We are joined on this week's episode by CEO of Trucker Tools, Kary Jablonski. We begin by discussing the power of personal branding through social media. Through our candid conversation, we reveal how authenticity isn't just a buzzword—it's the hidden currency of LinkedIn, fostering genuine connections and opening doors to untold business opportunities. Kary’s insights into social media's role in the freight world, from transparent communication to product testing, are indispensable for anyone looking to elevate their professional game.
On her personal journey from consulting to helping scale Uber's operations, Kary shares the valuable lessons learned about leadership within the tech and freight landscapes. We discuss the abrupt twists that come with working in dynamic environments, and how these experiences forge resilience and strategic acumen. As Kary and I swap stories, we highlight the importance of customer success, humility, and the magic of showing up as your true self in professional spaces—a strategy that translates into growth and success.
We dive into the business of Trucker Tools, understanding how so much of their success is centered on the product they've built out for drivers. By focusing on creating a great tool for drivers, they've given themselves a great entry point to support brokers in their increasing need for visibility load by load. As their business has grown, they've recognized the value of integrations and partnerships to expand their abilities to serve their customers. We talk about all this, plus what the future holds for Trucker Tools as Kary's team continues to grow.
The episode wraps up with deep dives into the challenges newly-appointed CEOs face, from navigating post-acquisition transitions to making strategic hires during industry downturns. Learn from our experiences as we discuss the approaches to fostering a leadership style that empowers teams and prioritizes dynamics, while acknowledging the personal obstacles we face, such as impatience. Join us for this episode, packed with authentic discussion and strategic insights that promise to resonate with professionals across industries.
We are joined on this week's episode by CEO of Trucker Tools, Kary Jablonski. We begin by discussing the power of personal branding through social media. Through our candid conversation, we reveal how authenticity isn't just a buzzword—it's the hidden currency of LinkedIn, fostering genuine connections and opening doors to untold business opportunities. Kary’s insights into social media's role in the freight world, from transparent communication to product testing, are indispensable for anyone looking to elevate their professional game.
On her personal journey from consulting to helping scale Uber's operations, Kary shares the valuable lessons learned about leadership within the tech and freight landscapes. We discuss the abrupt twists that come with working in dynamic environments, and how these experiences forge resilience and strategic acumen. As Kary and I swap stories, we highlight the importance of customer success, humility, and the magic of showing up as your true self in professional spaces—a strategy that translates into growth and success.
We dive into the business of Trucker Tools, understanding how so much of their success is centered on the product they've built out for drivers. By focusing on creating a great tool for drivers, they've given themselves a great entry point to support brokers in their increasing need for visibility load by load. As their business has grown, they've recognized the value of integrations and partnerships to expand their abilities to serve their customers. We talk about all this, plus what the future holds for Trucker Tools as Kary's team continues to grow.
The episode wraps up with deep dives into the challenges newly-appointed CEOs face, from navigating post-acquisition transitions to making strategic hires during industry downturns. Learn from our experiences as we discuss the approaches to fostering a leadership style that empowers teams and prioritizes dynamics, while acknowledging the personal obstacles we face, such as impatience. Join us for this episode, packed with authentic discussion and strategic insights that promise to resonate with professionals across industries.
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back. We are back for another episode of the Freepod. I'm your host, andrew Silver. I'm joined today by Kari Jablonski. I get that last name right.
Speaker 1:Nailed it.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the show, Kari. How are you doing today?
Speaker 1:I'm doing great. Thanks. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm glad to have you. I've been slacking. If I'm being perfectly honest, I probably owe an apology to my loyal listeners, the Freepoders, who have been showing up for the last I don't know four or five months then, and taking in all this content, it's I've hit, I guess, a bit of a lull, I should say where. Not that I've lost motivation, but it's I don't know. Just, you know how sometimes you get, you get going and things are going well, and then staying consistent is hard. You ever deal with that in your life, Kari?
Speaker 1:Your life gets in the way. You go to the Super Bowl and you just you've got other priorities.
Speaker 2:That was, yeah, that's fair. And you know I'm trying to start working again and you know I've been looking for a real job. Not that being a podcaster isn't a real job, but today it's not a paying job. I am working on sponsors. So, but it was out there thinking of how can I get my business, my brand, out there. If you've got a good business, I'd be happy to look at it and potentially bring you on as a sponsor. So, as the Freight Nation listens, you can I don't know partake.
Speaker 1:I've got a business, so maybe that I don't know, maybe we take this offline.
Speaker 2:Maybe we do take this offline. Speaking of the business, let's talk about your business. Well, let's actually start. Let's start with your presence in the world, kari, so you are relatively new to the industry right Two years in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, two and a half. Let's round up Two and a half.
Speaker 2:That's fair. Sorry, sorry, not me to cut your short and dog ears. That's another four years or so. So what I'm noticing is you've kind of really started to create a presence for yourself, a personal brand for yourself. I've seen it on Twitter, or what they now call X, which was kind of new for me as well, and then I'm really seeing it on LinkedIn a lot. I'm seeing you on a lot of podcasts. I'm almost curious if we're getting to a podcast bubble in the industry where there's just too many, not enough people to interview. So I was listening to you on the Logistics of Logistics podcast to do a little bit of research and I don't really want to do the same thing everyone's doing, but let's talk about that. So is this an intentional thing you're doing where you're kind of getting yourself out there into the world and trying to get the trucker tools name out there?
Speaker 1:Great question. I'd say it developed a bit organically and now I'm being more intentional about it and I've never been so just in front of me. I've never been a big social media person. I had a Facebook in high school but I got rid of it right after college. I think I might have been a little too young for my space, or just I stayed away from the computer. Maybe I wasn't, I don't know. Maybe I was just I was a loser, I didn't have my space.
Speaker 2:I didn't have my space either, I just was curious. You know what that social environment looked like for you.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Great question Now know my space Dabbling Facebook in high school and college. When, like remember Facebook party invites, like that's how you'd find out where the party was that weekend, you get like the invite, the invite. So how to do that? And then, yeah, never was always scared of Twitter, always really scared of Instagram. You can, you can go to Instagram and look me up, but I have zero posts. I will never post an Instagram, I just have it.
Speaker 1:You know, when I need to log in and check something out and LinkedIn definitely was something I always personally found a bit cringy. And then I joined Freight World about, you know, two and a half three years ago and as I really got to know our customers specifically, we can talk more about tracker tools if we want to. But brokers brokers live on LinkedIn in a way that I have never seen another. You know it's a huge space but, like niche, part of the workforce live on LinkedIn. So it just became a really useful tool for me to start to understand the industry, figure out who was who. I was noticing I have a meeting, I quickly get a LinkedIn request, which is kind of a social norm that was developing. So it was not intentional play to build my LinkedIn presence. But then I just started, I started to gain, you know, as about confidence in myself and as a leader in the space and leading the business.
Speaker 1:I, you know, I kind of typed something out and never wanted to be kind of written like half sentences because I didn't want to say anything. That was too, you know, forceful. And then, you know, got some good feedback on it and at that same time this was probably mid 23, started to become friends with some other folks in the space. Like Reed is read, lost aloud, I don't know how to say his last name, so read, if you're listening, send me a voice note and tell me. But he was really there we go.
Speaker 1:He was the one he really pushed me to just like, just try it and hit, send and see how people respond, and I give him a lot of credit for what he's built in this space in terms of authentic community and just encouraging people to go for it and be themselves, and that was definitely a push I needed. So over the last couple of months it's definitely been more of an intentional focus of mine. My marketing teams helped me a lot with it, but I'm writing, you know, the vast majority of my own content. I'm certainly tweeting on my own, which I don't. I don't think I really have Twitter down yet, but LinkedIn's been fantastic from a business growth perspective, like it's generating real revenue for trucker tools right now, so I have no plans to stop anytime soon.
Speaker 2:You have to follow the money. So, if, if, if, if LinkedIn is taking you down that path, then that's where you need to go. And you know it's interesting you use the word cringe to describe what you thought LinkedIn was. Can you elaborate on that? Like, what about what you were seeing felt so cringe?
Speaker 1:The amount of self promotion on LinkedIn, like when you see someone get an internship and say, hey, I'm, you know, I'm so humbled to announce it's kind of like LeBron, the decision style, like I'm taking my talent trucker tools, it just felt a little like, really like, is that actually how we feel about our jobs? People talk about their jobs very differently on LinkedIn than they do with their friends or even their coworkers, so that that always was a little odd to me. And there's obviously the element of that's true throughout all social media which which, with the exception of, I think, twitter, which is yours, it's kind of a glorified lens of what's going on. I think Twitter is a little bit more real and off the cuff because of the short form of it, but everything just seemed to be too good to be true on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:And now, I'm posting selfies on LinkedIn and it's kind of crazy to see. You know I didn't have it on my 2024 Pingo card, but here we are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it's it's one of those things where I've kind of thought this is, this is a joke, but like, if people were as nice in the real world and supportive in the real world as they are on LinkedIn, the world would be a very different place. And, you know, I don't think there'd be any world hunger would be solved. Like, if the world really was as is kind and supportive as everyone supposedly is on LinkedIn, then like it would be a different place we'd be living in, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:Totally, Totally, and I think I and please, listeners of the freight pod, keep me honest I certainly, you know I like to share the great things that we're doing at Trick or Jules, because we have been in an awesome spot over the last year or two, but I also want to share, I want to be really intentional about making sure that I'm not just posting like fluffy stuff. I want to be more precise and, you know, critical and in a constructive way when I can be, and I think I think I'm seeing a little bit more of that on LinkedIn right now and I'm hoping that's the way we're going away from just like great job, rooting for you. You guys are awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, for me I'm I've had a I have like a love hate relationship with LinkedIn. I would say in that what I see today my feed often frustrates me more than like makes me feel like I'm learning something or seeing something new. It does feel like a lot of self promotional kind of BS. And you know my I guess recipe I started posting on LinkedIn during the pandemic. I had not done so prior to that and I think for me the motivation was as someone who was largely a sales guy or spent a lot of time customer facing in my when I was CEO of MOLO like that's how I spent a lot of my time, was out in front of customers, and when the pandemic hit you couldn't go see them physically anymore. So I think I remember like a month in to the pandemic I came back to our office I was the only one in there and I filmed myself just kind of selling our business, like I was like these are our differentiators. This is where I think makes us different. This is where I think you need to be a great broker and kind of we check these boxes. And I just posted it on the internet, I posted on LinkedIn and I'm like you know, to some extent I'm putting this in front of all of my competitors to whether they want to make fun of it, steal it, use it themselves, whatever. But I also thought, you know, previously, if I wanted to talk to customers, there are only maybe three or four I could speak to in a day, especially physically if I'm traveling. Now it's like you know, if I put something out there, they're seeing this stuff and if they agree with it, it might lead to some you know, I don't know connection or business, who knows.
Speaker 2:And there was a real tangible moment for me where that kind of happened and I got a message from someone at a large shipper on LinkedIn and they were like hey, andrew, can we chat? And I thought my first thought was this person must have just gotten left, left their job, and they're looking to come interview with me. But I was like, yeah, sure, we can chat. And when we did, he said hey, I really like the things you've been posting. If this is representative of how your team operates, then I would.
Speaker 2:I think you guys should be a carrier for us. And all of a sudden I'm thinking man, this, this is not how this usually goes. I mean, I usually have to email someone 10, 15 times before I get a chance. And this guy's reaching out to me just because of the stuff I put on LinkedIn and so like there is real value. I just think people need to be as authentic as they can be and I just think I've definitely been part of a group that I've oversold before. I think I've done the fluff. At one point I posted it on LinkedIn that Molo was the like Tylenol of the industry for shippers.
Speaker 1:No, no. How many leads to that?
Speaker 2:I think I lost a few customers that day. No, I just put the funny thing. I actually I did ask some of the people in my executive, you know, what do you think of this post? And they're like do not post that, it is absurd. And then I wanted to prove them wrong, which is why I followed through. It didn't, the analogy did not play. But I do think you know my engagement on LinkedIn has grown tremendously from just trying to be as honest and authentic and it's gotten me in trouble sometimes where I say a little too much. But I'm noticing that's kind of where you're headed and I think I mean, I think it's why we're sitting here. I don't think I would really know who you were If I hadn't seen some of the stuff you were posting. That got me interested and that's why I reached out to you to want to talk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think I mean I give you credit for doing video content back whenever that was in 2018, 2019, because that was certainly pre-tik-tok and reels and everything. And video content still really scares me, even though I know it is the most engaging content that you can put on LinkedIn. So that's impressive that you were on that Vanguard. But I'm totally with you on even if your title post was, you know, net negative for the business. The cool thing about it is it does.
Speaker 1:Linkedin lets you test things so quickly. I've done this with Twitter, too, where I'm talking to my product team. We've got an idea. I tweet something out to say like hey, brokers, what do you think about this? I get 15 inbound immediately from brokers saying, no, this is right. I'd actually do this differently. Like the speed that you can test product ideas, messaging, positioning through work. Social is is pretty cool. And what I thought I have about social media, too, is I like I don't really use it in my personal life, but work like and I'm not saying like a toxic or alcoholic, but work is a really big part of my life and I like being able to like share some of that with the world and express some of it, and I think LinkedIn is, when you do it authentically, allows you to I don't know just like live that out and share it in the same way that people share their personal lives through Instagram or Facebook.
Speaker 2:I would argue that there's a part of it that could feel almost therapeutic, like almost like a release, to be able to like, hey, okay, I got it out. Like you know, this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm working on. You know, validates kind of how you're feeling about the work you're doing and maybe some of it's ego related.
Speaker 1:I don't know, maybe.
Speaker 2:I definitely know I've dabbled at that's. Where I think my post get off is when I'm, like you know, trying to. You know, maybe not intentionally, but like, like I want to feel good, I want people to know that this is what I did. Like you know that that's not the winning approach, I don't think, but, and that's part of the problem, or big part of the problem, I mean and those are the posts that do the best, and then you go check who liked it every five minutes and the dopamine hits are very, very real.
Speaker 1:So I definitely have that problem. I think that they're I don't know what the form for this is I think I actually tweeted out your brother once when he was talking about building in public and I was like the problem with building in public is that you never, like I've never been a founder, so I don't know what it's like and it's got to be so unbelievably challenging. But even taking truck or twig, I don't know what it's like Taking truck or tools where I have, over the last couple of years, so many things have gone wrong in addition to going right, like probably more more things have gone wrong and there's no place you have to talk. I guess by nature you have to talk about those in like bilateral, non-podcast form until you're well after, like whether it's after an exit like Molo. There's no place to kind of commiserate over that and it would be so awesome Like post something on LinkedIn about hey, we tried this, it fell flat on its face.
Speaker 1:Does anyone have an idea about something different we could do? And that? I Don't know if it's like an anonymous social work network or something, but that's, I think that's a big issue is that you don't get any of that sort of feedback on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's hard to get the real tangible, constructive stuff out of it. What? What, hopefully, you're getting, though, is People who can connect to the post and understand the problem you're talking about, and then they're reaching out and setting up conversations on the side. I agree with the concept of building in public. The same way, I think it aligns very nicely with a very transparent communication model, which was one thing that I think we did extremely well at Molo for a very long time was be just extremely Transparent, overtly transparent about everything we were doing the good, the bad, the ugly and that was kind of what I was trying to do publicly as well, and you know we were fortunate we didn't have a lot of really ugly moments in what we were building.
Speaker 2:So, like, I didn't have to, you know, deal with like how do I position this kind of Problem?
Speaker 2:That that's a real issue, but we did have, you know, there was a point in, you know I want to say late summer of 2020, the first year of COVID when we were standing by all of our contractual rate commitments and the market was Skyrocketing on price and all of a sudden, our business was literally at the worst margins we never had, and that was where I was like this is a moment we could talk about publicly but we can theoretically spin it positively, like helping our customers understand that this is us going to bat for them and we let freight waves write an article about us.
Speaker 2:You know, specifically kind of open the books to him is that here, here you go publish. This Kind of gave him an in-depth look at like what it looks like at a brokerage that's struggling, because I think a lot of brokers, especially the ones, the digital ones, lived in these negative margin numbers but they never wanted to talk about it publicly and it's like I'm comfortable. I think customers and potential employees are very open to buying into a Transparent model and buying into like a struggling business if they understand why you're, why you're at where you're at and I think if you communicate the right way, that's possible if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Definitely I don't want to set the record straight trucker tools is not struggling, actually in great shape, but you know, obviously things hit the fan all the time in your. If you have a business where things don't go wrong, please contact me. I'd love to hear more, but I totally agree and we've. So we're hiring for several roles right now and we've I've gotten feedback from folks on my team who are the hiring managers that candidates have said they really appreciate there, they know they do research on us and they check out who's at the business, who's in charge, and the Kind of transparent and down-to-earth nature of our social presence is actually a real draw for them, which I think we're awesome because it all comes down to who we can hire.
Speaker 1:You know that that's the determinant of our success.
Speaker 2:Well, who you can hire and and who's buying from you, and I think that there's a, I think there's a real big shift happening in our industry.
Speaker 2:That's generational, right, yeah, and the buyers are getting younger, right, and and that's you know whether, whether it's your business where you're selling into freight brokers, those buyers are definitely getting younger. There are a lot more people like me, and they're late 20s, early 30s, who are, you know, being aggressive and starting their own brokerages and doing well, and Same same thing for for the, especially on the employee side, right, I mean the people who are Applying for jobs. Now, they want there's an entitlement. I don't want to call it a problem. There's an entitlement, reality, and that entitlement is is drawn by or caused by, I guess, like the information age, like the tick tock age, where you can just Go on, tick tock and get any piece of information, or Twitter and get any piece of information that you want, and I think that's, I think that's why people are Like you know. A good example of this is a few weeks ago, a woman got laid off from her job and she recorded it and put it on the internet.
Speaker 2:I saw that and, like the whole world saw that and that like immediately changed how so many people view that company. And so I think, like, if I think Something that you're doing that I think is gonna be really beneficial for you is like putting yourself out there so people not only are getting to know how to trucker tools the business, because you're creating a present for yourself, but they're gonna know who's the face of truckers, who's the person behind all the decisions being made of trucker tools, and do I align with that person, do I want to work with that person? I think that is a path that more and more executives and CEO should be taking, because one it's not that hard. You know, if you've got a good head on your shoulders and you're making good decisions that are in the best interests of your customers and your people, then put that out into the world, like let let people know how you're thinking about things, because it will align you to the right people who want to come work for you, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Totally, totally, and on the customer side too, like the social media. It sounds like this is what happened to you, kind of with your eureka moment like Den, but I was at manifest I guess it was last week or just Gary and I met so many people I had interacted with on LinkedIn. So the the online to offline Conversion channel is absolutely crazy and it just speeds up. You have so much context about the person, you understand what they care about, you understand what they're thinking about, who else they interact with, so just you can really get into it Very quickly and I think that's probably that's been by far the most valuable use case for me. It's just speeding up that time to understand someone and what their priorities are.
Speaker 2:So you're spending a lot of time at conferences now, aren't you?
Speaker 1:Yes, I travel a lot.
Speaker 2:And what's kind of the Strategic thinking behind that being such a big focal point for you personally, versus sending a salesperson Versed doing other things you could be doing in the business at the time? How are you thinking about that decision?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we do bring our sales team to a lot of conferences and our marketing team and our product team like there. Our next big conference that we're going to is the TIA capital ideas conference in Scottsdale and we're gonna have 78 people there. So we do show up in spades, but it's been a priority of mine to be at conferences over the last two or so years for a couple of reasons. One is that we were going through a huge founder transition. So our founder, prasad Galapally, founded Trekker tools back in 2009 and was the face of the business for 12, 13 years until he and his business partner, morali, sold in early 2021 and they had such incredibly deep customer relationships with people who trusted them when they were still building this thing, um, before we were really established in in the brokerage tech stack. And Prasad imparted on me from day one, when I came in to you complete the leadership transition, how critical those relationships were, and I think I think that's probably true in almost any you know vertical industry, like freight brokerage, when you're a software provider, those customer relationships are everything. Um, so it was just. It was from day one. I was like I I can't mess this up like these guys, these people are friends, advisors, you know really put so much trust in Prasad and Morali, like I need to be a steward of those relationships. So I just made it up. You know, I felt the weight of that personal responsibility and thought I'm not gonna Respectfully, like, delegate this to a sales guy, like, and I love my sales team, I we have a phenomenal team but I thought it was important enough that I be there during, like, these leadership transitions don't happen often. I think you really got a nail and you have one chance to land the plane, so that's why I started going to them.
Speaker 1:Um, the second reason, too is, like you said, I I'm not a freight lifer, I didn't grow up in freight, and I think the easiest way to understand what the heck is happening in this industry is to go to a Conference floor, and you certainly someone on the tech side like me. You you walk the floor and you see the tech stack in real life and you can actually, you know what are the differences between the tms's and how does this you know provider differ from that provider? You can ask those questions and you can just you can visualize that. I'm a very visual person. So, um, it was also to speed up my own learning curve as I, as I got up to speed on the freight world um, and now I think um, I guess I also go to spend time with my teams. We're all remote and getting in person time is invaluable, so it's easy to do that when I do have folks from my team come in. But I think again, it has been Like it was.
Speaker 1:I didn't set out to become like a freight influencer. That definitely wasn't um. You know objective number one when I, when I moved into this role but I think it's been a um. I now see the compounding effect of it and how, if I can be the real steward of the brand and the face of the brand in some ways, how that can just help us tell our story so much more impactfully than Sitting behind a computer. So it's it. It's a straight up business decision. Honestly it's been, and it's easy for me to. I'm, I've been so involved in every part of the business over the last three years Like I've I've led the product team, I've led the sales team, I've led the market, I've led every single team that I can get feedback and know exactly who to triage it to very quickly in real time, so just it also allows me to get that feedback back to my team really fast.
Speaker 2:What was the biggest challenge in coming into this industry as a non freight lifer? Because our kind doesn't take too well to your kind. All oh, let's freight lifers, I was born in it. We don't just welcome Anybody from the outside, so talk about that a little bit definitely so.
Speaker 1:That was a challenge because, fairly enough, you as an outsider especially as a More of a techie outsider it's you get looked at with a lot of skepticism by the freight lifers. Um, so I think the first thing you know that I still I try to keep in mind every day is just to be humble and have humility and approach everything from a place of humility, to try to understand what, Like, what is the day-to-day of this person now who I'm working with, the customer's life? Um, so I think being really curious and open at the beginning was Probably sounds obvious, but the most beneficial thing I could do and just asking a lot of questions to understand what was going on. And I think something we've we talked a lot about at trucker tools Over the last two or three years is the power of focus and doing a couple things really, really well. And in a space like freight that is so dynamic from a tech perspective, where there's all these new entrants all the time coming in and saying, hey, we can do this, we can do that, we can do this, and it's honestly hard to tell sometimes what companies do.
Speaker 1:We got so laser focused on a couple of our offerings so that we could actually deliver and put wins on the board for customers and like I think that's how I built credibility in the space was hey, you're unsatisfied with your low tracking of visibility options. These other options you've looked at are not serving you right now. Like, okay, we are only working with brokers. We are going hard at that. For all the things we're doing, I will get on a call with you personally like every two weeks to tell you more about it. Mr Customer and um, I think I think From the customers I've developed in partners have developed great relationships with like that sort of to your point, like kind of transparency About what it is we're doing and why we're doing it and how we're going to do. It was really appreciated, um.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I think it was hard.
Speaker 2:I think you make a very valid like the, the notion of like I will personally, like I personally will take accountability for this, for this action. I'm for this plan that we have. That will make your life easier and and allow you to do your job better. I think there's something that A buyer just appreciates in that, especially when it's coming from someone in that c-suite, in that, especially in that ceo seat, because they know, like the, the business is supported by this.
Speaker 2:You know you're not getting a sales guy who's saying one thing and then the business is going to do another. You're hearing it straight from the horse's mouth. This is what the business is focused on. Um, and I think having that humility goes a long way, or that you know, really the willingness to say this is what we're good at. These are the things that are not our wheelhouse. We are laser focused on this. This is where we're going to beat the competition and this is we're going to add value for you. Having that mindset and that approach when you are at the c-level and you are directly on those conference floors saying it to potential customers, that's how you get buying.
Speaker 1:So I think you're thinking about it the right way.
Speaker 2:But with that said, you know you, you you went through a lot there and and let's, let's go back in time a little bit just for for a piece here to talk about your background. Like, how did we get to freight? You know, give us, give us the Not. I want like the not 30 000 foot view. Like let's get into a little bit. I want to know the highlights of your career leading up to freight. Yeah, and I may reject to, to make you go deeper on certain things.
Speaker 1:So go ahead great. So I'm from the east coast originally and I've always my mom worked in town government growing up. So I was always interested, broadly speaking, and like how do all these things in the world intersect? Like I remember looking at you know plans of we're considering putting in a stoplight at this intersection, like how is that going to impact how everything moves? So I've always I've always been interested in maps in the built world. It's just always been something I've it's really fascinating to me. So I think there's always been like some is some interest on my side In college.
Speaker 1:You know, moving away from that, I I worked for a student run business for the entirety of my college career. It was literally like 250 college kids running it's called the corp, running grocery stores and coffee shops. I was a member of the catering service and I ran the catering service my senior year and that was my introduction to like Dillardine, something small, together with a team of people you love. So I was a student in college and small, together with a team of people you love. So I was. You know I've been in the weddings of my friends from the corp and they're, you know, some of the closest people in the world to me, so that really cemented, like, okay, I want to go into something, I want to go into business, I don't know it's your first stage of building that, exactly, exactly, and like, just talk about messing things up.
Speaker 1:Like we go out Thursday night and then like someone would have forgotten to place the coffee order for sacks for Friday morning and I'm getting to call it 6 am. Like we got to go to Safeway, just like everything was going wrong, but it was so fun. Um, we actually used to call Fridays.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I can swear on this podcast, but we used to call it go ahead Friday is because I would you know I get out of class and like you'd have 15 missed calls and you have to go to the kitchen and just figure it out. So it was blast. So I knew I wanted to go into business there from there and a lot of a lot of my peers who were A couple years ahead of me had gone into management consulting. So that was just a very common path of like this is kind of the intro to business career Coming out of school. So I um, I ended up getting a job with Deloitte right out of college In dc consulting.
Speaker 2:I know our industry doesn't love consultants. So this is the start of the wrong path, but let's see where it goes.
Speaker 1:It is. It is, but you'll be very glad to know I very quickly Knew that it was not for me and that's not to disrespect Deloitte or management completely. It honestly was a fantastic first job and you can see the the fingerprints that going to consulting left all over me and the way I run the business today. Like asked my team. You know, rule of three for everything it. It makes you so organized, analytical, able to move at very many different levels. So I just I learned so much very quickly and I had some really cool jobs. I I was consulting for the navy. At one point I'd gone to their pharmacies and evaluate their standard operating procedures. You just get exposed to a lot of really cool stuff. But I knew quickly like I didn't want to be, I don't want to be advising and I wanted to be in it and calm the shots. So I had proof of that in journals. I've tapped around, like you know week three on the job.
Speaker 1:I think I don't know if this is going to be the path for me. So got receipts. So you know, I did a year or two of that and I I was thinking, okay, what I want to go work for a business, but like I don't really know what business to go work for. And that was the time when uber was really blowing up and uber x had just come out and you know, dd and uber were going at it in china and there's all this exciting stuff and I I thought ridesharing because as a concept is really interesting, coming back to my interest as a kid and like how do things move around a city? So Happy coincidence that dc's operational or sorry, uber's operational headquarters in the us was actually in dc their kind of product and global hq was in san francisco, but Um, the us ops leadership lived in dc where I was, and um, a number of folks had gone from Deloitte over to uber, so I was able to uh, I was able to find my way in there, actually through a freight guy, um iman shahi, who ran product at motive, so there's a freight connection. He was the one who referred me over to uh, over to to uber, and I spent About a year and a half, maybe two years, in the dc office Um, just helping grow the business. It was very much into like uber's blowing up hyperscale phase You're basically everywhere at that point. We're launching some college markets. I was Focused a lot on the airports and managing. So whenever you're out at the airport and you're annoyed about how do I know where to go to get my uber, uh, that was my team. Uh, so just like doing a lot of really cool operational things. I got a lot more data and it just it was the coolest job ever. Like I thought I I could not have been happier with my job. I worked with such smart people. They were cool, they were, you know, fast moving, they were fun, they were so smart. So I was happy as a clam um in the dc office and, and that was so a gold mine.
Speaker 1:In college I studied abroad um as well, for a semester in scotland and that was the first time I'd left the country and I was like holy smokes, there's a world out there that is the coolest thing like. I just grew up thinking kind of new england was the extent of you know the universe and uh, just going to. You know I was your classic american study abroad student. He's just, you know, bopping around, probably not getting, you know, totally cultural. America's been enjoying herself, and so I, I really wanted to work abroad at some point in my 20s, um, because I didn't think I was kind of done with that.
Speaker 1:So I applied for a program that uber had called nomad, where, when they were launching globally at that point, they were looking for folks from the us to come drop into other markets and help scale up quickly and impart kind of best practices from the most mature market. So kind of interesting story actually. I I applied for nomad in just probably 2017 and I got notified that I I was matched to go to indonesia, and I was so jacked up about it I didn't know where indonesia was. I had to go look it up on a map, um. So I was like, all right, I'm going to jacarta.
Speaker 2:So uh, I was there. No apprehension about just up and moving to jacarta like that, you know, with limited knowledge of.
Speaker 1:No, I was so unbelievably excited. I was 25. I had it like I went. I had a lot of friends who had lived abroad at the time. I went to Georgetown and there was a big emphasis on International everything. So I had some friends who were living abroad and it just sounded so fun and I had such great times from, you know, study abroad in college. I thought it was gonna be an absolute blast. I was. I was ready to go. I was signed up for Indonesian lessons. The next day I had this tutor named Zaki. We would hop on once a week. I was learning to pass it in Indonesia. So now I was really pumped.
Speaker 2:Okay, how's your Indonesian today?
Speaker 1:Oh, miserable. But I, it is an interesting language and that there, as far as I remember, there's not really like a concept of verbs or nouns or parts of speech, so just you basically just memorize bunch words. So when I was there, I, you know, I wasn't able to talk fluently with anyone but I could communicate to, like a cab driver, like hey, I want to go to this place, which is pretty cool, but that's all totally been so you're working for uber in Singapore, but taking cabs.
Speaker 1:I was in Jakarta, which is a very different place from Singapore. But a touche actually I maybe they were ubers. Well, it's actually interesting they weren't ubers. I'll tell you why so did you say Singapore?
Speaker 2:Did I make that up just now?
Speaker 1:You made it up. No, sorry, bed listener Sorry but keep, having you been to Singapore.
Speaker 2:No, I think maybe we were thinking about it for the honeymoon and that's why it's in my head, but I Never made it to Singapore, supposed to be top-notch.
Speaker 1:Jakarta is a very different place. Very close by it's like a massive, massive, massive city. Indonesia is the fourth biggest country by population in the world like it just Crazy place 17,000 islands. So anyway, I, you know, got told I was going to Jakarta. I was like let's go, I'm gonna sublet my apartment because I don't want to have to pay for my apartment while I'm there for like five months. So I'm gonna put all my stuff in storage, get out of my apartment.
Speaker 1:And at this time Uber was definitely kind of tightening up its own internal processes, as opposed to me just hopping on a plane and working there. I had to go through a visa process and Indonesia has quite a bit of red tape when it comes to foreign visa permitting, so I ended up getting delayed by a little bit. So I was kind of hanging around DC taking my Indonesian lessons for a couple of months waiting to go. And as we're getting closer and my visa is almost ready, I start hearing these rumors that Uber is gonna divest from Southeast Asia and Sell the business. So I'm just kind of like you know an underlying at that point. I know I'm not that important, but I was like, oh, that's concerning, because it's my dream to work abroad, and I'm like All my stuff is in storage and I'm like ready to go. So I, you know, I kind of emailed some folks and they're like nope, we're investing the business go. So I ended up getting my visa and hopping on a plane in mid-March 2018.
Speaker 1:Get to Indonesia. Like definitely apprehensive about, like is this business gonna exist? Like is this all about to fall apart? So it's spent the weekend in Jakarta and Then, you know, my first day at work Monday morning and 8 30 am First meeting is an all-hands in the Indonesian office, just a step scene. It is me Coming from America with a hundred Indonesians on the top floor of this massive office building, jakarta. They have the all-hands. They're like yep, we sold the business to grab, we're divesting from Southeast Asia. Like everyone, you know all the everything shut down right now. Like your laptops are turned off, your emails are turned off. Everyone's crying, everyone's like who are you? Are you HR here to like fire?
Speaker 2:us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was like I'm supposed to come work with you, I'm 25.
Speaker 2:I don't know what's going on. I can barely understand what you're saying and it.
Speaker 1:It was wild, like I mean, people were really upset under and this is like the intense rivalry war days. Thankfully, like I was still a US employee, I didn't make an official transfer, so I was fine. But I was just like what the heck this was? I just spent months preparing for this and it was just. It was devastating to me. I thought like I'm never gonna get to work abroad now. This is all you know. We just felt like it's all over. So it was really, really interesting. Like I'm ended up becoming good friends with some of the folks.
Speaker 1:It from the Indonesian office because I stuck around for a while Transition they had to move all the Uber drivers over to grab.
Speaker 1:So I there was no Uber in Southeast Asia when I was there and it was just. It was just like an emotional, intense experience and I think that like the big lesson for me with that was and I say this, knowing like I am people's boss, a lot of people's boss, and I take that job really seriously but like Companies are, like we exist in this capitalist society and companies do what they need to do at some points, and like you need to look out for yourself and I would say that to anyone on my team, anyone I'm advising, I'd say to myself like you all, you can never, you, always you. You need in the world we live and you have to be looking out for yourself. And I Think it was just a good lesson for me to learn at that point that Uber wasn't there to take care of me. It was a great employer and I loved it and I learned a ton and I have a lot of friends from there, but I had to take care of myself.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean yeah, that's. I think a very that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what? So I took a couple weeks off, I traveled around, I did my little eat, pray, love Bali vacation, which was awesome, and meanwhile I was trying to figure out you know where am I going next. So I could have gone back to the DC office, but I ended up With uber support able was able to find another role in Mexico, or, yeah, in Mexico To support their ride-sharing team as DD. The big Chinese company was entering Latin America, so Ended up a broad moment kind of yeah, oh, I definitely did.
Speaker 1:yeah, so I ended up going to Mexico. I was originally gonna be there for three or four months, ended up staying for 18 or 19. I think I transferred full-time to the Mexico City office. I worked primarily on Uber eats while I was down there on the Latin American kind of expansion, building that whole region up, and then left uber Summer 2019, right after the IPO.
Speaker 2:What would you say are any Lessons that you took from that business, your time there, that kind of stick with you and what you're doing today?
Speaker 1:I Think uber DNA is all over the way we run tracker tools. My COO, slash CFO Rohit that was water, he's awesome Is also ex uber, so he and I definitely run with that sort of mentality, which is, I think, a lot of companies say, their data first, but that's not actually true. Like uber, it was expected that every single person there Support operations, marketing, could you sequel and pull data to support any hypothesis they had. Like. If there wasn't a detailed analytical Viewpoint on something, no one was gonna listen to you. Your idea was never gonna get considered. So I think that's been big for us and embedding data and the way we think about our product, our customers, their success.
Speaker 2:Um yeah so you would argue that trucker tools is a very data-first company. Yes and Would you define data first is kind of how you just described that uber mentality of Every hypothesis you have must be supported by the data, more or less. So yeah, good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I think, I think so. It's not to say like you have to prove everything out with data, because we do, we get signals and we Take bets and we run experience. But I think it's more about the culture of experimentation, probably not that there must be a nice five paragraph essay or deck supporting something with a bunch of pretty graphs. It's more like okay, you think this is gonna be the case, let's test it, let's set up a quick experiment, let's pull the data and have a conversation about it and then make another move quickly. So it's just like hyper experimentation pace.
Speaker 2:I Don't know the answer. This question is but do you think there are any potential downsides to that approach, like when you could miss something, or like where a motion does play a bigger factor than data in a certain situation that you've seen?
Speaker 1:Certainly, like you know, when you're interacting with people, absolutely, and I think uber had plenty of its own baggage when it came to not Considering that always in the most you know effective way, certainly than like the in the tk era um, I hope he's not, you know, listening to this podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that'd be sweet. But so, yes, and I feel like to think we we strike a good balance there where, like, like I said, I'm on calls with customers every single day, I'm talking to people, I'm committing to things, like I'm hearing their pain, I'm walking through how they do their work every day and using that to inform ideas. But when it comes to Making decisions about what's gonna be the most of you know, what's gonna drive the most return for a customer, what's gonna allow us to be, you know, provide the most visibility possible, how do we scale our ELD program as fast as possible? Those are all, I think, things that need to be data driven and that's allowed us to grow really quickly. The interpersonal, like management stuff, of course. I think you're totally right, that has to be done really, you know, interpersonally and with emotion kind of at the forefront.
Speaker 2:I almost wonder if there's a generational aspect to this in that, like our generation is maybe most data prone, because it's just we're growing up in the age where people have learned how to leverage technology to get the most out of data. So, like you don't see it maybe as much in older generations.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I would and this could be a reach. But I'm curious if, when you get to Gen Z, there's gonna be a reversion away from data, almost because it feels like Gen Z is a little more emotional than Others. I don't know, I could be way off here, but I just I'm trying to. When I think about Gen Z, it's a different Animal than than what we have today. I don't know.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting. I think you should do a podcast with a Gen Z member of the freight community and focus on that. You could do like a pot, like a millennial and a Gen Z and talk about their different approaches to work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want I, because I don't even are the Gen Z years in the workforce yet, or are they? Yes?
Speaker 1:yeah, gen Z tops out right now at age 27.
Speaker 2:So you've got oh, okay, there you were almost there.
Speaker 1:I'm squarely a millennial. I want everyone to know I'm proud of it.
Speaker 2:Proud to eat. You aged up into the millennial workforce. That's right.
Speaker 1:That's right I.
Speaker 2:Got a sidetrack here. What were we talking about? So we were talking about lessons. We were talking about data-driven approach, trucker tools, so we were going down the path of post Uber. So, I'm sorry, post Indonesia. You get to Mexico. And then did we? We moved on from Uber. Where, where did we go next?
Speaker 1:Yes. So you know the freight community is not gonna like this one either. But I got my MBA and oh no you know, I know.
Speaker 1:I try to gloss over that one, but no, I'm definitely not Uber. Uber was awesome. I learned a ton. The company you know had grown a lot and was a public company, so I knew I wanted to go do something else and I was considering a couple of different Opportunities, like whether go join a startup and really try my hand at building something. A lot earlier stage ended up Also applying for some MBA programs and had an awesome opportunity at Kellogg at Northwestern in Chicago.
Speaker 2:So moved up from Mexico City to Evanston and Spent two years that overlapped with quite a bit of COVID, unfortunately, doing my MBA and Did we learn anything in business school, or is it? Is it all a farce?
Speaker 1:We did learn a lot in business school? No, I think it was. It was such a fantastic experience for me. I wasn't in business undergrad, I was a liberal arts major, so it was nice to go through some of the you know, actual academics around Accounting and all that jazz. But I think, more than that, it helped me mature for two years and think about it. Helped me mature.
Speaker 1:It helped me learn about all the paths that were available that I could go down. It just gave me a lot of context around. Here's a ton of different things you can do to make a difference in the world and, more than anything, it introduced me to amazing people professors, classmates alike who continue to have a really big impact on me several years out of the program. So I think a lot of the the business school academics. It's not about like learning what a debit and a credit is. It's more about how do I analytically approach this problem and pattern match across. You know these are how other companies have approached this and then think about Kellogg's really big on kind of personal leadership and Everything's a group assignment. So how do you show up in a group and lead a group of people and develop followership? So I Controversial.
Speaker 2:You know, for everyone who I know has done it, I think one of the biggest things most people talk about is just the network they develop. Yeah, but yes, for those that that I know who have gone down that path, they talk a lot about the network they developed. Do you kind of experience a similar perspective?
Speaker 1:Definitely I. Actually I was on two calls today with two of my classmates from business school talking freight. There are investors in the space and are looking to understand what's happening, walking them through a different tech stack. So I mean they're like very real kind of business revenue related implications. I've got some awesome professors who I keep in touch with, who are really grounding and helping me think through what this experience has been like and I think, most importantly, I've made some Amazing friends who I'm gonna be, you know, close with her for the rest of my life. So it's, it was absolutely worth it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Coming out of that, did any of your perspective on what you wanted to do with your life change at all, like what was what was kind of like the Motivation once you finish that process?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I actually that's that's why I got to trucker tools was through business school. So I I was looking for a full-time job after I graduated to, you know, start Making some money again, and I was introduced to the concept of Again, I didn't know anything about the investing world and I was introduced to the concept of these, these investment firms, not just investing money in companies but actually investing talent and people and kind of operating the operations into businesses. And I met the Now owners of trucker tools, a company, parent companies called Alpine investors and ASG is their software company who had just bought the business and we're looking for someone to come in and Steward it into the next phase. That's always the MO with Alpine, it's when founders are looking for a full transition and Prasadam Raleigh were, you know, had gotten it to an incredible place. We're looking to go do something else, so they needed an operator to come in to manage that transition period and then, you know, lead this, the business, into the future.
Speaker 1:And we're looking at MBA students, which, again, I think MBAs definitely get a bad rap and I understand why, but I I do think you find some incredible not to my own horn, but some awesome talent there and I had this kind of nice and generalized toolkit, especially from my experience at Uber, where I was just working on how do I grow this business, how do I try things quickly and then how do I, you know, develop, start building a team around me that it was an awesome fit. So, coming out of business school that was that was the job I had was coming into trucker tools right after the the sale and Working closely with Prasadam Raleigh through the transition and then eventually stepping into the CEO role in 2022.
Speaker 2:So you're a hired gun, so to speak.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I am hired, done exactly.
Speaker 2:So what was that like being hired in? Did you know when you joined Alpine that trucker tools is where you'd end up? Or you kind of joined TBD.
Speaker 1:I joined Alpine and then matched with trucker tools. So I Looked at a number of companies Based on kind of what I was looking for, what the company needed, and we found a good fit for me and trucker tools.
Speaker 2:So when you also didn't really know what my life is gonna be like Just that's that I figured out. Yeah, yeah, so when you, when you, when you find out you're matched to trucker tools. You know, my understanding is you didn't know much about freight at the time, so what we're kind of be cracked. So what? We're kind of the initial Thoughts you had about the industry, like coming into it, the preconceived notions that we're kind of running through your head, if you remember.
Speaker 1:First of all. So I was familiar with freight from Uber freight, but that was definitely a. They ran that business very separately from ride sharing and from Uber Eats. So you know, I was kind of I was up to date on what it was doing but I didn't know the details. So I was just really struck by how massive the industry was. I just remember thinking like how are there 17,000 freight brokerages in this country? That is crazy, and some of them are so huge. So that was really really surprising.
Speaker 1:And then you know it's going to sound obvious and I'm sure every tech person who comes on says this, but I just couldn't believe how old school some of these businesses were, with people hopping on the phones and you know nothing, things are just happening, not everything's getting documented, and just like how much opportunity there was to improve the way that these things ran, to make it, you know, more effective for everyone. I also was, I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun it is. I think my personally, I just I love the space. It's fun. I think that's why I go to all these conferences too, is I just enjoy it. I like talking to these people. I think everyone's really down to earth and kind of know, bs tells you how they see it. So I didn't really know what I was getting into and I don't know if I would have been, would have jived in the same way with a I don't know whatever other random industry there is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that makes sense. So you come in as this late 20-something CEO with zero kind of freight experience or even software building, I guess you go Uber software business. That's fine. But what was that like, coming into a business as the CEO without kind of having the repertoire behind you, I mean clearly a great educational history? But what was that experience like?
Speaker 1:It was also one I had to approach with a lot of humility, because I knew that the most important thing for me to do was to build trust and gain followership among the team. Like that was the only job from day one was. You know, I set up, I talked to every single person at the company. I, you know, wanted to hear their personal story, their background, what they cared about, what they want to do with their life and just like, get these people's buy-in first to like I am a human person here in service of you, as opposed to like come in and suss things out. So I'm sure like I'd love to ask some people what their reactions were to me immediately.
Speaker 1:I think I was pretty fortunate. The team was pretty welcoming and I was very welcoming and I think a lot of that probably didn't hurt that. I just got really kind of down to brass tacks from the start. I had all this, you know, I had operational experience and I was able to say, like okay, you guys need help building a process for this. Like send it my way. Like I love Google Sheets, Let me. Let me just help build this and train you up on it.
Speaker 1:So I think something I did well at the start of that was just like put quick wins on the board that people can get behind and then build trust that I am, you know, a force for good here and here to help build, as opposed to just kind of come in and call the shots from the hip.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I think customers too, like very, very rightfully so were, you know, somewhat skeptical of me, and that's completely fair. I would feel the same way, like who are you and why are you here? So I think that too, also, just like it just takes time with relationships, you have to meet with people enough times. I got on the road, I visited people in person, I went to every conference and I just I think like the only way you can build trust is by doing what you said you were gonna do. I was really, really committed to when we said we were gonna do something. We executed it. I called it up, I said, hey, did this work? Great, okay, let's do it again. And just like get that cycle going while simultaneously with the team helping anywhere I could.
Speaker 2:And I guess now it would probably be appropriate for you me to give you a chance to describe what the business is 55 minutes in.
Speaker 1:That's a no embossment I have another question.
Speaker 2:That isn't that. But let's do it now, and then we'll keep going.
Speaker 1:Sure. So Trucker Tools is a set of tools spoiler alert for brokers and carriers. So our two main broker products are visibility and capacity, and we also have a mobile app for carriers focused on owner operators and small fleets that powers both of those. The brief history of the business is we started in 2009 really, as this is all again all credit to Prasad and Morali and their vision the OG app for truckers.
Speaker 1:You know I didn't have a, I had like a flip phone at that point and they were building a smartphone app. So it's pretty remarkable what they did Over the course of the 2000s built these tools way station locators, truck specific routing, you know, truck stop reviews, walmart finders in this free app and carriers used it, loved it, kept it on their phones From there, developed those two tool sets I mentioned load visibility, load tracking first, and then our capacity tools later that have really grown into kind of the core of the business as it is today. So we track millions of loads a year and we match hundreds of thousands of loads from a broker to carrier.
Speaker 2:Why was it free?
Speaker 1:The mobile app.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Prasad really wanted to help the owner operator, so he was at get loaded. You should interview Prasad, that would be. That's another guess for you. He was at get loaded, which eventually sold to DAT, I think in 2007 or 2008.
Speaker 2:And was a load board. Remember get loaded. I mean when I was first booking loads in 0607, we used get loaded as, like that was one of the systems that you're one of the matching apps, so to speak, or websites.
Speaker 1:I was on a Twitter space a couple of weeks ago at night with a bunch of freight folks and some guy was like I said something about get loaded. He was like I still have a sign that says like get loaded at the happy hour from a TIA event or something back in 2008. So I can send me a photo of it. It's pretty funny. But yeah, prasad was at get loaded.
Speaker 1:So he knew the space and he knew, like, the plight of the owner operator and I think he genuinely was like and this is what I think the way that a lot of great businesses are built is like find a problem and solve the problem, and the revenue will come if you're actually solving the problem. So you realize life as a truck driver, as an operator, is really freaking hard, especially at that point. You're probably still printing out map quest directions. So having a digital assistant to support you on that and just getting that in the hands, it's going to become more powerful. It was almost like a ways and that, like truckers, would add in more information as they used it out on the road. So being able to get it at scale and get it into more folks hands is going to make the tool that much more powerful. So I think he had the kind of vision and composure to say I'm not just going to like release app and charge 499 for it, I'm going to actually drive like real value in this and then we'll figure it out. And that's again still very true.
Speaker 1:We play. Our only paying customers are brokerages.
Speaker 2:How many carriers or trucks are on the app?
Speaker 1:We have 350,000 monthly active users, so a lot.
Speaker 2:I mean, the entry point to building this business is, I think, unique in the visibility space, in that I don't think anybody else in the visibility space has started by creating this tool on behalf of the carrier that solves a lot of their problems for free and then creates a separate kind of business with all that data and well, not that a person is data, but it is in the sense that, like it's an access, it's an entry point.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. We have a very different approach from any of the other visibility providers and we've done a lot of this. We've got the ELD scale now. We built all of that up, so it's great that we had. I think something that does differentiate us still is that we started out again so long ago. When you think about talking about emotion, like carriers rightfully so need to be skeptical of a lot of these new things that come on the market, but they trust our brand, they trust the way we use their data and that we only do what we say we're going to do with it, and that allows us to have this crazy insight into your crazy visibility for brokerages as a result.
Speaker 2:Well, it definitely speaks to. There is a especially what I would argue is in the older population of drivers. There's a little bit of that tinfoil hat mentality, and I don't mean to lump everybody into one bucket it's not everyone, but there are a lot that are skeptical. I remember as a broker, one of the biggest challenges is getting consistent tracking electronically, and the expectation now is not just that you're going to be tracked electronically for a customer or for a shipper, but also that you'll be tracked with consistency, which means that the driver can't be turning their phone off and whatnot. And that's a challenge for brokers, and a lot of it does stem back to a carrier or a driver who's sitting there thinking I don't trust you. Therefore, I'm not willing to just give you unrelenting access to my stuff.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:If you have that built-in trust, I could see why that's a key selling point to get brokers working with you.
Speaker 1:Exactly, that's enjoying.
Speaker 2:So, as you came into the business now, what was the expectation from your PE owners, or your boss, so to speak, as you were coming into this?
Speaker 1:Grow the business as much as possible and make this the best business in the world that is truly. My mandate is to blow this thing up.
Speaker 2:How much of your approach coming into that was just keep be laser focused on the product that we have today and just double it, triple it, quadruple it versus. We've got to try new things or do different things to expand. How are you thinking about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the first three, four months, I took a do no harm perspective. I was doing all these things where I knew I could add value quickly dashboards, processes, bringing people together, operating rhythm, all of that but I didn't want to make any big strategic calls because I didn't know enough to do that. So I just spent it again talking to customers, talking to partners, talking to employees, figuring out what's going really well, what can we change, what does the industry need? The timing was also really interesting, because I came into the business in October 2021 and I officially moved into the CEOC in April of 2022, which coincides with when everything blew up.
Speaker 2:Everything blew up in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1:Exactly everything went south. I don't really remember those COVID good times that everyone talked about.
Speaker 2:You didn't get the COVID good times.
Speaker 1:No, I didn't, which again makes me so freaking proud of what we've done, because I think we've just identified these crazy pressing needs and gaps in the market and we've been able to grow. The rate we've grown at over the last two and a half years, when the tide has come out on everyone, is such a source of pride for me and my team. So, yeah, I spent the first couple of months just figuring out what is working, what is not working well, and we have two real core tool sets for brokers. One is on the visibility side. The second is on the capacity side, and very quickly. Capacity, of course, was all the buzz in 2020, 2021 and that changed on a dime in 2022 and we saw this massive gap in the visibility market. We played there.
Speaker 1:We'd always been in the low tracking space, but we just saw this opportunity to become the premier brokerage tracking product by doing a couple of things. One was doubling down on our ELD integration scale. So we're now really proud about where we've gotten that to and the ease with which carriers can integrate and the scope of our ELD integrations and the quality of them. Our mobile app is always the bread and butter, so just continuing to double down on that sort of reliability, making sure that we're staying top of nine. We've actually we're revamping the mobile app to come later this year, which is going to be a really exciting release and then introducing a couple of other tracking methods.
Speaker 1:We've got API integrations directly with larger fleets to expand more into the big fleet category, when we had historically been focused on owner operators, and also we introduced a text to track and what's what's up to track product to collect, kind of the stragglers, and then built out cross board or toolkit. We just made a lot of investments in visibility during that first 2022 year when I think everyone was like the world. You know it was bleak, bleak times and I think that really paid off because our insight was that shippers are retaining the or taking back the upper hand and they're good to demand insane service levels. So if we can be a badass visibility tool, we're going to blow up right now.
Speaker 2:That's so. You're so right. I mean the swing, the pendulum swings and we are definitely have firmly for the last let's call it at least, I don't know 18 months the shippers have had the upper hand and they are making those decisions. You know, not only do they tend to increase the service level expectations on like on time service, but they start to enforce other things that in bad markets or down or challenging markets for them, they don't enforce as much. Because it's just find me a truck Tracking is a big one for that. I actually heard I heard this recently from from two top brokers there's a fortune I would call it 50 or so shipper who's now requiring on their reefer loads that the brokers provide updates every 15 minutes on the temperature of the product in the trailer.
Speaker 1:I know exactly the shipper you're talking about and we are not feasible.
Speaker 2:First of all, well at scale in brokers, but go ahead next. I'm curious your thoughts on this.
Speaker 1:So we are integrating, we've done all the development to integrate with that specific network so that we will have real time temperature ingestion by that May 1 state that everyone's talking about in the industry right now. I don't think that necessarily. You know there's some things on the roll out of it, on kind of the mandate from the shipper, that could have been done a little bit differently to drive more clarity around what was required. But those are the exactly the things that we've been able to move fast on. As we got wind of that from a couple of customers. I can't believe how many brokers work with said shipper. It's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 2:But you're telling me it's doable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have the integration, it's development complete. We're just waiting for the credentials from the shipper.
Speaker 2:Interesting because my understanding is other than I. Mean, I think there are certain reefer carriers that certainly can provide that information and I guess if you can get the integrations right whether it's API or whatever that it's doable. It just for a broker to do it. Because you know, if a broker makes a commitment on a lane it's not, especially if there's enough volume, which there is in this case. This is a large company that shifts a lot of refrigerator freight. You know, one broker might be using 100, 200 different reefer carriers a month on this, and it doesn't mean they're bad carriers, because it's just it's. You don't have as much density in the reefer market where you're just going to get the same carrier taking the same load over and over again. So like, not every carrier is positioned to provide that to brokers and I think it's a situation where most of or all of a lot of the brokers are going to kind of fall on their face here and the shipper is probably going to realize like maybe this isn't as easily done as we hope.
Speaker 1:But I think that's fair. From a tech perspective, it's feasible and done, but I think when it comes to actually like, is, I think, what you're saying?
Speaker 2:is there enough yeah.
Speaker 1:Is there enough reefer capacity in the market that to service this one customer in such a way like that? That is a totally different problem. Maybe it'll drive reefer rates up.
Speaker 2:I mean it might for them. I mean that's kind of you know this is. This is the time when they can test stuff. I mean it does seem like people are insinuating the market might be upticking. Do you guys dabble at all in the pricing world they're trying to get? Is that, you know, a potential add on feature for you down the road, or not really your cup of tea?
Speaker 1:So we integrate with pricing partners. We were integrated with Sonar right now for both brokers and carriers and they're able to view that track data in on the on the broker side and our capacity tool and set some negotiation parameters around that. And we also have a mobile app or an immobile app for carriers. We give them provided they're small enough fleet, we give them some kind of relative information about hot lanes and cold lanes. So we're we always we talk to pricing partners, but we're not in pricing ourselves. What we do see is we see volume in the way of track loads, because we have all that and that's like real moved freight data, so we're able to see what volumes look like and I can assure you they are down. But we have seen some, some upticks. You know, really this week around I think produce season is here, so excited to yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's here.
Speaker 1:It's warm outside, so I'm excited to see if that happens.
Speaker 2:I would think La Nina would mean I'm being told, like I'm not educated in this, but I'm being told La Nina is the reason it's so warm. I mean you and I are both living in Chicago this February. We've had days in the fifties assuming that's true everywhere, it's fair to assume. I mean I did move to a lot of reefer business. Granted, it's been a minute since. I was like in the weeds in it.
Speaker 2:But my understanding historically you get produce season like true produce season. You get some citrus season out of Florida in in February but like true melon, produce season usually starts in April. I could see if they had a very, very warm winter why there might be harvesting happening earlier. And listen, the industry needs it. So you know all the brokers out there, which I think comprises a decent chunk of the listenership of the Frey Pot. We are cheering for you to see the turnaround. I know it's been a long, a long. It's been a long couple of years, but like it's coming back, just stick with it. The opportunity will be back before you know it, maybe not before you know it, sooner or not.
Speaker 1:I think we need to talk about meteorology more and freight, and I'm sure freightways is doing something on that. I know Kaylee's meteorologist by training, so, yeah, I don't know if La Nina is going to push us earlier into produce season. We're going to have a bountiful harvest and that would also hopefully drive some food prices down, so it could be great, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm curious as I think about. We just talked about the pricing concept and partnerships. So your business is really interesting to me in that you have access to such a large pool of drivers, which makes opportunity is plentiful in terms of what you could do with your business. Yes, you are attracting a visibility and capacity business today, but how do you think about the nature of partner versus doing it yourself? Because, with the access to drivers and carriers that you have, there are a lot of types of businesses, whether it was insurance or factoring that you could easily plug into what you're doing and just immediately increase your revenue stream because you just have this unique capacity at your fingertips. So how do you think about what you should be partnering with someone for? To get a small piece versus build it out yourself? Yep, Great question.
Speaker 1:You should join our board. We can talk about this in depth, because these are the sort of conversations we have. Yeah, there we go. So we have always been free for carriers and that's been really important to the identity of Trucker Tools and we talked about the trust and the brand equity we have. So when we think about anything on the carrier side, it needs to be really in service of that kind of truck driver facade was focused on 15 years ago.
Speaker 1:When it comes to partnering versus building ourselves the Right now we are so focused. We actually do a lot for the amount of folks we have on the team. We're a pretty lean team. We're only about 50 people. So, yes, there are a million ideas I have around. We could do this, we could do that, we could do this, but I think right now we're really pumped about. There's so much more opportunity just in the two broker categories that we're in right now that we're just focused on those because we know them so well, we've learned so much about them. Like that's where we want to grow, how much meat, do you think is on that broker bone?
Speaker 1:Oh, a ton. A ton I mean visibility even just as a single category. We're just, we're still in the early beginnings of that.
Speaker 2:You could 10X the business just with focusing on what you're doing well now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. So the addressable market is there, so do I want to distract us with another category that we're going to have to get totally up to speed on? That's something we always have to weigh, and is it going to really add strategic value to us as a business? And we're just we are. There's so much we can do in the visibility game right now that we're so pumped about. That's where I really want to focus a lot of the business's energy.
Speaker 2:It makes sense. It reminds me of my own business that my team and I built at Molo, because we were like damn near 100% truckload. We moved a couple LTA loads, we moved a couple intermodal loads, but we had no interest in prioritizing those things, simply because I was like we could spend the next two decades on just truckload and 10, 20, 30x our business. There's no need to venture in these things that we don't necessarily know as well. I mean, it was arguably a big driver for why we sold Ark Best, because they were so good at something else. They were literally one of the best in the industry, if not the best, at LTL. So we're like, hey, let's let them focus on that, we'll focus on truckload. Happily married, let's go on. So I'm definitely understanding your perspective there. Do you have?
Speaker 1:any partnerships. Riches and niches. Riches and niches, that's that.
Speaker 2:Riches and niches. Are there any partnerships you're working on now that would extend the service offerings or make the life easier for the carrier?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're talking to folks all the time. Like I said, we're revamping our mobile app later this year. It's looked and had the same feel for a long time, so we're going to give it a facelift, make tracking and booking a lot easier. And then that third part of our carrier presence, which are those tools for life on the road. We're talking to a lot of partners right now about what that looks like and where we can double down and how we can. Like I said, there's a lot of experimentation we can do around. What do carriers really need? We totally redoubled our focus on getting carrier feedback this year as well. We've got a big team going to MAPS, We've got a carrier feedback group, so we're really working to understand. I think again, something that's really important to us is doing something with intention, not just throwing paint at the wall and seeing which of those things stick and how do we make $200 off of something? And it's like if we're doing something, we want to do it big.
Speaker 2:And is there any feedback that you can share with the world that you've gotten from the carrier or driver community that's insightful or helpful?
Speaker 1:Yeah, again, I probably sound like working record just talking about tracking all the time, but it is so top of mind. This doesn't actually pertain exactly to the mobile app, but ELD tracking is no longer seen as much of an evil by carriers as it once was. I think there's been a big shift in that there's still plenty of carriers who don't want to track with ELD, so that's why they use our mobile app. But I've been interested over the last year or so to see the shift and I would hypothesize there's a couple things going on. One is the generational shift in truck drivers. That's an episode that I think would be interesting. What is life as a Gen Z truck driver with, where you've been sharing all of your data from birth? So who?
Speaker 2:cares if you connect your ELD.
Speaker 1:I think that could be really interesting. So we're starting to see that play out. I think there's been a lot more education around the ELD and what data is and isn't getting shared when you're using it. But we've just seen a lot of interest and appetite from carriers to move from a mobile to an ELD setting and I think too, because of those higher service levels demanded by shippers, they know that they're going to be able to hit those scorecards if they're using an ELD, Whereas mobile app you still do always run the risk of a battery dying or being in a dead spot. So I think that's been something that surprised me a bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is interesting. I wonder if many drivers have just kind of finally gotten over the kind of innate desire to fight the ELD and just kind of accepted this is the way the business runs now and I don't need to. I'm sure there are plenty of carriers still out there scheming, as there always will be, but I just think maybe the general population has moved more towards acceptance and then said hey, listen, if it's easier to track that, we'll just do that.
Speaker 1:Definitely, definitely.
Speaker 2:Well, let's dive into what you would argue is maybe the biggest challenge you've dealt with. You came in as a young CEO into this business. It's been two and a half years in the industry. What's the most difficult thing you've had to do?
Speaker 1:I have two different answers. One is doing this during this freight recession. Like I said, I moved into the CEO role like a month after the freight went off an absolute cliff. So going from an environment where we were positioning ourselves as a business differently and the buyer environment was very, very friendly and like yeah, sure, yeah, great, let's add it in Profits were at an all-time high.
Speaker 1:So just being forced on a dime to make sure that what we were doing was mission critical forced us to get really tight, really fast, just from a messaging and from a product prioritization perspective, to making sure we were focusing on things where we could demonstrate like here are the numbers, brokers, of why this makes sense, like here's what we're going to be able to do for you. So I think that's been challenging. I think it's a challenge we've overcome. The other challenge, I think, is just continuing to find the best people possible to come in, and I actually have hired a lot of folks from outside the industry and I've gotten people to question that at times and I think our results speak for themselves at this point and everyone has to get their foot in the door and freight somehow. But I think just building a great team has been both the most rewarding and the hardest thing I've done finding those people who you really can trust and want to build with.
Speaker 2:Is there anything you've noticed in? Because I'm speaking as someone who just maybe I don't know if I suck at identifying talent, but I've missed a lot of times when I thought I was hitting a home run with someone. And I'm just curious from your experience because when you come into the CEO role, especially the team that's not big. When I started, mine was 25 people, so yours was 30, 40, 50 people something that nature of what it is now.
Speaker 2:There's not a great playbook on how to hire, and especially if it's not something you're well-versed in or have experience in. So you start interviewing people. What, for you, is what you're looking for in or what you've seen as a pattern in some of the best people you've hired.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a couple of things. One, it sounds obvious, but just like a demonstrated track record of results. I joke with one of my director reports if she said in the interview, like I asked her why I should hire her, and she said because I've succeeded everything I've ever tried to do. And I was like, well, that's a great point. I love that confidence too you're on. So, I think, just like getting you know someone who's I don't really care what you've done, because I believe in the power of smart people to figure things out, just like I would be such a hypocrite if I didn't. You know, I was thrown into this and I figured it out. So, as long as you've succeeded at things and thrown you know kind of numbers on the board, points on the board, that's probably the biggest thing.
Speaker 1:I also, when it comes to interviewing, I get really specific with people, like I'm very detolerant and very numbers driven, so I like to really drill in to validate what I'm hearing and ask for several examples. That's one thing I think. The second is understanding how they work in a group and how they kind of bring others along on their journey, and that is admittedly hard to test for an interview because everyone's showing up to an interview and their best self. So I think, like taking note of kind of the signals around how they follow up with you and doing like reference tracks are so, so, so critical of the hiring process. To understand how did this person show up in a previous role? I think that's helped me retire some absolute all stars.
Speaker 2:That makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What would you say for yourself? Like I just I don't know. I started thinking, as you were talking about how someone shows up in a group, just kind of character flaws that people have. I don't know why that took me down that path, but in the interest of giving you a chance to maybe be vulnerable as someone who's trying to build your own kind of brand in the industry and maybe show a little bit of the downside it.
Speaker 2:Just the reason maybe I'm going on this path is I started listening to more people on podcasts. I'm noticing that people tend to spend a lot of time just talking about all the things they're great at and all the wonderful things they've done, and I just I've noticed that people I know aren't necessarily being super truthful and I'm like, okay, well, maybe I'm running into this issue myself or I'm just kind of believing everything someone's telling me and it's all rainbows and butterflies. So like, maybe I should open the door more for people to be more honest about the other side of the coin. So what's something that you're personally working on or something that you've recognized as a character flaw in your own leadership style or your own work style, or something that you're just not good at and needing to improve?
Speaker 1:Patience. I am so impatient in every part of my life. This spans personal and professional, where I want I think about oh, I want this, okay, I need it done now. And professionally, I've had to be really mindful of that because, as the leader of the business, like everything I say and I'm curious if you felt this way but like people listen and respond to you in a different way than anyone, which is obvious, like you're the head honcho, but restraining myself and embracing kind of the pause between stimulus and reaction has been something that has been such an unlock for me when it comes to working with teams and building my team and making sure that we're making good decisions.
Speaker 1:Because I do have a tendency. I think it's like a great thing. I have an insane bias to action and I think that's led to a lot of great results, but I think it's also been a downfall. It can confuse people sometimes. It can make them feel like they don't. I don't trust them. If I say something, I'm like you know what, I'm just gonna do it so, and then personally, like I mean it just drives people crazy, I think sometimes.
Speaker 2:So you're hitting. You and I are very similar in this regard and it took me a while. It took me, it took my team actually pointing this out. I didn't, I just didn't think about it, that I'm talking as the CEO to someone I often thought I was just thinking of, like I'm talking as someone who's trying to solve this issue, and I had the same bias to action. You know, I don't know if you're an Enneagram fan, but my exec coach have me go through this whole Enneagram process. I'm an active controller and eight, but part of it is I'm an eight as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:So. But you can either be like there's like a triangle of kind of how we respond to situations. So you kind of said stimulus response and it's like you're either feelings-based, action-based or thought-based, and like it's, you know, when something happens, you either go to your feelings and like really kind of sit with it and get caught in the emotion of it. You go to your thoughts and you spend a lot of time thinking through like okay, what are the different options that you do? Or action-based, where it's literally like you are more prone to just respond instinctively than relying on either of the other two processes.
Speaker 2:And I am in the action camp and just like you like these the examples you described were a big problem for me and I just think about, like you know, I had to get to a place where I would try intentionally try not to message, slack or text people after hours Because I forget. It's like the CEOs texting me at seven o'clock about this issue. Now they've created I've created a pressure for them to feel like they need to respond, which is not the environment you necessarily want to create for your team, and that same thing. It's like I just want to get a problem fixed. I'm like, okay, that person's like, okay, that person's busy, I'll just handle it, and then I'm off to go handle it. Meanwhile, this employee is sitting there thinking like, wow, he doesn't trust me anymore. Like I just lost the buy-in of the CEO because I was busy in another meeting that was pre-planned and he just got an email and he wanted to respond and deal with it and so he ran with it. That was a big problem for me.
Speaker 1:So I can relate to all of that. I schedule a lot of messages on Slack now Because I definitely I want to create a healthy work environment and I want to be mindful of, like you said. You know I don't want someone getting a random ping about an idea I had that I just fired off on my phone at 10 o'clock at night, but so I try to be really mindful around that and I do think it is the unlock to building an awesome business is being able to not solve everything as yourself. Like I think about it all the time and it's something I work on with my executive coach too is I should be hiring leaders and they need to be leading their teams and working through them and empowering them to make decisions is the only way to scale yourself, and I think we're like I've got such a kick-ass team right now and I probably still drive them crazy sometimes. They can tell me that, but the fewer actual decisions I have to be involved with, I think the better for the business.
Speaker 2:I think that's probably right, and I'm curious if you had to give yourself a grade one to 10, one being you recognize this is a problem, but you're completely incapable of solving it today, cause whether you don't have the emotional depth or restraint or whatever to 10, where you recognize it was problem and you've pretty much fully solved it, and you are, you know you don't have this issue anymore. I'll answer mine as well. Where do you think you stand on this?
Speaker 1:I'm gonna ask my team this tomorrow. I give myself I'm definitely closer to having it solved, but I slip up all the time, so I don't know six or seven, like I think I do a lot of the times. It's like you know the slip ups. I just I email someone and I'm like, oh shoot, I didn't finish that, thought I got email, and again, you know, those sort of things definitely still happen. But from a overall perspective, I think I've put so much work into getting really clear with the team on like here are the priorities, here are the things that matter, here's who owns those? You guys own them. I'm here to help unblock, elevate, solve, tackle. Otherwise, like this is on you as the owner. I think I've made a lot of progress there. I honestly think in my personal life is where I need to be More patient. I started playing golf, like last year and-.
Speaker 2:Oh well, you're screwed there.
Speaker 1:It's so bad and I love it.
Speaker 2:That's a problem that nobody is able to solve, for most of us can't.
Speaker 1:But I think it is so good for me to be playing it as much as I am, because it is. It's really healthy to suck at something. I think and I it's been a long process of learning to accept that I can't just go to the drive range 10 times and be a sub 90 golfer. It's gonna have to. This is gonna be painful and that result that I put on the board is not a reflection of who I am as an individual Like I'll walk off the course with a 104 and be like I suck as a person and that's not true. So it's. I'm working on it in the personal side as well.
Speaker 2:That's good, you know to score myself. I'm not where you are. I'm probably like a 3.7 out of 10.
Speaker 1:And I think I was or just a lot more honest than I am.
Speaker 2:No, I think you know, I think I was a 1.5 when I was at the end of my time with Molo and I think that having 11 months where I wasn't working and actually could spend all this time with a therapist and a coach and like, look at this stuff without the pressure of the business Cause that was the problem is like I always understood it and I clearly could see how this character flaw was impacting the business.
Speaker 2:But then, like the problem would happen in the business and I just wanted I just would prioritize, trying to solve it, and he's refused to stop and think and you know, anyone that got in my way was that was my fault. So I see it a lot more now and without the pressure of the business all the time it's, I'm able to kind of manage it a little bit better, but there's still work to be done there. So I do appreciate you sharing that, though I think I need to spend more time trying to get into this kind of stuff on the show. Not that the rest is great, but I think opening up more is certainly one way to to build some rapport with people. I think if your team listens to this too, I think they might have a little bit more grace for you next time it happens. Recognizing it's something that you know is is not something you're perfect at.
Speaker 1:Totally, it's not. We talk a lot about assuming positive intent, and we do. I think we do a great job of it, and that's where I unfortunately get a lot of grace is something I'm working on.
Speaker 2:That's, assuming positive intent, is something I think a lot of people could benefit from, myself included.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. You just never know what's going on in someone's life, and it's, it's so true.
Speaker 2:So let's wrap with one more thing. Let's go back to the business. As you think about 2024 and beyond, like, what do you see as the future for trucker tools? And you know what do we have to be excited about with what's going on in the business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so on the visibility side, like I said, I think we're still in the early innings there. Of all, the visibility is really just a series of integrations, ultimately, like you know, tms integrations, bld integrations, api integrations, mobile app being integrated onto a driver's phone so a lot of that is, you know, just building up our scale there. But we're thinking about how do we get more proactive and more proactive with visibility management this year. So you know, kind of traditionally in the visibility era we've been in it's you know you run the track, it tracks or it doesn't track, and then if it doesn't track, you got to go in, you got to troubleshoot and figure out what happened.
Speaker 1:We want to eliminate that from the workflow and instead make visibility something that's kind of just always there in the background and you're notified when something is going wrong to be more proactive in the way we're managing it, so that again, these brokerages, massive, massive tracking teams still like you would think check calls were a thing of the past they're not and a lot of it is just to be there in case something goes wrong.
Speaker 1:So we want to think about how do we let those people focus on much, much more constructive activities and just get notified when they might need to take a look at something. So that's where we're moving on the visibility front. On the capacity front, we've got a carrier sourcing tool coming out and we've got a new capacity tool coming out over the next couple of months that we're really pumped about. That, we think, is going to be a real game changer when it comes to building a lot of playing strength. So that's something we're going to be sharing more about over the next month or two that I can't share too much more on right now.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay. Well, if maybe we talk about that sponsorship and I can help you share it in two months when it's ready.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that would be great that would be great, All right?
Speaker 2:Well, listen, it's been great. I'm trying to get these to not be so long, but I just I start talking with my guests, and people like you are so interesting. I just want to keep going. We're up over 90 minutes again and but it's great. I mean, I just really enjoyed this. I'm very grateful to you for coming on and being as honest and open as you have been. It's been great getting to know you and learning about your business and yourself.
Speaker 1:Likewise, I'm really grateful to have the opportunity to come on and I feel like I'm feeling a little bit of like oh man, did I say too much at points, which I think is good. That's where you want to get people to, to actually get to know them. I like the format.
Speaker 2:I've had a lot of people who tell me within a week or two of coming on that they have new customers who are reaching out to them and I think a lot of it's just people who appreciate someone being kind of open and honest. So definitely appreciate you. And to our listeners, thank you for I won't use well, thank you for joining us for 95 minutes. I won't say the word enduring. I think this was great and you guys probably really enjoyed Carrie and her story. So that's all we got from the Freepod this week. You will be seeing more episodes soon. I'm going to.