Vikrant Host

Welcome everyone to episode seven of Execution at Scale. I'm your host, Vikrant Neb, founder of Lenify and Kurieta, and also author of Execution Under Pressure. And this series exists because I believe the best conversation in the industry always happens in the hallway over coffee or a beer, but not really on the stage. So with this podcast, I'm trying to change that, free-flowing and right from the heart, basically. And today is a little bit different because every episode so far, we have talked about what breaks, what goes wrong, how to fix it, etc. But this one is unique because I have Jeremy Van Puffelen with me, president of Prism Logistics. Prism Logistics was started by Jerry Van Puffelen, who's Jeremy's dad. However, instead of traditionally taking over the business or getting handed off, Jeremy was the one who had to go through and buy it. And he had a full commitment to do it, which we will talk about, and how the operation scaled over 25 years as Jeremy worked with Prism. Right now today, there is about 2.5 million square feet across Northern California, serving some of the most demanding CPG and food and beverage brands in the country. Jeremy is also co-chair at IWLA, that's where I met Jeremy a couple of months back, and thanks to IWLA that we met. So yeah, I would kind of hand it off to Jeremy in case I missed anything, said anything incorrectly, or if you'd like to add on anything.

Jeremy Van Puffelen Guest

No, nothing really to correct you on. Additions, I certainly haven't done any of this on my own. I have a brother, Zach Van Puffelen. He's also in the business with me, a partner who also had the opportunity to buy in when my dad's original partner was retiring. That was our opportunity to get in if we wanted to. We both took that opportunity at the same time. And Zach prefers not to be on camera, I think he'd prefer to be in operations and working through our IT stuff. So it's a good yin yang, we offset each other really well. But the only way we've been able to grow is through him. And then we had a partner of our own that also bought in when my dad's original partner retired in 2014. His name was Mike Mayo. He was our VP of Operations for 25 years as well as a partner, and then he retired at the end of 2025. My brother Zach and I acquired his shares at that point. So now it's down to my father, my brother, and I.

Vikrant Host

If you don't mind, before we go into specifics of operations, etc., I want to hear your story once again. I mean, I've heard it, but I want our listeners to hear your journey from ground up, how you started, how you got involved in Prism, and where it all went from there.

Jeremy Van Puffelen Guest

So my dad founded the company in 1993 with his partner, Paul Vanderover. They got their first account in September of '93, the company itself started in June of '93. When they left the company they were working with before, they set up a small office in my dad's house. At that point in time, I was going into my junior year of high school, so I wasn't ready to jump into the workforce quite yet. But they started grinding out of my dad's house. And then I joined them in '96, I graduated high school in '95 and was going to a local community college. They were getting really busy, needed some help, and it was probably the best thing for me in the long run. I was thinking about a different path, but I hopped on a forklift and was their janitor. It was a flour warehouse, 40,000 square feet of flour, nasty everywhere. I spent quite a bit of time sweeping up flour and restacking broken bags, different things. Yeah, it was fun. So started in '96, and we just continued to grow.

Vikrant Host

There were probably multiple conversations going on in my head, and within my family, one with my wife may have been a little different than the one with my dad, about how quickly I wanted to progress and where I wanted to go. After a few years where I really started getting serious about it, I'd say I probably spent three years just treating it as a job, not thinking I was going to be there long term. But as I got more serious about wanting to get married and have kids and started thinking about it as a long-term career, there were steps I had to take, things my dad and other people couldn't do for me, whether that's about my own seriousness or focus. There were things, when I was 19, 20 years old, I wasn't as focused as I may be today. So I won't really count that '96 to '98 timeframe, I think I was just there to drive a forklift, do the things, and learn. But it did teach me a lot about timing, and it taught me a lot about what everyone on the team is going through.

Jeremy Van Puffelen Guest

I was so early on, in the very beginning, there were only two or three of us in the warehouse, plus my dad and his partner, and my mom in the office trying to grow the business. So there weren't a lot of people I had to work through as far as impressing them or changing the narrative. It was a husband, his wife, and some of their family. It was easier then than as I got more developed in the business. Initially they just wanted to pour into me, they knew exactly who I was, they knew I was Jerry's son. It didn't stop Juan (that was his name) from driving down on me pretty hard. He was another good mentor, another good teacher along the way, and I think my dad was pretty honest with him and said, "if he's not doing well, you need to get on him," and gave him the authority to do so. So he did a lot of coaching for me, taught me a lot. One of the hardest, best workers I've ever met in my life, and he definitely inspired me to work harder a lot of the time I was there. I appreciate him still to this day, but there wasn't anything at that point in time I'd say I had to work around.

Vikrant Host

There's also a second scenario, especially in today's time, right? Because supply chain has evolved a lot over the last decade or so, a lot of times people are coming right out of college and becoming a warehouse manager or procurement manager and so on, who haven't had boots on the ground. So in both these scenarios, what would you say are some of the major lessons you learned in that journey, having boots on the ground, climbing from one place to another, getting into sales, and then being president all the way, from a forklift operator all the way there? What are some of the lessons you learned and the advantages of having boots on the ground?

Jeremy Van Puffelen Guest

I would never want to discount somebody who went through school and took a different path than what I took. I think a lot of it has to do with timing, one might take a little longer than the other. There's a reason people go off to school and get their degrees, so they can come in. I think there are advantages to both. I think a lot of the time, not just in our company or industry, things are different on paper than they are when you're actually on the floor going through the process. So I've had a lot of benefit from learning through experience, some of those experiences were great, some were hard. I didn't always do everything right, so more often than not I learned from my first mistake and tried not to repeat it. But anybody's going to have to go through that learning process, whether they're starting from the ground up or coming out of school directly into a management role. I think you can be successful on either path. For me, it was helpful for where I'm at today, just understanding everything about our company. We're not a big corporate machine, so it's different, if I needed to go do something in the warehouse, I could go do it. Other people don't structure it that way, and that's not bad, it's just a different structure.

Vikrant Host

You made a very good point. In my career in operations, across different types of companies, not just warehousing, that's been a common problem, the sales team promising the moon when there isn't much there. All the pressure then comes onto operations, and then you mess up, and it goes into a cycle. Even delivery timings, if you're doing manufacturing and trying to meet delivery timelines, being able to commit to what's at least as close to reality as possible is very important.

Jeremy Van Puffelen Guest

I totally agree.

Vikrant Host

I'm curious how it shapes up all the experiences of being in those roles, or being close to the actual operators, how does it shape leadership differently?

Jeremy Van Puffelen Guest

There are multiple paths to end up in the same spot, whether it's going through school or boots on the ground and learning through the process, I think you can be successful in both. For me, again, it helped me understand what the team's doing, how long things take. I really sell from an operations background, and I think when you're selling from an operations background, it helps with timing, pricing, understanding what the best fit is for your team internally, but also what's realistic for a customer and understanding their needs. And if those two things can come together, then you're really talking about service more than anything, hopefully, versus just a price-based conversation.

Vikrant Host

Two of the conversations, even at IWLA or other events, when we talk to newer 3PLs, the biggest thing is, "oh, our customer is beating us down on storage charge or receiving charge," etc. And everyone is kind of trying to compete in that race-to-the-bottom without understanding their margins, not having that problem-solving mindset, because the customer is just saying "do this or that." What are your thoughts on this scenario?

Jeremy Van Puffelen Guest

Yeah, I'll probably leave that one alone for the most part. We work on building good relationships and being fair with our clients. Understanding the business well helps us get there, we know what it takes on our side to be financially successful, and we know a fair amount about the customer side and what they need to be successful. So we treat it as a relationship, we want to make sure they're happy and doing well, and we're also happy that we're doing well. It really has to be a partnership. So when there are times things aren't working for our clients, if we can give them a break somehow, or figure out efficiencies, or use our operations background to say "we can take time out of the process here" or "be more efficient with the space here," those are things we look at.

Vikrant Host

That's wonderful. I guess what I'm hearing is that given the operations background, you guys are naturally solving for problems, creating more efficiencies, which in the end helps your customers and yourselves as well.

Jeremy Van Puffelen Guest

Well, that's the goal, isn't it? We're here as an extension of our clients. If they would be doing this in our locations for themselves, they're going to continue pushing forward to drive efficiencies and remove costs in the process. So we should be doing the same thing.

Vikrant Host

Doubling in five years is not an easy task, right? And you've done it almost twice, and again planning to do it. So what were some of the difficult decisions you had to make in that process, every time you're going from X to 2X? And what were some of the differences in how you ran the company, or processes you had to change that were totally different?

Jeremy Van Puffelen Guest

Yeah, I think the biggest thing, going back to our VP of Operations, Mike Mayo, was really building the culture with the team that had been with us so long, to make sure that culture was moving forward with everyone we were growing with and new people coming in. I think that's the hardest thing to do in a company, the larger you get, or the more regions you enter, the harder it is to maintain your culture. I think you only retain clients for a long time if you're treating them well, doing a really good job, and you're price competitive. So build those relationships, make sure it's fair for everybody, and then the hurdles become easier to jump. There wasn't any one major thing where we said "alright, it's 2X, now we've got to do this." We've always invested in our WMS systems, our technology, our people. So it was really just doing more, and being willing to take on a bit more risk than we maybe would have in the past, the dollars start changing on what leases look like in bigger buildings, things of that nature. So maybe taking on more risk, but it was really still just doing what we do.

Vikrant Host

If someone was watching us, and their 100,000-square-foot warehouse started maybe three, four years back, what would be your advice to them, the most common mistakes you've seen others make, or general advice to a typical SME 3PL?

Jeremy Van Puffelen Guest

'm going to go back to the partnerships, listen to your customers. If they're telling you this is what they need and where they need to be, do everything you can to get them there and help them. Push it as far as you can, as lean as you can, without sacrificing service and your ability to manage the financials of the company, but keep it as lean as you can for as long as you can. If you start adding a bunch of bodies, it gets tough to keep your pricing where it needs to be to make sure it always makes sense for the customers. So we run lean and stay efficient with both space and labor, that's what allows us to keep the cost where it needs to be for our clients.

Vikrant Host

As I talk to a lot of different people, even at some of the IWLA events, there's a mixed set of opinions. One opinion is that you should have a little diversification, multiple revenue streams, like you mentioned. Personally, I agree with that. But then there are some people who say it should be very specific, just do pallet in, pallet out, or cross-dock, or food, or e-commerce, specialize into a very specific niche. What's your thought process on these two different approaches?

Jeremy Van Puffelen Guest

They kind of overlap. For us, it depends on your path for growth and what you want to do. For us to continue growing the way we'd like to, that "double every five years" kind of process we're hoping to continue, I think we need to diversify a bit more, and we've been doing that over the last couple of years. But I think you can also do really well by having a very specific niche and just standing in your lane, so to speak. If that's where you want to be and that's all you want to do, but you do it the best, you can be very successful there. Everyone's on their own journey with their company and what they want that to look like, you can be successful in whatever lane you want, as long as you're really good at it. Like In-N-Out, right? They don't have a ton of different options as far as their burgers go, but I love In-N-Out, I'm a huge fan, their burgers are great, they're the same every time, but they have a very specific lane. They're not trying to be everything to everybody, they're not offering chicken nuggets and chicken sandwiches and all this other stuff. It's very specific, and they're really good at it, and they kill it. So I think across any industry, if you're really good at the thing you're doing, you can be successful.

Vikrant Host

If someone tells me, "okay, we're doing pallet in, pallet out, or the B2B side of a traditional 3PL, and we want to do fulfillment," my first comment to them is, yes, you should and you can, but these are kind of two very different processes and businesses. Same thing with packaging, if you're doing contract packaging as an added-on service, and this is my opinion, I want your thought process on it, people who don't treat these as different processes and different businesses, even within the same building, that's where the problem starts coming in. Because even pricing for a pallet-in/pallet-out operation versus fulfillment versus contract packaging is very different.

Jeremy Van Puffelen Guest

It is very different. Yeah. The pricing models don't necessarily overlap, there's volume play that doesn't overlap, and there are space requirements that don't overlap, they're very different things. The investment in equipment, you have it for both, but if you're trying to run a very productive e-commerce line, you probably need some sort of automation. If you're pumping out thousands of orders a day, you can do that in a traditional model with people picking and sticking to pallets, but running it through a labeling process, is that the most efficient? There are different investments from an equipment standpoint, and the software is different too, a traditional 3PL software is really a location-based system, versus a throughput-based system where you're just trying to track information, versus "where's the pallet, what's the lot number." They're very different. If anyone asks me, I say the same thing: if you're thinking about running it on the same process and same system, you should probably stick in your lane. If you really want to do it, you have to understand the differences and nuances. Even in transportation, last mile, LTL, FTL, asset-based or brokerage, or all the way into container freight, it's endless.

Vikrant Host

One of the things I know that Jerry and you both have been really involved in is IWLA. I became part of IWLA earlier this year, and I've only been to two events, but I really see the importance and value of the different sessions, these are the exact discussions we're having at an event like IWLA. There was one around pricing, there's one coming up on fulfillment, and so on. So can you share a little bit, from the start, since you've seen your dad present in the community, and you're very much involved in the community yourself, what role does it play, both in your own group and how it can benefit others?

Jeremy Van Puffelen Guest

I grew up going to the IWLA conventions, whether that was in high school or junior high, because my dad attended IWLA conventions well before he started Prism, he ran companies for other people for a long time. He was part of the IWLA, which wasn't the IWLA back then, I think it was the AWA, America's Warehousemen's Association, probably other names as well. But he's been going for a long time, I want to say since like 1973, '75. So it's been quite a while that he's been attending. One of the first things he did when he started Prism in '93 was join the IWLA. He thought, and I agree with him, that from an education standpoint, a networking standpoint, and a giving-back standpoint, those were good building blocks and foundational things for building a successful company. In my own journey, I learned a lot, I took my Essentials course, had a great time, met a lot of people. I learned a lot about setting up a warehouse and pricing. You've got guys like Bob Moran, who've been teaching people pricing for so long and have had an impact on so many people in how they approach rate and cost analysis. So you're learning how other people do things, how they operate, how they're implementing technology. It's a massive fountain of educational information when it comes to anything from setting up a warehouse, operating it, running the HR side, legal advice, the legal advice we get, the terms and conditions, and everything the IWLA provides, it's unmatched.

Vikrant Host

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Jeremy, for concluding that, and I totally agree with it. Thank you so much for your time today, I won't keep you waiting. I know we were supposed to keep it to an hour, but we'll probably do a follow-up session in a few months and see where things are.