Manifest Takeaways and CargoRex Launch Lessons

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Unknown (00:00):
Blythe, all right, 321, welcome

Blythe Brumleve (00:06):
into another episode of everything is
logistics, a podcast for thethinkers and freight. I am your
host, Blythe Milligan, and weare proudly presented by SPI
logistics. And in the show, Iwant to have more of a different
type of episode for this. Numberone, I am fresh off manifest.
And if you've ever been tomanifest, the future of supply
chain and logistics, held in LasVegas around, you know, January,

(00:27):
February timeframe for each ofthe last four years, then you
know how long it could take torecover from this particular
conference. And it's notnecessarily like, you know,
being in Vegas that definitelyhelps. I think also it's getting
getting older, getting up therein age. But it takes a long time

(00:50):
to recover from this damnconference. And so I am
recording this, you know, aboutfive days later than what I
originally planned. I hadambitious goals of recording
this content in the airport onthe way back home, No, instead,
I spent it trying to catch up onsome much needed sleep from the

(01:11):
conference, because it's just soimpactful in more ways than one.
Had more than 6000 people thatattended, you know, dozens and
dozens of companies, and it washeld in the Venetian and so if
you've never been to thisconference, this is a conference
that I will never miss. I'vegone to it every single year

(01:32):
since its inception, and it'sgotten it's doubled in size,
both in the people that attend,and then also the square footage
of the expo floor, which is justa site to be seen. It's, you
know, I often have havementioned on this show, and in
previous, you know, manifestfocused episodes, that it was
the first place that I walkedinto and could see the entire

(01:56):
logistics process under oneroof. So warehousing, maritime,
you know, obviously, truckload,you know, all of these different
facets, technology serviceproviders under one roof. And it
just, it was a big inspiration,of, you know, why I wanted to
start this show, start thispodcast, and so this, this

(02:18):
really feels like sort of agreat episode to give, sort of
you know, my quick hitters onthe main takeaways of what I got
from the show, things that arein motion, things that are
happening, and then a new thing,what I did this year as I also
took solicitations from othercompanies that were going to be
at the event. And so what I meanby that is, if you're listed as

(02:42):
a podcast or a creator or anykind of media person in the
manifest app, what they have isthis just insane level of
networking prior to the showtaking place or prior to the
event taking place. So me, as apodcaster, and I'm sure other
creators, in speaking with othercreators, they experience this
as well. Where you are added tothe manifest app, you get access

(03:06):
to it a few weeks in advance,and so you can kind of start
plotting out, like who you wantto meet with, the sessions you
want to go to, things like that.
But if you're on the media sideof things, you also have your
email sort of opened up to everysingle sponsor that is part of
manifest, and it's both dauntingand incredibly rewarding,
because you have to sort ofnavigate these waters of just

(03:28):
filtering through informationand figuring out where you need
to spend your time. Anotherthing with manifest is that you
have to prioritize who you'regoing to meet with and why, and
because of the previousexperience of going to all of
the other previous manifestevents, what I wanted to do this
year is figure out a way that Ican incorporate companies that

(03:51):
send me all of these pressreleases without having to, you
know, I have the bandwidth tointerview them and talk to them
For, you know a lengthy amountof time. Any listener to this
show knows that all of ourinterviews are at least 30
minutes long. And so if you dothe math, and you're getting, I
would say, probably a dozenrequests every single day, from

(04:11):
the time to manifest app opensuntil damn near the the start of
the event, you're getting pressreleases from all different
corners of the logistics world,and as one person, I cannot keep
up with all of it. So my ideafor this year was, you know,
having the Okay, so maybe I'llback up. My idea for this year

(04:33):
was for everybody that Icouldn't do a long form
interview with. I wanted them, amember of their team, a subject
matter expert, to submit a videoanywhere from one minute to
three minutes long, or a quote,you know, submit them to me, and
then I will feature the bestones on a manifest episode
recap. And so this allowed me tohave you know these subject

(04:57):
matter experts. Share exactlywhat they're thinking and what
they're seeing right from theexpo floor, and being able to
share that with all of y'all. SoI'll share a little bit more
about that. Well, I guess Ishould just talk about it right
now. So let's you know I'm thehost, so I can make these
decisions. And so for you know,a lot of these, I have 12345, I
have several, nine. Sorry, I hadto count again, because my eyes,

(05:24):
you know, again, getting older,nine videos that were submit,
that were submitted, and I'mcurrently in the process of
uploading those to our YouTubechannel. Technically, they will
treat YouTube will treat thesevideos as shorts, because they
just recently changed a rulewhere it used to be a short,
which is, you know, very liketick tock style videos had to be

(05:44):
59 seconds or less. Don't youdare make it a full minute,
because they're not going toshow it under the shorts tab,
shorts are being heavilyfeatured and promoted on the
YouTube platform, either to yourenjoyment or to your dismay. But
because these videos are shortform format, they are going to

(06:05):
appear in shorts because now,recently, YouTube changed that
rule where you can post videosup to three minutes long and
they appear in the shorts tab.
So typically like vertical stylevideos, and then you can add
them to YouTube, and YouTubewill determine if it's under
three minutes, and they willautomatically qualify that as a

(06:27):
short. Getting some pretty goodresponses on a lot of our shorts
lately that come from previousepisodes. So I'm curious to see
what these sort of like one takevideos and how they perform, but
I felt that it was a better wayto showcase some of the
conversations and some of thethought process that are
happening in and around the expofloor, without having to use the

(06:51):
bandwidth to interview each oneof these people, because that
would if I take it a stepfurther, I another aspect of the
manifest conference that Ithoroughly enjoy and I
thoroughly love. If you listento our in a recent interview
with Courtney Mueller, who's thePresident over at manifest, they
have a podcast booth, and so forthe podcasters and the creators,

(07:12):
they allow you, you know, acertain amount of time on
Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday ofthe conference in order to have
the podcast booth where you cantell other people that you want
to interview. Hey, show up hereand we can have a conversation.
They usually have, you know,like a table, a nice little
area, Maersk sponsors it, whichis fantastic. I think they
sponsor the entire time. So forthis year, they had not one, but

(07:36):
two podcast studios right nextto each other. And so I was able
to take advantage of three hourson the first day of manifest.
And the way that I structuredthese interviews, which will be
posted to the channel soon,they're currently being edited.
It's a lot of files to beedited, but the way I structured
them is over three hours. What Iwould do is I had somebody show

(08:00):
up from like, let's say 12 tothree is the time that I have
the podcast studio. And soduring that time frame, it was
like 12 to 1225, 1230, to 1255,one o'clock to 125, and so on
and so forth. And that way allof the equipment is already set
up. I'm just ushering in theguests here and coming in and
going out, quick introductions,quick setup, and then we can,

(08:26):
just, like, hop right to it andstart the discussion. So shout
out to manifest for having thisspace and having this you know,
you know, a place for forpodcasters and journalists and
other creators within logisticsto really feel like they have a
professional home. I can't tellyou how many conferences that
I've gone to where I'm trying tofinagle a spot in, like the

(08:48):
hotel lobby, and trying to finda good spot with good lighting
that you know can make for agood conversation. And then you
have to factor in that you'reprobably by yourself, doing a
lot of these recordings, unlessyou have a big budget where or
some kind of funding sourcewhere you can bring, you know,
an entire tech crew or an entiretech team. It was just me and

(09:08):
Lindsey. And if you don't knowLindsey, Lindsey handles a lot
of our social media, all of oursocial media, unless it sound
unless it's like a reallypersonal post on like LinkedIn
or Twitter or something, I thinkyou can kind of tell, you know,
if they're content based postslike about cargo bricks, which
I'll get into in just a littlebit with some updates there. But
if it's like coming from anepisode, or it's an email

(09:31):
newsletter or something likethat, Lindsey is the one who
really helps and shines in thatregards and leads that ship. So
it was great to have her thereto be sort of my second, you
know, pair of eyes and ears,helping to talk with the guests.
She also did a fantastic jobwith like snapping photos and
posting those photos to, youknow, my personal social media

(09:54):
feeds. And then also theeverything is logistics, social
media feeds. Um. And so justbeing able to get that content
out quickly, because for me, itwas just non stop with with sort
of the the lay of the land, asfar as you know, manifest is
concerned, because I flew in onSunday, the conference starts,

(10:14):
technically on Monday. Mondaywas six interviews, moderated a
panel Tuesday comes up. Imoderate the official manifest
panel. The other panel Imoderated was for vision, which
is one of the exclusive sponsorson Monday. And what's great
about the panels on Monday,which I'll get into in just a
second with some of the detailson some of those interviews and

(10:36):
conversations, but what's greatabout the Monday panel is that
the expo floor isn't open. Theexpo floor opens Tuesdays and
Wednesdays of the event. A lotof people don't know that, and a
lot of people showed up tomanifest thinking that they
would, you know, hit the expofloor on Monday and Tuesday come
to find out that, you know,their flight leaps halfway

(10:57):
through Tuesday, and then theycan barely see the the
incredible expo floor. So if youplan to go to a manifest in the
future, make sure that you arein town for all three of those
days, but especially Tuesday andWednesday. If you want to see
the expo floor, because itdoesn't open until Tuesday, but
Monday, because the expo floorwasn't open, there were panels

(11:17):
that were taking place, and oneof those was the women shaping
the future of supply chain,sponsored by vision and on, you
know, it's hosted at manifest.
And so we had, I moderated thatpanel, and there were four other
women on that panel, friend ofthe show, Grace Sharkey, was one
of those panelists. And we gotto speak directly to these women

(11:40):
to find out, not necessarilyfrom a, okay, you're, you know,
just, you know, what's it likebeing a woman working in
logistics, which, of course,yeah, that's the undertone of
the conversation. But what wefocus the panel on is the
achievements of these peoplethat also happen to be women,

(12:01):
and I think that that was myfavorite way of framing the
discussion, not that thesepeople are getting the
recognition because they'rewomen, but because they've
worked their asses off andthey've gotten to the top and
they've dealt with a lot ofbullshit along the way, pardon
my French, but they've dealtwith A lot of BS along the way,

(12:22):
and they still succeeded, andthey still thrive, and they're
still thriving to this day. Theaudience was packed out, and I
think it was most, you know,obviously the topic was, you
know, something that resonatedwith a lot of people there, men
and women alike. But I think weit was also very helpful to not
have to compete with a giantexpo floor that is insanely

(12:44):
impressive. And so that panelwas standing room only,
fantastic to see. I have somesome photos posted up on
LinkedIn, and then also myinstagram at Blythe Brumm, if
you want to go check that out.
But that panel was fantastic. Wehave a copy of that file, and
it's going to, we're going torelease it on the on the
podcast, of course, like we'vedone with previous manifest, you

(13:04):
know, episodes. So that one I'mexcited to share, and one of the
key takeaways that I rememberfrom that particular episode or
from that particular panel, istalking about the geographic
challenges. So, you know, two ofthe women on the panel were from
Google. You know, formallyworked at Google. One of them
now works at Uber freight. Oneof them now works at a company

(13:26):
called dextery. We've actuallyhad dexterity Awana Awana Jenga
on a show in the past. So gosearch everything as logistics
to find that conversation.
Because she is a gem. Also got aan awesome new palette post it
from dexterity so So shout outto them, because I love there

(13:46):
aren't many booth giveaways thatI love, but I love palette post
its and that's that one thingthat I will make sure that I get
at every conference, because Iuse them so much. If you looked
at my desk right now, 1234, Ihave four of these post. Its
just on my desk right now. Theyalso, in case you're you're

(14:07):
watching or listening, in caseyou're listening, I have showed
this off before on my socials,but this is a, this is what a
dexary robot looks like that'sinside the warehouse. And they
had one of these, a real one,not the Lego version. They did
offer me the Lego version, but Itold them I already had one, and
I already built it. But if younotice all of these little

(14:30):
sensors here on the robotitself. This is the the world's
tallest warehouse robotic, andall of these little sensors have
cameras on them. And so whatthey're used for is for accurate
inventory counts. So that wasanother cool person, just a
little side note. And then alsowe had Rachel levy from

(14:52):
brooklinen. She was also on thepanel as well. And then with
Uber freight, we had Nataliethat was on from Uber freight.
And then. Sharkey, of course,from freightwave slash fire
crown media. And one of thequestions that was answered by
the women who, you know,especially from Rachel, who with
Brooklyn, and I mean, they're aglobal company, and she talks

(15:12):
about being in the room withother supply chain folks, other
supply chain managers from allacross the globe. And, you know,
I think, you know, obviously,there's a lot to be said about,
you know, what's going on in thecountry, whether you love it or
you hate it, but there aresignificant situations that
affect women in this country,but also affect them a little

(15:35):
bit more in other countries. Youknow, you can say, oh, I want to
sit at the table, things likethat. And you can largely get
that opportunity in the UnitedStates, but if you go to some of
these other countries thataren't used to speaking or
working with women in thatregard, that creates a very
unique set of circumstances thatyou have to navigate. And these

(15:55):
women talked about workingthrough that, and I thought that
was a fascinating discussion,again, highlighting the
achievements of these peoplethat also happen to be women,
not necessarily featuring themonly because they're a woman.
And so because we framed thediscussion like that, and shout
out to Sammy amons from over atvision, you know, she really

(16:18):
spearheaded this discussion andorganized a lot of this panel,
but this was her This was herthought concept, and that she
really wanted to focus on thatarea, and it really rang true
and and a lot of women and menin the audience really
appreciated that. And from whatI understand, it was one of the
highest rated panels in theentire conference. So thank you

(16:39):
to everyone that showed up andlistened to that discussion. If
you did miss it, it will be on afuture episode of everything is
logistics, so we will be sure toshare those again in the future.
There's a couple of other notesthat I wanted to, sort of, you
know, give as far as takeawaysfor the conference. And I would
say one of the bigger ones isjust how many companies have

(17:07):
just added the word AI to theirofferings, and you don't really
know if it's AI or if it's just,you know, the evolved phrase of
machine learning turning intoAI.
So that was, that wasinteresting to try to sort
through, like, who is actuallydoing artificial intelligence,
and then who is, you know, justhas been using machine learning

(17:31):
for a while, and then justreframing it as AI, which, I
don't know that there'snecessarily a problem with that,
but it is. It feels a littlelike, I don't want to say
gimmicky, but it might begimmicky, and that's um, that
that was one of my my firsttakeaways is just how much AI
has dominated the conversation.
I even moderated a panel on inthe age of AI, how do you handle

(17:54):
data security? That was mysecond day panel, my Tuesday
morning panel. And so we wereon, or I moderated that panel
with the CTO of Honeywell, andthen also with the CEO of Clio,
and then also, I think he wasthe VP of sales from crisp, so
two logistics companies and ashipper. And then it was me

(18:18):
moderating that discussion onthe data security aspect when
you have so many differentplayers and tech stacks and
everybody's offering AI, but howdo you make sure that your data,
your sensitive company,proprietary data, stays
sensitive, stays you know,proprietary to you and your

(18:39):
organization, and there were abunch of different strategies
that Clio and Chris andHoneywell, all you know,
implement, and there were a lotof really great tips and
takeaways from that discussion.
Got a lot of good feedback fromthat as well. So I will be
sharing that conversation in thevery near future, hopefully by

(19:00):
the end of the month for both ofthose conversations, and then
from the interview perspective,oh my gosh. So we did. We had
conversations with Highway, wehad conversations with overhaul,
we had conversations withcolaris. Oh my gosh. I can't
believe I'm blanking on this. Wehad three more conversation Oh,
Kevin from the new warehousepodcast that is for Let me hold

(19:24):
on just a second and I will findthe other one. This is me
stalling for time while I findthe other Oh, geo post codes.
Oh, that was another really,really interesting one. So geo
post codes, and then also Rogerboza from clone ops. So clone
ops, brand new sponsor of thepodcast, can't wait for them to

(19:47):
come up on and, you know, Iguess come to the everything is
logistics, sort of landscape.
You'll start to see them in ouremail newsletters, across social
media. And then we got a coupleinterviews coming. One of them
was with Roger. Bosa. And thenwe also have an interview with
their CEO, David Bell. They arefrom David Bell, you might know,
from lean staffing and solutionsfame, but what they are building

(20:08):
is really fascinating. And it's,you know, I sort of bad mouth.
You know, are the companies thatare just changing, you know,
machine learning into AI and,you know, is it a marketing
gimmick or not? Well, clone Opsis not doing that. They're
actually building clones. That'sin the name, they're building
clones of yourself, and one ofthe things in order to carry

(20:30):
out, you know, specific tasks.
So it's not just, you know,handling phone calls and admin
tasks and things like that, butit's also giving the ability to
clone yourself, not just forlike in house brokers or things
like that, but also for drivers,which I thought was really
interesting and a reallyinteresting play, because for a

(20:52):
lot of drivers that thesentiment that I see online is
that they're very apprehensiveto more technology, More
tracking, more invasion ofprivacy, you know, things like
that. But they're also tired,you know, with many of us tired
of dealing with Bs admin tasksthat take up a lot of time, then

(21:13):
making check calls, answeringcheck calls, and they frankly,
don't really want to do it. Sothis is the first that I've
heard with clone ops, offering asolution of AI solution that can
help drivers avoid some of thoseannoying tasks that they have to
do while out on the road. Ithink there's also some really

(21:35):
cool from what David was saying,he was saying that there's also
some really cool translationopportunities there as well. So
what you have is, you know,drivers who who may speak
another language, or brokers whomay speak another language, then
you have this ability for forthem to communicate in their
native language. So then thatway nothing is really lost in

(21:56):
the translation or lost inconversation. I thought that
that was really exciting aswell, and so we'll have more
content from the clone ops teamcoming in the future. But I
thought you should just knowabout the six interviews that we
did record, especially ReedClements over at highway. I've
been trying to get highway onthe show for a couple years now.
We're finally able to make ithappen in manifest, which is

(22:16):
fantastic. I mentioned geopostcodes, which it was a really
interesting I never reallythought about how you need
different location data for, youknow, anywhere in the ocean. I
just thought, you know, sort oflatitude, longitude is, is good
enough. But from what Simon,who's a CEO over at geo post
codes, was saying, is that Sosay, for example, there's a town

(22:40):
in Belgium that has one specificname, but then in English, it
has another name, but they bothmean the same thing. So if
you're doing a, maybe a GoogleMap Search, or, you know, you're
trying to find a differentlocation, or trying to find that
location, and you enter in andyou're the English version,
version of that city, how? Howare you going to be? How is that

(23:03):
data going to be able to torecognize that you actually mean
the Belgium way of spelling itinstead of the English way of
spelling it? And so what geopost codes has done for more
than 15 years now is thatthey've aggregated a lot of that
data all of these different datasources, and then they sell that
data, that location data, as apackage, so to help folks with

(23:27):
their you know, locationaccuracy, port, terminal,
locations, things like that andthat, free and logistics. It's
just the more layers you peelback, the more there is left to
learn. I would have assumed thatGPS or latitude, longitude,
either of those two mechanisms,would have been perfect to

(23:47):
figure out where, you know,something, a place, is located.
I had no idea that this servicewas even in need, but it's
really, really cool to learnabout something like that and
then be able to, you know, shareit with you guys. So I got that
conversation coming. KevinLawton, I mentioned with new
warehouse podcast,he was great, because if you
were anywhere near the manifestExpo four, you saw how many damn

(24:10):
robotics are everywhere,everywhere. And so we were able
to have a, you know, a lengthydiscussion on sort of the state
of robotics inside thewarehouse. And that was another
one of my related I guess sortof big takeaways. Is that, for
with speaking with Kevin, morethan 90% of US based warehouses

(24:31):
do not have any form ofrobotics. But if you pay
attention to sort of logisticsnews, and you know, funding
rounds and things like that.
Robotics companies have beenhave been getting funded left
and right for years, but whenyou hear that more than 90% of
them do not have any kind ofrobotics, that's a massive

(24:52):
market opportunity. So it makessense that we would see all of
these different roboticsolutions out on that expo
floor. I. Um, now the problemwith a lot of that adoption is
that it's very expensive, andthen you also have to navigate
the employee relationship,because naturally, you know that
this is with a previousconversation with six river

(25:13):
systems, which is anotherrobotics company. I believe
Amazon bought them out, but theymentioned that anytime that they
outfit a new warehouse withrobotics, they have specialized
training that helps employeessee the robots as their friends,
as a helper, instead of seeingit as something that's going to

(25:34):
take your job. So they withrobotics, there's a spec,
there's a very like specificonboarding experience that has
to take place in order for theworkers at that warehouse to
welcome their robot overlords.
But in the instances that I saw,and if you might remember a
previous episode with gather AI,there are other ways that you

(25:56):
can implement robotics into yourwarehouse without it having the
perception of taking human jobs,one of those ways, like what
gather AI or another companycalled Corbis with a C, they
have what's called droneinventory counting, and so it's
a looks like a drone that youwould buy at a at Walmart or

(26:17):
wherever. Team, wherever you'regetting your drones, probably
not temu, but wherever you'regetting your drones from, it
looked like a very normal drone.
It takes photos and it scans upand down. So say, you have these
racks of warehousing shelfspace, and you have all of these
barcodes with all of theseproducts. Now a typical work

(26:38):
situation would be you wouldprobably have to have, you know,
some kind of machinery aroundthere, some kind of a ladder,
some kind of a device, if ahuman were to want to count
whatever is on those shelves,whatever and whatever is inside
those boxes, it's a very tedioustask. It's, you know, it's not
that fun, it's not thatinteresting. And there it, you

(26:58):
know, anytime you have a tasklike that. It's prone to human
error. Now, where this helps,where like gather AI or Corvus,
helps, is that these drones workalongside the humans, where they
are doing the inventorycounting. Just literally, they
have a base station, three orfour drones that are charged up,
ready to go. You deploy one ofthem, and it goes through and it

(27:20):
counts all through the from topto bottom, from left to right,
it scans all of the barcodes,sends that data back to your
your WMS, and then you have moreaccurate inventory counts
without having to worry aboutyour workers. You know, being
having, you know, strenuous jobsor getting overworked or
probably underpaid as well, andit's also a lower barrier of

(27:44):
entry for the more than 90% ofwarehouses that don't have any
kind of robotics. And so youhave that, you know, a lower
barrier of entry for thesewarehouses to use a tool that's
going to help them not be asmuch of a burden as far as
onboarding and especiallyinvestment is concerned, and

(28:06):
then the employees within thewarehouse are more likely to
look at, say, a drone like thatas a companion versus something
that's going to take your job.
So I thought that that wasreally interesting observation
out on the X I mean, obviouslyit's an interesting observation
to me, because I'm the one whocame up with it, but it's one of
those observations that I sawvery frequently. There were

(28:28):
several warehouse countingdrones that were on the expo
floor, and so I thought thatthat was a really interesting
display of what may be comingfor the future of a lot of
warehouses that don'tnecessarily have to be the super
expensive pick and packrobotics, where you're replacing
damn near everyone within thewarehouse, except for, you know,

(28:49):
maybe a couple of engineers.
Okay, um, a couple of last ones,overhaul highway. Of course, I
already mentioned them, butoverhaul on Highway, talking
cargo, crime topic, talkingfraud prevention, things like
that. Lindsey recently, ourmarketing manager, she recently
put out a poll on everything islogistics, asking what topics

(29:12):
that you guys wanted to hearfrom or hear about more and
freight fraud. And you know, thecargo crime was the far and
away, the number one topic. SoI'm when I see those polls, when
I see those results, I listen,because I want to, want to be
able to cover the topics thatyou guys care about. And so two
out of the six interviews arecovering those topics. So we got

(29:33):
more content coming soon. Andthen we also have collaris,
which is a visibility platformfor shippers and a port terminal
owner. So that was aninteresting conversation as
well, with Renee al varega Andyeah, so that does it for the
interviews that were featured.
Okay, I just sorry I had to takea quick sip of something to

(29:56):
drink, because hoof we aretalking. We are talking and I
thought this was going to be aquicker type show I need to
probably work on, you know,making these a little bit
quicker, but I got so much stuffto talk about. So because I want
to make this a little bit of aquicker show, I am going to
briefly mention some of thetakeaways that you can find over
on YouTube. I mentioned earlierabout the different shorts that
companies submitted. So we havevideos over there, and I will

(30:19):
link to them in the show notes,just to make sure that you guys
don't miss them, and that youcan check them out if you're
interested. But we have semanticvisions. We have BlackBerry
radar, which is rad. I loveBlackberry. I begrudgingly
switch back in the day for thefolks who remember, or old
enough to remember, Blackberrymade the best phones on the

(30:40):
market and their messaging whereyou could just type on your
phone and you don't even have tolook at your phone. Oh,
beautiful. I miss it so much. IfBlackBerry wanted to ever come
back out with a regular phone, Iwould love to replace my iPhone
with a Blackberry phone, as longas you know you still have the

(31:01):
full keyboard. But Blackberryhas evolved, company wise, into
BlackBerry radar, and so we havea quote from them as well. And
when I say quotes for thesevideos, I asked, What's one key
takeaway or trend you're seeingshaping the logistics industry
in the coming year, all of thesepeople recorded their videos on
the expo floor. I kind of wantedthat vibe, as you know, sort of

(31:23):
like a tone setter. The energyof an expo floor is just
different than, say, if you'resitting in sort of an office. So
we will have semantic visions,Blackberry radar. We also have
tint voxel. We have destia. Wehave auto tech ventures. Barack
has been on a previous episode.

(31:46):
He talks about, you know, sortof the VC landscape. And you
know, VC and the relationship tologistics, which is an
interesting conversation. Highlyrecommend going and listening to
that previous everything islogistics episode. We also have
video from in orbit. We have theCEO of lvk, her video, I think,
was probably my favorite. Andthen we also have another video

(32:07):
from Ryder talking about theirprediction of what they think
they're going to see this year.
And that's actually humanoids.
Humanoid robots in the warehouseis what writer is predicting. So
you can catch all of those overon our YouTube channel. Just
search for everything aslogistics, and you go to the
little shorts tab, you can watchwhatever ones you like, or you
can click in the show notes tofind them much easier. Now, I do

(32:30):
have a few different of the textbased so I wanted everybody to
submit a video, but noteverybody is comfortable being
on video. So I said text is finetoo. But I just, you know, I'm,
frankly, I'm, it's just tough todisplay these types of quotes on
an environment like this. Sowhat I think we're going to do

(32:51):
is we're going to, what I wasgoing to do is just share my
Google Doc and show you guyswhat these quotes are. But what
I think will look betterpresentation wise is to take
these quotes, put it on a nicelittle Canva graphic. Lindsey is
going to hate me for this, butwe'll put them on a nice little
Canva graphic, and then we willshare them in a Twitter slash x

(33:11):
thread, and then also over onLinkedIn, so you can catch all
of them. But for the text basedquotes, we have a we have
submissions from A to B, we haveroadie. We have Who else do we
have? We have 01, 100. We have Epost global. Who else do we
have? Ambi robotics, justreading through that, ambi

(33:36):
robotics where, yeah, it does,yeah and be robotics. We're
leaning into tech, and can'twait to continue innovating ways
that humans and robots can worktogether. Probably need to do a
show on how, you know, a lot ofthese robotics companies, how
they approach the, you know, thepsychological aspect of
training humans to work withrobots and vice versa. I think

(33:59):
that that's, that's reallyinteresting topic, so I'll
mentally have jotted that onedown for the future. We also
have quotes from Outrider, andthen finally, we have panda. So
look for all of those. Those arethe text based ones. So you
know, kind of find them onYouTube shorts, unfortunately.
But what we will do is just makesure that each of these are

(34:20):
featured in another way that'sslightly more appealing than
just me just sharing Google Doc,but overall, 10 out of 10 show.
Like I said, I'm stillrecovering. Vegas is a monster
to attend, and I was actuallyfairly good this this event.
Previously, I'd go out everysingle night I'd be up, you

(34:41):
know, late into the wee hours.
It's the thing with Vegas, theypump oxygen to all their
casinos, and then you can't finda damn clock anywhere, because
they don't want you to know whattime it is, and they want you to
keep going longer than you thinkyou can die. Is stocked up on so
many, you know, liquid IVs andginger and turmeric, little
drink mixes and things like.
Like that, and I was still wornout. I still got the conference

(35:03):
crud, which is just thecongestion and the sneezing and
just the your body is worn downafter 1000s and 1000s of steps
every single day. But we did,we're able to close it out
manifest another. Another thingI love about this conference is
they always have the best closeout conference, and they wait
until the end of the conferencein order to have it. And it

(35:26):
makes people stick around alittle bit longer than they
probably would typically at. Youknow, other conferences, they'll
have their main party, theirmain event, on the second to
last day, and that's becausethey know most people are
probably going to skip the halfday of the the next day's
Conference, which is typically,if you've gone to conferences,

(35:47):
you know how it goes, butmanifest does it a different
way, where they have each day isjam packed, and then they have a
concert at the end. The firstyear they had ludicrous. The
second year they had Nelly. Thethird year they had Neo and this
year they had flow rider. Nowfor me, when I first heard flow
rider, I was like, okay, like, Iget it. Like, he has a handful

(36:09):
of songs that I like, it'll befun when I tell you this man put
on a top three performance I'veever seen. He had bottles of
champagne out blasting into thecrowd. He made sure that all of
the audience felt like they wereseen. He gave out a dozen long

(36:31):
stem roses. He also had bottlesof patron that he's just him and
his team are just pouring shotsinto people's mouths, and then
he's playing great music. Andthen he also, I don't know if
you've seen any videos that havebeen posted to LinkedIn,
probably not appropriate forLinkedIn, but he also calls a
bunch of people up on stage. Hecalls girls up at first, and the

(36:55):
girls get on stage and theydance and they do their thing.
Then he calls guys up on stage,and then they dance, and they do
their thing, hilarious. Lots of,lot of the guys, like, ripped
their shirts off for somereason. One of the craziest
moments that I saw was thiswoman who she had a leg injury,
and so she wasn't going to go upon stage, but the team, the flow

(37:19):
rat, a team, pulled her up, thenpulled her scooter. Was wheeling
her back and forth on the stage.
One of the greatest things I'veever seen. I had no idea was
going on, but just a fantasticexperience, um, and he also got
the guys up there. I mentionedthat made them feel and, you
know, included as well. The guyslike they did not hold back.

(37:41):
They danced their little behindsoff. There were, there are some
people, especially the girl onthe wheelchair. There was also,
yeah, separately, not the girlwith the scooter at the injured
leg. There was another girl in awheelchair that I don't know. We
were theorized and maybe she wasa plant or something, but she
showed up in a wheelchair, shegot down, and she danced a lot

(38:04):
too up on that stage. So I hopeeverybody still has their job. I
personally did not get up onstage. I have been up on stage
plenty of times in my lifetime,but I do that in front of my
friends, in front of mygirlfriends, and, you know, in
front of my close knit people,not where there's, you know, 40
to probably 100 camera phonesthat are on you at all times and

(38:27):
filming your escapades. So I didnot get up on stage, but I do
not begrudge anyone for gettingup on stage our own. Greg
Sharkey got up on stage. Shealso got a signed shoe, which I
don't know how this girl doesit. Last year she got Neo's
towel. This year she getsfreaking a signed shoe for flow
rider. She's probably just goingto at her house. At this point,

(38:50):
she needs to just dedicate asection of her house to just the
trophies that she gets frommanifest conferences, because
she gets all of them. So thatwas really, that was hilarious
to see. She got up on stage, butshe behaved. So she wasn't like
doing anything that's like Jobthreatening or anything. But it
was a time, and if you ever havean opportunity to see flow right

(39:15):
alive, go, because it was such agood concert, such a like top
three all time for me concerts.
And I never thought that thesewords would come out of my
mouth. But yet, here we are.
Another part of that big Mondaywas we officially launched cargo

(39:35):
Rex. As if I did not have enoughgoing on with six interviews in
a panel, I decided to launch abusiness on the same day. So you
might have heard, you might haveseen the episode that dropped on
that same Monday. Cargo. Rex isoff to a fantastic start, with
more than 1000 sign ups in thefirst week. I think we have
close to 340 businesses,logistics, all logistics listed

(39:58):
on the site. I believe we also.
Have about seven or eightcreators, logistics creators. We
got to work on that. I amworking on that adding more
creators to the site. It's notas automated as I would like it
to be. But as if you didn'tlisten to our cargo Rex debut
episode, please go and listen tothat episode to get the full
back story of how this projectcame to be. But if you didn't

(40:20):
listen to that episode,essentially, cargo Rex is my new
venture. Digital dispatch in thepodcast is not going anywhere,
but cargo Rex is what I amtrying to build, is the Google
search of logistics. If you evertried to ask Google the
difference between a freightbroker, a freight agent or a
freight forwarder, it's veryconfused. It doesn't know the
difference. Neither does g2 andso for this platform, I really

(40:40):
wanted it to, or I want it to bea platform where we can go deep
in logistics and not rely onthese massive data platforms
like Google, like Bing, like alla G to, you know, a Capterra,
all of these different sort ofsoftware review sites. I wanted
cargo Rex to be an informationalwebsite, so helping creators get

(41:04):
exposure to their content,content matching the episodes
that they're already creating tobusinesses that are already on
the cargo Rex website. We'readding dozens of businesses
every single day since ourlaunch, and so that it's been
going great. However, there arealso some technical challenges

(41:25):
as well. Anytime you're dealingwith a site with this much data,
like I have built data heavysites before, a publicly traded
home builder for one, you know,with gosh, you know, homes that
are were in like half a dozendifferent cities. Talk about,
you know, sort of APIs data.

(41:48):
That was a lot. This one is justas much, and we are planning for
even more than that kind of, youknow, data integration, that
kind of data flow. So it's been,it's been a challenge since,
especially getting back, becausefor so long, or especially since
the fall, it's really been aboutgetting cargo Rex to the launch

(42:11):
point. Now the launch point hashappened, and now I kind of have
to figure out, and this is whereI am personally struggling, is
like, what does, what doesnormal site work look like
daily? So right now for me, I amin there responding to support
tickets, user requests, if sofor some of our listings that we

(42:32):
have on the site, we manuallyadded them so they do not have a
verified owner. We, my team, aretechnically the verified owners
of that listing page. And so nowwe're running into a couple of
different issues where, youknow, someone will create their
account, and then they go andthey claim their old business,
and then it's not, this is justone, you know, sort of minor

(42:55):
tech thing that happened today,but their email wasn't linked
automatically to the listingpage. And that, to me, it's like
it's earth shattering. Itshouldn't be earth shattering,
but it is because I just wantthings to function properly. And
anytime you've launched a, youknow, a tech tool or SaaS based
tool, you know, these thingsjust happen, and it's super

(43:16):
annoying. You want everything towork perfectly. But that's also
the lesson in launching abusiness is that you have to
launch to learn, and the onlyway you're going to learn is by
just putting it out into theworld and then seeing how people
interact with the site, and thennoting what things you should
adjust and what things youshould change based on the user

(43:38):
experience. And so that's whatI'm kind of knee deep in right
now and but I have so many ideasfor this site, and I can't wait
to show you guys all of them.
There is just one of the thingsthat we launched today, is it's
a premium feature, but it'sstill really cool. So anybody
can create a free account. Youcan add your business for free.
You can also add any kind oflogistics events. You can add

(43:59):
those for free as well, but wedo have additional features on
your listing page that you canupgrade and you can take
advantage of. One of those isbeing able to list all of your
tech integrations. Maybe you area TMS and you integrate into,
you know, seven other differentcompanies. So we have an
integrations tab, and the thingit's programming, is so

(44:22):
fascinating, because you wouldthink that when we first
launched in a VP version of thissite, it was just a text box,
and I wanted people to just listthe companies in a bullet format
of all the integration partnersthat you have. Well, what I
learned is that people don't payattention to formatting as much

(44:43):
as I would like them to or asmuch as I pay attention to those
types of things just to make itlook nice, make your profile,
make your listing look nice. Sowhat we had to do was kind of
scratch the just the regulartext box. And instead, what we
have now is, if you're part ofan association or charity,

(45:03):
that's one section, and thenanother section is your
integration partners. And soyour integration partners, it
programming. All you have to dois just type in, you know, the
first few words, maybe anintegration partner that you
have on an association thatyou're a member of or a fan of,
and if the listing is already onthe site, which you know, if

(45:25):
it's not, we will fix that inthe future. But if it is already
on the site, it auto fills. Itauto populates. It shows it
pulls up that you know, Sisterlisting, and it shows it on your
profile. So someone, from a userperspective. If they're doing
research, let's use a TMSexample. If you're researching a
new TMS, you can go to get aquick snapshot of all of their

(45:47):
latest, you know, sort of whitepapers and news. You can see the
associations that are part of somaybe you can meet them at a
future Association relatedevent, or you can check out
their integration partners. Andif you are already using a
certain amount of thosecompanies within your tech
stack, then it probably makesmore sense from a buyer
perspective, that you may wantto book a call with this with

(46:09):
this company if you're lookingto make a shift in your TMS
anytime soon. So that's onefeature that I'm really pumped
about. Another one that I'msuper pumped about is that for
all of our approved creators,we're going to have more
research papers that are goingto be coming out in the coming
weeks, in the coming months,really, this is going to be a

(46:31):
very strong focal point forcargo Rex is having these
different research papers thatpulls in content from a variety
of different creators withinlogistics. And then we'll be
able to pull in all of thesedifferent quotes from, going
back to the TMS example, say youhave, you know, at least a dozen
podcasts that have created anepisode on how to, how to, what

(46:52):
to look for in a new TMSpartner. You know, that kind of
valuable insight from a varietyof people is extremely valuable.
And so we're going to be makingresearch papers based on that
content, so that can help thebuyers in their research
journey, so that they can seesort of a too long didn't read
in a research paper. And thenthey can choose if they want to

(47:14):
listen and they want to hearmore. Then they can click on
those different shows and go andlisten to that specific episode
that talks about that specificcontent. And then, in addition
to that, then we'll have anexpert commentary section where,
you know, the people who mainlypost on LinkedIn, for example,
maybe they don't have a YouTubeor a podcast, but they're still,

(47:34):
you know, a very insightfulcreator or a consultant. Then
we'll add them as a creator tothe site, and they can submit
their commentary, and it'll showup as as a comment directly
under the post. So it's not, wedon't allow for, you know,
comments in general, or youknow, things like Google reviews

(47:54):
or Facebook reviews or anythinglike that. Just think those are
too gamified, especially in theA in the age of AI, where a lot
of those things can just beautomated away. And, you know,
frankly, just bots where we'reI'm taking a slightly different
angle in that regard, is thatit's going to be commentary from
approved creators, which, ifyou're making content in some

(48:15):
shape or form in the industrythere, there's really no reason
why you shouldn't be an approvedcreator. So if you are one of
those creators, or if you havean existing podcast or YouTube
channel and you cover logistics,I want you to submit your
information to team at cargorex.io, that way we can create a
creative profile for you. We canadd any of your content that

(48:38):
you're already creating. We canadd it to the site. And then one
the most important thing is thatif we have an RSS feed from you,
which, if you have a podcast ora YouTube channel, you have an
RSS feed. So we can pull in thatRSS feed and any view or listen
on that content on the cargo recsite counts towards wherever
that show came from. So say, forexample, YouTube, you have a

(49:00):
YouTube video that covers goingback to the TMS. Example, if you
have a YouTube video covering,you know, the things you want to
look out for when you'researching for a new TMS, then
that video we would have oncargo Rex, and if somebody views
that video, that view stillcounts as if you were watching
it on YouTube. So creators, youdon't lose any data. You

(49:21):
maintain ownership rights ofyour data. You're just using us
as a syndication partner becausewe have that content matching
algorithm that will match yourcontent to relevant searches
that are taking place on thecargo rec site. So if somebody
is looking going back to the TMSexample, if somebody is looking
for a TMS solution, they'll seeall of the business listings.

(49:44):
They'll see relevant events, andthen they'll also see relevant
episodes that covers thatparticular phrase. And so these
are things that we're going tofurther refine in in the coming
weeks and in the coming months,but I'm super excited. Out those
particular, you know, profileenhancements, and then also
creator enhancements. Those arejust launched, you know, this

(50:06):
week. And so super pumped abouta lot of this. And it's, it's
really, you know, it's a, it's anervous, it's a nervous thing to
to launch a new business. I evenhad on one of my notes right
before I left for manifest,because it was I wasn't sleeping
well, you know, we're trying toget a couple, you know, these

(50:28):
features over the finish line,making sure everything's working
properly for launch day when wedo go live. Because, like I
mentioned earlier, my Mondaythat we went live was fully
packed. I wasn't going to beable to stop what I was doing
and address any kind of supportissues or anything like that. So
it was really important to havethese things set up in place
and, you know, tested and makingsure they're working properly

(50:51):
and functional. But on my mylittle post, it that I mentioned
earlier, all it says on thispost, it is so nervous I
couldn't think of anything elseto write on my little post. It
my little shower thoughts,except for so nervous. And I'm
glad I have this little note,because it is a, it's a reminder

(51:12):
of how, how quickly, you know,things can change. Just a little
overweight now I'm feeling greatthe products out there. We're
getting feedback. We're gettinguser testing. And it's really
cool to build something and tosee other people gravitate
towards it, give compliments toit, sign up for it and use it,
and then also give me feedback.

(51:34):
And that's the biggest blessingthat I could ask for right now,
is if any of you have yet tosign up for the platform, or
maybe you haven't had yourbusiness yet or added an event.
We have events now live on thecargo rec site too. So any
logistics event that's going on,I want you to promote it on
cargo Rex, because we got emailnewsletters going out. We got,

(51:55):
you know, with social media,there's so much opportunity for
social media promotion with allof these different companies and
commentary and creators andevents. I'm just, I'm really
excited. I'm really excited toput this product out in the
world and take it from an ideato fruition, and then hear the
feedback from all of you, andthen be able to continue to

(52:17):
build upon it. So lots of coolstuff. I just, you know, I meant
for this episode to be a superquick episode, but here we are
about 52 minutes in, and I amcontinuing to blabber on, so I
will stop blabbering on, andinstead, I will point you over
to the cargo Rex website. Pleasemake sure that you are added as
a you know, even if you don'thave a business, add yourself as

(52:39):
a user. Find relevant contentthat may be of interest to you.
If you see any kind of glitchesor anything wrong with site,
please tell me, because I can'tfix it if I don't know about it,
and I can only test it myself.
So many times, it's crazy to beable to look at a site and be
like that looks weird, butyou're not exactly sure why it
looks weird, and you don't knowuntil someone else can, kind of,

(52:59):
you know, point it out in frontof you as well. So lots of good
stuff going on, verychallenging, of course, but this
is why we do it, right. This iswhy we this is why we launch and
learn. And so thank you guys forall the support, all the
compliments, and all the, youknow, the great feedback. Keep
it coming, and I'll have moreupdates to you soon, I'm gonna
do more episodes like this, youknow, sort of the solo shows I

(53:23):
can really quick. Just sit downand hit record and then get
these messages out to y'all alittle bit faster, especially
now that I'm recovered for themost part from manifest year
four. So thank you guys againfor all of your listenership and
your attention, and hope to seeher again real soon. Okay, go
jacks. Bye.

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