Ever found yourself wrapping gifts and suddenly struck by a business revelation? That's precisely what happened to Marina Brown, the trailblazing founder of Moniva. In our latest episode, we journey with Marina as she unfolds her leap from the comforts of corporate America to the dynamic world of entrepreneurship.
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.
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://success.spi3pl.com/
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.
Ever found yourself wrapping gifts and suddenly struck by a business revelation? That's precisely what happened to Marina Brown, the trailblazing founder of Moniva. In our latest episode, we journey with Marina as she unfolds her leap from the comforts of corporate America to the dynamic world of entrepreneurship.
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.
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://success.spi3pl.com/
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.
What's up everybody and welcome to another episode of Standing Out, a podcast about sales, marketing and leadership. I'm Trey Griggs, your host, so glad to have you with us today and shout out to our friends over at Highway for the great apparel today. Listen, if you're needing help qualifying carriers and making sure you keep the bad actors out of your business, out of your freight brokerage, be sure to check them out at gohighwaycom. Couple announcements. Before we start today's show with our phenomenal guest, be sure to sign up for the Broker Carrier Summit. It's coming to Kansas City April 22nd through 24th of this year. Register now at brokercarriersummitcom. You're not going to want to miss it. It's all about conversations and networking and building relationships with carriers and brokers to do business together with legitimate players in the game. So again, make sure you sign up for that brokercarriersummitcom. It's going to be the best event that you go to in 2024.
Speaker 1:Also, starting February 1st, we got a little change on the show. We're going to be streaming everything strictly to YouTube, so make sure you check us out over there. Go to YouTube and search for beta underscore podcast, underscore network, the beta podcast network. Be sure to subscribe and turn on those notifications so you never miss an episode. We're going to be building up our YouTube channel. You can find all of our content over there, including episodes of Word on the Street, the Edge and Standing Out. All right, we got a great guest on the show today. So excited to have her on the show. She is a founder in the industry with a lot of experience doing something new. So everybody give it up for our good friend, marina Brown of Moniva.
Speaker 2:What's up? How are you, marina? Hey, I'm like pumped up and ready to go.
Speaker 1:Ready to run through a wall. That's right. We're going to have a great time today. So glad that you are on the show today. I got to tell you, my friend. It has been so much fun getting to know you, hearing your story and what you're building right now, which is very exciting. I love seeing innovation and entrepreneurs taking a risk. So take a moment real quick and tell everybody a little bit about yourself and about what you're building over at Moniva.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I spent 20 years in corporate America and it was a great journey, loved it, spent a lot of time in electronic payments and banking and then followed up with some transportation experience, and I've always felt like I need to do something on my own. Like you know, sometimes when you have that gut, feel that there's more to life that you want to achieve. And so last year about this time actually it's been close to a year you know, people say I got this idea in the shower. Well, I was actually wrapping Christmas presents and I was like you know what this has always been, as the sorrows in supply chain have always been such a pain. I've experienced it personally. I've always wanted to do something about it, and why not? There's some research in the market couldn't find really the product that I would have adopted if I was the one driving freight brokerages, and so that's how our journey started.
Speaker 1:I love this story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what we ended up doing is helping freight brokers really predict the any additional as a sorrows that are going to come up on loads, and then enabling them to have a good conversations with their shipper about pricing predictability. And then, if it so happens afterwards, as sorrows still come up, then we give them an opportunity to communicate dollars quicker, provide visibility to them, to accounts payable and brokers, and then ultimately end up paying those out. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:We're going to dig into that a little bit more in just a minute. Before we do that, though, we have to ask first of all thank you for being on the show. We love to give our guests a little swag item to say thank you. So do you want a coffee mug, a standing out coffee mug or a standing out water bottle? Which one do you prefer?
Speaker 2:I would take the coffee mug.
Speaker 1:I'm a coffee mug.
Speaker 2:And a coffee, beautiful yes.
Speaker 1:How many cups of coffee a day are you plowing through?
Speaker 2:Probably like two to three, but they have to happen before 10 o'clock in the morning, Otherwise I can't sleep.
Speaker 1:You know your body regulation. You got it all figured out at that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, getting older is no fun, that's for sure. I used to drink coffee all the way through the day, but not anymore.
Speaker 1:Wow. Well, you know that's a life I don't know. I've never had a cup of coffee, so I appreciate coffee.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how can you survive? Oh my gosh, how do you survive?
Speaker 1:There's a whole story behind it about why I don't drink coffee. It's kind of weird and gross. We won't go into it, but I just. I never. I've never enjoyed it Like I've. I've sipped it a little bit. I don't like bitter things, but I love the smell of it. I love making it for other people. So coffee is a great thing, it's just not my thing.
Speaker 2:Question Do you drink beer?
Speaker 1:I don't no.
Speaker 2:Oh, there you go, another bitter taste, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, most bitter tastes wine, I mean anything bitter I tend to stay away from. But no, no, no hate for the coffee drinkers out there. My wife is a big coffee drinker. My two daughters are becoming big coffee drinkers, so we'll get that coffee mug out to you and hopefully you can enjoy a few cups of coffee out of that, which would be great. All right, so let's talk a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey. I did not know that you were wrapping gifts last year and went man, I need to do this. I think that a lot of people have those kind of experiences, but they tend to be too afraid to try. What was it in this, in this idea that you had this vision where you're like I'm going to go for it? And was there fear? Was there concern? And how'd you push through that?
Speaker 2:I would say any entrepreneurial journey is always filled with fear and uncertainty, like I think the two just come together and I felt like this was the right time. You know, sometimes a lot of people don't go into entrepreneurship because of the financial unpredictability right, especially if you have family, like in our scenario. We were a dual income household, right, and we have kids. It's very hard for you know, one of the spouses to just say you know what? I'm just going to quit my job and go do something that I truly believe in. So we were coming off of a situation like that. But things just worked out that I was able to do some consulting on the side while standing up this business and the two kind of walked hand in hand.
Speaker 2:I would say that it was scary initially.
Speaker 2:I didn't have, I didn't know very many entrepreneurs, right, when you're in corporate America, you walk with people in corporate America and I didn't know that there was a community of entrepreneurs in Omaha that were really close knit.
Speaker 2:We have, you know, behind I'm sure other people have it around the country, but we have a organization called 1 million cups and basically what 1 million cups does is gathers communities of entrepreneurs every Wednesday at 830 in every city around the country and they hear from an entrepreneur, their story, they learn, they ask questions and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:But the amount of networking that happens in those places is phenomenal. And so I walked in those doors like super scared, not knowing what the heck I was, I was doing, and these folks really embraced me, started giving me all the feedback and all of the learning opportunities to go from from zero to growing your business, because the skills that you pick up in corporate America are completely different from what you need in order to run your own business. You know, in in in corporate America, you're supported by armies of other skill sets and when you're running your own business, you have to be everything right, from the marketing department, from to sales to product development, to organizing development teams and running with your Lego and pricing and all that stuff. So it was a huge learning curve, but that's I actually ended up making it because of the support of the entrepreneurial community around me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're never going to. You're never going to hear hate and disrespect from entrepreneurs Like they. They have the most respect for people who are willing to throw their hat in the ring and give it a shot. And you know it's only the people that are not in the arena that are. You know, the ones that are throwing the accusations, the, the, the discouragement. You know all that kind of stuff, heckling you, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:So I agree with you. Yeah, it's good to have a group of those people and that's actually how we met, which was great. We got to meet through Valus, which is, you know, nate Schuitt's group of founders, which is a phenomenal organization. It's, it's growing. It's just it's probably one of my favorite calls every month is getting on there and hearing from people like yourself and sharing the struggles that I have and other people going. Yeah, I went through that too. Here's what we did, or here's how I overcame that. You realize you're not alone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's really important. One of the things that you hear as an entrepreneur is all of the success stories. Right, everybody talks about. You know the people that made it to $1 million their first year and $100 million in five years. Well, you don't hear very often is the everyday stories of people who work two jobs, work nights and weekends to to make it, people who struggle with their sales, and and I think that's kind of what you get in these groups, especially in Nate's group, is hearing from real people and real stories and ultimately realizing that hey, there's others that are in the same boat like me, and it kind of gives you the motivation to to keep going and make a difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I encourage people that if they have these visions and ideas like you, had to give it a shot. Maybe start on the side, start as a side hustle or find a way to make it work. But it's just so important that that our world gets to experience these products and that entrepreneurs get to experience the journey you know. And if anybody's out there, especially in the logistics world, that wants to learn more about ballast, just go to logisticsfounderscom. Nate will help you out with that. I'm telling you it is. It has radically changed my business being a part of that group.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. It's super supportive and and I love Nate he's he's done a really good thing that I think a lot of entrepreneurs in this space really need.
Speaker 1:It makes the scary a little less scary here out of the people, that's for sure. It's still scary, you know there's still unpredictable, but but so is life. So it was. I'm glad that we met through that group and I'm glad to hear about what you're doing. So let's dig in a little bit about what Moniva is accomplishing. So you lived in the corporate world for a while and you experienced the pain of unpredictable assesorial charges. I mean, that's the world that you lived in for a long time. You saw that, you felt the pain of it and then you just felt I want to do something about that. So let's talk about how big this problem is. What does this typically look like for a freight broker, for a carrier? Like what? What is the experience like? And is it? Is it just LTL? Is it truckloads? Is it all modes? Talk a little bit more about that.
Speaker 2:So the the assesorial problem is particularly pervasive in LTL, but it also occurs in full truckload and I'm sure everybody that's listening to this is going to know what I'm talking about. But you have carrier sales reps, who's primarily responsible for their delivery. So the real responsibility is to book new freight with their carriers Right. Instead, what they do is spend 20% of their time at a minimum having to deal with payment issues on all loads, and what that looks like is accounts payable calling you today to find out hey, what's that additional charge for $350 on a load from 10 days ago? Maybe your carrier put into a warehouse it was supposed to be a quick offloading one and a half hour process turns into a three and a half hour process, for the carrier charges you right.
Speaker 2:But as a carrier sales rep, you're handling like hundreds of loads per day and you probably don't remember exactly what happened. So you're digging through your inbox. You can't find what you're looking for. You're calling the carrier carriers already frustrated because of the situation that occurred, and so it's a no win for everybody. And while you know we're trying to resolve this situation over phone and email, you end up not being able to bill your shipper for the freight that was already delivered.
Speaker 2:So what money was trying to do is two things. The first one is let's give you visibility as a carrier, sales rep or as a broker a job together. Let's give you visibility in real time into all as a sorrows that are coming in, before the invoicing process actually happens. Then you get a chance to approve those charges, communicate them to the ship, to your shipper, so that you can ensure you can get paid for them. We sync up all of your systems and then, ultimately, when you get, when the invoice from the carrier comes in with additional charges, just now everybody's on the same page and the invoice gets processed straight through. So that's number one.
Speaker 2:The next step to visibility is predictability. So not only I give you the charges that are actually happening, but let me help you predict. The charges will occur on this load in the conversation that you're having with your shipper before you even take on that load. So you call the shipper and you want the load. You're negotiating on the pricing. Now you have the ability to say, hey, this type of facility usually charges lump fees or there's additional detention. That often occurs here. So let's plan for those before you actually conclude the pricing negotiation, so that you never even have to worry about those additional assasorials that will come up afterwards and how to resolve any potential conflicts.
Speaker 1:And a lot of is the predictability based upon. Maybe a location like at this location there seems to always be this, an assasorial, and so trying to collect that historical information to predict is that what is based upon?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of that right. Is it a residential location? Is it specific warehouses that may be located in particular parts of city that are harder to access, or you just have unreliable crews that work at those places? There's so many different situations that you can handle, but a lot of this is using historical data to help you basically predict the future. That's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think about whenever somebody asked me for something two weeks ago. I have a hard time finding it or figuring out exactly what went on or where the problem was. There's a lot of research that's involved, a lot of time that goes into that, and that's me not having 100 loads a day that I'm dealing with. So I can imagine how difficult that is. In an LTL environment where you have so many shipments going through the system on the daily and weekly basis, to try to keep up with the details of that has to be incredibly difficult. So that's exciting to hear about that. What's been the reception so far in the marketplace in terms of talking about it? Cause, as a founder, like you said earlier, you're the sales and marketing team, so you're out there talking to potential customers. What's the reception been like so far?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think like what we're seeing is that every place where we go or every broker that we go and talk to basically pitches us back our sales deck, because you start talking about the problem and there's not a single person that will tell you I don't have any problems with accessories, and so it's a conversation about how big is the problem, and oftentimes I'll tell you sometimes people don't actually realize the amount of time that their brokers spent on dealing with these issues. I sometimes compare it to the old days of trek and trace. Do you remember when we had teams of people that, basically, that all they did was call carriers on where are you, how soon you're gonna arrive at the destination, and so that was their job, and today this is all automated. Well, the same thing is happening with payments and as a sorrows. So that quickly translates for folks, and the fact that we can now eliminate a lot of these calls and conversations, similar to how we eliminated the tracking conversations, is fairly receptive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you wonder where the time goes or where time is being lost, and if you don't really understand it, this is one of those buckets that could be a big cause for that. So it's a great problem to address and it's great to hear that the reception's been good. We're gonna take a quick break and we'll come back. We're gonna talk about leadership in just a moment, but we're gonna take a break to pay the bills. We wanna give a shout out to our sponsor, spi Logistics.
Speaker 1:Listen, if you're a freight broker out there and you're just tired of kind of having your own MC and all the back office support, or if you're a freight agent not quite happy with your home, be sure to check them out at successspi3plcom. They've got the technology systems, back office support to help you succeed. Click on the link that's gonna be in the show notes and in the comments. That'll take you directly to a landing page where you can fill out a form and learn more against successspi3plcom. Again, if you're a freight broker, just tired of that back office stuff, you just wanna stay in your lane. They're gonna help you out. Thanks again to our friends over at SPI Logistics. All right, we're gonna resume our conversation. And, marina, I gotta ask you about this, because we talked about the fact that you are the sales and marketing department. What are you doing to stand out? How are you getting the word out? How are you marketing yourself in a way that really helps you stand out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question A lot of social media. So I will be super frank. I've never been, you know, big in social media because, like to me, I've always been a doer right, you get things done, and when you get things done, people recognize that. You don't really have to go out there and shout from the rooftops about what you've achieved or what you plan on achieving. But this is a different ballgame. Like here, people don't know you and people don't know what you, what you're doing, what you want to do and who you are. And so a lot of social media posts, learning materials, any, any information I can share from conversations that I potentially may have with, with potential customers, about the state of the industry and sharing that with the community and ultimately spreading the word out, making a lot new friends right, like whether it's through the Nades balance group or just purely through, you know, trade shows and even on LinkedIn. That's been a great opportunity. I used to be very shy in in my previous life and I've learned to make friends really quickly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hard to be shy. You know, if you're pretty shy, it's a little more difficult. Some have pulled it off, but it's pretty difficult, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't pretend. I agree, you have to have like a really good co-founder who is more on the sales side and we don't wear a technical crew.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah. And what are you? One of the big things about social media too. I mean, it's powerful, it's free, it's so easy to use in that regard, but content some people engage with some content more than others. We've got the meme world out there. We've got, you know it, gifts running all over the place and and fun content with educational content. What has been you've gained the biggest traction for you when it comes to social media? Are you in the meme game? Are you doing silly stuff or you trying to do more educational content? What's been your? You know modus operandi so far.
Speaker 2:I would say so. You know, chad GPT kind of changed the social media game a little bit, especially as it comes to like LinkedIn and other types of communication like that. There is so much Computer content out there. This is unfortunately. It's really boring to read, right and you can. You can kind of quickly start realizing what's been written by Chad GPT versus what's really a human story. To me, what's worked the most is just telling personal stories of not personal but professionally related stories that Maybe I just had a conversation with a carrier and they expressed certain pain points and we, you know, debated about what solutions for predicting Assessorios would look like, and so turning around and sharing those stories with their larger community, I would say that this is probably gotten the biggest, the biggest direction for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really good. Talking about people is always valuable. Telling stories is so critical to do that, and I'm with you I think people are using AI the wrong way. It's very powerful, but I think that AI should be used to help with ideation or help with maybe, like some, some creativity, but not to write it. You know you have to put in those personal touches. It has to be your voice. People recognize that. You know, people just recognize that. I've had people, you know, I've got a Our communications director sometimes posts on my social media account and people oftentimes know and it's not me, you know, even though that's really good content written, it's just not written in my voice, and so you know AI he has even more trouble with that right now. Maybe you'll get better down the road. I don't think it's there yet. You know it's not.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I think I think it has some. It has some ways to go, and I'm not sure that we really Want it to speak for ourselves, right? I think having your own unique voice is what people want to hear, and you know, for my experience, that's the stories that people read from the ones that I post.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and you know, the more computer content that's out there, the more that my content, personally written by myself, will stand out. So Exactly might help me out. Actually, the more people that do that. So. But you know it's important to think through your marketing strategy and what that looks like, how you're gonna stand out, how you're gonna Draw attention, get some traction, get people to you, know better, understand what you do, the problem that you saw. So I think you're on the right track. I think that's really exciting. Let's switch gears for a minute and talk about leadership. You know, when you go from corporate America, you could have a leadership position within corporate America, but when you become an entrepreneur, you're the leader. It's all on you. How is your leadership style changed going from corporate America to now being an entrepreneur?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. Actually, I have always been known for being a very decisive leader, right? You go out there and you use the data to make decisions. You lead with integrity.
Speaker 2:Right, if your teams are on a call, resolving a problem at 12 o'clock At night, you're with them, help helping resolve the problem. Very people oriented leader, right, and I've led pretty large teams in my past being an entrepreneur. Obviously you are a two, three people team. You don't know all the answers. There's a lot of uncertainty about how you're going to find your product market fit. Is what you're building and what you're selling truly resonating With people? And if your first few customers are not necessarily friends and family but close network partners, will the people that are one or two steps removed from that network going to take your product right?
Speaker 2:It's a constant exploration and you just don't know the answers always and that's been kind of a challenge right, going from a Certainty and I know I always know what to do in most situations to Sometimes you're like I'm not quite sure what the right path here is. But I think the persistence is the thing that really we, you know, kind of separates entrepreneurs that ultimately end up being successful versus those that drop out is you might not know the answers, but you have to persist and you have to keep moving forward. I always say, like your next journey is just one step away, right, and every day you wake up, you take that one step and as long as you're moving forward, you, as long as you're talking to people, talking to customers or your potential customers, and as long as You're focused on trying to resolve real issues in the industry, you are Don't succeed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with you. I think the entrepreneurship game is all about Longevity, just just sticking it out. You know, the ones that end up winning are the ones that just don't quit. You know the? The word picture that came to mind as you were talking just now is you know the difference between leading in corporate America and leading as an entrepreneur is Corporate America is like if you were in the military as a leader and you were, you were on a base where there's consistency, there's systems or structure of predictability and consistency in that regard, as opposed to leading in a war where it's completely Unpredictable and you're having to learn on the fly and make adjustments and figure things out and change strategies. Like to me.
Speaker 1:That's the difference you go from being in a pretty steady, stable environment in corporate America to the Wild Wild West Trying to figure it out, and that's a different. It's a totally different environment to try to navigate. And again, I think that the key is just keep walking, keep taking the next step, don't quit. You know that's. That's what the entrepreneurship game is really all about longevity.
Speaker 2:Yes, and the other thing is in corporate America, people report to you, right, whether they like it or not. There's usually a culture of you know leadership from a higher order of higher key. Yes, and in our situation you have to really sell the vision and and truly how people believe that what you're building is going to make a difference in that industry. So it's a lot more convincing and motivating people. Then you know just what exists, the hierarchy that exists in Corporate America.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just heard that today that the the number one job of an entrepreneur is Casting vision and recasting vision and recasting vision and reminding people of the vision and keeping that front and center, because when you're, when you're the leader out front, you have a view of things, of the people that are maybe behind you Don't get to see I thought that was a good word picture as well to think about the responsibility of leadership to remind people what we're trying to build here, what we're working towards, what difference we're gonna make, and that's you know, it's, it's ultimately selling. I mean, that's what you're doing. You're convincing people that come along on this crazy journey to make a difference.
Speaker 2:So you're like, you're like chief motivator, right.
Speaker 1:That's actually why I changed my title, so you know, when you become, when you start a company, you're like the founder and the CEO or whatever. I changed it to chief encouragement officer because I really feel like that's a big part of my job is to encourage everybody else and Keep going and be more like a coach in that regard. So lots of great stuff. That's great to share that, marina, and your journey. We got to take a break and have a little fun on the show. Listen, that's a lot of serious stuff, a lot of good content. We just showed there, but we had a little fun, all right. So we're gonna play a game and this game is called what song? I'm Marina. So here's what's gonna happen Our producer is gonna put a banner up on the screen with a set of emojis, all right, and you and I have to work together to try to figure out what song is being represented.
Speaker 1:Oh my, those emojis and hint. These are some of the greatest love songs of all time. Don't know why that category came up today, but that's what we're rolling with today. It's the famous, the greatest love songs of all time. So let's go ahead and roll it. Here's the first one. What do? We got here. We got a person walking to you walking up to you.
Speaker 1:Good Thumb is good Pointing at you. Okay, this is going to be our test round. Okay, this is our test round. Let's just kind of stay over headed with that?
Speaker 2:Did I mention that English is not my first language?
Speaker 1:We're throwing all the excuses out right now. Okay, well, let's answer that first one. Let's let's see what that was. Someone like you, kind of Okay, all right. I can see the you, but to someone like you that's difficult. Okay, all right, love songs, here we go.
Speaker 2:So raise me up.
Speaker 1:Oh, you lift me up, no, oh no, that's not it.
Speaker 2:My girl, oh my gosh Okay.
Speaker 1:We stink at this, marina. This is not good. This is not going well. All right, we have to cut this out Right. Here we go the next one. I was an eyeball. Infinity love. I will always love you, let's go, come on. We're on the board.
Speaker 2:That's one of my favorite songs. That's a great song to you All right.
Speaker 1:We're on the board. We're on the board. Okay, here we go. Okay, this is you. And then you musics your song, your song, billy Joel your lyrics, oh, your song, let's go Is that Billy Joel? I think it's Billy Joel.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you're on my team. I don't know who?
Speaker 1:that is All right. Anyways, we got that one, okay. And then this is a, this is a band. Hello, hello, hello.
Speaker 2:Hello, hey, is it me?
Speaker 1:Yes, nice work, marina, nice work, all right. So we've gotten, like, I think, the last three or four, I'm not even keeping track but we're doing good. All right, this is a final round, last one, here we go. Last one, let's try to get this one.
Speaker 2:Boy loves girl, man loves woman.
Speaker 1:When a man loves a woman. When a man loves a woman. Let's go Listen, marina. We started off slow, but we came on strong there at the end. I'm not gonna lie, that was that worked out. That worked out pretty well, pretty well.
Speaker 2:Okay, we also like to do it. It's probably going easy on us, but that's good.
Speaker 1:Well, you know the. You know those were tough. Some of the first ones were tough, you know, if you didn't didn't recognize those, those were a little tough, but we got quite a few. I think we may have laid down four or five there, so it's pretty pretty good there.
Speaker 1:All right, we also like to do a random question of the day, just have a little bit of fun as well. So today's random question of the day is what is the wackiest thing you ever did to help a friend? To help a friend, you think of something crazy you've done to help a friend.
Speaker 2:Get in a car accident.
Speaker 1:You got into a car accident to help a friend.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, I got a call from a friend one night that she was in a um they were in a car accident.
Speaker 1:I thought no. I got in a car accident. Oh, you did Okay.
Speaker 2:Help a friend. So I got a call one night from a friend who was in a little bit of a unpleasant, slash, scary situation and I quickly got in in the car. Once you know it, there was black ice on one of the intersections and before you know it I was staring at the light pole in the middle of my car.
Speaker 1:That is a crazy outcome.
Speaker 2:to help a friend, I don't know if that's wackiest, but it's. Given the fact that there's so much snow outside right now, that's probably the first thing that comes to mind.
Speaker 1:First thing that came to mind. Yeah, wackiest, I don't know about wackiest or craziest, but I did drive cross country to help a friend who bought a new car in a in a like a different city, like he went and bought the car and then we I flew down to met him and we drove across the country to get it back to his house and I flew home and it was pretty fun. I think it was a good journey, a little road trip, but you know, it's not too often. You get a call from friends that says hey, can you fly to here and drive with me home Cause I don't want to drive by myself all the way home. So I was kind of. I was kind of crazy, but it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:You're lucky to have friends like that, though.
Speaker 1:Pretty adventurous.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Um the fact that someone goes, you mean they trust you right.
Speaker 1:They could be asking me to come over and help them, like birth a cow or something. I mean not being that would be pretty crazy. So I'm, I'm going to take the car trip across the country is not being not being too bad. So that's a pretty good, pretty good random question today. That was, that was definitely random, all right. So, uh, marisa, let's, let's talk about um, what is um, what's next for Marina? Sorry, marisa, oh my gosh, marina. What is next for Moniva? What, what's, uh, what's on the horizon? What are you guys working on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we um. So, as I mentioned earlier, we are, primary focus right now is to provide visibility into, as a sorrows uh, real time, and now we're starting to get a lot more into the data science, ai and predictability um development, which is actually I used to um, you know background here. Um, I, after I graduated from college, I went to uh USC for a bit to study artificial intelligence, and so that was a long time ago. I'm not going to date myself, um, but when that that long time ago, you know AI really was more around. Hey, let's get you from point A to point B in the fastest manner. Right Now we're light years away from from that, but, um, I really kind of enjoyed the experience and stuck with me.
Speaker 2:Um ended up leading the data science teams um in in some of my corporate career. So, ultimately, uh, that's the thing that excites me a lot about our technology is the artificial intelligence ingredient that we are adding, and I know AI is such a buzzword today, um, but I've seen AI work um in in transportation quite well, and it's that's kind of the element that we want to bring to brokers is helping you with true data science and true artificial intelligence to get to a better cash maintenance, to get to a more load life cycle financial predictability. Um, I think that will have real impact on these businesses.
Speaker 1:Love that Absolutely. That's well. I'm excited to see how this all develops, how AI plays a role. I'm excited for AI. I think it's still very immature and still new. Um, you got the largest companies in the in the world still trying to figure it out. So you know, hopefully it it it evolves pretty quickly and actually produces a lot of positive results. So we'll have to see. We'll have to see how all of that that works out. Uh, marina, what's the? What's the easiest way that somebody can reach out to you if they want to learn more about you or about Moniva?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Um, my LinkedIn profile is probably the quickest way to connect and I don't know if you make that available in the show notes, but look for Marina Brown, Omaha, Moniva. I'm the only one around here, so definitely we'll be able to find me. Otherwise, go to Moniva. Uh, m o n e I v a dot com and we can connect there as well.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Well, uh, marina, it's so great to have you on the show. Thank you for stopping by. I'll have you back on to hear how it's going. Uh, you know, down the road, maybe another year from now, how far you've you've made it in that regard, um, but thanks so much for stopping by today.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Trade. This was exciting. Thanks for having me on board.
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