The Freight Agency Blueprint: Technology, Relationships, and the Origin of SPI Logistics

In this special "Best-Of" compilation,  I’ve mashed up four powerhouse conversations into one episode to give you the ultimate blueprint for building a successful freight agency.

We aren't just talking theory; we are connecting the dots between the vision, the tech, the sales strategy, and the culture required to win in this market.

In this episode, we break down:

1. The Vision: How the agent model was invented to solve a specific problem.
2. The Engine: How technology must enable—not replace—human process.
3. The Execution: How successful agents actually win business in a tough market.
4. The Culture: Why relationships and "soft skills" still trump automation.

Whether you are thinking about making the jump from W2 to 1099, or you just want to scale your current book of business, this is the masterclass you need.

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THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS!

SPI Logistics has been a Day 1 supporter of this podcast which is why we're proud to promote them in every episode. During that time, we've gotten to know the team and their agents to confidently say they are the best home for freight agents in North America for 40 years and counting. Listen to past episodes to hear why.

CargoRex is the search engine for the logistics industry—connecting LSPs with the right tools, services, events, and creators to explore, discover, and evolve.

Digital Dispatch manages and maximizes your #1 sales tool with a website that establishes trust and builds rock-solid relationships with your leads and customers.

Chapters

• 3:09 Pioneering the Freight Agent Movement with SPI CEO
• 57:05 From Engineer to Freight Agency Owner
• 1:46:30 The Freight Sales Formula That Still Wins with Mike Mikulik
• 2:20:35 Freight Tech in Real Life: Building For Today and Tomorrow

Transcript

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 0:37

Blythe, welcome back to another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers and freight I'm your host, Blythe Milligan, and today we're doing something a little bit different and a whole lot of practical we've spent a lot of time digging into the inner workings of what makes for a successful freight agent program, and it always seems to circle back to the crew at SPI logistics. They've been a longtime supporter of the show, and that's because their philosophy aligns with what we talk about here, which is real world strategy, smart technology and building relationships that actually last. Over the last year, I've sat down with some of their top leadership, to include CEO Mitch Helton, VP of technology as a Peralta CRO Mike michlik, and even some of their successful freight agents like Angelo frucci of freight coach logistics. You might remember him as one of the co founders over at Chris jollies company, which is also obviously freight coach logistics. We've covered everything from tech stacks that prevent design fatigue to sales strategies that don't involve blasting out a million cold emails, but today I'm combining all of those best of interviews, the most hard hitting takeaways from those conversations, into one definitive episode. So if you missed any of them, now's the perfect time to catch up on what you might be missing, if you're thinking about becoming a freight agent, or if you're already a standalone brokerage drowning in back office work, you probably need to hear this episode, because we're going to be talking about number one, why SPI co founder Mitch Helton decided to build a model that essentially handles 70% of the administrative work that brokers hate. Number two, how, as a Peralta, build a tech stack so flexible it lets agents use the tools they already love, but plugs them into a centralized, security focused hub. Number three, the non negotiable importance of relationship, building empathy and making time for site visits, a tried and true sales tactic that's a massive winner for their agents, as shared by Mike michalick and fellow agent, Angelo frucci. And then last but not least, why the boring stuff like a solid legal and operational agreements as some of the first things you must nail down, especially when starting a partnership, and why a little foresight prevents massive headaches? Later, you're going to get a master class and modern freight brokerage from the people who are actually building it, right? So dish the buzzwords, get out your notebook, and let's get into the best of SPI logistics on everything is logistics. Welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. We are proudly presented by SPI logistics, and I am your host, Blythe Milligan, and in this episode, we've got a special guest for you today, and that is the founder and CEO, Mitch Helton of SPI logistics. And we're going to be talking about those good and those challenging times of the entrepreneurial journey, especially in the world of freight. And so Mitch, it's finally, I'm finally pumped to have you on the show, because it's been a long time coming.

Unknown: 3:40

I'm happy to be here. This is great. Now. We were

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 3:44

talking a little bit before we started recording, and I had mentioned that I was listening to your interview with Chris jolly. You guys had talked about a year ago, and you I love the story that you gave when you said that you first started SPI, your business partner kept telling you to leave him alone, and that was how you came up with the initial idea of starting the freight agent program. I want to say, was that probably the light bulb moment for you to start up the freight agency for SPI,

Unknown: 4:16

was it kind of just happened upon us, because you're referring to Jim Taggart. He was very good friend of mine, and unfortunately passed away last year in October. But as far as the freight brokerage was concerned, we're, we're co founders in that because he I had, it's kind of restarted the business from when we first were doing import, importing product, from 1979 to 8283 and then I was in the airlines. And I did almost five years with my uncle in a travel agency. We were doing business travel. So my friend Jim, that was the end of May, beginning of June of 1990 came and I met him on the weekend at a barbecue, and he he called me up on Monday morning the following Monday, and said, Hey, I'm coming over for coffee. So I said, okay, and he was interested in what I was talking over the weekend, and the trucking company he was working for didn't look like it was going to do do too well. It was a if i. Flatbed, heavy haul carrier here and in the West Coast. And so he was the, he was one of the sales or he was the sales manager for the company. And so he kind of saw the writing on the wall and and they were going to let him go, and he gave him a severance. So he said, How would you like a partner? I said, Well, okay, this is what I'm working on, you know, more import, you know, of goods. And he says, yeah, that's, that's good with me. And so he started working with me, and then he got a call from one of his clients, who's an international freight forwarder in Canada, and they had a pulp mill that they were disassembling for for a company in the province of Quebec, and it had to go on hundreds of loads to the Port of Miami, and then it was catching a ship to go to Brazil, and they were going to reassemble it there. So I said, Well, that's great, Jim, where? Where's the reservation system for the trucks? And he said, There, there. He just laughed at me, because there is no such thing. So I got to work in the background, and I found out, you know, during that year, that you, if you're your own freight broker, and you're booking freight, you're getting the freight. You're getting that relationship with the shipper. You're going out and finding a carrier or calling them up back then, and you're, you know, finding which carrier can move it between the two points that you have to move it. Unless you're doing all essentially, you're starting to get enough business that you got to do the invoicing. You got to make sure the cash flow is right. You got to get the financing in place. You have to do the payments to the carriers. Then if there's a, you know, issues that come up, or you got to deal with the carriers, there's like it found, I found out 70% of our time was spent on the administrative side in the back office. So and he just wanted to keep working, you know, getting the freight and booking it, and that was what he loved to do. So I thought, Well, we tried getting more people to do that in the office, and didn't work out. We hired a couple of people didn't work out. So then we hired a guy, but on straight commission that knew freight kind of like Jim, and he started to work out. So I thought, I want more guys like Jim, and I'll set all this up in the background. So we put together a model and a plan to do that. I built a database. We built our own reservation system, basically, and set out the care contracts from it, and it followed everything through. And in the beginning, I thought, how hard can it be? You pick up at a drop off at B? Well, there's a whole bunch of things between A and B that happened. And so I built this system with off the shelf software. And then I thought, you know, we could do this for other freight brokers like Jim and so came up with a way of connecting people well before the internet was available. And back then, if you wanted a land you know, a connection, direct data connection between two offices across the country or across town, or whatever. Those were costing about $100,000 for a line. So I came up with getting again off the shelf software where the if you want to be an agent with SPI, you had to have a computer, you had to have a phone line, maybe two for calls, you need to have a fax line and you need to have a computer line, day line, or actually, you didn't need that. You needed the three lines, but one of the phone lines, the fax and the was used for also the computer. So we'd get them to get a fax mode on their computer, and I used a program called PC anywhere, and I set up computers inside our office, and they would just dial in and remotely control the computer in our office. So that worked through till late 1990s and I. Um, yeah, in a way, you're right. That's that's how it started. I just thought, let's leave Jim alone, let him do his thing, and as much of these times possible, do it in that work.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 10:49

It sounds like with your business travel agency that a lot of those skills that you learned there kind of apply to freight. Am I off base in that thinking?

Unknown: 11:00

No, that's true a lot of the things. And I found this as in business and as an entrepreneur, when you're creating something new, because that's often what ends up happening. You're creating a new model or a new system or a new way of doing things, and those are the things that are most successful, especially when you're doing something that's a need. You know, people need this. There's a problem, and always coming up against it. If you can solve for that, you know, you're you're on the right track. And so, yes, my experiences in the airlines I was I worked in when I just got out of high school. I worked in the the aircraft maintenance side of things, but it's the parts department stores, they called it. So if an aircraft was down, I had to arrange to get the park in. If I was on the night shift and even higher jet or something to get the part over to where it needed to go. And then, so I learned a little bit about inventory, warehousing, receivables, shipping.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 12:10

That's exactly where I was going to go after, after you mentioned that, I was like, Oh, wow. So you really know that side of it, too.

Unknown: 12:15

So, so I learned a little bit about that, and a lot of customs, you know, paperwork and that sort of thing. And then I worked in the airlines, also as a baggage handler for a short while. And then I quit all that, and I my uncle was opening up a travel agency, and he's the guy that, you know, we had a reservation system. I went down to Dallas and learned the saber reservation system down there, and he's the guy that taught me how to sell because we were doing cold calls, and we're, we're doing business travels, so we go and see we call them up, and we had our spiel. We had to make sure it fit on the back of a business card. Couldn't be talking too much. You had to listen. So we just call for appointments and we go see the people, and we say, we can book, you know, we can do this. We had all these things we could do for them to make it much easier to book their travel. And we ended up doing a million dollars the first year we opened the travel agency in sales, which was pretty good for the travel agency that back then, and the city we were in had 26 other travel agency as well. So that was pretty good thing that we did. And the commissions were shrinking back. Then the airline were cutting back commissions percentages. So I stayed with that till I thought, I'm going to get back into running my own business. So that's where, you know, we got back into the freight brokerage at that point.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 13:55

And so you probably noticed the commission splits dwindling in this industry, it forced you to change careers, and that was probably one of the, I guess, maybe the lessons that you learned of keeping valuable employees or keeping valuable agents on your staff by not dwindling their commission structure.

Unknown: 14:16

In fact, we've increased it over the years. We started out, I thought the fair way to go. You know, at first I thought this was totally in a vacuum. This is all came up in my head,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 14:30

yeah, because freight agents didn't exist until, you know, you were really one of the first people to create it.

Unknown: 14:36

Well, there was American back haulers was, but it was more an employee model, and they were all in one, you know, big bullpen, right? But as far as a networking with agents, connecting on computer and using a system like that, I think we were one of the first, wow, if not the first to do that.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 15:01

And so you mentioned with the with the agent model, that that working with Jim was one of those sort of catalysts that said you wanted to get more employees like that, or more, you know, contractors that that worked like that. What were some of those early days of did you use your cold calling expertise to start recruiting some of those first agents for SPI

Unknown: 15:24

Yes, and believe it or not, advertising in newspapers?

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 15:29

Oh, wow, interesting.

Unknown: 15:32

Yeah, tell me more about that. Well, so there's upbound. That's the cold calls. But we also. Of tried some inbound marketing and and so, you know, I get people contact us. There was no email back then. So you get a phone call. And so I was the person that was record recruiter as well. So I pretty well did all the jobs in SPI over the years as we rated them, and our first guy that called up was a fellow in Portland, Oregon. Actually, Jim Parker was a name, and he was moving big telephone cable reels all around, and he joined us. I did a business plan and projections for 1992 to 96 and I grew us from, you know, I showed growing us from, I think we were doing around 1 million at that point. The end of 91 that year, I had us growing from that to 7.8 million. And by the end of 96 we actually needed 7.7 and on the profit side, I was a I was 100,000 off on the overall, you know, gross sales, and I was 100,000 more on our profit. So I like to be conservative in our cost of things, right? Really over. So that was pretty good to have a projection that worked out that close four year projection. And so Jim joined us and I and that was the first guy, and then we had others join us. And I think by 96 we had eight or nine agencies working with us, all working from either their home. Most of well, pretty well, most of them were working from home at that point.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 17:40

So very early on in the agent model, one of the first to do it, very early on with working from home, very early on with your own sort of, you know, custom built TMS system and processes. I'm curious as to what were some of those early challenges that you knew you had to address as you started to scale up.

Unknown: 18:03

Well, remembering the difference between profit and cash. So we would, you know, the shippers, the customers would pay, and you want to keep them the receivables nice and tight. But, you know, sometimes, especially at certain times of the year, like going into January, they slow down. But your carriers want to be paid. And to keep your carriers with you, you want to pay them fast. So, you know, today we we pay a carrier as soon as that they're delivered, they can get paid if they want to. So back then, we were doing the same thing. So I found that we had to get some financing in place so that we could, as we grew, we could maintain our payments to the carriers as long as the receivables were were there to support it and coming in, and then you have to watch your costs. Now, the nice thing about freight brokerage operation, especially the the agencies, and that is, you know, it's quite scalable. So you know, any, any freight broker needs to keep their hard costs to a minimum. And so, in fact, that's one of the reasons why we've leased offices instead of purchase them, and because you can scale up and down. So we've been through a number of downturns. You know, 2008 was a big one at that point. We're at about 60 million in that year, going into 2008 by 2009 six months later, we had gone down to about 38 million. Oh, wow. And there was a little bit of slow, slow growth from 2001 to two, you know, 2004 we we'd made it by 2000 we were around 25 million in sales, and we had, by that point, probably 13 or 14 agents working with us and I, we had developed a new software system in in 97 I could see the writing on the wall. They were talking about, why to K? I remember hearing about that. Yes, there are a lot of software database systems that were going to die. Because the date was going to go back to 1900 so we we had to rebuild so the system, I hired a software company under our design and my instructions to develop a new system, and we launched that in December 1, in 19 nine, a month before, why UK? How about you were sweating? Well, we had to do it. I had all the operation side of things working. We could book the freight. We could handle all of that, and we kept all our agents going, but we still hadn't finished the accounting batch, so we started with that, and we quickly got that going, going into January. So that system, I took that, and I thought, you know, this really works well. We had a meeting. My by that point we, there were three of us that that were this and we had a meeting. And the the one guy wanted to say, we're spending too much money. We got white the.com crash was starting. We got a drop. We had an on, on in house developer. He said, We gotta drop, you know, cut costs, so we gotta stop working on the software. And, you know, we got what we need. I said to him, software is never done. Ain't that the truth, but if I find another project to help pay for our developers. So what I did is I went out to a friend who had a trucking operation, and they paid their carriers by a commission on the on what, how they that's how they got paid, instead of by the mile. And I said to the manager there, who was a friend of mine, hey, I gave you a system back in 1994 Would you like a new system? She said, Sure. So they looked at it, and I managed to get some money to pay to cut our the costs in half on the developer. And then I took that idea and I started a company called tailwind transportation software for that, and that was 2002 and we sold that in. It was a client, server based system where you had the company, and we built it for carriers, to start with carriers and brokers, but it was a system that was client server based, so you had to install your own server in your office and work within your network, but it would also work remotely, just with the Internet. So because that was the system all our agents were using, we used to be switching over that, and that worked quite well. Then we grew that. We converted to a software as a service in 2015 so those first number of years, what's that? 2014 2015 those first 12 or so years, we brought on about 460 trucking companies and freight brokerage companies using the system. And then when we sold it, we converted. We had converted it from 2014 to 2015 we converted to a software as a service. It's all web based, and successfully did. It was very difficult for all the other TMS systems at the time to go from their legacy client server still is web based, and it still is for many of them, but we managed to do it. It wasn't our first try. It was our like a fourth try, because it was trying to do that. Since 2006 I could see that that would be an opportunity. But we did it, and within that marketing alone, we managed to by 2020, when we sold it to on Vasey technologies, who was two years later, two half years later, bought by wise tech, which is big tech company that has freight forwarder software and now all kinds of software under their belt. So tailwind is now part of Western and when we sold it in 2020, we had over 700 companies come on to the the web based system. So in that short period of time that was that, that was the we bought almost doubled companies in. In that timeframe. So it was a

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 25:41

good yeah. I mean, I'm listening to all of the you were really so early on in a lot of these different technological advances that are commonplace to today. Does it sort of blow your mind to see how far logistics has come as far as technology adoption,

Unknown: 26:01

yeah, there's, there's a lot more coming, really, I think with, well, with AI, there's, there's new things we've adapted to. Building software has changed a lot from the old ways you did it writing code today at SPI you know we were on tailwind. Sped was on tailwind up till 20 we switched we switched over to ribanova, because we could manage and configure more of it. We had outgrown tailwind, is tailwind was good for middle, middle and medium size companies, but by that point, we had outgrown tailwind. We've got a really good team, a management team, executive team, well, everybody at tailwind is great, really good support so that we've developed that we invested in that I, I was working a lot with tailwind through the years, From 22,004 actually, through till, you know, 2020 really. So I had hired Joe Chandler to join us back in 2015 and he was, he did an excellent job putting, you know, taking the people that were good to keep, and adding more people to the team. So we invested in that. We invested in technology, and that was one of the switchovers to revivanova. Now it can't do everything for us. So today, instead of building a software TMS where it does has to do everything and do all the integrations, today, we done something different. We've built an internal data warehouse. It's got its own API, and we take the best of breed of any of the systems that we want, like try and pay for paying carriers, revanova, for the basic TMS. We have an LTL system we work with. We got different tracking systems we work with for shipment tracking. And there's probably you you're probably aware of all the different things available to freight brokerage companies out there, but you know, we've got at least 25 different systems that are all connected through our central data warehouse, and we've built the the tools. To be able to connect these different systems together. If they don't talk to each other, we make them talk to each other, but we get this all the data running through our central system, and we've got it so fine tuned to the point where, with our internal dev team, where an integration with the complexity, where it took maybe three months to do three years ago, AI, we could do it in a week. So that allows SPI to provide exactly what the freight broker needs, the agent needs. So if it doesn't matter what mode of transport they're used to doing, or what kind of customers they have, what kind of freight they're being what, you know, the system that's best designed for that, we can provide it to them.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 29:32

And that's one of the because we've done, you know, interviews with a lot of the SPI executive team and a lot of the freight agents. And one of the most popular episodes we've ever done is with as a Peralta, who works in it for SPI. And he was talking about how that central database is so important because, you know, there could be freight agents that want to use Revan Nova as a TMS, or want to use another preference for maybe their CRM, or, you know, some other different technology stack, but they're able to almost plug and play into SPI system, where the onboarding is really quick and they can stay on the programs that they're familiar with, or they have the option to upgrade to a tool like revenova, or maybe some of these other systems that you guys have with SPI that they have been wanting, that these freight agents have been wanting to try, and so I think that that's such a unique approach that I'm not sure that other freight agencies are tackling, and I think that it sort of speaks to how the company was originally formed. You. You guys have always been, you know, kind of establishing what the baseline looks like, but then moving the goal posts to where it's, you know, even better and even better. And so I'm curious as to with, you know, over 40 years that SPI has been in business, you know, all of the advancements that you guys have taken, how have you avoided some of the more common entrepreneurial pitfalls of you know, the paralysis by analysis or decision fatigue of which way to go were there? Were there any times that you were weren't sure about which direction to take?

Unknown: 32:08

I mean, of course, that's that's happened, but you meet the challenges as they come along and and, you know, business is really about not really seeing things as problems, but more as challenges, because there's, there's always a solution. So, and I've, I've always been that kind of a person is looking for the solution. So when I see a child, you know, problem, instead of getting focused on the problem to know, you know, evaluate what the problem is exactly, but really with the facts. If you you look at it, analyze it, if you can come up with a plan around it or to solve it, then everything's okay. It's not a problem anymore. It's not a problem anymore. It's just a challenge. And now, now you learn something, and it helps to solve other problems.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 33:12

Do you think the, I don't want to say, the Pro, or the challenges that freight agents face today are drastically different from, you know, 10 years ago? Or do you think it's, you know, it's kind of about the same. It's all solving problems.

Unknown: 33:28

It is solving problems. They're solving problems for their their clients, you know, the shippers they work for. They're they're solving problems even when they're working in a partner up with, you know, carrier, carrier partner who's is trying to serve the broker, get the thing done, and they're working together. So they're solving problems. You know, every hour, every day of the week, as far as the business side of things for freight brokerage companies, yeah, I think it is a little more challenging today, because there's a lot more coming at us. There's, there's all this new shiny tech coming out. You know, AI is the thing and, and there's AI that helps you with your emails and AI helps you with your phone calls. But you know which one, it kind of reminds me of the.com era, where there was all this new software coming out, and it was the greatest, latest, best thing, and new shiny object to look at. So there's those are challenges just making the right choice. And I think my experience with building or designing, I'm not a coder. Oh, how to code software, but I just know how it's supposed to work. I'm I'm good with systems and processes and and that sort of thing, and and I could tell when, you know, when there was a problem, where it was a people problem, you know, or this is not really, they're they're frustrated and they're at each other's throats, but this is really a system problem we got to solve here, so, but for freight brokers today than compared to 10 years ago. There's, there's more choice. There's more to choose from. There are tons of TMS systems on the market now that went there before. Many of them, you know, young, new systems. So they, they, they've got, they've got to mature, because there's so much more to designing a software, TMS system. There's so many different things that go on you have to account for, and we were lucky enough to have that when we started tailing from the experience of SPI so we were able to make an interface that was straightforward, simple, not too many clicks, not too many pages and all that, and get your job done fast. The challenges today are that the costs of, for example, load board has escalated exponentially, especially in the last five, five or six years, and I just see some of the you know, these, these bigger load boards not keeping up with technology, because technology today isn't the latest stuff that you had. It's it's now getting all these little apps and programs working together. And the whole industry is changing. The connection, the communication is changing. You know, you're now having direct connections with the driver and, you know, the the visibility on where they are, and being able to post out what loads or freight you have available is changing. So it's and being able to see what's coming and seeing how that will apply around the corner is very difficult. So I think today, for a standalone freight brokerage, it's, it's, it's a difficult thing because your your technology costs have escalated. Getting the right system like you can spend a ton of the technology, but if you got the wrong system for your business, it's, it's, it doesn't help. It creates big problems.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 37:32

How do you know if you've chosen the right technology, technology partner, or even just business partner? Because I'm of the opinion that, and this is slightly related, but I'm of the opinion that becoming a freight agent is one of the best pathways for entrepreneurial growth in all of logistics. But is it right for everyone, considering the technological investment that you have to make, considering, you know, maybe the brokers that you have to work for to build up your book of business, how important are all of these things, and is it, is it ever the wrong decision to become a freight agent? Or maybe what makes it the right decision for someone to become a freight agent?

Unknown: 38:19

Well, all I can no do is look at the past experience and statistics compared to standalone freight brokers that we saw from the data from Tia, freight brokers that do 16 million and under which is the vast majority of them out there, standalone freight brokers, compared to SPI agencies, our agencies do 40 to 50% better in sales and profit than the standards, and I think there's some good reasons for that. We we work with best practices. We're continuously improving. We're investing the big bucks into technology, and of course, we're going to also get the most efficiency out of it. So we're going to, you know, we've got that experience to to pick the right things and apply the the best for our agents and the you know, remember that thing about spending 70 or 80% of your time once you if You're a standalone is administrative, the back office, then you know, what's that costing you versus getting, you know, 30% or your 70% right? SPI, 30% as far as if your margins are there, and everything that's that's what you're going to get. And we do go up to 75% if their margins are are good and strong, and the volume is there. So for that, we've seen a lot of our we've actually had offices that have converted from their standalone, you know, freight brokerage company, to becoming an agency attached to the SPI logistics network, and they've thrived. I'm very proud to say many of our agents offices, the even the standalone one person offices, earn more money than I do a year.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 40:49

That's awesome. You don't really hear that a lot in business in general.

Unknown: 40:54

I just, I it's just, well, I'm proud to say that. I like to say that.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 41:00

Well, I think you bring up a good point, because for a lot of entrepreneurs, and I can, you know, speak this from my own business, sometimes just having the help is such a mental release that it allows you to be able to focus, or have the energy and the bandwidth to focus on the things that you're really good at communicating with your customers, talking to them, building those relationships. You can't really scale that, but you could probably scale, you know, some transcription service. Services, or, you know, email overload and things like that, is, is that maybe a safe assumption that, you know, well, not a safe assumption. I think it's a fact that you guys are, you know, providing this level of help to folks who started off, you know, wanting to do everything themselves, but then started to realize there is power in delegation,

Unknown: 41:54

and it's, it's, it's, you know, the services that we do for them, but we also provide, you know, the best of technology. We also try to provide the best service. You know, half of the the staff we have here at the head office is just for supporting agents, so we're available to help them. And then there's the financial support. In other words, you know, we're handling the agencies get paid weekly, and they get paid after the job is done. As soon as the the thing is delivered, it's counted, so the very next week, they get money, get paid for that. So there's the cash flow thing, there's the risk. You know, how many clients, if you're a standalone agency, you got to do the credit on your customers. And I learned back early on, credit risk on your customers is the thing that will kill you if you don't manage your so we do all the checks up front. We take care of the credit approvals for all the agency offices, and that protects them, that reduces their risk. And we take care of the carriers paying the carriers. We deal with claims. You know, you have a claim come up, or you have something that happens as an agent, if you have something that happens that you have never dealt with before, we've dealt with it. You know, we've got over 60,000 carriers as a resource in our database that we work with at one time or another. These are not just carriers. We brought them on because they work for us and so also in help in dealing with situations with carriers and and all of that to make sure that they can service their their clients, the shipper clients the best, and they do because it's their own business. They're they're not going to hesitate to pick up a call from their client on Saturday night at midnight, because there's a problem, and you're not going to necessarily get that with a lot of employee based

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 44:18

logistics companies. Yeah, the agents genuinely care about their relationships with their customers, because they know it's, it's very much you can't eat if you don't kill and not to, you know, say you're going to kill your customers or anything, but it's one of those things where, if you lose a customer, especially as an agent that could make or break you,

Unknown: 44:40

yeah, well, kill the problem. Yeah,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 44:43

solve the problem that you know that think that's been a resounding, you know, sort of lesson throughout this and when I was reading through our pre show document, you had mentioned the importance of goal setting. And I'm curious as to what are the or the differences in goals, if you are sort of a newer agent versus a more established agent, are the goals kind of the same, or are they different?

Unknown: 45:11

They change over time, but it's really, really important for you to have start with a vision of what you want to do and and then set a goal for what it looks like. And by when, now, you know, people think, Oh, we got to reach that goal by that date. But the fact, the most important thing about goal is it sets action, sets motion. You know, your actions and a path direction. So quite honestly, if you're shooting for the stars, you probably going to the moon, right? So if you set a goal, you're actually going to start stepping forward. And if you you know, you mentioned that analysis paralysis, if, if you're just sitting there. Okay, now, how do I get there and figure out the strategy? And you spend all your time figuring out strategy. You're frozen. You're not moving. So, you know that's in the beginning. That's the biggest thing. Is to set a goal. So if your goal is, you know, if you if you don't like where you're at right now, you. Then say goal to will make a difference, at least it gets you moving and the action. So for you know, I've seen over the years for independent one person freight brokerage, they've got to set those targets and their goals, and they're going to be at a certain level, you a certain point, you hit a ceiling. And you know, we can help increase that, the height of that ceiling with the services and support we give. You know best practices and how to sell and best practices and on operations, and technology and the new system, the new things on you know that are coming out and managing your clients, as far as the cash and and all of that. But then there's the we can provide some support in, maybe your operations a little bit to help you get to the next level, or finding the right person to come in. And maybe they're doing the the the delivery and and those types of, you know, follow ups with the carrier. I uh, then there's the next level, whereas you're actually hiring people, and you're growing, and that's probably going to go to three to, you know, four people with you. You start with one and maybe two or three more, and you get to another level. And then your your goals start changing about, you know, I can get this, this big customer, and I need staff to do it. Then you get into being an office that's that's doing 1020, 30 million a year, and you've got to, you've got a team with you inside your office, and they're all operations people, or a sales rep, awesome operations people. And so it allows you to dream when you can see a path to getting to that first goal and the next one and the next one. And it allows you to visualize bigger things.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 48:53

And I think too it leads to failing faster, because there's no greater lesson than when you lose money. And when you lose money, you get better. And I think when you're setting goals, sometimes you know it's you have to see the force for the trees. And just because, you know, a couple of those trees didn't work out and aren't still living, doesn't mean that the rest of the forest is bad. And so I think, as if I'm reading between the lines of what you're saying is, is set the goals, set the action plan to get there, and your goals might be different than somebody who's been doing this for 15 years, but it doesn't mean it's not worth doing, putting in the effort and putting

Unknown: 49:35

in the work. It's just as important. Yeah, it's just as valuable too. And it's, it's there after that. You know what you thought in your head? Software is like that. Oh, we can build this in six months. No, can't, but you're brave as you can I'm

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 49:53

currently going through that right now with the project I thought was going to launch in August, and here we are.

Unknown: 49:59

Yeah, so it's exactly not doing that in another business where I thought we've been running last March and we're just doing it this way. But yeah, it's, it's trial and error. It's just the important thing is the action is making those steps forward and heading down a path. Maybe you're going to hit a tree. You'll figure out a way around it.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 50:24

Yes, maybe not. Maybe don't focus on that forest for the trees. Maybe go around that forest if you're skiing. All right. Now, now, Mitch, we've talked a lot about sort of the evolution of freight brokerage, freight agents, the technology that supports them both. I'm curious as to what sort of the market looks like in your eyes, as we you know, head into 2025, head into the new year, there it feels like there's much more optimism in the industry. Are you kind of feeling that and seeing that as well?

Unknown: 50:56

Yeah, I would have hoped, like I saw everything that happened through 2122 and things peaked, and then 23 everybody had jumped in the marketplace, and then they were failing, and that really brought freight rates down. And I would have thought they would have come back. Many of us did. Would have thought that they would have come back, maybe this year 2024 they did a little. But not to the extent that we thought. I think, though we're probably finally going to see some more improvement in 2025 I think 2025 is going to be a pretty good year, and lots of opportunities. The marketplace is changing. I think you're going to see maybe a little more consolidation logistics companies in the marketplace. As far as independent freight brokerages, I think there's big, big opportunities for them to maybe join a network. And if they're considering a network, I'd really like to check out SPI but you know, we've proven that they do much better. And they're still independent. They're still still their business. They're just part of a network, and they've got all of the they don't have to focus on what kind of software to get or all of this stuff we're going to we're going to make sure that they get the best of what's out there, and the service as well,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 52:37

especially because, you know, with the one of the the past things, that Anita, who is SPI, she's in charge of HR, and, you know, more of like the people relationships within the company. And she mentioned on that episode about how, you know, SPI doesn't have to compete as far as, or they don't have the agent saturation that maybe some other agent programs might have. And I think that that is one of those very important things as you're thinking about, you know, how are you going to grow in 2025 and I think that that's, that's something really strong to consider, is, if you are partnering with a company, are they going to be able to grow with you? Because I think you also said, I had in my notes that you said in the in the interview with Chris jolly that yet you have to be careful who your partners are. And so I think that you you have laid out, you know, all of the really good reasons of why. You know, SPI is a great partner to work with, especially within the freight industry, and hearing about all of the things that you guys invested in early on, or very new to the game and all of these,

Unknown: 53:43

yeah, I realized early, early on, and you know the story now that you know our mandate is to help our agencies grow. That's it simple as that. We want them to thrive. And that's what we started out with, the very beginning with Jim.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 54:06

And that is, I feel like that is the the sound clip that I want to start off the show with, that's going to be a sound bite that we clip in and throw it up on social media, because it has the ethos has remained true throughout the, you know, the 40 plus years that SBI has been in business now, Mitch is, as we sort of round out this conversation. Is there anything that you think is important to mention that we haven't already talked about?

Unknown: 54:31

Well, we're, I think we've talked a lot things you brought up, things from the past, from other other interviews as well. Well, we're continuing to grow. We're, we're looking at ways we can help independent brokerage companies also join the network. And if they're interested, they can contact us. But I think it's good for the whole industry. The more that you know independent people are involved, running, being that that go to person for in freight brokerage in the industry, they provide a very important role. I mean, when I started, I think freight brokers made up less than 2% of the marketplace, and today, I think it's getting close to 30, or maybe more, I don't know, but but, you know, freight brokers going to focus a 100% on their client, the shipper, and no matter what kind of freight they're moving or whatever they have, whereas a carrier can focus, the carriers focus even though they they say it's on their customer, the truth is, it's on that truck, and Where's that truck and where, where can I get freight to put on that truck? Because they got to keep it moving full as much as possible. So I think it's good for the whole industry, and it's got to be integrity there and fairness in in the marketplace.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 56:11

I think that that is a perfect place to end this conversation, because I'm going to throw up a bunch of links in the show notes to where folks can listen to your conversation with Chris jolly, where they can listen to your previous conversations with essay as I, as I mentioned earlier, and then also to connect with you and SPI if they're interested in growing their a. Agency, or even starting out to become an agent in 2025 can't speak enough good things about SPI and working with you guys and the support that you provide me as just, you know, a podcaster, you know, working out in Florida versus you know that what you guys are all doing, you know, sort of north of us and in the United States as well. So I appreciate you. The audience appreciates you, and thank you so much for your time.

Unknown: 56:56

Jay, well, thank you, Blythe. Much appreciated.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 56:58

Welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. I'm your host, Blythe Milligan, and we are proudly presented by SPI logistics. And on today's show, we have the co founder of freight coach logistics and Angelo fruit, I only said Anthony, I'm sorry, does it really, yeah, well, we're going to be talking about how, you know, in our pre show document, which you filled out, which I have every guest fill out, kind of gives me a little bit of background insight, before we have the, You know, a conversation between the two of us. And in that document, you talk about leaving corporate America and the challenges and the rewards and all that good stuff of leaving corporate America to join the freight industry. But I find it fascinating that you did it in probably the worst time in freight history, during a recession, during the you know, the challenges of a down market, but I also think that that's why, you know a lot of folks will find value in this episode, is that you know you in a time where folks are questioning why they're even working in this industry, you, alongside your business partner, Chris jolly, who is friend of the show, podcast friend, of course, too. You guys decide to open a business and you're killing it. So welcome to the show.

Unknown: 58:14

Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Okay,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 58:17

so let's talk about that little bit of a pre I want to know what you were doing in work before you decide what was your corporate America job that you were doing beforehand?

Unknown: 58:25

Yeah, so I was a process engineer for medical devices. There's a huge market up here in Minnesota. So, you know, I started working on leads and pacemakers, went into catheters, and kind of stayed in that vascular market. My role as a process engineer was an r&d engineer. Would make 10 products, and then I would figure out how to make 10,000 and then validate it, make sure everything that got out was good, and get the line ready for manufacturing, and then pass it along to the manufacturing team.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 58:54

Oh, wow. So you had the whole, like, sort of shipper side of things, you know, kind of that shipper point of view worked out prior.

Unknown: 59:00

Well, that's kind of how we had talked about it, I mean, so, I mean, this was all, like, on mechanical assemblies, but it was that kind of mindset that Chris was, like, I've got an idea and you know, how to replicate it again and again and again. And that kind of started the conversation years before this had happened. And yeah, it was interesting. So we've been talking about it. And then I went to a startup, and it's funny, like the Lord works in different ways. I told myself that was gonna be my last w2 and that's what happened, not in the plan that I wanted. It didn't work out with the startup, which is all right, but yeah, I was driving home, and I was like, Chris, are we doing this? I'll preface this. I had a two month old our first one. I was like, are we doing this? And he's like, timing is not good. I'm like, he goes, let's do it. And then we obviously put a lot of planning in, because that's what I do with the business plans and all that nerd stuff. And so yeah, we put it together. I asked my wife if she trusted me, and she said, yep. And so we went for it.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 59:55

Wow. So two month old wife has said, Okay, you that that's good, that that is a very trusting wife.

Unknown: 1:00:03

Yeah, very trusting especially, I mean, I had good engineering corporate salary, I had my dream job, Dream title, all that stuff. But, yeah, I really wanted, I'd always wanted to do it. I'd done a small startup years ago, like a Kickstarter deal that we kind of, you know, another friend dipped our toe in. Learned a lot there. But, like, I'd always wanted that, and this was, I was just really kind of having a good point, like, I could call five friends, get a few interviews, probably get another job, and then, you know, keep doing the products again and again. And it was fun. I enjoyed it, but, yeah, I just really wanted to do it on my own. And I mean, not to plug them too much. I don't want to build his ego up. But watching Chris build a successful business, I was like, if he could do it, I can do it. I've known him my whole life. It was just like a chance to work with him. And you know, we talked about our relationship, what we like to do. And the good news is, our brains, our values, are aligned, but our brains work in completely different ways, so we really haven't overlapped on that. And it's just been, it's been a great experience since, well, I

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:01:02

definitely want to get into the relationship with Chris, because Chris is a, you know, a longtime friend of the show. We got into freight podcasting around the same time, and so he's been a really big, confident or confidant in helping take this show and really go fully independent back in January 2023, and so it's been, it's been fantastic. And you know, I took a lot of advice from him. And before we talk about Chris, I did have one curious question, why? Why? Is because your base? In Minnesota. So where why is, I guess, the medical device. Why is that such a big thing in Minnesota?

Unknown: 1:01:38

Yeah, Medtronic, and Earl Bakker and those guys. Well, he started Medtronic, but they got started up here with the first pacemaker. And that spawned into, you know, all these companies and, you know, kind of like, look at, like, Silicon Valley, you know, a couple guys started there, and then everyone who went there was like, Oh, I have an idea. So there's really just, I mean, between, like, the pacemaker cardiac world and valves to the cardiovascular shirt, people just spawned off, and the technology and infrastructure is up here. So I mean, everything from big fortune 100 companies all the way down to startups in the medical devices all around here, and the suppliers are in the area. And, yeah, it's just a big it's kind of just a medical device hub, lot of research at the Mayo Clinic and things like that. So it, besides just how, like, probably Medtronic and them getting started here, that's probably the biggest thing

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:02:29

that's super interesting. Because, I mean, we're, we've done a few episodes, you know, with the big promise of bringing manufacturing back to the United States, and what does that look like? And I would have never have assumed that that Minnesota would kind of be a, you know, a US hub for medical devices. So that's super interesting to know. Thank you for sharing that. So let's get into you mentioned knowing Chris your whole life. I imagine you, you guys grew up together. Give us the backstory on on how you, you guys became friends, yeah?

Unknown: 1:02:57

So he's my cousin on our mom's side, so literally, yeah, since we were in diapers and you know, he's my sister, like all of our siblings are on the same age, so us and another set of cousins would basically rotate houses, especially in the summer, for the weekends, and yeah, so we it's why I always well, we used to fight a little bit. We were younger, and then we got old enough to hurt each other. And they were like, Hey, should we stop doing this? And then at some point in life, we're like, hey, let's do a business together. But it was fun. You know, grew up together, especially like, his property was awesome. And then we go up to our cabin all the time and like, fish and stuff like that up there. So got to know him a lot. And then stayed in contact all through college, when I went down to Iowa State, and kind of after college, we hung out, we get together on weekends and stuff like that. And then when he moved up to Reno, I was like, I'm going to miss you, but I'm excited for you to go and see what happens. And it's kind of been, we've just stayed in contact the whole time, and, you know, on our careers and life and things like that. And I said we'd always kind of talked about doing it, and then it was one of those, like, and I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, and they're like, the timing wasn't good, but some life event happened that wasn't predictable, and it was like, now or like, either go or stay in the life you were doing, and we decided to go,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:04:14

and that was your first child. I'm assuming you, I'm not, I'm not sure how many children you have, but you said you had a two month old at home. And so I would imagine that would be the, I guess, the motivation of being like, let's do this. And because I do feel like entrepreneurial journey, you, you have to have that motivation of where your net, where is your next check going to come from? And maybe am I, if I'm just kind of putting two things together here, that the, you know, with the wife trusting you and the two month old at home, that that was all the motivation that you needed. Yeah.

Unknown: 1:04:48

I mean, that is definitely a big motivation. It wasn't. I mean, the finance has to happen because, like, we like this house, but it was more like, you know, what do I want to be? Like, what do I like having a daughter first, like, and all of a sudden, holding her, it's like, you know, who do I want her to bring home? And it's like, I need to be that person. And like, what do I want in life? And they said I had a like, it was a great life, great career, great people around me, but I just wanted to do more. And it was, this was just the chance and the time to just go for it and see what I can really do with myself. Knowing that there's gonna be, it's gonna be sacrifices and some hardships, but also, like, when they get older, they'll be able to see someone living the life that they want to live, and whether they want to go on logistics or not, that's like, well beyond it. But I want them to be able to see, hey, you can go after and do what you want and change lives and make the world a better place. And that was really, like, the big motivation behind it as well.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:05:40

And so when you're talking with Chris, like, how does that? How does that? I guess conversation get started. I know you had talked about it, you know, here and there. Like, growing up together, I'm not sure did you ever Did you always know that it was going to be a freight related business?

Unknown: 1:05:56

No, we had no idea. So we didn't start talking about doing a business until we were adults. I mean, he went into logistics when he moved out to Reno, and loved it. And really, like really, did well for himself there. I was doing very well in engineering. So we were having fun doing that. We'd meet up in different cities and things like that, living that life in the 20s. And it was really, I think, when he started the podcast, and it started going also like that was when we both kind of realized, like, hey, we can do this. Like, it's possible to go create something without a w2, paycheck, bi weekly. He's like, it's hard. And I'm not going to say it was easy for him, because I remember those conversations, but it was just like, we can, we can do this. And that was when we started to put it down. You know, he was talking about success that other people were having, especially with his help. So he believed in his system strongly and in the fray, not just the podcast. And it was, it started seeing that belief, and that was kind of what we touched on earlier, was like, Hey, I've got a good system. I can help people, and then, like, we could do in the my way to systemize, and I love operations and counting beans and things like that. He always drifts on me for having an MBA. And I'm like, that's fine. You don't need one. I got it. But like, and, I mean, we'll get to that a point like, I need someone like that as much as I think I'm this big visionary, and I have a vision he is that, right, and then I can be that executing hand, and we're both executing now, because you have to. But yeah, it was just we started actually putting it together. Like, hey, what would this look like? What numbers? And I wrote out a super detailed business plan, and it's like, all right, this isn't just a hobby, but the real motivation that was behind him was like, you know, carriers getting mistreated, smaller customers getting mistreated, employees going through the ringer on things. He's like, we can build something really good that helps a lot of lives. And that was the big motivation, that was kind of what sold me on. It not just the size of the industry, but just like, alright, if we're going to do this, because we both had highs and lows throughout our careers, and it's like, what can we do to make a place that people want to be at? And that was the that was probably the bigger motivation than what the actual thing was. Because I'm a builder, and I love systems and putting that together, and I love freight, but like, it's really that building and the why, and that was, that was when it got serious. So we, we didn't put a business plan together, but we kind of had a feeling like, at some point this is going to happen.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:08:20

So what were those first, I guess, systems that you established because, I mean, Chris comes from logistics, and so I would imagine that he would have known, you know, a lot of maybe the how to move freight, of course, but then running a business is a whole other layer on top of, you know, just being a broker inside of a big brokerage. So that's typically that the funnel system of folks who come into this industry, they come fresh out of college, they become a freight broker. They have to do a million cold calls, and then maybe one day they're successful enough that they can start up a freight agency, but you guys kind of got to skip that. Bs, well, Chris was a

Unknown: 1:08:55

freight broker for years. Yeah, he did, he did that. Bs,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:08:59

so he learned that, you know, sort of that side of things. So I'm always curious about, especially people who come from other, I guess, industries and then come into logistics. What were some of those systems that you established first that made sense? Because I would imagine that some systems maybe didn't make a whole lot of sense, but maybe you thought they did. What were some of those first ones that were that were really crucial?

Unknown: 1:09:25

It was, yeah, so the first ones, and I learned a lot from the initial Kickstarter I did, and then grad school it was, it was making sure we had a good legal team in place, and I'm lucky to have a good network up here, getting everything planned, because when, when you're in peace time or the honeymoon phase of the business, everything's good. But I knew I wanted to rock solid life events, things happen, structure, so getting everything legally structured and the operational agreements strong for both sides. I was we, I go to the Boundary Waters a lot, and it's the weather can get you. And I always say, hope for the best, prepare for the worst. So it was getting those kind of things in place, getting the banking structure set up, figuring out what kind of accounting principles we wanted to follow, so all that back office stuff, and then freight related again, one of the reasons I went into this because I believed in Chris's system. I didn't know his system yet, other than you know, from the outside looking in, but it was like, All right, you've got a lot of great words. How do we get that to the first employee and then to the 10th employee and then to the 100th employee? So I actually wrote, I forget the final count right now, but we're at about like 48 SOPs, so training documents that are, wow, yeah. So in my medical device world, I wrote, I wrote quality systems for companies and validated things and checked all the systems. So we went for about two or three months, and we were doing sales at the time, but you know, he would do a recording, and then I would document everything he said. So we put together a sales training program for when we do start hiring. And it was really getting down, like, what are you doing? That's successful? So we can make sure that as we grow and scale, we have that rather than, you know, let's say, one day, you know, we have we grow super fast. One day we land five major accounts, and we need to hire. What do we do? Do we just hire 10 people and see who sticks? Or do we bring them in and say, here's how we're going to treat our employees or our customers, here's how we're going to treat our carriers. Here's how we're going to vet our carriers, here's the questions we're going to ask to our shippers. We wanted to have all that documented so that that was there, not just like, hey, I hope you figure it out. So that was a big thing I put in place, I think, for this, and that will it. It like, Was that too early, maybe, but we did it during that time when we were in that early phase. So now we have that structure, and it'll change, you know, five, 610, times, but we have the baseline figured out. And that was one thing I wanted to have in place. Was like, All right, let's take your system and put it into a platform that we can use.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:11:47

Yeah, that's super interesting, because I don't I've worked at a couple logistics companies, I don't know that we ever had an SOP for much, and they were around for a long time. They went out of business. So

Unknown: 1:12:07

it's, I mean people, like, I look at them too. I mean, you learn on the job, and that's you're not going to replace that. But like, for me, especially, going in. So how we structured it? You know, Chris is the sales rep, or the account manager, sales rep, and then I'd be the apps. You know, me being in the industry, what do I if a carrier calls me and says, I want to book a load for this rate and we agree on it? How do I know if they're good? Like, I didn't know that stuff, right? So it was really good for me. Say, Okay, what zip code are you getting empty? And how long is your trailer? What can you scale? You know, running the MCS, how to look for it, checking in with the driver. I never would have thought of that right coming from the outside, doing this like, yeah, what is the dispatcher telling me, confirm everything with the driver and look for any issues there. So those are the kinds of things that we want to make sure is we hire new people that are aware and can start doing that from day one, and then they figure out how to do it and get efficient at it. But like, yeah, I don't want to just throw someone in and say, All right, go find a truck and, like, make sure they're exactly what happens right. And I don't, I mean, if we have a big or when we have a big account, like, I don't want that to happen and send the right equipment, or get those no shows that don't get recovered, like those are the type of things that we want to be able to train on from the start and and we're acting it too. And I update these things as we go, as we develop our sales system, so we so we can document here's what's working, and then we'll transfer it along. But yeah, we wanted to give people that baseline and that time and that we care into that. So that was one of the big things we structured in the beginning.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:13:34

And so as you're, as you're, you know, developing the these standard operating procedures, and you're learning about the industry and bringing all of your expertise into it. How are you, I guess, sort of coordinating with Chris on a daily basis, because you're in Minnesota, he's in Reno so how are you kind of knowing even what to ask.

Unknown: 1:13:54

Would you mean ask, like the carriers, or,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:13:56

yeah, so if you it's almost like you don't know what you don't know. And so if you're on the phone, maybe talking to a carrier, or, you know, a shipper, how do you know what? Or how did you know what to ask? Was it just simply based on those early conversations with Chris and going through those SOPs,

Unknown: 1:14:13

absolutely it was, and I made mistakes. It wasn't like these SOPs. I was like, Oh, got it right. But I was like, I had those SOPs up when I was doing it. And even today, he'll ask, like, Hey, did you get the exact width of the thing? Like, what did you get? And I still am learning that. I mean, it's been a couple years now, so I'm strong at it or stronger. But yeah, it was, I mean, in the beginning there was a lot of hand holding, and that is part of, like, how are we going to train too? Like, do we just throw them off, or do they have a mentor that's watching over their shoulders? And how do we transition with accounts and new people? But yeah, it was a lot of hand holding in the beginning. And then after about, you know, 1520 loads, it's like, alright, I feel pretty good with this. And then we grow and went from there. So yeah, a lot of hand holding beginning. I mean, with Zoom being a big thing coming out of covid, it was pretty easy and quick calls. And, yeah, it was, I mean, we and, like, as far as we coordinate, like, he's got his show and a couple other things. So we just, we're just very open. I'm looking at my phone for no reason. Like, just text each other, like, for this, Hey, I'm going to be on this call from two to three, which means I'm not looking at my emails right now, so keep an eye out, right? And he'll do the same thing if he's got to go do a site visit or something like that. I'm very aware of what he's doing, so I will clear whatever I need to do so I'm at my computer. I mean, I can still do other stuff, but, like, we just make sure that we're always active for when our customers reach out.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:15:31

And so as you're so, you build out these SOPs, but you also are in a very unique situation where you have that you know, this monster of a quiet partner, and SPI, that is, is helping you as well, because SPI doesn't do this very frequently, but they partner with you guys, with no book of business, and so it was up to you guys to build that book of business. Tell it. Tell me how that went. Well.

Unknown: 1:15:59

Very thankful for SPI they've been awesome. And, like, they're just a great company to work with, right? It basically, I mean, it would have been wild if we had to get a loan and get our own TMS and get a line of like, all that stuff would have been wild. So working with them has just been a blessing, and the service, but yeah, as far as, I mean, the fish didn't jump into the boat, is what I learned. But yeah, it was a big, you know, trying to make sure I kind of get into the question it was, it was get in and go and just start calling. I. And you know, we've learned along the way, like we now do sales calls and not emails and things like that. So it was just really growing, but it was a quick learning that, hey, both of us are in sales, and sales is going to be a part of our life for a long time, if not for the rest of this journey. And see how just pushing and growing and trying to introduce ourselves and really getting that belief in you, and that's an interesting one. Is like, I knew the system was good from what Chris had said, but I hadn't lived it yet. Now that we've still got our customers from, like, our first three customers that we ever worked with, and we still work with them, and we like they, still like us. That me, that's the proof of concept. So now, like today, I did five site visits here in the Twin Cities. I feel good doing that if we're a fit, if they're just a pure LTL shipper, like, hey, great to meet you if you ever need anything dedicated. Like, here's my card. But otherwise, you know, have a good day. But now I know, like, when I go to a billing material supplier, like, we know flatbed. We know how to protect it, we know how to send in the right equipment. Like, because I've done it hundreds of times now, so it just feels good to have that belief. But it was really getting that really getting that belief and the imposter syndrome in the beginning, right? Like, if someone asked, what I do for a living at a party, I'm like, how am I engineer? Am I logistics guy? Like, have I earned being a logistics guy? Right? So yeah, I

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:17:45

think you kind of need both of those skills. I think you need the engineering mindset in order to work in logistics as well. And to your earlier point, you know you and you and Chris have a really good, it sounds like a really good yin and yang kind of perspective that brings both of those perspectives together for sure, for sure. And so with you mentioning site visits, because Chris had had a LinkedIn post a while back that I just loved seeing, and he talked about the power of not only cold calling, because I think a lot of folks, especially freight brokers, they use just cold email, and they'll just blast a million emails out and just pray for the best. And with what Chris is talking he's always, you know, preached about the value of cold calling and just getting your reps in, but then he's also preaching about the value of site visits. And so it sounds like you're doing the same thing in a different state, which is, it sounds pretty cool, absolutely.

Unknown: 1:18:37

And to be honest, like we tried the emails for a while, and we're like, this isn't working. So yeah, I forget he came up to I forget why he came up. It doesn't matter, but he was here, and I had driven just north of me, up this street, and I saw, like, flatbeds in a yard, and like, lumber. I was like, God, we should go after them. And we were kind of like, Hey, should we call them and see if we could stop by rather than just go in? And they were all, well, all of them said, Sure. And then one of us called us back and said they were good. So we're like, alright, we won't stop in. But yeah, it was kind of like it was, it was a great experience. And you know, you stop in, you shake a hand, pass the business card, get one, and in five minutes, I've seen physically, what their stuff looks like. I've asked them about, you know, straps versus chains and all those details. I know the weights, I know their lanes, and they know who I am. And it was just a great experience. And I found I've been fine. I've actually, I've got a pretty high mark of how many I try to get to a week, but I've loved the experience, like the five I had today, I talked to a founder of a franchisee likely will not be a fit, because they're going to they're doing a different type of shipping than us, but had a great conversation with him. And then three of the visits I made were great conversations. And it's a little seasonal, but it was just, it's nice to meet in person. And I haven't, I haven't got lit up in person. I had a few cold like, Thanks, you actually showed up, type deals, but it was more just, like, short and it's like, Well, I'm just not going to flood them with questions. But yeah, for the most part, like coming in and shaking a hand, it's been really appreciated, and it's led to, I mean, the growth and the interactions is has definitely showed itself. Yeah, especially when you like, I found like, you know, you follow up a month or two later, and that's when things really get cooking. But yeah, just coming in and shaking a hand, presenting, I make sure I'm well dressed and presentable, and ask a few questions and then leave before the conversation needs to end. It's just been a great experience, and I enjoy it. I'm an extrovert as much of a nerd. Much of a nerd as I am, like, I love getting out to see people, so not being in an office right now kind of kills me sometimes. So that's like, it's a perfect way just to get out and shake a few hands and meet some people.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:20:42

So that's interesting, that you're doing five site visits just today alone. And so how do you how do you prioritize who you're going to visit and why?

Unknown: 1:20:52

Yeah, so what I do is, when I'm driving around, I'm sure my wife loves this, but if I see a yard like I'll get, let's just say Google Maps would be the short answer. But I'll drive by, even if I'm driving to the cabin or something, I'll see I'm like, Oh, that looks I mean, that looks like stuff that we would move and I'll cop on Google Maps, or I'll text Chris the name of the business, because I just need to write it down before I forget. He ignores those now, because he knows, but so I'll do that, and then that's how I find them. And then usually what I'll do is I'll zoom in, because what I'm finding is there's all these little like manufacturing hubs, where you find one manufacturing plant, then there's like, six. Six of them in this little area, right? You have, like the residential neighborhood, and then like the strip mall with the restaurants in it and the gas station. And then there's these little like residential things where it's like, All right, well, they're shipping docks in six of these buildings. So I'll go in, look at them, screen them, pick a few, and then just call and stop in and like I said, one of them today, like, hey, we do all LTL. It's like, well, I don't do LTL. Was great conversation. Thanks for your time. But yeah, pop in and it's more of a screening, like, I'm not coming in, like, Hey, we're the cheapest, we're the best. It's just like, What are you guys doing? Are you guys seasonal? Do you have your own trucks? Do you go outside ever? Like, what? What's the standard? Or like, where is your headquarters? Can you make the decisions? And usually, that's what it leads to, is they're like, Hey, we like, hey, we like, you get a hold of this guy, let him know you talk to me. And that's what you're getting in person, versus, like, just the cold calls and getting to that generic voicemail and things like that. And the craziest thing that me and Chris always laugh about is, like, sometimes when it's just when I call ahead and it's a receptionist and I check in with them, they're super nice. That's when they give me the person's information. It's like, that was like, my earning through the gatekeeper, right there. It was like, that was it. They didn't know anything about they didn't ask, they didn't want to go through questions, but they're like, here's who you need to talk to. And then, like, call me. You'll get me at this front desk, and I'll transfer you through now. Thank you.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:22:49

I love hearing that because I the other logistics companies I worked at. I was the front desk girl, and I was the executive assistant too, and so anytime somebody walked in, I was instantly annoyed, and would not give out any information unless you were very nice, unless it was you are expected. There was one moment where, you know, a couple sales guys tried to come in through the front door, and I was like, No, we're not interested. They came in through the back door, and I immediately, it was a whole mess. It was a it was they were persistent, but not they were persistent in a creepy way, like coming in through the back door. I was, I did not appreciate that, but that is, I think, that you hit the nail on the head when it comes to the gatekeeper, because the receptionist or the executive assistant at the front door can let you know who anyone in that building, and they can get you that contact information. So I love that you brought that tip.

Unknown: 1:23:44

Yeah, and that's I mean, calling ahead is the key too. Because I'll say this the few times I've, like, called a location and it wires me to their headquarters in a different state, and they're like, Yeah, go on in. Those have been some of the colder ones, right when I come in, I'm like, Hey, is Steve here? And he's like, I'm Steve. I'm like, Oh, hey, I'm Angela. I talked to you yesterday. Thanks for letting me stop by. And then it just relaxes the conversation. But yeah, we always do that call ahead to see because, yeah, the random pop ins, as much as, like, I won't say against it, but like, You got to read the room a little bit too. And even when people well today, I joked, the guy who I called yesterday was out sick today, and his boss was there, and he was like, I go, that's funny. Did he let the sales guy come in knowing he was going to be out? And we just had, that was how we broke the ice, so, but yeah, I was trying to call, talk to the person that's going to be there, and then pop in

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:24:36

and that that's super I think that that's a really good, like, very simple plan too, for a lot of brokers and agents out there who are, you know, I read a lot of, like, subreddits and, you know, from, you know, freight brokers and things like that, and a lot of complaints about how this is the worst market ever, and it just genuinely feels like you guys are just being good people and doing the hard work of doing the research, making the call, and then doing the visit and then following up later. It sounds like too simple to be true.

Unknown: 1:25:08

It is just be nice to people and see what happens. And like, people might not need us. I want them to remember us, and that's the big thing. Like, most people are good today, and that's fine. And, I mean, I don't know better, because I haven't been in another market, but yeah, it's more, you know, okay, you've got five trucks in your fleet, and two of them are sitting most of the time. Like, that's great if come you know spring when you need more, let us know, and that's when I follow up, or stop back in and say hi, but it's more, yeah, I know that they're busy. They've got other things to do. I just want them to know who I am, remember me, and then we'll be good to go from there.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:25:44

So how are you, how are you, I guess, tracking who you're going to follow up with, and at what time, I assume you're using a CRM like, what kind of I guess, coming from a technology background, I would assume maybe you know a lot of freight tech and CRMs and things like that are at the forefront of your operation.

Unknown: 1:26:00

They are, they will be, right now, we're pretty bootstrapping, right still, but it's about time to get into a CRM so right now, I've got a good spreadsheet, and I I put notes in my calendar when I'm going to follow up with specific people, so it pops up. It pops up at some point. It'll be nice to have an automated CRM that says, call these five people today. But, I mean, we're just not, we haven't got to that point in the business yet. But, yeah, I just keep track of everything. I keep track of the notes. Usually I try not to get into, like, personal Oh, how old are your kids? That's awesome. You know, I don't. Get into that unless they leave, like, they have to bring it up. But any notes, like, in right away, like I I don't take notes while I'm talking to people, but as soon as I get to my truck, I write down everything I can remember, so all those notes are back in there. So that way when I follow up, because who knows, they might not remember me. Usually, with the site visits, they've remembered me and they're excited to talk again, but like, when I'm doing a follow up call to a different state, if I can reference like, hey, we talked about straps versus this, and you guys are running this, but not kind of stogas, then that sets the tone for a better follow up. So just taking all those details notes, I run through it, look at their website before every call, and then I'm refreshed for that call, right there?

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:27:10

Are there any other, I guess, sort of marketing or sales initiatives that you are passionate about? I mean, it sounds pretty cut and dry, and it's working with what you're doing right now. But I'm curious if you know, obviously, Chris has the podcast. What about you know, LinkedIn is also another big one in logistics. Is there anything else that really sticks out to you from a marketing and sales perspective that

Unknown: 1:27:33

you that is such a big one, I don't know yet, is the answer. You know, do, yeah, do we go radio? Do we? Do we do have some SEO, so we're hopefully popping up on search engines, so a little bit of that's kind of the big one, but we've started talking about it. But I just, I'm not, we're not ready to invest that heavy into it right now. And which, which, I mean, I don't know if it helps or hurts, but no, right now, at the moment, it's just pure outreach. I know. I mean, Chris's podcast is big, but yeah, I mean, he's talking to there are shippers listening, but yeah, there, I don't know. It's, it's more awareness of it, but, yeah, I don't know. I guess the short answer is, No, I don't have a plan for marketing yet. You're kind of

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:28:17

already doing it. Like, yeah, way better than, you know, sending out, you know, downloading a glorified lead list from zoom info and then just blasting out a 10,000 emails. Like, I, I detest that.

Unknown: 1:28:31

Yeah, that's not what we're going to do. No, it'll always be that personal as we can go out there, and as we grow, you know, fly to different cities and do these type visits, especially like I think I've done, I don't know why I looked at my blank screen. I think I've visited about 150 people in the Twin Cities at this point. So, like, I'm starting to get a feel for how to have a conversation. And, yeah, eventually we'll take that and expand on it. But as far as like, a pure like LinkedIn or Facebook blasts, or those type of things, I don't Well at some point, I won't say no to it, but it's just not what we're doing today.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:29:03

Yeah, and especially with what does your team look like? Is the two of you? And are there anybody else?

Unknown: 1:29:09

It was, it's just the two of us right now and then as soon as I've got my nerd metrics of when we will start ready to hire and trust I went far. So far, my business plan has been accurate, just not the calendar, but yeah, it's so we just hit those metrics, and then we'll have those conversations grow. But yeah, right now it's just Chris and I, and we're having a blast doing it.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:29:31

So I'm curious back to SBI for a minute, because what does, I guess, that it sounds like you and Chris are handling, you know, covering a lot of ground with the two of you. How does SBI sort of play a role within the business? Obviously, back off a back office support and, you know, their annual event with, you know, rendezvous with all the freight agents. I want to know a little bit more about after you get started with SPI and what sort of the, I guess, the the middle like operational relationship looks like with them. Are you talking with them every day? Are you participating in training? What does that look like? Yeah.

Unknown: 1:30:08

So that initial stuff, there is training and all that. And for me, like, I had never been in a TMS, so that took a little longer than it should, but after about three, four loads, it made sense. Like, here's what I'll say about SPI they are great when you need them, and they're when you don't, they don't, they don't bug you. Yeah, they don't bug you. It's a great service. Like, if I have a question on a load, or, you know, we can make some adjustments, or something like that, they answer the phone quickly. They're there. The response time is great if you if it's an email, like, everything's good. So it's kind of more just, like, what do you need? And if you don't need anything, it's just a great platform to work. And so it's kind of a perfect my favorite, one of my favorite compliments, is boring and, like, that's pretty much it like, I love a good, boring load where it gets picked up on time and dropped on time, and they get the updates, and the customer may or may not say, Thanks for the updates, but they know that it's going to get done. And like, that's a good, boring load. And especially, I mean, they're just easy to work with. And, like, there hasn't been any, like, changes where I'm like, what were we thinking? Yeah, it's just, they're just a great it's just an easy platform and group of people to get to work with. And, like, I know most of my name, and yeah, it's awesome,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:31:19

yeah, yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head when it comes to them, because they are just, they're, like, the best silent partners, and you can just, yes, moving and doing, you know the work that you do best, and they're there. To support, yeah. And I, you know, I had the pleasure of going to one of their rendezvous, not last year, but the year before. I met a lot of the agents. And it was just, it was very evident that even though there's a little bit of, like, light competition between different agencies, but everyone is there to learn from each other. Have you had a chance to go to one of their rendezvous events I did.

Unknown: 1:31:52

Yeah, it was, I went to the My first rendezvous last when was that? Last April and Nashville one, yeah, the National one at the Opry. Yeah. It was awesome. Just to see it was wild to see so many different people with so many different goals for their businesses that worked in the same system. And everyone was so nice. Like, obviously we don't share shippers names. But like, I mean, case in point, there's one another agent, we got an opportunity to do some drayage, and we were like, Let's do it. And we called them up because, like, we knew that they had done a lot of drayage, and they gave us an hour their time. And like, you know, here's the list that we use it just here's what to watch out for, here's how to quote, here's how to do these things. And like, we knew it, but he knew knew it right? And then, because that, we got really good. And that was very good business move for us and the customer. And so that's, yeah, that is the kind of support you get from the other agents. And it's been and they reach out to us for, like, Chris's expertise in open deck. And so it's like, of course, we're going to tell them everything. Like, why? Why would we hold back? Like, go for it. We want you to be successful. And it is just a great, yeah, there's, there's trophies and things like that. But outside of that, like, nobody cares. And, you know, there was a very well established agent there, and, you know, I just want to, I asked him a couple questions, and, like, I don't know why. Like, again, with the imposter syndrome and still getting started things like that. Like, why should this guy give me the time of day? And he answered everything and like, it was just a great conversation. And it was just like, those are the type of people that they attract and work with and keep. And it's, it's very evident in that,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:33:25

was it Steve burrows? It was, I do know, because I love it, favorite agent interviews ever that I've interviewed twice. I Oh, man, when you were talking and I was like, I bet that Steve. I bet it's Steve. It was Steve.

Unknown: 1:33:42

And there's a few others too. Yeah, he was one of those ones. I'm like, yeah, he's here with his whole family. He's like, got one of the biggest agencies in here. And like, I'm just this guy, like, how many so, like, I train at a gym, and I see so many guys come in, they're gonna, like, I'm gonna get in the UFC cage, and then they're gone in a month, right? And I'm like, How many, how many of these Has he seen, right? And but he just opened up and just answered everything. And it was just a great conversation. And, I mean, and he wasn't the only one that was just one of the ones that stood up, but, like, everyone was like, yeah,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:34:14

a character too, like, he's like, the best, like, TV dad character, like, I don't know, reminds me of like, like a country Tim Allen or something like that. Yeah, very much. Is like, you know, it almost feels like another dad and like, he would just give me fatherly advice all the time.

Unknown: 1:34:35

Oh, yeah. Well, he asked me, like we were talking about, I forget how we got on the Florida conversation, but like we were joking about before this call. And I was like, Yeah, I was just down there, and I took my dad out fishing on the ocean. He's like, if you ever come down, let me know. I know some guys. I'm like, I'm going to take you up on that. I don't know when, but it's going to happen

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:34:54

for the listeners who don't maybe, maybe get a lot of these references, because Steve burrows has been a guest on this podcast twice now. I'll link to it in the show notes. It's one of our both of his episodes are some of the most, highest downloaded episodes that we have in our entire catalog. And I think it's, you know, very I think you're kind of hinting to it too, like he's, he just has a really great aura. And I think that that signals to your other point of just SPI really focusing on the the aura of people and a vibe like, you can't really put, like, I guess, data and numbers behind. Of course, you want more revenue, you want more customers and all that good stuff. But it has to really start from being a good person and believing in certain moral principles and things like that. And I think that that leadership comes from, it comes from the top at SPI, and then it, you can definitely see it filter down, especially in in this conversation. So far, you can tell that, you know, SPI really values the relationship aspect. And you know, why? Why wouldn't they, if they've been around for 40 years, which not a lot of freight agencies can say that, right?

Unknown: 1:35:59

I would completely agree. And like, Steve is one, like they all everyone was, I mean, not everyone was as large as life of that guy. But like, everyone was just easy to talk to, easy to approach, very friendly, like that. I do think that they, they line up, they make sure what you're doing has the like, the values that they want to keep. I think that's important to them, and they built it out over time. So, so

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:36:22

what does first question? Because I got, I got a couple more about sort of what you kind of feel like, what the outlook of 2025 is going to look like. But I. I do. While this question is still kind of permeating in my head, why haven't you ever been on Chris's podcast, the freight coach, for folks,

Unknown: 1:36:38

that's a great question. A lot of it comes to the thing I've mentioned before. Like, I still, I mean, yes, I've been doing this for almost two and a half years now, but like, still, I feel like I want to earn my way in. And like, Am I an expert? Why should someone listen to me? So whether it's insecurity or what like I want to be, I want to be able to contribute. And so that's a big thing. If I do go on a show. The other thing, my background is in engineering, and my wife loves this. I try to fix everything. I'm pretty good at it. So I try to, like, let that entity stay as it is, because he's good at it. It's a strong platform. He delivers great value to the industry. And like, I don't want to go in and be like, Hey, you should put dramatic pauses in here and there. Like, I don't want to put that in his head. Or you should get a new microphone. Like, I don't do that. Like, we'll do mic checks and things like that. I'm there for him for that, but I try. I don't want to go into like, I think it'd be like me trying to tell a major league baseball player what to do, like, who am I?

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:37:33

So look on his face if you told him a dramatic pause,

Unknown: 1:37:41

it's good. I've messed with him a few times like that. But yeah, you also got to remember, we know, we know, know each other, right? So there's not a lot of holding back.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:37:51

Well, I will say that just, you know, in the 41 minutes that we have been having a conversation, I look forward to the day that you join his podcast and and have that first episode with him. I imagine it'll be a lot of fun. And so, you know, as we sort of round out the conversation, what, what are sort of your goals and your play? I imagine you you have the goals already sort of lined up for the rest of 25 what does that look like?

Unknown: 1:38:16

Yeah, it's, you know, putting metrics as we shifted into, like, the calls from emails about a year ago. It's really like holding ourselves accountable to making sure we're hitting those metrics and then turning those into new customers. So we've got very specific people that we want to add, and I think we're gonna be able to do it, you know, a lot of the especially this year and in December, I could sense a lot of optimism in the companies that I talked to with where we're going. And I don't think it's going to be a light switch that turns on here like in April. Maybe it is, but it seems like there's a lot of optimism and things picking up and things moving, and the big thing for me is going to be, now that I've established these relationships, is really making sure to follow up with them. And that's that, you know, that's funny, like, one of the biggest things I've learned, like, I've gone to sites, and it's gone great, and they I sent them an email, and they set me up, and everything's good, and we high five, and then it's just not a good fit for what we're trying to do for multiple reasons. But in like, these ones where I've, like, talked to people three four times when they're like, hey, you know, send me your information, or here's our packet. Do you have something? Those have turned into long relationships and good working relationships. So it's really going to be focused on building those and, like, not just calling all my list once, it's going to be all right, who are these people that I've had good conversations with that went well, and I still got to learn this too. Like, how do I talk to someone for the fourth time? Do I just pop in and bring donuts or what? I'll figure that out. But it's like, it's really gonna be making those follow ups for those metrics, and, yeah, growing a sustainable business that we can hopefully listen help shippers of all sizes be good to our carriers. And then when we do start hiring like, make people like, enjoy themselves. Here now you will have fun. But like, have people like, build an environment that people enjoy, brag about, and hopefully bring their other good friends.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:40:07

And if I'm not mistaken, both you and Chris are you both the sons of truck drivers? Actually?

Unknown: 1:40:14

Yeah, yeah, we are. So yeah, Chris's dad, Gary, was over the road. I don't know if he's ever said his name online. Anyways, awesome guy. He's hysterical. But yeah, and then my dad was a local Twin Cities driver my whole life. So yeah, we both knew that, like, like, that was just the norm. So Well,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:40:32

I think that that explains your your your passion for wanting to take care of carriers first, because that is an extension of your business. Steve burrows actually said this on a recent show, that he wants to make sure that his carriers are representing his business, because they're the ones meeting the shippers.

Unknown: 1:40:50

That is the truth. And I, I'll take it one step further, so that that's huge, right, for keeping the business. But then selfishly, like, I love it when I call, because we do have regular carriers. I love it when I call and they answer on the first ring and they're, like, excited to talk to me, because they know, like, I know that they're I know their niche, their lanes, and they, you know, we treat everyone good and take care of things if issues do happen. And like, that's what we want to build. And like, I like that. I always say like, and that's one of my jokes with drivers. Like, I want you to answer when I call or want to, want to answer. So that's a big thing. Is like, yeah, treating them good. I mean, they're out there, and I know this has been said in the industry, but it's like, I'm behind a computer here in I can put a sweatshirt on a. I get cold, everything's fine. They're out there loading, strapping secure, like moving it and then unloading it and talking to the shippers and receivers like they're really getting it done. So I have a huge appreciation, and we want to make sure they get treated

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:41:44

well too. Yeah, absolutely. So okay, so positive outlook for 2025 now is probably a good time for folks who maybe are thinking about doing the same thing that you and Chris are doing. What advice would you give to a prospective freight agent on what's the first SOPs that they got to get set up as they're thinking about their business plan?

Unknown: 1:42:06

The first S guy? There's not one getting right legal. Yeah, legal is going to be the big one, especially if you're doing a partnership. Give it all that guesswork, have the financial conversations beforehand. Like, how do you want to take distributions? Do we both have the same needs? What does that look like? Right? Have those conversations and then see, get set up with a bank. Actually had a conversation with a buddy, not in logistics, but he wanted to talk to my tax guy. And I'm like, I called him back. I was like, What do you got cooking? Because I'm not, like, my tax guy's busy. Like, what? And he was like, Well, I want to figure this out and this out. And I'm like, go make a sale first. I'm like, I can get you structured in a week. Go make a sale first, and then we'll take care of this. And it's like, just jump in and go get the bank, the LLC, the operating agreement with a good legal team, and get running. I know I'm such a planner and a preparer like I that was where me and Chris, that's one of the prime examples of us balancing each other out, where he's like, alright, we got to be on the sales call, and I'm like, we need to write SOPs. And it's like, he was right. We both were right, but we like sales is what's driving it right? Yeah. And then I mean, most people who are going to go into this probably had more experience than me, and they know how to vet a carrier and stuff like that. So you can choose how important that is to you at that time.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:43:24

Yeah. Well, I think you you very much. I said hit the nail on the head a few times during this conversation. Wanted to say it again the legal part. You know, how answering some of those questions ahead of time, especially for our partnership, before they become a big issue and could potentially put you out of business using the wrong carrier. If you don't have the right legal or finance backing, then that could put you out of business. So I think that both of you guys were really smart to take that approach. But then to, I guess, to more of Chris's style, it's also you can get lost in the SOPs, and you can get lost in making sure that everything is perfect before you actually get going. And you can't do that. You got to have a little bit of the both. So I think it's, it's brilliant, the way that you guys have worked together, and clearly it's working, and clearly you're doing a lot of good things and and hopefully y'all, y'all, I say, hopefully y'all, are gonna keep it up.

Unknown: 1:44:19

Oh yeah, it's nonstop right now. So

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:44:21

anything we can expect from you guys, maybe a first appearance on the podcast later on this year, I officially have bragging rights as far as,

Unknown: 1:44:33

yeah, no. Big thing is going to be just growing the business and like, that's kind of our main focus right now, and staying on track and with like, yeah, it's, it's pure growth mode. And then we both are blessed with beautiful families, so it's balancing that out. And, yeah, basically family business right now, amazing.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:44:53

Well, this was a fantastic conversation. Angelo, any where can folks follow you? Follow your more of your work. Maybe they're a shipper and they want to get in contact with you. Where can I send folks?

Unknown: 1:45:04

Yeah, so I don't have so I would, I mean, Chris has got all the freight coaches. He's gonna be one to find. But I would just say freight coach, logistics.com, website, my Instagram is boring. I don't think I posted in like, three years. Like we joked, I'm not the front man. I'm the operations guy behind it who's doing sales. I don't have that huge presence, and that's we've talked about. Like, should I do that as, like, a marketing standpoint? But I don't know. Like, yeah, I guess freight coach Logistics is how you can find me fake coaches. I know. Yeah, I'm not like, yeah, Chris is the face. I'm okay with the face. I want to get things done. And, like, we both want to get things done. So yeah, I guess just our website. And feel free to reach out.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:45:43

Heck yeah. And then we'll, we'll put a link to all of those things in the show notes. And then, yeah, you're exactly right, because Chris, in podcasting, he is unstoppable. When it comes to the podcast, it's like Jesus, take a break for God's sakes you're making me giving me anxiety to produce all these new episodes, but he's not going to, all right, Angelo, this was a great conversation. Thank you so much. We'll make sure that we put all of that information in the show notes, and good luck in 2025 I say that, but I don't think you're going to need it.

Unknown: 1:46:17

Thank you very much. And yeah, it was honor to be on. I appreciate, I appreciate you letting me be here and have a great day.

Mike Mikulik: 1:46:24

It's unfortunate you can't rush, you can't rush the process with trying to get customers. You need to do good work. You need to take the time understand their business, ask a lot of questions, be curious about their business, and realize that not every company is going to be a fit for you, and you're not going to be a fit for them. And you know what, if you tell the customer that I'm only here trying to understand your business, I may not be the right fit for you, Will? You tell a shipper that he's going to be like, really, I've never heard that before, but it's just take it slow. Do good work. Understand their business. Be curious like be curious about the business, and never expect to go in there trying to take their largest lane. Start small. You got to prove yourself. Anything, anything this business. Start small. Prove yourself. And once you prove yourself, and they like you, and I've seen this with agents, where they've started with an account, and they know how big the account is, and they have, you know, this one small lane, and you know what gets them on the door? And then, you know what? Two, three late, years later, you're taking a look at that account and how much business they're actually doing with them. And it's just you look back, and it's the natural progression. The relationships are small. You prove yourself as they trust and like you, it ends up growing in to get more business, and I think sometimes we're just not patient enough.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:47:35

Well, there was an interesting debate on LinkedIn by my friend Grace Sharkey and a few other folks within the industry that was talking about how your brokers should be educated on everything that's going on within global supply chain, crisises and tariffs. And there was a counter argument that was made that brokers should be focused on covering freight, but the gray Sharkey was making the point that I I want my customers to know that I care about their freight, so I'm going to prove that I'm educated on the topic of, if I'm importing lumber from Canada, on how it's going to impact their pricing if they're moving it across the border. And her argument was, the broker should be educated on their customers freight. And there was a surprising amount of people that were saying the counter opposite to that, that, no, you should just be focused on moving moving loads.

Mike Mikulik: 1:48:24

Yeah, I think it's all about educating and looking at the whole supply chain, seeing how that's going to impact them. I mean, look what happened right now with, you know, the China us tariff crisis. And then also, then you have the 90 day period where, you know, you know, it was lowered. Well, guess what, imports bookings out of China to the US went up 300% Well, guess what that's going to hit us, probably in July and August, once those containers arrive into, you know, the East and the West Coast ports. And then from there, it's going to get offloaded. Then also it's going to start hitting the it's gonna start hitting the domestic network. Well, guess what? That's gonna put an influx of product out on the market that we probably don't have enough carriers for. Prices are gonna go up. Well, why would you share that with your customer and say, This is how the effect of this tariff pause can have an impact on your business. And he can plan accordingly for it

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:49:09

too, exactly. And then they can go into their meetings with their, you know, colleagues, and be able to speak intelligently on it absolutely.

Mike Mikulik: 1:49:17

And the shipper also goes, Wow, I didn't, I didn't think of that. Hey, that's really important to me. And if he does go and share it to those on his planning team or on there, you know, even to their executive team, he looks educated to them, too. And they all can, everybody looks good, yeah,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:49:31

and I think so we're hitting on a concept of, obviously, relationships around education. But what about, you know, relationships on the tech side of things, there's so much tech that has been just injected into the industry. There's some consolidation that's being hap or happening as we speak throughout the course of this year. How can you maintain a good relationship with a shipper if there's so much tech involved in that process now, and your carriers too?

Mike Mikulik: 1:50:00

I mean, Tech has its purpose. I mean, there's aspects of redundant, redundant things where technical, technology helps out. I mean, even auto bidding or or auto posting loads like that, stuff that all has a has a place. But I think anything where you have to have what a problem hits a customer is always going to want to talk to somebody, live on the phone. So you technology can do a lot, but it can't do everything. I mean, there's a, there's a whole thing now to, you know, utilizing AI to even communicate with the customer. I you know what? There's a place for things. There is definitely a place for things. But at the same time, too, when you're on the phone, and, you know what, your cell phone's not working, you're trying to call your cell phone provider, and you're dealing with, you know, with automated message, you just want to talk to somebody,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:50:43

and you're so much they're psychological tests that prove that, like you're so much angrier when you are talking to a robot than when you're not.

Mike Mikulik: 1:50:51

You know what's funny? Actually funny. You say that too, because I was reading a post today on LinkedIn that talked about what you know, key things that draw people like, how to be likable, how to be and the same thing works in business people deal with those they like, is empathy. And when you show empathy, like, you know what say, a loads gone sour, you got to call your customer. And you know what your customer is going to probably hear a lot about it as well, too, because it's going to affect their whole supply chain. It could affect their planning for their production as well. You know what? Showing empathy to them is a valued thing, and there's a lot of there's some things that AI just can't do, and empathy is definitely one of them. Genuineness is definitely not one of those things. Those soft skills are still important, and they still help. To sell.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:51:31

Now I think I was actually talking to essay, you know, of SPI logistics, and he was saying that even with some of the AI bots out there, they will, if somebody on the call has will ask if, are you an AI agent? And the AI agent will lie to them and say they're not. And so what do you think that that does to your trust and credibility, and

Unknown: 1:51:53

they find out

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:51:55

and that, I mean, you've lost that customer forever, and think people have to be really cautious whenever they are implementing new technology, is, where is the problem that it's actually solving? Is it going to create a whack a mole where there's now all these other problems that exist because this was brought in to solve a problem, and it's not solving that problem, it's creating more. And we've

Mike Mikulik: 1:52:15

been experimenting with AI too, in our especially on some of our marketing and our marketing videos too. I mean, it's got its it's got its place. That's awesome. What we're trying

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:52:22

to where have you seen success with it? I would love to hear some success stories with AI.

Mike Mikulik: 1:52:25

We're utilizing short videos like so we're trying to figure out, you know, what are commonly asked things for people who want to be a freight agent. So a lot of people are looking at it going, I don't know enough about what it means to become a freight agent, or how to set myself up as a freight agent. So you know you were gathering all this data on questions people are asking, and we're basically making YouTube shorts out of that through AI to help answer and educate potential freight agents. Yeah. So I think that that has an awesome place for it. But like I said, talking one on one to people, that's still,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:52:56

it's still paramount. I think there's certain things that kind of, you know, let you in the door, per se, but then it's up to you to really solidify that relationship through good service and communication and service expectations,

Mike Mikulik: 1:53:08

even going to see your customer too, or going taking your customer for lunch or dinner. You can't do that through AI. You gotta, you know what they're still the big thing about, you know, if you can be with a customer, have lunch, break bread, golf with them, whatever it is, get to know him. You hear about. That's what, that's what more, you know, puts more hands around the business, because now there's a relationship, and it's the one thing that

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:53:29

so how, how is your, your freight agent network been adjusting to all the chaos that's gone on this year.

Mike Mikulik: 1:53:36

Man, with all the chaos, with what fraud, with fraud

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:53:40

tariffs, just uncertainty, I think, in that, you know, for a lot of businesses, they have to rely on, you know, certain things that are going rules set in place. And whenever you have uncertainty,

Mike Mikulik: 1:53:50

we've always talked with our agents about is never be happy with the status quo. I mean, you know what? The customer that you have today, you could lose that customer pretty quick too. I mean, that customer who you have a good relationship could leave go somewhere else. Also puts that business in jeopardy. A lot of thing is planning. You always got to have some you always have to have something in your pipeline that you're always working on to be able to replace something in case you lose it. And the other big thing too, and I mean, we've been working on this for like, seven, eight years, and this is where we've seen a lot of our growth come from, is the aspect of deep selling, going back and re qualifying the business. Because the business you qualified, say, for instance, three years ago, when you got those one or two lanes, you know what, he's probably that customer is probably growing and probably doing a whole bunch of other things that they don't even know about. A lot of times it boils down to when it's like, hey, when you requalify the business, the common thing that we actually hear from our agents, I didn't know you service that area. Oh, I didn't know you did that. So I think you always got to be asking questions about and being inquisitive about your customers business and what other opportunities they have, or who know, who else makes decisions within, within the company that perhaps has some link to transportation requirements that you could actually handle. So always be curious. Always be asking that question,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:55:01

what did I think on that Chris jolly podcast, he said that Kara Brown of lead coverage, said that your top customer is somebody else's prospect.

Mike Mikulik: 1:55:10

Absolutely someone's always, yeah, that's another thing too. Actually, Michael and and Bill and Mark will talk about that tomorrow at the TMSA, about how many calls they actually get in a day. So someone, and it's not just like on your on your left hand, these people are getting tons of calls every single bit, every single day, and emails trying to solicit their business into trying to get into the door. And you know what, some of those people will eventually probably get in the door if they sell right and they and and they they do it the right way.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:55:37

That was one thing. We're at TMSA elevate in Austin, Texas. Had to think about that for a minute because almost said New Orleans, because that was last year's conference, yeah, but the one in New Orleans, lot of fun. That's great. Now, by the way, Mike is from Canada, so

Unknown: 1:55:58

he's that humidity factor going on. My body's not meant for that.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:56:02

Well, you, you did survive July at Disney World?

Mike Mikulik: 1:56:06

Yes, I did. So pictures of that, and I was laughing because there was, like, glistening I was wearing short glistening like sweat on my arms, as like we're taking pictures between with you or with you and batter and Maddie. I was like, oh my goodness, it was hot. It was

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:56:24

so we did go to Orlando, Disney World in July a couple of years ago. It was me and my husband and. Mike and his daughter, Maddie, who is also a freight agent for SPI and I remember at one point we were kind of just standing around in the theme park and talking about what we were going to do next. And you and Maddie both were like, can we stand and have this conversation in shape? I think Bonner and I like, we don't really, we're it's hot, of course, but like, we don't recognize it. I think

Mike Mikulik: 1:56:54

used to it. I think we're just used to the suffering. That's fun. That was great. Yeah, look forward to the going to the end of the ride section there, where there was air conditioning.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:57:05

But yeah, that's speaking of TMSA. Well, there was one shipper panel, I think it was last year that did say, like, we can recognize your templated emails because it's a different font and it's a different font color, and we know that you are sending this email out to, you know, hundreds, maybe 1000s of people and so, but that's not a good way to develop that first relationship.

Mike Mikulik: 1:57:28

So emails are tough too, don't you mean? I mean, I get emails all the time for people trying to solicit. I don't even reply half the time. You don't even read them, right? I mean, and we make a phone call, not everyone answer the phone, but if you do get on the phone with somebody, you've got like, 10 seconds to be able to make some sort of a quick impression, or they still want to be engaged in a conversation,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:57:49

and with SBI just having their rendezvous conference. I'm assuming a lot of people were maybe talking about, you know, how what's working, what's not working, what sales and marketing wise, is our home runs right now and then, what are

Mike Mikulik: 1:58:02

actually big thing is referrals for them right now. I was a big topic we talked about was referrals. And it's interesting, because when you have a freight agent who you know works for themselves. They're the ones that are answering the phone at six o'clock at night on a Friday night or on a Saturday morning at Seven 8am or on a weekend or after hours. They're the ones that are able to do that. That puts a huge separation between a lot of other companies. And you know what? These people, these customers that they deal with, no other people. So referrals, and asking about referrals. There's been a real big hit for us right now.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:58:34

Oh, that's so they're asking, just like on the phone, while they're, you know, they've had a, yeah, well, you

Mike Mikulik: 1:58:38

have a relationship with them. Like, hey, it's like, thank you so much for helping me all whatever it is, and it's asking the question, hey, thank you so much. I really value working with you, too. But hey, do you know anybody else that could be or value of what we what we do personally for you

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:58:52

ask that question because they would probably, I would imagine, want to help you too,

Mike Mikulik: 1:58:56

especially if you have that relationship. It's the same thing. When you go and you see a customer and you have lunch with them, or you golf with them, they feel so happy that you took that time to spend with them. And most times out of it, you end up getting more business out of it, naturally, because they're appreciative, because you have that relationship, they spend time with you. You obviously made an impression that they like you too. What happens

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:59:17

during or maybe you have some advice for folks who are dealing with, maybe with one, one relationship within a big ship or a big customer, and what happens if that person leaves, or, you know, something happens?

Mike Mikulik: 1:59:29

That's a good question. The other big thing, and I took the Miller Hyman training is going back, oh my gosh, this is, like, a long time ago. I'm dating myself. The big one thing that came out of it, though, and obviously, Miller Hyman has a lot more components to selling, but the one big thing was knowing that you have people that are the decision makers, and you have people that are influencers, and then you have other ones, the you know, the day to day workers, but they all have some sort of an influence on on things. So always looking at expanding your relationship within a customer. So if you're dealing with one decision maker right now, that's great. Have a good relationship with them. But who are the, you know, who are his dispatchers at that work, on the team? You know, who's his boss? Expand that relationship, because the moment that one person leaves, guess what? Now you have relationships with other people, and they can be advocates for you too, as you go and try to work around, trying to work with a new person that's coming in for that decision making position. And anybody who comes into a position, you know, a brand new position, especially who has experience in this industry, has his proven providers that he probably wants to bring in. But if the people that are surrounding him, that the workers, even as boss go, Hey, we've been dealing with ABC company for years, that you know, the guy working there had a good relationship, but, you know, he's awesome. We want to continue to use them. That's what you want. You want people that are advocates for your business and for your service. So expand the relationship as much as you can.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:00:49

And I think another thing that you bring up jolly for the third time. I think in this conversation, he's talking about site visits as well, which I think in, like in my digital world, I'm like, How can I create, like, different marketing campaigns and all of these different things? But I think a lot of brokers are dealing with this as well, and a lot of agents is that they're trying to do all the digital things, but maybe just asking the simple questions of referrals and also site visits are the tried and true methods a

Mike Mikulik: 2:01:18

meeting face to face is gonna having a meeting face to face is somebody is probably gonna go a lot further than having, you know, 15 phone calls for that person thinking that you know him right, and you know knowing what he ate for dinner on Saturday. Saturday night and watch football game he was watching on Sunday morning. But when you get face to face, yeah, it accelerates. It accelerates the process, accelerates the relationship.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:01:40

So referrals and site visits are big winners for your agents right now, and then also the other, I think, leg of that stool is the ongoing education for a lot of these agents.

Mike Mikulik: 2:01:50

We send a lot of good information, like market information, weekly market information, what's going on the market out actually marks weekly carrier port with what's going on the market, and what he sees that actually going to be happening. And it's that's really detailed. It's detailed mark, from what Mark does is he, he'll top highlight a few key points like these are some key points that you want to share with your shippers. And the reason we do this, and I think this is, like, spectacular, because sometimes you're like, Well, I have nothing to call a customer about. Well, guess what? You got two points here that are going to definitely affect your customer in the next coming weeks, that you can use that to share with them as you're open. Hey, I was thinking about this. What I just saw, I just read, and this could have an impact on your business. Hey, do you have five minutes to chat? Well, guess what? I'm sure the customers can be like, Yeah, I want to understand what this is. So have a purpose when you call and have something that's going to be of value to them and to their business. Are you

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:02:43

seeing folks with all the, I guess, uncertainty in the market? Are you seeing them jump more into becoming a freight agent or maybe just trying to stay in a stable spot, or what they presume is stable,

Mike Mikulik: 2:02:56

yeah, anything you see a bit of both. I mean, it's, I mean, we can have cold conversation on this too. Like, you know, what, if you come from a role where you have a salary and a commission, that's, that's, that's pretty safe, right? Let's say, and, you know, you got a family, you got a mortgage, you got kids, like to pull yourself away from that some, yeah, sometimes that's, that's, that's a challenge, right? You really have to bet on yourself. You have to bet on your skills, that you know that, and your and your drive, that you're gonna be able to do it. Whereas some, some people come on right away, and they just know what they have. They're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna do it, and they do it. But I'm starting to see a lot. I think a lot of a lot. What we see now is a lot of people were uneducated in the past, but what it was to be a freight agent, and I think now there's so much marketing. I mean, part of it is what we were doing with you and with Chris jolly, and even we're doing what Trey about educating the market on what it is to be a freight agent, and even putting our agents on the shows to for them to share their experience. I think, if anything, and that was the start of why we did it. Was because if we could put a freight agent on there, and they could share their journey from, you know, the time they they decided to do it, and the end and the benefits and even some of the challenges that they faced, those things are great for the market, and just helping them understand what it is to be a freight agent and what to be prepared for. From hearing from here, from somebody who's actually done it.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:04:13

I don't think that any other agency, freight agency program is has done that. Think they're all very scared of putting their agents front and center.

Mike Mikulik: 2:04:21

Yeah, you know the one thing, I mean, we scale back our bill. Yes, we were three. We don't. We're three people, but really we're a service to a three PL. So I have to make sure, and Joe has always said this from the beginning, goes, What's our stickiness factor with our agents? So I have to give them everything that they possibly can to be successful, so they don't want to leave. I mean, we've been doing this now. What have we noticed for now? Three four years,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:04:44

three years. Yeah, almost three years. It'll be three years. We've done this

Mike Mikulik: 2:04:48

for three in January for this, not putting the challenge out there to anybody. But we haven't lost an agent because we put them on the agent because we put them on the show, banging my head on the wood. But seriously, it's, you know what we're doing to educate, educate the market. That's a big thing too. And our agents want to share their story. I mean, and some of them have phenomenal stories. Some of them were different stories.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:05:12

Like, he, like, one of my favorite conversations ever, and he's been on the show twice, and he hires all his family members,

Mike Mikulik: 2:05:18

and it's, and you cannot, you cannot say there is one mold for each freight agent there, there are. They're all different. Their circumstances are different. Their business is different. It's, it's awesome. Like, it really is awesome. I wish I knew about it more 15 years ago, because 15 years ago it wasn't, it wasn't widely known, it wasn't widely understood. And I think now you're starting to see that people now understand it. People still have reservations about it, and you have to do your research. It's got to if anyone's looking to be a freight agent, I recommend take a look at a few and it's got to be the right fit. You got to know in your heart that that's the right company to go with.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:05:55

How do you know what, what are your same thing for

Mike Mikulik: 2:05:58

us, I don't bring on every single person that wants to be afraid. It's got to be the right fit for both and once you establish that it's the right fit for both people and it's a win, win, those are the relationships that work. What does a good win look like for somebody else who's getting you know, they're they're having the good technology. They're having good back office support. They feel comfortable with the team. One thing we do, like, when an agent comes on board or is interested in looking at SPI, you know, it's a conversation we'll start with Bob. I'll have a conversation with him too. And then from there, what we'll do is we'll go listen. We want you to demo our TM. System. So we'll give them a demo on our TMS system, and from there, because our TMS system, who's doing the the demo on it is the client care team. Well, guess what? The client care team is who are back office support team is who they're dealing with on a daily basis for, you know, challenges or issues that they face. So they all started to start developing a relationship with a bunch of people within SBI, and that's where the comfort level comes in. And I'll tell you, client care is the ones that keeps the customers happy. They're the ones that keep the agents, because they're dealing with them. When there's issues, there's challenges, need a carrier on board or quick, need credit, they all go to client care, and client care there to support them. So it's it's pretty amazing.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:07:12

It's kind of like you're all you're you're vetting each other, absolutely, both.

Mike Mikulik: 2:07:17

You have to, I mean, we vet them too. And actually, it's interesting when a when an agent gets, you know, goes to the demo too, like you'll get a message from the client care team, and they'll say, Hey, did a demo and so and so, and they almost write a report on what the agents like to thinking they're gonna, you know, they'll put their comments, and I think he'll be a really good fit for us. And that's great. The more great. The more people that actually meet them will know if they're going to be a good fit for SPI. And the same time too, that agent should be interviewing us to see if it's going to be a good fit

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:07:42

for them. Now, I know one of the other big selling advantages of SPI is that you don't have a lot of agent saturation across the country. Now, are there certain areas of the country that you want to fill those gaps that you're comfortable talking with, or maybe globally, or that's interesting.

Mike Mikulik: 2:07:57

We've, you know, we're actually been looking now even at agents globally as well too. We have some, I think it's so cool, like, we have some. We have an agent actually out of Spain. We have one other Southeast Asia so, and they're all working in the in the US market. So the business has gone globally, but even for like, you know what? Well, 80% of our agents are actually in the US, running us to us, cargo, our market is actually the US. Our Canadian business is a small portion. But you know what, I don't look at a certain region where I want agents. I'm looking for just the right fit of an agent, and it's got to be the right fit for them too. And when it comes to saturation, I do believe that we have low saturation. And you know what, if they're concerned about it, we'll sign, we'll we'll sign an NDA with that potential agent, and they'll disclose, you know, the customers that they have, and we'll let them know who's working on them, or if they're open for them. I think that's a big thing to do is vet your customers before you go and join an agency, because the last thing you want to do is go on to there and or join an agency and realize that you know a third of your customers are already being handled by another agent. That'd be a little disheartening. And if you're looking to actually grow your business, make ask about the saturation, how many agents they actually have? Because another big thing that we hear is they're leaving certain agencies because there is too much saturation, and there's no room for them to grow, because all the accounts are actually being handled. So it's all kinds of things to look for. Look at look at that. Look at Tech. Look at the technology stack, like demo the technology, you know, make sure that technology will work for you. Ask questions about, you know, their carrier onboarding. You know, what kind of tools are using for carry onboarding? Yeah, fraud help, claims help. That's another big one. Like, what happens when there's a claim? Who handles the claim? What happens if there's bad debt? Do I get stuck with the bad debt? Or, just like, ask all those questions. Ask about, you know, the relationships with carriers, and how many days you actually, on average, pay your carriers. That's huge. That's a big thing right now to be asking as well, too, because carriers are being selective, who what brokers are actually dealing with. So whole bunch

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:09:55

of education happening on all sides. Absolutely like that, from the brokers, the shippers, the carriers. But it also, I would imagine that on the flip side, I mean, especially online, what you're going to get, you know, a different, I guess, kind of comment online where it feels like there's they're almost adversarial to each other, but there seems to be concerted efforts to bring more brokers and carriers together, so then that way they're solving those problems for their members.

Mike Mikulik: 2:10:22

I mean, that's one big thing that we really focusing on, is the carrier and broker relationship and finding the right where do you want? Where's your key lanes that that that you want to run, that are good for you, and where can we support you on those and building a relationship with them? Because a lot of these carriers, they don't have a dedicated sales team. Well, all sudden, now you got, you know, you're part of a network of 70 agents that are running cargo all over the world. They're probably have cargo that could actually fit for you, so let them be your sales team and support you.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:10:51

That's very true. I mean, I feel like we've, we've hit on a lot of different trends. Even talked about Disney World. Florida is very sensitive world, I guess where should so if I'm if I'm thinking about making the jump, and I know we've talked about this before, but I'm curious if that has changed for 2025 and moving forward, if I'm thinking about making the jump, I want to have conversations with my customers. How do I kind of do that on maybe, like the down low. So you're currently careful, yeah, be careful

Mike Mikulik: 2:11:27

with that. But I think you've got a good relationship with the customer. You know? We. And you can talk to them about, you know, I'd be making a move, you know, have the conversation. Would you still continue to work with me if I was a different company?

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:11:38

Do NDAs play or non competes.

Mike Mikulik: 2:11:41

So play around on that as well, too. It's different in the US when it comes to non competes versus Canada. But I don't know, I find like, there's workarounds with the non competes, but it's the aspect of the non solicit. Of a non solicit, you still got, you got some, you got some things you got to look out to with, with a lawyer. I want to get in

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:12:00

Wait, yeah, which was another suggestion by Christian, is making sure that you have a lawyer as well that can read through some of these complex things and help you prepared to make that jump. And then also having, you know, a little bit of a lifeline. Six to 12 months of saving you have to, you

Mike Mikulik: 2:12:15

have to give yourself a lifeline if you think that you're going to come on board and right away and in month one, you'll be making, you know what you expect to be making. It takes time, I mean, a lot of big companies that you may be dealing with, for them to onboard you as a as a new broker. That takes time. I've seen that take up to six weeks, like trying to deal with a large company, where it has to go through the hands of different people, that takes time. So you got to be prepared.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:12:38

Yeah, it's not just you that has to be onboarded, but it's all of your customers as well. And maybe there's some different, you know, hoops that you got to jump through on that front as well.

Mike Mikulik: 2:12:45

I've seen, I've seen agents come on board in the first week. They're, they're roll, that they they're rolling, but they have their they have things set up ahead of time. Then I've seen ones that's taken, you know, three months for them to get things going. I've seen ones have taken six months. But be prepared that it doesn't happen overnight, and be able to be able to weather the storm, because a lot of times, some eight, some great freight agents will come on board who I know have the potential, and they'll give up two things that didn't happen fast enough. So be prepared for it.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:13:10

Yeah, I mean, it's expert. You got to be able to put in the work that nothing is going to come passively. There's no such thing as passive income and kind of get on that hamster wheel and keep rolling.

Mike Mikulik: 2:13:23

You always got to be working. You always got to be working. It's gone well for you, though, too.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:13:28

Yeah, absolutely. The podcast is really the best thing that's ever happened to me, thanks in part to

Unknown: 2:13:34

SPI support. And remember that conversation we had that where freight waves, yep, the day

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:13:38

after my show, cyberly ended, what my contract ended on October 31 and freight waves started on November 1. And so it was like their annual event, the f3 event. And so we had that conversation all day, the very next day, and I was like, You know what? I'm on to something here. I'm, you know, I think I'll be

Mike Mikulik: 2:13:57

I'm glad that you did it. I'm glad that we talked, because I can honestly say it was the first one, the first one to join.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:14:03

That's good. Yeah, it's been an amazing partnership. And the cool thing

Mike Mikulik: 2:14:06

is, you've met our agents, you've talked to our agents, you've come to rendezvous like, I think, for like, for you, and even for Chris, well, actually, even did Trey come to like, for the fact that you actually got to meet our like, our agents, and see our culture is huge.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:14:20

Well, it's their business owners as well. Like, I mean, you kind of hinted at it at the start of this episode that, you know, it's like 70 different entrepreneurs, that each of them are all different, and being able to connect with them and learn their story. And it was a pleasure,

Mike Mikulik: 2:14:36

and I think the partnership on that side has worked out really well. I think you know just as much about SPI as I know about SBI, like you've talked to every single I think in some cases, you probably talked to the agents more

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:14:47

than I have well. I mean, it's fantastic conversations, because I learned something new. Because I think that the entrepreneurial spirit behind them that they have, and it's very I can identify with that, because you you have to do it all. You have to know a little bit about everything. And I think that having that skill set will aid you in the future, as AI and technology take over more and more, you have to dabble in a little bit of everything in order to be successful, totally.

Mike Mikulik: 2:15:12

I think it's kind of interesting, because you've interviewed so many of our agents. Like each story is different. Yeah, like each story, and

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:15:19

I'm always surprised by the numbers of like what resonates with the audience, of what doesn't. I think before we started recording, I told you that Chris Angelo's story from the earlier this year has been our top episode this year in 2025 and that was the from engineer to freight agent model. He was interesting.

Mike Mikulik: 2:15:34

Yeah, even the store is Chris becoming a freight agent is actually, yeah. Anyways, I think this was, this was, it was funny, like, we're talking about this, James and I, like, three years ago when we kind of were talking about, like, we want to start, we wanted to make our own podcast, but we don't know what the heck we're doing. And that's where, like, you know, I was like, well, sponsor. It was, it was, it was an awesome marketing decision for us, because I think it really, it really, it helped get what the agent model is. But even just market ourselves, it was great. And I think it gave our agents an avenue to share their story. And some

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:16:08

of the I tell other potential sponsors and sponsors I work with that. Yes, it's definitely important to hear from the executive leadership team, but if you can have your customers on a show, then that customer telling that story, it hits differently. We had that happen with Ty software, where their executives, fantastic team, they had one of their customers come on and tell their story and it. Was the top episode out of all of our Thai episodes, really. And it was the customer telling the story of everything he went through to buy a new TMS and what he vetted, and the questions he asked. And that's the same thing that freight agents are asking, or potential freight

Mike Mikulik: 2:16:44

agents and changing software. That's a huge that's huge, especially a TMS, exactly. Especially with an agent model, they try to change your TMS with an agent model, oh, my goodness, that's, that's, that's not even not an easy fee. You get a lot of resistance. I was gonna say, like, how is that in the sound to Revan Nova? It was, it was, it was tough. Yeah. I mean, I mean, now, you know, it takes a bit to work on all the bugs and everything, but once that's done it, you know, people get used to it and they see the benefit of it, but any type of a new software implementation is even without the highway that wasn't easy, that wasn't easy either. But you know, through all those things, in the challenge of onboarding and getting your agent or your staff to adopt to a new program that takes time, but But I your tech providers play an instrumental role and help selling that too.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:17:31

Speaking of top episodes as a Peralta, who is head of it for SPI, like his episodes, also, we've had him on twice, and I think people want to hear that point of view as well before they decide if they're going to even have a phone call with SBI.

Mike Mikulik: 2:17:43

That guy is an absolute genius when it comes to technology, like he talks about this like, in awe, wow. Like I I'm not a smart guy when it comes to technology.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:17:53

Well, what I love about that his approach is that he creates this central hub, and then all of the spokes on it can either be provided by SPI or they could build your current tech stack into that hub model. And it's awesome, ultimate flexibility.

Mike Mikulik: 2:18:08

And he has so much passion for it, like he loves it like he just, he's passionate what he builds. I think he's an absolute genius, man. I got a lot of respect for that guy, all right.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:18:17

Well, I think we've, I mean, that's, I think it's a good place to leave it, unless there's anything else that you feel is important to mention to anybody. Maybe, maybe you're a current freight agent at another company you're looking to shop. You kind of already gave that advice.

Mike Mikulik: 2:18:30

I'll be honest when it when it comes I'm, look, I don't do not. I'm not trying to sell anybody. I'm just trying to help educate somebody. And if they have questions, just want to chat, you know what? Just have a chat. I am not the pushy guy. In fact, it's most times it's driven by the agent, okay, I want to join. It's like, all right, because it's a good fit for them, right? But just have the conversation. There is no pressure. Having a conversation, either thinking about it, or you're with as a w2 and you're thinking about becoming a 1099, and want to know what you know, what that's gonna look like, what onboarding is gonna look like. Conversation. I'm happy to share. I'm happy, happy to educate. And just have a real conversation.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:19:04

And even if you can't make the jump tomorrow, you can start preparing yourself to make the jump eventually.

Mike Mikulik: 2:19:08

It'll never come with the pressure that, the pressure to join or the pressure to do it. Let's just have a conversation at the end of the day.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:19:16

It's got to make sense to you. Mike, working, that's a perfect way to end the discussion. Mike, where can folks follow you? Get with SBI.

Mike Mikulik: 2:19:24

Follow me on LinkedIn. You guys are posting more often, too. A lot more. Yeah, it's awesome. A lot more. You know, they reach me through my email. Are you gonna post it? Or do I have to, like, say it out loud? I'll just put it in the show, put on the show, or call myself. I mean, you put it on the show, but I'm happy to talk.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:19:40

I'll put it in the show notes. We'll see if you're a good fit or not, and it's not for both sides.

Mike Mikulik: 2:19:44

Gotta make sense. You just got questions. Just want to talk about it. Yeah, I'm happy to have that conversation.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:19:50

Awesome. And there is landing page, resource materials, all on everything is logistics.com. In case you want to check out any of those past interviews that we've been talking about with the executive team or the freight agents. And if that's what they

Mike Mikulik: 2:20:00

want to do is just throw it on through that landing page and put your information there and go, Hey, I want to talk to Mike. Just watch the show. Just do that. There's no pressure, doesn't they're not You're not going to get 1000 emails from anybody that's saying you need to join or what are you joining or get advertised? Pop it up on your page with a one up, and we're just having an education Exactly.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:20:16

There's no no cookie tracking, maybe a little bit of Google Analytics, but that's it. Mike, thank you. The freight tech hype cycle is real, but behind the buzzwords are folks actually building the plumbing that keeps your freight offs running as a Peralta is one of them, and he is back with SPI logistics, VP of technology on the everything is logistics podcast. In order to break it all down for us, I am your host, Blythe Milligan, and of course, we are presented by SPI logistics, and I was just telling essay his last appearance on the podcast a couple years ago, I believe is our most popular SPI logistics episode. So sorry to everyone you know within SBI that's come on the show. But people love essay.

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:21:07

We all go to friends, so I so it's all good, I think,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:21:12

no competition, or let's, let's set the stage. So for SBI, for folks who may not be familiar with your role within SBI, can you kind of give us a high level overview of what you do on maybe a day to day basis, a weekly basis, what does, I guess, a. A week in the life of SA look like?

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:21:33

Well, there's we have two main areas. So one is the things that we are building internally. The other area is the things that we need to maintain or integrate or are in relation to tech vendors. And so there's a bit of swing between between those two aspects. So a lot of the time is meetings, meetings with vendors trying to align the roadmaps of what we're trying to do with what they're trying to do, trying to keep up with all the the new features that the new vendors that come up, it's, it's a lot of time, because evaluating tools and evaluating next steps and trying to sometimes might maintain the roadmap, but at the same time being flexible enough to pivot. So a lot of a lot of the time is that kind of more strategic point of view. And then there's a lot of time that is just coding or, you know, jumping into the the actual implementation, a lot of modeling and diagramming with the with the business users as well. A great deal of the of software development. A lot of people focus on on the coding side with software development, but in my experience, software development is a lot about modeling and understanding what you need to build before starting to build. Right? It's like, for example, you're going to build a house. You're not going to start, you know, cutting wood and laying bricks right away. You need some sort of blueprint. You need some sort of understanding of what needs to be built. You need to understand even, you know, the terrain, where you're going to work with and, and, and a lot of other factors. So a lot of the time goes into that as well.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:23:36

And so for folks who may not be aware, you know, SPI Logistics is a freight agency, and so you don't have any some freight agencies will have an in house brokerage team or an in house trucking team. SPI doesn't do that because they their internal team is set up and dedicated just to support their agents. And so you guys are, I believe in correct me if I'm wrong, but you guys have a general tech stack that you use, but then you also accommodate the freight agents. And maybe if they have, like, a particular tech tool that they like to use, you'll incorporate that into sort of, I guess the the mothership of SBI, is that accurate?

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:24:15

Yes, yes, correct. So we try to embrace also that diversity in our agent agents network. And you're correct? Yes, we, we spend quite, quite a bit of effort on understanding those needs and also offering the tools that we have to enhance the existing operations when, when agents on board with us, so because maybe they already have certain workflows that they already applying, and that's effective for them. So we don't force anybody to okay, this is the way how you should do it. But we do offer the tech stack we have, but also open to incorporate and integrate other technologies that agents might bring when, when they on board and trying, trying to augment and enhance their operations and and and then this goes in line where saying before of understanding what is needed before going into the how we're going to do it right. Once we know what is needed and what is the most helpful for our agents, then we can decide, okay, you know, how we implement it? Sometimes that is getting a new vendor sometimes is, you know, building some customization on an existing tool. It could take any shape, basically.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:25:41

Are there any sets of tools that your agents are using every day?

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:25:48

Well, the TMS is what you know our agents use every day. And I think the operations we have, the track and trace capabilities that that sometimes some agents would go directly into the tracking portals because they have specific needs, or some other agents will use them. Use these tracking capabilities within the TMS similarly with posting. Sometimes people would use, you know, posting directly to the boards. Sometimes people wouldn't do it through the TMS, but we tried to have a layer of control of all that data and where it goes, where it's coming from, so we can also offer some insight. And analytics on on that data as well. And then we have, yeah, for example, tools for procurement, capacity or risk management that we created internally. And a lot of the times, what we do is try to aggregate that very vast landscape of data into more actionable information. So you know, instead of our agent having to go into five different portals to make sure that their carrier is not fraudulent, then we kind of, like consolidate all that data and we say, hey, yeah, this is, this is a good to go carrier, or this is flagged for these reasons. Yeah, trying to also combat that tiredness that comes that sometimes people drop the ball on certain things related to risk, because it's just too cumbersome going into different places to having to check in 10 different portals to make sure that you know your provider is good to go so people stop doing it right? People stop checking because it's just cumbersome. So we try to also think about that and, like, make sure that we make it easy so, so those tools are used.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:27:43

Oh, that's super interesting. So you essentially are, you know, using different maybe, and I'm just spitballing here, but like, a highway and a carrier, sure. And you know, some of these, these vendors that do are in the same realm, but do things a little bit differently, but they all help give a fuller picture. And so you're able to build that into a dashboard for your agents,

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:28:06

yeah, and sometimes, sometimes even aggregating it, we have tools where the result is, you know, you're good, you're not good and up to that point. And then if you want to see more details, you can go into the portals, or you can expand on those details. But yes, we do that, like with all the compliance vendors we have, because sometimes, you know, maybe highway has some insights or flags about specific things, like, for example, where these people, these carriers, are accessing the system from, but then maybe freight guard, they have very, you know, if people who are reporting these carriers, but right for one, for example, so unique both right, because one will give you, you know, certain Insights. The other one is going to give you, I don't know highway for example, give you insurance information, inspection information, but if someone got burnt by by a bad actor, the first thing they're going to do is, most likely, is reporting it to 401, so we also want to, you know action on those those reports as well.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:29:12

So one of, and I heard you talking about this with Chris jolly on the freight freight coach podcast, that you guys were at technovations, tias, technovations in late 2024, I'm sorry I missed that. It was actually in Jacksonville, Florida, but I was getting married that week, so I couldn't, oh, I couldn't sneak away to go to that to go to that conference, but I heard that AI was just everywhere, as it is with most you know, freight conferences right now, what's what's your, I hear you laugh in there. What's your, I guess overall take on, is it hype? Is it a buzzword? Is it, yeah, is it valuable is it kind of all of the above?

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:29:53

I think, I think it's all of the above. And I think AI is a very vast field, so it's not the same. Saying, You know what? We are using the hype, this current hype wave of AI, it most related to large language models, which is, you know, the chat GPT, but artificial intelligence something that existed for a while. Now, the computing has gone, you know, it's more available and for companies to use these large language models, and the training techniques have improved, but before we had machine learning or other types of of artificial intelligence applied to analytics or different aspects like forecasting and these kind of things. So I do find it very valuable for a lot of use cases. We use it internally a lot in our like our dev team uses this, use it quite a bit, but also we we are cautious to not try to chase AI or implementation or any tool like AI or any other tool, just just for, just because everyone else is doing it, or just because, you know, it appears to be the solution, magic solution, to all these use cases we we are of the idea that alignment between business and technology is. Key. You know, integration and governance of all the integrations is key. Governance of data is key. So those things what we focus on, and if there is, you know, if AI can help us to achieve that, to achieve the the business outcomes that we want to achieve and improve the KPI we want to achieve. Then we evaluate it as we evaluate any other tool, and then we we apply it, right? But we are, you know? We try to keep focus on what is important for our agents, what is important for for the business as an organization. And, yeah, we do use AI and in many ways, and we are adding more use cases to it. But at the same time, I, I think there is this notion that is going to come and solve everything for everyone, and suddenly it replace workers and all this thing and like, that's that's not something that, I mean, we don't see it that way as much. Yeah, you can, you can automate phone calls and these things. But what about the when things go wrong? Nobody wants to talk with a machine. And most of the logistic business is managing risk, right? And are you going to let a machine to manage that risk for you? Are you going to let a machine do that negotiation or do that, you know, relationship building for you? So it's, yeah, if, if you have a mature enough system, then you can connect with your shipper via API. And then you don't need to have, like a voice agent, you know, calling a shipper or but at the same time, there are certain, there are certain, there are certain use cases that, yes, you know, for support, we had these autoresponders for phone for years, where you say, hey, you know, give me your low number. You just type it in the phone. And so it's not very, you know, it's not that different than that. And then, and then you have also the ethics aspect, which is I was reading a LinkedIn post. I don't remember who it was from, but it was something in the lines of, I was talking with an AI rep, and I asked if it was an AI. They said no, but then they found out that it actually was an AI, but it seems that this AI was trained to lie right, to say that he was not an AI. So I think, you know, we should keep being honest. So that's non negotiable, right?

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:34:23

No, that's a very good point. And I think that that's something that you know, that's a concern that we've raised in the past and in previous episodes on, when do you disclose that you're talking to an AI agent? And I think most people are fine talking to an AI agent when they need an answer quickly about something, you know, where is my load? You know, something like that. But for you know, a deeper, maybe customer relationship, there is a level of you should probably disclose you know that that information as quickly as possible, so then that way the person can make that preference on if they want to talk to somebody real or talk to a virtual agent. I would be curious to know, what other maybe use cases are you seeing? You know, maybe two different use cases. One where, you know, it's machine learning that's actually doing the job and you're using that. But then, on the flip side, a large language model. I'm curious about the the use cases for each of those that you're seeing.

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:35:25

So machine learning is mostly used on, you know, analytics and forecasting or finding anomalies or things like this. So you have, you know, data from the last, let's say, 10 years, and then you try to find, you know, seasonality. You try to find, like certain patterns that would be more difficult to find just manually or trying to dig into all that data so and so for that is, is, that's a good, good use case. And you can also train it to find trends, you know. Oh, we, you know, when these, when these metrics are, how metrics relate, oh, when these two metrics are going down, it means that your business is trending up, or, I don't know, or you start finding those relationships. And so for analyzing those huge amounts of of data, it's, it's machine learning, it's, it's, it's valuable. And for large language models, I think the important part to understand is. That no matter what the what the vendors say, they don't reason right reasoning is a different thing. They just predict the next token, the next the next symbol that should be there according to their calculation or their training. So what I find really interesting for as a use case is categorization and then interpreting natural language texts, for example, emails, tagging an email saying you can plug it into your inbox and say, Okay, I have 20 call requests. So in a day, I have 20 quote requests. I have 10 track and trace request, or where is my load kind of questions. Then they have 15 carrier carriers asking for posting, and then I have three complaints and and then you can, you know, categorize all of that, and eventually you're going to have enough data to understand your your own inbox, for example, much better, right? And then from there, you can automate, oh, when, when these type of request comes in, or this type of email comes in, then you can auto generate a response, as long as it fits with the with that category, right? So categorizing, I would say, understanding topics or subject on, on text, and then creating some sort of simple, simple responses or template responses for certain type of inquiries. Those are, I think, really good use cases.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:38:13

And then I with, as you were talking, I was thinking about, you know, is there any, I guess, safety issues that go on with, you know, using a large language model that, you know, maybe agents should be a little cautious of, of putting, you know, personal information maybe into some of these systems, or is it that concern may be largely overblown?

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:38:37

No, I think, I think that is it all depends on on the architecture that you have behind it, right? So, for example, we are talking with our team about cases where you see people doing this that they call now vive coding, which is like,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:38:54

I hate that phrase.

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:38:57

It is what it is, and yeah. And then people were able to hack applications built in this way in 30 minutes, just because the credentials were all pasted over in the code. So you could just go into the repository, public repository, and see all the credentials for for for different API's and things. Because, yeah, if, if you know what you're doing, you wouldn't do that, right? So if you don't know what you're doing, then you maybe think, is fine. You trust that the AI will do it okay for you, and then you just ask the AI or make it secure. That just doesn't work. You can't just tell the Oh, make make this application for me. Make it secure. I wish it was like that, but, you know, there's so much more to it. So I think security is one of the big, big topics to think about when thinking about AI for sure,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:40:00

what about from the email side of things? Because I personally struggle with sorting through my email on a daily basis, and I can't imagine what you know, a typical freight agent is going through with their email inbox. What kind of tools are you seeing that's helping to categorize those emails? Is it all strictly done through the TMS, or is it, you know, a bunch of different tools that can help, you know, categorize those emails. Maybe, you know, auto respond to them, you know, get rid of the junk. Is it a bunch of tools, or is it one or two really good tools?

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:40:36

So, I mean, there are a lot of tools, and I'm probably missing a lot here, but so our the TMS that we use ravinova, they are adding now features that natively allow you to to use AI and connect your email to it, and, and they will, it will create loads for you, and it will create truck postings for you, and, and, and also, with all the automation that exists already available in Salesforce, you can create these responses back and connect it to all the the the other existing workflow. So for us, that's that's a really good one. And levity, I think, is doing a lot of a lot of work on that as well. I personally like the what they have there. And then what I'm seeing also is that even the existing client, you. Email clients are starting to add all these features internally, like, if you have, for example, Outlook, you could grab, you know, power automate, which is their little automation tool, and you could have little workflows that categorize emails and use the AI within the Microsoft environment. And that should be at least, you know, if you already trusting outlook, then you know you can keep your your existing data already there, and it will not leave that, leave that environment and that that might be interesting. Gmail, I think it's also adding all of that. And I think eventually all the TMS are going to start doing that. I know that other TMS for brokers as well have already that. I know that. Yeah, tools like Bray, the also have some email automation going on. I haven't tested it freely, but yeah, I think all of those tools should do a good job on, on, on your categorizing emails. It's not at the same time, I've seen more and more orchestration tools, or the tools that allow you like to create your own automations, and a lot of people are starting to to build their own automations around email. I was talking with Sarah from Ali logistics, and she was telling me about some AI tools and that they're using for some use cases. And I think it's called Solar, solar AI. And so any tool should work again. It all comes down. I want to bring it back to have you modeled your business process. Do you know what your business process is? Do you know how you're going to measure if your process is working or not? Have you Do you know what's the outcome that you're trying to achieve? Because if you don't know that, then you're going to go into how the implementation without knowing the what, and then you know it might fail. And then you're going to think that the problem is the tool that the problem is, oh, this AI is not working, or this doesn't work, but, but how are you even measuring if it's working or not? Because you didn't know what your performance was before. You don't know the metric that you need to look at to know what your if your performance improved. So then it's like, it's all going to be gut feeling. And of course, the gut feeling at the beginning of implementing a new technology, the gut feeling is going to be frustration, most likely. But if you have the metrics in place and the business processes modeled properly, then you're going to realize that, oh, well, I'm frustrated because I don't know how to use this tool, but objectively, these metrics are improving, right? So I like always taking it back to that, like the business process needs to be solid and needs to be documented, needs to be refined. And it missed, because, if not, you end up with the vendor deciding for you how you should be working. And that's, I think, advice for anyone evaluating tech. You know, tech vendors will generally tell you that they can do everything? You're going to ask them, Oh, can you do this? They're going to say yes, because generally you're talking with a project manager or a sales representative. And then they're going to go to the developers, like teams, like my team, and they're going to say, Hey, I sold this. I sold this new feature. Now you need to build it. And then when you roll it out, then you're like, well, but like, how does this match with my existing workflow? What? And there's a lot of friction. So if you don't know exactly what you're looking for in terms of business processes, it's going to be harder for a vendor to to be effective, right? And it's, sometimes it's not even a problem of the vendor, because, you know, these are tools, and if you don't know what to do with the tool, then also it's, you know, it needs to be on both sides, a commitment on both sides,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:45:48

yeah, no one wants to do the the boring and really underrated. Challenging part is documenting your processes, because you have to be prepared to rip them all out if they're not working, but just simply documenting them is I find it personal experience, just very like draining on my brain. But once I get it done, that I'm so relieved, because then I can figure out, okay, what do I need to do? What can I outsource? What can a tool do? And I'm curious as as to how you how do you approach helping agents document their process?

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:46:28

So something that we do is, uh. A visiting agents, because being on site with with the people who are executing the tasks and executing the processes, I'm able to understand much better all the nuances, right? And also, you know, I don't like this idea of the tech team being, like isolated, and then, you know, requirements come in, and people, you know, the dev team doesn't know what the process is. And we try to all of our team is involved in, in in these modeling sessions and, and we, generally we try, because we know also that agents are very busy, and we don't want to also, you know, take out too much time or effort on that. But when we do this visit, we try to document as much as we can about what we see. And then we come up with a plan of, okay, this is, this is the process that we see, these are the points, the critical points that we could maybe improve. We have these tools available to help you on this particular point and then asking a lot of questions. I think listening and asking it's key, because, again, if we, in a way, the tech team is like a vendor for the agents, right? In a way, like it's an internal vendor, but we need to provide something that makes sense. And in order to be able to do that, we need to understand what the problems are. And so yeah, a lot of Yeah, listening and going on visits, because on a zoom call, you can get an idea, but sometimes you just need to be there to really to hear the phone ringing and, oh, how many you know, how much of the time is being spent on answering this call? Oh, what if we have a tool here that can filter out these calls and like, you know, tell you which, which call you should take first, and how, how do you, you know, how does that impact your overall time to cover a load, for example? Just, just to give you one example, something that we did was also one of our agents were, was having a lot of inquiries for posted loads from from boards. And what we were they were copying and pasting a template to respond to these inquiries. We're like, Oh, what if we tried to automate that? So we just said, it said you just set up all the your pricing in the DMS, and then we can just find the load that they're asking for and then give them back that information. And if it's covered, instead of telling them, oh, it's covered, we find similar loads in similar lanes with them, oh, that load is covered, but we have these other loads, right? But we needed to go visit the agent to really understand that, right?

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:49:33

How do you approach, you know, when you're thinking about, you know, onboarding a new agent, or maybe it's a current agent that is, is looking at a new tool. How do you decide what to say yes to and what to maybe caution them on?

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:49:51

Yeah, I don't want to be super repetitive, but I bring it back to what is the use case that you're trying to resolve? What is the business process that this fits in? Because sometimes you realize that by moving a few pieces in a different part of the board, right then you are also, you know, changing the tension on on the part that you're interested in. So sometimes it's okay, let's try to quickly understand at least the skeleton of the process that you're doing, and understand if, if it's a tool, what you need, or maybe it's a shift on some other structure, right? That might be, maybe it's a tool that we already have and that they don't know that we have. Maybe this a training issue. Maybe it's a lot of times comes down to training. It comes down to knowing the tools that we have available, because there are so many that sometimes it's like, well, if you're an agent who is doing truckload only, maybe you don't even know that we have an LTL program, or that we have a customer portal that. So they maybe are looking for a vendor that might give them a portal for LTL integrations, I don't know. And then, hey, we, we already have that. We, you know, we, we can just set it up for you. And so, yeah, a lot of times goes back to that understanding, where does that fit in the overall business? This process, and if it's needed, then we're going to talk with the vendor and make sure that can be shared with the entire network. And sometimes we set it up for a specific office, and we help that specific office to get that one vendor that they need. Because reality is that there are certain vendors that make sense when you have a specific type of office or specific type of shippers and there. So it's like, why other agents should go through the process of onboarding that if, if they don't need it, right? But yeah, it'll just long story short, it comes back down to business process, and where does that fit? And technology should be an enabler of that, not just something that you bolt on trying to just, you know, fix it on itself, a square

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:52:25

peg into a round hole, almost, yeah, yeah.

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:52:28

And in my experience, those type of involvements have not gone very well a lot of the time. It's a solution in search of a process, right? So let's try to understand the problem first and see if this is a good solution.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:52:44

So with all of the you know, remote offices, the tools we've talked about, how do you approach the cybersecurity elephant in the room.

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:52:55

Well, we are, we're cloud. Our TMS is cloud based. So a lot of is delegating the main, the main operational system that is the TMS, delegating a lot of that security to to a company like Salesforce that has, you know, invest billions of dollars in in security and and so we don't hold, we don't have anything on prem, on on servers on prem, then for The tools that we build internally. We are cloud based, but also use containerized workloads that are kind of like disposable. So if like it's we use, yeah, so it's not that we have the one big virtual machine with everything in it. We have each capability has its own containers, and then we have event driven system that connects everything together. So we try to incorporate the security on on the design itself of the solutions that we do. So that's on the aspect of more like infrastructure security, you know, security access to your database. We don't have one central database where everything is there. I mean, we do that have a data warehouse, but the operational systems you have each each feature will have its own little world. And if that, if that data goes away, we could reconstruct it, for example, right? So we tried to incorporate all that security by design. We use for all of infrastructure. For the tech nerds out there, we use infrastructure as code. So in order to deploy infrastructure, like databases, Virtual Machines and these kind of things. We're not just going to a UI or depending on a person doing their job right. Everything is templated and has all the security measures already in those templates. So when we deploy it, for example, our databases don't have access to Internet. In order to access a database, you need to go through some other, some other steps, and only our containers and virtual machines can access those databases. They are not open, right? Yeah, and we try to control our API. In that way as well, where, if something doesn't need to go over the internet, it doesn't, it doesn't go we only expose to the internet the things that like have to be exposed.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:55:45

So you guys are building fortress over there is, is essentially what you're saying, with several boats to protect the fortress.

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:55:53

Yeah, and we have in our team, we have Valentin. He's very, very strict on that aspect as well, and he knows quite a bit on that front of infrastructure security. And so we tried to incorporate all that. You know, from the get go, it's like we we don't deploy something if it doesn't have these characteristics, because it will be irresponsible. And also, in our case, we are agent based, so data needs to be siloed, so we cannot expose, you know, customer data from one agent to another agent. So all of that is control. In the TMS, but also we have our own separate user pool and security settings that make sure that all the tools that we build on top of the TMS and the tools that we build custom also have that characteristic right

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:56:48

in your experience, or maybe what you've seen at other, you know, agency, companies or brokerages, how, I guess, involved is the internal IT team when it comes to, like, freight fraud, are you guys, you know, in there, you know, trying to help combat it from a digital perspective, like digital warfare, or is that it sort of A separate team that you know maybe closely works, you know, with the IT team, I'm just trying to, I guess, maybe understand where it kind of plays a role when it comes to the, just the dramatic increase in freight fraud across the industry.

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:57:26

I think in order to have an effective security strategy, you need everyone to be involved, and it needs the business users to to to be the ones also pushing the the risk management initiatives. In our case, we have very lucky that everyone in our team are, it's, it's, very much aware, or Yeah, our VP of Operations, VP of Finance, VP, you know, Director of Career procurement, and everyone. It's very, very much aware of all of this. And they come up with the initiatives to us. Then we tell them what is possible. Then we discuss what ways we could be vulnerable. But the IT team is very aligned with the rest of the business in these initiatives, and we all know and understand, and we try to emphasize that with that team as well, that what the scenario is, what we are fighting against, and but I think it needs to be, it cannot be just delegated to it, because the business user know a lot more than they they think sometimes about security, because they know how a business process work. They know, for example, with when you see these schemes of fake paperwork, or these carriers buying MC numbers and doing all these maneuvers, you know they know all the business user know all the intricacies, intricacies of that from, from, from the business perspective. And it can, can put in place measures to but we need to know how that works sometimes, and we need to be, yeah, in collaboration constantly. I think in order to be effective, you just you need that. You need everyone on board. It's not going to work if just delegated to it, because it's just going to be a very partial view, and you're going to be covering this side, but then they're going to attack you on the other side. And a lot of the a lot of the threats are social engineering. So there's only so much you can do on the IT side against social engineering, because if people are giving away their passwords because someone just tricked them into doing it,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 2:59:49

is that sort of the crazier side of it, that that you've seen is just people willingly giving up that information.

Ezequiel Peralta: 2:59:55

Yeah, our James, our CFO always says it don't click the link. Like, if you get an email with a link that just don't click it, like, you know, you can reply by, you can call the person. You can, you know, try to, but don't, don't click it, because most of the times when something happens that someone gains access to an email or something like that, is because someone clicked the link, or someone got a call, got tricked into going to a website that was not the actual website. And there's always something like that. And so, yeah, I think definitely the most scary part, and the most difficult to combat is the social engineering threats.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 3:00:42

Are there any examples that you've seen that have, like, maybe at other companies or something, what they're dealing with that has the creativity of a fraud scheme has almost impressed you.

Ezequiel Peralta: 3:00:58

What impressed me is when the quality of the emails that people are crafting and sometimes even how they are putting malicious code inside of PDFs, for example. So you're not even clicking a link. You're getting, you're getting an email from your boss saying, Hey, can you check this report for me? And and it's looks exactly like them, and maybe it is coming actually from their from their inbox, because they got access to that inbox. Box, and I'm not taking any link, even if it's a file, right? So you click on the file, and then you're done. So I think, yeah. Or when a TIA, the keynote speaker was talking about how with deep fakes, you can have someone, some AI, talking to you as if it's your boss, for example, asking you to put money on an account, or things like this. And in this case, the CEO was talking with the CFO on a video call, but it was not the CEO, it was just a deep fake, and they asked them to put money on an account for for an acquisition they were going to do. And they did it and like, how can you combat that? Yeah, it's, it's very it's very hard, right?

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 3:02:27

Yeah, I think on the podcasting side of things, I have warned my family that I'm like, 30 seconds of audio is is all it takes to deep fake me. And so if you get a call from me at you know, first of all, I don't call them, I text them, so they probably know that something was up. But if you get a call from me, we've developed like, a safe word within the family that you know, you're going to use in the event of something like that happening, where we would call and, you know, ask for money or something like that, we have a family safe word. It kind of sounds like maybe we need to do that at the corporate level too.

Ezequiel Peralta: 3:03:02

Oh, that's definitely, that's multi factor authentication. Like, when, when? When people do their multi factor authentication on their phone asking you it's that it's a shared secret that only the people that it's securing that secret know, and then it can be used to, to to to unlock, right, whatever you need to unlock. And in this case, the this, that safe war is acting as that, you know, multi factor that are you actually you? It's like, so yeah, but first things first, if you don't have multi factor authentication on in your organization by default for absolutely everything, then you should be looking into doing that first, because that's another thing. Is that we're talking about really social engineering schemes and everything, but then people just don't have their multi factor codes on, on, on, on their phones. So you're basically the, you know, hackers and the bad actors. They're going to try to find the easiest path for getting, you know, if so, yeah, just start there. That was that solves like 90% plus of the of the phishing attacks.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 3:04:20

Is there any freight tech that doesn't exist that you wish existed? Wow.

Ezequiel Peralta: 3:04:31

I I think maybe all the integration landscape, in the in the freight tech world is it's kind of all over the place. So I think some sort of standardization of what we all think a load is what, what, what kind of events are relevant to to a load or or so, I think, some sort of, I don't know if it's a software itself, some sort of agreement or standardization on How we're going to communicate these systems between systems, Edi was an attempt to to achieve that, and I think it is still being used be in part, because of that, because it was some somewhat successful in in, you know, this, creating a base standard that then everyone need to derail from that standard, and ended up doing like, each EDI its only world. But with API's, for example, it's happening that every API is different, and you need to, you have all these point to point integrations, and there's no, yeah, there's no standard, and I think there's it generates a lot of waste for a lot of organizations, having to maintain software that is just a pipe to put data from A to B, right? So that, I would say, Yeah, another time, even for tech vendor, even for vendors, it's like, it's not valuable work. It's just something that you need to do in order to get data, and then you start, you know, adding value with your product.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 3:06:18

Now, last few questions here for a potential agent that's thinking about making the switch, is there anything that they need to do on the tech side of things, on their end of things? Better prepare them for making the jump to, you know, maybe, hopefully SBI, but maybe another company. Is there any, I guess, maybe standardization of what you would recommend for an agent to get ready to make a switch?

Ezequiel Peralta: 3:06:48

I think, I think asking the questions, to to the to the agent that work that that they're gonna they're evaluating about what's their tech stack, but no, no, not as listing the vendors that they use, because that you could have a really good list of vendors, but not have them working together. Well, right? So it's the okay, can, can this network give me all fulfill all the use cases that I need to fulfill? For example, we offer we push data to shippers. Sometimes they need it as a CSV file with a very specific format. Sometimes they need to be IPI, sometimes they need to be EDI, sometimes they need it as they come. Sometimes they need it in a schedule, right? So if you have shippers that are requiring this type of technology, then you need to ask very clearly at the beginning, hey, can you push data to my shippers in the way they need it? How long it takes for you to complete the new integration if, if a new shipper needs it. For example, can you automatically quote because I have a shipper that asked me to respond to a quote within a minute? Can you do that like and same for you know what? Carrier fraud, carrier vetting and compliance is like asking the questions, you know, but trying to get to the proper depth of the question. It's like, Oh, do you use one question could be Oh, do you use highway? Or do you use RMS, or do you use my care packets? That's one way of asking another. Another way of asking is like, how do you handle with a carrier trying to do this, how would you prevent this from happening, or how do you use those tools in order to protect me or protect my business? And I think, trying to find the depth in the questions beyond, oh, we use this vendor, okay, but how you use it? Why you use it? Why that one or not the other one? Like trying to get a bit more deep into, into the into the ask, into the asking.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 3:09:00

Is there any actually one more quick question that just popped in my head? AI agents, not necessarily like the call ones, but the the ones that are promising, you know to fix, you know, be your internal marketing department, or be your internal sales department. Do you see the rise of sort of AGI agents that you know you have a little you know, minions that are doing all of your work for you,

Ezequiel Peralta: 3:09:28

to be honest, like from, from what I've been seeing so far, I think we're far from it still. Whenever I try to, I mean, I use coding tool that has some sort of agent in it, and it also has, like an autocomplete feature. I end up using the autocomplete more than the agent, because a lot of times the agent is just going to go in a loop of trying to solve a problem, but in a very kind of, like, naive way. And maybe it's not understood for certain tasks. Yeah, I can see it working for certain tasks, but I don't see it happening at the level that is being advertised. Of, oh, now you're going to have these digital workforce that is going to just do all of your calls for you, and it's going to give you all, you know, all these benefits. And I have yet to see something that shows me that that's possible, and that's and also, one aspect that we, I was talking with my team yesterday, is what you get, you know, when you're in when you're doing something by yourself, like, if I'm trying to solve a problem and I don't know how to do it, then maybe I Google, maybe I use AI or whatever, But I'm still using my brain to solve the problem. Once I solve it, I learn something, right? Same with human interaction, maybe some employee making a mistake also reveals that there is a process that needs to be improved, right? So then you can so I think error, and it's part of life, and it's also part of learning, and I think we are entering to this notion of we are going to have these agents doing all the work for you. But then I. After you see the work done, have you learned something from that process? So I see one of the possibilities is that our learning curve, it goes up, but then now we are just delegating all this resolution to these automations, but we don't know how they work, because nobody knows what an AI agent is thinking, and nobody is even if we could, no one is going back and say, Oh, how did you reach this conclusion? Was it accurate? Was it not? What can I learn from the process of reaching the conclusion? So I am a believer that that process of reaching a conclusion is really valuable, and learning from these processes, learning from mistakes, is valuable. And I think sometimes the promotion of these type of tools forget that part, and they're just too focused on the solution, instead of trying to understand how we get to a solution, how the problem works, why the problem even exists. Could we define this problem out of scope so we don't even have to solve it because it doesn't exist anymore? You know, the trying to find more depth, I think, I think comes down to depth. I think a lot of these tools are being promoted with not enough depth in mind, just very tactically, and we're not thinking about, you know, maybe you needed to, maybe you needed to walk the path. Make a little mistake that is, as long as it doesn't destroy you, right? You needed to walk the path, make that mistake, learn from it, improve and keep going and and you can still do that while you're using AI agent, but if you just delegate everything to and then you don't think about it anymore, then we're becoming kind of like thinking lazy, right? Like we are becoming lazy at thinking. And I personally don't like that.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 3:13:38

I completely agree, and I echo that statement, because I on one side of the coin. I will say that you know these even like groks deep research tool. I love it, but I use that inside of chat GPT in order to help me come up with an interview flow. And it'll I did it for this interview. For example, I took our previous episode, I took the transcript. I said, Give me a landscape of, you know, the current freight trends and freight tech trends and technology and things that are on the market. Analyze the transcript and then come up with an interview flow based on that. And I would say probably 60% of the questions were pretty good. But if I didn't do the active listening to our previous episode and also to other episodes you've been on, I wouldn't have been able to, I think, craft a better interview for the sake of this conversation. And so it's it. I don't know that that's something that you can replace. Is that active learning of by doing it, you have to still do the thing. And, you know, maybe there's some ways where you can automate the boring stuff, but there's still, you know, a creative aspect that you create, a problem solving and learning that I think is still needs to be prioritized.

Ezequiel Peralta: 3:14:58

Yeah, and in this case, what the process you're describing you were driving the process. You are not delegating to an agent that was driving the process, an AI agent that would drive the process. You were driving the process you were using a tool to categorize, to give you, you know, some help, but you were in the in the driving role, and I think that's important and and also it's like, it's fun to be a human, and it's fun to connect with humans. Big fan of humans,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 3:15:28

don't tell the AI that

Ezequiel Peralta: 3:15:32

it already knows. Probably that's a topic for another, another podcast. But like, then there is that aspect of like, do you want to be working with an AI agent, or you want to, you know, are we working for? What are we working for? Humans? Are working for ourselves, for human species, for that's more philosophical, maybe, but that comes into play too, when we're talking about, you know, replacing people, it's like,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 3:16:03

I don't know, I want to do more of the things that I like doing and less of that. And I think that that's, you know, sort of the common complaint I hear with AI and automation is like it's taking away, or some people feel as if it's taking away from the things that we want to do more of instead of the things that we don't want to do more of, which is, like, I don't know, clean the bathroom, or, you know, fold your clothes. Like nobody wants to do that. But, you know, AI is not fixing that yet, and that's what we want. To fix. We don't want it to take away the things you know that do make us human, creative problem solving, you know, creative adventures, things like that, talking to people, developing relationships with people. I think all of those things are really important. You kind of hit the nail on the head for the rest of you know, I guess, say 2025, and beyond. Are there any you know, new tech solutions that you guys are working on, or integrations that you could share with us, or or things you're thinking about that you think the audience should know

Ezequiel Peralta: 3:17:03

we're working continue improving on, on the capacity, the capacity tools that we have we know that the you know market still somehow lose on that sense. But we know when being prepared for for for different market conditions, as as they show up. So adding more sources of capacity to our capacity hub tool, continue adding on, you know, more data into our risk management tools. Also, we're adding these more features on the AI email, you know, creating loads from emails and and these categorizing email requests, working also on automation of bidding to the shipper side so and, and also a lot of work on on the back office, because we, we need to, we need to provide, you know, best service in back office, because our agents, we work a bit differently than maybe other other agent models, where agents just do the operation, they complete the load, and then we take over the entire AR and AP cycle, right? So in order for that to be effective, we need to have a high level of automation, high level of efficiency on the back office. So a lot of work on 2025 is also going to go into continuing the already, already highly automated back office is going to continue being more automated and providing our staff with tools to, yeah, maybe to reduce some of their data entry and so they can focus on, on being more analytical, on on, on the audit and these things. So, so yeah, that's those sort of things we're working on.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 3:19:06

Lot of work you guys are got ahead of you for this year and beyond, but I'm sure you know, a lot of the agents are extremely thankful for the investments that you guys continue to make into the platform and the program itself as a where can folks find you, follow more of your work, maybe connect with you at a future conference. Yeah.

Ezequiel Peralta: 3:19:25

So my LinkedIn, I am Peralta. You can find me there. My email is E Peralta at SPI three, pl.com, you can email me and I'll try to reply as soon as you can. Yes, no, I don't use email bots, so if I take time, it's because I'm actually responding. And if you see me at any conference, generally, I go to Tia and capital ideas and technovations and maybe a few other more. I don't have anything planned as of now for for conferences. We have our annual Asian conference this week. Yeah, exactly. It's gonna be fun, but yeah, if you see me at any conference, just Yeah, would love to connect.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 3:20:16

Well, perfect. This was a great discussion. Hopefully people you know like this one just as much, hopefully more than than the previous episode that we did together. But I'll be sure to add all those links into the show notes. Just make it easy for folks. But as a this, this is great. Thank you so much for your perspective insight.

Ezequiel Peralta: 3:20:32

Thank you very much Nate for having me absolutely

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 3:20:39

thanks for tuning in to another episode of everything is logistics, where we talk all things supply chain for the thinkers in freight, if you like this episode, there's plenty more where that came from. Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you never miss a conversation. The show is also available in video format over on YouTube, just by searching everything as logistics. And if you're working in freight logistics or supply chain marketing, check out my company, digital dispatch. We help you build smarter websites and marketing systems that actually drive results, not just vanity metrics. Additionally, if you're trying to find the right freight tech tools or partners without getting buried in buzzwords, head on over to cargorex.io where we're building the largest database of logistics services and solutions. All the links you need are in the show notes. I'll catch you in the next episode, in go jags. You. You