Building The Circular Economy: Trade-ins, Returns, and The Rise of Reverse Logistics - Rich Bulger

Yeah, My Goal, whenever I rose to the ranks, I got promoted really fast through Verizon. Started as a temp and before I knew it, I was the youngest director in Verizon. And what drove me wasn't necessarily getting the next job. The goal was to do the next job at an exceptional level. So what motivates me more than money credibility is impact. So through my time at Verizon,

I always went through and tried to work above and beyond what my band and job required me to do. That way I could learn how to go through and be effective at the next level, at the level I was currently at. That way when I got that promotion, I wasn't getting there making mistakes. I'd already made the mistakes. And I tried to make sure that I knew cause and effect of decisions that I made. So my philosophy is,

I believe if you go through and you set your heart and your mind to make a positive impact, then promotions, revenue, credibility, all comes from just having a noble purpose of doing the right thing.

100%. I really like that the way you're putting it, which is if you do good work, rest of the lagging indicators anyway follow. So if you're already doing good towards a certain role, that role is already yours. And that's something I, know, I even I went through in my career previously when I was trying to get promoted at Amazon where the one combined feedback that I got to be moved to a senior level was that

You'd have to already be in a senior role. You won't be promoted to a role and then expected to perform in it. You have to be already in that role to be able to promote it to that. And I mean, I'm kind of reflecting back from your time in Verizon, from where you started to where you of concluded your career in Verizon, what was that journey like? Moving through ranks from the very starting of it to the...

director of reverse logistics, that to the youngest. And that would have been a ride. I'm guessing you must be pushing like 14 hours, 15 hours kind of days or like you must be working pretty hard to kind of reach that level, especially at a company like Verizon.

Yeah, my experience, I joined Verizon after I got out the military as a temp from Medeco. So they brought me in initially to take bill payments. And this is 2001, it was right before September 11th. And whenever a customer came in, I'd smile, I'd shake their hand if they'd let me, I'd look up their bill to see if they were on the right plan, take their payment, walk them to the door. And I tried to make sure that the experience was the best it could possibly be. And Shiv about...

Mm-hmm.

30 days into that role, Verizon put a machine in the store. You know what that machine did? It took bill payments. So my very first job at Verizon got automated. And I could have said, hey, that's the end of my career, but I had a really good leader ⁓ that was teaching me customer service. So I started going through and looking at to analyze rate plans and handle billing issues. And I learned about the mobile devices before I got my part-time customer service job.

And then same person challenged me to learn how to sell from customer service. So when I walked into the sales role, I immediately became in the top 10% of the company in sales. And then from a sales role, I started doing senior sales rep work. So when I moved into the senior sales rep role, I was already competing in the top 10% in that position. And as a senior sales rep, I was going through going from store to store, being an assistant manager, which was above my responsibility. And I wasn't getting paid to do it, but I wanted the experience.

You got to work to learn, you got to work to earn. That way, when I became an assistant manager, was immediately in the top 10 of assistant managers that existed. And the same thing through management. I ran the largest retail district of 270 in the company from Knoxville, Tennessee to Bristol, Virginia to Asheville, North Carolina. And I had 17 stores. had 17 amazing store managers. had 34 amazing assistant managers and another

200 plus employees that I could go through and find the best practices, make sure everyone was on the same page. And by doing that, I helped our district grow to be the top performing district in the company. In 2009, I became the youngest director in Verizon and they put two jobs together. They put an operational job. had 223 stores, had 400 franchise agents, I had a couple hundred business to business reps.

And I had to figure out how to get inventory into and out of the locations. had to merchandise. I had to manage operational finance KPIs like discounting, return rates, no fault found on warranty swaps. And I was also a marketing director, $6 billion region, 10 million subscribers. I had to figure out how to get customers and keep customers. And what pulled me into the space that I was in now was I started Verizon's first retail trading program as a two district pilot in order to put money in customers' pockets.

so could sell them more things. In my army truck driver brain, I thought you're more likely to sell your house when you're buying a new house, you're more likely to sell your car when you're buying a new car. You'd be more likely to sell your phone when you're buying your next new phone. And if I could put $100 in your pocket, I'm gonna sell you more than $100 worth of stuff. And then that became a new source of revenue, because the phones that I bought for 100, I was selling for much more than 100, so was a new source of revenue.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

customer satisfaction scores went up because people felt better about getting value. ⁓ And we did what was right for the environment. That got me a call from the vice president of supply chain saying, I you're really good at reverse logistics. How would you like to move your family to Texas and run the CRTC? And my response was, it sounds awesome. Thank you for thinking of me. But I've got two questions. What's reverse logistics and what's a CRTC? ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Bye.

Centralized returns and testing center. ⁓ I've processed 15 million devices annually, ran a $300 million P&L, operations and repair. Then it took over the sales team when trade-in revenues broke a billion, grew it to a billion six. Before I had a chance to retire from Verizon and I went to Cisco, a maker of things and a distributor of things. I got to learn global reverse logistics, not domestic. Verizon didn't want us to advocate so I couldn't serve on any ⁓ thought.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Thank

think tanks or associations like the RLA and Reverse Logistics Association, Cisco encouraged it. So I went to Cisco, ran their global reverse for three years before I left there during COVID to take over my first CEO role, matching used supply with used demand for revenues from 27 million to 116 before I had a chance to leave that company. Wrote a book, I've been traveling the world teaching master classes and now I help companies solve those challenges.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's what inspires me, like where you kind of worked in the industry and now you're educating others about the industry of how to approach it. So if I have to put it correctly, the trade-ins that we see in T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T today are your creation, at least at Verizon in the beginning. Before that, the trade-in concept existed or did not exist?

It did not exist. Everyone thought I was crazy. I've got a picture of my, uh, my old finance associate director behind me. you can see him wearing the tuxedo in front of all my major mistakes I made in business. Um, but he's like, rich, we're a cell phone company spelled S E L L not a buy-phone company. Why on earth would you try to buy devices back? And I said, I can sell more things. He's like, I really need you to sell accessories. I'm like, this will help me do that.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And by the time I left Verizon, the revenue that we generated from the sale of products that people no longer wanted brought more revenue into the company than the sale of every accessory we sold from every channel combined. It was just breaking the linear sales process, developing a circular sales process and thinking different. But everyone thought I was crazy going through. I remember I had a vice president.

Mm-hmm.

I'm sorry, a area president, when he found out I was going from marketing to logistics, he goes, rich, why on earth would you ever go from a marketing position where you're universally loved to blood sucking overhead and supply chain? And I'm like, because I think I can make the company more money. He's like, you're an idiot. And then I did. Now, um, you know, by the time I left Verizon, uh,

you

Yeah, I mean, it's really in. go ahead. Please go ahead. Sorry to interrupt. Please go ahead.

We were a $1.6 billion revenue stream. I was controlling 2% of the company's revenue with a team of eight, but no one knew what I did.

Hmm.

Makes sense. Yeah. mean, reverse logistics is such an underrepresented and underestimated part of the retail supply chain or in general, like manufacturing supply chains altogether. had a question pop up in my head. Like, while you were like trying to convince the executives of the value and having driven it to $1.6 billion, which is like 2% of revenue, why did they let you go? How did they let you go? By letting you, I mean like how...

When you move to Cisco, then they stop you that hey, hey Rach, we'll do anything we can do for you. Please don't leave.

Well, this is the interesting thing. My entire career at Verizon, I was a leading employee with the exception of two years, a top performance rating employee. In the two years I wasn't top rated, I was rated new and role. So we had a CEO that came in. He looked at the balance sheet saying, we're paying too many people too much. So if you weren't on commission and it's very hard to pay commission on reverse logistics.

⁓ regardless of your performance rating, ⁓ there was an email that went out saying, Hey, if you'd like to go through and retire early, here is what we're willing to buy your career for. And even though I loved my boss, I loved my team. I loved my mission. ⁓ you know, that, that number was enough to pay off my house and put both my kids through college. So I couldn't look my wife in the eye and say, was being a good steward of the family.

if I said no to that job and then Verizon advertised that they were doing it. So before I knew it, I had seven job offers. All were six figures more than what Verizon was paying with sign-on bonuses and other other good deals. So I couldn't afford to stay. And, you know, they did try to go through and keep me. said, hey, we don't want to lose our top talent. Like, well, can you match these other offers that I have? And they weren't willing to do that. So ⁓

Mm-hmm.

To me, the Cisco job opportunity wasn't the highest paying offer I had, ⁓ but Shiv, it was the hardest job offer I had. Going back to what motivates you doing a good job, I wanted to see if what I learned about reverse logistics at Verizon, a distributor of things with primarily a business to consumer sales funnel and domestic reverse logistics could transfer to Cisco, a maker of things and a maker of different things, routers and switches. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

telepresence gear, international reverse logistics. I got to run plants in the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Japan, here in the US. 12 places helped me ship a product across borders. I got to see recycling operations in Brazil, ⁓ built operations in India, places that I wouldn't have been able to go at Verizon. And then, you know, I got to challenge myself to go through and expand to see.

is what I know about reverse logistics transferable to another category. And I found that there's a lot more in the center of the Venn diagram. Everything has a cost reuse. Everything has a blended benefit. You've got to match expected orders with the person that's sending it. You've got to assess cosmetic and functional capabilities. Now you might do that through different ways, but the math was the same. The processes were a little bit different. And I got to really go through and expand what I knew about this industry from taking a new role.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

That makes sense. mean, you expanded your career from direct to consumer to more of an OEM role where you're looking at a global distribution. You're looking at all different kinds of businesses that are taking supply from Cisco. And then you're kind of learning on the job and kind of understanding the reverse logistics for B2B space, Like B2B space, B2 like schools, and I'm guessing like Cisco, Cisco is used almost like.

I'm guessing it's like it's in every country out there, I'm guessing. So you must have already like seen like how the different nuances are. Did you find anything different about what was going on in Brazil in terms of reverse logistics versus what was going on in the US or India or like what were the behavioral differences that you found by looking at reverse logistics in these different marketplaces?

Well, Brazil, India, Russia, before the conflict broke, we called it type five countries where they were very difficult to get product into and out of due to government regulation. The tax structure in Brazil is, I've never seen anything like it in Nota Fiscal where the burden of tax goes from whoever holds the product at the time, whether it's forward or reverse, it's a much more complicated tax structure.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ India doesn't allow things to come used into their country because they don't want their country to become a landfill. due to some of those regulations, it's virtually impossible to get things into and out of. possible, but it's very difficult. So it's easier to go through and set up entire forward reverse manufacturing organizations within those borders. So I learned that with forward logistics,

Hmm.

the assessing value added taxes ⁓ or tariffs, because those are two different things, ⁓ are easier to do when a product is in new condition. But when it's used, it's much harder to get product across borders. It's much harder to calculate taxes ⁓ and tariffs and recall that if you're pulling something out of. ⁓ It's a different set of challenges, but every country has their own unique feel.

Mm-hmm.

But the ones you talked about, Brazil, that one was a brainer to figure out.

Yeah, I can imagine the same for India as well. Like I've imported things into India and it's very complex. Every time it's kind of, you you learn something new that these are the customs paper you need. This is the rules that you need to follow. And it's a lot of, know, you need local partners who know the country and the import duties and regulations much well. I'm trying to understand, like there must be like a complete...

There are no experts. And there's virtually no education on reverse logistics. I've been traveling the world now with my good friend, Dr. Peter Evans, ⁓ through my company, All Things Circular, teaching master classes on, I stopped using the terms forward and reverse logistics because people's eyes kind of glaze over. I started using the term circular logistics, because that is the combination of forward to the point of use.

Mm-hmm.

Your headsets will never be more forward than on your head right now. If you ever decide to sell them and it moves away from you, that goes through a reverse logistics moving away from you. And then if you assess cosmetic and functional condition and it's sold to another person, that goes back to a forward logistics process. So circular logistics is the connection of where forward and reverse meet to move product in the hands of the first customer into the hands of the second customer. You would think

Mm-hmm.

that there's a lot of education on this space. But one of the things that Peter and I do is when we're in these conferences, we ask people that are in reverse, how did you get trained? And we use a software program called Menti that helps us go through and get real-time feedback. But we ask people, were you put through a formal course or have you taken a formal course? Did your company have its own onboarding program? Did you shadow with someone?

Mm-hmm.

when you came in, were you just thrown into the deep end to figure it out? Are you still uncertain about how you do it or other? Shiv, we've done this course now, over 400 people, six different countries we've delivered this in. Do you know how many people have ever taken a formal course based upon the survey results we have so far? And these are people that do it for a living.

Hmm.

Got it. Let me take a guess. I would say around 10% might have, because I know the lack of, you know, like literature or general education on the rivers or circularity, both like circular logistics. 10%, how close am I? One.

One, not 1%,

one person. So I'm like, all right, cool. Who put in, they took a formal course. And one of my college professors from the American Public University System, the only college on the planet that has a course in this, raises his hand. I'm like, all right, you're teaching a course, you don't count. But you would think, according to the National Retail Federation, the size of the retail

one person.

Mm.

Yes.

economy in the US is $5.3 trillion. It's how much companies who make and sell things through retail made in 2024. Unwanted returns, where someone approached the retailer and said, hey, I want my money back because I bought the wrong thing or I don't want it, was $890 billion. It's up almost 300% compared to pre-COVID rates.

Mm-hmm.

Online shopping has an 18% in change return rate versus eight and change in stores. So the impact of unwanted returns flowing through reverse is more critical now than ever before. And the size of the secondary market, according to trending from some studies, is north of 800 billion. So if you aggregate unwanted returns with the benefit of the secondary market returns in the US, it's 1.6 trillion of a $5.3 trillion economy.

Yes.

almost 30% is influenced by reverse logistics and no one, including the leaders in this space are trained how to do it. Everyone's thrown in to figure it out. If you're lucky, you're shadowing with someone. If you're really lucky, you're shadowing with someone good, but you've got all these different binoculars and practices that exist where people are trying to do the right thing.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

but there's no standardization or education that you find in finance, in sales, leadership, even forward supply chain and transportation is taught, but reverse is best case scenario, barely mentioned in supply chain classes.

Yeah, I I totally resonate with what you mentioned about like it's underrepresented. I feel the reason for that could be that when like returns became important, I believe at the starting of e-commerce events, 2008, 2007, 2006 is when returns became like a problem, problem for somebody to look at. All right, now I'm getting these returns and they're increasing and COVID kind of derived them to a point that, all right, now I'm getting 30% returns on apparel and getting

20% return on electronics and I can't just write them off. just can't, know, and at the same time I'm getting a lot of ESG pressure that I can't, you know, make them disappear either. So I mean, this is a real gap that I think even I resonate with that I'm also learning on a go. Like I'm learning through your podcasts. I'm learning through kind of, you know, whatever content I can get from RLA. ⁓ I'm yet to buy a book, but I'm very close to buying it.

I'll

send some of your address, I'll send you one. Actually, this is the Montgomery Ward catalog from 1879. And Montgomery Ward was a mail order catalog salesperson. And in this catalog was the very first time 100% customer guarantee was made that I've been able to find. So where if you bought something from this catalog and you decided that you didn't want it, you could send it back and get your money back.

Hmm.

No questions asked. So I call Montgomery Ward the father, the godfather of linear returns because this started the phenomenon of if you make a promise to sell more things, which you want to do that customers can get their money back, you've got to deal with the returns. The very first Model T's rolled off the American assembly lines in 1908 with a warranty promise that if something breaks within a period of time, we'll fix it.

Hmm.

Those cars were manufactured with peat moss as seats. So there was no cushions like they have today. And when those Model Ts rolled off the assembly line, the seats had bugs in it, chiggers that would bite and cause rashes. So the first Model Ts that rolled off had to get recalled to get the bugs out of the seats, linear returns. Now there's another guy, Les Kelley, who by 1912,

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

those Model Ts were starting to fall apart. ⁓ They had a slang term when I was growing up, we called them Hoopties. ⁓ But in 1912, they called beat up cars, flivvers F-L-I-V-V-E-R-S And ⁓ what Les Kelley did was he would go through, he bought a flivver, fixed it up and sold it for what he could get. And that gave him enough money to go through and buy two flivvers where he fixed them.

Mm-hmm.

sold them and he was able to buy four after that. By 1918, he had bought and sold enough flivvers to open up the very first used car dealership in the United States and California. And then people started going to Les Kelley saying, hey, listen, I know you have a book where you're keeping your buy price and your sell price. Could you sell us access to your book so we know what we could buy for and what we could sell for? Which is how the Kelley Blue Book started coming around. So I called Les Kelley.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

the godfather of circular returns, even though no one thinks cars is a circular process, it's one of the best examples of a circular program that's ever existed. And ⁓ he was able to do it over a hundred years ago with pen and paper. We've got AI, ML, circular platforms, and all these things that can go through a match use supply with use demand.

So you're able to do it for your headsets now. can sell used books. People are checking the resale value of clothing before they buy it. So it's very interesting how the world has changed, but no one knows how to do it and how to think about it at scale yet.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, it's almost like everyone's trying to create their own process and trying to figure out what do I do given that I now have it in my hand. then kind of like, I've spoken to leaders who would be, you know, like, this is the best case scenario for my warehouse. This is what I should do based on my goals and whatnot. But there's no playbook that they can kind of refer to and say that, hey, I'll follow 80% of this and then 20% I would customize to my own needs.

which I'm guessing must be increasing the time it might take them to kind of set up a process because now they're really figuring out on the job and they're also committing mistakes in the process and mistakes that actually cost money when you're not moving goods at the right recovery or you're not moving them at all or you're sitting on them way too long and eating warehouse space as well. But yeah, I mean, I've only seen Verizon, AT&T, Amazon,

Target. These are the companies that have this role of leader for reverse logistics. Most companies, I don't think they have a separate role for like director of reverse logistics. It's more like a director of supply chain who also looks at reverse supply chain ⁓ in addition to all the other things that they do. So it's never like a area that's completely. Yeah, I mean, it's not it's not it's not a it's not a

It's not looked at as a marketing leader or a sales leader. It's like you have to first explain to hey, I'm a reverse logistics leader. What exactly does that mean? What do do?

Yeah, you could go through and you can find vice presidents of logistics. ⁓ I rolled up into vice presidents of logistics as a reverse director. You can find tons of VPs of sustainability that exists out there. And I've been speaking at colleges all over the planet. Columbia University I was at not too long ago. And I asked all the people who were getting master's degrees in sustainability, who has taken a course on reverse logistics? No one.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

has and there's no VPs of reverse logistics, is one of the most, if not the most complex part of supply chain that exists out there. And now you're right, Shiv, where you said, Hey, people used to just write off. I'll take an 8% revenue haircut and just write returns off and just have it net out of my company's corporate profits. Well, now that the impact is three acts.

They've got to figure it out. The National Retail Federation just bought the Reverse Logistics Association last year to try to find thought leaders and expertise to address the return problem. But I'm shocked that there's not vice presidents of reverse logistics that exist because the impact that they have, knowing who the second, third, fourth customer is, how to prepare product to get there.

One of the other regional differences is good, better, best is different in Brazil than it is in Japan, than it is ⁓ in Europe, than it is in the United States. So how to go through and know who the second customer is and what their buying motives are and how to get the product could have a massive impact to a company's bottom line. But it's not taught in any business school how to go through and manage this. And some companies are starting to figure it out.

but there's a lot of work that needs to get done.

Yeah, definitely. I that motivates me as well because it's a space where there's a lot more of awareness, a lot more work to be done. And that is what I think I feel sometimes I'm sad that it doesn't have that much visibility as much as it should have in an enterprise setting. But at the same time, it's also an opportunity. return rates are helping us. Return rates are actually making their way into

being a huge red line into P&Ls and like leadership itself now realizing that if we don't look at this problem as a big problem or as a problem of our supply chain, they're going to be looking at 10%, 20% decline in their margin. So that's, it's a changing trend definitely. And you know, like the role that RLA plays in it is huge. I RLA, I believe started like 20 years ago or like when did Tony started? about in 2008 or nine, I think.

Well, it started before Tony took over. Tony took over several years ago. Get him on. He's a fantastic storyteller. But I don't want to misquote the RLA's history. I've been a part of it now for the last seven years. I spent three years in the advisory board of the RLA. And it is one of my favorite groups of people because it's the only place I can go where people speak my language.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, definitely. I'm looking forward to being in the show this year. it's going to be, I'm also looking forward to being in the same community because every time even I have to explain it to people, it's like, which industry do you work in? So yeah, it's definitely a very small group, connected group. I explained that, you know, I just simply say that, you know, when you buy things on Amazon, you return them. What do think happens to them?

How do you explain it?

Funny, I do the exact same thing. I explain forward and reverse. I'm like, have you ever bought anything on Amazon? Four logistics. You make the headsets, you package them, you send them to a distribution point, they get sent to you, that's four logistics. Have you ever returned anything? Well, yeah. What do you think happens then? That's what my superpower is. I find value in things that people no longer want.

100% and you know I have a more like before I entered the industry now I have more appreciation of what happens at the customer return kiosk at Target Amazon and things like that now I kind of Refrain myself and I ask myself again and again do I really want to return it because I know it's gonna be very hard to find this thing a new home and you know, it's The way the industry work as you know, like things get mixed. They are sold for pennies on dollars. Sometimes they don't even find a good home

The brands are losing money, you're kind of creating, you're adding to the climate change problem. yeah, once you start working in this industry, you realize what kind of a role it plays, not just in consumerism, but also climate and sustainability. Because at the end of the day, whatever we produce has to go somewhere. It doesn't just disappear.

That's right.

Awesome. I want to make a segue. like from, tell me a little, like I want to learn more about like, what was your experience doing a master's in reverse logistics? You've already spent at that point, I'm guessing around two decades in the reverse logistics space or at least in the supply chain space, if I understand correctly. I mean, you've spent 17 years at Verizon. I'm guessing, and so yeah, like at that point you have spent like 15 years in reverse logistics if I'm like more accurate.

Man am I that old? I think I'm that old.

No, no, I

think you're right. My back identifies with what you're saying more so than I think my mind does.

Got it.

Well, that's always a good thing, right? Like you have to be younger in your brain than in your body. But what did you like kind of my question was like, well, I'm guessing you must be teaching the professors more than learning from them, right? Because you've already been in the field and what value you were hoping to kind of derive from a master's having already spent having written playbooks at such big companies already.

So when I was at Verizon and I got pulled in, the first year in reverse logistics almost killed me. My stress level was just maxed out. Cause I went from sales and marketing where I knew cause and effect of everything to reverse logistics where I tell people it was like going from tennis to Taekwondo. You have to be athletic, but if you mess up, you get kicked in the face and the rules of engagement are entirely different. So my spider sense was going crazy. I did not know.

Thank

the problems that I was causing from retail, just throwing stuff into boxing, they'll get back to the warehouse and they'll figure it out. When I saw what 15 million annual returns looked like at scale, think of hundreds of pallets coming in every single day with receipts wrapped around them, where every one of those receipts represented a name and a face and a story of people that I would deal with. And... ⁓

I didn't know how to go through and run the operation. Thankfully, I shadowed with someone who was really good, who had the job before I did, Erica Pollock. She is the one who gets credit for everything that I know about reverse logistics. Because she really taught me, but I was learning from someone who knew everything to a level that I didn't know. And it was the first time in my career that I was in that situation. And what I found when I was

bringing in employees, I had to spend a lot of time just trying to explain them what it was. when I was on webinars and I was talking about our operation, there was a lot of people that reached out saying, hey, I want to learn more, but there was no formal training. So four years running Verizon's reverse, there was no formal training. So I leave and I go to Cisco and Cisco is winning Gartner Supply Chain Awards for supply chain. I'm like, cool, we should have something. There was nothing there as well.

And then when I was able to go on the advisory board of the Reverse Logistics Association. So now I'm on with Amazon, I'm on with Walmart, I'm on with Hewlett Packard, I'm on with 3PLs that go through and enable movement. And asking the same thing, hey, who has a onboarding and education program? And the response was, well, that's something that a lot of our members are asking for. ⁓

But we really haven't haven't come up with anything yet. I was on that board for a year. And then Dr. Oliver Hedgepeth came on from the American Public University. And he educated us about a college curriculum that the RLA developed in 2013. That was an online course that had a bachelor's and a master's degree program. Verizon, I moved six times in 17 years. You know, when I went to the Army, I went to the Army for college money, but I just kept on moving.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

and I could never start and finish school. So every time I'd move, I'd have to start over until I got my degree, my two-year degree from an online college at 29. I got my four-year degree from an online college at 33 when I was already a director. So I'm in my 40s now and I hear about this online program that the American Public University has. So I'm like, cool, I'm on the board.

Mm-hmm.

It's a responsible thing for a board member to do to test out the curriculum and see we had tuition assistance. And I wanted to see if my tuition assistance could be leveraged to go through and train my employees reverse logistics because I knew you'd have a higher retention rate. If people are taking online school, they don't quit as as often. So my guy, ⁓ I want to go in, be a responsible board member. I want to train my employees. I also wanted to recruit.

Mm-hmm.

next time.

Selfishly the American Public University System has a civilian arm in a military arm the American Military University So my cool, those are my peets so if I could go in and ⁓ Find people that knew what reverse logistics was and were motivated enough to take a course in it Those are people that I wanted to recruit So I'm like I'll take one class at a time and I tried to stage my curriculum to go through and have assignments

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

complete tasks that I wanted to go through and work on at work anyway. So my very first class, I developed ⁓ the business plan that I used to convince Cisco leaders to become more circular. And I just fortified it with a ton of research. My second class, I developed my product lifecycle loop theory, where product goes forward to, away from modeling the sales cycle that Cisco had.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

the customer racetrack, I wanted to try to go through and speak in Cisconian. And that's become a core philosophy that I've shared. When I became the CEO of my last company, I used one of my courses to write the business plan that I was gonna use. I used my IT course to help go through an engineer of reverse logistics warehouse management system. So I'm seven classes in and ⁓ usually what happened was on Monday morning, the courses would open up at 6 a.m.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Thank

and I wanted to interact. So I would go through and do my introduction. I wanted to be one of the first to do it because I wanted to spend a week getting to know the people in the class. you know, seven classes in, I go through, I do my first thing and the first response was, hey, professor, great to meet you. And I'm like, I'm not the professor of this course, just a student, just like you happy to learn just as much from you as you learn from me. And then the next person posted, professor, great to meet you.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

When I said hello, I'm like, no, no, I'm not the, I'm not the professor. And by Thursday, the professor finally responded and wasn't thrilled that people were asking me if I was teaching the course. That was never my intent to position myself. I always like to say I'm the least intelligent person in the room. I'm the least important person in the room. You know, I'll go through and find value by adding value to everyone else. So I start getting seeds on my assignments.

Hmm.

Because the book that was used was written in 1999 called Going Backwards, Reverse Logistics Trends and Practices. And the whole concept behind the book is all returns are bad and how do you drive down returns? So when an assignment came out, give me a best practice in reverse logistics. And I started talking about buying back returns. I got from him the same thing I got from Verizon. You don't drive up.

I see.

Yeah.

returns, you drive them down. I'm like, well, with circular programs, lease product as a service trade in, you're actually trying to compel some returns up. So you need to know how to value. You need to know how to sell. I like, no, that's not in the book. See, you're not getting the concept. There was another assignment where, you know, they had us read, ⁓ a best practice in the army from 96. Where if you were a truck driver and you wanted to send something back,

Hmm.

from the motor pool to the part depot, you had to go get the Army manual, take it to the Xerox machine, photocopy the page three times, keep one for yourself, put two in the box and send it to the part depot. I'm like, well, I know why you would wanna do that. I was actually in the Army in 96 driving trucks. You wanna make it easy for your friend at the part depot to know what part they have to give you the check mark that they got the right thing without having to go through and figure out what it is.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Like nowadays you could do serialized number of returns. You could go through, take an image of my digital camera, upload the picture into ChatGPT and it will tell you it's an Osmo Pocket 3. Good glasses will tell you not just what it is, but what grading condition it was in. Really cool ones can go through and see what's in the box without opening the box. There are all these things that you can do. See, you need to photocopy something three times and put it in the box.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And I have a call with the professor. like, hold on a second. I don't mind you. You want to ding me for writing style? It was the hardest English class I've ever taken. The papers would come back with all sorts of red on it. ⁓ I'm like, you want it, you want to ding me for writing style? Cool. I'm not interested in learning writing style. I'll do it, but I'm more interested in concepts. So if my concept is wrong, let's talk about it. And his response was rich. If it's not in a book, you can't write about it. I don't care what you do.

See you.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

for a living. And I'm like, well, there's some good concepts in the book, but we really need to update it. We should write a new book. He's like, you can't write a book. I'm not a professor. So I wrote a book called Going Circular, The Evolution of Reverse Logistics into a Competitive Weapon. I gave 900 copies of this away to the Reverse Logistics Association. 350 pages. It's got a 35 page glossary of returns.

you

Cause I wanted to go through and put something out there, start the dialogue, just, just get something that could go through. Now this is the textbook that they're using to teach that course. was getting a CN and I won the 2025 Reverse Logistics Association educator of the year award for the podcast, the book, the master classes that we've been teaching, but really it's for starting the conversation.

That's That's release.

Yeah, I mean, that's really inspiring how I mean, first, I'll touch on like the disparity among like what was getting a book written in 1999, which is not taking into consideration how much technology has evolved, how easy it is to disposition stuff. You know, in 2020, there's already trade in programs, people know how returns can actually drive more value, especially in the trade in world, because you're trying to upsell them. It's essentially like, hey, give me this.

cheaper thing and buy a more expensive thing. So the ROI is quite clear with respect to kind of getting those in. And know, times have also changed, like just like in the 1970s, 60s, 50s, where used cars were getting popular that hey, it's okay to buy used cars. I think in like, as you kind of introduce that trading program, that kind of accelerated the strength of used phones are also okay, because before that, I don't think a lot of people actually expected

Do you actually even buy a used phone? Right. So it's, it's, they are, they are pristine condition. They're more or less like cars. ⁓ You don't, you don't, know, you use them as much as you want. They're solely protected. You might have to change the screen or something, but there's a lot of value in the hardware itself that you can recycle refurbish and build a, you know, still get value out of instead of trashing it. So, I mean, it's, it's.

I really enjoyed learning how you pushed back and that drove you to create your own book. guessing it must have taken you a lot of... As you mentioned, you were not interested in improving writing styles and things like that. Was that a challenge as you were trying to put your thoughts into this book? Or did it come naturally because you were so much full with content and knowledge that you just wrote in three weeks? How much time did it take you to write the book?

Great question.

So by the time I decided to write the book, it took me three years to get my master's degree because it took one course at a time. But what that did is it allowed me to go through and accumulate a lot of recent and relevant research. So Tony Sciarrotta from the RLA was saying, hey, we need to get this book updated. And I was keeping my advisory board team aware of the progress I was making. He's like, you should turn that into a book. So. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

By the time that I made the decision to write the book, I was finishing up the master's degree. ⁓ I went to the two people that wrote the original book and asked them if they wanted to collab on updating it. They had a lot of things going on at the time and they weren't necessarily interested in doing it. And I know a lot of people didn't think it would be that the book would get finished. But ⁓ from the time I made the decision to write the book,

⁓ to the time that it was done was about 12 months. So for me, ⁓ when I went through, was very hard to go through and take reverse logistics at scale and dissect it down to something that's digestible, that you could go through as an OEM and know where you're at in the secondary supply chain and as a distributor and as someone that's matching you supply with use demand and the, in the secondary market or a three PL that's doing repair. ⁓

refurbishment upcycling of a product to understand the end to end. Found people understood where it came from, where it was going next, but didn't know the entire picture. So it was hard for me to write this in a way that it could be given to anyone that's in the space so they could understand the concepts. And when I went through the editing process, Brown Books is my publisher. They had never written a book like this before. And the two...

Mm-hmm.

Makes sense.

No one has actually, so...

Uh, yeah, the

two editors that I had, uh, we had, we had an initial call. went through the concept. had all these papers that I had accumulated and, I had a program I use to help me build an outline. And I was just kind of plugged them all the way through it. But the two editors said, Hey, rich, we want to do a great job, but we don't know this space. So we can't help you write the book.

Hmm.

⁓ you know, can edit second structure, but I'm not sure that that's going to be what you need. I'm like, actually. You're the perfect audience for this book because the people that are going to read it are people that are just getting pulled in from finance or sales or, ⁓ packaging or marketing or finance. So if by the end of this book, you know what I do and you can explain it, you're actually the perfect audience. So I found the editing process to be really good.

Hmm.

You know, you use this slang or this jargon. What does that mean? Like, all right, cool. Let me simplify it. You're exactly right. I didn't even think that that would go over someone's head. So I found the process of editing ⁓ really insightful and helpful. And Brown Books helped me take something that was complex that I tried to put in army truck driver language so I could understand it and deliver something that so far has been really well received, but

Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Shiv,

I'll tell you, it's pretty intimidating taking everything that you think you know, putting it down on paper and giving it to the association. Because if you're an RLA member, you can download the book for free to every peer that you have for the world to judge. ⁓ But to me, trying to be motivated by doing what's right and starting the conversation, that is a really good illustration of

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

represent.

I wanted to give back to an industry that's given me a lot. And I want to make people like you, make the people that are listening to this podcast and people listening to my podcast, better tomorrow than we are now.

100%. I I can totally get the intimidation part of writing a book in kind of how it would be received and what not would be received. But I really admire your guts and hustle that you would still go a mile more to educate people, which people would be hesitating from because then their own self-identity comes into picture. Whereas in your case, you're more like, I'm passionate about this space. I want to throw more light on it.

And if book is the way, then I'll do it. And I would not care about the consequences of the entire response and whatnot. And I mean, I'm super excited to, I like I want to read this book ⁓ having heard from you and the story behind it. It actually makes it even more interesting because then that kind of gives any reader a context that this is how this book has evolved. This is the latest refresher on what circular logistics is about versus what it used to be. And anyone drive like

senior analysts reverse logistics, you someone younger in their career, just starting and trying to find meaning in their career. think books like those really give them that kind of a framework, just like a marketing book does and whatnot. It's really exciting.

Well, I'll ask you and

your listeners for a favor if you do go through and read it. Peter Evans, he's got a PhD from MIT. We're co-teaching this master class globally now. And we just started the process of updating the book to do the second revision. It launched in 2024. So now it's about a year and nine months old. A lot's changed. AI and ML is rapidly changing everything it's touched on in the book.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

But I'm a lot more precise with what AI and ML does in reverse now than it was then. Peter's a ⁓ world expert on circular platforms, so he's got a lot of relevant research. But after you read it, if you wouldn't mind, let me know what you think. Let me know what could be improved, because the goal is to make the book better tomorrow than it was when we first launched it. So I would love to have ideas from you, ideas from your listeners, on how we can go through and make this better.

Mm-hmm.

100% we'll tag the book in the sub tags as well to kind of for people to kind of look at. Is it available on Amazon or like other? Okay, awesome. Then if you can share that with me, I really want to kind of promote that and see if more people can kind of educate themselves on this space.

It is. Yeah.

Great, you can get the link if you

go to www.allthingscircular.com. The link to the book is on our website.

Awesome.

Perfect. Perfect. Yeah, I'll go there. Awesome. I think we are at time, but I do want to close on a little lighter note of kind of understanding you as a person. know you love MMA ⁓ as well, right? I've seen some of your content where you're speaking about your health and kind of taking care of yourself as well. How do you kind of do that being on the road so much? what's your... ⁓

health mantra that you can kind of share to other people who have these intensive jobs where you have to travel so much.

Well, I think I could do a better job with, ⁓ with health. don't get enough sleep. And, you know, when you go to those shows, there's always too much to drink and you're not eating the right food. Well, now when you go through to me, my, my first and most important job is being dad. I've got two boys that, that I love a lot of a 12 year old and a 17 year old. both playing soccer and, I, I'm sorry, but my son's actually listening to this, this podcast right now.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Riley's 15, not 17. So thank you for the the edit and the clarification. But I also love Shiv that there's not a phone call or conversation that I can have that I wouldn't have in front of my 12 year old. ⁓ He's my moral compass and I want to be there physically for him. I want to be able to run in shag soccer balls or be able to throw a baseball in the backyard. And I'm getting up there in age now.

Hmm.

But thankfully I've lived a healthy life. I've done martial arts since I was 15. I've done competitive martial arts for most of my life, mostly Taekwondo, wrestling that evolved into MMA and a little bit of UFC. When I left my last company and I lost my health insurance, I stopped doing the sparring because 46 getting kicked in the face by 20 year olds or grappling with someone.

Hello.

Mm-hmm.

Makes sense.

that's fighting scared. Like, all right, if I tear my shoulder, I can't do my advisory work. But I found I do a keto diet. It's what works for me at my age. When I was in my 20s, I could work out three times, being back in shape. ⁓ When I was in my 30s, I had to go through and work out a lot, but I could still eat basically what I wanted. Now in my 40s, I've got to go through, work out, and watch what I eat.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

So ⁓ for me, it's a key to life. And if I can go through and work out two to three times a week and then spend time with my kids when I can and I'm not traveling, ⁓ it's important. So.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's ⁓ super, you know, insightful to kind of hear the person side of your story as well. And how do you kind of approach your family life and whatnot? I really, I mean, the point that you made about you would have every conversation like in front of your 20 year old and that's how you kind of rate. I really found that inspiring. I'll have to think about it even more. Like, like that's really insightful, but yeah, I really appreciate the time, Rich. I really appreciate the insights that you shared. think. ⁓

For me, it was a conversation and I'm sure it will be a conversation for others as well where they would learn a ton. They would kind of understand what the industry is about. They would get to hear about how your journey entailed and things like that. So I really appreciate the time, Rich, and this was a real pleasure.

Shiv, I enjoyed the conversation too, my friend. Thank you for having me on.

Yeah, likewise. Thank you. Thanks, everyone.

Cheers.