November 23, 2023 • 58 mins
This episode features Nathan Cheney, founder of Supply Chaney, discussing his experience in logistics, starting a freight agency, and creating educational YouTube content. He shares insights on improving supply chain processes, building company culture, marketing B2B content, and more. He also adds his thoughts on creating efficient content workflows and choosing the right metrics to focus on.
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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 were proudly presented bySPI Logistics and I am your host
, Blythe Brumleve.
We've got a special guest foryou today and that is Nathan
Chaney.
He is the founder of SupplyChaney and he's also dabbling in
you know a few other differententerprises.
I'm excited to talk all aboutthose enterprises, your
(00:29):
experience as a freight agentand also your experience as a
content marketer in logistics,because, frankly, we need more
folks creating content inlogistics.
So, with all that said, Nathan,welcome into the show.
Nathan Chaney (00:41):
Hey, thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
I'm just kind of jealous that Ididn't come up with the
logistics as everything sort ofmoniker first, because I think
it's genius.
Blythe Brumleve (00:51):
Thank you.
It's also very easy to spell,which I think is very important
when it comes to, you know, ashow title.
I've created shows in the pastthat didn't exactly have that,
and it was a nightmare fortrying to get people to visit.
Okay, so I was just telling youbefore we started that I was
listening to your interview withChris Jolly, the freight coach,
(01:11):
which is great because we'reboth, you know, partnered with
SPI and you as well.
So this is, you know, a greatconversation you know within the
SPI family, and one of the coolthings that I learned about you
during that conversation isthat you're one of the rare
people that went to school forsupply chain and then stuck with
it and, like, stayed in theindustry.
(01:32):
Typically, it's yeah, they justenter and they never go to
school for it, or they go toschool for it and then quickly
just go to another industry oncethey start working in the
trenches.
So so tell us a little bitabout that experience of going
to school and then deciding tostay in the industry.
Nathan Chaney (01:49):
Cool.
All right, I like that topicmostly because it's kind of fun.
So I was originally thinking Iwant to be an engineer and then
I realized that I wasn't sogreat at math in my earlier
years and so I kind of wentbusiness route instead.
And as I was finishing up myfirst two years of school on
like a business administrationdegree, I realized that business
(02:14):
administration was way toogeneric of a field, just felt
like I wasn't going to bespecialized enough.
So you know, I kind of went tothe head of the business
department and I said, as I gointo my junior and senior years,
what should I consider doing?
And you know this would havebeen in 2007 or so.
And he and the answer was youshould go look at logistics and
specifically that school upthere in Dallas at, you know,
(02:37):
the University of North Texas,has a pretty good program.
You should go check it out.
So I went up there one weekendand you know my favorite color
happened to be green.
That was the color of theschool and I just thought I
liked playing with trucks andcars and the mud when I was
little and, being typical sortof boy, that sounds like what
logistics is to me.
(02:57):
I'll do that.
So it was about as scientific ofan approach to kind of select
what I would do for the rest ofmy life as that and I feel
really really fortunate, to yourpoint that it was something
that resonated with me and kindof how I think and I've been
able to continue staying andworking in the field, you know,
from college graduation all theway through to today, and you
(03:21):
know it's treated me well, I'veenjoyed it.
There's an endless number ofchallenges and sort of avenues
you can go down within thesupply chain and logistics and
operations and there's reallyjust so much you can do and a
lot of autonomy.
And it's a new field.
You know, in the biggerperspective, this idea of having
a logistics degree wasn'tsomething that people were
(03:43):
getting, you know, 12 or 20years ago and so now it's kind
of become its own, it's brokenaway from the operations
department into its owndiscipline.
So I feel really fortunate, Iguess, to answer your question
that I've I picked the rightthing and that I didn't bounce
around.
So it's allowed me to havecontinuous sort of progress and
one sort of focus in my career.
Blythe Brumleve (04:05):
I think it too.
It speaks to just for a lot ofkids that go to college.
They just pick a major and theyhave no idea if that major is
going to be around for a while,and so that was really smart of
your professor to recommendlogistics to you at the time,
because I you know, I think weas an industry need to be better
(04:25):
at educating the younger folksabout how just interesting this
industry is.
And you're pretty much going toalways have a job because
there's always going to needstuff needs to be moved.
So talk to me about your,because you spent time after you
graduated.
You went to go work at a threePL, I believe, and then you also
went to work for a shipper.
(04:46):
So what was sort of the, Iguess the what was the education
versus working in those roles?
Like, did you learn?
Was it pretty much learning onthe job or did you know a lot of
this going into each of theseroles?
Nathan Chaney (04:59):
Yeah, I would say that theory and practice are
two pretty different things inthe logistics curriculum and in
the real world.
So I had the opportunity tohave two internships while I was
in college, which was great,because I advocate that for
everyone and one of the bestpieces of advice that I got was
to have multiple internships ifpossible.
And it's like trying on shoes.
(05:21):
You know you don't buy thefirst pair of shoes you try on.
And so my first internship wasin the three PL world.
Actually, I was writing SOPswas kind of like.
The first thing I did was,right, go visit all the
departments and write SOPs forthem.
Turns out I'm still doing thattoday.
That's still a big part oflogistics and operations.
And my second opportunity waswith a shipper, with PepsiCo,
(05:45):
and those were my two.
First like formative experiencesin the industry was at SEVA and
at PepsiCo.
And the interesting thing is atPepsiCo I was measuring the
carbon footprint of the entiresupply chain for PepsiCo,
including all the differentbusiness units like Frito, lay
and Tropicana and whatnot.
And what I realized is thatwhenever I was at the three PL,
(06:08):
I was needing to be responsiveto the customers you know the
people that are shippers.
And when I went to go toPepsiCo, it was interesting to
be that shipper, to be thatcustomer, and whenever I called
up a carrier and said, hey, Ineed information about your
fleet, how many of these trucksyou have, what your average
miles per gallon is, what yourcarbon emissions are, man, yes,
sir, I'll be right on that rightaway.
(06:29):
Let me get that back to you assoon as I can.
And it was such an interestingway to see the different, you
know, sort of way of being.
We're still doing logistics,but you're just on the customer
side instead of the serviceprovider side.
And so at a young age I got tokind of experience that and I
feel like that was amazing that,you know, for all the students
(06:51):
out there or folks that are ableto kind of be able to see what
side of the fence maybe fitsthem best, it's a great
opportunity.
And so when I was graduating,that was 2008, when the you know
, the economy was not doinggreat, and so I was kind of like
there was hiring freeze thereat PepsiCo, and so I had to kind
(07:12):
of make a choice of do I stayan intern for an unlimited or,
you know, kind of likeindefinite amount of time or do
I try to go find a full-time job.
And so I was able to get afull-time job in 3PL and that
kind of just set me on a pathtoward 3PL career.
So a couple of different stopsat a couple of different places
move my way up to branch manager, you know, running, opening up
(07:36):
new facilities, hiring up allthe teams, getting new clients
in the door, running, you know,from soup to nuts the entire
operations, you know, still inmy 20s, and that was really fun
and awesome.
And at a point I got anopportunity to go to the shipper
side and that was TexasInstruments and I kind of wanted
to relive, you know, lookingback at it, relive kind of what
(07:57):
I got to do as an intern, whichis to kind of see both sides.
And so while at TI I got to run,you know, the raw materials and
spare parts facilities goinginto their fabs and a little bit
after that I got to transitionand manage their finished goods
distribution center here in theUS as well.
So within that I actually hadto see the raw materials going
(08:18):
into the plants and manage allof that.
And then I got to manage theoutgoing finished goods going
out to customers.
So I feel even though it wasn'tmy plan, you know, coming out
of school that I really gotmyself a lot of exposure to all
aspects of the supply chain,from the service provider side,
from the shipper side, frominputs into a factory to outputs
(08:39):
out of a factory, kind ofeverything in between.
So again, I don't think I couldhave accomplished this if I set
out to do it on purpose, but Ithink accidentally, I've just
kind of been able to be exposedto a lot of the parts of supply
chain.
Blythe Brumleve (08:52):
How do you think your roles at Pepsi and
and Texas Instruments havehelped you become a better
broker?
Nathan Chaney (09:02):
Well, having lived in those shoes and have
you know inventory or freightthat needs to get you know from
a warehouse into a factory orfrom a factory to a customer or
any of those sort of bits, butto be able to speak the same
language and just be able torelate right is look, I know
exactly how this feels and Ithink I've got the best solution
(09:24):
that's going to.
Maybe that you haven't eventhought of the solution that can
help solve this, but you know,because I've been in that seat
as well and have had to solvefor it before.
Here's maybe some of the thingsI might have done, and so I
think it kind of just helps togive a broader perspective and
be able to have that client sortof perspective.
Blythe Brumleve (09:43):
So what was, I guess, the how did you decide
that you wanted to become afreight agent?
Like what was the jump from youknow working at Texas
Instruments to maybe you had youknow some roles in between
there, but what was ultimatelysort of the catalyst that you
wanted to become a freight agent?
Nathan Chaney (09:59):
It's a fun story.
So at the last, I want to say,like kind of corporate job that
I had, I, you know, left thatposition kind of not 100%
knowing what I wanted to do next.
But I knew I kind of wanted tobe an entrepreneur of sorts.
I've always had the itch, I'vealways had ideas kind of cooking
in the back of my head and Ifelt like I was maybe at a right
(10:21):
point in my career and life tobe able to go do that.
So I started kind of justthinking through it and I have a
friend that actually has afreight agency and through
Landstar and he's had it for 10years and he's been really
successful with it.
And so I said, hey, can I justgo do some business development
kind of stuff for you and I'llgo talk to people.
(10:44):
I'm here in Dallas, he's likeup in beautiful mountain country
up in Colorado, and so you know, I can be that kind of boots on
the ground where shippers are.
I can see if I can come findyou some business.
So as I went through thatprocess I realized that there
were obstacles to bringing onclients under, you know, under
(11:04):
that model, under thatparticular brand, and so when I
came across some, you know.
Also, what we haven't mentionedis throughout all these years
I've been heavily engaged in allof the networking in the
industry organizations and soI've got a pretty good network.
And so I was going to all thesefolks and I had the opportunity
to get business, but just notunder that model, under that
(11:27):
brand.
And so that actually is whatprompted me to say, well, if
that's kind of what's holding meback, then I'll just, I guess I
just need to go open up my ownshop.
And so I went and shoppedaround for different you know
logistics companies that I couldoperate an agency under
no-transcript.
As I did that, I started torealize and started to be this
(11:49):
freight broker, I startedrealizing that I actually want
to help with all aspects of thesupply chain, not just
transportation.
I've gotten to the point whereI'm trying to morph into being a
full supply chain servicesprovider, with transportation
being one of those tools in thetool belt.
It's been a great experienceworking with SPI and that being
(12:11):
my first, I'm glad I selectedthem and they approved me.
I guess it doesn't sound likeeveryone gets automatically just
accepted.
That's great because it helpsmake sure that agency network is
really strong.
It's been a great experienceand largely it was just the
culture of the company.
They're just really friendlypeople to work with.
(12:35):
Then the TMS, the back-endoffice piece of it, is up to
date.
It's new and it's efficient.
As an operator, I want thatefficiency.
Those are two of the bigcomponents that made me feel
compelled to select SPI.
Blythe Brumleve (12:56):
I would imagine that those were maybe some of
your questions of when you'reshopping a freight agency.
Is it really the back officeand the tech that are the
biggest concerns, or are thereother concerns that you wanted
to be sure of before you madethe choice?
Nathan Chaney (13:11):
We all work for a living.
At the end of the day, thatcommission split is also very
important Very important.
As much as we love what we do,at the end of the day we've got
to put foot on the table.
I felt like their policy andprogram around that was really
fair.
It was one of the best in theindustry that I was, from what I
(13:33):
was seeing in the shopping Iwas doing.
It touched on all points theculture, the technology.
At the end of the day, if youwant to say the paycheck all
those were the three mainbuckets that I was looking at In
SPI.
I checked all of them.
Blythe Brumleve (13:50):
Are you in freight sales with a book of
business looking for a new home,or perhaps you're a freight
agent in need of a betterpartnership?
These are the kinds ofconversations we're exploring in
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
(14:11):
agents with back officeoperations such as admin,
finance, IT and sales.
But I would much rather youhear it directly from SPI's
freight agents themselves.
I want a 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
(14:32):
these conversations or, ifyou're ready to make the jump,
visit spi3plcom.
And so it kind of sounds likeyou know, based on your
experience, the networkingcapabilities and the network
that you've built, and then alsobeing a freight agent, it
almost sounds like you're kindof morphing into not just a
(14:53):
freight agent and I don't meanthat like derogatory, of course,
but it's almost like a supplychain agent, maybe as a fair
assessment, that's 100% fair.
Nathan Chaney (15:02):
And you know, it was nine months ago, ten months
ago maybe, that I had one ofthose light bulb moments that I
realized that my last name isCheney and that if I'm going to
do this entrepreneur thing andit's going to be in the
logistics space, then maybesupply chain would be a fun sort
of name for it.
Right, and so, taking that sortof as my sort of the mission
(15:25):
and kind of the end goal ofbeing supply chain oriented, it
kind of just forces me toactually be pretty broad and try
to kind of provide a lot ofservices that all kind of
obviously fall within the supplychain space.
Of course I have mentors thatare saying, nathan, you need to
specialize, you really need tofocus.
(15:45):
You can't be everything toeveryone, but I'm like I really
appreciate the mentorship, butit's in the name, it's supply
chain.
So of course I got to go try toboil the ocean a little bit,
but that sounds like a funchallenge and I'm up for that.
So I have been buildingrelationships with a number of
(16:05):
different providers throughoutthe supply chain that you need
to run not only like a supplychain business, like a 3PL, but
a supply chain logisticsdepartment within a shipper or a
manufacturer or whatever itmight be.
And so I don't have all thoseexpertises, but with my I'm
going to say education andexperience, I kind of understand
how they all need to worktogether and kind of, at the end
(16:29):
of the day, have a successfulbusiness, you know, that's
profitable, that people want towork for.
And so what I've found is that,even though I have a degree in
logistics and that's what I'vestudied and that's what I've
done I've started to morphtoward a full kind of a whole
hearted, all-encompassingbusiness type of perspective,
and I firmly believe thateverything is logistics at the
(16:52):
end of the day.
And so I kind of see a lot ofcompanies.
Unless you're in insurance orfinance advising or something
like that, everything kind of tome focuses on the logistics of
the business.
So you've got inputs coming in,you're doing something to
transform some materials orpeople, and then you've got an
outbound product, and so I seeeverything through that lens,
(17:14):
for good or for bad.
But there's people, there'ssystems, there's technology,
there's money that needs toexchange hands through all that,
that's all the supply chain.
And so I've, again, I've beenfeel really fortunate that, not
only that, I find that rightsort of passion and career, but
my last name turned out to beCheney, I guess, and that I've
(17:36):
at some point had that lightbulb moment, and so it's a bit
of work for sure, as you know,to kind of get up, get out and
try to build something new thatdidn't exist before, but, darn,
at the end of the day it'spretty darn fulfilling.
Blythe Brumleve (17:50):
Yeah, it definitely is, and I hope you
don't mind that I'm going toclip that little audio piece and
definitely use it as promo forsaying everything is logistics.
So I appreciate that that wasnot planned, but I'm going to
take advantage of it anyways.
Okay, so I did want to.
I thought what you said wasreally interesting about
building sort of that SOPprocess within shippers,
(18:12):
especially managing their supplychain department, you know,
building their own internallogistics team, which I think is
really interesting.
What are some of the challengesthat these shippers are facing
that you're helping to craft forthem, that they may not have
known about the logisticsprocess?
Nathan Chaney (18:30):
Well, I think one thing and I kind of specialize
on the smaller to medium sizedbusinesses is a lot of times
they kind of lump in logisticsand supply chain in with
operations in general.
You know.
So the person who's been, youknow if you want to say making
widgets, you know for a longtime and you know how to make
widgets really well they becauseyou know the inputs into that
(18:53):
process have to, are going tothem and the finished goods of
that process they're also kindof in charge of it just kind of
gets lumped into operations andso there's not a lot of
specialization within thelogistics and supply chain and
so you might not have a lot offolks that have much experience
on their team in the logisticsand supply chain space.
And there's a lot of savings tobe made if you just package
(19:17):
things up differently.
If you get pallets that aremade, that are customized to
your size, you can have asmaller footprint in your, in
your LTL trailers.
There's just a lot ofoptimization.
And you know, a big part of myactually degree in college was
marketing and one thing thatI'll kind of always remember is
that saving a dollar is theequivalent of, you know,
(19:40):
whatever your margin is saving$1 equivalent of selling $10
worth of product.
So for every little bit ofsavings that you can get, you
get an exponential return basedon the sales equivalent of that
savings right.
So there's a lot of opportunityfor companies to, you know,
improve their bottom line.
Not worry about the top line somuch, but improve the bottom
line by just drawing out anddriving out costs that don't
(20:02):
need to be there, justoptimizing.
So, and even though there aredegrees you know people are
getting logistics degreeshundreds and thousands a year
it's still, for in the biggercompanies you're going to find
logistics as supply chaindepartments, but in smaller
companies I think there's thatthat expertise is still finding
their way in and finding a seatat the table and showing their
value.
Blythe Brumleve (20:24):
What is?
Maybe, if someone is listeningto this, maybe they are one of
those businesses that needs to,you know, get a grip on their
logistics SOP.
What are maybe some goodoverall tips to developing that?
Nathan Chaney (20:39):
Well, one thing that I've come to realize now is
the world of consulting thatI've kind of found myself in for
a bit now is that if you don'thave the expertise in-house
there are, there's plenty offolks out there that are very
experienced and more than happyto come help you out a bit so
that if you don't have thebudget to have, like, for
example, a full-time expert, youknow, on staff, you can do that
(21:02):
in a part-time consulting sortof fashion, even maybe just a
retainer, that they just come onand help, just again in a
retainer type fashion, to bringsome of that expertise.
It can, you know, obviouslyvery much have a really
rewarding ROI at the end of theday just for the little bits and
pieces of expertise andknowledge those folks have that
(21:23):
you know, within your companyhadn't thought of yet.
You know, I know that there'scompanies out there that kind of
frown upon the idea of havingconsultants and whatnot, but
I've really kind of learned tosee the value of just having
little bits and pieces of thatexpertise that you're able to
access.
The other thing that I think isis a struggle is not investing
a lot of time in training andkind of telling those new hires
(21:45):
and people that are coming inthe door, why All this is
happening, why we do things theway we do them and what the best
way to do it is.
I feel like even with some jobsthat I've had, it's very much
just on the job training, justget in there kind of get going.
And so there are actually waysto be a little more structured
and to provide those new hireswith the why of why your company
(22:07):
is doing what it does.
You know why its mission iswhat it is and also the how you
know the how do you do your jobfrom day to day.
And so I've actually partneredwith some folks that kind of
help with those things, ifsomeone's ever wanting to talk
about it more.
But there's really goodsolutions out there that can
help get that how intoeverybody's pocket so that there
(22:29):
is no question about how to godo this job properly and execute
consistently day in and day out.
Blythe Brumleve (22:36):
What are some of?
Because, especially for smallto medium sized businesses, you
don't know what you don't know.
So how do you, what are some of, maybe those warning signs that
someone needs to get thatoutside consultant, needs to
hire somebody that is an expertin logistics, or at least is
familiar with it somewhat?
What are some of those maybelike hints or like little red
(22:58):
flags that may start popping up,that may signal to them hey, we
might need to get somebody inhere.
Nathan Chaney (23:04):
Sure, you know, when you start to ask that
question, the thing that poppedinto my mind is you, if you keep
yourself within your own fourwalls of your business day in
and day out, you're not going toactually know what other people
are doing and you're not goingto be able to kind of see what
best practices are out there.
And so one way to actually dothat is to get involved in sort
of those industry groups thatmight be in your area,
(23:26):
particularly ones that go onfacility tours and visits of
other facilities.
It can be transportation docs,it can be warehouses, it can be
plants or factories that aremaking something.
But I've found that one of thegreat ways to kind of identify
where there might be gaps inyour operation is to go look at
and see what other people aredoing.
And that's actually kind ofwhat spurred the creation of my
(23:52):
creation by a chain of YouTubechannel was to go out and kind
of go tour and film thosefacilities and kind of bring
those best practices and givethat sort of inspiration to
folks in a way that they don'teven have to leave their office
or their couch to kind of getsome of that inspiration.
And I know that doesn't 100%answer your question.
(24:13):
I think you're probably lookingfor what KPIs can they look at
or what sort of financialreturns or reports they could
look at to find that there'sproblems.
And I think those questionscould also be answered by the
accounting team is does thiscost look like it's out of spec
compared to our industry?
Is our transportation andwarehouse spend?
(24:34):
Is our inventory turnover right?
Do we have too much loss goingon from?
We started out with a milliondollars worth of inventory at
the beginning and now we've onlygot half a million.
But we sold $700 million of itor 700, just things being off
from a business perspective andgoing to try to find those root
(24:55):
cause could lead you down intothere's something in the
logistics or the supply chain ofthe business.
But I think a really goodpractice that's easy and fun is
to just go and learn and seewhat other people are doing and
kind of benchmark your ownbusiness.
Blythe Brumleve (25:10):
Yeah, I would add on to that, especially for a
lot of small to medium sizedbusiness.
They might not even know thatthey have a local maybe council
supply chain managers or a localtransportation club or anything
like that.
But maybe that is a good avenuefor people who work in freight
to go to some of these otherbusiness networking meetings and
(25:33):
to meet with those folks andexplain what you were saying.
You don't know what you don'tknow.
So let me share my expertisewith some of the maybe the more
casual business networkinggroups.
That seems like it would be agreat opportunity for a lot of
these folks if they don't knowalready about transportation
management.
Spend which can eat up at least50% of any given product is
(25:56):
transportation costs related.
So it could be a good sellingavenue for the freight brokers
out there to go to some of thesemeetings and educate these
business owners.
But speaking of educating yourYouTube channel, which you've
mentioned supply chain, greatname you mentioned the catalyst
for it Starting it was bridgingthat educational gap and I think
(26:17):
for a lot of people when theystart down a content journey,
they start out really strong andthen they just fall off.
What has kept you continuing tomake content, in addition to
managing all of the other thingsyou've got going on.
Nathan Chaney (26:36):
Well, the model that I'm following at the moment
is to bootstrap the contentcreation part of it.
One, because if I'm doing thefilming and the editing kind of
everything myself, then later on, whenever, say, things take off
and I can kind of outsourcethat production piece and have
other people that areprofessionals kind of help out
(26:56):
with that, is that I've alreadykind of been there and done that
, so I know.
One, I've already kind ofcreated the look and feel of how
I want the episodes to look, sopeople that are doing editing
later can kind of just mimic theepisodes that I've already done
.
And then two, from like ashooting perspective, if I'm
going to be the interviewerwalking around, then since I've
(27:17):
also done the filming part andI've also done the editing later
, I can kind of know how to talk, how to take pauses here and
there, how to kind of frame thedifferent shots so that later on
in production it's moreefficient and it can get kind of
published and put out faster.
And I think that's where I'mhaving a little bit of fun is
that everything is logistics, inthat even in content creation
(27:39):
there's a way to be moreefficient and actually there's
kind of an endless pursuit ofgetting out there and trying to
take as little footage andhaving to capture as much little
raw content as possible so thatyou have less of it to go
through and then, at the end ofthe day, you spend less time
having to edit becauseeverything you shot on site or
whatever was better, all usable,not a lot of waste.
(28:01):
All the kind of metrics that wethink about in logistics really
applies, I think, a little bitin content creation and at the
end of the day, we just want tobe efficiently able to tell a
story to the audience that wantsto hear it.
Blythe Brumleve (28:14):
Yeah, definitely.
I've talked about this withclients too.
It's like your content is atotally different supply chain.
You have to find out where youroriginal materials are going to
be coming from, what yourdistribution plan looks like,
what is that last mile of yourdistribution that plan looked
like?
So it really is like thatsupply chain can really be
applied to content as well.
How are you with creatingcontent and the ventures that
(28:39):
you have going on?
What does sort of a typical dayto day look like for you?
Or maybe a week or a month is abetter way to phrase it.
Nathan Chaney (28:50):
So, content-wise, I'm kind of shooting for a
couple, two or three episodes ofbeing filmed and kind of
published each month.
I think that's kind of it.
The publishing or going out toshoot mostly just kind of looks
like, if you want to say, coldcalling a few interesting
looking businesses that might bearound or talking with friends
(29:11):
that are in my network and justgoing and setting it up, telling
them why I'm here and what I'mgonna do, and kind of getting it
on the calendar.
Going out and shooting and the,if you want to say, the B-roll.
It's been about an hour doingthat and about an hour doing the
actual interview and walk andtalk, so that's kind of
happening.
Those are points on thecalendar and then in addition to
(29:32):
that, I do some fractional sortof operations work for some
folks, and so that is also akind of big part of the schedule
.
I'd say half my time is spenttalking about how to make a
logistic company more profitable, how to keep their folks more
happy, retain and recruit talentand just run the business and
(29:53):
run the operations.
That's 50% of my time, give ortake.
I've also kind of got, if youwant to splash in, a little bit
of an MBA that I'm working on aswell in there, and then the
freight brokerage and other sortof bits and pieces of the
business where I'm just helpingpeople execute their business
and get things done.
And again, in all of thosethings it's always a constant
(30:18):
striving for efficiency.
And how much can I accomplishall these things with this
little sort of waste and timekind of involved?
So I keep myself busy.
I haven't learned yet how torelax.
Being busy and having my handskind of in a bunch of different
buckets is actually just kind ofhow I get a fulfillment in life
(30:41):
, so I enjoy it a lot.
Blythe Brumleve (30:43):
I think you're approaching content the right
way.
You even to this day.
I'm lucky enough that I do havepeople that help me with my
content now, but that is only arecent revelation or a recent
addition, but I still think it'sreally important to know how to
edit it, know what you'relooking for, know what the kind
(31:04):
of overall story of what you'retrying to tell, before you ever
even get out to onsite, becausethen, once you're onsite, it's
very much like the sales processI call content like the new
golf course, where you can goand you can meet people and you
can have a conversation withthem and then you develop that
relationship with them that isso much stronger than trying to
send a cold email and justhoping that they would notice
(31:27):
you.
I'm curious as to, witheverything that you've learned
from content this year, how doyou sort of think about
adjustments or changes to theprocess, the efficiency of it,
as you're going into 2024?
Nathan Chaney (31:44):
Well, a little bit of new gear.
I think that when you're juststarting out, you kind of start
out with some starter stuff andthen you kind of figure out what
is important to you and whatnot.
So one of my strategiesactually is to intentionally not
need more than what will fit inlike a backpack to show up to
onsite and have everything shot.
(32:05):
So I got the drone here, I justgot the Pocket 3.
All my stuff is all DJI, so itall kind of works and plays well
together.
But literally everything that Ineed will fit in a backpack.
And if I come to, if I shouldsomehow get an inquiry to do
some work where they're likewanting some really good
lighting and some cinema qualitystuff, then I outsource that
(32:28):
because that's not where myplace is.
And then I think the other partof it is getting better with
editing.
So I've spent a good amount oftime just watching YouTube
videos on how to edit video andwhat kind of shots.
You know I'm actually workingon a shot list now of what all
those different shots are andknowing what those are gonna be,
you know before you walk outthere.
(32:49):
And I think that from anefficiency perspective, the fact
that it takes hours to make aone or two minute short clip is
mind blowing.
I don't think people that don'tknow this yet but it's almost.
The shorter the clip is, thelonger it's gonna take to get it
polished and looking good andrun through all the different
(33:11):
sort of sequences, get all thewords and all the audio in it,
right.
So my recipe at the moment is Igo and shoot and then I make
like a two or three minute sortof episode preview and then I
take that and I basically juststretch out all those clips and
make that into a 10 to 15episode and so I'm again, from
(33:34):
like a logistic sufficiencyperspective, just figuring out
how can I spend as little timeon site, get the content that's
needed and then spend as littletime editing later on as later
on so in 2024, I'm actuallylooking to expand on the content
that I'm creating and packagingit up into what I'm gonna call
(33:55):
supply chain.
Academy is the working.
Supply chain academy is theworking title.
But I do a lot with students.
I do a lot of mentoring with alot of the college students here
in DFW and I also do a lot ofinteracting with people that are
hiring students in,specifically, supply chain, and
I think I've kind of thinking offiguring out a way that I can
help match those two togetherand use content that I'm
(34:20):
creating through the channel Oneto kind of educate the students
, to kind of get them real worldexposure to what life is like
really in logistics, becausethat's kind of what my episodes
are a lot.
They're all behind the scenes,taking a peek behind the curtain
of what really happens withinlogistics or operations or
factories or whatnot.
So using that experience andthe content to be able to kind
(34:44):
of educate and prep students andget them connected up to
employers for internships andfull time jobs.
So that's actually the bigthing I think I'm gonna be
launching and trying to makehappen in 2024.
Blythe Brumleve (34:57):
How do you, I guess, from like a marketing
standpoint, how do you think ofmarketing your company versus
you?
Nathan Chaney (35:09):
Or is it kind of all the same that one bucket or
one umbrella yeah, at this pointI think I am intimately tied
into the company, like I am thecompany, right.
But I realized that in thelonger term I need to get to a
point where it can stand on itsown and operate on its own and
does not rely on me to be partof it, and so I'm obviously very
(35:32):
still early days in the wholething.
But I've got some ideas anddreams, I guess you could say
right, of having a company thatstands on its own, that one
provides the services thatexecutes logistics for folks,
right.
However, that might look intransportation, warehousing and
whatnot, but also has a kind ofa media component to it.
(35:58):
The idea that I've kind of beenthinking about is, if I've got
all these episodes where I amout and about and I'm talking to
people that make this and thatsell that and distribute that
and I've seen all of thesethings than that as a
salesperson or selling theservices I'm providing, I feel
like that is a pretty compellingreason to hire me, because I've
(36:20):
seen all of these things and Ihave all these connections with
all these folks.
So you can go watch the episodeyourself and you can learn how
pallets are made, or you canlearn how concrete is made and
distributed.
But at the same time, if youwant, you can have direct access
to that person who's actuallygone and seen and touched and
felt all those differentoperations.
And I wanna be able to try tomove a lot of that knowledge
(36:42):
that I'm getting, that's in myhead and share it with other
people through the content,through channels, so that it's
not all just trapped here but Iwanna kind of pass it along.
And so I want the company tokind of represent that best
practices and logistics and kindof fostering the industry and
(37:03):
the expertise not the expertise,the logistics or know how into
the next generation.
Blythe Brumleve (37:13):
Like your experience, especially with
having that experience across somany different silos of
logistics, where that's wherecontent really shines a light
and can really help thisindustry move forward as a whole
, because everybody just betweenmaritime intermodal warehousing
, everybody operates in theirown silos, and when you operate
(37:33):
in your own silos going back towhat you said earlier you don't
know what you don't know.
I'm curious as to do you have afavorite story that you've told
so far?
And then is there a dream storythat you would love to tell in
the future?
Nathan Chaney (37:48):
Yeah, that's a good question, it's a really
good question.
So if I think back through thefew that I've filmed, so I would
say that and I have got a quicklittle visual.
The interesting thing is, as Imentioned a while ago, is that
as I've kind of gone throughthis journey in the supply chain
sort of career and industry isthat it's becoming less and less
(38:11):
about the technical ins andouts of transporting things and
warehousing them and more aboutjust being a good general
business practitioner and kindof just being a well-rounded
company that people want to workfor.
And so to that end, I've got anepisode coming out here pretty
soon.
That is what they're gonna callthe work wear safety.
And I think of many companiesthat I've been a part of, they
(38:36):
seem to be the most intentionalabout how they've developed the
culture of the business, and youcan kind of see it in just how
well they could recite exactlywhat their mission was, Exactly
kind of the ways that they eachexpect each other to act toward
each other, how they all expectto deliver for the customer.
And so there's this internalcomponent to their culture and
(39:00):
then there's this external sortof customer facing component to
it and, as in the episodeColeman, who's the president CEO
of the business says he says,at the end of the day, culture
eats strategy for breakfast.
And I think that as we growkind of in our business sort of
(39:20):
levels of how you think about abusiness and whether it's
logistics or anything, you startthinking at a higher level.
It's more about the people andthe culture and that's what's
gonna carry the business forward, Not so much the technical
expertise of how well your ratetables are structured with your
suppliers or something right.
And so it's in that episodewith Workwear Safety that I
(39:43):
think I really got to highlighta company that cares about its
people and has intentionallydeveloped a place that people
want to work in.
And at the end of the day again, your SOPs can be the most
amazing ever, but if it's not aplace that people want to work,
then you're gonna have troublerecruiting and retaining folks
to do to run those SOPs.
Blythe Brumleve (40:04):
So I just made a note in our show notes to
include that video in the shownotes Just in case people want
to check it out and check outmore of your work, and real
quick.
Do you have a dream company ora dream story that you would
want to tell in supply chain?
Nathan Chaney (40:20):
That one is tough .
I haven't thought about it.
That's maybe the next episodethat I'm on.
Blythe Brumleve (40:28):
I could it could be okay.
So you're on the verge oftelling it.
Nathan Chaney (40:33):
No, honestly, I gotta think on that one.
It's kind of like saying what'syour favorite song.
Do you have a favorite song?
Blythe Brumleve (40:41):
Yes, but it changes so often so I don't know
if maybe I have five differentsongs at any one time, but I
would say, if I'm thinking afavorite, because I do a lot of
we have a series on the showcalled the Logistics, of which I
just rebranded to Source toPorch.
So Source to Porch I shouldn'tuse the proper name for it, but
(41:03):
for that it's been DisneyLogistics.
I am anxious to get In fact, Idid meet someone at a recent
conference that was in charge ofWalt Disney Logistics and she
was trying to keep her namebadge on the low so no one else
would see it, and I think Ifreaked her out a little bit
because I've been wanting totell the story for so long.
Just the theme park logisticshow they reopened, how they got
(41:30):
all their suppliers back inorder, from everything from the
food and the people to thefireworks.
It's just an incredible displayof logistics, and so I've told
it independently a couple oftimes.
But my dream supply chain storywould be I don't know, maybe
(41:50):
even not like a US-based themepark, but maybe it's like
Tokyo's Disney Sea, which isregarded as one of the most
beautiful theme parks in theworld.
That would probably be theupper Mount Everest of stories
that I would like to tell, so Idon't know if that helped create
any ideas for you, or maybe youhave a new one that you want to
(42:11):
hit.
Nathan Chaney (42:12):
My equivalent of that would be a movie set.
Blythe Brumleve (42:15):
Oh cool.
Nathan Chaney (42:16):
And I don't know how you could bubble that down
to just like 10 minutes becausethere's so much that's got to go
into it.
But I mean just the logisticsof getting people, I mean the
people component.
If you talk about all theextras that are in the
background of a war scene orwhatever, all the makeup and the
costumes and then the specialeffects and the safety that's
(42:39):
got to be taking place, oh mygosh, I would be really
interested.
You know, myself I'm curiousabout how the logistics of a
film set in a movie happen.
But to be able to kind of tellthat story would be pretty cool.
Blythe Brumleve (42:53):
I will say I so I'm a big Game of Thrones fan
and so it's season eight.
I know a lot of people havetheir their feelings about it,
but on HBO they have a like aspecial episode of filming
season eight or filming sevenand eight, and they talk about
some of those logistics.
It's really fascinating.
Highly advise everybody to gowatch it.
(43:13):
But you're you're right thatall of the extras they in.
One thing that I rememberspecifically from it is that
they had different large tentsjust for people who are getting
makeup than people who are readyto shoot, and it was just like
you're moving people from liketent to tent.
It was a really fascinatingwatch.
And just, you don't even thinkabout the fact of like a show or
(43:36):
a movie.
It's not filmed inchronological order, it's filmed
based on logistics, based onwhere can people get to in time,
where can they, where locationsare on site.
You know it's.
It's really focused onlogistics first and then the
story comes like after the fact.
So I would co-sign that one too.
Ok, last few questions, becausewe haven't really talked about
(44:00):
any of like your distribution orhow you think about
distribution when it comes tocontent.
So do you have like a you knowa favorite social media platform
.
Are you using email?
How do you sort of think about,you know, not just creating the
content but getting it out tothe audience that you care about
?
Nathan Chaney (44:16):
I think that is in phase two.
I feel like I'm still kind ofin phase one, which is like just
getting those first 10, youknow episodes shot, I think that
.
So in phase one I'm kind ofjust getting my sea legs as far
as creating and getting the vibeand sort of just feel of how
things are going to go.
I think in phase two is where Ieither need to do it myself or
(44:39):
just bring someone on or, youknow, just help, get some
outside help that will just helpkind of be able to tell that
story in more channels.
So right now you know it's veryun-magical, you know it's a
YouTube channel and then I poston LinkedIn and kind of try to
share there.
But what I think I've learned isthat, like, the LinkedIn
algorithm doesn't really like itif you send people outside of
(45:03):
LinkedIn, like so if you'relinking out to a YouTube or
something, then it's going tokind of rank you lower and
you're not going to get the sortof you know.
So I'm just getting into how,all that sort of stuff, you know
like how you should make yourthumbnails, what your title line
should be, and all that sort ofgood stuff, and so I'm still
learning, still in phase one ofjust getting things kind of
learned, but I feel like herepretty soon I should be able to
(45:26):
get to a point where I am goingto be able to take the content,
write a blog summary of theepisode, of what I learned from
that tour.
Because that, because wheneveryou try to take an hour
discussion and turn it into 10minutes worth of finished
content, you don't actually getto tell the whole story and
maybe even some of the mainpoints are not going to actually
(45:48):
come through because theyweren't caught in a conversation
or they weren't caught on video.
It was just the what you feeland what you experienced that
you can't exactly tell throughthe video.
So you know, I've gotten moreplans of how to be able to share
kind of the experiences and getthat content out, but for right
(46:08):
now I'm kind of keeping itpretty simple, but I hope to
really expand on it.
Blythe Brumleve (46:12):
Yeah, I think that that's the way to go.
Like, don't I think too manypeople, when they start creating
content, they want to beeverywhere and they want to be
on all the things and they getquickly overwhelmed and then
they quickly burn out.
The key to longevity is youknow very it's very similar to
what you've been talking about.
You know throughout your entirecareer of being almost obsessed
(46:33):
with the process.
And if you're process obsessedand then that leaves room to
optimize, that leaves room toget better, and if you're not
obsessed with the process andgetting that part better, then
the end result is always goingto be subpar.
So, whether that's you knowrunning a supply chain
consultancy, running a freightagent business, you know
(46:55):
creating content, you know beobsessed with the process and
then you'll ultimately, you know, get to that, that carrot at
the at the end of the road.
Okay, so what?
Anything else for 2024?
You got going on.
Is there anything that I shouldhave asked but didn't, that you
think is important to mention?
Nathan Chaney (47:13):
I want I love that question because it's a
question I try to use wheneverI'm talking to folks is what did
I not ask you that you thinkit's important?
I love that question.
You know that's that's a.
You know I'm kind of taking itif you want to call it an
episode at a time or a week ortwo at a time in exactly where
it goes.
You know I'm kind of lettingthings organically grow.
(47:36):
I don't know where things couldbe a year from now.
I'm kind of excited because ifthings work out really well and
it's just a whole lot of fun andsuccess I don't know what that
could even be, but I justimagine it could be really cool.
On the other hand, if, if itall just kind of leads into
something else that just allthis is just preparation for,
(47:58):
then I think that that's alsogood too.
You know you kind of win at lifethrough your successes and your
struggles, and so I guess youknow it's kind of you got to
have a little maturity, you know, in order to look at a failure
and say I learned from that andI'm going to be able to go do
something better now, but sojust kind of continuing this
(48:19):
kind of experiment that I'vebeen on for a little while,
which is, you know, trying tooperate and run, you know,
independent and get somethinggoing.
It's, it takes a lot of work,you know to to not have someone
that you rely on, you know, tokind of pay you a paycheck at
the end of the day that you'vegot to go out and fish for
yourself, and it's, you know,it's not for the faint of heart
(48:41):
and to anyone out there doing it, if it's a freight agent or if
it's any sort of means of justdriving income yourself.
You know, my hat's off to youall because it's, it's man, it's
a ton of work, but it's alsoextremely rewarding and really
fulfilling, right.
So that's, that's really it.
Actually, if I could ask you aquestion, the one question, I'm
(49:02):
going to use my question back toyou, which is in this B2B
content creation space, becausewe aren't making fun cute, like
there's a cat, you know, doingsomething, funny videos.
It does seem tough to get viraland it also kind of just getting
followers and viewers seemslike a little bit of a slower
(49:23):
process than than what I, I, I,you would be slow, but I think
it's pretty slow, but I justkind of want to get your sort of
take on what it's been like foryou kind of.
You know, feeding content intothe supply chain market, and
earlier you mentioned that thereneeds to be more content
creators.
So that that's a positive sign.
But can you kind of tell themabout your experience and what
(49:43):
you're seeing?
Blythe Brumleve (49:44):
Sure.
So I think the caveat for me is, when I launched digital
dispatch, I already had thisradio broadcasting experience
and I didn't see anybody reallydoing that in freight, except
for like Dooner, like TimothyDooner.
You know what the truck and Iuse and I knew I wasn't coming
(50:07):
from a sports background.
I knew I wasn't going to be inthe news game.
When you create content, youreally have to pick one side or
the other.
Are you going to createeditorial style content or are
you going to create new stylecontent?
Now you can add a little bit ofeditorial to news, but if
you're focusing on news, likeyou are, you have to constantly
(50:27):
be online.
You have to constantly read andlisten and watch everything,
because what you may need forthat day's show or that day's
news program might not beapplicable for that day, but you
might need it six months fromnow.
So it's really almostemotionally draining to run a
business and try to play in thenews game.
(50:48):
So I made a very consciousdecision that I need to be
editorial.
I need to have certain contentbuckets that I focus on and not
steer away from unless there'srevenue to justify it.
So all that to say is when Ifirst started the show.
It was called the DigitalDispatch Podcast and it was
(51:08):
really just about trying to getclients trying to figure out
where their pain points are,because I knew if I knew those
pain points ahead of time, thenother people are probably
experiencing that at the sametime.
Then the show did okay and thenI got picked up by Freight
Waves.
So when you're on Freight Waves, it's a different beast that
(51:31):
you're creating.
You're creating a show.
You're not just creating atopic that we're going to
explore or a customer interviewthat has specific marketing
questions, things like that.
So there's a little bit of afine line that you have to walk.
So my biggest advice is don'tever expect to go viral, because
in B2B it's just probably notgoing to happen.
(51:55):
But the value is that you weretalking, hopefully, to there's
12 people that are watching avideo.
Then hopefully 10 of them arein your target audience and that
is significantly more than ifyou were to go viral and say,
like I've gone viral a couple oftimes on TikTok didn't bring me
(52:16):
any new customers.
It actually brought a lot ofheadaches, a lot of bad comments
, nasty comments.
So there's a lot of baggage, Ithink, with going viral that
people don't talk enough about.
But I usually advise people tosay don't pay attention to the
vanity metrics.
Pay attention to the rightmetrics and you as a business
(52:40):
have much more avenues ofopportunity if you focus on the
12 people that are going to buyfrom you, versus 12,000 views
from folks who are never goingto buy from you.
So focus on having thosecustomer conversations through
video, through content, and thenfiguring out a way to build
(53:01):
stories on top of that.
I think for a lot of marketersand freight, those stories exist
already within their companyand I think the challenge is to
explain to the executive teamthat no, you're not going to go
viral from it, but the insightsyou're going to gather from
talking to your carriers andtalking to your customers and
talking to your vendor partnersis you're going to get answers
(53:24):
to questions that you never knewto ask and you're also going to
get insight that is going to besignificantly more than what is
people are sharing online oreven that you can get from SEO
keyword volume.
You know stupid things that youknow marketers still pay
attention to.
That.
Just don't move the needle intoday's marketing world.
(53:44):
I believe it's content firstapproach and it should be a
content first approach for mostfreight companies is telling
those stories that are alreadyinside internally of your
business and then you can startmaybe playing in the news game.
But that should.
For the overwhelming majorityof people who are working in
supply chain, that justshouldn't be.
You know, let freight waves anddoon are that's their full time
(54:07):
job.
You still have to run abusiness and hopefully content
can complement that.
So hopefully that answered yourquestion.
Hopefully it did anyways.
Nathan Chaney (54:18):
Tempered expectations, I think is and
kind of go for what?
The meaningful sort of qualityover quantity type of engagement
.
Blythe Brumleve (54:28):
I think too, but it's also it's gaining the
direct insight from yourcustomers, who, if they have
certain questions from you, thenthere's likely other businesses
in their same demo, verysimilar customer profiles that
have those same exact questions,and so I think you know, coming
from the place of having thoseconversations with your
(54:48):
customers.
First, I think using content asa way to get your foot in the
door is brilliant, and it's astrategy that I've used
throughout my whole career ishey, come on my podcast, let's
talk, and then you can gainthose insights and gain those
business solutions from thosecustomers, because the last
thing you want to be is like oneof these SaaS companies that
creates a product and tries tofigure out where it fits in to
(55:11):
the mix, instead of going directto customer and figuring out
what they're dealing with andcreating products and services
and solutions around that.
Nathan Chaney (55:20):
Sure yeah.
Blythe Brumleve (55:22):
All right, Well , I guess that about does it for
for this conversation.
Where can folks you knowobviously I will link to your
YouTube channels or any otherway or any other platform that
folks should check you out.
If they want to get in touch,if they want to connect on
social media, where should theygo?
Nathan Chaney (55:39):
Well, it's kind of simple.
Yeah, just basic website atthis point in time, which is
just supply chaincom and, like Isaid, kind of phase two would
be to get out there on the morechannels and more ways to sort
of engage, just kind of keepingit lightening.
Blythe Brumleve (55:55):
Yeah, definitely protect your piece,
so get out there when you can.
No, don't spread yourself toothin.
All right, Nathan?
Well, that was awesome.
Thank you again for coming onthe show and we look forward to
watching your YouTube channelgrow.
Nathan Chaney (56:08):
All right.
Thanks for the support.
Blythe Brumleve (56:39):
A lot of the times, we hand this task of
building a new website orrefreshing a current one off to
a co-worker's child, a neighbordown the street or a stranger
around the world, where youprobably spend more time
explaining the freight industrythan it takes to actually build
the dang website.
Well, that doesn't happen atdigital dispatch.
We've been building onlinesince 2009, but we're also early
(57:00):
adopters of AI, automation andother website tactics that help
your company to be a centralplace to pull in all of your
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
(57:22):
at $90 a month, plus some bonusfreight marketing and sales
content similar to what you hearon the podcast.
You can watch a quick explainervideo over on digital
dispatchio.
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.
(57:43):
I'll see you all real soon andgo Jags.
Welcome into another episode of Everything Is
Logistics, a podcast for thethinkers in freight.
We were proudly presented bySPI Logistics and I am your host
, Blythe Brumleve.
We've got a special guest foryou today and that is Nathan
Chaney.
He is the founder of SupplyChaney and he's also dabbling in
you know a few other differententerprises.
I'm excited to talk all aboutthose enterprises, your
(00:29):
experience as a freight agentand also your experience as a
content marketer in logistics,because, frankly, we need more
folks creating content inlogistics.
So, with all that said, Nathan,welcome into the show.
Nathan Chaney (00:41):
Hey, thanks for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
I'm just kind of jealous that Ididn't come up with the
logistics as everything sort ofmoniker first, because I think
it's genius.
Blythe Brumleve (00:51):
Thank you.
It's also very easy to spell,which I think is very important
when it comes to, you know, ashow title.
I've created shows in the pastthat didn't exactly have that,
and it was a nightmare fortrying to get people to visit.
Okay, so I was just telling youbefore we started that I was
listening to your interview withChris Jolly, the freight coach,
(01:11):
which is great because we'reboth, you know, partnered with
SPI and you as well.
So this is, you know, a greatconversation you know within the
SPI family, and one of the coolthings that I learned about you
during that conversation isthat you're one of the rare
people that went to school forsupply chain and then stuck with
it and, like, stayed in theindustry.
(01:32):
Typically, it's yeah, they justenter and they never go to
school for it, or they go toschool for it and then quickly
just go to another industry oncethey start working in the
trenches.
So so tell us a little bitabout that experience of going
to school and then deciding tostay in the industry.
Nathan Chaney (01:49):
Cool.
All right, I like that topicmostly because it's kind of fun.
So I was originally thinking Iwant to be an engineer and then
I realized that I wasn't sogreat at math in my earlier
years and so I kind of wentbusiness route instead.
And as I was finishing up myfirst two years of school on
like a business administrationdegree, I realized that business
(02:14):
administration was way toogeneric of a field, just felt
like I wasn't going to bespecialized enough.
So you know, I kind of went tothe head of the business
department and I said, as I gointo my junior and senior years,
what should I consider doing?
And you know this would havebeen in 2007 or so.
And he and the answer was youshould go look at logistics and
specifically that school upthere in Dallas at, you know,
(02:37):
the University of North Texas,has a pretty good program.
You should go check it out.
So I went up there one weekendand you know my favorite color
happened to be green.
That was the color of theschool and I just thought I
liked playing with trucks andcars and the mud when I was
little and, being typical sortof boy, that sounds like what
logistics is to me.
(02:57):
I'll do that.
So it was about as scientific ofan approach to kind of select
what I would do for the rest ofmy life as that and I feel
really really fortunate, to yourpoint that it was something
that resonated with me and kindof how I think and I've been
able to continue staying andworking in the field, you know,
from college graduation all theway through to today, and you
(03:21):
know it's treated me well, I'veenjoyed it.
There's an endless number ofchallenges and sort of avenues
you can go down within thesupply chain and logistics and
operations and there's reallyjust so much you can do and a
lot of autonomy.
And it's a new field.
You know, in the biggerperspective, this idea of having
a logistics degree wasn'tsomething that people were
(03:43):
getting, you know, 12 or 20years ago and so now it's kind
of become its own, it's brokenaway from the operations
department into its owndiscipline.
So I feel really fortunate, Iguess, to answer your question
that I've I picked the rightthing and that I didn't bounce
around.
So it's allowed me to havecontinuous sort of progress and
one sort of focus in my career.
Blythe Brumleve (04:05):
I think it too.
It speaks to just for a lot ofkids that go to college.
They just pick a major and theyhave no idea if that major is
going to be around for a while,and so that was really smart of
your professor to recommendlogistics to you at the time,
because I you know, I think weas an industry need to be better
(04:25):
at educating the younger folksabout how just interesting this
industry is.
And you're pretty much going toalways have a job because
there's always going to needstuff needs to be moved.
So talk to me about your,because you spent time after you
graduated.
You went to go work at a threePL, I believe, and then you also
went to work for a shipper.
(04:46):
So what was sort of the, Iguess the what was the education
versus working in those roles?
Like, did you learn?
Was it pretty much learning onthe job or did you know a lot of
this going into each of theseroles?
Nathan Chaney (04:59):
Yeah, I would say that theory and practice are
two pretty different things inthe logistics curriculum and in
the real world.
So I had the opportunity tohave two internships while I was
in college, which was great,because I advocate that for
everyone and one of the bestpieces of advice that I got was
to have multiple internships ifpossible.
And it's like trying on shoes.
(05:21):
You know you don't buy thefirst pair of shoes you try on.
And so my first internship wasin the three PL world.
Actually, I was writing SOPswas kind of like.
The first thing I did was,right, go visit all the
departments and write SOPs forthem.
Turns out I'm still doing thattoday.
That's still a big part oflogistics and operations.
And my second opportunity waswith a shipper, with PepsiCo,
(05:45):
and those were my two.
First like formative experiencesin the industry was at SEVA and
at PepsiCo.
And the interesting thing is atPepsiCo I was measuring the
carbon footprint of the entiresupply chain for PepsiCo,
including all the differentbusiness units like Frito, lay
and Tropicana and whatnot.
And what I realized is thatwhenever I was at the three PL,
(06:08):
I was needing to be responsiveto the customers you know the
people that are shippers.
And when I went to go toPepsiCo, it was interesting to
be that shipper, to be thatcustomer, and whenever I called
up a carrier and said, hey, Ineed information about your
fleet, how many of these trucksyou have, what your average
miles per gallon is, what yourcarbon emissions are, man, yes,
sir, I'll be right on that rightaway.
(06:29):
Let me get that back to you assoon as I can.
And it was such an interestingway to see the different, you
know, sort of way of being.
We're still doing logistics,but you're just on the customer
side instead of the serviceprovider side.
And so at a young age I got tokind of experience that and I
feel like that was amazing that,you know, for all the students
(06:51):
out there or folks that are ableto kind of be able to see what
side of the fence maybe fitsthem best, it's a great
opportunity.
And so when I was graduating,that was 2008, when the you know
, the economy was not doinggreat, and so I was kind of like
there was hiring freeze thereat PepsiCo, and so I had to kind
(07:12):
of make a choice of do I stayan intern for an unlimited or,
you know, kind of likeindefinite amount of time or do
I try to go find a full-time job.
And so I was able to get afull-time job in 3PL and that
kind of just set me on a pathtoward 3PL career.
So a couple of different stopsat a couple of different places
move my way up to branch manager, you know, running, opening up
(07:36):
new facilities, hiring up allthe teams, getting new clients
in the door, running, you know,from soup to nuts the entire
operations, you know, still inmy 20s, and that was really fun
and awesome.
And at a point I got anopportunity to go to the shipper
side and that was TexasInstruments and I kind of wanted
to relive, you know, lookingback at it, relive kind of what
(07:57):
I got to do as an intern, whichis to kind of see both sides.
And so while at TI I got to run,you know, the raw materials and
spare parts facilities goinginto their fabs and a little bit
after that I got to transitionand manage their finished goods
distribution center here in theUS as well.
So within that I actually hadto see the raw materials going
(08:18):
into the plants and manage allof that.
And then I got to manage theoutgoing finished goods going
out to customers.
So I feel even though it wasn'tmy plan, you know, coming out
of school that I really gotmyself a lot of exposure to all
aspects of the supply chain,from the service provider side,
from the shipper side, frominputs into a factory to outputs
(08:39):
out of a factory, kind ofeverything in between.
So again, I don't think I couldhave accomplished this if I set
out to do it on purpose, but Ithink accidentally, I've just
kind of been able to be exposedto a lot of the parts of supply
chain.
Blythe Brumleve (08:52):
How do you think your roles at Pepsi and
and Texas Instruments havehelped you become a better
broker?
Nathan Chaney (09:02):
Well, having lived in those shoes and have
you know inventory or freightthat needs to get you know from
a warehouse into a factory orfrom a factory to a customer or
any of those sort of bits, butto be able to speak the same
language and just be able torelate right is look, I know
exactly how this feels and Ithink I've got the best solution
(09:24):
that's going to.
Maybe that you haven't eventhought of the solution that can
help solve this, but you know,because I've been in that seat
as well and have had to solvefor it before.
Here's maybe some of the thingsI might have done, and so I
think it kind of just helps togive a broader perspective and
be able to have that client sortof perspective.
Blythe Brumleve (09:43):
So what was, I guess, the how did you decide
that you wanted to become afreight agent?
Like what was the jump from youknow working at Texas
Instruments to maybe you had youknow some roles in between
there, but what was ultimatelysort of the catalyst that you
wanted to become a freight agent?
Nathan Chaney (09:59):
It's a fun story.
So at the last, I want to say,like kind of corporate job that
I had, I, you know, left thatposition kind of not 100%
knowing what I wanted to do next.
But I knew I kind of wanted tobe an entrepreneur of sorts.
I've always had the itch, I'vealways had ideas kind of cooking
in the back of my head and Ifelt like I was maybe at a right
(10:21):
point in my career and life tobe able to go do that.
So I started kind of justthinking through it and I have a
friend that actually has afreight agency and through
Landstar and he's had it for 10years and he's been really
successful with it.
And so I said, hey, can I justgo do some business development
kind of stuff for you and I'llgo talk to people.
(10:44):
I'm here in Dallas, he's likeup in beautiful mountain country
up in Colorado, and so you know, I can be that kind of boots on
the ground where shippers are.
I can see if I can come findyou some business.
So as I went through thatprocess I realized that there
were obstacles to bringing onclients under, you know, under
(11:04):
that model, under thatparticular brand, and so when I
came across some, you know.
Also, what we haven't mentionedis throughout all these years
I've been heavily engaged in allof the networking in the
industry organizations and soI've got a pretty good network.
And so I was going to all thesefolks and I had the opportunity
to get business, but just notunder that model, under that
(11:27):
brand.
And so that actually is whatprompted me to say, well, if
that's kind of what's holding meback, then I'll just, I guess I
just need to go open up my ownshop.
And so I went and shoppedaround for different you know
logistics companies that I couldoperate an agency under
no-transcript.
As I did that, I started torealize and started to be this
(11:49):
freight broker, I startedrealizing that I actually want
to help with all aspects of thesupply chain, not just
transportation.
I've gotten to the point whereI'm trying to morph into being a
full supply chain servicesprovider, with transportation
being one of those tools in thetool belt.
It's been a great experienceworking with SPI and that being
(12:11):
my first, I'm glad I selectedthem and they approved me.
I guess it doesn't sound likeeveryone gets automatically just
accepted.
That's great because it helpsmake sure that agency network is
really strong.
It's been a great experienceand largely it was just the
culture of the company.
They're just really friendlypeople to work with.
(12:35):
Then the TMS, the back-endoffice piece of it, is up to
date.
It's new and it's efficient.
As an operator, I want thatefficiency.
Those are two of the bigcomponents that made me feel
compelled to select SPI.
Blythe Brumleve (12:56):
I would imagine that those were maybe some of
your questions of when you'reshopping a freight agency.
Is it really the back officeand the tech that are the
biggest concerns, or are thereother concerns that you wanted
to be sure of before you madethe choice?
Nathan Chaney (13:11):
We all work for a living.
At the end of the day, thatcommission split is also very
important Very important.
As much as we love what we do,at the end of the day we've got
to put foot on the table.
I felt like their policy andprogram around that was really
fair.
It was one of the best in theindustry that I was, from what I
(13:33):
was seeing in the shopping Iwas doing.
It touched on all points theculture, the technology.
At the end of the day, if youwant to say the paycheck all
those were the three mainbuckets that I was looking at In
SPI.
I checked all of them.
Blythe Brumleve (13:50):
Are you in freight sales with a book of
business looking for a new home,or perhaps you're a freight
agent in need of a betterpartnership?
These are the kinds ofconversations we're exploring in
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
(14:11):
agents with back officeoperations such as admin,
finance, IT and sales.
But I would much rather youhear it directly from SPI's
freight agents themselves.
I want a 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
(14:32):
these conversations or, ifyou're ready to make the jump,
visit spi3plcom.
And so it kind of sounds likeyou know, based on your
experience, the networkingcapabilities and the network
that you've built, and then alsobeing a freight agent, it
almost sounds like you're kindof morphing into not just a
(14:53):
freight agent and I don't meanthat like derogatory, of course,
but it's almost like a supplychain agent, maybe as a fair
assessment, that's 100% fair.
Nathan Chaney (15:02):
And you know, it was nine months ago, ten months
ago maybe, that I had one ofthose light bulb moments that I
realized that my last name isCheney and that if I'm going to
do this entrepreneur thing andit's going to be in the
logistics space, then maybesupply chain would be a fun sort
of name for it.
Right, and so, taking that sortof as my sort of the mission
(15:25):
and kind of the end goal ofbeing supply chain oriented, it
kind of just forces me toactually be pretty broad and try
to kind of provide a lot ofservices that all kind of
obviously fall within the supplychain space.
Of course I have mentors thatare saying, nathan, you need to
specialize, you really need tofocus.
(15:45):
You can't be everything toeveryone, but I'm like I really
appreciate the mentorship, butit's in the name, it's supply
chain.
So of course I got to go try toboil the ocean a little bit,
but that sounds like a funchallenge and I'm up for that.
So I have been buildingrelationships with a number of
(16:05):
different providers throughoutthe supply chain that you need
to run not only like a supplychain business, like a 3PL, but
a supply chain logisticsdepartment within a shipper or a
manufacturer or whatever itmight be.
And so I don't have all thoseexpertises, but with my I'm
going to say education andexperience, I kind of understand
how they all need to worktogether and kind of, at the end
(16:29):
of the day, have a successfulbusiness, you know, that's
profitable, that people want towork for.
And so what I've found is that,even though I have a degree in
logistics and that's what I'vestudied and that's what I've
done I've started to morphtoward a full kind of a whole
hearted, all-encompassingbusiness type of perspective,
and I firmly believe thateverything is logistics at the
(16:52):
end of the day.
And so I kind of see a lot ofcompanies.
Unless you're in insurance orfinance advising or something
like that, everything kind of tome focuses on the logistics of
the business.
So you've got inputs coming in,you're doing something to
transform some materials orpeople, and then you've got an
outbound product, and so I seeeverything through that lens,
(17:14):
for good or for bad.
But there's people, there'ssystems, there's technology,
there's money that needs toexchange hands through all that,
that's all the supply chain.
And so I've, again, I've beenfeel really fortunate that, not
only that, I find that rightsort of passion and career, but
my last name turned out to beCheney, I guess, and that I've
(17:36):
at some point had that lightbulb moment, and so it's a bit
of work for sure, as you know,to kind of get up, get out and
try to build something new thatdidn't exist before, but, darn,
at the end of the day it'spretty darn fulfilling.
Blythe Brumleve (17:50):
Yeah, it definitely is, and I hope you
don't mind that I'm going toclip that little audio piece and
definitely use it as promo forsaying everything is logistics.
So I appreciate that that wasnot planned, but I'm going to
take advantage of it anyways.
Okay, so I did want to.
I thought what you said wasreally interesting about
building sort of that SOPprocess within shippers,
(18:12):
especially managing their supplychain department, you know,
building their own internallogistics team, which I think is
really interesting.
What are some of the challengesthat these shippers are facing
that you're helping to craft forthem, that they may not have
known about the logisticsprocess?
Nathan Chaney (18:30):
Well, I think one thing and I kind of specialize
on the smaller to medium sizedbusinesses is a lot of times
they kind of lump in logisticsand supply chain in with
operations in general.
You know.
So the person who's been, youknow if you want to say making
widgets, you know for a longtime and you know how to make
widgets really well they becauseyou know the inputs into that
(18:53):
process have to, are going tothem and the finished goods of
that process they're also kindof in charge of it just kind of
gets lumped into operations andso there's not a lot of
specialization within thelogistics and supply chain and
so you might not have a lot offolks that have much experience
on their team in the logisticsand supply chain space.
And there's a lot of savings tobe made if you just package
(19:17):
things up differently.
If you get pallets that aremade, that are customized to
your size, you can have asmaller footprint in your, in
your LTL trailers.
There's just a lot ofoptimization.
And you know, a big part of myactually degree in college was
marketing and one thing thatI'll kind of always remember is
that saving a dollar is theequivalent of, you know,
(19:40):
whatever your margin is saving$1 equivalent of selling $10
worth of product.
So for every little bit ofsavings that you can get, you
get an exponential return basedon the sales equivalent of that
savings right.
So there's a lot of opportunityfor companies to, you know,
improve their bottom line.
Not worry about the top line somuch, but improve the bottom
line by just drawing out anddriving out costs that don't
(20:02):
need to be there, justoptimizing.
So, and even though there aredegrees you know people are
getting logistics degreeshundreds and thousands a year
it's still, for in the biggercompanies you're going to find
logistics as supply chaindepartments, but in smaller
companies I think there's thatthat expertise is still finding
their way in and finding a seatat the table and showing their
value.
Blythe Brumleve (20:24):
What is?
Maybe, if someone is listeningto this, maybe they are one of
those businesses that needs to,you know, get a grip on their
logistics SOP.
What are maybe some goodoverall tips to developing that?
Nathan Chaney (20:39):
Well, one thing that I've come to realize now is
the world of consulting thatI've kind of found myself in for
a bit now is that if you don'thave the expertise in-house
there are, there's plenty offolks out there that are very
experienced and more than happyto come help you out a bit so
that if you don't have thebudget to have, like, for
example, a full-time expert, youknow, on staff, you can do that
(21:02):
in a part-time consulting sortof fashion, even maybe just a
retainer, that they just come onand help, just again in a
retainer type fashion, to bringsome of that expertise.
It can, you know, obviouslyvery much have a really
rewarding ROI at the end of theday just for the little bits and
pieces of expertise andknowledge those folks have that
(21:23):
you know, within your companyhadn't thought of yet.
You know, I know that there'scompanies out there that kind of
frown upon the idea of havingconsultants and whatnot, but
I've really kind of learned tosee the value of just having
little bits and pieces of thatexpertise that you're able to
access.
The other thing that I think isis a struggle is not investing
a lot of time in training andkind of telling those new hires
(21:45):
and people that are coming inthe door, why All this is
happening, why we do things theway we do them and what the best
way to do it is.
I feel like even with some jobsthat I've had, it's very much
just on the job training, justget in there kind of get going.
And so there are actually waysto be a little more structured
and to provide those new hireswith the why of why your company
(22:07):
is doing what it does.
You know why its mission iswhat it is and also the how you
know the how do you do your jobfrom day to day.
And so I've actually partneredwith some folks that kind of
help with those things, ifsomeone's ever wanting to talk
about it more.
But there's really goodsolutions out there that can
help get that how intoeverybody's pocket so that there
(22:29):
is no question about how to godo this job properly and execute
consistently day in and day out.
Blythe Brumleve (22:36):
What are some of?
Because, especially for smallto medium sized businesses, you
don't know what you don't know.
So how do you, what are some of, maybe those warning signs that
someone needs to get thatoutside consultant, needs to
hire somebody that is an expertin logistics, or at least is
familiar with it somewhat?
What are some of those maybelike hints or like little red
(22:58):
flags that may start popping up,that may signal to them hey, we
might need to get somebody inhere.
Nathan Chaney (23:04):
Sure, you know, when you start to ask that
question, the thing that poppedinto my mind is you, if you keep
yourself within your own fourwalls of your business day in
and day out, you're not going toactually know what other people
are doing and you're not goingto be able to kind of see what
best practices are out there.
And so one way to actually dothat is to get involved in sort
of those industry groups thatmight be in your area,
(23:26):
particularly ones that go onfacility tours and visits of
other facilities.
It can be transportation docs,it can be warehouses, it can be
plants or factories that aremaking something.
But I've found that one of thegreat ways to kind of identify
where there might be gaps inyour operation is to go look at
and see what other people aredoing.
And that's actually kind ofwhat spurred the creation of my
(23:52):
creation by a chain of YouTubechannel was to go out and kind
of go tour and film thosefacilities and kind of bring
those best practices and givethat sort of inspiration to
folks in a way that they don'teven have to leave their office
or their couch to kind of getsome of that inspiration.
And I know that doesn't 100%answer your question.
(24:13):
I think you're probably lookingfor what KPIs can they look at
or what sort of financialreturns or reports they could
look at to find that there'sproblems.
And I think those questionscould also be answered by the
accounting team is does thiscost look like it's out of spec
compared to our industry?
Is our transportation andwarehouse spend?
(24:34):
Is our inventory turnover right?
Do we have too much loss goingon from?
We started out with a milliondollars worth of inventory at
the beginning and now we've onlygot half a million.
But we sold $700 million of itor 700, just things being off
from a business perspective andgoing to try to find those root
(24:55):
cause could lead you down intothere's something in the
logistics or the supply chain ofthe business.
But I think a really goodpractice that's easy and fun is
to just go and learn and seewhat other people are doing and
kind of benchmark your ownbusiness.
Blythe Brumleve (25:10):
Yeah, I would add on to that, especially for a
lot of small to medium sizedbusiness.
They might not even know thatthey have a local maybe council
supply chain managers or a localtransportation club or anything
like that.
But maybe that is a good avenuefor people who work in freight
to go to some of these otherbusiness networking meetings and
(25:33):
to meet with those folks andexplain what you were saying.
You don't know what you don'tknow.
So let me share my expertisewith some of the maybe the more
casual business networkinggroups.
That seems like it would be agreat opportunity for a lot of
these folks if they don't knowalready about transportation
management.
Spend which can eat up at least50% of any given product is
(25:56):
transportation costs related.
So it could be a good sellingavenue for the freight brokers
out there to go to some of thesemeetings and educate these
business owners.
But speaking of educating yourYouTube channel, which you've
mentioned supply chain, greatname you mentioned the catalyst
for it Starting it was bridgingthat educational gap and I think
(26:17):
for a lot of people when theystart down a content journey,
they start out really strong andthen they just fall off.
What has kept you continuing tomake content, in addition to
managing all of the other thingsyou've got going on.
Nathan Chaney (26:36):
Well, the model that I'm following at the moment
is to bootstrap the contentcreation part of it.
One, because if I'm doing thefilming and the editing kind of
everything myself, then later on, whenever, say, things take off
and I can kind of outsourcethat production piece and have
other people that areprofessionals kind of help out
(26:56):
with that, is that I've alreadykind of been there and done that
, so I know.
One, I've already kind ofcreated the look and feel of how
I want the episodes to look, sopeople that are doing editing
later can kind of just mimic theepisodes that I've already done
.
And then two, from like ashooting perspective, if I'm
going to be the interviewerwalking around, then since I've
(27:17):
also done the filming part andI've also done the editing later
, I can kind of know how to talk, how to take pauses here and
there, how to kind of frame thedifferent shots so that later on
in production it's moreefficient and it can get kind of
published and put out faster.
And I think that's where I'mhaving a little bit of fun is
that everything is logistics, inthat even in content creation
(27:39):
there's a way to be moreefficient and actually there's
kind of an endless pursuit ofgetting out there and trying to
take as little footage andhaving to capture as much little
raw content as possible so thatyou have less of it to go
through and then, at the end ofthe day, you spend less time
having to edit becauseeverything you shot on site or
whatever was better, all usable,not a lot of waste.
(28:01):
All the kind of metrics that wethink about in logistics really
applies, I think, a little bitin content creation and at the
end of the day, we just want tobe efficiently able to tell a
story to the audience that wantsto hear it.
Blythe Brumleve (28:14):
Yeah, definitely.
I've talked about this withclients too.
It's like your content is atotally different supply chain.
You have to find out where youroriginal materials are going to
be coming from, what yourdistribution plan looks like,
what is that last mile of yourdistribution that plan looked
like?
So it really is like thatsupply chain can really be
applied to content as well.
How are you with creatingcontent and the ventures that
(28:39):
you have going on?
What does sort of a typical dayto day look like for you?
Or maybe a week or a month is abetter way to phrase it.
Nathan Chaney (28:50):
So, content-wise, I'm kind of shooting for a
couple, two or three episodes ofbeing filmed and kind of
published each month.
I think that's kind of it.
The publishing or going out toshoot mostly just kind of looks
like, if you want to say, coldcalling a few interesting
looking businesses that might bearound or talking with friends
(29:11):
that are in my network and justgoing and setting it up, telling
them why I'm here and what I'mgonna do, and kind of getting it
on the calendar.
Going out and shooting and the,if you want to say, the B-roll.
It's been about an hour doingthat and about an hour doing the
actual interview and walk andtalk, so that's kind of
happening.
Those are points on thecalendar and then in addition to
(29:32):
that, I do some fractional sortof operations work for some
folks, and so that is also akind of big part of the schedule
.
I'd say half my time is spenttalking about how to make a
logistic company more profitable, how to keep their folks more
happy, retain and recruit talentand just run the business and
(29:53):
run the operations.
That's 50% of my time, give ortake.
I've also kind of got, if youwant to splash in, a little bit
of an MBA that I'm working on aswell in there, and then the
freight brokerage and other sortof bits and pieces of the
business where I'm just helpingpeople execute their business
and get things done.
And again, in all of thosethings it's always a constant
(30:18):
striving for efficiency.
And how much can I accomplishall these things with this
little sort of waste and timekind of involved?
So I keep myself busy.
I haven't learned yet how torelax.
Being busy and having my handskind of in a bunch of different
buckets is actually just kind ofhow I get a fulfillment in life
(30:41):
, so I enjoy it a lot.
Blythe Brumleve (30:43):
I think you're approaching content the right
way.
You even to this day.
I'm lucky enough that I do havepeople that help me with my
content now, but that is only arecent revelation or a recent
addition, but I still think it'sreally important to know how to
edit it, know what you'relooking for, know what the kind
(31:04):
of overall story of what you'retrying to tell, before you ever
even get out to onsite, becausethen, once you're onsite, it's
very much like the sales processI call content like the new
golf course, where you can goand you can meet people and you
can have a conversation withthem and then you develop that
relationship with them that isso much stronger than trying to
send a cold email and justhoping that they would notice
(31:27):
you.
I'm curious as to, witheverything that you've learned
from content this year, how doyou sort of think about
adjustments or changes to theprocess, the efficiency of it,
as you're going into 2024?
Nathan Chaney (31:44):
Well, a little bit of new gear.
I think that when you're juststarting out, you kind of start
out with some starter stuff andthen you kind of figure out what
is important to you and whatnot.
So one of my strategiesactually is to intentionally not
need more than what will fit inlike a backpack to show up to
onsite and have everything shot.
(32:05):
So I got the drone here, I justgot the Pocket 3.
All my stuff is all DJI, so itall kind of works and plays well
together.
But literally everything that Ineed will fit in a backpack.
And if I come to, if I shouldsomehow get an inquiry to do
some work where they're likewanting some really good
lighting and some cinema qualitystuff, then I outsource that
(32:28):
because that's not where myplace is.
And then I think the other partof it is getting better with
editing.
So I've spent a good amount oftime just watching YouTube
videos on how to edit video andwhat kind of shots.
You know I'm actually workingon a shot list now of what all
those different shots are andknowing what those are gonna be,
you know before you walk outthere.
(32:49):
And I think that from anefficiency perspective, the fact
that it takes hours to make aone or two minute short clip is
mind blowing.
I don't think people that don'tknow this yet but it's almost.
The shorter the clip is, thelonger it's gonna take to get it
polished and looking good andrun through all the different
(33:11):
sort of sequences, get all thewords and all the audio in it,
right.
So my recipe at the moment is Igo and shoot and then I make
like a two or three minute sortof episode preview and then I
take that and I basically juststretch out all those clips and
make that into a 10 to 15episode and so I'm again, from
(33:34):
like a logistic sufficiencyperspective, just figuring out
how can I spend as little timeon site, get the content that's
needed and then spend as littletime editing later on as later
on so in 2024, I'm actuallylooking to expand on the content
that I'm creating and packagingit up into what I'm gonna call
(33:55):
supply chain.
Academy is the working.
Supply chain academy is theworking title.
But I do a lot with students.
I do a lot of mentoring with alot of the college students here
in DFW and I also do a lot ofinteracting with people that are
hiring students in,specifically, supply chain, and
I think I've kind of thinking offiguring out a way that I can
help match those two togetherand use content that I'm
(34:20):
creating through the channel Oneto kind of educate the students
, to kind of get them real worldexposure to what life is like
really in logistics, becausethat's kind of what my episodes
are a lot.
They're all behind the scenes,taking a peek behind the curtain
of what really happens withinlogistics or operations or
factories or whatnot.
So using that experience andthe content to be able to kind
(34:44):
of educate and prep students andget them connected up to
employers for internships andfull time jobs.
So that's actually the bigthing I think I'm gonna be
launching and trying to makehappen in 2024.
Blythe Brumleve (34:57):
How do you, I guess, from like a marketing
standpoint, how do you think ofmarketing your company versus
you?
Nathan Chaney (35:09):
Or is it kind of all the same that one bucket or
one umbrella yeah, at this pointI think I am intimately tied
into the company, like I am thecompany, right.
But I realized that in thelonger term I need to get to a
point where it can stand on itsown and operate on its own and
does not rely on me to be partof it, and so I'm obviously very
(35:32):
still early days in the wholething.
But I've got some ideas anddreams, I guess you could say
right, of having a company thatstands on its own, that one
provides the services thatexecutes logistics for folks,
right.
However, that might look intransportation, warehousing and
whatnot, but also has a kind ofa media component to it.
(35:58):
The idea that I've kind of beenthinking about is, if I've got
all these episodes where I amout and about and I'm talking to
people that make this and thatsell that and distribute that
and I've seen all of thesethings than that as a
salesperson or selling theservices I'm providing, I feel
like that is a pretty compellingreason to hire me, because I've
(36:20):
seen all of these things and Ihave all these connections with
all these folks.
So you can go watch the episodeyourself and you can learn how
pallets are made, or you canlearn how concrete is made and
distributed.
But at the same time, if youwant, you can have direct access
to that person who's actuallygone and seen and touched and
felt all those differentoperations.
And I wanna be able to try tomove a lot of that knowledge
(36:42):
that I'm getting, that's in myhead and share it with other
people through the content,through channels, so that it's
not all just trapped here but Iwanna kind of pass it along.
And so I want the company tokind of represent that best
practices and logistics and kindof fostering the industry and
(37:03):
the expertise not the expertise,the logistics or know how into
the next generation.
Blythe Brumleve (37:13):
Like your experience, especially with
having that experience across somany different silos of
logistics, where that's wherecontent really shines a light
and can really help thisindustry move forward as a whole
, because everybody just betweenmaritime intermodal warehousing
, everybody operates in theirown silos, and when you operate
(37:33):
in your own silos going back towhat you said earlier you don't
know what you don't know.
I'm curious as to do you have afavorite story that you've told
so far?
And then is there a dream storythat you would love to tell in
the future?
Nathan Chaney (37:48):
Yeah, that's a good question, it's a really
good question.
So if I think back through thefew that I've filmed, so I would
say that and I have got a quicklittle visual.
The interesting thing is, as Imentioned a while ago, is that
as I've kind of gone throughthis journey in the supply chain
sort of career and industry isthat it's becoming less and less
(38:11):
about the technical ins andouts of transporting things and
warehousing them and more aboutjust being a good general
business practitioner and kindof just being a well-rounded
company that people want to workfor.
And so to that end, I've got anepisode coming out here pretty
soon.
That is what they're gonna callthe work wear safety.
And I think of many companiesthat I've been a part of, they
(38:36):
seem to be the most intentionalabout how they've developed the
culture of the business, and youcan kind of see it in just how
well they could recite exactlywhat their mission was, Exactly
kind of the ways that they eachexpect each other to act toward
each other, how they all expectto deliver for the customer.
And so there's this internalcomponent to their culture and
(39:00):
then there's this external sortof customer facing component to
it and, as in the episodeColeman, who's the president CEO
of the business says he says,at the end of the day, culture
eats strategy for breakfast.
And I think that as we growkind of in our business sort of
(39:20):
levels of how you think about abusiness and whether it's
logistics or anything, you startthinking at a higher level.
It's more about the people andthe culture and that's what's
gonna carry the business forward, Not so much the technical
expertise of how well your ratetables are structured with your
suppliers or something right.
And so it's in that episodewith Workwear Safety that I
(39:43):
think I really got to highlighta company that cares about its
people and has intentionallydeveloped a place that people
want to work in.
And at the end of the day again, your SOPs can be the most
amazing ever, but if it's not aplace that people want to work,
then you're gonna have troublerecruiting and retaining folks
to do to run those SOPs.
Blythe Brumleve (40:04):
So I just made a note in our show notes to
include that video in the shownotes Just in case people want
to check it out and check outmore of your work, and real
quick.
Do you have a dream company ora dream story that you would
want to tell in supply chain?
Nathan Chaney (40:20):
That one is tough .
I haven't thought about it.
That's maybe the next episodethat I'm on.
Blythe Brumleve (40:28):
I could it could be okay.
So you're on the verge oftelling it.
Nathan Chaney (40:33):
No, honestly, I gotta think on that one.
It's kind of like saying what'syour favorite song.
Do you have a favorite song?
Blythe Brumleve (40:41):
Yes, but it changes so often so I don't know
if maybe I have five differentsongs at any one time, but I
would say, if I'm thinking afavorite, because I do a lot of
we have a series on the showcalled the Logistics, of which I
just rebranded to Source toPorch.
So Source to Porch I shouldn'tuse the proper name for it, but
(41:03):
for that it's been DisneyLogistics.
I am anxious to get In fact, Idid meet someone at a recent
conference that was in charge ofWalt Disney Logistics and she
was trying to keep her namebadge on the low so no one else
would see it, and I think Ifreaked her out a little bit
because I've been wanting totell the story for so long.
Just the theme park logisticshow they reopened, how they got
(41:30):
all their suppliers back inorder, from everything from the
food and the people to thefireworks.
It's just an incredible displayof logistics, and so I've told
it independently a couple oftimes.
But my dream supply chain storywould be I don't know, maybe
(41:50):
even not like a US-based themepark, but maybe it's like
Tokyo's Disney Sea, which isregarded as one of the most
beautiful theme parks in theworld.
That would probably be theupper Mount Everest of stories
that I would like to tell, so Idon't know if that helped create
any ideas for you, or maybe youhave a new one that you want to
(42:11):
hit.
Nathan Chaney (42:12):
My equivalent of that would be a movie set.
Blythe Brumleve (42:15):
Oh cool.
Nathan Chaney (42:16):
And I don't know how you could bubble that down
to just like 10 minutes becausethere's so much that's got to go
into it.
But I mean just the logisticsof getting people, I mean the
people component.
If you talk about all theextras that are in the
background of a war scene orwhatever, all the makeup and the
costumes and then the specialeffects and the safety that's
(42:39):
got to be taking place, oh mygosh, I would be really
interested.
You know, myself I'm curiousabout how the logistics of a
film set in a movie happen.
But to be able to kind of tellthat story would be pretty cool.
Blythe Brumleve (42:53):
I will say I so I'm a big Game of Thrones fan
and so it's season eight.
I know a lot of people havetheir their feelings about it,
but on HBO they have a like aspecial episode of filming
season eight or filming sevenand eight, and they talk about
some of those logistics.
It's really fascinating.
Highly advise everybody to gowatch it.
(43:13):
But you're you're right thatall of the extras they in.
One thing that I rememberspecifically from it is that
they had different large tentsjust for people who are getting
makeup than people who are readyto shoot, and it was just like
you're moving people from liketent to tent.
It was a really fascinatingwatch.
And just, you don't even thinkabout the fact of like a show or
(43:36):
a movie.
It's not filmed inchronological order, it's filmed
based on logistics, based onwhere can people get to in time,
where can they, where locationsare on site.
You know it's.
It's really focused onlogistics first and then the
story comes like after the fact.
So I would co-sign that one too.
Ok, last few questions, becausewe haven't really talked about
(44:00):
any of like your distribution orhow you think about
distribution when it comes tocontent.
So do you have like a you knowa favorite social media platform
.
Are you using email?
How do you sort of think about,you know, not just creating the
content but getting it out tothe audience that you care about
?
Nathan Chaney (44:16):
I think that is in phase two.
I feel like I'm still kind ofin phase one, which is like just
getting those first 10, youknow episodes shot, I think that
.
So in phase one I'm kind ofjust getting my sea legs as far
as creating and getting the vibeand sort of just feel of how
things are going to go.
I think in phase two is where Ieither need to do it myself or
(44:39):
just bring someone on or, youknow, just help, get some
outside help that will just helpkind of be able to tell that
story in more channels.
So right now you know it's veryun-magical, you know it's a
YouTube channel and then I poston LinkedIn and kind of try to
share there.
But what I think I've learned isthat, like, the LinkedIn
algorithm doesn't really like itif you send people outside of
(45:03):
LinkedIn, like so if you'relinking out to a YouTube or
something, then it's going tokind of rank you lower and
you're not going to get the sortof you know.
So I'm just getting into how,all that sort of stuff, you know
like how you should make yourthumbnails, what your title line
should be, and all that sort ofgood stuff, and so I'm still
learning, still in phase one ofjust getting things kind of
learned, but I feel like herepretty soon I should be able to
(45:26):
get to a point where I am goingto be able to take the content,
write a blog summary of theepisode, of what I learned from
that tour.
Because that, because wheneveryou try to take an hour
discussion and turn it into 10minutes worth of finished
content, you don't actually getto tell the whole story and
maybe even some of the mainpoints are not going to actually
(45:48):
come through because theyweren't caught in a conversation
or they weren't caught on video.
It was just the what you feeland what you experienced that
you can't exactly tell throughthe video.
So you know, I've gotten moreplans of how to be able to share
kind of the experiences and getthat content out, but for right
(46:08):
now I'm kind of keeping itpretty simple, but I hope to
really expand on it.
Blythe Brumleve (46:12):
Yeah, I think that that's the way to go.
Like, don't I think too manypeople, when they start creating
content, they want to beeverywhere and they want to be
on all the things and they getquickly overwhelmed and then
they quickly burn out.
The key to longevity is youknow very it's very similar to
what you've been talking about.
You know throughout your entirecareer of being almost obsessed
(46:33):
with the process.
And if you're process obsessedand then that leaves room to
optimize, that leaves room toget better, and if you're not
obsessed with the process andgetting that part better, then
the end result is always goingto be subpar.
So, whether that's you knowrunning a supply chain
consultancy, running a freightagent business, you know
(46:55):
creating content, you know beobsessed with the process and
then you'll ultimately, you know, get to that, that carrot at
the at the end of the road.
Okay, so what?
Anything else for 2024?
You got going on.
Is there anything that I shouldhave asked but didn't, that you
think is important to mention?
Nathan Chaney (47:13):
I want I love that question because it's a
question I try to use wheneverI'm talking to folks is what did
I not ask you that you thinkit's important?
I love that question.
You know that's that's a.
You know I'm kind of taking itif you want to call it an
episode at a time or a week ortwo at a time in exactly where
it goes.
You know I'm kind of lettingthings organically grow.
(47:36):
I don't know where things couldbe a year from now.
I'm kind of excited because ifthings work out really well and
it's just a whole lot of fun andsuccess I don't know what that
could even be, but I justimagine it could be really cool.
On the other hand, if, if itall just kind of leads into
something else that just allthis is just preparation for,
(47:58):
then I think that that's alsogood too.
You know you kind of win at lifethrough your successes and your
struggles, and so I guess youknow it's kind of you got to
have a little maturity, you know, in order to look at a failure
and say I learned from that andI'm going to be able to go do
something better now, but sojust kind of continuing this
(48:19):
kind of experiment that I'vebeen on for a little while,
which is, you know, trying tooperate and run, you know,
independent and get somethinggoing.
It's, it takes a lot of work,you know to to not have someone
that you rely on, you know, tokind of pay you a paycheck at
the end of the day that you'vegot to go out and fish for
yourself, and it's, you know,it's not for the faint of heart
(48:41):
and to anyone out there doing it, if it's a freight agent or if
it's any sort of means of justdriving income yourself.
You know, my hat's off to youall because it's, it's man, it's
a ton of work, but it's alsoextremely rewarding and really
fulfilling, right.
So that's, that's really it.
Actually, if I could ask you aquestion, the one question, I'm
(49:02):
going to use my question back toyou, which is in this B2B
content creation space, becausewe aren't making fun cute, like
there's a cat, you know, doingsomething, funny videos.
It does seem tough to get viraland it also kind of just getting
followers and viewers seemslike a little bit of a slower
(49:23):
process than than what I, I, I,you would be slow, but I think
it's pretty slow, but I justkind of want to get your sort of
take on what it's been like foryou kind of.
You know, feeding content intothe supply chain market, and
earlier you mentioned that thereneeds to be more content
creators.
So that that's a positive sign.
But can you kind of tell themabout your experience and what
(49:43):
you're seeing?
Blythe Brumleve (49:44):
Sure.
So I think the caveat for me is, when I launched digital
dispatch, I already had thisradio broadcasting experience
and I didn't see anybody reallydoing that in freight, except
for like Dooner, like TimothyDooner.
You know what the truck and Iuse and I knew I wasn't coming
(50:07):
from a sports background.
I knew I wasn't going to be inthe news game.
When you create content, youreally have to pick one side or
the other.
Are you going to createeditorial style content or are
you going to create new stylecontent?
Now you can add a little bit ofeditorial to news, but if
you're focusing on news, likeyou are, you have to constantly
(50:27):
be online.
You have to constantly read andlisten and watch everything,
because what you may need forthat day's show or that day's
news program might not beapplicable for that day, but you
might need it six months fromnow.
So it's really almostemotionally draining to run a
business and try to play in thenews game.
(50:48):
So I made a very consciousdecision that I need to be
editorial.
I need to have certain contentbuckets that I focus on and not
steer away from unless there'srevenue to justify it.
So all that to say is when Ifirst started the show.
It was called the DigitalDispatch Podcast and it was
(51:08):
really just about trying to getclients trying to figure out
where their pain points are,because I knew if I knew those
pain points ahead of time, thenother people are probably
experiencing that at the sametime.
Then the show did okay and thenI got picked up by Freight
Waves.
So when you're on Freight Waves, it's a different beast that
(51:31):
you're creating.
You're creating a show.
You're not just creating atopic that we're going to
explore or a customer interviewthat has specific marketing
questions, things like that.
So there's a little bit of afine line that you have to walk.
So my biggest advice is don'tever expect to go viral, because
in B2B it's just probably notgoing to happen.
(51:55):
But the value is that you weretalking, hopefully, to there's
12 people that are watching avideo.
Then hopefully 10 of them arein your target audience and that
is significantly more than ifyou were to go viral and say,
like I've gone viral a couple oftimes on TikTok didn't bring me
(52:16):
any new customers.
It actually brought a lot ofheadaches, a lot of bad comments
, nasty comments.
So there's a lot of baggage, Ithink, with going viral that
people don't talk enough about.
But I usually advise people tosay don't pay attention to the
vanity metrics.
Pay attention to the rightmetrics and you as a business
(52:40):
have much more avenues ofopportunity if you focus on the
12 people that are going to buyfrom you, versus 12,000 views
from folks who are never goingto buy from you.
So focus on having thosecustomer conversations through
video, through content, and thenfiguring out a way to build
(53:01):
stories on top of that.
I think for a lot of marketersand freight, those stories exist
already within their companyand I think the challenge is to
explain to the executive teamthat no, you're not going to go
viral from it, but the insightsyou're going to gather from
talking to your carriers andtalking to your customers and
talking to your vendor partnersis you're going to get answers
(53:24):
to questions that you never knewto ask and you're also going to
get insight that is going to besignificantly more than what is
people are sharing online oreven that you can get from SEO
keyword volume.
You know stupid things that youknow marketers still pay
attention to.
That.
Just don't move the needle intoday's marketing world.
(53:44):
I believe it's content firstapproach and it should be a
content first approach for mostfreight companies is telling
those stories that are alreadyinside internally of your
business and then you can startmaybe playing in the news game.
But that should.
For the overwhelming majorityof people who are working in
supply chain, that justshouldn't be.
You know, let freight waves anddoon are that's their full time
(54:07):
job.
You still have to run abusiness and hopefully content
can complement that.
So hopefully that answered yourquestion.
Hopefully it did anyways.
Nathan Chaney (54:18):
Tempered expectations, I think is and
kind of go for what?
The meaningful sort of qualityover quantity type of engagement
.
Blythe Brumleve (54:28):
I think too, but it's also it's gaining the
direct insight from yourcustomers, who, if they have
certain questions from you, thenthere's likely other businesses
in their same demo, verysimilar customer profiles that
have those same exact questions,and so I think you know, coming
from the place of having thoseconversations with your
(54:48):
customers.
First, I think using content asa way to get your foot in the
door is brilliant, and it's astrategy that I've used
throughout my whole career ishey, come on my podcast, let's
talk, and then you can gainthose insights and gain those
business solutions from thosecustomers, because the last
thing you want to be is like oneof these SaaS companies that
creates a product and tries tofigure out where it fits in to
(55:11):
the mix, instead of going directto customer and figuring out
what they're dealing with andcreating products and services
and solutions around that.
Nathan Chaney (55:20):
Sure yeah.
Blythe Brumleve (55:22):
All right, Well , I guess that about does it for
for this conversation.
Where can folks you knowobviously I will link to your
YouTube channels or any otherway or any other platform that
folks should check you out.
If they want to get in touch,if they want to connect on
social media, where should theygo?
Nathan Chaney (55:39):
Well, it's kind of simple.
Yeah, just basic website atthis point in time, which is
just supply chaincom and, like Isaid, kind of phase two would
be to get out there on the morechannels and more ways to sort
of engage, just kind of keepingit lightening.
Blythe Brumleve (55:55):
Yeah, definitely protect your piece,
so get out there when you can.
No, don't spread yourself toothin.
All right, Nathan?
Well, that was awesome.
Thank you again for coming onthe show and we look forward to
watching your YouTube channelgrow.
Nathan Chaney (56:08):
All right.
Thanks for the support.
Blythe Brumleve (56:39):
A lot of the times, we hand this task of
building a new website orrefreshing a current one off to
a co-worker's child, a neighbordown the street or a stranger
around the world, where youprobably spend more time
explaining the freight industrythan it takes to actually build
the dang website.
Well, that doesn't happen atdigital dispatch.
We've been building onlinesince 2009, but we're also early
(57:00):
adopters of AI, automation andother website tactics that help
your company to be a centralplace to pull in all of your
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
(57:22):
at $90 a month, plus some bonusfreight marketing and sales
content similar to what you hearon the podcast.
You can watch a quick explainervideo over on digital
dispatchio.
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.
(57:43):
I'll see you all real soon andgo Jags.
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