Leading with Culture, Delivering on Performance: The Young Guns Playbook

Trent Fuller doesn’t waste any time telling me he’s not here to talk about himself. When I try to push back, there’s a flicker of discomfort.

You see, Fuller hails from Mission Beach in Far North Queensland, where he was raised with a “deeply ingrained sense of humility”. This shows in how quickly he deflects credit for Young Guns’ success.

“This isn’t my transformation,” he says more than once. “The model was already here.”

And yet, while Fuller didn’t build Young Guns Container Crew from the ground up, he has become its clearest voice.

A passionate storyteller, the CFO-turned-CEO has helped take a quietly radical business and put its culture, performance model, and results into language that resonates – with customers, the team, shareholders, and at CFO Symposiums in Australia and New Zealand.

With over 1,500 employees across Australia, New Zealand, and Canada – and a goal to reach 10,000 within a decade – Fuller is steering one of Australia’s largest Indigenous-owned businesses through high-growth expansion.

At the same time, he’s holding fiercely to its original mission, which is to unlock the potential of its people.

And while the context is blue-collar logistics, the core ideas – clarity, connection, and care – can be applied in any white-collar business, too. That’s what makes this model so powerful.

From “Zombie Labour” to Belonging and Performance

In logistics, churn is often just part of the game. In some sectors, annual turnover for casual blue-collar roles can hit 400%. At Young Guns, it’s closer to 100% – and absenteeism sits below 3%, on par with the best white-collar organisations. (Competitors often see rates as high as 25%.)

That difference, Fuller says, is all cultural.

“Our frontline team are everything,” he says. “We’re not just putting people to work – we’re building teams they’re proud to be part of and feel like they belong to. So we meet every new hire at the gate, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on uniforms, they get a heartfelt welcome letter, and a team lunch on Friday.”

He recalls how, when he first joined the business, he was told that executives weren’t allowed to park in the best car parks. They were for the frontline crew.

“That told me everything I needed to know,” he says. “The values weren’t on posters. They were in the everyday decisions.”

The more we talk, the clearer it becomes that this isn’t feel-good fluff. It’s a structured, repeatable model built on care, metrics, and trust – and it’s delivering extraordinary results.

For example, a few months ago, a global shipping client recently ran a time-and-motion study without Young Guns’ knowledge. The Young Guns team outperformed traditional labour hire by 3x, and doubled the output of the client’s own internal team.

The Model: High Care, High Achievement, High Trust

Fuller explains that Young Guns structures its entire operating model around belonging, autonomy, and mastery.

Broken down, that means:

• High Care: Small, tribe-like teams. Daily rituals. Visible symbols of value, like uniforms and shared feasts. Constant connection.
• High Achievement: Live scoreboards. Daily team briefings. Performance transparency at every level.
• High Trust: Team-based incentive pay, where teams have a choice in what they earn. (The harder they work, the more they earn.) Peer-selected teams. Referral-heavy recruitment.

All of this adds up to better performance, but also deeper fulfilment.

“We say ‘hearts, minds, and hands,’” Fuller says. “If someone walks into work and they feel like they matter, they’ll do more than just show up. They’ll take ownership.”

Obviously, not every organisation can replicate peer-selected teams or performance-based pay. But the model still offers plenty of practical, low-lift starting points: short daily huddles, live team scoreboards, onboarding rituals, and values-led recognition programs.

The key is to make care operational – something people actually feel in their daily work.

Take performance reviews. In many corporate organisations, they happen every six or 12 months – often too late to shift behaviour, catch problems or really engage people. Young Guns takes a very different approach.

“It’s like playing for an elite sports team,” Fuller explains. “You don’t train once a month. You train every day. You meet with the coach every week. You constantly review your performance. It’s the same here.”

That means regular one-on-ones – not to check boxes, but to build trust, reinforce goals, and course-correct in real time.

Performance That Hits Home

The gains are striking:

• 400% productivity increase in a single-site trial
• $4M in annual savings for a national retailer
• 86% improvement in team satisfaction
• Hundreds of weekly safety hazard observations by frontline staff

“We’ve got people calling out hazards because they care about their team – not because they’re told to,” Fuller says. “That’s the kind of ownership you get when people feel connected.”

It’s a perfect example of the Young Guns philosophy in action: when you win people’s hearts, engage their minds, and trust their hands, performance follows, both on and off the floor.

What’s even more powerful is how the culture shows up in people’s lives. Fuller often comes back to the idea that you take your day home with you – that how someone feels about their work flows out into their family, their relationships, and their community.

“We had a team member who talked about our company values around the dinner table with his kids, and they decided to write their own set of family values,” he says. “He said it’s had an amazing impact on the way their family functions.”

From CFO to CEO: Not Just a Title Change

Fuller stepped into the CEO role in 2024, after five years as Young Guns’ CFO. The transition wasn’t as jarring as it might seem.

“I’ve always been more of a culture-and-performance leader than a traditional CFO,” he says. “That comes from my background in sport. I’ve always believed in high-performance environments and the power of team culture.”

Still, the CEO role brought a shift in scope: more time with customers, more time with the frontline, and more responsibility for keeping the culture alive at scale.

“My job now is to amplify the vision, tell the story, and protect what has made this place special as we grow,” Fuller says.

The last few years have been about locking in what works – building the systems and rhythms that let Young Guns scale without losing the culture that powers it.

“You don’t want to smother the culture with red tape,” he says. “But if you don’t put some structure around it, growth can get messy fast. It’s about finding that balance.”

A Blueprint Other CFOs Can Learn From

Young Guns is a working model that Fuller believes any CFO can adapt, regardless of industry.

“So often, we separate wellbeing and performance,” he says. “But they’re mutually reinforcing. You can’t have sustained performance without care.”

He adds that CFOs are uniquely positioned to drive these kinds of shifts.

“Finance leaders have the data. They’re close to the metrics. That puts them in the perfect position to lead culture – if they’re willing.”

In a world chasing high tech and low cost, Young Guns is betting on something older: purpose, community, and trust.

And there’s no doubt it’s working. Because numbers don’t lie.

Three Things All CFOs Should Remember About Culture and Performance

1. Start with belonging.
   “Performance comes after people feel safe and valued. You don’t get high effort from people who feel disposable.”
2. Make performance visible and shared.
   “It’d be boring going to a footy game without a scoreboard – and the same goes for work. When people can see their performance and how that impacts the team and the business, motivation and fulfilment go up, and so does discretionary effort.”
3. Balance trust in teams with smart systems.
   “Empower people rather than micromanage them. When trust is high, outcomes improve across the board — and the systems you do have work better.”