Blythe Brumleve:
0:45
Welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast where the thinkers in freight, I am your host, Blythe Brumleve, and one of the bigger decisions a freight broker will ever make is deciding to become a freight agent. The next biggest decision they'll make deciding what company to be an agent for now. Long time, listeners of this pod know that SPI logistics has been our day one sponsor and continues to do so. But instead of our regular feature interviews, I wanted to pull all the conversations with the SPI leadership team and bring them together in one episode covering everything a potential freight agent should or wants to know about a company they could potentially be a part of. Think accounts payable, it marketing, fraud, support. If you're thinking about it, you'll find that topic covered by the SPI leadership team and how they think about supporting you as an agent in your journey. So if you're interested in becoming a freight agent or joining a freight agent program, even if it's not SPI, which I'm gonna say, you probably should consider them. But there are plenty of questions and topics covered in this episode that you will still find valuable. The first step, we're gonna start with Mike Mikulik. He is the VP of marketing and sales to talk about how to succeed as a freight agent in 2024 and beyond. And we got a really great guest for you today, because he's from SPI logistics. That's Mike Mikulik. He is the VP of marketing and sales over at SPI. So we are going to be talking about what makes for a successful freight agent in 2024 and beyond. We all know the market conditions are a little rough right now, but there are some bright spots. So let's sort of, you know, kick things off with one of the central discussions that we had last year. At this time last year, we were talking about how what makes for a successful freight agent. And that video now on your YouTube channel sits at around 8,008.4 1000 views. So it's pretty safe to say that people really like the conversation we had last year. So Mike, welcome back to the show, and let's kick off this conversation for this year.
Mike Mikulik:
2:59
Yes, thanks for having me back. I'm glad to hear that we had good success for the last show and that people are actually interested in what we talk about. Yeah,
Blythe Brumleve:
3:05
absolutely. I mean it. I think the success with this sponsorship, this relationship between me and you and SPI, is that, you know, we come at these conversations with a genuine curiosity and then genuine wanting to to help so that that's my sort of initial, like sales pitch. So hopefully, you know, folks continue to listen in. I promise it's not going to be too salesy. It will be one of those situations where we're going to cover a lot of the common questions that people are asking about becoming a freight agent. Because, you know, I'm of the opinion that the the broker, the traditional freight brokerage model that we've all known for the past 15 to 20 years, is evolving into an agent first model. Now I know other people will probably disagree with me when it comes to that statement, but How accurate do you think that statement is? I mean, obviously we're biased here, but it's one of those things where I there is a legitimate movement from people who are working inside of a brokerage, who want to do their own thing, who want to to take their customers with them and build a book of business on their own?
Mike Mikulik:
4:07
Absolutely. I think there's a lot of people that are that have an existing book of business, have the relations with our customers who would like to go out on their own and start it on their own. They control their own destiny. So I think there is definitely a movement towards it. I think there's sometimes the fear factor of people going out on their own or starting their own brokerage. And really at the end of the day, it's going to be what you kill is what you eat. So if you're not, you know you may starve for the first few weeks or the first few months as you start bringing your customers over. So there's that fear factor that that people are thinking about. But I also think a lot of actual freight broker companies, so to speak, who have an employee based model are very interested in the agency model. And we get asked quite a bit like, how do you how do you guys do it? How you know, how can we make this agency model work? And there's definitely potential with it. The challenge is, is when you have an employee based model, where you have your own in house, you know sales people, your own dispatchers, you have your own books of business with a customer, and then all sudden you have, you bring on freight agents that have their own customers, they sometimes view themselves as competing against each other. So those those challenges. But I think people in general are interested in the agency model, just because there's less overhead that you have to put in place in order to have people on board. Basically you don't have no cost associated with you're only paying them for what they bring to the table. So if they're bringing business, everyone's winning. But if they're not bringing business, well, you don't have extra costs as a company associated to that agency, which
Blythe Brumleve:
5:34
I would imagine is very, very, I guess, enticing for, you know, an existing freight brokerage that's looking to everybody wants more customers. So that's probably the easy. Easiest route for them to take is to just bring on additional agents to increase their margins. But then to your point, and to a lot of points that I see, especially on the freight broker subreddit, which we'll get into some of those questions later on, but a lot of the comments around there, within that subreddit is that, oh, well, if you go work as a freight agent and you go to another brokerage, then those customers are going to be called on by the in house brokers, and so it's almost like you're competing with yourself. Yeah,
Mike Mikulik:
6:14
I think a lot of that's a big, a big question that gets asked of us when anyone is looking to come on board as a freight agent with SPI is who owns the accounts? Are they my accounts? Are they your accounts? Are they shared accounts. Here's the thing, the freight agent model that we have in place. The agent that comes on board has his existing book of business. He has his customers. He has his relationships. They're his accounts. I don't make him sign a non compete, where I have control of accounts. If he decides to leave, he can take his accounts with him. So that is one thing that is usually one of the first questions is, do I have a non compete and who owns my accounts? And you know what? It puts a lot more pressure on the agency company. I mean, for instance, our company with that type of model that the agent could leave at any time and take his accounts and go somewhere else, it puts the onus on the agency company to ensure that they have a strong stickiness factor. And that's the word Joe always use. He goes. We need to ensure that we have a good stickiness factor with our agents so they don't want to leave. So that means giving them support when it comes to sales, support, helping them try to, you know, grow their business. You know, working with them to find areas that they can enhance their business so they can streamline it to be more effective and productive. You know, giving them the best TMS system that you can give or that you can offer out there, giving them all these various tools that it makes them hard to lead, because, you know what? They're getting everything they need to be successful. And we're all winning together. And I'm telling you whether could we sell with our agents and we help them get a new piece of business, or they're able to deep sell an existing piece of business, like the the mental factor of how good you feel is just awesome on both sides as a partnership, and I find we've had good success with that because we've invested heavily working with our agents to help them grow and streamline their business. Now,
Blythe Brumleve:
7:59
no, I mean, you definitely like knocked off a few of my questions that I had later on, which is all about efficiency. So that's, you know, that's the world we live in. So I, you know, I've heard you talk about, you know, different models before. And I'm curious, if just, you know, if there's any additional ones. So you have the the in house brokers with freight agents model, then you have, you know, just the straight up freight agent model, where you don't have any in house brokers. Is there any other model to complement that, or, in addition to that, that sort of works out, maybe sub agents. Is that, you know, a regular thing too.
Mike Mikulik:
8:33
Sub agents are an aspect too. Like a lot of our agents, our larger agents will have sub agents where they'll bring on someone else who has a smaller book of business, and they'll run into their agency, and they'll work out a commission structure that's going to work for them too. So there's definitely options with that. I guess I see a lot of our larger agents have gone down that road where they bring on sub agents that work within the team, and they kind of need to share the account, or they'll each to have different modes, which they'll focus on within that account. It just it varies. But that's a model, definitely. And then you'll see some other companies, not front of artists, because we're non asset based, but asset based companies carriers who will employ freight agents as well too, with folks of business to either, you know, broker their, their their customers, or, you know, sell it based on the with the assets that that company is offering as well too. So there's all kinds of different, different models that are out there,
Blythe Brumleve:
9:26
different ways you can skin a cat. And as you were talking, I just remembered that we had Tynan on the show when it went one of your your agents, and he's actually a sub agent for a larger agent, and that was how he got his foot in the door at a, you know, a very young age. And now he's doing very well as a sub agent, and has sort of that pathway to get his own customers where, you know, it might be challenging for a lot of folks, especially in this market to, you know, just start off being an agent. Maybe you never go to a freight brokerage, or maybe you leave a freight brokerage in hopes that you can become an agent. And, you know, you got to try to build that book of business in this market. You know, maybe in special circumstances, I from, what I understand is where the sub agent model makes a lot of sense for them.
Mike Mikulik:
10:10
It does. It does. I mean Titans. What an example that was bringing somebody on just finishing school. You know, was interested in the was interested in transportation, logistics, connected with one of our agents, worked with her, on helping her grow her business and management. Business was, it was a lot to handle. And at the same time, he's learned the business as well, too. And, you know, he's slowly been able to get some of his own accounts that he's been able to pursue and work on. It's been good, you know, it all boils down to the people that become agents having that right mindset. It's not for everybody. I mean, people think, you know, I drive a truck, or I have, you know, I. I've driven truck, I understand, you know, a lot of the customers that I'm delivering to, it's a mindset, like, you need to have that entrepreneurial spirit. You have to be driven, you have to be hungry, you have to be relentless. It gets tough, like, it's not easy, it's not easy. And you know what? Some people just, you know, they give up too soon as well, too. But if you push through it, it's a numbers game. You know what? You get one account, and from there you get another account. You get another account. But it takes time. You
Blythe Brumleve:
11:15
can do well at it and that. What are some of those challenges that you've seen for for freight agents, that they've taken that risk, and then they fall into a situation where maybe, you know, they it's tough to see a way out. I think
Mike Mikulik:
11:27
sometimes, I think they gave up too soon. They figured that, you know what, I'm going to hit, I'm going to I'm going to work really hard at this for a month, two months, and then I'm going to start seeing some income that's going to come in right away. And the reality is, it can take longer than that. It can take three months. It can take four months. And a lot of the ones that I've seen that have come in and trying to, like, who legit, legitimately want to build a book of business and be an agent give up too soon. They were, like, that month or that two months away from actually hitting it big. And I've seen numerous examples of it too. So the thing is, it's like starting your own, you know, if you want to start your business as a as a roofer, well, first of all, you had to go buy a truck, you got to buy ladders, you got to buy product. You got to take care of your mark. You know, marketing, your marketing, your product. You gotta do some sales. You gotta do quotes. It all takes time. Like no one just start from day one starts and starts making money on day one. It it takes time, but then you have all those costs that are associated with it. As a freight agent, you basically come in with a cell phone and a computer. And you know what you're betting on yourself to make it happen? And takes a little bit of time. But you know what? Give yourself that three, four months to get things going? Because the reality is, that's what it's going to take.
Blythe Brumleve:
12:31
So what does that what does that process look like, especially when it comes to, you know, the the ages that SPI is looking for, you're looking for somebody with a little bit more experience. But maybe let's, let's start from the beginning. What is that pathway to ultimately becoming maybe an agent for SPI. What does that pathway look like? Is it going to work at a freight brokerage, you know, sort of earning your chops there, and then building your book of business, and then becoming a freight agent, and then, you know, making sure that you you have all of those little details worked out, and then joining SPI. Or is there, you know, another, you know, sort of pathway in between. What does that look like? Typically,
Mike Mikulik:
13:06
the agents we bring on board have an existing book of business. So they've, you know, either a are a salaried broker somewhere else that has relationship with customers, that has no non compete, and they want to go out on their own, and all the, you know, the usually, behind the scenes, they're working a lot with their customer to say, Listen, I'm thinking of leaving this for I'm thinking of going, will you, will you support and follow me? And in most cases, you know, because the salesperson or the or the freight broker has such a good relationship with the customer, they'll follow them, right? The loyalties to the salesperson is to the person who's been handling their day to day operations. And from there, they come on, and usually it's about a week window day for the transition, and they start, they come with an existing book and start running with it from there, and then from there, just it just takes off and grows sometimes. So I basically bring on agents that have at least a million dollar in revenue book of business. End up those are the ones where, you know what I kind of look at. But at the same time too, there's a lot of really good candidates out there who are phenomenal sales people, who have an existing book of business, and they're looking to go on to their own, they came from a salaried and commission role, and they want to go out on their own. I'll take a chance on some of these guys, even if they don't have an existing book that they can bring on, but they're going to work at it for a few months. But I'm really selective on it's that mindset like, are they? Are they hunters? Are they? Are they resilient? Because it it like I said, a lot of times it takes a little bit more work than what they think. But if they have that, it's still soft skills you can't be trained for. It's either you're passionate about something, you know, you're hungry, you have that entrepreneurial spirit, you're driven, you're a good communicator and a good listener, and you want to be mentored. Those are the guys, or the guys or girls who seem to have the most success in this business, and
Blythe Brumleve:
14:47
so when you're you're thinking of making this jump, what should, what should be those first few questions that you think about asking you mentioned non compete. I imagine pay commission splits is probably up there. Is there anything else of what somebody should be considering if they're thinking of making that leap 100%
Mike Mikulik:
15:08
I even think even more so now, just given the challenging market conditions we're facing right now with, you know, fraud and with credit, there's many questions you should ask. I mean, first of all, I'd ask about the non compete who owns the accounts? Are they my accounts, your accounts, shared accounts? What is that? And you know, what? If you're doing all the work, and you're the agent. Those accounts should be your account, so make sure you're not signing something where someone has control of your accounts, because in my mind, that's that's just not fair. The other thing that they should be looking for, I mean, this is usually the first question, because everybody wants to know what they're getting paid, is, what's the commission split? And on those ones, be specific on you know how the commission split works? If it starts off on the lower side, how do I wrap myself up to the higher side? What are the parameters around that? Because you want to ensure that you're comparing apples to apples on the commission splits. The next thing, and this is one thing we've been finding that a lot of potential agents are actually asking, just given the challenges the market with companies going out of business, is they're asking for credit information about the company. And it was interesting, it's actually one of them. We sent them our our credit report just so we had an idea of who we are as a company. But I was impressed that he took the time to be like, Okay, what kind of I want to if I'm partnering up with you, I want to ensure that you guys are a stable company, that you have financial resources in place, and that you guys are financially healthy. And to be honest with you, I think it's a really good question to be asking now, you know, finding out how long they've been in business, you know, what's their revenue? What's their profit? You know, over the last three years, what has been your what has been your growth scale? Like, how are you guys doing now, in a down market, asking those questions, I think, is important. The last thing you want to do, because taking your agency from one place to another, it's a lot of work, like it's it's work. You're going to all your customers. You're resetting them up again. It's a big commitment, and you would hate to go and make your move from one agency to another agency. And the next thing you know, you know, the company's got financial challenges, and you know what, they're no longer around, right? Gosh, yeah,
Blythe Brumleve:
17:05
that's a really good question that that agent asked you, because they're, you know, with all the reports that we sort of see about, you know, sort of trucking companies that go out of business, it's also affecting, you know, that this down market that we're in, it's also affecting brokerages as well, where, you know, there's almost a need in the market for more brokerages and more trucking companies to close in order to help the rest of the market get back to, you know, quote, unquote, normal. And so that is actually a really smart question that I wouldn't have even thought of asking. So So kudos to that agent for even, you know, thinking of that. I thought
Mike Mikulik:
17:39
it was great. And obviously you don't put like I was the first time I've ever been asked that question, just in that direct form, but I was impressed that, obviously he's doing his due diligence. And I think everyone's to do their due diligence about the company they're going to work for. I mean, the other thing I'd be asking, and this is another big thing that I find we get agents from other, from smaller, from smaller companies coming to ours, is about technology. And the big thing they're asking is, you know, what kind of TMS system. Are you using? You know, what kind of connections are available with your TMS system? How old is your TMS system? What enhancements Can you provide to me that I'm not getting right now? That's another huge question to ask. And I think technology has been so much on the forefront over the last five years. If, if companies are behind the technology, I think they're lagging and actually getting real solid agents. So I'm proud of the technology that we actually have, what we have actually we've who we've partnered with in our TMS system. I have no problem going head to head against anybody in the market with our TMS as I think we've invested heavily into it, and we have one of the one of the most robust systems that are actually out there. So I'm proud of it. I'm so proud of it. Even when I'm in the conversation stage with agents, I'll be like, Hey, listen. I'll set you up with a demo. Take a look at our system. Judge for yourself. And you know, nine times out of 10 the first comment back is like, wow. He goes. I've never seen anything like this, or this is exactly what I'm looking for. And I think part of it is too, is that when we have our client care do the demo with them, they're actually asking the potential agents to a lot of questions about the type of business, and they're showing them things directly related to what would be important to them. And I think that's important. So I'm proud of the TMS system that we have so and that's a question you should be asking any potential agency that you're going to going to look at to work for. Well, I mean, the other thing I would be asking you want to still talk about that? Donya, oh,
Blythe Brumleve:
19:31
yeah, I was going to ask a follow up question, but please go ahead. Okay,
Mike Mikulik:
19:35
now I lost my train of thought. Oh, the other question I think that should be asked while we're on technology is carrier vetting. I mean, right now, with fraud and double brokering, it's a it's a hot mess out there. And you know what? I think, if companies right now have not invested into the proper technology when it comes to carrier vetting to avoid fraud and double brokering, they're putting themselves at risk. And you know what fraud can add up pretty quick. I mean, you have, you know, enough claims against Eric, against you, or lost loads or stolen loads. I mean, you have that aspect where you it could sink a company pretty quick. So that's the big thing right now, is asking about the technology they're using for carrier vetting. And we made a switch a year ago. Actually, how long have you been on highway now? For six months? Yeah, about six months. But, you know, we talked to highway back when they were first promoting their product on carrier vetting, and it was the right tool for us to use. And, yeah, there's little hiccups along the way as we got things going, but I'm telling you that is that that process has saved us so much headache when it comes to double brokering and the and the risks of fraud and being able because these guys are constantly looking for different ways to circumvent, you know, the system and to try to screw the broker. But I'm telling you how. Has done a phenomenal job with trying to roll out all that. So I feel very protected. And I think any agent that's looking at a particular agency should be asking what tools they have in place, what technology they're using for carrier vetting,
Blythe Brumleve:
20:57
and with all of these tools, you know that you mentioned that the TMS, you mentioned highway, I'm sure a variety of other different software applications that a freight agent can use. Are these freight agents bringing their own tech stacks, or are they able to take advantage of, you know, maybe a combination of what SPI offers and their own tech stack.
Mike Mikulik:
21:18
You know what I mean? I mean, 99% of the time they have no tech stack at all, existing agents, and they're looking to come on board to a company that has the technology, the tech stack that they need to be able to carry out their business. In some cases, some agents have some specific technology tools, more so surrounded by, you know, around their prospecting tools or the CRM that they're using the prospects, those kind of tools they're using, and we look for ways to help, you know, manage those within to our network as well for them. Sometimes, you know, agents are working with really large customers where, you know what, it's all on a platform where all their loads are posted, and they may have some technology for scraping the kind of loads they want to work on. You know, we've been able to try to work with them and integrate that so it makes it easier for them to do it within our system. But 99% of the time, they're looking to come to a company that has the tech deck stack that they want. And really as an agent, you know what you're working on, the commissions, but why are you why? Why are you interested in an agency model? You don't want to pay for your technology yourself. You don't want to pay for your MC number. You don't want to pay for all your insurance certificates like you want to go with a company that has all those things so you're protected. You can basically do what you do best, which is bring your existing book of business on, sell deep, sell dispatch cargo and find carrier. So by us taking all those other tools away from it gives them more time to focus on those revenue generating activities. And
Blythe Brumleve:
22:37
so I would imagine that those additional tools are those part of the, maybe the commission fee that they have to pay out. You know, as far as their commission splits. Are there extra costs for this extra technology, or is it all included with being an agent at SPI all included with
Mike Mikulik:
22:52
being an agent with SPI? We may work on a commission split, so obviously we're taking a portion of the commission, but in return, what are they getting? They're getting back office support from our client care team. They're getting, you know, they're not having to worry about bad debt. If their customer doesn't pay, I take on all that financial risk. So if the customer, if our agent's customer, doesn't pay, and or goes belly up, for that matter, I don't go back to my agent. Go where your customer went back or went out of business. You owe us over the last or you owe us this back. No, we take on that financial risk. So that Commission's fee, which is a smaller fee compared to what the agent gets by quite a bit. It protects them, it gives them all those tools so that they can do what's best and and a lot of people, actually, this is an interesting story. Actually, you, you did interview Brad Clark at one time, didn't you? Yes, he
Blythe Brumleve:
23:39
was my first SPI interview. Actually, yeah,
Mike Mikulik:
23:41
I thought I was your first SPI interview. I
Blythe Brumleve:
23:43
probably was the first grade agent. He was a first grade agent,
Mike Mikulik:
23:47
but, you know, he ran, you know, a three PL company as well, too. And what was he found it was so hard for him to build his business because he was so focused on back office, support functions, receivables, payables, you know, dealing with whatever, whatever other challenges come up, that he found by outsourcing that to SPI he was able to spend more time on revenue generating activities, and his business actually grew just based on that model. So I do think that for a lot of three PLS, that are smaller in nature that you know, are looking to expand in technology. Well, technology is expensive, or they're looking to scale up their bill their business. But you know, it is cash flow they need in order to scale up their business with a lot of large customers, there's a value in them, even them joining an agency, and they still can hold tight on, you know, you know, they built a company name. For instance, they can still use their name, no problem. They can still use their email address. We just become their back office support function as SPI. But yeah, there's ways to work around that too. But I've seen a lot of success with smaller three. Pls, who finance themselves want to grow? Just didn't have the time, didn't have the support, or even, you know, hiring a back office team cost money that they found value in just relinquishing that and just becoming an agent and focusing on revenue generating activities. And
Blythe Brumleve:
25:04
you've already sold me not just saying this, like, no, not that I'm actually going to go do this. But it does sound enticing to go out there and, you know, we have all of the risk and the questions, and have those that part of it answered, and then you could just focus on what you're really good at. The next question I sort of had around, was around, like, taxes, you know, CPA, because you're, when you're an agent, you're doing, it's your own business, and so you have to worry about those additional, I guess, structures, because you're essentially an independent contractor. So is there any like sort of assistance in in that regard, when it comes to, you know, sort of the admin side of of running a business, or is that really should be. To the agent, I think, in
Mike Mikulik:
25:46
the States, where they run off of 1099 Yeah, 1099 the same thing, they run off at 1099 you'll get a statement of earnings from us. You take care of how you're going to file it with. What do you guys have in the States? There the IRA, or whatever it is, IRS, IRS, whatever it is. But anyways, you guys, you know they, you guys, deal with all that directly, but a lot, most of our agents have their own LLC. They're incorporated companies, and, you know, they have accountants that, you know, take care and run that backside of their of their own business. But it's a lot easier. I mean, your costs are so low, like, you know, what are your costs? You're not, you're not, you know, paying for a TMS system. You're not paying for insurance, like all those things are. That's why you join us.
Blythe Brumleve:
26:28
Yeah, pay, pay for or invest in a CPA, so then that way you can do more of what you love and not get in trouble with the government owing a lot of money, because that that probably is a danger of happening if you don't have a CPA or some kind of an accounting firm. I did want to ask a little bit about the international perspective, because you guys are also building out international freight agents as well, right?
Mike Mikulik:
26:54
Yeah. In fact, it's interesting, because my background, when I got into this industry a long time ago, was on the international freight forwarding side. So I got, I was involved in international air and ocean around like that, the transport Asia Pacific trade lane coming into North America, which was awesome. There's so much business that comes in from Asia into North America. And then, you know, slowly got myself into where I'm born right now, on the on the trucking side, with the USA and Canada. And I always thought like, you know, whenever you talk to these customers, you know, we talk to them about Trucking, we talk about their domestic network, and it's like there's an international opportunity that we have never even asked about. And they if they're doing domestic trucking within Canada, in the US, or intra USA or within Canada, they're bringing product in from overseas. And I think a lot of it just boiled down to it's like we're missing out on this potential opportunity to really deep sell existing customers. And we thought, You know what? If we look at the international side of the business, this is another way and provide a tool for our agents. Here's another revenue stream that we can give to our agents to be able to deep sell their customer and to be able to grow their own business. And it's not a hard sell, when you think of it, you already have credit set up with them. You have the relationship with the customer. You know they know who you are. They obviously like you and trust you because they're doing business with you. In most cases, it's just an ask and just a qualification as to what international business they have. So with that thought in mind, we saw a really big revenue potential for the company to grow as a whole, offering international then the big thing comes up. It's like, well, you know, we don't have any offices overseas, so how do we find the right people to partner up with? And you know, we've joined a few freight forwarding networks where, for instance, you could have, you know, a freight forwarder in Hong Kong, for instance, who controls all of China. And you go to these conferences, you have one on one meetings with them. He's got cargo coming out of Asia or out of China, coming into Canada, the US, but he has no domestic agent here to help him with his delivery and following up with the consignee or, you know, but anyways, these cars I go to, they have, like, there's usually a couple 100 agents that are at these conferences. You have one on one meetings with them. And they all have the same need, like, I need somebody in Canada us. Well, guess what? I'm going to have opportunities coming out of China or out of Vietnam or out of Europe, and I'm going to need an agent overseas to book cargo with. And it's, it's slowly starting to get off, it's slowly starting to get off the ground, but I see a huge potential of growth coming on the international side and more so just within our existing, our agents existing account base that there's international opportunities that are not necessarily a hard sell, and we have the right agents overseas to be able to handle that. So that's my strategy, is the opportunity,
Blythe Brumleve:
29:39
and I think that that's such a fascinating model, because when we had Anita on the on the show Susan, she's the the AR Lee or
Mike Mikulik:
29:49
Arps. She's, I'll tell you honestly, with all the crazy ideas come I come up with for, you know, for revenue growth at the end of the day, it's going to be her team that's going to have to help on the international side. But the cool thing about it is we collaborate together on these kind of things, and we work. We work really well with this. But she buys. She's bought into it too. She sees the potential, but she realized that's going to be putting a lot on to her and her department. But, well,
Blythe Brumleve:
30:11
she had mentioned during our conversation, and I'll link to it in the show notes, in case, in case, people want to check it out. But she mentioned that one of the bigger advantages with SPI is that they that they do not have agent agent saturation, which is, could you explain that for us and why it's sort of a danger that some other agent models face that,
Mike Mikulik:
30:31
you know, that's a great question, Blythe, and actually, that should be another, another point that any perspective aid or agent that's looking to join an agency should ask is about what's a saturation like. I mean. Mean, there are a lot of companies out there that are massive that have hundreds or 1000s of agents that they have working for them. I mean, we don't have to go far to name those companies, but, you know, the challenge that you hear is a lot of them say, I want to join that company, but then they they learn pretty quickly when they join that company and they already have an existing account base, and they go and they go and they put it through that system. It's like someone else is already working on that account. And how frustrating for someone to to go all the way to the finish line thinking you're going to join this company and you're you're excited about them. They've got everything you want. You haven't vetted your customers through their system to see if, if you can actually pursue them or not. That's a challenge. So I think a big question is, is asking about the saturation within the market with the existing agents. And obviously, you know what? If you have low saturation, you have room to grow. And in our case, you know what, 90% of the time, you know what, we don't have any conflicts with potential agents, accounts, with the with the accounts that our existing agents have. So that's a really, really important question to have and,
Blythe Brumleve:
31:47
yeah, well, I would think too from the what you just talked about with growing the international market. So it's not only that you guys are thinking about it from the lens of the saturation of it, but what other prospecting lead opportunities could you have and the international market sounds like a perfect compliment to that. So you're not. You don't have to worry about saturation within the US market. But then you also have opportunities on the international market as well, absolutely.
Mike Mikulik:
32:16
And I mean, we have a lot of, you know, inactive accounts within our system as well, too, where, you know, at after credit expires with them, and no one's pursued, or no business has been done with any particular account. You know, the agent can, you know, go and make some contacts with some of those people as well, too. So there's prospecting opportunities just within we've been a business for 45 years. We don't have every single account still with you. So there's opportunities for that too. And I think, you know, some agents come up with, you know, they're part of a lot of lead generation, or they're getting company names to go and prospect on. And we work with them, try to help them, you know, prospect, or give them the right marketing tool, or marketing tools for them to help prospect and grow their business. Another big thing, which I'm a huge advocate on, which I think is the easiest, the easiest way to grow your business quickly is deep selling. I mean, it's like all low hanging fruit that is just there. You have a relationship with the account, you have credit with them, like, those are the easiest cells. And a lot of times, what happens is, is, you know, you're working with a particular account, and you're working on whatever lanes, but there's other business that you know you may not even know about, or there's other people within that company that are, you know, maybe they're actually, maybe there's exporting, and maybe you're only dealing on the import side. But by really expanding the relationship with your within your existing account base, and finding other key players that are making decisions on transportation, is a huge thing to go and pursue. And you know, there's a lot of opportunities that come out of that. And you know, just going and visiting your accounts, having that face to face, meeting with them, you know, having dinner with them, getting to know them. This business, I mean, we overcomplicate this business. Sometimes it's all relationships. People only deal with people that they like and trust. So if you have that relationship with your customer, they like you. You know them. You know a lot of lot of them are you know, our agents are friends with their customers. You know what it's easy to work with people that you like and trust, and sometimes we we take that for granted. We need to have some sort of a secret sauce in order to close out business. But yes, it helps, but you know, it's a relationship game too.
Blythe Brumleve:
34:17
Well on, on a similar note to the relationship building the deep selling. You were just recently at Tia in Phoenix, and you were on a panel with other shippers, and they were talking about, you know, some of the sales and marketing strategies that work on them, and then the ones that don't necessarily work on them. Can you kind of give us a summary of what those main takeaways are?
Mike Mikulik:
34:38
Yeah, that wasn't, I was a fun panel. We have a good group of people on there. So we had one guy, Michael Lindsey Nolen, who was a shipper, and then we had two people that were on the broker side, but they were sharing their experiences on what's been working for them. We try to utilize that shipper panel tool as an education, as an education tool to kind of help other people understand how shippers want to be sold. And it was so interesting, because you know what? I think even more so now than what it was say a year ago, just given what's going on with with fraud and double brokering? Shippers now want collaboration, and they want to be educated. They they what came out of it was, was that shippers are looking to brokers as the experts in their field, and they want, they want to be challenged as to how they're currently doing business, to find new ways to do business that's going to enhance their supply chain, so they're open to having those deep conversations. You know, obviously the broker having a conversation with the shipper as to how they're doing business, asking those right questions, but the shippers, or that shipper, is also expecting them to find out different ways to enhance that business. So really, what came out of it was, was collaboration and education is a. Huge part what shippers are looking for. And that was even before they even talked about price, which I think sometimes, you know, we always think, well, they're so price driven. There is a deeper aspect to selling. You know what? Collaborating, educating them on things they don't know what the trends are going on the marketplace. That's important. The other thing is, is they want brokers to have some idea as to what their business is all about, not just utilizing the same blind pitch every single time that you know, for every single shipper that you're going across, but do some good research. You know, check out their websites. Understand, you know, where their offices are, what's their product, you know. Do some you know, reviews on the company. Do a deep a deep dive into the company to learn as much as you possibly can. And a lot of times, what you'll find success into is if there's a specific lane or a trade lane that they're that they're shipping on, that is a strong trade lane for yourself, sharing that with them, they want to work with experts in particular trade lanes too. So a big thing is just educating yourself about the customer and going in there with something that's gonna make you sound a little bit different, but you've taken the time to show an interest in their business. That was huge, too.
Blythe Brumleve:
36:54
What does that look like, I guess, from a cold perspective? So say you don't know this shipper you're trying to get, you know, a foot in the door. Maybe you've done some cold calls, some cold emails, and nothing is really resonating. What does that? Yeah, I guess sort of relationship look like when you're trying to establish the connection between them two?
Mike Mikulik:
37:14
Yeah, you know what? It's funny. One of our agents, hang on, probably, I'm going to probably blow this for how you said it. But he goes, when you send out emails, you know what your chances take you? You know, 10 emails to have one that may reply to you, but he goes, if you can try and get a phone, if you get someone on the phone, phone call, sorry, I think it was one phone call. Was getting someone on the phone, actually talking is worth 12 emails. So it's true. I mean that human touch with talking to people that's going to go a little bit further. Granted, you know, a lot of shippers that you talk to are busy as well, too. And respect that. You know what? I think if you take a natural curiosity into their business, and you're not trying to sell them right over the phone, everybody hates to be sold. Everybody does. But if you try to take that natural interest in their business and you know, or perhaps you know, you've done research and you found something that's interesting, that may be of use to them, or perhaps they may be shipping on a certain trade lane, where you know what, you know, some you know market information that's going to take place the next three to four weeks that could be a benefit to them. Sharing something like that's going to have you be a little bit more setting yourself apart from the crowd than someone who's just making a canned phone call or a canned email that you're just you're sending out to everybody. Be creative. That's the key. Be creative.
Blythe Brumleve:
38:25
That's so I at the TMSA conference last year, we had a shipper panel as well. And one of the notes Tony Darnell, who is a shipper within the industry, I think he's actually looking for a new opportunity.
Mike Mikulik:
38:39
I like Tony man, you know what? If anyone's actually looking for a good transportation professional man, reach out to Tony. Tony is a good guy. We're
Blythe Brumleve:
38:46
finding jobs for all kinds of people on this show. But he he had a really great takeaway, where he said that he gets so many cold emails a day, and because of the way that people send the emails, meaning the software that they use, so like HubSpot, for example, has these canned templates that you can create and you can blast out to, you know however many people that you want on the end user, on the shipper end user, they know that you're sending them a templated email because it's a different color font than the traditional text that's in an email. So they immediately know that it's a templated email, and they just immediately delete it, whereas they were saying, if you just take the time to do a little research and send me a normal email like a normal person, then you're going to stand out immediately. And I thought that that was such an interesting takeaway, that the tools that you're using to save you time are actually costing you business in the long run.
Mike Mikulik:
39:37
You know what? It's true, you know what? Everyone I mean, sales is a number game. No no question about the more people you touch or you reach out to your better yard to success, but if you take it just one step further and just, you know, save your goal, whatever that number of goal is that you want to have touch points today, but do good work along with it as well too. Don't set yourself up as different. Do that research. Educate yourself about the customer they know, they know and they're getting, you know, 1015, calls a day from the same, people with the same can message set yourself up as different. I love them to touch this business, though, like even, even the aspect, like we're talking at the TIA, someone mentioned about handwritten thank you, carrots. Well, guess what? That's you get 100 pieces of mail that come on your desk, and also you see somebody with a handwritten card or or the or the title that's all handwritten. You're gonna open that first before anything else, because someone took the time to write it. So that's still it's a lost art, handwritten. Favorite characters be different, 100%
Blythe Brumleve:
40:36
I just had a shipper on the show the other day that said he only does businesses with carriers who stop into his office and introduce themselves. And he has worked with one carrier for more than five years because he randomly stopped in his office and introduced himself, and that's how he got the business. And that shipper in particular, he's like, I don't want to deal with all of the fraud issues that are going on, so I'm not answering your cold call. I'm not answering your cold email. It was the guys that walked into the office that I'm doing business with, because I can look them in the eye and shake their hand. Yeah,
Mike Mikulik:
41:09
I think that's that's great. It's true though,
Blythe Brumleve:
41:14
everything that's all that it becomes new again. All right, last couple questions, I was going to go through a bunch of Reddit questions, but you actually answered them unsolicited throughout the, you know, the entire conversation. So I think that that would be a little bit redundant to go through some of these questions. But last one that I did want to ask is, you know, when market downturns happen, like what we're currently experiencing, should a freight agent, firm or agency, should they step in and help their agents throughout the downturn, and what does that look like? Or should they just let their agents kind of figure it out for
Mike Mikulik:
41:49
themselves? No, yeah, that's a really good question, too. I mean, obviously, you know, yeah, the markets, markets, market's not the same as what it was two years ago, that's for sure. And some of our region, some of their businesses down, and that's where we've taken time to, you know, chatting with our agents about their business and finding different revenue streams for them to be able to, you know, to increase their numbers with either their existing accounts or just with new accounts too. So I think, yeah, of course, the company, I think we take a proactive approach to it, and I think every other company should take a proactive approach with helping their agents to continue to find different revenue streams for them to grow in a down market. And it's funny, because, yes, we have, I mean, the the revenue per shipment is down our it's funny, our revenue per shipment is down across the board. Our load count as a company is, like, up 15% which is shocking. So obviously that shows that our agents are, you know, looking for different ways to grow their business, whether it's, you know, focusing more of their time on on new prospects, or looking at ways to deep sell, that all those combinations have actually helped the load count as a company actually increase. And once the the rate, or the the revenue rates go up for the trucking, for the for the trucking rates, all that stuff's just going to automatically grow up and or grow as a company too.
Blythe Brumleve:
43:05
Alright. Last question, where can folks, this was a great conversation, by the way, we answered and we covered a ton and this,
Mike Mikulik:
43:12
but where all the questions you had? I was like, oh my goodness, we're gonna be forever.
Blythe Brumleve:
43:18
I know I well, you definitely covered a lot of them that I was going to ask. Is I had about 10 questions that I was going to ask from Reddit, but they primarily were around contracts, around pay, around prospecting, and those really were answered within other questions. So I think we kind of got it all covered. But the last one, probably the most important one, where, I think
Mike Mikulik:
43:42
is awesome that you know what the questions that they had. You know what? That's good, because you should be asking if you're looking to join an agency, ask a ton of questions, and don't just look at one agency, look at a few and compare them against each other. And you know what? The recruiter, whoever you're talking to, should be happy to answer those questions for you. So but ask as many questions you can, and you gotta educate. It's gotta be the right fit for you. You're making a huge commitment joining an Agency Network, and it's got to make sense on both sides, so ask as many questions you can and make sure you have that comfort level. And if it doesn't feel good in your gut, that's not the right company to go with,
Blythe Brumleve:
44:20
all right? And next up, we're going to talk accounts payable and tips that are specific to freight agents with spies, head of AP department, Taryn Reeves, and today we've got the head of the AP department, Taryn Reeves on the show. So Taryn, welcome to the show.
Taryn Reeves:
44:37
Well, thanks for having me. I look forward to our conversation Absolutely.
Blythe Brumleve:
44:41
Now, you know, for I was reading through there was like a news story recently that talked about how there's, like, this shortage of accounting professionals, and that, you know, the industry is, you know, going to be facing some productivity issues and things like that. I'm curious as to if there's a shortage. Now, how did you originally find yourself working, you know, in accounting at a trucking firm or, you know, essentially, a freight company.
Taryn Reeves:
45:06
Well, I actually did a, like, short term contract work for them back in 2008 I was leaving to go to Southeast Asia, and I knew James from when we were younger, and he said, Hey, I need someone to fill in. Can you come for a couple months to get some extra money? Like, Well, okay, sure. So I was here way back when, and then I was actually working in automotive apprenticeship. I was doing marketing for them, and then the government decided to bring that all in house. And so once again, I said to James. I was like, Hey, if you need anyone to cover vacation for the summer, let me know. Had just had my second daughter, and he, he was like, oh, I need you tomorrow. Okay, not the answer I was kind of expecting. So I had one day training, and then I covered a two week vacation, and then they asked me to stay a month, and then three months, and then they're like, Okay, what's it gonna take to keep you
Blythe Brumleve:
46:05
so? So I guess, what does your day to day role look like?
Taryn Reeves:
46:09
So we do all of the paperwork processing. Well, I say paperwork, but we do all the document processing for the whole firm. So anytime a carrier moves a load, we validate every single invoice, every single proof of delivery, with whatever that you just put into the system to confirm that the numbers match the delivery shipper, Po, numbers amounts, all of that match before we actually pay them.
Blythe Brumleve:
46:36
And so I would imagine that's a lot of like, man, is that, like, a lot of manual entry or you, you know, one of the, you know, the part of the teams that are really starting to adopt, you know, a lot of this new technology coming into the mix, or is it still something that you need to, you know, manually verify?
Taryn Reeves:
46:52
So back in the day, I would have a piece of paper on my desk with all the documents. I would verify. It to the screen, I would initial the bottom, I would put in all the information. Then it would get processed at the end of the week. So thankfully, we gone through a couple different systems, and we have one now that we use one email address. Every single invoice and proof of delivery goes into that. So we receive anywhere, I would say, between 350 and 400 a day, and then, because they're all in one system, I have a team that goes through and we just look at all of them one at a time. But it's a smart system, so it reads the invoice number and the amounts, and it kind of generally reads the information, so we just do a little bit of verification. As soon as we hit save on that, all the information transfers into our DMS system, our TMS system, rev Nova,
Blythe Brumleve:
47:43
Oh, wow. So then I would imagine that that's such a breath of fresh air for a lot of your responsibilities, and almost like a little bit of maybe it helps ease the worry of maybe getting something wrong.
Taryn Reeves:
47:56
And I would say there would have been no way the growth that we've had would have happened if we still were in any of our old system. There's not a chance we would have been able to cover what we do now. And plus, we had, we used to have a specific person that we had hired for filing a loan. So you would do it all. You would put it in a bin. She would come in, she would take it all to the back warehouse, and then file, file it all away. And so you have to keep original documents for, I think it used to be 10 years, so we just had a warehouse full, and then eventually they stopped sending them in, emailing them in, but we didn't have a system, so we'd still print them out, scan them in, load them in, and move forward. So thankfully, the system we have we got, I would say, just before covid happened and we all got sent home and without the systems that we had in place there, it wouldn't have happened. It wouldn't have run smooth at all.
Blythe Brumleve:
48:51
That's interesting. You say that because I remember when I worked for an asset based three PL and we switched TMS providers, and the TMS provider that we switched to did not have a strong accounting portion of it. And I don't know that a lot of folks realize how important, until you're already in it, until you've already, like, you're you're up shits Creek, essentially, how important the accounting features and functionality within a TMS, it really matters. Is that a safe? Is that still a safe assumption?
Taryn Reeves:
49:23
Oh, 100% and I would say that the one that we moved to, I wouldn't say necessarily, had all the accounting side that we need, but between James and our IT support team, we have one gentleman that came in and any questions we had, we could throw in there, and, you know, those like it gurus, that could just get in the system and look at all the numbers, And they could figure it all out. He kind of grew the system for us so that everything could talk to each other as we got new, different document management systems. And, yeah, it was a real blessing. That's
Blythe Brumleve:
49:56
amazing, because we've done a bunch of these interviews with SPI freight agents, and then a couple from within the, you know, the leadership team, and one of them was with as a pearl, he's awesome. He's the head of it for for SPI, and that has been one of our more popular episodes from all of like the SPI interview series. And I think it's because of what you said. Like, you know, when people are really curious about how you can make these different tools and technologies sort of talk to each other in order to because you're bringing in freight agents that have their own tech stack, that have their own things of what they're dealing with, and maybe their own processes. So maybe that's a really good segue to start to talk about. You know, when I guess a freight agent is shopping for a new opportunity, at what point is your department brought into the. Mix. Are you regularly meeting with them? Or, you know, maybe having those conversations, you know, around financial data and you know things that they need to know before they join SPI or or is that more of like the higher level executives that are that are talking about those so
Taryn Reeves:
51:00
it's usually once they've confirmed that they want to work with SPI they start getting trained within our system, and then once they get their training within rev Nova, initially from our client support team, they get sent over to myself to talk to them a little bit how the AP side of things works. Because, in all honesty, we know why an invoice is being held. We can see the three different systems. So if they're getting phone calls and they're like, Hey, I've been paid. It's been three weeks. Blah, blah, blah, your team sucks. Then they phone us and they're like, Hey, you're they're like, Hey, I
Unknown:
51:34
just heard you guys suck. I'm like, whoa, whoa.
Taryn Reeves:
51:36
Let's back up here for a second. And then I start looking. I'm like, Oh, they just didn't send in their or they didn't update their wallet, or they just didn't send in a blank and we just needed the notice of assignment. So when I first train them all, I tell them, as soon as they get a phone call, send them to us, give them either transfer them to us, or get them to send us an email, because we can see exactly where it's at. And it's usually not that we don't want to pay them or there's an issue. It's usually just something small that if they haven't received that payment, it's usually something like they don't have their ACH information in there correctly, or they have a factoring company in the system, but they didn't put it on their invoice. Or something small that we can solve within a quick email or a quick phone conversation with that carrier direct. What other
Blythe Brumleve:
52:23
things are you Are you trading the agents on during their onboarding process.
Taryn Reeves:
52:27
I train them in all the different email addresses that where the curious cassendum, I talk to them about our fastpay program, because we do offer a quick pay. And I've heard, as I've been talking to them, and it's one of the best in the freight industry, which is pretty nice to know. We offer a same day 2% quick pay. The only thing is, we can't offer that to a first time use. Our network won't let us override it if it's a first time carrier. So they do have to have moved a load with us in the system for that. So as I train them about the quick Pay Process, and a lot of them, if there's like, a blind shipment or the documents, are always going to say the warehouse on them, but they're actually giving them to head office or vice versa, then we won't process them in that if that information doesn't match. So I always talk to them like, if it is blind, make sure you note it on the rate confirmation. If it's going to always go to a warehouse, but you're always going to note head office. Just give us a heads up. We can make an exception. Process those without bugging you, because ideally we want to be able to process everything after they've put it into the system, after they've done their part. They got their customer happy, they got their carrier happy. Let me do the rest. So that's kind of where we sit. So I don't want to have to go back and forth. But obviously, agents all move different kinds of freight, so whether you're moving something to grocery stores or to empty sites, and you're building something, it's going to look very different on the proof of delivery we get so kind of as that relationship gets rolling with our new agents, if there's anything that comes up that we're being held on, or we're going to them a lot, I just have another conversation with them and say, Can we get confirmation we can do this moving forward, or update that moving forward, and then we don't have to go back to them every time. How
Blythe Brumleve:
54:11
long does that sort of onboarding training process take? It sounds like it might be relatively quick.
Taryn Reeves:
54:17
It is. And I think it depends on every different agent, because some, I don't want to say old dogs, new tricks, but some old dogs new tricks, it's hard to teach, and so there are a lot of little things to learn within the TMS system that we use. But because we're so open, we have a huge team of client care that is a phone call away at all times. We have a really knowledgeable AR and AP team, so I would say they should be up to it as they're getting all their customers into it. They should be up and rolling within the week.
Blythe Brumleve:
54:53
And then what I would imagine for a lot of these freight agents, so it's not just the conversation that they're having to figure out, you know, what kind of program is, is right for them. You know payables, you know all of the details that that come under your umbrella, but also from their customers and their carrier perspective. What does that setup process look like for them?
Taryn Reeves:
55:15
Well, for the carriers, we just started using a new onboarding so they actually have to go in on their own, and they have to fill out all the information. And then, once again, that's become a manual process too. So our system will either accept it or deny that carrier in general. And then our our carrier setup team will do a little bit more digging to help them out, to kind of get them rolling through that for customer setup is very specific per agent. So if they have a customer they want to set up, they'll go to our AR team. They'll find out if it's they'll enter them. The prospect, then they'll have a talk about how many loads they move if there's any other agents, because we never want stealing going on within like SPI we're, we're such a big family and such a big team, we would never want that to, like, hinder like we've had, unfortunately, a couple agents pass away, and we've had other agents that have just like, gracefully taken them in, not taken the cut, given that payment directly to their wives, that of the person that passed, just because they're like, we just, we're just here to help. Like, it's just, it's just hard to to hit it hit home, hits home, you know? So, yeah, it's, it's different, depends on the different customer they're hiring and how it rolls smoothly. But yeah, yeah. It's, yeah. Typically
Blythe Brumleve:
56:26
it sounds like it's pretty simple setup, because I would imagine, for you know, a lot of customers, they just don't want any kind of disruption right now they they look for any kind of maybe reason. But it sounds like maybe they have a really great relationship with a lot of your agents, and then that just makes the process of moving from another, maybe another freight agent program to SPI a lot more smoother. Is that a safe assumption?
Taryn Reeves:
56:48
And I've heard that a few times. And then as I'm training some of the freight agents, they'll they'll say things like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We did that at our old firm. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you're saying with that. And so they get kind of cute and like, oh, we know that. And I had one that called me after we had had our initial initial talk. And he was like, I'm just calling you. I think he called it to fill your tank. Or there was a saying that he used, I'm not American, so it was a very American saying that he used, and he literally just gushed about how lovely it was and how comfortable he felt knowing that he's coming here. And he said, Now I have this peppy cheerleader, an AP that's going to help out all my carriers, and I've become, like, a selling feature for him to use. And, yeah, it
Unknown:
57:31
was just, it's just nice to hear,
Blythe Brumleve:
57:34
yeah, because, I mean that kind of hints back to we were talking before we started recording, that, that you picked, that you and obviously, on this interview so far, very like bubbly personality, great. You know, interviews so far, that's, I don't think that's typical of, like, normal logistics, or logistics, like accounting departments, at least ones that I've worked as you have a couple, of course, that are, you know, very, you know, cheery, but the rest of them are just, you know, sort of just in the computer and just focused on data.
Taryn Reeves:
58:00
Yeah, it's really true, but I think that that's why I've kind of landed so well, because I deal with truck drivers all day. So I can't really, like, take a phone call and be like, your paperwork doesn't match. I can never do this again. I really have to be like, that sucks 30 days. Let's get you your money. And then they're like, Oh, you actually want to help me. Like, literally, my only job is to pay you. That's what I do.
Blythe Brumleve:
58:25
I mean, yeah, that sounds like a great opera. I mean, it doesn't sound like you're dealing with a lot of folks that are on the angry side, maybe, per se. Oh, well, let's talk about some of maybe those ongoing, I guess, sort of relationships that you have to manage with your agents and, you know, maybe with some of their customers and carriers. How do you what are some of those common problems that maybe pop up across a lot of different ages, maybe not just one or two, I would
Taryn Reeves:
58:56
say, for processing side of things. Unfortunately, if there's a signature that is in a carrier or a shipper location, and they come back and say, That's the receiver. If an auditor looks like that, they're a little more black and white or robotic than I am. So yes, I want to believe you, but if they look at that, our customer doesn't pay us because there was no signature on it, I have to go back to these poor carriers and be like, Oh, thanks for driving for two weeks straight, but your signature's in the wrong spot. And I think that that's probably one of the hardest parts of my job, is that I don't want to not hold your money because you didn't sign it right. But if my customer is not going to approve it, then you need to figure it out on your end. So whenever I talk to those carriers, it got it can get a little bit heated, but I'm like, our patrons are net 30 days, so typically our customers pay terms are the same. So it's usually as soon as they get approval, we can release payment right away, because then the auditor will be like, Oh, customer is fine with it. You were okay to pay it. We're okay to move forward. So I always suggest get your shipper to sign it when you leave, always sign it on your own, and then the receiver has no choice but to sign it, either anywhere on the page or in the right spot.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:00:12
Oh, interesting. So what would happen in a situation like that, you just, does the carrier just have to drive back to that customer and get the right signature? Does you know additional approval process happen?
Taryn Reeves:
1:00:23
So it, it completely depends on the situation. Some of our customers, they we can email almost right away and just say, Hey, you received this freight. I have documentation of this. We'll all go to my AR department. They'll come back and say, Oh yeah, they said that this is going to be fine, and then we can process it per normal. Otherwise, we call it a hold until customer approves. And we'll say. It to them, invoice them with the paperwork we have. And like I said, typically they pay us within those 30 days, so we can release payment before the carrier even is notified of it. And sometimes our agents will be like, Oh no, no, that care. That customer is one of my best friends. Just go for it. Or, oh, that customer, he's been with me for 35 years. Just pay for it, right? And I don't know why all of my agent mimics are always like old guy sounding not all of them are. Lots of them are beautiful females.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:01:13
Let's talk about maybe, what are some of the ongoing questions that that not, maybe not necessarily problems, or maybe some ongoing things that freight agents are coming to you with, as far as, like, you know, maybe getting paid a little bit faster, or, you know, some discrepancy on, you know, a bill. What kind of questions are they regularly coming to you that they need answers for?
Taryn Reeves:
1:01:35
Um, I would say for additional billing is probably the number one reason why our we communicate back and forth with our agents, because sometimes there's a lumper when they pick up or they deliver, and the carrier will call them and then just be like, Oh, hey, I just got here. I need a lumper. And they're like, yeah, yeah, I'll go for it. I'll pay you. And then they'll forget. They won't be at their computer. They won't put it in. I get an invoice. Now I'm being invoiced an additional $250 and so then we have to go back to the agent to talk to them about that. I would say that's probably the number one. Is like, either waiting charges, because a lot of the times they are just on the phone and then they're like, Hey, I've been waiting here for three hours and it was only only supposed to take an hour. And our agents will be like, oh, yeah, no problem. I'll pay you the extra $100 for waiting. I really appreciate you. They forget to email, they forget to add the system, whatever the case may be, and then we get that additional billing. So I would say that those are usually the number ones and or vice versa. They talked to a carrier and they said, like, Hey, you were four hours late. I my customer is going to deduct this. I need to deduct you. They'll deduct it in the system. But the carrier tried to, kind of pull one over and send us the original rate confirmation with the original invoice. So I would say mostly it's a amount differences, not necessarily paperwork issues. If that makes
Blythe Brumleve:
1:02:55
sense, it does. It does definitely now, before we started having this conversation, I went to Twitter slash x to ask, because I have a lot of freight brokers and and agents that follow me on social media. And so I asked, you know, freight brokers, you know, what are some common things that you would want to know to better, do your to do your job better from the accounting team? And I got a couple different responses. One was very friendly and genuine approach to want to work with the AP team, because I think that there's, you know, from my experience working at, you know, a three PL, there were some times when, you know, you had some shadier actors within the company that were trying to pull one over on the accounting team, and the accounting team just stood up for themselves and said, No, we're not going to do that this way here. So from this question from Mike, he has the very like, friendly and genuine approach of wanting to work consistently and develop a great relationship with the AP team. And he said, he says, oddly enough, I engage with our accounting team around payables aspect and best practices. So this episode is going to be a timely listen for him. He goes on to say that a lot of the best practices he's worked with them on is average days to pay and quick Pay Process were the ones we touched on also talking through document management workflow internally, because that's been an opportunity for us, from the carrier side of things to the accounting team to build a customer. Is that a good example of how maybe, you know, a freight broker or a freight agent can work well with the accounting team,
Taryn Reeves:
1:04:25
for sure. And our pay terms, like I said, our net 30 days from the date we receive a valid invoice and proof of delivery, which we're pretty much on point. If you pull any of our reports to be at that mark, it kind of comes into an issue with any of those quick pay questions only because some of the carriers want to take the load because they'll get quick paid. But obviously that's a service that we offer, and we can't offer that on a first load moved. So it kind of becomes a little bit of an issue. So for those ones, we there is a way around it, and we request the mail the originals to head office, and as soon as we have that original bill of lading in head office, my system will let me override it, so I can still pay them that exact same day. And so because the pay terms are 1% for five days as well, usually it takes about five days to get there, get here, so I'll deduct it for the 1% give it same day pay term when I bought it, but it'll be the five day percentage deduction, because then it helps them out, helps us out, and we can still offer that service. And
Blythe Brumleve:
1:05:32
it still, it sounds like, you know, if I'm reading between the lines here, it sounds like you're, you're genuinely trying to get people paid as soon as possible, and it but you still have to cover your own basis and cover your own tracks.
Taryn Reeves:
1:05:44
Mm, hmm. And it's very unfortunate when, since double brokered loads have kind of come into play a little bit more recently. Mark funk is one of our directors, and he was talking to me about back there was a little bit of a a drop in the economy back in 2008 and he said back then double brokered loads really kicked into high gear, and he kind of saw the same thing within this year again. And I, my heart breaks, you know, because you talk to this I always think they're mom paws that are getting ripped off. They probably aren't, but you get a call from this mom paw that moved this load. They can't find their money, and I'm digging around for paperwork, but somebody else has invoiced to me, and so now we're trying to figure this out with this cute little mom Paul company, whereas, like, it's someone that's trying to scam us. So it's like, My heart breaks, and it's like, I want to give you your money. I know you did the work. I know your husband's on the road, and I'm trying to deal deal with this, right? And so yeah, those ones are a little bit trickier. So
Blythe Brumleve:
1:06:42
how do you how do you navigate towards it, to figure out, you know, who is legitimate and then who isn't.
Taryn Reeves:
1:06:49
So with the new implementation of the uploading for carrier process that we have, it's really starting to streamline. They have a lot of kind of hoops they have to go through in order to become a legitimate carrier, if we always look for the carrier name that's on a bill of lading. And so sometimes those are correct, sometimes they're incorrect, sometimes they're shipper error. So you kind of have to kind of a gray area, but it needs to be pretty black and white. And then when in doubt, we always request the original, because legally, you have to pay whoever has the original bill of lading. So if it ever gets to that point where we're super doubtful and we have no idea who moved this load. I've received three calls from three different carriers or three different factoring companies, because a factoring company they've hired to handle all of their receivables. And so if they're sending a rate confirmation and a bill of lading to a factoring company, they call us for the verification like, oh, I have a different carrier in my system. Then the question starts coming up, and so sometimes I'll get a call from two different factoring companies that same load that both have paperwork for it, and that's when we've kind of gotten a red flag. So we have little pre alerts that we can put in our document management system. We get Mark Funke involved, and he's been so beneficial and takes, I say he has a really, really hard backbone, because he's just, like, has to deal with all of that. And so anytime I'm feeling some kind of way, I'll just call him and be like, okay, my heart's breaking.
Unknown:
1:08:12
What are you doing with this? And he'll really, He's really amazing.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:08:17
Well, I feel like I really want to ask Mark funk this next question, because the next response that I got on on Twitter was a little bit more colorful when asking how to work better with the accounting team, because, and I quote, he says, I look in the mirror and I ask that department, why in the hell they waited so long to get the invoices out? The reply from the accounting department is always, you know, shut the F up and stay in your damn lane. So obviously, a response like that. He's dealt with some frustrations from other accounting departments, not yours, obviously, clearly,
Taryn Reeves:
1:08:52
like, I couldn't imagine anyone in our head office talking to any of our agents like that ever so. So he's talking about the accounting department for invoicing his customer. So that's a little bit on the other side, because that's an accounts receivable side of things. So for accounts payable, if everything's not matching, we technically can't invoice your customer, because they're not going to pay it. If it didn't deliver to the right location, it didn't have the right pickup or purchase order number, that didn't have like, so there's kind of stipulations where we can't invoice the customer if the amount doesn't match. And we invoice the customer without the lumber, and we go back to them like, APS, pay us another 250
Unknown:
1:09:36
bucks. They're not gonna be like, Oh, okay, sure. I would love to. They're gonna be like,
Taryn Reeves:
1:09:41
well, I paid my original invoice. You can wait on that. And so some of those amount differences, get the hold off for invoicing the customer as well. So there is a lot more to it than just invoice your customer, but we do try, like we are same day to 24 hour data entry, just because of our fastpay program, we need to get through pretty much all 403 50 invoices daily. And so because of that, all of our customers get invoiced at the same time, as soon as we've validated that proof of delivery that gets sent out to the customer. Thank the good Lord. That's all automatic in the system too nowadays. And so I would say it's a lot more streamlined that hopefully what this gentleman that messaged you is dealing
Blythe Brumleve:
1:10:26
with, yeah, it looks like there's a little bit of heat behind those little spiciness behind that response. But I you know, you had mentioned that the fastpay program, you know, a couple times now you, I think you also said it's one of the best in the nation. Can you tell us a little bit more? Well,
Taryn Reeves:
1:10:43
I was training one of the Asians. Last week. And so they only made it was two weeks ago. And they always talk to us about whether or not or whether or not we offer fast pay. And so I told him our fast pay terms. He's like, Oh, that's that's the best there is out there. Like, oh, well, folks. And so we recommend if they are requesting it, to send it to a different email address, because then it kind of doesn't get lost in the mass of the 350, 800 invoices over the couple days that we receive them. And then we can review it right away, look at it, let them know if we need anything. Let them know that they have to update, because sometimes they don't even have their ACH information or EFT in Canada information in the system. So if they're looking for a quick pay and we're sending them a check. They're going to wait, because they all go from Texas, but they're going to end up waiting however many days in the mail for that check to get there. So there is a couple things that we double check with them just to make sure same day means same day, because that's kind of a big deal. And
Blythe Brumleve:
1:11:41
so you know, as you know, you're evolving these, you know, training, these new Asians that come on and you're continuing that relationship with them. What do you wish that they knew about your job to make your job easier?
Taryn Reeves:
1:11:58
Good question,
Blythe Brumleve:
1:12:00
because if you make the accounting team happy, everybody, yeah, and
Taryn Reeves:
1:12:06
I think that what I always train them on is just give us a heads up. Because if you have 10 trucks going into a warehouse, and it's going to be first come first serve basis, but you've put load A, B, C, D, and then carrier a picks up load C, but that's not what it says in my system. It's going to get stopped, and we're going to have to have a lot of back forth on all 10 of those loads. So if they just gave us a heads up that says, hey, I have 10 loads moving out of here, first come, first serve basis, whatever PO number gets picked up there, you can just put it into the system. As long as we get all 10, we're good to go. That simple email, we put a pre alert on 10 different loads, and as those came in, we would be able to update for invoicing all of their customers, and it would all run smoothly. So because obviously it's up to the carrier whenever they feel like invoicing us, right? So if they end of the month they decide like, Oh, I'll bring in my accounting to come and invoice all of these now, then it might take a whole month for us to get a couple of those. But if we already received eight of them, we could have processed eight of them instead of waiting for all 10 and those last two at the end of the month, and then it kind of keeps everything rolling smooth. Yeah. So
Blythe Brumleve:
1:13:18
communication sounds like is very key, as with a lot of other aspects in life. Now, you know, we've talked a lot about, you know, the existing freight agents that are shopping new programs, that are onboarding with you guys and continuing that relationship, but what about for maybe some potential like freight brokers that are looking to maybe make the leap in the future? How? What are some best practices that they should be looking at with how they're managing their finances, their their payables, things like that, to set them up for success.
Taryn Reeves:
1:13:48
Um, I think that as long as they our they are managing their finances and their payables, they're going to be on a pretty good term, because if they come with no no book of business, they come not knowing where they stand on any end already, then they're going to come in and not know if they're succeeding or failing at SPI and so I think if they come in already knowing a little bit about their own business, then they'll be able to see that having the back office support at head office is actually going to let them focus on their customer growth, because that's pretty much the point. The more agents get to focus on their customers, and we get to kind of handle the day to day, then they're going to just be able to grow bigger and bigger, right? And that's kind of what they're in business for, for themselves and to grow their business. And so they don't want to handle the day to day invoicing and po numbers and data entry part of it. And so I think if they come into our business already knowing where they're sitting and or failing succeeding, they'll see that we can help them succeed in a lot of different ways. That's
Blythe Brumleve:
1:14:50
very well said. And, you know, as we round out this sort of section of questions, before we get to, you know, the final segment of the relatable eight questions, anything that you think, that I didn't ask, that you think is important for, you know, current freight agents, potential freight agents to know about working with the accounting team.
Taryn Reeves:
1:15:09
I would say, if you're coming in as a freight brokerage that moves LTL loads, just tread lightly, because LTL is a lot and has a lot of hidden fees in it. So the final charges that you're going to have are always going to be different. So always audit your billing before you complete a load in your system, because if you're auditing it first and then complete it, then there's not going to be any surprises for you. Oh, great,
Blythe Brumleve:
1:15:37
great little added insight there that that was awesome. So so thank you for that. And you know, as just mentioned, the relatable eight. This is. A section of the interview that the audience has come to really know and love. Over the last few months, we've been asking this set of questions, you know, to just sort of, I It's kind of breaking the ice, but not really, because it's towards the end of the conversation. So, but with all that said, let's get to the first one. How do you think about marketing when it comes to you and your company. Because I imagine, you know, appearing on, you know, a podcast like this is definitely a form of marketing. So how do you think about that, that sort of process? Is this your first podcast interview? Have you done others in the past?
Taryn Reeves:
1:16:18
This is actually my first podcast interview. And I think that marketing obviously comes with a little bit of challenges of its own, because the bigger you grow, the more you get known, the more kind of, I don't want to say, scammers come out, but the more that they get that scammers come out. And so when we were just kind of like, happy go lucky little family and head office just doing our work, right, it kind of changed the dynamic as well, because the bigger you get, the more corporate you get, the more a little less family that the whole head office starts to feel like and but I obviously, I think it's great. Our marketing team is doing fantastic. They sent us out fun Yeti cups during covid. Mine's all like, obviously washed off now. But I find even having something like that is so fun, because when you're out and about and people like, oh, SPI I work for and then they start talking to you about all sorts of things. Or even with my kids, when we're driving, you'll see a truck go by. They're like, Oh, do you pay them? Do you pay them? Like, Oh no, not them. Oh, I pay them every day.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:17:24
Oh, that's so awesome that that's great. I Yeah, kudos to the to the marketing team over at SPI because they're they're doing fantastic things and and also kudos to you for this being your first podcast interview. I imagine it's not going to be your last, because you fantastic so far. And then we have the next question, what's your favorite social media platform and why?
Taryn Reeves:
1:17:47
Okay, I'm pretty lame when it comes to social media, but I would say Facebook is still probably the one I use the most, but mostly because that's where I get all the invites to anything that's going on in my friend group from because everybody posts on there. My husband's really into Instagram, which I also think is kind of fun and but I wouldn't say that. I'm really honest, but so I guess it would be Facebook, professionally, LinkedIn, but I only go on there because people connect with me. I'm like, yep, yep, yep, you look like a connection too.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:18:20
Alright. Next one. What is your favorite SAS tool that you use every day and can't live without? Oh,
Taryn Reeves:
1:18:26
definitely. Well, it used to be called hub trends, but now they call it triumph pay audit, and that's the document management system I was talking about. There is absolutely zero chance the growth that we've had in our company would have happened without having a platform like that to manage our documents.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:18:41
Oh, that's awesome. Hell yeah, I'm clipping that out just to, you know, to send it over to the Triumph page.
Unknown:
1:18:47
Oh, I should have put on the hat. They gave me a hat when they were here. I like swag. So if
Blythe Brumleve:
1:18:53
you're hearing that and you're listening, go center in some swag. All right. Now, next one. What is your favorite freight business that isn't your own?
Taryn Reeves:
1:19:02
Well, I kind of have a soft spot in my heart for CND logistics. The owner there, his name is Dana, and he was actually a coach on a Canadian Junior football team, and I used to cheerlead for them, and my husband came and started playing for them, and that's how we met. So I kind of have a soft spot for Sandy. That's
Blythe Brumleve:
1:19:23
a great one. Awesome. This is, this has been my favorite answer so far for this section. Okay, what's one task in your current job that you can't stand doing?
Taryn Reeves:
1:19:31
Oh, definitely telling carriers that the signature is in the wrong. Oh, I think that it breaks my heart every time, because I know you did the job. I know you got there, I know you left, and then I have to say. PS, they signed it wrong. Like, you're tired, you drove all day or all week or for two weeks, or crossing borders or whatever the case may be, and you have this annoying chicken AP, that's like, oh, the numbers, the signature is wrong. Bye. And I think that that's probably my number one pet peeve
Blythe Brumleve:
1:20:02
that, yeah, that's got to be a tough one to deal with on, you know, a regular basis, to have to tell folks who already have enough on their plate that, you know, there's a little caveat and that's going to delay in them getting paid. So, yeah, I wouldn't like that one either. Okay, so next one, if you didn't have to worry about money, what would you want to do for the rest of your life? Ooh,
Taryn Reeves:
1:20:21
that was a good one. I liked it. Um, I kind of started thinking through this after I read that actually, because I really like serving my family like I just think that it's pretty awesome to be like all about the kids and all about my husband and kind of being a personal chef, and there's not very much tradition in my family, because my mom was adopted, my husband's dad was. Adopted. So it kind of lost a lot of like, the traditions being passed down. So I think that if I didn't have to work, I would probably travel to a lot of little like remote little towns throughout the world, and kind of work with all those, I say little grandmas, but that's kind of sexist a little grandmas or Grandpas that are cooking and like baking all day. And I would like to learn how they like use their spices, or picked them or dried them. And I would like to learn all those, like little tips and tricks for cooking from, like, yeah, those little remote towns throughout the world. I love
Blythe Brumleve:
1:21:14
that, because that was one of the first things I know, you know, say what you will, about Tiktok. But my feed, especially during covid and, like during lockdowns, I never got so much inspiration from that platform than watching like, these grandmothers in, like, Lebanon, like, cook over this open fire pit. I'm like, a, you know, a stove that looks like it's, you know, 100 years old.
Taryn Reeves:
1:21:34
Yeah, amazing. Have you ever seen those little um places? They're like, rolling their own gnocchi, like, they're just like, do it with that little fork thing and the special, and all of a sudden they have this huge bin. You're like, how you try and it turns into, like, home of this twisty ravioli. You're like, what just happened?
Blythe Brumleve:
1:21:50
I tried to make wontons the other day, and it was a disaster. So I this is very recent for me. I spent about six hours trying to do this, and ultimately I just emptied them all out and decided to do a stir fry. Were
Taryn Reeves:
1:22:03
you trying to close up the wonton fully? Yes, yeah. Because if there's any sort of oils or any of the food that hits the outside of that, you're hooped from the beginning. It
Blythe Brumleve:
1:22:13
was a disaster. And I probably maybe should have contacted you these tips ahead of time, and I've wasted a lot of time before I knew it was 11pm at night, and I was like, I have to go to bed.
Unknown:
1:22:23
It's and you haven't eaten.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:22:26
That's why we had the stir fry more. What is something you believe in that most people don't?
Taryn Reeves:
1:22:35
Um, I think so obviously. I don't know if no one else believes in it, but we all were obviously given a purpose in this world. There is a problem in the world that only one person is able to solve, and I think that there's a difference between being on your path for whatever that problem is to solve versus being in your your like divine purpose versus your divine assignment. Because obviously, my purpose isn't necessarily data entry at a freight brokerage, but I think that my assignment is doing this and being able to raise my family and learn how to make loan tones. But so I think that having knowing that difference and knowing that just because you're not living, quote, unquote, your dream at the moment doesn't mean you're not in the right spot and you're not doing the right assignment you're supposed to be in right now.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:23:32
Love that definitely it's life is a pathway, and you have to partake in all of the journeys of the pathway. So last one, what is your favorite supply chain or logistics fact?
Taryn Reeves:
1:23:45
Well, okay, so this one was kind of funny, because I was talking to one of our agents that's been with us a long time. He used to even work in head office as well, in the operation section in the back. And we were just chatting about, I was watching a show called ridiculousness. I don't know if you've ever seen it, so I was watching that, and it kept on having all of these trucks running into the bottom of overpasses. And it was like a little segment Rob Dyrdek did. And I was laughing so hard. I'm like, so I was talking to him. I'm like, these truck drivers are so ridiculous. I don't know where they're hiring them. And he says to me, he's like, you know, Taryn, there's always the height on the overpass, but where they measure that height might be the wrong spot. So if they measured it in the middle of the Overpass, but your truck is driving to the right of it, you may think that you had the clearance, but then you've run into it because it's on the right hand side and it's a little bit lower on the outside. I'm like, Oh, they're not all just silly. It was just a mistake. So I think that that was kind of a fun fact of the logistics industry that I never put two and two together on.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:24:52
Yeah, I've never heard that either, because I have the same reaction I see that, and I'm like, Well, why didn't you know that? Like, why didn't the broker tell you that this pass existed and your truck wouldn't be able to go under this bridge? And so I immediately, like, want to point the blame at everyone, but really, we should, I guess, be pointing the blame at the engineer
Unknown:
1:25:10
or the connection, or
Taryn Reeves:
1:25:11
whoever is the person. Maybe, is it the city planner that puts that height on it? Like, maybe there should be inside and outside on all of them. I don't know what the case. I don't know who's in charge of that, but whoever it is, if you're listening, you should add a double one.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:25:25
It's also very, I think, severely, like, underfunded, I know in the States at least, like our infrastructure for like, inspecting bridges and dams, like it's all it's very underfunded. So I'm sure there's a lot of folks out there that wish, you know, maybe they could, you know, change a lot of those things. But you probably don't realize, you know, some of those issues are a thing until someone. Fortunately, he crashes into it.
Taryn Reeves:
1:25:47
Could you imagine what these truck drivers did before, like Google Maps came into play, like I just picture, because obviously it gives you best route. But imagine back in the day, you were following one of those maps that, like came out from, like the roof, and then you followed one, thinking you could go there, but it came to like something where you had to try to turn around or back down this, like, windy rural road or something. I just, yeah, there's so been so much. What are you gonna do? Yeah,
Blythe Brumleve:
1:26:12
well, we have no service. Anyways, you probably didn't even have a phone when you were using some of these, you know, giant Rand McNally map books that, yeah, my dad still swears by so
Unknown:
1:26:23
I love your dad now, so he'll use both,
Blythe Brumleve:
1:26:26
right? Well, well, this was a fantastic interview, fantastic answers to these questions. You know, I guess it might. My last remaining one is, you know, if anybody who's interested in becoming a freight agent for SPI, where should they go to for more information? I'm sure we'll have a link in the show notes for them. But any you know last remarks that you want to leave
Taryn Reeves:
1:26:48
the audience with? Well, obviously, just go to our website and you can go from there. There's a spot on there for agents that are looking to get involved carriers, if you're looking for information, or customers, if you're trying to figure out to find an agent, because there's some customers that might be interested in not realizing they could save a lot of money using a three PL versus just shipping on their own. So I would highly recommend just going to the website and feeling it out. And everybody at head office is super helpful. And you could call, you'll be able to get a hold of somebody that'll talk you through it
Blythe Brumleve:
1:27:19
absolutely now it for just, you know, talking to the audience for a second, if you love the energy that that Taryn had on this interview, which I, you know, obviously did, then you should know that the rest of the SPI team has very much the same sort of just positive energy. That's why I like working with them so much so. So Taryn, thank you again for coming on the show. Really enjoyed this conversation. Hope you enjoyed that conversation. Now, let's talk it in the minimum technology that your freight agent program should have with SPI, VP of tech, Eze Peralta, welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. I am your host, Blythe brumleve, and I'm happy to welcome in as a Peralta. He is the VP of technology at SPI logistics, and we're going to be talking about the role that it plays at a three. Pl so Eze, welcome into the show. Yeah.
Eze Peralta:
1:28:10
Thank you very much Absolutely.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:28:12
Now for folks who may not be familiar with you and your background kind of give us an idea of how you first started off with technology. When did you know that technology was or IT infrastructure was going to be your career path?
Unknown:
1:28:27
Well, I think at a very, very early age, I started using computers when I was age four. That was the first computer. My dad was into learning graphic design and this kind of thing, so he got an old Mac, and that was kind of like love at first sight. Started on the graphic design, more like Illustrator, Photoshop, that kind of stuff. Then I but always really interested in how things really work and the mechanisms behind it. I always knew that I was going to get into coding one day. And then, yeah, I used my first experience with databases was with some custom built database that I did for a small business that I had with I used to do screen printing, so I created the software for that business, and then created software also for for other like small businesses like that. And then my my first like bigger job opportunity was online travel agency, where we were with, with with a friend, we were developing the data warehouse and all their analytics solutions. So that was my first, like bigger project, and that was kind of like what led me to SPI, the first project that I, that I did for SPI, with with my friend Valentin, who is now also working with SPI, was at our warehousing tool, and that was our first experience. Then I got the offer to to to come on board, and yeah, thanks to the trust of offer our leadership team, Mitch and and Joe Chandler, that that's when all started in logistics for me. And I have to say, I'm really thankful that of all the learning process that I had in SPI about the frabi industry, because when I just first started, it was very new to me. I had an idea of the brokerage model from online travel agencies. But I learned so much from from from everyone here, and I. Yeah.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:30:46
So can I nerd out with you for a little bit? How do you build a database?
Unknown:
1:30:51
Well, more than that, well, building a database or or an implementation of a database model for for a company, generally, there is a lot of research on the on the on the data model. On the design of data model, right? What is the scope and the grain of the data that you want to store? It's like you want to store things by date, is your business related to timing issues, is related to quantities, is related to you, know, more a very general level. Then, for example, for a freight brokerage or a these are very complex data models, because, for example, people usually tend to oversimplify, but it's a lot about thinking about model, how you model reality into A into an abstraction, or, in this case, a database. But it's a lot about talking with the actual business experts, in order to know how they think about things, and try to translate that into a mechanism that that will fulfill those requirements. Something that we, that I noticed and analyzing data models for, for TMS systems, is many times there is like a glitch or an error, an issue on the on finding that granularity. For example, okay, you you model a load, right? But then what happens if that load has many line items, and each one of those line items go into a different truck, and then that truck has maybe a team right driving, so then you have the driver, so then you're doing tracking on a driver, but then that load changes driver and then, but it's all in the same order, right? And the customer will see, will want to see that as one right, but the as one order, but maybe on the carrier side, they will see a piece of that order, and you don't want also that data to leak, right? Or so it's a lot of about that. Like, designing databases is one of my main I don't know, I really like it, the data modeling aspect of it, but, yeah, that's usually because
Blythe Brumleve:
1:32:57
I, from what I understand, in a very like, loose sort of, Oh, I like to consider myself as tech savvy, but I don't you know that walking into a server room at a, you know, a three PL was my big like, eye opening moment, like, wow, this is, you know, how a lot of the functionality of how things work, but then you're talking about, sort of the inside guts of that, that server itself, and how you're programming different texts and different, I Guess, TMS, you know, the information that you're reading within a TMS, you're coding that a certain way, so the database understands it. So if you're looking to pull records or sort records, then it will be pulled correctly. Is that a kind of a general overview?
Unknown:
1:33:40
Yeah. And for example, the main challenge, one, one of the main tasks that I had when I started with the data warehousing project. Here is that we had, at that time, three different TMS systems in production. So there was a group of agents using a legacy system that was a client server system. Then there was a group of agents working with a web version of that same TMS system. And then there was a subset of agents working with the newer TMS system that we were migrating to. Eventually we'll get everyone into the newer TMS system, but in the meantime, we needed to have our KPIs every day on how the business is doing. Now, one system will say, okay, a load has these fields, right, all these columns, but the other system would say, well, a load for us is these other columns, right? So we needed to create basically all the architecture and the database modeling to pull all that into a common model that will be able to tell us, no matter where the load is coming from, no matter the TMS kind of build that SPI owned abstraction over the business objects that we are dealing with, because what is a load or what is an order for SPI, it might not be the same of what is an order for ABC TMS or XYZ TMS. So, yeah, that's, that was actually one of the of the main challenges. That's how I learned a lot, a lot, a lot about the frame industry itself, by just seeing the how information is stored in these systems, right? And
Blythe Brumleve:
1:35:19
so what is I guess, um, for, for folks who may not be aware, what is the I guess positive outcome, or maybe dangerous outcome, of not having a database that's properly maintained and organized. What could be the, I guess, the downstream effects of that not being the case, not being properly optimized?
Unknown:
1:35:41
I think you lose power on the inside, right? That you can get from your data. I think everyone is familiar with the term garbage in garbage out, with data management, right? And then I think more important than the data that is stored in each call each table on the database, then you have the aspect of the relationships, right? How does relate this a load? How does related load with a stop? How does related stop with a tractor? How does it relate with and not having that model properly gives you a lot, gives you a lot of issues that you don't know, that you're having because it's hard to know or hard to see an issue where you don't know there's an issue there, because it was never there. It's not something that it was done and then it broke. It was never there. So basically, I think the Yeah, it the main point would be losing possibility of insight in the future over your own, your own data and operation. That
Blythe Brumleve:
1:36:47
makes a lot of sense. It's almost like for, you know, the marketers out there, you know, or the sales leaders out there, you know, having a lot of crap leads maybe in your CRM, like you're you looks good to have 20,000 leads in that CRM. But if it's crap, or if they're fake email addresses or something, then you know, you're not going to find out until you actually go to start sending them messages, yeah,
Unknown:
1:37:07
or you end up, you know, because maybe from a lead, you cannot convert that into an they didn't model the proper follow up objects of okay, a lead becomes an opportunity. An opportunity becomes an account. And maybe if you're missing some of those tables where to store information, or you don't have those relationships there in the data, then you will end up basically putting all that into another system or in a spreadsheet, or kind of like, you know, building something around it. And that's when things start go sideways, because all the purpose of implementing software is to fulfill business need, right? And then you start kind of adapting your your processes to the software instead of the opposite. And I think, yeah, that's that's not a good path.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:37:53
And so when you So, how long ago did you join SPI? I
Unknown:
1:37:56
started with SPI in 2018
Blythe Brumleve:
1:38:00
oh, okay, so that the, I guess organizing the databases was a big part of your job initially. So what does your sort of the day to day look like for you now? Is it? Is it managing that database? Now?
Unknown:
1:38:12
More database, I think I'm more focused on the business processes and how trying to see the overall picture, besides the operational side of the freight brokerage portion. When I started here, one of my main goals was to talk with the team who is actually using the software. The client care team has been so helpful. AP and AR team has been so helpful in teaching me how they use the software. And they came up with all these would it is, is there a way how we could do this instead of, you know, entering this spreadsheet data into this system? Is there a way we could do it better? And then we started talking about and like we came up in some cases, we realized that we didn't need that spreadsheet to start with, because there were, there was another way where we so instead of running into the implementation of a software solution to to do that, we started questioning, do we need that spreadsheet to start with? Do we need that process overall to start with? Or maybe doing a couple of changes in the process will basically define all your problems out of out of scope, and, you know, get rid of all these problems without even implementing any software. Because for me, it I prefer to write less code, and I prefer to maintain less infrastructure, less software and less and the code that never fails is the code that never is never written, right? So I feel happy when I have to, I get to delete code, right? Because I'm decreasing complexity. Basically, in many cases, sometimes you need to, you know, add but, and I think that's like an overall rule for everyone into the software world, is no go after implementation right away, it's like, okay, what are you want to implementing? Is it necessary at all? You know?
Blythe Brumleve:
1:40:12
And I think that you I love that you said that you actually talked to employees before you started implementing a lot of different tech solutions or trying to essentially put a band aid on a broken leg. I think that that's what a lot of organizations do, is that they just see the shiny new piece of software, the shiny new piece of tech, and they just go ahead and buy it, and then they, you know, throw it on the team that's actually going to use it, and the team hates it. So I think that that I love, that you answered that question that way, where you're talking to the team before you actually. Make those tech investments is that has that, I would imagine that's proven successful for you guys to actually talk to the team members first, right?
Unknown:
1:40:55
Yes, for sure. And there is to be a balance, because sometimes people will want to, of course, stick to the old ways and the way they're doing thing, the way they know. So there's a lot you need to also, kind of like encourage them to where they're going to see the improvement. And I think sometimes there's some sort of arrogance from the from people, from the software, where it's like, Oh, why people are hating this so much if it's so much better than what they already do? Well, they are the ones. Let's listen to what they have to say, because they might have good points, and maybe there's little tweaks that we can do in order to, you know, fit those needs. So, yeah, it's proven successful. And I think seeing, trying to see, see it as an overall approach, besides, okay, operations and, you know, TMS and then back office. But because, let's say you get a new TMS system, right, and then that, then you increase your order account by an order of magnitude, right? You have three times more loads, right? Okay, now you have to pay them. Now you have to build them. Now, if your back office is working on spreadsheets and printing checks in your office, then suddenly you're going to find out your you need a bigger printer or you need more what people do is, okay, you have all these maybe super fancy software doing the order management. But then on the billing side, you have basically an office with a bunch of people doing very repetitive work, and then you're in whatever you're winning on one side, you are basically, you know, losing on the other side. So you need to grow all together. I think that has been my idea from the beginning, like putting a lot of focus on the back office has been, has proven also successful.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:42:46
So give us, I guess, a sense of the tech stack that SPI, if that SPI sort of, I would imagine that the TMS is sort of the backbone of the entire organization. And then what do those additional tools sort of look like? Are you, you know, investing in third party software and integrating that into the TMS. Or what does the tech stack look like for a typical freight agent coming on on board? Yeah,
Unknown:
1:43:15
so the tech landscape at the center, I would say, we're trying to move the TMS from the center of the tech stack. And of course, it's always going to be the center of the stack, because it's a transportation management software and it's built for it. It's where most, most of the domain lives, right? The all the objects that have the naming of what we deal with, load, stop, driver, carrier, that's lives in the TMS, but that's not everything to the business. So we have the CRM, which is how we get our leads for new agents and like then we have our AR and AP, right? So we used try and pay for processing payments. We use them also for doing OCR on the pods that we receive. So all that process automated. So we link, we built an integration with with them so we can basically automatically submit the payments and audit if a payment, if a payable is ready to be sent, then we send it. But if not, it will go into different queue where we were going to evaluate. Okay, there's, you know, mismatch on the, there's an exception on the mismatch on the on the on the amounts, or whatever it is. Then we have all the load boards right, dt, truck stop. Then we're onboarding now with parade to for doing digital matching. We also have client Schmidt for EDI connectivity, connecting with all the EDI value added networks and FTP providers. Then we have we're using Aqua freight for LTL. And then we have, we have some bots initiatives also for for those sites where there's no API to call, we also have, we create our own visibility sharing platform. I would say it's all in the background. There's no user interface, but we basically created these reusable components to be able to share location data with any of our shippers, no matter the system they use. So we have now four kites, P 44 so we're feeding their systems with our location data that we get from. The tracking providers, we have macro, point P 44 and tracker tools, we like to always offer, like a few options, because, you know, features that we don't have in one we can get from another one. And when I was talking about trying to not have the TMS at the center is that we built, and we are continuing the process of continuing building an integration layer, or what we call SPI data services, where, for any integration that we do, we integrate the TMS and the data sources with our SPI data services platform, and from there, we can feed data to that warehouse and also feed any other data source. So we created some custom libraries, or code libraries to to reutilizing our own integrations. We deploy all this, you know, in our own infrastructure in the cloud, trying to follow all the, you know, best practices regarding security, observability, governance and all these things, and that has proven also a good approach, like, you know, owning your own integrations. I think that that's a key, because you cannot be waiting for your software provider to to integrate a system, because maybe that that's not something they want to do, because maybe it's not good for their customer base. But in our case, we cannot be waiting for, you know, another vendor to say, Oh yeah, we're gonna integrate this. And maybe they integrate it, but maybe they don't integrate the data points you need. And then you waited all that time, right? Oh, and it's like, well, it doesn't work for me now. So, yeah, we built, we built quite a, quite a nice, I think, platform to to allow us get the best features from every vendor, but give give them a context and a process and a way of using it, and a documentation and and, you know, to make it work for us.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:47:49
And it almost sounds like it's like an apple, like an Apple store with a bunch of apps that you can kind of chew, pick and choose on which ones that you want to use as a freight agent. Is that a safe bet, or is it kind of, you know, this is the suggested tech stack that you should use for X, Y and Z.
Unknown:
1:48:05
Yeah, actually, actually, one point it's SPI is a network, right? So each office is different, and SPI embraces this difference, instead of trying to equalize and you know, or trying to say no, this is the way how you should do things. Of course, we have proposed best practice. Of course, we have, you know, how we think things should be done, but also we understand there are as many ways of working as dispatchers and brokers are, and even in that best practices path publicity and differences, right? So we try to embrace that. So if someone wants to use EDI for their tenders, but then they want to use load boards in certain way, then we set them up for that, right? But then if someone else says, Oh, actually I want, I want to feed my loads from a separate system, well, then we will evaluate if that the complexity of the project. And then if we can do it, then we will, we will just integrate it. And so we try to make it so it's evolvable. So because maybe tomorrow, you will want to incorporate a new tool, okay? So we just plug it in, right? And we adapt to the complexity and requirements of each agent, basically. So some agents we had, the case, for example, with LTL, the TMS we use, it has a good LTL integrations. But for people who is focused on LTL, they need maybe an LTL focused TMS or software, right? So what we did is we created an iteration where they booked their loads in an LTL oriented software, which is Aqua freight, and then we sync those that data with our main TMS, our current team, they don't even know where that payable or billing came from. So if it came from TMS one or TMS two, it's a billing and it's a payable. You should, you should audit it. You should pay it and or you should, you know, Bill it to the customer. So that's kind of the approach that we want to have where, if you come to SPI and it's like, oh, actually, I want to use this combo of features, of this combo of things, well, we can make it happen. Yeah.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:50:42
So I guess when. Your or a new agent is thinking about joining SPI do they typically meet with with you or somebody else from the tech team in order to answer some of those questions? And if so, what? What are some of those common questions that they're asking?
Unknown:
1:50:59
Yeah, so some, sometimes they would meet with with me before onboarding, just just to get to know, you know, I would give a demo of the system. Our client care team can, can give demos too, but sometimes they want something more specific, or I want to know how EDI looks like EDI tender looks like in your platform, okay, and then we do it. Or, you know, what options you have for tracking, how reporting works, or so generally, yeah, we, we do a demo. They explain what they need, and then we explain what are the what is the toolkit that we have in order, you know, to fit those needs and how we can make it work. And again, some, sometimes, because we are a small team, we are not a software company, so we need to evaluate it. Our resources are also limited. So, you know some it might take more time for us to build something than if a software company, dedicated company, software company, but in reality, because we have already so much, already built, it becomes faster. So we're not starting from zero, right? You already have all this toolkit, and it's basically grabbing this piece, this piece, this piece, this is how can make it work for you.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:52:20
And so I would imagine for a lot of these folks that are gonna that are interested in becoming a freight agent, and they contact you guys and they're ready to move forward, I would imagine that they would be saving a considerable amount of money by, you know, using some of the licenses and the software tools that you guys have already spent in, you know, an incredible amount of, not only money, but time as well, investing into these platforms. But what if somebody wants to keep say they've had, you know, a load board for years, or they they've had their own, you know, sort of CRM for years. Can they keep that valuable data? Can they migrate it over? Or do they have the option to keep it in, still within their, I guess, their own ecosystem?
Unknown:
1:53:04
I think, yeah, I think they have both options, or the three options, they could keep it on their side. Of course, whatever data they need to enter as part of SPI will be shared. They can choose to migrate that into our operational system, or they can choose to migrate that into our data warehouse for just to store it and then start fresh with a new install of the TMS, but that's something that we usually do. For example, people has this big list of locations or customers, so we have processes to just upload all that into our platform and then, so yeah, they have both options, and even Yeah, if they're using a specific load board, and if that loader has an API, then we will work with them to integrate it. Same for visibility sharing, or this very common requirement that we have is all my shippers are wanting, you know, to get a daily file with the location of all their shipments. We can set that up in a day, you know, and I don't know how is the processing? But if, if a small broker, like a one person operation, would want to build that out, you know, to send a daily visibility file or or real time updates to the shippers, they will have not only to buy software, but also work with to adjust all the little knobs, and they probably don't have time for that. And that's the thing, that's the thing, the timing. That's something that gets forgotten. People are on their day to day, doing stuff and doing their, you know, taking care of their orders, and they don't want to spend that extra time, and they shouldn't have to. And
Blythe Brumleve:
1:54:48
so I imagine, you know, after, you know, maybe some of those initial questions are answered, you know, a new agent signs and and they're ready to get rolling. What does that, I guess, onboarding time look like? Because I know, for you know, a lot of folks, it's, you know, you got to manage the freight every single day, all day, every day. So any kind of, I guess, time away from that is almost seen as a frustration. So how do you sort of mitigate that level of frustration as they're onboarding and learning these new systems? What does the, I guess, the time period look like, and how do you, I guess, you make it as easy on them as possible.
Unknown:
1:55:23
So we have an amazing client care team that will will give the training. We have a portal where you have videos on the training for the TMS. We can upload the locations and customers, and we do all the credit check and all of that before you know the their go live date, so by the time they get their. Login. People can go in the system and start booking loads from day one, from day one, you can, you can, you can book your loads and that, including, you know, posting to load boards or onboarding pro we, we put a lot of effort in automating the onboarding process and tracking it. So we have, you know, we schedule our training sessions after those training sessions, if there's, there's a need of upload these locations for data, we do that. So by the time, by the time agreed with the with the new agent, we they can start booking loads day one. And then, of course, like getting used to a new software, maybe you are slower at the beginning, and then, you know, you start getting up to speed, entering more, you know, new customers and these kind of things. But it
Blythe Brumleve:
1:56:39
sounds like too, you know, it's one of those things that you don't really know, I think, how it's going to impact your daily life until you're in the new system. And so it kind of goes back to your earlier point about defining what those processes look like, and then maybe, you know, it's changing a little bit of your processes on your end of things in order to speed up things later on. So they're not only, you know, saving money on a lot of these different licenses, but they're also getting better and more access to different licenses that they probably didn't have before, and then now, with a lot of the different automation that you guys are integrating, then they're saving more time and probably allows them, I would imagine, to be able to develop deeper relationships with their customers. What are some of those other I would imagine that that's a light bulb moment for them, once they really get into the system. Are there any other sort of light bulb moments for them? You know, making this transition tech wise?
Unknown:
1:57:35
I think, I think a big part of it is the fact that they don't have to care, take care of billing and paying right the back office support. That's a huge thing, because it allows people to focus on, you know, managing freight, not managing, you know, if a check didn't go to the to the right address, or things like that. At the same time, I think there's a high benefit on participating in an organization that is oriented to high efficiency. And it's not that we, you know, gonna we're gonna think about it. We're gonna work with the agency in order to understand the problem and try to find a solution, not a not not saying, Oh, you're wrong. You should do it this way. Okay, what are you trying to say? Right? Like, how we can and I think a libel moment is when, yeah, it's like, so I just need to book freight and talk with my customers. Well, yeah, that's it. And, you know, it's and they gain a lot of the fact of because of being part of an organization that is focused on high efficiency, they start seeing the benefits of of that as well. Of okay, I can learn from these business processes. I can learn from other agents as well. I can learn from this network. You know, how? How can I do my my part better and but knowing that cares are going to get paid, your money is going to be collected. You're going to get your commissions. You're not going to have, you know, any if you have an issue, then you're going to call client care and they're going to help you right away. Is there is a claim we're going to take care of that, you know, work with the agent to solve that claim. So I think that libel moment is where, oh, now I can. Now I can be hyper focused on, on, on, on my business.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:59:36
And I think, too, it's you're highlighting a good point that for a lot of these folks, I would imagine that you don't know what you don't know, and then you finally get into a new system of processes, a new way of thinking. And maybe at first it's kind of a little worrying, because you're so used to having your hands in everything, and now you don't have to worry about that anymore. So maybe at first it's kind of jarring, a little bit, you know, surprising. I know I've experienced this in my own business, where I've implemented different automate automation strategies, and it feels weird to not have to micromanage each of those little things. I imagine a lot of that is going on with them, too, and once they make or complete that onboarding process,
Unknown:
2:00:19
Yes, totally. And I think the key to calm that is communication and observability, like, if you can have KPIs reporting on on, you know, how much, how many loads you were able to move before? How many loads are you being able to move now? How much time you were spending on these processes? And I. That now you're spending zero, and that takes time, and that, you know, some people will, and it depends on the personality. Also, some people will still want to have their hard copy on paper, and that's okay, like they want to have their spreadsheets with, you know, their what their commission should be. And I think we encourage that. It's like, it adds to the transparency. And if there's an error or an issue with with, you know, data inconsistency, then, well, thanks for letting us know. We'll, you know, work on that. But yeah, the key to that, I think, is observability reporting like KPIs, and be able to see that and measure it. So
Blythe Brumleve:
2:01:30
with when everybody, you know, I guess, when covid happened, if you know, a few years ago, and everybody's working from home, there was a big sort of outcry, I think, in a lot of like the corporate tech world, that this is going to open everybody up to, you know, malicious attacks and cybersecurity issues and things like that, but with an agent model, you guys are kind of used to having these remote offices all over the place. How are you, I guess, monitoring or mitigating potential cybersecurity risk in sort of this environment that most companies find themselves in with remote offices all over the place.
Unknown:
2:02:07
Yeah, so that there, it would depend on the vector right, where the attack is coming from, or there are many ways. So for example, email phishing, like it's it's really hard to combat, because, you know, if it only takes one person to click a link, enter their password and then right so that we try, we do what everyone does, which is protecting our email server as much as we can, and we use Cloud for that. We don't use on premise for emails, and we don't use on premise for for almost anything. We do have some some internal storage, but we are leveraging, yeah, cloud infrastructure in order to combat that, but used in a way that, for example, all of our we use multi account setup, so every integration that we do, it's its own little world. So if you are attacking that integration, basically, we can take it down and spawn it, you know, we can spawn like another one, like, with a different, with different, you know, URLs and everything in minutes. Or, like, you know, because we've been putting a lot of effort on automating our deployment, automating our infrastructure. We use infrastructure as code. I'm going more in the internal parts, but
Blythe Brumleve:
2:03:38
no, I think that's cool whenever cybersecurity issues happen, and what you have to do to mitigate those risks in a modern day environment, yeah,
Unknown:
2:03:46
and we have daily snapshots of our databases and daily snapshots of our we love all the queries and the data warehouse and all of that and and I think, well, our, I think cloud, cloud infrastructure, using the right way, helps a lot In and it opens up other possibilities for attacks. But I think, yes, we try to not keep all of our data as if, as it was before, people will have this one database that if you lose a database, you're done so we have, our structure is more distributed.
Blythe Brumleve:
2:04:24
Now, I don't know if you watch to the office, but there's, like, that one scene in the that, well, you know, even if you don't watch the office, but there's that one scene that, you know, kind of everybody will will use as a meme where it's like, oh my god, it's happening. And, you know, everybody starts running around the office like crazy. I tend to think that that's what happens when, like, a cybersecurity attack happens. Is that accurate or probably not at all. You guys are probably, you know, you know, have so many different protocols that you don't even have to worry about that. But that's what I imagine happening anyways,
Unknown:
2:04:53
yeah, knock on wood. We didn't have a serious incident, like, in our in our systems, like, at least, since I'm here, we had, like, phishing attacks to emails people trying, you know, to get, get to other users, emails and these kind of things. But on the, on the on the TMS side and on the integration side, we take it very seriously, and we try to be as preventive as possible. And so far, it's been good, and I so, yeah, it didn't happen yet. So there was no there was no panic so far. But I imagine that would be what what happens, but the one of the vectors that we are more exposed as we're integrating. Multiple systems, right? But so what happens if one of those systems go down? But the fact of the fact that we have our integration layer means that you could replace that with a spreadsheet in the meantime, while, while you are you know you can mitigate that, and your entire operation will continue working. You will probably slow down because you have one component that is not feeding the the overall process at the rate it should, it should, but you can still operate right, like even for us, for example, if we don't have access to our TMS, but someone wants to get a report on how many loads we did yesterday, you can just go in and get it, because that data comes from data warehouse, a different system, different storage, different permission, different credentials, different everything. So you cannot attack the entire thing, right? Like, I think that's the main point. So
Blythe Brumleve:
2:06:39
there's different layers of security that that sit on top of it, yeah. Now, you know, we've talked, well, we've mentioned the phrase a few times, you know, during this discussion with automation. But I kind of want to talk a little bit about, you know, AI and chatgpt can't, you know, really, like, take a step outside without somebody mentioning it. I feel like it definitely in my world, you can't, not hear about it multiple times every single day. I'm curious as to, you know, what your your early thoughts on using systems like this on top of the data that you already have, which I think is kind of where chat GPT, like technology is heading.
Unknown:
2:07:17
Yes, I think we use, we use chat GPT, and we use also other AI tools for coding. We use GitHub copilot, and I think these tools are awesome, as long as you know, you know to how to direct them, right? So generally, I found that for junior developers, it helps, but it's not, maybe it's not going to take them to the next level, right, but in the hands of someone who is more on the software architecture side, where, you know, in the data modeling, as we were talking before, or, you know, exploring a problem space and its solution space and all of that, I think it's interesting, because it can provide you a lot of nice insight, and it can speed up a lot of the boilerplate code. And, you know, sometimes, but it's not gonna help you define your processes better, because the business users are the ones who really know how the process should be and and should drive that. And I think, going back to what you're saying about data, right? Like, I think there is an underestimated power of the processes over the data, because people are focused on the output on the which is the data itself, right? Oh, I'm seeing this spreadsheet or report or BI tool, but that that is just a output from a process, right? And what is your process? So how that get data gets cleaned up, how it gets collected, how it gets is it compliant? It the way, how you're collecting it is compliant, or you're getting in legal trouble because of how you're collecting it. Like there are so, so much more to that than you know, seeing the number and also with business process. So I think, yeah, to answer the question, chatgpt, we use it a lot, mostly on that side, but we give it a lot of direction on to what we're building. And, yeah, I think it works better the more you know about what you're doing. That's
Blythe Brumleve:
2:09:35
interesting. You're the first I've asked, I think, in like, the last four interviews I've had, I've asked, you know, how you know folks are using chat GPT like technology, and almost all of them have said that they are, I think, you know, about three out of five had said that they are, and then two of them are kind of, you know, just a little scared by it, but I agree with you. I think it the outputs are there, and you can see those kind of early light bulb moments happening. But it still takes somebody that is highly experienced, that can see the nuance in it, especially like on the on the marketing side of things, or even on the podcasting side of things. I'm using it. I'm using chatgpt a lot for that, but I know what to look for and what not to look for, if that makes sense, like, some of the stuff that I'm getting, like, you know, they'll, it'll. So for example, I'm using it in you know, transcription. So I'll take a podcast transcript and upload it to chat GPT and tell it to find me the most you know, five, you know, impactful moments from this conversation. But sometimes it will pull things that we did not even talk about. And so you still have to have that nuance. That experience level to fact check it to make sure, because it will confidently tell you an answer and it might not be the right answer.
Unknown:
2:10:53
And also, these tools are so biased that we can actually get them to say what we want them to say. And they become this feedback loop, loop where you can, you can basically make chat GPT say that two plus two is five and so, and I think you'd said a key word there, that is nuance. Like humans are very highly adapted to understand the nuances of everything. We are always, you know, our curious minds are trying to, you know, find all those patterns that don't match. And, you know, those details. And I think AI tools are not as good on the at that level. So they're very good at, you know, okay, write a piece of code that does this thing, but then you need to go in and find those nuances and make it if you just use it as is, you're probably gonna, you know, suffer that pain in the future when you need to go back and in that to that and do it again. Because so do
Blythe Brumleve:
2:11:59
you see, I guess, an environment where, like a chat GPT powered, like chat box is sitting on top of, like a TMS, and, you know, maybe for for some of your customers, or some of the freight agents, they can, you know, use chat GPT to ask, you know, what's the most efficient carrier to handle this lane for me? Does something like that exist? Or it kind of sounds like, you know, maybe like a parade would be doing that instead of, like a chat GPT,
Unknown:
2:12:24
yeah, I think because chat GPT is trained for natural language processing, right, and in many cases, to do digital matching of freight, you are looking at other types of of data, it's not natural language processing. So chat bots could help, mostly on the support side, maybe, and because they will give you, they will make it really, a really nice answer about this, should be your carrier because of this and this and this. But if they don't have access to a machine learning model that uses the right signals to determine that, how can you know that it's it's actually that that carrier is the best. So I think chatgpt is mostly oriented to natural language processing, other machine learning and AI tools, I think will be a best fit for more like, you know, digital matching rates,
Blythe Brumleve:
2:13:22
like specialized activities where chatgpt is just not there yet. And
Unknown:
2:13:27
we should not underestimate the complexity of the problems we're dealing with. Like having a dynamic pricing is not a trivial problem. Like matching a carrier with a load is not a trivial problem. And there's a lot of this also, like, of course, on a sales on a sales call, there's going to be, you know, this is easy. It's going to be easy, you know, we're going to give you this number that is a magic number that if you put that number in your bid, you're going to win that bit it. I don't, I think it doesn't work like that. It's, it's just, it's more complex than that. It might work for a subset of people or subset of cases, but there are so many, I
Blythe Brumleve:
2:14:12
think everybody wants a blanket approach to this, forgetting that there's other people on the other side of the transaction that have their own needs and specifications, and they're all nuance that that they want to or prioritize and
Unknown:
2:14:26
something, if I may, add something to that is, I think there is something kind of important to mention about the model itself of software companies and startups and versus having people in your brokerage or your freight company, a freight brokerage company who understands technology and is able to at least build something, even if you're not going to build a TMS, because SPI is it's been in the industry for a while, right? And anything that we build is going to stay with the company for a while. We are not trying to build something quick out to market, and then we get some customers. And because that's not our business, our business is the free broker, not selling software with technology companies. Sometimes they just run after a set of features because they got a few, you know, contacts at some you know, business experts that they tell them, Okay, this is what you should build. Is very biased to that subset of people, and then they try to build it as quickly as possible. And in that process, sometimes quality gets an possibility of customization and all the nuances. I can get lost. So I think, yeah, there is something kind of like broken in that model itself. And I think that's why we took this path of, okay, we need vendors. We need all this technology because we, we we cannot build this dynamic pricing tool ourselves in a time that would make sense. So we're going to use them, but okay, we're going to also own the integration so we can use them in the way that we need, making sure it works for us. And also, what happens if that new company that is all new and shiny doesn't do well? It could happen and SPI is going to still be here, but we, we have seen companies, tech companies, come up and down, you know, get, you know, or maybe they start focusing on brokers, but then suddenly they have a big trucking company customer, They start adding features that are only for asset base, and then we are like, Oh, we are customers too. We want these new features too, but you need to wait, because now we have another customer that is, you know, and and that's part of their model. Because, of course, they they have to do that because they need to be profitable, and we need to be profitable too. So I find a tension there. And I think we a lot of what we built, it kind of answering to that tension as well.
Blythe Brumleve:
2:17:13
And I think that you said it very well, where it's almost, it's it brings a whole conversation, you know, kind of circling back in full circle, where you're really analyzing your processes from not only a personnel level, but also from a business level. And you can't be distracted at the business level from the shiny new tech object that takes you away from your overall mission, and that is, you know, providing technology solutions that can, you know, help your freight agents now and in the future. So with all that said, you know, where do you Where does, I guess, sort of the tech outlook, tech outlook look like for, you know, maybe in the months to come, maybe, you know, in the coming year, what should you know? Maybe some freight agents that are on the fence, you know, about joining the company, or maybe some, some current freight agents that are, that are listening to this. What should they expect, you know, coming down the pipeline from SPI
Unknown:
2:18:07
Well, what we are working on is inter in all, continue improving the integration layer so we can continue making it easier to integrate whatever new software and tool that may come up make it easy to integrate. Then there's some automation the back office also as well, because we notice the company is growing, so we need to make sure that, you know, we, we don't have a bottleneck in our back office. So there's, there's some automation initiative, but for the agent facing, we're integrating digital frame matching next to that is going to come the digital booking as well, what they call the book it now, so we have LTL integration with LTL specific tooling, and all that is seamless and connected with the TMS. So those we are launching a scoring program for for carriers. So we are director of carrier procurement. Mark came up with this amazing, amazing logic to to to score carriers and, yeah, to offer more tools to agents to to to book their freight, yeah, to get access, to improve their care relationships, to reduce the possibility of claims and fraud. We'll be working also on the dynamic pricing side. But we want to do that all in you know, we want to do it in a solid way, because we had, yeah, because I find that there are certain tools that are not mature enough yet. That's my perception. At least it's like they're very new. But like, you know it, oh, you should charge $2,000 for this. When I asked, How did you get to that? I never got a clear answer on, how do you get to that? And they don't want to tell you. So it's from, you know, trust. So we might, we will. You will use these tools. But okay, how? Because once you start automating, it's okay, let's automate bidding, right. Okay. Now, are you bidding at the right price? Are you bidding on lows that are actually good for you? So all of that is,
Blythe Brumleve:
2:20:35
yeah, that's interesting. It's not just about, you know, integrating the tool and then never looking at it again. It's the constant monitoring of it, of what is the value that this tool is bringing to. Our platform. Yeah,
Unknown:
2:20:46
exactly because it's okay. This tool is telling me that carrier A is really good for you. It's very close to your load. Does that mean that it's good for your load? It's telling me that it's close by now, if I what we did is okay. We get that information from a vendor that this case, gives us the carrier matches by location, but maybe we find that that's in our rating, that's an F carrier. So maybe, you know, you don't want to book with that carrier because it already had teams with SPI. So isn't that those are the things that we are working on right now. You know, in all these iterations that we are building, adding all this, and also our agents don't need to log in into a separate system to get all this. Oh, that's good. We because, you know, oh, we onboarded this new tool. Okay, here's your login. Okay. Then, you know, now you have to go to another 72 tabs open, and you copy that data, and then you need to copy it back somewhere else. So we don't like that. So all the integration we will we try to bring into the TMS and but keeping the option that, if we need to the other way, we we also have that option.
Blythe Brumleve:
2:22:08
So it sounds like a, you know, an agile and flexible solution, especially for a lot of these agents that are out here, that they might not they don't know what they don't know. And so being able to still have some of the tools that they're comfortable with, but also being exposed to learning about these new systems and processes and ways of thinking that I think just goes back to sort of the root of all you know, tech purchases that you should be thinking about before you make that purchase is what do your processes look like, and what do you wish that you didn't have to do so you can do more of what you want to do, and you don't. You should never make a tech purchase, if you don't know what those processes are in the first place,
Unknown:
2:22:50
totally, totally, totally, and you should know what you need, and if there's no need, then there's nothing to really offer, right? Like to be offered. So yeah, something that I appreciate from from SPI that we have a lot of good communication with agents, and agents can call me, they don't have to go to over like, you know, 20 people to get to the IT department to look at their requirements. And, of course, we have a list of priorities. We have our roadmap and everything. But everyone can just, you know, hey, essay, what can we make this happen? You know, this customer has a very specific need. They need a file with this specific format, and they want it, and this is my, you know, this is, if I land this account, gonna be great for my business. And then so we work closely with agent to make it happen. And if it's very, very, very custom. We don't say, Well, I don't know it's too custom. It's like we knew it was going to be custom. We are ready for it.
Blythe Brumleve:
2:23:54
I love that. I love I think that that's a perfect place to sort of land on for a lot of, you know, perspective agents, you know, in current agents, you know, just thinking about maybe making the switch, or, you know, maybe they're on the fence right now that, you know, it doesn't have to be a painful process. I think you know, for most of us that have worked in freight long enough, you have experienced the pain that is a terrible you know, tech stack, onboarding. I once worked for a company that we had a TMS and we integrated. We spent two years adding it to our system, and it still didn't have an accounting functionality to it, so it was kind of a hot mess, and the company ended up going out of business anyway. So I mean, that was probably, you know, the wrong tech investment can be detrimental. And so at least, you know, from that angle, from a freight agent perspective, you know, your your sounds like everything that SPI is doing is thoughtful and then also customizable.
Unknown:
2:24:54
Yes, totally. Great description. Oh,
Blythe Brumleve:
2:24:57
thank you. Well, where can folks, you know, if they're interested, if they are one of those folks that are kind of on the fence, and you know, thinking about becoming a freight agent. Where could folks, you know, find out more information? I imagine it, you know, right there on the website, you know, SPI logistics.com, any other resources that you think that that would be helpful for a potential freight agent to know? Yeah,
Unknown:
2:25:20
our website, SPI, three. PL, look at the number three. Pl.com, then I would encourage them to talk with they can email me personally. E Peralta at SPI three, pl.com feel free to chat and say, hey, I'm interested. And you know, we want to have a demo of the system. Yeah, for sure. Let's set it up. If you want to reach out to Mike, I. Uh, Mike McCulloch, he will be also happy to so I guess just reach out to us and like, you know, our executive team is, is here to to talk with you. We're not going to be hiding or, you know, yeah, we'll, I encourage, yeah, them to email us directly to me, or Mike, or any on the on the team. I can, I can share the emails of everyone for
Blythe Brumleve:
2:26:12
sure. And I think I'll make it easy for folks. I'll put put your email address in the show notes, so hopefully you won't get, you know, hit with any kind of, you know, too much spam, or anything like that. But just to make it easy for folks out there, I'll put your email in the show notes, as well as the SPI three pl.com website, which should be already in all of our show notes. So any episode that you listen to on everything is logistics. You'll see them. They are a proud sponsor, or I am a, I guess, a proud podcaster that has the support of SPI. So these shows are definitely brought to you by SPI, but all of the conversation that you heard in this is as honest and authentic as they come. We know we're kind of, you know, no no, Bs around here. So SA, I appreciate your insight and kind of entertaining a lot of the different, you know, questions that I threw your way this was really insightful conversation. And appreciate your time. And last, but certainly not least, let's talk with Anita Bassi, she's the vice president of people and operations over at SPI logistics, to talk about the day to day challenges that freight agents face, and the unique way that SPI supports its agents through technology assistance, proactive fraud prevention, all of this to reduce turnover and cultivate enduring partnerships. Speaking of SPI logistics, we have one of the best people working at SPI with Anita Bassi. She is the VP of people in operations over at SPI. So we're going to be talking all about what makes for a successful freight agent program in 2024 and beyond. So, Anita, welcome.
Anita Bassi:
2:27:51
Thank you. Excited to be here. Hi. No,
Blythe Brumleve:
2:27:55
we were just talking before the show. You mentioned that, you know, you hate doing podcasts. They're, you know, they're a little nerve wracking. I totally get that. So let's just start off with sort of your job role in title you recently upgraded so it was formally client experience, but now it's a VP of Operations too. So tell us a little bit about what that day to day role looks like for you.
Anita Bassi:
2:28:19
Yeah, in terms of operations, exactly what you think I'm having the day to day operations of the organization. So my team handles any issues that come in. So if there's a carrier issue, a stolen load, an accident, or just an agent issue where you know they're having problems with their computers, the TMS software, we're the ones who are kind of coming in and troubleshooting, helping them, but we're also taking the lead when it comes to hostage loads. I carrier not being happy, any complaints coming in. So, you know, although I focus primarily on the agent side of things, we have quite a bit of the operations, and that includes like, carrier satisfaction and those relationships. So it just seemed like a natural progression to change my title and role and really take on operations altogether. So yeah, I think
Blythe Brumleve:
2:29:06
anyone who's who's met you in person knows that you are just I joke to Mike, Mike, who also works for SPI, he's been a former guest on the show. For anybody who's listening, they may want to check out those episodes as well. But I joked around to Mike that I was like, Anita scares the shit out of me because she's so badass. And I don't, I was like, I have to make sure that I'm on my P's and Q's when I'm around her. So this is, if you if you're a little nervous, and I'm a little nervous too, because I was like, I gotta make sure this interview is
Anita Bassi:
2:29:35
right. I feel like I'm harmless, but I get that sometimes I'm like, I'm just like, you know, I'm like, a big teddy bear, because I look kind of like scary. I have that resting face, you know, but I'm actually quite friendly and nice. I'm very kind. Yes, you
Blythe Brumleve:
2:29:47
definitely are. But you're also a woman in this industry that you want to impress. So I say that as like, a full on like, I like, I just want to make, I want to make Anita proud, because I feel like, if I make Anita proud, that everybody else will be okay, too. Let's make sure that you know, we come with it. Now, what I thought was really interesting because I also told you, before we started recording, that I was listening to your conversation. Trey Griggs of standing out show, which was a great interview and a conversation that you guys had as well. But what I thought was really fascinating is that, before you ever joined SPI, you grew up in the trucking industry. Your dad owned a trucking company. Is that correct?
Anita Bassi:
2:30:28
Yes, he did. So he was a so he started off as a truck driver, um, since I can remember, like, probably as a toddler, so he was driving a truck, like, in town, then he kind of moved to Highway, then he moved back into town. Eventually, the company's working. With who, by the way, was like a fabulous trucking organization here, ended up having to close shop, you know, because I think it was during one of the recessions. And so at that time, he took the leap and opened up his own trucking company. But so then I was kind of immersed into the industry at that time, right? Like dispatching, understanding how the ports work, seeing how claims affected people, not just the administration of a claim, but like the impact has on real people, like the drivers, the trucking company, the customer relationship, yeah, just all of it. I found it really dynamic. I just didn't think I would follow suit,
Blythe Brumleve:
2:31:19
yeah, that I would imagine that seeing it from that lens, because I think you mentioned during the podcast that, you know, there were, you meant you watched him, you know, late at night, having to answer phone calls and answer concerns of other drivers, and just seeing, kind of, like the impact of, like, the work life balance that he had. So when it came time to join the industry again, were you hesitant at all to join? Or was it just a good, you know, sort of it felt right.
Anita Bassi:
2:31:48
So when Joe reached out, and, you know, we had an interview, I really, really liked Joe, off the bat, I liked what his vision was for the organization. And I actually went to my dad to talk about, like the industry and the company. And he recalled SPI because he had actually been a carrier for SF, yes. So he started saying, Look, is this person still there? And I was like, No, Dad, that was like, 20 years ago, but, but, you know, he had nothing but great things to say about SPI. So from that point of view, I wasn't hesitant. Also, when I originally started with SPI, I started more of an HR based role, so I did not have as much exposure to, I guess, like the opportunities or the problems that might arise in this industry, it was more to do with, like the people actually in the office or agency offices building up the culture. And the only really insight I had into, like transportation in that particular role was claims management. So that was, it's kind of like a soft introduction, and so I didn't find it stressful, or, you know, hesitant to come in. I was enjoying it. It was it was dynamic. And also, six years ago, the industry was quite different from what it is now. You know, you weren't having all these insurance companies where you have problems with claims and things like that. So it was quite different. And I was not hesitant. I think it's just completely, completely changed, like the landscape of what we do in transportation or as a freight broker now.
Blythe Brumleve:
2:33:12
And for folks who may not be aware, who is Joe and his relationship to the company?
Anita Bassi:
2:33:18
Sure, so Joe Chandler is our President and our chief operating officer, and so that's my report into and he had been with the organization about two years when I joined, and he actually ended up bringing Mike, who's our VP of Sales and Marketing, and myself on. So that was the time that he kind of decided that, you know, we needed to have more of an HR presence. And so that was my background. I came in on the HR side, but I had always been embedded within, like an operations team. And so I had two roles I've always played. I've always kind of understood how does HR really impact the strategic vision of an organization and the bottom line? And so it was kind of a natural fit. And then as I kept working with the team here at SPI, I just, I love the industry, I just found it so dynamic. Every day is different. It's very challenging, but also, when you resolve a problem, it's so rewarding, because there's so many players in the game, right? And so then I just kind of naturally progress towards operations and that side of things. But
Blythe Brumleve:
2:34:14
so for HR, you know, you had mentioned this earlier, that you still are heavily involved in HR, you know, right now for SPI, and you just mentioned, you know, that it really impacts the bottom line. Can you kind of expand on that a little bit? Little bit? How does you know? Because I think for most folks, they kind of know HR is like the department that you go and you report a problem too, but you mentioned how much it impacts the bottom line. I'd love for you to expand on that a little
Anita Bassi:
2:34:40
bit. Yeah. And I think any any organization that wants to be successful really has to see the value in HR, because we're not just those individuals who come to get, like, a write up from or, can we terminate this employee? Or, you know, I want to have an event, so like or like, I don't know what to do, so give it to HR. But, um, I think the important thing about it is, is that we are the ones selecting the individuals. We are the gatekeepers to who represents the organization. So having great HR leads to a successful bottom line, because we bring on the talent that represents the company who is aligned with your culture, your values, your mission. You train them right, you get them on board, and you put them into this perfect little package to hand off to operations. But in our situation as an organization, it's so nice that HR and ops are under one roof, because now we have the people we bring on in client care, right? But they're also training our agents. So we're kind of doing it as an HR department, that that really is an HR function training. And so when an agent on boards or a. Up for an agency office on boards. We take them through the full training, we onboard them, and we help them with continuing training, too. And so things change, but also we understand the operations of the organization, so we can act quickly when they have questions. We're not saying, hey, just hold on. Let me talk to your operations manager or the ops coordinator. We can just answer those questions for them during training. We understand the industry ourselves, and we also understand how to be able to dispatch a qualified load, or how to find what the proper rate would be. So aligning those two, or like two departments allows you to be profitable.
Blythe Brumleve:
2:36:20
I know that that's a great breakdown, and it makes a ton of sense, because you're not only balancing the employees that you have in the office, but you're balancing the freight agents that are coming into play. Because I think, you know, what makes SPIs super unique compared to other freight agent programs is that you only have freight agents. You don't have an in house brokerage team that almost, you know, I don't want to say can kind of steal freight away from the agents, but it's borrow might be the best phrase. Share might be, you know, a better phrase. Why? Why the focus on and maybe this? You know, I'm not sure if you can answer this question for me, but I'm gonna ask it anyways, but for the freight agents in particular, why the focus there when you know you could add an additional line of revenue with an in house brokerage. But does that sort of muddy the waters too much?
Anita Bassi:
2:37:11
You know? I think it muddies the water. But I think as an organization, we've made a decision as to what our product is and our product is service, and we are here to provide a great service. We are back office support. That is what we specialize in, and that's where we spend our resources and our people's training. So we can provide this great service at the end of the day, right? If we were to bring in in house brokers, you're then deviating from kind of a service, because now we're also having to bring on our customers. We're providing a product kind of, you know what I mean? So you're muddying the waters. You're also creating competition with your agency based model. And I think it also becomes, who do you service? Do you service your in house customers, or do you service the agent's customers? And this keeps it so clean for us, and it's just something we enjoy doing. It's great having partners who know what they're doing. We don't have to become experts in every type of freight, because our agents are experts in their customers freight. But what we are experts in is understanding, how do we onboard? How do the systems work together? How do we integrate new tools for you so you can just focus on dispatching the freight, getting the customers. If there's a claim, we're experts in, you know, filing that claim, resolving it for you, finding a way out of it, and even when it comes to, like, accidents, things like that, that's what I think we provide, like, pride ourselves on, and it just gives us a competitive advantage, I guess, in comparison to other brokers.
Blythe Brumleve:
2:38:35
Yeah, for sure. And let's get into a little bit of what that onboarding experience looks like. You know, you mentioned, you know, the value of HR being able to sort of, you know, train and onboard people and make sure that they're cultural fit. Is that sort of the same approach to agents as well, making sure they're a cultural fit as well?
Anita Bassi:
2:38:56
Yeah. And I think one thing we do strong here is that we're we work very closely with sales. So Mike and I have a great relationship. We're on the same page when it comes to identifying agents who are going to be onboarding, you know, he him and his team do a great job of qualifying the agents, because it's just like employees, you know, yeah, you're interviewing them, they're interviewing you too. And I think it's the same way for agents. Yes, they're interviewing us, but we're interviewing them as well. Do you fit our professional code of conduct? You know? Do you have the ethics, the morals that we want? Does it make sense? Are you a fit for the culture that we've created, and we try very hard to protect at SPI, right? So those are all things vetted through those conversations and making sure that works out. But then, before we even onboard, Mike's really great with us, having calls with the prospective agent, demoing our system, making sure that there's a great fit. Because what we don't want, and you don't want this in HR either, is turnover. We don't want the attrition to be high. So when we onboard agent, they don't leave, because I think we've given them a very real picture of what they're going to get at SPI who the players are, who they'd be working with, what the system looks like, what we can truly offer. We try not to promise something that we can't back up. And that's the same thing on the employee side too. Now
Blythe Brumleve:
2:40:12
we've had Eze, who's in charge of it over at SPI and he was talking about, sort of the technical aspect of onboarding a new agent and being able to connect to all of their different systems. What about on the operations side of things? What does that onboarding experience look like? Does, I guess, take me from, you know, the agent signing on the bottom line to getting fully up and running with SPI? Yeah.
Anita Bassi:
2:40:38
So once I've demoed our TMS and we've decided it's a bit, you know, like the basically, the onboarding process starts from setting up an agent. The agreement, which, by the way, we have no one on compete. So that's always a win, right? Yeah. So we set up the agency agreement. We schedule a day within like, it's usually, typically 24 to 48 hours, depending on the agent's availability. And if, if they're actively working and it's hard to onboard during work hours, then we'll make our team, you know, reach out and they'll coordinate it maybe an after hour session. So we're really flexible that way. But basically, within 24 to 48 hours, they'll be doing an actual training session. So we have two training sessions that they'll go through, not just with our TMS, but all of our load, birds, our company, internet, any kind of tools and technology that we have is kind of what we spend the majority of the two days training on and then we provide them support with getting their customers onboarding, making sure we get the credit agreement signs. We introduce them to AR. We also introduce them to AP at that time. So explaining, you know, what are the payment terms that their carriers can be looking for, because we also want to make sure that they understand our procedures so they can relay the correct information to their carriers and to their customers. And if they have carriers that they want to onboard, we typically try to get that onboarded before so put them through our carrier vetting process to make sure there's not going to be any issues, and just working with getting them all set up for their go live date of, you know, dispatching their first load within our system. How
Blythe Brumleve:
2:42:03
long does that process typically take is it sounds like it's relatively short. It's
Anita Bassi:
2:42:08
pretty quick. I would say one to three days. They're up and running. Yeah, wow, yeah.
Blythe Brumleve:
2:42:13
I thought you were going to say, like, one to three months. I that that's what I would have assumed. Just, you know, learning any kind of new technology. But I guess if they can take all of their current technology with them wherever they go and make upgrades where needed, then the onboarding process can be a lot quicker than that.
Anita Bassi:
2:42:28
Yeah, and like with our company intranet, we also have a lot of resources. So we have training videos for all of like our TMS. So you know, even though we'll take them through training, we provide them additional resources. So if they don't want to talk to us on the phone, they don't want to call us and they with just a couple quick questions after training, like how they're booking their load, or a freight plan. We have all the video resources for that too, so they can go step by step. You know, they're narrated by us, so they can completely understand how to get things done. So it's quite efficient that way. But we have a great like carrier and client care setup team who's available all the time. We have after hour support. So we run 24/7, basically, there was
Blythe Brumleve:
2:43:04
one point in the conversation with Trey that you were talking about a new agent that you wanted to help, or maybe he was an existing agent, and he was onboarding a new customer, I believe, but he didn't know how to use teams. And you guys actually set up a training session and got teams set up for him so he could land that new customer. Is that accurate?
Anita Bassi:
2:43:24
Yes, that is. So we do that with, like zoom, or when they have these, like, online meetings, like, because we do have agents who are not as comfortable with tech. So a lot of the times, we will jump on and we'll do like, connect wise, and we'll show them how to get it done and set up. Or, you know, they might get locked into their email, or they might get hacked. And so it's us also going in and, like, having our IT team go in and support them and doing a check and doing whatever we can to get them up and running quickly as possible, you know, just going that extra mile, because I think people appreciate when you actually, genuinely care about them, and I think we do. So yeah, because
Blythe Brumleve:
2:43:57
you were listing all of the things that SPI provides, and it was claims, HR, day to day ops, insurance carrier setup and vetting, AP, payroll training, fraud training, or fraud help, that's a lot of stuff that, I mean, it's essentially the entire back office, right? We
Anita Bassi:
2:44:15
are, we're 100% back office support. And again, that comes back to we have decided this is our service, and we are going to be great at it. So, you know, everything that they need. It's a one stop shop, and we're there for them.
Blythe Brumleve:
2:44:27
Yeah, because I think you had mentioned too that it was you're almost in the client services business, where your agents are your clients, and as long as you're giving them everything they need, then hopefully they don't have any reason to leave.
Anita Bassi:
2:44:39
Yes, exactly. And I think, you know, that's where that model is different again, because it's like they're partners, but they're also clients, right? So, you know, we might go with them to pitch their customer on a new lane or a new product or a new sale, right? But at the same time, they are also our customers. So it's making sure that we provide the same service to them, that we encourage them to provide to their customers. So it's kind of just a round effect there. So
Blythe Brumleve:
2:45:03
what I imagine during the onboarding process there's going to be some concerns, there's going to be some questions, there's maybe some objections or obstacles that you have to overcome. What are some examples of maybe some of the more common ones that SPI helps them to resolve, to speed up the onboarding process.
Anita Bassi:
2:45:23
Yeah, so typically, this is ironed out before they actually onboard. It's usually during, like, the prospecting phase, and so if there's any questions, we should put them in touch with the right department to answer those questions. But for example, I would say that most two common ones that we deal with are claims, claims questions, what our role is going to be in claims, because a lot of agents who come to us, I've had a lot. Have issues with their claims department, so not enough support, not helping them file the claim, not giving them direction. So those are usually the biggest hesitations, or they've been burned. You know, they've had claims that aren't able to get settled, but their agency doesn't go the extra mile to get legal involved or to pursue the claim, they just accept it, maybe at the denial phase and not appealing, or they've had to pay out of pocket for ones that they weren't negligent and there's no fault of their own. There's no shared cost. So those are the questions that typically come up with claims. And so you know, where we explain our process and how it works, and we fully take ownership of the claims in terms of the administration. So that's kind of one of the areas that could be a hesitation. You know, they're looking for a new agency who can better support them in that side of things. And then the other question lately that's coming up is carrier vetting, and I would say that's because of the fraud, and it kind of goes hand in hand with the claims and the stolen loads and so, you know, a lot of the new agents are now asking, Hey, what are your carrier vetting processes? What system are you using? What are you doing internally? And so that's kind of something we've been working with. And you know, I think we have a great carrier vetting process. We have a great carrier vetting tool with highways. So I think we can alleviate a lot of those concerns with just a quick conversation. Yeah, it almost
Blythe Brumleve:
2:47:10
sounds like they're looking for a partner as well in order to help them get through some of these more difficult problems so they can focus more on their customer relationships and selling more freight while the back office things and things that could really impact their business. I mean, one claim could maybe put, you know, some companies out of business,
Anita Bassi:
2:47:30
yeah, or you could lose the customer. And some agents only have, like, one particular customer. So when they're coming to you and they're saying, hey, like, you know, I had three claims back to back. We had poor carrier vetting processes, we're on our last strike here now with this customer. What do we do? What are your processes? So those things are really important to agents as we go into this, like unchartered territory right now, and that's what we're seeing. And
Blythe Brumleve:
2:47:53
so what other you mentioned highway? What are some other ways that you're helping with carrier vetting and fraud prevention?
Anita Bassi:
2:48:00
Yeah, we still. We have our own internal systems too. So you know, we review carry. For one, we have Carrie assure we're using highway, and then we have other things within the internal TMS that we've created to just have an internal carrier scorecard, so making sure we're checking also FMCSA changes to contact information. So there's a lot of good resources out there, and a lot of them aren't that expensive, like carrier Sure, or having access to 401, but just doing your due diligence. And as an industry, I think we have to encourage everybody to get on these platforms. And I think that's the only way you're going to be able to weed out, you know, these scammers and these fraudsters and the double brokering. But if we can encourage everybody to do even one system, I think we can help a lot. And then, you know, when you're going to these conferences, it's great. So Mark funk, our director of carrier procurement, he went to a carrier conference, and he actually ended up carrying creating a broker chain. So you know, we can talk to each other and figure out best practices, but just communicating with each other is important, and
Blythe Brumleve:
2:49:03
it almost sounds like some of these issues are catalysts for why a freight agent would leave somewhere else and then come and join SPI is that a safe assumption that carrier vetting is one of those top reasons? Yes,
Anita Bassi:
2:49:17
carrier vetting which leads to, you know, sizable claims. So of course, that's a big, big one. What
Blythe Brumleve:
2:49:22
are some other ones? Do you know any offhand?
Anita Bassi:
2:49:25
You know, I think those are the two challenges that we've seen. And prior to carrier vetting, it was mostly claims questions that we had, or lack of support. So not having a department like the client care or the carrier setup team that was responsive, you know, delayed times, taking an hour, two hours, to respond to an email. So responsiveness is a huge thing, obviously, in this industry, and so agents come in without that lack of support are going to be looking for a new home.
Blythe Brumleve:
2:49:49
Now, we had talked briefly about, you know, having maybe an in house brokerage is almost a little bit of competition to a freight agent program. But what about the freight agents themselves? Because I get the impression, and I've talked to a few of the different agents with SPI, that a lot of these freight agents are friends like they're they're not seeing each other as competition. Is that, by design, within the the HR, part of the the program with us,
Anita Bassi:
2:50:15
yeah, within SPI, their friend, I was gonna say, I don't, I thought you meant, yeah, definitely. With an SPI, it's actually, I love it. I think that we've just created this culture of like a family, and so you know, when we have our annual conference, they're sharing ideas. They call other agents to get help or to recover loads, or sharing customer accounts that you know maybe are too big for them to take on by themselves, covering for vacation time. They have great friendships. So it's become like a network, but it's. Also having respect for everybody's, you know, boundaries when it comes to like this is their client. But again, yes, they are very resourceful and sharing and helpful. And it can be tough in this industry when you maybe only have enough business to have yourself and not have employees, so creating networking relationships within the company to allow yourself to take a vacation. That's, I didn't even
Blythe Brumleve:
2:51:04
think about that aspect, because for a lot of freight agents, it's a one person operation, and so then they have the help, of course, of SPI. But if you want to take that vacation, you probably can't with other programs, but with SPI, you can actually trust that the other freight agents within the system are going to be able to help you out as well to enjoy a little downtime.
Anita Bassi:
2:51:25
Yeah, and like, we don't try to interfere too much in that part of it, but you know, when they have those conferences, that is the opportunity to network and create those relationships. And especially since we have very little attrition, they see these people over and over, and you begin to trust them, and you create those relationships. And it is important, because I think about my dad, who never really took a vacation because he was running the company on his own. And it can be tiring, you know? It's like a burnout factor there too. So having people that you can rely on account as friends, it's really important. And we see those relationships for sure in SPI. It's It's neat. And there
Blythe Brumleve:
2:51:58
was a previous guest on the pod, in case anybody wants to listen to it, is Tynan, and he actually is a freight agent for SPI, but he is working underneath another freight agent that's also part of SPI. So that was, this was a pathway for him to enter the industry and then start to build his book of business. Is that a common program that is offered, or is it more like a case by case basis for SPI? Yeah,
Anita Bassi:
2:52:24
that's a case by case. Like, we're very open to helping like, you know, I'll do interviews for agency offices when they want us to jump on or like, they're hiring, like, a higher level position. When it comes to sales, our team is totally willing to help and do interviews and give our opinions and our feedback, because, again, they might not be experts in HR, but we can do that for them. And then we're also keen to help and train so, you know, if there's situations that come up, like finance, yes, we're, we're completely hands on to help and train them and then try to find a solution. But that's a, definitely a case by case. It's not like a regular
Blythe Brumleve:
2:52:57
service, yeah, because I, you know, especially with the the sponsorship and the relationship that that we have with SPI, like we know that you need to book a business, you need to be established in order to be a good fit for SPI but there are case by cases where you can maybe impress Anita with your skills, and then get on boarded with with SPIs as you were talking and you were mentioning that sometimes you join, you know, other calls I would be having you interview or helping me interview everyone, Because I know that you would be able to catch something that I wouldn't be able to catch. So kudos to those freight agents that are, that are, you know, you know, putting the Anita power, but behind their hiring now you we had also talked. I went to my first rendezvous, SPI rendezvous, annual conference that you guys have, I believe the way you approach it is, you have one in Vancouver, then one in a one in a US city, and then back to Vancouver, and then another US city. Is that the the right fluctuation that is,
Anita Bassi:
2:53:54
that is, and we were just in heavy planning right now for our 2024, so, and it's going
Blythe Brumleve:
2:53:59
to be in Nashville for this year. It's usually around, like April, May timeline. What all goes into planning an event like this,
Anita Bassi:
2:54:07
like a small wedding. So I get, like, you know, hot sweat thinking about it now, it's like a small wedding, to be honest, it's there's just so much care and love that goes into this conference. And I, even though, where I started it in this company, where I am now, I can't let it go, because I just there's so much happiness that comes from it, from the agents and how much they enjoyed. And so I just want to make sure it's really perfect for them, and it's a it's a time for us to appreciate thank them for their business as well. So, you know, we try to make it educational that we have speakers come out, we have the executive basically presenting on topics that are important, that are happening, having some breakout sessions, but like, really, the heart and soul of it is to network and to have fun, and it's like a couple of days for them to go out and get to meet other people who are in this industry, where they might not get the time to do that, right? They may not have time to go to conferences. So they get to come out and have fun and let loose, but also learn and meet with, you know, members of the leadership team, but also with all of our staff. So it's just a great event overall, but that's kind of the purpose.
Blythe Brumleve:
2:55:12
I didn't even really think about the fact that freight agents are kind of a lot like drivers, where they don't really have that office community. They have to go and they're working remotely for most of the time. And so for this event, it probably is one of the few occasions out of the year that they get to network with other like minded individuals who are going through the same like trials and tribulations that they are it, I would imagine that the education being shared is really top notch at each one of these events. Yeah,
Anita Bassi:
2:55:42
and I think, and that's like, again, this is like, talk. Opportunity where we share everything that's going on. So it's great. And this year is amazing. I think we only have like, four or five agents not attending, and the rest are all coming. So it just kind of speaks to the volume of like, that family feel that we have, and the fact that everyone is really excited to come. But yeah, they share a lot, they learn a lot, and we have some great speakers. This year, we're going to be focusing more on, like the carrier vetting side of things. But because, again, it's like the issue at mine right now. So, yeah, it's
Blythe Brumleve:
2:56:10
like, this should be good the nature of the industry, you know it fraud is just in the incredible explosion in it. I think it was 57% of cargo, just cargo crime in general, not even, you know, carrier fraud, or, you know, impersonation, or anything like that. But cargo crime itself was up 57% year over year. I saw that stat that was just released yesterday, which is just insane to think
Anita Bassi:
2:56:31
about under reported too, right? Like that under report. Think about like so, yeah, we have access to carbon now we're reporting it, but a lot of organizations don't have access to that, because you have to be a member, you have to pay for it. So a lot of them don't report it. A lot of this information is just like that data is just left there. So if we think it's 57 imagine what it really is. So, so what else is, is,
Blythe Brumleve:
2:56:53
I mean, I know SPI, freight agent program is best in biz, but how do you, how do you decide what to add to it, like, what are, what are some of, maybe some additions that you're going to have in 2024 that might complement the freight agent program. Or do you have kind of unlock?
Anita Bassi:
2:57:09
I feel like we have unlocked like we are introducing a couple new tools that I I'm not privy to speak to as of yet, that we're going to be announcing at rendezvous. So we're always looking for new technologies. We're always looking for new items that are going to make our agents lives easier or more efficient or automate the process. The only difference for us is, even if we automate the process on our end, is we don't let go of our staff. We want these tools to better the life of our staff, to help our agents, who can then, in return, help their customers. But yeah, I think in terms of what we may focus on, that's maybe my question for sales.
Blythe Brumleve:
2:57:47
Yes, we got to get him back on the show so he can talk about, you know, some of these things and some new additions to to the program. Now, before we kind of wrap up, what, I guess, what advice would you give to somebody who is maybe already a freight agent and is thinking about making the jump? Yeah,
Anita Bassi:
2:58:06
and like, do you mean a freight agent as an employee, or
Blythe Brumleve:
2:58:09
just just in general, just a freight agent? Maybe they're, they're with another company right now, and they're thinking about making the jump to SPI. What kind of advice would you give to them to make sure that all their ducks are kind of in a row before they make that leap?
Anita Bassi:
2:58:21
Yeah, I think, well, one, there has to be a catalyst for the reason why they want to leave, right? So I think they really need to identify that and see, are they getting what they're paying for because it being a part of a brokerage, like any other industry, like real estate, whatever you're paying to be a part of that brokerage, right? So are you getting the bang for your buck? Are you getting the support? Are you feeling protected? And I think that's a big one coming into 2024 because shippers understand that loads are being stolen, they also want to know, what are you doing to protect my load? Are you educated in that area? Is your brokerage informing you? Are they on top of it? Do they have good processes? Do they have the technology to move forward in 2024 and I think that's a big one, that people who have not invested in technology to this point, especially on the carrier vetting process, are going to be behind. And so as a freight broker, I think you have to real assessment as to what your system is capable of and what it's not capable of, because if it's not capable of giving your carriers a scoring, it's not capable of, you know, limiting loads, or finding out, you know, as their associations, or whatever the insights of risk might be to that carrier, you're going to be in trouble, and you're going to be at high risk of losing that customer. So if you're not prepared, and your agency is not prepared, I think that's a big catalyst for change. And at SPI we are ready, and we can help you out. So, all right, I love self. No, that
Blythe Brumleve:
2:59:46
was a great answer because I was just writing that down, that that's going to be our we have a new editing technique for, I guess, some behind the scenes knowledge, but we have a new editing technique for our videos. Is where we're taking a good pull quote from the conversation to put at the front of the conversation, kind of reel people in. So that was the one. So that's what I just wrote down, so in case anybody's listening and they want to, kind of, I guess, see how the this sausage is made. I guess this is a terrible part, but Anita, anything else that you think is important to mention that we haven't already talked about?
Anita Bassi:
3:00:21
No, I don't, I think at the end of the day, I know the industry. You know, I talked to some for agents, and I feel for them that have been in the industry for 1520, years. 1520, years, and they've gone their entire career without any problems, any issues, and now they're dealing with double broker loads, or us coming in saying, Hey, we got to tighten, you know, this process or that, or like, but why? You know, an issue, and it's just a lot of change, and I just want people to hang in there. And I think that. Even though it might not feel fun right now because we're combat, combating so much crime, I'll get back there, and it is a fun industry be part of, and the people who work for it are amazing. So just hang in and enjoy and it's a great ride. Yeah, I
Blythe Brumleve:
3:00:57
think, I think it's kind of like any industry, the more digital tools you add, the easier it is for everyone, but it's also the easier it is for the fraudulent players as well. So we got to kind of, you know, keep up with the times in order to protect ourselves and our business and our customers. So Anita, this was awesome. This was great. Where Can folks follow you? Sign up for SPI freight agent program, or, you know, book a meeting, any of that cool stuff.
Anita Bassi:
3:01:22
Yeah, I think I'm easily accessible by email. I'm, like, total millennial. I hate talking on the phone, so, like, just email me. But Agassi at SPI threepl.com you can connect with me on LinkedIn as well. Otherwise, you can go to our website and there is a quick you know you're interested. Send me your information, and I'll come over to our sales team and touch with us as well. So well, this was
Blythe Brumleve:
3:01:47
awesome, not not scary at all. Great conversation and a ton of value. So what more can we ask for?
Anita Bassi:
3:01:55
Thanks so much. It was fine, absolutely.
Blythe Brumleve:
3:02:00
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 digitaldispatch.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.
