An interview with Dave Gulas of EZDC 3PL on what e-commerce brands need to know about fulfillment, marketing, and entrepreneurship
By Jeremy Rivera | From the Unscripted Small Business Podcast
About the Guest
Dave Gulas — President & Co-Founder of EZDC 3PL
Warehousing, fulfillment, and transportation services for manufacturers and e-commerce brands
Connect: LinkedIn | Beyond Fulfillment Podcast
Introduction: Building Expertise Through Service
Jeremy Rivera
Hello, I’m Jeremy Rivera, your unscripted podcast host. I’m here with Dave Gulas, who’s going to introduce himself. As is customary with this podcast, I like to focus on what is your experience, either professionally or personally, that’s giving you the expertise that makes us actually want to listen and trust what you say.
Dave Gulas
Thanks so much for the intro, Jeremy. My name is Dave Gulas and I am the president and co-founder of EZDC 3PL. We provide warehousing, fulfillment and transportation services for manufacturers and e-commerce brands.
In terms of what makes me an expert — I’ve been in sales my entire adult life. That’s 20 years in medical and pharmaceuticals and then over three years in logistics. Really that entire time, I would say my expertise is in making customers happy.
Particularly with the sales process, what I was involved in was a lot of continuous repeat business. Often the sales was involved in making sure the orders got from A to B. If there was anything going wrong, following up on issues, dealing with that.
That’s really where myself and my partner got the idea to start the logistics company because we saw a vast amount of complacency within the market to where legacy big box 3PLs were just not providing the proper service to e-commerce brands. We knew several of them that were complaining about this. So we saw a gap in the market and we thought our brand of customer service from the pharmaceutical world would be a great fit.
Three plus years later, we’ve got a stable full of happy customers and we’re helping them continue to outsource the headache for most people that is logistics. We handle that for them so they can continue to operate in their zone of genius and grow their business.
The Friction Points in E-commerce Logistics
Jeremy Rivera
What happens with the logistics industry? What is it that’s challenging? Where’s the friction point that invited that deeper scrutiny? What usually goes ping and flies off into the corner that needs to be fixed?
Dave Gulas
When you think about e-commerce companies, which is really the specific niche that we serve, most of them start off self-fulfilling, whether it’s out of their home or a small office, a small warehouse. They sell their products online, grow their business, and handle the fulfillment themselves.
Usually at some point in their life cycle, every one of them reaches a graduation point where they see that if they’ve grown and scaled properly, they have way too many orders to ship and way too many other problems to deal with to continue handling it themselves.
It only makes sense to outsource that to a company that specializes in it. A company that can negotiate the carrier rates so they can maximize their scale of spending. A company that can have the right software options so the brand doesn’t have to go and continue to operate or upgrade expensive software. They can rent the bigger building, manage the staff, handle all the inbound, connect them with the right solution, and have the right size packaging option for every different type of order.
Technology Dependencies in E-commerce
Jeremy Rivera
I’ve consulted with a number of different e-commerce companies and it’s interesting because as a business model it seems very dependent on technology. If you’re a brick and mortar obviously you get foot traffic but if you’re an e-commerce you’re living and dying by the technology you’re working with — whether that’s the effectiveness of your SEO and marketing or whether it’s the delivery systems on the back end. What are some of the pitfalls that e-commerce owners you’ve seen overcome? What are some of the best practices?
Dave Gulas
Some are just basics. We have one of the top commercial WMSs that we use — for those that may not know, it’s a warehouse management system. It’s software that basically allows us to track every customer’s inventory and then connects to a variety of platforms such as Shopify, Amazon, Walmart.com, and a host of others.
For us, that’s just automatic. When we first got into this business and we were researching everything, we were told we couldn’t even launch without a credible WMS — not even feasible. But then as we get out there in the market, we see that there’s many 3PLs currently operating without a WMS to where they track inventory on spreadsheets, or they don’t have automated shopping cart connections.
If a brand is doing a good part of their business on Shopify, you want all those orders to flow through directly to the warehouse where it’s all automated. We get a whole list of orders and we can just pick, pack, ship efficiently and continue to move on. These are all things that to any credible 3PL would seem automatic, but for many people, if you don’t automate that in the very beginning, you’re not going to be able to scale.
The Role of AI in Logistics
Jeremy Rivera
I’m curious what kind of impacts — obviously some of these things being automated are the outcome of software choices, some are probably developer time to connect certain web hooks to other programs. Is there any growing or additional role for the development of AI and the use of it, either within these platforms or as an augmenting tool to help businesses tackle these technical and developmental challenges?
Dave Gulas
I think ultimately AI has got a lot of potential and it’s only going to continue to get better. At this point right now, at least from what I see — and I’m not a software expert by any means, I’m really the sales and marketing arm of our company — but from what I see, at least the problems and the challenges that we encounter, it definitely requires a human to come in and fix it.
With logistics, so many things can potentially go wrong when you have all different types of businesses and all different types of software and all different types of platforms, all trying to connect and run efficiently and have it operate as a well-oiled machine. You have to have a good team of qualified people with you.
Our guiding principle is we want to treat our customers as if it’s our business in terms of we’re going to operate with urgency and if they have a problem, we’re on it right away. If we made a mistake, we own it. Especially if there’s an issue with the webhook or a store not operating properly, we’re on that immediately to resolve it as quick as possible. That’s really the thing I think our customers appreciate about us most — just our sense of urgency in terms of making sure everything is running smoothly.
Scaling Challenges: Learning from Early Mistakes
Jeremy Rivera
From the outset of your company and what you’ve been able to grow, what’s been some of the challenges that you’ve had to face trying to scale as you adopt new customers? What’s been some of those uh-oh moments of realizing we are hitting this roadblock consistently?
Dave Gulas
Probably one of the first things that comes to mind for me specifically is just in the very early days, we were saying yes to too many of the wrong customers in terms of maybe trying to be everything to everybody and chase every type of deal and not really niching down hard enough, soon enough.
You know, you’re a new company, you’re excited, you want the revenue, you want the volume. Hindsight 2020, you certainly learned some valuable lessons from your biggest mistakes. We’ve had to ask many customers to leave just as a result of realizing that wasn’t the proper type of customer for us.
Another one was saying yes to too big of a customer too soon — where we just weren’t equipped to really handle the type of volume and they weren’t necessarily willing to operate in a way that we thought would be good for a partnership. You see the revenue, you see the volume, you think “we can make this work” — and then in hindsight, you realize that wasn’t the right decision.
Three plus years in, many of those mistakes have been made. Now I’ve got several logistical experts on our team. When a bigger deal comes up, I can have an initial conversation, bring all the details to them, and we can talk about the pros, the cons. Then really make a much more informed decision together about is this going to be the right fit for us and why or why not.
Marketing a 3PL: Finding What Works
Jeremy Rivera
Being choosy about who your clients are is as important as doing the marketing to get the clients in the first place. Not everybody that comes through the door is the ideal prospect. What are some of the paths that you have successfully found — or unsuccessfully found — to put your message out there about your USP, your unique selling proposition?
Dave Gulas
That’s another mistake overcome. When we first started, coming from pharma, it’s a much different type of selling environment where it’s traditional B2B and it’s a lot of phone sales. Everyone knows who the customers are and you can buy a list and understand and connect.
Within logistics, you never know where the customers are going to come from. And people aren’t moving warehouses every month either. So they really have to be able to find you when they’re ready. It’s so much more about being visible and content marketing and putting out consistent posts on social media, guesting on podcasts like this.
I have my own podcast as well, which I started a couple of years ago and I’ve put a lot of time and effort into. All those things combined with the LinkedIn posting and appearing on podcasts and doing my own podcast and as well as our blogging and our other web advertising — all those things together have created a nice flywheel of just inbound leads.
If people are searching, particularly within our niche, they can find us very easily. We’re in Kentucky, which is an excellent location if you want to reach the vast majority of the country within two days ground. We really focus on smaller items for direct to consumer e-commerce brands — things like beauty, supplements, books, home goods. Small parcel type shipments that would be sold direct to consumer via Shopify or Amazon.
Advice for New E-commerce Entrepreneurs
Jeremy Rivera
What’s some groundwork advice that you can give to somebody that’s considering going into one of your niche areas — whether it’s beauty or those types of products? What’s some of the things that if somebody thinks they have something new, they’ve got a different approach, or just are fascinated with the concept of starting their own business?
Dave Gulas
This is going to sound kind of like a no brainer, but you’d be surprised. Just basic market research in terms of does the market want this product and are they willing to pay for it?
The number one threat I see to at least the companies we deal with is just a lack of sales. We’ve had startups go out of business or new companies that looked promising go out of business just because they don’t sell enough product. We’ve had to liquidate inventory from people that couldn’t move product and couldn’t pay us.
If you are starting a new company and you have an idea for a new product, you certainly want to make sure you did the appropriate research. Are people willing to pay for it? Is it competitively priced? Do you have the proper margins in place? Is your supply chain sufficient? What’s the growth trajectory look like?
And then again, what’s your acquisition cost going to be? Because sometimes people have a good product that people are willing to pay for, but it’s an extremely competitive space. If they don’t have enough ad revenue or the ability to organically market and create sales, they don’t have the runway to succeed and ultimately sustain themselves. Understanding your SEO opportunity sizing can help you plan realistic growth expectations.
Bootstrap vs. Funded: What Actually Works
Jeremy Rivera
Have you seen a difference in success rates of people who are attempting to bootstrap their companies from the beginning versus those who are taking their concept and taking it to investors expecting X amount of return within a specific runway of time?
Dave Gulas
We’ve certainly seen more success with the bootstrap companies. With the funding, obviously you have more resources and there’s a much greater sense of urgency from those investors to really turn a profit quickly. But it’s a double-edged sword — if you don’t, it can be a wrap pretty quick.
We’ve actually seen more success from the people that not only are bootstrapped, but also have — and it may sound counterintuitive — the proper amount of patience to know that it’s a journey and it really is a marathon.
If people try to go too fast, too quick, and maybe skip steps, or they don’t allow the ideas enough time to properly mature, that can sometimes work against you. Some of the best companies we see are the ones that maybe operate more conservatively with the proper amount of patience, but they consistently do the actions day in and day out that are going to incrementally grow their business.
The Importance of Employee Wellbeing
Jeremy Rivera
This may be my own internal philosophy, but I personally, in my 18 years of digital marketing, have seen more companies succeed where management has more of an ownership perspective towards building a lifestyle type company — where they’re equally concerned about the quality of life of their employees and how successfully they’re operating their business versus a strict view on profitability. Would you say that’s true or am I just an idealist?
Dave Gulas
I think it’s true. And I would say it’s a sign of the times in terms of what is the workplace like today. People can work from anywhere in the world. Remote work is so prevalent. People have options. There’s more money, there’s more ways to make money than ever before. It’s a much more interconnected world.
Employees have options. There’s other companies willing to pay more for top talent. Bottom line is you got to take care of your people. Taking care of them isn’t just necessarily the high compensation, but it’s really understanding who they are, giving them the flexibility if they need it, making sure they’re in a role that uses their skill set to the best of their capabilities where they can enjoy it and grow and flourish.
In today’s workforce, you certainly can’t just operate the old way and expect to have a team stay with you long term of competent, high quality people. You absolutely have to take care of your people and that involves a lot more than just salary.
Lessons from the Beyond Fulfillment Podcast
Jeremy Rivera
On those conversations you have on your own show, are there any trends or themes that have been recurring over the past six months that stand out — something interesting or surprising from those conversations?
Dave Gulas
For those that don’t know, we’re talking about the Beyond Fulfillment podcast. It’s available on YouTube and everywhere else podcasts are heard. Basically what it is — it’s stories of real entrepreneurs. The messy, like the real story of what it’s like to be an entrepreneur, not the Instagram highlight reel.
We get into all different types of businesses. Some are nine figure exits. Some are people that just started recently. But a recurring theme I keep hearing is the importance of taking care of your mental health.
Part of the genesis of the show was kind of exposing what it’s really like because I feel like entrepreneurship has been glamorized so much in recent years. Look, there’s clearly success stories and lifestyle and all that — that’s all great. But let’s be real about what it’s really like to be an entrepreneur.
For most people, even when they reach those highlights, it’s not without a lot of pain and suffering. And if you’re not really built for that and there’s not a greater why than just money and lifestyle, it’s really difficult to sustain yourself.
The Reality of Failure in Entrepreneurship
Jeremy Rivera
There definitely are a lot of shiny hustle-hustle-hustle culture bros strutting their stuff on X and Instagram and LinkedIn, making it all seem glamorous and glorious 24/7. But as with anything on the social media channels, you’re getting a highly refined, polished peek at things.
I’ve done a number of different entrepreneurial things myself, interviewed dozens of different types of entrepreneurs. And yeah, the one consistent theme through all of them is they have all failed at some point, sometimes spectacularly, sometimes in a minor way that they were able to quickly recover from.
If you are sailing your ship into the entrepreneurial waters, just be prepared to figure out that what you thought you had figured out — no you didn’t have it figured out. You thought you did, but what it really represented was actually something quite different.
Dave Gulas
I’m so glad you brought that up because failure — I’ve never met an entrepreneur or talked to an entrepreneur that hasn’t failed. And like you said, sometimes spectacularly, but at least repeatedly. There’s failure on top of failure, on top of failure.
That reminds me of — I don’t know if you’ve heard of the fable of the premature butterfly. A butterfly comes out of a cocoon, a caterpillar transforms into a cocoon into a butterfly. One day a man saw a butterfly kind of in a cocoon struggling to get out but not all the way out so he thought he was being nice and he helped it out. Basically the butterfly just stayed stagnant and never was able to fly and just died right there.
The whole point is that struggle creates strength. Particularly for the entrepreneur — the person you’re meant to be and what you need to go through to evolve to who you need to be to reach those goals, oftentimes is going to involve failure and struggle and the ability to develop resilience.
Learning Through Struggle
Jeremy Rivera
My friend, Michael McDougall at Right Thing Agency — I helped consult on his door business where he was partnered up with a guy that didn’t understand things. I’d seen him fail at iterations for developing his own delivery software and intake. At times from the outside, I was like “I can help you do that so much faster.” But it was like “No, I really just have to figure this out.”
It was better for him long term because he did manage to successfully exit that company and start his own separate thing. But depriving somebody else of the struggle — there’s an empathetic thing among humans of seeing people in distress and wanting to help. But there are certain things where you have to struggle.
I started doing karate and I had to struggle for those first couple of months with a complete lack of flexibility. But if I hadn’t struggled for those first couple of months and gotten through it, I wouldn’t have graduated to yellow belt. Taking on those challenges — my daughter is doing the same thing. She’s in karate class and I see her struggle and I have to pull back from the “I’m going to fix everything for you” mindset. There’s something about that struggle that has its evolutionary power.
Dave Gulas
100%.
Final Advice: Personal Branding and Customer Service
Jeremy Rivera
As a kind of wrap up here, what are some low hanging fruit from your pool of experience, either in the entrepreneurial space or specific to logistics, to help other small businesses out? What are some perspectives — the easiest things to make sure you check off your list on that path to success?
Dave Gulas
I’ll give you one of each. From the entrepreneurial angle — anyone, whether you’re a new entrepreneur, a would-be entrepreneur, upcoming entrepreneur — I would say particularly in 2026 and beyond, having a personal brand is more important than ever.
People do business with people and faceless nameless brands are really losing a lot of ground to companies that are founder-led with a visible founder that’ll get out there and speak and get to know people and let people get to know them.
It doesn’t have to be anything glamorous or on a grand scale but just getting out there on whatever platform you choose and getting your thoughts and your ideas out there and posting content is more important than ever before. Particularly with the rise of AI and so much fake stuff out there, people more and more are craving real human connection. This is exactly why podcasting has become such a powerful SEO and authority-building strategy.
And then specifically with logistics and e-commerce fulfillment — we’re seeing a shift. The complacency of these legacy big box type companies is more important than ever before. Even if a company’s been around a lot of years and has a big name, if their people are complacent and they’re being killed by the bureaucracy and they’re not performing, customers are quick to leave them for companies that operate with a real customer service approach and people that care.
I see this everywhere — within the software industry, certainly within logistics, within other service-based industries. Founder-led up-and-coming companies that really focus on treating their customers right and showing them that their people care are winning against these legacy giants.
Jeremy Rivera
Absolutely love it. Thanks so much for your time Dave.
Dave Gulas
Hey, thank you, Jeremy.
More interviews on the Unscripted Small Business Podcast
Learn more about EZDC 3PL | Connect with Dave on LinkedIn
Get Your SEO Keyword Forecast | White Label Podcast Services