April 23, 2025 • 36 mins
Dive into this episode with FreighCaviar and Shipper CRM’s founders, Paul-Bernard Jaroslawski and Krystian Gebis, with their solution for the industry’s pain points, such as fragmented data and outdated contacts!
Paul and Krystian highlight how Shipper CRM can help centralize and update shipper info, manage prospects, maximize opportunities, and more of the platform’s incredible features!
About Paul-Bernard Jaroslawski and Krystian Gebis
Paul-Bernard Jaroslawski is a Chicago native who began his career in logistics after graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2015. In 2017, he moved to Kyiv, Ukraine, to launch and manage an outsourced freight brokerage operation for Everest Transportation System, growing the team from 4 to nearly 100 employees.
In 2020, Paul founded FreightCaviar, a media platform that connects freight brokers, dispatchers, and truck drivers through memes, podcasts, and a daily newsletter focused on the logistics industry. In October 2022, he co-founded ShipperCRM with Krystian Gebis—a purpose-built sales tool that helps freight brokers prospect shippers, build relationships, and grow revenue. Krystian later joined FreightCaviar as a co-founder.
Krystian is the co-founder of FreightCaviar and ShipperCRM. Krystian was also previously the co-founder of Autobon.ai, a self-driving truck startup he started in Chicago after dropping out of school while studying robotics and AI.
Connect with Paul and Krystian
- Website: https://www.shippercrm.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/freightcaviar/ / https://www.linkedin.com/in/krystiangebis/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freightcaviar/ / https://www.instagram.com/krystiangebis/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
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 getting to the bag hey Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when the blame moving fast hey Let them all cross if they hate then let them made them make a bigger balls.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hey what is up ladies and gentlemen? We are back.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
We are live.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It is the 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 into what you can do with all of this information. If 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. 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 Wednesday, everybody.
(01:06):
I got a couple of very special guests. I'm going to bring him up here in a second. I know we're running a little bit late, but like I said, you guys, this is a real world. Shit doesn't go according to plan. We make things happen, but we're live and we're going to break some things down. Quick reminder, though, the weekly newsletter did drop this morning. All right, so if you want to sign up for that, go to the freightcoach.com it will auto prompt you to register. I don't auto sign anybody up for any of that stuff. Frankly, I just don't know how to do any of that stuff. So your data is always safe with me if I have your contact information because I am not tech savvy at all.
(01:39):
But I would love if you guys want to check it out, we just talk industry on there, you guys. Again, I'm not trying to be a life coach. I know a little bit about freight and that's where I like to stay in my lane. But today, you guys, we're going to be talking data, we're going to be talking shipper information, all of that stuff. CRMs, how do you track it? And I got a couple of my good friends on the show to break this down. You guys are. You guys know who Paul is. And we got Christian on the show as well with Shipper CRM, fellas. Thank you so much for joining me here today.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
For having us, Chris.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
No, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
It's been a while. I was on the episode, I think 113 of the freight Coach, and now you're at, like, over a thousand, so.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah, dude, you guys are officially 1182.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
There we go.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Cranking them up.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, man, it's. Yeah, dude, I like Paul. I remember the first time when we connected back in the day when you were just starting Freight Caviar out and everything, and, you know, it's wild, like, just kind of where everything has gone. We were talking about this in San Antonio too, man, where it's just like, it's just nuts to. To see where growth happens when you just, like, literally commit to it and build it up. And I mean, dude, you guys have built, you know, a phenomenal thing with Freight Caviar and now with Shipper CRM. I'm excited to break this down and. And learn more about it because, you know, from. From my perspective, tracking your shipper data is. I mean, it's something that I've definitely not been the most efficient with, right? Like bootstrapping my companies.
(03:09):
I understand the need to, you know, operate inside of our budget, and we' kind of stuck with spreadsheets and stuff like that for tracking our shipper data. But what I've started to see is the more and more people we reach out to and speak with, the higher the likelihood of things falling between the cracks that start to happen. And that's one thing that I know. If I'm experiencing this, other people are definitely experiencing this as well. So, like, what was the. What was the driving force behind creating Shipper CRM?
Speaker 4 (03:38):
That's a good question. Well, I'll start it here and then, Christian, you could take it. Take it away. So basically, like, this was August 2022. I had, like, a post on Twitter that, like, got like, over 20 likes, which was back then, like, didn't happen at all, you know, And I was looking at the people who liked it, and I saw Kissan Gebis liked it. And right away I knew that was a Polish name. And I go on his profile, and his profile says, CEO and founder of Autobond AI. And he was in the logistics industry on the trucking side. And Christian could talk a little bit about that, but I reached out to him because I was like, oh, we could get him on the Freight Caviar podcast and I could just network with him.
(04:18):
So I reached out to Christian to see if he'd Be up for a call, just a kind of an intro call to get to know each other. And on the call he told me about like, he closed on Autobahn, that AI and he's actually working on this new like shipping scheduling tool that he's been working on for a little bit of time. And he, you know, he was thinking that maybe like, because I have kind of like the marketing side and like the logistics experience of being a freight broker that I could kind of partner with him and, you know, we could, you know, together build it up. And so immediately like when were talking, I was like, you know, Chris, we got to talk to my mentor, Tim Hyam from Ascent tms, who's like one of our first sponsors.
(04:55):
And Tim knows a lot about this industry. He's sold the freight brokerage. He's. He sold another like, fintech company back in the day. And so we got in the call with Tim and Tim's like, you know, telling us basically like that this, you know, shipping scheduling tool will be difficult because. Well, yeah, so basically, so like Open Dot got acquired by Low Smart. I don't think they were profitable, but they got acquired. And then like for Kites has a scheduling tool, a free scheduling tool already available. And he's like, it'll be difficult to sell into shippers. You know, it's difficult to sell into them. And etc, he was like, if I were like, and I, and were like, what would you do in our shoes? Like, what would you build? He was like, everyone, every single one of my customers needs the CRM.
(05:41):
And at that point, like, Christian was like, well, he was kind of interested, but he wasn't in. Like, I don't think he wanted to build a CRM because like in Silicon Valley building now, it's not like the thing to do. But he was like, Paul, if you could post it on your Instagram stories and see if there's any interest if people actually give us their emails. And we posted two Instagram stories and we got 200 emails of people that would be interested in this product if we build it up. And right away K starts building it. And within a month we have four paying customers. And Tim sees this and Tim's like, I want to invest in you guys.
(06:18):
Because it was like a month after he gave us the idea and then Khustan built on that, on the fact that like it was a CRM. That's what we call the shipper CRM. But like Kusan, at the end of the day it was like, what do brokers really want, they need, they want leads. And so that's when he started building the magic map and the whole data side of things. And Khusan could get into that, but that's kind of like the origin story and it was, that's how it came together.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah dude, let's dive into that a little bit man. Because you're right dude, CRMs are great. But like lead generation tools are where everybody like needs to start right at the end of the day. Like I mean for me, yes, you can get away with utilizing Google and depending on how big you want to go after it, maybe lead generation isn't your thing. But like I feel like a lot of people over underestimate, excuse me, how much opportunity is in their backyard. Right? Like literally inside of the metro that they live in or within a 50 mile radius of the city that they live in. Granted, unless you live in like rural Kansas in the middle, there might not be a lot out there, but most people are close to major metropolitan areas.
(07:23):
And I think people highly underestimate how much opportunity is literally a 15 to a 20 minute drive away from their house.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
So one of the things you know, Paul was doing pretty frequently, I was doing as well too was like were to that point looking locally like where shippers were around our area or specifically maybe even more so like in my case like where I had a customer in New Jersey, like where houses around that area were and.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Give them the, give it a background story of why you were looking for shippers because I think that's important behind that.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Oh yeah. So as Paul mentioned prior to kind of him reaching out, my first startup was a self driving truck startup. So we had two trucks, a Kenworth T700 2012, biggest pile of garbage you could probably ever buy. And then we had a second one which was a 2020 Peterbilt, which was much easier to work with but we basically would. We attached a bunch of electric steering motors to the steering wheel. Brake pressure like sorry, air chamber controllers for air like braking and then throttle acceleration. So this truck basically had a bunch of sensors on it or two trucks and they were driving around Chicago. You could press a button kind of very similar to Tesla Autopilot. And it was working, you know, pretty well. We had raised about like $3 million for it.
(08:47):
But effectively throughout that process, like you know, just to kind of try to break even on these trucks, I was hauling freight with them and we had a driver. I also happened to get my CDL during that process. But one of the Customers we had was. That's a whole nother story, but how I got that cdl. But one of the stories, yeah, so I actually got my CDL in four weeks. I'll keep that part short. So as usually it takes a lot longer, but to break even on these trucks, like, you know, while we're testing, we kind of just started looking for freight to haul.
(09:17):
And one of the shippers that we found most actually through the mayor of a city in suburbs here called Rolling Meadows, he previously used to work at this three plus that was installing Siemens machines, MRI scanners and CT scanners. And one of those deliveries was oftentimes to New Jersey. We'd pick it up in Elk Grove village, right by O'Hare. It's a big machine. We'd put it into our semi and we'd take it to New Jersey. And then one of the things I was looking for was what other customers can I find that I can have as direct customers that would give me a backhaul back to Chicago. And that was the first experience that I had.
(09:55):
It wasn't even obviously thinking about ship or serum at the time, but having that insight and the foresight as to how much time it took to a, look around and try to find those facilities and then B, compile kind of like a company file for myself, whether that was in spreadsheets or whether that was in whatever software. And it took a lot of time. It took on average, two to three hours per company. Because you kind of want to educate yourself as much as possible around what, like, where is their supply chain. So you, when you reach out to somebody, you actually know what their company's about. Right. And so that was really a big insight as to when we started Shipper CRM, one of the first. We should probably make some merch that has the like three magic words.
(10:37):
And it's just like, how find shipper. Because Paul and I would literally get DM'd on LinkedIn or whatever those three words, like, so often that, I don't know, I feel like we should make.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
We had a couple of those. I have some screenshots of some forward dispatchers wanting to work directly with shippers.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
And like, we kind of make a joke about it. But like, at the end of the day, what we realized pretty quickly was like, you know, CRM's great and all, like, people obviously do need that. But really what they were after was like, nobody even knew what, like they didn't have data to bring into the system. Right. And very quickly we kind of realized, okay, well, everybody's using all these generic tools that are out there. Everybody pretty much has like access to the same ones, but they all cherry pick that information and they all silo it into their own like databases. Whether it's, whether that's a spreadsheet or whether that's like HubSpot or zoom info, right?
(11:30):
And to take that one step further, we started realizing really quickly and also from our personal experience which was like we'd enter this information into a spreadsheet or HubSpot or wherever, right? We'd set our reminders, we reach out to the shipper, they're like, all right, reach out to me in six months now you come back in six months, that reminder goes off and then you have no idea whether that person's actually still at the company. And so you spend a ton of time trying to figure out like what's going on, Are they not reaching out to me? Because whatever.
(11:59):
And so all of that, basically as time went on we started realizing like that just this should just all be baked into natively like how what shipper CRM is, it's a platform for you to look up any shipper in the United States supply chain. And then we provide tools for you to be able to do kind of manage your relationships, like set your reminders, set your interactions, your emails. But while having that foresight and insight of like what is changing about the company, which employees are leaving, which locations have closed down, which locations have opened up and that building on top of a database that actually is living and breathing is, you know, it's a huge time efficiency unlock effectively.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
So dude, I'm like salivating here because like you are literally speaking to my soul on a lot of things here, man. Because like for me, you're right. The amount of times where it's like, you know, we, we utilized a lead generation software tool, we, you know, it all went into a spreadsheet and everything and like our follow ups and everything were happening. But like the amount of times we have and I, and you generally saw, see this, excuse me, the end of a year and the beginning of a new year where it's like, hey, so and so is no longer here. And then it's like the sales cycle starts all over again. Nothing is more frustrating because it's like I'm a big cold call guy.
(13:16):
I, I won't get away from cold calling because I feel like it is the most efficient way to generate business inside of transportation. Cold calling, site visits. That's it. I've tried email. Don't DM me for the every time I say this, I always get 70 dms. Hey man, you should really try email and social selling. But anyways, that's a conversation for another day. But everything you're bringing up here, man, is the mo. The biggest time suck of my day, every single day. And it's like I just want that list of people. And then especially like when I update a note inside of there, like, hey, so and so said call them back on February 10, for example, that it would be awesome.
(13:54):
And you guys might have this integrated into my Google Calendar or my G Suites where it says, hey, so and so this is an event and it just automatically creates an event. So that day when I come in, I have my first warm, cold calls. I call them, set up and ready to rock for me so I can come in and make sure I'm staying on top of that stuff. Because I've just personally found where that's an area of improvement of my internal process where it's like, my notes are great, I keep up to date everything. I'm reaching out to people. If I'm on that page inside of my Google document that says to reach out to that person this day and it's like, dude, you got to stay in front of people no matter what.
(14:32):
And I feel like that's one thing that people miss. And then inevitably people start to feel like, oh, they told me to call them last month, I'm not going to call them because then they, you know, they're just going to be pissed. And it's like, nah, they're probably not going to remember you. But yeah, that's kind of a negative look on you. And at least for me personally, that is a negative look. If you tell somebody, well, all right, cool. So I can call you in February. Like, yeah, call me in February. And then you don't. I mean, I think like, it's just a, a knock on your abilities, in my opinion.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Totally not keeping your word.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah, no, and that's exactly it. So from like an, like, how. How does the integrations work with what you guys are? Are you guys already with tmss? Are you guys integrated with like Outlook and G Suites and all of that stuff?
Speaker 3 (15:16):
So we have one main integration at the moment it's HubSpot, which is the mid. Like I would say that's the one that kind of covers a lot of our customer base. A lot of people that are signed up for shipper CRM are former HubSpot people or current HubSpot people. And the main reason why we prioritized that integration was we, there's a lot of things that HubSpot bells and a lot of bells and whistles that HubSpot has that we don't yet have, mainly like things like sequencing or email integration, call integration, calendar integration, stuff like this. So we thought it would be a pretty good bang for the buck where you can use shipper CRM as a lead gen system.
(15:57):
And if our CRM features aren't yet up to par with what you need as a more sophisticated organization, then you can just sync your favorites, favorite companies, contacts over to your HubSpot account and that information, you can resync it multiple times. And there's some limitations with that HubSpot API because we don't have full control over HubSpot. But obviously we do our best to try to keep those records in your HubSpot up to date for, you know, when and if possible. So that's the one integration that we have right now. And you know, we're small teams so we have to pick and choose really where to point our focus at the moment. And one of those main things that we, you know, really focus a lot on is just working on the infrastructure to make sure that information stays, you know, validated up to date.
(16:49):
We're getting people, which is another thing we can kind of talk about here, which is like the logistics employees at these particular shippers, these companies, which is really cool because we now can rank and we predict which of those employees, those logistics employees, are more likely to be the decision maker. That, that's another little time saver maybe. Well, it depends on how you look at it. But it's pretty cool to be able to see like at the top of that list. It's like, you know, you'll see a transportation manager if they're, if that's actually an employee job at that company.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
And then over time, sorry, down the list you'll see they become less relevant.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
But no, and that's exactly it. Right. And I feel like there's also, you know, another thing too is how many times out there I know I've came in contact with this exact problem with lead generation software in the past is you reach out to this individual and they're like, dude, I'm not even the transportation manager anymore. I'm in a different department now. Click and you're like, fuck. And it's like again, it's back to square one with it because you know, again, people change jobs, they change titles, there's a new decision maker that's being brought in. There's a bunch of stuff out there that changes, right? So it's like you need to be on top of that and do that. Like that's a phenomenal tool right there. Like that right there. If you believe in God.
(18:05):
Like I believe in building my relationships up from the ground up. I love befriending the gatekeeper. I try and, you know, make sure that they remember me every time I call and then work my way up the totem pole. But there are people who love to just go straight to the decision maker. So it's like to be able to save those steps like that's a massive time save. How are like, what about with your guys's clients? If they're operating, say Chris Jolly is operating off of spreadsheets in Google Documents. How do I transfer all of my current data into Shipper CRM? Because I'm not a complex guy. I love simplicity and the way that I operate, I'm not attached to anything. So how would I go with all of my current data to upload it into Shipper CRM?
Speaker 3 (18:48):
So we're working on a way for you to just drag and drop your spreadsheet into Shippers into Shipper CRM that as that simple. Like just drag the file into Shipper CRM and we will basically create a. Well, if we have the company file already for a company, we'll just add it to your account and then once it's added to your account, you basically get all the updates for that company. We're not sure yet when that will be ready because it's a little bit like cumbersome. Mainly if you for example, have in your spreadsheet, if you don't have like the URL for the specific company, it's sometimes difficult to match a specific company to the one that you really want because there will be now that we've gone through this and like actually have a lot of data.
(19:40):
There are so many companies that have similar names, almost identical names, but one is a C corp, one is an llc, one is a, I don't know, like a limited partnership or something like this. But they all have like the same base name. Right? Obviously the way to delineate between those is via website. And of course there's going to be one offs here and there that, you know, some small company that might not have a website, but I'm not sure how much business they will have. You know, they'll be doing if they don't have a website to begin with.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
So yeah, that you know, because like I'm, you know, when I'm going out there and trying to develop business, like I'm not going after enterprise level shippers, right? And it's not anything other than the fact that like the sales cycle is too long. Like I mean you guys understand this because you guys own a real company. I need revenue, right? Like I can't wait three years if you know, because like I'm just not going to make it in business. I need revenue to pay my bills and everything. So it's like I go after the small to mid sized market. I've. And I do that because they have a shorter sales cycle associated with it. There's less touches to the decision maker that comes along with it if they're publicly traded. Like I'm not even calling them, right?
(20:50):
Like I want nothing to do with that at this moment. Just because it's just not inside of where I can turn on revenue in like a 60 or a 90 day sales cycle. And that's where I need to look where it's like ideally 30 days would be phenomenal. 60 to 90 days is pretty average out there from a conversion data point for us and having that ability, you know. But again there is that one where it's like hey, they're on their. Because like this is where people, if you're actually prospecting shippers, you've gone to a company's website and you're like damn, these guys look legit. And then you call them, they're like dude, we have one parcel shipment that we send out, right? Like we manufacture the gas ltl dude, it's just, it's something like that, right?
(21:34):
So being able to go inside and like find somebody and the probability meter of like hey, these guys are going to have full truckload. They're going to be open deck. That's a massive, massive time save, you know. Cause like that's all I do. I only do open deck freight, right? Like 99% of our business is open deck. And that's where I'm going to stay. I want to know who I'm going after. Because you're like it does change the entire conversation. Like I don't even want to call somebody that's going to be 90% LTL or 80% LTL. That's just not worth my time. I need to find that customer that's got 5 to 50 weekly full truckload shipments inside a flatbed where I can go and just hammer them.
(22:15):
I hammer them as, you know, just a statement just to get in front of them as much as I possibly can. And then I know that the likelihood that they fit inside of my ideal customer profile is where I want to sit. So that right there, I don't know of any other tool out there on the market that has what you guys have. All right, I would want to put that out there to my audience. I've done the research on CRMs, you guys. I've done the research on lead generation software. They're either ridiculously expensive or they are nothing what they are advertised as and or they're overly complex to operate. Like I said, I stay in the Google and Excel realm because it's easy for me to operate and do my business in.
(22:57):
But there are limitations that come along with this and I feel like this is also a major barrier why people don't want to prospect. Like let's remove all of the rejection aside from prospecting. It's how do I even become organized, how? And then to make sure I'm reaching out to the right people, but then how do I stay on top of it? How do I build a system around that to make sure that hey, I'm following up with the right people at the right moments.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
Yeah. Appreciate that though, Chris, what you said and I think you're right and props to Christian because Christian is the one who was thinking about it in that way where we have a database of leads and our goal is to have every single shipper and manufacturer in shipper CRM and then having a CRM tool. And the CRM tool right now, like Christian mentioned doesn't have all the bells and whistles that HubSpot does. Christian knows more of the time, I guess when we'll be releasing more features. But overall like we've been able to, we have over 150 customers and that's because like people go and they look at it. It's simple to use, it's intuitive. They look at the database of the magic map and they're able to scroll on the US they could go into like their backyard just like you said.
(24:16):
And I love that you mentioned that because we interviewed Tim Heim like a year or two ago and that's what he was talking about. It's like literally like just go like in the 50 mile radius of where you live and go knock on doors, you know, call those people up and build relationships with them because that's the easiest way to actually build a relationship if you're next door. You could, you know, sit down with them and break bread. So. But yeah, thank you, Chris, for that. And I think you're right. And our customers see that. That as well. And we've also partnered with Journey recently where we have sales training inside of Shipper CRM. So if you're a customer of Shipper CRM, you actually have the Journey sales training course inside. Inside of the app. So you can learn actual, like, sales tips from.
(24:57):
From the Journeys course, which was founded by Will Jenkins. Will Jenkins. So.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
No, dude. And that's, you know, when I was consulting and it was really just doing sales training, at the end of the day, that's what it was. Everybody's like, dude, how do I find shippers? Right? Like, I was chuckling at your DMs about that because, like, I have been asked that literally more than anything over the years that I've been doing this show is how do I find shippers, how do I sell, how do I cold call? And it is those basic fundamentals that are out there that I feel like at the end of the day, like, you need to focus on that. You need to stay on that. Because from my perspective, it is. It's the only thing that matters, right? More people need to focus on developing and generating revenue than worrying about all these hypotheticals.
(25:47):
And, you know, like, I'll just bring up tariffs right now. The amount of people posting about tariffs right now is nauseating because I, like, as a competitor, I'm going to fucking steamroll you because I'm not stopping reaching out to people. The more uncertainty that's out there in the world, I dig in deeper and I just continue to push forward with it. I don't care about tariffs, I don't care about port congestion. I don't care about any of that stuff. Not that it's irrelevant, it's just I can't use any of that to stop me from developing business because if there is anything that is certain in freight, somebody out there is dropping the ball somewhere. As a sales rep, it is your job to find that prospect and that customer and position yourself where they think of you first.
(26:30):
But I see this time and time again, so many people are so apprehensive to even sell because all the market's this, there's tariffs that there.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
It.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
There's always going to be something. You are just lazy and you are finding a reason to not want to do your job.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Sorry.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
I get really fine.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
I love that energy. No, I love that I got goosebumps listening I love that energy. And you're right, I mean, especially for like a smaller guys, like there's so many opportunities in the market because like the big guys are dropping the ball or just other companies are dropping the ball. And, and I think like what you said is 100 correct. Like we have to like, or at least if you're a regular broker, like there are so many opportunities in the market, no matter what kind of conditions there are.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
So I appreciate that. One of the things that we're trying to do to that topic about, you know, helping you find those opportunities is tailor the tool with really good filtering. So you were mentioning you don't want to go after the enterprise shippers. Great. You can go in and select one of the revenue filters to say 0 to 50 million in revenue. 150, 100 or less than 100 million in revenue. And we can also choose commodities too. In addition to just naturally going to your backyard, you zoom in on the map and you just see all the dots on the map of warehouses that we have discovered in our research process.
(27:50):
And when you really think about what the tool actually ends up doing by being built in the way that we built it is that it, in my view, will require you to have far fewer leads that you basically need to spend your time on.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
Right?
Speaker 3 (28:10):
Like the main thing in sales is consistency, right? Following up with people. And if you're not following up with people, but you're just expanding your funnel endlessly and just trying to see what sticks and what hits the, you know, what hits the wall. That, that would be a losing strategy. A winning strategy is go and figure out which ones, which prospects you have the best chance with and the best angle to approach with. Because they themselves, right? Like they're, they are looking for capacity all the time, whether that's brokers or whether that's trucking companies. They, you know, some shippers have 10 to 15 brokers that they work with. And at different times, you know, somebody else might fall through and you might come in because you have maybe strong capacity to offer in the lanes that they need, right.
(28:59):
Or you have domain expertise in a certain vertical that they make products for. Those, those things make you stick out. And I think in general it just makes you more resource efficient by using a tool like ours. Obviously I'm biased in saying that, but generally speaking, that's the intent behind how we're building it.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
I love it. Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
If I may, I have a quick question for you. I Don't want to interrupt you though. This is going to be kind of different subject.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Yeah, no, by all means, shoot.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
I want to. What's your tech stack right now? Because I know you got denim, right? But I'm wondering like what is, what is the freight coach tech stack?
Speaker 2 (29:35):
So what we use is I use Revenova for my tms out there. I utilize green screens obviously for rates and that's the cool thing about creating content, you guys is like my advertisers, I actually use their. Right. And then I'm on top of that. We utilize, you know, the main load boards. Right. DAT and Truck Stop. But you know, for the most part though, our whole thing with that is like once we develop capacity on specific lanes, like we don't load boards, our second outreach, right when our carriers aren't there, then we'll do that. But you know that's kind of as complex as I keep it and you know, for me it's like I have yet to find any of my prospects out there who need a in depth tech stack at all. Right. Like my busiest shippers out there still operate via email.
(30:23):
That's all they need. That's all that they're going to do. They don't need anything more than that. Do we have EDI capabilities? Yes, I have EDI API. I have all of those capabilities at my disposal in the event that I need them. But I find it there is a lot less of shippers out there that actually require any of that stuff than not sure.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Especially with the small mid sized companies that you're reaching out to for sure.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Obviously enterprise shippers, yes, 100%. They're going to require way more. Shit.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Yeah. And like, I mean you're talking about that earlier and it's like also like you reach out these enterprise shippers, the sales cycle's incredibly long and then like you're also, it's a volume play where like the margins are also super thin.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Right.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
And like you're only really profitable when you take a lot of loads at like very little margin. So you need the capacity to be able to handle all that. So yeah, I mean I, I think you're, you have the right approach and it's cool to see you do this, you know, like kind of like building in real life or building and like with an audience online and I think that's really cool.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
You know, for me it's like I, you know, I obviously I listen to a lot of like entrepreneurs out there, you know, their podcasts and stuff. Some very highly successful people. And I saw them all say the same thing. They wish they would have documented from day one what was happening and like what it actually took, right? Because like everybody, you know, I mean, sure shit, Paul, you probably see this now where everybody's like, oh, Paul, it must be, let's be nice Freight caviar. Look at your team. Look at you. Dude, I remember when you started that in your bedroom essentially six, seven years ago, right?
Speaker 4 (31:58):
Like, I remember making no money for two years.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, I remember you. Your first post was like in the, it was like an Uber or something coming back from the gym. Like I remember you talking about that stuff, right? So it's like, it's easy for people to see the results after the work's been done. And I'm like, dude, I have such a unique opportunity where I can document from day one, $1. And I essentially did it in both of my companies, right? Like the Freight Coach Media stuff that's been documented since day one and now Freight Coach Logistics, that's also documented from day one.
(32:31):
And it's like I'm putting all of this stuff out there and I feel like as somebody who has a, you know, call a following or whatever the fuck you want to call it's my duty to talk to multiple different companies that are out there because people need to know what is at their disposal. Not everybody has thousands of dollars to spend to go to a trade show, to walk around on a floor, to see what's out there. So it's like I want to continue to do that, but I also want to be able to show the fundamentals of like, hey guys, this is what it took to get us to $10 million a year in revenue.
(33:03):
I'm gonna document all of that stuff out there because there's the next generation of people who are going to come up and if there's anything that they can learn from my fuck ups along the way to help them become better earlier, dude, that's what it's all about for me.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
I appreciate that and thank you so much for having us on the show. And it's great to see you and where you're taking everything and just awesome to like reconnect here and after being on number 113 on the Freight Coach podcast.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
So we'll make sure it doesn't take another thousand episodes for you to come back on.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Yeah, let us know.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
We got to get you back on the freight Caviar podcast because I'd love to learn more about what you've been building on the logistics side.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Dude, whenever, man, I'd love to, but. Hey, fellas, how does anybody reach out to you guys to find out more about what you guys got going on?
Speaker 3 (33:54):
So you can go to shippercrm.com you can check out our website. There have a landing page obviously with all the information. If you want to sign up for shipper CRM, you go to shippers here.com you have to submit an application. We actually run a vetting process on every customer that wants to purchase access, basically to make sure that nobody's has a fraudulent background. Scammers, double brokers, stuff like this.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
Because there's a lot of scammers that want to get in. Yeah, there is.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
So, so we run that. It's fairly quick. We'll, we'll turn that around pretty quickly. And then you can reach out to Paul OR I on LinkedIn X or Instagram. Follow us on free Caviar Social Shipper CRM as well too. And yeah, we'll always reach back out.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Perfect, fellas. I appreciate it. That's going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen, as always, if you got value in what you heard, which you better have after this one, subscribe to the show. If you're not subscribed, if you really ambitious, which you should be, rank the show on itunes and Spotify you guys, because that's how your network's going to see value. Because if you saw it, chances are they're going to see it as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Thanks, Chris.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
We just ended stream. We have no.
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 getting to the bag hey Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when the blame moving fast hey Let them all cross if they hate then let them made them make a bigger balls.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hey what is up ladies and gentlemen? We are back.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
We are live.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It is the 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 into what you can do with all of this information. If 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. 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 Wednesday, everybody.
(01:06):
I got a couple of very special guests. I'm going to bring him up here in a second. I know we're running a little bit late, but like I said, you guys, this is a real world. Shit doesn't go according to plan. We make things happen, but we're live and we're going to break some things down. Quick reminder, though, the weekly newsletter did drop this morning. All right, so if you want to sign up for that, go to the freightcoach.com it will auto prompt you to register. I don't auto sign anybody up for any of that stuff. Frankly, I just don't know how to do any of that stuff. So your data is always safe with me if I have your contact information because I am not tech savvy at all.
(01:39):
But I would love if you guys want to check it out, we just talk industry on there, you guys. Again, I'm not trying to be a life coach. I know a little bit about freight and that's where I like to stay in my lane. But today, you guys, we're going to be talking data, we're going to be talking shipper information, all of that stuff. CRMs, how do you track it? And I got a couple of my good friends on the show to break this down. You guys are. You guys know who Paul is. And we got Christian on the show as well with Shipper CRM, fellas. Thank you so much for joining me here today.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
For having us, Chris.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
No, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
It's been a while. I was on the episode, I think 113 of the freight Coach, and now you're at, like, over a thousand, so.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah, dude, you guys are officially 1182.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
There we go.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Cranking them up.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, man, it's. Yeah, dude, I like Paul. I remember the first time when we connected back in the day when you were just starting Freight Caviar out and everything, and, you know, it's wild, like, just kind of where everything has gone. We were talking about this in San Antonio too, man, where it's just like, it's just nuts to. To see where growth happens when you just, like, literally commit to it and build it up. And I mean, dude, you guys have built, you know, a phenomenal thing with Freight Caviar and now with Shipper CRM. I'm excited to break this down and. And learn more about it because, you know, from. From my perspective, tracking your shipper data is. I mean, it's something that I've definitely not been the most efficient with, right? Like bootstrapping my companies.
(03:09):
I understand the need to, you know, operate inside of our budget, and we' kind of stuck with spreadsheets and stuff like that for tracking our shipper data. But what I've started to see is the more and more people we reach out to and speak with, the higher the likelihood of things falling between the cracks that start to happen. And that's one thing that I know. If I'm experiencing this, other people are definitely experiencing this as well. So, like, what was the. What was the driving force behind creating Shipper CRM?
Speaker 4 (03:38):
That's a good question. Well, I'll start it here and then, Christian, you could take it. Take it away. So basically, like, this was August 2022. I had, like, a post on Twitter that, like, got like, over 20 likes, which was back then, like, didn't happen at all, you know, And I was looking at the people who liked it, and I saw Kissan Gebis liked it. And right away I knew that was a Polish name. And I go on his profile, and his profile says, CEO and founder of Autobond AI. And he was in the logistics industry on the trucking side. And Christian could talk a little bit about that, but I reached out to him because I was like, oh, we could get him on the Freight Caviar podcast and I could just network with him.
(04:18):
So I reached out to Christian to see if he'd Be up for a call, just a kind of an intro call to get to know each other. And on the call he told me about like, he closed on Autobahn, that AI and he's actually working on this new like shipping scheduling tool that he's been working on for a little bit of time. And he, you know, he was thinking that maybe like, because I have kind of like the marketing side and like the logistics experience of being a freight broker that I could kind of partner with him and, you know, we could, you know, together build it up. And so immediately like when were talking, I was like, you know, Chris, we got to talk to my mentor, Tim Hyam from Ascent tms, who's like one of our first sponsors.
(04:55):
And Tim knows a lot about this industry. He's sold the freight brokerage. He's. He sold another like, fintech company back in the day. And so we got in the call with Tim and Tim's like, you know, telling us basically like that this, you know, shipping scheduling tool will be difficult because. Well, yeah, so basically, so like Open Dot got acquired by Low Smart. I don't think they were profitable, but they got acquired. And then like for Kites has a scheduling tool, a free scheduling tool already available. And he's like, it'll be difficult to sell into shippers. You know, it's difficult to sell into them. And etc, he was like, if I were like, and I, and were like, what would you do in our shoes? Like, what would you build? He was like, everyone, every single one of my customers needs the CRM.
(05:41):
And at that point, like, Christian was like, well, he was kind of interested, but he wasn't in. Like, I don't think he wanted to build a CRM because like in Silicon Valley building now, it's not like the thing to do. But he was like, Paul, if you could post it on your Instagram stories and see if there's any interest if people actually give us their emails. And we posted two Instagram stories and we got 200 emails of people that would be interested in this product if we build it up. And right away K starts building it. And within a month we have four paying customers. And Tim sees this and Tim's like, I want to invest in you guys.
(06:18):
Because it was like a month after he gave us the idea and then Khustan built on that, on the fact that like it was a CRM. That's what we call the shipper CRM. But like Kusan, at the end of the day it was like, what do brokers really want, they need, they want leads. And so that's when he started building the magic map and the whole data side of things. And Khusan could get into that, but that's kind of like the origin story and it was, that's how it came together.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah dude, let's dive into that a little bit man. Because you're right dude, CRMs are great. But like lead generation tools are where everybody like needs to start right at the end of the day. Like I mean for me, yes, you can get away with utilizing Google and depending on how big you want to go after it, maybe lead generation isn't your thing. But like I feel like a lot of people over underestimate, excuse me, how much opportunity is in their backyard. Right? Like literally inside of the metro that they live in or within a 50 mile radius of the city that they live in. Granted, unless you live in like rural Kansas in the middle, there might not be a lot out there, but most people are close to major metropolitan areas.
(07:23):
And I think people highly underestimate how much opportunity is literally a 15 to a 20 minute drive away from their house.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
So one of the things you know, Paul was doing pretty frequently, I was doing as well too was like were to that point looking locally like where shippers were around our area or specifically maybe even more so like in my case like where I had a customer in New Jersey, like where houses around that area were and.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Give them the, give it a background story of why you were looking for shippers because I think that's important behind that.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Oh yeah. So as Paul mentioned prior to kind of him reaching out, my first startup was a self driving truck startup. So we had two trucks, a Kenworth T700 2012, biggest pile of garbage you could probably ever buy. And then we had a second one which was a 2020 Peterbilt, which was much easier to work with but we basically would. We attached a bunch of electric steering motors to the steering wheel. Brake pressure like sorry, air chamber controllers for air like braking and then throttle acceleration. So this truck basically had a bunch of sensors on it or two trucks and they were driving around Chicago. You could press a button kind of very similar to Tesla Autopilot. And it was working, you know, pretty well. We had raised about like $3 million for it.
(08:47):
But effectively throughout that process, like you know, just to kind of try to break even on these trucks, I was hauling freight with them and we had a driver. I also happened to get my CDL during that process. But one of the Customers we had was. That's a whole nother story, but how I got that cdl. But one of the stories, yeah, so I actually got my CDL in four weeks. I'll keep that part short. So as usually it takes a lot longer, but to break even on these trucks, like, you know, while we're testing, we kind of just started looking for freight to haul.
(09:17):
And one of the shippers that we found most actually through the mayor of a city in suburbs here called Rolling Meadows, he previously used to work at this three plus that was installing Siemens machines, MRI scanners and CT scanners. And one of those deliveries was oftentimes to New Jersey. We'd pick it up in Elk Grove village, right by O'Hare. It's a big machine. We'd put it into our semi and we'd take it to New Jersey. And then one of the things I was looking for was what other customers can I find that I can have as direct customers that would give me a backhaul back to Chicago. And that was the first experience that I had.
(09:55):
It wasn't even obviously thinking about ship or serum at the time, but having that insight and the foresight as to how much time it took to a, look around and try to find those facilities and then B, compile kind of like a company file for myself, whether that was in spreadsheets or whether that was in whatever software. And it took a lot of time. It took on average, two to three hours per company. Because you kind of want to educate yourself as much as possible around what, like, where is their supply chain. So you, when you reach out to somebody, you actually know what their company's about. Right. And so that was really a big insight as to when we started Shipper CRM, one of the first. We should probably make some merch that has the like three magic words.
(10:37):
And it's just like, how find shipper. Because Paul and I would literally get DM'd on LinkedIn or whatever those three words, like, so often that, I don't know, I feel like we should make.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
We had a couple of those. I have some screenshots of some forward dispatchers wanting to work directly with shippers.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
And like, we kind of make a joke about it. But like, at the end of the day, what we realized pretty quickly was like, you know, CRM's great and all, like, people obviously do need that. But really what they were after was like, nobody even knew what, like they didn't have data to bring into the system. Right. And very quickly we kind of realized, okay, well, everybody's using all these generic tools that are out there. Everybody pretty much has like access to the same ones, but they all cherry pick that information and they all silo it into their own like databases. Whether it's, whether that's a spreadsheet or whether that's like HubSpot or zoom info, right?
(11:30):
And to take that one step further, we started realizing really quickly and also from our personal experience which was like we'd enter this information into a spreadsheet or HubSpot or wherever, right? We'd set our reminders, we reach out to the shipper, they're like, all right, reach out to me in six months now you come back in six months, that reminder goes off and then you have no idea whether that person's actually still at the company. And so you spend a ton of time trying to figure out like what's going on, Are they not reaching out to me? Because whatever.
(11:59):
And so all of that, basically as time went on we started realizing like that just this should just all be baked into natively like how what shipper CRM is, it's a platform for you to look up any shipper in the United States supply chain. And then we provide tools for you to be able to do kind of manage your relationships, like set your reminders, set your interactions, your emails. But while having that foresight and insight of like what is changing about the company, which employees are leaving, which locations have closed down, which locations have opened up and that building on top of a database that actually is living and breathing is, you know, it's a huge time efficiency unlock effectively.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
So dude, I'm like salivating here because like you are literally speaking to my soul on a lot of things here, man. Because like for me, you're right. The amount of times where it's like, you know, we, we utilized a lead generation software tool, we, you know, it all went into a spreadsheet and everything and like our follow ups and everything were happening. But like the amount of times we have and I, and you generally saw, see this, excuse me, the end of a year and the beginning of a new year where it's like, hey, so and so is no longer here. And then it's like the sales cycle starts all over again. Nothing is more frustrating because it's like I'm a big cold call guy.
(13:16):
I, I won't get away from cold calling because I feel like it is the most efficient way to generate business inside of transportation. Cold calling, site visits. That's it. I've tried email. Don't DM me for the every time I say this, I always get 70 dms. Hey man, you should really try email and social selling. But anyways, that's a conversation for another day. But everything you're bringing up here, man, is the mo. The biggest time suck of my day, every single day. And it's like I just want that list of people. And then especially like when I update a note inside of there, like, hey, so and so said call them back on February 10, for example, that it would be awesome.
(13:54):
And you guys might have this integrated into my Google Calendar or my G Suites where it says, hey, so and so this is an event and it just automatically creates an event. So that day when I come in, I have my first warm, cold calls. I call them, set up and ready to rock for me so I can come in and make sure I'm staying on top of that stuff. Because I've just personally found where that's an area of improvement of my internal process where it's like, my notes are great, I keep up to date everything. I'm reaching out to people. If I'm on that page inside of my Google document that says to reach out to that person this day and it's like, dude, you got to stay in front of people no matter what.
(14:32):
And I feel like that's one thing that people miss. And then inevitably people start to feel like, oh, they told me to call them last month, I'm not going to call them because then they, you know, they're just going to be pissed. And it's like, nah, they're probably not going to remember you. But yeah, that's kind of a negative look on you. And at least for me personally, that is a negative look. If you tell somebody, well, all right, cool. So I can call you in February. Like, yeah, call me in February. And then you don't. I mean, I think like, it's just a, a knock on your abilities, in my opinion.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Totally not keeping your word.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah, no, and that's exactly it. So from like an, like, how. How does the integrations work with what you guys are? Are you guys already with tmss? Are you guys integrated with like Outlook and G Suites and all of that stuff?
Speaker 3 (15:16):
So we have one main integration at the moment it's HubSpot, which is the mid. Like I would say that's the one that kind of covers a lot of our customer base. A lot of people that are signed up for shipper CRM are former HubSpot people or current HubSpot people. And the main reason why we prioritized that integration was we, there's a lot of things that HubSpot bells and a lot of bells and whistles that HubSpot has that we don't yet have, mainly like things like sequencing or email integration, call integration, calendar integration, stuff like this. So we thought it would be a pretty good bang for the buck where you can use shipper CRM as a lead gen system.
(15:57):
And if our CRM features aren't yet up to par with what you need as a more sophisticated organization, then you can just sync your favorites, favorite companies, contacts over to your HubSpot account and that information, you can resync it multiple times. And there's some limitations with that HubSpot API because we don't have full control over HubSpot. But obviously we do our best to try to keep those records in your HubSpot up to date for, you know, when and if possible. So that's the one integration that we have right now. And you know, we're small teams so we have to pick and choose really where to point our focus at the moment. And one of those main things that we, you know, really focus a lot on is just working on the infrastructure to make sure that information stays, you know, validated up to date.
(16:49):
We're getting people, which is another thing we can kind of talk about here, which is like the logistics employees at these particular shippers, these companies, which is really cool because we now can rank and we predict which of those employees, those logistics employees, are more likely to be the decision maker. That, that's another little time saver maybe. Well, it depends on how you look at it. But it's pretty cool to be able to see like at the top of that list. It's like, you know, you'll see a transportation manager if they're, if that's actually an employee job at that company.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
And then over time, sorry, down the list you'll see they become less relevant.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
But no, and that's exactly it. Right. And I feel like there's also, you know, another thing too is how many times out there I know I've came in contact with this exact problem with lead generation software in the past is you reach out to this individual and they're like, dude, I'm not even the transportation manager anymore. I'm in a different department now. Click and you're like, fuck. And it's like again, it's back to square one with it because you know, again, people change jobs, they change titles, there's a new decision maker that's being brought in. There's a bunch of stuff out there that changes, right? So it's like you need to be on top of that and do that. Like that's a phenomenal tool right there. Like that right there. If you believe in God.
(18:05):
Like I believe in building my relationships up from the ground up. I love befriending the gatekeeper. I try and, you know, make sure that they remember me every time I call and then work my way up the totem pole. But there are people who love to just go straight to the decision maker. So it's like to be able to save those steps like that's a massive time save. How are like, what about with your guys's clients? If they're operating, say Chris Jolly is operating off of spreadsheets in Google Documents. How do I transfer all of my current data into Shipper CRM? Because I'm not a complex guy. I love simplicity and the way that I operate, I'm not attached to anything. So how would I go with all of my current data to upload it into Shipper CRM?
Speaker 3 (18:48):
So we're working on a way for you to just drag and drop your spreadsheet into Shippers into Shipper CRM that as that simple. Like just drag the file into Shipper CRM and we will basically create a. Well, if we have the company file already for a company, we'll just add it to your account and then once it's added to your account, you basically get all the updates for that company. We're not sure yet when that will be ready because it's a little bit like cumbersome. Mainly if you for example, have in your spreadsheet, if you don't have like the URL for the specific company, it's sometimes difficult to match a specific company to the one that you really want because there will be now that we've gone through this and like actually have a lot of data.
(19:40):
There are so many companies that have similar names, almost identical names, but one is a C corp, one is an llc, one is a, I don't know, like a limited partnership or something like this. But they all have like the same base name. Right? Obviously the way to delineate between those is via website. And of course there's going to be one offs here and there that, you know, some small company that might not have a website, but I'm not sure how much business they will have. You know, they'll be doing if they don't have a website to begin with.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
So yeah, that you know, because like I'm, you know, when I'm going out there and trying to develop business, like I'm not going after enterprise level shippers, right? And it's not anything other than the fact that like the sales cycle is too long. Like I mean you guys understand this because you guys own a real company. I need revenue, right? Like I can't wait three years if you know, because like I'm just not going to make it in business. I need revenue to pay my bills and everything. So it's like I go after the small to mid sized market. I've. And I do that because they have a shorter sales cycle associated with it. There's less touches to the decision maker that comes along with it if they're publicly traded. Like I'm not even calling them, right?
(20:50):
Like I want nothing to do with that at this moment. Just because it's just not inside of where I can turn on revenue in like a 60 or a 90 day sales cycle. And that's where I need to look where it's like ideally 30 days would be phenomenal. 60 to 90 days is pretty average out there from a conversion data point for us and having that ability, you know. But again there is that one where it's like hey, they're on their. Because like this is where people, if you're actually prospecting shippers, you've gone to a company's website and you're like damn, these guys look legit. And then you call them, they're like dude, we have one parcel shipment that we send out, right? Like we manufacture the gas ltl dude, it's just, it's something like that, right?
(21:34):
So being able to go inside and like find somebody and the probability meter of like hey, these guys are going to have full truckload. They're going to be open deck. That's a massive, massive time save, you know. Cause like that's all I do. I only do open deck freight, right? Like 99% of our business is open deck. And that's where I'm going to stay. I want to know who I'm going after. Because you're like it does change the entire conversation. Like I don't even want to call somebody that's going to be 90% LTL or 80% LTL. That's just not worth my time. I need to find that customer that's got 5 to 50 weekly full truckload shipments inside a flatbed where I can go and just hammer them.
(22:15):
I hammer them as, you know, just a statement just to get in front of them as much as I possibly can. And then I know that the likelihood that they fit inside of my ideal customer profile is where I want to sit. So that right there, I don't know of any other tool out there on the market that has what you guys have. All right, I would want to put that out there to my audience. I've done the research on CRMs, you guys. I've done the research on lead generation software. They're either ridiculously expensive or they are nothing what they are advertised as and or they're overly complex to operate. Like I said, I stay in the Google and Excel realm because it's easy for me to operate and do my business in.
(22:57):
But there are limitations that come along with this and I feel like this is also a major barrier why people don't want to prospect. Like let's remove all of the rejection aside from prospecting. It's how do I even become organized, how? And then to make sure I'm reaching out to the right people, but then how do I stay on top of it? How do I build a system around that to make sure that hey, I'm following up with the right people at the right moments.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
Yeah. Appreciate that though, Chris, what you said and I think you're right and props to Christian because Christian is the one who was thinking about it in that way where we have a database of leads and our goal is to have every single shipper and manufacturer in shipper CRM and then having a CRM tool. And the CRM tool right now, like Christian mentioned doesn't have all the bells and whistles that HubSpot does. Christian knows more of the time, I guess when we'll be releasing more features. But overall like we've been able to, we have over 150 customers and that's because like people go and they look at it. It's simple to use, it's intuitive. They look at the database of the magic map and they're able to scroll on the US they could go into like their backyard just like you said.
(24:16):
And I love that you mentioned that because we interviewed Tim Heim like a year or two ago and that's what he was talking about. It's like literally like just go like in the 50 mile radius of where you live and go knock on doors, you know, call those people up and build relationships with them because that's the easiest way to actually build a relationship if you're next door. You could, you know, sit down with them and break bread. So. But yeah, thank you, Chris, for that. And I think you're right. And our customers see that. That as well. And we've also partnered with Journey recently where we have sales training inside of Shipper CRM. So if you're a customer of Shipper CRM, you actually have the Journey sales training course inside. Inside of the app. So you can learn actual, like, sales tips from.
(24:57):
From the Journeys course, which was founded by Will Jenkins. Will Jenkins. So.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
No, dude. And that's, you know, when I was consulting and it was really just doing sales training, at the end of the day, that's what it was. Everybody's like, dude, how do I find shippers? Right? Like, I was chuckling at your DMs about that because, like, I have been asked that literally more than anything over the years that I've been doing this show is how do I find shippers, how do I sell, how do I cold call? And it is those basic fundamentals that are out there that I feel like at the end of the day, like, you need to focus on that. You need to stay on that. Because from my perspective, it is. It's the only thing that matters, right? More people need to focus on developing and generating revenue than worrying about all these hypotheticals.
(25:47):
And, you know, like, I'll just bring up tariffs right now. The amount of people posting about tariffs right now is nauseating because I, like, as a competitor, I'm going to fucking steamroll you because I'm not stopping reaching out to people. The more uncertainty that's out there in the world, I dig in deeper and I just continue to push forward with it. I don't care about tariffs, I don't care about port congestion. I don't care about any of that stuff. Not that it's irrelevant, it's just I can't use any of that to stop me from developing business because if there is anything that is certain in freight, somebody out there is dropping the ball somewhere. As a sales rep, it is your job to find that prospect and that customer and position yourself where they think of you first.
(26:30):
But I see this time and time again, so many people are so apprehensive to even sell because all the market's this, there's tariffs that there.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
It.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
There's always going to be something. You are just lazy and you are finding a reason to not want to do your job.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Sorry.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
I get really fine.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
I love that energy. No, I love that I got goosebumps listening I love that energy. And you're right, I mean, especially for like a smaller guys, like there's so many opportunities in the market because like the big guys are dropping the ball or just other companies are dropping the ball. And, and I think like what you said is 100 correct. Like we have to like, or at least if you're a regular broker, like there are so many opportunities in the market, no matter what kind of conditions there are.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
So I appreciate that. One of the things that we're trying to do to that topic about, you know, helping you find those opportunities is tailor the tool with really good filtering. So you were mentioning you don't want to go after the enterprise shippers. Great. You can go in and select one of the revenue filters to say 0 to 50 million in revenue. 150, 100 or less than 100 million in revenue. And we can also choose commodities too. In addition to just naturally going to your backyard, you zoom in on the map and you just see all the dots on the map of warehouses that we have discovered in our research process.
(27:50):
And when you really think about what the tool actually ends up doing by being built in the way that we built it is that it, in my view, will require you to have far fewer leads that you basically need to spend your time on.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
Right?
Speaker 3 (28:10):
Like the main thing in sales is consistency, right? Following up with people. And if you're not following up with people, but you're just expanding your funnel endlessly and just trying to see what sticks and what hits the, you know, what hits the wall. That, that would be a losing strategy. A winning strategy is go and figure out which ones, which prospects you have the best chance with and the best angle to approach with. Because they themselves, right? Like they're, they are looking for capacity all the time, whether that's brokers or whether that's trucking companies. They, you know, some shippers have 10 to 15 brokers that they work with. And at different times, you know, somebody else might fall through and you might come in because you have maybe strong capacity to offer in the lanes that they need, right.
(28:59):
Or you have domain expertise in a certain vertical that they make products for. Those, those things make you stick out. And I think in general it just makes you more resource efficient by using a tool like ours. Obviously I'm biased in saying that, but generally speaking, that's the intent behind how we're building it.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
I love it. Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
If I may, I have a quick question for you. I Don't want to interrupt you though. This is going to be kind of different subject.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Yeah, no, by all means, shoot.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
I want to. What's your tech stack right now? Because I know you got denim, right? But I'm wondering like what is, what is the freight coach tech stack?
Speaker 2 (29:35):
So what we use is I use Revenova for my tms out there. I utilize green screens obviously for rates and that's the cool thing about creating content, you guys is like my advertisers, I actually use their. Right. And then I'm on top of that. We utilize, you know, the main load boards. Right. DAT and Truck Stop. But you know, for the most part though, our whole thing with that is like once we develop capacity on specific lanes, like we don't load boards, our second outreach, right when our carriers aren't there, then we'll do that. But you know that's kind of as complex as I keep it and you know, for me it's like I have yet to find any of my prospects out there who need a in depth tech stack at all. Right. Like my busiest shippers out there still operate via email.
(30:23):
That's all they need. That's all that they're going to do. They don't need anything more than that. Do we have EDI capabilities? Yes, I have EDI API. I have all of those capabilities at my disposal in the event that I need them. But I find it there is a lot less of shippers out there that actually require any of that stuff than not sure.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Especially with the small mid sized companies that you're reaching out to for sure.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Obviously enterprise shippers, yes, 100%. They're going to require way more. Shit.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Yeah. And like, I mean you're talking about that earlier and it's like also like you reach out these enterprise shippers, the sales cycle's incredibly long and then like you're also, it's a volume play where like the margins are also super thin.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Right.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
And like you're only really profitable when you take a lot of loads at like very little margin. So you need the capacity to be able to handle all that. So yeah, I mean I, I think you're, you have the right approach and it's cool to see you do this, you know, like kind of like building in real life or building and like with an audience online and I think that's really cool.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
You know, for me it's like I, you know, I obviously I listen to a lot of like entrepreneurs out there, you know, their podcasts and stuff. Some very highly successful people. And I saw them all say the same thing. They wish they would have documented from day one what was happening and like what it actually took, right? Because like everybody, you know, I mean, sure shit, Paul, you probably see this now where everybody's like, oh, Paul, it must be, let's be nice Freight caviar. Look at your team. Look at you. Dude, I remember when you started that in your bedroom essentially six, seven years ago, right?
Speaker 4 (31:58):
Like, I remember making no money for two years.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, I remember you. Your first post was like in the, it was like an Uber or something coming back from the gym. Like I remember you talking about that stuff, right? So it's like, it's easy for people to see the results after the work's been done. And I'm like, dude, I have such a unique opportunity where I can document from day one, $1. And I essentially did it in both of my companies, right? Like the Freight Coach Media stuff that's been documented since day one and now Freight Coach Logistics, that's also documented from day one.
(32:31):
And it's like I'm putting all of this stuff out there and I feel like as somebody who has a, you know, call a following or whatever the fuck you want to call it's my duty to talk to multiple different companies that are out there because people need to know what is at their disposal. Not everybody has thousands of dollars to spend to go to a trade show, to walk around on a floor, to see what's out there. So it's like I want to continue to do that, but I also want to be able to show the fundamentals of like, hey guys, this is what it took to get us to $10 million a year in revenue.
(33:03):
I'm gonna document all of that stuff out there because there's the next generation of people who are going to come up and if there's anything that they can learn from my fuck ups along the way to help them become better earlier, dude, that's what it's all about for me.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
I appreciate that and thank you so much for having us on the show. And it's great to see you and where you're taking everything and just awesome to like reconnect here and after being on number 113 on the Freight Coach podcast.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
So we'll make sure it doesn't take another thousand episodes for you to come back on.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Yeah, let us know.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
We got to get you back on the freight Caviar podcast because I'd love to learn more about what you've been building on the logistics side.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Dude, whenever, man, I'd love to, but. Hey, fellas, how does anybody reach out to you guys to find out more about what you guys got going on?
Speaker 3 (33:54):
So you can go to shippercrm.com you can check out our website. There have a landing page obviously with all the information. If you want to sign up for shipper CRM, you go to shippers here.com you have to submit an application. We actually run a vetting process on every customer that wants to purchase access, basically to make sure that nobody's has a fraudulent background. Scammers, double brokers, stuff like this.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
Because there's a lot of scammers that want to get in. Yeah, there is.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
So, so we run that. It's fairly quick. We'll, we'll turn that around pretty quickly. And then you can reach out to Paul OR I on LinkedIn X or Instagram. Follow us on free Caviar Social Shipper CRM as well too. And yeah, we'll always reach back out.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Perfect, fellas. I appreciate it. That's going to be it for today, ladies and gentlemen, as always, if you got value in what you heard, which you better have after this one, subscribe to the show. If you're not subscribed, if you really ambitious, which you should be, rank the show on itunes and Spotify you guys, because that's how your network's going to see value. Because if you saw it, chances are they're going to see it as well. I appreciate you guys. I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Thanks, Chris.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
We just ended stream. We have no.
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