People Processes Interviews: Rocky Romanella

Today we're going to be interviewing Rocky Romanello. He has had an illustrious career spanning more than 40 years focused on supply chain logistics, retail sales, sales operations, all kinds of things at UPS, including the UPS Store franchise network. He became the Chief Executive Officer and Board of Directors for UniTek Global Services, a provider of engineering construction management and he is currently the founder and CEO of 360 Management Services, LLC. He's an experienced CEO, he's led one of the largest rebranding initiatives in franchising history. The UPS Store revolutionised the $9 billion retail shipping and business services market. And we're going to talk to him today about leadership and his journey and the advice he can give us for our growing companies. Before we go too deep though, I want to ask you, please subscribe to our podcast. You can find us on iTunes, Google, podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, pretty much any pod catcher of your choice. You can also subscribe at peopleprocesses.com, which will give you exclusive subscriber only content, including a follow up summary on this very episode. Rocky, thank you so much for coming on. Welcome to the show.Rhamy, thank you very much for having me.So Rocky, you have I mean, you've done a ton. You're not a green new business owner who just started up last week. I'd love for you to tell me how you got to where you are today. I know you spent a lot of time at UPS. What was that like? And why did you wind up striking out on your ownWell, of course, it was a great career at UPS. It had a promotion from within policy, which I took advantage of. I actually started out as a part timer unloading trailers. I was working my way through college and I actually was going to college to be a high school history teacher and a baseball coach. And as I was working my way through school, I realized that the best leaders were those leaders that could get their people to connect the dots. So I never gave up my passion for coaching or my passion for teaching. To me, I just did it in a different classroom, which was the business setting. And so I always felt like I was still pursuing those passions of coaching and teaching. As I said, UPS had a promotion from within policy and my dad told me two things when I started the job. He has since passed, but he told me two things. He said, "Whatever they asked you to do, say yes and thank you, and then learn your job and learn some more.” And so for me, as I was working my way up through UPS, I learned and your passion is people in the processes. So for me, one of my most valuable lessons I learned early on, was I may not have felt ready for that promotion that UPS tapped me on the shoulder for, but what I realized is that there are times when you have to believe in your people until they're ready to believe in themselves. And you bridge that gap maybe of confidence, or you bridge that gap maybe of knowledge. And that to me, was probably one of my greatest lessons. As I was growing and developing and learning how to manage and manage large groups of people, I never forgot that lesson that I was taught firsthand by me being that person who was a little bit nervous and a little bit scared. But UPS, believing in me until I was ready to believe in myself. And then of course, I mean, you started with like, loading the docks. I mean, you started at the bottom and worked your way all the way through. I mean, you've learned every lesson along the way....