Why Pressure Is a Privilege for Founders
Cody Bahnam’s company started with a tweet.
Not a business plan. Not a pitch deck. Not an ideal customer profile (he admits he didn’t even know what “ICP” stood for yet). Just a guy with a full-time job and deep supply chain knowledge who decided to say something out loud on the internet.
A few people replied. They wanted to buy his time. So at night, on the couch, with football on and his wife next to him, Cody started consulting for clients in Europe he assumed he would never meet.
That tweet became a consulting engagement. The consulting engagement became a question: “Will you be our 3PL?” And that question became a warehouse, a team, and the business he had always wanted to build.
I sat down with Cody for Episode 030 of the Create Your Art Podcast, and this segment is the one I keep coming back to. Because his story isn’t really about logistics. It’s about what happens when you finally use your voice, and then keep saying yes to the next uncomfortable step.
The Domino You’re Waiting to Flick
Here’s what struck me most. Cody never saw the whole staircase. He only ever saw the next step.
He didn’t know the tweet would lead to a client. He didn’t know helping that client would lead to a bigger ask. He didn’t know a casual Sunday lunch would put a warehouse in his path. Each move only made sense once the one before it was done.
“I know a lot of people out there, myself included, still have some domino we’re waiting to flick over.”
Cody Bahnam
That’s the posture so many experts live in. You know your craft. You’ve done the work for years. But you’re waiting for a clear plan, the right timing, or some kind of guarantee before you put yourself out there.
Cody’s story says the plan shows up after you move, not before.
What a Tape Gun Teaches You About Building Something Real
Inside this segment are a handful of ideas that apply far beyond warehouses. Here are the ones worth carrying with you.
- Your common sense is someone else’s breakthrough. Cody described what he tweeted about as “common sense.” To the people who hired him, it was worth paying for. Most experts badly underestimate the value of what feels obvious to them.
- Give away the playbook and trust grows. Cody wanted his clients to finish an engagement feeling like they had “a bachelor’s degree in supply chain.” From a pure business lens, he admits that was probably dumb. But it’s exactly why his first client came back with a much bigger opportunity. Generosity built the trust that built the business.
- Respect is earned on the floor. Cody had worked with hundreds of 3PLs and watched countless people pack orders. Then he tried it himself and nearly needed stitches from a tape gun, four or five times. Doing the work humbles you, and it teaches you things no amount of observation can.
- Pressure is a privilege. Quitting his W-2 job three months in meant taking a pay cut with his back against the wall. Cody reframed it. When you work for someone else, your back is always against the wall, just in a different way. At least this pressure was building something of his own.
- Growth lives on the other side of discomfort. Posting the tweet was uncomfortable. Packing the first order was uncomfortable. Asking near strangers how to work a tape gun was uncomfortable. Cody stopped treating discomfort as a warning sign and started treating it as the signal that he was growing.
The Day One Picture Nobody Posts About
I asked Cody what his company looked like on day one. His answer was simple: me.
First it was him in his living room. Then it was him in a borrowed conference room, taking calls for his full-time job and slipping out between meetings to print a label, pull the items, box them up, and set them out for the carrier. He bought order software that was total overkill and joked that he had three orders to show for it.
That stage lasted until he was shipping a couple hundred orders a day. Then his wife started coming in at night to help. Then a couple of guys from the warehouse started pitching in, and he started paying them. Then came the partnership conversation that took the business to its next phase.
Nobody posts about this part. But this is the part where the real thing gets built.
Where Your First Domino Is Hiding
If you’re a coach, consultant, or leader who has been sitting on your expertise, here’s how to borrow Cody’s playbook.
- Say the obvious thing out loud. Write down one insight from your work that feels like common sense to you. Share it publicly this week, in a post, a video, or an episode. Don’t wait for it to feel impressive.
- Serve the first person fully. When someone responds, help them like Cody did. Teach them, don’t just fix the problem. Trust is the compounding asset.
- Ask “what’s the logical next step?” You don’t need the five-year plan. You need the next yes. Look at what’s directly in front of you and step into it.
- Tell people what you need. Cody’s warehouse came from mentioning his need at a Sunday lunch and then making a slightly awkward ask. Opportunities show up when people know what you’re looking for.
- Name the discomfort, then do it anyway. When the next step feels scary, treat that feeling as evidence you’re on the edge of growth, not proof you should stop.
The Stories That Keep Experts Waiting
Story one: You need a clear vision before you start. Cody walked into a warehouse owner’s office unable to explain his vision, because he didn’t have one defined yet. He got the space anyway. Clarity came from motion.
Story two: Giving away your knowledge costs you business. Cody worried that teaching clients everything would keep them from coming back. The opposite happened. They came back because he had earned their trust.
Story three: Saying yes to everything is the goal. Cody is honest here too. He built confidence by saying yes, again and again, until he discovered that saying yes to everything becomes detrimental. The early yeses get you moving. Wisdom eventually teaches you which ones to keep.
Your Next Step Is the Only One You Need to See
Cody’s journey from a tweet to a warehouse didn’t come from a master plan. It came from a series of uncomfortable, logical next steps, each one made possible by the last.
That’s the heart of what we talk about on this show. Your voice is needed. The people who need what you know are already searching. They just can’t find you until you flick over the first domino.
Watch Segment 2 of Episode 030 with Cody Bahnam on the Create Your Art Podcast, and subscribe wherever you listen so the next story lands automatically. Watch here. Missed the first part of the conversation? Catch Segment 1 here.
Create your art. #createyourart
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Darren: I want to go back to the early stages of growth. It’s you sitting in your living room building this thing. What did it look like on day one? Even to the point of when you stopped your full-time gig and you were a hundred percent on this, what did the company look like at that time?
Cody: Yeah. I mean, me. That’s all it was. The very, very beginning.
Darren: I ask just to get a picture. You’re printing labels, putting things in boxes, and shipping. You’re doing all of that?
Cody: Yeah. And even before that, it started with consulting. I’m working a full-time job. I get done with that work day, and now I’ve got these projects going. I’ve got people to help that I’ve never met. Ironically, all of them lived in Europe, so I didn’t think I was ever going to meet these people.
So I’m sitting there at nighttime, probably watching football with my wife, and I’ve got my computer out in front of me, crunching numbers and giving advice.
Darren: Okay. So it’s very consultant-type work at the beginning.
Cody: Yeah. “This is how you need to use these people. If you move this over here, you’re going to save some dollars. This is how you’re going to smooth out your flow. And this is why you need to do all these things.”
This is probably naive of me, but I’d never owned a business or anything like this. All I did was post the tweet, and now there are a couple of clients. So I’m like, I’m going to help these people. So I helped them.
A big thing to me is that I want to empower them to be self-sufficient. If you ever run into another supply chain challenge going forward, I want you to feel like you have a bachelor’s degree in supply chain when you get done working with me. I feel like that’s helpful, right?
Darren: Yeah.
Cody: Which is probably dumb from a business perspective. If I had left a little bit of that out and just solved the one problem I was hired to solve, they could have come back to me for others. But I didn’t want that. I literally just wanted to help people. It was a cool opportunity, and I did my job.
And they ultimately came back more, because there was trust. The first consulting engagement I did, they came back and asked if I’d be their 3PL. And that’s where the light bulbs start turning.
All right, if I’m going to do this, that takes a lot of capital. It takes a lot of time. There are things I don’t even know about yet. I’ve got to go source a forklift. I’ve got to go source racking. I’ve got to have the racking installed. I’ve got to get permits to install the racking. Plumbing issues are going to come up, and a plumber is a lot more expensive in a commercial building than in a residential one. The AC is going to go out, and I’ve got to have someone fix that.
All of these thoughts start creeping into my head. I’m a very data-driven guy, so I’m doing a lot of research on what this is actually going to take. So I’m like, all right, first step, let’s find a space.
I’m looking around at a lot of different options. Then I’m at lunch on a Sunday with my wife and one of her college roommates, and she mentions that her dad has a warehouse. I’m like, hang on. I said, “This is going to be weird, but can I get his number?” She gives me her dad’s number. I text him. He tells me to come in.
So I come in and talk to him, and I can’t even explain the vision, because I don’t have one defined at this point. I don’t have an ICP. I don’t even know what ICP means, ideal customer profile. My core need right now is space so I can try this out.
At the time, one of the first people to say yes was a company making habanero jelly in different flavors. So it’s, “Hey, I’ve got ten pallets of this coming in. Can I store it here?” We work out an agreement, and that comes in.
And yes, at that point it did look like just me. I’ve got orders coming in. I procure software to intake the orders and all of that.
Darren: Okay.
Cody: Total overkill at that point. It was not needed. But look at my software, though. It’s awesome. I’ve got three orders to show for it.
Darren: That’s cool.
Cody: So I start working out of the conference room in that warehouse. I literally still have my full-time job at this point, so I’m on meetings, and in between meetings I’m like, all right, I’ve got enough time to go pack this order. I’d print the label, go out to the floor, get the items, prep them, box them up, put the label on, and get it to the area where the carrier picks it up.
It looked like that until it was probably a couple hundred orders a day, and I’m like, this isn’t sustainable anymore. I can’t do this. But crunching the numbers, I’m not going to replace my income yet either.
So my wife starts coming in and helping me at nighttime. A couple of guys who work for my wife’s friend’s dad start pitching in, and I start paying them. Then they’re seeing a lot more product coming in, and it’s like, all right, do you want to partner on this, or do something different to make it more scalable? That’s how we got to the next phase.
But to answer your question, in the beginning it was me in my living room, then it was me in a conference room, and then it was me out there on the floor.
Darren: So what I hear is you were doing some consulting, and then that consulting turned into, “Will you be our 3PL?” Did I say that right?
Cody: Yeah, you did.
Darren: All right. “Will you be my 3PL,” which is another light bulb moment.
Cody: Yeah. “Oh, I think I could probably do that.” I’ve worked with hundreds of them. I’ve seen this a million times. I’d just never packed an order. But I’ve seen countless people do it. It can’t be that hard, right?
Darren: Right. Some tape.
Cody: And then you figure out how much respect you didn’t have for the people doing it. Oh God, this is kind of brutal. How does this box go together?
Darren: Oh Lord. The tape gun.
Cody: I didn’t know how to work a tape gun. I got my hand caught in a tape gun probably four or five times and should have gotten stitches, because I could not operate the dang thing. But you just figure stuff like that out.
Darren: How to build a company fast? Learn how to run a tape gun.
Cody: Literally, man.
Darren: Oh, that’s wild. Okay, so it starts to grow, and it sounds like you bring in some partners.
Cody: Yep.
Darren: “We’ve got to scale this up a little bit.” Are you full time at this point?
Cody: Yeah, I quit my job right then, probably three months into it, which was a leap. It was scary. It was a pay cut. I felt so much pressure, but I kept coming back to that saying, “pressure is a privilege,” because my back’s against the wall now.
But when you have a job and you’re trying to be good at it and you’re working for someone else, your back’s always against the wall, just in a different way. The analyst in me is thinking, well, I have a hundred percent success rate making this work for other people. I’m sure I can figure it out for myself too.
It’s uncomfortable, right? So I really leaned into the mantra that growth is just uncomfortable. Posting that first tweet was uncomfortable. Packing that first order was uncomfortable. Asking these guys, who I didn’t know at the time and who are now some of my closest friends and work very closely with me, “How do I work this tape gun? See this blood? I need to figure it out.”
It’s uncomfortable, but you just have to do it to grow. And what I’ve learned along the way is that seeking out that discomfort, being uncomfortable with the goal of helping more people, that’s where the growth comes from.
Darren: That’s so true. Man, I love that, because there are so many times you get scared. You put the tweet out. Somebody reaches out for consulting. Somebody says, “Hey, will you be my 3PL?” You say yes.
And it’s the idea of just the logical next step. Let’s step into it. Okay, it’s a little scary. I don’t know where a warehouse is coming from. Then you hear the word “warehouse” at a lunch, and you go, “Hey, can I make that call?” Every time, it’s just one step into the next thing that gets you to the next place.
Cody: And each one of those steps was scary. That first step of posting the tweet, and then getting some kind of validation back, someone saying, “Hey, can I buy some of your time?” That’s scary. I don’t know this person. I don’t know what they’re doing. But I’m betting on myself that I have enough competence, that whatever I tweeted about, which to me was common sense, holds value for them. So let me just give this a shot.
To your earlier point about your buddy calling it the first domino, it really is a domino effect. I know a lot of people out there, myself included, still have some domino we’re waiting to flick over.
I didn’t know that posting that tweet would lead to a consulting engagement. I didn’t know that being scared to take on the responsibility of making a company more profitable would work and then lead to the dream business I wanted to start. And I didn’t know that taking the leap of quitting my full-time job, the only security I’d ever known, a W-2 income, would lead to what it’s led to now.
I would just encourage everyone: flick over that first domino. It might not be the same chain reaction I’ve had, but other doors are going to open on their own. Just think about it. Is this something that could benefit me? Then flick over that domino.
I think it was a confidence thing. I got the confidence the first time, did it the second time, and I’m like, all right, I’m just going to keep saying yes until I can’t anymore. And then you realize that saying yes to everything is detrimental.