative part of my career because, I learned

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from some brilliant people.

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I was able to watch a lot of great clients and learn from them, and quite

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frankly, I, was also able to watch some who may not have made the right moves.

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And, you know, I, took notes on both sides of the ledger.

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Um,

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and and so It was like, career education, you just… Y- you-- It was irreplaceable.

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and one of the clients I did a lot of work for, I was very close to, wound up

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going to work, for them as their chief operating officer.

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And again, you can't write this stuff down.

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In other words, if… I look at my career and I-- it's nothing

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I could've ever scripted.

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you know?

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And, and, and, and that to me is fun.

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um, I, I don't mind, um, a little randomness.

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I, actually embrace it

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When you're on the outside looking in at entrepreneurs, you think

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of them as high rollers, right?

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As, as, just,

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we'll roll the dice and see what happens.

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And to a person, the best entrepreneurs

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knew how to manage risk.

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and,

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and I learned that in

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law, right?

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In other words, the the best entrepreneurs were not the high

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rollers who might have gotten lucky.

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They were calculated, they were deliberate, they're strategic.

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they understand you can't necessarily mitigate risk.

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Risk is risk.

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you

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can manage

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it.

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you can put your defenses in place, and the better you do that, and

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let's not expect perfection here, but the better you do that, the more

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confident you are in playing offense.

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You've thought about what can go wrong, you've protected the organization to the

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extent possible, then you can focus on offense, where I think the people that

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are more of the, the cowboy approach.

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N- I'm not saying it's a bad approach, I'm just saying it, I could never

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figure out how to do it, it's, not me.

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Um, it, it's, it's the old,

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I guess growing

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up a Packer fan for all those

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y- years right near, right, growing up right near Lambeau

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Field, the Lombardi defense, the

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Reggie White defense.

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it's like you

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do that and your offense can shine

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in between law and Jetco was a real important step.

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I went to go work for my favorite client.

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they were a family-held recycling company, second and third generation.

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And, they brought me in as their chief operating officer right out of practicing

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law, and I'm like, "Well, if you guys are willing to do that, I'm saying yes."

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so it… I always wanted to be on the business side, and so this was

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a great opportunity.

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Um, and, we grew the business.

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Ultimately, it was sold to Waste Management, and so I moved down

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from Wisconsin to Houston to help Waste run their recycling

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business from their headquarters.

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I did that for a couple years, and I learned a lot at Waste.

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It was a great organization, but I still had this entrepreneurial bug, right?

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And I still wanted to do my own thing.

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And I needed to prove if I could do it.

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The recycling business, I think I helped make it more successful, but

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let's be real clear, it was gonna be successful without me, you know?

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I, I needed to prove I could do it and to myself.

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And so I looked for companies, and what I was really interested in,

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I was interested in trucking and

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logistics as one option because I really enjoy the process of taking

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what is perceived as a commoditized business or a commoditized

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industry and de-commoditizing it,

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right?

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and trucking, if you

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view yourself as commodity, you, you compete on price, and there's

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probably not a lot of future in that.

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But if you can kinda create a value proposition, and ours was real simple.

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It was the right people, it was the newest and best equipment we could

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afford, and it was leaning into technology, which even early

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on was transforming trucking and logistics, and now it's

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been a revolution.

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But, so it was a people, you know, strong on the

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inside,

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unbeatable on the

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outside strategy regarding our people.

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Um, making sure our people had the best equipment we could possibly provide,

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and then, weaving technology in to create a value proposition that, that

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we thought would resonate with not all clients, but with the right clients.

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Oh, 100%, making the leap.

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By the time I left law, I was pretty comfortable with it.

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I enjoyed practicing it, so was a level of comfort and security, right?

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Now you're

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going into something that, you know, you might, uh, succeed spectacularly, and you

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might flame out, and that, that unease, it accompanies every transition you

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make, whether that's inside the business, right, moving into a new business

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line, making a significant investment, transforming the business somehow, or

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whether you're just kind of going from one business or opportunity to another.

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that it's unsettling, but it gets your adrenaline going.

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and that's why, again, I would never tell somebody… Um, I think in one

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of our earlier conversations I was saying, one piece of advice would

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be ignore the influencers, right?

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There's a million people out there that wanna tell you what

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to do, how you should live.

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if staying in one place your whole career fits for you,

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then that's what you should do.

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So I would never… I should never would never say that anybody should follow my

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career path, but for me, I guess call it a certain restlessness, a desire to sort of

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go broad, led me to these career choices.

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And I, look back at it and I'm never… Like I said before, I never could

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have scripted it out, but I'm really excited it's turned out this way.

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when I moved down to Houston to join Waste at their headquarters, there

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was I didn't know that how long it was gonna last, but was no intention

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at that time to say, I'm gonna do this and go buy a trucking company."

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But I got

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to the point at Waste where I'm like, "Okay, great organization, great

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people, but I gotta do my own thing." And then I started to

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make a list of what kinds of industries would be the best for me.

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and again, that decommoditization thing was important to me.

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Kinda, kinda finding a business that was big enough to have some scale, but not

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so big that, I couldn't own most of it.

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Um, one that was an industry that I, thought I could learn, again, one where I,

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thought maybe, um, tired but not broken.

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That's the kind of company I was looking for.

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one that, you

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know… I mean

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Yeah.

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I mean, and the,

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owners of this company when I was doing due diligence are-- they were fantastic to

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deal with.

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You

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could tell the integrity was there.

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the main owner took me out for lunch with three or four customers

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on separate occasions saying, "No script, you ask." You know, in other

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words, they threw things wide open for me, which that that just gave me

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such comfort that, you know, I knew what I was… I knew what was there.

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and they were, you know, the primary owner was in his early sixties.

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and, he was just real clear, "I, I need to double down on my fleet, double down

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on my capital, or I need to sell." and the funny thing is After closing, we

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signed a six-month consulting agreement, and then, you know, he would move on.

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Well, he's still there.

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Um, yeah, I mean, he's still there.

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I

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just saw him a

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couple weeks ago, just

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a wonderful person.

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So

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our

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transition went very well.

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We

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built a great working relationship.

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he taught me and the people that I brought in so much, and it was…

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You know, I've have this belief that if an acquisition is screwed up.

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nine times out of ten, it's the buyer that screws it up.

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And

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I promised

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I wasn't gonna be that buyer.

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Um I mean, a seller can screw

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it up

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by

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misrepresenting, by sabotage.

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there's ways to do it, but let's just, let's not assume that.

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Let's assume that the seller represented correctly, there

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was no malfeasance post-closing.

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The problem with buyers sometimes is they're, they're, you're

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the smartest guy in the room.

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It's my toy.

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I'm gonna play with it and break it.

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That's insane.

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if you buy a good culture, it doesn't mean that you're gonna keep it

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stagnant.

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It doesn't mean that, that you're going to um, just do things the way it always was.

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You're gonna change, but it's

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gonna be evolution.

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You're gonna capture the best of what was there and then layer in

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what you're bringing to the table.

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Uh and so I made a promise to myself that if I had the

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chance

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to buy an

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organization, I would not be that buyer that, to be

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the star of the show, had to be the smartest guy, in the

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process screw up a good thing.

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in the very early years, if I was intentional, it might have

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been, um… You know, you're, you're nervous as a buyer, right?

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So it it was some common sense stuff, treating

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people right and that kind of thing.

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But it took a couple years for me to get really strategic

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about what is, culture, right?

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In other words, you've got a culture.

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The question is, is it… the culture you want?

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is your culture working for you or against you?

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So a- as I matured in the business, it became

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real clear to me that to

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have a

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healthy culture it's values.

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It's the value.

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It's having value-aligned people, but that's not enough.

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Then you need systems and process.

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It's people, systems, process working in harmony.

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And you come across these hur-

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hurdles where you may have a productive employee, somebody that, you like,

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somebody that you may even wanna go have a beer with, but you're not

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value-aligned, right?

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in our company, if safety wasn't your core value, safety wasn't in your heart, I

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don't care how technically good you were, you didn't have a home at the company.

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and so those are,

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like, things that you

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sorta

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have

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to learn that, it's gotta be leader-driven and employee-owned,

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but leader-driven means you've gotta

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pull harder than everybody else.

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And if you look the other way, everybody else sees you look the other way, and

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they come to the conclusion real fast that you're not serious about this

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there were a few of those along the way.

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I think, early on, if I look at my first three years or so, you give me a metric,

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growth, profitability, safety, We were doing really well, uh, and too well.

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In other words, we sort of got complacent and put our feet up on the desk.

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And then we kinda had a string of incidents and issues, and that brought us

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down to earth, which was an, an important part, I think, of the growth journey.

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and

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and We

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realized that, you know, the

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company had grown a lot, and we didn't have the processes and the systems in

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place to handle today and tomorrow.

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our processes and systems were still based on yesterday.

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Th-that was a good wake-up call.

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but I think, our business And, the trucking side of the

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business, we had two companies.

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we had a trucking business and a freight brokerage business.

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In the trucking business, the truck driver is the heartbeat

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of the organization, right?

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in other words, y- you have to have this unconditional respect

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for your frontline employees.

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and we tried, and we did okay.

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But what really changed the game, the aha moment, is we asked our

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drivers to elect a driver committee.

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And what they basically did is they

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elected their-- people who their leaders are, right?

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Remember, your

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leaders

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don't necessarily have big titles, and

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sometimes the--

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when you get a

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room of

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people with the-- only with the big titles, you don't

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get to the right decision.

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So once we elected the driver committee, we did not make a decision about

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the life of a driver, whether we're talking about pay, work, equipment, et

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cetera, without at least the input of the chairman of the driver committee.

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Um, and That, broke down the physical or metaphorical

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window that separates the office from the front lines.

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that is toxic.

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that separation is toxic.

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when

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that came down, driver retention

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employee retention skyrocketed.

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service skyrocketed.

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We created a sense of ownership, a sense of camaraderie that wasn't there,

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and you couldn't necessarily create a situation that allowed 150 people,

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drivers, to express their voice.

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But through the

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committee, we gave them a channel to do it, and especially

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working with the chairman.

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So something that

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sounds so simple because people sometimes think of committees

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as a suggestion box, right?

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just

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give it to the

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committee and hopefully it goes away.

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That wasn't what we did.

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we

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really brought the committee into the DNA of who we were.

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that was a huge sea shift in, how our

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culture and how we functioned internally.

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And remember, that's what your customers

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are buying.

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Your

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customers, at the end of the day, are

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buying not what you do, but how you do it

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Yeah

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I think it's about rhythm, and focus.

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I don't remember the exact details, right?

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But Pat Lencioni, who is one of my favorite authors, writes about it where,

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You know, one of his books, I guess you don't have to go past the title of

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the book, Death by Meeting, you have

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to be intentional about how

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you

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engage your team.

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So, we would have kind of quick standup meetings every day, what, went right,

Brian Fielkow:

what went wrong, where are we what course corrections do we have to make?

Brian Fielkow:

But it wasn't like every day we would sit down for a marathon meeting, but then

Brian Fielkow:

we would make sure that we would have off-sites, and uh, it was relationship

Brian Fielkow:

building as much as it was business.

Brian Fielkow:

So in other words, it, was really trying to focus on making .Sure that we had

Brian Fielkow:

a, a cohesive team in place that was aligned, that had the bandwidth, and the

Brian Fielkow:

latitude to do their jobs and execute.

Brian Fielkow:

'Cause my, my whole goal in building the business and I think I proved

Brian Fielkow:

it after selling it, was legacy.

Brian Fielkow:

I didn't

Brian Fielkow:

want a

Brian Fielkow:

business that ran around me.

Brian Fielkow:

What does Brian want?

Brian Fielkow:

What does… No.

Brian Fielkow:

I wanted a business where the people, we taught them how to approach issues, how

Brian Fielkow:

to run the business, and then they did.

Brian Fielkow:

I remember toward the end of my tenure there, I was having dinner with

Brian Fielkow:

some people, and the old Brian came out, and I started to get detailed.

Brian Fielkow:

And, the woman that ran our intermodal business said,

Brian Fielkow:

"Wait a minute, Brian, stop.

Brian Fielkow:

You taught us.

Brian Fielkow:

Now let us go do it,

Brian Fielkow:

and if we have any problems, we'll come back to you." I'm like, "Thank you

Brian Fielkow:

Well

Brian Fielkow:

said.

Brian Fielkow:

I'm done." You know, and, and I was at

Brian Fielkow:

the

Brian Fielkow:

company's month, the company's fiftieth anniversary.

Brian Fielkow:

It's been around fifty years now.

Brian Fielkow:

now And, it's the morale and, it's…

Brian Fielkow:

I feel like the, it's the day I walked out.

Brian Fielkow:

and a lot of

Brian Fielkow:

the stuff

Brian Fielkow:

that I know I put in place is still there, and that that's the fun part,

Brian Fielkow:

is I've seen too many companies that revolve around the, quote, "owner."

Brian Fielkow:

I never wanted to be the owner.

Brian Fielkow:

I

Brian Fielkow:

never wanted the world to revolve around me.

Brian Fielkow:

First of all,

Brian Fielkow:

the burden is just

Brian Fielkow:

too darn

Brian Fielkow:

big.

Brian Fielkow:

Um, but you're not really building anything that

Brian Fielkow:

lasts.

Brian Fielkow:

And I

Brian Fielkow:

wanted something that

Brian Fielkow:

was gonna last.

Brian Fielkow:

and again, That's where

Brian Fielkow:

it's

Brian Fielkow:

process, systems, and the right people

Brian Fielkow:

There has to be a recognition that safety is at the foundation of

Brian Fielkow:

operational excellence and profitability.

Brian Fielkow:

can you imagine a company that's running poorly when it comes to

Brian Fielkow:

safety, being productive or profitable?

Brian Fielkow:

That, that company doesn't exist.

Brian Fielkow:

They could

Brian Fielkow:

have a lucky quarter, a lucky year, but over time, it's not gonna work.

Brian Fielkow:

in not relatively recent times, but let's say in the past fifty, forty, fifty

Brian Fielkow:

years, the best example is Paul O'Neill.

Brian Fielkow:

Paul O'Neill, uh, became chairman, CEO of Alcoa, and he told his investment

Brian Fielkow:

community in his first meeting with his

Brian Fielkow:

investors, "If you wanna know how Alcoa is doing,

Brian Fielkow:

look at our safety statistics." And some of these people ran for the door.

Brian Fielkow:

It's "This guy's crazy," you know?

Brian Fielkow:

And Paul O'Neill, by the way, went on to become George Bush's

Brian Fielkow:

treasur-treasury secretary.

Brian Fielkow:

I mean, he

Brian Fielkow:

was very,

Brian Fielkow:

a very accomplished leader.

Brian Fielkow:

but but what Paul O'Neill understood was that if you're hurting people,

Brian Fielkow:

your own employees, members of the public, um, if you're continually

Brian Fielkow:

have a continually revolving door because you can't operate safely, if

Brian Fielkow:

you're spending your money cleaning up the mess rather than playing offense,

Brian Fielkow:

you're not building a solid organization.

Brian Fielkow:

So

Brian Fielkow:

it's that

Brian Fielkow:

foundational principle that, that safety is truly at the core of, operational,

Brian Fielkow:

excellence and profitability.

Brian Fielkow:

On top of it, of course, it's the morally right thing to do.

Brian Fielkow:

It's one of those where all the boxes are checked, right It's the right thing

Brian Fielkow:

to do, and it's really good business.

Brian Fielkow:

And safety outcomes, to put it bluntly, it's a mirror of leadership effectiveness.

Brian Fielkow:

So you know, We weren't

Brian Fielkow:

perfect.

Brian Fielkow:

We had safety issues.

Brian Fielkow:

When we had safety issues, the first place I would look in the, was in the mirror.

Brian Fielkow:

It's like maybe my hands weren't on the levers, but is there something we missed

Brian Fielkow:

in process design, in how we're managing our people, in how we're communicating?

Brian Fielkow:

and and generally, I would find, you would certainly have the occasional unforeseen

Brian Fielkow:

issue, but I would find that most of the issues revolved around production

Brian Fielkow:

pressure, around training, a-around things like that, that that just symptoms of

Brian Fielkow:

things that we could do better as leaders.

Brian Fielkow:

So while I'm certainly not gonna absolve the person whose hands were

Brian Fielkow:

on the levers of accountability, they may be accountable.

Brian Fielkow:

If you just hold them accountable and don't look in the mirror, you're probably

Brian Fielkow:

missing eighty percent of the story.

Brian Fielkow:

Yeah.

Brian Fielkow:

It's hand in hand.

Brian Fielkow:

it-- when safety, improves well, your, your insurance carriers notice.

Brian Fielkow:

that gives

Brian Fielkow:

you, more opportunities on your insurance

Brian Fielkow:

costs.

Brian Fielkow:

Your employees notice.

Brian Fielkow:

But

Brian Fielkow:

your ladder story is perfect.

Brian Fielkow:

it's like, you know, we look at

Brian Fielkow:

people wearing their PPE, and if you're area that requires a hard hat.

Brian Fielkow:

you should absolutely wear a hard hat.

Brian Fielkow:

I'm not minimizing it.

Brian Fielkow:

But how about if we focus on the steps to prevent something from

Brian Fielkow:

falling on your head in the first

Brian Fielkow:

place?

Brian Fielkow:

So, so you gotta you gotta design the

Brian Fielkow:

systems, and then PPE

Brian Fielkow:

becomes

Brian Fielkow:

your last resort.

Brian Fielkow:

And again, it's

Brian Fielkow:

important, but a lot of times we look at it and say, "Well, they're

Brian Fielkow:

wearing their vest and their hard hat.

Brian Fielkow:

They're okay." But they haven't thought about design, and that

Brian Fielkow:

ladder story is exactly the right story because you focused on design,

Brian Fielkow:

Let me first tell you what it's not.

Brian Fielkow:

not academic.

Brian Fielkow:

It's not theoretical.

Brian Fielkow:

So the whole point of the book is to bring actionable ideas

Brian Fielkow:

to businesses of any size.

Brian Fielkow:

You a big budget.

Brian Fielkow:

isn't about who's got the biggest safety department.

Brian Fielkow:

Whether you're a, a startup, an entrepreneurial business, a

Brian Fielkow:

large established business, the ideas in here will work for you.

Brian Fielkow:

And the book is organized in these areas.

Brian Fielkow:

First of all, we've gotta sort of change our way of thinking about safety, right?

Brian Fielkow:

It's not a compliance function.

Brian Fielkow:

Safety and compliance, in my view, are barely related.

Brian Fielkow:

what's the real cost of being unsafe?

Brian Fielkow:

It's way beyond your insurance cost.

Brian Fielkow:

We gotta change how we think because once we change what we believe,

Brian Fielkow:

then we're gonna change how we act.

Brian Fielkow:

Then we're gonna talk about the leader's role in safety, and we're gonna talk about

Brian Fielkow:

not just the… We're gonna start with the C-suite, and we're gonna make sure that

Brian Fielkow:

as executives, we understand that, safety is part of, uh, enterprise risk that

Brian Fielkow:

that safety

Brian Fielkow:

is part of your role of managing, risk.

Brian Fielkow:

Then we're

Brian Fielkow:

gonna move into

Brian Fielkow:

employee engagement, how to get our employees to, uh, align with where we're

Brian Fielkow:

going and how to harness that unlimited power of our frontline employees.

Brian Fielkow:

Then we're gonna talk about respect for process.

Brian Fielkow:

And let's not mistake process, actionable process with a 600-page handbook

Brian Fielkow:

that I guarantee you nobody reads.

Brian Fielkow:

We're gonna talk about how you make process actionable, how

Brian Fielkow:

you make it understandable by by your intended audience, by the

Brian Fielkow:

people that need to follow it.

Brian Fielkow:

I'll kind of say if your audience reads at a seventh or eighth-grade level,

Brian Fielkow:

and your process manual's written at a collegiate level, you don't have process.

Brian Fielkow:

You

Brian Fielkow:

have words on

Brian Fielkow:

paper.

Brian Fielkow:

So it's

Brian Fielkow:

how to get

Brian Fielkow:

process… It's how to

Brian Fielkow:

ingrain it, how to make it actionable.

Brian Fielkow:

And then we move into accountability, and what I'll talk about there is that

Brian Fielkow:

an organization can cause an injury or a crash as much as an individual.

Brian Fielkow:

So a lot of times we'll just blame the person whose hands were on the levers.

Brian Fielkow:

But like I said earlier, we gotta look in the mirror, individual accountability,

Brian Fielkow:

organizational accountability.

Brian Fielkow:

And then we're gonna end by talking about resilience.

Brian Fielkow:

Even in the best organization, you know as well as I do, bad things are gonna happen.

Brian Fielkow:

You can't sweep it under the rug.

Brian Fielkow:

How do you learn from it?

Brian Fielkow:

how do you listen to the whispers?

Brian Fielkow:

how do you build smarter, stronger organizations?

Brian Fielkow:

One, one example I use when I speak, and it's really a, a tragic situation,

Brian Fielkow:

but we had that crash in January of 2025 over the Potomac the American

Brian Fielkow:

Eagle

Brian Fielkow:

and the

Brian Fielkow:

military

Brian Fielkow:

helicopter

Brian Fielkow:

And something

Brian Fielkow:

that we

Brian Fielkow:

should all learn

Brian Fielkow:

from

Brian Fielkow:

is that between two

Brian Fielkow:

thousand eleven and the date of the crash, that exact same set of

Brian Fielkow:

circumstances appeared over eighty times.

Brian Fielkow:

It's just that it didn't result in a crash.

Brian Fielkow:

Yeah.

Brian Fielkow:

So… And, and but the key is it it happens in all organizations, right?

Brian Fielkow:

You know, very few people will say that was a shock loss.

Brian Fielkow:

Well, if I look deep enough, in most cases, that was not a shock loss.

Brian Fielkow:

It was a predictable surprise.

Brian Fielkow:

If you listen to the whispers, if you listen to the near

Brian Fielkow:

misses, if you look at the unsafe

Brian Fielkow:

conditions, if you look at the, flaws in the system, you'll find it, and

Brian Fielkow:

that's where you really can prevent it.

Brian Fielkow:

But it's a function of leadership, and not just executive leadership.

Brian Fielkow:

Some of your best leaders are in your front lines.

Brian Fielkow:

It's, it, it's

Brian Fielkow:

a function of

Brian Fielkow:

not just process, but, unconditional respect for process.

Brian Fielkow:

So, e-e-examples like

Brian Fielkow:

that, these na- big national news examples like the crash over the

Brian Fielkow:

Potomac, I don't like talking about those too much because I don't want

Brian Fielkow:

to sensationalize such a tragedy.

Brian Fielkow:

But a bigger tragedy is if we don't learn from it.

Brian Fielkow:

And I'm

Brian Fielkow:

telling you

Brian Fielkow:

that at its root, you'll find

Brian Fielkow:

those citations, you'll find those penalties, you'll find those paper

Brian Fielkow:

cuts or s- or minor cuts, not paper cuts, but like minor cuts because

Brian Fielkow:

you didn't have machine guarding, and all of a sudden somebody loses their

Brian Fielkow:

hand that means ten people cut their

Brian Fielkow:

hand and they got lucky.

Brian Fielkow:

you didn't fix the machine guarding.

Brian Fielkow:

Now somebody lost their hand.

Brian Fielkow:

and you're surprised.

Brian Fielkow:

No.

Brian Fielkow:

if you have

Brian Fielkow:

dealt with the

Brian Fielkow:

hand cuts in that unsafe environment, you might not have

Brian Fielkow:

had somebody lose their hand.

Brian Fielkow:

it's… That's

Brian Fielkow:

the kind of stuff w-we hit in the book, but in a

Brian Fielkow:

way that

Brian Fielkow:

people can take

Brian Fielkow:

it and adopt it and make it their own

Brian Fielkow:

whether you like Alabama or not, Ni-Nick Saban's the model of that, right?

Brian Fielkow:

If you listen to what he would say, he's "All I knew how to do was, was build the

Brian Fielkow:

process and trust the process," right?

Brian Fielkow:

It-- the scoreboard takes care of itself

Brian Fielkow:

if

Brian Fielkow:

you've got the process,

Brian Fielkow:

But If you're

Brian Fielkow:

looking at the scoreboard without the process, probably doesn't work.

Brian Fielkow:

in the sports world, I don't think anybody has done a better job

Brian Fielkow:

articulating in a way that business people can learn from, than Nick

Brian Fielkow:

Saban on just respect for process.

Brian Fielkow:

build the

Brian Fielkow:

process, keep refining the process, but trust the process and

Brian Fielkow:

don't deviate from the process.

Brian Fielkow:

And it's why you see these organizations, I mean, A-Alabama under his

Brian Fielkow:

leadership, Green Bay Packers, right?

Brian Fielkow:

Since Brett Favre took over in 1993, they've had three quarterbacks.

Brian Fielkow:

O-other than, injuries And, you know, minor, and again, it's the process.

Brian Fielkow:

and you have all these wide receivers coming in that, maybe they didn't--

Brian Fielkow:

they weren't big names or anything, but they became great because

Brian Fielkow:

they were in a system that works.

Brian Fielkow:

Um, compare that to signing the free agent in, a bad system.

Brian Fielkow:

the free agent might get a big paycheck, but we've seen

Brian Fielkow:

that play out a lot of times.

Brian Fielkow:

and, those are-- those analogies work.

Brian Fielkow:

It's build the system, build the team, ingrain the

Brian Fielkow:

process, keep refining it, but That's the only way I know how,

Brian Fielkow:

whether talking operations.

Brian Fielkow:

And then the scorecard.

Brian Fielkow:

Your scorecard, card, namely your P&L statement, is an outcome of that

Brian Fielkow:

if they're really busy, the first thing I do is tell them

Brian Fielkow:

that, "Hey, we, uh, produced an audiobook, so you can listen to

Brian Fielkow:

it on the, way home." Um, but the thing I'd want them to take away

Brian Fielkow:

is that, that if you're a smaller business, small stature is a virtue.

Brian Fielkow:

Small thinking in any size business is the kiss of death.

Brian Fielkow:

So we

Brian Fielkow:

gotta

Brian Fielkow:

think differently and think big.

Brian Fielkow:

And

Brian Fielkow:

from there, we're

Brian Fielkow:

gonna… the

Brian Fielkow:

book's gonna show you as a leader things you can do, how to engage your employees,

Brian Fielkow:

how to build process that works.

Brian Fielkow:

it takes what I think a lot of people overcomplicate.

Brian Fielkow:

I'm not saying that this is easy, that, anybody can do it.

Brian Fielkow:

But I'm saying that if you just focus on the fundamentals in the book, you

Brian Fielkow:

will get demonstrable, improvement.

Brian Fielkow:

And it's really no different than the ladder story,

Brian Fielkow:

Dallas, that you told, right?

Brian Fielkow:

It's those incremental improvements that all of a sudden pay these huge

Brian Fielkow:

dividends, like what you saw on the-- with the ladder, big gains in productivity.

Brian Fielkow:

Um, we had customers find us because of our safety reputation.

Brian Fielkow:

not every customer cares.

Brian Fielkow:

some customers just want that last nickel.

Brian Fielkow:

Fine.

Brian Fielkow:

That's not my customer.

Brian Fielkow:

I'm not

Brian Fielkow:

competing

Brian Fielkow:

for

Brian Fielkow:

that business.

Brian Fielkow:

You can

Brian Fielkow:

have it.

Brian Fielkow:

but the

Brian Fielkow:

ones that

Brian Fielkow:

care are the ones that that vet their vendors, and then I know that I'm

Brian Fielkow:

competing with other vendors, other logistics companies that share the

Brian Fielkow:

same values and that do things right.

Brian Fielkow:

I'll compete against those guys all day long.

Brian Fielkow:

Not gonna compete against the bottom feeders that don't do it right.

Brian Fielkow:

and so you start to attract value-aligned customers that feel

Brian Fielkow:

the same way, and that's where I think where the magic happens.

Brian Fielkow:

You have the right customers, the right employees, and, that's how

Brian Fielkow:

to build a business that lasts.

Brian Fielkow:

And we ultimately sold the business, and we were able to tie all that to

Brian Fielkow:

the buyer, showing the buyer our, stability and our low customer

Brian Fielkow:

churn rate And that low customer churn rate wasn't because we brought

Brian Fielkow:

better donuts than the next guy.

Brian Fielkow:

It's because of everything we've talked about in this call.

Brian Fielkow:

the book is available on all major outlets, so wherever you like,

Brian Fielkow:

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et cetera.

Brian Fielkow:

the e-book, it's in Kindle format, Apple Books.

Brian Fielkow:

it's widely available.

Brian Fielkow:

if people want more than 10, if you wanna use them for group, for your employees

Brian Fielkow:

and for group conversations, you can just reach out to me, Brian, at Brian

Brian Fielkow:

Fielkow, B-R-I-A-N F-I-E-L-K-O-W.com.

Brian Fielkow:

We've got bulk pricing, a-a-available.

Brian Fielkow:

Um, and, we've tried to make the book as accessible as possible

Brian Fielkow:

with, the hardcover, the audiobook, and then the electronic versions.

Brian Fielkow:

And You don't need to read it chapter by chapter.

Brian Fielkow:

It's not meant to be read sequentially.

Brian Fielkow:

It's meant to kind of meet you and find you where you are, meaning that

Brian Fielkow:

you find the chapters in the areas that are the most important to you

Brian Fielkow:

today, that's where you should focus.

Brian Fielkow:

Yeah

Brian Fielkow:

Yeah

Brian Fielkow:

well, if we looked at anybody in time, right?

Brian Fielkow:

you're gonna no longer have the chance to get a guy like Paul O'Neill on, so

Brian Fielkow:

that's, that unfortunately is gone.

Brian Fielkow:

But I'm… if I could think of, I guess when I was thinking about this question,

Brian Fielkow:

a- again, somebody that you no longer have the chance to do, but, I'm a

Brian Fielkow:

huge Jimmy Buffett fan, been forever.

Brian Fielkow:

And the thing I the thing I liked about Buffett so much, besides the

Brian Fielkow:

fact that I think he was a great songwriter and a great performer, is

Brian Fielkow:

you couldn't put him into a bucket.

Brian Fielkow:

He was also a great businessman, a brilliant entrepreneur, New

Brian Fielkow:

York Times bestselling author.

Brian Fielkow:

And I love people like that that, you know, we all wanna put people in buckets.

Brian Fielkow:

you're country, you're rock, whatever.

Brian Fielkow:

I like people that that avoid the buckets, that you simply can't put in the bucket.

Brian Fielkow:

And I think maybe that's one of the reasons that I liked him so

Brian Fielkow:

much, wa- was just because there, there was no no rhyme or reason.

Brian Fielkow:

Uh, People tried, but they couldn't.

Brian Fielkow:

and again, that's the key is people, anybody, any guest that marches

Brian Fielkow:

to their own drummer, that kind of figures things out on their own.

Brian Fielkow:

We were joking before about not listening to the influencers, right?

Brian Fielkow:

People that, that don't… If you meet somebody that's got all the answers, run.

Brian Fielkow:

Run as fast

Brian Fielkow:

as you can.

Brian Fielkow:

So I wanna, I would love to see you have more guests like that.

Brian Fielkow:

more guests

Brian Fielkow:

who have just done it their way.

Brian Fielkow:

Um, not the right way, not the wrong way, but their way.

Brian Fielkow:

Thank you

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The Last 10%
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Dallas Burnett