Unknown:
0:00
LinkedIn presents
Blythe Brumleve:
0:10
welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, the podcast for the thinkers in the freight. I'm your host, Blythe Brumleve. And I'm happy to welcome in Jennifer carpus. Romain, she is the executive director for the transportation marketing and sales Association, aka the TMSA.So we are going to be talking about the evolution of the TMSA.It's almost 100 year old organization. And that's a pretty mighty lift to modernize,you know, sort of a an organization that's been around for nearly a century. So Jen,welcome into the show.
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
0:44
Thanks for having me. Yes, I've almost100 years it will be next year.So when we go into 2024, and we started talking about like the2024, TMSA elevate conference,that's going to be where the big celebration. Is that so? Oh, my God.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:03
Well, that is.So we'd have to do like one of those like price comparison,like, what are all the costs of the things in 1924? Compared to now?
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:14
It's probably I mean, I mean,especially if you're talking about like a marketing budget.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:21
Phrase marketing exists in the 20s. I
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:24
barely did. Yeah, I mean, I think it was it started more as like a TMSA started as like a railroad marketing conglomerate thing. We think just like the advertisers in the papers got together to try to talk about rates and like, when are they paying so that the newspapers couldn't overcharge? Like they think that's kind of the word tlsa Oh,and then it evolved into what it is today, which is included,adding sales to it. And to really, I mean, marketing itself is so multifaceted. It's also been really interesting to see an influx in HR professionals coming in to because we're seeing marketing and HR coming together, especially in terms of recruiting and things like that.So a lot of our education, and a lot of the things that we're discussing, are kind of cross pollinating through different departments from customer service to HR, and then obviously, the big ones in marketing and sales.
Blythe Brumleve:
2:17
Oh, well, I would have never thought that that HR would be involved in that process. But now that I think about it, you know, the last couple of web projects that I've worked on, I have worked heavily with the, with the HR department, because they're so tired of filtering through applications that don't make a lot of sense for their company.So you know, developing web solutions to kind of filter through that noise. So that's,yeah, that's a really good point that I wouldn't have even thought of, with respect to the TMSA. Now, for folks who may not be familiar with your background you actually worked at at, I believe it's a couple of different transportation companies. Is that accurate?
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
2:51
So I worked. So my career has been all over the place. So I started in journalism. And at first I worked at a community paper as many people do, but then I really found my niche inside of industry. So I wrote for Korean communications. And I wrote for the rubber and tire markets,which I still do on the side.And then I started working after there. But when I was there, I really got into, like social media branding. And I like to say like, Oh, I was I'm like a social media dinosaur, because I started before you had to, like pay for it. But I started doing it before that. And I really,really fell in love with it. And tire business was geared towards independent tire dealers. So I'm like, Hey, you could reach so many customers on social media,and here are tips on how to do it. And then I just kind of fell in love with helping people tell their stories and get their messaging out and understanding their differentiators. So much so that I like Okay, I think even though I love journalism,I'm going to do that on the side and then start this marketing path as like my full blown job till then went to marketing agencies still worked with industrial clients. And then I switched to go into the tech world where I was selling into transportation. So doing like CRM, customer experience,software integration, really understanding how sales and marketing work together, how some of those other departments could fit into those puzzles,watching the expansion of software integration, especially over COVID And how so many more people needed to see the visualization between different departments. You can't just go knock on your neighbor's door.You can't share post it notes.You know, you got to go into that system. And a lot of those things were in place but people just weren't using them because they were relying on being able to communicate with each other in office. And then it just exploded with COVID of okay. We need the software to talk to because there are people can't necessarily talk the same way.And what I also loved about it,especially in terms of marketing is all Have a sudden, people understood kind of what marketing does, because I don't know about you. But obviously,you've been on the marketing side of things, too. But I was a director of marketing that worked by myself with a team of one or a team of two, and nobody else at the company did marketing, no one understood what it meant. They thought you could just easily send over this request, and it would take five minutes, right? Isn't that how long it takes to write a blog or trade email content? You know,and it doesn't. And with that merging, or the integration of software, they're able to actually see like, how many emails you're sending out? Oh,look, there's so many different lists of different types of customers and prospects, that marketing has to like, keep the database of thought and make sure that we're sending to the right places, and making sure that contact information is correct. So that understanding has really catapulted marketing in a different way than before.So with that company that I was working for, I was a member of TMSA, and selling to transportation, working with a lot of transportation companies,and then joined the board of directors and fell in love with the organization. And when it then started to go through an evolution and sort of looking through for new leadership, I threw my hat in the ring. And I was like, that sounds great. I just really believed in this organization and what it stood for. And as a board member, as someone who was kind of in charge of the Marketing Committee, I was looking at the different software and seeing how things could better connect or how we could do more for our members and how to kind of expand different parts of the business. And so I then, you know, put my name in, and the Board of Directors, God bless them agreed to just let me take it over and work with them,which is, has been a great experience for me, especially as kind of a younger female in the industry, you never know how that's going to go over. But they've been fully supportive of what I represent and what I bring to the table and just so supportive of new ideas and embracing that. So it's been wonderful.
Blythe Brumleve:
7:08
And so as you so when you got the nomination,and you found out you had the position. So what were you know,sort of like the I guess those first few weeks, those first few months, when did you realize what, like what projects you wanted to tackle first and why?
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
7:27
So,because of being um, I had a unique experience, because I was already kind of knee deep in some of these projects. So I knew for sure I wanted TMSA to have a new website and a new member portal, because the old site just wasn't it hadn't been updated in a while. There were so many CTAs everywhere, it was like you had no idea where to click because there are so many clicks, you didn't know where the join button was, it was just it just needed to refresh. And to really think through what do members or prospective members need from TMSA. And making sure that our website and everything that we're putting forward facing aligns with that today,and be able to expand for tomorrow, because marketing and sales people need so much more support from a variety of different places than they would have 510 15 years ago. So that was a big project that we did last year is really making sure that we sat in that and thought about what do our members need?And how can we make sure that we have that educational content,those networking opportunities to present that when we did the website project, it was also extremely important to me that all of the people on that site were real TMSA members or attendees. So we don't have stock images, because we want to showcase who we really are and not Amen. Just these fake people that float and it's fun. Our members like to play like Where's Waldo with themselves on the new website and be like, oh,there's me, or there's my friend or there, you know. So it makes it more fun and interactive that way. And then I would say the other huge overhaul that we did was in regards to our affiliate members and our sponsorship packages and what that looks like. So in previous TMSA iterations, we had a tradeshow floor with booths. And we kind of changed the game on that. And we wanted to be able to help our affiliates, our sponsors to get the same type of engagement that other members were having. In conversations. The conversations were going on in the hallways,real interactions, real connections, and not so much at the booth because everyone was in the hallway. So how can we help them have those kinds of real engagements, real conversations, get their branding out. We also are a membership organization. We're not just one of that. So giving opportunities to have a bundled package of different events that we do or digital assets on top of that to really give them what they need. To succeed in an organization like this
Blythe Brumleve:
10:04
This episode is brought to you by SPI logistics the premier freight agent and logistics network in North America. Are you currently building your freight brokerages, book a business and feel that your capabilities are being limited due to lack of support and access to adequate technology? At SPI logistics, we have the technology, the systems and the back office support to help you succeed. If you're looking to take control of your financial future and build your own business, with the backing of one of the most successful logistics firms in North America, visit SPI three pl.com to learn more. And so when you're you're going through this process of developing the site of of, you know, out deciding what features to add to it, you know, a big part of that was the the HubSpot integration. And I think that that is a tool that probably I would say the overwhelming majority of transportation companies or logistics companies that you either or are using in this space. What What was I guess,maybe? What was a big challenge of adding HubSpot? And then what was the big benefit of adding it? Yeah,
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
11:08
so we do a metric study. And we find that there are a lot of people,especially on the marketing automation side using HubSpot,but on the flip for the CRM,Salesforce is still bigger amongst this. And so I think a lot of them are using both of them and using the integration.It'll be interesting to see how that ramps up in time since now both of those have both sides of those in their own kind of thing, where they used to be just friends now their friends and competitors. So frenemies,they're frenemies. So it'll be interesting how that kind of develops, but that I just wanted to share that because their stats that we know because of our study. So for us, we had the marketing automation for HubSpot already, what we added was pretty much everything else. So we had added our website, we added our member portal, our payments, it's attached to QuickBooks, it's all kind of encompassed in that. And some of those are new for HubSpot and developing them and utilizing their hub DB tables, which are the most user friendly way to build stuff. It's very easy. You just like make sure your database tables, yep, their database tables, it's kind of how our member resources and our event pages are set up. So you just make sure that whatever your image size is the image size you have throughout your site, so that everything lines up properly. But if you don't do that, then it'll look kind of wonky. But besides that, it's really, really easy. And so very user friendly, both on the back end. And for our users who are in the system, looking through our member portal, or member resources and all that information. I would say the hardest part is just especially on the member portal side of things, or event registration.Like some of this stuff is newer to HubSpot, and they build from the ground up, which I love because then it is seamless when they get there. But I feel like we've been really like knock knock HubSpot, like can you figure out how to do this because like, we need to be able to do this. So I always joke that like HubSpot, he either loves us or hates us because we you know, knocked on the door so much. But we have a great support there. And it's a team that works with us to really help us get to where we need to go in terms of being able to support the membership.
Blythe Brumleve:
13:20
That's interesting to the that you mentioned the the member survey because I think that that is I think it's the only one within the industry that actually surveys like sales and marketing leaders and the software tech stacks that they're using, which is often very different from the own tech stacks that are operating within the transportation company themselves. So it's kind of like they're siloed off a little bit when they should be more merged together is that I guess maybe a safe assumption.
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
13:47
Yeah. So the metric study we do every other year, it is the only one of its kind that are you know,looking at those sales and marketing figures. And it's, you know, what software are you using? But like, what's your marketing budget? What's your sales budget? How do you divide your sales team? What are your sales projections? How many digital marketing people do you have on your team? What are you outsourcing? What are you keeping in house, it's really a great benchmarking for a lot of people who are trying to determine like, what is the industry norm, and it is a benefit of being a member that that is free to members. It's something that we put out for our membership. And I love to highlight that because that alone to me is like price of membership, because it's so valuable. And we really wanted to make sure when we put that out last year that we were thinking about this post COVID world because the last iteration of that was done in the beginning of 2020. So it was like worlds away from where we are now. And I do think that software pieces become even more important and even like really funny stuff like the social media channels like Tic Tac didn't even show up as something that as an other in 22 money,but it's now this emerging platform that businesses are using and transportation. And so some of those trends are really fun to see. But unfortunately,things like how many marketing people do have on staff that really didn't change a lot. It was a lot of one, maybe two.Yeah. So they're doing more with less? Yeah, some people do change. And some people, some things didn't change. So, but it's always really interesting to dive into that and really see what people are spending money on and how they're doing it.
Blythe Brumleve:
15:29
Do you have any other of like, your favorite stats from from the perspective or not the perspective but the survey?
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
15:36
So I definitely think that that stat of the marketing people because it is sick, I mean, anecdotally,I can see that a lot of our members are one people, team,one person teams, that was not correct grammar, one person teams that are doing all this work. And interesting to see like, what is doing what's in house versus outsource, like things like video SEO, you would expect to be outsourced? And they are but there's a ton of people do it in house too, which is insane to me with these small teams. And then, but every single person did event planning in house, there was no one who was outsourcing that. So it was interesting to kind of see. And I was like, okay, and maybe that's because throughout COVID People weren't doing events as much. But obviously now we're ramping up. And I do think that like you were saying, yeah, do more with less, we are then continuing to put more and more at one person. And I do think in some ways, that's where TMSA can come in and support if for no other reason than you feel less crazy and alone, because you feel like people in your company are asking you to do so much.And you're like maybe I'm the crazy one who thinks that this is an unrealistic expectation.But then you can come together with other marketers. And they're like, No, this isn't an unrealistic expectation. And you can also as a marketing person engage with salespeople in the organization to be like, this was my favorite part when I was a member, hey, salesperson, how can I create better sales enablement for my sales? How can I be more of a supportive marketing person to the sales process? What should I know?Because you don't want to necessarily ask your own salespeople those questions because they're very busy, and you want to produce what they need. And not that they don't want to support that. But I mean, it's kind of your job as the marketing person to do that field, read, research and understand. So having a network like TMSA, really lets you dive into that and be kind of vulnerable and ask like the embarrassing questions you wouldn't want to ask in your own job.
Blythe Brumleve:
17:43
And that's for sure that that's definitely been my experience at my first inperson TMSA event, what was at last year's conference. And it was one of those moments where you expect people to be really,you know, sort of close to the chest and not share some of those insights. But, you know,we're all sort of battling, I think everyone that was ever most of the people that I talked to at the conference, it was very, almost like consoling,like, everybody's just kind of lucky. Because we all know, of the just the frustration of being a one person marketing team. And not having a lot of even just a second pair of eyes on something that you've written has been incredibly challenging.And, you know, having experienced feedback on the work that you've created, I was a one person marketing team at a transportation company. And then I went to go work for a magazine and the stress level of being able to go to other creatives and say, Is this good? Or is this crap was just so it was such an a, I guess, a stress reliever from that aspect,because I could rely on other people that were experienced.And I think that that's a struggle that a lot of marketers are dealing with is that not only are they dealing with, you know, the relate that combative relationship that sales and marketing has historically had,but you know, these people genuinely want to help the business do better from a marketing standpoint, and on the sales standpoint, they want to,you know, make as much money as they can. So they're both aligned. But how do you get that good? I guess working collaborative nature out of him is still really challenging. I think for a lot of marketers,why do you think that so many transportation companies only have one person handling their marketing?
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
19:26
So I do think it is that understanding of what they actually do and what they can represent. I think too often people just think of marketing as advertising. And there's so much more to marketing than that. If you really think about how much industry trends and market research your marketing team is actually doing. They should absolutely have a seat at the table and to be able to discuss and talk through those points because they're doing a lot of that. And if you're not really utilizing that information in for your customer support and your customer you database and all that stuff, you're missing opportunities. I also think that when times are confusing, or are downturn, marketing budgets are normally the first to get cut.And the biggest expense expense for a marketing budget is going to be the pay of your marketing team, which that was the other thing that came out of that survey that when we talk about marketing spend, you're often thinking about, Oh, this is all the money you have to spend on what you're doing. But like your your marketing team, and their pay is also included in that. So like, if you think about how much people are spending on that one person, and then if you add a second person, third person,fourth person that can affect your budget, and same with whatever you're outsourcing,like, you have to pay those people to do the outsourcing. So if you have leadership or other people on your team that don't understand the value of what you're doing, it's going to be the first thing that's cut expecially in a confusing market or a downturn or something like that. But on the flip side of that, if you really think about understanding what your differentiator is, how you're explaining your brand, to the market, how you're going to market with that information,how you're aligning your brand statements throughout your organization, it becomes more important to have that unified unified message and to be able to explain how you are different and why customers and prospects should work with you in those confusing times. But it's always the first to get cut. I also think a big piece of this, like a misstep is that when we are talking about brand, we're only talking about it in marketing,let your marketing person be a part of that conversation, for sure. That's like the owner of it. But anyone that has customer FaceTime should understand your brand values to understand your mission, all of those things that are on your wall somewhere in your business or in like the one page you send to new employees, that stuff shouldn't just be buried, that should be a forward facing, and it should all align. There may be in different parts of the conversation between billing,customer service, sales,marketing, they all talk to the customer in different places.But ultimately, it's still be part of the same value, the same brand, the same alignment so that they feel like they really understand who your company is.And those things are going to push you further in this like confusing market or when you're not getting as much business when you want to, to really understand who you are as a brand as a business. And all of those people are a part of that puzzle.
Blythe Brumleve:
22:30
Yeah, extremely well said, because that was one of the the lightbulb moments for me at at TMSA. Last year is when I heard someone say that they are marketing to the internal employees first before they ever go external, because they want the entire team to be on the same page of how they're marketing their services, and what services they're even marketing or lanes or commodities, you know, whatever niche that they are, and then having that that brand statement, that brand value,every having everybody be consistently on the same page,especially with like new product releases, or new service releases, things like that, that you would be shocked at how many marketers just send that message off to the public first and then don't actually educate the internal team as well. And they're like, Oh, well, it's news to me.
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
23:16
Yeah, I think that that's true when we talk about technology, too. I think that was something I saw,like in my old role. And I still see that when I'm talking to sales and marketing people is too often people go directly to market to find that new software solution. And they're not first asking, like the people who are actively working in the system is like, hey, what would you want a new system to do? What is not working in your current system? And that question is incredibly important. Because you might be able just to put like an add on or an integration to something, you don't have to buy a whole new system. Some people are like, Oh, well, we can't invest in that, because it's too much money to switch platforms. But you might not have to, if you really understand like the heart of the issue, like if you so for instance, yes. Like I wanted to make sure that our billing system could connect to our member portal that could connect to our like sales function. And that's kind of why everything came into HubSpot, because I needed to be able to have someone buy a membership and then an invoice be created that will then file into QuickBooks.I don't want to do that manually. I don't want to have to do all that behind the scenes stuff. So if that's all you need your system to do there, there's integrations for that, that you can add into your platform. But if it is more sophisticated, if you do need some other solutions, you might need to build something specific to you.Or you may have to have a new platform. I mean, I don't know those answers because it's a it's a personal use case. But too often people just go to market and buy what they think makes sense. And you're not actually talking to the people who are in that software system day in and day out. Or like they'll buy the CRM and be like,oh look there's a marketing platform in here use this marketing team but they weren't part of the training process,they weren't part of the decision making process. Or vice versa, they buy a marketing platform, oh, there's a CRM uses sales team, have all those people as part of the conversation, one, you're gonna get better buy in because you know, no one likes change, and they're going to be crappy because you're making them do something new. But if you came to them for the beginning and said, Hey, we're actually doing this to make your job better and more efficient. We value what you bring to this company, we're not getting software to replace you. We want to like use your skill set and make your job easier for you. How can we help you with that, they're going to appreciate you more, they're going to give you positive feedback that's going to actually do those things. And then when you do implement it,they're more likely to gravitate to it and actually use the system than actively avoided as many people do, when you don't do those things.
Blythe Brumleve:
25:51
Yeah, the worst thing you can do is just buy the shiny new tech tool, and then tell your team Oh, go use it,and they're probably not going to use it, they're probably going to put up much of a fight because especially when it comes to like CRMs, I'm shocked at at my old company that I worked at that is out of business, I don't mind talking about, we had like four CRMs that were being used in the building. And that is just, it was a nightmare to operate from the marketing standpoint. And I was a big HubSpot fan back then. But then,you know, we had, you know, some people that had just used Salesforce for years, and they wanted that one. So that was a given to have that software platform. I think HubSpot and CRM are clearly like the one and two, but then you had some people that are like, oh, you know, I have this other CRM, or I have this spreadsheet that I use as a CRM, and it's like, oh,Lord, how are we going to track anything, we're not going to be able to be efficient at our job.And then if I'm not efficient at my job, then like you said earlier, marketing is the first thing that gets cut, because I can't prove my value.
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
26:53
Well,yeah, and if you think about it,then a lot of those when you're looking at your cost and your ROI, so maybe they invest in all four of those CRMs. And they deem all four of those CRM investments as failures, because the people aren't using it. But really, if they would have just had a better process,implementing it, and onboarding it and having consistent training, because that's the other piece that people forget,you do onboarding, and then you just think that the people are going to remember everything they don't, because they're humans. And if you're not doing something every day, you don't remember. But like having that consistent, continued training and investment in your team,then those things become much more successful, both from just like them using it, but what you actually want them to do with it. And having clear expectations on that too, like,what type of reporting Are you putting in the system? What do you what information are you trying to pull out of that and house, all of those things are a piece of the puzzle puzzle. And not everyone does that. And so then they think, Oh, well, this system can't do that. Or this is a failure of a project. But if you would have just really made sure that you're identifying the most important things that you want to achieve, making sure that software can do it at the price point you can pay for it,and the making sure your team has buy in, then you can go a lot further with that.
Blythe Brumleve:
28:07
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Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
29:38
So one thing I will say is our onboarding process is one of the things we're most actively looking to make significantly better, because we found that there's really not a super formal onboarding. And that's something I think is really important when you join an organization that you understand that value and what you're paying for. So the light bulb moment It's always happening at conference, if someone shows up to conference, they get the camaraderie they get the community, they understand who the organization is, and that this isn't just oh, you come together 123 days for a year.And then maybe you see them again in the future. This is,oh, I'm meeting these people here. And this is a touch point for relationships that I can continue to engage with year round. And that's something that's really important. But we're trying to make sure that we're implementing that throughout our membership touchpoints. And it's not just at a conference, we did at a second conference, the executive summit that's in the fall. So that would be to major in person events that people can see each other at. But we have virtual roundtables, we've started doing some local networking events, we have webinars. And we're always open for suggestions. I mean,that's, to me, the most important thing as a leader is your ability to listen, and to understand what your team or for me what my members really need us to be, and then do my best to try to implement that. And sometimes that's a little slower than maybe people want, because there's a lot of things and there's a lot of different processes to consider or stepping stones to get to other places. But I'm always willing to listen, and I want to hear from members, both current members, past members,prospective members, what do you want TMSA to be? And how can we help you in your job, and we are a trade, nonprofit, everything that we do is to build better programming to better engage our membership to provide more opportunities for members. So we want that kind of feedback. We want to understand what sales and marketing professionals today need to date. Yeah, sorry.We want to know what sales and marketing professionals need today to succeed and what they could need for tomorrow to be successful and kind of be that resource for them.
Blythe Brumleve:
31:54
Yeah, for sure.And I think that that's been,you know, the, the the super selling point for me, because I do often wonder, you know, how do you it's got to be challenging, you know, with YouTube, everything is on demand that you can learn at a moment's notice. You know, social media,I can, you know, I quote unquote, network with people on social media. So, you know, how do you sell, I guess the value of an in person calm, or, you know, the value of a marketing and sales Association. And I think you just answered it with the in person connections of getting to know folks who are in the same exact position as you and not being scared about, you know, revealing sort of insider trade secrets, you know, to the competition, which is what traditionally, like the executives are typically scared of doing. But you know, for a lot of marketers, it's what works for me is not necessarily going to work for you. But you might be able to cherry pick some things that that work out for you. And that was the big lightbulb moment for me at at last year's TMSA was being able to hear that direct feedback of what is working for folks and what isn't working. Because I've often wondered, you know, how do you sell the value of this association, in this social media environment? But I think you just answered it, or you know, when you hit the nail on the head,
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
33:15
yeah,it's really about making continued relationships and connections to people that want to talk about sales and marketing and transportation and logistics, because there's really, I mean, there's a lot of us, but in the the ecosystem of the world, there's really not that many of us, right. And I know, like, I will go to other conferences, and I love going to other conferences. I love engaging in networking with people who have nothing to do with me, but other parts of the industry to learn. But then it was like, Where are the people who want to talk about the things I want to talk about. And that's that was how I felt when I first came into TMSA. As a member, I went to conference after conference after conference, my first year at that tech company in transportation. And then I was like, Oh, here they are, they're all right here, I don't even have to like try to find them randomly on a tradeshow floor.If that's what this conference is, it's for the sales and marketing professionals to come together and talk about those,what they want to talk about.It's not just all the other things that other people in the industry want to talk about.It's very specific to your roles and how to support what you're doing. And you can talk to people who have your same job title, or the job title that you're trying to aspire to. We have a ton of leadership like CMOs and like high level directors of marketing and presidents and sales directors and all of those that you can be aspiring to and maybe you I would love to start some type of formal mentorship program in the future for TMSA. But for right now, it'd be informal, but like,talk to them, engage with them,see how they got to where they are in their career, see if they can help you succeed or have any success for you. And what I love about TMSA is when you make that connection, people always pick up the phone. I remember I even had add like a new sponsor last year, and they said they sent out an email before conference,and people responded to it. And she's like, like almost everybody. And that's unheard of, you know, the emails that you send out as a marketer ahead of a conference be like, Hey,we're gonna be there too. But people wanted to engage, we're excited to see someone new and like, wanted to show them support for being part of the show. And that is unique to us,I think because it is a collaborative and supportive group. But with that, we also work really hard to not be like Clicky. Like, we have the TMSA buddy program, where if you're a new person coming into conference, you can sign up to be assigned to a buddy, and you can have a TSA veteran, do a zoom call with you ahead of the show and have conversations with you. Throughout the show, we've actually added a new comers reception this year. So for the first half hour, you'll be with just the new people. And then we'll have some type of like competition with your buddy,like you and your buddy will compete against the other new people in their buddies. We haven't fully scoped out what that looks like yet, but I'm really excited about it. Because it just gives you more time with your buddy and to feel comfortable and to meet the other new people before we then go into the other networking parts of the evening. Because to me, that's when we were talking about this before, like you, you might have one person you go to trade shows with and you feel really comfortable. But not everyone has that, especially if you're brand new to the industry. And it's kind of terrifying to walk into a networking event where everybody clearly knows each other. And even if they seem nice, like you feel out of place. And so for sure, that's something that we really work towards to try to change. And we do believe in adding more networking opportunities, more ways for you to engage on top of those educational components to our show. So for instance, so this year, our elevate conference is June 11, through 13th, in Savannah, Georgia, and we on June 10. So the Saturday ahead of conference, we're going to the savannah bananas game, and super excited to do that. The bananas was definitely something that my members were screaming at me last year, as soon as I announced that we were going to Savannah. And I was like they're gonna be way too cool for us.But they I mean, they are but they're not. They have been lovely. We have Jared Orton, the president coming as our keynote speaker then on Monday, and he's bringing with him like his marketing manager, his customer service, his fans first to come on as a QA component to his keynote, because he knows that we are sales and marketing people. I did a LinkedIn live with Jared. And he was wonderful people were throwing him like crazy, specific marketing questions. And He answered them,because I was like, give him a minute, like, Oh, he's bringing his marketing people to the show, you have to come to conference, but he gave it really insightful things, which I like, kudos to you. But um, so just giving more opportunities to engage with each other,having more ways to have real conversations, I think is key.And we do encourage people to keep those relationships up throughout the year and not just at conference.
Blythe Brumleve:
38:11
Yeah, for sure.There's definitely connections that I made at last year's TMSA conference that I regularly message with now. Whitney over it, is it Casey ah, I always get the acronyms wrong. kch Kate,ah, yes, Casey, Ah, thank God.But I regularly speak to, you know, talk with her. And she is one of the I think the sweetest people I've ever met in my life.But she is also very, very big,like, TMSA fan, and she was just so welcoming, and just such a genuinely nice person. And that is, you know, my experience with I can't even say like, 99.9%Because I want to say it's 100%I've never had like a bad experience, you know, with somebody within the organization itself. Now, as your you were kind of talking a little earlier about, you know, the the topics that your members care about,and I imagine that some of these topics are going to be covered at the upcoming conference. Can you kind of give us a little bit of an overview on what some of those topics are?
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
39:10
Absolutely.So we are sales and marketing focused. And we do have a session on sales and marketing alignment, which is great, super excited about that one. fighting alone, no fighting loud, they should all be friends. And then we have so Whitney is speaking and she's talking about building your brand through messaging and how important that is. We have somebody speaking David Adler is a lawyer in the transportation space, but actually, I'm branding, which I think is amazing, because a lot of times we're talking about the legality of other things, but like how do you safeguard your brand? What are the rules around that like tips and tricks to like, make sure you're doing things right and you're protecting your brand, which I was like, yes.When I saw that come in, I'm like, Absolutely. This sounds like a perfect topic for us because that's something that everyone I think needs advice on especially right now, we have Samantha Jones from rocket ship shipping, speaking on how to use your people for your brand,especially in that sales capacity. We have Michelle LeBlanc with dropping hook is coming with Amber Karen of Wreaths Across America and talk about how you can have this mission driven purpose and bring people together and really do great like marketing and sales,but just how that mission driven initiative can help shape your business and how people care about that. And I will say, I do a lot of like generations research for fun, because I'm weird and like, but younger generations care more and more and more about what companies care about and what they represent and what organizations they support and what they're doing. So I'm really excited for that. Because I do think as we talk about even recruiting and retention, showcasing that you support an organization like REITs across America is going to become even more and more important in our space for younger generations coming in to the workplace. We have oh, well,we have we'll have a live TMSA morning show with you and Trey Griggs,
Blythe Brumleve:
41:15
which I knew that as soon as you pointed to the camera, I knew
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
41:19
I'm missing something. So we just I swear I didn't set up that way.It's I'm very excited for that.Like I said, we got the savannah bananas president coming as our opening keynote, there are just so many great topics, both sales and marketing, applicable for both like a sales rep, marketing practitioner up to a marketing leader or sales leader. We're going to the bananas game before. And then also we have limited space, but doing a tour of the Port of Savannah after the close of conference. So Tuesday afternoon. So that was something we had really heard from members is they want more opportunity to network. And we obviously don't want to dilute our education because it is so powerful and jam packed in there. So we're trying to add more opportunity to still learn and engage. And but just adding kind of more opportunity to do that on the back ends of the show.
Blythe Brumleve:
42:14
And it's such a cute city too. And it was Savannah is a major port city,but also it's just such a fun historical city, as well. And so I think for a lot of folks who traditionally, you know, they go to a lot of conferences throughout the year. I don't think a lot of conferences happen too much in Savannah, the city itself. So for folks who have never been to Savannah, it is a gorgeous city, great food,you know, they this might be related. I don't know who would care about this. But they also have a lot of restaurants that have to go windows that you can walk right up, order a drink and then walk around downtown Savannah.
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
42:47
Yeah,that was when I pitched this to the board. I was like, this is something for everyone. It's a transportation city. It's beautiful. There's historic, you can do ghost tours for our younger conglomerates. And some of our older two you can drink in the streets. Like there's something for everybody. Like there really is. And that's yes,I mean, I'm very thoughtful.When I think about where we should go, I think about where people, we are lucky that people want to embrace us and go to conferences, and people are more selective to that now more than ever. So we do really think about where should these go?Where would people want to travel, we encourage people to bring their families that bananas event, please bring your your families with you to the game, we just ask that you don't give out the links to people who like aren't any way associated to TMSA. But like, bring your families were organizing a tailgate before the show and just really embracing that. I mean, I have a husband and a son, they'll be there. I mean,our professional lives come into our personal life all the time.So in my perspective, why don't we do that a little bit on the opposite side and bring some of our personal life I do think through COVID Like we've all been in each other's houses and we've met our families and and stuff and it is fun. Like you met my husband and son last year at at conference and that was really cool. Like to share that part watching my son like full on network and give like hearty handshakes to the to the people who were at the pool was very fun. But it's just I think that's a piece of who we are,and especially knowing we do have a June conference. So that's when people do travel with their families. Like why not trying to incorporate that into what we're doing so you can go learn. And also you know, we started on Sunday nights you can have that full weekend mostly to network or not to network, to network with your family to spend time with your family before you have to start networking with professionals.
Blythe Brumleve:
44:47
Yeah, because I think that that's really what because for folks who do go to a lot of conferences, you're away from home a lot and you know the families are the ones that typically suffer from that because it's not just you coming back home and having to you know, catch up on all the work that you miss, but you got to catch up on family time too. So why not bring the family along?And then you don't have to do whole thing? Yeah, whatever.Merge that together? No, no, no switching gears a little bit, I am a huge proponent of, I guess responsible AI is the best way to put that. And I've been incorporating it more and more into my different workflows and processes. But you know, my current workflows and processes,even determining what that looks like, and then adding software to it kind of going echoing back to your point earlier about the importance of doing that first,before I bought a lot of AI tools a and I probably shouldn't have. So now I'm regretting that decision. So figure out your thought process as far as before you go out and buy all this software, but you kind of have a different take on a lot of like the the AI movement, chat GPT,all of that. You mentioned earlier, not in this show, but in our previous conversations,that it scares the shit out of you. And I think that that is an important, an important part of the discussion that needs to be had. So I mean, not to kind of put you on the spot. But yeah,to kind of put you on the spot.What, what, what scares you about AI?
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
46:11
Yeah, it scares me not like in the I think that the computers are going to take over the world kind of that like some people think. But I do think I think about the creative space, and how important it is for me. So I was a copywriter I was a journalist, like writing is so important to me. And to think that a computer is going to take over that is really challenging,or like for designers like, yes,so like your the role is completely changing, and could potentially wipe that out. And that that is scary to me. And I think while they're, they're saying things that make sense.Like I listened to a lot of your stuff. But when you were talking about like, oh, there was a lot of blog content, I had to refresh, they put it into the chat GPT and it like pop something out in a minute, like,but I liked that you had to write it first, like you had to earn it. But just like the concept that we're putting something in, and then it can pop out so quickly. I think there is I'm scared of the purpose. Like when I write something, there is a purpose to it. I'm thinking who is my audience and making sure I'm writing to them to what I think their needs are. And I don't know how much the champion GPT is going to do that. I mean, I know we can put it in there like this is to this person, but like, what does it actually look like for them? And yeah, I think it's scary, because it is evolving very, very quickly and very, very rapidly. And I think right now it can be a tool to help somebody but at what point does that take over? And then then then where are we? So it's not that I'm not supportive of technology. I'm a big I love technology, even though it hates me technology, like shuts down for me. But what Where's his leading? And that's kind of what scares me, especially when we think about the jobs like what i As if I came into the job market1520 years after I did what I have a job? Probably not. So what does that look like? And how are our students that are coming in? So I teach Community College sometimes, in my free time, they don't really well,like, what are these kids going to be doing? Or like my nephew is graduating with a marketing degree this year? What does that look like for him? What is his career actually going to be? And I know, I mean, there's been a lot of changes over time. Like I remember when I was in college,like internet marketing was like an optional class to take in rose internet journalism, unlike journalism, I don't know I'm calling it internet journal. But like, I was like this i at the time, I still felt like it shouldn't have been optional,but like that curriculum obviously was changing. But like, what is that going to look like now? And what are the jobs gonna look like? And I mean, I think there's been a ton like,even with like, CRM super like,oh, well, if I put my data in there, my job is gonna go away.And I'm like, well, that's not true. But for this, I'm kinda like, but it might be true now.Like, like this technology like that might like the CRM know that you still need to call the person, you are then putting that information of like, Hey,don't call Sally be at 9am on a Monday, or she'll be really pissed at you and never return your phone calls again. Like you have to put that in there. Like the computer's never going to understand that. But like for some of this stuff, like it can take over your job. Yeah,
Blythe Brumleve:
49:37
there was. And we kind of talked about this before the show, but I'll mention it, you know, for the audience sake is that there was this thing there was this post that went viral on Reddit about a week ago, that it was a game designer who was a 3d animator and he wrote this long post, and it was really, it made me really feel, you know, sort of sympathetic and empathetic to You know, his role and he said,basically, my job changed overnight, I didn't have a choice in this, there was no,you know, sort of evolution into new technology, it happened overnight for him, and the owner of the company that, you know,they're responsible for creating a video game, and he's responsible for, you know,creating the characters that go inside the game. And that was a really enjoyable process for him to be able to think through and create. And that gave him purpose. And now that purpose has been taken away from him overnight, and he hates it, his boss loves it, his coworker loves it, but he absolutely hates it. And I see that and I really, I empathize with that.But my, I have to admit, like my first thought, was also well,now I can make a game, like I,you know, I can create a game now, because these tools exist.And you know, seeing it almost as like a tool in you know, my tool belt is kind of the way that I see AI. But I was talking to a software developer earlier today. And he said that he's been using chat GPT,religiously, but it's still very much a junior, like if a junior code are came in and tried to use it, he wouldn't have the same nuance and experience to know, what is crap, and what is good code. And so he sees it as almost kind of the same, like a,you know, I'm an artist, and this is, you know, that one of my paint brushes in my toolkit.But he did say and I agree with him completely that it's it requires much more nuanced, I think and experience to know the outputs that come from these systems to so you have to kind of do all of the training. But you know, perhaps these tools could come in and help alleviate some of the grunt work that you don't like doing building databases. And, you know, adding leads to the CRM and things like that. But to bring up your job topic, because I actually have this on my notes to write about this in in my newsletter, but inside.com came out with a stat today that said, 25% of us jobs across all industries, could be at risk to be replaced by AI.And that's a renewed report coming from Goldman and 25% of the job market. And that is something that we need to have a real discussion around just as a country as a society, like as a whole, like, what are all these people going to do? Right? They don't have their work when they don't have their purpose? And you know, there's a lot of societal downstream effects that can happen if they don't have that purpose. And I think that that's where your your argument sort of really rings true. Yeah,I think there's a
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
52:41
lot of input implement implications with that. And I think too, like I, fundamentally, then what does that mean, for a leader? Are you then getting rid of 25% of your workforce? Or are you keeping the workforce but making them do something else? And I, people probably have different answers for that. But like, I think through that, because I do believe there's this quote that I really liked that says, like,whatever got you to this point isn't what's going to keep you there. So like, Yes, I don't believe I would have the same for me, my career path has been insane. Anyways, like, if you would have told me when I graduated, oh, you're going to be a journalist. And you're going to be, oh, I worked for PR Newswire at some point, too. So like, you're gonna, like do press releases, then you're gonna go back to journalism, but you're gonna write about tires,and then you're gonna go, you know, all these places when it makes sense. But like, but I it keeps you on your toes, you have to evolve, you have to keep changing, and you can be at the absolute top of your game. But if you just stay exactly where you are, everyone else is going to, like move past you. But I do think it's really important that as we think through that, we're then cross training our team to do other stuff. It's like the same as like in a plant, like your machine, it should be trained on different machines,so that if that person goes out on a vacation that that person can move over there and keep the production running. But are we doing that in other roles? So like it as a copywriter? Am I being cross trained and any other skill set? Or? And is that on me as the employee or on you as the employer on that, like,what else am I being utilized for? How am I growing my skill set so that when that particular skill set becomes obsolete,because I agree, like the sophistication of the AI tools right now are where they are,but think about where they were six months ago, to where they are now to where they'll be six months from now. It's
Blythe Brumleve:
54:30
evolving so quickly, so like, most people don't know. Yeah,
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
54:33
and yeah, so which is part of what's terrifying boy, we just Yeah,but Well, there's
Blythe Brumleve:
54:39
also the letter like the open letter that came from I think it was Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, you know, co founder of apple and a bunch of other tech leaders that said, we need to pause all future AI tool releases for six months just so we can collectively as a society debate it, because all of these tools are just moving to Italy just band chat. GPT two Do in Germany is talking about banning it just as a platform overall,even it probably won't work because VPN is exist, so people will still be able to access it.So it's a real sort of societal conversation that is that needs to happen because this stuff is happening in the background. And most people I don't think are even slightly aware of it.
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
55:20
Yeah,that's part of what scares me. I mean, I just think like, we were talking the other day about how you're like, oh, like, there's this app that like, it'll make my face and put makeup on me. So I don't have to actually ever put makeup on again. And I'm like, how? Yes, that sounds lovely. I had to put makeup on to come on the show. Because it's, it is that not terrifying anyone else, but it can just put makeup on your face. Like it could just completely change our face. I would bet even scary to me. And it also I feel like it takes away a part of humanity,like what our filter face. Like,you should be able to tell when a face is filtered. And we can't anymore. So yeah, that that's a whole different discussion, I opened a rabbit hole. But
Blythe Brumleve:
56:02
oh, yeah, I was gonna go down, I have to stop myself. No, but so I will give another example that I think is really fascinating is that there's this writer, and he's been writing online for years.But he has taken all of his writings, and he's trained Chet GPT on all of his own data set,in order to help speed up the process of him writing. And he said, he really says David Sacks from the the all in podcast. And he said that he's training the system on all of his past writings. And with a new article that he just released that he released it in a half a day,because instead of versus a week, that it would have typically taken him to write this like research piece,because the system has been trained on all of his past writings. And I thought that that is so just fascinating from like, a workhorse standpoint,from a personal standpoint. But I mean, there's still it,there's there's that sort of upside of it. But then on the flip side of it, I just I do have a serious concern about what's going to happen to the roles that marketers and sales folks have been used to working in for, you know, they're really the the all of our lives is being upended overnight, and there isn't really a warning or discussion around it is just full steam ahead by a lot of these companies. And its competition now to who can have the better features who can release it between Google and Microsoft, and, you know,Facebook is entering the ring as well. And God knows what they're gonna do with all that data that they have. So there's real implications that are coming from this, I even had to have a,you know, a conversation with my family the other day, because there's AI tools that already exist that can clone your voice and clone you as a video. And so they can have you say something that you have actually never said. And now they're using there's like these advanced like, phone scammers that will use your voice to call your family and extort money from them. And you're like, at no point. Am I ever calling you for this? Right. But I, I think about like my grandma, for example, who fell for one of though and the guy didn't even sound like my, you know, my cousin. He had said he wasn't,you know, in a in a jail in another country. And my grandmother was ready to wire him 1000s of dollars, because it sounded like her grandson. And I just think about all of those kinds of implications that we haven't really thought of yet,that you have to now have that conversation with your family that what is our safe word, if I call it I'm in danger, and I'm asking for money, or I'm asking for help. And that I think that that's a real reality of the world we live in now.
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
58:47
And I think it's terrifying to because like I was even like, it's like,safe adults at school. Like,that's part of what my son, my son is six. And they're talking about, like, who are safe adults who can talk to who are not. And I'm thinking about that. And like he's not allowed online without us by any means. But like it will point is even if people are cloning your safe adults, and talking to your child, that predatory behavior becomes even more terrifying,because now we're telling them he'll tell us who you think your safe adults are whispering because he's probably like on the other side of the door. But like, who are your safe adults?And who do you feel like you can talk to so now knowing that like, there are online programs that can mimic you? is scary.And I respect the leader saying hey, like maybe we should like really think through what we're doing. And I hope that that's like a real conversation that happens because yes, where are we heading as? I mean, even just like, tick tock freaks me out like I mean, because of what is being shown to our children and like even YouTube like we have,I mean, we let our son watch it and then we're like, be at the Really pull back on this and like now he can only watch it for in the room when we have to have conversations about some of the things that and like, why he can't watch certain videos and like, there's just a lot,everything moves so fast. And it's a society that we built. We like things move fast. We like things to change, we like to see new stuff, but like, what are the implications of that for us as a society? And where are those jobs going? When you're talking about the writer, there are some things about that, that I really liked. Because I think there are a lot of media,especially mainstream media, who just write and move things really fast without fast like fact checking. So I think responsible journalists have more opportunity to get the word out faster. But then on the flip side, if a non responsible journalist is then putting stuff into chat, btw, they are also able to move that right even faster. So but what is the safeguard around this? Like, I think just internet behavior is,you know, laws are so far behind that now that we're moving even faster on some of the stuff like how is it ever going to catch up?
Blythe Brumleve:
1:01:00
Yeah, and I think, you know, you hit the nail on the head, because the content moderation has, you know, fake news and misinformation, all that stuff has been a problem for pretty much you know, our entire existence as far as like how news is spread, and how quickly it spreads now with with the internet, but it's also, we had an election coming up soon, and now we have all this deep fake technology that is just available to the masses is not just something that, you know,we can blame on a foreign government anymore. It could just, it could be someone in the next room to you, it could be you know, someone down the street from you that are making and creating these things for nefarious reasons. You know, I think for probably, you know,for the overall, I think nature of humanity, it's, it's, it remains to be seen on if this is a value add to society or not, I tend to look at kind of the, you know, the glass half full and see it as a value add, because complex problems require complex solutions. And I think we're going to see some of those bad actors, of course, but hopefully, you know, that I think a lot of this discussion has been around, you know,helping the one person marketing team helping the one person sales team, that's where I see a lot of like, the light at the end of the tunnel with a lot of these tools. I, you know, when that writer talked about training, a database on everything he's ever written,and everything he's ever said, I thought, Oh, my God, what a goldmine for, you know, not journalists, creators, you know,being able to almost replicate yourself with modern technology,I did not think that we would ever see the day. And now we're entering into waters where it's a lot more questions that need to be asked and a lot more checks and balances. I just don't know who's going to be actually doing the checks and balances. Because if it's any signal from what our government understands, they don't even know how Wi Fi works. They don't know how Facebook works. And so I imagined that they have zero clue on how any of this AI technology Yeah, and I
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:02:55
definitely,like see the benefit of how it can work. I'm just fearful of like the shirt, you know, the the negatives to it. But yes, I mean, I was a one person marketing team for many years.And I even I mean, I pretty much we are evolving and growing and TMSA. But I always laugh that I feel like I'm at like the oldest startup company of the world,because like we are, you know,we're evolving. And COVID hit us very hard as an organization.And you know, just trying to move everything forward. I'm still trying to do the work of like seven people at once. And so there's a lot of capabilities like we do have HubSpot. And HubSpot is coming out with their own set of tools. And like how can Oh, chess spot is incredible. Yeah. And so how can we utilize that to make us move faster? I think there's a great opportunity there. But yeah, it does make me worried, because there's a lot of implications that aren't, you know, being really thought about are talked about intellectually? And when,when will that end? I don't know.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:03:57
And the outputs, you don't exactly unless you are experienced, in fact, checking, you don't know that the outputs are correct or not. And I Speaking of which, I kind of wanted to switch to this final topic, because it's kind of a fun segment that I've been doing. And, you know, the the last sort of handful of interviews, and I call it Chet GPT factor fo and I asked Chet GPT to write or give me five facts about the person that I'm talking to to see how accurate the system can be. We've had very mixed results, if that's correct or not, there have been,we've done five of them total,and three of them. Two of them have been highly accurate. And one of them is about you know,mid tier level accurate. And then the other two were about95%. Incorrect. So, including,we had a conversation with an rinky. She is the the CEO over at Tia transportation intermediaries Association. She is one of the people that they got, you know, 90 85% wrong and I thought, wow, this is somebody with a very high profile and like in the industry for sure.She has been around it gotten I told her yoga instructor. So it was, it was definitely an eye opening experience for that. But I thought, you know, if you will let let me let me play a little game or see what he thinks about me. So we have five facts you and I'm going to read them off one by one you tell me if it's right or if it's wrong. So So number one, Jennifer carpus.Romain has over 25 years of experience in the transportation and logistics industry with a focus on sales, marketing and communications.
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:05:37
Incorrect.I am 36.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:05:42
So what is the math there you are your four years. Terrible math. It's
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:05:47
like 11.So I would have been 11 Really getting in deep.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:05:52
The logistics of a lemonade stand? Yeah, I
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:05:54
would say probably what it did is I would say the previous leader of TMSA has 25 years of industry experience and so they owe his stuff.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:06:06
So fail on that one. Number two prior to joining TMSA in 2016. Already, no this one's wrong. carpus remain held various senior leadership roles at transportation companies such as YRC worldwide and Conway now.XPO logistics, nope, that was not zero for two zero for number three is carpus. Romain is a member of several professional associations, including the American Marketing Association,that Counsel of supply chain management professionals and Women in Trucking Association.
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:06:36
Um, so I mean, I have been a member of AMA, I don't think my membership is active. I have like spoken at Women in Trucking. TMSA is a member like we're, you know,friends, so I would say like maybe half
Blythe Brumleve:
1:06:52
maybe. Okay, so they get a point five for that one. Okay. Number four in in2019 carpus, Romain was named one of the Top Women to Watch and transportation by the women and Trucking Association and was also recognized by the transportation marketing and sales association for her leadership and contributions to the industry. In 2019. Yeah,2019.
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:07:13
So no, I was named a top person to watch in 2022 by Women in Trucking.And that would be weird if Tim I mean, I guess to say every time I wouldn't award then has to publicly like congratulate care.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:07:28
So maybe like a point two so there's suddenly like a point seven chat DPT. And then the last one carpus remain is passionate about mentorship and has spoken at various industry events about the importance of mentoring and fostering diversity inclusion in the transportation industry.That is
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:07:41
correct.Good job. Okay, chat, GBT. So,
Blythe Brumleve:
1:07:45
one 1.7 out of five. And that is, and I think that that is a perfect use case of the confidence of these systems to tell you an answer.But you still have to fact check it, you still have to have the experience to go back through and say, That sounds a little fishy. That doesn't sound too,right. Because in this instance,that so now it's kind of like three for three, or not three for three, but three against three, where it's been pretty accurate versus just highly inaccurate. And I think that's fascinating and sort of a use case as I live check. Yes, sort of, I was really
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:08:23
interested when it was going to pull out like if it if it pulled out all like real. Top five facts about me like what what it would be,but it was wrong. And mostly
Blythe Brumleve:
1:08:32
Well, it does give me the caveat. What does it say, as an AI language model, I do not have access to real time information and the ability to browse the internet. However,based on the information available up until my training caught off of 2021. Here are some possible facts about Jennifer carpus. Alright, so it does give that disclaimer, but whose I didn't even read that,right?
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:08:54
The output because like all so 2021Like, I mean, technically, I became Executive Director at TMSA in November of 2021. But in theory, then, like all the information that it's cooling should be in my past career. It shouldn't even be I mean, I was a member of TSA and I was active, but like, it would have been everything else I did not even TSA related. Right?
Blythe Brumleve:
1:09:21
And you would think that they would have if it was in 20. You were you were nominated to the or you were nominated to Executive Director,I think in 2020
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:09:29
it was I so I was executive director at the very end of 2021. Oh, okay.Okay,
Blythe Brumleve:
1:09:33
so 2021 So it still should have had you know that information but I think that that's interesting nonetheless that you know, it got
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:09:40
Yeah, I will be dissipating it like telling me like some of the old companies I worked for, or, like journalism awards, I've won for you know, like, things like that, because that's all I mean,I do have a very, like public net public name like I'm not I don't think I'm a celebrity but if you Little Lea that pops up because I was a journalist for I mean, I started my journalism career in like 2010. And I've been writing ever since. And then you know, now as a leader have to say my name is splattered everywhere, but like,so I knew that it would find things. It's not like a very hit in the world, like, my name is out there. On one, but I only found one thing. And so it just interesting. Yeah, you know,it's definitely,
Blythe Brumleve:
1:10:26
yeah, this has been fun to sort of experiment with, with guests coming on the show, talking about all of these different, just just the ways that people are thinking about AI, the ways that they're implementing it right now, or the ways that they're being cautious about it. And this is a perfect use case, on Yeah, it sounds cool to be able to, you know, get a bunch of these notes sort of spit out at you in you know, five seconds, but it's,you still have to fact check it,you still have to do a little bit of the work. So it might speed up some parts of it. But and like
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:10:57
that's like what you just did, like,this is part of what's terrifying to me. Because like I said, if you're a, I don't want to say a bad journalist, because I feel like the people who are probably doing this probably haven't done any type of real journalism training, but like,you are writing an article,you're like, oh, I want to write an article about this person,let me put it in the JpT. And then they take all of that information and put it in the story. But very little of that was true about me. So then it's on the internet. So people think it's true. So then then what?Like, that is scary to me.Right? Because wrong information fast?
Blythe Brumleve:
1:11:32
Yes. And that's going to definitely be something that that we have to watch. And hopefully this is just, I don't know, I don't even know, I don't I don't even know what to be like to say like, hopefully about it. Like, hopefully, it gets more accurate. But I think that, you know, where AI currently as, especially with outputs like this, I think it just sort of signals that you should be more experimenting with your own proprietary data.And then using it that way,instead of relying on it to just be the ultimate sort of, you know, just the end all be all.And that's the answer. And that in that's that. So I think that that's probably the takeaway, I think, for this conversation, or this part of the conversation,especially when it comes to chat, GBT because you can't really trust all of it. But you can use it to help, you know,maybe speed up some aspects of your work processes that you're already doing. But it kind of goes back to, you know, the earlier discussions that we were talking about, figure out your processes first and figure out where technology fits in there.Because otherwise, it's going to be a bad time. You're gonna you're gonna have all these, you know, incorrect facts that are out
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:12:40
there could take you even longer than if you just started. Yes. On your own. So
Blythe Brumleve:
1:12:45
100% All right,Jennifer, or Jenna, what Jennifer? It feels weird calling you Jennifer Jen.
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:12:51
Everyone.Just don't call me Jenny. Put that official notes only.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:12:59
Hopefully chat GPT will learn that. Right now.Their
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:13:03
journey curve is from a and b like we are never going
Blythe Brumleve:
1:13:09
We're done here. All right, Jen, what can?Is there anything else that you know, I know. We've been talking for a while now. And I know you're you're kind of feeling under the weather. So I'll let you go with these last couple questions. But is there anything else about the TMSA? Anything that's upcoming that you think is important to mention that we haven't already talked about?
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:13:28
So I mean, definitely we talked about it. But our elevate conference is June 11. Through 13th. You can get information on that at events dot TMSA today.org. And then in October, we'll have our executive Summit, that's going to be October 11 through 12. In Chicago, we do have a save the date page up for that registration will hopefully open by the end of this month. That's my goal. And then we do have a couple local networking events that we'll put out later in the year as well. We always have great webinars, you can find this at our website, TMSA today.org, shall be at ta conference. So it the in a couple of weeks. I don't know when this episode's coming out.But if it's before that it's April 19 through 22nd. And we are always looking for new members to come in to network to engage if there's something particular that you would want from an organization like this.I'm always just a phone call away. I really do love talking to members. And yeah, next year we'll be celebrating our 100year anniversary. I do very believe strongly in a membership driven organization. So I have had a survey link out to our membership to see where we should go for the 2024 show. And that will be announced at the2023 elevate show. So stay tuned. Awesome Yeah,
Blythe Brumleve:
1:14:59
and I love those webinar trainings because you know, as you know, a one person team, it can be really difficult to get that industry specific training, you can go out on the web and get, you know, any kind of, you know,marketing training that you want, but it's not industry specific, actually just signed up for the upcoming and I, this has probably happened before the show was posted. But negotiating sales tactics. So there's a lot of, you're a marketer, and you're not necessarily strong on the sales side, or if you're on the sales side, or you're not necessarily strong. On the marketing side, there's, there's content to fill, fill your cup up, if you are willing to become a member and engage in the conversation. So So
Jennifer Karpus-Romain:
1:15:39
that's gonna say with that, too, sorry to cut you off. But oh, this,you can leave that in, even if this goes live after that,because as a member, you have access into our member Resources Portal that has all of the recordings of all of our past webinars since like 2017, you really want to dive into COVID stuff from 2020, knock yourself out. But it's all that kind of stuff. Some of it is still relevant for today. Or you can see kind of like where you were a couple years ago to now. We have award submissions, we have conference presentations, we have that metric study that we talked about earlier, all of that stuff lives in our member portal for our members. So becoming a member gives you access to all that. So even if you can't attend a live webinar,which we do offer for everybody,but you then get the recordings as a member. Heck, yeah.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:16:24
What a great point because I forgot to mention that. So thank you for that. But yeah, that's uh, I think we we've This is officially I think the longest podcast that I've done so far.And everything is logistics history. In our four months, all this good or bad for you, but it was No, I think it's great. And I probably could have, there are a couple of topics who definitely could have gone you know, a little bit further on.But for the sake of, you know,respecting everyone's time, we will go ahead and leave y'all to it go to TMSA to de.org in order to become a TMSA member and check out all the good content that the crew is creating over there, Jen, thank you so much.Thanks.I hope you enjoy 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. If you liked this episode, do me a favor and sign up for our newsletter. I know what you're probably thinking, oh God,another newsletter. But it's the easiest way to stay updated when new episodes are released. Plus,we drop a lot of gems in that email to help the one person marketing team and folks like yourself who are probably wearing a lot of hats at work in order to help you navigate this digital world a little bit easier. You could find that email signup link along with our socials and past episodes. Over at everything is logistics.com And until next time, I'm Blake and go Jags
