1285. #TFCP - Real Strategies and Niche Specialization: Building a Stronger Business in Freight! - Coffee w/#The Freight Coach

Episode Transcript
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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 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 hate them make a bigger balls.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hey hey guys, before we jump into the episode, I wanted to let you know it is brought to you by the NMWTA.
Let me ask you a question.
Do you ship LTL freight?
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(00:53):
Stop guessing, start classifying smarter and quote freight with confidence.
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Learn more@nmfcchanges.com and get started with Class IT+@classitplus.com just do me a favor and let them know that the Freight Coach sent you this episode is brought to you by SPI Logistics, the premier freight agent logistics firm in North America.

(01:18):
For over 40 years SPI has been diligently building the most successful freight agent network to provide first class relationships for our shippers, receivers and carrier partners.
We are more than another transportation network.
We are a dedicated team of professionals united by one singular purpose and that is to expedite our agent success.
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(01:49):
This way you can focus on continuing to grow your business.
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Visit www.spi3pl.com to learn more.

(02:09):
Do me a favor and let them know that the Freight Coach sent you.
What is up ladies and gentlemen?
We are back.
That 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 and I'm literally going to save the rest of the intro.
You guys know what to do.
We got an action packed episode.
I'm really excited about this guest today to come on and talk about his journey in the industry and building up his company and everything else.

(02:36):
And I'm just going to save it for the rest of it, you guys.
I'm going to bring them up right now.
Building a company is so much harder than you think.
It is also so much more rewarding than you think.
And there is just a different level of enthusiasm that you need to find in yourself to show up day in and day out through all the rejection, all the hardships and everything that come with it.

(02:59):
And we're going to talk about a lot of that today.
So I got my friend Alex Schick with Alliance Logistics on the show.
Alex, thank you so much for joining me here today.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
No problem, Chris.
Pleasure to be here.
Looking forward to it.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Dude.
Like were saying before we recorded, like, so Alex and I had met in person at DATCON in Kansas City late.
It was October of last year and it was.
I've.
I've met a lot of people, as I was telling you, and I feel I have to say this on the air as well, man.
Like, there are very few people that I talk to that I'm just like, they're, they've been through it, right?
Like, they've been through the ringer and.

(03:32):
But.
And it might even just be your willingness to talk about it, right?
Because I think some people are kind of afraid to like, show that vulnerability.
Vulnerability of like, dude, this is literally the hardest I've ever done in my life.
And you were like, open about it from the beginning of like, why you do what you guys do inside of your company.
I mean, you guys have a very, I don't want to call it a niche only offering, but you guys know your identity and you're not afraid to go out there and do it.

(03:58):
So it was just different, man.
And I just, I appreciate that a lot.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
Yeah.
So it is interesting.
A lot of people don't really talk about the emotion of what it takes to be in logistics and transportation and also what it takes to start a company and run a company.
So I guess let's hit it off with that.
I want to share a little short story.
So a little bit about my background.
Got into transportation.

(04:23):
2007, tracking and tracing.
Started at the very bottom at an agency when agencies were still in their infancy.
Helped grow that company quite a bit.
And in 2019, we had left the agency and started our agency of our own.
Built that up, did well in 2023, we decided, you know, the agent model, We've outgrown it.

(04:46):
We need to start a company ourselves.
So we did.
So everything was amicable.
We did everything by the book.
We had a couple customers that were going to transition over with us that we had fostered for a long time or so we thought that we're gonna foster for a long time.
And everything was like, all right, we're doing this.

(05:06):
So we're in California.
We're in Fresno, California, and we drive over to San Francisco to have lunch with a couple friends from ours.
Of ours.
And we're sitting at lunch and I get a phone call.
I step away, and it's one of the customers, our largest customer that's going to transition with us.
And I walk away and I was maybe 20 steps from the lunch table, and he says, we're not gonna be able to onboard you.

(05:32):
We're not gonna do it.
And literally my heart dropped like it was the most devastating thing that has happened in probably my life in business.
Just, that was the core of what were gonna be able to go with.
You know, we had already built a company, we had several employees, and it just.
All the thoughts were racing through my mind.

(05:53):
I'm gonna have to lay people off.
We're gonna have to start over for a fourth time.
This is detrimental.
And my wife was with me.
My partner finished the phone call.
Keep a straight face, dude.
I was just inside.
I was bawling in tears like it was.
I was a wreck.
Walked to the table, finished lunch, made it all great.
Nobody know, none the wiser.

(06:14):
On the way home.
It's a three hour drive.
That was probably the longest three hour drive.
But that right there was like, that's business.
That's.
That's what people don't talk about, and that's what people don't see.
Like, somebody is going through that right now in this world.
Somebody is having their world turned upside down by somebody else's decision.

(06:35):
Somebody is so passionate about the company that they're building and just they're going through it and we went through it.
Fortunately, like I tell everybody, you don't fail until you give up.
So we didn't give up.
We continue to go.
We continue to push.
Several weeks later, we.
We penned an agreement and ended up getting onboarded.

(06:57):
Stroke of luck.
Right place, right time, right strings pulled, call it what you want, but that's, that's the grit of transportation.
That's the grit of being an entrepreneur.
That's the grid of.
Of nobody else taking ownership over that decision than the person at the top.
Like, you've got to do it.
You've got to street keep a straight face while you do it.
And you've just got to.

(07:17):
You gotta get it done.

Speaker 4 (07:19):
It's.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
It's tough.

Speaker 4 (07:20):
It's.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, dude, that.
I mean, so I've had to rebuild a book of business like three times now at this point.
And, you know, this last time is.
Is when we decided to go out on our own.
And you know, like, yeah, because we're like, we're an agent with SPI and you know, they fortunately were like, took a chance on me because I'm like, hey, I have some old shippers that I could call, but, like, I don't have anything, right.

(07:48):
Like, I have no revenue that I could bring you guys at all.
And they were like, honestly, they were more excited because they're like, dude, you know how cool of content it's going to make if you succeed with this.
And I'm like, yeah, I.
But I'm like, I'm just.
So we're all aware and you know, going out there and building it up because it's like, dude, we're, you know, the amount of energy and effort to get something off the ground and, you know, most people start a business with your, you know, like your scenario, right?

(08:17):
Like, hey, we got some guarantees from some customers they're going to come with and then.
But you went through the.
They didn't.
Not.
At least not right away.
And you know, for us, it was like, we have been piecing together business throughout this journey, right?
Like, we've, you know, we've just completed our second year in business.

(08:38):
We really started in January of 2023.
And, you know, it's been a slow go from a customer acquisition standpoint, you know, because again, like, I'm just another provider who's calling people right now.
And you know, and it's not.
And it is just keeping that.
Keeping that same enthusiasm every single day that, hey, it's gonna work out.

(08:58):
It's gonna work out, it's gonna work out.
And dude, it is.
It's an emotional roller coaster.
And, you know, this.
This is the second business that I've started from.
From scratch, right, where, you know, same thing with the.
The media stuff that I'm doing and you know, the media stuff.
I mean, dude, it took me probably four years of doing this show before I actually felt like I had a system down, right?
And now we're at a point where it's like, finding guests is.

(09:21):
I don't want to call it easy, but like, man, we have a system and a process down where, dude, we're already booked out through all of February at this point, you know, so it's like we're getting proactive about that.
We have pre episode, post episode production, we have all of that stuff that.
And it just, it takes so much time.
But, you know, people tune in now and I'll just use this as an example, and they see the nice studio, they see them, they see all this stuff, but they didn't see the.

(09:46):
When I was in my bedroom freaking out because I, I had no money left over, I was burning through cash.
It was in the middle of the pandemic.
And you know, and it was like, again, it was just the showing up aspect of it, right?
Like, I didn't stop.
You know, I had bad moments and I had bad days, but I didn't let them turn into anything more than that.
And that's like, dude, that's just such a, it's just, it isn't talked about because everybody wants this facade on the Internet that they're the best freight broker, they're the best sales rep, or they're the best this and the best that.

(10:17):
Man, I like, anytime I see stuff like that, I just keep scrolling.
Like, I'm like, dude, if you're not willing to talk about the real side of this, man, you're trying to, you're like, there's an underlying or an ulterior motive.
You're trying to sell somebody something.
You're hoping they click on your shit because that's probably where you make your money is through whatever you're trying to sell behind the scenes.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
Right?
Yeah, I think that's true.
You know, we don't, we've recently taken approach of a lot of marketing and putting content out.
We backed away from sales.
We, we, we paid attention.
Customers, they're tired of getting called right now.
We've pumped the brakes on calling customers and decided to shift a lot of focus into marketing.

(10:57):
Let's just get our message out there.
We're not trying to sell you anything.
We just want you to know who we are, what we do, where we're at, and that we're here and we're here for the longevity.
I mean, I've been in this since 2007.
I'm not going to stop.
This has become my blood, sweat and tears.
Like the industry.
It is what it is.
It's caught me.
I'm hooked.
But yeah, we don't want to go out there and say, we're the best.

(11:19):
We do what we do.
We do a really good job at what we do, and we're looking for the right partners.
I think it's what you said is important.
You know, you have all these hurdles that nobody sees, and you alone are the one who kind of has to deal with them or provide the direction.
It's really easy to get down and in a rut and have somebody else lift you out.

(11:43):
But when you're the founder, when you're the CEO, when you're the entrepreneurial mind that falls on your shoulders, you.
You team up with people and you get through it.
But.
But you're the one who wakes up every day, failure after failure, and say, I'm.
I'm gonna not fail today.
And then you probably will, but you're just gonna keep going.
You do it the next day.
People don't talk about that.
People don't talk about the realities.

(12:04):
I mean, people don't talk about almost going through bankruptcy, being on their last dollar, not being able to make payroll.
Like, these are the things that businesses go through early on.
And it's.
It's real and it's.
It's.
It.
It is what it is.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
How important.
You know, you brought up not being able to make payroll in the finance side of things, because that.
That's something that, you know, I. I will tell people all the time, if you don't have the stomach for being on day 30 of your receivables being due, and then you don't have the money to pay your payables that are due the next day, just stay an employee.
Because it's not fun.

(12:39):
Right?
Like, it's like my.
My gray hairs have exponentially increased over these about five years because of stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
And.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
But, you know, again, like, how important is it to have a better financial understanding from a business perspective or, you know, like, the importance of partnering with the right financial companies as you're going to build your business up or even start your business.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
Yeah.
So I see your denim sticker.
We're huge fans of denim.
This is.
I haven't talked to them about this.
They don't know I'm here.
Denim has become one of the strongest financial partners that we've ever experienced.
Seriously, the way that they do things and the way that they lift responsibilities off for the payables specifically is.

(13:30):
Is crucial.
So when we look at business, we've been doing this for a long time, and we really take a partnership approach.
Like, our average carrier.
10 years.
Like, 10 years.
There's carriers that I've worked with for 17 years.
There's kids that I've met as infants that are now graduating high school of people that I've done business with.
There's kids that we've put through college, lawyers, doctors, you name it.

(13:51):
Like, there is a lot of history here.
But the one thing that's always remained important is to make sure that your carriers get paid and get paid when they're supposed to.
Because if you lose that, like, you can have the best relationship and you can be the best person ever.
But ultimately it is a business and you have to treat it like a business.
You have to pay your carriers on time.
Partnering with Denim has taken that kind of responsibility off of our shoulders because we process it and they pay it on time regardless.

(14:21):
Like, that's.
It's a done deal.
So that's important.
The other sides of finances, it's.
It's important to know, like, your projections and create, like, a sound budget.
It's important to know what you can spend in certain categories and when you need to reel back and then make the right choices around financial decisions.

(14:41):
There's a lot of times where tech providers will call us and try and sell us on things, and I'll just tell them, look, I love your product, but now's not the right time.
Like, you're on the list when we get there and it's in our budget, we're coming for you.
You're not going to have to follow up for us.
We want your product and staying disciplined in that process.

(15:02):
Like, people are going to bring things that bring you value all the time.
But you have to stay, like, focused to your core and make sure that your financial decisions are aligning with your core decisions.
Ours has always been taking care of our people, our employees, our carriers, our customers.
So through 2024, it got real tight.
It got real.
It was a real struggle.

(15:23):
We.
We made decisions to cut into our margins, to give more money to our carriers, to make sure that they.
They stayed in business, that they stayed sustainable.
We didn't lay people off.
We may have trimmed some hours, but we kept our whole team intact.
We didn't let anybody go.
Like, we made sacrifices as a company.
It cost us some.
Some momentum in certain areas.

(15:43):
It cost us personally in.
In quite a bit of areas.
But.
But those are the goals that we stayed and set out to from the beginning, and we aligned them financially.

Speaker 4 (15:53):
Is.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
Is essentially what happens.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
You know, you brought up a lot there and, you know, for.
For me, you know, I want touch on the tech piece as well for.
For a second there.
And, you know, I try and I've done a couple of podcasts about this stuff, like, showing people how, like, I use Google and an Excel spreadsheet to develop a lead list and stuff like that.
And, you know, this is the point of what where I'm saying here is it's like, technology is great if you can afford it, right?

(16:18):
If it's in your budget, you can afford it, you of course use it.
But, like, for the majority of us out there, it's not needed, all right?
It's more of a luxury than not.
And if it's the true dollars and cents of business, you know, like, you got to do what you can afford.
And this is the re.
Like, again, this is like the real side of bootstrapping a business.
It's not just like, when I talk about this or like, post about it, you guys, it's not just me trying to get some likes.

(16:44):
I'm telling you guys what's going on inside of my company and every single day because, like, I don't have investors, nor do I want investors, all right?
Because a, I hate being told what to do.
And that's.
That's a.
That's for another show.
But, you know, it's like, you don't need that to find shippers.
Okay?
And I go out there and we go through a lot of that stuff, but again, if you can afford it, run with it.

(17:06):
And, you know, the financial understanding.
So, like, Sean with Denim, we do a monthly podcast with him and I to.
We call it Financial Fridays to raise the business financial acumen of all of the listeners out there talking about, you know, your business credit score, paying your carriers fast, quick pay, all of that stuff.
We do that to.

(17:26):
To again, just bring information out there to try and help you before you hit that roadblock or that fork in the road of like, damn, I owe a lot of money out here.
What do In these situations?
Or, hey, this tech product sounds really cool, but like you said, it's just not on our roadmap right now.

(17:46):
Right?
Like, there's a lot of stuff that's going to come at you all the time that sounds really good.
And you think, hey, this would be awesome to have, and it might be awesome to have in the moment, but can you afford it?
And most people, more times than not, it might not even be an affording thing.
Do you actually need it for where your business is?

Speaker 3 (18:07):
Yeah, so that's an interesting one.
When you, when you look, when we look at tech, all of our business or the majority of our businesses is short haul, hyper low margin, turn them grind.
Like it just this dense freight and we have a ton of touches on a ton of freight that makes very little money.

(18:32):
And as we've started to approach tech, a lot of the conversations have been your tech is not cheaper than a person.
Like I love your tech, I want to employ your tech because it will help us scale, but it cost us more to use it.
And a lot of tech companies are.

(18:53):
Don't they get mad at me.
They really do.
I can tell.
It's okay, I understand.
I would be mad too if somebody told me that.
But it boils down to, you know, it has to fit your business model.
Right.
Like, like if you're doing long haul business and you can, and you have high margins, you can bake those prices into it.

(19:17):
But if you're running on, you know, five, ten, seven dollar margins.
A dollar a load, A dollar load will put you out of business.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (19:25):
If you're paying a dollar load for three different services, dude, that's 30% of your margin.
You're done.
Like you can't afford it.
So when you look at tech, IT one has to be affordable.
It too has to provide value and save money.
And it 3 it needs to fit your business model.
Right.
Like it needs to fit what your core competency is.

(19:46):
And I think that goes back to one thing that you and I have talked about, being super focused on what you do as your core competency.
Like I, I used to think that we're broker and we can move anything and we have moved almost everything.
But what we're good at and what our niche at is what we've been focused on recently.
And so when we look at things and we look at our roadmap, it's all based on what we're going to focus on.

(20:10):
Like your flatbed open deck.
I think I emailed you a few days ago about it.
I'm like, dude, just help me take it over.
I don't even want to deal with it.
Like I want to do what we want to do.
You can have it.
And so like having that mentality and knowing what you're going after will help you make better decisions with your tech and better financial decisions as well.

(20:33):
Like having an aligned mission statement or a mission goal for the company.
Veering off and saying, we're a broker and we're going to do everything is, is dangerous.
That, yeah, that can get you in trouble.

Speaker 4 (20:44):
How?

Speaker 2 (20:46):
You know, I'm trying to think of the best way to word this, but like how unnecessary is it for most brokers to offer everything?
Like how much would you advocate to have that niche?
You know, because again like I look at it like this, like full truckload open deck, that's our jam.
We'll touch some dry van freight.
But like I'm not going after food, reefer, I'm not going after ltl, Air Parcel, any of that stuff.

Speaker 4 (21:09):
Stuff.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Full truckload is my jam.
And that's really where we like to play.
How, how do you guys navigate through that like, like that mindset of like, hey you know what?
This is our niche, we're gonna stick with it.
There's more opportunity out there than you think.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah.
So as the market became kind of hyper inflated with brokers, right?
And the brokers that are succeeding and are being successful have found a niche, I guarantee you, there good at.
And there is a core customers that align with what they are very good at and that is what is making them successful.

(21:47):
And then there's the companies that are really struggling and they're the ones just trying to sell to anybody and move any piece of freight to make a dollar.
If you want to grow and you want to scale and you want to be successful for the longevity, you have to identify what you want to be good at, get really good at it and execute on that with your soul for, with your sole focus, you'll always have your biggest customers or the people that you have a lot of loyalty to ask you to do some oddball shit and you help them, you get it done.

(22:20):
Because that's the relationship side of things.
You have to, you have to to build and continue to build that relationship with them.
So you do it right.
It's not in your real house, but you get it done.
But that should not be your focus.
You should not be calling every customer and saying, hey, I moved a Maruca from Texas to California last week.

(22:40):
I could move your Marucas too, you know.
No, that's not what you do.
That's not what we're gonna do.
We're gonna say, hey, we do local short haul, hyper dense, hyper efficient, low margin freight.
What do you got?
Let's, let's talk.
Let's build a dedicated model.
Let's, let's build something that performs well.
Let's, let's continue to grow and for us it's interesting because we're brokerage first.

(23:04):
Our, our core competency is brokerage.
We started buying assets in 2023.
We kind of do backwards than everybody.
Everybody has an asset company and backs it up.
With brokerage, we do the opposite.
We have the back the brokerage and back it up with the assets or we build the assets to align with where our best strategies are with the brokerage.
You know, we go to customers and we build dedicated fleets for them, we build dedicated asset operations for them because that's what we've always done.

(23:31):
We continue to stay focused on what we've always been focused on, our core competency as brokerage.
We're just brokering to our own assets at that point.
So that's, it is important, it's really important to focus and hone in on what you want to do and not just go willy nilly and take and go after whatever you want.
And I think too, I think customers in general were really, really appreciate that because in my opinion, the sales cycle is kind of broken right now and they have a bunch of Joes who does it all reaching out to them all the time.

(24:07):
And when the carrier like you or I, that's focused on doing what they want and need calls them, they're so sick of hearing from people.
They don't want to give us the time of day.
Right.
So if everybody just kind of stepped back and chose something to focus on, I think it would help everybody all around.
Everybody would be more successful.
Customers would be happier because the cold calls are going to die down.

(24:29):
People are going to be calling them with things that they're actually interested in or things that they're actually needing help with.
And I think it benefits everybody, not just the people who are honing in on it.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah, I, you know, a good friend of mine who's a shipper for a very large company just actually put a post out there the other day talking about just this and how they went through all the outreach and everything else.
And he put the really good outreach that he received and the really bad outreach that he received.
And you know, there's kind of a mix in there.
And I'm not going to say his name because I don't want people to go in and just blow up this guy's dms.

(25:00):
But you know, to put some, you know what, to put some numbers behind it.
I, I know some people who own freight brokerages and then, you know, some of them Own brokerages with assets as well, but they're pushing like 80 to 100 million a year in revenue.
And they do one thing, you know, like.

(25:21):
And that's it.
Right?
So it's like, I don't understand why so many people are out there chirping, saying that you need to do all of these, all this stuff.
And I mean, I know another guy, same thing.
He only does one mode as well.
And I don't know what his numbers are, but I know that he has grown exponentially.
He has a very large operation, and they offer one thing.
And it's like, there's.

(25:43):
It's funny because it's like I see two different camps out there where it's like the.
The ones who are like, oh, we do everything, we'll do everything.
But it's just like, well, how much are you constantly churning?
And, you know, and again.
And I just.
I look at it from like a growth standpoint, a training development and everything else.
I want my team doing flatbeds, open deck, tarp.
No tarp only.

(26:03):
Not flatbed with tarp.
Frozen chicken and then over dimensional RGN on the next.
I don't want them doing that.
I feel like that's counterproductive at that point.
From a training standpoint, but also from a vision casting standpoint here.
Right?
Like, how much more clearer of a vision is it of like, hey, we are the top open deck provider in the United States of America.

(26:24):
This is all we do, and we are doing it better than everybody else as opposed to we'll move everything, do everything, go after everything.
And I think it's just that spray and pray model that's out there.
And again, you know, and like, don't take my word for it.
I'm just a little podcaster here on the Internet.
Go listen to the founders podcast and listen to some of the titans of industry in the United States of America and listen to what all they say.

(26:49):
They do billions, you guys, not just a little podcast.
They do billions of dollars a year and listen to their journeys, if you don't believe what I'm saying here, you know, And I feel like so many people get so intoxicated by potential opportunity that they lose sight of the target.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
Yeah, I agree.
I agree.
It sucks where we're at in the industry.
It's been a hard few years, but we just got to keep going.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
You know, that's it.
I think if you want to diversify and do everything, you do it one at a time and you do it under separate entities and you stay and remain focused on each individual thing separately.
So let's say, you know, if.

(27:39):
If you wanted to be a venture out, you have your core competency, your flat step deck, open deck, tarps, right?
And then you say, okay, well, we're doing really good on this.
What's the next step?
Well, okay, we're going to get into.
To reefer produce, right?
You.
You open up almost a second organization or a sister company, and you hire a new team for that company, and you hire experts in that company, and you build that company laterally to the OpenStack with two different mission statements.

(28:10):
Right?
Because I do think it's important.
I mean, some wise people have told me, you can't build multiple things at once.
Well, one will thrive, one will suffer.
You have to stay focused.
And I learned that the hard way.
Being arrogant and young, I was.
It wasn't that long ago.
I, I started a gardening company in 2017, and I tried to run and make that thrive alongside running and making a brokerage thriving.

(28:38):
Dude, people are right when they tell you have to focus.
I've went through it.
I. I've been humbled by it.
You.
You do.
You have to focus.
You have to have your focal point and stick to it and venture out.
Once that one thing is at a point where you say, okay, I can let off the.
The gas here and focus on something else and give something else my whole attention.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
Yeah.
As somebody who goes through that every single day, like, I wouldn't be able to do the podcast and the brokerage at the level that I do if I didn't have my business partner to monitor emails and watch everything behind the scenes for these 30 minutes.
Just like, I wouldn't be able to do the brokerage and get the content out if I didn't have my marketing, you know, Christian, who's behind the scenes, who's editing, distributing, doing all of that work now, it took a while to get there, but it is very right, you know, like, it is getting pulled in different directions and I feel overwhelmed at times.

(29:33):
And, man, that's like one of my biggest things that all that I'll go through out there, Alex, is I'm like, am I spinning my wheels too much?
You know, But I'm like, I also have to pay my bills, you know, and I love doing both.
And, you know, and I'm never gonna stop podcasting, no matter what.
Like, my goal is I'm just gonna build people and I'm just gonna show up, do my thing, and then go and then just Stay.

(29:56):
Stay on my routine.
I'm just.
I guess I'm still arrogant enough to know that I'm gonna do it.

Speaker 4 (30:00):
So, hey, you know what?

Speaker 3 (30:02):
You.
You.
You paint your own path.
You make your own destiny, and.
And you create your own fate.
So if you keep saying you're gonna do it, you'll get it.

Speaker 4 (30:10):
It's.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
It's gonna happen, man.
And so, dude, as we're kind of wrapping up, I. I want to ask you one final question here.
So I don't pay attention to the freight market.
Like, I. I pay attention to the data and stuff that's out there.
But I think a lot of what's out there is irrelevant to where my business is, right?
Like, I can't accept what I hear out there of, like, oh, it's slow.

(30:32):
It's this and that.
I have to curate and cultivate my own opportunities.
How important is it for you to, you know, at least for others to be like, hey, stop paying attention to all the noise.
Focus on where you are in your business and how do you get to that next level?

Speaker 3 (30:49):
That's a tough one and a long one.
We only have a little bit of time, okay?
So one of the biggest things that I've always done is only pay attention to our failing competitors or don't pay attention to our direct competitors at all.
What this does is it allows you to kind of identify your needs for what you are doing currently.

(31:14):
Like, I don't care what CH is doing.
I don't care what Flexport is developing.
I don't care.
I don't care.
Right?
Like, I'm going out there and I'm.
I'm saying, this is what we're going to do.
These are the problems that I see in our organization today.
This is what our customers want, and that's what matters, right?
That's.
That's it.
So we focus in.
We don't pay attention to our competitors unless they're failing.

(31:36):
Because if they're failing, there's a lesson to be learned from it.
We need to pay attention to them.
We need to find out what they did wrong so we don't make the same mistakes.
You learn more from failing companies than anything else.
You never see what makes a successful company successful from the outside looking in, but you can pick apart a failing company and understand where the mistakes are made and learn from that.
So that's important.

(31:57):
As far as the market conditions, you have to kind of keep your finger a little bit on the pulse.
The data is great, and the data can give you a high level view.
But when I want to know what the market's doing, I pick up the phone when there are people are calling in on load postings and I listen to how these drivers are responding and I listen to the tone of their voice and how eager they are to negotiate with you or how not eager they are.

(32:22):
Like I want to get a.
Before data can analyze it, read on drivers mentality and driver's behavior so that we can adjust accordingly to react to those super, super intricate market changes.
And that's a lot regional based or even city based, like that's honing in very, very granular.

(32:46):
But you have to understand those when you're hyper focused.
The data's there, the data is great.
A lot of people have a really good platform for data.
We use it to gauge markets and market trends.
But the breadth of it comes from the conversations.
Getting on with somebody and having a real conversation.

(33:06):
Yeah, I hope that answers your question.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
No, dude, no, that did that answered it perfectly in my opinion.
You know, and it was also kind of elaborated a little bit more on how I think as well.
It's just more of like there's a lot of stuff that's coming at you every single day and every single direction.
And you know where my business is, we're in business development mode only.
That's what we're doing.
I'm not paying attention to anything else out there.

(33:28):
We have our goals, we have our metrics or daily metrics that we're going to hit to get there and it's going to be, it's a straight, you know, it's black or white, it's pass fail and that's it.
And that's just the direction that we're going to run with it.
But dude, Alex, I'm gonna have to have you back on man.
I feel like we could go for like two and a half more hours minimum about all of this stuff.
But how does anybody reach out to you to find out more about what you guys got going on?

Speaker 3 (33:50):
They could shoot me an email or give me a call.
I could throw it in the LinkedIn link.
Email is a schick S C H I c k@alliancelogistics.com with an X. Yeah, shoot me an email.
I'll respond.
I always respond.
Call me.
I'm not afraid to have a conversation with people.
Pick up the phone.

(34:10):
I think that's really important is real conversations like this.
You can have interactions through emails all day long.
But yeah, shoot me an email and Expect a phone call.
That's the best way.
But yeah, I'll share contact info on the.
On the podcast comments.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
Perfect.
I'll say.
Yeah, don't.
Don't put it out there right now, man.
You're gonna get spammed.
But anyways, man, Alex, I appreciate it.
Thank you guys all so much for joining me here today.
I know you guys got value out of this one.
Happy Wednesday, everybody.
I got a very special guest.
I'm gonna bring him up here very shortly.
Quick reminder, though, you guys, the weekly newsletter dropped this morning.
Go to the freightcoach.com.

(34:45):
it will auto prompt you to register for it again.
It's all industry insight, fuel prices, rates, stuff like that.
We talk about it, but again, I don't sell out my listeners or my contacts and just auto sign you guys up.
So if you want to check that out, FreightCoach.com and we'll go from there.
But with that being said, you guys, again, entrepreneurship is a phenomenal journey.
It's definitely over glorified on the Internet and everything else that you see out there about how easy it is, how great it is all of that.

(35:13):
But, you know, there's a cost behind a lot of that.
And I'm gonna, you know, and I'm gonna bring up my guy here right now and we're gonna talk about his journey in the industry.
So I got my man Matt with Monarch Connect on the show today.
Matt, thank you so much for joining me.

Speaker 4 (35:26):
Thank you so much for having me.
Very excited.
I had to match your flag with my flags here in the background.
Get some of that patriotism across all countries here, dude.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
I love it.
And, you know, with current events, I'm gonna have to slap a tariff on you now with that, so we might as well.

Speaker 4 (35:43):
It's gonna go both ways here.
It's gonna go both ways.
As long as we're smiling and we're doing it, we're good.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
I love it.
That's funny.
So, Matt, do how'd you get your start in freight, man?
What brought you into this industry?

Speaker 4 (35:58):
I think nobody, at least in North America, comes into freight just by choice.
Everybody kind of falls into it through one way or another.
My journey was a little bit unique.
I started off joining logistics through a family friend.
They got me involved in a company called Fluor.
I went overseas to work with a company called Fluor, which I did work on.

(36:19):
It's called Log Cap 4, which is a military operation by the American military.
I was in Afghanistan helping the troops, both Canadian and American.
But I was mainly an American basis, fell in love with logistics there.
When I came back, I go, hey, I gotta keep doing it.
So that kind of started my journey then from there I went into trucking, worked for Bison, then went into logistics, worked for companies like Fuel Transport, which is logistics company here in Canada.

(36:41):
And then I worked for Traffics and then worked for Amplify Logistics.
And then I found a great co founder and we started Bonner Connect and we wanted to do something a little bit different.
And that's where the entrepreneurship kind of got me to where I am today.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
So I, I love what you said about you guys wanted to do something different.
And I, and I think like that is, that's a statement that you hear a lot of people throw out there.
But what, when you say that, Matt, what does that mean to you?
What is that?
This is like on your guys's vision or like your core values?
What do you mean by that?

Speaker 4 (37:15):
Yeah, the business part of Cat, she's the vision board person.
So she probably, she has the vision board and says like, hey, this is this.
We gotta manifest all this stuff.
But our model is we got to deliver with kindness.
We find a lot of everybody out there today just, you know, rams everything down the freight, the drivers throw, rams it down the shipper.
This is what we can do.
Nobody really tries to solve the problem like the use.

(37:36):
There's none of that coaching involved in it.
There's none of that partnership involved with it.
Everybody's like, hey, you got a truck, let's move it, let's do it.
Like, okay, how do we get to this point?
What's the challenges that you guys are facing?
Like, we want to really get to the bulk of what is logistics.
And I find that occurred when a lot of these tech companies started coming into logistics and saying, oh, this is an easy fix.

(37:57):
Let's just match a truck and a customer and put them together and just move that freight.
I don't think that's what we do.
And from the sounds of it, I don't think, Chris, that's what you do either.
So I think most of us don't want to do that.
But there's a lot of.
And we've talked about when we first set up, there's a lot of those basement brokers that kind of did that for a while during COVID and ruined that reputation for everybody.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
Yeah, I think that you know this.
And when I sit out here and I say, like, it's different now from like a business development standpoint and everything else.
I mean, that.
That's kind of like a great way to summarize what you were saying there is that.
That's kind of what I feel like we're.
We're up against, right, because it's like, you know, this is a.
This is a massive opportunity, but this is also a massive hurdle for a lot of business development reps out there right now Is.

(38:44):
Is.
You know, there has been a.
Yes, it's been very easy to cover trucks here over these last couple of years, but there's been some colossal stupidity that's been ran through.
You know, a lot of what's going on out there, and you're really only as good as their last experience with the service that you are offering, right?

(39:04):
And that's across the board, man.
I don't care if you're selling ink pip, you know, ink for a printer.
It's the exact same thing.
And, you know, for.
For us inside of our organization, you know, my business partner and I, our number one core value is do the right thing.
And that is a very subjective and open statement.
But I say that because deep down inside, we all know what's right and what's wrong.

(39:28):
We all know the difference.
Unless you were raised in the wild, you.
You were raised in an environment where you know the difference between right and wrong.
And I think even if you had a shitty upbringing, instinctively, we all know if we should or shouldn't be doing something.
And I have just found that throughout my business.
Again, I'm not an entrepreneur, guru, or a genius or anything like that.
I'm just a guy who's been in it here for, you know, about five years now.

(39:51):
And I know that in most situations when I have put my best foot forward and I have been as open and honest about everything, and I have kept the other party's interest in mind, my customer, my carriers, all of that.
As long as I kept that mentality, things have ultimately worked out in the long run.

(40:11):
And I think that's, you know, one thing that, you know, individuals need to really take into consideration as you're going out there and trying to develop business, right?
Like, dude, I've already made.
And I say this before every show.
It's like, I've already made my 35 cold calls before I jump on.
I break it up.
I do 35 before the show, and I'll finish up and do 15 after the show.

(40:32):
But I. I do that, and, you know, I'm out there talking to people all day long, and no matter what, I Know that there's a high probability that most of these individuals will not remember me in about 30 seconds.
But as long as I hold myself to that same standard, I'm respectful.
Even if it's a rejection.
Hey, I completely understand.
Thank you so much for your time and end the call.
I don't push, I don't do any of that because I just don't believe in that stuff.

Speaker 4 (40:54):
Yeah.
And that's the thing.
And luckily I am not the cold call guru in our group.
I'm more of the operations kind of, you know, talking to the truckers and talking to the drivers and operations.
Cat, my business partner, she really doesn't.
She does the same experience, she says the same thing is like, hey, we make all these phone calls and you don't know if it's going to register.
But the ones that do, we create meaningful relationships with them and make it long lasting and we be high five and we're excited every time we get a customer because we know we're solving a problem.

(41:20):
The same thing for me, when I'm talking to a lot of the truckers in the operations, I don't want to just hire a truck for the lowest price because I want to make sure they can grow and come back next year if I can keep a truck.
And then he multiplies to two trucks next year, four trucks the year after that.
16 years, 16 trucks the year after that.
That's going to benefit me because I helped him get him started.
A lot of the other brokers in the industry don't understand that aspect of it where it's like, oh man, I made, you know, five grand off of this guy.

(41:47):
He didn't know the market.
To me, that's just not like you're talking about being dishonest.
Right.
Like if I have had guys lowball me and I've rejected it, be like, you don't know the market or there's something else going on that shouldn't be that low today.
And like either, hey, let me help you, educate you what's happening in the market or B, what's going on in your operation.
Tell me why you're so cheap into that area if you can't articulate that properly, you really got to work on that, your business because you might not be around tomorrow.

(42:13):
And I need every guy that I use to be there because rep being a repetitive customer for me is just as important because they will know my customers freight better and then they will execute on a higher level.
And when there's issues, there's Less phone calls at 2 in the morning.
One thing I hate, Chris, is a 2 o' clock phone call with a guy doesn't know what to do and he's like, oh, what am I supposed to do in this circumstances versus someone who's trained?

(42:36):
Be like, hey Matt, I'm sorry I'm calling you this late.
I've already done all these 13 steps.
This is where we're at.
Let me know what I should do now and then we know we can roll on to the next thing.
And I'd rather pay 100, 200, 300 bucks more for a carrier to do that than having those all night phone calls and upsetting the customer, shipper, everybody in between by not knowing what to do next.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yeah, that.
You know, again, you guys, if you're listening to this on the replay later on in the day, rewind everything Matt just said and re listen to that till it truly resonates with you.
Because what you're describing right there is something that, you know, we're not perfect, but we try and apply that on every single shipment.
Right?
Because like at the end of the day, man, I don't want to go out to the spot market to find opportunities or to find the next.

(43:20):
I want to find.
You want know, like again, we had a couple of loads that moved this week, already booked them with the exact same trucking company.
They were phenomenal.
Right.
Like I, I literally told the dispatcher, I'm like, hey, I've been doing this for like 15 years now.
I just want to let you guys know, you guys are in the upper echelon of providers that I've worked with.
And on top of that we found out, all right, how many trucks they have in their fleet.

(43:40):
We know exactly what lanes that they like to run now, which kind of fits inside of our, a core region of ours, which is, you know, the V. Virginia down to Florida in the Southeast, like mid Atlantic down to the Southeast there.
And you know, again, like now I know as we're out there and selling, like it's just that confidence as a broker when I'm going out there and prospecting new opportunities, where I'm going to talk to them about that.

(44:01):
Right.
Because I'm very singular focused in our business development approach when it boils down to it.
Because I have just found that is working in my pro with my prospects right now is very singular, very direct.
This is what we do, this is who we are.
As opposed to the old spray and pray methodology.

Speaker 4 (44:18):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
That used to work back in 2010-2020.
Right.
But things have seismically shifted in that.
But now I know, because I know that this will resonate with some sales reps out there.
The nerve that you feel after you onboard that new customer and they send your first load and you're like, we don't have a real carrier for this.
That all goes away when you have that capacity network built up where it's like, dude, I have a thousand percent confidence that when I land my next shipper that moves freight from that region that I just mentioned and I can call that carrier up, I know how it's going to go.

Speaker 4 (44:52):
Exactly.
And that's one thing I have on my wall.
You can't see it, but it says do not take same day loads for that very specific reason.
Because as an ops guy or like a founder, I want to take as much fate as possible.
So I have to constantly remind myself, you know, if an opportunity is knocking and a customer's pressure, you want to say yes.
But unless you have a truck in hand with someone that you know that is trusted, that can execute to the level that you want, you don't want to bring your operations level down to a lower level.

(45:18):
That's where things like your a proper TMS really comes into place.
And luckily enough, and funny enough, I didn't even notice this.
But Revenova is who we use for our tms.
It really does help us get to where we need to get.
It's.
For me, it's awesome to I can use it off my phone and a lot of those other legacy softwares I've used in the past.

(45:40):
I need to be mobile as a founder because I might be out visiting a customer.
I don't have time to bring up my laptop or whatnot.
So having the ability for that to be a all in one package part of your TMS really helped us in our initial first year growth and it helps with our customers visibility because it was able to provide all the things that the customer would normally ask for.
It's already there and that really helps when you're starting off with the company as well.

(46:02):
That's one part of our journey that we wanted to really focus on is finding that create a great TMS software that can do all those things for us and then add layers to it as we grow.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
Yeah dude, I'm right there with you.
Right.
Like I also am a active Revenova user as well.
Right.
Like we use them every single day.
I was literally in there this morning researching Prospects researching active shipments that we have and all of that.
And you know, and that's one thing for me where it's like, you know, having that ability to really grow and scaling because like dude, we have to run lean.

(46:33):
At the end of the day we are a startup, we are bootstrapped.
We have to get, you know, as the old rap song goes, I gotta make a dollar out of 15 cents.
Like that is my life right now, right?
So it's like to have the right tech in our operation that helps us scale and just save because to me man, I'm constantly looking at it from an efficiency standpoint.
How do I save minutes of my day so I can take those saved minutes and pick up the phone and start making more sales calls right?

(46:59):
Like that's my focus is and that's where it's like the operations of having the right tech stack inside of your organization is.
It is.
I think it's a massive different difference maker out there.
Like my favorite, one of my literal favorite features in Revenova is the clone feature that comes along with it.
Cloning shipments and everything.
Because like dude, we don't have EDI customers, we don't have a lot of that stuff out there.

(47:23):
So it's like we have customers who you know what we pick up out of a lot of the exact same and deliver into the same facilities.
Man, you know how much time that saves us just to go in and click that duplicates everything because the commodity is the same, the weight's the same, pickup delivery locations, all of that.
Dude, it's just like that just saves us a ton of time.

Speaker 4 (47:41):
Automatic posting the carrier can go in and put all their information can start their tracking.
We connect, we use trucker tools but connects to your trucker tools automatically sets up the geolocation for everything.
Geo fences, the whole bit.
Customer gets their notification.
Drivers are like it literally the tracing I don't need to like a lot of this might be a hot take.
A lot of people think well we got a near shore everything to other countries.

(48:02):
And you know, I think that's the wrong approach.
I think having the technology for you to be able to focus on what you're doing really will push it more forward for you because then you can go have more in depth conversations with your carriers, with your customers because you have the ability to know everything's being handled in the background correctly.
And not always relying on third party outside sources is the best way to going about it.

(48:25):
I love to Keep everything as much as close to heart as possible and then be able to talk to my carriers as often as possible.
I find that fundamentally very important too.
That's why another feature I like in Revenova is being able to track all those rates that you're putting in.
Go back and review that later on with your guys, like, hey, you know, I know you're one of my most common carriers, but you're like X amount above the market today.

(48:47):
Like, what.
What's going on?
And be able to have those conversations.
I think a lot of people just put a rate in and they move on.
They don't go back to have conversations with your steady guys like, hey, this is how we need to improve.
This is what we need to do in a secure, more business is part of that ideology as well for us.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
So how are you leveraging that to kind of stay lean?
Right?
Because, like, this is another thing too, you know, out in the real world where I operate, not everybody just has boatloads of investment capital to go hire fucking 100 people, right?
Like, we gotta, again, we gotta make this work.
So how are you leveraging that data to help you make better decisions inside of your business?
Because that's one thing that we like, we do too, man.

(49:25):
Like, we are very.
And when I say we, this is 100% my business partner, he is the guy who fucking I talk all this.
He takes all the shit I talk and then compiles it up into a very nice report for us to look at.
But with that being said, though, man, like, our data is everything right now.
Because it is, man.
Like, I love going, like, again, we're not in a position to turn away business.

(49:46):
But at the end of the day, not all revenue is profitable, okay?
Not all customers profitable.
So it's like, how are you doing that?
And then like leveraging that to know, like, hey, we're.
We're good with our current employee headcount, for example.
We don't need.
If we focus more on booking these same repeatable carriers, we don't necessarily need to invest in hiring anybody at this time.

(50:07):
We can keep stashing away capital to make sure that when we do bring somebody on, we have a financial Runway already built in.

Speaker 4 (50:15):
And I think, Chris, that's a very hard decision to always be making every single day.
As an entrepreneur, that's one of the things I've been learning and that was accustomed to is, when do you hire on?
And I laugh because, remember when I was an employee, I'd always be telling my boss, we need to hire more people.
We need to hire more people.
Why can't we just hire more people to help support now as a business owner, like how much more can I do before I blow my brains out, right?

(50:38):
And it's hard because you really want to focus on the right trucks and having the right ability to have the right knowledge to service the customers.
And I think you nailed it earlier.
It's understanding your carriers and where they're running and what capacity they can give you and then making them feel comfortable that you will secure that capacity.
Because how many guys that you know, that you talk to have been, you know, offered an RFQ from one of the big retailers because the broker got it when they got the rfq, they never saw the freight.

(51:06):
And there's that the trust is lacking.
When you have that trust built in, the data that you get, you know, is accurate.
So what I mean by that is often when we go talk to our carriers and when I used to do this, when I talked to carriers, I used to add another 20, 30% or I know they're 20, 30% higher because they're fishing.
I used to just say they're fishing for rates and they're not giving you an accurate number that's out there.

(51:28):
We'd have to really kind of guesstimate where it is.
So you rely on different kind of reports and whatnot.
Now when you're working with trusted people and you have me revenova, I have that sales tracking data that comes in what other people are using, what kind of other rates, very similar to what Green screen even does too.
You're able to go, hey, this is the market.
This is what my guys tell me.

(51:49):
I know we're pretty close.
I think I can secure the business at this, go back to my carrier, be like, this is what I'm seeing is the market.
Can you agree to this rate for 6 to 12 months?
Lock it in.
If I get this business put into writing into a contract and then everybody's kind of happy and hopefully you're able to kind of grow from that position.
I try to stay away from the load boards, but you need to develop carriers and those are very much needed still too.

(52:14):
So load boards are good for new blood, trying to find it out.
But I'm not, I'm different in a way.
I talk to all my broker friends and I'll ask them who they're using, who is good and who is bad and be like, hey, what's your guys experience with this?
I'm willing to try or I'll tell them, hey, these guys are really great.
Please use them because I think that helps the whole community out as well.

(52:34):
When like minded brokers use like minded carriers, that group is going to rise to the top versus people who kind of hoard all the information to themselves and it doesn't benefit the community.
And I'm very much a community believer and one of my models always was there's enough freight for everybody to go around.
There's always a driver shortage.
We always hear about there's not enough freight.
I know there's dips in the market, but I don't know about you, but we felt a little bit of a crunch in the last couple weeks with the tariffs.

(52:59):
Now it's going to probably give you the reverse.
Not enough drivers.
This is happening.
That is happening.
You always got to be working within your community.
I think that community presence is very important to be able to move really accurately understand your data that you're getting.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
Are you guys primarily doing cross border freight then?
Is, is that your guys is kind of your wheelhouse or are you guys intro Canada for the.

Speaker 4 (53:18):
Most part, majority is cross border and we focus on cold chain.
We love dealing with anything that has to do with cold chain, predominantly with food and food mainly.
And the reason being is recession proof in our mind.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
Yeah, no, absolutely.
I, I completely, you know, 100 agree with that stance, right?
Like food at the end of the day, like if we're not eating, like I think we can all do the math on a lot of that stuff.
But you know, from my perspective though, Matt, how have your prospects, you know, again, you do a ton of cross border freight.
I know tariffs are all over the news about what's going to happen.

(53:54):
Is it going to happen?
Is it a giant negotiation?
You know, my personal stances is I'm at a wait and see with a lot of this because I feel like a lot of the talk goes away when there's a little bit, you know, there's a give and a take, right.
I don't think anybody can deny that the United States practically subsidizes the majority of the world.
And I look at it as this.

(54:15):
We're like 35, $36 trillion in debt.
We got to start clawing our way out.
Right?
But with that being said though, man, when we're at the front lines like we are in transportation, how much of that is a concern with a lot of your customers right now?
Are you seeing that they're like, hey, we got to get a Bunch of this stuff shipped down there right now.

(54:36):
Are they at a wait and see?
How is that looking?

Speaker 4 (54:39):
A lot of the food guys are very much, I wouldn't call it panicking, but they're being very urgent in their requests and the movement of the goods because they don't know what's happening.
So a lot of the protein buyers are really shipping across the border and really buying to bring up inventory into Canada because Canada and the United States have been best friends for a heck of a long time.

(54:59):
Right.
So we've been across border sharing everything, resources.
Our regions are more aligned than certain parts of the US within itself.
So the Midwest and the Prairies are more similar than Ontario and New York are to even the BC and the California area.
So these regions have developed more regionally versus country wise.
So the supply chains feed it that way.

(55:20):
That's why you saw it.
Trump talked about the pipeline recently because it connects from Alberta all the way down.
But to the same effect.
A lot of these food buyers right now are pushing a lot of their products across because everybody wants to build up inventory.
The problem with a lot of these positions is it's perishable.
You can't increase too much of that inventory because then you have to really sell it quickly at a lower price once it starts spoiling.

(55:41):
So it's kind of like a catch 22.
So certain products are moving and getting frozen and being held to, but other products, you can't do that.
But the customers are then deciding, we buy across from Canada, we buy from Mexico, we can't buy from those two.
Do we really want to buy from China?
Do we want to really buy from South Africa or do we really want to buy from Asian countries?

(56:02):
Or do we just continue buying from Canada and Mexico because it's still a better product because they adhere to the same rules that we do when it comes to food consumption.
And I think that's part of what has to be hashed out in the next little bit.
But everybody has to obviously protect their own interests for the most part.
But I think there's a lot of panic buying going to start happening and tariffs do come into play for sure.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Yeah, no, I'm right there with you.
Robert Cowton has a question about what technology are you using to onboard carriers.

Speaker 4 (56:29):
Right now I use rmis.
I know highways.
The other one that was kind of popular, I've always used RMIs was more like a familiarity for me and it's kind of worked out and I like how it kind of, for me it goes Right into my Revenova system.
I don't have to kind of do anything else.
I do use carrier for a 101 to kind of have a look at what the carriers are being rated on and how they're being looked at.

(56:53):
But for the most part, I want to make sure the insurances are up to date.
I have my thresholds, for the most part get always triggered because of differences between Canada and the United States.
I always review all my carriers at least three times before I onboard them.
That's very important to what we do.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
Yeah, no, I, I got you there, man.
I think that, you know, with where things are right now, how do you, how are you projecting, you know, in, you know, maybe you and your business partner.
How are you guys projecting what 2025 might shake out to be?
My personal stance is, I mean, outside of some drastic event that happens and again, you could argue that, you know, implementation of tariffs at the levels that are being spoken about, that could cause a drastic shift.

(57:37):
If all of this kind of gets worked out, which I ultimately think a lot of it is, it's just media sounding pieces.
It's going to work itself out.
I don't necessarily see anything changing for the most part.
I feel like what we're experiencing right now is probably going to trickle along at, you know, throughout the year.
What are, what's your kind of thoughts on that?

Speaker 4 (57:57):
We're projecting a very good year.
I think freight's going to increase the price just because we're still very much in growth stage or initial kind of stages.
So it's a lot easier to go from 1, from 0 to 1, from 1 to 2 and so on.
But I feel there's gonna be a lot more freight for entrepreneurs like ourselves right now as other companies are going to try something different because they weren't being provided the support they were promised.

(58:19):
And I think it's a very much a year for entrepreneurship as both sides of the border are going to be focused on that middle class again, which is great for startup companies getting in there and kind of really focusing on what customers need.
And I'll also see the rise of these smaller companies.
So there's a, you know, there's a famous company in Canada that's kind of really taking on Hershey's and Nestle.

(58:43):
It's called Midday Squares.
And there's a lot of these like smaller chocolate companies or other food confectionery companies that are coming up through the ranks and they're going to be coming big in 2025, 2026, 2027, only people like you and I are able to service because they don't want to go over to the big guys because they're not going to get that specific need that they're looking for.
Yeah, I really see 2025 being a very good year for entrepreneurs and mid to smaller size enterprises for sure.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
Yeah, I'm right there with you, Matt, in that regard.
I personally think.
And like I had Sean Smith, he's with Denim.
We do a financial Friday show once a month together and were talking about that.
I think it was either in December or January where the growth in the industry or like the market actually started showing a shift in smaller providers taking market share away from the larger providers out there.

(59:34):
And I'm like, dude, I'm of the mindset no matter what I say about the market, you guys, I personally don't give a flying how the market is performing.
I will find a way to win.
Right?
Like that is where I'm at with it.
And I'm right there with you, man.
Like, I think that the tolerance for failure is the longer, like I will say this to any sales rep out there.

(59:55):
The longer that this market remains this way, the better of an opportunity you're gonna have when their current network fails.
Because the tolerance for failure will be so low.
Because most people are going to look back.
Most people's attention span is like eight seconds, you guys.
All right, so like they're going to look back and be like, well, hey, it's been easy for like our trucks have been on time for the last year.

(01:00:16):
What gives now?
Are you not able to do this job?
We got to find somebody who is.
So I think like these next 12 to 24 months are going to turn into one of the biggest market share grabs of modern history.
I truly feel that way about that.
From a business development standpoint in freight.

Speaker 4 (01:00:35):
I would add a caveat to that.
As long as you have a product to sell and you're not just selling, I can pick up and deliver.
If you're just doing a pickup and delivery and you're commoditized that way, all the other sales rep are having the same conversation.
And you really need to have an ability to speak to what you're doing and what you're doing differently and able to vocalize that to the customer.
Because if you're making that phone call and you're going, hey, I pick up on time, my on time percentage is 99%.

(01:01:01):
He's going to say, yeah, so is the other 150 phone calls I got today.
Like, how is that different?
And difference could be in the things that.
How you promote yourself and being a familiar face, going out there and exposing yourself into being a part of the community, going out there and doing different things differently.
And what I mean by that is focusing on a specific niche.
Like, if you're doing dry freight that is full truckload point A to point B, you're going to be losing out to the big guys like prime and Schneider all day long because they can get it down to the pennies, and they need to make a dollar off of every truck that they move.

(01:01:31):
You need to make a heck of a lot more.
So you really got to focus on what your story is in that journey that you're providing to your customer and how you fit part of their journey.
That's why I said, like, the way we're buying now is changing as well.
So Everybody's going on TikTok, everybody's going on Instagram.
Nobody's going watching the commercials about TV dinners anymore.
It's like, who you're following that's influencing what you're buying.

(01:01:51):
And those purchases are different from what it was 20, 30 years ago.
They're not going to giant warehouses anymore.
You got to be far more niche.
You got to have more of that supply chain kind of figured out.
Versus I pick up with a big truck, I deliver with a big truck.
That's all I can offer.
How else can you give them the different opportunities?
Can you cross stock this?
Can you warehouse it for them?
Can you provide a final mile?

(01:02:11):
Can you palletize?
Can you pick and pack?
What kind of folder solution can you do that makes them more attractive to you is what I would suggest for 20, 25.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
I love it, Matt.
Dude, this flew by.
I knew it was going to.
I mean, the first time we talked, I think we almost went for like an hour, and we're both like, fuck, we got to get back to work here.
But, man, I appreciate you joining today.
How does anybody reach out to you to find out more if you guys are hiring?
Whatever it is, man, put that out there so people know how to reach out.

Speaker 4 (01:02:38):
Yeah, absolutely.
Either through our website, Monarch Connect, obviously.
Monarch.com Shoot us an email.
There's obviously a contact list there on LinkedIn.
And we're gonna be expanding some of our socials.
We're doing a few different things later on this year, so check that stuff out.
We'll have a lot more announcements that we'll have coming up.
I think it'll be pretty cool.

(01:02:59):
And yeah, just kind of reach out to us.
We're very responsive.
We're not like.
I think most people where they just kind of ignore everybody.
We'd like to get in touch with everybody that we kind of chat with, whether it's.
You have industry knowledge, if you want to learn about something.
We just want to talk to everybody and learn about you as well.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
I appreciate it, Matt.
Thank you so much for joining me.
That's going to be it for today, you guys.
We got a guest coming on pretty much tomorrow.
Well, not pretty much tomorrow and Friday as well.
As always, if you guys got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show.
You guys, if you're feeling really ambitious after this one, which you should be, rank the show on itunes and Spotify, you guys, because that's what helps us get that message out there is because if you saw value, your network's going to see value as well.

(01:03:38):
I appreciate you guys.
I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon.

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
Came back with a bank Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when I'm get to the bag a got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when the lane move a fast a let them all cross if they hate then let them made them make a bigger balls a.

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1285. #TFCP - Real Strategies and Niche Specialization: Building a Stronger Business in Freight!

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