June 11, 2024 • 54 mins
In this episode of Everything is Logistics, Blythe explains the reasons behind her decision to separate her podcast from her web design company, Digital Dispatch. She discusses the need for better communication with clients, upgrading her financial acumen, and streamlining processes to maintain profitability and sustainability.
QUOTES:
- "I went through and I wrote down every part of the process for onboarding, off-boarding, what happens during lead conversations, what happens when somebody becomes a customer, what happens when they move into an active opportunity. I ripped it all down and built it back up from the ashes of those flames from the previous processes." - Blythe Brumleve
- "I'm a process junkie, and I would not be able to figure out my prices, I would not be able to develop a stronger financial acumen, if I didn't take all of my processes and just tear them down and start almost from like a zero-based budgeting perspective, but start as zero-base processing perspective." - Blythe Brumleve
- "I thought if I was giving a fair price to me 10 years ago, me then, that was good enough. And that shouldn't be good enough. But I was creating this perception of myself and of my work and of my business, that I was cheap." - Blythe Brumleve
- "If you never hear from me, it's a good thing; everything is running smoothly. If you hear from me, things are a little shaky. The problem is that my tech team does a really great job. So the clients never heard from me. And that was a gap in our communications." - Blythe Brumleve
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Blythe Brumleve (00:05):
Welcome into another episode of Everything is
Logistics, a podcast for thethinkers in freight.
We are proudly presented by SPILogistics and I'm your host,
Blythe Brumleve.
We've got a solo show for youtoday no guests, because I feel
like I owe lots of people anexplanation on why I decided to
split this podcast from DigitalDispatch, and in this episode
(00:27):
I'm going to be going over whatthose needed changes were and
how I have navigated them.
So if you are interested instarting a podcast, if you are
interested in starting sort of afounder-driven marketing
strategy that promotes yourbusiness, this is probably going
to be a good episode for you,because I'm going to talk
through some of the neededchanges that I needed to make on
(00:49):
my end of things, and hopefullyit will provide some value to
you.
Or maybe you're just interestedin some of the more behind the
scenes style stuff, and so thatis what this episode is going to
provide as well, because I liketo know the behind the scenes
info of some of my favoriteshows.
So hopefully this will be ofhelp to you.
(01:09):
And so, with all of that said,let me give a little bit of a
primer on how we got here, howwe got to today.
So I started a company calledDigital Dispatch in 2019.
It is a web design andmanagement company.
Strong emphasis on themanagement aspect, because for a
long time well, actually, theentire history of the digital
(01:32):
dispatch empire I guess I don'tknow if you can call it an
empire, anyways so digitaldispatch, what I would do is I
will revamp, rework, create,design a new website for a
freight company in this spaceBecause, unlike a lot of
marketing agencies out there, Ispeak the language.
I know the language, I know whofolks brokers, carriers,
(01:53):
freight tech I know who you'reall trying to reach and I know
how to say it in a language thatmakes the most sense.
Plus, I own my own sites too.
I have about a half a dozen ofmy own sites that are personal,
private, also public placeswhere I like to tinker.
I like to tinker on differentwebsites and play around with
different content, initiativesand strategies and then bring
(02:15):
that insight to my clients.
Okay, so, now that we got thatout of the way, I started a
podcast for it.
I started the Digital DispatchPodcast out of the way.
I started a podcast for it.
I started the Digital DispatchPodcast same company, same
podcast name, which you're notsupposed to do.
I don't know if anybody elseknows that out there, but
technically, from a legalperspective or a legality
perspective, you should have aseparation between your podcast
(02:38):
name and your business name.
And that is not that I'm evergoing to sell either of them,
but just from a tax purposes,from accounting purposes, and if
you were to ever sell it in thefuture, it makes it much easier
to sell that one entity versusthe other.
If I were to ever and notsaying that I am interested in
(03:00):
doing this but if I were to eversell Digital Dispatch, if I had
the podcast name associatedwith it, the podcast would have
to be involved in that deal aswell.
And so, from a strategicstandpoint, I started the
podcast as a way to talk to mycustomers, be able to get those
insights, talk to leads, makeconnections with people, figure
(03:21):
out what was going on in thefreight market, specifically
when it comes to marketing andsales, and so I was using these
conversations as a way to reallygain market insight, to have a
stronger connection with mycustomers, with my leads and
with my audience.
And so from that, the podcastgot started Very shortly after
(03:43):
that I'm talking like a coupleof months after the podcast got
started is when I got picked upby Freightwaves and so they said
we love what you're doing withyour show, we want you to create
that same show over here for us, and with the mindset that I
would be able to take thatcontent and still be able to
upload it to the DigitalDispatch podcast.
(04:05):
So that's how the show Cyberlywas born, and that was a B2B
freight marketing and sales showthat was on Freightways for
about two years, and when thatcontract was coming to an end, I
knew I wanted to take mypodcast.
I knew I wanted to take itindependent.
I had already been given orshown support from potential
(04:28):
sponsors that they would bewilling to sponsor the show, and
so I thought I've been apodcaster since 2014.
I started off in sports andentertainment, pivoted to
logistics when I was anexecutive assistant at a 3PL.
I also had a sports andentertainment blog on the side.
Sorry if you've heard thisstory a million times, but I'm
(04:49):
going to tell it again just forfolks who may not have heard or
who are new to the show.
I was an executive assistant atan asset-based 3PL.
I worked there for about fiveyears and I had a sports and
entertainment blog on the side.
When that company unfortunatelyclosed down, I chose to leave
(05:12):
logistics and go into the mediapath.
So I was editor-in-chief of alocal magazine for a period of
time.
I also got a gig at radiobroadcasting.
So I was covering sports on ashow called Helmets and Heels
and also on the kickoff showhere, covering the Jacksonville
Jaguars where I am based, andalso, if you can't tell Jaguars
fan, I covering the JacksonvilleJaguars where I am based, and
also, if you can't tell Jaguarsfan, I got all kinds of Jaguars
stuff in my display in the backI'm wearing teal.
As we speak I've got a Jaguarsflag right next to me.
(05:35):
So right next to we shouldprobably hide that that's a
convoy bracelet.
So RIP, convoy Anyways.
So back when, I think I'm atthe correct spot in this
conversation or in this story.
So I did some radiobroadcasting.
I went back and worked for myold boss who had formed a new
(05:56):
company or started working for anew company, and a lot of that
same crew that I had worked with, because I mean, I'll be honest
, the media world, especially insports and entertainment,
doesn't pay all that much.
And logistics is anybody who'sworked in logistics.
You kind of know it's almostlike restaurants you try to
leave, you're going to come back, you're going to get sucked,
(06:17):
and the majority of people aregoing to get sucked back in.
So I was sucked back in.
I went and worked for my bossand very or my old boss at the
time, who was still very much amentor to me former truck driver
, worked his way up, bought thecompany, owned the company, you
know, owned a couple ofdifferent transportation
companies and so he very muchknows, still works in the
(06:39):
industry, still love him todeath.
And so after I went back andworked for him, he knew how much
I had grown in my career.
From the time as editor in chiefI was no longer, I guess, an
executive assistant type.
He told me I had become a CEOtype and he said there isn't
going to be a CEO role for youhere or a CMO role for you here.
(07:04):
So it's time for me to push youout of the nest and for you to
start your own business.
And that's how Brumleve Brandswas born.
And the reason I chose BrumleveBrands is it's neither here nor
there, but it's one of thosebusiness decisions where I was
like, well, I'm never going tochange that name and I'm always
going to be tinkering withdifferent things.
(07:25):
So let's create an umbrellacompany of Brumleve Brands and
Digital Dispatch, which wasalready a thing at the time, at
the time of the businessformation.
That's when it really wasn't atthe business formation.
It was months later when Ifigured out I needed to focus on
a niche with Brumleve Brands,and that's how Digital Dispatch
was born.
But I say all that to say thatmy boss became my first customer
(07:54):
and it was the biggest reasonwhy I started my company,
started Digital Dispatch, and Iam in the position I am today is
because of that man.
So shout out, al Steele.
He is still one of the greats,one of the legends in my eyes,
and so full support since dayone for me and my company, and
so I would not be here withouthis expertise, his investment in
(08:16):
me.
All that to say Fast forward to, I would say probably 2022,
would say probably 2022, late2022,.
My contract is coming to an endwith Freightwaves.
They say you can still do theshow, but we don't have the
budget to pay you.
And I said, well, I think I canget paid for this.
(08:42):
I think I can finally get paidquality, a full-time income from
this podcast.
I've been a podcaster since2014.
And so, with that experience inmind, I was like I think I can
do this.
And so, in January 2023, theEverything Is Logistics brand
was born.
It was the podcast which I hadtaken all of my logistics
related content that I'dproduced independently, that I'd
(09:03):
been on other shows or the siderelease show.
I brought all of that contenttogether and I put it on
everything is logistics as sortof a catalog backlog of sorts.
But starting in January 2023 iswhen the new content flow
started, very similar to whatyou're experiencing in this
episode All of the sort of bellsand whistles of intro music and
(09:26):
sponsor ads and sort of theflow of the show.
So January 2023 was when thatwas born, but I also.
Digital dispatch is absolutelystill a thing as well, but I
wasn't sure from the podcastperspective.
I was scared.
I didn't know if it was goingto actually work or not, and so
(09:47):
what I had in place was just avery simple like we're going to
publish the show, we're going topublish it to YouTube and then
we're going to have a very shortwebsite.
Here's a link to our content,almost like a if you've ever
experienced or used a link treeor a bitly link or a link in bio
type stuff.
I built the originally builtthe everything is logistic site
(10:08):
as just a pretty much a copy ofthat.
I just wanted to be able to getpeople to where they want to go
as quick as possible, find mycontent as quick as possible.
Are you in freight sales with abook of business looking for a
new home, or perhaps you're afreight agent in need of a
better partnership?
These are the kinds ofconversations we're exploring in
(10:29):
our podcast interview seriescalled the Freight Agent
Trenches, sponsored by SPILogistics.
Now I can tell you all day thatSPI is one of the most
successful logistics firms inNorth America, who helps their
agents with back officeoperations such as admin,
finance, IT and sales.
But I would much rather youhear it directly from SPI's
(10:49):
freight agents themselves.
And what better way to do thatthan by listening to the
experienced freight agents telltheir stories behind the how and
the why they joined SPI?
Hit the freight agent link inour show notes to listen to
these conversations or, ifyou're ready to make the jump,
visit spi3plcom.
(11:09):
That was the nature of therelationship between everything
is logistics and digitaldispatch.
However, there was starting tocreep up a lot of brand
confusion.
I started experiencing thislast year.
People weren't exactly sure ifI still had digital dispatch,
what it was doing.
Some of my clients were likeyou're still going to be around,
(11:32):
right, you can still work onour site and manage our site for
us.
Yes, absolutely.
But those kinds of questionswere the first sort of inkling
to me that huh, I probably needto do a better job of marketing
myself.
I had only ever marketed myselfat Digital Dispatch.
I didn't know, frankly, how tonavigate the waters of marketing
(11:55):
myself as a founder of severalcompanies and at this point now
between me and my fiance, wehave several companies under our
belt that serve specificaudiences and so I always had
that inkling in the back of myhead.
But there were initialcatalysts that really forced me
into this change of okay, I haveto fully, legally,
(12:19):
business-wise, separate thesetwo entities.
And so those two catalysts wasone of my customers left me,
canceled his contract, and whenhe told me that he was canceling
his contract, he said I justdidn't think that you had time
for me anymore.
I see you doing all thispodcast stuff and it just looked
(12:39):
like you were focusing more onthat than anything, and that
broke my heart.
Well, it broke my heart andalso pissed me off because it
felt like something that wascompletely avoidable on my part,
and so I'll have more insighton that in just a bit.
But that was a big catalyst ofI really let that one go and he
(13:00):
was a very good client of minefor years and I just felt really
gutted after that experienceand, even though there's no hard
feelings or anything like that,because I get why he made that
decision, this is a problem.
(13:20):
We do have to address thedifferences between the podcast
and digital dispatch and thelevel of expectation that my
customers within digitaldispatch should be getting, and
I, frankly, was missing the boatin that regard.
So I'm going to have moreinsight on that in just a second
, which is really specific towhat that client was
(13:41):
experiencing, why he left andthe solutions that we've come up
with to hopefully prevent thatfrom happening again.
Now the other catalyst issomething slightly more annoying
, because it was a call that Ihad gotten on in December of
2023.
(14:02):
So that big client had left inthe fall of that year and then
in 2023, december.
Then it was a situation whereand I have to be careful here
with how I talk about thisbecause I was on a call with a
lead Now keep in mind I hadalready had a call with their
CEO.
Ceo was familiar with me,familiar with my content,
(14:24):
familiar with how we work andhow we sort of think about the
methodology behind how we makewebsites, why we create them,
the insight to how we createthem, our process, things like
that Thought he was very much onboard.
It was a matter of just sendingover the contract and sending
over the invoice and getting itsigned, but first he wanted me
to talk to I believe it was hisbusiness partner or some kind of
(14:46):
like a VP underneath him.
I get on a call with this manand it was one of the rudest
calls I've ever been on in mylife.
It felt like he wanted me totap dance for him and I'm just
not that kind of.
I'm not going to tap dance foryou.
(15:06):
Typically, when I have salesconversations and when I have
lead conversations, they alreadyare familiar with my content,
they already have a level oftrust or they've gotten a
referral from someone else thatsaid, oh, she did great work.
Here's her information Go booka call with her, so they're
already.
I'm used to.
My main marketing focus hasalways been on inbound marketing
(15:27):
, and so I'm very used todealing with people that kind of
already know about thephilosophy of how I build sites.
Now there was, I guess, anothercatalyst, which I will get to
in a second, but during thiscall he pretty much wanted me to
tap dance for him.
He insinuated that my price wastoo low, that there must be a
(15:50):
catch, and so I just thoughtthat I had priced my products
fairly.
I have negotiated rates, I havepremium licenses that I've
already invested in, and so frommy perspective, I'm giving you
an entire package that typicallya marketing agency would charge
thousands and thousands ofdollars.
(16:11):
I'm talking like 20 grand plus30 grand.
There are agencies who docharge that much for their sites
.
I do not, because I wouldpersonally never pay for that.
The only reason I even know howto build sites to this day is
because I couldn't originallyafford a website designer or
developer, so I had to learn itmyself, and so I came up with a
(16:34):
price that I thought was reallyfair for the market I was going
after, and the market I wasgoing after was smaller trucking
companies, small to midsizetrucking companies, small to
midsize brokers, and so that waswho I had worked with for years
in my previous gigs, and sothat's the market that I knew
and that's the market I wasgoing to sell into.
(16:55):
Now I haven't factored in how,when business grows, you should
really think about how you'regoing to approach that growth.
Is your market segment going tochange?
Has it changed all that much?
If we're being honest, I domore freight tech websites now
too, but I guess that's the onlyreal catalyst that has changed
(17:16):
in the last handful, since I'vebeen doing this, since
professionally been doing thisfor the last handful of years
and so.
On this call, I felt like myreputation was being questioned.
I felt as if my work was beingquestioned.
He even went so far as to tellme to bring up a website that he
(17:36):
had somebody else do.
And hey, can you replicate that?
And I kind of pissed him off.
When I looked at the site and Iwas I was kind of taken aback
because I thought he was goingto show me a beautiful site that
looked like it had been builtin the last five years.
I was wrong.
Uh, he showed me a site thatlooked like it was built in the
early two thousands.
(17:57):
And when somebody like that,with an attitude like that,
that's you feel like you'retrying to make you tap dance.
You feel like you got to proveyourself.
And I'm sitting here like bro,I'm charging you $1,500 for a
site when I know it's worth fivetimes more than that.
I don't have to sit here onthis conversation and tap dance
(18:17):
for you, so I'm not going to doit.
But I entertained him.
I went on this website that hetalked about that was so
beautiful that someone else hadbuilt for him.
It was not.
It was a very old website.
It was something that wouldprobably cost $200 and it's
probably $200 poorly spent.
Just being completely frank andbeing completely honest, I
(18:41):
don't think he appreciated thathonesty and, honestly,
completely honest, I don't thinkhe appreciated that honesty.
And honestly, between the twoof us, it was for the best,
because clients that act likethat on an intro call, that is
just a little bit of a previewof how they're going to be as a
customer.
I personally like to work withcustomers that I would have
dinner with, that I regularlylike helping and make helping
(19:06):
them grow.
This person was not it, but Idid take a lesson from that that
, because of my pricing at thetime, he was immediately
skeptical of the quality of theservice that I could give him.
Now I had to figure out how tostrike that balance of what is
(19:27):
an affordable price for thecompanies that I'm going after.
Are my still going after thosesame level of customers or do I
want to go for a little bit of ahigher tier?
Not really.
I think that there's still thissame baseline services that I
should be offering, and then Iwanted to tweak it based on the
(19:48):
customer's budget, based ontheir content goals.
That's typically how I like toprice out my sites.
But the fact that he looked atmy pricing and said what's the
catch?
And thought that I woulddeliver subpar services and a
subpar product because of myprice, that is what I took away
(20:09):
from the conversation.
So, while it was a situationwhere I definitely was not going
to work with this man, it didturn into a situation where I
took a lesson from it and I said, okay, we need to look at a lot
of things.
And so over the holiday break,over December, over really the
last six months.
As I said earlier, it has beena process of looking through all
(20:34):
of our pricing, our processesand figuring out where we need
to make those tweaks and makethose adjustments.
So I spent the first 20 minutesgiving a backstory of the why,
and now I'm going to tell youabout the how, and so here are
the three tips areas that Iidentified that I needed to
address in order to separate thetwo brands effectively and,
(20:59):
honestly, efficiently.
To give a little bit of context,we are a small team.
I have a dedicated team of atech team that I work with, and
then I have what's called acontent remixer.
So she helps take my podcast ortake the video portion of this
show, and then she will turnthat into social media clips.
(21:22):
She'll add it to our emailmarketing newsletter that goes
out regularly.
She handles that side of things.
Then I have a podcast editor,youtube editor, and so he takes
the file, he does his work onthe editing side of things.
Shout out to Josh and thenLindsay, who handles all of our
content remixing, and so that isessentially the team that I
(21:42):
have, and I knew that previously, especially when I was
editor-in-chief of a magazine, Ihad a large team.
I had an editorial staff, I hada sales team and I loved working
with them.
I loved having a team I youknow working with Freightways.
I loved having a productionteam Shout out to the Boiler
(22:03):
Room Boys in case they'relistening I doubt they are
because they have plenty of workto do but I loved having a
community of that workforcearound me and I loved it because
it was help.
I'm so used to being a businessowner that works solo that I
really appreciate when I canhave the help.
(22:24):
But in order to have help, youhave to be able to pay them, and
so in order to keep my businessespecially in the age of AI, in
the age of all of thesedifferent software products that
can help you with automation,that can help you with different
processes and optimizing bothof those things, I knew that the
team still had to stay agileand be able to do a lot of
(22:50):
things with a little bit of time, and so that is how I choose to
build out my team, because Idon't want to over-invest in
employees and then I'm stuckmanaging them all of the time,
and then I'm also responsiblefrom a payroll perspective.
I don't have to tell anybody outthere that hiring is really
(23:13):
tough, and then also keeping theincome at a regular pace in
order to justify hiring thosepeople is also really tough as
well.
So I had to look at it from abunch of different angles and
figure out what is the bestpathway forward, because the
last thing I want to do is tomake a bad decision that is
(23:35):
going to impact the currentpeople that I have and impact
their contracts and theirmonthly income that I send their
way for the jobs that they dofor me.
So that is an extra addedpressure that a lot of business
owners have to think about, andin the age of AI, in the age of
(23:55):
where a lot of businesses aregoing, I firmly believe that the
world is going to be dominatedby these smaller companies, by
these small teams anywhere fromtwo to five people, and having
several businesses now and inthe future is not going to be
seen as crazy as it was.
(24:17):
Five years ago, I had peoplelook at me crazy because I had
the company Brumleve Brands witha couple different content
sites underneath it.
They're like well, if you havemany businesses, then you have
no business because you're notactually focusing on one of them
.
Now the tides have turned alittle bit, where my initial
(24:37):
thought process is now startingto pay off, but it has its own
unique set of challenges.
So the three needs that Ineeded to address need number
one better communications.
I talked earlier about how thatclient left me and I could have
been avoided had I had bettercommunications.
So we have done in the last sixmonths this is why this episode
(24:57):
has taken so damn long torecord is because I had to
identify the gaps in mycommunications.
I'm ashamed to say that when acustomer would come on board, we
would get their site launched.
Everything is great, awesome,perfect.
I'm going to move on to thenext site and I used to say I'm
like the CIA If you never hearfrom me, it's a good thing.
(25:20):
Everything is running smoothly.
If you hear from me, things area little shaky.
The problem is is that my techteam does a really great job.
So the clients never heard fromme and that was a gap in our
communications.
And what we have completelyrevamped is the offboarding
(25:40):
process setting properexpectations, how to check your
leads, how to check your websiteanalytics, how to add new
content, how to you know if youhave an issue, if you want to
add something new, here's how todo that.
Something new, here's how to dothat.
Little things like that,because typically that process,
the way it worked, is thatsomeone would just shoot me an
email and tell me what they needto get done and that's what we
(26:05):
got done.
But now setting up those formalprocesses of what the
off-boarding experience lookslike for our clients and
developing communications aroundthat.
Now couple that with thepodcast.
We also create a tremendousamount of content with a very
small team, and so what can wedo from a content perspective?
What nuggets of information canwe take from those
(26:26):
conversations that will helpkeep me in front of these
clients and also help them withcertain goals and certain
initiatives?
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(27:11):
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So that was a big thing isdeveloping an off-boarding
campaign and then alsodeveloping an ongoing
communications plan.
Now, I wish this stuff could bea little bit more automated
(27:34):
than what it is, but it'ssomething that should have been
invested in a long time ago.
It was one of those things thatwas a back burner item, and it
just took me a long time.
Okay, we got to be able to burnsome shit down and be able to
(27:58):
start fresh, and so the last sixmonths have been essentially
looking at all of my processesand figuring out what to burn
down and what to keep and whatto tweak.
That was a big thing that wedid.
So we implemented theoffboarding campaign.
We set up the email automationfor a lot of regular
communications, and so when Isay email automation, what I
mainly refer to and I wouldhighly advise anyone to do this
(28:20):
is to make a shell of an emailtemplate.
So we have a shell of an emailtemplate.
I still use MailChimp.
It's still an incrediblypowerful system to use.
I know there's a lot of otherthings out there, like
ConvertKit and not Klaviyo,that's more e-commerce, but
ConvertKit or Beehive, beehive,whatever they call it.
(28:43):
I see Beehive and I think ofBeyonce.
So that email company is that Iknow is also out there and I've
heard very good things aboutthem.
However, all of my data is inMailChimp.
I like using MailChimp.
It's extremely flexible andit's also a great price.
Try to move everything toHubSpot.
Hubspot is too damn pricey waytoo damn pricey for the services
that they offer from an emailperspective.
So everything will stay inMailChimp for the foreseeable
(29:05):
future.
Hubspot just catches strays outhere.
I should probably do an episodeon how we use HubSpot.
Very powerful CRM.
The starter plan is what mostpeople need.
The rest of the stuff is I'llsave that for another show.
So anyway, so we set up thatdifferent processes inside of
(29:26):
MailChimp.
We built all that out, so wehave the shell of the email
template, and then MailChimpalso has a really cool tool
called Journeys, and sobasically as soon as a customer
is their website is launched, weput them into the off-boarding
campaign.
They go through a series ofdifferent content initiatives,
basically answering thequestions of I have a website,
(29:48):
now what?
Who's doing the updates?
How do I make updates to mysite?
Where do I check my websiteanalytics?
Where do I check my leadreports?
You know all of the mostimportant things that you should
know about your site after it'slaunched, and then also the
expectations of what we doversus what you do.
So all of that was not beingclearly communicated before, but
(30:09):
it is now.
And also room to tweak, becausewe have soft launched it to our
current customers gettingfeedback on that process, and
then it's just designed to beextremely flexible so that we
can continue to get feedbackfrom our clients and then be
able to adjust that campaign aswe see fit.
(30:29):
After they go through thatseries of emails introducing
them to the front end and theback end of their site, then
they get put into differentcommunications, whether it's
regular podcast communicationswhen we drop new episodes.
Everything is.
Logistics has a weekly emailthat goes out on Thursdays, and
so when it goes out on Thursdays, there's additional
(30:51):
communications throughout themonth that specifically go to
clients.
That's more like freightmarketing, sales, even like
website enhancements, thingslike that that we're giving them
customized tips based on theservices that they've already
purchased from us, theproductized services that
they've already purchased fromus, and then information that is
(31:13):
specific to them.
So if it's a broker, then I'mgoing to send him freight broker
marketing and sales tips orbrokerage, marketing and sales
tips.
If they are a carrier, I'mgoing to send them that kind of
content.
I didn't want to add to thenoise of an inbox and so, with
journeys and MailChimp, it'sreally, really cool how they let
(31:33):
you build that journey and then, as you tag those people within
your list, you can send themand you can add them to
different funnels that make themost sense for them.
So it's really aboutpersonalizing the experience,
but doing it in a way that I'mnot manually writing every
(31:53):
single email.
So that was one of the big onesis better communications,
because we also have a lot ofcontent on the everything is
logistics side of things andwe're going to be doing
something very similar on theeverything is logistics site.
Next, because I did have toactually build out a website for
and everything is logistics.
I love this site is um.
(32:14):
Of course I love it I mean it'smine, um, but I everything is
logistics.
I love this site.
Of course I love it.
It's mine, but I love thedesign, I love the look of it.
I feel like it is one of thefew content sites in freight
that isn't overly busy, that youcan find what you need pretty
quickly.
At least I hope that is theexperience, because that's the
mindset of how I design, how ourteam designed to look in the
(32:37):
feel of it and how it displayscontent.
So we're going to be makingsome more improvements on that
front.
One thing I'm really pumpedabout is being able to send you
know, some of the targetedcampaigns that we're sending to
digital dispatch clients.
We can do the same thing oneverything as logistics, and so
I just want to be conscious ofadding to the inbox noise and
(32:59):
trying to be respectful ofadding value there, so that when
you see an email that comesfrom us, you want to open it,
and I think for a lot of emailsright now it doesn't feel that
way.
It just feels like somebody isspraying and praying and it's
leading to inbox overload in alot of instances where you just
(33:21):
immediately delete the email andyou don't develop sort of a
brand affinity.
So those are the communicationsplans that we've implemented
and the communications plansthat we're working on in the
future, which I'm super pumpedabout because it's a lot of
different customization, butalso without the added, I guess,
overload of trying to manageseveral different email
(33:45):
newsletters that are going outin several different audiences
and without having to manuallywrite each and every one of
those.
So that was a big one, allright.
Need number two slightlyembarrassing to admit this, but
I needed to update, upgrade myfinancial acumen.
Now I have to preface this withI grew up in a very I wouldn't
(34:12):
say low income, but a lowermiddle-class income family.
So we were always taught youdon't get credit cards.
You get maybe one, but you payit off each and every month,
which is still, you know, greatadvice.
But we paid for everything incash.
Um, there was no talk of like401k investment or, uh, a profit
(34:34):
and loss assessment or anythinglike that.
That kind of talk just wasn'thad.
It was if you can afford it,then you get it.
If you can't afford it, youdon't get it.
You pay your bills on timeevery month.
Just very basic level financialacumen.
And, from a businessperspective, I knew how much my
(34:56):
expenses were each month, howmuch revenue I needed to earn
each month to cover thoseexpenses.
Transportation, marketing andSales Association.
Mark Dirks and JenniferKarpis-Romain had asked me to
(35:22):
join the TMSA financialcommittee and I was like are you
crazy?
I don't know anything aboutfinances.
I know very base level stuff.
Why would y'all want me on thisteam?
And I turned it down.
Then they asked me again andthey asked me again and they
asked me again and I finallyjust caved.
And I caved because I'm justgoing to put this story out
(35:43):
there.
But Jen and I are friendsoutside, I guess inside of the
association, we are friends,talk regularly.
I love hanging out with her atdifferent conferences.
She's a gem of a person.
But we had had some wine andshe asked me again and I said
yes and I will tell you.
(36:03):
As soon as I said yes, she ranto Mark, told him and he was so
excited and he said to mesomething that I will never
forget and that when he manageswomen at Blue Grace because he
is the CMO over at Blue GraceLogistics that when and I'm
paraphrasing here, so pleasedon't quote me or quote him on
(36:27):
this, but he had said somethingto the effect of with women in
particular, we will not applyfor a job unless we have been
asked several times.
Also, there is data this isseparately from what Mark said
separately.
There is data that suggeststhat if or not, suggests, but
(36:49):
tells a story about how women,when they see job notices, job
boards, job listings, thingslike that, that if they don't
meet close to 100% of thequalifications of that role,
they won't apply.
In the reverse, though, withmen, they could meet none of the
qualifications and they'llstill apply because they're
(37:11):
going to shoot the shot.
And so when he said that to me,I thought of that study and I
said, my God, I fell victim tothis myself, where I had a lot
of self-doubt, I didn't thinkthat I belonged in that group
and, frankly, I probably didn't,because I didn't have any kind
of financial acumen.
(37:31):
But when I joined the committeeI was like a sponge.
So I just sat and I learned,and I just learned.
There's very simple things suchas creating a P&L, profit and
loss statement, learning whattop line revenue is versus
bottom line revenue, and thesethings might sound so dumb to
someone who has been in theindustry or maybe has dealt with
(37:54):
a lot of these things for along time, but I just I never
went after it, I never.
I didn't know what I didn'tknow.
And so within theseconversations, within our
regular committee meetings, Irealized how much I needed to
learn.
So I just became a sponge and Itook a couple of courses and I
(38:16):
started replicating a lot of thespreadsheets that we had for
TMSA and the way that I learnedthe best is we had Google Sheets
for a lot of our summaries andbalance sheets and profit and
loss statements.
I made a copy and then Istarted putting my numbers in
for my business into thatspreadsheet and editing it for
(38:37):
myself.
That was the biggest, bestdecision that has ever happened
in my business.
I am not confident that I wouldstill be in business if it
wasn't for Jen and Markconvincing me to join this
committee and pushing me tolearn something that I didn't
even know that I needed to learn, and I will be forever grateful
(39:00):
for them for pushing me in thatdirection, because when I was
starting to my expenses and mypricing, I had never raised my
(39:22):
pricing.
That should have been signalnumber one that if all of my
other expenses are going up,it's okay to raise your own fees
, to raise your own prices.
I had a lot of hesitancy and Ithink I've always had a little
(39:44):
hesitancy of what the value ofmy work is worth.
I thought if I was giving afair price to me 10 years ago me
then that was good enough andthat should be good enough, but
I was creating this perceptionof myself and of my work and of
my business that I was cheap.
And because of going through myprofit and loss statement and
(40:04):
realizing the true cost ofbuilding a website, I doubled my
prices immediately.
So now we start off at $3,000for a five-page website, which
is still extremely affordablerelative to all of the other
marketing agencies, especiallyin the logistics space that now
exist, that charge a premium forsome of these services.
(40:27):
Most sites don't need it, butbettering my financial acumen
was something that I didn't knowthat I needed and I think well,
I know that it hassingle-handedly saved my
business and now it impactsdirectly what I make investments
(40:51):
in, what I don't makeinvestments in, and it's allowed
me sort of the permission tosay, even to cut out unnecessary
expenses, which is one of thebigger things that, as I was
going through this process inDecember and January or December
of last year, january of thisyear, I'm going through this
process and I'm looking at allof the things that I'm spending
(41:13):
money on and it's just you don'trealize it how many
associations you're part of, howmany conferences you go to free
conferences that you go to thatare never really free, you got
to pay a lot of extra money onthe side in order to get.
Even if you get a free ticketto a conference, which I am
grateful for, I will say thatbecause of the podcast, I am
(41:35):
able to go to, uh, someconferences not all um, some
conferences and my ticket iscomped.
But I had to look at thoseconferences and say did I deepen
any relationships at thoseconferences?
Did I get any leads from thatconference?
Um, what about that association?
Did I?
Did it provide value?
Yeah, in any way.
(41:56):
And for a lot of theassociations, no, they haven't.
Tmsa, however, has.
I will give that caveat.
Obviously, this whole sectionis kind of about them and how
they've helped me.
And so from there I becamebetter educated.
My accounting firm that I hadhad for years, my CPA accounting
(42:16):
bookkeeping team that I had hadfor years, started realizing
that I had had for years my CPAaccounting bookkeeping team that
I had had for years, startedrealizing that I had upped my
knowledge and upped my game,because I started having a lot
of questions and I startedseeing a lot of things that were
coded incorrectly on some of myexpenses and I wasn't taking
full advantage of some of thetax advantages that you get, and
(42:37):
also protecting myself fromthings that I thought were
covered, you know, like meals,entertainment, things like that
that I thought would be coveredtax wise but that you shouldn't
actually mess with, becausethat's just a signal to the IRS
that, hey, we need to come auditthis person.
I don't want no IRS smoke and Iwant to be able to play the
game as fairly as possible, butI also want all of my tax write
(42:59):
offs to play the game as fairlyas possible.
But I also won all of my taxwrite-offs every single last one
of them, and so that wasanother part of the business
that really was strengthened,because I was pushed into an
uncomfortable situation that Iagreed to over some glasses of
wine, but that then turned intocreating a profitable business,
(43:19):
and so we are completelydebt-free.
I'm absolutely super pumped tosay that that Digital Dispatch
is debt-free, everything islogistics is debt-free and we
are a profitable company.
And so I don't know, I think wewould have had a little bit of
runway, but I don't know, Idon't know if the business would
(43:42):
have survived without that.
So deepening your financialacumen has been such a game
changer, and I'm so thankful forknowing what expenses to cut
what the true cost of myservices is and then being able
to come up with a pricing planthat is still affordable for my
(44:02):
customers but is also not goingto be a situation where someone
looks at my pricing and says,what's the catch?
So shout out to that guy forhelping me.
That lead that did not turninto a customer, which was a
good thing, but also helped savemy business, helped me raise
prices, and now we have recordrevenue and record profitability
(44:24):
.
And we're five months into thisyear, and so I'm very, very
thankful that those situationshappen, because without those
situations happening, I wouldn'thave addressed some of the
elephants in the room that Ineeded to address that had been
back burner items that needed tobe moved to the front burner,
and if I did not move them tothe front burner, I probably
(44:44):
would have burned down my entirehouse.
So highly recommend anybusiness owner to upgrade their
financial acumen.
Uh right, final one, and thenI'm going to cut this out,
because I did not think thatthis show was going to be four.
We're at 44 minutes right now.
I did not think that we weregoing to take it this far, take
it this long, but I'm apodcaster, I'm a talker, so
let's land the plane here withnumber three better processes.
(45:07):
I don't have to tell you I'm aprocess nerd.
I mean, maybe I do have to tellyou I'm a process junkie and I
would not be able to figure outmy prices.
I would not be able to developa stronger financial acumen if I
didn't take all of my processesand just tear them down and
start almost from like azero-based budgeting perspective
, but start as zero-basedprocessing perspective.
(45:30):
So that is essentially takingeverything that's most important
in your business and thenfiguring out the things that you
need the most and thendeveloping a budget around those
things that you need the most,and then developing a budget
around those things that youneed the most.
And then, if you can't developa budget around it, then can we
automate it?
And then asking yourself, whatparts of these processes do I
(45:50):
need to do?
And then what parts of theseprocesses do I want to do?
And so once you map out I meanI'm talking like actual
literally in one time I'mactually going to use the phrase
literally in its correct formis I went through and I wrote
down every part of the processfor onboarding, offboarding,
what happens during leadconversations.
(46:12):
What happens when somebodybecomes a customer, what happens
when they move into an activeopportunity, what happens during
the podcast process whensomebody becomes a sponsor.
I ripped it all down and thenbuilt it back up from the ashes
of those flames from theprevious processes.
(46:32):
So if you are interested inmapping out your processes, a
channel that really, reallyhelped me.
I know she does some paid stuff.
She has some paid options aswell, but a lot of her content
on YouTube Layla at ProcessDriven YouTube channel is such a
godsend and a lot of hercontent I didn't need to get the
upgrade.
Maybe in the future I'll payfor something because it is that
(46:53):
good, but a lot of just herfree content that she puts out
into the world was more thanenough to push me in the right
direction of how we're doingthings, why we're doing them,
the budget behind them and whatdoes that look like for the
future, especially when youfactor in where one aspect of
the business is everything islogistics and it's very content
(47:14):
heavy and AI is kind of takingover as far as all content is
concerned.
So how do we fit in the robotswithout making it sound like a
robot?
That is essentially our contentphilosophy right now, where we
figure out the things I need todo.
Obviously, I need to write thescripts.
I need to be the one on camera.
(47:34):
Do I need to edit the podcast?
No, do I need to be manuallywriting out transcripts
something I actually used to dono, I do not need to do that.
And so figuring out where Ibest need to spend my time, but
then also helping my team figureout where they need to best fit
their time and where they needto prioritize and where some of
(47:56):
these other tools can help.
Now, because I went through myprocesses, I also discovered a
lot of software subscriptionsthat I was paying for that were
no longer useful, so that wasalso a big expense cut.
And so it all sort of comestogether as you rip down all of
your processes and have somewhatof an idea of a business goals
or business goals in mind andhow you can develop content to
(48:20):
further those business goals,and that is the.
These are the reasons why I hadto split everything is
logistics from digital dispatchand so, um, I I don't know if,
uh, you'll find, I mean, ifyou're, you're still listening
at this point.
I hope that you found value inthis conversation.
I hope that some of the thingsthat I have talked about will
(48:42):
help other founders, othercontent-focused entrepreneurs,
figure out what their path is,because everything is logistics
is its own entity now anddigital dispatch remains its own
entity Both of those I stillwork full-time for as much as
you could say full-time for eachone, but the content drives the
(49:04):
business.
So we still do marketing andsales focused shows, we talk to
marketing and sales logisticsleaders, and now we just take
that content and also put it ondigital dispatch.
We also send it to ourcustomers.
We're in the process ofcreating some premium content
libraries that are commercialfree and that is more like cut
to the chase type content, whereI can take the best insights
(49:26):
from these six marketing leadersand package them up for my
clients so that they don't haveto go and listen to six or seven
different podcast episodes andpull out different nuggets, and
so that is the future of whatwe're investing in.
I'm trying to contribute less tothe noise and provide more
impact, but I'm also trying todo it in a way that is
(49:46):
sustainable for my team from amental perspective, but also a
financial perspective.
So with better processes,better pricing that sends the
right message.
And, through all of thesethings, I hope that this was a
good explainer of why I chose toseparate these two brands.
(50:09):
What's sort of coming down thepipeline in the future for the
podcast and for the business Ido?
Because of these optimizationsthat we've made in those two
sectors, I now feel fullyconfident that I can launch this
other idea that I've beensitting on for about a year and
a half, and I really, reallywant to tinker with this one too
(50:31):
.
And so now that we have thisprocess and the team really
dialed in, with standardoperating procedures and
processes, you know, go figure,like the boring stuff is the
important stuff, um, but dialingthose in now, uh, gives me the
mental clarity and also a littlebit of mental freedom to to
feel okay.
(50:52):
Adding, uh, another, you know,chain in the armor, um, and so,
with that all said, I think Ifeel like I said this twice
already, but I'm going to say itagain.
I hope you found value in this.
If you're still listening, Iimagine you found some kind of
value in it, but I would love tohear from you.
I would love to hear how you'reapproaching content marketing,
(51:12):
how you are, if there's anyareas you're struggling with
from a content perspective,especially in the world of
logistics, if there's folks outthere that we should be talking
to.
If you need a website, reachout to me.
All of my contact informationis over on
everythingislogisticscom, alsoon digitaldispatchio, and so
you'll hear a lot more aboutthese companies.
(51:35):
That's a weird way of sayingthis.
Hopefully you're alreadyhearing about this company.
So, anyways, I've gotten to thepoint of the show where I am
rambling.
That's a good place for me tostop, but I appreciate your time
, I appreciate your attentionand I appreciate you listening
to my story.
Much, much more to come and Ifeel much more confident about
(51:55):
pursuing these other goals andinitiatives in freight.
I should note that in freightis not leaving freight
whatsoever, but pursuing some ofthese other initiatives and
ideas that I have for thefreight world, now that I'm
confident in our processes andour pricing and in a lot of the
things we discussed in thisepisode.
So thank you again for yourtime and attention.
(52:16):
Feel free to reach out for anyneeds or support.
And yeah, that does it.
We'll see you next time.
Go, jags.
I hope you enjoyed this episodeof Everything is Logistics, a
podcast for the thinkers infreight, telling the stories
behind how your favorite stuffand people get from point A to B
.
Subscribe to the show, sign upfor our newsletter and follow
(52:36):
our socials over ateverythingislogisticscom.
And in addition to the show,sign up for our newsletter and
follow our socials over ateverythingislogisticscom.
And in addition to the podcast,I also wanted to let y'all know
about another company I operate,and that's Digital Dispatch,
where we help you build a betterwebsite.
Now, a lot of the times, wehand this task of building a new
website or refreshing a currentone off to a coworker's child,
(52:58):
a neighbor down the street or astranger around the world, where
you probably spend more timeexplaining the freight industry
than it takes to actually buildthe dang website.
Well, that doesn't happen atDigital Dispatch.
We've been building onlinesince 2009, but we're also early
adopters of AI, automation andother website tactics that help
your company to be a centralplace to pull in all of your
(53:20):
social media posts, recruit newemployees and give potential
customers a glimpse into how youoperate your business.
Our new website builds start aslow as $1,500, along with
ongoing website management,maintenance and updates starting
at $90 a month, plus some bonusfreight, marketing and sales
content similar to what you hearon the podcast.
(53:42):
You can watch a quick explainervideo over on digitaldispatchio.
Just check out the pricing pageonce you arrive and you can see
how we can build your digitalecosystem on a strong foundation
.
Until then, I hope you enjoyedthis episode.
I'll see you all real soon andgo Jags.
Welcome into another episode of Everything is
Logistics, a podcast for thethinkers in freight.
We are proudly presented by SPILogistics and I'm your host,
Blythe Brumleve.
We've got a solo show for youtoday no guests, because I feel
like I owe lots of people anexplanation on why I decided to
split this podcast from DigitalDispatch, and in this episode
(00:27):
I'm going to be going over whatthose needed changes were and
how I have navigated them.
So if you are interested instarting a podcast, if you are
interested in starting sort of afounder-driven marketing
strategy that promotes yourbusiness, this is probably going
to be a good episode for you,because I'm going to talk
through some of the neededchanges that I needed to make on
(00:49):
my end of things, and hopefullyit will provide some value to
you.
Or maybe you're just interestedin some of the more behind the
scenes style stuff, and so thatis what this episode is going to
provide as well, because I liketo know the behind the scenes
info of some of my favoriteshows.
So hopefully this will be ofhelp to you.
(01:09):
And so, with all of that said,let me give a little bit of a
primer on how we got here, howwe got to today.
So I started a company calledDigital Dispatch in 2019.
It is a web design andmanagement company.
Strong emphasis on themanagement aspect, because for a
long time well, actually, theentire history of the digital
(01:32):
dispatch empire I guess I don'tknow if you can call it an
empire, anyways so digitaldispatch, what I would do is I
will revamp, rework, create,design a new website for a
freight company in this spaceBecause, unlike a lot of
marketing agencies out there, Ispeak the language.
I know the language, I know whofolks brokers, carriers,
(01:53):
freight tech I know who you'reall trying to reach and I know
how to say it in a language thatmakes the most sense.
Plus, I own my own sites too.
I have about a half a dozen ofmy own sites that are personal,
private, also public placeswhere I like to tinker.
I like to tinker on differentwebsites and play around with
different content, initiativesand strategies and then bring
(02:15):
that insight to my clients.
Okay, so, now that we got thatout of the way, I started a
podcast for it.
I started the Digital DispatchPodcast out of the way.
I started a podcast for it.
I started the Digital DispatchPodcast same company, same
podcast name, which you're notsupposed to do.
I don't know if anybody elseknows that out there, but
technically, from a legalperspective or a legality
perspective, you should have aseparation between your podcast
(02:38):
name and your business name.
And that is not that I'm evergoing to sell either of them,
but just from a tax purposes,from accounting purposes, and if
you were to ever sell it in thefuture, it makes it much easier
to sell that one entity versusthe other.
If I were to ever and notsaying that I am interested in
(03:00):
doing this but if I were to eversell Digital Dispatch, if I had
the podcast name associatedwith it, the podcast would have
to be involved in that deal aswell.
And so, from a strategicstandpoint, I started the
podcast as a way to talk to mycustomers, be able to get those
insights, talk to leads, makeconnections with people, figure
(03:21):
out what was going on in thefreight market, specifically
when it comes to marketing andsales, and so I was using these
conversations as a way to reallygain market insight, to have a
stronger connection with mycustomers, with my leads and
with my audience.
And so from that, the podcastgot started Very shortly after
(03:43):
that I'm talking like a coupleof months after the podcast got
started is when I got picked upby Freightwaves and so they said
we love what you're doing withyour show, we want you to create
that same show over here for us, and with the mindset that I
would be able to take thatcontent and still be able to
upload it to the DigitalDispatch podcast.
(04:05):
So that's how the show Cyberlywas born, and that was a B2B
freight marketing and sales showthat was on Freightways for
about two years, and when thatcontract was coming to an end, I
knew I wanted to take mypodcast.
I knew I wanted to take itindependent.
I had already been given orshown support from potential
(04:28):
sponsors that they would bewilling to sponsor the show, and
so I thought I've been apodcaster since 2014.
I started off in sports andentertainment, pivoted to
logistics when I was anexecutive assistant at a 3PL.
I also had a sports andentertainment blog on the side.
Sorry if you've heard thisstory a million times, but I'm
(04:49):
going to tell it again just forfolks who may not have heard or
who are new to the show.
I was an executive assistant atan asset-based 3PL.
I worked there for about fiveyears and I had a sports and
entertainment blog on the side.
When that company unfortunatelyclosed down, I chose to leave
(05:12):
logistics and go into the mediapath.
So I was editor-in-chief of alocal magazine for a period of
time.
I also got a gig at radiobroadcasting.
So I was covering sports on ashow called Helmets and Heels
and also on the kickoff showhere, covering the Jacksonville
Jaguars where I am based, andalso, if you can't tell Jaguars
fan, I covering the JacksonvilleJaguars where I am based, and
also, if you can't tell Jaguarsfan, I got all kinds of Jaguars
stuff in my display in the backI'm wearing teal.
As we speak I've got a Jaguarsflag right next to me.
(05:35):
So right next to we shouldprobably hide that that's a
convoy bracelet.
So RIP, convoy Anyways.
So back when, I think I'm atthe correct spot in this
conversation or in this story.
So I did some radiobroadcasting.
I went back and worked for myold boss who had formed a new
(05:56):
company or started working for anew company, and a lot of that
same crew that I had worked with, because I mean, I'll be honest
, the media world, especially insports and entertainment,
doesn't pay all that much.
And logistics is anybody who'sworked in logistics.
You kind of know it's almostlike restaurants you try to
leave, you're going to come back, you're going to get sucked,
(06:17):
and the majority of people aregoing to get sucked back in.
So I was sucked back in.
I went and worked for my bossand very or my old boss at the
time, who was still very much amentor to me former truck driver
, worked his way up, bought thecompany, owned the company, you
know, owned a couple ofdifferent transportation
companies and so he very muchknows, still works in the
(06:39):
industry, still love him todeath.
And so after I went back andworked for him, he knew how much
I had grown in my career.
From the time as editor in chiefI was no longer, I guess, an
executive assistant type.
He told me I had become a CEOtype and he said there isn't
going to be a CEO role for youhere or a CMO role for you here.
(07:04):
So it's time for me to push youout of the nest and for you to
start your own business.
And that's how Brumleve Brandswas born.
And the reason I chose BrumleveBrands is it's neither here nor
there, but it's one of thosebusiness decisions where I was
like, well, I'm never going tochange that name and I'm always
going to be tinkering withdifferent things.
(07:25):
So let's create an umbrellacompany of Brumleve Brands and
Digital Dispatch, which wasalready a thing at the time, at
the time of the businessformation.
That's when it really wasn't atthe business formation.
It was months later when Ifigured out I needed to focus on
a niche with Brumleve Brands,and that's how Digital Dispatch
was born.
But I say all that to say thatmy boss became my first customer
(07:54):
and it was the biggest reasonwhy I started my company,
started Digital Dispatch, and Iam in the position I am today is
because of that man.
So shout out, al Steele.
He is still one of the greats,one of the legends in my eyes,
and so full support since dayone for me and my company, and
so I would not be here withouthis expertise, his investment in
(08:16):
me.
All that to say Fast forward to, I would say probably 2022,
would say probably 2022, late2022,.
My contract is coming to an endwith Freightwaves.
They say you can still do theshow, but we don't have the
budget to pay you.
And I said, well, I think I canget paid for this.
(08:42):
I think I can finally get paidquality, a full-time income from
this podcast.
I've been a podcaster since2014.
And so, with that experience inmind, I was like I think I can
do this.
And so, in January 2023, theEverything Is Logistics brand
was born.
It was the podcast which I hadtaken all of my logistics
related content that I'dproduced independently, that I'd
(09:03):
been on other shows or the siderelease show.
I brought all of that contenttogether and I put it on
everything is logistics as sortof a catalog backlog of sorts.
But starting in January 2023 iswhen the new content flow
started, very similar to whatyou're experiencing in this
episode All of the sort of bellsand whistles of intro music and
(09:26):
sponsor ads and sort of theflow of the show.
So January 2023 was when thatwas born, but I also.
Digital dispatch is absolutelystill a thing as well, but I
wasn't sure from the podcastperspective.
I was scared.
I didn't know if it was goingto actually work or not, and so
(09:47):
what I had in place was just avery simple like we're going to
publish the show, we're going topublish it to YouTube and then
we're going to have a very shortwebsite.
Here's a link to our content,almost like a if you've ever
experienced or used a link treeor a bitly link or a link in bio
type stuff.
I built the originally builtthe everything is logistic site
(10:08):
as just a pretty much a copy ofthat.
I just wanted to be able to getpeople to where they want to go
as quick as possible, find mycontent as quick as possible.
Are you in freight sales with abook of business looking for a
new home, or perhaps you're afreight agent in need of a
better partnership?
These are the kinds ofconversations we're exploring in
(10:29):
our podcast interview seriescalled the Freight Agent
Trenches, sponsored by SPILogistics.
Now I can tell you all day thatSPI is one of the most
successful logistics firms inNorth America, who helps their
agents with back officeoperations such as admin,
finance, IT and sales.
But I would much rather youhear it directly from SPI's
(10:49):
freight agents themselves.
And what better way to do thatthan by listening to the
experienced freight agents telltheir stories behind the how and
the why they joined SPI?
Hit the freight agent link inour show notes to listen to
these conversations or, ifyou're ready to make the jump,
visit spi3plcom.
(11:09):
That was the nature of therelationship between everything
is logistics and digitaldispatch.
However, there was starting tocreep up a lot of brand
confusion.
I started experiencing thislast year.
People weren't exactly sure ifI still had digital dispatch,
what it was doing.
Some of my clients were likeyou're still going to be around,
(11:32):
right, you can still work onour site and manage our site for
us.
Yes, absolutely.
But those kinds of questionswere the first sort of inkling
to me that huh, I probably needto do a better job of marketing
myself.
I had only ever marketed myselfat Digital Dispatch.
I didn't know, frankly, how tonavigate the waters of marketing
(11:55):
myself as a founder of severalcompanies and at this point now
between me and my fiance, wehave several companies under our
belt that serve specificaudiences and so I always had
that inkling in the back of myhead.
But there were initialcatalysts that really forced me
into this change of okay, I haveto fully, legally,
(12:19):
business-wise, separate thesetwo entities.
And so those two catalysts wasone of my customers left me,
canceled his contract, and whenhe told me that he was canceling
his contract, he said I justdidn't think that you had time
for me anymore.
I see you doing all thispodcast stuff and it just looked
(12:39):
like you were focusing more onthat than anything, and that
broke my heart.
Well, it broke my heart andalso pissed me off because it
felt like something that wascompletely avoidable on my part,
and so I'll have more insighton that in just a bit.
But that was a big catalyst ofI really let that one go and he
(13:00):
was a very good client of minefor years and I just felt really
gutted after that experienceand, even though there's no hard
feelings or anything like that,because I get why he made that
decision, this is a problem.
(13:20):
We do have to address thedifferences between the podcast
and digital dispatch and thelevel of expectation that my
customers within digitaldispatch should be getting, and
I, frankly, was missing the boatin that regard.
So I'm going to have moreinsight on that in just a second
, which is really specific towhat that client was
(13:41):
experiencing, why he left andthe solutions that we've come up
with to hopefully prevent thatfrom happening again.
Now the other catalyst issomething slightly more annoying
, because it was a call that Ihad gotten on in December of
2023.
(14:02):
So that big client had left inthe fall of that year and then
in 2023, december.
Then it was a situation whereand I have to be careful here
with how I talk about thisbecause I was on a call with a
lead Now keep in mind I hadalready had a call with their
CEO.
Ceo was familiar with me,familiar with my content,
(14:24):
familiar with how we work andhow we sort of think about the
methodology behind how we makewebsites, why we create them,
the insight to how we createthem, our process, things like
that Thought he was very much onboard.
It was a matter of just sendingover the contract and sending
over the invoice and getting itsigned, but first he wanted me
to talk to I believe it was hisbusiness partner or some kind of
(14:46):
like a VP underneath him.
I get on a call with this manand it was one of the rudest
calls I've ever been on in mylife.
It felt like he wanted me totap dance for him and I'm just
not that kind of.
I'm not going to tap dance foryou.
(15:06):
Typically, when I have salesconversations and when I have
lead conversations, they alreadyare familiar with my content,
they already have a level oftrust or they've gotten a
referral from someone else thatsaid, oh, she did great work.
Here's her information Go booka call with her, so they're
already.
I'm used to.
My main marketing focus hasalways been on inbound marketing
(15:27):
, and so I'm very used todealing with people that kind of
already know about thephilosophy of how I build sites.
Now there was, I guess, anothercatalyst, which I will get to
in a second, but during thiscall he pretty much wanted me to
tap dance for him.
He insinuated that my price wastoo low, that there must be a
(15:50):
catch, and so I just thoughtthat I had priced my products
fairly.
I have negotiated rates, I havepremium licenses that I've
already invested in, and so frommy perspective, I'm giving you
an entire package that typicallya marketing agency would charge
thousands and thousands ofdollars.
(16:11):
I'm talking like 20 grand plus30 grand.
There are agencies who docharge that much for their sites
.
I do not, because I wouldpersonally never pay for that.
The only reason I even know howto build sites to this day is
because I couldn't originallyafford a website designer or
developer, so I had to learn itmyself, and so I came up with a
(16:34):
price that I thought was reallyfair for the market I was going
after, and the market I wasgoing after was smaller trucking
companies, small to midsizetrucking companies, small to
midsize brokers, and so that waswho I had worked with for years
in my previous gigs, and sothat's the market that I knew
and that's the market I wasgoing to sell into.
(16:55):
Now I haven't factored in how,when business grows, you should
really think about how you'regoing to approach that growth.
Is your market segment going tochange?
Has it changed all that much?
If we're being honest, I domore freight tech websites now
too, but I guess that's the onlyreal catalyst that has changed
(17:16):
in the last handful, since I'vebeen doing this, since
professionally been doing thisfor the last handful of years
and so.
On this call, I felt like myreputation was being questioned.
I felt as if my work was beingquestioned.
He even went so far as to tellme to bring up a website that he
(17:36):
had somebody else do.
And hey, can you replicate that?
And I kind of pissed him off.
When I looked at the site and Iwas I was kind of taken aback
because I thought he was goingto show me a beautiful site that
looked like it had been builtin the last five years.
I was wrong.
Uh, he showed me a site thatlooked like it was built in the
early two thousands.
(17:57):
And when somebody like that,with an attitude like that,
that's you feel like you'retrying to make you tap dance.
You feel like you got to proveyourself.
And I'm sitting here like bro,I'm charging you $1,500 for a
site when I know it's worth fivetimes more than that.
I don't have to sit here onthis conversation and tap dance
(18:17):
for you, so I'm not going to doit.
But I entertained him.
I went on this website that hetalked about that was so
beautiful that someone else hadbuilt for him.
It was not.
It was a very old website.
It was something that wouldprobably cost $200 and it's
probably $200 poorly spent.
Just being completely frank andbeing completely honest, I
(18:41):
don't think he appreciated thathonesty and, honestly,
completely honest, I don't thinkhe appreciated that honesty.
And honestly, between the twoof us, it was for the best,
because clients that act likethat on an intro call, that is
just a little bit of a previewof how they're going to be as a
customer.
I personally like to work withcustomers that I would have
dinner with, that I regularlylike helping and make helping
(19:06):
them grow.
This person was not it, but Idid take a lesson from that that
, because of my pricing at thetime, he was immediately
skeptical of the quality of theservice that I could give him.
Now I had to figure out how tostrike that balance of what is
(19:27):
an affordable price for thecompanies that I'm going after.
Are my still going after thosesame level of customers or do I
want to go for a little bit of ahigher tier?
Not really.
I think that there's still thissame baseline services that I
should be offering, and then Iwanted to tweak it based on the
(19:48):
customer's budget, based ontheir content goals.
That's typically how I like toprice out my sites.
But the fact that he looked atmy pricing and said what's the
catch?
And thought that I woulddeliver subpar services and a
subpar product because of myprice, that is what I took away
(20:09):
from the conversation.
So, while it was a situationwhere I definitely was not going
to work with this man, it didturn into a situation where I
took a lesson from it and I said, okay, we need to look at a lot
of things.
And so over the holiday break,over December, over really the
last six months.
As I said earlier, it has beena process of looking through all
(20:34):
of our pricing, our processesand figuring out where we need
to make those tweaks and makethose adjustments.
So I spent the first 20 minutesgiving a backstory of the why,
and now I'm going to tell youabout the how, and so here are
the three tips areas that Iidentified that I needed to
address in order to separate thetwo brands effectively and,
(20:59):
honestly, efficiently.
To give a little bit of context,we are a small team.
I have a dedicated team of atech team that I work with, and
then I have what's called acontent remixer.
So she helps take my podcast ortake the video portion of this
show, and then she will turnthat into social media clips.
(21:22):
She'll add it to our emailmarketing newsletter that goes
out regularly.
She handles that side of things.
Then I have a podcast editor,youtube editor, and so he takes
the file, he does his work onthe editing side of things.
Shout out to Josh and thenLindsay, who handles all of our
content remixing, and so that isessentially the team that I
(21:42):
have, and I knew that previously, especially when I was
editor-in-chief of a magazine, Ihad a large team.
I had an editorial staff, I hada sales team and I loved working
with them.
I loved having a team I youknow working with Freightways.
I loved having a productionteam Shout out to the Boiler
(22:03):
Room Boys in case they'relistening I doubt they are
because they have plenty of workto do but I loved having a
community of that workforcearound me and I loved it because
it was help.
I'm so used to being a businessowner that works solo that I
really appreciate when I canhave the help.
(22:24):
But in order to have help, youhave to be able to pay them, and
so in order to keep my businessespecially in the age of AI, in
the age of all of thesedifferent software products that
can help you with automation,that can help you with different
processes and optimizing bothof those things, I knew that the
team still had to stay agileand be able to do a lot of
(22:50):
things with a little bit of time, and so that is how I choose to
build out my team, because Idon't want to over-invest in
employees and then I'm stuckmanaging them all of the time,
and then I'm also responsiblefrom a payroll perspective.
I don't have to tell anybody outthere that hiring is really
(23:13):
tough, and then also keeping theincome at a regular pace in
order to justify hiring thosepeople is also really tough as
well.
So I had to look at it from abunch of different angles and
figure out what is the bestpathway forward, because the
last thing I want to do is tomake a bad decision that is
(23:35):
going to impact the currentpeople that I have and impact
their contracts and theirmonthly income that I send their
way for the jobs that they dofor me.
So that is an extra addedpressure that a lot of business
owners have to think about, andin the age of AI, in the age of
(23:55):
where a lot of businesses aregoing, I firmly believe that the
world is going to be dominatedby these smaller companies, by
these small teams anywhere fromtwo to five people, and having
several businesses now and inthe future is not going to be
seen as crazy as it was.
(24:17):
Five years ago, I had peoplelook at me crazy because I had
the company Brumleve Brands witha couple different content
sites underneath it.
They're like well, if you havemany businesses, then you have
no business because you're notactually focusing on one of them
.
Now the tides have turned alittle bit, where my initial
(24:37):
thought process is now startingto pay off, but it has its own
unique set of challenges.
So the three needs that Ineeded to address need number
one better communications.
I talked earlier about how thatclient left me and I could have
been avoided had I had bettercommunications.
So we have done in the last sixmonths this is why this episode
(24:57):
has taken so damn long torecord is because I had to
identify the gaps in mycommunications.
I'm ashamed to say that when acustomer would come on board, we
would get their site launched.
Everything is great, awesome,perfect.
I'm going to move on to thenext site and I used to say I'm
like the CIA If you never hearfrom me, it's a good thing.
(25:20):
Everything is running smoothly.
If you hear from me, things area little shaky.
The problem is is that my techteam does a really great job.
So the clients never heard fromme and that was a gap in our
communications.
And what we have completelyrevamped is the offboarding
(25:40):
process setting properexpectations, how to check your
leads, how to check your websiteanalytics, how to add new
content, how to you know if youhave an issue, if you want to
add something new, here's how todo that.
Something new, here's how to dothat.
Little things like that,because typically that process,
the way it worked, is thatsomeone would just shoot me an
email and tell me what they needto get done and that's what we
(26:05):
got done.
But now setting up those formalprocesses of what the
off-boarding experience lookslike for our clients and
developing communications aroundthat.
Now couple that with thepodcast.
We also create a tremendousamount of content with a very
small team, and so what can wedo from a content perspective?
What nuggets of information canwe take from those
(26:26):
conversations that will helpkeep me in front of these
clients and also help them withcertain goals and certain
initiatives?
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(27:11):
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So that was a big thing isdeveloping an off-boarding
campaign and then alsodeveloping an ongoing
communications plan.
Now, I wish this stuff could bea little bit more automated
(27:34):
than what it is, but it'ssomething that should have been
invested in a long time ago.
It was one of those things thatwas a back burner item, and it
just took me a long time.
Okay, we got to be able to burnsome shit down and be able to
(27:58):
start fresh, and so the last sixmonths have been essentially
looking at all of my processesand figuring out what to burn
down and what to keep and whatto tweak.
That was a big thing that wedid.
So we implemented theoffboarding campaign.
We set up the email automationfor a lot of regular
communications, and so when Isay email automation, what I
mainly refer to and I wouldhighly advise anyone to do this
(28:20):
is to make a shell of an emailtemplate.
So we have a shell of an emailtemplate.
I still use MailChimp.
It's still an incrediblypowerful system to use.
I know there's a lot of otherthings out there, like
ConvertKit and not Klaviyo,that's more e-commerce, but
ConvertKit or Beehive, beehive,whatever they call it.
(28:43):
I see Beehive and I think ofBeyonce.
So that email company is that Iknow is also out there and I've
heard very good things aboutthem.
However, all of my data is inMailChimp.
I like using MailChimp.
It's extremely flexible andit's also a great price.
Try to move everything toHubSpot.
Hubspot is too damn pricey waytoo damn pricey for the services
that they offer from an emailperspective.
So everything will stay inMailChimp for the foreseeable
(29:05):
future.
Hubspot just catches strays outhere.
I should probably do an episodeon how we use HubSpot.
Very powerful CRM.
The starter plan is what mostpeople need.
The rest of the stuff is I'llsave that for another show.
So anyway, so we set up thatdifferent processes inside of
(29:26):
MailChimp.
We built all that out, so wehave the shell of the email
template, and then MailChimpalso has a really cool tool
called Journeys, and sobasically as soon as a customer
is their website is launched, weput them into the off-boarding
campaign.
They go through a series ofdifferent content initiatives,
basically answering thequestions of I have a website,
(29:48):
now what?
Who's doing the updates?
How do I make updates to mysite?
Where do I check my websiteanalytics?
Where do I check my leadreports?
You know all of the mostimportant things that you should
know about your site after it'slaunched, and then also the
expectations of what we doversus what you do.
So all of that was not beingclearly communicated before, but
(30:09):
it is now.
And also room to tweak, becausewe have soft launched it to our
current customers gettingfeedback on that process, and
then it's just designed to beextremely flexible so that we
can continue to get feedbackfrom our clients and then be
able to adjust that campaign aswe see fit.
(30:29):
After they go through thatseries of emails introducing
them to the front end and theback end of their site, then
they get put into differentcommunications, whether it's
regular podcast communicationswhen we drop new episodes.
Everything is.
Logistics has a weekly emailthat goes out on Thursdays, and
so when it goes out on Thursdays, there's additional
(30:51):
communications throughout themonth that specifically go to
clients.
That's more like freightmarketing, sales, even like
website enhancements, thingslike that that we're giving them
customized tips based on theservices that they've already
purchased from us, theproductized services that
they've already purchased fromus, and then information that is
(31:13):
specific to them.
So if it's a broker, then I'mgoing to send him freight broker
marketing and sales tips orbrokerage, marketing and sales
tips.
If they are a carrier, I'mgoing to send them that kind of
content.
I didn't want to add to thenoise of an inbox and so, with
journeys and MailChimp, it'sreally, really cool how they let
(31:33):
you build that journey and then, as you tag those people within
your list, you can send themand you can add them to
different funnels that make themost sense for them.
So it's really aboutpersonalizing the experience,
but doing it in a way that I'mnot manually writing every
(31:53):
single email.
So that was one of the big onesis better communications,
because we also have a lot ofcontent on the everything is
logistics side of things andwe're going to be doing
something very similar on theeverything is logistics site.
Next, because I did have toactually build out a website for
and everything is logistics.
I love this site is um.
(32:14):
Of course I love it I mean it'smine, um, but I everything is
logistics.
I love this site.
Of course I love it.
It's mine, but I love thedesign, I love the look of it.
I feel like it is one of thefew content sites in freight
that isn't overly busy, that youcan find what you need pretty
quickly.
At least I hope that is theexperience, because that's the
mindset of how I design, how ourteam designed to look in the
(32:37):
feel of it and how it displayscontent.
So we're going to be makingsome more improvements on that
front.
One thing I'm really pumpedabout is being able to send you
know, some of the targetedcampaigns that we're sending to
digital dispatch clients.
We can do the same thing oneverything as logistics, and so
I just want to be conscious ofadding to the inbox noise and
(32:59):
trying to be respectful ofadding value there, so that when
you see an email that comesfrom us, you want to open it,
and I think for a lot of emailsright now it doesn't feel that
way.
It just feels like somebody isspraying and praying and it's
leading to inbox overload in alot of instances where you just
(33:21):
immediately delete the email andyou don't develop sort of a
brand affinity.
So those are the communicationsplans that we've implemented
and the communications plansthat we're working on in the
future, which I'm super pumpedabout because it's a lot of
different customization, butalso without the added, I guess,
overload of trying to manageseveral different email
(33:45):
newsletters that are going outin several different audiences
and without having to manuallywrite each and every one of
those.
So that was a big one, allright.
Need number two slightlyembarrassing to admit this, but
I needed to update, upgrade myfinancial acumen.
Now I have to preface this withI grew up in a very I wouldn't
(34:12):
say low income, but a lowermiddle-class income family.
So we were always taught youdon't get credit cards.
You get maybe one, but you payit off each and every month,
which is still, you know, greatadvice.
But we paid for everything incash.
Um, there was no talk of like401k investment or, uh, a profit
(34:34):
and loss assessment or anythinglike that.
That kind of talk just wasn'thad.
It was if you can afford it,then you get it.
If you can't afford it, youdon't get it.
You pay your bills on timeevery month.
Just very basic level financialacumen.
And, from a businessperspective, I knew how much my
(34:56):
expenses were each month, howmuch revenue I needed to earn
each month to cover thoseexpenses.
Transportation, marketing andSales Association.
Mark Dirks and JenniferKarpis-Romain had asked me to
(35:22):
join the TMSA financialcommittee and I was like are you
crazy?
I don't know anything aboutfinances.
I know very base level stuff.
Why would y'all want me on thisteam?
And I turned it down.
Then they asked me again andthey asked me again and they
asked me again and I finallyjust caved.
And I caved because I'm justgoing to put this story out
(35:43):
there.
But Jen and I are friendsoutside, I guess inside of the
association, we are friends,talk regularly.
I love hanging out with her atdifferent conferences.
She's a gem of a person.
But we had had some wine andshe asked me again and I said
yes and I will tell you.
(36:03):
As soon as I said yes, she ranto Mark, told him and he was so
excited and he said to mesomething that I will never
forget and that when he manageswomen at Blue Grace because he
is the CMO over at Blue GraceLogistics that when and I'm
paraphrasing here, so pleasedon't quote me or quote him on
(36:27):
this, but he had said somethingto the effect of with women in
particular, we will not applyfor a job unless we have been
asked several times.
Also, there is data this isseparately from what Mark said
separately.
There is data that suggeststhat if or not, suggests, but
(36:49):
tells a story about how women,when they see job notices, job
boards, job listings, thingslike that, that if they don't
meet close to 100% of thequalifications of that role,
they won't apply.
In the reverse, though, withmen, they could meet none of the
qualifications and they'llstill apply because they're
(37:11):
going to shoot the shot.
And so when he said that to me,I thought of that study and I
said, my God, I fell victim tothis myself, where I had a lot
of self-doubt, I didn't thinkthat I belonged in that group
and, frankly, I probably didn't,because I didn't have any kind
of financial acumen.
(37:31):
But when I joined the committeeI was like a sponge.
So I just sat and I learned,and I just learned.
There's very simple things suchas creating a P&L, profit and
loss statement, learning whattop line revenue is versus
bottom line revenue, and thesethings might sound so dumb to
someone who has been in theindustry or maybe has dealt with
(37:54):
a lot of these things for along time, but I just I never
went after it, I never.
I didn't know what I didn'tknow.
And so within theseconversations, within our
regular committee meetings, Irealized how much I needed to
learn.
So I just became a sponge and Itook a couple of courses and I
(38:16):
started replicating a lot of thespreadsheets that we had for
TMSA and the way that I learnedthe best is we had Google Sheets
for a lot of our summaries andbalance sheets and profit and
loss statements.
I made a copy and then Istarted putting my numbers in
for my business into thatspreadsheet and editing it for
(38:37):
myself.
That was the biggest, bestdecision that has ever happened
in my business.
I am not confident that I wouldstill be in business if it
wasn't for Jen and Markconvincing me to join this
committee and pushing me tolearn something that I didn't
even know that I needed to learn, and I will be forever grateful
(39:00):
for them for pushing me in thatdirection, because when I was
starting to my expenses and mypricing, I had never raised my
(39:22):
pricing.
That should have been signalnumber one that if all of my
other expenses are going up,it's okay to raise your own fees
, to raise your own prices.
I had a lot of hesitancy and Ithink I've always had a little
(39:44):
hesitancy of what the value ofmy work is worth.
I thought if I was giving afair price to me 10 years ago me
then that was good enough andthat should be good enough, but
I was creating this perceptionof myself and of my work and of
my business that I was cheap.
And because of going through myprofit and loss statement and
(40:04):
realizing the true cost ofbuilding a website, I doubled my
prices immediately.
So now we start off at $3,000for a five-page website, which
is still extremely affordablerelative to all of the other
marketing agencies, especiallyin the logistics space that now
exist, that charge a premium forsome of these services.
(40:27):
Most sites don't need it, butbettering my financial acumen
was something that I didn't knowthat I needed and I think well,
I know that it hassingle-handedly saved my
business and now it impactsdirectly what I make investments
(40:51):
in, what I don't makeinvestments in, and it's allowed
me sort of the permission tosay, even to cut out unnecessary
expenses, which is one of thebigger things that, as I was
going through this process inDecember and January or December
of last year, january of thisyear, I'm going through this
process and I'm looking at allof the things that I'm spending
(41:13):
money on and it's just you don'trealize it how many
associations you're part of, howmany conferences you go to free
conferences that you go to thatare never really free, you got
to pay a lot of extra money onthe side in order to get.
Even if you get a free ticketto a conference, which I am
grateful for, I will say thatbecause of the podcast, I am
(41:35):
able to go to, uh, someconferences not all um, some
conferences and my ticket iscomped.
But I had to look at thoseconferences and say did I deepen
any relationships at thoseconferences?
Did I get any leads from thatconference?
Um, what about that association?
Did I?
Did it provide value?
Yeah, in any way.
(41:56):
And for a lot of theassociations, no, they haven't.
Tmsa, however, has.
I will give that caveat.
Obviously, this whole sectionis kind of about them and how
they've helped me.
And so from there I becamebetter educated.
My accounting firm that I hadhad for years, my CPA accounting
(42:16):
bookkeeping team that I had hadfor years, started realizing
that I had had for years my CPAaccounting bookkeeping team that
I had had for years, startedrealizing that I had upped my
knowledge and upped my game,because I started having a lot
of questions and I startedseeing a lot of things that were
coded incorrectly on some of myexpenses and I wasn't taking
full advantage of some of thetax advantages that you get, and
(42:37):
also protecting myself fromthings that I thought were
covered, you know, like meals,entertainment, things like that
that I thought would be coveredtax wise but that you shouldn't
actually mess with, becausethat's just a signal to the IRS
that, hey, we need to come auditthis person.
I don't want no IRS smoke and Iwant to be able to play the
game as fairly as possible, butI also want all of my tax write
(42:59):
offs to play the game as fairlyas possible.
But I also won all of my taxwrite-offs every single last one
of them, and so that wasanother part of the business
that really was strengthened,because I was pushed into an
uncomfortable situation that Iagreed to over some glasses of
wine, but that then turned intocreating a profitable business,
(43:19):
and so we are completelydebt-free.
I'm absolutely super pumped tosay that that Digital Dispatch
is debt-free, everything islogistics is debt-free and we
are a profitable company.
And so I don't know, I think wewould have had a little bit of
runway, but I don't know, Idon't know if the business would
(43:42):
have survived without that.
So deepening your financialacumen has been such a game
changer, and I'm so thankful forknowing what expenses to cut
what the true cost of myservices is and then being able
to come up with a pricing planthat is still affordable for my
(44:02):
customers but is also not goingto be a situation where someone
looks at my pricing and says,what's the catch?
So shout out to that guy forhelping me.
That lead that did not turninto a customer, which was a
good thing, but also helped savemy business, helped me raise
prices, and now we have recordrevenue and record profitability
(44:24):
.
And we're five months into thisyear, and so I'm very, very
thankful that those situationshappen, because without those
situations happening, I wouldn'thave addressed some of the
elephants in the room that Ineeded to address that had been
back burner items that needed tobe moved to the front burner,
and if I did not move them tothe front burner, I probably
(44:44):
would have burned down my entirehouse.
So highly recommend anybusiness owner to upgrade their
financial acumen.
Uh right, final one, and thenI'm going to cut this out,
because I did not think thatthis show was going to be four.
We're at 44 minutes right now.
I did not think that we weregoing to take it this far, take
it this long, but I'm apodcaster, I'm a talker, so
let's land the plane here withnumber three better processes.
(45:07):
I don't have to tell you I'm aprocess nerd.
I mean, maybe I do have to tellyou I'm a process junkie and I
would not be able to figure outmy prices.
I would not be able to developa stronger financial acumen if I
didn't take all of my processesand just tear them down and
start almost from like azero-based budgeting perspective
, but start as zero-basedprocessing perspective.
(45:30):
So that is essentially takingeverything that's most important
in your business and thenfiguring out the things that you
need the most and thendeveloping a budget around those
things that you need the most,and then developing a budget
around those things that youneed the most.
And then, if you can't developa budget around it, then can we
automate it?
And then asking yourself, whatparts of these processes do I
(45:50):
need to do?
And then what parts of theseprocesses do I want to do?
And so once you map out I meanI'm talking like actual
literally in one time I'mactually going to use the phrase
literally in its correct formis I went through and I wrote
down every part of the processfor onboarding, offboarding,
what happens during leadconversations.
(46:12):
What happens when somebodybecomes a customer, what happens
when they move into an activeopportunity, what happens during
the podcast process whensomebody becomes a sponsor.
I ripped it all down and thenbuilt it back up from the ashes
of those flames from theprevious processes.
(46:32):
So if you are interested inmapping out your processes, a
channel that really, reallyhelped me.
I know she does some paid stuff.
She has some paid options aswell, but a lot of her content
on YouTube Layla at ProcessDriven YouTube channel is such a
godsend and a lot of hercontent I didn't need to get the
upgrade.
Maybe in the future I'll payfor something because it is that
(46:53):
good, but a lot of just herfree content that she puts out
into the world was more thanenough to push me in the right
direction of how we're doingthings, why we're doing them,
the budget behind them and whatdoes that look like for the
future, especially when youfactor in where one aspect of
the business is everything islogistics and it's very content
(47:14):
heavy and AI is kind of takingover as far as all content is
concerned.
So how do we fit in the robotswithout making it sound like a
robot?
That is essentially our contentphilosophy right now, where we
figure out the things I need todo.
Obviously, I need to write thescripts.
I need to be the one on camera.
(47:34):
Do I need to edit the podcast?
No, do I need to be manuallywriting out transcripts
something I actually used to dono, I do not need to do that.
And so figuring out where Ibest need to spend my time, but
then also helping my team figureout where they need to best fit
their time and where they needto prioritize and where some of
(47:56):
these other tools can help.
Now, because I went through myprocesses, I also discovered a
lot of software subscriptionsthat I was paying for that were
no longer useful, so that wasalso a big expense cut.
And so it all sort of comestogether as you rip down all of
your processes and have somewhatof an idea of a business goals
or business goals in mind andhow you can develop content to
(48:20):
further those business goals,and that is the.
These are the reasons why I hadto split everything is
logistics from digital dispatchand so, um, I I don't know if,
uh, you'll find, I mean, ifyou're, you're still listening
at this point.
I hope that you found value inthis conversation.
I hope that some of the thingsthat I have talked about will
(48:42):
help other founders, othercontent-focused entrepreneurs,
figure out what their path is,because everything is logistics
is its own entity now anddigital dispatch remains its own
entity Both of those I stillwork full-time for as much as
you could say full-time for eachone, but the content drives the
(49:04):
business.
So we still do marketing andsales focused shows, we talk to
marketing and sales logisticsleaders, and now we just take
that content and also put it ondigital dispatch.
We also send it to ourcustomers.
We're in the process ofcreating some premium content
libraries that are commercialfree and that is more like cut
to the chase type content, whereI can take the best insights
(49:26):
from these six marketing leadersand package them up for my
clients so that they don't haveto go and listen to six or seven
different podcast episodes andpull out different nuggets, and
so that is the future of whatwe're investing in.
I'm trying to contribute less tothe noise and provide more
impact, but I'm also trying todo it in a way that is
(49:46):
sustainable for my team from amental perspective, but also a
financial perspective.
So with better processes,better pricing that sends the
right message.
And, through all of thesethings, I hope that this was a
good explainer of why I chose toseparate these two brands.
(50:09):
What's sort of coming down thepipeline in the future for the
podcast and for the business Ido?
Because of these optimizationsthat we've made in those two
sectors, I now feel fullyconfident that I can launch this
other idea that I've beensitting on for about a year and
a half, and I really, reallywant to tinker with this one too
(50:31):
.
And so now that we have thisprocess and the team really
dialed in, with standardoperating procedures and
processes, you know, go figure,like the boring stuff is the
important stuff, um, but dialingthose in now, uh, gives me the
mental clarity and also a littlebit of mental freedom to to
feel okay.
(50:52):
Adding, uh, another, you know,chain in the armor, um, and so,
with that all said, I think Ifeel like I said this twice
already, but I'm going to say itagain.
I hope you found value in this.
If you're still listening, Iimagine you found some kind of
value in it, but I would love tohear from you.
I would love to hear how you'reapproaching content marketing,
(51:12):
how you are, if there's anyareas you're struggling with
from a content perspective,especially in the world of
logistics, if there's folks outthere that we should be talking
to.
If you need a website, reachout to me.
All of my contact informationis over on
everythingislogisticscom, alsoon digitaldispatchio, and so
you'll hear a lot more aboutthese companies.
(51:35):
That's a weird way of sayingthis.
Hopefully you're alreadyhearing about this company.
So, anyways, I've gotten to thepoint of the show where I am
rambling.
That's a good place for me tostop, but I appreciate your time
, I appreciate your attentionand I appreciate you listening
to my story.
Much, much more to come and Ifeel much more confident about
(51:55):
pursuing these other goals andinitiatives in freight.
I should note that in freightis not leaving freight
whatsoever, but pursuing some ofthese other initiatives and
ideas that I have for thefreight world, now that I'm
confident in our processes andour pricing and in a lot of the
things we discussed in thisepisode.
So thank you again for yourtime and attention.
(52:16):
Feel free to reach out for anyneeds or support.
And yeah, that does it.
We'll see you next time.
Go, jags.
I hope you enjoyed this episodeof Everything is Logistics, a
podcast for the thinkers infreight, telling the stories
behind how your favorite stuffand people get from point A to B
.
Subscribe to the show, sign upfor our newsletter and follow
(52:36):
our socials over ateverythingislogisticscom.
And in addition to the show,sign up for our newsletter and
follow our socials over ateverythingislogisticscom.
And in addition to the podcast,I also wanted to let y'all know
about another company I operate,and that's Digital Dispatch,
where we help you build a betterwebsite.
Now, a lot of the times, wehand this task of building a new
website or refreshing a currentone off to a coworker's child,
(52:58):
a neighbor down the street or astranger around the world, where
you probably spend more timeexplaining the freight industry
than it takes to actually buildthe dang website.
Well, that doesn't happen atDigital Dispatch.
We've been building onlinesince 2009, but we're also early
adopters of AI, automation andother website tactics that help
your company to be a centralplace to pull in all of your
(53:20):
social media posts, recruit newemployees and give potential
customers a glimpse into how youoperate your business.
Our new website builds start aslow as $1,500, along with
ongoing website management,maintenance and updates starting
at $90 a month, plus some bonusfreight, marketing and sales
content similar to what you hearon the podcast.
(53:42):
You can watch a quick explainervideo over on digitaldispatchio.
Just check out the pricing pageonce you arrive and you can see
how we can build your digitalecosystem on a strong foundation
.
Until then, I hope you enjoyedthis episode.
I'll see you all real soon andgo Jags.
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