Join us for an exciting episode of Standing Out with Will Jenkins, where we will be exploring the journey of this dynamic entrepreneur and leader. With his determination, passion and leadership skills, Will has carved his own path to success and continues to stand out in every venture he undertakes.
Sponsored by SPI Logistics. If you're looking for back-office support such as admin, finance, IT, and sales as a freight broker - reach out to SPI Logistics today! Learn more about becoming an agent here: https://bit.ly/SPILogistics
Standing Out is a sales, marketing & leadership podcast powered by BETA Consulting Group, created to highlight best practices from industry leaders with incredible experience and insights! The goal is to entertain, educate & inspire individuals & companies to improve their sales, marketing & leadership development outcomes.
Join us for an exciting episode of Standing Out with Will Jenkins, where we will be exploring the journey of this dynamic entrepreneur and leader. With his determination, passion and leadership skills, Will has carved his own path to success and continues to stand out in every venture he undertakes.
Sponsored by SPI Logistics. If you're looking for back-office support such as admin, finance, IT, and sales as a freight broker - reach out to SPI Logistics today! Learn more about becoming an agent here: https://bit.ly/SPILogistics
Standing Out is a sales, marketing & leadership podcast powered by BETA Consulting Group, created to highlight best practices from industry leaders with incredible experience and insights! The goal is to entertain, educate & inspire individuals & companies to improve their sales, marketing & leadership development outcomes.
Welcome to Standing Out. Thanks for being here today. I'm Trey Griggs, your host and the founder and CEO of Beta Consulting Group, so excited that you are with us today. As we approach the Christmas holiday, hope that you're having a wonderful end of your year. While you're out there on the internet, make sure you check us out at betaconsultinggroupcom. See how we're helping companies to build social proof through customer testimonial videos. Love to work with you. Simply click on that button there to schedule a call with yours truly. Tell us your story. We will help you write yours. Also, follow us on social media. You can find us out there Beta Consulting Group, all over the place and my personal handle is Trey Griggs24. Again, we'd love to engage with you out on social media. Also, as a quick reminder, if you're a freight broker, if you're an agent, if you're thinking about just getting rid of having the back office, the admin, having your MC authority and just want to be an agent, make sure you check out our friends over at SPI Logistics Successspi3plcom. They've got the technology systems and back office support to help you stay in your sweet spot. Just some great guys over there out of Vancouver, british Columbia. They live to support their agents and they really allow you to stay in your sweet spot. Again, check them out at successspi3plcom.
Speaker 1:All right, again it is the Christmas holiday, so I'm wearing my what Matters Most shirt today. Make sure, in this holiday season, that you are focusing on what matters most. We all work very hard, but what for? It's usually right there somewhere in your house, walking around your family, your friends, people nearest to you, so make sure you get to spend some time with them this holiday season and tell us some stories about what happened over the holidays for you.
Speaker 1:All right, we've got a great guest today. This guy's been doing some amazing work in the transportation logistics industry for several years and really made his mark recently at Molo, a freight brokerage out of Chicago. So please welcome to the show my good friend and the new CEO of Journey, founder that is, and CEO Will Jenkins, in the house today. Hey, what's up, will? How you doing, brother? What's going on, man? How are you? Man? It is so good to see you. Man, I've been wanting to have you on the show for a long time and here we've finally made it happen. And, man, it's just good to have you on the show, man.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. It's good to be here and it's always fun to kind of connect with you. I love the intro. That was funny. A lot of good clips there.
Speaker 1:You know every time I watch that it just reminds me we've had a lot of fun. We do some silly stuff around here. Hopefully people laugh Makes me laugh. So it's been a good time. We've had a lot of fun on this show. That's just good. Awesome, man, before we get started, we appreciate you being on the show as a guest on this show. Are you a coffee drinker or a water drinker? Do you want a water bottle or a coffee mug? What do you prefer?
Speaker 2:Man, I'm going to go with the coffee mug.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. All right, man, we'll get that out to you. We appreciate you being on the show and a decent little mug there for you for spending some time with us today. All right, fun fact for you. And I knew this about you, but some people might not know this about you, as you played four years of football in college.
Speaker 2:I did. It was a really good time. I feel like I learned a lot and I actually had dinner with some of my college football buddies last week and just so good it's like we never left. So it was a really good time and it taught me a ton.
Speaker 1:It truly is like its own fraternity. I played college athletics as well. I played basketball and golf and those two teams. I just remember we get together still this day and it's like nothing ever has changed. It's just good to get back together with them. You were a Titan. You were a Titan. You played at what's remind me again. You played at.
Speaker 2:I played at.
Speaker 1:Illinois Wesleyan in Bloomington. Illinois Wesleyan, that's right. I always wanted to say Western Illinois because my buddy's the head women's basketball coach at West Illinois and that's not the same division. Did you play them the whole 11?
Speaker 2:No, they are in a different division. We were D3. They're either D1 or D1.
Speaker 1:That way, yeah, excellent, yeah, very good. What position did you play?
Speaker 2:I was a corner so I had to do everything fast backwards, which was a challenge but a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Not ask backwards Fast backwards, fast backwards.
Speaker 1:That's right. It kind of sounded that way when you first said it. I want to clarify, make sure people didn't hear that. Yeah, the corners. To me it's impressive because you're really reacting to a lot of just changes in movement, different patterns. I always feel like wide receivers in football always have the advantage because they know where they're going to go and you're kind of guessing and then have to react and turn a lot of times in different directions. I mean, I played basketball, so it's similar to guarding in basketball. Somebody's running, you're turning, but it's way different. You got a helmet on, you got visions a little bit obscured and it's just different. But you loved them. Did you start playing cornerback? Did you start an offense? How'd you get to cornerback?
Speaker 2:In high school I played linebacker, safety and running back. So my senior year I played running back and linebacker. I'm a little undersized to play linebacker in college but went to Wesleyan to be a defensive back so I was either going to play safety or play corner and ended up playing corner. It was a blast, Learned a lot about the position. But, like you mentioned, the people that you're lining up against know what they're doing and you don't necessarily. You read tendencies and watch a lot of film and whatnot, so I feel like that taught me how to be agile and react to situations and you translate those things to just life. In general. You do your best to plan and prepare, but you don't always know how things are going to play out and a lot of times that's how stuff is.
Speaker 1:On defense, that's so true. It's amazing how many lessons you can learn from playing sports to transition over into business and to life. And correct me if I'm wrong, but a defensive back has a different body shape and style than a linebacker or a running back. Did you have to change your physique to play that position so?
Speaker 2:not really. I got a lot bigger in college because you've got the strength and conditioning coach and you're in the weight room a ton and then you got the linebacker, true or not. So actually got a ton bigger in college. But I think what changed was just the style of play was very different. So I'm used to being down by the line of scrimmage, at least in high school, playing linebacker, and I like to hit. I have my helmet from senior year and that bad boy is scraped up. So it was different because I'm a physical player, I like to hit people and be in the scruff and all the stuff and whatnot. So DB is a little bit different but we played a lot of cover two and a lot of man, so there was still a large physical aspect of the game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely different, though You're not running into those 350-pound linemen as much when you're in DB. I don't want that. I don't think that. I don't think any. I'm a little guy too. I don't think any of us like that. But college sports is definitely different. I remember playing high school basketball. Occasionally we work out preseason, but during the season we were just practicing, and in college, every practice you had to work out an hour before the practice and then you had a two-hour practice. It was intense, and so everything changed quite a bit for me too. When I got to the college level, everything sped up, everything got faster, bigger, stronger, so kind of the way that that worked All right. So let's transition from it, because I want to talk about your career. Man, you've had a stellar career as a young guy. I mean, you're not that old and you've done some amazing things already in the industry. You started, you did door. I learned this about you. You did door-to-door sales with Kako back in the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was my first job at 18. And it wasn't door-to-door, it was all cold calling and the way they train you. You go through three days of training and they teach you the products and things like that, but on your second day they tell you to bring a list of people that you can set up preliminary appointments with to go see at the end of day three training. So I took my high school directory and I called all the kids' parents that I went to high school with cold calling. You know, hey, this is well, I graduated with your son or daughter and setting up appointments to demonstrate cut-code kitchen cutlery. But it taught me a lot at an early age, specifically how to handle rejection, not take it personally.
Speaker 2:I went to a pretty small school and we had about 400 students and so you got 100 kids per class.
Speaker 2:You're going to know just about everybody and you can imagine being 18 years old, calling people and their parents are hanging up on you like no, I don't want to talk, or like I don't want to buy knives, because you know I'm not the first person that recall them. But it's just funny, man, you learn so much about how to handle the ups and downs of sales at a young age at that organization. Super grateful to have had the opportunity to do that, and really I'd spent all four years in college playing football, going to school at Wesleyan you know really academically rigorous university and then selling cutco. I was going back and forth between Bloomington and Chicago learning the ins and outs of the business and how to run an office and whatnot. So I had a great experience there and even had a chance at 20 so this was the summer of 2006 to run an office of my own. So it was my first entrepreneurial venture and it taught me a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, whether it's door to door or cold calling, it's just learning how to talk to anybody. I mean, you think about your, your friends in high school and their parents. They all had different jobs. Some were probably in a medical profession or maybe, you know, doing something else in business, or a teacher like you learn to talk to anybody. You learn how to, you know relate to people and what, what works. How many of those parents did say yes, did you get some meetings with them? And then you know, did it work out?
Speaker 2:So in my first 10 days I did about 40 appointments and I sold north of $10,000 worth of cutco in 10 days and that was when I realized that sales and entrepreneurship was for me. I initially this was June of 2008 and I went to Wesleyan to go pre-med. I was going to be bio and, you know, wanted to be a doctor and I made a ton of money that summer selling cutco and I was like I don't think I want to go to med school anymore. I want to be in sales or or build a business. And so I did.
Speaker 2:You know, really well, early on I had great mentors and coaches to kind of walk me through it and that first 10 days I still am pretty close with the, the manager I had back in 2008 and he taught me a lot and, you know, really helped me work through the ups and downs of you know, hey, not everything's going to work out the way you want it to, but you need to be able to show up and keep putting the work in. But it was, it was a fun four years selling cutco and that first summer, you know, really laid the base for everything.
Speaker 1:I'm not surprised that you have door-to-door experience. Most successful entrepreneurs I've met they've done that at some point in their life and I don't know why that's not more of a prerequisite or something that everybody should try, because you find out pretty quickly do I like this, does this fit, or is this not who I am? And I think that helps, you know, figure out some of those life situations. If you didn't like sales, being a doctor might have been a really good option. You know you might not really enjoy that, but figuring out that you enjoy sales, you enjoy building something, being an entrepreneur I just wish more people would give it a shot and see, because I'm the same with you when I got in there and it's I'm competitive, meeting, talking to new people, making a sale, all that stuff is just incredibly exciting for me. But I wouldn't know that if I hadn't done the door-to-door myself. And absolutely what did you do? I didn't know that you did door-to-door sales. So so I went from you know just real quickly.
Speaker 1:I went from teaching and ministry so I was a youth pastor and a teacher and it just didn't make enough money for our family because my wife wanted to stay home and I had a friend who said you should get into sales and the only job I could find at the time we were living in Portland Oregon was a door-to-door you know sales opportunity, selling office supplies, business to business. So I would go literally into businesses, walk in for 40 to 50 businesses a day with the hopes of selling to, and I mean that's a lot of rejection. You learn pretty quickly how to deal with with, knows how to have fun with it, how to try to make people laugh. I learned the value of just making someone laugh and being entertaining because you know if you got to buy office supplies you might as well have fun doing it. So the more that I could make them laugh. So I was always trying to do something that was silly or goofy and just made their day, made them laugh a little bit.
Speaker 1:Most people are kind of miserable at work. They're not, they're not enjoying it. And if you can make it fun, I found that was kind of my secret sauce to to getting in there and have an opportunity and then at that point you learn a lot of skills about upselling, rehashing as we called it, the money makers. We started with paper three cases of paper for 90 bucks. That was kind of our intro. But man the the money was in the toners man Tony's like 250 bucks a piece and you can make good money on those.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's funny that you're saying that your friends or people that you know that are entrepreneurs have had previous cold calling or you know door-to-door sales experience. I Same thing for me, like all of my friends that sold cutco and did it for a sub couple of summers are extremely successful. They own their own businesses now. Their high-powered executives at other organizations and then my friends and the brokerage space that come from a sales background Really do well because you know when you look at it, revenue cures all ills. If you can go and find the right type of business, the right types of customers and early on, if you get exposure to that, it makes it a lot easier when you go build businesses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And the founders that try to give away sales early or just aren't good at sales, they're the ones I see that really struggle, you know. So it's a great skill to have. And I mean, if I have any advice for parents, it's like two things. One, make sure that your your kids on how to network early, like you did, obviously, with your friends and their, their parents. But the number two is, give your kids, you know, a little encouragement to try things like sales and learn how to fail, because I think I think that's so powerful.
Speaker 1:I think I think too often we tell our kids to get a stable job, you know, and be stable, me secure. I think the successful people in this world, they don't go that route. You know, I don't know where people I try try to door-to-door stuff and do that. So let's talk about your entrepreneurship journey. You were at coyote logistics for a while, learned a lot about free brokerage at that point, and then you know, you and a crew started started in Molo. How'd the idea for Molo come about? What was that story? We're just sitting around playing some cards like man. We can do this better.
Speaker 1:Yeah how'd that happen?
Speaker 2:so I'll start at January of 2017, which is the end of my time at coyote. So I spent three years at coyote. I started there in January of 2014. I spent two years on the carrier side and I got that job because of a couple of friends that I used to sell cutco with.
Speaker 2:So don't burn bridges, you know you never know working baby, yeah, a couple of my buddies were crushing it as customer-facing sales reps at coyote and I was like looking to do something new seems like you guys are having a good time making some good money. So I ended up over there. I loved it. I spent three years at the at that organization. I'm on my last year there was on the customer-facing sales side, so I learned how to sell the shippers and I built up a team at eight wraps that worked with me and it was a blast teaching them how to go out and build their books of business.
Speaker 2:Well, while I was leading that group, I got recruited by Transport America, an asset-based player out of Minnesota who had recently purchased a brokerage in Chicago, and they wanted me to be their director of business development on the brokerage side. I was like man, you know, cool opportunity. I was 26 at the time, so I'm like this is sweet, you know, 26 years old, cool career opportunity to go and do this. And I Jumped at it and went and you know I learned so much. I learned how to sell the asset side of the business, learn how to work between, you know, an asset-based brokerage all these cool things. But kind of like you mentioned, you see, the things that are open in the space and you see businesses having success and you go. I Think we could do this right. You know, maybe we bet on ourselves to go out there and try to figure it out. So I did what any mid 20 something would do. I took a backpacking trip for two weeks to clear my head before.
Speaker 2:I realized yeah, I was like man, do I want to like leave this organization and try to go do something different, or you know, I don't want to stay here and try to figure this out and I left. I came back to the States and ended up, you know, meeting up with Andrew Silver, who was he used to be a manager of mine when I was at coyotes, so he was the director over the business development group and I was a manager in that group and so you know he and I worked pretty closely together then and we sit down and we're talking about you know what it would be like to have an organization like mollo. You know how do we differentiate ourselves, how do we go find the money, where's the office going to be? What type of people are we going to go recruit all these things. And we also had two other partners in the beginning. On Stefan Mathis, who's who we worked with at coyote, one of the top carrier sales reps there and then by far and away the best sales rep I've ever worked with. Like he is incredible, did a great job building up you know enterprise style shippers while during his time at mollo. So it's a lot of fun working with him, but we knew that he would be a great person on the team. And then another guy our president's names Matt Vogue, rich, went to school with Andrew. So we sit down and we're like man, you know what are all the things we need to do to get this business off the ground?
Speaker 2:And so day one was July 5th 2017.
Speaker 2:Myself, bogey and Stefan get it going, and Andrew's got to sit out because he's got an on compete, so he joined us when he's not, compete was over, and I think April of 2018 so not quite a year, but almost a year later and you know the the main thing it boils down to is just understanding how large the transportation space is and Really how many players there are, and there's a large gap between small to mid-sized players and the big top 20 or 30.
Speaker 2:So the echoes, tql's, no lens, all these large players, coyotes of the world, they're the best of the best, right, the biggest of the big. So much space between that. And so we just knew that there was a way for us to get in there, provided a differentiated, customer-based service, and treat our Carriers well, and say we think we can do this, and so I'm glad we bet on ourselves to go do it. But it took some convincing over the years as you build that business to get Internally like all your people to buy in the same way and externally you know the market, customers and things like that to buy in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I heard Andrew talking about you know part of those early days and what you guys were thinking about. But you know you think about it. You guys started in 2017 but you know from my recollection, the buzz didn't really start to happen for you guys till a little bit later. You know you had to kind of build up to that, but but you were shooting for for those, those big brokers. Andrew was talking about how arrive was like your target. You're like man, we could beat beat those guys numbers. You had somebody to chase in that regard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that had to be pretty motivating it to say that that's where we're headed. We're not headed for just survival. We're not headed for mid-mid market. We're gonna be one of the big, big players. But what was the driving factor behind that? And you know what kind of led you guys to go? We can do that. I mean, there's, there's audacity behind being an entrepreneur. That's just the way it is. You gotta think we can do this. What was it that you guys said, yeah, we can make that happen. We can go after guys like arrive and keep up.
Speaker 2:One thing, I think, is being young and ambitious and Not afraid to fail. So Most of us came from a larger organization, like a coyote. We'd seen what it's like to manage a business at scale. None of us built a brokerage from zero to a billion dollars in revenue, but we knew what it looks like to execute really high level service for customers, take care of people, develop talent, take care of carriers. So you see that and go.
Speaker 2:I'm not gonna say it's easy, but I've seen it right. I know what it takes to make that happen and, to be honest with you, the time is gonna pass either way. So I'd rather go big right, like there are companies out there that have marketed their services and you know they think that they're capable of producing at this clip. Why not us right, like, why can't we be the next player to go out and do that? And I think when you boil it down to what customers come to you for, which is the ability to execute freight, pick it up on time, communicate Well, deliver that service, if you do that and you have the right people on your team, you can scale right.
Speaker 2:If you don't execute the business well, customers aren't gonna keep coming back to you. You're not gonna have the opportunity to grow. But if you root your business and service and you have the opportunity to go out there and find large you know strong enterprise shippers and build the right team around them to be able to scale the business, there's a lot of opportunity available, lots of different ways to do it. You know some people want to stay a smaller shop and maintain that and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I've got a lot of friends that have 50 to 150 million dollar brokerages that are very profitable. They do very well super niche and that's what they want to do and, like you mentioned, we wanted to go after bigger fish. We're like we think we could really blow this thing up and become a billion dollar company. But that was the feeling Before day one. Like before day one, we're like we we want to be a billion dollar company. We think we can do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love them. I love that ambition. I think that's just really awesome. I don't think the people dream big enough. People just don't go after things that are big enough and and I heard this one time as an entrepreneur myself, I'm still kind of working through this that your goal doesn't scare you. It's probably not big enough, you know. You just go right the goal. That kind of sounds ridiculous when you tell other people about it. And I'm still working on myself. I love the fact that you guys did that, that you went that route and doing it as a team. So it wasn't. You know, some people go out and become entrepreneurs on their own. You guys decided to do this really as a team. What was about that team leadership environment? That was really attractive to you.
Speaker 2:I think there's something to be said about Taking people who have the work ethic and the drive and the ambition to go do what it takes to succeed and Putting them in the same room and seeing what they're capable of going to go do so.
Speaker 2:I was sitting in a room and Probably this would have been March of 2023 this year and it's a lot of different molo leaders, from individual contributors up to executive level, right, and I look around and go this is the most talented room I've ever been in in my life and you see what the like.
Speaker 2:You see the quality of work these people produce right, the way they coach and mentor their teams and things like that, and I think back to the early days with you know, vogue, rich and Stefan and silver and myself, and then you bring more managers on and you go out and find really strong talent to people and go. You're better than me at this thing. You know how to do this better than I do, and I want to give you the opportunity to lead and create and you're gonna have a better Organization as a result of it. I'd rather have a piece, a smaller piece, of a larger pie than try to have the whole pie and Build small, because there are people better equipped to do certain things and, you know, that's something that I think really helped us early, early on, and say, hey, we have to build this together. You know there's a there's a lot of value and being able to use what the collective, shared knowledge is to succeed.
Speaker 1:And that is so good, dude, that is, that is so good. I think entrepreneurs think that they have to be solopreneurs and they have to learn everything. And, man, I tried that. You know, when I started beta was by myself. I tried that and I realized, man, there's so many things that I, I'm terrible, I'm not good at all. Now I could learn them, but it would take time, you're right. It wouldn't be as well much time and it would be, and it would be life draining, like it would just be energy Draining to do that, and it's taken me a while to figure out. Yeah, I need to bring in the people that are way better at the stuff than I am and I really get out of their way. That's the only way this thing grows, and I love what you said. A smaller piece of a bigger pie, that a big piece of a small pop just makes sense. I think, more than a person to hear that. So I love the fact that you said that, man, it's so good you know.
Speaker 2:You know it's funny, mola wasn't the first entrepreneurial venture that I went out and did actually went through a startup program while I was at coyote. This was October of 2015 through February of 2016, and I was trying to build an app to help independent contractors manage their expenses more effectively, because when I sold cutco, I was a 1099 Contractor, so all of my expenses I had to manage on my own, like a small business, and then you could, you know, so my taxes. But I was really bad at that and, long story short, like you mentioned, I tried to learn everything on my own and I didn't find a technical Co-founder, I didn't build a team around me and it didn't work right. I was not able to build that business and I learned a lot from that Failure, which is really just a lesson.
Speaker 2:You know, spend a lot of money to make it work and dude is fine, right, like understanding that you need to have the right team is is crucial, so those are lessons that I'll take with me for my entire life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like to change that phrase from wins and losses to wins and lessons. I mean, you know, you don't. You don't lose, you just learn. You only read. I've learned. The only way you lose is if you quit, if you've stopped trying. That's the loss. Everything else is a lesson and absolutely learned a lot of that. So you had a.
Speaker 1:You guys had a successful exit from Molo recently. First of all, congratulations. I'm excited for that because I know that's. Those are game-changing moments for people. You worked hard for About five and a half six years at this thing grinding away. I know you guys worked hard. I had a chance to connect with you during that time and just see what you guys were doing, and now you had an exit. It's really cool. I'm envious, I'm I'm striving for that one day myself. And now it gives you a little time to play and to and to experiment. You know, like some people think that people exit and they ride off in the sunset. Maybe some do, but most, most entrepreneurs want to want to build something. They want to want to get after it and build something new. So you took a little break. You went over to Europe for a while. How long did you do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, timeline-wise, we sold the business in November of 2021, so it's been two years now and I stayed on part of me. Yeah, arkbast acquired us in November of 21 and I stayed on. I used to oversee our shipper-facing sales group, so managing customer-facing teams, which was a lot of fun. I did that for 18 months after the business was acquired and then I exited in May of 2023. I Wanted to go travel. I wanted to go think and figure out. You know what I'd like to build, and I have so many great relationships with the Arkbast exact team and and Molo leadership and everyone there that Believes and believed in what we're building, and so it just it felt really good to have the opportunity to say man, I think we're in a good spot. You know, I feel good about being able to walk away from this and you know the people that are in place now to help us succeed are still going to be able to go do their thing.
Speaker 2:So I spent the summer traveling Europe. I left the States mid-June, I got back September 15th and I spent time in 10 countries, 22 cities for about 90 days, and it was the most incredible trip of my entire life. I was able to unplug a journaled every single day, which is something I hadn't done up to that point, and it's been really cool to be able to reflect and say you know, how are you feeling or why did you think that, why did you like that, why didn't you like that? And, to be super transparent with you, I don't think I did a really good job of that during the six and a half years of building Molo, because you're so entrenched in the business and I certainly missed a lot of moments or reflection or opportunity to just appreciate the moment, because you're just so caught up in what's going on and for me, that three months was Dude just slow down and do nothing and figure out what it is you want to go build and what your life looks like and the types of people that you want to have the opportunity to work with, and you know what's your legacy going to be, what type of cool things do you want to go do, and that the story I was shared is like we we had the opportunity to build a billion dollar company, which is incredible.
Speaker 2:We did a billion dollars in revenue in 2022, but none of us will ever be able to say that we did that for the first time. Again, it's been done. We did it one time right, so I'm not gonna downplay that it, you know, wasn't incredible, but in the moment we're, like all of us as present and you know, really locked in and appreciative of this crazy thing that we did right. You know scale the business 900 plus employees. You know a billion dollars in revenue. Sometimes you got to step back and be like this is insane. We really did that right, I mean. So I personally like I don't think I did a really good job of that because you're like go, go, go head down, go bill, go bill, bill. So I wanted to just pause and say, you know, appreciate some of this stuff and think about what you want to, what you want your life to be like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love the reflection. I love that it just takes some time to do that and that's a skill that I think that the rest of us entrepreneurs we need to do that before we get to that place through the exit, because I can just hear the benefits that you got from that, just from taking time to do that. I know that's an area that I definitely need to improve on. Let me ask you one question about Europe. If you could go back to just one of the cities that you visited, which one would you go back to?
Speaker 2:that is really challenging, because there are four cities that I really enjoyed, so I can't say one. I would go back to one of these four cities I really enjoyed Lisbon, portugal, barcelona, spain, oslo, norway and Stockholm, sweden all for different reasons, but the culture, the food, that, just like five of the cities, are all so fun and I could see myself living in any of those cities. To be honest with you, they're really cool. So I just I really enjoyed my time and all four of those.
Speaker 1:Man, that's so dope. That's. That's on my bucket list. I haven't been to Europe yet. I definitely want to go. I've heard a lot of good things about Portugal. I've heard a lot of good things about Sweden. I mean there's there's a lot of culture there and a lot, of, a lot of things to check out, which is awesome.
Speaker 2:So glad you got a lot of recognition. I've got a lot of recognition for you.
Speaker 1:I'll have to reach out and get those from you, for sure. But but I'm glad you had a chance to do that. I'm glad you had a successful exit, just had a chance to to have some down time and to think, and you know Creativity comes out of that. You know you've got some new things coming up. We're going to talk about that minute. But before we get to that, my friend, we got a little fun here, so we're going to play a game.
Speaker 1:Today's game is Finish. The lyrics is here's what we're gonna do Will we're gonna do Christmas edition. So we've got Christmas. Next week we're gonna have a little fun with this. So this is the Christmas edition of Finish the Lyrics. Here's what's gonna happen Some lyrics to Christmas songs will be displayed in a banner up here on the screen, and then you and I have to try to guess. We're gonna be a team on this. So it's you and I together, working together. I think we'll be able to do pretty well. At least I hope we will, since it's Christmas songs. All right, do you listen? A lot of Christmas music, big fan man.
Speaker 2:You know I do love Christmas. My mom's birthday's on Christmas, so I've heard a lot of Christmas songs.
Speaker 1:Oh nice.
Speaker 2:We're gonna see how I do. I don't know. I'm excited, though.
Speaker 1:I know this could be good. It could be not so good. We'll have to see how we do. All right, little theme music here for us. All right, here we go Round one this year to Blank Special. Oh gosh, this is a test run. This is our practice round. We're not gonna count this one, I can tell.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I don't know this year to Blank Special, do we? Get.
Speaker 1:Man, I feel like I need to hear it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do we get any sound? Just the lyrics. We don't get any sound.
Speaker 1:That is just the lyrics. I know it's pretty tough, all right. So let's see what this one is. Let's give, we're gonna have to have a little break.
Speaker 1:This year to make it special. Is that this year to make it special? All right, let's see if we got that right. Is that correct? This year, to Save Me From Tears, I gave it to someone special. Oh, so that's a. There could be a lot of words here. Oh, this, okay, to save it, yeah, yeah, yeah, give it to someone special. Yeah, yeah, okay, all right. I'm gonna say now All right, yeah, this is gonna be tough. All right, here we go. This is our official number one. Here we go. This one is what A Bright To Rock the Night Away. Okay, so, what A Bright Time. It's the Right Time To Rock the Night Away. Yes, let's go. Let's go. All right, one for one baby Cause we're not counting the first one. Here we go. One for one. Number three oh, oh, this is a yeah.
Speaker 2:Feliz.
Speaker 1:Navidad. Yeah, feliz Navidad, prospero año y felicidad. Uh-huh, got it Two for two. This is money. Here we go. Okay, next one. Take a look, blank, it's glistening once again. Ooh, take a look. Hmm, it's glistening once again. That's not, that's not ringing a bell, no that's not ringing a bell.
Speaker 1:Take a look it's glistening, glistening, okay. So what song has glistening in it? There's, there's, okay. Oh, man, will, I'm sorry, man, I'm, I'm, I'm blowing it here, yeah, okay, all right, what is it? What do we got? What do we got? Take a look at the five and 10.
Speaker 1:What song is that from? Do you know what that song? That is no idea. I'm not even sure. If I know what song, that is Okay. Well, if you know out there, let us know. I have no idea, all right, next one you better watch out. You better watch out. You better not cry. Come on.
Speaker 2:You better not pout.
Speaker 1:I'm telling you yeah yeah, yeah, oh wait.
Speaker 2:No, we got it wrong.
Speaker 1:You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout. She just going for the middle. No, we got it, we got it. I said, I said the whole line, we got it. She just took the middle part. Our producer did that, so we got that. Okay, so we're three for four. I think Blank is the thing to say on a. Oh, this is Malika Likimaka from Christmas Vacation. Yes, she says so. Malika Likimaka is Hawaii's way on a ride. Hawaiian with a day. Come on, let's go. Wow, let's go. Your Christmas knowledge.
Speaker 2:Are you okay?
Speaker 1:Okay, so hold off on that. Have you Christmas Vacation? Is this not your favorite Christmas movie out there? It's a Chicago Christmas movie I've never seen it what You've never seen Christmas.
Speaker 1:Vacation? No, I've never seen it. Oh my gosh, I just dream all the way. Okay, that's a good one, all right, there's lots of good ones, all right, but you have, okay, between now and Christmas, will, this is your homework. You gotta watch Christmas Vacation, just let me know. I mean, to me it's one of the classics, all time Christmas movies. I can't believe that. You're just so young. This is the problem You're so young. I was like 10 years old when this thing came out in the theater. Will, you probably weren't even born yet. All right, moving on. Next one. Next one Blank at the Christmas party, hop, yeah, at the Christmas party, hop. This is rocking around the Christmas tree again, I think.
Speaker 2:Oh, rocking around the.
Speaker 1:Christmas tree at the Christmas party. Hop, come on, we got it, let's go. Come on, we're good. All right, we're knocking this out. Okay, do we have any more? Let's see, I think we might have one more. Yeah, final round. Here we go. Santa Baby, and really that's not been a lot been in Angel. Ooh, what part of the song is this? Santa Baby, ta-da-ta-da-ta-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, oh gosh, come on, Will Dude there's a lot of Santa Baby in that song.
Speaker 2:There's a lot.
Speaker 1:This could be any part, but the second half and really that's not a lot, not a lot been in Angel.
Speaker 2:Hey, how about Hurry Down the Gemini Tonight? I don't know.
Speaker 1:That doesn't seem to rhyme. Yeah, yeah, ta-da-ta-ta-da-da-da-da-da-da. Okay, I don't know. All right, we're not gonna get this one. We got most of them. I wanna yacht and really that's not a lot, it's a little bit of a blue round with lot, I don't know. See, I would not have got that. No, it was a good one. All right, we got like five out of seven. That was pretty good. That's pretty good. I'm gonna take that. I'm gonna take that. Yeah, that's not bad. That's not bad. That's pretty good, all right.
Speaker 1:So between now and Christmas, Will you gotta watch Christmas Vacation? Give me a report online or send an email, we'll post it. Whatever Got it. And I can't believe you haven't seen that. That's wild. So your favorite Christmas movie again is Jingle All the Way. Jingle All the Way. That's your favorite one. It's hilarious. That's clutch. That's a good one. We tend to watch more musical related ones. So we watch White Christmas. That's a big one around here. Watch a lot of White Christmas. Have you seen that one? Well, ben Crosby Action. Oh man, you're so young, it's terrible. All right, let's move on, all right. So listen, we're gonna finish up the show with this today. I wanna hear a little bit about your new venture. You just launched a new company called Journey, and I have no idea what this is, so tell me all about it. What are you doing?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Journey is a recruiting and training business. The recruiting aspect is focusing on the transportation and brokerage sector, and then most of my experience in sales is coaching and developing sales talent. So we've built a sales academy, which has on demand online training and a community aspect to take high performers in sales that want to network and find collaboration across different industries, put them all in the same place and allow them to be able to grow and learn and collaborate together.
Speaker 2:Already got an incredible feedback from clients, helping them place talent, get in front of the right people, and I think what's interesting when I look at what we were able to do at Molo, a lot of it is driven by the people. We're calling the same drivers, we're calling the same customers. But to differentiate your business, you really do need to have extremely talented people that understand the ins and outs of what you're trying to do, and it's been fun to help customers find the right talent to be able to drive their business forward, and that's what most of my network is. It's CEOs of brokerages, and being able to help them is a lot of fun, and the training aspect is just near and dear to my heart. I've been doing that for 15 years and I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was gonna say this is a combination that I haven't heard before, which is the recruiting side of business we have. You know, there's a lot of great recruiters in the industry, we know that but then the training side as well. There's not as much in terms of training resources and you're now gonna be combining the two of these. Is there gonna be a SaaS product with it? Is there already SaaS product on the training side, or how?
Speaker 2:are you gonna?
Speaker 2:train yeah, yeah, tell me a little more about that, yep. So the first version of the training platform is online on demand, along with live events that we run. So the community has access on the membership side to take any courses whenever you want, get feedback on how you performed, connect and network with people within the community, and then we'll run on demand live in person and online sessions. So we'll do enterprise selling sessions, a session with the CEO. Let's talk about all the different things it takes to move forward large opportunities. How do you market yourself? Linkedin. Let's talk about professional sales skills, presentation skills. A lot of those things will be on demand so that people get a chance to hear from others in the space, and I'm excited about that. But it'll be a monthly membership for people that have access to the training platform.
Speaker 1:Very cool and it sounds like tell me if I'm wrong about this but there's some custom training in there, so a company could work with you to maybe create some custom training solutions for their team. Is that correct, or is it all gonna be more generic training?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so in the beginning it's gonna be out of the box training specifically to sales, so not cater to any type of organization or any type of industry. I wanna be able to help people in the broader sales ecosystem understand how to progress themselves, and one of the things I learned early on is that if you're not seeking new knowledge to improve, you're gonna get left behind by the competition, Like you really do have to find ways to improve every single day. Long term, there probably will be an aspect of us being able to create custom content that caters to a particular organization. I think that probably comes Q2 of 24. But in the beginning it's gonna be stuff that I've spent years creating and things that I think are relevant to people and a sales seat to just upscale themselves.
Speaker 1:Very cool man. Well, I thought I heard a little customization there. It sounds like maybe it's down the road.
Speaker 2:But that's exciting man.
Speaker 1:I'm really happy for you. You're doing this on your own. You got a team that you're doing this with. How are you going about this one?
Speaker 2:Same. So building out a team of really strong qualified recruiters on the talent side, and then I will continue to build a team of facilitators on the training side to help pop in and manage and lead sessions. But I've got a great team right now. It's been a blast building with them and seeing what they're able to do and their ability to come in and execute for the partners that we're working with now has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:I love it, man. I'm so excited for you. Just love seeing entrepreneurs do their thing, and that's what you're doing, man, so that's incredibly exciting. And how can people learn about this and connect with you those maybe haven't connected with you yet?
Speaker 2:Yes, so my social handle on most things is Will Jenkins WCJ, so you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm very active there, also pretty active on Twitter Will Jenkins WCJ. Instagram, will Jenkins WCJ. And then the new business is wwwjourneydeliverscom, and that is our website. Our LinkedIn is Journey. You'll probably look up Journey Delivers, or you'll find a link to it from my LinkedIn, and over time we'll begin to put content on YouTube and other places like that. But I'm pretty prominent on LinkedIn and Twitter, so two easiest places to get a hold of me.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Are you getting into the Twitter to the Freidex? Are you getting into that?
Speaker 2:conversation. I'm happy in it. I'm in there, right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hilarious. It's a lot of fun, man, it's been really good. Will man listen? I'm so excited for you. Thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to be with us here on Standing Out. And, man, I'm pulling for you. Man, anything we need to help you out, don't ever hesitate to reach out. But I'm excited for you, man.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I appreciate it, man. I love what you're doing and thank you for giving me a chance to join the show. Of course, man, We'll talk to you real soon, Will? We'll see you buddy.
Speaker 1:All right, I'll see you. All right, everybody, make sure you come back every Tuesday for Standing Out and just a couple of things coming up. We're getting to the new year. Our next episode is gonna be in January. Can't wait for that. We also have a couple of events that we're gonna hopefully see you out in the new year. We're gonna be well.
Speaker 1:First of all, I hope you enjoyed Risa Cross America recently. That was a great event, but we're gonna be at Manifest in February. We're gonna be at Broker Carrier Summit in Kansas City in April of 2022. We've got the TMSA Elevate Conference in June of 2020. I'm sorry, 2024. Did I say 2022? Man, I'm losing my mind here. It's time for a break. It's time for a holiday break, everybody. But hopefully we see you out there on the road and we hope, more than anything, that you have a wonderful holiday season with you and yours. Enjoy Christmas, enjoy New Year's. We will see you guys next year on Standing Out show about sales marketing leadership Brought to us by our good friends over at SPI Logistics. Be sure to check them out at successspi3plcom. We'll see you guys real soon, midsummer.