Ali Shafi:
0:05
Well, because I've seen how well they've done over the years, and they continue to improve and continue to bring in other partners that we can integrate with. And to take it back real quick, you brought up, how am I keeping up with freight tech? I give a lot of credit to Ty too, because we'll, you know, we'll just get an email or a notification or TMS that we would log in, hey, we just partnered up with XYZ. And I'm like, Oh, I've never heard XYZ, and I'll go research it. Since it integrates with my TMS, I want to know about it. So they've done a phenomenal job of continually improving the TMS, which I'm sure all of them are doing. But more so than that, is continually adding partners that will integrate with our TMS welcome
Blythe Brumleve:
0:46
into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. We are proudly presented by SPI logistics and Tai software, and we've got another great episode for you today. I'm your host, Blythe Brumleve, and I'm happy to welcome in Ali Shafi he is the CEO of SIO Logistics, and we're going to be talking about how he's grown his brokerage tremendously over the last few years. I believe you guys opened your doors in 2018 but also how a TMS choice has helped to propel that growth. So Ali, welcome to the show.
Ali Shafi:
1:17
Hey. Thanks for having me. Excited to talk today.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:19
Absolutely. Now this episode, I do have to give the you know, sort of disclaimer out there that this episode is in partnership with Tai's software, so we are going to get into sort of the nitty gritty of what all goes into choosing a TMS. So we're going to get into that in a little bit. But first, Ali, I want to hear more about your journey into logistics, because I always find it interesting of how people you know, whether they found logistics or logistics found them how it just sort of, you know, and and tangled you and then just doesn't let you go. So how did you get started? Yeah,
Ali Shafi:
1:50
I think you said it perfectly. It doesn't let you go, right? So I had just graduated college, and I went into a big box brokerage for an interview. They put me out on the floor. I did a shadow session within 30 minutes. I knew this is what I was born for. It was just a match made in heaven. They ran a cradle of the grave model. So you're negotiating both on the customer side and the carrier side. And so the job was negotiation. And I naturally just live for that. I'm one of those guys that I'm not much of, like a penny pincher, but I just need to be made. I just want to feel like I won that negotiation. I got a deal, and I'll buy so and I like doing that to people that I'm talking to, and so I fell in love with it. I worked there for about two, two and a half years, and I decided that I wanted to do my own thing. And so I sat out a year for my non compete. I got SiO logistics off the ground, uh, my my buddy and my partner, Cody Brown, joined me in 2019 and he worked at that same brokerage, and it's been a pretty crazy ride ever since that
Blythe Brumleve:
2:52
that's awesome, you. So you're one of the few that, like, got sat down at a, you know, a book and, you know, just, or sat down at a desk and given probably a bunch of cold leads and just told to pound the phones. Is that? Is that how you you got started, like many other brokers,
Ali Shafi:
3:05
well, like when I went in for my interview, they just showed you what the job is, right? And I was one of the few who are like, I want to do this. I can. I'm going to whoop everybody on the floor here at this this is, this is what I do. So I mean, they, they had great training for six months, and then, kind of, what you said, they throw you in the fire and sink or swim, and I swam, and, you know, I loved it, and I what, what really drew me out of there was they were so big that I was competing internally for leads more than I was out doing my job. Other than that, there's nothing negative I can say about that company. They taught me everything. It's great training, great support. And they were there, my introduction to the crazy world of logistics. So I had a great experience.
Blythe Brumleve:
3:48
That's awesome. So what was, I guess, sort of the catalyst that you were like, I want to do, I want to run my own company. What was sort of that light bulb moment?
Ali Shafi:
3:56
Man, I've always been an entrepreneur at heart. I had my first hustle when I was 14. I hustled throughout college. I was doing, you know, wholesale, flipping and random things on the side, just to earn a little bit more party money for college. And I've always just kind of done my own thing. So even going into it right, I knew eventually I was going to go out and do my own thing. So I was a sponge for those two years that I was there, I was, and I'm a bird's eye view type of guy. I'm thinking, 2345, years down the road, always, even when I was working. So I always knew I wanted to do my own business, run my own business. And yeah, you know, I learned as much as I could, until I knew and I felt deep down inside that I was ready, and so that that's when I decided to leave and start my
Blythe Brumleve:
4:43
own. So with, how did you come up with the name SiO, and what does SiO stand for?
Ali Shafi:
4:49
I'm glad you asked. It's a very common phrase in our industry. Stands for send it over so you got freight. Oh, nice, yeah. Oh,
Blythe Brumleve:
4:58
because I was, I was looking. At your company LinkedIn and your LinkedIn to prep for this interview. And I kept seeing the hashtag send it over, but I didn't put two and two together. And I first I was like, is it CEO? Is it SCI Oh, and then I was listening to another interview that you did shout out to Mary o'conn all over at freight waves. So I was listening to that interview, and heard her say, SiO. And so I didn't put two and two together. So thank you for putting that together for
Ali Shafi:
5:23
I'm glad you asked, because my mom still, till this day, calls it Scio, and it grinds my gears.
Blythe Brumleve:
5:29
Thank God I didn't ask before. I asked beforehand, instead of, you know, just assuming that it was Scio. So okay, so take me to So you started in 2018 obviously that was a completely different market. We saw the, you know, sort of rapid, you know, I guess, cease, ceasing of all business during covid for, you know, five or six months. But then there's the incredible boom that happened right after that, the incredible boom for freight brokerages. And then, you know, the current market conditions that we're dealing with right now, where it's extremely tight market. So how have you sort of prioritized what growth levels to pull during your your time as a business owner?
Ali Shafi:
6:12
Yeah, um, so I started in 2017 it took me about a year, year and a half by myself, learning the ins and outs of, you know, the whole credit issue of establishing credit for carriers work with you. And by the end of 2018 we had established credit. 2019 Cody came on board, and that's what I consider when we really got going, although we established in 2017 and from there, you know, it it was just Cody and I. So we were out just building books. I was in Dallas. He's in San Antonio, and much like this call, you know, before the Zoom era, me and him were on Google, meet all day, just comparing and competing, building our own personal books of business. Eventually we got to the point where we were able to hire using that organic growth. And we started hiring, you know, one at a time, two at a time. And throughout covid, we had a team of about 1819, folks. And we, we kind of go against the grain. Typically, we saw everybody mass hiring during the, you know, the covid boom, and we took a step back, and we decided to do it, to just work on our efficiency. And since we're bootstrapped, we just padded our savings. We wanted a lot of capital in our account to deploy it when everybody else is kind of pulling back, and that's what we're doing this year. So you're seeing a lot of people out there who are, you know, having layoffs or cutting commissions. We're trying to cut costs. We're doing the the exact opposite. We're investing more. We're hiring more this year than we ever have in the past. We're growing. We just started the Dallas branch right now, so we're hiring for this branch. We've got a branch in San Antonio, in Houston, we've got a few people in Austin, so we're going to be in all the major cities in Texas. And I think that's really, it's really helped us being bootstrapped and nimble, because we're able to adjust and go, you know, through the through the tied areas, and come out stronger than before, and we don't have to answer to anybody. And then, did you, did you say bring up, talk about the TMS yet or not yet? How do we pick it?
Blythe Brumleve:
8:13
Not yet, but, but I do want to, I do want to get into that. But first I what kind of freight Do you focus on? And why? Why? You know, I would probably preface this with a lot of brokerages that I've seen. You know, they start off in, you know, one area the country or one region of the country, and then maybe they expand to Chicago or the West Coast. Why the strong focus in Texas? So
Ali Shafi:
8:38
I'm a big believer in people and having that touch and feel with your co workers, that's that's what gets me going. I'm competitive, so I want somebody next to me to compete with. So our focus on Texas is just for our personnel in our offices. We move freight around, around the country, right? And when I first started, I was very heavy on West Coast produce. I had done that in the past. I was heavy on that drayage and working with freight forwarders that that's where we got started. But today, we've got over 500 customers, and we're moving all sorts of commodities, right? Oh, wow. So we're not necessarily focused on one thing just yet, although our core commodities are still produce machining parts and chemicals, but at the same time, like I said, we are so spread out. And this is fresh, because I just had a meeting with one of our mentors yesterday, and we went through our q1 and q2 and our spread is really, really healthy. As far as we're diversified in commodities customers and the whole shebang, as far as you know, not putting all their eggs in one basket.
Blythe Brumleve:
9:44
Oh, that's super interesting, because you hear so much about, oh, the riches are in the niches. And, you know, especially for, I think, like brokers who are trying to develop a personal brand or something like that, really being able to hone in on a specific niche. So you're known as, like, I don't know, the flatbed guy or, right? You know, chemicals guy, or, you know, something like that. So you have maybe had a different approach that to diversification, which I think is a lot smarter and probably has protected your company. You know, during this, this tight market condition,
Ali Shafi:
10:13
yeah, we're still so we had come into this year expecting, at least setting our expectations kind of low. We told ourselves, if we do what we did last year, we're going to be happy, because we've got, like I mentioned earlier, the capital to deploy this year and prepare for the next years instead of folks on this year. But we're growing roughly 40% compared to last year this year. So I'm really proud of our team, what we've been able to do. But to your point, you know the riches and the niches, I think, is fairly true, depending on where your brokerage is at. So our next target is, we're we're inching closer to that 100 million dollar mark, and I think to get there, it makes sense, right? Even our role model, our mentor, mentor that we're talking to, brought that up to us yesterday. We do need to get better about that and focus a little bit more on what our core customers are, you know, our top 80, 90% customers are doing, and then go out there and focus on those and see how you can earn more and get more referrals and penetrate that industry. So there definitely is some truth. I think there's levels to this game. What got us here won't get us there, type mentality. And so we're focused on that and trying to get to that. You know, our next milestone, which is that 100 million dollar mark, yeah,
Blythe Brumleve:
11:22
Mark. And you've hit other milestones too. I was reading through some of the Instagram posts on on the SiO account, and I think you were like, top 500 for our, you know, company growth as far in the entire country, top 500 and I think you're also top 100 in Dallas too, for all companies, yeah,
Ali Shafi:
11:41
we've had crazy growth. So last year, we're 23rd fastest growing company in Dallas. We're top 15% in the nation. So I think our ranking was 650 out of 5000 and we're top 15% fastest growing companies in the
Blythe Brumleve:
11:58
nation. Are you in freight sales with a book of business looking for a new home, or perhaps you're a freight agent in need of a better partnership. These are the kinds of conversations we're exploring in our podcast interview series called The freight agent trenches, sponsored by SPI logistics. Now I can tell you all day that SPI is one of the most successful logistics firms in North America who helps their agents with back office operations such as admin, finance, it and sales, but I would much rather you hear it directly from SPI freight agents themselves. And what better way to do that than by listening to the experienced freight agents tell their stories behind the how and the why they joined SPI hit the freight agent link in our show notes to listen to these conversations, or if you're ready to make the jump, visit SPI three, pl.com, now since you got started, obviously there has been just a boom of not just, you know, business or sort of the market fluctuations of business and that side of things, but there's also A boom in the technology side of things too, especially in freight tech. How do you sort of, I guess, keep track of all of the new toys that you could be investing in, and how do you know which ones are the right decision for you?
Ali Shafi:
13:15
Yeah, great question, and it's not easy. I still, I do it every single day. So my philosophy has just been, if I see anything shiny, right? We're talking about the shiny object syndrome earlier, I just go and book a demo. I don't I don't research or look like I do, you know, just like an overview, but I just book demos, and I get to know the person. I get to know the product, whether it's for me or not, that I figure out afterwards, but at least I know what's out there in the market. If it's not for me today, I can maybe one day it will be for me, as long as I know what's out on the market and what works for me. That's been my philosophy, and I've done so many demos that way, and I've learned a lot about how people demo and what you need to look out for, what keywords to look out for, right? Like road map. I hate that word, yeah. When you ask questions and they say it's on the roadmap, just take it as a no. But that's that yeah, that that's what's worked for me, and we've onboarded a lot of technology partners this year.
Blythe Brumleve:
14:11
Oh, wow. So yeah, I would imagine that the demo part of it has been crucial. Now, how do you, how do you sort of take the approach of you the executive, versus like the, you know, the broker that's making the phone calls. How do you determine, like, what's the right technology to invest in, from your perspective, versus like, the broker on the floor perspective?
Ali Shafi:
14:33
Yeah, so I'm a big believer in perfecting and then delegating. So everything that everyone here does, I've done it before. To not just like once, right? I, in my opinion, I've perfected it before. I've had delegation or had somebody else take over that role. And just to give you some insight, I'm handling everything operations at the business today. My partner, Cody, does everything sales related, so we sync up and we've got sales managers and operational i. Operations managers and try to, you know, fill those gaps that we have. So I'm really, really focused on operations this year, while Cody's handling everything sales. And then, you know, the dream is to have both of them talk to each other. And we went through pretty big organizational changes this year. Just this month on the first we went through, like, a hybrid split model. We've been traditionally created with a grave, and we just recently kind of went into it, not a full split we call it a hybrid split model. So that's been really fun and exciting, and I think it's going to really play out well with all the freight tech that's out there, because most of the freight tech right now is focused towards, you know, the buzzword AI, and automating all your back end tasks, which I think we're really close to doing that.
Blythe Brumleve:
15:47
So a part of that big, you know, I would imagine a part of that, the largest investment that you could practically make, I think, is on the TMS side of things. So with that being such a large investment of not just money, but time as well. Talk to me a little bit about like while the company was growing and while you were experiencing this growth, but also kind of holding back a little to choose which investments to make. What were some of the things that stood out most to you, as far as the lack of features that your previous TMS provider had, and, you know, without dropping any, you know, names or anything like that, but what were some of those features that were missing or challenging from your old TMS provider that said I or told you that you got to make a change? Sure,
Ali Shafi:
16:36
I think just the lack of scalability and the lack of integrations and not wanting to have an open API because they thought other people were their competitors. There's a lot of manual stuff going on. A lot of manual uploading. Man, I just, ever since I've been using tire, I almost forgot about all the things that the previous CMS didn't do. But it was just and it was desktop based. It wasn't web based. It didn't integrate with anything. It didn't have any automation. Tracking and check calls were a nightmare. Just a lot a lot of manual entry. And not that it matters, but it does. Their UI was terrible.
Blythe Brumleve:
17:17
I think I might know who you're talking about, but what was take me to the moment that you were like, That's it. I'm done with this. DMS, I'm going to start shopping. Yeah,
Ali Shafi:
17:30
I was still pretty in the weeds of the business when I started shopping, that I was doing a lot of our accounting. And I think that's what the straw that broke the camel's back was how hectic just doing simple things like sending an invoice to a customer was we were getting pods. We'd have to extract the pod from the carrier invoice. We'd have to download the invoice from the TMS, combine them, find out where the customer's email is, manually, email them invoices. And at that point, I think we were probably just doing about 100 loads, 150 loads a week. And so even that was enough. So I knew that we needed a change, and we needed one from the long term, because changing a TMS is not something you want to do more than once. And we spent a long, long time researching it. How long did you spend? I think it was like eight or nine months.
Blythe Brumleve:
18:17
Oh, wow. And I think, you know, before we hit record, you said that you created, you know, a whole, like, comparison sheet doc. So, you know, with it your previous statement of, you know, I, you know, take part in a lot of demos. I imagine you took part in a lot of TMS demos during this process.
Ali Shafi:
18:33
Oh, yeah, yeah, we had a, I've got, like, a Google sheet with a CRM and a VOIP and a TMS competitive analysis, all the major players. It's probably in there. And we went through kind of what we're looking for, and who checked the boxes where, and, yeah, I think it was. It came down to two of them. And I'm so glad we went with tie.
Blythe Brumleve:
18:57
Why is that? What are the the first things when you say a statement like that? What are the first things that that come to mind that make you thankful for choosing Ty
Ali Shafi:
19:04
well? Because I've seen how well they've done over the years, and they continue to improve and continue to bring in other partners that we can integrate with. And to take it back real quick, you, you brought up, how am I keeping up with freight tech? I give a lot of credit to Ty too, because we'll, you know, we'll just get an email or a notification or TMS and we log in, hey, we just partnered up with XYZ. And I'm like, Oh, I've never heard XYZ, and I'll go research it. Since it integrates with my TMS, I want to know about it. So they've done a phenomenal job of continually improving the TMS, which I'm sure all of them are doing, but more so than that, is continually adding partners that will integrate with our TMS, because I'm a big believer in just having the TMS is the heart of our business, right? So I want to have everything that plugs into my heart. Instead of having multiple tabs and having, you know, sales guys, operations guys, all go to different tabs and work with different softwares, I want everything as much as possible in the heart of my. Business, which is the TMS. And
Blythe Brumleve:
20:02
I think you brought up a point earlier that that really resonated with me, because I worked at a freight brokerage before, and I remember, during like, the middle of my tenure there, we made a TMS switch. And we made that the CIO at the die made the switch to the new TMS provider, but he didn't consult with anybody else, any you know, any of, I guess, sort of the in the trenches employees, and it caused havoc in our accounting department, where accounting was pretty much having to do all of those manual processes. But now it was just doubled, because the previous system did do that, but the new system that we moved to did not have that key piece of of the accounting integration into it. And it seems like such a massive just oversight, but once all the money is committed, I mean, that was, that was just the route that we were going down regardless. And so it was more of like a custom built option. So that was, you know, in and of itself, had its own flaws and issues. But I'm curious as to what was sort of like the, I guess, table stakes of what you were looking for in a TMS that if you know this company just didn't have XYZ, I'm not even going to get on a demo with it or or entertain this as a long term option. Yeah,
Ali Shafi:
21:13
integrations are really big for me. I wanted a web based, mobile friendly TMS because you're not always sitting in front of a desktop computer when you need to grab something real quick. I wanted the ability to have certain processes automated. It needed to integrate with some of my rate quoting tools. It needed to have real time rates and historical data and like clean dashboards. At the time, we were using my carrier packets to onboard so I needed to integrate with them, and the UI, you know, it's not important, but it is for me a little bit. I wanted it easy to learn, easy to train people on. Yeah, that was, I think, like a handful of what my must haves were.
Blythe Brumleve:
21:56
I had talked earlier about how you did a previous interview with Mary O'Connell. She's the host of Chuck call over on on freightwaves, and you had made a comment that said I was the biggest Karen when it came to qualifying Thai. Now I have to ask like, what? What were some of those like Karen style questions that that you were probably berating the poor Thai team. But important questions,
Ali Shafi:
22:20
those guys are great to work with. But I think I was just so stuck in my ways at that point, because I had only had experience at a big box brokerage and at a fairly outdated TMS, and so I was so focused in my own ways, and I wanted it done a certain way. And those the guys at tide made me, helped me realized that, hey, there's better ways to do this. And they showed me how. So I was very I'd be nitpicking every little thing, but hey, you can do it like this, like Well, what about what if this happens? Okay, if that happens, that you can do this. And the thing that really, really stuck out with Ty was they stood behind their product, regardless of what questions and how many times I asked them, and even down till you know their annual agreement, they they were open enough to say, Listen, we want, we want to work with you. If you're not happy, you let me know. I'll put it in writing. I'll let you out of your annual agreement. That spoke volumes to me. Wow,
Blythe Brumleve:
23:14
that's a pretty big I mean, usually it's the complete opposite of what a software vendor would say, like, you know, no, sorry, you're locked in. Gotcha
Ali Shafi:
23:24
So, yeah, typically, it's okay. Your sign, here's the account executive, see you later. Yeah.
Blythe Brumleve:
23:29
And I think that that is where, especially with my conversation, like, I'm not a freight broker. I never have been, but have sat next to a freight broker floor. I don't know if that experience counts, where I hear them yelling and banging the phones down on the desk and cursing each other out, or, you know, the reverse cursing other people out on the phone. But I imagine that that process of hand holding and just, you know, almost be, not almost, but being a good business partner in a sense, versus just trying to sell you something and move on to the next.
Ali Shafi:
23:59
Oh, there, there. I would certainly consider him a business partner more than just like a vendor, right? So I talked to Mitch, who's the CEO over there, and he's super open. If ever have any questions, it's a lot of the times are like, basic questions that probably his data entry guy could answer, but he's always available and willing to just hop on and he'll answer my questions and more. Hey, by the way, have you checked this out? Like, oh, I don't even know you guys had that. He's like, You need to check it out so they, they've got a lot, a lot going on and a lot to offer. And I think it the way that they've grown and still able to keep that customer relationship and that small mom and pop shop type feeling. I love that, and I love supporting people like that. Brokering
Blythe Brumleve:
24:42
success demands a battle ready strategy. Thai TMS equips freight brokers with the ultimate battle station for conquering a tough market. With Thai brokers gain access to a comprehensive platform where rate intelligence and quote history converge on a single screen. It's not just a page, it's a strategic. Command center designed to help brokers win. Thai equips your team with all of the data they need to negotiate with confidence and allows them to communicate directly with carriers and customers from a simple control base, revolutionize the way your brokers perform by giving them a competitive advantage with Thai TMS. For more info, go to Tai software.com backslash battle stations, and we also have a link for you in the show notes to sign up for a demo. Talk me through what the onboarding process look like. So you sign the agreement you're going to make the transition. How do you communicate, firstly, that to your team, because the team has to obviously buy in to something as massive as a TMS transition.
Ali Shafi:
25:44
Yeah, luckily, I've got a rock star team. First and foremost there, I'm switching stuff up a lot, and I you know, they are very easy to work with. But Ty made the onboarding pretty simple. Is straightforward. We're able to upload our data from our previous TMS into Thai really easily. Actually, I think they did it for us, and we're able to book as many training sessions as we wanted. I remember the guy, poor guy, Juan over at ms, had to deal with us and all the Karens that we brought, but they were really easy. It was simple. It's very straightforward. Even to this day, we've hired quite a bit. I think we're a team of probably 10 when we brought on tie. So we're a team of almost 40 now. And just bringing people in, right? We can get somebody up and running, somebody brand new to the industry, up and running on tie within a matter of days. Oh,
Blythe Brumleve:
26:35
wow, that's pretty easy. That's pretty quick. I mean, obviously, a lot quicker than, you know, your six month trial at the other gig that you had. So I imagine that that's a huge benefit to get somebody you know, on the ground and running as quick as possible. I did want to know, you know, what, as far as, like, the onboarding process, there obviously are going to be some challenges involved. So So what were some of those initial challenges, and then how did Ty sort of help the team move through them?
Ali Shafi:
27:07
I think my honestly, I don't, I don't remember any crazy challenges that stick out besides maybe just reporting, because I was, again, used to just getting certain reports one way, and Ty didn't have that report, but they showed me a really nifty tab where I can create my own reports with 1000s and 1000s of different fields, and so now I have more reporting capabilities than I know what to do with. So once, once, I learned that it was off to the races, so that besides reporting, I don't remember or recall having any issues that stick out because it's been a couple years since we onboarded with them. But, yeah, it was smooth sailing.
Blythe Brumleve:
27:47
And so I would imagine that that reporting feature, you mentioned the accounting feature, or the accounting integration earlier, what are some other like, favorite features of yours from an executive perspective? And then, what are some of the favorite features from like the brokers that are, you know, booking the freight. Yeah.
Ali Shafi:
28:06
So initially, I think just having the integrated onboarding was huge for us. In the past, we were like, literally sending people my carrier packet invites, waiting to see it being completed, and then going into our TMS and manually adding them in to where Ty made that seamless, right? We, if we were onboarding a carrier, as soon as they signed the packet, it'd be it push over to Ty and be in there and ready to onboard, right? I think that was, that was a really big one. I know for my accounting team, it was night and day difference, because if a carrier returned a lumper or a pod whatever it automatically would get attached to their invoice. There's no more extracting and combining files. You can send out an invoice in like a matter of clicks. Check calls is a big one. You can come in and just highlight every single one of your loads and shoot out a text to the drivers or an email to the dispatcher and get your check call updates. The customer facing tracking is a big one, right? So I use this of you know, when you buy a $15 frying pan from Amazon, it'll ping your phone when it's four doors down. Like, do you need to know that? No, but is it kind of nice getting that notification? Yes. So your customers kind of want, you know you should, even though they're they're not saying, hey, I want tracking, or I need tracking. You need to provide it to them. And Ty's customer facing portal really makes that easy to where they can track all their all their loads on the board. They can see, kind of the the breadcrumb trail on the on the map. And now we'll recently, we integrated our relay lumpers into Thai, which is really nice, too. And so our guys, you know, historically, we were going on com data or relay or road sync, whatever, pulling a lumper code, calling this guy, giving him the lumber code. Now it's all done for us. And not only is the lumber code sent automatically, the receipts and everything's up. Uploaded automatically into my TMS, so no more taking after hours calls for lumpers. That's that's recently kind of the highlight of like a new integration we just brought in.
Blythe Brumleve:
30:11
And I think, if I understand correctly, they also tie directly connects to your email. So a lot of the automations you're talking about, it's automatically added because of the integration with the email. Is that accurate? Am I probably butchering that explanation?
Ali Shafi:
30:28
No, no, you're fine. Yeah, your email is connected to the TMS, so you're able to send like your rate confirmations. You can even use their imaging capture software that Ty has that you can build loads directly from your inbox in the TMS, and they've got all sorts of functionality. We use a different automation software to build our loads. It's called vuma. They've done a really good job, and they're integrated with tie as well, so we're able to push our loads directly for inbox, right into Thai instantly. Wow.
Blythe Brumleve:
30:58
So that. So with all of the talk, you know, around, you know, sort of automation, AI, you know, those features that are pretty much in every tech stack nowadays. It tends to lend a theory that, oh, if you use these features more, use these tools more than your your people will have more time in the day to focus on more, you know, sort of higher revenue opportunities, instead of trying to, you know, merge a PDF together and send it over to accounting, what would you say that your team is able to do more now versus before?
Ali Shafi:
31:33
I think you're, you're we're still getting there. We're nowhere near perfect, but since we're working through our split model right now, our sales reps are able to do what they're supposed to do and what they're good at, sell more our operations reps are able to do what they're good at and what what they're hired for, and that is to create more capacity and and book more loads, and book more freight, and take more freight. So at the end of the day, that's where the growth is going to come from. Everyone getting more efficient. I was talking to another executive just a couple weeks ago, and his goal for his team and his software is an operational rep to handle 200 loads per day. I thought that was rich, but he he's, he's on to something. I was thinking 50, that that's what I was like, hey, I want my guys doing like, 50 per day once we get a lot of this automation in there. But I think we're, we're going through a huge shift. Technology is going to be changing a lot of things on the operational end to where reps are going to be able to make a lot more money and be a lot more efficient, because they're able to book way more freight. What
Blythe Brumleve:
32:37
do you think the future of like, sort of the the freight broker role looks like because there, you know, there's there. I do hear, you know, sort of talk about, you know, freight brokers are going to be replaced. It's their 90% of their jobs are going to be automated. How are you thinking about that? I
Ali Shafi:
32:54
don't think the freight broker ever gets replaced. The relationship is, is one thing that, you know, a robot or AI can't do. I do think that you're going to have to be more competitive as far as the back end goes. I think our overheads, as far as body count goes, you know, coming back to my previous point, each person is just going to be way more efficient on the operational side. So I'm just splitting it up, you know, coming down to one guy who's handling 20 loads a day, that's that's a lot, if you think about it, about a year ago now, with technology, that same guy is doing 100 a day, so you don't need as many bodies to do the same amount of work. So what do you do? You go out and get more work.
Blythe Brumleve:
33:36
Very true. So Okay, so last couple questions here, if somebody is, if, you know, maybe an executive at, you know, another three PL is, is thinking about making, you know that maybe they, they echo a lot of the, you know, sort of the frustrations that that you were experiencing, and they're, they're thinking about, maybe it's time to make a switch. What advice would you give them on hunting for, you know, a new TMS,
Ali Shafi:
34:02
um, so I was really big about just making sure that everything is in one spot, right? So regardless of what your stack looks like today, you know, again, I think 234, years ahead, I want to see what that company is doing, what they've done in the past, who they're working with, always ask for references of some of their current clients and clients, and you want different tiers of those clients, right? I don't want just one $600 million brokerage. I want a $4 million one. I want a $30 million one. I want to bigger client and then go out and talk to them. You know? I think our industry is really open to helping each other out, and people are open to discussing and giving you the real feedback, and including myself, if anyone's thinking about switching over to Ty, I'm more than happy to set up a call and tell my true feedback, which I've given here as well.
Blythe Brumleve:
34:56
Awesome. Well, perfect. All right, last question, or last couple. Questions here, what, what's on I was, I was about to say roadmap, what do you have planned in the future? Is maybe a better
Ali Shafi:
35:08
phrase as far as what technology or what,
Blythe Brumleve:
35:12
you know, the plans for the rest of this year, how you're preparing for, you know, 2025 can you actually prepare for, you know, 25 right now, or are you just adjusting to the market conditions as they come?
Ali Shafi:
35:25
No, we're absolutely preparing for 2025 and we have been all year. What I mentioned earlier is we were taking 2024 as our quote, unquote pause here, and what that meant internally is, hey, we're okay doing what we did last year. Revenue wise, we're fine. We're we're just going to grow, we're going to set our reset, our foundation, and we're going to do 100 million in 2025, right? So that's what we're preparing for right now. And our inventories are people, right? This is a people based business. We're so we're just increasing headcount. We're getting better, but redoing our trainings, redoing our softwares, redoing our workflows and just trying to get everything in one river down the lake right. So we're not perfect. We had three or four rivers. People are doing the same tasks differently and getting the same result. We want to, we want to find the most efficient River and just make sure everyone's going down that same path.
Blythe Brumleve:
36:18
Well, I lied about the last couple questions because now I want to ask about like, video process, mapping tips. How do you get others to buy into a new process?
Ali Shafi:
36:27
Yeah, that's it's tough. It takes time. You have to be patient. You know? I could see the vision and I I'd catch myself being an impatient person when, hey, this is a new process. Why aren't you doing it? But I see if you give people time and show them why we're doing it, it's night and day, so you gotta be really clear and open with your team about why you're doing what you're doing. That's a
Blythe Brumleve:
36:50
good tip, because I'm I'm currently experiencing that right now. I think my team hates me every time I'm like, we got a new process update. It's not going to make everything greater. And they're like, oh, great, thanks.
Ali Shafi:
36:59
I think just being clear cut about how it works, trying to, and you can't draw it out right? Like we bring in a new software. Nobody has time to learn it for two hours a day for the next week. Okay, it's, I've seen it works better if you just do a really, really simple SOP with pictures, I use this new this, this web extension called Tango that works really well, but just as simple as you can make it, that's
Blythe Brumleve:
37:25
a really good tip. And I think that that's the perfect place to sort of leave everybody at. Is that process mapping is not for the week, but it can lead to tremendous growth, especially if you have a great software provider like Ty has been for you guys over at SiO. And so where can folks, you know, follow you follow more of your work. Connect with SiO. You know, all that good stuff. Hey,
Ali Shafi:
37:47
SiO stands for send it over. So that's our that's our tagline, that's our social media handles, Instagram, send it over, linkedin.com/send, it over. You guys can follow me on LinkedIn. Connect with me on LinkedIn. More than happy to talk to anybody. I'm an open book. You can ask me anything. There's nothing too personal. Happy to happy to be a resource to anybody in the industry that's
Blythe Brumleve:
38:09
awesome, great feedback, great insight. And Ali, thank you so much. We look forward to watching the company grow.
Ali Shafi:
38:15
My pleasure. Thank you so much.
Blythe Brumleve:
38:20
I hope you enjoyed this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. Subscribe to the show. Sign up for our newsletter and follow our socials over at everything is logistics.com and in addition to the podcast, I also wanted to let you all know about another company I operate, and that's digital dispatch, where we help you build a better website. Now, a lot of the times, we hand this task of building a new website or refreshing a current one off to a co worker's child, a neighbor down the street, or a stranger around the world, where you probably spend more time explaining the freight industry than it takes to actually build the dang website? Well, that doesn't happen at Digital dispatch. We've been building online since 2009 but we're also early adopters of AI automation and other website tactics that help your company to be a central place, to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit new employees and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business. Our new website builds start as low as$1,500 along with ongoing website management, maintenance and updates starting at $90 a month, plus some bonus freight, marketing and sales content similar to what you hear on the podcast. You can watch a quick explainer video over on digital dispatch.io, just check out the pricing page once you arrive, and you can see how we can build your digital ecosystem on a strong foundation. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll see you all real soon and go jags. You.
