Hello and welcome to the Bootstrapper's Guide to Logistics, the podcast highlighting founders doing it the way that doesn't get a lot of attention. We're here to change that by sharing their stories and inspiring others to take the leap. It's a roller coaster ride that you might ultimately fail. That's when I kind of knew I was on to something. It was very hard. It truly is building a legacy.
Speaker 2:The more life you live, the more wisdom you have.
Speaker 1:Because we are where we're supposed to be, kind of answering the call. Don't shoulder entrepreneurship on your own. I'm your host, nate Schutz. Let's build something together from the ground up.
Speaker 1:Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Bootstrapper's Guide to Logistics. We continue sharing stories of founders and supply chain, like we have going on almost four years now. Which is absolutely mind-boggling to me that after four years there's still interest in the stories of the people that start the companies, more so than just what the companies themselves do. And that's what I think the universal appeal is is we love seeing people accomplish difficult things in the face of adversity and overcoming odds and sharing their painful lessons, often with others, so that they don't have to make the same mistakes. And it takes a special kind of person to be willing to open up and share the not so pretty details, because what you see on social media is usually just the victories, and we intended to do some of that.
Speaker 1:Of course there's a lot of value in that, but there's often more value in the hardship and the stories that don't see the light of day, and so I don't know exactly where we're going to end up on that arc of a story today, but our guest is Mark Cleveland, who is an executive. He's been a six-time founder. He has as an investor. He now focuses on the M&A space and does a lot of work in the supply chain arena. Your resume is too long for me to go any deeper than that, mark. Good morning, welcome to the show, and I'm glad we're finally getting a chance to do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've tried this two or three times. It's like a third time's the charm.
Speaker 1:It is. So with a career as rich and storied as yours, can you give us a fly overview of what you've done in the supply chain industry first, and then we can shift into your entrepreneurial pursuits?
Speaker 2:Wow Depends on how far back the helicopter can fly. I got involved in the transportation industry as a test, a personal test. I had started a satellite communications installation and services business right out of college and a software business. I ran both of those companies. An enterprise software development company in the 80s was kind of avant-garde and satellite TV installations, satellite master antenna television systems for cable head ends and, you know, hotels and motels, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Um, I, I sold both those companies and I decided that, uh, I'd gotten a lot of feedback as an entrepreneur and an owner over an eight year period, that, uh, nine years, I, that, I, I, of course I own the company. I should be motivated and I should be highly excited about it and I should be drive, drive, drive. And you know, maybe I expect too much of other people and I thought, well, I'm the next. After I sold my company, I'm going to go to work for the most boring business I can possibly imagine and test myself and see if I could be the employee that I always expected everyone else to be. And Jubitz Truck Stop in Portland, oregon, which turned out to be the Disneyland of truck stops, and a family-run business by Fred and Al Jubitz and Mo Jubitz A spectacular career opportunity, but now I'm an employee with no stock and I'm working in the truck stop industry, which, of course, turned into opportunities to work at DAT with that fabulous management team and we sold tire and retread manufacturing plant products that we controlled, provide services and facilitate over-the-road and regional trucking organizations, plus DAT, with the nation's largest database of available freight loads and trucks. I got a chance to work with Joel McGinley and Mark Cameron and a whole bunch of spectacular people over the years. Yeah, it turned out to be a spectacularly interesting business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it turned out to be a spectacularly interesting business and I think I proved that I could be the employee I always expected everyone to be, and then you got the itch eventually to move on to another thing.
Speaker 2:I know you also spent time doing Trip Pack, which I assume was adjacent to the truck stop industry, just with what it actually is. I got recruited to join truckload management inc. Which was the brand owner of trip pack, and we had 3 000 drop boxes and shipping and consigning and fleet uh terminal locations nationwide. Uh overnight courier business that we then consolidated and sorted and distributed with our own courier network fleet documents, expedited delivery and my mission. I came in to take the technology that we had been developing and really scale it because we have the documents before anybody else does.
Speaker 2:This is before truck stop scanning and we were a leader in that space this is before imaging in the phone and reliable document movement by apps, and we were of course pioneering those activities as well. But we had a football field full of people handling CRST and Swift and Schneider documents and it was a really fascinating thing to be in a position where for about five years I saw all of the dispatch data for a vast majority of America's trucking companies in one place In service to those fleets. I learned an awful lot and we performed very, very well and eventually the company sold to ACS Affiliated Computer Services out of Dallas and that gave me my opportunity to work for a Fortune 500 company for a few years.
Speaker 1:And so you just kept evolving One of the things that already stands out. Of course, you and I have had 100 conversations, so I know how your mind works, but for our listeners you hinted at a few things there. With TripPack, you saw an opportunity to innovate with data basically access to data earlier than others With Jubits, and then on the DAT side, sort of the same idea. You're pioneering some new insight or some new value that can be unlocked from an asset that's not being unlocked, and I think that that's a part of entrepreneurship that doesn't get enough attention.
Speaker 1:We focus a lot on the hustle and grind culture. We focus a lot on the Silicon Valley guy in a garage startup narrative, but we often don't talk about being able to see around the corner when nobody else has done anything yet. It's easy to follow a business model that somebody else created, but to be able to see the early signs of change in an industry or in technology as a whole seems to be one of your unique abilities that you can find that rare insight inside of a mass of information and and take out the noise and just find the signal. And then you're one of those folks that you just go. You're a deep ender. You go off the deep end all the way into that opportunity. So how do you, or what do you, attribute that skillset to?
Speaker 2:Interesting we. We can go back. I spent nine years at Jubits Corporation. We could go all the way back to that. I was an entrepreneur before that. At Jubitz Corporation. We could go all the way back to that. I was an entrepreneur before that.
Speaker 2:But at Jubitz I had an intentional process to sit down with a roundtable, a driver's roundtable, truckers and at least twice a week for nine years and I gained a little weight doing this I would host truck drivers America's finest humans in, listen to the conversation and contribute to it, but lead it. I guess it feels like now, upon deep reflection. It feels a little bit like I was a podcast host with eight guests and eight people in the audience every single week, consistently looking for and listening for signals and they're closer to the market and closer to the problem. And we did essentially product development out of that activity and you know, if you're a Silicon Valley executive, you might not consider going to get knee deep and elbow wide with a trucker in that industry. I found that I respected them more. I appreciated their work, I understood what a fleet's challenges might be to operate and dispatch and you know, as you continue to work through, the great superpower I think is listening.
Speaker 1:That's where the insights come from, to begin with.
Speaker 2:That's where the insights come from. To begin with, I think so, and a good idea might be an entity all by itself. I like to imagine ideas as spiritual inspirations, little light bulbs floating around the universe, landing in my head trying to be born, and then, if I don't give it care, attention and water, it can never sprout and it leaves my brain and comes to yours, nate, because you're a fertile ground for making something happen. But I feel like ideas. They present themselves, and then it's about dedication and execution. How can you feed that and pull the energy that exists out of that listening experience and that idea and translate it into action? Um, I've done it a lot, I. I don't know why it's easy for me, um, but it is well, there's a creative element to it.
Speaker 1:Um, that is unique also. And I, I play music. I can't read a lick of it, but I can play by ear. If somebody, if I hear a melody, I can go over to the piano and play it. Or I can grab a guitar and figure it out in a couple of minutes, and to me that is not difficult. But, um, to others they're like wow, that's an incredible skill and it comes so easily to me that I almost take it for granted. And I assume you're. You, you not take it for granted, but you, you're leaning into your superpowers, which you know. For you they're not difficult.
Speaker 2:So post, let's, let's move past the kind of your early logistics ventures Then what was the idea that floated through the air and also accepting the fact that I don't know enough to make all the right decisions. And if you combine those things, I was right. After I left TripPack, we had a great. I had a great mergers and acquisitions experience there as somebody that got bought and, wow, I wanted to learn more about American manufacturing. I just spent a long period of time outsourcing jobs. You know, today the logistics industry is outsourcing jobs to Columbia. Or you know it's taking in Pakistan labor arbitrage. We were doing this in 2000. But what we were doing was taking Crete Carriers and their document management, opening mailroom teams. We were outsourcing their mailroom and imaging systems and also providing workflow for them. So I'm in the transportation industry and I see, then we sold to ACS and next thing, you know, we're in a follow the sun model. We've got I have 56 developers working for me all over the world and follow the sun model means you're distributing your workforce to where it's the least expensive and you're networked and the business model really lent itself to being efficient in that way.
Speaker 2:But I became super aware of the cost of job outsourcing. It made sense when it was from Nebraska to Ohio, but all of a sudden, I'm seeing it at scale internationally and globally and working and participating in that. So what I wanted to do was see if I could create jobs in the United States and what could I do? That would be a job creator and eventually, the criteria for getting into the stock business. There's four or five things that I wanted to do specifically into the stock business. There's four or five things that I wanted to do specifically Be a market leader, create a brand, be green from the start as a startup, be a technology leader and best in class. So I was looking at chicken processing plants to buy or packaging food packaging systems and eventually what happened was I decided to buy a position in Ellsworth Handcrafted Bicycles and help my junior high buddy after I left this big Fortune 500 job. I'm helping him do US domestic high-end mountain bike manufacturing in the United States.
Speaker 2:This is how I dropped some weight from my career. I said you know, I'm going to have to change the things I pay my professional attention to in order to drop 60 pounds here. And I became a bicycle manufacturer and I started traveling globally and expanding my global supply chain experience and re-engineering the supply chain in order to make the world's best mountain bike. So in order to promote the world's best mountain bike, I started a event management company that did 12-hour exotic and long-distance exotic cycling events with world-class competitors. So I'm at one of those events and in order to promote the event, to promote the experience, I went to this sock manufacturing teeny, tiny little activity and I bought 600 pairs of socks and I put my logo on them for the event and for Ellsworth and gave them away.
Speaker 2:But this event was unique. It's like 2006. It's the first time that female mountain bikes, female mountain bike professionals, were paid the same as male mountain bike professionals for a podium. I just looked at that and said you're kidding me. The females win 500 bucks and the guys win a thousand. You know, it's that sort of dichotomy. And so we had all the professional female racers from all over the country came out of the woodwork to compete in this event and support it our first year, and so did all the guys.
Speaker 2:So we had this Olympic event and all 600 socks got given away. And at the end of that day we're drinking beer like you would at a festival mountain bike race and chatting about how exciting it was, and people were coming up to me saying, yeah, this was a great race. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, where did you get these freaking socks? And if I heard that like 150 times that night. People had just put that product to an intense market research project and I didn't know it was happening until I recognized it and I thought, wow, that's the business I'm going to get in and it fit all the criteria for best in class high technology US domestic production. And that's how SwiftWake was born.
Speaker 1:So again, you are rare in the way that you go about solving problems. I can't imagine what it would be like to have been in your family around this period of time when I'm sure some around you were like, no, let's not let him leave the house because he's going to start another company. Like if he runs into somebody at the hardware store and he can't find the right hammer, he's going to go try to build it, make a new hammer company. Does that ring true?
Speaker 2:It feels exactly like that Even when I swear I'm not going to go try to build it, make a new hammer company. Does that ring true? It feels exactly like that Even when I swear I'm not going to start another company. I'm right now, like right now, in the middle of starting a new company, right now.
Speaker 1:Which would be company number?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, I just sold one, which makes it seven companies that I've started and sold in seven different industries, and this one will be yet a new industrial activity. We're going for some patents. I'll come back and tell you, maybe in a future episode, what we did. That blew people's hair off and it's really exciting because it's a fantastic idea. And these are the things like when you see a really good idea and then you go how in the world has this not been done? And you do a patent search and you look all over the market and you can't find anything and you're scratching your head. Well, it's up to your action-oriented, experience-based decision-making, human creative body to act.
Speaker 1:This is a dangerous question and I'm going to ask you in advance to not be diplomatic. Of the companies that you've started, do you have a favorite?
Speaker 2:Yes, swiftwick was the most fun because I lost the most weight. I was really, really intentional about building a company with A players from day one and we recruited salespeople that would go run 50 miles for lunch. Some of them qualified for Ironman National Championships in Kona. These were incredibly dedicated, physically fit men and women who you know I got to get my game on. To hang around, yeah, yeah, to hang around them right and to lead them. You know the CEO sets the weather.
Speaker 1:What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2:Well, it's an emotional and a spiritual and a, I think, a real thing. Maybe the CEO's most important role and we've talked about this recently is is, uh, to set the weather in the company. Um, the weather patterns. If we come in and it's a rainy, gloomy day, then we set the weather we're up to. We're supposed to be creating environments for other people to be successful, which includes acquiring resources. It includes making good decisions. It includes sometimes passing the decisions down to the front line where they can be made faster, and then occasionally using those as training opportunities and learning opportunities.
Speaker 2:But you set the weather by your attitude, and I had an experience there where the people that I hired and the nature of their chew-through-nails, goal-oriented attitude and the fact that we were building the world's best sock that set my weather. I had to go learn how to take better care of myself and to put some of my own needs as a leader and a human first, which included a fitness regimen and a commitment to learning that I formalized in that window of time. So I think Swiftwick is my favorite. I still own a tiny piece, sold that business, but I'm interested in their success and they still make the world's best sock.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned having a framework for Actually, I do have a Swiftwick request. By the way, I'd love to see a golf sock added to the collection.
Speaker 2:Well, every Swiftwick sock is a golf sock. Um, and there's a story there too.
Speaker 1:I actually wear them when I golf. Uh, I just wish there was a version that was a little lower cut. But that's a that's a separate show we can do yeah, that, that's a canoe sock, that's for your wife Uh, come for the logistics, stay for the humor. Uh, we, we we.
Speaker 2:We had an opportunity. Um, we went after golf. This is a good lesson for any business. Uh, my partner was an avid golfer, still is I. I was not so much of an avid golfer but I I could see that golf market would be great and we went after it. And we went after it with a vengeance, with a really talented golf professional to help us with that. And she just wasn't successful and we withdrew from the market. But we weren't not interested in it anymore. We just failed and we kept growing in the cycling and running and triathlon markets. But a few years later I hired somebody who was extraordinarily passionate about golf and he took the product to the caddies and the caddies all fell in love with the product and the caddies influenced the pros and the pros all. Next thing, you know, we've got a 70 market share in the pga tour, 100 gorilla, 100 successful. Now we're selling swiftwick socks in most major golf. Um, you know a lot of of the major golf shops in in great courses nationwide and the lesson there was it's exactly the same sock. It was introduced in a different way. It got traction because it outperforms any other sock.
Speaker 2:But the nugget. The moment is when Adam Smith won the Masters. And he's standing on the green and he raises his knee and his hand's in the air and he's got one leg out and one leg in front of him. And he's just on the green and he raises his knee and his hands in the air and he's got one leg out and one leg in front of him and he's just going yeah, and you can see it on the cover, and that lifted his pant leg and exposed the Swiftwick logo. That was the breakthrough moment. And the other breakthrough moment for us was with Camila Villegas, who used to do the spider pose and he'd get down and read the grass. Remember that Vaguely. Camilla is really the pro who introduced Swiftwick because he's so fitness oriented, one of the early fitness oriented professionals, a cyclist, and so he discovered us from cycling. He wore our socks and then everybody who would take a photograph of him trying to read the green. There was no way except to see the Swiftwick logo right beneath his line of sight. Sternum yeah.
Speaker 2:And plus, I think he had the most amazing gallery of females following him on the whole planet. So maybe they all bought them for their um, their their gift items for Christmas. But we, you know, between Camillo and Adam Scott and a few people who were and won, uh, we, we got significant traction in in golf.
Speaker 1:Well, and I swear by them, I, I wear them golfing too. This is not turning into a promo episode, but if you're listening, go check it out, because they are absolutely legit. When you first told me about them, I didn't tell you, but I actually went out and bought a pair within a week and it was part of my vetting of you. I was like Mark says these are the best socks in the world and I'm going to test them out and see if they are. And if they aren't, then Mark might not be. You know who he says he is. And I was like dang, these are really good socks.
Speaker 2:Dang Well, you know, I think it's just a lesson, right? So you try things that don't work the first time that doesn't mean you don't try them again. And I entered the sock business knowing absolutely nothing about textiles and became an expert over a seven-year period and I'm speaking at conferences and I'm the little brand that could and we can. And we kept trying things and sometimes we would try them with different recipe. It would taste better the next time. I think that's important in logistics. It's important in business. We don't have to be experts in the business. Sometimes our absolute naivete is a competitive weapon because we don't know what we can't do. So we don't enter any of these decision-making situations with preconceived notions based on 30 years of working in the industry about what doesn't work.
Speaker 1:Yes, you also seem to have a very candid and straightforward way of talking about failure. Most of the time, failure is something to be rejected or masked or not talked about, and yet you simply you said we tried and we failed, and there was no, it wasn't loaded. You just owned it and then moved on to the next thing. I've learned that lesson, and I think there is something to be said for that of. Sometimes it's just time to let it go. It's not.
Speaker 1:Not every idea needs to be a lifetime commitment, Not every business. Sometimes businesses are for seasons. They they work for two years or they work for eight years, and then it's time to move on to the next thing, Not because it is or isn't financially successful, but because it's not the right thing for you anymore. So do you have your own framework then? For because you could have you have a hundred ideas a week, but you've only got 24 hours a day. So how do you filter in and filter out beyond just the financial viability of a business and beyond? I like how you framed up Swiftwick. It met these five criteria of what I wanted to do next, but there has to be something else to it. Also, you got two brilliant ideas that are equal. How do you choose?
Speaker 2:I think the first thing is to approach that question with the attitude of a parent. I have two brilliant daughters I do not have to choose and one of them became a global supply chain's logistics expert and grew up in some of my businesses and is a superstar, and the other one became a doctor and they'd make their own choices. Businesses grow up, just like kids do, and we have to change our management style from the baby to the toddler to the first grader Terrible twos, right. It's constantly challenging us as parents to manage ourselves and set the environment for success. So that's my first secret is that I love all my companies, just like I love my children. Some of them have greater opportunities than others or maybe more natural skill sets that can be expressed, and some of them have. I think we all as parents, we see this kid has a lot of potential and is just not interested in achieving it for some reason.
Speaker 2:I don't know what that is. Maybe that's a season. Sometimes, you know, you add on the dynamics of marketplaces and markets give you signals about what's working, what's not working. Okay, I have a flaw related to failure, and that is I don't want to fail. I may be afraid of failure, and so it drives me harder. But failure is so informative and so important and in fact, in my view, failure we are failing all the time, like 100% of the time everything that I'm doing is a failure compared to something. So I just stopped comparing and start to enjoy whatever progress we made as a success, even if it felt like a failure because my expectations were too high, I think. Thirdly, I tried not in my more advanced age I try to settle expectations down. I think you know if a company has goals the team's not bought into, then the vision, values and culture and why we're doing what we're doing, then it doesn't matter how good executive leadership is, you're not going to achieve the way you expect to. So expectations are premeditated resentment and it's important to start every meeting with a little victory. All right, everybody, let's talk about our little victories. Like you can't come to one of my meetings without having a little victory, and I don't care what it is, but everybody starts reporting out some random whatever they consider to be a little victory. And you can't have progress without some setbacks, because you learn in that time what to do and sometimes you learn what not to do.
Speaker 2:And my grandfather taught me. He said, mark, if you want to be successful, you got to learn from the mistakes of the other guy. They're the least expensive kind and I just have had that drilled into my head all my life. You know, I observe and listen and watch for what's a mistake. Now does that mean that that move by that business was the right move or the wrong move at that time? Was it really a mistake? Or what can I learn from that and relatively adjust my approach to problem solving?
Speaker 2:And failure is just such a charged word. I had a hat literally I have a baseball hat with the word failure across the top and it made me uncomfortable wearing it. Test yourself, do something like that. You know how can you embrace failure? Because we're all some flawed example of humanity running around looking for a place to be loved. You know that's all a company is doing, that's all customers are doing, that's all we're doing. So let's set the weather right, let's set the environment. As leaders, let's be creative and try new things and see if we can hatch a new idea and give it some legs, and just listen.
Speaker 1:Have you thought about codifying your philosophy on a lot of these things? You've had mentors in your life. You've had business partners, friends, advisors that have, I'm sure, shaped much of your view on things and your ability to clearly articulate and communicate. That vision is contagious. It's part of why, you know, when you and I first met, I got to spend more time with this guy. You've got high energy, you've got really clear perspectives on what you know, think and believe and you follow through. Have you ever thought about writing a book?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I was at Swiftwick, I started writing a book called Do what Moves you, and I interviewed Bill Walton and Justin Wilson, the Indy 500 race car driver. Unfortunately, both of them have passed since then. I interviewed Camila Villegas. I had a plan, I started writing that book and then I got fearful of it. So I think that's once you go back to failure. It touches fear somewhere, and courage feels a lot like fear when you're in it. Fear somewhere and courage feels a lot like fear when you're in it. And I talked myself out of writing that book because I thought who wants to hear my story? Or who? How ego would I be? What kind of ego is driving me to write a book? And these are self-talk. This is self-talk that I have tried to learn to manage.
Speaker 2:So in 2024, january of 2024, I set a goal I want to do one thing every day that scares me, and I started looking for things that I was uncomfortable with. And when you're uncomfortable, you are at the edge of your known universe or you wouldn't be uncomfortable. These are signals that are saying I'm exploring, I'm not prepared for this, or am I? I'm scared, I have a fear. All these signals teach me where my boundaries are, so I'm comfortable right behind. I can get there to the edge of my boundary really easy Landscape. I know I'm gonna to go right up to the edge. Well, I'm starting to test all my boundaries and one of those things was I stopped writing a book that I've been encouraged to write, that I have. It would be a gift to do it and a challenge at the same time, and I've never written a book successfully or released it, so I'm uncomfortable with that. Well then, gosh, darn it, I'm going to do it.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm in the about halfway through writing a book called um. It's basically about parallel entrepreneurship, about the art of paralleling and what are the superpowers that you can leverage and what? How do you find synergies across businesses, across organizations, across markets? Why do I not own 10 companies? Why shouldn't I? There's a lot of public speak and self-talk about why people shouldn't be doing those things and, as a matter of fact, most of the business books out there will tell your listener focus, focus, focus. You know, and that's great for an employee, that might not be great for the entrepreneur. That might not be enough creativity and enough insight that they can pull from multiple different places. So, yes, I'm writing a book. I'm anxious to see how well I draw the stories of people who are parallel entrepreneurs and whom I admire and who have coached me and taught me along the way. I'm eager to find out how well I can tell their stories and weave that in with my own lived experience.
Speaker 1:Let's unpack the term parallel entrepreneur for just a second too, because it's different than a serial entrepreneur, isn't it?
Speaker 2:I think that as we study this issue, there's been some studies about multi-preneurship or it's called different things, including including portfolio entrepreneur. It looks like a private equity model. It is, in fact, typically and one of my you asked me a question how do I decide to move forward? Well, I want to know if I can build an organization around this idea. Can I build an organization? Because if I can, I can get that going. Then it can grow. It's like the seed that creates the child, that creates the adolescent, that creates the adult business. Can you create an organization around this concept? What does the market look like? And if you do that once, why can't you do it twice? So a lot of people will do it once. They'll pour all their energy into it, they'll invest their identity in it to the point where they can't even separate their identity from the business and it becomes more difficult to be objective.
Speaker 2:And if you start a second one, you've got another company at a different state of being. It's your, you know. You got a four-year-old child and a brand new baby, a different state. So it forces you to be better at all those things and it's also joyful. So parallel entrepreneurship to me is first aligning who you are. If you're an accountant, and you're a good accountant and it makes you happy, then be an accountant and track numbers and do things really well, like that. If you're an entrepreneur, go start something, create something, build something and then when you sell that company you'll start at another one because you're good at it. Now you're a serial entrepreneur and that's pretty obvious and for me.
Speaker 2:I know most of my friends call themselves serial entrepreneurs but when you dig deeper, no, they're actually parallel entrepreneurs. They're paralleling, and paralleling is living and being your aligned self, who you are, and matching up what you do outside yourself, in your world, with alignment. And I can run three companies that are aligned with my identity and with my skill sets and then I can go hire the who, not the how. I can hire the who, that can go, do all the things that those businesses require that make them unique and special. And I can parachute in and contribute in my superpowers in business A and then withdraw, which is a signal of trust. And I can go pay attention to business B and deal with its unique moments, with my superpowers, whatever they are, and encourage other people to do the same.
Speaker 2:And I think parallel entrepreneurship the younger you are, the more likely you are to be a parallel entrepreneur. The reality is, I'm executing a market research project, an actual academic research project, to take some old research on this topic that might have left some unanswered questions, to try to extend and figure out what does that look like in 2025 now? And to try to characterize and and document for the purposes of the book um and some formal research about how is parallel entrepreneurship actually better than or at least correct for me? But it's an identity that is not well understood and yet it exists everywhere you look.
Speaker 1:I can't find a flaw in that. I also want to add to it as a business model. It exists under different names already too. We might call it vertical integration. There might be a conglomerate of we make tires, so we need to have a rubber tree plant or a rubber plant farm. I'm sorry and okay now that we've got the farm. Now we need transportation and fertilizer. So let's start a private fleet company and let's start a fertilizer company. And when an entity does that, we just call it vertical integration or something else. And fertilizer. So let's start a private fleet company and let's start a fertilizer company, and when an entity does that, we just call it vertical integration or something else.
Speaker 1:I think the term is kiruetsu. It's a Japanese term where roughly the same idea. The Sumitomo company is a good example of this. The Sumitomo family, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, started all these adjacent businesses to support their other business and then eventually the Japanese government had to intervene because there was like six families running every industry in the country. And so when we think of it from the industry lens, everybody can get on board with it and say that's cool. It makes a ton of financial sense's good for the customer, it's good for the entity, but then when a person tries to do that and build their own entity or entities around, themselves it's somehow frowned upon, but the individual's pursuit of parallel entrepreneurship, it is countercultural.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:I think so, and we also. I've done a hundred interviews of parallel entrepreneurs and pushed through to discover how many of them are diagnosed with ADD or ADHD whatever the term might be today. That's appropriate. But, yeah, self-diagnosed sort of. Maybe I've got ADD, but some of them absolutely do have. We're going to look into that. We're also going to look into whether you see dyslexia and other types of what society might suggest contributes to you being unemployable for some reason. So therefore, you become an entrepreneur, which is another myth.
Speaker 2:But I think there is some truth to overcoming challenges as a natural way of being, that an entrepreneur just is and it's expressing itself in business. And I'm concerned about this ADD thing because I was defensive about that. I had three, four companies at the same time and people, how do you do that? You must have ADD, and I'd be like, well, what would happen if I was just enjoying myself and I don't have to have a medical condition? So I think businesses are biologies and there are examples in nature of everything that a business is and should be Born, growing, maturing, spinning off spring, aging and dying and being consumed by the forest. Companies have to be healthy and it's okay to be a small fish and swim in a school, and it's okay to be a large fish. And wherever your company finally gets, and however your management style allows you to be successful, you're either a big fish or a little fish, or a giant fish, or you're the whale hunter. You know Every business has its place in a biological comparison and biologies out here are very complex ecosystems.
Speaker 2:The only thing that I have a problem with these days is, you know your listeners will remember when a monopoly was a bad thing and there was monopoly busters and your example in Japan, our example of Standard Oil and AT&T, the bell companies here in the United States.
Speaker 2:There's a point where dominance by one humanity is that example.
Speaker 2:We're dominating the planet so much that we kill competition and kill out ecosystems and we are mishandling the gift of this earth that we were given to have some form of management responsibility for. Perhaps and there is a the modern problem is a duopoly and duopolies, or maybe triopolies, where they all have some form of mutual interest in killing off innovation. They are the modern monopoly innovation. They are the modern monopoly, and I think it's up to the entrepreneur and to political leaders and to coaches and people out there trying to help each other, be successful, to just stay the course and be competitive and take a little chunk out of that beast every time you can and build companies that sport, car around those big brands and take little parts out of their flesh because you can, because they're not paying attention and that's yeah, I'm a piranha. I'm going to go out there and take a chunk out of Nike's manufacturing or I'm going to take a chunk out of some big logistics company's business and start some form of a freight company and be successful and have fun doing it.
Speaker 1:What a pleasant way to go through your day and to go through your life. You've also got the advantage of age. You have actually seen a lot of time around a lot of people. You see how humans behave in large numbers and you can begin to predict what might happen next or what's most likely to happen next, and I wish that I could fast forward my own learnings and accumulation of knowledge to reach that point, and so instead, the best thing I have is to just call you and say hey, mark, what do you think about this? Because I don't want to. My dad would say if I made a bad mistake, he'd say well, you just paid a tuition fee in the school of life. Yeah, mistakes and um, and from their wisdom, from those who've gone before, and so that's part of what you've done today is you've shared for a lot of our listeners, um, some of those mistakes, but also, just like, the freedom to be yourself.
Speaker 2:I. I appreciate that and I would. I would say yes, and I've learned that again, with pushing edges and out of your comfort zone, a way to stay young in your perspective. I can't control my body but I can hack it as best I can and try to respect myself, but along the way, a way to stay mentally young and agile is reverse mentorship. You find crazy smart young people and they're teaching me and the old model of a mentor helping somebody who's younger than them navigate through the politics of a Fortune 500 company and all that. The reality is reverse mentorship is more valuable and it keeps me sharp so that when I get a chance to contribute to somebody's learning experience or maybe they're not listening and I just get to watch them make the same mistake and now I got to circle back around with them and talk about integrating with the lessons. I wouldn't be able to have that conversation with most young people if I wasn't listening to them first and trying to pay attention to they have a perspective about what's hot and what's emerging and what's not, and what is old and stodgy and needs to be killed off.
Speaker 2:I really believe that younger entrepreneurs are spectacular resources by themselves. They need to ask more questions and they need to find great advisors. And my dad taught me. He said if I, you know another one of those. If you want to be successful, pick your advisors carefully. And then, mark, listen to them. Right, because I could pick my advisors. And now that's great. You just validated something, because humans want validation. I'd like to be challenged. I'd like to sort of grab that bread and knead that dough and make something like a souffle out of it, but I want to do it with other people and then enjoy the meal.
Speaker 1:That's a great metaphor.
Speaker 2:It makes me hungry Last question.
Speaker 1:It is breakfast time. Last question, because you spend so much time around other entrepreneurs and you know, obviously, what I do with the podcast here, but also with Ballast, this group of supply chain entrepreneurs that get together and help each other every month, and this network of folks that want to see each other win. As somebody who's gone through multiple startups and exits, what is a piece of advice that somebody, a founder who wants to sell their business in two to five years, for example? What should they be thinking about that they're not as they begin to plan for optimizing for their own exit?
Speaker 2:I think that the first rule should be pay attention to your finances and know your books and actually know your numbers. That's the heartbeat of, and the blood supply of the business, so be financially aware. Second, get on accrual accounting and be an actual accrual accounting company, no matter what, every single time you do, because if you don't, when you sell your company you're going to be transitioning to accrual. You might as well get busy with it and be accrual, particularly if you have meaningful revenues.
Speaker 1:And that takes a couple of years to set a baseline for. If you're doing cash accounting now, mid-2025, you're going to want to have all of 2026 under accrual and all of 2027 so you can show a year-over-year comp using the same method. That's part of why I asked the question of years in advance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because otherwise it's a lot of research and in the M&A process, which I spend most of my time in today, it's a part of due diligence where deals go to die. So I think the second piece of advice I actually heard this on yesterday's Parallel Entrepreneur Network meeting. One of the members chose a growth strategy A and B and one of them was got an M&A advisor and we're actively looking for what is it that we're creating that is valuable to an acquirer? What is it that we're creating that we could lean into and shape our message and shape our company? And that market's a different market that will teach you something specific about your business. And then, separately, they pivoted from enterprise to SMBs. They started at SMB, they went up to enterprise Enterprise market's tough right now and to maintain their organization they're going to pivot back down to SMBs where they now have much more muscle and much more skill than they had last time. So they're going to crush it. Well, that SMB market's going to give you different feedback than the enterprise market did.
Speaker 2:I'm expecting both those strategies will be successful, but I don't think very many entrepreneurs actually build a three to five year plan with the correct advice and actually begin to pursue an exit long, long, long long before they get frustrated with the business. They're can't find a father founder transition, kind of an internal family thing. They're afraid their kids are going to wreck the business, whatever it is. Usually that decision to sell comes when the market's pivoted and you now got to get out, or you don't have enough resources to go to the next level. Well, you should know you don't have enough resources to go to the next level three years before you're actually in that situation. So plan for it Brilliant, mark.
Speaker 1:thank you for the wide ranging conversation. I wish we had more time, because we could do this for a whole other hour. We can't, unfortunately, but.
Speaker 2:I enjoyed every second.
Speaker 1:If folks want to connect with you, where can they find you? Connect with you where can they find you?
Speaker 2:I'm available at theparallelentrepreneurcom, markaclevelandcom and I guess LinkedIn is the place where I spend my most energy communicating and maintaining conversations. But I got to tell you before you let me off the hook here. I want to tell you that one of the greatest experiences I've had over the last year is being a part of Ballast and watching and observing mid to small, new and old logistics players, from software to broker to trucking operations like dig in, roll up their sleeves and help each other, and it's a completely astonishing thing to watch at scale like that. So hats off to you for pulling that off, nate.
Speaker 1:Thank you. That's my superpower is bringing people together and um you created the environment disarming them, getting getting folks to be honest and open up.
Speaker 1:And that's part of why I learned that doing this podcast, that that was one of my superpowers. When people would say to me afterwards I can't believe, I told you that I didn't mean to share that and I did. And that was when I realized I have built a trust vault of relationship management and doing what I say I was going to do. And, yes, sometimes that costs opportunities, but I sleep really well at night and I get to have lots of friends everywhere I go and by that definition, I'm very, very successful and I'm very happy. So on that note, Mark.
Speaker 2:It shows your higher self. Looks good on you, nate.
Speaker 1:Ooh, well said, I'm going to put that on a hat. Thank you, mark, and of course we're always rooting for you. I appreciate that. Take care, my friend, you too. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Bootstrapper's Guide to Logistics, and a special thank you to our sponsors and the team behind the scenes who make it all possible. Be sure to like, follow or subscribe to the podcast to get the latest updates. To learn more about the show and connect with the growing community of entrepreneurs, visit logisticsfounderscom. And, of course, thank you to all the founders who trust us to share their stories.