The Freight Pod

Ep. #71: Hannah Testani, CEO, Intelligent Audit

• Andrew Silver • Episode 71

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This week, Andrew welcomes Hannah Testani, CEO of Intelligent Audit. Hannah dreamed of becoming CEO of Lehman Brothers, so she studied finance at Carnegie Mellon and got a job at Goldman Sachs in 2008, just as the financial world was crashing. Though she had zero initial interest in supply chain, she pivoted to join her father's small, three-person company, Intelligent Audit. Starting from those early days of having to prove herself, Hannah shares her story of transforming Intelligent Audit into a global leader in freight audit, business intelligence, and AI-powered optimization.

In this episode, Hannah shares:

  • Her early career pivot from Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis to joining her father's company, Intelligent Audit, and the initial challenges of proving herself in a new industry.
  • The critical moments that forced Intelligent Audit to mature and redefine its vision, including losing a major customer and the strategic decision to buy out sales channels to control their own destiny.
  • How Intelligent Audit has embraced technological evolution, from leveraging machine learning seven years ago to now integrating advanced AI to enhance everything from customer service to product development.
  • Her experiences and advice as a young female CEO in a traditionally male-dominated industry, focusing on turning perceived disadvantages into opportunities and the importance of perspective.
  • The transformative power of implementing the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) at Intelligent Audit and her vision for a future where the company is even more self-serve and empowers customers through data.

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. ***
Andrew Silver:

Hey FreightPod listeners. Before we get started today, let's do a quick shout out to our sponsor, rapido Solutions Group. Rapido connects logistics and supply chain organizations in North America with the best near shore talent to scale efficiently and deliver superior customer service. Rapido works with businesses from all sides of the logistics industry. This includes brokers, carriers and logistics software companies. This includes brokers, carriers and logistics software companies. Rapido builds out teams with roles across customer and carrier sales and support, back office administration and technology services.

Andrew Silver:

The team at Rapido knows logistics and people. It's what sets them apart. Rapido is driven by an inside knowledge of how to recruit, hire and train within the industry and a passion to build better solutions for success. The team is led by CEO Danny Frisco and COO Roberto Lacazza, two guys I've worked with from my earliest days in the industry at Coyote. I have a long history with them and I trust them. I've even been a customer of theirs at Molo and let me tell you they made our business better. In the current market, where everyone's trying to do more with less and save money, solutions like Rapido are a great place to start To learn more. Check them out at gorapidocom. That's gorapidocom. Welcome back to another episode of FreightPod. I'm your host, andrew Silver, joined today by a very special guest, always a special guest. Today's extra special, per usual. This is Hannah Testani, ceo of Intelligent Audit, and we are going to learn about your story, her story and her business.

Hannah Testani:

So, Hannah, how are you? I like that extra special. I don't know why you had to backtrack that one, but I'm great. It's exciting to be here, exciting to talk to you and exciting to talk to all your listeners.

Andrew Silver:

The extra special. I need to stop doing this. But every single episode I opened the same way and I say we've got a special guest, and then I say it's extra special. And I guess by doing it the same every time it makes them all not extra special. I should, I should change up the pace. I don't know the whole starting thing. I just like to get a conversation going. I don't really feel like I know how to run a podcast because I don't feel like it's as much a podcast as much as like hey, just two people talking, and so the beginning and end I always struggle with.

Hannah Testani:

I thought you did great today.

Andrew Silver:

Thank you. Have you done podcasts before?

Hannah Testani:

I've been an attendee. I have never hosted a podcast.

Andrew Silver:

Okay.

Hannah Testani:

But I could small talk all day, so we'll see, maybe it's my next gig.

Andrew Silver:

Okay, yeah, I mean, I think my recommendation would be to keep running a business before entering a podcast, but if you ever find yourself kicked to the curb with nothing else to do, uh, maybe contemplate the podcast okay, fair, I'll start.

Hannah Testani:

I'll try and keep the day job yep, smart.

Andrew Silver:

So, speaking of the day job, um, how did you find yourself in this day job? How did you get into this industry? What brought you here?

Hannah Testani:

Really interesting story. So I'll say I had zero interest in supply chain, zero interest in tech. I wanted to be CEO of Lehman Brothers. So I went to Carnegie Mellon, I studied finance and went to work at Goldman Sachs and it was 2008. And at that point everything around me was, you know, crashing down. So EMA went under, bear Stearns went under, goldman seemed protected, but everyone around me, all my friends from college, all their banks whether it was Citibank, morgan Stanley, I mean it just didn't seem like a great time to go into finance.

Hannah Testani:

My father founded Intelligent Audit, rented. At that point it was three employees all who were double my age and not really the workplace that I was expecting to go out of after leaving college. But it was an interesting time, interesting opportunity leaving college. But it was an interesting time, interesting opportunity. I had interned through college and kind of worked full-time since I was like 17 in the space. So I knew it and my mentality was let me try it for a year and see if I like it and if not I'll go back to finance. And a month in I hated it. I called my boss at GOM and I was like I'm ready to come back, I'll do any role Put me in the back office. I just can't. I can't be here. I can't work with people who are in their 50s and is in an industry that is so boring.

Andrew Silver:

This is when you're like 22?

Hannah Testani:

21. I graduated college.

Andrew Silver:

I just graduated college, at 20.

Hannah Testani:

So I was like fresh out of college, senior year, all you're doing is partying and having fun and living your best life, and then, one month later, I'm going to an office with three people and, you know, listening to them talk about chess. So really not what I was wanting or expecting, but I stuck around and it was interesting because you know my husband at that point we were just, you know, dating. But he went to Citibank and he was in an investment capacity and he started to get calls from the founder of XPO. So Brad Jacobs was looking to start up XPO and he had called me and he was like like there's this guy that created a waste management company, um, and he's trying to get capital from city. Um, you know, I don't think we're gonna do it, but seems like the interest the industry is is building momentum.

Hannah Testani:

And then he called me a month later and he was like this company, like his bookstore, amazon, is getting into e-commerce. Um, what do you think about Amazon competing with UPS and FedEx? And I was like I don't know what you're talking about. But the point is that the momentum started to build up and I was really lucky that I was in a job where it was engineers and then me. I can do a tiny bit of engineering, but it allowed me to really explore everything. So I didn't have shackles where I had to do the same job in a repetitive way. I was kind of able to do a lot.

Andrew Silver:

And this was sorry, just to confirm. When you say this time, when you were doing a little bit of engineering but didn't have shackles, you were working at that time at Goldman no Intelligent Audit At Intelligent Audit. So this is when you were okay, keep going.

Hannah Testani:

Total baby and I got exposed to a lot and I just loved it. No, two days were the same and there was a lot of opportunities. Our business was evolving tremendously and, frankly, there was just so much opportunity that I loved it.

Andrew Silver:

When your father started this company, what was the idea for what he was trying to accomplish?

Hannah Testani:

Warner Music Group and Warner Home Video at that point, when people used to buy cassettes and DVDs were huge organizations. He supported them in their warehouses to create order management systems and that was his legacy job. That business was bought and he was basically a consultant and they came to him and they said I have all of these shipments that I'm shipping out to various locations. They won't pay me until I can prove to them that the tracking numbers were delivered and I have the proof of delivery. And the beauty of that is the original product that we created was able to take mass amounts of shipments and automatically track them, capture the POD and then deliver them back to the customer in automated fashion so they can get paid. Then they quickly came back and said well, actually that's great, but if they're delivered past the commitment time, go and get me a refund. And you know the rest is kind of history.

Hannah Testani:

But it was really originally all about taking mass amounts of parcel shipments and tracking them before you know the dot-com bubble. So that allowed us to create from the beginning a solution that was indexed well, that can manage a scale, and you know if our first customer was like a customer that shipped a couple hundred shipments a day, we would never be where we are today, where we have customers who ship over 100 million shipments a year. So that scale was so important. And, frankly, the best thing about engineers is they're lazy, so they want to do something once and then never do it again. Versus, like I'm a hard worker, I'll do the same thing all the time. Show me an Excel function and I'll click it.

Andrew Silver:

Engineers won't do that. So, um, the fact that it came through. By lazy you mean like they want to find the most efficient way to do something and do it that way and then not have to go again, versus you and I who are like we'll just bang our head against the wall endlessly and keep doing the same thing that's like steve jobs, that he's like find really smart lazy people.

Hannah Testani:

And like they'll automate everyone's workflows because, like they don't want to do it, like they they're like oh, what are you doing every day? Hold on, like I'll automate this and and make it so that you can go outside and do what you want to do.

Andrew Silver:

Yep, that makes sense. Um, okay, so you come into this business 21 years old, not that interested the CEO's daughter. What was the next few years like, as you kind of came into the business and started to kind of find your way?

Hannah Testani:

Yeah, so at the company, we were always the technology backend for a lot of different partners, which is interesting because our industry is so incestuous there's a lot of companies and competitors that also do business together. I don't know if you've noticed that, but that was just our experience. So we were always at the backend tech arm and then a lot of our competitors were using our product. So what that meant is we didn't sell directly to customers. We went through parties and third-party channels. So really who I was working with was all of those third-party channels and they had no interest in working with me.

Hannah Testani:

So there was a lot of friction there for the first several years. They were like who is this new child coming in? They were like who's this new child coming in, um? And like why, why would I bring her into a sales meeting? Or why would like, why do I need her?

Hannah Testani:

Um, so it, the first few years, was me just trying to prove myself to all of these partners that you know, like it's not a win-loss, like I want to help you win more and you winning is me winning, so like we're all in this together, um. But that was definitely contentious and probably would set me back originally because I wanted to be able to do more in terms of shake our customers' hands. I wanted to understand their pain points. I wanted to go to sales pitches and a lot of times everyone was just like you would be a distraction in the room. Like we're talking, like we're going to a dinner right, we're probably going to a strip club after. Like there's really no room for you here. Like we'll just let you know afterwards how it goes and you'll support them in the back end. But like let let the adults talk and then you'll come in later.

Andrew Silver:

Okay, Well, how did you navigate that? I mean, that's, that's an interesting kind of challenge. I definitely understand it in our industry, especially 20 years, 15 years ago. But I'm curious how do you deal?

Hannah Testani:

with that. So he always dreamt that I would come in and run the business, even though I have an older brother. He was just like you can come and do this, but he would always dream about that. But he never really felt like it would happen because he was like it was never that I'm a woman, it was because he thought I was young and that the industry was not accommodating to young women. So he was like kind of on their side. He was like use Hannah when you can and she's here to assist you, but like I'm here, so like you know me being my father, so he, for the long time I was in the background and then I got to a point where, you know, fast forward about five years, I was able to learn enough from all of our partners where, and we were growing. So we were just still about like maybe 15 people at this point.

Hannah Testani:

But we were starting to do some of our own direct sales, have our own customers and we had a few really big sales channels. One of them actually used our name, so it was Intelligent Audit. They used our name, so it was Intelligent Audit. They went to Trace it was Intelligent Audit, but they were not actually affiliated with us. They just had the rights to sell our product.

Hannah Testani:

So I told my dad I think we should buy them out because we want to be able to. For us to grow into the future, we need to have control of our own destiny in terms of sales, in terms of marketing. We need to be able to touch our customers, shake their hands, grow with them. And as long as there is a barrier between us and the end customer, we're never going to be able to be where we need to be.

Hannah Testani:

And you know, the good thing about my dad I mean he's great is he was always comfortable letting go of the vine as long as he knew that I would kind of step into those shoes. And he told me, like if I can go prove myself and I can go close a book of business and, you know, upsell our customers, then it's mine. But to do that we actually had to go take debt out on the business to buy out those sales channels, to go take debt out on the business to buy out those sales channels, and it was very contentious. That being said, we were able to make a great deal, for everyone bought out a few of our biggest sales channels. At that point, over 95% of our revenue was sales channels. So after that transaction you know it was a majority owned by us. There were still about 25% due partners. But we learned a hard lesson because seven months into that acquisition, our biggest customer left and in terms of-.

Andrew Silver:

As related to this or having nothing to do with the deal.

Hannah Testani:

No, they actually just decided that they could do this in house through a TMS partnership, um, which luckily ended up being a disaster for them, um, but still that, even if they failed, it still was a hit to us. Um, but that made us, as a company, grow up really, really fast. And you know, take a step back. Until then, we never had a vision. There was no focus, there was no clarity. Everyone just worked on what was urgent, but not what was important. So take a step back and we said, okay, we now need to rebuild, and you know, rebuild entirely, and you know I had. We've always been talking rebuild and you know rebuild entirely, and you know I had.

Hannah Testani:

We've always been talking to, you know, some investors, and the good thing about investors is some of them are really smart and they'll just give you free advice and they're doing that.

Hannah Testani:

They're trying to prove that you know they'd be a good partner for you, um, so some of them gave us, you know, good, good ideas in terms of buy out those sales channels, grow up, figure out what you want to do and like, also like, diversify, like, make sure that you can handle all modes globally and always be technology first.

Hannah Testani:

So we stepped back, we sat down and we created, for the first time, that vision. You know, where do we want to be, ignoring all of our sales channels. We're now adults, we hold our own, the own, the own keys to our success. And that was the biggest, the biggest opportunity for us, because we we learned so much. Um, we really have been thoughtful about what success looks like, how we make sure the entire company knows what success looks like, and you know, it's been focused on sustainable, repeatable, profitable growth and we have such a good way right now of just enforcing that across the company and getting everyone to feel bought in, getting everyone to feel like they have control and they're an important cog in the massive wheel for Intelligent Audit, and it's been really transformational.

Andrew Silver:

And when was this roughly?

Hannah Testani:

So we did the deal in 2017. We lost our biggest customer in 2017, the day before Thanksgiving, and we did the big transformation in about 2019.

Andrew Silver:

So was there ever a moment where, when you lost that big customer, it felt like this business might fail?

Hannah Testani:

oh my, we really screwed up, yes, um, like rock bottom, um, which is all about perspective. But, yes, I mean, there were times where we were like what are we gonna do? Like how, how? Because we took our debt, and you know that was it was a big move. And you know, like my ass is on the line for that, because I was the one who was, you know, confident, you know, said we have to do it. I still felt like it was the right thing. But, yes, like there were days where everyone was like what's the plan and how are we going to overcome this? And you know it's, there was luck to it, but more than luck, it was just focus. It was so much focus on not feeling like a victim and instead saying let's figure this shit out.

Andrew Silver:

So smart I mean it's so easy to let your circumstances kind of overwhelm you or let outside things that are not in your control overwhelm you, and if you focus on the things that are out of your control play victim mentality, it's paralyzing. I mean there's no point. I mean there's just nothing you can do about things that are outside of your control. So you might as well focus on what's within your control.

Hannah Testani:

It's such an important life lesson and it really, like that moment, has made me realize that almost every time you feel like life is against you, it is an opportunity to excel and just innovate, and that's where innovation comes. I am so confident that if we did not lose that customer, we would be nowhere near where we are today. We'd be a different business because we would never be forced to mature. So, yeah, I mean, it's the best thing that's ever happened to us.

Andrew Silver:

Are you looking to grow your brokerage? Are you struggling to land new customers in these challenging market conditions? Look within so many companies that tender you freight throughout the domestic United States also have business coming out of Mexico. A year ago I understand why you might not have seen that freight as an opportunity, but today Cargado exists and that means any load coming into or out of Mexico is now an opportunity for you to support. In just over a year I've been able to see Cargado go from ideation to launch to rapid growth. It's amazing to see how many logistics companies have been able to use Cargado to expand into Mexico to grow their business.

Andrew Silver:

Cargado is the first platform that connects logistics companies and trucking companies who are moving freight into and out of Mexico. If you move Mexico freight or are planning to reach out to Cargado today at cargadocom, that's C-A-R-G-A-D-Ocom. Yeah, I mean that's the value of pressure and feeling like your back's against the wall Because when things are just ho-hum, things are going well, you still got your big customer, got your big customer. It's like there's no pressure to innovate, there's no pressure to make changes, there's no pressure to get bigger or diversify or anything like that, because you're like, oh, the bills are paid. We're making a little bit of money, everything's fine.

Hannah Testani:

Did you ever have?

Andrew Silver:

that feeling.

Andrew Silver:

Oh yeah, I mean and part of it is me probably being too emotional and, in some cases, way too reactive but like I feel, like I constantly felt like our business was going to fail. I mean COVID when COVID hit initially I was like we don't know what the hell we're doing. Like this is beyond what we know how to deal with. I mean we were when COVID hit 2020, so I was 30 years old. How to deal with. I mean we were. I went COVID in 2020, so I was 30 years old and you know we were fortunate that our business was so heavy in food and grocery retail that, like that part of the business boomed.

Andrew Silver:

But we had made a conscious decision in that year that we would not adjust our rates on any of our primary business with our customers, and the thought was, if we can hold the line and keep these rates, we'll stand out for our customers in a way that no one else has, because I'm like nobody will ever forget this period. Covid isn't something that's happened before and hopefully it's not something that will happen again. So we're looking at a once-in-a, once in a lifetime situation and in that once in a lifetime situation, how are our customers going to look at us, and if they look at us and see us standing out against the competition like that should set us up for life and that's all great until it's August of 2020. And the rates have tripled and we're sitting here losing money, hand over fist and I'm like pulling what I had hair. Then I had hair until three days ago.

Hannah Testani:

I shaved my head on a wind to be clear I was wondering, I was gonna ask, but I decided you know, maybe yeah, no I'm an open book.

Andrew Silver:

I, you know I've shaved my head three times in my life, um, and and the first two were in like some of the darkest moments where I was like really struggling and, and you know, kind of lost my shit. One of them was COVID. Actually, the beginning of COVID I shaved my head, and so that spoke to where my head was at this time was more meant to be like I'm trying to, I'm trying to create, I'm trying to. I want to change how I'm trying to create. I'm trying to. I want to change how I'm thinking about my life right now, and like I've been frustrated by a lot of things and not and I've paralyzed myself in my frustration because, you know, I've got this non-compete that doesn't really allow me to do much in the industry, and after two years it's really starting to wear me down, and so I'm trying to get this kind of mentality shift. And so the other thing is that I was balding too, which was not helping, and where this showed up the most, because my wife basically told me you're not getting plugs, you're not going to Turkey, you're not. Whatever it is, whether you do it here or there, you're not doing it, you don't need it, like I don't care. And I think it's weird that, if you would want to do that, and so I'm like, okay, plugs is out, plugs are out.

Andrew Silver:

But I play a lot of pickleball and I play at this facility where they there's cameras always on, and so when there are great shots or great plays, people will hit a replay and it sends you the replays after, and so I. But the cameras are all from up top, and so my buddy would send me these replays after we'd play and all I could see was the top of my head. I'm six foot three, so most people wouldn't even notice because I had hair all around. But I'd get these replays and I'd see this bald spot and I'd be like God, you've got to fix that. So here we are.

Hannah Testani:

Do you think you're going to let it grow back in, or this is a new look for you? I?

Andrew Silver:

think I'm going to keep it. I don't know what you think should grow back. You haven't said you're going to be on a flight to Turkey? I don't know, I'm not. That's the only thing my wife has definitively said no to, and she said she likes it, so we'll see.

Hannah Testani:

But it's hard no-transcript.

Andrew Silver:

Wow, shout out to Remington free marketing for you that your product is great. But back to what we were talking about. Yeah, there are definitely moments where we felt like the business was going to fail, and I appreciate those moments in hindsight because it does light a fire. My most involved sales moments like the times you know my role as CEO was I had a really great partner who was exceptional at managing the day-to-day and managing the people in the day-to-day and so I had a lot more freedom to kind of move and shake and apply myself wherever I felt, and sales was where I spent a lot of time, but it wasn't always needed for me to be actively involved, but it was in the moments when I felt most desperate and felt most like my back was against the wall. That's when I poured myself into sales. I mean, I'd be sending emails to people at nine o'clock at night on Saturdays on Sundays like whatever I could, and it lights a fire in a way.

Andrew Silver:

There's something about feeling like you're responsible for whether it's 10 people, 20 people, 50 people or 500 people. That really does force you to mature and figure out how to like get shit done, because there's no one else who can do it. At least that that that was my mentality was like I can't ask someone else to fix this problem for me. Um, I can certainly ask everyone to help me fix the problem, which is what we would do. I mean, rally the troops, as you kind of talked about, getting everybody to understand how important, even if they are a cog, it's an important cog and a very important wheel. So I don't know, I don't know if you have thoughts on that.

Hannah Testani:

It's so true, you know, for a long time my friends would say, like my life is so easy, I am my own boss. And I would shoot back and be like I have 215 families that I'm accountable for, not just one. So, yes, like I could be flexible with my days, but so can anyone on our team. Like, just get your work done. But at the end of the day, I don't just care about what. You know me and my immediate family has to be. You know, accountable for it's everyone and, like you, you care about this. You're a team and it's not just that you care about them. You want to make sure that they're all excelling and succeeding and you have an environment where you can hire smart people and those smart people have the tools to be successful and can grow. Because, at the end of the day, like CEO's job, to your point, like we should not be running this show. That means that we're actually not doing a good job of hiring people around us and being clear with our vision so they can execute. So for us to succeed, we need excellent people everywhere who are motivated to show up, to have control, that can do what needs to be done and, you know, keep them accountable. So, yeah, I think that everything you said is spot on and it's stressful, but it's also at least for me right now. I'm at the point now where I have such an amazing team all around me that you know we meet quarterly.

Hannah Testani:

I don't know what you did, but we we um deployed EOS entrepreneurial operating systems in uh 2021. Um, interestingly, because I uh I called a competitor of ours um a CEO, cause I had heard that he had resigned and I was just like you know what's up, what are you doing? Like, why are you out? And he, just like you know what's up, what are you doing, why are you out? And he, there was you know some issues of why he had to leave, but he was like I became an EOS consultant and I was like what's EOS? And he explained what it was and you know very basic operating model. But he became our consultant, which was really interesting to have him like in very intimate conversations. Um, deploying eos was the best, most revolutionary process that we underwent as a company. That really took us from a good one to a great one. Like, our ability not just execute like clockwork and keep everyone accountable is made true because of EOS.

Andrew Silver:

What is EOS you got to give us? Can't just tease us with it.

Hannah Testani:

Yeah, absolutely so. Eos is. It's a way of running a business, although, you know, really like everything that I'm about to say are things that you have probably heard of and you probably do so at a macro level. Eos is about setting a vision. So I equate this to having a boat. So a boat, for example, is going from point A to point B. The vision is to say here is where the boat is going to. That way, everyone at the company understands that they're on the boat and everyone knows exactly where the boat is going. So that is the clear vision.

Hannah Testani:

Then it's having the right people. So making sure you have the right people on the boat and the people are in the right seats. So you hear a lot of right person, right seat. So again, think about the boat. You need to have the captain. Where the captain is, you have to have an excellent people in the various divisions you know, divisions of where you put in the boat so that the boat gets to where it needs to be. And you might have really smart people, but when they're in the wrong spot, they're just friction from being able to, you know, get to where your vision is.

Hannah Testani:

Then there's data, which is really important. So taking the emotion out of making decisions instead of saying you know, from a pure data perspective. So if you were stuck on an island and someone gave you a sheet of paper, what measurables would you have to see on that piece of paper to make sure that the business is operating as it should be? To make sure that the business is operating as it should be, and you need to be really thoughtful of saying what those measurables are. If you can't figure those out, then you'll never know if your business is successful. And when you do and you know what the right goal is for each data point, then you can keep everyone accountable and make sure everyone is doing what they need to to get to where the boat's going.

Andrew Silver:

Just before you keep going, just so I confirm I understand so essentially what you're saying. This checklist is basically, if I'm completely removed from the business and I'm not there every day, I'm not talking to customers, I'm not talking to employees. But I have this piece of paper with data points on it and I have expectations around each of those data points and as long as each one of these expectations is met at the level it is, it should be a successful business. I don't need to know anything else.

Hannah Testani:

Correct Yep. So those are the first few principles. It's vision, people data. It's vision, people data. The next one is being able to properly articulate when there is an issue with the right person and solving it. So this is really taking the emotion out of seeing a problem. But again, go back to the boat example. I'm a simple person so I like that example. You can be on different parts of the boat and different your different responsibilities, but you have to be comfortable, even if you know your part of the boat isn't as where you know where it should be in terms of operations, you have to be comfortable talking to someone else, being like you know, let's say, they're in charge of, you know, food you're not executing properly. Here's why here's the very specific issue that we need to address and then making sure that you're actually identifying the problem, discussing it and solving it. And you know, in so many organizations people are either like too shy to talk about it because they feel like they can't complain, or they can't throw rocks out of a glass building. But it's so important to have the comfort and the ability to be able to properly have those conversations because you need to hear feedback, see issues and solve them and, again, the right channel to get that done is critical.

Hannah Testani:

The next two so the first one is being able to create goals. So, um, like, we just had our leadership team meeting, um, this past week, everyone came in town and what we do there you know. You have your vision, so you have where you're going, which is, say, in the next five years, three years. But then what so many people do? Like human nature, we dream big but we don't make progress towards hitting those goals. So the purpose here is it's called traction. So you create 90-day goals and they're smart. So they're smart goals. So they're very specific, they're measurable, they're actionable. Their results aren't in their time bound. So, for example, if I was to say, hey, andrew, I want to go lose 20 pounds, okay, but like, that's, that's a great dream. But instead I would say I want to lose five pounds in 12 weeks. Here is what I'm going to do to achieve that. So now you can keep me accountable. You can check in in two weeks and say, well, where are you at? And it'll be obvious if, at 10 weeks, I'm still doing about losing five pounds and I haven't made traction. So really important to create those goals, to achieve the bigger vision.

Hannah Testani:

And then the last part is just having repeatable processes. So, especially as you become a bigger organization, you know you have various departments in a company and what you'll find is what you don't want to see is 12 people in the same function solving the same problem differently. What you would instead want to see is the team, and maybe the leader of that team, saying what is the best process. So what does everyone do? Really well, how do we create that as a standardized process that everyone can do the golden standard continuously?

Hannah Testani:

And when you can do all of this at scale, it is so easy to just like continue to be on that boat. You know, my job, I say to the CEO, is to see what's on the outside of the boat, so what's going to give us friction, and to remove that. And then everyone else in the boat, their job is just do what needs to happen to get us there. But every single person on the boat has an important role and is achieving our vision. So we can't do that if there are five people not doing their jobs Like that. That's that slows us down from winning, and I'm all about winning, but I want everyone to win with me. You know it's on my team.

Andrew Silver:

I like it a lot. I think that's. I mean, I appreciate the very thorough explanation and I think it I. You know, I was kind of through my head thinking like where are the holes in this? And I didn't find any. So I think it feels like a very accountable structure to ensure you're moving in the direction you want to be moving in.

Hannah Testani:

And it applies to any business. It applies to, like relationships, like almost everything. It applies to relationships, almost everything. There's nothing complicated about those principles and if you can do that, even when you're raising kids, it's almost the same thing. You just need to be thoughtful and disciplined and have a vision and keep everyone accountable, and then it's easy. It's easy to win, and then, like it's just easy, it's easy to win.

Andrew Silver:

So when was this that you kind of spoke to your competitor, friend?

Hannah Testani:

I think it was in either late 2020 or early 2021, probably 2020. And you know it takes a long time. I don't want it. It was like a half a year to roll it out, because this is like a different way of of living your life. You know, this is like transforming and being thoughtful and being using different. You know, principles that you didn't use before. But it is just. It is so much easier now to for us to be able to hire people, people, because everyone wants to be part of something, but it's hard to be part of something that isn't defined.

Andrew Silver:

Well said. So I mean 2020, that's right when you had stepped into the CEO role.

Hannah Testani:

No, yeah, no, this was one of those big, big moves. So you know, I was really fortunate when I became CEO. At that point I had been doing sales, I had been managing our operations, so I was really I was the acting CEO, but I was also the operating COO, Because my, my dad at that point was like I think I was probably in my early 30s point, was like I think I was probably in my early thirties. Um, I just had my third kid. He was like you can't, you can't be a CEO. He was like and actually I used to talk to the Western Journal a lot at this point One of the journalists sent me a collage of all of our competitors and um me, because I was like oh yeah, the board's talking about making me CEO.

Hannah Testani:

And he came back and he said all of your competitors are middle-aged white men. And he showed them to me and he said do you really think that you would be an adopted CEO in this space? Like I hear board really thought about this because I can just see you not being accepted and you're gonna stand out. And I was like I hear you, um, yeah, obviously don't look like the rest of them. But like, so what like, let's change things. And and here's my proven record. So I didn't have to. I had to prove myself internally, internally, but I was actually lucky that externally we were getting the momentum of like why not?

Andrew Silver:

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Hannah Testani:

Yeah, I'm a big fan of people saying no and then me getting the chance to prove them wrong yep, you and I are very similar in that regard because it's like you're, I think we're probably around the same age, yes, like we are younger.

Hannah Testani:

But so what? Like we have innovative ideas, we'll work hard, we'll prove ourselves, and the best thing I did was I lost a lot, and every one of those losses was great learning opportunities for me. So, um, yeah, like, put me, put me back on a coach, like that's what I would say. Like put me in coach yeah, give me, give me a chance. And it's been a great, a great roller, great ups, great downs, but weren't from every one of them.

Andrew Silver:

How did you get your father over the hump to finally say, okay, yeah, I think it's you.

Hannah Testani:

He was definitely the hardest. And the truth is, first he just came in and he said if you can do this and he gave me a set measurables then it's yours. So then I did that and I did better than he wanted and I was like all right, like that's it, you're out, I'm in. And he really was so against it. And the day I became CEO was not a happy day for him. He was proud of me, but he was still like he felt like I was taking his role and kicking him out. But ultimately he saw that it was the right thing for the business and, to be truthful, he had a health scare around that time and I said to him um, there's no way that you can expect me to take over, like what needs to be done with the family, um, and run a business at the same time. Um, I've proven myself, um, the board has the vote. Like everyone is saying yes. Even my older brother at that point, who was like filmmaker ceo, was like why isn't she ceo?

Andrew Silver:

um, so he relinquished control it was your brother involved in the business, or no?

Hannah Testani:

yes, um, he, so he's an interesting guy. He, um, he's a poker player, so he's won world poker tournaments and really smart. Um, but a different person, a different personality than me um, he is a really really smart problem solver and, like you, give him a complex problem and he just like solves it like this. Um, so he's always been in the engineering side. He's in charge of our entire engineering team. Now he came in, figured out how to code and really stood up our business intelligence platform in a way that was really forward-thinking.

Hannah Testani:

At that point, I mean, we were talking about analytics in 2011,. You know, before it was second nature. And so he's been at the company and he at first was like no way, hun is taking my spot. I'm like he's like I'm the older son, like that is my blood-born right. And then he was like there's no way I want to be ceo and like, hey, dad, you're not really a ceo. Just like, give it to her, because then we can hire a COO and then she can actually, you know, do more sales, do more client success, and I have to also run the business.

Hannah Testani:

So you know, as you said, you, you are, you stick out like a sore thumb in that environment as the kind of young female CEO and I'm curious if we could talk a little bit about that in terms of and I'm curious if we could talk a little bit about that in terms of what was that experience like, being like was and what you say? It's you and you're talking to a middle aged white person. Your expectation from them is set high because you're like, you deserve to be there. I'm like, I'm ready for this conversation. When it's me, across from you, the bar is actually lower because you're like oh, like, ok, like, okay, like, let's see what, let's see what she has to say. So that just means, like, the initial expectations for me versus like my competitors was lower, which means when we were able to have a conversation, it was able to go higher. So, like it, I always think it worked in my favor and it was like a day of birth Goliath.

Hannah Testani:

You know the story because, like, everyone was just like wow, like didn't expect that, what a surprise. And I, I'm excited. And you know we, we always had great momentum because people trusted us, we have a great customer list and we have great value. Like, our customers are our best salespeople. So it's not like I was preaching something and didn't have the ability to back it up. There were so many people that were like, yeah, like trust what she's saying, I'm advocating for it, so I never felt like it was a a bad thing. Um, you know, I had my fair share of prospects asking for threesomes, but like they were always like, like wait what I guess?

Hannah Testani:

shows like people will be like oh, like, wonder what she's here for, and like that I always felt like, you know, we could quickly nip in the bud and be like that's not going to happen here, and once you can get past that, they became some of our best customers.

Andrew Silver:

So I mean this is important because it's just not right. Obviously, If I go to a trade show, no one's sexualizing me, no one's asking me about threesomes, it's just work.

Andrew Silver:

Maybe, Well, maybe in their, their head, I doubt it, but in in your world that's like a real issue. And so I guess, as I think about you know women who might be listening to this, younger women who are in our industry and wanting to fill a seat like yours one day. What like advice do you have for them for navigating this? Because it's not fair obviously right that women have to deal with that in these settings and so I'm just curious what you would say to someone who wants to get to your seat but also is dealing with sexualization and different expectations and the other BS that kind of comes with that.

Hannah Testani:

Life's not fair. So it's not like you can't be a victim. This, you just have to understand what it is. Um. So, yes, like the downside is, I always tell our team, like we have, you know, lots of women who travel like you can't be drinking, you can't be getting wasted. Um, when people text you, our customers or our prospects are texting you, like keep it, keep a G. When they go X-rated, like you still back out of it. And it's like the same thing I would say if someone went to college. And, yes, like, be conscious, be aware of it. I think people are professionals, so it's not like anyone is going to do anything inappropriate for you. They just might make advances, but like always be in control so you can say no.

Hannah Testani:

That being said, it's still a great opportunity to be a woman in the supply chain, because there's not many of us and I actually think that women are well suited for logistics better than anyone else, because women can handle dynamic situations, complex situations, fast moving, a lot of complexities really easily. And I always equate this to like me versus my husband with like running our family. We have three kids. My kids are like in tons of activities, tons of sports. It is very easy for me to navigate the complexity, to create the schedule to react when there's anything that happens that's complex, so like a kid is sick or like something was canceled. When it is just him and there is complexity, he's like nevermind, everyone's staying home.

Hannah Testani:

And like same on the weekends, like you watch, like on a Sunday, when usually the dads do the birthday parties you will have. If there are 20 kids, there are 20 dads doing pickup and drop-offs. If it was a birthday party during the week, there will be five, because moms know how to carpool and we know how to be efficient. So it is an excellent place to be a woman in terms of being in supply chain and because there's not many women. You shine Like when you are different. If everyone is wearing a blue shirt and you're wearing an orange shirt, you stand out and standing out is a good thing because people see you and it gives you the opportunity to be better. So, yes, be aware, be smart, make smart decisions, but also, like you are, you are fortunate that you stand out and like don't, don't be like. It is not a perfect place to be a woman.

Andrew Silver:

So well said. It's interesting because I think about it through two lenses. One is kind of like the virtuous, you know this is a problem, and like we should attack it and fix it. And I agree, it is wrong and it is a problem and like you know, and women shouldn't feel uncomfortable when they go to a trade show. But you kind of have two choices. You could, you can, well I guess I shouldn't say two choices, but there's two different ways to think about it.

Andrew Silver:

One is to say this is going to be where I spend my energy trying to fix this problem, but it's probably too big of a problem for any one person or team to try to address. Like how are you going to change the way that men across the board are engaging with you in the setting? Like that seems like a really overwhelming thing to try to address, versus your line of thought which goes back to kind of focusing on what's within your control, like you can't control how these guys are going to react, especially because you can just keep swapping them out, like yeah, maybe you go to this trade show in New Jersey and you're going to deal with it and then you go to one in Phoenix. It's completely different men, but it's probably the same behavior and so like. Are you going to change the world and change how all these people react, how all these people behave, or are you going to realize, like, this is the way it is, at least today? I can't change all that today, but what I can do is manage it to the best of my ability and put myself in the best position to win as a result of it.

Andrew Silver:

Like you see it, it's a, it's an. It's an inspiring thing, I think, to look at what is clearly a very negative thing and spin it into a positive. And I think it speaks volumes to, I think, kind of who you are as a person and certainly as a business person that, rather than focus on the negative and focus on and be a victim in all of that, to say, hey look, it's a good thing, I've got the orange shirt on, they're all wearing blue, I'm different. That means I've got their attention. And in an industry that is becoming more and more commoditized, with more and more competition by the day, the ability to stand out is one of the most important things in being successful, because just getting someone's attention is so hard in our's industry, in our industry today I think that if people can adopt that mentality in life, everything becomes better for them.

Hannah Testani:

Just always see the opportunity. Every single challenge is an opportunity. And like I like even like in my friend circles when they text me like oh my, my God, my fight was canceled. Like my life sucks. Like would you prefer to be on a flight that crashed. Like no, like your life is fine. Like move on, you're going to be okay. Take a drive. Like perspective is so important and it's also a great leadership quality. Like people don't want to work for someone who is always complaining. And like isn't able to change and adapt. And like innovate and innovation comes from a hard problem that you're trying to solve and you didn't expect to. And like it is always a good opportunity.

Andrew Silver:

The other thing too, especially as the leader it is so easy to be negative. It is way easier to be negative than it is to be positive. It's way easier to play victim than it is to be positive. It's way easier to play victim than to navigate problems and see opportunities. And the bigger issue with that is it's way more infectious and so like.

Andrew Silver:

If you, as the leader, take this victim mentality, take this negative perspective, it is going to spread like wildfire in your organization and it's a cancer. So I think, like understanding that, especially at the top, that it's your responsibility to frankly set the perspective of the organization. You get to drive. That. That's part of driving. The vision is determining how we're going to look at the outside world, how we're going to look at the challenges that are in front of us. And if you're the one who's like this is a BS industry, every time I go to a conference I get sexualized. I'm not going to conferences anymore, we don't need conferences. That's a very different perspective to saying, hey, this is an unfair challenge, but life is unfair and I'm not going to sit here and complain about it. So you're not going to complain about it, we're going to figure out a way to navigate it and be winners through it. That's an inspiring thing.

Hannah Testani:

And every second you're in the pity party. You're not thinking about it, solve it. But I still think that going to a trade show as a woman is amazing, because when all the men are walking by, then you see like a person in heels. You're like what did I just say? Like is there a woman here? Like this is great, like it's it. There is so much more upside than there is downside. You just like you got. You have to understand the downside to protect it and then like arrive.

Andrew Silver:

So I want to pivot now, um, and I want to start talking about technology a little bit, because you know you're you're a technology business that was founded in 1996, before the dot-com, all that. So 30 years later, ai is the only thing anyone wants to talk about. So what I'm curious about is what has the evolution of technology looked like in your business and how have you strategically approached that? Because every company is different and there are some companies that TMS examples there are companies that are still on-prem, that have these clunky technologies that 30 years later they know it's not great, but they're unwilling to adapt in a way that sometimes it takes a transformational adaptation in which you literally throw out everything you've had and start from scratch to build something better. But that's a scary thing. So I'm just curious can we talk about that a little bit Kind of what your technological journey has been like at Intelligent Audit?

Hannah Testani:

Yeah, so really important way you hit on your past does not guarantee your future. Your past could give you an upper hand to give you a better future, but you've got to work for it and transform. And AI is incredible. What AI allows anyone to do, if you use it effectively, is set yourself up for the future. So the good thing about us as an organization we've always been technology first, so our approach has always been through. You know how do you create scalable processes that are configurable and not customizable? Where you you know we have really smart problem solvers who are just able to build solutions that you know, then business people can manage, that business people can manage. I was fortunate that I went to a school where I studied finance, but my friends were all really smart computer scientists, which I think is another important lesson. Surround yourself by people who are smarter than you.

Andrew Silver:

And different, different, smart in a different way and different right.

Hannah Testani:

So about six years ago or I guess not seven years ago because I had my oldest one I had a bunch of our friends over and they were at this point. One of them was getting his PhD in computer science, another PhD in physics and they were talking about AI. So you know, back then it was all about machine learning and deep learning because there was no large language models. So you know, even back about seven years ago, you know we understood what was coming and we were able to listen to how others were using AI. About One of them went out and is now CTO of an insurance company where they actually have a piece of hardware that fits in your car that's able to assess if you're a safe driver. So it does that. So if you think about driving, when you're driving this piece of hardware will move, and sometimes it's because of a divot in the road or a bump, other times it's because you're just a bad driver and it needed the intelligence to be able to take all of these patterns, remove where you are like it is just an issue that you did not have control over versus what you have control over and then take that information to assess if you're a safe driver and then, based on that, create an insurance company. So that was only made possible because of deep learning. Another friend who we ended up hiring, who at this point was getting his he was working at UPMC and his job was to be able to look at people's MRIs and be able to say you know, every person's liver is different, mine is different than yours, but within each person's liver and their MRI of their liver, there's consistency. So find me the pattern that is irregular. And when you see that pattern that's irregular, tell me with high confidence if it is fatty liver disease, because that is a disease that is very hard to take a biopsy of and then diagnose and then treat. And if you could do all of that up front, you just you're saving lives.

Hannah Testani:

So I was listening to this, like in my basement seven years ago, and I thought to myself you know, I know we have data that is really well indexed, so our customers can take massive data and just see it very quickly and use that to make decisions. But what we thought was you know, right now we have people that are looking through data and saying how do we help our customers become smarter? So where is their inefficiency in their supply chain. So where is there inefficiency in their supply chain? The thesis was can we leverage some couple of months to help us build the initial model and then the second one. His name is Brian Pollack, dr Brian Pollack. He became our head of data science and the thesis was what I just mentioned.

Hannah Testani:

What it really does well is it takes mass amounts of data. Let's just say it's. You know any type shipper. Shippers are really complex. And our customers we take their data across all of their modes, globally. So even one customer, you take all of their global data globally. They're going to have different processes and different expectations of what their data looks like. So the model has the intelligence to say give me all of this data, I will slice it into like patterns and then, within each pattern of data, I'm going to create a baseline of expectations and then, as new data flows in, if I couldn't predict that, then it's anomalous.

Hannah Testani:

So we started playing around with this seven years ago, created an alpha product five years ago, and what we found was, yeah, bad behaviors are there, but what we are actually seeing is a ton of fraud, a ton of technical glitches and just unexpected consequences. So the fraud is a real problem, you know there's. It's really easy to intercept ABI carrier APIs and then actually change the ship to location, so that's happening at scale. But the beauty of all this is we were, we had AI before people knew what AI is, so we were leveraging it through machine learning. But it, you know, we've always been focused on what's next and we've never been scared on what's next. Um, and we've never been scared of what's next, like, even when we have a process that works great. I'm not scared to be like could it be better? And if the answer is yes, then like guys, like let's make it better. Because as you become a bigger organization, any squeaky wheel becomes squeakier.

Hannah Testani:

So both, thinking about ai has been, you know, amazing. The machine learning has been really, really powerful and it was our first, you know, use of ai. But really it was just a tool that was for our customers. It didn't really help us. Chat gpt has been excellent. So our head of data science became our chief product officer in december. Because we used to think about data science and ai differently and in my head the future is like it's one like if they used to like co-mingle a little bit like I want. I want ai to be part of the way we think in every conversation, and Brian Pollack is now on OpenAI's Red Team.

Hannah Testani:

So OpenAI, createchat, gpt, they have engineers across the world. Before they release new products into the world, they have these engineers that actually try and test it to see if there's any malicious content before it gets into the hands of a bunch of bad actors, which just allows us to be on the front end of getting access to these kinds of technology and we now leverage some form of not every time, but we think about how do we use your chat GPT or we're using AI for engineers. How do we use it everywhere? So it's not just our engineers, but it's like our operations. It's rate loading, it's rate auditing. We actually still leave an advisory board and a lot of our shippers said that they have teams of people across their entire executive team that get constantly trained on AI. So they taught us that we need to have every group at our company and have their division head say where can our teams use AI, even if it's just prompt generation or workflow automation? But how do we continuously think about AI empowering either us, our customers or or the carriers to be more effective.

Hannah Testani:

So the way I equate it now most simply is we've had screwdrivers for a long time and like screwdrivers get things done, like they work. But imagine when you get a drill and then you're like holy shit, like had this have been out there for so long? Like holy shit, like had this have been out there for so long. So now my only challenge to the team is let's make sure that everyone has a drill with a battery, like I don't want them to have a drill and like someone's like well, we can't get this because of X, y, z. Like no, give them a drill, make sure it has a battery and then give them a tool belt so when they're up on the ladder they're not like coming up and down and coming up and down, but like make them hyper efficient. And AI is just so powerful to everyone. But you have to embrace it.

Andrew Silver:

At Molo we built a great company and I'm proud of the work we did. We knew when to ask for help and sometimes that meant going outside of our own company. I'm proud we built an ecosystem of trusted partners like Metaphora. When we needed differentiated industry expertise in business consulting or technology services, we looked at Peter Ryan and the team at Metaphora. They've consistently delivered value in the transportation and logistics space for over a decade for mid-market and enterprise brokers, for shippers and logistics space for over a decade for mid-market and enterprise brokers for shippers, carriers, private equity and freight tech companies. At Molo we use Metafora to solve problems we simply couldn't on our own. Metafora is the only partner you should trust to help you win, whether that's doing ops and tech diligence, growing revenue, optimizing spend or selecting and building software. Go check them out at metaforanet. That's M-E-T-A-F-O-R-A dot net. Have you dealt with headwinds or challenges in getting the team to buy in or adopt this kind of change? I mean, it's not that it. Let me just ask that. I'm curious there.

Hannah Testani:

Yes, always, like human nature, nature we need to evolve to hate change, like change has come with in the past. So we hate change. But it's so easy to prove, like, literally, it is a screwdriver versus a drill, like it empowers you and we've we've always embraced technology and we've always proven to our people that it's not going to replace them, it's going to make them a superpower, and we're fortunate that we've grown so much year over year where they have seen we've never fired a team of people because they were. We could automate their jobs. Like, if anything, we'll automate it. We'll use AI to answer emails, and now those people are doing more challenging tasks. So I you know, I think you have to approve, you have to have trust and then you have to show them why it's going to make them able to do more work and not taking work out of their plate.

Andrew Silver:

And once you have that and you can use it like it is so powerful what do you feel like has been one of the best examples where these new tools, the drills that you've now employed with your team relative to the screwdriver, has actually, like, made an impact, like? Are there examples in your?

Hannah Testani:

mind of like. We completely changed this because of it prompt that is repeatable in nature, then it's easy to be able to take that partner, that or integrate it with GitHub and integrate it with the actual code to be able to really create products so much quicker and the engineers can now work on more exciting work a lot faster. And people like to be challenged and if you give them a tool where they can be better and they can win more, they're happy. On more of the operations side, like our most entry-level position, we used to get a lot of carriers emailing us saying like when am I going to get paid? Or like why is Invoice's stack? And it was a very highly repetitive job and you know we automated it because we were able to create this product called Polly Polly because Dr Brian Pollack, so the name is after him, polly and a carrier sends an email in.

Hannah Testani:

You know emails are very unstructured in nature. It's not going to be consistent each time and you can't force thousands of carriers to email you in a structured way. But that's where you know large language models actually do really well, so they can take unstructured emails with. You know unstructured formats and respond back to carriers within 60 seconds with what they want to hear, which means all of those people that used to do that can now go up level and they're now answering more complicated work. So it's it's been a win-win. Carriers get answers quickly and those people who you know are great people and great assets to our company and are now being able to be challenged more, and we're investing in them more so that they can, you know, be great at ia but also being great outside of ia if they decide that they want to go somewhere else. They've been trained to do more than entry-level positions, so it's a massive win-win.

Andrew Silver:

I love that. New opportunities, like big new opportunities that you see for Intelligent Audit as a result of some of this change, or just in general, like as you think about the years ahead, like where are you taking the business in terms of growing it or building it beyond what it's doing today?

Hannah Testani:

Yeah, I mean it's great time for the questioning because we just had our team here and it's a lot of asking the question of looking at all of our processes and not being scared to break and change what's working well, to think about the future. Um, so, you know, there's a lot of processes that we do today that we know could be done better. You know, and the question that I asked our team is could anyone off the street who understands logistics get this done very quickly? And if not, what are the hurdles and what has to be true if that was the case? So if you were to put, you know, your five problems down and I was to come back to you and say those were solved by the end of this year, what does that mean? We did, and first, that empowers them to really think creatively to solve a solution. But it also empowers us to really think about what's next.

Hannah Testani:

So where the business is today is different where it was five years ago. I mean we were very lucky that we transformed before COVID or we would not have a business. And I think the same about the future. You know, right now we do a lot for our customers. You know, we load the rates, we audit the data, we configure new carriers, which is fine. But what if we made it easier for carriers to do that themselves, or for our customers to do that themselves, because I think the future in our industry is more self-serve. Our people will always be here, but I think shippers want to do more by themselves, and I equate that to like banking. You know, I used to have to go down to a JP Morgan branch to do just about everything and now I can do so much more on my phone and I'm empowered to do that, and I don't want to have to call my banker to be like hey, can you move the funds here so I can invest here? I want to do it all by myself and that does the need. I don't need the bank, but it means that I am just empowered to be so much more nimble where I actually need and I rely on that tool so much more. So, from our perspective, I think the future is going to be a lot more self-serve.

Hannah Testani:

I think that you know now, if it's, you know, 70% us doing work for our customers, I think they get down to 15% where you know they want to be able to buy a tool, have all their carriers send their invoicing in, and it's really easy to create cost allocation rules, to get the analytics to become smarter, to configure all of the complexity of audit rules, and that's where we're doubling down. And it's a lot of having to teach people of yeah, it works great today. Yeah, we have great margins today works great today. Yeah, we have great margins today. But just because we're doing great today in this environment doesn't mean that we're going to have a chance of winning in the future. Like, we need to think about what that future is going to be and then say how are we also winning then? And yeah, we'll look a lot different, but you've got to innovate. But you've got to innovate. Is there any?

Andrew Silver:

fear or risk, that I 100% align with what you just said and appreciate it and I think it makes a ton of sense. But I'm curious if there's any fear or risk of margin erosion or the ability, or you lose the ability to charge maybe as much as you do because you're giving them tools to do a lot more themselves. So like what used to be a very kind of um exhaustive process of configuring carriers that you had to do for them. Now, okay, you've created a very innovative tool that allows you to take some of your work out of it and them to do it a little easier themselves and then does. That is the risk. Like they say, like okay, well, I shouldn't have to pay you so much if, if I can you know, because do you get what I'm talking about?

Hannah Testani:

and it's yeah, I I would assume that our pricing goes down. I mean, we'll always have a high margin because we'll always be able to show our wine value, and as long as we can do that, then I do expect that our costs would go down. I mean, they're not to like go down in half, but if we don't need to have as many people, why not reduce them? And that would just make us more competitive. And we're really lucky as an organization.

Hannah Testani:

If you look at almost all of our competitors, they're all owned by private equity firms and their their focus is how do I reduce cost and increase EBITDA, which is reduced investment in the technology, so we don't have outside investors that control us. So we're still family owned. We still have complete control, which means we can build for the future and we can make big risks now and we're not up against people who are trying to cut costs. We will lose margin in the short term hiring data scientists and doing what needs to happen, because we are confident that in the long run, this will be the more viable business option and we'll always have both. I'm sure that there will be some people who just need the people. They don't want to insource it, but we want to be able to accommodate both.

Andrew Silver:

Well said. So as we start to wrap up here, um, I want to kind of understand how you think about the future and you know what in your mind is. What does intelligent audit look like in five years?

Hannah Testani:

Different than what it looks like today, for sure, you know, I don't know. I don't know what it looks like. I know what I'm hoping, I know what the technology looks like directionally, but I really think that AI is going to be pretty transformative in terms of what we're doing as an organization. That being said, I mean we'll, I'm sure, still be a Freighton Analytics company. We're going to exist to be able to help our customers take mass amounts of data, reduce the complexity and help them be able to operate efficiently and be smarter about it. And, you know, hopefully, we have a great team the people who want to show up. Every day, they're being challenged, they're forced to innovate, they're, you know, overcoming tough challenges. I want our most junior people to become our best leaders and I want to make sure that we're giving them the platform to do that. And, like you know, there's a roller coaster, so there will be ups, there will be downs, but I'm here for it and that's life.

Andrew Silver:

How about for you personally, Five years from now? What will be different? How will you evolve or change as a person?

Hannah Testani:

It's a great question. I got young kids, so they're nine, seven and five, so I think I'll still be in New York and I am really lucky that I have a team now where you know, when I first started doing this, I was on the road every day, different place every day, when COVID hit and I had to be at home and at that point I had a three-year-old and a one-year-old. I remember my son saying to me why are you home? And because I was home like the third day in a row and I was like, hey, kid, like I live here, this is my house, and he just wasn't used to seeing me.

Hannah Testani:

So you know, it's all about balance. I, you know I want to be doing more um with them, but I but I'm very lucky now I love to play tennis. Um, I don't have the bald head issue, so that's good, but I also don't have the issue. People care to see my footages, my footage. So maybe people will be trying to get my footage in a few years, but I don't know. I'm here for it. Whatever it is, hopefully I'm being challenged, hopefully I'm having fun, hopefully the business is growing and doing well, but whatever it is, it'll be fun.

Andrew Silver:

Well, listen as we come up on time here. I just want to thank you. This has been a really exceptional interview. I think you know I've known you for an hour and 15 minutes, but I've really enjoyed our conversation and I think our audience will too. It's funny because I, like, came into this with the intent of diving deep into freight audit and pay, because it's just not something I've spent a ton of time on and my audience hasn't heard a ton about it, and this was more like a masterclass on business. I really think it was, and so I just want to say thank you. I'm sure my audience will appreciate it and, I guess, any parting thoughts for our audience before we wrap it up.

Hannah Testani:

It's been an honor watching you and your career. I mentioned this before we went on camera, but the industry that we are in you know you're very highly respected. You've done so much. So many investors have always kind of proven you as the one that everyone wants to emulate. So I know that there might not be the best situation now, but you've done exceptionally well and I think everyone is excited to see what's next for you. So thank you for inviting me on. It's been an honor, it's been a great time and I can't wait to talk to you next.

Andrew Silver:

Thank you, I appreciate that very much.

Hannah Testani:

And we'll see how much hair you have then Hopefully none To our audience.

Andrew Silver:

We'll see you next week, Thank you. Hopefully none. We'll see you next week. Thank you you.

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