Blythe Brumleve:
0:30
You welcome
Blythe Milligan:
0:35
Welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. I'm your host, Blythe Milligan, and we are proudly presented by SPI logistics, and we are here live at TMSA elevate in Austin, Texas, and we're making this the second year in a row where we record immediately after the TMSA is done what our top takeaways are. And we have a fantastic panel of guests with us today. We have Charlie Saffro with CS Recruiting. We have RJ with SPI logistics. RJ, how do you say your last name? Or Finnegan, well, I heard you pronouncing your Yeah. How do you say your first name? We'll keep it we'll keep it kosher, but very
Unknown:
1:17
fancy. We need to do that to my name. Of
Blythe Milligan:
1:22
course, we have Anthony with Mohawk Global, and we have a little bit of a different perspective, because we have RJ with marketing, we have Anthony with sales, and then we have Charlie with kind of like the entrepreneurial mindset. So let's just start off, Charlie. I'll start with you. What is your the top takeaway that you've learned so far at TMSA? Wow.
Charlie Saffro:
1:42
I would say, okay, there. I'm going to say two, because one is very like in my head with the economic trend panel, when Lee Glasgow said, I'm a very optimistic person, but I'm not optimistic right now, something like that. And I just, I feel that it's a lot of unpredictability uncertainty. There's a lot of humility in the room, where it was just like, we don't know what AI is going to do and what's going to happen. I think the other takeaway is like, watch out world, because freight is getting like, sexy or something, I don't know. I feel like these topics that we discussed here, fraud, environmental sustainability, are topics that usually do not come up in sales and marketing conversations, and whether it's this organization or the creative minds here, but we're spinning it and using fraud protection and environmental awareness to market and sell these services to other companies. So that was a big takeaway. It's not just we can move your freight anymore, it's we can move your freight, and these are the other things we can handle or that we care about. Yeah, that was one of the sessions that they were talking about how your internal marketing is so important in order to create that external experience. And I think for a lot of folks, they're not necessarily like sitting in on those, like operational meetings or sitting in with sales, and so there's a lot of miscommunication and non alignment, and those are easy wins that we can get in a tough market like this. So what, RJ, what about you? What were some of the top takeaways that you've learned so far? Yeah, I'd say it's probably about two things. I think the first one definitely during the first day, talking about, really about branding, but not branding, and it's just about, you know, how are you positioning your company, or how you want your customers to
RJ Finnegan:
3:32
see you. I think at the end of day, it's really how sales as well, needs to integrate branding into their messaging, and it'll also help closing. So I think it was really cool to kind of, I forget her name, the first keynote speaker, Kate, yeah, when she was breaking down, you know the why, what and how's and the 15 to 30 seconds, and really explaining that. And I think even just when you're doing your marketing and you're thinking, hey, you know, I want to have the best, you know, the best message out there, to be able to capture my customers attention, even just keeping the keeping it simple at the end of the day works as well. And then the second thing is, just when I attended two years ago, I feel like now, just the way that the marketing tools and the way it's exploded, like you said, it's become sexy. Now it's like, you know, you lot of people are integrating different AIS and technologies and things like that into their workflows, and it's freights. The industry is really evolving as well with technology. And like, two years ago, I couldn't even talk to somebody about a lot of the tools even I use. And then nowadays, everyone's hopping on, which is really awesome as well, too. As a big tech guy, yeah, definitely, it's like, I'm
Blythe Brumleve:
4:39
trying to manage through all of the chaos with not just what's going on in the freight world, but also with the tools and technology infusion that that's coming. It's really changed, like every part of my job, I feel like, and I'm sure the same for y'all as well. What about you, Anthony? What are some we're
Unknown:
4:54
taking a little bit of a different direction, because that's typically what I do.
Anthony Pagnotto:
4:59
I agree with both you. There was, I loved the keynote. I absolutely loved the keynote. I ordered her book off of Amazon. Like, 10 minutes into the keynote, I was like, I want more of this. It was just a fantastic way to start the conference. And for me, there's a there's something that I haven't been able to get out of my mind. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna say this, and I don't want to get political or anything like that. But
Unknown:
5:24
there, when I get here and I see my friends and people that that I've known. And we get together, and we start talking about what we do, and there's so much excitement and pride and happiness. And, you know, we have the first night together, the reception, right? We meet the newcomers. How many newcomers do we have at TMSA? How freaking awesome. How cool is that, right? And so we see all this, there's so much positivity, and just like all this great stuff going on, we go through a wonderful first day of events, and it's and it's all these, like, we know the market's tough, right? We know freight, freight hasn't been easy for a long time, and I think we're all used to that, but we talk to each other, and nobody's giving up, nobody's backing away, right? We're all charging forward, ahead and with this group, and one of the things I love about TMSA is the ability to bounce ideas off of each other, and knowing that amongst this group, I have a group of peers to share ideas that have similar situations to me, and I will tell you my heart is, it still is, but it was so full, right? And then we had an event here at TMSA last night in Austin, Texas, and it was the protest against ice. And I'm not making a political point. I have my opinion on that, and I don't, I don't, I don't want to draw any conclusions everybody's reasonable minds make. May disagree, right? And I don't want to get into that, but to see the protest outside and know that there's lives being affected and a lot of things going on in the turmoil in this country, followed up by the economic panel right and watching the the thunder clouds right that are forming, both in the industry, and, let's be honest, in the society with which we live in, which are all deeply connected, this industry is very there are a lot of people who aren't US citizens, who drive trucks, right? Who help get product to market every day, and a lot. So all this is tied together, and I was really had a had a rough afternoon today, maybe a little tiredness, right? And little bit going on, but you bounce back by this group knowing that there's a little bit of shelter in the storm with these friends and colleagues. And we're going to be here. We're going to continue to do excellent work for our clients. We're going to continue to deliver and we're going to get through these things as a team, as a family, as an industry, and there will be bright skies ahead for all of us, because we're going to push through this as a society as well. And I appreciate knowing all of you and all the other colleagues, and knowing that we're going through similar challenges together, that's a nice experience, right? A weird bonding experience, completely a bonding right? There's not a lot of over here. There's not a lot of people in our day to day. I don't know about you, but you know, not a lot of people know exactly what I do on a day to day basis, they have a general idea that tariffs don't make it better, right? Like they have a general idea of that, but to be able to sit here with people and talk about what we're what we're doing, and what our teams are doing, and our people are excelling despite these challenges, our operations teams, our sales professionals, our marketing people, all of us positive, exciting stories about what's going on despite the thunder clouds, right? You know, we're going to get through this. So don't underrate that. I mean, in your world too, you're you're talking about your competitors being part of your circle and your supports and that, I think that is so amazing. You come to an event like this, and it's competitors not commiserating, sharing highs, sharing lows, sharing solutions like you just don't see that in a lot of industries.
Blythe Brumleve:
9:15
Yeah, I would definitely agree with TMSA. I think for a lot of folks that go to a lot of industry conferences, it's the big show, it's the big expo floor, and sometimes that is amazing, but it can also be overwhelming. But then you come to a place like this, it almost feels like your tight knit community, that you can kind of lean on each other and solve these, you know, big problems together. So with all of that said, I would, I would like to move into some, maybe some of the sessions that you felt were really impactful during your time here. RJ, I'll start with you. What session maybe did you sit in on that really resonated with
Unknown:
9:51
you? Yeah, definitely. It was the one I attended today, drop and hook. Shout out. Michelle LeBlanc, yep. So I like doing videos, you know, things like that, shorts, reels, all that. What she really broke down was just how each platform really speaks. You have to understand how each platform works, but then also understanding what each platform is pushing, because they each drop their own revenue report, and they'll say what they are, you know, expecting in order to generate revenue. And like for like, as marketers, you know, they'll say, Hey, be everywhere, be loud, be seen. But that's not necessarily the case, right, especially with your target audience. And you know, it's going back to a little bit, yeah. A basic one on one marketing. But I'm still, I was still blown away by, I didn't realize that, you know, Instagram is definitely more community driven and comment based driven. So you'll see a lot of videos will be like, you know, follow my journey for part two and things like that. While YouTube is more educational based, right, but also focusing on the long form and more SEO keyword titles. But like, you know, I've chopped up podcasts, I've done videos, and I've posted them all across platforms, and then Tiktok won't do so well YouTube. I mean, Instagram won't do so well, but do really well on YouTube, for example, right? So it's just then understanding the deeper insights of each platform and how can really leverage video messaging, so that we're not just creating content for all platforms, we're creating content for specific platforms, but being more specific, specific with that platform in layman's terms. So that was something that really because I, again, I'm a big media nerd, so like something that really hit me hard today. I was like, Oh, wow. I thought I knew my video, but I leveled up again. So,
Blythe Brumleve:
11:28
and I think it's interesting too, that either different content performs so differently on different channels. Yeah, one thing will work really well on X, another thing will work really well on YouTube, shorts, and then it'll fall flat on LinkedIn or Instagram. It's just, it's tough navigating all of these things, but it's almost like the advice of the old days of like, oh, just pick one platform and get really good at it. You can't really do that anymore. You have to be everywhere, everywhere, which is kind of annoying, but at the same time, like it's the nature of the world, that digital world that we live in. Charlie, what about you? What kind of session? I mean, you sat in on all the session. I know it was
Unknown:
12:05
very present this year. I'm like, all my notes. I just, I want to commend the TMSA educational committee and Jen, just the way they sequence to the content. Again, I'm sitting in a bit of a different chair as more of an outsider looking in and a partner to the industry, but just the way, like, I don't want to steal your thunder if you want to talk about Kate's session, but Kate and Leo came in and really, just like, framed it up, like, what is your 15 second pitch? And I feel like everyone in the room was like, Oh shoot. Like, I think I know it, but like, the way you just explained it, I don't have that down. Then, you know, Robert Bain comes in and talks about his personal brand and all the things that we have access to that we could all do. And then we had the shipper panel. So it was like, Oh, now we're actually healing, hearing what our customers want to hear so we can And I think, like Michael Lin's story on the panel, when he's like, you know, if you call me and I answer and you say, Yo, bro, like, that's not going to get my phrase. So I just love the way it was, like, layered on. It was like, Oh, we all have a problem we didn't really realize we had. Here's one way I can solve it. Here's how our bigger strategy can solve it. And that, just like continued through two days. So I don't know my wheels were spinning. I'm selling a very different service, but same approach. No, no strategy. I have all of these Exactly. I'm like, where that's awesome. I mean, it's so and one thing I will point out with the TMSA, unlike other conferences, is that you can catch everything. It's not like a bunch of different talks going on at once, where you have to kind of pick and choose. So you could really sit well there. I mean, there are breakout sessions that you have to pick and choose naturally, but most of the sessions you can step in on and watch all of them if you want to. Anthony, what about what about you outside of the opening keynote? No, yeah, no, absolutely. We can all agree that was fantastic for me. First of all, I want to say, unlike many other conferences and even TMSA at times like which is to elevate a fantastic conference, I don't think there was a single session that I didn't enjoy thoroughly this time. Like, whatever it was, whatever was in the water here in Austin was really clicking right. The team did a fantastic job of putting them together. So I'm more it's a harder thing to talk about, because they all made an impression on me. I was really this is going to sound like, probably not where you were going. I enjoyed so much our sponsor, vendor, like breakout, where we walk around scavenger hunt, yeah, and talking to them. We had so many high quality, like, like, really cool, you know, businesses, they're, they're my size Mohawk. Global is a mid sized organization, right with some really cool challenges and opportunities ahead of us, and to meet these other kind of right sized players for us, or have the ability to scale with us, was really exciting, and it always gets my creative juices flowing almost too much, right? You're like, okay, like, we can't do everything at once, right? We're all gonna crash, like, absolutely short circuit tomorrow. So I really enjoyed that. And then the shipper panel for me is always, always fantastic. Michael Lind was hilarious, right? That was just a fantastic situation, and it and it confirms it's important, because it confirms what I know and what I feel, and that sales is challenging, right? We have some wonderful professional. At Mohawk global that are working their their tails off to bring in new clients, and these guys made it fairly clear, in such a positive way that it takes a lot of time, right? You've got to build relationship, you've got to add value, you've got to bring something, and you've got to bring your authentic self to the table. I loved them calling out, AI, messaging, right? Like, like, like, please. And for everybody out there, please, don't ever send me another AI message again. Like, it's an automatic trash can, like, you know, and so that's a bot. Call me. Yeah, absolutely right. Yeah, you haven't had that yet. Listen to my voicemail. Yeah, it's, it's, it's so crazy, right? And and so. And that confirms a lot of Mohawk Global's approach with the market, which is being genuine, being human driven. We are. We work hard on technology, but it's the back end, right? It's to drive efficiency, to drive process, to simplify things for our clients and and so I really enjoyed that shippers panel, and I left, like feeling really good about what we're doing as an organization
Blythe Brumleve:
16:38
to follow up on that with the shippers panel, where there was there anything that they talked about that you guys aren't doing, that you're going to implement. When you get
Unknown:
16:46
back off the top of my head, I can't think of anything, right? And it's been a long couple of days, so it's very likely that there was. I have quite a quite a few notes. I think, you know, one of the things that we have to do we we work on and discuss velocity as a sales organization, right? Pipeline, moving things through the pipeline. I think we've got to do a better job organizationally. And again, this is bringing marketing and sales together, right, to make sure that we're having nurturing campaigns that, again, that are authentic, that are genuine, right? Maybe incorporating some of the video tools, right? Maybe incorporating some of these other, other things out there, but that we're that we're talking to people, and we're not losing fact that some of our ideal clients may take two or three years to close, right? And so I think that that's just that's part of the learning lesson. So I think giving it more time and making sure we're committed to we need to close and we need to close regularly, right? All of us do. That's how you keep the lights on. It's how you keep the business growing, but making sure that there's an understanding that that the time it takes means that if you don't plant the tree today, right, you're not harvesting the fruit for a long time, right?
Blythe Brumleve:
18:06
There was another part of that discussion that I think is being missed by a lot of companies, it's when they talked about their back office and how you need to be marketing your back office capabilities if you want to take on a new shipper. I thought that that was fascinating, and it also opened up the door, because one of the other talks was Cassandra Gaines talking about fraud and using your your fraud prevention tools as part of your marketing. And I don't think anybody, there was one person, Patrick from its logistics, raised his hand as the only company in the room as marketing their fraud prevention. And that was such a That, to me, is like one of those little like home runs that you can implement as soon as you get back. And so for maybe for any of y'all, are there any of these tactics or tools that you're not using yet that you can't wait to implement when you get
Unknown:
19:51
back? Oh, I had a little bit of exposure to a couple people who were showing me their AI agent teams, and that like, blew my mind in the sense that I was like, This is so exciting and I'm terrified. Well, how did it break down? What is it so, I mean, he was showing me that he has an entire team pretty much assigned for every client, and he names the agents, and here's the director of the agents and the manager, and nothing gets to him that doesn't get past the manager through the director, but they're all prompts and cues and rules and responsibilities. I mean, he was literally showing me how he created a year of content in 12 seconds, and from soup to nuts. Like, here's my ideas, create them, post them, schedule them, find images. So I don't know. I think everyone kind of feels the same way. I think we all know that there's like a moment right now when you either get on the bus or you're gonna be left behind, but I would say in back office type of stuff, that was, like the one thing that I was in not specific to this industry, but I feel pretty confident saying there's not a lot of companies in this industry doing anything like that. For the record, he was a marketer, so for with an agency, oh, that's
Blythe Brumleve:
21:07
super interesting, because it's almost like a video game that you're managing these little characters
Unknown:
21:12
Exactly. And he talked about it the way I would be like, Oh, you need a new job. You'll talk to Brittany, and then she'll get with Jessica on my team. And he's like, Yeah, I got Cleo doing this. And then he passes it to Ingrid. And then. She sends it to her manager, but they're agents. They don't exist. Just wild. That's
Blythe Brumleve:
21:30
that's interesting. I've tried building an agent, and it took me to do a specific task, but it took me longer to try to build the agent than it would to do the damn task. So I just stopped. I was like, I'm not ready for this yet,
Unknown:
21:41
for routine, repetitive tasks, right? Like we do a lot of document collection pod that was something mentioned in the shipper panel, bring your pod, get your pod. For the love of God, I need your pod, right? Like routine, regular document collection, things like that. There, it's a great area, right? And, and we're scratching the surface there. I'd say we're a little bit beyond scratching the surface. We've implemented some of that at Mohawk, and it's fantastic going back to the to the like, to the the fraud panel. Oh, sorry, that was the original question. Oh,
Blythe Brumleve:
22:15
no, no, no. It
Unknown:
22:18
was like there was what you could bring away. Oh yes, yes, okay. Were you not there? Did you like? Did you miss you sleeping? Time, yeah, you know, freight, we all spend an enormous amount of time trying to de commoditize ourselves, right? That is literally our job, right? Is to say that our rice is better than your rice, right? Like, even though it's all kind of the same rice, right? And to miss, you know, for me, to look myself in the eye and realize that we missed something like advertising our fraud prevention, knowing we're going through that, right? Was a huge wake up call. And it's so it's not just, it's not just for me, fraud prevention, it's inventorying everything that we do as an operation. We have incredible people doing incredible things and seeing where we can create stories, seeing where we can create points of differentiation for ourselves, and even if it's not a huge differentiator for everybody, making sure we're calling it out so people know that we are there and doing it. So really, really cool part of the
Blythe Brumleve:
23:30
conversation. I love when shippers drop those marketing nuggets like this is what we want to see. And so do more of this. RJ, I want to go back to you about the sort of AI conversation, because that was one topic that I don't know that we had a singular focus on, which might be the first conference I've seen that didn't have a AI specific talk. But I think that more speaks to AI just infiltrating every part of our lives where maybe we don't need a dedicated talk on it, because it's part of every conversation. Anyways, I would love to know, like, how are you thinking about AI and using it? I know you've used a little bit of it, how are you implementing it, and how are you thinking about it
Unknown:
24:11
for the future? So I think the good thing with AI right now is it speeds up a lot of workflow process, workflow processes, and you can be really efficient if you have a lot of repetitive tasks that need to be done. I think what the bridge that are, what I'm trying to gap with, AI is creating that authenticity and human interaction, like touch, right? And in order to do that, I'm finding you need to have real data, and whether that data is from a form submission, phone call, conversations, transcripts, things like that. AI is he can train it to essentially do anything you want you, just like any human. It just comes down to language and being able to convey, okay, this is this. This is this is how a shipper speaks. This is how a broker speaks. This is x, y, z. So how can we bridge the gap between speed, but then also quality and office authenticity, so I find that's what I've kind of been working on. Like, I shouldn't even be saying this, but like, a lot of my job is, like, almost automated, right? Like I have good systems and processes, right? A lot of the marketing tasks not talking to clients or anything like that, or team members, but a lot of my marketing processes I have automated, been able to free up a lot of my time to learn and expand a little bit more in different fields and different types. What it's for Exactly, right? So I think that's the next step with AI as people learn and integrate into their systems. And it's pretty cool that we didn't even have to talk about it this year, because I think last year we talked about it quite a bit, but then now it's just like, it's one of those things that it's just adopted by everybody. They know you have to eventually have it some form of it doesn't have to be, you know, your whole entire model, but you know, you gotta at least sniff it. You gotta at least be aware of it. So, yeah, that's the way I'm looking at it.
Blythe Brumleve:
25:55
Well, RJ, I don't you're in a very similar place as I was when I was in house marketing at a three PL that I think, you know, for a lot of other marketers that are here, where you are essentially the conductor of the orchestra. And the thing with nowadays is that you can use these tools to help you play all of these instruments, instead of trying to rely on getting the time and the bandwidth to do it yourself. Are there any strategies that you think. That more freight companies should be adopted because you guys, I mean, I'm biased when I say this, but I love SP eyes marketing, the way that they partner with podcasts like this one, and then you are able to take that kind of content and put it on like steroids for us. So what are you thinking about in the future that more freight companies should be doing? That's
Unknown:
26:44
a good question. I mean, I honestly would like, it's hard, it's hard for me to answer that, because I would then have to go into Mohawk global, see what they're doing, go into CS regret, see what you're doing, to really understand what is happening. But I think for every freight, like, I guess freight or logistics company, I think, I think it would really come down to, how are you, how are you researching, right? AI can save you a lot of time when it comes down to research, not necessarily personality and, you know, picking up the phone call, but even when I was talking to you about, you know, researching, you know, what type of content, what? What are people searching on forums, on Reddit, Quora, things like that. Like, the information is out there. How can you get it quickly, and how can you be efficient in order to speak to your target audience, opposed to being, you know, a wide fish and a wide net? I'm not saying everybody is doing that, but I think a lot of logistics companies, they would benefit from being able to use the research tools to be able to really hone in on, okay, what are people actually searching for, for my company, what are people talking about coming right? Your brand is what they what they say you are, not what you think it is right, and then being able to really just answer those questions. Because I was shocked, even just looking at some of the questions on like well, freight broker questions on Quora and Reddit, four Chan, all these random channels. And I was like, Oh, this is a gold landmine because one people are looking it up. And then also you position yourself as authority, right? And as soon as you're the authority position, right? Who are you gonna believe Timmy John's shoe company about running? Or are you gonna believe Nike? Right? Position yourself as authority, and then that's also how you bring in traction and get more customers and your ideal client and all that, once you build that relationship.
Blythe Brumleve:
28:31
It's extremely insightful. Yeah, well, on the on the sales side of things, because marketing is, you know, they have obviously, an insanely challenging job where they're trying to manage a bunch of things, and they probably got a lot of irons in the pot. What about on the sales side of things? Because you've mentioned, I sat on one of the talks with spark change labs that they were able to do a live demo with you and get the structure of your sales team versus your marketing team and how people can improve that communication gap between them. Yeah. Great session. So shout out to Lee and Beth for managing that one. And one of the things I think you said was managing the hunters versus the gatherers, and then getting the marketing team, you know, much more familiar with the roles of each of what the sales people are doing. How are you implementing that now? Or is that something you're going to implement in the future?
Unknown:
29:17
We're in the process of segregating. We have segregated our sales and account management. It involved compensation restructuring, which we believe we we could, we have done, without affecting anybody, right? But the sources of compensation growth versus retention, right? And we've worked to get some of the people that were maybe doing more farming on the sales side of the role into account management roles where they're absolutely thriving. So that's that's been an evolution, right? And that's something, I don't think it's particularly unique, right? It's something, it's something unique to Mohawk, as we go, as we go on our growth journey, right from a regional company to a multinational company, it's something, it's something that's had to be done. But at the same time, I think where we have to work harder is to make sure that marketing is one of the number one suggestions that came out of the Spark Lab. And I thought it was really cool. We have an opportunity to make sure that both marketing and sales work together right to accomplish a goal. And I think one of the things that we came out of there was, for example, building a target list for marketing and sales to collaborate on jointly, and let some of the creatives from our marketing team, like, like, our sales guys use some of the cold calling, right? You know, knocking on doors, right? Emails, they're doing a lot of that stuff. Let our marketing people run wild, right? Maybe they land a hot air balloon at our top prospects, right? Like, yeah. You know that does not represent the Mohawk global brand. Choose a different emoji, yes, yeah, the smiley face. But you know, getting getting those teams working together, and giving marketing some skin in the game, and reward right for being able to collaborate and gain entry into some of these key clients, and that's transforming our marketing crew. We have such talented individuals on the team who are chomping at the bit and maybe just you. Giving them a nudge and pointing them in a different direction will unleash some of that. So that was a really cool idea that came out of that, I think, on top of that, just making sure that anything we do from a marketing point of view and a sales point of view, the teams are talking right, that there's a regular, routine communication that we don't have silos within our commercial division, right? I think that breaking those down is important. I think we do a fairly good job there at Mohawk. There's always room for improvement, though. So yeah, there
Blythe Brumleve:
31:54
were definitely a lot of tips in that session, in particular of aligning.
Unknown:
31:57
I can't wait to get the notes from it. Like, yeah, that's like, it's really cool.
Blythe Brumleve:
32:01
And one of the notes that somebody suggested that you should involve marketing in your compensation very similar to sales. And how do you talk about incentivizing marketing? I mean, there right now, many marketers are incentivized just to get leads. They don't care about the quality of the leads, because they know that they're measured by this specific measurement. But if you involve them in the compensation process, I guarantee they're going to be sitting in a lot more sales,
Unknown:
32:25
absolutely, if you open the door and we convert the commission, right? I mean, like, I mean, I don't think that that's unreasonable, right? There's a momentum change, and I think it's something that needs to be talked about at multiple companies. Right at the end of the day, it's all business development, right? It's all business development. We're all on the same team, and I don't think at Mohawk, where there's any adversarial like, but we don't necessarily talk to each other as well as we should or could sometimes, yeah, because there
Blythe Brumleve:
32:49
was definitely, there was one girl that was like, I, you know, when it came to, like, the fraud marketing, she's like, I'm not doing this, but I just the light bulb clicked for me that I should be doing this. And so it's, you know, it's kind of sparking those ideas to work more closely together. I am curious, Charlie, on your side of things, because you're you're really great at company marketing and also personal branding, how do you sort of think about what, what data matters to you, what ROI matters to you when you're thinking about your personal brand versus the company brand?
Unknown:
33:21
So it's that almost feels like a trick question. She asked hard questions, like, seriously because, like, I don't, I don't know who wants to hear this, but the majority of the success we get from our branding is when we crack the door open and show who we are as humans and put the data aside. So, you know, with my LinkedIn and the way our company, you know, shows up on LinkedIn, we do try and separate it a little where I would say we use more of our data from our company. But honestly, what I try and do a little LinkedIn, 101 secret, I'll try to ride off a good post. So three weeks ago, four weeks ago, I posted a gallon of orange juice and had a story about how I overpaid for it, and I think it has 100,000 views. Oh my gosh. Like dumb and really dumb. But then the next day, that's when I'm gonna now, I have all this attention, and people are coming and commenting and coming and checking the comments back to them. That's when I'm going to post the data. I want them to see that, you know what I talk about a lot is just, you know, unengagement, disengagement, disengagement, and what we should be doing as talent leaders for recruiting and retention. So that's where I start to I almost drop the data in. The data does not get their attention. Once I have their attention through a ridiculous strategy, I use the data to, kind of, you know, that's really what I'm there for, is
Blythe Brumleve:
34:55
keep those posts, like, kind of parked, like the data more focused post, you keep them kind of parked for when a post takes off unexpectedly, like,
Unknown:
35:05
I try, yes, I am very fluid. I mean, people don't realize, like, I write those posts every single morning. Oh, interesting. So I have, like, a library of ideas, but I really keep it fluid and, like, a very good balance, but, yeah, I don't think the data brings them. I think it might keep them, but people want humans, and that's just that was another, you know, theme here is especially with AI. We need humans, we need emotions, we need creativity, we need judgment. And that is really what people want to know about other people before they do business with them. So I think it was Bill on the from quick creed on the shipper panel. He's like, You want my freight crack the door a little bit every time we engage. Like, don't just come and hit me with a sales pitch. So that's the human side of our business.
Blythe Brumleve:
35:55
No, that's really well said, and a great reminder, because I think for a lot of marketers there, they try to present data to the executive team. And I don't know, maybe, RJ, you've experienced this before. I know I have, when I'm presenting the data like really good metrics that I know are good metrics, and they have no idea what any of that data means. Yeah. So I think it's like trying to think about the ways to speak to that audience and speak to that executive to get that executive buy in, is presenting them with data that they care about. And you. Can't make it too complicated, otherwise, it's just third
Unknown:
36:26
grade. I mean, like, it's kind of unrelated, but I saw like, a meme earlier today that, and it was just satire, but it was like, you know, if you this is one way to advertise or create a news story, let's say 100 ton asteroid is gonna hit Earth, and that's, you know, that's the headline, or an Astra, an asteroid bigger than 100 elephants is going to hit Earth. And the way that we think of that is, like, what's 100 tons? I don't even know what that is, but 100 elephants like, so it's just dumbing it down. I mean, there are a lot of times I will use AI and be like, explain this to me, like, I'm a third grader, and that's, you know, that's the easiest way to communicate. It is, yeah,
Blythe Brumleve:
37:05
that's a really great example. Anthony, what about you? What kind of maybe data points is your maybe marketing or sales team presenting to you that makes sense to you?
Unknown:
37:16
You know, I we use a lot of very fundamental right? We use, we use time and funnel time, like, like, average days, lead cycle, right? We look at conversion rates, we look at time. And I, you know, for me, the challenge is always balancing what the data tells me with what I know our people are really doing, like data is, I don't run the business on data, right? Like, I can't. I have some really hard working people that have ups and downs and have good weeks and bad weeks, so I tend to really look at the totality of everything. So I'm not saying throw it out. It's important to monitor right? And there's probably areas that we could get better, right? But if you look at my like leadership profile, if you take one of those things, I tend to lead by the gut, right? My boss, Mike, great guy. He tends to leave without us. So some of that has to be there, right? And we can, we can kind of come together and have conversations. But you know, I think we're looking at your typical right leads, conversion rate, MQL, SQL, right on down the pipeline. We're not very unique in that area. That's because I'd rather focus my attention. I like my favorite thing to do is to go out and get with our salespeople and ride out in the cars and go talk to customers, right? And that's what most of our executive team's favorite thing is to do, and that's where you get the real pulse of what's happening. And that's where you see where the real challenges are, and that's where you see where you have opportunities for coaching development, or where you've got somebody that's just knocking it out of the park. And you know the business is going to come, right? Whether, they're in a slump, it's going to come. And so that's kind of how we do it. We try to, I try not to over complicate it. It's interesting how that feeds right into marketing, because it's, you know, you being out in the field, you are being exposed to problems that may have not come back upstream to you. You're the shipper problems. That's now part of your intent strategy, and being able to lead with marketing by focusing on their pain points. And I think that's a hard thing as a leader. The further you get removed from the business, it's like the micro stuff that we need to latch onto for a campaign or whatnot,
Blythe Brumleve:
39:40
yeah. What are those early wins, which might be a great question. RJ, what would maybe in a lot of the content that you're creating, are those early signals that you're like this piece of content is going to really work? Or how do you what data maybe is important to you from a marketing metric standpoint?
Unknown:
39:57
So I guess the the way I look, kind of look at data, and then also the way I kind of explain it to people that might be a little bit higher up as well, is, I really just look at it as, like, ego, right? I can say conversions, KPI, you know, bounce rate all this kind of jazz, and say, Yeah, we got 78% all this kind of jazz. And, yeah, it might seem great, but at the end of the day, it's really about playing the ego and understanding, you know, breaking it down in scenarios that they'll be able to understand. But then also, I find one of the easiest ways to also communicate with data is almost, when there's success, you're almost communicating it like it's their idea, right? So when we have a really good, you know, a podcast episode and we're getting lots of views and things like that, it wasn't my idea that to, you know, sponsor any podcast or anything. That was Mike Michalak, shout out, my boss, right? But part of the execution, though, was being able to, you know, position it properly in front of the audience and then looking at, okay, what is the data point? What's the watch? What are the watch time hours, things like that, right? Well, then I'll say, hey, you know, it was a great idea that, you know, you sponsored Blythe, we talked about this, x, y, z, when we talked about our last meeting, right? So then I don't have to say all this, like, hey, you know, we had a conversion rate of this. And you know, our watch time is down 20, 30% right? So that's kind of how I present data, especially with those that might not be as technically sound. So ego, and then also trying to frame things more as. Their idea, because then you're more likely to get buy in and future yeses when you pitch another idea. So then it's not just like, Hey, can I have more money for this? Oh, well, I don't even understand the thing you just told me, right? So
Blythe Brumleve:
41:34
yeah, I think, and you work so well, I think with the executive team too, especially like on the finance side of things, and that's something that a lot of marketers just, frankly, aren't that good at but you need to be. And I think with the economic times that we sort of live in now and those different challenges, you have to be able to provide some kind of value in a way that makes sense to get that buy in Exactly. All right, last couple questions here, because I know that everybody wants to kind of get out of here. I Okay, what I do have a question just sort of like overall, like industry associations. What kind of value do you think that industry associations provide in sort of a modern day world?
Unknown:
42:18
I'll say I think they all serve different purposes in the sense, and maybe this is one of the reasons we all enjoy this conference. And the crowd is no one's trying to close you here or sell you Well, there were three shippers. I'm sure they got bombarded or and then maybe the South by Southwest people. But when you go to other industry conferences, you know it's either, it's very rarely, everything it's I'm going for education, I'm going for business, I'm going for partnerships. But here there is, I don't sense that there is, that is the focus for anyone like they may get business out of this. They may start to build a relationship that turns into something. But I truly feel like this association is to learn, to network, to grow, to build relationships, to make friends, I mean, in a strange way, that is a big part of the business. So I think they all serve a different piece. And you know, for me as a recruiter, it's just as important for me to go and learn about what my clients are doing, versus actually way prefer a conference like this than a conference where I just have to be like, Yeah, on exactly right. I have to stay I have to stay in check. No, just, I don't want to hard sell anyone when I meet them for the first time. That's not my goal.
Blythe Brumleve:
43:38
Yeah, that's very well said. What about you guys? What kind of maybe in addition to TMSA, or maybe how TMSA is relevant to other different industry associations, that maybe you're a part of
Unknown:
43:51
you personally. Yeah, I mean, TMSA is my favorite, like, it's clearly the place that I come and enjoy and learn and decompress a little bit and have a good time, where we also tend to get involved, are areas in the industry where we can provide thought leadership and and demonstrate our thought leadership. So we have quite a few of our one of the, you know, one of our go to market strategies is bringing expertise to our client. We're a flat organization, easy to talk to, right? Not trying to sell here, but you know, like and that means that, you know, our Vice President, head of compliance, is active in ncbfaa, right? And is there and is speaking regularly at those events. Rich Roach is on the federal Maritime Commission, right? Worked to put the rules together for or he's not on the actual commission. He's on the advisory board. He's not on the actual commission, although he should be, right. And, you know, he worked to put Ostra together, which dealt with the excessive detention and demurrage practices that we've seen, right? And so we do a lot of stuff that enables us to get out there, and we bring our you know, if you think about our consulting group, our Mohawk global trade advisors, where we have consultants on trade policy, we bring a lot of people to like trade oriented events, so that they can learn, so that we can build their knowledge, so that we're building the future leaders of tomorrow. From a sales point of view, I'm not a big conference guy, right? Like, we go to some, you know, my we, I was talking about this last night with somebody, right? We have some people in our company. We do a lot of furniture business, so we have some people that will go to the furniture show in Vegas, but they're not going to find customers. They're going because they can meet with 20 of our customers at one time, right? And so they go and do that, and it's they can bring a couple of people out to dinner, and it's just, it's a nice, convenient way to do that. Typically, you know, conferences, industry events, the big ones, you know, I tend to get lost in the shuffle with the bigger events and things like that, you know. And then other conferences. We don't go to sell to people. We go to the other Trans Pacific that the TPM we go to. We have to be there as an NVOCC, right? Our clients are there and we go. But even then, it's all about bringing our clients out to dinner after, right, things like that. It's about
Blythe Brumleve:
46:20
building relationships and upskilling. Sounds like so. Bar, is that very similar to you? RJ,
Unknown:
46:25
yeah, for sure, I think definitely one of the things TMSA has helped me is when I joined the industry. Yeah, two years ago. Wow, time flies. When I joined it, like two years ago, it I knew nothing about logistics. I still don't, right, but I am, none of us do, but I am better equipped than I am now, and I can confidently talk about certain things that I would be absolutely zip tight about my first time around, and then also just being part of the committee recognition and being active and getting involved. We got our website rebrand done in my first year at SPI, and one of the ways I was able to do that was one of the committee members. She also had her website done, and she actually shared her numbers with me on the improvements. That was also, that also helped me sell the exec team on getting the website done. We did need it, though. It wasn't, you know, we did, actually, it was just seen it exactly. But it's just one of those things, right, just meeting the right people at the right time. But then also, like, when you the newcomers reception people are like, I've never worked with logistics, right? And then you're just right? And then you're just like, okay, you know, I'm not a I don't have that. What's that term imposter syndrome, right? Like, you know, here I am. Yeah, I can do marketing, but can I do it in logistics? I don't know, right? So I think that's what's been really valuable. It's helped with my knowledge, touched with being able to also, oh, an agent, he wanted some service that we just don't offer. And then I've already met two or three people that are able to do that, that I can say, hey, I can do an email introduction, you know. And hopefully you guys can connect from there. But I now don't have to say no or something, or hey, no, that's not within our scope, right? So it's really, it's really amazing, in that sense, that you can really almost be the go to person, not just for your company, but then also anyone else that you build a relationship with and expand your knowledge.
Blythe Brumleve:
48:05
It's making your profile much more valuable too, not just for yourself and for maybe future, you know, jobs or maybe career endeavors that you would want to pursue. But it's also within the company itself. I think that you're helping them upskill and grow with you as well. And it's kind of it's kind of crazy how in this how much technology has come into this world and come into this space in particular, and then now we're what are we talking about, in person events? And another one I heard was the power of referrals and just asking your best customers, and these simple things that maybe a lot of us just forget in when we're trying to keep up with all of the different things. So speaking of like all of the different things, kind of last, final questions here, what is one thing that you can't wait to do whenever you get home, when it comes to marketing or sales with your company
Unknown:
48:59
from this event or just in general, just in general,
Blythe Brumleve:
49:03
maybe it's conversations that you had with people here, something you learned in one of the sessions. What's one thing you can't wait to kind of try out whenever you get back?
Unknown:
49:11
Yeah, I'll definitely say, because we are freight brokers, and a lot of our main clients are freight agents, I think the big thing is, I had no idea that shippers were interested in looking at the fraud and security and panels, things like that. Honestly, I thought, I mean, I'm a lady on I was like, white papers are lame. I'm not gonna make a white paper, but you guys are looking at it, so I should also integrate it on top of the video strategy and the content strategy that we're doing right provide different models of how SPI is fighting fraud and different partners. We have to not only strengthen SPI, but then also help our agents as well when shippers go check them out. So I think that's something I'm looking forward to. It's a different challenge, like, again, I'm not a fraud expert by any means, but it's gonna force me to do some research. Gonna force me to ask around and go from there.
Blythe Brumleve:
49:55
Awesome. Yeah. What about you?
Unknown:
49:57
Charlie? Yeah. I think something we've been struggling with is, you know, we recruit across the entire industry, but what we find is that what our clients use us for the first time becomes their perception of what we do. So if we work with a shipper and fill an inventory manager role, they come to us when they have inventory jobs, when we work with a three PL they come to us for freight brokers. And we've started to really like have these conversations with our clients and realize our freight you know, freight brokerages don't even realize we could service their shippers and the power of those types of introductions. So Kate's speech, the keynote, really resonated with me. Just, I'm gonna recap her three things, but the 15 second elevator pitch, she just made it so simple. And I think we like pound our heads over this, but what do you do? How can you solve my problem, and how are you different? And so that's what I want to go home. And actually, I might do it tonight. I might ask chatgpt. It knows me pretty well, so I might, I might go to my room and figure that out tonight, if I'm motivated. But it was just so simple, the way she positioned it, and I think a lot of eyes in the room lit up, which is crazy for a room of marketers that knows how to push pain points, and
Blythe Brumleve:
51:12
it's almost like you need to be reminded. Sometimes you get so lost, maybe in the weeds of everything that's going on, that sometimes it's just back to the basics and all aspects of business. But. About you, Anthony, what's the thing you're
Unknown:
51:24
gonna jump into that you mentioned you were on the recognition committee that awards was It was spectacular to see what those other companies, and especially the rising stars, are doing in their organizations. Was really cool to see. Like, so sorry for the little aside there. I just want to comment. And obviously, like, as I was reading those nominations, some of the impressions were wild, like some of the social media, millions and millions, just like the awareness for the trucking industry, very cool. Yeah, great job. Yeah. So I really thought that that was cool and very inspirational, right? Just to go back and look at who run awards and why that's something that we can do, right? Like, and think about that. I already talked about, we already talked about spark change lab, that was really cool right there. We're going to get some ideas out of that. We talked a little bit about going back based on the fraud conversation, and really digging into our organization and taking a second look. And I think that this has to be a regular practice, like, like a quarterly or a six month practice, to say, what have we started doing as an organization, throughout the organization, whether it's in credit and finance, whether it's in, you know, operations, customs brokerage, whether it's been, you know, on our air freight product, whether it's been in our consulting division, what have we started doing different that we can like, we need to shout out, and this is a differentiator, right? So making that a routine part of our process, so that when we're doing cool stuff and our organizations building towards the future, that we're also communicating that out into the world, right? So, so I think finding some sort of schedule for that is important. And then last but not least, you know, I come from a background. I had an old boss who's only comment when, when funding, you know, a journey to a conference or something like that was, was whatever you do, take it back, right? And so taking the time. I've got copious amount of notes to share with my teams, my colleagues, you know, my team and the executive team, right? All the cool things I've learned, right? And really share with them, so that they feel like they were they got some of this experience too, and then they do the same thing, you know, when they go to Tia or other things like
Blythe Brumleve:
53:44
that, right? I haven't actually heard of that like but it makes a ton of take
Unknown:
53:49
it back, right? Otherwise, it's just sitting in this old brain, and it doesn't last a long time there, right? Like it starts beautiful, right? And so much of what we do is non measurable, but it's important to the to the business and to the people and to the teams and just the overall development of the organization. So that's something that I'm always excited to do. From a non conference point of view. I'm really excited to go home and relax. It is
Blythe Brumleve:
54:18
a lot. Conferences are a lot. They're draining. It's a lot to prep for, it's a lot to catch up on, but it does. There's certain aspects I think that, you know, I can probably speak for all of y'all that you know, there are certain things that you're going to take away from this, and it's going to have lasting impact on the work that you do. So thank you. Do
Unknown:
54:34
realize it's only Tuesday, right? the working before it's even last week, I already had one of those fake Thursdays where it was really Wednesday and, like, I had one of those last week. So like, this week is gonna be really long, yeah. So all right. Well, publication time, pub time, promo time, where can folks follow each of you and connect with each of you? Follow me on LinkedIn, or you could follow CS recruiting. We are always looking to talk to job seekers in the industry, but I would say right now, really looking to help companies hire for any professional position. Awesome. Yeah, you can check out our company, LinkedIn page, SPI Logistics, and your website, yeah, and our website, there you go. Also, we're quite active on YouTube. If you're looking for any educational type logistics content. That's where you can get in touch and learn. You can follow me on LinkedIn. You can follow Mohawk global on LinkedIn to keep up with all the latest news in the industry. And there's been a lot of it specifically regarding tariffs. I think we're really leading the industry there on keeping our clients up to date on tariffs. So if you want to know what's going on there, please, please log in. We have some other cool stuff coming out. One of the things that I did want to throw out there video, that's like, we have to move into video. And I met some really cool providers, and it's always inspiring to see what you do, Blythe, and your presence online, and things like that, and and so I always walk away from here saying, this is the time for video. And I think, I think I have a path now, right? So anyway, LinkedIn, humans on the video, not AI. I was gonna use claymation. Okay, someone did show me a video they made that was, you know, it was a person, but it wasn't a real person. They just made them up. Yeah, and they are talking and delivering a speech as if they're human. That's any wouldn't know what, yeah, because it's getting so good. And how can you, how can you do more with less? And some of these programming, I mean, it what's important? Yeah,
Blythe Brumleve:
56:43
I can't come soon enough. I wish I could clone myself, but I guess I'm going to have to do what the AI agents are doing, clone certain parts.
Unknown:
56:56
She's already on the beach. Her background is fake what you see on LinkedIn, yeah. Actually laying
Blythe Brumleve:
57:02
really good mics, and you can't hear the wind and sand is a little bit of an issue, though, we'll have to work. Thank you so much for sticking I know it's the end of the conference, so thank you all for tuning in and being
Unknown:
57:15
a part of the discussion. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Yeah, that was fun.
Blythe Brumleve:
57:24
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of everything is logistics, where we talk all things supply chain. For the thinkers in freight, if you like this episode, there's plenty more where that came from. Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you never miss a conversation. The show is also available in video format over on YouTube, just by searching everything is logistics. And if you're working in freight logistics or supply chain marketing, check out my company, digital dispatch. We help you build smarter websites and marketing systems that actually drive results, not just vanity metrics. Additionally, if you're trying to find the right freight tech tools or partners without getting buried in buzzwords, head on over to cargorex.io where we're building the largest database of logistics services and solutions. All the links you need are in the show notes. I'll catch you in the Next episode and go jags. You.
