April 18, 2025 • 31 mins
In today’s episode, we discuss effective back-office integrations in transportation, data processing, and the risks of automation and data security with Sean Smith of Denim!
Sean highlights how integrations can help with operational efficiency, reduce errors, and ensure confidence, as well as best practices to minimize risks, such as using different credentials for automation, data limitation, and multi-layer verification due to threats like deepfakes!
About Sean Smith
Sean Smith, VP of Product at Denim, has spent 10 years building and scaling products in the financial services and logistics industries. While leading Product at Denim, he has pioneered new capabilities for the factoring space including risk automation and pricing. Sean has also led work on our client dashboard, job management and collaboration that have revolutionized the process and workflow for broker clients looking to save time on back office operations. He excels at combining his passion for technology with the ability to drive impact on a balance sheet.
Connect with Sean
- Website: https://www.denim.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smithseanp/
- Twitter (X): https://x.com/smithseanp
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Came back with a bank window down yelling now money anything hey oh Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when I'm get to the back hey Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when the lane moving fast hey Let them all cross if they hate then let them made them make a bigger balls hey.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
What is up, ladies and gentlemen? We are back. We are live. It is a freight Coach podcast, the top podcast in transportation, coming to you guys every single weekday, 8:30am Pacific, 10:30 Central, to break down some industry headlines. But most importantly, you guys provide some actual insight with what you can do with all of this information. This is your first time tuning in. Welcome. This is the real side of freight, ladies and gentlemen. And I say that before every single show.
(00:49):
And what I mean by that is I only speak with transportation professionals because at the end of the day, you guys, I want to talk to the right individuals who have done what you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve, so you can take that information, apply it, utilize it, and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life. Happy Good Friday, everybody. For those of you out there who observe Good Friday and Easter and everything, it's going to be a holiday weekend here. A lot of places are not going to be open today or are definitely closing early for the weekend to try and get out and enjoy that. So get ahead of it, you guys, with your appointments, phone calls for your sales calls and everything else and do all that fun stuff.
(01:25):
But with that being said, you guys, I got my literal favorite segment of the entire month. And it's financial Fridays today, you guys, because at the end of the day, I'm damn near financially illiterate for the most part. And Sean with denim is back to educate us on all of this stuff. So, Sean, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today, man.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Good Friday it is, man. I, I tell you what, it's an extra Good Friday because my Lenten sacrifice, good Catholic boy, good Irish Catholic boy, has been. I've been on the wagon. And so I'm. I'm ready for Easter. I'm ready to rip.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
You're ready to rip? I don't want to ask what you gave up for Lent or anything, because that might be a personal choice.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
No. No drinking. No, I've been sober for my. Yeah. Since. With the exception of St. Patrick's Day. Okay. Like, everybody's got a carve out somewhere, you know.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Dude, congratulations that. Man, 40 days of. Of that is. No. No joke at all.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
I'm not gonna lie. It was very intimidating to start.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
And I think you. You're sober, too, is that right?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Dude, I've been sober for over two years now. So, yeah, it felt.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
It was hard at the beginning, and then it sort of just kind of became part of the rhythm. I don't feel like I've got a good Sober like. Like a good drink, though, like, to go. Everybody goes to the bar. What do you do?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
What do I do when I go to the bar? Yeah, I mean, I. I don't really go to the bar, but, you know, like, when I was at the TIA last week, man, I just walk. Like a soda water and lime. I'll do.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Yeah, I gotta get.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Dude. Or I just walk around with a bottle of water, you know, like, I guess it's like, Sean, I'm kind of to the point where it's like, dude, I'm almost 40. Like, nobody's gonna, like, give me for not having a drink in my hand, you know, like, that's a myth that I think you convince yourself of when you're in your early 20s and stuff like that. But, man, I just reached to give a point of. That is so low. Of other people's opinions of me, where it's like, if you think that you're gonna derail anything that I've done because you want to call me, like, dude, go talk to a wall. You'll get a response way faster than out of me.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
I was gonna. I say something like, I don't know, man. Have you seen what an IPA does to my stomach?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
You're welcome, basically, John, I like abs, all right? I like having abs. My wife likes me having abs. And alcohol in me never had abs. All right? So I'm just gonna put that out there.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, that. Yeah, Hard to disagree with that.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
So, dude, what's that? What's been going on out there, man? You know, I think a good thing for us to really, you know, and we had kind of came to this agreement on this topic, especially with everything that's coming out. I mean, there's never a shortage of technology coming into the transportation space out there, but, you know, the viability and the functionality of a lot of what's out there. Some marketing makes it sound like it's the end all, be all. And then when you get behind and you actually see the infrastructure and the nuts and bolts of it, they're not even, like, integratable with anything, right? Like, having a fully Active API is vastly different than it's on our roadmap. You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Yeah. And so if this is my. Now we've been doing Financial Fridays for a long time, as everyone knows, because I've said this on previous Financial Fridays, I am not a financial planner or anything. I just am. I am not. This, though, is my wheelhouse. This is what I actually do every day as a product idem. So I am like super passionate about helping people on this stuff. And what I would say to people, maybe to start on like just like a. What is. What are integrations? Like, how can they. How can they work for you and your business? It's a super important part of your back office, for one, your overhead structure as manager or like a leader.
(05:05):
And then it's really important for your frontline to be able to spend as much time as possible being able to spend time with clients and customers and carriers and kind of everything in between. And so that's like the sort of business driver for all this is like obvious reduction in data entry, obvious reduction in errors and omissions and I forgot or whatever. But the other thing too is it makes you feel more confident. It just makes you feel like you got your shit together, right? It's like, oh, I just click this, I click that. The stuff all populates. I don't have like staring down the barrel. I'm sure everybody did this, you know, tax season, in case you haven't filed your taxes. Everybody get it together, get an extension in there.
(05:46):
You know, you like staring down the barrel of like a full Saturday of just like assembling all your paperwork for taxes. And you're like, this is gonna suck. Like if there's. If you have integrations in your back office, if things are moving to and from your TMS appropriately, like not staring down the barrel of like 50 data entry tasks on a Saturday to be able to get your capital you need.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Dude, straight up, man. What's the difference? You know a term that I've heard out there here recently, what's the difference between a one way and a two way integration? What does that even mean?
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah, this is, I think an important part of integrations is like, what is your source of truth? Like, what's the one thing that you're gonna believe all the time and just like have that in your mind, like your system of record people call it too. Like whatever kind of term you use, you gotta have something that you really believe in and then use that in your brain as like a hub and spoke to the other tools that you use, right? So like if your TMS is your source of truth, you are going to push things to your QuickBooks, you are going to push things to your factoring company, you are going to push things to whatever, right? And as things get updated in whatever system that is. So like you work with denim, great, nice to have you.
(07:00):
We're running collections for you, we're sending payments for you, we're doing collections for you. And so you need to be able to have that information come back so that your system record your source of truth has like the current information all the time. Right. So this two way integration is being able to send, here's my load. I want you to go factor this denim to like, okay, the payments have been applied to my carrier, okay, the payments have been received to my customer. I can kind of close this load out on my aging. So it's the ability to be able to take like the full round trip, as you like to say, to be able to make sure that works.
(07:33):
Now for some systems like QuickBooks, who's just like a receiver of information, that round trip might be just like an acknowledgment, posted, applied, received, success, you know, whatever. And it just gives you that sense of like security and comfort knowing that you know what your thing worked right. And so you don't have to be worried about whether or not it's, you know, whether or not the information you're getting is being applied correctly. One more thing I'll tell you.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
So as you talk about one way and two, this is like the data direction. There are other kind of parts of how data moves. And so if you're a broker out there and you're evaluating freight tech, or you're a carrier and you're evaluating freight tech, your integration type is really important. So whether it's like batched, where they do it in a group like every hour, we'll take everything and shoot it over, or whether it's real time or near real time where things are just being pinged all the time, bing, bing. So that way you can sort of have a sense for whether or not my system of record is always up to date or whether I need to go to another tab and see who's got like the latest info.
(08:47):
So like as you figure out whether something is one way or two way, I think you should also have a similar kind of mental model for what is real time and what is constantly updating versus what's updated once a day. Everybody knows you go to your bank account, right? They're clearing and posting transactions, like, every few hours. So just, like, have a sense of what. What I'm waiting for versus, like, what's real time and up to date versus, like, what system you're in, and make sure that your integrations basically reflect, you know, whatever. It works for you and works for your business.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
You know, what's funny about, you know, I'm just gonna rip on banks here for a second, how when it's like, right around the time of your closing for your credit card, how, like, normally it takes like, 48 to 72 hours to clear transactions and have them post, but ironically, anything you charge the day of your statement closing gets closed and processed.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Hey, they're able to sneak that right in, aren't they?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Weird how that works, you know, Otherwise it takes three or four days. But nonetheless, you guys, we're not here to talk about all of that. And frankly, I don't have enough money in the bank for them to even care about my opinion. So, you know, here. Here we are. But, you know, when you. When you're talking about batch versus real time there, how are you guys personally doing that stuff, Sean? And, you know, because it's like, for me, I'm like, you know, kind of psychotic about my money, as most small business owners are. I want to see where my cash flows at, especially when it comes down to, you know, because my. My payments are kind of spread throughout the month, right? Like, it's usually the first, middle. You know, first, 15th and 30th is probably the easiest way to describe it out there.
(10:19):
But, you know, I want to see my. My real time finances and stuff. So kind of, how do you guys attack that, especially for, like, the larger volume companies that are out there?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Yeah, we are maniacal about this, honestly. And I'm sure that doesn't surprise you at all. At Denim, we maintain something over 20 different integration versions or patterns or whatever so that we can get as much data as we can as quickly as possible and apply it and use it as quickly as possible when it comes to how our money moves and how our money is applied. We were on the show talking about the integrated ledger a couple of months ago, and, like, we do that once a day. We make our batch transactions, and we apply them to our own books once a day. When it comes to how jobs get into denim and how payments get processed, we are. We're the. We're the. We're the Twitter pipe, right?
(11:15):
Like, we're taking in as much as we can as quickly as we can from as many places as we can. And we do that because nobody in trucking is like leading once a day for anything.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Like we need to be able to.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Apply that information as quickly as possible for people. Right? Like we'll get like our, we had like a, a login glitch that like people can log in for like an hour and a half and we got like 17 emails. Like, hey, something wrong? Like, yeah, we're working on it. Like we push some code weren't supposed to. Everything's fine. Give us like another 45 minutes and we'll be in good shape. But like we know how fast freight moves. And I would say to people out there, know which vendors will move at your pace and which won't. I think we all know that like our banks are not moving at the pace that we want to move at. And so just make sure that expectations are aligned there.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
No, I'm right there with you, man. Cause like everything for me, I'd like, I am so insanely focused on efficiencies inside of my organization. How do I shave 5 minutes off of my normal task, 10 minutes off of my normal task to free up more time for revenue producing activities, right? Like I'm reading right now called fanatical prospecting. I think everybody who works in sales should pick it up and read it and it, you know, it helped. You know, talking about batching where, you know, but this is just from like an outbound sales perspective where it's like, yeah, sure, batching your calls, right? So it's like I block out my first hour of my day is first 30 minutes of my day is always updating all of my in transit shipments, pickups and deliveries for the day.
(12:45):
And everything that we got going on the next hour is dialed in for cold calling every single morning. And, and I was averaging, you know, anywhere from 25 on a good day, maybe 30 in an hour is where I was getting from an outbound calls perspective. And after reading this book, it was like, hey, batch your calls. Preload five numbers at a time. Because I always like to have the company's website up when I'm calling them because I like to actually talk to them about their product. Not just, hey, I have a pulse and move freight. You should let me quote. So I'm out there doing it.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Hey, I've got trucks in your area right now, just FYI.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Exactly. Like literally right now, this second. But I started doing that and then in the Book it said, hey, batch your numbers up and then preload five at a time. So I started doing that and dude, it literally shaved no less than 10 minutes off of there to where I can now increase my output. You know, because at the end of the day you guys, not everybody's answering the phone. It's actually very rare to get people to pick up the phone from an unknown number. But it does happen. But again, like I have a, I hit 55 calls a day, every single day, no matter what. And now batching these calls and doing that, boom, it just shaved more time off. So now I'm going to run this for 30 days.
(13:54):
And then after that 30 days, I might be able to increase my call volume in a day where I can start increasing my numbers and you know, again, still working the exact same amount of time in a day. So it's like for me, these are these inefficiencies that I am trying to uncover. Have you guys ever seen that though, in these integrations where, you know, it's actually caused more work because it was not what you guys thought it was going to be.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
We did an integration with our bank and went from a file based integration to a API batching that actually has been really good for us. This was something we used to have to upload. I think people might remember the term called a Nacha file, where you upload this giant file and the bank processes the file. Now we do it API based and we create these payment batches 15 minutes before the bank window cuts off and we just grab all the payments we have. We create a batch and we shoot it over. And that's our routine for every payment window, every single day. And so that has been really helpful for our team because we have credit decisions we need to make. There's tickets, we need to answer, there's whatever.
(14:59):
And so they know that they block on their calendar 30 minutes before the payment window. Make your batch, submit your batch, and that's how we make our payments Everybody day, right? It's just like religion. You've got to make that payment batch. And so that's been really helpful for us as far as how things maybe haven't gone over as well. I, I think let's just like flat file integrations are hard. Like I think they're, they've been around forever but like people shooting CSV files around the Internet, like there are zillions of them being moved every single day. EDI files, I think we don't have to go into that But I think it's another kind of similar high volume file based integration structure.
(15:40):
I think those are really difficult to process because it is hard to get the acknowledgement that a file was received or feedback that what you did worked or was correct. Those tend to be a little bit more tricky. We have built in stuff like auto sending emails. If something doesn't process, if you've got a parentheses in the wrong spot or a comma that isn't formatted correctly, or God forbid a name is, the Freight coach comma, Inc. Thing blows up, the world turns into flames. And so I think there's like some reliability problems that are always like kind of tricky. So like knowing what's under the hood I think is an important part of like how you think about your integrations and like whether or not you have like the reliability and resiliency of what you're looking for.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Dude, I've started hearing the term. I think it's Frankenstack thrown out there.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Oh, that's amazing. I haven't heard that before. I love that.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
What is that? Like, can you break that down?
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Yeah, yeah, I know this is a term. I know exactly what someone's talking about and I've never heard it before.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
The.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Yeah, so the Frankenstein is fantastic. That's a fantastic term. The way that I would describe that is if you have maybe a Google Drive that's shared or maybe you're using teams or maybe whatever and you will glue a bunch of triggers together. If this email hits this inbox, then forward it over to this SAS tool, which then takes it over here and turns the data from a CSV file into a packet and then apply the packet to this SAS tool and then your quote gets answered or something like that.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Right?
Speaker 3 (17:22):
There's like seven little duct tape things. I think we have a huge respect for the Zapier gang. We use a ton of that stuff internally for our own tooling. We don't use a lot. We don't use it very much for production stuff. But for our own internal tooling we do a ton of that low code stuff. It's amazing sitting on a take right now. I'm not ready to. It's not ready, it's not fully baked. But I'm reserving it. I'm squatting on it. The take is the new age, like company operator is going to be always like part salesperson, part people leader, inspirer. And I think it's going to be part like low code vibe, code type person, like somebody who can sew a bunch of these different tools together.
(18:10):
Because if you're trying to like make change happen in a business or you're trying to do something different than how you work now, you need to be able to get your tooling to line up with your people and your process and you need to be able to have the leadership, people skills and the technical chops to be able to do it. Because we're not like Freight Coach LLC does not have a software development team of like 25 people. And I would say that's the same for 99.99% of businesses out there. But the technology is too powerful to just sit on the sidelines. So you've got to be able to figure out a way to make that work for you and your business. And so that's my like, that's my take on in on the new age operator.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Yeah, it's, you know, I mean, obviously I interview a lot of different people for this show and there's a lot of really emerging and good technology that's out there where it's like from an operational efficiency standpoint, you know, because for me, it's like, dude, I'm always like, all right, how do I do more with less? You know, like, how do I increase my outputs in any way I possibly can with less head count and everything that comes along with it. That's not saying I don't want to hire people, but like, at the end of the day, I want to arm my people with the right tech stack to increase their outputs. Because again, I always like to interject, none of my companies will ever have capped commissions.
(19:18):
All of my sales reps will be able to make as much money as they possibly want their desires, right? But you know, I look at a lot of this stuff, man, and then, you know, as somebody who's had their identity stolen in the past and I spent a long time fixing that just to get all that shit removed and stuff like security is the first thing that comes to my mind with everything from a financial standpoint, like your internal processes, all of that shit. So it's like, how does this protecting my data, right? Like, how does this protect my customers data, my carrier's data as a broker, all of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Yeah, I think not only from a data standpoint, but I think it also, if these things run awry, not only can they share data to people they shouldn't supposed to be shared to, but they can also kind of steal your time. And all of a sudden you're not working anymore, you're keeping this duct tape and glue thing, the grease on the wheels, you know, properly applied and all of a sudden all you're doing is fixing shit all the time. So like, I think there's a lot of risk associated with automation. Don't share passwords to people. Like create a separate username and password for automation related stuff to the extent that you can. I think that's like generally good practice because if you reset the password then you know that all your shit is shut off, right?
(20:36):
So like, if you can create little like controls and safeguards like that, I think that's like a really important thing. The other thing is be smart about what you're automating. So like the Frankenstack is like not something you're gonna want to do with driver's licenses or voided checks or whatever. Like be smart about what you're using to automate where. And be careful with like we send invoices through like random stuff all the time because that like there's nothing sensitive in an invoice. Like invoices go everywhere, right? It's got like a total amount due, it's got a due date, it maybe have some codes in it that's not going to mean anything to like 99.9% of the world. So like, we're totally fine using that sort of stuff to be able to create some bespoke solutions for people.
(21:21):
Things are like kind of funny, but I'm not, you know, accepting your banking information without connecting to Plaid or without uploading a voided check to one of our secured kind of image storage. So like I would say be smart about what you're doing, what you're automate. A couple of our clients have come to us and they're like, hey, we don't feel comfortable sending this through here. Can we send it through this particular mechanism instead? We're like, absolutely. Like we would do this all the time if people felt, if people used it. Like a lot of these tools, I think it's hard to navigate, but once you set up the infrastructure, it's, it's all point.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
You know, how are you guys like attacking a, from a cyber perspective here, right? Because it's like I, I feel like, you know, the deep fakes with the rise in AI voices and the accuracy and everything coming with it, man, it's only going to increase the exposure and the risk for financial crimes to increase and everything else. How are you guys really attacking that to ensure that like hey, man, this deep. I mean, dude, you put a deep fake video of me out at one point where people thought it was, you know, you throw in an orange polo in the backwards hat, man, it's. It's amazing what could happen out there.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Identity theft happens to millions of Americans every year. It's not funny, Jim. You know, like, I. Yeah, this is. It's a fucking race, man. It's like a rat race. And we're on the wheel and we're always chasing new stuff. And the reason why we're always chasing new stuff is that there's always new stuff happening, right? And so we are trying to be really smart about this. And our people, we tend to inject people into stuff where we need like an extra control. Like, oh, give us a call, reply from this email. Like, if you kind of give somebody, like, what is a normal request, I think it might throw somebody who's trying to impersonate or somebody who's trying to be able to get. Do something they shouldn't do to, like, think twice about it.
(23:19):
And so injecting people, like, we do samplings on, like, manual samplings on documents in addition to the automated checks that we do manual samplings on payment settings. We require evidence. There's some cool startups out there. I think that there's one in one of our sister kind of companies from Crosslink Capital does Image. It's like an image metadata analysis tool. We haven't used it yet, but we're like thinking about it and basically you feed this SAS tool an image and it's like, oh, yeah, this image was created from this software based in this country from, published on this date. And it gives you a ton of information that's totally invisible to like, any normal person when they're looking at a picture on the Internet.
(24:10):
And so that's like something we're starting to flirt with, is like using some different tools like that to be able to verify authenticity, right? It's as many different ways as we can. Cause, like, the other thing is we tend to have a lot of teeth in factoring. So like, we have like, maybe we don't catch you on this invoice, but we might get the next one. And maybe this is the wrong customer here, but we'll get them on the next page. And so I think just having a lot of hedging is an important part because it's not an if, it's a when on a lot of this stuff. And so we just are always vigilant and we're always like keeping lines of communication open and keeping kind of exposure so that we can, you know, lever it if we need to.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
What can people do to spot a lot of this? Right? Like, I, you know, again, there's a lot of stuff that's coming at a lot of people and there's a lot of solutions that sound phenomenal on paper, but yeah, how can a business owner who maybe doesn't have all the answers to a lot of this stuff stop from getting taken advantage of because a platform is not what they say it is?
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, you're going to love this because I know you live it every day, but like, I think a lot of this stuff happens to people because they don't like, pick up the phone or they don't want to like, talk to a human or they don't want to reach out to human beings to like confirm a piece of information or whatever. And they sort of just pass stuff through. So, like, that's my biggest piece of advice is like, be thoughtful about where you're injecting the human in the loop in this, in all of your processes. Like, your SaaS tools are great, they can be a big help. But like, look at where the domain is on the email. Confirm the phone number, matches the phone number that's on the website. Make sure the website is the real website and it's not.xyz or whatever it is.
(25:57):
So, like, use your sort of awareness and like, have your head on a swivel and combine it with like, yeah, no problem. You hang up, call the number back, hey, is Rob available? Right? It's like, not that complicated. Like, there's some of this stupid, simple stuff out there that people can do is like, it's easy, it sounds silly, but like, taking that maybe that extra step or something doesn't smell quite right. Like, maybe taking a step or two to verify super important and can yield worst case scenario. Hey, yeah, thanks for taking my call. Just wanted to make sure this was the right number for you. I didn't have it written down correctly, so just want to double check. Thanks so much. All right, I'll talk to you soon. It's that easy. Like, it doesn't have to be that complicated.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
No, I'm right there with you, man. And I think, like, if you're out there, like, you should ask for a reference list for anybody. If, like, if I was starting from zero again and like I was coming in and, you know, whether it's a, an attorney or any vendor that you possibly are going to partner with. You should ask for references of the people who, of their current customers who are utilizing their services that they can speak with about that, you know, because at the end of the day, if they don't have any references, that is red flag number one. Like if they're like, oh, you don't need, you know, blah, blah, or you go to our website, there's review, fuck that. All of that stuff can be bought and paid for.
(27:21):
I want to talk to actual real people who are using that stuff. And then another thing I would do, go to social media at the end of the day if they don't provide anything, which that would like. If you can't provide me references, I'm not going to sign to work with you under any circumstances. But say you're a little bit more trusting than I am. Go to their social media, see who's commenting on their posts, engaging on their content, send them a dm. Hey, are you an actual user? I'd love to learn about your experiences. Do anything besides signing on the dotted line without doing your research.
(27:53):
Because at the end of the day, just like with everything, when you are in charge of an organization, whether you own it, CEO leadership, whatever it is, it's on you at the end of the day to do your due diligence for literally any decisions that you are going to make for your company. Because especially when it comes to financial commitments or banking information, do that will. That is the literal, fastest way that you can lose your job. In that instance, think about.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
The value of a full pipeline. Like if you have nothing in your pipeline, it's really easy to say, oh, I'll skip the reference, I'll take this load and bup buh bopa, I'll move on. Or oh, I'll hire this candidate because I don't have any others. And so I don't really feel great about it. Oh, I gotta work with this vendor. Cause I didn't really evaluate any others and I don't have a lot of time. Like in any aspect of. Yeah. Of being a business owner and needing to make a hard decision, having a pipeline makes those decisions. Like you have way more confidence, right? Because you can move at the pace that you want to move at. You can, you can say no to stuff and it's not going to kill you.
(28:52):
Like get a full pipeline in any aspect of whatever decision you're making as a business.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Couldn't agree more. Sean, as always, thank you so much for taking the time, man. I appreciate you. How does anybody reach out to you to find out more about what you guys got going on at Denim, find.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Us@Denim.Com send me a. Send me a LinkedIn invite. Sean Smith on LinkedIn. My full name is not product Sean, contrary to popular belief. So if you find me Sean Smith on LinkedIn, I love I get the Orange Crew Orange shirt gang sends me requests all the time. I appreciate it. Keep it coming.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Hell yeah. I love it, man. Sean, thank you so much for joining as always. You guys, if you got value in what you heard, which you better have after this one, you guys, and you're not subscribed, subscribe to the show. You guys, if you're feeling really ambitious as well, rank the show on itunes and Spotify. Because if you saw value, that's how your network's going to see value as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Happy Good Friday.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Happy Good Friday.
Came back with a bank window down yelling now money anything hey oh Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when I'm get to the back hey Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when the lane moving fast hey Let them all cross if they hate then let them made them make a bigger balls hey.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
What is up, ladies and gentlemen? We are back. We are live. It is a freight Coach podcast, the top podcast in transportation, coming to you guys every single weekday, 8:30am Pacific, 10:30 Central, to break down some industry headlines. But most importantly, you guys provide some actual insight with what you can do with all of this information. This is your first time tuning in. Welcome. This is the real side of freight, ladies and gentlemen. And I say that before every single show.
(00:49):
And what I mean by that is I only speak with transportation professionals because at the end of the day, you guys, I want to talk to the right individuals who have done what you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve, so you can take that information, apply it, utilize it, and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life. Happy Good Friday, everybody. For those of you out there who observe Good Friday and Easter and everything, it's going to be a holiday weekend here. A lot of places are not going to be open today or are definitely closing early for the weekend to try and get out and enjoy that. So get ahead of it, you guys, with your appointments, phone calls for your sales calls and everything else and do all that fun stuff.
(01:25):
But with that being said, you guys, I got my literal favorite segment of the entire month. And it's financial Fridays today, you guys, because at the end of the day, I'm damn near financially illiterate for the most part. And Sean with denim is back to educate us on all of this stuff. So, Sean, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today, man.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Good Friday it is, man. I, I tell you what, it's an extra Good Friday because my Lenten sacrifice, good Catholic boy, good Irish Catholic boy, has been. I've been on the wagon. And so I'm. I'm ready for Easter. I'm ready to rip.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
You're ready to rip? I don't want to ask what you gave up for Lent or anything, because that might be a personal choice.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
No. No drinking. No, I've been sober for my. Yeah. Since. With the exception of St. Patrick's Day. Okay. Like, everybody's got a carve out somewhere, you know.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Dude, congratulations that. Man, 40 days of. Of that is. No. No joke at all.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
I'm not gonna lie. It was very intimidating to start.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
And I think you. You're sober, too, is that right?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Dude, I've been sober for over two years now. So, yeah, it felt.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
It was hard at the beginning, and then it sort of just kind of became part of the rhythm. I don't feel like I've got a good Sober like. Like a good drink, though, like, to go. Everybody goes to the bar. What do you do?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
What do I do when I go to the bar? Yeah, I mean, I. I don't really go to the bar, but, you know, like, when I was at the TIA last week, man, I just walk. Like a soda water and lime. I'll do.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Yeah, I gotta get.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Dude. Or I just walk around with a bottle of water, you know, like, I guess it's like, Sean, I'm kind of to the point where it's like, dude, I'm almost 40. Like, nobody's gonna, like, give me for not having a drink in my hand, you know, like, that's a myth that I think you convince yourself of when you're in your early 20s and stuff like that. But, man, I just reached to give a point of. That is so low. Of other people's opinions of me, where it's like, if you think that you're gonna derail anything that I've done because you want to call me, like, dude, go talk to a wall. You'll get a response way faster than out of me.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
I was gonna. I say something like, I don't know, man. Have you seen what an IPA does to my stomach?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
You're welcome, basically, John, I like abs, all right? I like having abs. My wife likes me having abs. And alcohol in me never had abs. All right? So I'm just gonna put that out there.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, that. Yeah, Hard to disagree with that.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
So, dude, what's that? What's been going on out there, man? You know, I think a good thing for us to really, you know, and we had kind of came to this agreement on this topic, especially with everything that's coming out. I mean, there's never a shortage of technology coming into the transportation space out there, but, you know, the viability and the functionality of a lot of what's out there. Some marketing makes it sound like it's the end all, be all. And then when you get behind and you actually see the infrastructure and the nuts and bolts of it, they're not even, like, integratable with anything, right? Like, having a fully Active API is vastly different than it's on our roadmap. You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Yeah. And so if this is my. Now we've been doing Financial Fridays for a long time, as everyone knows, because I've said this on previous Financial Fridays, I am not a financial planner or anything. I just am. I am not. This, though, is my wheelhouse. This is what I actually do every day as a product idem. So I am like super passionate about helping people on this stuff. And what I would say to people, maybe to start on like just like a. What is. What are integrations? Like, how can they. How can they work for you and your business? It's a super important part of your back office, for one, your overhead structure as manager or like a leader.
(05:05):
And then it's really important for your frontline to be able to spend as much time as possible being able to spend time with clients and customers and carriers and kind of everything in between. And so that's like the sort of business driver for all this is like obvious reduction in data entry, obvious reduction in errors and omissions and I forgot or whatever. But the other thing too is it makes you feel more confident. It just makes you feel like you got your shit together, right? It's like, oh, I just click this, I click that. The stuff all populates. I don't have like staring down the barrel. I'm sure everybody did this, you know, tax season, in case you haven't filed your taxes. Everybody get it together, get an extension in there.
(05:46):
You know, you like staring down the barrel of like a full Saturday of just like assembling all your paperwork for taxes. And you're like, this is gonna suck. Like if there's. If you have integrations in your back office, if things are moving to and from your TMS appropriately, like not staring down the barrel of like 50 data entry tasks on a Saturday to be able to get your capital you need.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Dude, straight up, man. What's the difference? You know a term that I've heard out there here recently, what's the difference between a one way and a two way integration? What does that even mean?
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah, this is, I think an important part of integrations is like, what is your source of truth? Like, what's the one thing that you're gonna believe all the time and just like have that in your mind, like your system of record people call it too. Like whatever kind of term you use, you gotta have something that you really believe in and then use that in your brain as like a hub and spoke to the other tools that you use, right? So like if your TMS is your source of truth, you are going to push things to your QuickBooks, you are going to push things to your factoring company, you are going to push things to whatever, right? And as things get updated in whatever system that is. So like you work with denim, great, nice to have you.
(07:00):
We're running collections for you, we're sending payments for you, we're doing collections for you. And so you need to be able to have that information come back so that your system record your source of truth has like the current information all the time. Right. So this two way integration is being able to send, here's my load. I want you to go factor this denim to like, okay, the payments have been applied to my carrier, okay, the payments have been received to my customer. I can kind of close this load out on my aging. So it's the ability to be able to take like the full round trip, as you like to say, to be able to make sure that works.
(07:33):
Now for some systems like QuickBooks, who's just like a receiver of information, that round trip might be just like an acknowledgment, posted, applied, received, success, you know, whatever. And it just gives you that sense of like security and comfort knowing that you know what your thing worked right. And so you don't have to be worried about whether or not it's, you know, whether or not the information you're getting is being applied correctly. One more thing I'll tell you.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
So as you talk about one way and two, this is like the data direction. There are other kind of parts of how data moves. And so if you're a broker out there and you're evaluating freight tech, or you're a carrier and you're evaluating freight tech, your integration type is really important. So whether it's like batched, where they do it in a group like every hour, we'll take everything and shoot it over, or whether it's real time or near real time where things are just being pinged all the time, bing, bing. So that way you can sort of have a sense for whether or not my system of record is always up to date or whether I need to go to another tab and see who's got like the latest info.
(08:47):
So like as you figure out whether something is one way or two way, I think you should also have a similar kind of mental model for what is real time and what is constantly updating versus what's updated once a day. Everybody knows you go to your bank account, right? They're clearing and posting transactions, like, every few hours. So just, like, have a sense of what. What I'm waiting for versus, like, what's real time and up to date versus, like, what system you're in, and make sure that your integrations basically reflect, you know, whatever. It works for you and works for your business.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
You know, what's funny about, you know, I'm just gonna rip on banks here for a second, how when it's like, right around the time of your closing for your credit card, how, like, normally it takes like, 48 to 72 hours to clear transactions and have them post, but ironically, anything you charge the day of your statement closing gets closed and processed.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Hey, they're able to sneak that right in, aren't they?
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Weird how that works, you know, Otherwise it takes three or four days. But nonetheless, you guys, we're not here to talk about all of that. And frankly, I don't have enough money in the bank for them to even care about my opinion. So, you know, here. Here we are. But, you know, when you. When you're talking about batch versus real time there, how are you guys personally doing that stuff, Sean? And, you know, because it's like, for me, I'm like, you know, kind of psychotic about my money, as most small business owners are. I want to see where my cash flows at, especially when it comes down to, you know, because my. My payments are kind of spread throughout the month, right? Like, it's usually the first, middle. You know, first, 15th and 30th is probably the easiest way to describe it out there.
(10:19):
But, you know, I want to see my. My real time finances and stuff. So kind of, how do you guys attack that, especially for, like, the larger volume companies that are out there?
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Yeah, we are maniacal about this, honestly. And I'm sure that doesn't surprise you at all. At Denim, we maintain something over 20 different integration versions or patterns or whatever so that we can get as much data as we can as quickly as possible and apply it and use it as quickly as possible when it comes to how our money moves and how our money is applied. We were on the show talking about the integrated ledger a couple of months ago, and, like, we do that once a day. We make our batch transactions, and we apply them to our own books once a day. When it comes to how jobs get into denim and how payments get processed, we are. We're the. We're the. We're the Twitter pipe, right?
(11:15):
Like, we're taking in as much as we can as quickly as we can from as many places as we can. And we do that because nobody in trucking is like leading once a day for anything.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Like we need to be able to.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Apply that information as quickly as possible for people. Right? Like we'll get like our, we had like a, a login glitch that like people can log in for like an hour and a half and we got like 17 emails. Like, hey, something wrong? Like, yeah, we're working on it. Like we push some code weren't supposed to. Everything's fine. Give us like another 45 minutes and we'll be in good shape. But like we know how fast freight moves. And I would say to people out there, know which vendors will move at your pace and which won't. I think we all know that like our banks are not moving at the pace that we want to move at. And so just make sure that expectations are aligned there.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
No, I'm right there with you, man. Cause like everything for me, I'd like, I am so insanely focused on efficiencies inside of my organization. How do I shave 5 minutes off of my normal task, 10 minutes off of my normal task to free up more time for revenue producing activities, right? Like I'm reading right now called fanatical prospecting. I think everybody who works in sales should pick it up and read it and it, you know, it helped. You know, talking about batching where, you know, but this is just from like an outbound sales perspective where it's like, yeah, sure, batching your calls, right? So it's like I block out my first hour of my day is first 30 minutes of my day is always updating all of my in transit shipments, pickups and deliveries for the day.
(12:45):
And everything that we got going on the next hour is dialed in for cold calling every single morning. And, and I was averaging, you know, anywhere from 25 on a good day, maybe 30 in an hour is where I was getting from an outbound calls perspective. And after reading this book, it was like, hey, batch your calls. Preload five numbers at a time. Because I always like to have the company's website up when I'm calling them because I like to actually talk to them about their product. Not just, hey, I have a pulse and move freight. You should let me quote. So I'm out there doing it.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Hey, I've got trucks in your area right now, just FYI.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Exactly. Like literally right now, this second. But I started doing that and then in the Book it said, hey, batch your numbers up and then preload five at a time. So I started doing that and dude, it literally shaved no less than 10 minutes off of there to where I can now increase my output. You know, because at the end of the day you guys, not everybody's answering the phone. It's actually very rare to get people to pick up the phone from an unknown number. But it does happen. But again, like I have a, I hit 55 calls a day, every single day, no matter what. And now batching these calls and doing that, boom, it just shaved more time off. So now I'm going to run this for 30 days.
(13:54):
And then after that 30 days, I might be able to increase my call volume in a day where I can start increasing my numbers and you know, again, still working the exact same amount of time in a day. So it's like for me, these are these inefficiencies that I am trying to uncover. Have you guys ever seen that though, in these integrations where, you know, it's actually caused more work because it was not what you guys thought it was going to be.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
We did an integration with our bank and went from a file based integration to a API batching that actually has been really good for us. This was something we used to have to upload. I think people might remember the term called a Nacha file, where you upload this giant file and the bank processes the file. Now we do it API based and we create these payment batches 15 minutes before the bank window cuts off and we just grab all the payments we have. We create a batch and we shoot it over. And that's our routine for every payment window, every single day. And so that has been really helpful for our team because we have credit decisions we need to make. There's tickets, we need to answer, there's whatever.
(14:59):
And so they know that they block on their calendar 30 minutes before the payment window. Make your batch, submit your batch, and that's how we make our payments Everybody day, right? It's just like religion. You've got to make that payment batch. And so that's been really helpful for us as far as how things maybe haven't gone over as well. I, I think let's just like flat file integrations are hard. Like I think they're, they've been around forever but like people shooting CSV files around the Internet, like there are zillions of them being moved every single day. EDI files, I think we don't have to go into that But I think it's another kind of similar high volume file based integration structure.
(15:40):
I think those are really difficult to process because it is hard to get the acknowledgement that a file was received or feedback that what you did worked or was correct. Those tend to be a little bit more tricky. We have built in stuff like auto sending emails. If something doesn't process, if you've got a parentheses in the wrong spot or a comma that isn't formatted correctly, or God forbid a name is, the Freight coach comma, Inc. Thing blows up, the world turns into flames. And so I think there's like some reliability problems that are always like kind of tricky. So like knowing what's under the hood I think is an important part of like how you think about your integrations and like whether or not you have like the reliability and resiliency of what you're looking for.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Dude, I've started hearing the term. I think it's Frankenstack thrown out there.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Oh, that's amazing. I haven't heard that before. I love that.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
What is that? Like, can you break that down?
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Yeah, yeah, I know this is a term. I know exactly what someone's talking about and I've never heard it before.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
The.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Yeah, so the Frankenstein is fantastic. That's a fantastic term. The way that I would describe that is if you have maybe a Google Drive that's shared or maybe you're using teams or maybe whatever and you will glue a bunch of triggers together. If this email hits this inbox, then forward it over to this SAS tool, which then takes it over here and turns the data from a CSV file into a packet and then apply the packet to this SAS tool and then your quote gets answered or something like that.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Right?
Speaker 3 (17:22):
There's like seven little duct tape things. I think we have a huge respect for the Zapier gang. We use a ton of that stuff internally for our own tooling. We don't use a lot. We don't use it very much for production stuff. But for our own internal tooling we do a ton of that low code stuff. It's amazing sitting on a take right now. I'm not ready to. It's not ready, it's not fully baked. But I'm reserving it. I'm squatting on it. The take is the new age, like company operator is going to be always like part salesperson, part people leader, inspirer. And I think it's going to be part like low code vibe, code type person, like somebody who can sew a bunch of these different tools together.
(18:10):
Because if you're trying to like make change happen in a business or you're trying to do something different than how you work now, you need to be able to get your tooling to line up with your people and your process and you need to be able to have the leadership, people skills and the technical chops to be able to do it. Because we're not like Freight Coach LLC does not have a software development team of like 25 people. And I would say that's the same for 99.99% of businesses out there. But the technology is too powerful to just sit on the sidelines. So you've got to be able to figure out a way to make that work for you and your business. And so that's my like, that's my take on in on the new age operator.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Yeah, it's, you know, I mean, obviously I interview a lot of different people for this show and there's a lot of really emerging and good technology that's out there where it's like from an operational efficiency standpoint, you know, because for me, it's like, dude, I'm always like, all right, how do I do more with less? You know, like, how do I increase my outputs in any way I possibly can with less head count and everything that comes along with it. That's not saying I don't want to hire people, but like, at the end of the day, I want to arm my people with the right tech stack to increase their outputs. Because again, I always like to interject, none of my companies will ever have capped commissions.
(19:18):
All of my sales reps will be able to make as much money as they possibly want their desires, right? But you know, I look at a lot of this stuff, man, and then, you know, as somebody who's had their identity stolen in the past and I spent a long time fixing that just to get all that shit removed and stuff like security is the first thing that comes to my mind with everything from a financial standpoint, like your internal processes, all of that shit. So it's like, how does this protecting my data, right? Like, how does this protect my customers data, my carrier's data as a broker, all of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Yeah, I think not only from a data standpoint, but I think it also, if these things run awry, not only can they share data to people they shouldn't supposed to be shared to, but they can also kind of steal your time. And all of a sudden you're not working anymore, you're keeping this duct tape and glue thing, the grease on the wheels, you know, properly applied and all of a sudden all you're doing is fixing shit all the time. So like, I think there's a lot of risk associated with automation. Don't share passwords to people. Like create a separate username and password for automation related stuff to the extent that you can. I think that's like generally good practice because if you reset the password then you know that all your shit is shut off, right?
(20:36):
So like, if you can create little like controls and safeguards like that, I think that's like a really important thing. The other thing is be smart about what you're automating. So like the Frankenstack is like not something you're gonna want to do with driver's licenses or voided checks or whatever. Like be smart about what you're using to automate where. And be careful with like we send invoices through like random stuff all the time because that like there's nothing sensitive in an invoice. Like invoices go everywhere, right? It's got like a total amount due, it's got a due date, it maybe have some codes in it that's not going to mean anything to like 99.9% of the world. So like, we're totally fine using that sort of stuff to be able to create some bespoke solutions for people.
(21:21):
Things are like kind of funny, but I'm not, you know, accepting your banking information without connecting to Plaid or without uploading a voided check to one of our secured kind of image storage. So like I would say be smart about what you're doing, what you're automate. A couple of our clients have come to us and they're like, hey, we don't feel comfortable sending this through here. Can we send it through this particular mechanism instead? We're like, absolutely. Like we would do this all the time if people felt, if people used it. Like a lot of these tools, I think it's hard to navigate, but once you set up the infrastructure, it's, it's all point.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
You know, how are you guys like attacking a, from a cyber perspective here, right? Because it's like I, I feel like, you know, the deep fakes with the rise in AI voices and the accuracy and everything coming with it, man, it's only going to increase the exposure and the risk for financial crimes to increase and everything else. How are you guys really attacking that to ensure that like hey, man, this deep. I mean, dude, you put a deep fake video of me out at one point where people thought it was, you know, you throw in an orange polo in the backwards hat, man, it's. It's amazing what could happen out there.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Identity theft happens to millions of Americans every year. It's not funny, Jim. You know, like, I. Yeah, this is. It's a fucking race, man. It's like a rat race. And we're on the wheel and we're always chasing new stuff. And the reason why we're always chasing new stuff is that there's always new stuff happening, right? And so we are trying to be really smart about this. And our people, we tend to inject people into stuff where we need like an extra control. Like, oh, give us a call, reply from this email. Like, if you kind of give somebody, like, what is a normal request, I think it might throw somebody who's trying to impersonate or somebody who's trying to be able to get. Do something they shouldn't do to, like, think twice about it.
(23:19):
And so injecting people, like, we do samplings on, like, manual samplings on documents in addition to the automated checks that we do manual samplings on payment settings. We require evidence. There's some cool startups out there. I think that there's one in one of our sister kind of companies from Crosslink Capital does Image. It's like an image metadata analysis tool. We haven't used it yet, but we're like thinking about it and basically you feed this SAS tool an image and it's like, oh, yeah, this image was created from this software based in this country from, published on this date. And it gives you a ton of information that's totally invisible to like, any normal person when they're looking at a picture on the Internet.
(24:10):
And so that's like something we're starting to flirt with, is like using some different tools like that to be able to verify authenticity, right? It's as many different ways as we can. Cause, like, the other thing is we tend to have a lot of teeth in factoring. So like, we have like, maybe we don't catch you on this invoice, but we might get the next one. And maybe this is the wrong customer here, but we'll get them on the next page. And so I think just having a lot of hedging is an important part because it's not an if, it's a when on a lot of this stuff. And so we just are always vigilant and we're always like keeping lines of communication open and keeping kind of exposure so that we can, you know, lever it if we need to.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
What can people do to spot a lot of this? Right? Like, I, you know, again, there's a lot of stuff that's coming at a lot of people and there's a lot of solutions that sound phenomenal on paper, but yeah, how can a business owner who maybe doesn't have all the answers to a lot of this stuff stop from getting taken advantage of because a platform is not what they say it is?
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, you're going to love this because I know you live it every day, but like, I think a lot of this stuff happens to people because they don't like, pick up the phone or they don't want to like, talk to a human or they don't want to reach out to human beings to like confirm a piece of information or whatever. And they sort of just pass stuff through. So, like, that's my biggest piece of advice is like, be thoughtful about where you're injecting the human in the loop in this, in all of your processes. Like, your SaaS tools are great, they can be a big help. But like, look at where the domain is on the email. Confirm the phone number, matches the phone number that's on the website. Make sure the website is the real website and it's not.xyz or whatever it is.
(25:57):
So, like, use your sort of awareness and like, have your head on a swivel and combine it with like, yeah, no problem. You hang up, call the number back, hey, is Rob available? Right? It's like, not that complicated. Like, there's some of this stupid, simple stuff out there that people can do is like, it's easy, it sounds silly, but like, taking that maybe that extra step or something doesn't smell quite right. Like, maybe taking a step or two to verify super important and can yield worst case scenario. Hey, yeah, thanks for taking my call. Just wanted to make sure this was the right number for you. I didn't have it written down correctly, so just want to double check. Thanks so much. All right, I'll talk to you soon. It's that easy. Like, it doesn't have to be that complicated.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
No, I'm right there with you, man. And I think, like, if you're out there, like, you should ask for a reference list for anybody. If, like, if I was starting from zero again and like I was coming in and, you know, whether it's a, an attorney or any vendor that you possibly are going to partner with. You should ask for references of the people who, of their current customers who are utilizing their services that they can speak with about that, you know, because at the end of the day, if they don't have any references, that is red flag number one. Like if they're like, oh, you don't need, you know, blah, blah, or you go to our website, there's review, fuck that. All of that stuff can be bought and paid for.
(27:21):
I want to talk to actual real people who are using that stuff. And then another thing I would do, go to social media at the end of the day if they don't provide anything, which that would like. If you can't provide me references, I'm not going to sign to work with you under any circumstances. But say you're a little bit more trusting than I am. Go to their social media, see who's commenting on their posts, engaging on their content, send them a dm. Hey, are you an actual user? I'd love to learn about your experiences. Do anything besides signing on the dotted line without doing your research.
(27:53):
Because at the end of the day, just like with everything, when you are in charge of an organization, whether you own it, CEO leadership, whatever it is, it's on you at the end of the day to do your due diligence for literally any decisions that you are going to make for your company. Because especially when it comes to financial commitments or banking information, do that will. That is the literal, fastest way that you can lose your job. In that instance, think about.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
The value of a full pipeline. Like if you have nothing in your pipeline, it's really easy to say, oh, I'll skip the reference, I'll take this load and bup buh bopa, I'll move on. Or oh, I'll hire this candidate because I don't have any others. And so I don't really feel great about it. Oh, I gotta work with this vendor. Cause I didn't really evaluate any others and I don't have a lot of time. Like in any aspect of. Yeah. Of being a business owner and needing to make a hard decision, having a pipeline makes those decisions. Like you have way more confidence, right? Because you can move at the pace that you want to move at. You can, you can say no to stuff and it's not going to kill you.
(28:52):
Like get a full pipeline in any aspect of whatever decision you're making as a business.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Couldn't agree more. Sean, as always, thank you so much for taking the time, man. I appreciate you. How does anybody reach out to you to find out more about what you guys got going on at Denim, find.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Us@Denim.Com send me a. Send me a LinkedIn invite. Sean Smith on LinkedIn. My full name is not product Sean, contrary to popular belief. So if you find me Sean Smith on LinkedIn, I love I get the Orange Crew Orange shirt gang sends me requests all the time. I appreciate it. Keep it coming.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Hell yeah. I love it, man. Sean, thank you so much for joining as always. You guys, if you got value in what you heard, which you better have after this one, you guys, and you're not subscribed, subscribe to the show. You guys, if you're feeling really ambitious as well, rank the show on itunes and Spotify. Because if you saw value, that's how your network's going to see value as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
Happy Good Friday.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Happy Good Friday.
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