WEBVTT 00:00:01.762 --> 00:00:08.134 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. 00:00:08.134 --> 00:00:12.570 We're here to change that by sharing their stories and inspiring others to take the leap. 00:00:12.570 --> 00:00:16.510 It's a roller coaster ride that you might ultimately fail. 00:00:16.510 --> 00:00:19.068 That's when I kind of knew I was on to something. 00:00:19.068 --> 00:00:20.646 It was very hard. 00:00:21.120 --> 00:00:30.251 It truly is building a legacy the more life you live, the more wisdom you have, because we are where we're supposed to be kind of answering the call. 00:00:30.251 --> 00:00:33.209 Don't shoulder entrepreneurship on your own. 00:00:34.011 --> 00:00:35.155 I'm your host, Nate Schutz. 00:00:35.155 --> 00:00:38.203 Let's build something together from the ground up. 00:00:38.203 --> 00:00:43.631 Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Bootstrapper's Guide to Logistics. 00:00:43.631 --> 00:00:46.756 We're moving into the back half of 2025. 00:00:46.756 --> 00:00:56.893 We're well past the 100-founder story episode mark and I love getting to talk to folks who have started their business post-COVID. 00:00:56.893 --> 00:01:10.471 There seems to be a dividing line of folks when they start a business and they've been in business for 15 years and then they went through the COVID challenges and then now kind of the freight recession that's seemingly endless. 00:01:10.471 --> 00:01:25.831 And then there are folks like our guest today, Justin McKessie, who started a company in the middle of all of that and has a slightly different perspective because he went right into the fire day one to start his business and so happy to have him on the show today. 00:01:25.831 --> 00:01:30.054 He's the founder and CEO of First Choice Freight, based in Chicago. 00:01:30.054 --> 00:01:32.000 Justin, good morning, how are you today? 00:01:32.902 --> 00:01:34.465 Good morning, nate, I'm doing well, how are you? 00:01:35.027 --> 00:01:35.787 I'm doing great. 00:01:35.787 --> 00:01:41.683 There seem to be three or four companies that just about every freight broker has come out of. 00:01:41.683 --> 00:01:44.207 It's either CH Robinson every freight broker has come out of. 00:01:44.207 --> 00:01:49.615 It's either CH Robinson, tql, coyote I'm drawing a blank. 00:01:49.615 --> 00:02:01.960 Who am I missing? 00:02:01.960 --> 00:02:03.584 Tql, coyote, ch and the other big one, xpo, and a handful of others. 00:02:03.584 --> 00:02:03.945 I'm drawing it. 00:02:03.945 --> 00:02:15.444 Yeah, having a bit of a senior moment here, but you came out of the Coyote family and there's a really big number of entrepreneurs that have started their careers at Coyote and then went off on their own. 00:02:15.444 --> 00:02:31.790 Can you maybe unpack a little bit of your early years, of your career in logistics, how you got the bug for freight, and then when did you feel like you had learned enough to start to have some dangerous thoughts about building something of your own? 00:02:33.259 --> 00:02:37.170 Yeah, yeah, the Coyote lineage is talked about a lot and it's definitely out there. 00:02:37.170 --> 00:02:45.328 We go a lot of places and everybody says like, wow, everybody I've met is in some way shape or form from Coyote my background. 00:02:45.328 --> 00:02:52.736 I actually went to school at Central Michigan for logistics management, so I had logistics in my intentions. 00:02:52.736 --> 00:02:54.802 I never thought it'd be in the brokerage space. 00:02:54.802 --> 00:03:00.144 I always thought I'd be at some big manufacturer or something and figuring out the hard puzzles of supply chain. 00:03:00.144 --> 00:03:09.032 I got an internship my junior year of college at a place called ALS in Michigan Automated Logistics Systems in Jackson, michigan, my hometown. 00:03:09.032 --> 00:03:10.925 Fantastic group of people. 00:03:10.925 --> 00:03:14.490 And that was my first endeavor into brokerage space. 00:03:14.490 --> 00:03:27.064 And then the Coyote thing kind of came by happenstance and, it's funny, one of the colleagues there in the office randomly said oh wow, this news article says Coyote's opening an Ann Arbor Michigan office. 00:03:27.064 --> 00:03:28.751 And I said what is Coyote? 00:03:28.751 --> 00:03:30.034 And they said, oh, it's this. 00:03:30.034 --> 00:03:32.627 You know they do the same stuff as we do, they just have all these. 00:03:32.627 --> 00:03:35.461 You know young people and the office environment. 00:03:35.461 --> 00:03:37.382 So I Googled Coyote logistics. 00:03:37.382 --> 00:03:47.427 I had one year left of school and I decided like, well, if I'm going to do another internship, maybe I'll reach out to these guys Did that and was accepted in. 00:03:47.427 --> 00:03:49.930 You know, I took my next summer to Chicago. 00:03:49.930 --> 00:03:55.652 I actually pulled out a $2,000 personal loan to move myself to Chicago for an internship. 00:03:55.652 --> 00:03:57.694 I also had to pay Central Michigan for a credit. 00:03:57.694 --> 00:04:01.997 We had to have internships, but that was my foray into Coyote. 00:04:01.997 --> 00:04:08.764 So I got there as an intern in 2014. 00:04:08.764 --> 00:04:10.569 Immediately knew I was going to come back and was accepted full-time. 00:04:10.590 --> 00:04:16.089 The year following Getting to Coyote I was in the traditional carrier sales role, kind of growing through that. 00:04:16.089 --> 00:04:27.634 We were acquired by UPS shortly after my entry there and that is kind of where my career took the most interesting turn and really was a springboard for what I've done since then. 00:04:27.634 --> 00:04:45.709 I was lucky enough to be part of the early group of folks that were dedicated to the UPS side at Coyote, got to basically play in their sandbox and have a ton of different roles, building teams and building new endeavors all around just how we could create synergies with UPS. 00:04:45.709 --> 00:04:50.535 Literally, my first role there had no job description. 00:04:50.535 --> 00:04:55.846 It had the name of one gentleman that said work with Rock to find synergies. 00:04:55.846 --> 00:05:01.329 First hour I was Googling like, is this one of our employees, is this a company? 00:05:01.329 --> 00:05:07.365 And a gentleman by the name of Keith Hargarten, walked in and said hi, I'm Rock, we're going to be working together. 00:05:07.365 --> 00:05:30.803 So he was in charge of a lot of the intermodal side and I got to work with him and it was wide open, which, as someone that's a self-proclaimed like builder and tinker my whole life, this was a space where I could really shine and say you know, whatever is out there, go find it. 00:05:30.803 --> 00:05:33.711 Go find a way that Coyote can help UPS do it on the asset side, on the intermodal side, and everything was fair game. 00:05:33.711 --> 00:05:38.786 So that was really where my entrepreneurial spirit was able to shine in the world of Coyote UPS. 00:05:39.708 --> 00:05:49.524 So I did that for quite a long time, had a lot of success there and always knew in the back of my mind it was going to turn into, you know, for my career, something that I wanted to do start another business. 00:05:49.524 --> 00:06:00.862 I again, by stroke of luck, had some friends from Detroit that had been in contact with me and the timing was right, where they said hey, we're thinking about starting a brokerage. 00:06:00.862 --> 00:06:07.649 I had plans mapped out, I had multiple business plans put together, different names, different areas we wanted to focus on. 00:06:07.649 --> 00:06:14.011 I flew out the next day and pitched them what I wanted to do and told them my vision and it was okay, let's do it. 00:06:14.011 --> 00:06:17.346 So I was at BP Logistics at the time. 00:06:17.367 --> 00:06:26.031 It was a short stint between Coyote and what I'm doing now and I told them exactly what I was doing Another great group of people, very honest with them and they told me go do your thing. 00:06:26.031 --> 00:06:28.877 It was no hard feelings, it was. 00:06:28.877 --> 00:06:30.201 We see where you're coming from. 00:06:30.201 --> 00:06:31.946 So that was my. 00:06:31.946 --> 00:06:36.336 My jump into entrepreneurship was okay, it's go time. 00:06:36.336 --> 00:06:39.026 There's some other people that I know that are ready to go as well. 00:06:39.026 --> 00:06:47.271 And I closed the laptop at one place and the next morning I opened up my new laptop and got started on the dream that we had set out in front of us. 00:06:48.040 --> 00:06:49.786 And that dream is now First Choice Freight. 00:06:49.786 --> 00:06:52.810 You're in your three, four years in. 00:06:52.810 --> 00:07:09.180 It's been a tough climate for a lot of companies in that space, so you have to be able to have a high pain tolerance to do what you do, but also be somebody who is chronically not satisfied. 00:07:09.180 --> 00:07:19.089 When you start talking about being a builder and a tinkerer, I'm getting pictures of you as a kid and if you had multiple business plans and multiple names. 00:07:19.089 --> 00:07:25.932 So you're somebody who likely has a very active thought life and has been that way for a long time. 00:07:25.932 --> 00:07:27.504 So what were you like as a kid? 00:07:28.766 --> 00:07:31.432 Oh yeah, that's absolutely correct. 00:07:31.432 --> 00:07:44.502 Growing up I was always messing with something I probably drove my mom crazy Like a VCR that was eating the tape speakers that weren't working, that were left behind in our garage. 00:07:44.502 --> 00:07:50.845 I would find them, take them apart, find a way to make it work, and usually I would leave half the parts out and it'd be working better than before. 00:07:50.845 --> 00:07:56.713 Anything that I could get my hands on, I was constantly messing with it and trying to build it, improve it. 00:07:56.713 --> 00:08:06.372 I think in hindsight we probably just had a lot of voided warranties sitting around after that, but it worked out sometimes we might have to explain what a VCR is too. 00:08:06.392 --> 00:08:07.375 We got a younger audience. 00:08:07.375 --> 00:08:15.091 So keep going, so you did you find ways, then, to make money doing things like that? 00:08:15.091 --> 00:08:17.002 Also, I did so. 00:08:17.041 --> 00:08:34.687 I think from that stage that carried into my you know my driving stage where I was messing around and tinkering with my vehicles, my first entrepreneurial endeavor was I built these light kits for the bed of my truck that went under the rails and they shine in different colors at nighttime. 00:08:34.687 --> 00:08:37.101 This was I don't even know what year it had been before. 00:08:37.101 --> 00:08:43.892 It was like standard in trucks today Got a lot of comments on it and I was like, well, gosh, this took me $30 to put together. 00:08:43.892 --> 00:08:46.601 I started buying up the parts for it. 00:08:46.601 --> 00:08:48.787 I assembled instructions on how to do it. 00:08:48.787 --> 00:08:58.003 I created a eBay motors page and I posted them on there with different thoughts and instructions, and it took me a while to find the price point. 00:08:58.003 --> 00:09:02.861 But I was testing it out and lo and behold, I started selling them for $60, $70. 00:09:02.861 --> 00:09:04.144 And I'm like, okay, I'm making money. 00:09:04.787 --> 00:09:06.331 I was never serious about it. 00:09:06.331 --> 00:09:13.187 It was just something that, again, I was playing around with, but without even knowing that that was entrepreneurship at the moment. 00:09:13.187 --> 00:09:16.793 It was something that I was like well, I can do this for $30. 00:09:16.793 --> 00:09:17.554 People like it. 00:09:17.554 --> 00:09:19.720 I'm seeing companies sell it for $200. 00:09:19.720 --> 00:09:22.669 Maybe I can fall from the middle and make a little profit. 00:09:31.840 --> 00:09:36.313 So I think that was my first leap and you know, from then on out, there were actually a period of time where I would buy and sell cars that I was even driving, or if I just knew something random like it's. 00:09:36.313 --> 00:09:38.320 You know, it's October and there's a four-wheel drive SUV that's for sale. 00:09:38.320 --> 00:09:41.188 It's gonna be worth a lot more in December when people want it. 00:09:41.188 --> 00:09:50.570 So if I could pick that up and sit on it for a while and wait until the time was right, I can make a profit on it. 00:09:50.570 --> 00:09:52.778 So my mom would help me clean things up in the yard and repost them on Craigslist or anything like that. 00:09:52.778 --> 00:10:02.799 So yeah, there was always that like what can I do to make money, to improve something, to find a different way to make money, to make money and be profitable? 00:10:03.621 --> 00:10:06.488 So that you mentioned price testing on eBay. 00:10:06.488 --> 00:10:10.820 Pricing is a complicated thing. 00:10:10.820 --> 00:10:17.842 On one level, there's a bunch of theory behind it, and then there's also just the value that somebody places on. 00:10:17.842 --> 00:10:22.340 Whatever the thing is that you're selling, and they get to decide what it's worth, not you. 00:10:22.340 --> 00:10:36.283 And so when you say I knew what my costs were, I knew what my competitors were doing and so I wanted to test it, did you just increase the price by five bucks every time and see where demand stopped? 00:10:36.283 --> 00:10:36.745 Or how did? 00:10:36.745 --> 00:10:41.118 Was that just another way to tinker on something different? 00:10:41.979 --> 00:10:44.381 Yeah, and I actually hadn't thought about this until you brought it up. 00:10:44.381 --> 00:10:51.130 But on eBay it would show you if I posted at a hundred dollars, you got five views and no buy. 00:10:51.130 --> 00:10:52.398 It now clicks, right. 00:10:52.398 --> 00:10:56.913 So I think I posted it like $120 and no views, no anything. 00:10:56.913 --> 00:11:00.198 So I'd go back in and I'd give the old price cut right. 00:11:00.198 --> 00:11:03.664 Oh, this is on sale for 99.99 and might've gotten 25 views. 00:11:03.664 --> 00:11:12.893 And then I think when I dropped them to like $68, the views went up and all of a sudden I had the first purchase and then the second and the third and the fourth and fifth. 00:11:12.893 --> 00:11:15.716 So I was like, okay, I just found my sweet spot where I can sell some of these things. 00:11:15.716 --> 00:11:20.181 And it never went more than a dozen or so, but it was a fun at the time. 00:11:20.181 --> 00:11:25.527 It was just fun for me as a young man to say, like all right, I just made money off selling something on eBay. 00:11:26.067 --> 00:11:26.769 Out of thin air. 00:11:27.769 --> 00:11:28.311 Out of thin air. 00:11:35.615 --> 00:11:36.876 And that is the beauty of entrepreneurship is the market. 00:11:36.876 --> 00:11:37.357 There's a scoreboard. 00:11:37.357 --> 00:11:39.842 The market tells you how good your idea plus your execution is. 00:11:39.842 --> 00:11:42.748 There's no subjectivity left. 00:11:42.748 --> 00:11:47.775 Somebody made the decision and voted with their dollars that they want what you sell. 00:11:47.775 --> 00:11:53.427 And in the freight world, yes, on one hand it's a pure commodity. 00:11:53.427 --> 00:12:00.456 Transportation is transportation, and yet some companies have a lot of success selling transportation and others don't. 00:12:00.456 --> 00:12:04.482 And there's going to be a relationship component to it, of course. 00:12:04.482 --> 00:12:14.586 And then there's also going to be knowing what the potential customer or your existing customer values and trying to price it right. 00:12:14.586 --> 00:12:22.062 So how do you think about tinkering with price and costs within a freight brokerage in a volatile world? 00:12:23.445 --> 00:12:24.267 Yeah, great question. 00:12:24.267 --> 00:12:25.136 For us. 00:12:25.136 --> 00:12:29.464 We're in the drayage space international containers, imports, exports. 00:12:29.464 --> 00:12:36.903 It's a space that has lacked a lot of ingenuity or improvement, really, since day one. 00:12:37.515 --> 00:12:41.886 Our hardest endeavor is trying to prove real value. 00:12:41.886 --> 00:12:45.820 It's a space that a lot of people are just middlemanning right. 00:12:45.820 --> 00:12:49.043 They get a response from a customer, they copy and paste it to the carrier. 00:12:49.043 --> 00:12:50.025 I've watched it happen. 00:12:50.025 --> 00:12:55.399 They get a response from the carrier, copy and paste it back, and it's because it's a very complex part of our industry. 00:12:55.399 --> 00:12:56.881 The costs don't make sense. 00:12:57.803 --> 00:13:02.561 The jargon that you hear in and out of every conversation it just it doesn't add up. 00:13:02.561 --> 00:13:07.109 So we're doing something different where we're showing them the data can be useful. 00:13:07.109 --> 00:13:10.437 We're showing them transit time on the water, things that people aren't usually offering. 00:13:10.437 --> 00:13:26.740 So for us and we're not even trying to necessarily charge a premium for it but we're trying to buy our way into their, their company, at the same or lower cost, but to tell them we're doing something that truly is more valuable or bringing a new angle to the industry. 00:13:27.181 --> 00:13:34.250 It's incredibly tough to break through the noise of the industry and say, hey, spend your dollars here because you're going to get more bang for your buck. 00:13:34.250 --> 00:13:42.184 That's our biggest hurdle and that's what we hone in on is if we can show them the value that they can get more for their money. 00:13:42.184 --> 00:13:46.562 You know they're spending With us, we're winning. 00:13:46.562 --> 00:13:53.722 And when we do finally break through and show them, all we hear time and time again from the customers we do have is like wow, I can't believe you guys are actually doing this. 00:13:53.722 --> 00:13:56.721 You're doing what you said you were going to do, and that seems so simple. 00:13:56.721 --> 00:14:01.615 But yeah, so our value proposition has been exactly that. 00:14:01.615 --> 00:14:11.988 Like we're going above and beyond, not even necessarily to charge you a premium amount, but just to do what we think is kind of table stakes today in most parts of the industry. 00:14:13.075 --> 00:14:17.105 And that's the bridge, I think, between sales and operations. 00:14:17.105 --> 00:14:25.642 You take a potential value prop and put it out into the market and hope somebody is interested enough to try you and you've generated interest. 00:14:25.642 --> 00:14:28.629 But now is interested enough to try you and you've generated interest, but now you've got to follow through and deliver. 00:14:28.629 --> 00:14:33.147 And that's where I think it is frustrating. 00:14:33.147 --> 00:14:34.274 I'm an operator myself. 00:14:34.274 --> 00:14:44.187 It's frustrating to see the hype that gets thrown out and marketing messages that get attention when you know some of the companies behind it can't actually back it up. 00:14:45.216 --> 00:14:59.206 And when you're an operator who does things really, really well and maybe doesn't have the flair or the dramatic pitch, you can't always trust that the work is going to speak for itself. 00:14:59.206 --> 00:15:00.535 You have to. 00:15:00.535 --> 00:15:08.875 The customer has to in some cases, be shown the value that they're getting. 00:15:08.875 --> 00:15:13.922 And I'm curious for you also, knowing that you have a co-founder in the business. 00:15:13.922 --> 00:15:21.750 Most of your career up until starting First Choice looks like it was in ops, and now you're having to do ops and sales. 00:15:21.750 --> 00:15:25.381 How did you and your co-founder decide who was going to do what? 00:15:25.381 --> 00:15:28.500 How did you set boundaries on this? 00:15:28.500 --> 00:15:31.070 Is my area, stay out of it or no? 00:15:31.070 --> 00:15:34.179 I really need your help on this because you're better at that thing than I am. 00:15:35.544 --> 00:15:37.773 Yeah, I think you just described me to a T. 00:15:37.773 --> 00:15:45.058 I've always been the operator and builder behind the scenes, extremely proud of what I can build and do and put together great processes. 00:15:45.058 --> 00:15:52.796 But I was never that person trying to be out in the spotlight and necessarily great at showing or talking about what I was doing. 00:15:52.796 --> 00:16:07.738 My co-founder, tyler Billings, has been a sales leader his entire career, so kind of a great duo in terms of like, hey, I'm going to build this product that I know there's a market out there for you. 00:16:07.738 --> 00:16:13.519 Go, you know, boots on the ground, show people what we can do and talk it up and get their engagement. 00:16:13.519 --> 00:16:22.126 So in a lot of regard, that's a you know, probably a dream scenario where you have somebody that's super sales focused and someone that's super ops and building focused. 00:16:22.635 --> 00:16:24.818 Now, that doesn't mean that we're not all selling all the time. 00:16:24.818 --> 00:16:26.602 Right, everybody in every seat. 00:16:26.602 --> 00:16:30.429 I have to be selling the vision behind why I wanted to build it this way. 00:16:30.429 --> 00:16:37.039 And gosh, even in the accounting seat they're selling right the end experience for our people on the other side of the equation. 00:16:37.039 --> 00:16:43.982 If there's bad billing scenarios, that can be as terrible of an outcome for a customer as the front end experience. 00:16:43.982 --> 00:16:48.011 So we're all selling all the time an outcome for a customer as the front end experience. 00:16:48.011 --> 00:16:49.095 So we're all selling all the time. 00:16:49.095 --> 00:17:00.164 But I think having that split where it's if there's something with the product to be improved or the operations or the overall business, that's me and I will go do that and having somebody that is on sales, I can get this message out there and see what we can bring home. 00:17:01.215 --> 00:17:05.323 And that sounds like you built it with intentionality. 00:17:05.323 --> 00:17:23.107 You built your team with intentionality from day one, and I know it's easy to romanticize entrepreneurship and yet I also know it can be a complete grind and a lot of companies get close to not making it way more than people will ever know. 00:17:23.107 --> 00:17:29.028 Were there any lessons like that that you had to learn along the way or learn the hard way yourself? 00:17:30.414 --> 00:17:30.916 Absolutely. 00:17:30.916 --> 00:17:37.357 You know, to rewind and something that was completely skipped in the first choice freight intro. 00:17:37.357 --> 00:17:43.884 You know I mentioned going to Detroit with my partners at the time and that was the beginning of it Flew out. 00:17:43.884 --> 00:17:44.949 We had great plans. 00:17:44.949 --> 00:17:49.721 The goal was just to grow and see where we could take a brokerage in one to five years. 00:17:51.306 --> 00:17:56.394 At that point in time, the market being what it was was coming off of the COVID high Margins weren't there. 00:17:56.394 --> 00:18:03.097 Business was hard to come by and you know my two partners at the time, very successful entrepreneurs in their own right from the Detroit community. 00:18:03.097 --> 00:18:08.887 This was their fifth, sixth, seventh, uh, dive into business. 00:18:08.887 --> 00:18:10.593 Right, they've already had successful businesses. 00:18:10.593 --> 00:18:13.027 I was the one in the logistics space. 00:18:13.027 --> 00:18:21.150 So we got six months in, realized the cash that would need to be on hand to continue growing it at our pace and we were growing pretty quickly. 00:18:21.150 --> 00:18:26.711 Right off the jump they were like, hey, this is kind of not what we signed up for. 00:18:26.711 --> 00:18:30.747 Let's maybe just scrap the plans and move on to something else, right? 00:18:30.747 --> 00:18:33.214 And that's, in all honesty, probably the right move for them. 00:18:33.214 --> 00:18:38.317 There's a lot of other places where they could have parked their money outside of logistics at that time. 00:18:38.317 --> 00:18:46.117 That would be a smarter move and I was leading with passion for the industry and the vision they were leading with smart money. 00:18:46.117 --> 00:19:00.125 So, luckily for me, we were able to come up with an amicable solution, had great partners in them, to where I would continue on and take the business over entirely, make them whole and from that point forward. 00:19:00.165 --> 00:19:17.252 So we went from months one through six, growing hiring, realizing it wasn't going to work the way we wanted it to, to saying like all right, I'm going to take this solo, I'm going to correct course, essentially make sure this thing is sound enough to work, and then kind of refound it again six months later. 00:19:17.252 --> 00:19:21.969 So it was the highest high, followed by a reality check instantly. 00:19:21.969 --> 00:19:23.692 And I think that was the biggest lesson. 00:19:23.692 --> 00:19:32.574 Was you know, I think from a big place like Coyote, you know how to pull levers to grow, or what you think is growth? 00:19:32.574 --> 00:19:38.200 Right, if you want sales, I can pull a lever that'll drive sales and drive revenue and we'll get people in. 00:19:38.240 --> 00:19:45.926 Well, what's happening on the back end of that? 00:19:45.926 --> 00:19:46.448 Is it profitable revenue? 00:19:46.448 --> 00:19:47.691 Is it taking us 10 hours to cover a break-even load? 00:19:47.691 --> 00:19:50.758 Right, there's a cost associated with that and the struggles of growth? 00:19:50.758 --> 00:19:57.708 Right, we didn't know where some of our receivables were at one point where and when you're running out of cash, you're saying, well, we have to go find that right. 00:19:57.708 --> 00:20:09.515 So everything, aside from the logistics piece I knew very well, it's the boring stuff that you don't know about that will come back and get you, and that was an instant lesson where it could have been the end. 00:20:09.515 --> 00:20:19.708 Six months in and luckily for the partners I had that were willing to let me continue, we were able to correct course pretty quickly and get this thing back on the right track and grow from there. 00:20:21.151 --> 00:20:25.159 I love the candidness that you share with that. 00:20:25.159 --> 00:20:30.652 People think businesses fail because they decline. 00:20:30.652 --> 00:20:54.317 Sometimes businesses fail because they grow too fast and their cash flow gets away from them, because it takes a lot more working capital to run a $20 million freight brokerage than it does a $2 million freight brokerage, and so more sales faster can actually speed up the end of a business if they don't have good accounting. 00:20:54.317 --> 00:21:09.208 And it's a healthy reminder for everybody who is maybe listening and is passionate about an idea that they have been thinking about for a long time and want to get into their own business or start their own thing. 00:21:11.010 --> 00:21:14.566 The secondary things are what you end up spending a lot of time on. 00:21:14.566 --> 00:21:24.728 I use the example of like a bakery somebody who is a really good baker and is like I want to make donuts because I or you know pastries, because I'm really, really good at that, and so they open a donut shop. 00:21:24.728 --> 00:21:28.757 Well, they end up spending the least amount of time actually baking. 00:21:28.757 --> 00:21:52.233 They spend the rest of their time dealing with a landlord and with vendors and customers and chargebacks and HR issues and all of that other stuff, and so if you it's kind of the don't follow your passion advice unless you have people around you that can fill in those gaps, because, especially in logistics, the dollar amounts are too big. 00:21:52.233 --> 00:21:59.133 It takes a lot of cash to run a even a medium-sized freight brokerage. 00:21:59.133 --> 00:22:12.449 You've got to have millions and millions of dollars available um, should a customer not pay, or you have to front money to the carriers before you get paid by your customer in maybe 45 or 50 days. 00:22:12.449 --> 00:22:19.599 And those aren't sexy things, but they are the building blocks of a company that lasts. 00:22:27.704 --> 00:22:28.306 Anything to add to that? 00:22:28.306 --> 00:22:29.067 Yeah, I think you nailed it right. 00:22:29.067 --> 00:22:29.708 I knew it about six months in. 00:22:29.708 --> 00:22:32.510 If we were going to fail, it wasn't going to be because I didn't know logistics or I didn't know what I was doing. 00:22:32.510 --> 00:22:38.519 It was the stuff that you're not seeing and you're not aware of you haven't been trained on. 00:22:38.519 --> 00:22:40.080 There's nobody to train you in these environments. 00:22:41.185 --> 00:22:52.015 Right, I think, being open and honest with yourself about what you don't know as you jump into entrepreneurship, obviously you have to go figure out everything, right? 00:22:52.015 --> 00:22:53.875 So my mentality was I'll figure this out. 00:22:53.875 --> 00:22:55.678 Oh, the accounting, I'll figure this out. 00:22:55.678 --> 00:22:57.318 I know where to look. 00:22:57.318 --> 00:22:59.621 I know it'll figure itself out in some way. 00:22:59.621 --> 00:23:03.484 Like, the things are going to come to me that are issues, and that's very naive, right? 00:23:03.484 --> 00:23:11.094 I think if you can't be honest with yourself and say, wait, this is beyond my reach, maybe I should tap a resource for help. 00:23:11.094 --> 00:23:15.109 You my reach, maybe I should tap a resource for help. 00:23:15.109 --> 00:23:16.795 You can end up in a lot of trouble very quickly and sometimes irreversible. 00:23:16.795 --> 00:23:18.380 So that's probably a trap that a lot of people fall into. 00:23:18.380 --> 00:23:25.086 I'd imagine it's one that I almost fell into myself is not being able to say to yourself you can't necessarily do this one. 00:23:25.086 --> 00:23:26.490 Let's find some help. 00:23:27.271 --> 00:23:29.115 You're a very thoughtful person, justin. 00:23:29.115 --> 00:23:34.537 In all the time that I've known you, I know your mind is constantly working through things. 00:23:34.537 --> 00:23:44.999 Do you consciously think about the difference of your professional life and your personal life as an entrepreneur, or is it just one big ball of yarn? 00:23:44.999 --> 00:23:46.045 It's all mixed up together? 00:23:46.045 --> 00:23:56.566 How do you look at the different parts of your life, given how large of a role entrepreneurship can take and just dominate? 00:23:57.929 --> 00:24:04.900 Yeah, I think year one was a big ball of yarn Because there was no other way. 00:24:04.900 --> 00:24:08.913 I had to juggle whatever I could find a way to make things work. 00:24:08.913 --> 00:24:22.656 I try more than ever to be very intentional about the time that I spend, you know, with my family, with my loved ones, with my friends, how I show up for them versus how I show up for the business versus how I show up for myself. 00:24:22.656 --> 00:24:26.153 I need my own time where I'm a big fitness enthusiast. 00:24:26.153 --> 00:24:42.884 I need that time and making sure that the other areas don't impact the rest of them, and it's extremely difficult trying not to bring home the stresses of work, trying not to, you know, have the carryover from personal life into the business world Right. 00:24:42.884 --> 00:24:54.728 So, yeah, I do think a lot about segmenting them and trying to understand how they factor into each other and making sure that they're, all you know, coexisting in a peaceful manner. 00:24:54.728 --> 00:24:56.894 That is also not running me completely ragged. 00:24:57.884 --> 00:25:00.954 How do you think about goals, then, for the future? 00:25:03.526 --> 00:25:07.076 Yeah, I think those they have to intertwine right. 00:25:07.076 --> 00:25:11.548 It's you could set goals individually and say, well, I want the business to do this. 00:25:11.548 --> 00:25:20.537 How does that affect my personal life and marriage and kids and all the things that come, which I'm not there yet, but I will be in the very near future? 00:25:20.537 --> 00:25:27.517 So it's trying to understand does this business goal align timing wise with what I do with my personal life? 00:25:27.517 --> 00:25:30.907 Can my personal life sustain what I'm doing with the business? 00:25:30.907 --> 00:26:00.931 It's a tight race between all of them together and I think you have to be intentional and, again, honest with yourself in the business world, honest with yourself in the personal life world, to know where you're falling short and where they're going to work well together helped you form that kind of a mindset and the ability to be that mature and wise about how you want your life to go. 00:26:03.215 --> 00:26:05.921 Yeah, great question I would. 00:26:05.921 --> 00:26:11.834 I mean my mother first and foremost, who raised us as a single parent, myself and my older sisters. 00:26:11.834 --> 00:26:17.992 I think a lot of my intentionality comes from that Extremely supportive right. 00:26:17.992 --> 00:26:24.554 I knew that she was the one that was going to help me understand things in a way that made sense. 00:26:24.554 --> 00:26:34.787 If I was sporadic as a kid or even as an adult, I think she gave me that courage, if you will, to say like okay, go do what you want to do, but take care of your responsibilities. 00:26:34.787 --> 00:26:39.971 Make sure you're not doing something that's going to hurt others if you're taking a leap of faith on something. 00:26:39.971 --> 00:26:42.814 But I would give most of the credit to my mom and to my sisters. 00:26:42.814 --> 00:26:46.277 They were like second mothers my entire childhood. 00:26:46.277 --> 00:26:57.951 That trio of women definitely gave me a strong ability to be intentional, first and foremost, about my actions and my desires. 00:26:58.853 --> 00:27:13.201 Well, and I'm sure they're all very proud of seeing what you've done so far and knowing that you've got a lot of runway ahead of you, because that's part of why you do what you do Knowing you, I know that's true. 00:27:13.403 --> 00:27:14.686 It's not just about money. 00:27:14.686 --> 00:27:19.018 It's not just about solving cool problems, although that's a part of it too. 00:27:19.018 --> 00:27:26.719 It is people that want to have an impact in a positive way and prioritize what matters. 00:27:26.719 --> 00:27:42.719 And when you can find that overlap between your chosen career, your finances, your friends, your family, your relationships and something bigger than yourself, then that's a pretty good place to be. 00:27:42.719 --> 00:27:52.407 I mean, you've got to feel very fortunate, and I know you shared with me beforehand that you haven't had a lot of chances to stop and think about this journey that you've been on. 00:27:52.407 --> 00:28:19.599 I hope this provides some of that a chance to pause, reflect, recharge for the next stage of what is coming, for First Choice and for you and we're grateful for you for opening up and sharing your story I always like to ask is there any advice that you would give to somebody who's maybe a couple of years behind where you are right now, so that you can pay it forward to somebody else who's on their own entrepreneurial journey? 00:28:22.305 --> 00:28:24.753 Yeah well, I definitely appreciate all the kind words. 00:28:24.753 --> 00:28:34.429 I think the thing that I would give the most advice on is protecting your time, time management and it's something I've always preached before. 00:28:34.429 --> 00:28:35.613 Entrepreneurship as well. 00:28:35.613 --> 00:28:44.718 There's a lot of fires that are going to be thrown your way any given day, right as the guy that has to be the one to you know the end all be all. 00:28:44.718 --> 00:28:59.013 Your day is going to be pulled in a million directions, and if you can't be, again, intentional with your time and protect it and decide what fires can be left burning for a little while while you focus on the main fires, it's a quick recipe for disaster. 00:28:59.013 --> 00:29:09.775 So I think the one thing that has helped me the most is time management making sure that I am focused on what I need to be focused on and letting those small fires burn, knowing that I'll get to them. 00:29:09.775 --> 00:29:20.230 It's not ignoring them by any means, but if you don't be very intentional with your time, you will quickly run out of time and then realize you didn't get anything done in that day. 00:29:21.375 --> 00:29:33.717 I once heard the analogy of owning a business is like riding on the back of a lion it's really powerful and it can take you really far, really really fast, but at any point it can also turn around and bite your head off. 00:29:35.826 --> 00:29:54.172 So it's this beautiful contradiction of risk and reward, and using the time management part of it and prioritizing what you're going to focus on gives you a greater likelihood of being successful, and I love that you brought up health. 00:29:54.484 --> 00:30:17.133 It's underappreciated, I think, that to be at your best from a performance perspective, you need good sleep, you need exercise, you need a healthy diet, and it not only manifests itself in your physical body but in the way that you show up for others, how much stamina you have to make it through the day. 00:30:17.133 --> 00:30:35.728 Your mental clarity and the happiest entrepreneurs I'm not necessarily going to always say the most successful, because that's subjective, depending on how people define success but the happiest entrepreneurs that I know tend to be the ones that prioritize their health, and so that's another good lesson. 00:30:35.728 --> 00:30:38.153 It's a reminder for me too. 00:30:38.153 --> 00:30:39.416 That's why I love to do. 00:30:39.416 --> 00:30:49.413 What I do is I get to learn from dozens and dozens of people doing what you're doing, justin, and we're grateful to you for sharing your story and we are definitely all rooting for you. 00:30:49.413 --> 00:30:51.519 Awesome, I appreciate it, nate, always great talking to you and thank you so much for having me. 00:30:51.539 --> 00:30:52.423 All right, are definitely all rooting for you. 00:30:52.423 --> 00:30:55.652 Awesome, I appreciate it, nate, always great talking to you and thank you so much for having me. 00:30:56.173 --> 00:30:57.016 All right, take care, my friend. 00:30:57.016 --> 00:31:07.876 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. 00:31:07.876 --> 00:31:12.175 Be sure to like, follow or subscribe to the podcast to get the latest updates. 00:31:12.175 --> 00:31:18.608 To learn more about the show and connect with the growing community of entrepreneurs, visit logisticsfounderscom. 00:31:18.608 --> 00:31:23.239 And, of course, thank you to all the founders who trust us to share their stories.