Standing Out: A Podcast About Sales, Marketing and Leadership
Standing Out is a show created to help individuals and companies improve their sales & marketing outcomes, as well as their leadership development. Each episode we have an expert who has a unique perspective on sales, marketing and/or leadership providing insights from his or her experiences. And we throw in a few laughs from time to time. Be sure to hit Subscribe wherever you listen to our podcasts.
Standing Out: A Podcast About Sales, Marketing and Leadership
From Seed Cleaning to Tech Summit: Chad Olson's Journey in Freight Brokerage Automation
From a seed cleaning warehouse to the tech summit of freight brokerage automation, Chad Olson of AVRL shares his incredible ascent and the values that powered his journey. Join us for a candid conversation where we unravel the tightly knit fabric of work ethic and leadership, taking cues from the greats like Michael Jordan, and how these principles have shaped Chadd's approach in both life and the fast-paced world of logistics tech.
Sponsored by SPI Logistics. If you're looking for back-office support such as admin, finance, IT, and sales as a freight broker - reach out to SPI Logistics today! Learn more about becoming an agent here: https://success.spi3pl.com/
Standing Out is a sales, marketing & leadership podcast powered by BETA Consulting Group, created to highlight best practices from industry leaders with incredible experience and insights! The goal is to entertain, educate & inspire individuals & companies to improve their sales, marketing & leadership development outcomes.
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Standing Out, a podcast about sales, marketing and leadership. I'm Trey Griggs, your host, so excited that you're with us today. We've got a great guest. Can't wait to bring him on here in just a little bit. Hey, when you get a chance, check us out over at betaconsultinggroupcom and see how we're helping companies tell their stories to the marketplace and truly provide marketing for sales to drive more opportunities, to drive more revenue. That is what it's all about. Sales and marketing should be working together. We'd love to talk to you when you have a moment, so check us out on the website. Click that little button in the middle there to schedule a call with yours truly. We'd love to hear your story and help you tell yours. Also want to give a few shout outs.
Speaker 1:A couple of things coming up. We just had the broker carrier summit in Kansas City. It was phenomenal, had almost 400 attendees. Some business happened there was really exciting. Some great conversations happened there. We are planning the next one, which is going to be in fort worth october 23 through 25, and so it's going to be uh time to sign up here in just a little bit. Registration is going to open at the end of may, so make sure you look for that. You can go to broker carrier summitcom to check out more information about that. Listen, if you're a small to medium-sized broker or carrier looking for likes likeminded partners, make sure you make plans to attend Fort Worth in October. It's going to be a phenomenal event. A lot of fun. There. We'll have the second edition of the Post and Prey Classic Golf Tournament. Which incredible event. Going to have a good time with that and hopefully we'll see you down in Fort Worth.
Speaker 1:Also want to give a shout out to our partners over at Wreaths Across America Radio so excited to be a syndicate on their radio program every Tuesday night at 6 pm Eastern time. So if you're listening on Wreaths Across America, thank you so much for tuning in and make sure that you make a donation to the cause to support what they're doing, which is going to happen in December again laying wreaths at the headstones of fallen soldiers at cemeteries across the country. So again, thank you to our partner, wreaths Across America for their support. You can visit them at Reese across Americacom. So appreciate them.
Speaker 1:And finally want to say thank you to our sponsor, spi logistics. Hey, freight brokers, listen if you are tired of the back office and just all the kind of administrative aspects of running your business and you want to hand that off. Spi has got the technology, the systems and back office support to help you out. Check them out at success SPI threeplcom. Let them know you heard about it right here on Standing Out and give them a look. They're great guys Up in Vancouver, british Columbia. All right, it is time to bring on our guest today. I've known this guy for about a year and a half now and just watched him do tremendous things in the industry, especially around automation and technology, specifically for freight brokers and for the industry in general. Guy's a problem solver. He is a giver very generous of his time. I'm just excited to have him on the show today. So please welcome from AVRL the founder and chief executive officer, chad Olson.
Speaker 2:I like this tune, man, it's fresh.
Speaker 1:British jazz rap. This is a new one. I always get a different walk-up song with every guest, and this is kind of a new one. I've never heard that one before, so that's pretty tight. You said British jazz. Is that what it is? British jazz rap. Yeah, that's quite the combination. I love it. I love when the genres get mixed. I like country and hip hop coming together and all that. Pretty cool man, How's? Life down in Austin. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:buddy, it's good man, austin's great. I'm busy Good, though Always busy Trying to grow and be sustainable with that.
Speaker 1:I think you're doing a heck of a job with that. We're going to talk about that more here in just a minute, but we're excited to have you on the show today. Before we get started, do you want a standing out coffee mug or standing out water bottle? Which one suits your fancy? Here let's go coffee All right On the way. I don't drink enough water?
Speaker 2:I don't think so. Maybe I made the wrong choice.
Speaker 1:Well, you can have. I mean, heck, we can send you both if you want. Let's just you know what we're going to send you both. We're going to give you the coffee mug, but then we're going to send the water bottle just to encourage you to drink a little more water. My friend, it's a good water bottle. It's metal solid, so we'll send them both your way, which would be great. I know this about you, but some people might not know this about you that you grew up on a farm. You're in Austin Technology Hub of Texas, but you grew up on a farm and from ages 13 to 19, those teenage years, you worked every summer, six days a week, 7 am to 10 pm, sunrise to sunset. Talk about that, man.
Speaker 2:So my family has a century farm in Oregon and I just would grind with their grass seed farmers. I think a lot of people probably know Smith Seed Company that moved freight across the country. Know smith seed company, um, that moved freight across the country and uh, my, my mom is like from that side, like from that family, and so my family does grass seed. They make like they grow like fescue, rye, grass, wheat, meadow foam, all kinds of stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So grew up by not choice by like force, I guess so I've lived in Oregon and I know we're talking about those really flat fields that have, like perfectly beautiful grass, no weeds in them at all. It makes the rest of us homeowners incredibly jealous because it looks so good. That's what your family did, so that's cool. So what kind of work did you have to do on there? What were you doing?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I like literally when I started I would like drive, windrower drive, combine drive what's called like a bunk out wagon, which is like a tractor, pulls right up next to a combine and unload. And then when I was in high school, I managed our warehouse. So my family has a custom seed cleaning business. So before it gets shipped out it goes through these massive machines and I would work, I pulled night shift one summer, all kinds of stuff, whatever I was told to do, you know.
Speaker 1:So when it shows up at Home Depot or whatever, in the seed bag it's nice and clean and looks really good and way different than that. So you drove a combine, though you said, before high school. So what age did you start driving these? You know farm vehicles.
Speaker 2:Around like 12. I mean, I grew up like literally there's pictures of me when I'm like four or five years old driving these things, so, um, by myself, like I think we would start like 12, 13 years old.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, yeah well, I mean, they only go like 2.2 miles an hour. You know not not not a lot of damage you can do. You can get up there and and stop it. I remember when I was 13, my dad had me, uh, jump into a car and he towed me across town 15 miles in the back of a car with my foot on the brake. Uh, that was my first experience of actually driving at 13.
Speaker 1:I still can't believe he trusted me to do that because, you know, when you're a city boy, you don't you don't jump behind the wheel of a vehicle uh, right away. But I still remember that that was a monumental moment. So, driving from an early age, what are some of the things that you learned doing that that you still hold with you today because your work ethic, man, is like one of the best yeah, I I don't know if it's like a, something that I learned, but something that is like me.
Speaker 2:um, I think I will. I will work non-stop 24 7, like literally probably online at 6 am, probably get offline at 11 pm and that's like literally like in front of a computer. I think that when we look at like farm life versus like corporate life, etc. I think if you put in like I just think, if you put in the work like, you can achieve things that other people can't. And if I can put in, you know, 100 hours a week, every week, then in a year I can accomplish two years worth of work. And I'm not like we don't expect that of employees or anything, but I will be the first one online, the last one offline, and so I think, like my leadership style that I show with my team is that that I will outwork anyone on my team. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know when you. It reminds me of like watching the Last Dance. You know the documentary with Michael Jordan. There's a part in there where he says you can say whatever you want about me and my attitude or whatnot, but you can never say that I would ask you to do something that I wouldn't do myself. Yeah, and I think that that's the mark of leadership. People will follow somebody like that, even if they are a jerk Sometimes I'm not saying you are, but Michael Jordan said he was you, he's like. People will still follow you because they see that you're putting in the work and doing that.
Speaker 1:And what's interesting is that we're in a weird place in our society where some people think that working a lot is unhealthy. We talk a lot about balance and those types of things. How do you think about that in terms of like productivity, because at some point you probably do get a little tired and need to take a little break and recharge and come back to it. How do you manage staying highly productive with long hours, because that's a difficult thing to do. People can work a long time, but their productivity starts to shrink. How do you maintain such high levels of productivity while working long hours?
Speaker 2:I think I separate my workout so during like the day, like I take meetings from, you know, 9am till 2pm or whatever, and then I have specific things that I do in the afternoon and then when everyone on my team is logged off, that's when I do like I'll literally prospect for my sales team, I'll do things for like the rest of my team. I like just try and separate based off of like being like super mindful. So a lot of my writing, a lot of the stuff that I do in the morning, my creative stuff, I do like first thing, then meetings, then separate it out based off of where I think that I'm the most successful.
Speaker 1:So really segmenting your calendar and prioritization has been powerful for you to get a lot done and almost switch gears. It's like in your mind you're switching to something new and it gets fresh again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like in your mind you're switching to something new and it gets fresh again. Yeah, I think actually that's like a huge benefit for being able to like endure a lot of work is like if you break it apart into separate things and you're constantly working on something new yeah, I love that and your social media.
Speaker 1:I know you do a lot of writing, especially on. That is absolute fire. I love your social media presence. Um, we're going to talk more about that here in just a little bit. You're writing all your your own social media right, nobody's writing for you.
Speaker 2:I write it and I don't schedule posts. I like write what I'm feeling when I feel it, what I like doing. A lot of cases, like I have this notebook right here and with something like makes me feel a certain way, whether I'm on a meeting or like I'm reading or anything, I write it in there and then I go through this like every morning and I like find something that like triggers me and I just write about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, your social media presence is so authentic and I think that a lot of people miss that. But hearing the fact that you don't plan, you just write something in the moment, I tend to be the same way not nearly as effective as you, but the same way. We're like what's on my mind. If it, if it, if it hits, impacts me, I feel like it's going to impact somebody else, and so I often try to write in that regard. So I love that.
Speaker 2:I think that's a whole benefit like of doing it. Like a lot of what I write on LinkedIn isn't for anybody else, and so sometimes I get like flack about writing like stuff that like maybe sounds like hustle culture and I and people like really hate on that, but it's not for them. It's to continue to encourage me to keep going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you do just a great job with that. In fact, we've got a few fan questions. I want to jump to one real quick before we talk about one of the topics I want to discuss, and that is RC, who is at GenInfinity on X, wants to know why you prefer LinkedIn over Twitter, over X, because you got great content that probably could do really well on Twitter.
Speaker 2:So I'm working on a strategy where I am going to start using Twitter, but I just feel like who I'm writing for. I always felt like me posting it into LinkedIn. I find people that that I like want to meet. I'm sure that you could find the same exact type of people, but, like I've written some posts about sales and like people they like blew up and everyone like hated on it and some of the people that hated on me I've connected offline and now I like meet with them on a regular basis to talk about sales and I don't know if I get that same. I don't know if that community approach exists on Twitter, but I've never tried it on X.
Speaker 2:But it definitely exists on LinkedIn, where some of the people who have hated on my post like the most. I have a really good relationship on the backside with them and we've talked about sales, we've talked about strategy, stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think LinkedIn does a better job, I think, overall of creating a community. I think you're right about that. But I see people like Nick Huber Sweaty Startup, who does a great job on Twitter, andrew Gazdeki, and there's a number of people that they're really good at writing threads and explaining what they do, and I could see you doing really well and kind of laying out a process or philosophy or a thought pattern that can be really beneficial and start to build that community. In fact, nick Huber Sweaty Startup he recently just raised 20 million from his Twitter community on a business venture that he came across and it was because of the following he's created on there, doing these types of like posts, that he has this network and got it within like a week and a half. It's pretty impressive, yeah, so I can see you exploring that and really benefiting from that. So I'm excited actually to see you start posting more on Twitter. So that should answer the question there it's coming. It's coming Not yet, but it's coming, which is great.
Speaker 1:All right, let's talk about one of the topics that we discussed. I think this is really valuable because you build some really incredible technology technology in our industry, something that's still relatively new in our industry, especially at the level that you're doing it at AVRL with automation. But we talked about this, the the technology is really only as good as a company is willing to invest to make it successful, to adopt it to it, to um, you know, bring it into house and make it a part of what they're doing. Talk a little bit about change management and you know how some companies really get it and and take off with your tech and some companies struggle. I think this is true for almost all tech platforms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to like pull that back a little bit. So when I first came in the industry, I heard that you know, there was a lot of tech that came in the industry and it failed. And I was like, oh, that sucks, like technology must be like massively underserved. And then, as I started to work through this journey myself, I'm like, oh, maybe it's not necessarily the technology always failed, but the implementation of the technology. That is what's failed and that's where, like AVRL is investing the most amount of time, the most amount of resources, et cetera, so that we can help our customers one look at their data, understand their data, help them get better with strategy, help them get better at the change management piece.
Speaker 2:And I think that when we like break 3PLs into segments, it's not necessarily like the largest ones have the best change management.
Speaker 2:I think it's a mentality that the company has and it obviously starts at the top.
Speaker 2:And when I look across some of my customers, there's some like amazing leaders who are not just like forcing adoption, not, they're literally encouraging their employees to like drive the adoption themselves. And then there are some leaders that you know buy technology and then hope that it changes their business, and that doesn't necessarily happen. We have to really focus on making sure that we're looking at the data, making sure that we're putting in the work, and sometimes maybe it doesn't come across that that like there's a lot of work that goes into automation and if you ask some of the people in my network, you ask like jay gussison at echo, like he'll tell you like it's a lot of work to automate, you know 700 accounts or whatever you know right, right, and I, you know I've sold technology in this space for 10 years, prior to what you know we're doing now, and can 100% say that lack of implementation or lack of training for customers is the number one reason that customers don't use the technology, and I think, on average, people only use a small portion.
Speaker 1:I don't know what the percentage is, but it's gotta be a low portion like 25% of what the technology can actually do, and a lot of it's just ignorance that they don't, they just don't know. They don't, they just don't know. They've really been taught. I've seen companies who sold a lot of their product and then, when renewal time came around, people dropped it because they didn't know how to use it, and I think that's really wise of you to work through that. What's been really successful? Like when you, if you had something to say to companies almost some some tips or tricks on how they can be most successful implementing technology what have you found that's really worked?
Speaker 2:what we did in our sales process is that we actually bring in someone up front on our customer success team that like basically just explains, like everything that they need to be worried about. And like my like sales team is like scare the crap out of the customer to the point where maybe they don't want to buy. And the ones that don't want to buy, great Like we don't probably wouldn't have done a successful job with them. Them and then the ones that actually do want to move forward. We've level set up front and so we then have the opportunity to go to their leadership you know, a month, in two months, in three months in and say like hey, you're paying us a lot of money.
Speaker 2:We agreed up front that you were doing, you'd be doing x, y and z. How do we get to that place? And so what we're trying to do is drive change and change management, almost like peer-to-peer rather than like now they paid us money. Who cares if it fails? Who cares if it succeeds? Like I, I want anyone who buys our technology to be successful with it, but I also need to be upfront about the expectations that's going to happen, that that we have for them to implement yeah, you've done a great job of creating.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure what the right word is I don't know if exclusivity is maybe the right word but you qualify people well, which I think is important, because, again, like I'm in a similar boat of obviously not technology. We're a service provider. But if we sell our services to somebody who isn't ready to really fully implement or to embrace what we're asking them to do, it's not going to be successful. And it's the same thing with the tech If you have companies that aren't willing to take those hard paths that are necessary to make it successful, it's not going to work. So I like that tactic of almost scaring them.
Speaker 1:In fact, one of my favorite job interviews that I had from back in the day was a sales leader who tried to scare me out of wanting the job. I just remember that clear as day and I really wanted the job and so I pushed through and I got it and it worked out. Everything was great. But that was her tactic as well, was? I'm going to see how much you really want this, and I think there's something to be said about that from the sales process. You have a totally different sales process than most people. Man, I love it, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's kind of interesting name is madison. She's phenomenal and yeah, she's like I honestly think she might be one of the best salespeople in transportation logistics. When, um, when we were onboarding her, I was like, hey, I want you to take this process and she's like no way that this is gonna gonna work, like I don't want to lose like deals like this. And now she's like forcing it because she's seen it work and she's like seen it like go like great when we did it pot negatively when when she didn't do it and we're hiring another salesperson right now and on I was like listening to her interview and she's like talking about this strategy and I think she's like fully adopted that and I'm excited to see like where she takes that in our organization yeah, and I'm not surprised to hear that one bit.
Speaker 1:She's got a great presence about her. She does a great Hope that she gets a chance to do more speaking and sharing some of the wisdom that she has. But she's a great representation for AVRL, that's for sure. But your sales process has always been a little different. Your marketing approach has always been a little different. In fact, one of the questions that we got was from our friend, liz Wayne, or I'm not sure how well you know Liz, but I've known Liz for a long time. She's the Able up in Nebraska and she saw your website and wants to know what do you do? The website is so minimal. That's always been intentional about you. I'm a marketing guy and you've always made me challenge what I think about marketing and the approach, because you're very much a contrarian on how you think about that. Where did that come from? Where did this idea of trying to be a little more minimalist when it comes to marketing? Where did from so there?
Speaker 2:are a lot of technology groups that talk about like being product-led, and then there are technology groups that are product-led and we always wanted to invest in product and technology and not invest in the sales process from the standpoint of like we didn't want to be a company of 100 people with 50 sales reps, massive customer success team and like 10, didn't want to be a company of 100 people with 50 sales reps, massive customer success team and like 10 engineers. I wanted to have I think we probably have like 100 engineers and we're like 115 people. You know, like that's what I was always trying to build. When we build like that, then I get to reinvest in like customer success. I get to reinvest in technology, get to invest in upgrading products. And we were meeting with investors early on. I told them that we were going to do this strategy and they told me that it wasn't going to work.
Speaker 2:And as we started to come into the freight market in 2020-ish, we were looking and there were so many copycat technologies that I was like this is the market that we could actually do this in. Is that? One, we can prevent our competitors from knowing what we're doing, so it's really hard to sell against us, but two if we can drive technology and make it work with some large players, which we did, then all of a sudden word of mouth will follow and geez, I think, like you know, the 18 companies that will sign this year all came in inbound. Yeah, it's impressive. Like you know, the 18 companies that will sign this year all came in inbound.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's impressive. It's impressive because you know what we have this conversation a lot like do you need marketing or do you need a great product? I'm of the opinion that you probably need both get in the door and to uh and to stay in the door. But you've kind of you, kind of you challenged that and make me think, and I love that, I appreciate that, cause you've you've gone full product. We know we're going to have the best product and we're just going to trust that it's going to work out. And you've got great word of mouth. Obviously, the word is out now. Uh, it wasn't out a year and a half ago when you were really kind of starting some of these with enterprise accounts.
Speaker 1:I need to do it and she's like the fact that you think you're in stealth is is hilarious, right, like you're still riding that wave, but the rest of us are watching, like we all see you now. Uh, it's all happening, but yeah, you've been doing a tremendous job, man.
Speaker 2:But when we do start marketing we always wanted to use like marketing is like like gasoline on the fire Right To push us forward and I think that you will see some activity from us by like mid this year of like where we're going in that strategy. But it was always to to be like a leader in the market, not not the other way, not because we didn't want to, we just figured like, hey, if we could dial this in and we could get it working and I could build case study after case study after case study, then when I do market that off the races.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it's interesting. What you forced me to do, which is I'm very thankful for, is now a part of our process of helping clients market. What they do, is we start digging in and asking about the quality of their service or product yeah because you know, if their service isn't good or their product isn't isn't good, why are we doing this?
Speaker 1:you know you're just putting lipstick on a pig. At this point it's not really going to work out. So I really think that both are necessary. I'm not sure the order. You've really challenged me on the order of that, but uh, it's been fun to watch you, girl. I can't wait to see you come out of stealth mode. We'll see what happens, but that'll be fun when it happens. Um, all right, so a quick sidebar. Also. I want to jump back in this real quick. Your family has a vineyard in oregon too, right, isn't that correct, don't they?
Speaker 2:have, yeah, my wife's family, yeah, on special property in willamette valley. I send bottles of wine to my customers every year. Um, that come from that like region and then that's kind of like where we go.
Speaker 1:Like, if ever I go back to oregon, I only go to wine country oregon's kind of oregon's kind of a little bit of a a secret when it comes to wine, because you have napa valley so close by, but there's some really great, uh you know wineries there in the willamette valley area, some cool spots there. What's your favorite, uh, bottle of wine, do you have a favorite?
Speaker 2:um, my favorite winery in oregon is this, uh, a winery called brick house. It's a small farm that is like biodynamic, like biodynamic, so like anything that's like grown there comes from, like the farm they like use manure and like fertile. They don't like use anything that's like not natural. They make good, really good pinot noir and it's like really small um are they closer to Portland?
Speaker 1:like closer Eugene?
Speaker 2:no, I think it's in.
Speaker 1:Uh, it's in Dundee okay or like Carl Carlton area, yeah, minville kind of down that, that area just south, south southwest of Portland a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've been to a couple of venues in that area. I don't think we've been to that one. We've been a couple in that area because we used to live there. So, um, some good, good secrets back there. I still have to make the. I want to get the tour of the facility someday when I'm back in Oregon with from from your wife's family. That'd be tremendous. So we will definitely make that happen. All right, we've got a little bit of fan mail. We've got to go through some of these just real quick. We've gone through a couple of them already. One of them's from our good friend Robin Hira. She's got several questions, so here's the first one she wants. I know you probably don't have a plan B, but if you, just if you had to do something else today, what, what do you think you'd go after?
Speaker 2:I'm not sure. Like I, I like never had a plan B. You know, I like when we started AVRL, I had started AVRL with a customer as well, right Like when we signed this massive auto manufacturer, like that's what we incorporated AVRL on. I don't know if I've ever thought about what had happened if it failed. Um, I would say that at this point, like I like have made enough connections where I probably would stay in transportation, I would probably start another technology company in transportation we got you roped into transportation.
Speaker 1:Now you're not getting out. I like it I think so.
Speaker 2:I think that there are some problems, um, that exist still with connecting disparate systems that we are not solving that. I would like to dive deeper into um and I I would probably stay here and do that. I will tell you this like when I was growing up, though, I like really wanted to work for nike. I think all these companies like are all these kids like grew up in oregon? They like want to work for nike? It's like this pinnacle company and uh, I applied for like 20 jobs there and I just like they kind of like never even got an interview yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's a clear sign. This is not yeah.
Speaker 1:And then I started my own company and said yeah, yeah, it's that, or you get so pissed off, you start your own apparel company, like you could have said, well, screw those guys, I'm guys, I'm doing my own thing, but that's pretty epic. I remember when we moved to Portland I thought that working for Nike would have been cool, but then at that point it becomes such a corporation it probably wouldn't have been any fun. The startup life is definitely much more enjoyable, more exciting, that's for sure, but that is definitely a different concept that you and nicolai wanted to work on. Like, did the market kind of force in this direction? But there was something else you kind of had a desire for, or was this? Was this always the focus?
Speaker 2:oh my gosh. I don't think that most people know is us outside of transportation. So we um have had like an interesting cycle with with our technology. That can start out in language processing. We built, like we've worked with three major, like major, auto manufacturers. One of our investors is the chairman of ford through his single lp, and we then started working with some really big consumer packaged goods companies. Then we started working with some really big oil and gas companies. Those oil and gas companies were using us and, like you, would leverage our technology, or leverage our technology in oil and gas brokerage, which is done via chat, so they all chat on Intercontinental Exchange. We were piping that data into their SAP systems. I got super lucky in the finding transportation, because Walmart introduced me to JB Hunt, like that was it. So that was it Like I don't know. So like I think that if we would have never found transportation, yeah, we would have just gone deeper into supply chain, but on, like the warehouse management side, because that's where we were really driving towards.
Speaker 1:Interesting, yeah, and the market will do that. You know, like you make the right connections or whatever, and he starts to steer you in the right direction and we're fortunate that you made that move as well. But you know, a lot of people don't know you outside of transportation a lot of people think that you started in transportation.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and we work with some like really good companies that like outside of like in applications outside of transportation. We still support them. We just think that the most opportunity for our technology today and our products is probably in transportation, but that doesn't mean that's where we're all only going to stay as well.
Speaker 1:Well, and let's be honest, if you can figure out automation and transportation, you can probably do it in just about any other industry, because this is a pretty complex. I mean it's a pretty complex process overall not the most, but it's one of the complex processes in there with a lot of touch points. So it makes a lot of sense to get that figured out. Okay, third question for Robinin. I can't believe we're giving robin three questions here, but she did a three-parter on us in her post. She says what do you think is the most difficult use case to solve in logistics? I mean, he talked about connecting the spirit systems what do you think is really kind of the most most difficult, most challenging one?
Speaker 2:so most shippers their erp system is where they have like their orders. So think of that as like an sap system. Most of them run with different WMS and then a different TMS. Which means that when you look at like an inbound truck coming into a facility for like Danone, they the ERP, the WMS and the TMS and then automate the execution between those systems. You could just massively shift the industry to the point where if a shipper was out of stock on an item, they could reschedule a load and swap in a load for another one so that they could get product to a warehouse now and then we'd remove out of. They could get product to a warehouse now and then we'd remove out of stocks going outbound to like a Walmart.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of taking what you're doing on a much more of a macro level, cause I mean those. I feel like people have maybe tried those things in some form or fashion before. It just hasn't worked out very well. But it still blows me away how many technology systems are in transportation that don't talk to each other, don't do a good job of it, the whole. You know api connectivity thing. It solves part of it, but then if one system changes it can mess up the connection and the workflow and all that. It just seems. It seems overwhelming. I will definitely give you that seems like a problem that I don't even know how we're going to solve that. So, all right, good questions, robin, we'll give them that one. Okay, the last was not really a question, but I wanted to share it anyways. This is from nate johnson, who says what's it like being the dawn child of a godfather of freight automation?
Speaker 2:you know, I was like getting ready to go to the gym it was like 6 am this morning and my wife was like, hey, some, someone just wrote on like trey griggs's post about you being the dawn of freight automation um you know, I feel like we're like.
Speaker 2:I honestly feel like AVRL is so irrelevant from the like transportation and logistics market today because the customers we support like, we support like a ton of like massive 3PLs but as a whole we're barely touching it. I like don't know if I'm the I think I want to be at some point I'd like to be, but I don't know if I'm the Don I think I want to be at some point I'd like to be but I don't know if we're there yet.
Speaker 1:You're well on your way, because if Nate Johnson will say that a man who knows technology inside and out I think that's a pretty good recommendation. It might mean something different coming from somebody else who doesn't know anything, but Nate Johnson knows what he's talking about, so got to give him the credit on that. All right, chad, we got to pause and play fun on this show, and so today we are playing a game called. Would you rather? All right, pretty simple, 50, 50. Here. You gotta let us know what you would rather do between the two options that are presented on the screen. Let's go number one. Would you rather have the ability to fly or be invisible? A little harry potter action here on this. What do you think?
Speaker 2:I think, fly for me. I think I think that, like a lot of people that know me, know that I really like to travel a lot and if I could just fly, that would be, that would be great for me I'm the same way.
Speaker 1:I've always wanted to fly. I thought being a bird was great. I love getting on a plane. I love that feeling when you feel lift for the first time, when it takes off, like I can't get over that. Man, if there's a way that we could fly as individually man you know when you watch those videos, the guys that jump off the cliffs and they got the, the squirrel suit or whatever it is I so want to do that. I should have done that before I got married. I don't know if that's gonna happen now. That would have been one I should have done before, uh, before I tied the knot. Um, so I'm with you. We're both flying, okay. Next one would you rather have the power to read minds or control time?
Speaker 2:wow, that's a thoughtful one. Um, I think control time. I like to be honest I don't know if I care enough what other people think of like anything in general. Um, and this like goes back, like I've been kind of this black sheep in my life, the entire like my entire life, so like always doing what people like wouldn't do or invite doing things differently, and so I think that like for me, I've like I've gotten like far enough, like fine, without reading minds that like I'm good with that.
Speaker 1:But I think time you can control, time you can do a lot I think if you study human behavior and human psychology enough, you can kind of read minds like you can kind of see what people are thinking, right, so that's. I think that's a possibility on some level. Controlling time there's no possibility. So I agree with you. I think that's the better one to take because you can do a little bit with one.
Speaker 2:But not the other. On your point, there's this book called predictably irrational. Have you ever read it? I have not. No, I haven't heard of that. It's great. It's kind of like it's a psychology book that talks about the reasons why people do make irrational decisions and like a lot of our marketing strategy is based off of theories in that book of like we, we can you can almost guarantee that people will act in irrational ways to do certain things, and so we build a lot of our stuff based off of that.
Speaker 1:Most people make decisions irrationally and they try to justify them with facts or data later, but most of our decisions are made irrationally. Uh, that tends to be the true, uh, true statement. All right, next one would you rather always have to speak in rhymes or sing everything you say?
Speaker 1:oh, rhymes, I I can't sing, and it's not rhymes, I'm good with that drop some bars while you're uh, while you're on your next sales call. See how that goes, we'll see how that works. See, I I'm kind of torn because I like doing both. I love rapping. I've just demonstrated that recently with some karaoke yeah, I saw this like videos doing that yeah, a little karaoke action.
Speaker 1:I mean, uh, humpty dance is kind of one of my, one of my go-tos when it comes to karaoke. I like to do that just to throw people off a little bit. But I love to sing too. So I don't know, man, I, I, I love musicals. The idea of like a whole story through the through a song is is really fascinating. So I think, I, I think I'm going to go sing, cause I love to sing too much. I don't know if I'm any good, but I enjoy it. So I'm gonna go that route, all right.
Speaker 2:Next one Would you rather live in a? I will go daytime. I've lived in seattle. I lived in seattle for like six years and you know it was dark at three o'clock um during during the winter, so I'll go daytime have you ever been to fairbanks, alaska, no okay, so I was there in 2015.
Speaker 1:We're actually going there in just a couple weeks with our kids, uh, taking them up to alaska to get their 45th state that they visit, which is pretty cool. So we're going up to Fairbanks and in the winter you get about two hours of daylight, and it's from like two in the morning, like one in the morning to three in the morning, something like that, and in the summer you only get that period of darkness, so you could play golf till like midnight out there. It's wild. We were there in May the last time. This time we're in June. We're much closer to the summer equinox or summer solstice, I guess it is, and so we'll be really close to that time where it's almost like daylight the whole time. So I'll get a feeling of that. But I think I'm with you, you can control light a little bit in daytime with that, but I'd much rather have daylight than dark all the time yeah, I'm with you on that, okay than than dark all the time? Yeah, we found that, okay, all right.
Speaker 1:Next one is there? Last one, last one. Here we go. Last one would you rather have the ability to change your appearance at will or be able to teleport to any place. You've been before, I think I know what this one is. Go forward, I'll go travel, that's right. Wouldn't it be cool to be like in dubai, like now?
Speaker 2:like that'd be so cool yeah, I like, I like to be outside like and go hiking and stuff like that, and if I could literally teleport from austin to like sedona, right to a trail.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, just get started. 100, that'd be way better. Yeah, I'm with you on that. So, uh, very good. Well, thank you for playing the game. Would you rather last one random question if you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, but it had to start with the first letter of your name, what would it be?
Speaker 2:Oh man, I don't know what I would choose, but the thing that came to my mind was cheese.
Speaker 1:I don't know if that's a good option. I think it's a good option. You can put cheese on a lot of stuff. That's a decent one. My first thought was cornbread, because I love cornbread. Could go with that, with a seat for you. We're doing c, I could go with cornbread, but she's a good option. We'll. We'll go with that one. That's good. All right, chad, so we're gonna wrap this baby up. I'm bringing him for a landing. Just a little bit. When you think about work-life balance we talked about this a little bit what do you like to do for fun when you're not putting in the long hours of work? What are some of your? I mean, you talked about snow a little bit. I know you like to travel. You've been to some cool places Bali and some other places like that. Yeah, what do you love to do when you have? You know?
Speaker 2:me time. I really like to hike a lot and I like my like. I like to travel, but that means so many things to different like people. I really like to sail. I've like done some vacations where I've sailed in like around, like from tahiti to borobora and back um with some friends and I'd say like probably that is this the sailing like?
Speaker 1:so when I think of sailing, I think of the small boat turned almost like 45 degrees, kind of going through the water. Is it that kind of sailing? Is it bigger boats like?
Speaker 2:tell me a little like a little bit bigger boats. I think you know it really depends. So, like in seattle, everyone does use those smaller like sailboats. But in, if you were like in the caribbean or you were in like like borobora, you'd probably use like a catamaran or something like that yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have. I've never done sailing before, but I only see the small boats. That sounds actually pretty interesting to do. Uh to that kind of vacation, pretty relaxing. That's why, it's the reason why I like cruising is my favorite form of vacation, because I don't have to think about anything, just you're just there. You just can't, you can't get away, you can't leave you, just you're there, you're present, not connected to a phone or to you know internet in any way, and so my favorite form of vacation is, uh, similar to that, but not quite the same. Never, never, never sailed before. I have to do that, okay. Last question chad, what's next for avrl? What can we expect to see? My friend, what are you working on?
Speaker 2:my team was in uh, overseas for the past like two weeks. We're productizing like four products right now, one of them's for carriers, which is interesting for us. We've always like focused on brokerage, um, and I think that you're going to see some like interesting activity around. We've never had a sales team before. We're building that out. We've never had marketing. We're building that out and I think that we're really just going to be talking about problems. What you're going to see from us is no different than what I write, but we're going to have that be corporate marketing and so the challenges with the industry, the problems with it, rather than like AVRL, avrl, avrl. I don't necessarily know if we are seen in the message, but maybe more driving that message out.
Speaker 1:Well, you're speaking my language because in good marketing, your short-short position or company is the guide, not the hero, right? And you got to talk about problems. I always joke around about this. Why do the cable news networks have such good followings? Because all they do is talk about problems. They don't talk about solutions on their shows, they just talk about the problems and people want to keep hearing about it. You tune in the news to see what problems happened that day, not what solutions were created that day. So you know, good messaging, engaging messaging, is all about problems and putting your company as the guy that can fix those problems.
Speaker 1:So can't wait to see that, my friend. Can't wait to see kind of where it all heads. And again, appreciate you being on the show man. Always fun to get a chance to catch up with you, my friend. Awesome, thanks, chad. Hey, chad, we'll talk to you real soon. Everybody, make sure that you come back every Tuesday for interviews like that with Chad and many great guests as well. And don't forget to catch us over at SPI logistics for making it possible. Check them out at successspi3plcom. We'll see you guys real soon. Don't forget. Stop standing still, start standing out, see ya.
