Ep. #78: Hans Stig Moller, CEO Odyssey Logistics

What if your sales motion created real partnerships instead of fragile price wins? That’s the thread we pull with Hans, CEO of Odyssey Logistics, as he maps a journey from Danish directness and early Maersk rotations to leading a global multimodal platform through a roll-up-to-one-brand transformation. The conversation is practical, candid, and loaded with moves you can copy tomorrow—whether you’re running a desk or running a P&L.

We start with the foundation: a value proposition built on facts, not slogans. Hans explains how probing, silence, and quarterly KPI reviews expose true customer pain, unlock share of wallet, and make relationships stick at multiple levels, including the C-suite. He shares why he spends heavy time in the field, what onsite town halls surface that email never will, and how a consistent cadence—global Q&A, divisional sessions, defined values—turns culture from posters into behavior.

Then we dig into Odyssey’s shift from 16+ legacy brands to One Odyssey. Hans breaks down the integration playbook: centralizing shared services, standardizing procurement, and rebranding fast without crushing entrepreneurial spirit. He’s frank about PE carve-outs, IT risk, and why overcommunication beats overpromising during ownership changes. On growth, we get specific: three levers—share of wallet, new logos, and cross-sell—powered by a cross-trained sales force and subject matter experts. Multimodal strategy is the differentiator, with intermodal often beating truckload on cost and CO2 when planned well.

Technology underpins the whole plan. A data lake fuels route optimization, predictive analytics, and automated bidding, while better systems lift both customer outcomes and employee satisfaction. Odyssey’s rebranded brokerage in Atlanta becomes the easy entry point—truckload and LTL open the door to deeper multimodal solutions. Hans closes with career advice that never expires: choose training over titles, learn every job, stay humble, and remember the team is smarter than any one of us.

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Transcript

Sponsor: Stute AI For A/R

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Before we get started today, I want to give a quick shout out to our headline sponsor, Stute Technologies. Every week on this show, I talk to operators who are crushing it on the service side but still chasing down payments. That cash flow gap is brutal when you're trying to scale your business. That's why I wanted to tell you about Stute. Stut is the AI platform that does accounts receivable work instead of just assisting with it. Their CEO, Tarek, actually came from TQL, so he gets how logistics companies operate. I've known him for years and I truly trust what he's building. What Stute does is simple. Their AI actually collects your receivables for you, not some software that just helps you chase the payments. It literally does the work. It's up and running in days, not months. As an example, Bishop Lifting is using Stut for a 35% reduction in overdue invoices, millions more in working capital, and a reduction of manual work by 50%. If you're tired of your AR eating up time and cash, check out Stute.ai. That's S T-U-U-T.ai. Tell them you heard about it on the Freight Pod. They'll get you collecting in days, not months, so you can focus on actually running your business. And let's get this episode started. Mr. Hans, Mr. Steve Moeller. Did I say that right? Thank you. I got some help. CEO of Odyssey Logistics, um, one of the largest and most interesting, I think, uh freight companies in our industry. And I'm excited to kind of dive into both your personal journey um and that of the business you run today. Um so want to first just welcome you to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Thank you very much, and thanks for uh asking me to join you.

Danish Roots And Direct Leadership

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Yeah, I'm excited. So let's get started and just jump right in. How did you get into the freight industry?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

So, you know, I was born and raised in Denmark and the largest um logistics company in Denmark, and at uh for many years, uh especially in the container side, was Marsk. And everybody admired uh that company, especially growing up in a small country of six million people, kind of aspired that that would be an exciting industry to get into. And when I graduated college, uh that was one of the opportunities that I uh looked at, and I actually started as a trainee slash gopher in the uh Los Angeles office um at the first first uh job uh out of school.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

When did you come to the States for the first time for that job, or did you go to school in the States?

SPEAKER_00 2:51

I moved to uh the United States in 1980 uh with my family and uh went to high school uh and then college on the West Coast.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Is your your last name's Molar? Is that is there any connection to the brand?

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Uh no uh no connection. It's the the the right last name but the wrong family. Uh we're actually uh uh Stigmoller. Uh the other Muller families, really, and McKinney Moller uh is is but you don't really use hyphens in in Denmark. So uh but molar is a very common name in uh in Denmark.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Well, did that help at all when you worked there, or people just thought they should help you more or just gave you a little more respect.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

There's a lot of molars that work for Mersk as well. Uh like I said, it's a very common name. So no, it it it didn't really change anything versus it was helpful that I spoke Danish because uh working with the uh the the headquarters out of Copenhagen and and dealing with a lot of the uh the executives and and various um business leaders there, it was always helpful to be able to converse in in uh in the language and also understand part of the culture possibly better than than uh than others.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

What would you say is different about the kind of Danish work culture versus what you see here in the States?

SPEAKER_00 4:09

I think the Danish war culture is is more direct, and uh people will tell you what they think, and they're not gonna there's not a runabout way to to describe uh the issue. And it's a very direct matter of fact, and some people have have a challenge dealing with that, others uh are fine with it. And growing up there, that that's just partly how the communication is done.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

So, like when you think about kind of your your leadership style today, like what from your Danish roots do you think you've kind of brought to kind of how you carry yourself, how you lead the business?

SPEAKER_00 4:47

I've always been very direct. You know, my uh my direct reports uh don't necessarily need to think what what what it is I'm thinking, or or am I sharing everything that that's on my mind, etc. I'm very transparent. And and sometimes uh some of them are like, wow, a little more information that I wanted to hear or know, but um they don't have to worry about that that uh there's there's anything being uh being left out. But I think that transparency is is important and is powerful, and and ensuring alignment at all times is is critically important to uh ensure that that you really uh get the results that you're you're looking for.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

I'm a big believer in transparency and directness I I agree. And uh you know, I'm curious if if you've ever seen kind of the other side of that coin where there it's caused you trouble or or you you've had issues as a result of being direct or or or too transparent.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

We'll have an issue uh dealing with the uh with the facts. And I think the at the end of the day, as long as you you deal with business facts and it's not hearsay, and and you have facts behind what it is you're you're saying, then then it's fine to be direct. If if you if if you don't have facts, then it's much more difficult uh because then you can shoot holes in in a lot of the uh the the the communication that that you have. But you you need to make sure that you have your ducks in order and that you're talking about specific issues. And and uh, you know, I'm a big proponent of of um of action plans and really working through what are the issues? What is it we need to do? Who's the owner and what's a due date?

Career Arc: From Mersk To XPO

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Yeah, I appreciate that. So I want to give the listeners some context on your overarching story, and then and then you know, we'll kind of go through bits and pieces that I think are most interesting. Um can you just kind of walk through your whole career arc from that first job in LA, what you were doing, to you know, even now today? And and then I will go through and pick specific spots to go deeper on, but I just want to give everyone kind of a bigger overview of your career.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

So uh I started in Los Angeles um as a gopher trainee uh for a little less than a year at every job in the office, including working at the container terminal, the CFS, the trucking company. So I was very fortunate to get a very broad view of the business. And I worked in every single department and almost every desk in the uh in the office as well. One of the things that I learned early on from that, and I still reflect on it today, is that every every job's important, and there's a reason for every role. If not, they they wouldn't be here. And I also got an appreciation for every every function in the in the organization and the challenges that each function uh uh is is confronted with. Uh so that was the first part. Then I went into sales, and my first role was uh um really to cover the the uh airport area. I had a lot of uh a lot of freight forwarders, and at the time uh Mersk was entering into the transatlantic trade lane and had not given the freight forwarders a lot of attention because um and the Pacific Trade were really just dealing with the BCOs. And I got thrown out of more offices than I care to admit because we hadn't been in to see them for a long time, and they didn't really care for the brand. Um, but I just continued to be persistent and eventually won over one by one, and and we started really to uh to get some traction with a lot of the forwarders who tend to be located in the in the airport area. From there I took over a territory actually of the San Joaquin Valley, which was from Bakersfield to Fresno, all the farmers, drastically different. I spent a week generally a month up there, drove a thousand miles visiting the farmers, etc. Fantastic experience, great people. Um so up there we we exported predominantly a lot of the fruits, uh nuts, and the the cotton was the uh the three big commodities out of the uh out of the San Joaquin Valley, obviously. Then I moved to uh to New Jersey, and uh initially uh I was in corporate sales for a little over a year. So I was an intermediary between the U.S. organization and the headquarters in Copenhagen, facilitating um sales and pricing issues. Then I um moved on to a pricing role where I handled uh pricing and policy, um specifically on the refrigerated side, based on my experience in the San Joaquin Rally, dealing with a lot of the uh refrigerated customers. Uh then from there I moved to Memphis, Tennessee. I ran a small district office covering uh state of Arkansas, uh third of Tennessee, two-thirds of Mississippi. There was a um small customer at the time called Walmart in Bentonville that that uh did a lot of business with Sealand and not with Mersk and Mersk and Sealand shared vessels. Um, but they were very pleased with the Sealand service, which they were able to take advantage of obviously also on the Mersk vessels. But it took me about a year and a half to break into uh Walmart, and I got my initial 15 minutes of fame talking about a port called Yantian, which was opening up and uh which they had not heard of, and and um the discussions continued from there. We had some South America opportunities and kind of took off. It was a team effort between me and uh um a group in in Asia as well, as soon as we we got the floodgates open, and uh the business grew quite significantly uh with uh Walmart became a great uh partner of Mersk. From there, I moved to Seattle, was in Seattle for two years. I handled the Pacific Northwest region, which dealt with really Alaska, Washington, um Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. So it's unique part of the U.S., um a lot, again, on the refrigerated side with the fish, et cetera, but also apples, a lot of the refrigerated uh commodities. But it's my first role from uh Memphis as a district manager to to Seattle being more of a regional manager. This was before everything was centralized, so we still had um customer service and documentation and booking and all the functions locally in the uh in the office. So it was the the old school version of how you ran a region and an office, really. Great experience, great people. Um there we had a customer in uh Beaverton, Oregon called Nike that we didn't do any business with. And uh I found it hard to believe that the largest shipping line in the world didn't do business with the largest footwear company in the world, and it took me almost a year and a half to break into uh into Nike. And we uh we finally uh finally did before I moved to uh Panama. Um so I moved to Panama, uh Republic of Panama. I was down there for seven and a half years after Seattle, and um amazing experience, uh amazing people, amazing team. Uh when I got there, we were a mid-sized carrier. Uh at the um end of 99, we bought sea land and doubled in size quickly. And within a very short order, we were the largest customer of the canal, the ports, and the railroad. So we were a big fish in a uh in a small pond that that obviously came with certain challenges, but uh really uh I have to say that that fantastic experience and the growth we experienced and the the succession planning and the development of the local team down there uh was phenomenal. One one person in particular I hired from Sealand uh in sales, Antonio Dominguez, who now is president of Mersk Latin America. And um very proud to have seen his growth and development, and he's doing a phenomenal job down there for the uh for the organization and a great testament of locals moving up in organizations with the right willingness to learn and and and also development. Uh and and just couldn't be more proud of uh of his accomplishments, what he has done down there. Um leaving Panama, we moved the regional office into Panama, and uh it was time for me to move on after especially especially seven and a half years. Unusual to stay that long. I stayed longer because of just the the growth was explosive. Um moved to LA initially and took over a uh warehouse and distribution company. We did transloading crosstalk and also had uh um about 14 facilities total, um pick and pack as well, and in a number of large uh warehouse facilities throughout the United States. Then I moved on to Jersey and lived there for two years and did the same job, then on to um to Charlotte in um 2008 to uh and I took over the uh drayage division of MERS called uh Bridge Terminal Transport, and I ran that for about seven and a half years. Uh the last two and a half years. Um the first two of that, it was uh it was sold to private equity, to platinum equity. Uh we were spun off uh and um they had a quite successful uh exit uh with a very short ownership and a bidding ward to XPO. Uh I handed that over to uh XPO Intramodal, and then I I spent uh the next about four years with XPO uh working on a number of uh roles. Uh basically it was it was um uh sales operations, but it was quite broad, uh especially the opportunities that XPO provided. Uh I was involved in the acquisition of Conway. Uh we were I was involved in setting the sales strategy for XPO globally. Uh we worked closely with uh with an outside consultant to uh to put that together. So great experience. I learned an awful lot at XPO, it was a phenomenal experience. Um and then I moved on to work for uh Sun Capital as a um senior advisor for two of their portfolio companies, uh, and then landed at uh Odyssey Logistics about three years ago.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

What a fascinating career journey. I mean, there there were that's like so cool how many different places you got to go and different roles you got to participate in. I guess I have so many questions. First, first question is like, did you ever think you would leave Mersk?

SPEAKER_00 15:20

No, I did not. Uh and you know, it's a phenomenal place to work, uh, great people. And I think when when I think back at most of the the roles I've had in the past, what do I miss the most is the people. And and uh, you know, it's a great organization, great values, uh, very well, very well run. I I definitely felt uh very much at home there. Um, but with the spin-off leading the the ray's company, when that was spun off to private equity, um and and the role I had at the time, I I had to go with the organization, and that's what uh what really caused it.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

So it's it it's what's it's really interesting to me is my career moving freight strictly as a broker, I started with produce. At one point I hauled for Nike, another point I was Walmart's contact. So, like hitting on three of the the core kind of customer bases you mentioned, and they're all very unique types of customers. What I'm curious about is in your time at Mersk, what what was the most unique type of freight that you you were or the most unique role you were engaged in in terms of the challenges that come with it? And elaborate a little bit on and what that looked like.

Panama: Operating And Influencing Policy

SPEAKER_00 16:38

I think the the uh most unique was probably in Panama. When when you uh I think you come across a lot of executives, but few who have international experience, that that really brings a whole new dimension of uh of just how you operate. Um you have your core values of the company you represent and what you should do and how you should do it. And then you have parameters within the country you're in and and uh how things work there. And um, you know, we we were unique in in Panama because we had our own offices there. Uh we were not represented like in the at least at that time, that has changed since then for some of the uh carriers. Um most of the carriers at the time had agencies down there, agencies representing them. So we had a vested interest because we had our own people there. I was I was the leader representing the uh the the shipping company's interest. So we we really were watching out for number one, which was which was Marsk. Um the agents um they were watching out for who they who they represented, but had multiple interests really that they had to watch out for. So so a little different, and I I appreciate that. So there were definitely challenges that came up with the uh with working down there that I had to go to bat and and uh and deal with. Um these are sensitive issues, and and and uh you you have to make sure that uh you got your facts in order and that you're going in fighting for the for the right right things. And uh there were a number of things that came up where I actually met with the vice president and minister of commerce and expressed our concerns over some of the things that were taking place. And um I give them a lot of credit that they listened, uh, and we we managed to get a mutual understanding of of uh what the right path forward was and what we should do. So uh, but somebody had to take the initiative to go meet with them, explain to them what what some of the things that they were they were looking at doing or considering doing, what the effects were. And and uh one of the things I I explained was that um you know airlines have flying flying assets, they can fly them in a lot of directions, they don't have to come to any particular location. Shipping lines, we have floating assets. They could sail in a lot of directions too. And uh once you kind of outlined a little more as to what the picture looks like, then uh they they quickly realize that okay, we need to look at this maybe a little differently, and and uh there's a there's a better solution to uh the what we're trying to solve here.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

I'm curious about selling this type of service in general. And and the context that I'll add is I'm a freight broker at heart, right? And selling freight brokerage, you're selling against 30,000 competitors. It's very different in in your world than when you were at Mersk, in that like there's way fewer competitors, you know, asset based. And what is that experience like? You know, talking about you know, in the Walmart example, and you can talk about other examples too, but like it's like you versus C Land, and like I I'm just curious what it's like to sell in that environment. What's different than you know, now you're in more of a brokerage type capacity or multimodal. But um just curious about that in general, if you could talk a little bit about it.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

I think at the end of the day, all these businesses, they're people businesses. And and we should never forget that. Relationships matter, but you still need to have a value proposition. You need to set to be able to convince the the customer why you versus somebody else. But the the relationship is is an important part of it. But what's your real value prop? And are you truly outlining what that is? Uh many times people sell price, and price is great, but that's transactional. That's not sticky business, that's not partnership. One thing that that I've implemented throughout my career is uh I'm a firm believer in whether it's quarterly or or semi-annual reviews with with especially larger customers to, and it doesn't have to be a three-hour meeting, it could be an hour meeting, but but how do we agree on a set of KPIs that are really what are the critical things that really matter? And also where we talk about what's going well, what's not going well, and how do we what are we doing to fix these things? And how do we also grow the partnership? I think that that's really how you want to look at this. And I don't care if you're selling truck brokerage, maybe it doesn't apply quite as much, but it probably would to your larger customers than it would be to the more transactional side. Uh but you've got to the the the business is evolving. And if you think the transactional business is really where where the future lies, um, that's not that's not the way I would uh I would look at it, at least.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

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Sponsor: Genlogs Market Intelligence

Sales Philosophy And KPIs

SPEAKER_00 23:29

I can tell you that the way I look at it is everybody's in sales. And and in an organization, there's nobody who is not. Everybody deals with customers. I don't, it doesn't really matter what your role is in the organization, you're dealing with customers and you were in sales. One of the things we're encouraging at Odyssey is that for even customer service, to ask our customers, what else can we do for you? Ask for more. And and uh they know the customers, they have their relationships. How can we do more things for you? Uh what are your pain points? What do you need help? And and I think you really got to dig in to look at how do you partner with a customer and not make it transactional? So I think it really starts with understanding your customer. I think a lot of people out there, if they really drill down and say, Do I really understand the customer? Do I really know my customer's business? More often than not, I think you'll find is they kind of do, but they really don't. One question you might ask is, what's their spend? How much do they spend on trucking, uh, LTL or uh full truckload? What do they spend on ocean? What do they spend on warehousing? You can go down the list of the services. Do you even know that? And until you know that, you really don't know your customer. And a lot of times what I hear is that, oh, we don't know that if they're privately held and we can't get that information. Well, there's a way to ask enough questions where you can get directionally uh learn what what those numbers are and be a lot smarter about the customer's business. And the internet today, it's amazing. There's there's an awful lot of information available today that that I don't buy that you can't get that. So understanding the share wallet, uh, the overall spend and what your share wallet is is a critical piece of the sales process to really hone in on do I have 10% of the customer's business? Do I have 50%? Do I have 100%? Do we really know and understand that? And and what is the customer looking for, not what I'm looking for. I think the biggest challenge that that salespeople have is that they they're good at at talking, they're not as good at listening. And and uh the key is to probe and then uh be quiet. Listen to the customer, see what the customer is willing to tell you. And if they're tough getting things out of, just keep probing and probing and asking more and more questions, and and eventually you will you will get the picture. It might not be in the first meeting, it might be multiple meetings, might be different people, but you know, you really need to understand the the overall picture of what is the customer looking for, then you can do a lot better job of putting together the right value prop that you might be able to offer.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

What an exceptionally wise answer. Um so much goal than that. I mean, I think as someone who spent his career in sales, it's like a lot of salespeople, they go into a they approach a situation or or an opportunity with their goal in mind, right? They want to land the customer, they want to grow the business, whatever. And it's very, it's me centric, it's I-centric, it's it's it's about what my team can get. But if you can develop a perspective shift to understand that if you can go in thinking about what is it that they want, and if I can deliver that for them, it will ultimately result in me getting what I want in most cases. Um, and and I think that's powerful to focus on the idea that you can't get to that, you can't know what they want or need unless you do that probing, unless you ask those questions sometimes repeatedly, until you get what you what you you need to understand how to deliver a solution or create a solution. So I think that's a really great answer.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

And I'd add to it is does the customer even know what you have to offer? Do they really understand what the organization that you represent, what would you have to bring to the table, or do they only know that, okay, we offer an emoto? That's really what we offer. Well, we offer 10 of us, 10 other modes of services as well. They just don't even know about it. Or are you able to ensure that your customers really know the scope that you're able to bring to the table? And you know, some organizations have have a broader scope than others, but there's probably more that they could do for that customer if the customer knew that they also offered those services.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

And and I think that's such a critical point where where you understand that this is where sales is an art form, because it's not going in and just dumping all that information onto the customer, like, here are all the things we do, and just like unloading it, right? You need them to understand what you can do, but not in a way where you just dump it on them where it's irrelevant or it's too much, and you know, it's you don't want to go and just do all the talking. So it's it's it's a it's a dance of of asking questions to gauge enough info to know when it's time to jump in and say, like, hey, these are actually the things that I can do for you that that that align with what your needs are, but it's a dance because you you don't want to do too much of like asking a hundred questions to the point where you're not giving anything. And the the the other side of it is you just what a lot of people do is they just go in and they just word vomit all of the things that they've memorized, you know, uh, about the services they can offer. It's it's the conversational back and forth where you're you're giving and taking um in the right way.

Senior-Level Relationships That Stick

SPEAKER_00 29:03

No, that's that's that's really what it comes down to. But I no that there's what I hear often is oh, the business is down, we have this, that, the other. There's plenty of business out there. And and uh, you know, somebody's getting it, why not uh why not us? So the the key is to to uh uh to understand the customer. And the other thing that I found um to elaborate a little further on your question is do you have the right relationships at the right level? Um one of the areas that that many struggle with is that it's important to have relationships at all levels and and not just at the top or or necessarily further down than organization, but it's also important to have it at senior levels to really have stickiness. But with that, you need support of leaders within your organization to come in and help you develop those relationships at senior levels because that takes these relationships to a whole different uh to a whole different level and a whole different discussion, a much more strategic discussion versus a transactional discussion. Um and that's easier said than done because some companies are are more so open to uh to that than others, but that's about networking and and finding ways to get into the highest level as possible within your customer to create a much much uh uh more senior relationship uh between the two companies, and then others on the team can also work at the appropriate levels to uh ensure that the partnership evolves.

SPEAKER_01 30:34

Yeah, so another great point that takes me into kind of a side side part of this is like I agree wholeheartedly, and I think that and and this is just dating back to my own sales career. Like, first of all, people don't love to be uncomfortable. Most people don't. Uh if you can get to a point where you can love living in the discomfort, you're in you're ahead of the world by a lot. But I say that to say that you know, you do all this work, you you navigate all this discomfort to develop a relationship with one person who can give you loads or give you a business. And then you're finally in a place of comfort. And and so it's like it's not often that people will push, like you're saying, to go into discomfort again and reach out to someone else and reach out to someone else. And and in some cases, you don't have to be fully discomfort, like it's not like you have to fully cold call all these people. Ideally, if you've gotten in with one person and you've done a great job, they can help start relationships with other people, but it goes up and down. I mean, I think one of the things that I learned that was super valuable when I first started selling was, you know, first of all, you know, the transportation manager often didn't want to talk to me. And so I'd start lower. I would just call a facility, the same people who, you know, the dock workers or whoever's answering the phone at the facility, and they're maybe just they're maybe their primary function might be just to schedule the trucks that come in and out. But you could call that person and probe them for information and ask them, like, what's it like in your role dealing with transportation providers? And they might be like, yeah, all these dang brokers that we're using don't show up on time. We they all all the morning appointments always get missed. That's a piece of gold right there. That if you then finally get on the phone with the transportation manager and like, listen, I understand that you guys struggle with your morning appointments with brokers, and that's pissing off your doc workers. I can help you there. I can put a priority on that. And so it goes both ways. And you know, there's so much information to learn, and you use that information to then, you know, develop the next relationship and maybe it gets you business. But the the the worst case on the other side of this is if you don't and you have one contact, and that contact retires, or that contact gets laid off, or they decide just to leave. And and you know, maybe they leave and that creates a new opportunity for you at their next company. Maybe they leave the industry altogether. But the worst case is they leave and you're left with nobody that you know, and all of a sudden you're just a number on a piece of paper of this person does X number of loads with us. Maybe their KPIs are good, maybe they're not. But if you don't have a relationship, whoever comes in next and they want to make decisions, I mean, you're you're in a lot of trouble there potentially. Um, so I appreciate you bringing up that that concept because it got me thinking about a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

I think it's it's it's critical, but but to your point, you should never underestimate um who and a customer could could be helpful and could be influential. So you can't just think, oh, I'm just gonna cover the top leaders. No, it doesn't work that way. You you need to cover top to bottom. And and as I mentioned, the biggest challenge that a lot of salespeople have is how do you get to those higher levels? Well, you can have your superiors help you get into higher levels. And it's it's all about networking. At the end of the day, when we look across, it it's it's a small industry when it comes down to it. You know, that there I've heard many people say that the the best salesperson, and I'm not sure it's always true, is a CEO, but CEO should be actively involved in sales, should be out there seeing customers. I I will be the first to tell you that the more time I spend in my office looking at my computer screen, the more concern I get about what's going on in the real world. You know, it's out in the field where the rubber meets the road, and and really I spend a fair amount of time on the road. And when I do, I spend time with our teams out there, uh, with our partners, and and also with uh with our customers. And that's how I really get a pulse of uh what's going on in in the real world.

Field Leadership: Town Halls And Site Visits

SPEAKER_01 34:25

Yeah, you know, that was something I saw in kind of the bio your team sent me, that you you you're you try to be very hands-on and you'll visit your teams, whether it's in Hawaii, Alaska, wherever, aside from just trying to get some extra personal vacation time in beautiful places. Uh what what it what it what about your kind of leadership style? Like, why do you focus so much on that kind of hands-on going out to the teams and being a few years?

SPEAKER_00 34:51

You should mention that because uh my last trip to uh to Hawaii, I left the house at 5 30. My wife happened to be up and she said, enjoy your vacation. And um I landed out in Hawaii at I think it was at actually uh five, close to five o'clock local time, which is eleven o'clock our time. The first night we had a dinner at 7.30, uh, which was uh 11.30 uh our time. And I got back at 9.30, which was 3.30 in the morning, and I did that for four nights straight, and then I took a red eye back. And my wife asked me when I can't, uh my guy, how was you vacation? And uh, here are the kids, and I'm leaving. And uh so some of these trips they they might sound glamorous, and and the glamour really is spending time with the team and and seeing our our key partners and and and our customers. But but uh there's parts of it that's not quite as glamorous, uh, but it's amazing how some people make them very glamorous. I'm not sure it's all uh all there.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

Uh what do you feel like you learn out in the field that you just can't learn sitting at your desk?

SPEAKER_00 35:55

One of the things I do is especially with the teams, uh I'll have a mini town hall at every location, and uh I'll give a brief update um on the the the uh the the company and the organization. I will have uh talked to the local leadership first and said, is there any certain things, hot topics that the team wants me to cover that's important that we cover that they have an interest in, and we'll cover those as well. Then I'll open up for questions. And um the more I do it, the more questions I get. And I'm encouraged by questions because it shows that they're comfortable asking uh and and and they're curious, they they want to know more. So that interaction many times is is extremely valuable. Also the questions they ask me, and to see what what concerns do they have. And not having been there, I would never have learned that. But even to seeing the facilities, seeing what we do, getting a real feel for what are we doing, what are some of the challenges we have locally, um, how might how might I be able to help address some of those those issues? Sometimes they're they're simple, sometimes they're there are bigger issues, they could be larger capital investments that we want to make that's been postponed for whatever reason. That, okay, now I understand what it is we want to do. Yeah, it makes sense, yes, we should do it. Uh seeing it's a little different than getting on a Teams call, et cetera, you you don't really get the same uh same effect. Um but even meeting with our customers and partners. You know, when you sit in front of a customer, you really learn what a customer is looking for, and and you also have an opportunity to thank the customer for their partnership. Uh, I think it's it's critically important. And and uh many of our customers are are very appreciative when we uh we when we sit in front of them and learn more about them and also talk about what we're doing and what we're doing that's important for them, our investments in in IT, for example. What are we doing? What do we see? AI taking us, etc. Um, and our partners, how do we become a better partner? Are we a uh are we a good partner for them? For example, in Hawaii, we use two different shipping lines to Hawaii. Um uh and also patia. Are we a good partner? So things that we're doing that um is is is making life difficult for them or or not. And uh sometimes there's small things uh that can easily be addressed, sometimes there's nothing. But at least we want to make sure we ask those questions, and and uh that hopefully differentiates us from our others that that uh we truly want to be a partner, and a partner is not a one-way one-way street.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

Yeah, you know, I I think before you mentioned the comment that CEOs are, and you said I don't know if you nest you said you don't know if you agree with this, but that CEOs are intended to be the best salesperson. And and I've heard that before.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

I think they're an important part of it.

Sponsor: Cloneops AI Agents

SPEAKER_01 38:48

So I want to counter and because I I I've heard that my father has said that, and there are parts of me that have believed that, but I think the more important distinction is that the CEO is the best representation of what the business stands for and what the business cares about, like how the CEO spends their time is certainly indicative of what's most important to the business. And and if you think about it more from the perspective of the customer, when the CEO shows up in Hawaii flying from Charlotte and to sit down and ask, like, how are we doing? What does that tell the customer? What does that tell the customer about what the brand cares about, what the business cares about, that the most important person in the organization is willing to fly 3,000 miles to go sit with them and ask them how the team is doing for them. That was something that I I like felt was super important for me. And hearing you and just ever all the wisdom I've gotten from you in just 37 minutes, it's like this is reinforcing that belief that this is such a valuable use of a CEO's time is getting out into the field, whether it's in front of the team, asking, giving. them the opportunity to ask whatever questions and doing so openly where there's no uh there's no penalty or or or you know guardrails on what you can ask uh and then out in front of the customers so I I just really appreciate that insight and I think my my my list my audience will will also kind of take a lot of uh value from that.

Carve-Out To PE: What Works

SPEAKER_00 40:19

We have big operations in the Midwest as well so I spent a lot of time in the Midwest uh also uh seeing uh customers up there and we have quite a few facilities so I'm able to combine uh a number of things while uh while up there so uh absolutely no but it it's um I think it's important and and the if if you don't uh you you'll be too disconnected from from the business and and at the end of the day without customers um what do you have nothing you know they same there's there's a saying that that people are the most important asset I I would I would modify it slightly I'd say the right people are your most important asset uh at least for the organization and and uh on top of that you the the right customers are also the right customers who understand uh what partnerships all about and the right partner vendors too critical to to your success and I think you it's it's a mixture of those that you need to invest time in to ensure that how do you make that work cohesively to um to to create your success 100% 100% hold up wait a minute let's give a quick shout out to our sponsor cloneops.ai logistics moves fast there are calls to make updates to send documents to track your customers are always waiting cloneops.ai helps teams stay ahead with a platform that can be white labeled and a marketplace of AI agents built for real logistics operations inside the cloneops marketplace you'll find agents for tracking documents after hour support finance workflow fraud prevention and more these agents plug into your workflows and existing systems to handle the repetitive tasks whether it's making calls sending emails replying to texts gathering info or writing updates your team stays in control with real-time visibility into every interaction and because the AI is always turned on operations keeps moving even when your team can't a standout is carrier screening plus voice ID which ties a voice to a DOT number and alerts your team when that same voice appears across different or multiple DOT numbers helping catch fraudsters before they cause damage.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

No one else has this and for companies building a long-term AI strategy cloneops.ai gives you the ability to white label build own and control every AI use case across your business and this team is run by David Bell founder and leader who I've known for years a good friend of mine and someone who frankly anything he touches in this industry turns to gold. I trust him with what he's building here. If you're ready for automation that supports your people visit cloneops.ai now let's get back to the show. So I want to just take a two minutes on on one topic and then we're gonna go all in on Odyssey and talk about what you're doing there. You were actively running uh bridge transport when the business was sold. And having been through an acquisition myself I always find it interesting to talk a little bit about kind of acquisition culture and and what's important in an acquisition and to to make it successful. Because a lot of times in the freight industry acquisitions happen and so much is lost because of whatever poor decisions are made that that lead to people leaving, uh customer relationships breaking down, whatever it may be. So going back to that acquisition that you kind of went through what were the kind of cornerstones of of making that a success or do you feel like there were things that didn't go as well that were there are lessons you took from it so we've been owned by by MERS for over 30 years uh homegrown and really were the Dreach arm of the organization and decisions were were were made to spin off a number of these subsidiaries.

Transparency During M&A

SPEAKER_00 44:19

The Dre H company in the US uh was was one of them we went through a process and they were were were um various potential uh buyers uh uh um that that looked at us both uh um financial uh and also sponsors and um as a uh as we went through it uh we ended up with private equity um I didn't have a lot of experience with private equity beforehand um this particular uh private equity firm that bought us was platinum equity that uh we're in the logistics space in a number of areas and um we we it was a carve out really coming out of the uh out of the parent and uh the the carve out the the biggest challenge you have in those is IT and uh it was touch and go on the uh on the IT carve out it was very very challenging um I had a lot of smart people um smarter than me that facilitated this uh I remember like it was yesterday multiple nights where we were all there as a team until four in the morning and trying to pull this off I I was more moral support than anything else I couldn't help with uh anything else but I felt I needed to be there to support the team but they worked endless hours they pulled it off um together with a couple of key consultants that were hired that did a phenomenal job but the IT carve out was probably the the biggest and the also the biggest risk I I would say that that was done correctly but uh standalone when you come out of a parent is is uh that's a big change and and a big cultural change too because what does this mean and and what what for especially the uh the team what what does this mean that that they're gonna own us for you know a year or or six months or 10 years or what what what does the future hold? And and uh you know in private equity as we all know private equity firms that they're in business to buy and sell companies. That's what they do. They buy companies and they they uh they add value to them and and at the appropriate times they uh they spin them off um so my best feedback to the team was let's focus on running the business let's focus on building the best business we can and and when we will be sold we'll we'll um we'll worry about that then but spending a lot of time on that doesn't really add a lot of value and we we are gonna have a say but it's not really our our decision so the focus was really on how do we how do we run the business, how do we do the best we can the and one of the challenges we had then was we were still being owned by by a big parent uh had a lot of business from that parent and we needed to diversify uh we needed really to make sure that our our our customer base was much more diversified. In the past it was difficult to diversify because uh many of the other shipping lines were concerned whether we would share information to the parent of of volumes that they were doing et cetera and we did not but you you you getting across uh getting that perception change was was challenging but being now standalone we we definitely opened up some uh new doors to be able to get in because we were finally standalone so it created some opportunities on on growth I brought in a new sales leader that did a uh phenomenal job uh and uh we we managed to successfully diversify the uh the business but we we also went through uh um the sale from there uh into uh into xbo and and and uh obviously that was a significant change a uh again from uh being standalone and now being part of a big organization again so as someone who is keen on transparency and and I went through this because I was I I had a similar belief that transparency was the best form of communication but that's hard when you're thinking about acquisition or you know there's there's an there's an uncertain future or uncertain timing of the future.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

Maybe the future is certain that there's going to be a deal but you don't know when or with whom. And employees want safety and security maybe above everything other than pay. And it's a hard thing to kind of balance is like how transparent do I want to be with my team about what's going on knowing that the more transparent I am, the more risk there is that people are concerned about their safety and security in this business and what's going to happen. So I'm curious how you thought about that as you navigated leading through those uh the the two acquisitions.

Why Odyssey: Fit With PE And Mission

One Odyssey: From Silos To Single Brand

SPEAKER_00 49:00

I think it's really uh it's it's really you got to overcommunicate you got to share with them you know don't don't sugarcoat it and and don't don't start making up things you know be be transparent and and say this is what it is this is what it's not um you know I'm not going anywhere. Uh it's more the same. I think they just need to see and be assured that we are okay the business is the same this is a strategy going forward this is what we're gonna do um this is how the business is going to evolve and then then time itself cures a little bit and then start seeing okay what he said was is exactly is actually happening and it and it is correct. So that there you you need you need further down the organization you need individuals who share that um that that uh that story with others because you can only say so much and and uh a point comes where it's not effective for you to continue to talk it's better for others in the organization to other colleagues of theirs to share uh their opinions and and their beliefs and and what what's uh what's actually taking place so it you you you you really you've got to cover cover all areas and uh but you can still do what what you can do to overcommunicate and ensure that you're also available for for questions. What are your concerns? What are your what what uh what's on your mind what why is there anything particular that that uh you know you're uncertain about as certain in terms of what we're doing or your for your future etc and and uh really the the story I used more than anything else which is factual is that that we were going to be sold eventually and you know the better business we bought the the uh we would land in a place and whoever bought us would what what are they buying? They're buying people they're buying the team they're buying the business uh and and that every one of them was were going to be needed um but but I didn't have a a crystal ball of exactly what the outcome was going to be so you can't overpromise but you know private equity they're they're there to build good businesses and to sell good businesses to others uh to do more with them and and a number of things can happen but you just got to be careful you don't overpromise something that that you don't know but these are this is what's available today as it changes I'll keep you abreast of what's going on and uh we will share information as appropriate and I think that's the best you can do trying to make things up or overpromise things that you really shouldn't or couldn't then then it's a slippery slope then they can see right through that and and rightfully so. But we we didn't really have a lot of issues uh with the transition actually I I I'd say reflecting back on it it went uh even better than I I expected it was probably more the the um CFO and the financial team that were came under uh increasing pressure based on private equity um being more hands-on on the specific financials and the data et cetera like like they do uh not to say Mersk didn't but but they take it up a couple of notches um but but other than that I think the rest of the organization really was more focused on just running the business and I I to a large extent shielded it from that they didn't really come out and uh get involved in the business um they most of private equity they really look for for management teams to run the business and and to report in as appropriate uh whether it's monthly uh or or on a on a on a uh quarterly uh board meeting but uh they don't want to run these businesses that's that's what we are there for and should be there for awesome I appreciate you diving into that all right now let's move into Odyssey for the rest of our time so why why why you know I'm sure you had plenty of opportunities given the illustrious career that you you had already been on and what was it that drew you to this role at Odyssey uh when I was approached initially you know I I I I'd heard of Odyssey um didn't know a lot about the uh the company and as I dove into it a little bit more I saw a lot of similarities between you know XPO and and Odyssey but on a much smaller scale but um odyssey was a roll up of at the time of uh 16 acquisitions over about 20 years um at XPO 15 companies rolled up in eight years much much larger but a lot of similarities to to a a roll up type of uh of of scenario and uh I I really reflected on on my time at XPO where I learned a ton uh and and um a lot of similarities where I could use some of the some of the block and tackle and learnings from XPO and I could put that into Odyssey and I saw this is a great opportunity of taking pieces of of what I learned in in my past career whether XPO or or other and and applying that in and coming in really making a difference. And I think that's really what uh what attracted me. The other thing that attracted me was um I had quite extensive dialogue with the uh with the PE firm and and as we all know it's important we we have uh we we're aligned in mutual respect with with whoever we work with or for and and I saw quickly that this was a premier PE firm and somebody that I easily could uh could align with and would enjoy working with and for and and that's been truly the case uh in the almost three years I've been here they're fantastic. And and that's the uh the Jordan company out of uh based out of New York uh equity firms that uh that that I've ever come across yeah great um give me kind of a 3000 foot view of Odyssey itself and what the business does what it excels at um I know it's it's a very unique business in our space it is a unique so we're really a a global multimodal logistics provider um where technology is is is the core of of our business we specialize really in complex uh logistics such as chemicals metals food and beverage and package freight uh we have an extensive carrier network across every mode that gives our customers uh the flexibility to optimize the whether it's cost whether it's speed sustainability and and other priorities and if I look at our footprint we're in 82 locations worldwide uh about 2000 employees serving 6,000 customers with uh revenue north of uh 1 billion so that would be the best summary I could give you 82 locations are those mostly offices for sales type people or is there is there a lot of asset ownership in this business like give me a little bit of a uh understanding what that footprint looks like all of our salespeople uh work remotely are from their their their homes so none of these are sales uh locations they're even they're they're either uh uh they're they're facilities where we we actually have uh have have warehouses uh whether it's a crosstalk or whether it's actually uh a a a facility gotcha um um what's your take on the remote work environment and versus an in-office environment so it's a sensitive topic and and i appreciate uh the the why it is um i'm a firm believer that that uh in the office is is the best approach um we have been for post COVID at three days uh uh in the office two days remote generally Monday and Friday remote and um on um October of uh 24 I sent a note out to uh to the team globally and I shared that effective on uh January 1st 25 we were going back four days Monday through Friday in the offices uh our operations warehouses etc were already working five six some seven days a week so that didn't really change and and uh I firmly believe that collaboration is key and you need to do so in person um teams is good it works and we've all adjusted well especially during COVID to it but it's not the same and a lot of the feedback I hear is oh it's the young people the young people don't want to come in which is not true the young people want to come in because they want to learn from people like you uh they they want to they want to be sponges around others so they can learn and and move up in organizations they want to sit in meetings where they can be coached and developed and and uh and really um you know make better themselves and so they're not the ones who don't want to come in I see more so the ones that that are have been with the organization for longer periods um that they're the ones who who have less a need possibly to come in and and um they tend to say well I don't really need to come in it's nice but I don't necessarily need it so so I think it's better to be home two days a week but but I think you really got to look at if you want a an organization that collaborates that works as a team being in the office makes a difference we have exceptions uh and and we try to make him exceptions but um we I still believe that that uh going back into the office uh and we're at four i i do plan to stay at four i i think the uh one one one uh friday where there's an option um is is a good uh a a good happy medium i know a lot of companies especially in charlotte that have gone to five days now more and more um the banks are starting to go to five as well but i do not plan to uh take us to uh to five days but up by i'm always shuffled by the young people who are the ones who gets the blame who that is not the case yeah and I think there's a couple ways to think about it so one I was like the biggest early proponent of remote and you know when you know you we were forced to go remote and then you know just in COVID our team did so well in this environment and the reality is our team does well in any environment or our team my former team would do well in any environment but I was so impressed by how they did I felt like they earned the right to stay remote.

Centralizing Functions Without Killing Grit

SPEAKER_01 59:53

Now I think that was a huge mistake and if if I hadn't gotten fired I would have brought everybody back. They actually Actually, I just did bring everybody back this week, which is hard for me because I live two blocks from my old office. And now that they all came back, I see everyone walking around and it gives me a sad nostalgia of like, I wish I could be there for that, but that's a separate point. But I I just and part of this comes from my my recent pickleball addiction where I go play pickleball because I don't have a job during the day other than sitting here talking to guys like you. Uh, but this is 90 minutes. Um I go play pickleball and there are people sitting there playing games with an airpod in while their computer's up and they're fake listening in a teams meeting, or they they're just moving their mouse while they play pickleball. And I'm like, I it's just there's a trust issue that unfortunately has been broken. And separate from the young versus old, I feel like there's a separate contingency of people who just the young people who don't want to go in the office are probably falling into the bucket of the people who want to cut whatever corners they can. Um the people who are hungry to learn and who are your best employees, they want to come to the office.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:01

Um I would I would say that, you know, there's definitely some who do the right thing, who work hard, even from home, but we have no issues whatsoever. And we have a lot of those. Uh so so and we've seen that. You know, at the end of the day, it's about productivity. Uh, but but I still believe that that even with that, that that collaborating in an office is a different type of environment where you can go in and just, you know, the water cooler talk, et cetera. It's it's meaningful and and is it's really how we want to run a business versus everybody sitting on an island. But uh we we have we have a lot of examples of of colleagues actually working hard and doing the right thing where I don't have any concerns on the Fridays when they uh they work from home whatsoever.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:48

Okay, let's take a quick time out and give a shout out to one of our sponsors, 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, which 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. 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 Icaza, 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 in 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 Rappido are a great place to start. To learn more, check them out at goropido.com. That's gorapido.com. Now, let's get back to the show. Yeah, I I agree. I think it's good to not bl I think I made a mistake in kind of blanketing. There's not any type of person, right? But I do agree that abuse it. There are some who abuse it, but I think the more important thing is just comparing remote to in-office. There are benefits that you can get from in-office that no matter what, you can never get from remote. It's just a reality. Um, and that osmotic learning of just being around someone, listening to the guy next to you making a sales call and being like, oh, that was an interesting question he asked. I've never heard that before. I'm gonna ask my customer that question. You can't get that sitting at home.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:36

Um so let's moving off of the even from a succession planning standpoint, you know, you you you're looking at training and development, and and you can't do that really remotely. It's not, it's just not not the same. So there's a number of things that you really have to think about when you look at this remote, uh remote work.

Integrations In 90 Days: Playbook

SPEAKER_01 1:03:56

Yeah. So talk to me about when you first kind of came into the business. What did you see that was working really well? And then what were the things that you felt like I need to focus on this, and this is something I'm gonna make as a change or make a focus for improvement.

Culture: Values, Cadence, And Q&A

SPEAKER_00 1:04:13

So I spent the um the first uh five weeks traveling quite extensively, uh uh meeting the uh meeting the colleagues, uh some of our key partners, some customers, and got a good feel for where are we, what's going on. And uh after that, I um I sat uh had a uh call with uh with our private equity owners and just talked through um my observations and and uh what I thought uh needed to be addressed uh short, mid-term, and midterm, and longer term. And um we aligned on the priorities and what needed to get done and we kind of went to uh went to work. Um we had um we had run this business in the past uh siloed really with uh with legacy names, uh hence the reason that the Odyssey brand was not very well known because we were using a lot of the um the legacy names, and and I understand why. Um and it it made sense to a large extent that the philosophy was that we didn't want to uh we didn't want to kill the entrepreneurial spirit in these businesses, hence keeping everything the same. But once you cross a billion dollars in revenue, um there's a lot of efficiencies that that could be achieved uh by by looking at it smarter and consolidating things and also branding everything the same. So I really put a new strategy together of one Odyssey, one brand. And we've been working on that for about two years or so now, and and it's it's uh it is coming together, which is very encouraging. So we are going to market as one Odyssey, not as all the legacy names. We should be proud of what we come from and who who what company we bought, because there's a reason we bought them. We wouldn't have bought them if they weren't a great company. So the legacy names shouldn't just disappear, but we also need to be smarter in terms of how do we brand ourselves and how do we avoid confusing our customers. I sat in front of a lot of customers who said, Oh, that's an Odyssey company. I didn't know, I've done business with them for years, and they didn't even know they were doing business with Odyssey. So we become smarter in regards to how do we go to market and really rebranding, and that's difficult because a lot of colleagues, you know, are are proud of their the the the companies they've been a part of for years, and rightfully so, and I've completely understand it, but I I've explained it to them, like I just outlined, that the one odyssey approach is is the much smarter approach for us to go to market, and we will be able to capitalize, especially on cross-sell. And and uh the customer not even knowing what we do and who we are based on all these brands doesn't help us. Uh, this is helping us, and we're really seeing that also on the uh on the cross-sell side. So one of the things I saw was was with that particular the other thing was we had um it was quite fragmented on on uh just even the functions. Um so we've restructured the organization where the entire finance organization reports into the CFO, the IT, the technology organization reports into the CIO, HR reports into the uh the head of HR, etc. So a little more of a functional type of structure. Uh we've taken functions out of the uh out of the field and and uh centralized a number of them. And you have to be careful of that. Uh it's it's a little bit of a there's there's two sides to that. You have to be careful you don't take it too far. Uh and initially we probably took it a little further than we should, and we swung it back a little bit, but we had to put some controls in place to ensure that that uh we we had standard uh operating procedures in a number of areas. In one area that was really low-hanging fruit was procurement. We used to procure 15, 16 different ways, and now we procure one, and we can all see what whether we're buying forklifts or racking or anything else. You know, when when you procure in in a$1.2 billion organization, you you hopefully will procure a lot smarter than you will on a much smaller scale. So there was some low-hanging fruit that we we picked up quickly uh on how to do things a little bit different and uh and better. And I don't um looking back saying we could have, shoulda done a lot of things, that doesn't add any value. You know, nobody goes to work and wants to do a bad job. Neither did the prior team here. And and uh it's really a matter of coming in with a new set of eyes. We've grown and and we've gotten to a point where we needed to simplify, to, to restructure into the the more modern structure that we uh that we have have to uh today.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:57

A lot of really good insight there. And you know, I'll start with the beginning talking about because that resonates with me a lot, the idea of having kind of subsidiaries or brands that were acquired. And, you know, as as as someone who was a part of an acquired brand, you have such a sense of loyalty to the culture and the brand that you grew up in or that you helped build. And so it's hard when someone comes in and says, Hey, we want to change this. Um it's sometimes hard for people to see the forest through the trees and understanding that, hey, yes, you know, your customer here might love this brand name and and you as part of that brand name, but how much more could we do with them if they better understood what one Odyssey can do? And and the 16 other brands that we have that if they all connected and cross-sold and work together, we could we could, you know, turn one into 10 or 10 into 100. Um so I'm I'm curious. Um, like I'm sure there was some pushback there. And like what was probably the most challenging piece like in in bringing these all in one house? Like I imagine uh like a compensation challenge may come up in in in cross-selling functions and or navigating structure and who could sell the what.

Growth Shift: Organic, Share Of Wallet, Cross-Sell

SPEAKER_00 1:10:18

Um anything like that that kind of was I can tell you I I I took a little bit out of my uh playbook from an earlier uh very large roll-up firm I was with in the past, who when we when we bought companies, um really within 90 days, it was it was integrated. And there were certain things that lagged past that. Uh but but it was a 90-day plan, and in many cases, even sooner. It was fast and furious, but there was a plan, and the execution was absolutely amazing. Um, when we got acquired, British Terminal Transport within 90 days, we were rebranded, the the uh, you know, the signs on the building, the uh the offices were repainted, everything was done. Uh, and even outward to the customer, etc., it it was done very, very professionally, very fast, and people didn't even flick an eye. Um and recently, uh actually a year ago, we bought a um chemical sampling company in Vandalia, Illinois called Opticem, and within 90 days, we rebranded them under Odyssey. I used my prior learnings on how to do this, and we'll have to say that it worked very, very well. So it's the first one we've done under the new model, and um I was just there recently visiting uh with uh with a prior prior owner, founder, uh Mark Langston, who's been a fantastic uh partner and is still with us, still actively involved in the business. We actually even had dinner with the uh mayor the night I was there um to look at some expansion uh possibilities in in Vendale, Illinois, and we're excited about what the future holds uh there. But I think the the speed of execution uh and really doing it, doing it right, overcommunicating, but having a plan on how you integrate is the critical piece. And there we've definitely seen, we have now have a a model of what we will do in the future as we acquire um not that you want to do it too fast, but you want to do it at a speed that everybody sees what's coming, and and it's not really it can't be a huge discussion. You know, this is what needs to get done. Um, you have been acquired, this is and this is this is what's in it for you. This is what we plan to do, this is how, and this is when. And once people see the plan and get it, then it's a lot easier. The challenge we've had at Odyssey was we didn't do it, and doing it later on, I I had a lot of people who said, uh, you know, we like the way we do things today. We we don't like your model. Uh, we don't think it's right, we don't think it's it's the way we should move forward. And um some of them put up a bit of a fight and they said, well, he's probably gonna be gone in six months, so uh we we won't we'll just have to deal with it for six months, and then he's gone, and we'll go back to our good old ways. But now they've seen uh three years later that uh I'm not gone and we're still moving forward on the on the model. And and I think many are starting to realize the value in the one odyssey, and in particular on the uh on the cross sell, uh, where we have uh much more a much stronger brand out there versus the the uh the many brands we had in the uh in the past. But I think you you you you need, like in anything, you need to outline to the to the teams what's in it for them. Why is this good? Why is it important? Why is it important to our customers? Uh and and once they kind of see, okay, this kind of makes sense, I kind of get it, that then you get them across the finish line. But but it has been a transition, and it's been tougher in some areas than uh than others, as you would uh as you would expect. And that that's human beings don't like change. That's just the nature of of how who we are. And and some adapt uh easier to change than uh than others.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:15

So, you know, you I think there are 17 acquisitions that Odyssey endured over the last 20-something years. And as you started to go through this one Odyssey transformation, you have your plan of how you were going to go execute. I'm curious, like, what's one thing that you actually took from one of the pre-existing cultures or or organizations that you were like, wait, I actually really like this. Let's bring this into the overarching business. Just something you learned from one of the old old ways that actually was like, hey, you know what? I like this more than what I thought going into this. Let's let's apply this across the board.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:56

I think the the the structure that I put together here, there's a rhyme and reason why I've seen it work in the past in terms of the the shared services model and then the the divisions uh um under that. Um it's been very very effective. But I think one of the one of the lessons that you always have to watch out, as I mentioned earlier, do you take it too far too fast? And do you need to swing back a little bit? And and um it's a fine balance. It's it's uh and and you kind of you you need you need to look at it both ways. And it's not a matter of control, it's just a matter of of running a business the most efficient and the appropriate way, and also ensuring that that you cross the T's and dot the I's. Uh you know, we we we now have much better policies, procedures, structure. Um, but one thing you just need to make sure you watch out for uh is the entrepreneurial spirit affected by doing so? And and that's that's the um that's the area you really got to be careful of because if you crush the interruption spirit, um that's a that's uh that's a big problem.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:05

So one of the challenges or or I'm I'm curious about how you've navigated creating one culture with respect to how you communicate, right? You know, taking 17 teams and making them one team, it's one thing to do that on paper and create an org structure for one Odyssey. But you know, 17 teams have their own 17 unique cultures, their own 17 ways of communicating with each other. And now you're saying, okay, we're gonna communicate as one team. What does that look like in terms of how you yourself as the leader are communicating with your team, the cadence in which you're communicating and how that all works?

Multimodal Wins: Intermodal Education

SPEAKER_00 1:16:43

The culture is difficult. And and and it's it's um you you really you just have to be relentless. It's it's not something that's created from one day to the uh the other. Uh for example, you know, we we firmly believe in a strong uh safety culture, but putting banners up to safety is important, that doesn't create a safety culture. It it is really uh uh actions speak a lot on the words, as I like to uh as I like to say. But part of what I've done is I rolled out a um a new set of values to kind of create a culture. And in our core values go along, we we win together, we innovate boldly, we drive results, we're customer-centric, and we guide with care. So those five values is really what the foundation is. And and one of the things that I that I do is I have a quarterly town hall that I hold live um with with um with the entire globe, and it's recorded. I I generally do about 20 minutes of uh of of um of a presentation. I don't believe in death by a PowerPoint, so it's just a handful of slides that really talks more about how their organization is doing, a a brief update at a high level, some areas that we find as a leadership team is important to uh to share with the uh with the colleagues globally. And then we go into about 40 minutes of Q ⁇ A where we get questions that have come in confidentially uh beforehand and questions that come in live on the uh on on the um the town hall. And um any questions we we don't get to, um we'll answer separately. Uh and and um it's it's a great way to make sure that that um the colleagues see unfiltered what's going on, is able to ask questions. We get a lot of great questions. And and uh really I'm encouraged by the questioning, and I am because it tells me the colleagues care. They they uh they really want to know. They they're they're and it's not they're not inappropriate questions. They're they're very good, well thought out business questions on what are we doing and why do we do this, why does this make sense, et cetera, to get further clarification, et cetera. So it it's uh I find it extremely interactive, and and I would be the first to tell you that the best part of that global town hall is the 40 minutes of QA, not the first 20 minutes of where I present, uh, because the dialogue is really where the the most value come out. And many of the questions that are brought up are thought thought of by many of the colleagues, but a lot of them are are shy to ask. Hence we put together this confidential channel as well. And it truly is for confidential. We don't know where they come from. Uh some of them we wish we did because we could probably address some of their concerns differently or locally if it's really certain areas or certain facilities, but we we've committed to it's confidential, so it is confidential and we we can't see it.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:48

Yeah. I think that's great. I and I appreciate that. Because one of the things that I thought about, uh you know, uh one of the things that I feel like we did well at Molo was generate buy in from our team. They they were very bought into. Who we were, what we were trying to accomplish and the culture we created. And there are a number of reasons and a lot of people who contributed to that. And one of the things that I pride myself on in my own contribution to it was kind of the art of storytelling and doing so in a very pointed and intentional way, where when we when I would host our town halls, and I think about this just through the lens of you having 17 teams, you're trying to get aligned. It's like if there were if I wanted my team to pay attention to one thing that was going on in our business, I made sure I told a story during that town hall that aligned to that one thing. And it was a success story from someone on the in the team who'd done XYZ with X customer. And because they had done XYZ, we grew or we got another account or we got more business that allowed us to hire another person or promote another person or whatever it was. But what it did was it took one localized situation and it expanded it globally to the rest of the team and gave them focus on like, if you do X, then Y will happen for all of us, for you specifically. Um and it helps get buying and it helps because like 17 teams or even you know any number of teams can't see what everyone else is doing on a given day. But your job as the leader is to articulate what's going on in a way that helps everyone connect to what you're doing and learn from it and then hopefully be bought into doing it themselves.

Tech Stack: Data Lake And Bidding

SPEAKER_00 1:21:23

The the one thing that we see on the town halls is too uh people give shout-outs to others who've done an exceptional job. So it's I I love the the interaction that comes out of this. Um so further to that, each one of the four divisions will have a town hall uh subsequent to this town hall to dive more into their specifics and in shared services and corporate will have separate town halls also with the corporate teams. So I think what one of the things you you it's getting back to your initial question of culture. You know, culture takes time, it's it's hard work and it's a lot of effort to build it, but you have to you have to be consistent, you and you have to be relentless uh to ensure that you over-communicate. And I think one of the things that we all get busy and and and uh these type of town halls are critical and uh they make a difference. And we I didn't do them from some time, and I um finally initiated them about a year ago or so, and and uh we we've definitely seen uh a very positive outcome out of them. And as the colleagues get used to them and used to asking questions, and they're they're scheduled for the year. They already have the calendar dates, so they know it's coming. You know, initially they're like, is this really happening or not? Now they when they see him scheduled out, they're like, Well, he is serious, he is gonna do this. And yes, they are recorded, so if I miss it, I can go and see it at a at a later time, right? And I think that's you want to make it accessible to everybody. You know, we work in China, US, and Europe, uh different time zones. We're not gonna get everybody no matter when we hold it. So so uh having it recorded uh gives the ability for everybody to go in and and actually uh look at it.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:07

I like that a lot. I appreciate that. Reminds me of some stuff we did, so I'm glad. Um let's let's talk about growth. And you know, I know Odyssey for a long time was kind of acquisition-led growth, and I feel like for you it's become a shift to more organic commercial growth. And one, why was that the why was that shift important for you? And and two, what part of the business has has been the best growth engine or seen the most been the business driver of growth lately?

Brokerage Rebuild And Rebrand

SPEAKER_00 1:23:42

So traditionally we've grown by acquisition, and um we we really need to to grow by acquisition, but but even more importantly, we we need to grow organically. And my focus today really is to grow the organization organically through a couple of different means. The first one being uh share a wallet with existing customers. We talked a little bit about that earlier. The uh second one is uh new logos. New logo to me is a customer we haven't done business with in uh in 12 months. And and the last one is cross-sell. We have over 6,000 customers, as I mentioned, many of them who are able to support us in multiple ways. A lot of things, a lot of the areas I find is that the customers don't know who we are and what we do and what we're capable of doing. Hence the discussion we had earlier on making sure your customer knows what it is you're capable of doing, but also our salespeople probing to find out what are the customers' pain point, and then saying, actually, we can help you with this, we can do this for you, right? Um, so though those are really the three areas that that uh I'm focused on growing the business. We've been through a four-year freight recession, as everybody knows, in the business, and it's been uh it's been challenging without uh without a doubt. Um we are seeing uh 26 definitely looks brighter, especially the uh the second half. Um some of the numbers that came out, I'm sure you follow that based on your background on the uh truckload sector this past week came out definitely uh looking much better than they have in in in some time. And I think what what we're focused on is how do we bring solutions to our customers, not transactional rates. And and how do you really look at the the, as I discussed with you earlier, how do we bring value proposition to the customer? And we have the the unique uh ability that we can offer different modes. You know, many many many customers use truckload or or LTL, but do they really need that that that uh truckload to get there on day X? Or can they if if if they have 20 20 loads moving at the same time, do they need all 20 to arrive on Friday when they're not working on the weekend? Why don't you move half of them in a modal at 20% less cost? And you you're you're also benefiting from from the uh the the uh uh CO2 reduction uh and being more sustainable uh and and dabbling in the in a modal. A lot of people have moved really to um to to truck more than anything else, but we all know this is gonna shift. And you don't want to shift when everybody else does. You want to be ahead of it, you want to have experience within a modal, have tried it, know it works, know what what the challenges are, and making sure that on certain pieces of the business, it makes total sense to go into modal, and you should move more in a modal. And we're trying to educate our customers really to become much more uh think out of the box and and and and think I need to look at look at this in a much bigger, bigger picture than just, well, I'm worried about today and not about tomorrow. We all know how business goes, it goes in cycles. And and having options and really having the multimodal approach which we're able to offer is kind of how we like to differentiate ourselves from uh from our competitors uh in front of our customers.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:10

So correct me if I'm wrong, but I imagine in a siloed environment, each salesperson was kind of focused on selling their unique, their specific mode. And now you're you're kind of moving into this consultative, uh contemplative world where it's well, it could my role was truckload, but intermodal makes rail makes more sense here. What was that like? Am I right that that's what it was and that's what you've moved to? And if so, like how do you navigate educating your workforce or getting to a place where one salesperson understands all of these tools and can become that consultant?

Looking Ahead: Ownership And Focus

SPEAKER_00 1:27:51

We still have um uh we have a chief commercial officer, Bill Heaney, who oversees the entire commercial organization. He has he has uh three sales leaders under him. Um, one of them handles two of the divisions, the other two uh handles the other two. And really they're they're they are specialized in their respective areas, but we have done extensive cross-training of all the salespeople to know how to probe and ask. They're not experts, but they know how to ask. And then once there's interest and and really a reason to explore further, then we bring in subject matter experts to help uh discuss the opportunity further. But half the battle is just asking the questions. But as we know, salespeople, they they uh generally sell what they're comfortable with, not what they're not comfortable with. So the education piece, to your point, has been critical to ensure that they feel comfortable talking about the other service offering that that we um that we have. And and we have uh we've done so quite successfully. Our cross-sell uh in the last four months is up significantly. We're really seeing tremendous traction on the cross-sell thanks to this uh this new initiative. And and things are really coming out of the woodwork of of customers that we we didn't even know did certain things that we're finding that they do, where we can partner with them on.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:18

That's great. And I'm curious, how does technology play a role in all of this? And I want to spend a couple minutes on tech, because I feel like that could be where AI or or some automation can can really start to help with kind of understanding when it should be this versus that.

Career Advice: Learn The Whole Business

SPEAKER_00 1:29:32

Yeah, technology is key. One of the things that been created is a data lake, a data warehouse where we store all the data. It's all about data. It's all about having data. But then the important part is what do you do with it? Uh and and really what we see in our data lake, what we've been focused on is really route optimization, uh, predictive analytics, and also automatic bidding. How do you how do you get better at these things? And and there's so much potential in on the uh on the IT front. We're very fortunate. We have uh a visionary CIO, Manit Singh, who's been done a f uh who's been doing a phenomenal job uh for us, and and we have really transformed our our entire uh IT value proposition versus what we had before. We did have some systems, and I I would say that most companies are challenged by this. Tell me tell me a company that doesn't invest enough in IT. We always invest more, right? It's uh but you've got to be focused on the areas that that are truly meaningful for especially your customers and that really add value. But we have upgraded systems to really have much better product uh for for for uh uh be able to deliver the the um the right service levels to our customers. And the other piece of having good systems that's equally important, I think, is underestimated, is that uh employee satisfaction. You know, if you come to work every day and you work on an inferior system, you know, how does that create an employee satisfaction? It every day is miserable. So it's critically important to have good systems to ensure your employees can facilitate and and and uh the the customers request, but also do so expeditionally and and do it in a way that they enjoy their work. If they're challenged every day, then then you're creating some bigger challenges for yourself to even to just just trying to facilitate the workload.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:36

So something that I think is really interesting related to the automated bidding concept is automated bidding thrives on large quantities of data. The better, the more data you have on a given lane, on a given type of movement, the more accurate an automated bid is likely to be. What's interesting in your situation is that your company is is moves a lot of very unique things that maybe doesn't have a ton of density on the lane, or it's it's kind of unique in terms of weights or the type of freight. And so I'm curious if that creates challenges in developing a strong automated bidding system for lanes that aren't as highly dense or that don't have um as much historical data to use for developing a rate.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:28

Yeah, the historical data is key, you know, to have that and really understand the freight. We're we're building that out. We're actually expanding our brokerage arm quite significantly. It's based out of uh out of Atlanta, and we've seen some great strides of um how we have really transformed the the organization. It was again branded under a different name. We have rebranded it now under Odyssey recently. Uh so the industry will see a another brokerage arm come out that that has a slightly different value proposition. And really what we're doing with it is every customer, I don't care who it is, they all have truck brokerage. And most have LTL as well, whether they like it or not. And so it's the easiest thing for the salespeople to discuss with customers, you know, what are you doing on your truck brokerage? What are you doing on your LTL? And everybody has it. So it's an easy entry into a customer if you have a solid mousetrap in in that particular space. And we do finally now. Uh, but um, it's been in the building blocks here in the toward the end of last uh last year, but we're really off to the races here uh now. I'm very very encouraged. It's definitely the area that we are gonna see significant growth in our in our business.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:54

So we're getting close to the end of our time here, and I've really appreciated everything you've shared. I want to talk about what the future what the future looks like for Odyssey. Like in in five years, like for you to be like, I we nailed it. What needs to happen?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:12

So as I previously shared, we're owned by TJC, and private equity firms usually have an investment horizon, which for us might need a change in ownership in the next two years, plus minus. That isn't unusual. It's just part of the typical life cycle in this field, and it's been part of our strategic plan. My focus and our focus really remains on executing on the strategy, growing the business, laying a solid foundation for whatever the future holds. And that that's where we uh have our focus area.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:47

Awesome. And last question for you. More on a personal note. Uh as someone who's had such a kind of incredible logistics career, what's one piece of advice you'd give to the 22-year-old kid graduating college who wants to get into logistics?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:03

I would say that um I would focus on getting into a company that has a great training program and really to learn the business. Um, and there's all kinds of training programs. It doesn't have to be a a it's not a matter of size. It's a matter of are they willing to invest in in you to really learn the business and invest you you make time yourself to to really understand and learn the business from the ground up. There will be times where you think, I spent four years of college, I'm too good for this. This is uh this is below me, et cetera. But it's probably the best time where you will learn and really get a true appreciation. And I reflect back to, as I mentioned earlier in the conversation, my early days at Mersk and being a traineeslash gopher, probably the most valuable that I did because I got a completely different understanding and appreciation for you know what really makes up a company. And I think that that that experience and background just changes your mindset totally as you move up the ladder. And you know as as you go through that, one of the things that you you'll see is that there's things that that you experience in bosses that you have that you think are great and do the right thing, and there are bosses that you think aren't great and don't do the right thing. Learn from that. Make sure as you move up that don't do to others what you didn't like, do to others what what you liked. And and others are necessarily that different than you are. And and these are not big things, they're they're fairly small things, but they're meaningful. But be mindful, never forget where you came from. I think being humble is is very important as a leader. And nobody knows at all. As I say to my team often, well, I'm smarter as a team than we are as individuals, and and I truly uh truly believe in that. But getting back to your question, I think really getting into a company that is willing to invest and train you and expose you is is probably the one of the best things to do to get into logistics and really learn the business. There's a lot of facets of logistics. There's a lot of great companies out there to uh to pursue and and start their uh their careers.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:16

Hans, as you said, nobody knows it all, but you certainly know a lot, and I appreciate you sharing that wisdom with us today for 90 plus minutes. I know my audience will as well. Uh I wish you all the success as you continue to build out Odyssey and um don't be a stranger. Thanks for uh coming on the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:34

Thank you very much. Thank you for including me.