The Freight Pod
The Freight Pod is a deep dive into the journeys of the transportation and logistics industry’s brightest minds and innovators. The show is hosted by Andrew Silver, former founder and CEO of MoLo Solutions, one of the fastest-growing freight brokerages in the industry. His guests will be CEOs, founders, executives, and leaders from some of the most successful freight brokerages, trucking companies, manufacturers, and technology companies that support this great industry. Andrew will interview his guests with a focus on their life and how they got to where they are today, unlocking the key ingredients that helped them develop into the leaders they are now. He will also bring to light the fascinating stories that helped mold and shape his experiences.
The Freight Pod
Ep. #51: David Bell, CEO & Founder of CloneOps.ai
Andrew welcomes David Bell, CEO and founder of CloneOps.ai. David has been in the logistics industry for more than 30 years. He once had a vision to make Lean Solutions Group a 10,000-employee organization — he and his team accomplished that. Now, with his new voice AI business, CloneOps.ai, he plans to hit 1 billion talking minutes for his customers in three years.
In this episode, David shares:
- How he founded his early LTL brokerage business and the challenges of LTL.
- How he and cofounder Roberto Cadena built Lean Solutions Group.
- His recipe for building long-term loyalty with the people who work for him.
- What inspired him to start CloneOps.ai and how he got it off the ground.
- How CloneOps.ai is solving the biggest challenges in brokerage.
Follow The Freight Pod and host Andrew Silver on LinkedIn.
*** This episode is brought to you by Rapido Solutions Group. I had the pleasure of working with Danny Frisco and Roberto Icaza at Coyote, as well as being a client of theirs more recently at MoLo. Their team does a great job supplying nearshore talent to brokers, carriers, and technology providers to handle any role necessary, be it customer or carrier support, back office, or tech services. Visit gorapido.com to learn more. ***
A special thanks to our additional sponsors:
- Cargado – Cargado is the first platform that connects logistics companies and trucking companies that move freight into and out of Mexico. Visit cargado.com to learn more.
- Greenscreens.ai – Greenscreens.ai is the AI-powered pricing and market intelligence tool transforming how freight brokers price freight. Visit greenscreens.ai/freightpod today!
- Metafora – Metafora is a technology consulting firm that has delivered value for over a decade to brokers, shippers, carriers, private equity firms, and freight tech companies. Check them out at metafora.net. ***
Hey listeners, before we get started today, I want to give a quick shout out and word to our sponsor, our very first sponsor, rapido Solutions Group, danny Frisco and Roberto Acasa, two longtime friends of mine, guys I've known for 10 plus years, the CEO and COO respectively, and co-founders of Rapido Solutions Group. These guys know what they're doing. I'm excited to be partnering with them to give you a little glimpse into their business. Rapido connects logistics and supply chain organizations in North America with the best near-shore talent to scale efficiently, operate on par with US-based teams and deliver superior customer service. These guys work with businesses from all sides of the industry 3PLs, carriers, logistics, software companies, whatever it may be. They'll build out a team and support whatever roles you need, whether it's customer or carrier, sales support, back office or tech services. These guys know logistics. They know people. It's what sets them apart in this industry. They're driven by an inside knowledge of how to recruit, hire and train within the industry and a passion to build better solutions for success. In the current marketing conditions, where everyone is trying to be more efficient, do more with less near shoring is the latest and greatest tactic that companies are deploying to do so, and Rapido is a tremendous solution for you. So check them out at gorapidocom and thank you again for being a sponsor to our show, a great partner. We look forward to working with you To our listeners.
Speaker 1:That's it. Let's get the show on the road. Welcome back to another episode of the Freight Pod. I'm your host, andrew Silver, and I am joined today by a good friend of mine, a mentor of mine, someone who has been there for me through the early days of my entrepreneurial journey I don't like saying entrepreneurial journey, but through the early days of me starting a business Mr David Bell bell. Welcome to the show, sir how are you?
Speaker 2:thank you, man. Thank you. What early days were fun, man. I miss those days, every trade show and every trade show. Now it's not the same. We had a cool little group. You know what I'm saying? We had a cool little group that, uh, made trade shows fun. I gotta, I gotta figure out and now that I'm getting back into the trade shows I gotta figure out a way to get a little group back together or something so it's fine.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say that maybe just a personal reference because, like that was 2018, 2019 and maybe it's just you haven't been in the day-to-day grind of running a business and now that you're back in it, I think you'll find that that group naturally creates itself for you.
Speaker 2:It does it's crazy because I didn't realize what it was to start a business from scratch, like from nothing. You know, I mean when, when it's just like even logistics. I got logistics in 1995 and just kind of morphed and you have customers, you know you work for somebody and then you go out they, they do something about a business, whatever you go do yourself. And then so in 1997 I went into business for 1995. I went into business for myself. I got into logistics in 93 in south florida. In 1995 I went into business for myself because the company I was working for was a husband and wife and got divorced and and it was just, everything was still there.
Speaker 2:You know I'm saying like you just had to move shit, like, okay, here's a business, let's move it. And and then you know, lean is another story. That just easily morphed into a business. But starting this business had to do everything, like we'd have a phone number. Somebody's like, okay, what's our phone number? I'm like shit, we have, people have phone numbers anymore. You used to have to call the phone company, get your phones turned on. You know I'm saying like it's like shit, we have phones, we don't have a phone number for the website. So like everything from market, from website to accounting to, I mean, just every little thing you have to start.
Speaker 2:It's like building a house right, you've got you, don't? You don't just walk in and put the floors in and it's there. So it's pretty crazy. What's a? And I didn't have all those skills to like, do that, like. I never started a business from day one, scratch myself and have to lay out everything. So it's been, it's been pretty interesting. It's uh, I don't know that I'd say it's I don't know. I'd say it's a like all fun because it's a lot of work. Man, you don't realize everything you got to do.
Speaker 2:I mean it's, you know, like even your podcast, you have to, even when you get your podcast up and do it from scratch, like you have to do everything, like. So it's been crazy, it's been great, but but it's exciting, man, it's. I think feel like I missed a lot of opportunities along the way. You know, on the dot coms and the cryptos and all that. I think AI is one of those things that everybody didn't get into it early. It's going to look back and at least at least learn it and understand it and do it and implement it in your daily life and use it. It's kind of like the people that hesitated to switch to the iPhone, you know. It's like when they finally did, they're like, why did I wait this long? So it's pretty cool. I'm so. It's pretty cool. I need to do something, man. I can't just vacation all over the world.
Speaker 1:I know that about you. Yeah, I have to do something. Let's take it back a step, though, because I know you well and so it's easy for you and I to sit here and just get right into it. But I've got to introduce you to the audience a bit, because you've been a part of a big business two businesses, and we're very involved in lean staffing, but you weren't exactly like kind of the face of it outwardly, um and so. So you know my audience maybe doesn't know you, and so let's, let's introduce them, let's take them back. You said you got into the space in 1993. Yeah, um, what, what? What brought you into the space? What? What were you doing? Was that as a brokerage, an ltl company? What? What were you into the space? What were you doing? Was that as a brokerage, an LTL company? What were you doing?
Speaker 2:It was kind of a crazy little story, man. I was always in phone sales, like from when I sold the newspaper door to door when I was 12 years old, so I was always in sales. I got into phone sales selling magazine subscriptions, bacteria for septic tanks, like you name it. I was selling it on the phone and so I was going to go be a stockbroker and in 1987, you had to be 18 to be a stockbroker. So I was going to, I was studying for my series seven and they said go get, go get, uh, go do some more telemarketing. But find something in like this, this sales. And I forget what they told me, kind of geared on. So I opened the paper and I look and and I see these ads that say make two, three thousand a week if you like sports, it's great. So so I called up and, and and the first call there was two ads in the paper I never forget.
Speaker 2:I called the first one. He says all right, what do you know about sports? I'm like I play sports, I'm an athlete. I golf, I play baseball like I'm an athlete, I know everything about sports. Goes all right, what's a parlay? And I'm like fuck, what's a parlay? I'm like, does that have to do with golf. He goes it's not for you. And he hangs up on me. It's like a rough New Yorker. He hangs up on me, bam. And so I go. Okay, well, I blew that one. Let me figure out what the hell a parlay is. So I asked around a couple people. I called my dad what's a parlay? He goes I think that's something In one aspect I'm 17. It was a sports touting service.
Speaker 2:So so I call up the next one, and so he says all right, come on in. So I come in. I never forget I go in. I sit down, he goes. I thought I'm interviewing. He goes. No, he's like get on the phone, let's see what you could do. So he puts a script in front of me.
Speaker 2:I get on the phone and I was relentless in phone sales Like you couldn't stop. You know how it is. You I mean the sales, you. You have to be relentless, and at an early age I just was. And so the first day I get in I started. I made a couple of sales.
Speaker 2:So I worked three days the first week and I made $3,500. I'm like the hell am I going to be a stockbroker for? So I started doing this business. And then we were getting leads out of Western Union and Western Union. So I ended up becoming a partner in a phone room at 18 years old and we had 30 people on the phone. We were getting leads out of Western Union and then, like anytime, anybody would send money to a sports touting service, western Union would show who it was named phone number, so the leads were like gold. And then all of a sudden, western union changed their whole system and the leads dried up. So um so from there. So I made a lot of money there. I was making 50,000 a week at 18 years old. It was insane. I mean, I had a Ferrari a fricking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to Atlantis, bahamas, with a fake ID gambling every other weekend. So it was just insane. I mean you know, look how big sports betting is now. I mean it's crazy, right, like when you look at the sports touting, it's, it's, it's huge, so so from there. So so I had to figure out what I'm going to do because the leads dried up and you know, you go from making that kind of money, making nothing and struggling and having to recycle leads. So I got an opportunity to get a Cellular One franchise.
Speaker 2:It was Bell South and Cellular One and I was big into car stereos. We were building car stereos and there was a guy that worked for a company called Audio Advisors. He says, hey, we're building these crazy, crazy mini trucks and car stereos and simultaneously it's like weird in life, everything kind of happens. And then you get something happens. It's like the butterfly effect, right.
Speaker 2:So I go in to get my cars washed at this exotic car wash place and he's got room. He's got room, he's got two bays. So I asked him one day I go in. I go, hey, can I put a? Can I start building new car stereos and stuff here? He's like, yeah, no problem. I don't use those bays. Why don't you do that? So I gave me a South. They want nothing to do with me. You have to have a business and you have to have like all this. So I call up Cellular One and they're like yeah, you got a good site. The guy comes out. He goes this is a great site, let's put Cellular One here. So I was one of the first Cellular One franchises in Lighthouse Point, florida and You're saying you know you forget, I'm 34 years old.
Speaker 1:I have no idea what you're talking about, I mean I think I've seen it in Scarface, I think they had one of those. I know you do. I got a kid your age.
Speaker 2:I just had my fifth grandkid. By the way, hunter just had his second baby two weeks ago, did he really? Yeah, he actually had it on his birthday. So in the old days the cell phones used to be installed in the car and they were like a handset that would be in the glove box or set up next to it and you'd pick it up and you'd be on the phone cruising like looking cool. So I started doing that in car stereos and uh and. And then all of a sudden this guy that used to work for me in my sports touting room comes in. Um, I know him. He come in to uh to get a car stereo and I said what are you doing? He goes you're not're not going to believe it. Man, I got.
Speaker 2:You know, I was working for this trucking company who's out of business back then and you won't even remember him, so I won't even bring up their name. But I was working for this trucking company and I decided I'm going to take all my customers and I'm going to go to Carolina Freight and CF Freight and I'm going to see which. Carolina gave me a discount. And I took all the biggest shippers in Miami ship with me and all I do is put third party bill to my company on the on the bill and all the bills come to me, I rebuild them and I make 20%. I'm like what? He's like, yeah, they get a 50% discount, I get a 60 and I just print money like magic beans. They just come in the mail, I rebuild them and the check come. I'm like, fuck, this guy's, this guy's, uh, not that sharp, if he could do this shit, I could do it. So I go, let me see what you're doing, man Shit.
Speaker 2:So I went and I saw what he was doing and I and I realized this freight business. Like I had no exposure to freight whatsoever. I said so, let me understand this. I can go to a dock on Miami, I can jump on the dock. I could tell the guy hey, I just saw ABF pull out of here. I'll tell you what. What's your discount? 45%. I'll give you 50%. And we use Carolina. And, by the way, let's go to lunch. And oh, you like the Marlins, we can go see a Marlins game, no problem. And it was shooting fish in a barrel, like it was like boom, boom, boom, boom. There was nobody. You're talking about 1993.
Speaker 2:And so I just started building the business and I realized what brokering was and and I'm like, why don't we do truckloads? He's like, ah, it's too big, you built 2000. You only make 400. It's too risky. I'm like what's risky about that? It's one shipment instead of 10. It's like one bill instead of 10.
Speaker 2:So I, I got the license and and then we started making so much money he started cheating on his wife. I had three girlfriends and his wife was his wife was in the business, so she's, she's, you know, take the money out of the bank. And so he, they were ruining the business. So I had one big customer and I still remember I'm still friends with this guy today and I tell the story and so I call this guy. His name's Bill Bailey it was. He was with a company called precision delivery systems in Miami and circuit city was my biggest account. I did all of the distribution for South Florida, for circuit city, and he did it for me. So I call a bill and I said bill, this is a shit show here.
Speaker 2:I think this company is like going under, like I don't want to see you get burnt, like like I don't know, I don't know what's going on. So he. And so he says uh, man, I go, I go. What do you want to do? Get, get burnt, man. He goes. He goes well, what are you gonna do? I don't know, man, I think I'm gonna do it myself. I don't know, I gotta decide. So I go home that day and I tell my soon-to-be ex, my wife. Then I tell her what, uh, what was going on. She goes you could do it, just open it up, you. What's the problem? I'm surprised that you had any kind of angst about doing that, because it seems like you're such a go-getter. No, but it was different.
Speaker 1:Every part of it from the gambling service to the car stereos. It's like you were just jumping in. It was a different business. Like.
Speaker 2:I needed a real accountant. You needed accounts, receivable, accounts payable. Like I needed a real accountant, you need an account receivable, accounts payable. Like I didn't know anything really much about accounting and you had to go get it. You had to go get an office. The other ones kind of just came together. You know what I'm saying. Like it was just I was there, I did it, boom, this I had to, like the one you were doing out of a car wash, yeah, so I had to figure it out.
Speaker 2:You know what? I'm only 23 years old, so I'm you know, I'm young, and so so I go back and I tell Bill I go, bill, I'm going to, I'm going to open my own business. I go, I got to tell you what, hold the billing, let's see what this company does If they go under. I'm going to, I'm going to open my business. So, sure enough, the company, boom, um, they split, they have a nasty divorce, they tear each other apart. So I leave, I open up, open up my own company. And he says, dave, you build circuit city with your new company and go in for a couple months, get your, get your company up and running and take as long as you need to pay me. I'm like what he said, yeah, like listen, if it wasn't for you I would've got, I would've got burnt like three months. So I I'm okay, like like how much time do you need? So I said, and I had like two months of billing. At that point it was like 78, 70 or $80,000. And uh, I said, I don't know Bill, okay, so I bill them, I get the 80,000 the next day, 70, $80,000 next day. I go get the office, I go get furniture, I go get phones, I get everything and I get set up. And a couple people had, you know, uh were with the company, came with me, uh, and I build them and I think three months later I paid them.
Speaker 2:And that's how I started in logistics is because of him. If he didn't do that for me, I don't know if I would money to go get everything, because by the time it was all said and done, like I was out of the money. I went through the money fast. By the time you get an office. I mean I had an office with, I had big ambition. So I was thinking, you know, I had an office with 15 desks. I had two people, you know, four offices and 15 desks. So like I wanted to go big and and I've always just gone big, like, and even in logistics like, like I bootstrapped it the entire time I went through boot, you know, bootstrapped it the entire time. I bootstrapped it the entire time, never got a loan, always managed payables, hustling payables. I said I'll pay you this week, help me out, and it's just.
Speaker 1:Was this a brokerage? Yeah, like an LTL brokerage. Essentially, it was a LTL brokerage. Yeah, yep.
Speaker 2:How long were you in that business? How big did?
Speaker 1:you get how many? How long were you in that business? How big did you get, like, how many people did you get it to? What did that?
Speaker 2:mean, I mean I grew it. I grew it that I made a, I did a merger with an actual trucking company in 2000, in 1997. So it gave me like 30 trucks that ran the East Coast only, which is still running today. What company is that? A company called Gold Eagle Logistics, okay, and they still do all the Northeast business today, back and forth. It was part of what.
Speaker 2:When I sold in 2018, when I sold Smith, they were an agent of mine, like a partner agent of mine, and a guy named Andy Mendoza ran it and and when I sold, he didn't want to be a part of it and they didn't want assets. You know, people don't want to buy assets, so they want assets. So I spun them out. I said, listen, don't worry about it, just go, I won't make you part of the sale. I mean I was only taking 5%, you know, as an agent fee. So it wasn't like a huge part of what we were doing and they didn't really like. You know, they didn't like assets and they didn't want to. They didn't want to build something. They didn't want to. They didn't like the agents. As a matter of fact, when I I think, I think they did, but, um, it's still running and I.
Speaker 2:So I had that and I thought if I had trucks like those, 30 trucks were in every shipper in Miami with assets. I'm like, okay, if I can get in there, I can go in there. They're only doing New York, I can expand and do everywhere else with all these customers. So I opened up. I ended up putting on 30 trucks.
Speaker 2:I went everywhere else too. We built it to like right away. We got like 60 trucks and and went everywhere. We were hauling for every freight forwarder panopina, eagle like every freight forwarder. Miami was using us and I just built. I went from like I went from doing like six million a year to doing like 40 million a year in like a year and a half like like finished a year and then at the end of the year, the next year, I was on a run rate for over 40 million and uh, and just grew it and then continue to grow it and grow it and, you know, just went through all the pains and ups and downs of of freight and then in 2012, I own, by the way, robert Cadena worked for me during that period. That's how I met Robert. Robert came to work for me at that trucking company, and so hold on.
Speaker 1:When, when did you get involved with Smith transport, so that became.
Speaker 2:Smith transport, that that company became Smith Transport. We threw some mergers. So in comes Lee Futernick, my partner on FTS, who sold to CH Robinson in 2002. We ended up merging, being partners because we were the two largest in Miami and we went head to head. So one day I meet up with him and we were battling over all the business and he says let's do a deal. And my and at that time my father-in-law was working for me and he got prostate cancer. So he was kind of like my, you know, my, my partner, so to speak. I started the business but I brought him in and he was a partner but he got prostate cancer and he was wanting to retire. So I said, I don't, we do something together. He had sold to CH Robinson, he was looking to get back in the business and he goes I'm going to put the gang back together. But you know, what do you want to do? And I said, well, let's do something. So we put it together. We rebranded. It was called Cargo Transportation, we rebranded it Smith Car Miami and then he started Smith Terminal Warehouse. He made the brokerage FTS Funeric Transportation Services, and so we became partners and he came in and we built the company and in 2012, we, robert Cadena.
Speaker 2:I ran into Robert Cadena, which is a crazy story. I never should have been. I shouldn't have run into him, but I did run into him. It's like bizarre. So I run into him like, hey, robert, what are you doing? Oh, good to see you, dave. And he worked for me in the nineties. So I'm like, what are you doing? How's everything? And I knew he had a company because I hauled for him. He had a company called chain express and I he would use me cause I did always knew he was there. I would periodically like, like you know, hear from him, but I never saw him. I haven't seen him in six, seven years. And he says, hey, can I come see you tomorrow? So he comes. So he comes to my office, sees me and says we had a huge customer, me and my partner.
Speaker 2:We lost it. It was like 70% of our business. You got anything I can do. You got any ideas Like, what can we do together? So it was during a time when it was very difficult to get people. So I'm like how many people do you have? And he's like I got four people, but they're all in Columbia. And I'm like Columbia, how am I going to do it? People in Columbia what I don't need?
Speaker 1:people in Columbia. I need people here.
Speaker 2:I need real people here. What is people in Columbia? What is that? So, uh, so he picks up the phone and dials the girl and he tells the media. He goes I'm with a customer, so she speaks perfect English and he starts talking about a shipment that when LTL that had to be pulled off and expedited and she was handling it, she did a perfect job. And I'm like man, how much are you paying her, what? And I had like 30 people doing this LTL brokerage and and I was barely making money because LTL Brokerage is a crappy business, man, if you ever did it, it's like very difficult. It's very difficult because there's always relays and claims.
Speaker 1:Talk about that for a minute because I haven't gotten into LTL a lot in this podcast. I mean, there's an opportunity for you to educate our audience. What are the challenges of?
Speaker 2:LTL Brokerage. So LTL Brokerage's challenges is the archaic measuring system in which they classify stuff. So everything is classed and everything's reclassed and reweighed, and this dimension programs and shippers are always trying to scan the classes. So they're you know it's just and there is always. You know it's, it's always delays and damages no-transcript to. Then you got to call them and figure out why they're short, paying you $30 and argue with the carrier. And I'll tell you a story One I ended up talking to XPO.
Speaker 2:I emailed Bradley Jacobs. He actually talked to me about it. This was back when he was making acquisitions and I'm like the smc3 decide that they're going to get rid of a class. Okay, they're just going to get rid of this class. No, we don't want it to exist anymore. We're going to get rid of it, okay. Well, all my shippers that use that class ship for six more months under that class. So they keep, they keep billing for the new class, which is more money, obviously. They keep billing for it. So I'm getting these bills. All of a sudden it's also now XPO like $180,000 of this, of this new class.
Speaker 2:I'm like I don't understand this, what, what is so? When they finally explained to me, I understand. And I'm like, so you mean to tell me, you all get together, you change class, you don't tell anybody. And then you just you expect us because, and then you do it until we cry and scream and you cut our account off. How does you do business like that?
Speaker 2:So I emailed Brad Jacobs. I'm like this is absurd, like. And so he ended up getting involved. I got it settled and uh, and then I realized okay, not got me once, don't get me again. And uh, so just like little nuances, like that it's, it's crazy.
Speaker 2:And you have to go to SMC three. They're like the, they're like the LTL rate mafia, so it's, I mean it's, it's just a. I mean, listen, in the end, when you look at the global trends and the worldwide expresses and the echoes that do a ton of this LTL stuff. And I had to do it because I consolidated LTL. So I would put a trailer. I had a. You know, I had a big uh when Watkins sold the FedEx I I hired like 27 of their sales reps in Florida and all this LTL business came. So I would put a trailer into an account and pick up all the freight, bring it back to the dock, peel off all the good stuff that I wanted going to california, chicago and the good areas three pallets or more and I give all the ones two pallets going to the shitty areas to the lta carriers, and so that business was lost. Leader, I'd lose money on it, and so when I moved that operation, down the lost.
Speaker 2:The lost leader was the one, two, three pallet stuff, yeah, but the, the, the good stuff.
Speaker 1:How did that pan out for it?
Speaker 2:it's. I would, I would consolidate, I'd build trucks, put four or five stops on a truck and have four dollars a mile going out of florida.
Speaker 1:So I mean that's, it's crazy I'd have, I'd have crazy you're making two, three thousand bucks a load, and then I would get a load out.
Speaker 2:I would go to chicago final in chicago or minnesota and I get a load from ch or echo, command or Coyote or any of those guys back to Florida. One pick, one drop, right back to Florida, because that was easy, you know, to find a truck in Chicago or Minnesota that's begging you for a load to Florida, you know it doesn't really exist. So I would put all and I had 150 company trucks, so I would send all my trucks out with huge revenue load to ride and I bring them back with a one pick, one drop.
Speaker 2:And I did business with all the brokers in the country because when I'm talking to them about getting a load to floor back in the floor, I'm like, hey, you got any LTL, you got any LTL, where do you go? And I had California, northeast and Florida, so I started doing their LTL out there. I mean, that's how, I don't know, do you ever you had to hear the story of how I met Matt at arrive?
Speaker 2:No, no, tell me, you never heard that okay, so fast forward, because we only got a short period of time. If I keep rambling on, we'll be here for like two days no, you're doing great, it's so wonderful.
Speaker 2:So jeff maser of course everybody knows the legend jeff maser. So jeff maser gets on a group text in ohio and says hey, my rough life, I gotta go back down to columbia for work. This is brutal and he's being you know, he's being sarcastic. You know another three days of know drinking and partying and rough business. So this got. So everybody starts chiming in this group chat and Facebook, going ah, when are you going to take me, when am I going? And it turns out Jeff's best friend, rod's son, is best friends with Matt Pye and Matt Pye is in the group for some reason. So Matt chimes in.
Speaker 1:What's the timeline of this? This is 2017. He's at arrive at this point, or he? Yeah, he started arrive.
Speaker 2:This has to be 2013. When did he?
Speaker 1:start arrive.
Speaker 2:I think was 2014. Okay, so it had to be 2015. It was when he had just, he was only he was, he had just started arriving. He's like eight months in business, seven months in business. So he. So he uh chimes in what's, what's the business you got to be in? To go to columbia. You know, I'm sure, I'm sure Matt liked Columbia so he wanted to go to Columbia. He's like what business you got to be in? So Jeff goes the logistics business. So Matt writes back in the chat I want to see if Jeff has that still today, because that'd be pretty cool. He writes back in the chat I'm going to be the fastest growing logistics company ever. You need to take me to Columbia.
Speaker 1:So Jeff's like what. I think I've sent a text like that before, Not about Columbia, but just about the area Aggressive. I'm going to be the best. I probably sent that text to him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he probably recycled that text, re-gifted it. So Jeff ends up on a call with him. It just so happens he's coming to Florida that weekend to come down and see a customer who's in Miami. So Jeff tells me who it is. So of course I look it up and I'm doing business with him. I'm like, oh, we have to arrive out of, out of California. And then I look at what we're doing and it's one of my direct customers that he stole from me. And I'm like, look at this company called Leonard Parker. I'm like, why is he getting Leonard Parker and Lee?
Speaker 2:My partner is best friends with the owner of Leonard Parker and I go into Lee. I go how much are free to a broker? This is your best friend. He goes I don't know, dave, I'm in the accounting side, you run sales. So of course Matt flies in. So I tell him I go. I go yeah, you know you're hauling my customers, you're giving me my customers freight. He goes what? I go? Yeah, but I go keep it whatever, I don't care. Like you can have it, it doesn't matter. So we start talking to him and we hit it off and he goes. I tell him what we're doing in Columbia. He goes man, I'm going to grow like crazy. Like you, you need me as a customer. So we plan a trip, we go down to Columbia, show him the operations and he immediately became our first biggest customer. And then from there it just felt like dominoes everywhere we went and that's how?
Speaker 1:Just for those that aren't familiar, because you're new to the podcast game, we got to make sure the audience you and I are friends. You and I are friends, so it feels like we're just catching up, but the audience has to stay up with us. So what you're talking about is lean staffing, what's known as lean Solutions.
Speaker 2:Now, sorry, lean.
Speaker 1:Solutions. What was once Lean Staffing now Lean Solutions, the largest near-shore staffing business in the industry, which was started by yourself, dave, and Robert Cadena, who you? Mentioned before. And yes, Pyatt and Arrive were your first big customers.
Speaker 2:They were the first big one, Like ARL was one of our first customers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were the first one to say give me 100 people. We used to put on five people, 10 people. We thought we were king of the world, ringing the gong like it's going no tomorrow. And Pat and Pi is like give me 100 people and I'm going to grow to 500. We're like what? So we went out and get big offices and so he was the first one. I think when he came on we had maybe had 100 employees total. When he came on, like we just started really going hard in 14, 15 and 16.
Speaker 2:I told Robert, this is a real business, get out of this logistics thing, because Robert ran the LTL brokerage portion. He ran that in Columbia. So I said listen, we bought him out of that. We gave him a nice severance package and said go be the CEO and start this company. I did the business plan. I laid it out. I went down to Columbia. I had a friend who was in the call center business. He went to Columbia with me. He said, dave, I think this is an opportunity. He gave me the financial pro forma which was what made me do Lean Solutions, lean Staffing back then. I'll never forget it was a spreadsheet he sent to me. It has all the costs plugged in, it has revenue per seat plugged in and it has EBITDA plugged in here, so I start plugging in. Okay, what am I going to bill? Back then we were billing $1,500 a seat. I mean it's crazy. Back then I think it's $2,600, $2,700 a seat now because the FX and inflation and everything it's doubled.
Speaker 1:So I plug in $1,500 a seat and I plug in $100 and I plug in that's $1,500 a seat a month.
Speaker 2:Gross a month yeah, that's the cost of what Lean was billing a customer back then per person, all included, everything included and, like I said, now it's like $2,500 to $2,700. So I go plug it in. I plug in one seat of $1,500, 10 seats of $1,500, 100 seats, 1,000 seats, and I'm watching EBITDA, ebitda and 10,000 seats, and so I just decided to put an enterprise value there, conservative, like like 10 X EBITDA, and at 10,000 seats it got to over a billion dollars of value. And I'm like what? So I call up Ed, I go, ed, I go, is this right, he goes, all right, run through, he goes, yeah, he goes. You can you think you get 10,000 seats? I go, I think I can.
Speaker 2:Man, like it's's logistics, like it's huge. I'm more, I'm worried. I got 50 people down there myself. I got customers coming and they're dying, they're begging me, give me people. Set up my satellite office. Like was what we coined the term set up your satellite office. I said I think I can get, like I'm just doing the math, like it might take five years but I think I can. And uh, they, they. You know we're over 10 000 seats down there now.
Speaker 1:so, uh, so it's pretty crazy it's cool because you you were telling the story of meeting robert cadena again and how he had you get on the phone with one of his employees who was in columbia. That's the whole genesis for starting lean staffing, the whole thing. Like you and robert get on the phone with one of his current ltl employees that happen to be working in one more step.
Speaker 2:That happened that made the light bulb come on. So at that moment I didn't think about lean staffing, it wasn't even a thought. I thought about me, I thought about Smith.
Speaker 1:You were just like I should put some employees down there, because 30 people in Tampa.
Speaker 2:I'm losing 500,000 a year on this lost leader business of these one and two pallet LTL brokerages. Robert here saying, listen, I just lost my biggest customer. I can handle all that, all that business and we could grow it and I can make money with it because I'm staffing for that. He was paying people $400 a month so like I mean, he was paying people way less. So when I had, when I went, when I had the office, then we were paying $400 a month, yeah, so that was reasonable for in.
Speaker 2:Columbia Over 10 years ago. Like I said, it's double, it's over double now. I mean, I think the average is like 900 plus taxes, plus you know everything. So that's why it's up as high as it is. So it, so I started running it, we moved people down there, it started going, and then and then and then we started getting like hey, is that person in Columbia? Like that's that's interesting? So we, so then I went and made a sales call. I went, I went on a call on a friend of mine who had a food business, shipper business that I didn't do business with.
Speaker 2:And it's another thing. Like my kids played lacrosse. So I'm at the lacrosse game, his wife's there and he's not there and I'm like, hey, where's Todd? They're like, oh, our logistics manager quit. And I'm not the kind of guy I never asked friends for business, like if you're my neighbor, i'm't. I just wasn't my style. So I said, oh, he's in.
Speaker 2:He lost his logistics manager. Well, if I can help, let me know. You know, I, that's what I'm, that's what I do, let me know. And so he immediately, like four minutes later, text me. You can help me with my logistics problem. I lost my logistics manager. I have nobody.
Speaker 2:It's a shit show. Can you help me go to his office Monday and I bring Robert with me and Mazer and we're sitting there and I'm looking and this guy's doing everything on spreadsheets and paper and this guy just up and left them. So all these loads, and he was delivering to municipalities, prisons, schools, frozen and refrigerated LTL. It was a shit show. So I'm like I don't think I, I don't think I want this freight. But I like I said what if I give you Mercurygate, I have Mercurygate back, then you can white back, then you could white label it. I said I'll give you Mercury gate. You'll put all your, all your loads of Mercury gate. So at least see what you have. I'll see your carriers when we'll have a and then I'll give you a couple of people in Columbia because I have an office in Columbia. I'll give you a couple of my people to manage it all and do it and do all the work, and they know Mercury gate, so there'll be able to get in.
Speaker 2:And so he goes just let's go, let's do it, I don't care. And he gives it to me. So I go okay, robert, give me like two really good people down there that could do this. So he gave me two people and I marked it up like 3X. I think I was charging him like $2,500, $2,800. We were paying nothing, so that was the first indication for me. I walked out and I said, wow, this is crazy, that guy. When you're jumping in my lap and giving me the business and signing the signing the deal, I'm like that's what I want to sell and you're creating value too, so it's not like you're just charging a bunch of money and not doing anything.
Speaker 2:No, I've always in sales. I can never sell anything that doesn't create value. Like you know, if you give me a product that is good and a customer needs, I'll sell the shit out of it, but if you give me something they don't need and can't use, I I can't sell it. Man, I don't want to sell somebody something they can't need, and it's just I can't. So this was something I knew, this was something I knew I could sell like crazy. I knew it so, um. So then two things happen. So that happens Robert goes to the Mercury gate conference in Las Vegas they had a conference every year and he's talking to the guys at AIT and AIT is complaining about Mercurygate because it's miserable.
Speaker 2:You've got to wait months to get the updates and customization. And so Robert says the guy oh, we have our own Mercurygate super user. He goes what he goes yeah, we have a and we have our own Mercurygate super user down in Columbia. We got a couple of them because we know we don't want to go to Mercurygate to get shit done. So we got our own super user. He goes can I use them? And Robert's like yeah, no problem. So he calls me and goes hey, our guy, can we like, use our super user and do that, I go, he's begging you for a super user at Columbia too. So like within the span of a week two people are begging us for people in Columbia. I'm like Robert, I think this is a business.
Speaker 2:So I went and wrote the business plan and then I called Ed and said, hey, how do I do this call center type business? I want to do like a 50 seat pilot to see what it does and sell it. And then I just started going to all of the people I knew and like ARL and all these guys I do business with and saying, hey, you know you're talking to to Jolene, put four people in Columbia. And then you know, you use the money you're saving to boost up sales. So everybody bought it and we just started getting like little itty bitty customers three and four people, three and four people. And then Piat comes along and you know he's the whale of the century. I want off 400 people. Give them all so. And then it just morphed.
Speaker 2:It just morphed into this crazy business.
Speaker 1:Just for context, because I think it could. It could sound bad, but I don't think, knowing it because I've been part of it, it's not bad. These are people who, without jobs like these in columbia, would not have jobs to work right. I mean, like there's not like a ton of opportunity down there that they'd be like. It's not like you're taking advantage of these people down, no, no not at all.
Speaker 2:it's different today than it was then, because back then there were no jobs. Today Columbia is on fire. Columbia is a hot Latin American country that there's a lot of work down there, so it's way more competitive.
Speaker 1:now Is the work down there all the same type of work. It's like everyone's caught on to this idea and it's call center type work.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, there's a lot of call centers down there but there's big companies down there. A lot of the work was in hospitality before, like you know, before you know last six years, when, when it took off. But these are, these are educated kids like they're young kids that they have. They have a lot of americanized schools down there. So columbia is like the most, most like america in latin america. They study in english, like. So there's a lot of english influence and american influence in colombia.
Speaker 2:And so we tapped into that and robert knew it because his dad ran, his dad's a retired admiral in the navy, ran. He ran all the cruise ships into cartagena. So we, we opened in cartagena. Robert had this pool of like already english-speaking hospitality people that we were able to tap into so like. So for those people there's job. For majority of the people in these third world countries in Latin America there's not a lot of jobs. You know their poverty level. But for this class of people that are working in the hospitality industry but they're not, they're getting paid peanuts. So when we came along, we were paying twice the average wage to these hospitality workers and and it was amazing for them Like that's what I wanted to clarify, Because when you're like we're paying them nothing, it could sound like you're taking advantage, but you're not.
Speaker 2:I mean it's relative to no. No, no, robert, yeah, he's the thing about Go ahead. I was just going to say the thing about this type of business because we used you guys.
Speaker 2:It was great and you guys. We had some other competitors that we didn't get along with and didn't like very much, but the Rapido guys are really good dudes, man, really good guys. They have a good product. Being in Mexico, they didn't really step into our area. We didn't step into theirs. I like those guys a lot, man. I saw them at your wedding so I know they're good friends of yours and anything I could ever do for those guys happy to do it.
Speaker 1:But what I was going to say is, when I looked at this business I was trying to understand why does this make sense? And then you realize that I couldn't get the kids I hired out of Indiana and Michigan State and wherever these Big Ten schools. For one, they demanded at least 40 something thousand dollars a year, and two, they didn't want to do the job of calling and tracking a load or even three.
Speaker 2:As soon as they learned that job, they were gone to someone else. So you invest in them and then they're gone, like you put money and time and then they're like thank you for the experience, I'm gonna go use you to get another job so.
Speaker 1:So the alternative is individuals in Columbia, where there's not as many good jobs and, yeah, I'm paying a fraction now of what I would be paying to someone here and they actually maybe enjoy the work it's at least more enjoyable than what they otherwise would be doing. So, like it's just the opportunity available in both countries that makes it very attractive to want to use companies like lean, because, like, it's just a a very different opportunity available to these individuals versus what's funny too, because when we first started it was uh, it was nick, ryan and hunter.
Speaker 2:They were the first one. They were in a little office in the back of my logistics company selling lean. It was like a closet they were in and I used to walk in in there hey guys, what's going on? And one day I walk in and Nick is someone that slams the phone and they go man, this is tough man. I'm like what's so tough about it? Nick, tell me he goes. This guy just hung up the phone and said putting people in Colombia, that's un-American. Bam, he's like all email. Yeah, send him a brochure and say listen.
Speaker 2:So one of our partners back then he wrote a paper on why nearshoring is patriotic and the paper I don't know, I have to see if we even still have it but it basically said that people don't want these jobs. It's like trying to say oh, you know, all these jobs that we want Americans to have, they don't want to do and companies are investing into them and then they're leaving and they have to replace them and it's mundane, low-level back-office jobs. Put those there. Use the savings you have to invest in real jobs. People want sales and good jobs and use that in your business to grow your business. For every two people you have down there, if you can hire one salesperson here, you're doing America a favor. You're creating jobs that could actually pay the bills. And so he wrote a paper on it and we started and we gave it to them to like send out.
Speaker 2:When anytime somebody says that and you know it's Nick was the funniest ever. So I told I told these guys, listen, I'm too busy, I don't have time to teach you how to sell. These are young guys You're talking about. I think Nick was 24, hunter was 19, 20, and Ryan was 25, 24, 25. And they had really no sales experience. So I'm like I don't have time to cheat, you Go get a. So they went on Jordan Belfort straight line hiring and took the course and so I would get the calls in and I would laugh. I mean, hunter and Ryan were pretty much steady, average salespeople, to be clear these are your children we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Ryan, again, the audience doesn't know this, but Hunter and Ryan are two of your kids Ryan's my oldest son, hunter's my youngest son.
Speaker 2:Ryan's given me three grandkids already. Hunter just gave me my second grandkid to make five, his second, so I have five. And then Nick is like an adopted kid with me. I kind of adopted Nick and took him out of college in Minnesota from a friend. So I get this call and it's like it's Nick and Nick.
Speaker 2:If anybody I want to know, people that know Nick, could laugh about this. If you don't know Nick, it's hard to laugh about it. But I'm listening to this call and it's like hey, joe, yeah, hey, it's Nick, it's Nick, dead silence, okay, nick, nick says nothing for like eight seconds, awkward as hell. He's like, yeah, it's nick, from, from lean. And he's like nick, what do you want? Like spit it out. Oh yo, we're near story, have you heard of us? And he ends up closing the guy and I'm like nick, you're so freaking, weird and awkward, it's different. Just keep doing it. Keep doing it because like it's like if this awkwardness is creating you're not just the average, go right, and how you doing, how's the weather, what you're doing, this bullshit, you know pitch that everybody does. And so it worked for him.
Speaker 2:And and then he got so discouraged because it was very tough to sell lean man for the first two years it was. It was hard and nick was thinking he was going to fail and he was going to move home to Minnesota. I believed in lean so much. I go, nick, and what happened is Nick's apartment was up his lease where he was staying. He had to go get a new place, he had to buy furniture and do all that and he was strapped for cash. And I go, listen, nick, I believe so much.
Speaker 2:I went and bought a townhouse, I furnished it and I put him in there. I said, listen, you can rent it for the next six months and if it doesn't work then I'll keep it as an investment property. I'll rent it out. And I put him in a nice townhouse right next to the office and I said you stay here and do this. I promise you it's going to work, man, I know it works, I know it does. It worked for me. I got 50 people Works for me. It'll work for every logistics company, I promise you. So he got back in and he just grinded.
Speaker 1:Then we started doing the TIA trade shows and the freight waves, and and then Robert spun out and so he stayed and and he's crushed it, he's, he, he's done amazing, yeah, all of them have done amazing. Yeah, Hunter closed me I.
Speaker 2:Hunter got my business. I'll never forget that. He was up in college, he was working out, he was an intern.
Speaker 1:He was an intern. You know, I get a lot of LinkedIn messages from people selling me. I get a lot of emails from people selling me and there was something about getting a LinkedIn message. Oh yeah, of course I break a lot of people's balls. I got to mess with people a little bit, you did.
Speaker 1:Especially once I know I like someone and I know I'm going to give them business, that's when with them a little bit more but something about the fact that the intern had the kind of uh, the gusto to just get right into the ceo's inbox and be like, hey, I want to talk to you, like I love that. I mean, I, I am probably more likely to take a call from an intern than I am a salesperson.
Speaker 2:I, I'm the one who did that. I coined that. I said listen, nobody wants to hear from fucking sales jerks like they don't have no time. I get them all day long. I don't want to hear from. I give them two seconds, I'm like thank you anyway, and I don't want to be have bad sales karma. I go listen, tell me you're an intern, you're cutting your teeth, you're getting your feet.
Speaker 2:Everybody wants to help the kid trying to get, trying to cut his teeth and get and. And we did it, and Nick did it, Ryan did it, Hunter did it. Nick's still doing it today. Nick's still saying, hey, I'm an intern.
Speaker 1:No, see that I don't agree with.
Speaker 2:No but all my guys did that, so we used that and it fucking worked. Man, it worked great.
Speaker 1:So finish your story with Hunter, because I think I fucking love that story he reached out and I he was an intern and I was like you know what, I'll give him the time of day and uh, and, and that was the beginning of a long, really strong relationship.
Speaker 2:Because then he turned it over to Ryan and Ryan closed you and got the deal and then you said, no, no, no, I don't want Ryan. Nick the Hunter's my guy and Ryan's like I'm not giving it to Hunter and I'm like, dude, he wants Hunter. And I'm like, because Hunter went from being an intern in college, he came home and now he's working, he's like, well, it was mine. And Ryan's like, no, he's not, I closed it. I'm like Ryan I mean technically, hunter got in, he's here because of Hunter and I'm like just split it whatever. I mean I got two kids arguing over this account.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know what I was thinking at that time I think it was you got the business because of Hunter. No, but that's what I was going to say.
Speaker 1:I always thought that the hardest part in sales and brokerage is just getting somebody to give you the damn time of day and getting somebody to give you the opportunity. For me, it's like Hunter got the door open. I wanted him to get credit for that opportunity. Sorry, Ryan, he did Listen. Anybody that has for that opportunity.
Speaker 2:Sorry, ryan, no, I just yeah, listen, it's just, you know, when you have anybody that has kids and sons and actually as old as me and hasn't been in business with them and all that, like anybody like you helped my kids, you helped Hunter and you helped Ryan, like I'll forever be grateful for that, like when people help your kids in business and like do something like as a father, like there's nothing that replaces that. So you did that and I'll forever be grateful and you were a great account for them and Mola still is, and Art Best. So I appreciate that man and they're doing great. The best thing as a father is I have four great kids, three boys and a girl. Taylor also does some stuff for Lane and trade shows and to have great kids turn out. I'm know your parents feel the same way about you and I don't think I've. I met your other siblings, uh, at your wedding, I think.
Speaker 1:But I think I only know, matt, really I really only know matt and uh, to have good kids.
Speaker 2:Man, it's just like you the day you realize your kids are okay and they have careers and they're doing good, it's like such a, it's such a feeling as a father. So hopefully one day you get to, you get to feel that. I know you're married now, hopefully you'll be having kids soon and you know and you'll feel that, but that's a great feeling.
Speaker 1:Talk a little bit about working with your kids, like how do you think about raising kids in a way that doesn't you know you? You know, by the time your kids were old enough to be certainly influenced, you had some money.
Speaker 2:So, like you know, there was an opportunity to screw them up with money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I'm just curious.
Speaker 2:I don't know how it happened. I don't know how it happened, man it's. And people talk to me on P listen. I again every single person that's ever met my kids, has come back and told me I got great kids Like and to me that's the biggest accomplishment in the world Like there's nothing better than that. I can make, sell companies and make millions and do land big customers. There's nothing better feeling than when somebody tells you your kids are great and I, I don't know why. I mean, listen, their mother was a big influence on them. She was a stay at home mom. She was, she was a great mom.
Speaker 2:Every. It was always a party at our house. It was always kids at our house. Um, I don't know. I don't know what it is that made them good and how they turned out. I mean, they lived the life like you know we lived. We lived upper class life. They had everything they wanted. They never anything they wanted they got.
Speaker 2:Our toy room was a closed in three car garage. We had so many toys. When kids came over we would give them brand new toys and games that were never opened as parting gifts to leave, just for coming over. We had a candy closet, not a candy drawer. The neighbors would just wander in our house and get candy and cookies and leave. I'd be in the kitchen and I'd see somebody come in and go in the candy and then just leave. I'm like what? That kid just, oh, he just came and got some candy, so the whole neighborhood had access to our candy cabinet.
Speaker 2:So, like they grew up, you would want to say they grew up spoiled, rotten kids. But they're not man, they're humble, they're good kids. They work hard. And I don't know. I don't know what I did. If I could figure out that exact recipe of how I did that, I could write a bestselling book and crush it, but I don't know what it is. Man, I just worked hard. I never listen, I never. We, me and me and my ex never went out, we never party, we never like when. We never had date night, never went out on saturday nights, never took vacations without the kids. I just worked. I worked 70 hours a week for 30 years, yeah I just worked, that's it.
Speaker 1:I was gonna say two things I know about you is one you're a grinder, you work your butt off and still, even today, as like an 80 year old man who looks 50, I'm just kidding you don't look 50, 72. Just kidding. That's the stem cell stuff we can talk about that later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but as as as a mature adult, you've worked your butt off and I think one of the things I've always really appreciated about you is you really take care of people.
Speaker 1:You know and I don't know this from the perspective of people who work for you, I can assume you take great care of people who work for you, but you take great care of people anybody who you really come across.
Speaker 1:And when you and I first came across each other again, I guess part of it was through Hunter, your son, but I've asked you for favors before, I've asked you for advice before and you've never batted an eye from saying you've always tried to be there. And it's one of the things I've always really appreciated about you. And even as I hear you kind of tell stories, it's clear that you're a grinder, but you're also somebody who takes care of people and I think that's like such a great thing, a lesson for a kid to learn Like. One of the greatest lessons I've learned from my own father was essentially to like anytime someone asks you for help, try to help them. Like you can't lose in those scenarios. Like worst case, if you ever need help you can maybe ask for it, but like it just feels good to help people. And um well, some people say it's selfish.
Speaker 2:Some people say it's selfish. What would I do Like? Because I love helping people. I mean I love like. You know I've sold several companies and when I write I've made many millionaires and it makes me happier to see them win than myself win.
Speaker 2:And I think a couple things I really instilled in my kids growing up is a couple things is one don't fuck with other people's shit. People care about their shit. Don't use it, don't break it, don't disrespect it. Two, don't ever lie or steal Like. That's the two things that, no, you can't. Once you do that, you're done.
Speaker 2:And the third is be the be the friend in your friend group that everybody counts on without fail. You're on time. If somebody gives you something, if somebody says, hey, we need somebody to handle this, you, you need to be the nominee. If you do that stuff, sky's the limit, you'll never have a problem. And over and over, and, over and over again, it's my values I instilled in them and told them that's what you need to do to be successful. You don't need to go be a doctor or a lawyer or all that bullshit and go to college and all that nonsense. You need to be this person and you'll succeed, and you also got to have half a brain too. I mean intelligence. It starts with average intelligence. If you're below average intelligence, I can't help you. Like someone says, you can't fix stupid things.
Speaker 1:Average isn't asking much.
Speaker 2:It's 50%. If you're average and above intelligence, then you have a chance. And I said, if you do those things, if your friends look at you as the one friend they can count on, no matter what and trustworthy, you'll get whatever you want in life. And I think they did that. I think anybody that knows my kids know they'll drop everything and help you. You can trust them and count on them. They'll you know they're always going to tell you the truth. They're never going to lie or steal from you and I think those just core values right, like those just simple core values.
Speaker 2:And then everybody else asked me about raising kids. I'm like, just do what he says he's going to do. And I always did that. I just did If I said, hey, we're going to turn this car around. Boom, car got turned around and they didn't stop and and and I never had a problem with my kids, ever. My kids were great, I kids in four years and we'd be at a restaurant and they would be like your kids are the most well-behaved kids I've ever seen. Like, yeah, because that they no doubt kicked their ass, we will go to the bathroom. So I never had to. I don't know if I ever would have. But like, because you know I love my kids and nothing hurts a parent more than disciplining your kids. But, um, but they knew like they didn't, they didn't do that. They had great kids and still great kids today. Thank you, and hopefully, you know, I have grandkids the same way, because the generations tend to do things different.
Speaker 2:But I think I think those understanding those core values is is all it. All it takes, and if you're a person that has those values and listen, like I told you, I would have done anything for you because you helped my kids, you get. You were a ceo that talked to an intern, that talked to ryan and gave us business and like to me, if somebody always does a little something for me, I do a lot for them something back, and that's that's always been my recipe for for friendships and and and having great people and I got. I mean, I have people that worked for me for 20 plus years. You know, and you can't take my people. If you're in business and non-competes and all that, go ahead, try. You cannot touch my people. My people love me because I love them. You can't take them. You're probably the same way your people kill for you and go through a wall, like, like, because you'll do that for them and if you do that, you know you, you're, you're, invincible yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1:I mean, that was. That was a great little monologue I was.
Speaker 1:Thank you we're gonna probably market some of that clip on linkedin for you, um, but it's true. I mean I I agree people on it and it's funny because I've seen both sides of myself with people and I've seen points where I've had an immense kind of love frankly is probably the word trust and loyalty between myself and people that I work with. And then I've also seen the other side of it, when I've not been at my best and and it hurts and it hurts to see how you can impact people negatively if you're not being the best version of yourself. Anybody that knows you and knows that knows, you knows the real.
Speaker 2:You too, you know, listen, we all go, we all do shit and shit happens and things happen. But like you're a great guy, man, everybody knows you. I never heard anybody say a bad word about you and you too go out of your way to help people in the same way. And you just, you know, listen, you're just young, you know, you're young man. We all, when we're young, we all do shit. Like, everybody does different shit, you know, just matter what it is, but everybody does shit. Nobody goes through the youth without doing shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's part of how you grow. You have to do some reversion in life and that's how you grow from it.
Speaker 2:Exactly and who you become, and all the people that went through this stuff with you see who you become and then that's it. They know who you are, man. It's, it's and that's how you build. You're only 30. I'm 24 years, almost 25 years, older than you, and that's all that's. The only thing I have is 25 years. It's same shit like, and you're gonna, you're. You're starting, you know, early. You have the luxury. A lot, of, a lot of people aren't where they, where you're at, at 30. You know, I'm saying like you know, to I'm saying Like you know to be where you're at at 34, but they're not where you're at at 34.
Speaker 2:They're still out doing stuff and haven't got their life together yet. So you know you're going to be way ahead of everybody when you're my age, you're going to be doing the same shit to 34-year-olds.
Speaker 1:I can only hope so. Well, listen, let's use this opportunity to get about your new business phone ops ai. What prompted you wanting to get so for one, I mean, as we've talked about, I appreciate how transparent you are and hopefully that doesn't come off to people as a negative that you're so honest about. Like some of the success you've had, um, I've had failures too, man it's.
Speaker 2:You know I'm not.
Speaker 1:You know I've had lots of fail ups and downs and and failures, but we don't want to talk about those, but yeah, so what I was going to say is you've had a ton of success. You've had a ton of success. You don't exactly need to get back into grinding a new business at 55, 54 years old. What's inspiring this? Why are you wanting to start a new business now?
Speaker 2:So I mean hopefully just keep trying to shorten the story down. So the evolution of Lean we came in, we me and Robert built it. We got great private equity partners FTV, lead, edge, capital, great partners and we grew the business and with any business it grows, it outgrows the founders and needs to get to the next level. So we started transforming lean about a year and a half, two years ago and bringing in higher level c-suite. You know, roberts never ran a billion-dollar company and it's miraculous where we got to where you are. I've. You know the lean was the first billion dollar company I was ever involved in. So they started bringing in higher level c-suites, stacking the c-suite, stacking it to be a professional company, to go to the next level, and Lean should be a $5 or $10 billion company in the next three to five years. So they start stacking it. So we started getting kind of pushed out a little bit and a little bit less important. These really smart people come in and transform the business. And so I was really the first to take a big step back because I ran sales. So I basically ran sales and I oversaw finance and Robert oversaw operations.
Speaker 2:In Columbia. We brought in a high level CFO from Pepsi, the Ivy Leaguer, and he's smarter than everybody combined. And so he took the finance over and kicked me out and said I don't need your help, I know more than you. And I'm like, okay, go ahead. And so it got me out of the finance. So I just focused on sales and then about a year later, as I look for a CRO to replace me in the sales which is a tough thing to do because pretty much all the sales guys at Lean grew up in my house. If you go to David, bowen and Drew and Kevin, these are all poor groups that grew up in my house. These are all like my kids, so I can't just turn my kids over to any CRO that comes in because I have to find the right person. So they were breaking my balls to bring in a CRO because I'm not a CRO. Cro comes in and writes a strategy and does all this shit.
Speaker 1:I just go get business, let's talk about what you need and I'll make sure it's taken care of you. Tell me exactly what you need. I will make sure you get it. That's how you sell, that's how I sell.
Speaker 2:I'm with you, yeah, yeah, but private equity wants structure and presentation and 40-page PowerPoints and $300,000 consultants to come in and write playbooks.
Speaker 1:So that's what a CR does $3 million.
Speaker 2:Consultants $3 million. Yeah, I remember when you told me you were paying like $250,000 or $400,000 to get a logo.
Speaker 1:I'm like what $250,000 for the logo six months after I got our old logo tattooed on my ass. Yeah, that was great. I do love the new logo we got yeah, no logo.
Speaker 2:New logo was good, but I'm like what? What did you pay 250 for?
Speaker 2:a logo and then all of a sudden they're paying 250 for some study. I'm like, okay, I guess I'm same idiots. But whatever it worked, they wrote a great playbook, and so I. So they were breaking my balls, we need a new seat. You got to get a cra because they want to go through another transaction, do a liquidity event. We've had three liquidity events at lean, so they want to do another one and and cash out, because lean grew like six, x in like two years. Like I mean, it was crazy their growth.
Speaker 2:So so I meet. So I finally say, listen, I'm looking, man, I'm just don't see anybody. So I need the right guy. It works so, so, so. So they tell me in February, two years ago, listen, you got to tell me to hire a CRO. I'm like, okay.
Speaker 2:So so April comes and I don't have no prospects and I'm like, listen, I don't care, man, you guys can kick and scream all you want doing it. This is my, this is like my multi-generational wealth. I'm not jeopardizing and I'm not taking these kids and putting them in the hands of some moron not happening. So incomes, chris Strambiello, first time I sit down with Chris, I go what's the most important thing with you? I got. We have a bunch of kids here that are working and they're under 30. How do you feel about that? He goes, I can't wait to mentor him. Like I love mentoring young kids. Like like I want to take these kids under my wing, I want to teach them, I want to build, I want to, I go, I, and that he just had me from that, because that's what I was looking for. I was looking for somebody to take my kids off of me and like, make sure they were in good hands. And we talked and talk, talk, and I loved him and I, so I didn't say anything and then I knew they were going to press me. They're like what are you doing about the CRO? This guy, chris, I'm like I'm, I'm, I'm thinking about it. I was hiring him the moment I met him. So I finally back to all right, I'll hire him. I didn't want to go too fast and give up too easy. So I hired him and he, chris, has been amazing.
Speaker 2:Chris is, he would have been a great sales rep. Down and dirty, go get it. He's learned process and scale and like he's learned all the shit that they teach you, like in school and big companies that I don't know, I don't know. You know I can't do that shit and and he's learned it. He's going to, he's going to. He's like he has got the skill. Like he in his phone he probably has 150 CEOs of logistics companies. He could text and go what's up.
Speaker 2:And they're like, how dare, what's up? I mean, who has that at 27 years old? You know what I'm saying. Like he's done incredible and and and Ryan and Nick are the same way, drew and tyler and and I mean kevin burger like all of these guys have just done crazy good under chris. So I'm super blessed that chris took over my, took that over from me, you know. And then uh, and then uh, kind of early middle last year, they brought in uh jack frecker. They took uh robert, made him executive chairman and brought in jack, who's a high level ceo, great guy. Like he's amazing, he understands how to take a business from a billion to 5 billion. So like he knows what to do and seasoned and everybody loves them, he sees it, he's people already bought into him. So they have a really great team there.
Speaker 2:So I was sitting there like in February, march of last year and I'm like I'm worthless man I'm, I don't need me, like they don't ask me. They have meetings. They don't call me. Like they have, you know they do events and I'm not invited. They don't ask me to go. It's like I'm not, I'm nobody. I'm waking up like depressed and I got. You know I have other ventures. I do. I, you know. You know I have the stem cell center down in Antigua which I'm very passionate about. I mean, we've we like a project for me that I love and wait, what is that?
Speaker 1:hold on hit me on that for a second. You've treated kids with autism. What does that mean?
Speaker 2:to treat so kids that have autism in the earlier stages, like 6 to 12 years old, before puberty, they'll get stem cell treatments and have miraculous results, like we have kids. Sergio, that works for lane.
Speaker 1:An example of a miraculous uh.
Speaker 2:So sergio alvarez at lane has uh, has two twins and his uh eight-year-old son has autism and Sergio is another one that I've known 20 years. It's worked for me. So his son went down and got stem cells. When they took him down, they basically have to sedate him on the plane Can't be in an environment with noise like can't sit, still doesn't really speak and they went down and got him stem cells and then went home. The next day got on the plane, watched his iPad, no problem. Went to school the next day the teacher said who's this kid? Like they've had miraculous results, like insane, and they treated multiple people after that Is cure the word.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it cures, but it basically reduces the challenges.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. How does that work?
Speaker 2:It's stem cells. So if you know the history of a stem cell, your body starts as one stem cell. Your stem cell creates your whole body. Stem cells deploy and build your whole entire body, everything about it. So stem cells basically go in and it's regenerative medicine. Um matter of fact, I, I did, uh, I got this book that our doctor that's involved with. He just asked me hey, my new book just came over.
Speaker 1:I can't see it lifespan decoded how to hack your biology for a longer, healthier life by pradeep albert and so pradeep albert is one of the most amazing humans on the planet ever.
Speaker 2:He's our partner and runs the stem cell center. He's, he's incredible. So, like he wrote a. He also has a textbook on amazon, uh, stem cells. And so if you go to our stem cell center, uh, wwwstemcell123.com, and and it's it's, it's a pretty simple website. It's a pretty simple website. I was pretty came up with that, so pretty great. So like, if you anything on, do that like it's it's. You don't need it yet Cause you're only 30, but like it's been life changing for me, like I have no aches and pains and back on track. So Chris comes in. Chris has done an amazing job. So I find myself just You're feeling less valuable.
Speaker 1:I'm not happy. I feel like I'm worthless.
Speaker 2:I feel like I'm not helping anybody, I'm not adding value anywhere and they're paying me. I'm getting paid, nice, and they're basically paying me to do nothing. And I still own a piece of the company. I'm still a stockholder. But I want to add value and it just appears like they don't want me to add value. They just want me to stay away and let the new team take over, which is normal it happens in a business.
Speaker 1:That's what they do. Yeah, you know it's hard, especially when you have people who are. A challenge for someone like you is people will be loyal to you and so like it's hard when someone new wants to come in and exert or have influence and it almost feels like there's there's a, there's a stranglehold or like a friction, because people are like, do we go to the new guy? Or but like we love Dave and like he's always steered us the right way, so I understand why there would be kind of a challenge there, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, plus two, you know, they still want to be connected to you. So so you know I took it well. I think I handled it well. I think I did. I think I transitioned it good and I kind of stepped out. And it wasn't easy, man. It was emotionally draining, and especially when I'm working with my kids, right, like I'm. I'm in there every day working with these guys and motivating them and I they were doing AI. So I heard, I looked on LinkedIn, I saw one of the posts I won't mention any of the names because they're competitors now but I saw this voice, ai, and I'm like wow, that's interesting. But it didn't sound that great, it sounded a little robot-y. And so I called up my guys that do the social media because they were doing chatting with AI, they were doing a content creation with AI. I mean, basically, they could take you and make you do something and and show you in a, you know, on a beach surfing and just with your image. So I called him up. I said, hey, what's this new voice?
Speaker 1:AI is going to go back.
Speaker 2:They could give you that. That's easy. You can do that. You can do that with yourself. What do you want? Bud Light, niccolo, what?
Speaker 1:do you want?
Speaker 2:No a six pack on my mind, obviously I know I'm saying I can give you something.
Speaker 2:So I called them up. I said what's this voice agent stuff going on? They go that's the LLM. I go are we doing any of that? They go yeah, we actually are. We just started. I go can you build me a? Can you build me a one of these, whatever you call it they were calling it voice agents back then Can you build me one of these voice agents that can basically book a truck? And so I sent them a few recordings of booking trucks and they go yeah, it's not a big deal, we can do that. So they sent it to me and I'm like shit, this is pretty good man, what can it do?
Speaker 2:So I started looking. Then I started really digging into it. Then I discovered there was like a couple other people doing it and they were like going, getting ready to go big in the market and they raise money and do all this. So I said, shit, I need to move fast because this is going somewhere. Um, and I wasn't even sure what I was going to do. I just knew that something was going to happen here and I wanted to be involved in it and I didn't know what I was going to do so I basically resigned from lean. I flew up and told my private equity partners listen, I want to, I want to go do this ai thing. You, you know, lean is lean is doing great, you don't need me. And uh, uh, let me figure out what I'm gonna do with this AI and come circle back to you and and I think it could be good for lean, good for everybody and, and you know, I think I could do something with it.
Speaker 2:And so I went out, I put together a whole plan. Um, I got, I got a, I got a uh, sample demo done. We basically made a dashboard, basically so I could go out and hustle up some investment capital. And then I called with it. I called our good friend, kevin Nolan and I said, hey, I'd love for you to be a partner in this business. I think it's great.
Speaker 2:And I've done a couple other things with Kevin. We've had some success. And you know Silk Creek Capital. And he said so. He said I sent, I gave him a quick demo. He goes, let's do it.
Speaker 2:So I said, all right, you know, I just I think we need 500K to basically bootstrap and get it off the ground, get a good investment deck, get a really good dashboard and a demo and go out and raise some real money to go put this, put this in the market. I'm like you know we can put in the money, but like I don't want to. I don't want to put in my money and you know, anybody knows knows me. I'm in the middle of a divorce four years now, pretty contentious, so anything I do, they're up, you know, they're up my ass. So I'm like I don't really want to use my money because I should be trying to claim it. So I need investment capital.
Speaker 2:So I gave him the opportunity to people he loves and cares about and got them in on the 500. So we basically went and did. I got the demo, got the dashboard, I put together a great team by, just by luck, like I had guys for ai and I mean just, I just reached out and just so happens they're perfect, perfect and we went to, we started building it and we went and raised money and, uh, soap creek put together an insane cap table. We got 25 strategic people on the cap table and we have all freight people. Like I don't want to. I don't know who I can say and who I can't say don't say any names, it's fine, yeah, yeah, but everybody who's anybody that is excited about ai.
Speaker 2:And we're already got pilots off the ground. Pilots are up and running and we should have we should have that. We should have back from the pilots in the next two weeks, hopefully before, before BGSA and definitely before manifest. We should have 10 working pilots with good feedback and have it ready to go to market right before manifest.
Speaker 2:And I have a saying and just like in lean, I always had a vision and and even in a freight, I always had a vision because I used to say if I get a shipment today and a shipment tomorrow, I should be the next day and I and I always had so lean. It was 10,000 employees was my what. I went, I woke up, went to sleep, I always said 10,000 employees. I put it in everybody's head. So I want to get to a billion talking minutes, because that's how you bill AI is, by talking minutes. I want to get to a billion talking minutes within the next three years and if I could do that you know the average billing talking minutes about 18 cents, you can do the math I think I'll build another billion-dollar company and I'm excited about it and it's not just AI, because anybody can build. You could go learn and build you a voice agent to take your calls and sound like you would do that. But it's the actual experience of a dashboard that makes it effective for an employee. That makes us different, and our dashboard will allow an employee to just multitask and be two or three, four times more productive than normal, and that's, I think, where we'll win the day. It doesn't just take a call and get a lot of the little nonsense out of the way and then transfer it to somebody that can actually do something. It actually allows the person that can actually do something, watch this stuff go on and then interact in real time and take it over. So I think that's what will make us different and make us better at what we're doing is the ability to understand what employees need.
Speaker 2:Because I've done every job in logistics and having 10,000 employees doing every job in Columbia, I know what needs to be done in every aspect, from payables, receivables, pod retrieval, tracking, tracing every job. I know how to do it and what needs to be done, and so we've created a dashboard that the average employee at a company like lean or anywhere can use. That makes them more productive, um, in their daily work. An example is if you're having accounts receivable rep calling on accounts receivable, they're making, they're, they're picking the phone and maybe 20% are calls. The rest is email and nonsense. But you're calling to see where your money is. They can make one phone call at a time, one pick it up dial ask for the person.
Speaker 2:Well, this dashboard allows the AI. They're making 10 calls at a time, getting the people on the phone, talking to them about them, sending them their AR, sending them invoices that they're missing, and if somebody has an issue, the person can just take the call over. They can pick it up, click on the box and pick the call up and say, hey, I notice you're struggling with my AI, let me see if I can help you with this. Instead of saying, transfer me to an agent, agent representative, and trying to get the AI to get you to a person, the person can actually take it over and it highlights escalation words and so you can see the person working, can see these five or eight, 10 conversations going on at once. It can't be too many because then if they got to take over five, then defeats the purpose.
Speaker 2:But there'll be a number that they'll get to that says this is how many calls I can manage. And now they can watch it. And then escalation words get highlighted and yellow and red and the success of the calls are. You know, smiley faces, regular faces, frown. You know simple stuff that makes it interactive. And so now, if an accounts receiver person can have five or six phone calls going on at one time and then picking one up and getting it real effective, they're using their time for the real stuff instead of wasting time, and things like that are what's going to make AI more effective. Ai is not going to replace people and do the job from start to finish with no audit, no trail, no human making sure it was done right and anytime soon that I can see in logistics. It's going to take time, you know, a few years, but now it can make people more effective and better. If you could take a call center employee at lean that, you're saving money already and now make them twice as productive. It's just more value, more ROI.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. I mean I'm curious, can you kind of help me understand? So like the name is clone ops, so in essence you know stand. So like the name is clone ops, so in essence you know the concept is to clone the operation, clone your best people, yeah, yep. And like how far does this go? Like what functions in the business, like you mentioned, ar what other? Functions in the business. Does this make sense to work with?
Speaker 2:so I mean we're, we're tackling all kinds of use cases. So a lot of the use cases are, you know, the pod retrievals, the document retrieval, um, you know, accounts payable, carrier sales, like inbound carrier sales is the biggest one everybody's tackling because that's where the money is for people. Like people are looking at like, okay, where, where can I make the biggest impact in logistics and reduce, reduce their cost per load? It's in carrier sales, right? So most and you know you were a big volume broker you know that your inbound calls like somewhere between 20 and 40% of your calls go unanswered, left on hold. You pick it up and it's, it's a tire kicker. You don't even want to talk to the person but you got to give them the time of day and 30 seconds where you can get them off the phone.
Speaker 2:So what ours is doing is you know it's taking that inbound call, it's identifying who it is. It's saying, okay, this is a, this is a high value asset or low value asset, no value asset. That's on the phone. What attention does it need? And it it? It it? Um, kevin Nolan calling me. Should I take the call during the podcast?
Speaker 1:No, no, I'll probably screw up your recording.
Speaker 2:Oh well, okay, or whatever. So these inbound calls don't get vetted. They sit on hold. You don't know who's in hold and what queue. So what this will do is it'll take the inbound call and it'll prioritize it and categorize it so people can see these are the people in the queue talking to AI. Do I want to grab one of these?
Speaker 2:If you have your big carrier on your hottest load for your customer and he's and he's talking to your ai, you want to take. You want to pick that call right up so, like it's, as soon as that call rings it gets answered by ai and if that's who it is, immediately what it is. It matches to your system, say, is it a one truck guy, is it a hundred truck guy, like it kind of like sizes it up in a priority and now allows your people to already have that knowledge when they're you know, before they get the phone call to find out who it is. And so, like those inbound calls are a big tackle because you don't want to lose a carrier. If a carrier calls in for a load, he's on hold and he hangs up, you still want to know where his truck is and what's available and who he is and get him logged in some sort of system so you have it in the future. So that's a big one that everybody's tackling. That's a pretty easy one to tackle, then you've.
Speaker 1:Well, hold on. Before you go into outbound. Let me just say one thing on the inbound that is a massive unlock.
Speaker 1:People who have not run a brokerage or been active high enough up in a brokerage do not understand that being able to answer every call has, to this date, been an impossible thing to solve. And the abandonment rate, which is the percent of calls that go unanswered, is way too high. And any broker that wants to create a quality experience for their carriers cannot say they're doing so well honestly if they have a high abandonment rate. And it's just a really hard thing to staff because of the way that the volume of calls work. We're, on certain times, certain prices, certain days, you're going to see way more calls than others and you just the the. The number of people you have to answer the, the calls to this date is, is a finite number. That is not going up and down every day, but the number of calls coming in is, and so just to be able to have a support system through AI that can take those calls is a massive unlock?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it is. And you know I wasn't really aware. I know I always knew there were calls on hold but I never narrowed it down to percentage. And during the raise we're talking about use cases and, the most important part, we got to hit with these. You know smart logistics people. They said like these inbound phone calls are insane, like people sit on hold forever and it's like we get tackled this. And I said that's easy, like that's one of the easiest things to do. And then we came up with let's tackle it, let's find out who it is and prioritize the call too.
Speaker 2:Because one guy with the owner operator, with a truck that doesn't need anything, is way less important than the hundred truck guy that's done five hot loads for you but you still want to talk to the one guy. But if you have to take your business and you have to say what's more important right At this moment if you have a, if you have a, uh, if you have a receptionist taking these calls and answering every call, right, she's going to prioritize. She's going to tell hey, andrew, you want to take this call. The other guy get right after. Like, you have to prioritize. It's just the nature of the nature of the business. I don't want to make it seem like the one truck guy is not important because he is but he's your customer.
Speaker 2:Your customer is the most important right, because your customer is a customer of that one truck guy and the hundred truck guy and that. So everybody wants you to take care of the customer first. So you have to prioritize and make sure you take care of the customer first on those calls and that's what it'll do. And so you want to get. But you don't want to lose the one truck guy either. You want to take care of him. So if you can have an AI agent, speak to the one truck guy and he's happy speaking to him and giving the information and he actually gets somewhere by giving that information because it's being logged now and somebody gets back to him. It's a win-win for everybody. Instead of just being left on hold and left on hold and picked up, oh you're held.
Speaker 1:Everybody somebody in that one truck guy can end up being a hundred truck guy down the road and he's going to remember where he was treated, that's true, and the other thing that you're now jogging my memory about that I've seen before in recordings is for one I wanted our carry reps to be the best of the best and I wanted them to do things the right way every time. But with people you're not perfect and your team's not perfect and sometimes people are going to do you know people are going to do their. People are emotional, they're emotional.
Speaker 1:People are emotional, but there's also, people are going to do whatever they are most incentivized to do and in a situation where a carrier rep picks up a call and has to put it on hold for a second to answer another call if the first call is someone who's looking for information or doesn't seem likely to be a load that's going to get booked.
Speaker 1:But the second call is someone calling in on a big money-winning load for you. You're going to sit there and deal with that guy all day and let the other guy just sit on hold and marinate, and it's not creating a good experience. And the beauty at least what I believe in if you can get the AI recording to do exactly what you want, because there is no emotion involved, because there is no incentive to make more money or anything like that then you can get rid of some of the subjectivity.
Speaker 1:You can get rid of some of the kind of poor decision making that some of the reps happen to make yeah, well, the reps are busy too.
Speaker 2:We used to have three phones on every desk. You know, I'm saying like you had. You had two phones on hold, one phone here, one phone here, your cell phone in the middle, like you were hustling. And this does that because it's easy too. It's. It's basically voice attendant on steroids. That's as close to a human as you can get. It's not a human, but it's as close as you can get, so somebody can actually speak to them. It's not frustrating. You have a conversation. It's conversational. It's a conversational voice attendant instead of just the typical. Here's what I'm going to say not interrupt me, and we can make the voice soothing. We can make it anything we want to make. We can make it your voice, like you can make it you. You can create a style of voice no, well, yours not but.
Speaker 2:I said soothing then I said your voice.
Speaker 2:I wasn't clarifying two separate things but at the end of the day, like, make the experience and and I'm also promoting too with all of the people we're talking to I'm like let people know it's ai to test it, try it. Don't don't shove it on them like they have to use it. Let them want to use it. So even in outbound sales right, we're creating outbound sales programs. That it's not a typical pitch. It's hey, I'm AI, you believe me? I'm AI for Molo Transport. I'm in sales. They got rid of all the salespeople and it's just me. Do you believe me? Ask me a question, something that's other than hey, I'm calling with Molo. The standard sales pitches are dead. Nobody's listening to that. If I hear somebody coming, hey, is this David Bell? No, click, no, it's not me, click, definitely not me. Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:So we're creating AI that makes it creative, because people are curious about AI now and if you could take that curiosity and turn it into a door opener, like, it's great. And we're building some really cool shit because AI is going to evolve and eventually I'll have an avatar of me on my website that you can just click on and have a full-blown conversation, just like this, and it'll download all of me. It'll know my voice, it'll know me and you could literally have this conversation with me as my AI and it'll look just like this, just like me. Just literally have this conversation with me as my AI and it'll look just like this, just like me, just like we're doing this today, and it'll be my AI. So if I could do that on my website and do a presentation and do a demo right with anybody, anybody that wants an AI sales pitch, I could do it like this and hit it and give them the sales pitch and ask questions. I just 100Xed my ability to reach out to people because, to schedule a discovery call, to get them immediately, they can have their discovery call right now. Let's schedule a discovery call. No, let's do it right now. You got three minutes, just click there, boom, and you do it instead of scheduling and doing all that Like if I can transform sales to be able to do that and have people accept that form and be curious about it and test it.
Speaker 2:Now sales just got put on massive steroids, which companies will massively scale better now, which means more people, which means more AI. So I think AI is going to promote and help companies grow and help them, add people and add opportunities for people in the beginning stages of it to the middle stages of it, before it actually does something drastic for people. And in this business not in every business, right, I mean, some businesses are just going to get rid of the people and have AI and it's going to be what it's going to be. But in logistics, I think it's going to evolve. And if we can use it and tap into that curiosity and the creativity of AI to help open doors and be the ones who do it with logistics companies, then I think it's a benefit. I think it's something cool.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned being able to build. Today, the average is, I guess, 18 cents per minute, and my question is as you described, it doesn't take a lot to get this kind of product up and running. It takes intelligent people who understand how to build AI tools. It takes a little bit of capital, Not a ton though it's not like it takes 10.
Speaker 2:But you didn't raise 10 million bucks to get this going. It's under a million dollars to have a platform, fully up and running, robust platform to do it. You could get it done for under a million dollars. You could get it built.
Speaker 1:So my question is there's a hype cycle right now around AI. Yeah, for sure, and there will be benefits and value add. We've already talked about it. Just one exact example of the unlock with being able to get rid of the abandonment calls. But my question or concern would be how do you make sure 18 cents doesn't become 17, become 15, become 12, become 10, become 8, become 5? It will.
Speaker 2:It's going to be like the cell phones when cell phones were $3,000 a month the phone bill and now they're 300 a month. It's going to be the same exact thing. That's what I'm saying. Like, the AI voice itself is not exciting and that's that's not where the value is going to be created. It's in. It's in the, the dashboard, the integrations, the partnerships, creating the, the, the perfect prompt scripts, the perfect database of 10 million calls with best practices, best prompts, data, all the data. Eventually it's going to become so. We have we have basically what you know.
Speaker 2:Most most people are using API. We're using AI API. Eventually, our agents will talk AI API. Is that something different? Yeah, that's what we're working on to come out in the future to hopefully like be similar to the next API.
Speaker 2:Because if I have a voice agent that's at a broker calling a carrier, right, and now these carriers, now everybody has these voice agents calling these carriers. These carriers are going to be tired talking to voice agents. They're going to pick up another voice agent, pick up. You know what I'm saying. So what I'm creating both ways is now, when I get a carrier, now when I get a broker on board, we're looking at all the top carriers they're using and we're connecting with those carriers say, hey, we're going to create an agent for you, so our agents talk to each other and communicate and both parties can watch this communication go on and eventually that's like API.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying? It's basically what load do you have, what load do you want? Here it is, but there's so many archaic, you know, non-technology companies that are in this space. There's very you know, it's an unsophisticated group of space logistics and everybody doesn't have the APIs and TMSs and everybody. There's a lot of small to medium-sized companies that don't invest in the technology, which is what holds up the industry from being, you know, pure technology. So what we're doing is we're going to create an AI for the carriers and we're going to simultaneously go down both paths to get them both talking to each other with AI and if we can accomplish that, two years down the road we'll just have AI talking to AI and there'll only be exception handling what the people are doing Village, our favorite Chicago-based area for booking loads.
Speaker 1:I'm looking for four bucks a mile and I'm sitting there and I'm not answering a single phone call. I'm talking to my girlfriend and I'm looking at my screen and I'm on the Clonob's dashboard and I see 40 different calls going on at the same time where all I'm looking for is Probably won't be able to hit 40, but figure 10. Call it 10.
Speaker 1:I'm watching 10 calls go on at the same time and all I'm looking for is Probably won't be able to have 40, but figure 10, you can reach it. I'm watching 10 calls go on at the same time and all I'm looking at is the one column that has a dollar sign. And as soon as that call gets to the point where your AI talks to, I guess, your other AI about the rate and it plugs that rate in and the first one says two bucks, it turns red. The second one says $2, it turns red. The second one says $2.25, it turns red. The third one says $4.10 a mile Boom, it turns green. Now I tell my girlfriend hold on, let me look at this. I look at it, I say, okay, I like that, I like that, I like that, and I either can just book it or I can jump into the call and say, hey, this is Vlad.
Speaker 2:I want take it, or the broker will say, okay, let's do it, but let me talk to Vlad. You know you want to make sure. Listen, I'm going to give you $4 a mile, but your ass better have the driver there on time, he better have a clean trailer, he better be good, he better make it overnight here, and that's why I'm paying your ass so much money and it better not go able to get across. So you're going to your, your AI is going to want to talk to Vlad and maybe the broker carrier rep on the broker side will want to talk to Vlad. So and confirm it. So you don't say, but you're never putting that in AI's hands only and then let it happen.
Speaker 1:In a lot of ways, what your dashboard and the AI will do is just cut a lot of the noise. That is ineffective for me to deal with as a rep.
Speaker 2:Wasted noise and time, even to the fact where it's like hey, andrew, how's the family? What'd you do this weekend? You have four lines holding but you don't want to be rude and like you're like oh, everything's great. You know, last week how'd that go? And you know you have the small talkers Like you want to do that because you don't want to do it all day long while you got people holding and so like, if you can just socialize when you're ready and you have time and you want to do that, you put in your socializing time to make, keep the relationships and still seem human. But you still got this work you want to get done in a in a, you know, a rapid fashion to move on because it's the world's moving faster and faster, it's not going to slow down.
Speaker 2:So you know that's basically what we're trying to accomplish with the dashboard and and I think we can do it I think it's going to take time and adoption and and it could do it for the, for the guys that don't have the technology because all he has to do is upload a CSV of his trucks and where they are and the agent can go. He don't have to be in his team, he don't have to be in any system for a carrier, he could just have a CSV of his available trucks and the rate target rates that he wants and his dispatcher can negotiate with the broker calling, just like you just described. And it's a simple upload your available trucks and where you want to go, where you're looking to go, and what the rates you want, and let it negotiate every broker that calls in for your trucks. So like there's so many things we could do that we're building and going to do, and that's my vision of it and and eventually there's going to be just this big ai community that's moving freight and the human community that's watching it happen and handling exceptions is what I see and I think that I actually think some crazy shit's going to happen. I think sometime in the next future three to five to ten years, I think we're going to go to like a three-day work week or a four-hour work day, because I think things are going to get done so much faster and so much more productive and so much quicker. Because, again, ar making one phone call a day, not one phone call at a time now can make 10, that guy booking trucks one truck at a time can now book 10. So I think it's going to get.
Speaker 2:I think we're going to I don't think we're going to get rid of massive people. I think we're going to go to shorter work weeks and shorter work days because people after COVID, people don't want to go into office. They want flexibility, they want a job that they can have more personal time. That's evolving Like my old dinosaur generation of the 40-hour, 80-hour work weeks in the office, grinding, doing nothing. I don't think that's in the next generation.
Speaker 2:My kids don't look at it that way. You don't look at it that way. You want to have freedom, flexibility, time. And I think we're going to evolve as AI does more work and people do less. I don't think people are going to be gone. I think they're just going to. Companies are going to short. You're going to go to work for a company that says we only work eight to 12 and we get all the work done. You want to work for us or you want to go work over there, where you got to work eight to five and we're going to pay you the same. You know what I'm saying. So, like that, I it's going to go to that, to working less, to getting you know what I'm saying. I think that's what it's going to evolve to in my crazy thinking.
Speaker 1:So I've heard crazier. I've talked to this guy. I was talking to this guy at a. I was at a holiday party and he has a business like yours. He's. He's a. He's a few years ahead of you. He's been doing this for. He's been in ai for a while and his business is the same thing voice ai sales agents but it's not in our industry like I think he does a lot of the stuff for, uh, the nfl, like when they're connected to me.
Speaker 2:Because we can, I will. We can partner in this industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd be happy to connect you but let me tell you what he's selling me on. So for one, um he he believes what you just said will be basically times 100, in that we will actually get to a point where most people are not actually doing any real work.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The AI will become so proficient and so inexpensive that it will do 99% of the work. And he said, I think, what his number was for one. This was a kind of fascinating number, but I think it's 11% of the workforce today is in content creation of some fashion, and content creation can be a broad term here in terms of I guess this would be considered content creation and he thinks that in, I think, 15 years that number will be 60% and people will make way less money. Percent and people will make way less money but people will need way less money everything will be way less be in abundance.
Speaker 2:Resources are going to be in abundance it's hard for me to.
Speaker 1:I can't get, I can't wrap my brain around what that looks like so.
Speaker 2:When I was, when we were looking for manufacturers for our stem cells and sourcing for stem cells, we went and met with a bunch of different companies and scientists and what was funny is that that's like the question what happens when people live to be 200 years old? Like, how does that happen? Like if, if, if this really is longevity, what happens? And their, their reasoning was this there's going to be way more resource. You have plant-based protein now that can be made in abundance. You don't have to put cows in a field anymore to get meat protein. They got plant-based protein.
Speaker 2:Resources are going to become abundance. Power is going to be coming from so many sources that it's going to be cheap. Everything is going to be so much less expensive that you have to work less. People will do less, but the resources will be in abundance. So there'll be countries like the us will just have stipends. Your food will basically be free if you want it, and it'll be good. Your, your electricity will basically be free if you want it and it'll be good.
Speaker 2:They say it's going to evolve to like all resources for required for basic necessities, just to get by, are basically going to be free. And then the people that want to go do something, there's going to be more creative stuff. That's going to happen because we're humans. We're always going to evolve and create and go forward. Those people that are creative and want to do that will have the opportunities to go do that and build new things and new ideas.
Speaker 2:And I mean, if you imagine, before electricity was made, nobody thought that we would be in a house with bathrooms and lights and you look, then people would have thought you were crazy, but it seems like everything futuristic that comes out of movies like 30 years before all of a sudden starts evolving, right. So I think that's what it is. But I think that resources and AI is similar, like it's just going to be very, very inexpensive and in abundance. And if that's the case, people aren't going to have to go work crazy jobs, unless it actually is something that requires your physical hands that a robot can't do. But I mean, almost everything will be able to be done and then life is people are going to have their basic needs in abundance. I mean that's what they that's it's hard to imagine, but that's that's how they painted it and I'm like, yeah, maybe a hundred years from now.
Speaker 2:But but it was crazy too, they there were three different scientists that told me because I the first one said he said he thinks there's somebody living today that lived to be 500 years old. So I took that and the next scientist we met I'm like what do you think the oldest person living today could be over 500? What do you think the oldest person living today could be over 500? I'm like what All of them thought? That there was somebody actually living today that would live to be over 500 years old. By the time of the way health and longevity and the way you're mapping dna and pulling out markers for diseases, like they think that that that can happen, which is crazy to think. Like you think about that. It's nuts. I thought they're nuts. I still think they're a little nuts, but they have phds.
Speaker 1:They're doctors, what do I know I yeah, I mean, I'm a freak guy. Maybe we're getting too far out of our wheelhouse here, but it's hard for me to imagine any of this. Back to AI.
Speaker 2:I got one more question AI is cool, man, ai is cool and I'm happy to be in it. So it goes back to like I really got into it because I just needed to get back in the game and do something and feel needed and productive again. And I do, man, I'm excited, I'm excited. I wake up every day, I'm excited and doing some cool stuff.
Speaker 1:My last question for you. Maybe we'll have more, but my last one. We're at an hour and a half, which is usually when I start to try to cut it off. People get bored. They won't get bored with this. They don't get bored. It's a long time to sit and listen to my nasally voice? Am I sniffling?
Speaker 2:You got a cold or something? I got a cold. Yeah, I had a cold. I can't see my grandbaby because I have a cold really yeah, we've been sick for the last two weeks in the house, so yeah, it's going around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, in any case, what, what? Like? Why should someone like there's going to be a lot of these companies popping up they're already our number there's. There's a few that have raised a bunch of money and like why should people choose clone ops? Why should people choose to partner with you versus some of these other guys that are starting? So?
Speaker 2:I think that it's. I think I think one of the most compelling things is I know freight over these guys. There's a bunch of guys raising money and throwing money out of their tech guys and and they don't really know freight. I know freight as good as anybody I'm selling to. There's nobody that you could put on the phone with me that I can't go toe to toe with on freight anyway. Any zip code to zip code, miles, whatever it is, I can. I know freight inside and out. I think is one and my whole, my whole cap table, my whole team. We're all freight experts and I have really good tech guys, so we have a combination of knowledge and tech.
Speaker 2:I think the second thing is is credibility. I mean, when you look at when I was a, when I was in freight, I hauled for every broker and whether it was a truckload backhaul or it was, and backhaul obviously truckload backhaul, or it was a or it was an LTL, they trusted me right. I would get a call from five brokers for the same shippers load and I would quote them all the same price and I would never even think of calling that shipper and getting the freight direct. I mean, I dealt with for 20 years I hauled freight for brokers and never had one scenario not even one scenario where anybody called me and said you called my shipper, not one. And I made sure of that because and so when I went into lean, I did the same thing. Like I, I have competitors right next to each other in every single building. We never let anybody take anybody's employees. We made sure we were secure and data secure, like. There's not any incidences at lean, with over 700 customers and 10,000 employees where, where people are saying they're shady, they used our information and they didn't do the right thing. So I've always done the right thing. My credibility and integrity is at the highest level and it's going to stay there and I so, I think, going into this like, data protection, data security, what are you going to do with my information? Who are you going to put it with? Like, where are you going with this?
Speaker 2:I think the trustworthiness and credibility is what sets us apart from everybody too. There's a bunch of tech guys that raise a bunch of money. I don't know what they're going to do with the money. Everybody says marketing or whatever. I don't need that much money to grow the company Like. It doesn't take that much. So I don't know what they're going to do with all the money, but at the end of the day, what's going to win the day is I know what needs to be done to make it effective and work and easy and deployable to where it gets right in. It starts producing an ROI and working versus not because a lot of tech gets deployed and doesn't get used properly and work.
Speaker 2:And I think the credibility and people trust me, I mean, and I think I've earned that trust, for you know, through the history and so I think trust is a big thing and when I tell somebody I'm going to do something and deliver it, I'm going to not sleep till I deliver it. If I don't, you're not going to be. You know I got to pay for it. I'm not going to. You know what I'm saying. Like, I'm going to make sure that I deliver what I say I'm going to do, and I think that's where I think that's what people are looking for, because it's still a no-transcript. They're there. I got to give credit where credit's due. They've done a great job and the competitors are out there in the market and they're going.
Speaker 2:Lean, did it forever and then, all of a sudden, we had no competition for five years, like none, nobody was. We were the only ones doing it. And then all of a sudden people are like, oh shit, this works. And next thing you know like there's 10 people competing with lean now and they're still getting the business because they're the experts, the trustworthiness, they're the, they have the history of everybody that's doing it and success. So I think that's what's going to be the differentiator and I hope and I'll just be grateful for any business I get if I can make it a profitable business and return some growth on investment to my investors. I'm happy because I can't sleep at night knowing I have people's money, and so I got to make sure we make this a success. I guess that answers your question.
Speaker 1:It does. I'm sitting here and I got to be honest. I think I regret not getting on the cap table. I don't think I regret it.
Speaker 2:You had a chance. You had a chance. I think we talked to you about running the company. Yeah, you wanted me to be CEO.
Speaker 1:The thing was I had these other guys want me to do it with them and I'd been talking to them. I don't think it's the space for me, it just it's. It doesn't feel like it is where I should be investing my, my time as like a CEO or an executive in the business, but I'm, I'm, I'm on your team and and you've always been man.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:I'm giving you some cash when I had the chance. So if that, if that door opens back up, let me know, because I want to, I want to get in on it. So, um, I appreciate.
Speaker 2:I love to have you in man and uh and you know thanks for thanks for having me on this man. It's uh, you know I appreciate it, you know you're doing great with it. I'm so happy for you, man, because I know you're enjoying it and and you know it's getting you. It's your, it's your foundation for where you're going, man, and I like to see that I appreciate it, brother.
Speaker 1:Well listen, I hope you enjoyed the episode. It was great. I mean everything from all around. You're a great storyteller, so this was fun. I had to remind you, you're on a podcast so it's not just you and your buddy catching up, but a lot of people struggle with that so it's hard. When you know someone so well, it's so easy to get it. It's like you're sitting at the bar having a drink, just talking war stories, but I think that's more interesting.
Speaker 2:I did a podcast um like two or three weeks ago. My marketing team said how'd it go? I go, it's some.
Speaker 2:It felt so self-promoting man, I hated it like I don't like to be self-promoting, like it's just not me like I, and it just felt like it was all self-promoting and and so I told myself, when I get on your podcast, I don't want to be self-promoting, I just want to shoot the shit and tell people some stories and history and make it interesting, because the worst thing is just to keep hearing over and over about somebody talking about themselves. So I was hoping that it would it would, you know, be be better and turn out this way. So hopefully people, people, enjoy it. Man, I think they will. Yeah, cool man, thank you so much and uh, we'll catch up.
Speaker 2:For sure, don't forget to connect me to your buddy if you said you would in the AI. Yeah, I will. I got you Cool and you can see it. Brother, thank you, have a good one. Have a good one. Have a good one, you.
