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
Brad Perling: A Visionary's Journey Bitfreighter & Personal Fulfillment
Join us as we uncover Brad Perling's journey, the Co-Founder and CEO of Bitfreighter, who is transforming the logistics industry with groundbreaking innovations. From tackling the complexities of EDI to creating a full-scale automation platform, Brad shares the evolution of Bitfreighter, including the critical role of customer feedback and strategic partnerships with major TMS platforms.
A word about our sponsors:
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 back to another episode of Standing Out, a podcast about sales, marketing and leadership. I'm Trey Griggs, your host, so happy that you are with us today. Hey, if you get a second, take a moment to go check our website out betaconsultinggroupcom and see how we're helping companies in transportation to truly build a sales engine, especially around some of the messaging, the stories that they tell. Give us a call, or click on that button on the website that says schedule a call with yours truly. Tell us your story. We'll be glad to help you write yours. Also. A big shout out to our sponsor for the show today SPI Logistics.
Speaker 1:Our friends up in Vancouver, british Columbia, listen, if you're a freight broker and you're tired of just having an MC in the back office and all the stuff that goes on with that stuff that goes on with that, you just want to work with customers and book loads. Or maybe you're a freight agent just not happy with where you are today. Give these guys a call or check them out over at successspi3plcom. They've got the technology systems and back office support to help you stay in your sweet spot. Again, check them out at successspi3plcom. Let them know that you heard about it right here on Standing Out. All right, listen, we've got a great show today. Can't wait to bring this gentleman on and talk about some of the events that are coming up really soon. You may know him from around the industry doing some great work in technology, but also for a golf tournament that's coming up really soon. Please welcome to the show my good friend and the founder and CEO of Bitfreighter, brad Perling.
Speaker 2:Hey Trey, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's coming. This is a slow intro song, but it's a good song. I feel like we've got to let it build up, let it marinate just a little bit. My friend, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:Doing good. Thanks for having me on the show, looking forward to being on the show and talking a little bit about Bitfreighter and what we have going on, some of our big event, our big annual event coming up.
Speaker 1:I know we're going to talk about that in just a minute, but the song is starting to kick into high gear, so let's just, let's go Just a little bit, you know, let it play. Let it play. Let it play, man. All right, let's talk a little bit about you and about Bitfreighter. First of all, a little introduction to who the heck you are and what is Bitfreighter.
Speaker 2:for those who may not know, although I'm sure at this point just about everybody knows- yeah well, bitfreighter is an integration platform that helps logistics companies connect to their shippers and shippers connect to their logistics companies through system integrations. So we are the only fully automated lifecycle of a load platform that allows a logistics company to automate the lifecycle of a load from quoting all the way through invoicing, through EDI or API technologies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's a lot that you're doing now. You didn't start that way. If I remember correctly, I think you started just doing EDI because EDI was a big problem several years ago. There's only one outfit, or one main outfit or a couple of their small players, but it was incredibly expensive and you saw a need in the marketplace. You started with EDI and started building things out. Talk about that progression. What all are you doing now? On top of EDI and API connectivity, there's quoting involved, there's some automation. Talk about all you're doing.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 2:So we started as an EDI platform that kind of took the nuances of EDI and the painful things that EDI brought, which was transactionally priced and really without a helpful solutions team in place that would take sometimes weeks or months to implement, and what we did was kind of flip that idea upside down and said let's make it unlimited messaging, so no transactional pricing, you pay per shipper and then you also get a single point of contact at Bitfreighter to essentially help manage the implementation and the onboarding of your EDI accounts, which also comes with an engineering team to support those solutions people.
Speaker 2:And most logistics companies don't have an engineering team on staff right or tech people in general don't have an engineering team on staff right or tech people in general. So when a shipper asks you if you're running a logistics company, hey, you need to integrate with me, or you need to integrate with my visibility platform or you need to do this API, you kind of are left scratching your head on what to do and I felt that pain and felt like there needed to be a company out there that really helped support logistics companies with those deep systems integrations. And that's what we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm not a freight broker. I did move freight for like six months. I don't know a lot about the whole EDI process, but I just remember the pain point being the pricing I was always talked about was how expensive it was, because there's only one player in the marketplace. Bring a little competition to it. You guys flip it up on its head and you made some inroads pretty quickly, which was awesome, and now you're doing a lot of other things. How did that process go of? Just were you listening to the market and saying, oh, they need this, okay, let's do that. Oh, they need this, okay, let's do that. How did that process go that now you're adding so many elements? You said the truly automating the life cycle of the load. There's a lot that goes into that.
Speaker 2:Well, we are solely focused on helping logistics companies connect to their shippers, and I believe that's really only four components it's quoting, tendering, updates and invoicing and we solve all four of those components. And so when we were approached by a very large TMS platform that Shipper TMS platform in 2022 that was rolling out their API real-time rating pricing they wanted to partner with us, and that's really what inspired us to create our live quote tool to allow logistics companies to provide real-time pricing. And so that live quote tool was in line with what our pricing model was for the EDI side, which is unlimited quotes. So not only can logistics companies provide real-time quotes for unlimited pricing model, which is extremely affordable, they can also then accept those loads that they've won in right in their TMS and then provide real-time updates back to their shippers all through the bit freighter connectivity, whether that's EDI or API.
Speaker 2:But we actually all the modern TMS is that we connect to are all API driven, so we connect to a lot of the modern TMSs that we connect to are all API driven, so we connect to a lot of the modern TMSs. We now connect to 12 different logistics TMSs that a lot of them were the preferred EDI partner of through APIs and we actually have an open API that allows. We're actually creating the industry standard for API and EDI connectivity. So we've created an open API that there's been now four or five commercial TMSs have written to, because we're creating the open API standard for EDI connectivity.
Speaker 1:Love that. I absolutely love that man. That is great to hear that you're making those inroads and industry standard just sounds impressive. I absolutely love that man. That is great to hear that you're making those inroads and industry standard just sounds impressive. I'm not going to lie, it's pretty cool to have that in your description there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's one of those things where APIs are not created equally. Everybody has their own flavor of how they want to build their API, and to have a robust API for EDI messaging is really important for our industry and that's what we're really focused in on the EDI side of things, because more and more platforms are moving to API connectivity. But it needs to be done right and we believe that the more platforms that can adopt our open API, it just streamlines the entire process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was going to ask every guest what are you doing to stand out in the marketplace? But you're clearly doing that through being kind of the industry standard when it comes to EDI through API. So we'll skip that question and go to. I want to talk about the name. I know the story of Bitfreighter, but how'd you come up with the name Bitfreighter? It's a great name for technology and transportation.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that. I have to give all the credit to my co-founder, brandon Joyce. He's really the name guy. He came up with the name Bitfreighter. He came up with the name LiveQuote. He's full of good names. So I think that you know, when we were just kind of talking about what we were doing in the market we were serving, you know, it made sense. Part of one of our early taglines was the data hauling experts. So yeah, I mean it made sense with the target audience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it almost sounds like a John Deere vehicle at the same time. I mean it could almost be one of their models of a John Deere. It could be the Bitfreighter. I could see that playing out at some point. So it's a cool name. It's fun to hear the story about all that. He probably had no idea it was going to take off like this, because not only is the company taking off I mean I don't know how many customers you guys have now, but it's a lot.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of people that are talking about you in the marketplace, but what I really wanted to talk to you about today on the show was this annual event that you referenced at the beginning when you introed yourself, and that is the Bitfreight freighter annual golf tournament raising money to support als. This thing is absolutely blown up. I got to play in it last year. We get to be a sponsor, which thank you so much for letting us be a part of this. Als is a cause that's very near and dear to our heart as well. It's coming up monday, august 12th, in nashville, tennessee. What the heck led you to? Hey, we should. We should start a golf tournament. Do you love golf that much that you'd want to make an event out of it.
Speaker 2:You know, it's the one time of year my wife lets me play golf.
Speaker 1:This is the strategy. Listen, yeah, right, if I have an event I have to play, it all goes back to me.
Speaker 2:No, I'm just kidding. I've always been somebody that has liked putting on events, even from an early age. I did a haunted house in my mom's backyard for four years when I was in high school, and then in college we put on a big philanthropy concert event that I put on, and then it's always been something that I enjoy doing is putting on events.
Speaker 1:You're one of the rare breeds, my friend. Not a lot of people enjoy this type of thing.
Speaker 2:Like this is most people.
Speaker 2:This is a headache this is a necessary evil sometimes, my goodness. Yeah, I think it's fun and it's exciting, and bringing people together for a good cause is is, you know, a great purpose for an event. And you know, I always thought that it would be really cool to have a bunch of industry executives come to Nashville for some sort of summit and, with Bitfreighter sitting in the middle of so many different large technology platforms and having so many large logistics companies as our customers, it made sense that we could be the facilitator of a phenomenal one day networking event and I think that it's really turning out to be. It's going to be an incredible event. We have 50 plus different executives from logistics companies that are going to be there, really a lot of owners and C-suite people, so I think it's a really heavy hitting executive type event and, on top, it may not be the biggest event of the year, but I think it will have some of the most influential people in our industry at the event.
Speaker 1:And it's sold out, which is great. Not only that, you got about what? 40 sponsors, something like that, so you got a lot of sponsors supporting the event. Uh, got a lot of support, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have, um, it is sold out, uh, 114 golfers, um, we're at our limit. And um, we have 27 sponsors. We have gold sponsor, silver sponsor, a bunch of bronze sponsors and then a ton of green sponsors. So, you know, we we were a little concerned about it, but everybody stepped up. You know, six weeks before we completely sold out of the sponsorships and uh and spots for the event. So, um, it's going to be really exciting. And on top of that, you know it's a one day fully packed event where we're raising money for ALS.
Speaker 2:Als is the benefiting philanthropy. It's near and dear to my heart. My mother-in-law had ALS and you know it's one of those diseases that you can only fight right now through raising money and awareness. Unfortunately, there's no test or cure for ALS. It's a really terrible disease. It's really terrible to watch somebody go through it and I'm really excited that we have so many people in our industry and our community that have gotten behind this event, not only through raising money but also through raising awareness. I mean, there have been a ton of ice bucket challenges that have gone out there. It really took off last year and I think it's going to take off again this year as we get closer to the event. If you haven't done your ice bucket challenge, you can actually do it on site at the event. So not to worry, you'll get an opportunity to do the ice bucket challenge here in Nashville if you're going to be there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've got one coming up. I'm not sure if I'm going to knock it out before I get down there or while I'm down there, but I'm looking forward to that. Als is something that's, unfortunately, near and dear to my heart as well. My brother-in-law's mother-in-law passed away from that about six years ago. We have a golf tournament in September to raise money for current ALS patients, cause, as you said, there's really not much you can do about it except try to make it as comfortable as possible and raise money, cause it's expensive accommodations, modifications, technology it's expensive, very unfortunately, a very expensive way uh, you know, for the end of life and so I'm very happy to be a part of it and support you in that.
Speaker 1:I was so excited when I heard about the tournament last year and what you're looking to do unfortunately through tough circumstances, but what you're looking to do and so we're delighted to be a green sponsor, to be a part of the event, looking forward to seeing you next week down there in Nashville for the event. It's going to be great and can't wait. Can't wait to do that, man, and last year you had a long drive. Specialist Troy Teal Is he coming back? He will be there.
Speaker 2:Let's go.
Speaker 1:This guy hits the ball 300 yards with a putter. Yes, it's insane and it's down the middle.
Speaker 2:It's in the fairway. I think he can hit it 500 with a driver. It's super cool to see some of his tricks. He's going to be on hole 18 again. It's super cool to see some of his tricks. He's going to be on hole 18 again. I will actually be on the hole two with Brandon with our own contest, so you'll have to come and find out what that looks like.
Speaker 1:Looking forward to that. But Troy Teal is amazing. Shout out to him. Yeah, I saw him for the first time at another golf tournament. I think he was at a TIA event or he was at a different event. I saw him somewhere else and then when I saw him at your event, I was like man, this is awesome. I've got to know that guy pretty well and just kept up with him because.
Speaker 2:I'm on the dark side with you, my friend.
Speaker 1:I like events as well, so I've thought about that, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think he helped us raise like $5,000 right on that one just on the whole alone. I mean, he did a phenomenal job raising money for ALS last year and honestly, trey, you were one of the first people that signed up and paid to be a sponsor last year and I know you did this year again. So again really appreciate, obviously, the sponsorship, but the awareness and everything that you've been doing to raise awareness for the event.
Speaker 1:Dude, it's our pleasure man Happy to help out with that. Looking forward to that. And we have to give a shout out to your MC. I mean you got the one and only Nate Schutz to once again come and. Mc your event. He is the man.
Speaker 2:Oh my God.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to see him. It is. It's a world-class event with truly A players in the industry. And I'll just say this For people who are coming to the event bring the cash, bring the money. We're going to have a lot of fun and we're going to raise a lot of money for our last. So it's going to be, it's going to be an awesome event. Brad, I can't wait to get down there and see that man. So I got a random question for you today, but we're going to ask a couple other questions before we get out here today. But I got a random question for you today. Who is in your dream foursome and you anytime? Who is in your dream foursome tiger wood. Can I pga players? Anybody, man? I'm telling you, anybody, let's, let's live now or live prior anybody at all.
Speaker 2:Man, uh, tiger woods, uh, justin thomas. And then I guess I gotta pick, pick an ordinary.
Speaker 2:You can be the ordinary you can be the ordinary guy yeah, I could be that guy, um, also, um, a buddy of mine that got me into golf. Uh, he sold me his first uh, uh set of clubs when I got into golf and when I was 22, at my first logistics job, because I found out it was a way to get out of working. I could go play golf with the bosses. But Greg Allison, he would be part of it too. Tiger Woods, justin.
Speaker 1:Thomas and Greg Allison. Hey, all those people are still living. We can certainly probably get that together. We need to make that happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we got to make it happen. That's a great question, that's right.
Speaker 1:That's right. My dream foursome would be similar to yours, although I'd go slightly different. I'd definitely go Tiger Woods. I don't know how you leave that guy out, right, I mean, I'd definitely go Tiger Woods. I'd go Ben Hogan, because I read his book when I first started playing golf and was just absolutely intrigued, like so intrigued with just his focus, his passion, kind of his reclusiveness. It was just an interesting character. So I definitely go with him.
Speaker 1:And I think the third this this is kind of odd because he did. He never played golf, that I'm aware of. But I would put my dad in there, like I'd love to have a round of golf with my dad. My dad and I never played golf. I took up golf in spite of him, because he couldn't coach me, he didn't know anything about it, and so it was a way for me to actually distance myself from him when I was a kid. Because of that, we never played. I think it would be fun just to have a round of golf with my dad. I'd say Tiger Woods, ben Hogan and my dad. That's my group, we'll see. Hey, if you're watching this, let us know who's in your dream force. We'd love to know who you'd like to have in there as well. All right, brad, give me a little. The first company that you have started, that you've owned, or is this? Uh, you know, are you, are you a mature?
Speaker 2:seasoned entrepreneur. You've done this several times. You know exactly what to do, or has this been a big learning curve for you? Well, um, it's the first company I started from inception. Um, I did partner with, uh, one of my best friends, joe delLeo Joe DiLeo I call him DiLeo, but it's really DiLeo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so him and I met at our first logistics company in 2010, and then he moved in with me.
Speaker 2:He was a roommate of mine and he started his brokerage from the house we were living in and he was on his own for a couple years and I stayed at that logistics company and then stepped down and partnered with him and it was just him and his brother at the time and brought the skill set I had learned through helping build a company to 300 people from.
Speaker 2:You know we were employees like 17 or 18 at that company. So you know we were really starting from scratch not from inception, but really from scratch when Joe and I partnered and you know being able to take all of those things that I learned from helping grow a brokerage, stepping down from that company to go start Bitfreighter was a really nice playbook, right? So I already knew what CRM I wanted. I already knew what payroll company, all the things that you kind of have to have as a starting foundation from a tech stack, and I already kind of knew just some of the philosophies and core values I wanted to have at Bitfreighter. So yeah, I mean it's definitely the first company, I've started from inception, but I was able to really kind of take from the values that I learned at Chariot and at Calvary. Obviously, I wasn't the first employees at Calvary, but I felt like I was part of really early on part of that group. So I feel like I've been in startup mode since I graduated college.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but sounds like the iterations were really, really helpful. It was nice to learn something here about management or about technology or tech stack, or values or communication, those types of things. Was there anything along the way that kind of led you to this point of I want to start my own company someday. What was that moment where you said, I think, I think I want to do my own thing?
Speaker 2:I didn't. I guess I in college I had always I been writing business plans for random things and it was never a like I never had to do my own thing. It just kind of happened.
Speaker 1:It sounds like these events that you've been putting on for a while were kind of like your little mini businesses or just things you'd like to put on Mini businesses. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I had a bunch of different business plans I'd written ideas I'd had, and when I ran into this EDI monopoly and realized how expensive it was, I just couldn't believe it. I just it was just hard for me to understand why it was so expensive and why there was. You know, I went through and I purchased it myself when I was running a logistics company and I went through eight different vendors, including the one that's the monopoly, and couldn't believe how expensive it was. And I just it just didn't make sense to me. And you know, when I pitched it to my co-founder about this idea, he didn't believe it either, like he couldn't believe it was so expensive either. So you know, that was really the foundation of an idea that was solving a big enough problem that felt like we could go into business to help people solve that problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you feel like you've kind of just fallen into this a little bit from time to time, just kept kind of falling into opportunities and ideas.
Speaker 2:You know, I have a saying and it's something that I do live by is luck is a product of hard work, and I feel very lucky most days. So, yeah, I mean, I feel lucky to be a part of each company that I've I've been a part of. But, um, I also think that a lot of that comes back to how hard are you willing to work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean to tie this back into golf. I think it was either Ben Hogan or Byron Nelson, I can't remember which. One of those, uh, initial golfers back in the forties said the harder I work work, the luckier I get on the golf course. And that was. That's a cool, cool thought. You know, like the work, the harder you work. A lot of times things just tend to kind of fall in into place. Opportunities tend to happen, which is great, um, and capitalizing on those really matter. So you've had you know, time to grow companies. Go from 1718 to 300. Build these out. How many people do you guys have at bit freighter now?
Speaker 2:we're at 24. So, yeah, we growing out our engineering team and it's been exciting. We really didn't start hiring people outside of our core three owners. Our first real hire was June of 2022. So it's two years. We've gone from three people to 24 people in a short two years. So we're really working really hard to get some depth and, you know, some tenure within our different departments at Bitfreighter, because that's really one of the most difficult things about a startup is that there's so much siloed knowledge that as you grow your tenure within the departments, I think that's really where you start to see the growth happen within the organization.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got Hannah, who's a rock star. She came on right before the event last year. I believe she's kind of helped spearhead the event last year, so she, she was hired.
Speaker 2:To put, we actually hired her 67 days before the event and in her interview we asked her have you ever put together a golf event? Thankfully, she put together four other events for other golf events. So she had a little bit of a playbook, but not one to the scale that we put on last year. So yeah, we were lucky. In 67 days we got 85 golfers and, like I think it was, 15 sponsors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we got a little bit more time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she killed it last year, so she's, she's gonna. She's doing a great job. Right now she's in the thick of planning. You know, last two weeks just getting all the T's crossed, i's dotted trying to get everything just perfect for this event.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got a rockstar team man, a lot of good people over there Dave McCoy and so many others. It's a good organization that you've built up, obviously doing a great job with leadership you put. In a recent LinkedIn post you talked about becoming the product of the people that you surround yourself with and the groups of people that have influenced you. Um, talk a little bit about that. Like, which people would you say have been the most influential for you?
Speaker 2:there's so many. I mean I'm I'm again lucky to be influenced by I I think the bitfreighter, the, the people at bitfreighterer are some of the most the smartest and best people I've ever worked with. But in the past I've been, I've had the opportunity to work with people at Calvary that have all gone on to do so many great things. I mean, if you look at that organization there's so many legendary freight guys and girls that came out of the early days of Calvary that went to go build Molo and Decker and Steamboat and I mean I can just name and so I've been influenced by so many, so many great people.
Speaker 2:And then at Chariot and those guys, so, but I would say my foundation really started with my parents. I mean my mom and dad are amazing human beings and I've never had to worry about anything. So having that support surrounding myself with the right people and my friend group goes back to elementary school, so, um, you know it's. I think that you know, if you pick the right people, you, you really do become a product of the people you surround yourself by?
Speaker 1:Are your parents entrepreneurial as well?
Speaker 2:My mom's a real estate agent. She's been a real estate agent for 30 years. That's pretty entrepreneurial.
Speaker 1:That's hard work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, feast or famine through that job.
Speaker 1:You eat what you kill. That's it, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've, I've job. You eat what you kill, that's it, that's right. Yeah, I've. I've listened to plenty of her calls uh, closing deals at home and so, yeah, she's a and um. Yeah, I mean, I I think that she's running her own micro uh business and um, I've always asked her and I actually talked about this on Nate's podcast about why he never wanted to go build a bigger business, and she said that she was happy with doing her own business and, you know, being her own boss, but she never had aspirations of building something bigger. And you know what? As Nate said, you have to know what your happiness is Like, what's going to make you happy, and bigger isn't always better, as Nate said, is like you have to know what, what your happiness is like, what lead, what's going to make you happy, and bigger isn't always better.
Speaker 1:So no, it's not, you know, it's interesting because, like when I was a consultant, when I was a solopreneur there, when I first started beta consultant group, I was just providing for me and my family and that was it, you know. And then, as we started growing, uh well, now I, you know, if you think about it, what do I do? Well, I, I sell and I go out and I kill so that everybody on our team can eat. You know, like now it's, it's a bigger family that we're feeding now and it's a little more responsibility. So I think you do have to kind of know what you want to do and what you don't want to do.
Speaker 1:If you're somebody that scales companies, go, scale the cat out of companies. And if you, as a parent now my number one job is to give my kids every opportunity to succeed and they got to take advantage of it they have to do it Something like that's what your parents did for you. They provided you with that opportunity to go get it and did a great job of being close to home and letting you listen to the calls. I bet those are incredibly. Some of those those calls in the, in the car and all those kinds of things have rubbed off on you. I'm sure that's awesome and for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm, I'm lucky to to uh have seen that and be a part of it. So well.
Speaker 1:Last question you're an entrepreneur, like I am. It's tough, it's not easy. How do you kind of balance things? How do you, um, you know, keep your family important, keep those friendships you've got you said you got friends from back in grade school. You still keep up with, obviously, your family or close with them. How do you kind of keep it all you?
Speaker 2:know how to keep all the balls in the air. Yeah, that's a good question, you know. I think it's it's really important at Bitfreighter.
Speaker 1:We have unlimited PTO and you know, I read the book by Reed Hastings. Do you take it? Do you actually take PTO? Do you exemplify that? That's where I'm going with this.
Speaker 2:Give me a second Trey, so I yeah, no good question though I read the book by Reed Hastings no Rules rules and we really believe in that philosophy at Bitfreighter allowing our employees to be adults, and one of the things is unlimited PTO. That Netflix had and we have that at Bitfreighter. And the way to have unlimited PTO and deploy it properly is that the leadership needs to take PTO, because everybody whether it's PTO or work ethic or just culturally, everybody is going to do maybe a little bit less than whatever the leader does and if they see you not taking PTO, they may not feel comfortable to take PTO. So I do take PTO.
Speaker 2:I, you know I try to spend time with my family. I work from home. There's some days where I take my lunch break and I'll take my kid to the pool for an hour. But, like you know, we are very flexible at Bitfreighter when it comes to our work-life balance but also your timing at work. But really, when it comes to me and my stress level being an entrepreneur, I think it's really important that you have that time where you can turn it off. It's taken me some time to figure that out. I think the number one thing I did that has really helped me was last September. I signed up for a gym membership and I have been going two to three times a week every week for since September of last year, getting out of my house and going to the gym two to three times a week at 11 am, and it's on my calendar and that is one of the most important things you can do, whether you're an entrepreneur or just working somewhere. If you can find time to go work out, that will completely change your mental state.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so good, man. Well, I'm glad to hear that, because I always, man, when I hear that from entrepreneurs, I want to call them out and make sure that they're actually taking the time off, because if people don't take the time off, then their people often don't take the time off as well. A hundred percent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it also actually goes down to the department leads. Even if I'm taking the time off, it's really each department's the leadership of that department. It's their responsibility to make sure they're taking PTO because, honestly, as your organization gets bigger, the people kind of follow their managers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so true, man. There's so much truth to that. Well, Brad, listen man, you've got a great organization. It has been so much fun to watch you grow the last year and a half since I've gotten to know you, being a part of this golf tournament for the second year in a row. I can't wait to join you guys next week for that event. It's going to be awesome. And just thanks for taking the time to be on the show today. We appreciate you, man.
Speaker 2:And thanks for having me, thanks for setting it up, thanks for sponsoring the event and doing everything you're doing for the event. It's it's big time. It's, it's a really important. It's near and dear to my heart. That event's going to be awesome. I'm excited to see you there. Thanks, trey.
Speaker 1:Come back and see us here on the show again soon. We'll have to talk more about the golf tournament next time you're on and who actually took home the crown, even though I know it doesn't really matter that much. We'll see if we can pull out a victory this year. Thanks again, Brad, for being on the show. Appreciate it, buddy, Thank. Make sure you come back every Tuesday for an episode just like this one, with great guests like Brad Perling and Bitfreighter, so we'll see you on that. Also, if you're listening on Reese Cross America Radio, thank you so much for being a part of that.
Speaker 1:We love being a part of the Reese Cross America Trucking Tuesday lineup, and it's not too late to start thinking about the Bitfreighter Golf Tournament for 2025. I'm sure they're going to have it again if you didn't make it this year. So check out bitfreightergolfcom, bookmark that page. Make sure you come to it next year. At least support it. Make a donation this year if you can. You can still do that right on the website as well. We appreciate all the support and until next time, don't forget friends. Stop standing still. Start standing up. We'll see you soon.
