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
Credibility with Rob Light: The Impact of Social Proof
What if reviews could transform the trucking industry as much as they do restaurants?
Tune into our conversation with Founder & CEO Rob Light of Carrier Source. Uncover how Carrier Source brings transparency to the trucking and freight brokerage industry, helping companies build trust and credibility through customer reviews. Learn why social proof is more vital than ever in today's market and how it can shape reputation and decision-making.
Thank you to our sponsor, Salesdash CRM – A CRM for Freight Logistics. Salesdash CRM is built for freight broker & agent sales teams. Manage your shipper prospecting and follow-ups. Organize your carriers and the lanes they run. Learn more at www.betaconsultinggroup.com/standing-out
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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.
All right, everybody, what's up? I don't know what I'm doing, I'm just crazy sometimes. Welcome to another episode of Standing Out, a show about sales, marketing and leadership. I'm Trey Griggs, your host, so glad that you are here with us today. We are with Beta Consulting Group. We'd love for you to go, stop by our virtual storefront and check us out. Go to betaconsultinggroupcom when you get a chance after the show and see how we're helping companies to be able to perform marketing and sales at a high level in any market. The market changes sometimes, and sometimes you just need to change what you're doing as well. So scroll down, click on that button that says schedule a call with yours truly, tell us what's going on in your business and we'll help you get jump started with that. Also, I want to give a shout out, before we get started today, to our friends over at sales-crm for supporting the show. Listen, know, listen. Not all CRMs are created equal, especially when most CRMs are not built with your freight brokerage in mind. This is what I love about what Josh Lyles is building over at sales-crm it's built by freight brokers, exclusively for freight brokers. So be sure to visit betaconsultinggroupcom.
Speaker 1:Forward. Slash standing out where you get standing dash out. We can request a demo through a form there or you can go to sales-crmcom and make sure you let them know that you heard about it right here on Standing Out. Also, a couple of announcements, a couple of things are coming up really soon. First of all, we want to say thank you to our friends over at Wreaths Across America Radio for being on their Trucking Tuesday lineup. If you're listening right now on Wreaths Across America, thank you so much for being a part of a phenomenal organization. If you haven't signed up to either participate in the Wreaths Across America event in mid-December or to sponsor Wreath, make sure you do that today. Go to wreathsacrossamericaorg forward, slash standing out and you can sponsor Wreath with us. We would appreciate that support. And again, thanks for letting us be a part of the programming. And finally, we are just weeks away I cannot believe this from the next iteration of the Broker Carrier Summit, the Fort Worth edition. October 23 through 25. Down in Fort Worth, texas, at the beautiful Worthington Renaissance Hotel. We got free truck parking from our friends over at truckparkingclubcom. We have some incredible speakers who are going to be there, the best golf tournament in the industry and, most importantly, a chance to meet freight brokers and truckload carriers who are like-minded, who will help you grow your business. You can go to BrokerCarrierSummitcom, see the new website and register today. Don't forget to sign up for that golf tournament, the Post and Pray Classic, and we'll see you down in Fort Worth really, really soon.
Speaker 1:All right, we've got a great show today. I've got my friend back on the show. We've had him once before. Got to know this guy a little while back, but he's doing some great stuff from the chicago area. He's up with carrier source. Everybody, please welcome to the show my good friend and the founder of carrier stores. It's gone, man, a little throwback dude. I'll tell you what this is crazy. We've had so many guests recently with throwback songs for their walk-up songs some 80s, some 90s stuff. I think this might have been like either late 70s or early 80s. When did this?
Speaker 2:come out. That sounds right to me. I mean, it's a pretty good hype-up song. I don't know much better than that one, yeah it's a good one.
Speaker 1:Well, I always enjoy it because I never know what our guests are going to put out there. We always get a little surprise here on the show, which is a lot of great. How are you Great to have you on the show? It's been a while. It's funny. I still think back. It was just a year ago that we met for the first time at the first Broker Carrier Summit Well, the first big one, I guess I should say in Tampa back in October of 2023. Got to meet you there and it was funny because I didn't know you at all. But I have to tell this story real quick. We were in a breakout session and some of the brokers and carriers were well, I think the brokers were like how do we know if a carrier is reputable? How do we even know? How do we find this out? And you're sitting back in the back and I think we had just met and you told me what you did and I'm like I think you should talk to Rahab.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was such a fortuitous session to be in right. It was kind of perfect the way that conversation devolved and hopefully CarrierSource is helping those trucking companies prove that they are reputable and good to work with.
Speaker 1:We'll take just a moment and tell everybody a little bit about CarrierSource and just give a little intro of what you guys do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so at our core, we are a review website for trucking companies and freight brokerages. We collect reviews from customers to help paint a more accurate picture of who these carriers are, who these brokers are. Carriers can also review brokers. Now that's a new feature that we have, so that carriers know the right broker partners to work with, and so we hope that we're just lending a little bit more transparency into the industry.
Speaker 1:That's so powerful we're going to talk about that a little bit later but the idea of social proof. You know, I always think about this. If we were to go to a new sushi restaurant in Chicago that we'd never been to before, we would never call the restaurant and say, hey, tell me about your wasabi, tell me about your shrimp tempura, how do you guys cook it? We would never do that. You guys cook it. We would never do that. We would always want to hear from somebody who actually experienced the food and the restaurant and the experience, and yet a lot of times we don't think about that when we're buying commercially or buying other things. Well, I think the power of reviews as well.
Speaker 2:If you were to call that sushi restaurant up and say, hey, I want to talk to three of your patrons who have eaten at your restaurant, they'd send you to their cousin at your restaurant.
Speaker 2:You know, they'd send you to their cousin, their best friend and the regular right right right into their restaurant every day for for you know years, right, but with reviews kind of at scale right, you flush all that out. It's verified by a third party, it's not just the hand chosen references that someone's going to give you Right, and so that's where I think the real power of reviews at scale comes from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we're going to dig into that here in just a little bit. Before we do that, though, I want to talk to you about because you know, we're in trade show season. People are, companies are making decisions about where to spend their dollars Should they attend, should they exhibit, should they sponsor, how are they going to stand out, how are they going to track their results, all those types of things. But I want to ask you this in particular, because when I did go to the Broker Care Summit for the first time last fall that was my first Broker Care Summit as well I didn't really know what to expect, and one thing that's unique about the summit is that we don't have exhibitor booths, we don't have kiosks. You don't have to sit at a booth and man it people come by but instead all of our sponsors and all of our supporters sit in all the sessions and get to be in everything.
Speaker 1:How did you feel about that? I'm just kind of putting on the spot. I don't even know what you're going to answer. It could be good or bad. How did you feel about being involved in the sessions and being involved in the conference, as opposed to kind of being relegated to an exhibit hall and waiting for people to come by.
Speaker 2:As a sponsor, I think it changes the direction of conversations that you have with those folks.
Speaker 2:When you're in it, if you're, like you said, relegated to a booth, if you're stuck in the exhibit hall, folks have a very predetermined notion of the conversation they're going to have with you.
Speaker 2:They're expecting to be sold. In that moment of them walking by your booth, you're going to try to grab their attention. You're going to hand them some swag as a way to try to pull them in and give them the elevator pitch. But with the Broker Carrier Summit it is a much more organic, authentic conversation that you have with these folks and I think the best thing that we did going into it is we didn't really try to sell too hard. You know we try to go to learn more about these folks and the current challenges they're facing and hear from them directly, which you know we get to do with our customers, but we don't get to do it as broadly and as focused as you would at a place like the Broker Carrier Summit been. It's been great. We're really excited to go back. It's it's definitely our favorite show in the in the lineup this fall and, and you know, the the last one down in Kansas city was fantastic in the spring.
Speaker 1:Well, we're excited to have you guys supporting that. And I got to say that when I first heard this concept of like no exhibitors and no demos and no, all those, all those kinds of things, I thought, man, are sponsors really going to value this? Are they going to get a lot out of it? And I remember talking to some of our friends over at Tye Software who said we walked away from this show with more legitimate leads than the other show that we were at and I was like it almost took me back a little bit, like wow, that's crazy. But what you said is true. You're sitting in the sessions, you're hearing the problems and you can go up and say I just heard you talking about this. Tell me more about that. That's authentic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, we call it the gift that keeps on giving, because the ROI keeps coming from it. And I mean the one in the spring was six months ago, right, and so you know, you go to a trade show where you have a booth, you get a bunch of business cards you try to follow up after and maybe somebody responds to you or maybe a couple of people are willing to get on a call with you. But with the way that the Broker Carrier Summit is set up, you have true, meaningful conversations and the folks that are going to end up talking to you, they really want to know what your company does and how you can help them. I think that's the kind of beauty of the Broker Carrier Summit. Again, it's like those folks aren't at most other trade shows in the industry. Right, they're there because they're smaller, they're looking to build relationships and so when they do schedule time with you or they come up to you and they want to learn about your company, they're genuine about it. They want to ask you those questions because they're potential buyers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. It is pretty cool just to watch from a distance, just seeing these interactions happen. So we're excited for Fort Worth excited you guys are going to be there as well. It's going to be a lot of fun. But let's shift our gears for just a minute. Before we talk about reviews and about carrier source, I did find a little fun fact about you that I didn't know. According to you, you're relatively confident that you're in the top one percentile at making frozen pizza. Now listen, when I read this, I said what Frozen pizza? You take it out of the box, you throw it in the oven. It's not that hard, rob, but you're talking about something a little different. So enlighten me. What is this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's funny, it was top of mind because it stems from a conversation that I've had not that long ago. What do you think that you are genuinely an expert at or in? Like the top one percentile of doing that can be a skill, it can be a trait. What is one thing which is a pretty good interview question, by the way? You know outside of work, what are you an expert at, right? What do you take pride in? When it comes to that, I was trying to think of, like, what am I actually the best at? And I think I've just made so many frozen pizzas in my life to this point right, that, specifically home run in pizzas. I don't need a timer, I don't even need an oven sheet, I don't need anything like that. But I'm, I'm, you just got it, I just got it. It's that I don't know. I think I would challenge most folks that I could make a better home run in frozen pizza.
Speaker 1:Listen, we have friends in Dallas. We can go to someone's house, we can make this happen, all right, I mean, I'm not saying I'm a connoisseur of frozen pizza, making you know for homemade, but I give it a shot, dude. I give you a run for money and then afterwards I'll share with you my expertise, which is chocolate shakes. Listen, I've been making chocolate shakes so long that for my 16th birthday, my mom bought me a blender a nicer blender to make more shakes. That's pretty sick, dude. That's legit. So we may have the kitchen locked down here, dude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't cook really at all all I'm not a very good cook, but man that home run in frozen homemade frozen pizza, which just sounds.
Speaker 1:It just sounds kind of silly, I'm not gonna lie, but homemade frozen pizza, I love it. That's awesome, dude. Well, all right, I'm, I'm challenging too. We're gonna, we're gonna make that happen at some point. We're gonna. We're gonna see you can make the best frozen frozen pizza from scratch. I'm going to have a box under the table. I'm just going to swap them out last minute. That's what I'm going to do. I got to do something to win.
Speaker 1:So, all right, let's jump into carrier stores. So you know, when we met a while ago and you said, hey, we help, you know, consolidate to get to bring other reviews for carriers, I thought that meant it's really cool, because it's hard to know, you know, if a carrier is going to do a good job and understand that I know fraud's a big deal right now and obviously, having people who will speak on your behalf, that can really help out when you're making decisions on going to restaurants. I mean, how many bad reviews do you have to see before you decide not to go? Or, conversely, how many good reviews do you have to read before you decide to go? And there's a psyche that's involved with that. Talk a little bit about how you got into that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, into that. Yeah, so I mean, my background is really in reviews, right. I was an early employee at a company called G2.com, which is the largest software review marketplace, and I kind of got indoctrinated by the power of reviews. Right. I watched these really small software vendors compete with the sales forces, the oracles, the SAPs of the world, entirely from the voice of their customers, right, and it was super powerful to watch and and to watch those companies really grow and flourish was impressive. And you know, there's, there's so much research done on on the buying process of of software these days, and other other services as well, but so much of the the research done by the buyer happens before they reach out to sales or before a sales rep even knows that hey, this is an in-market buyer, right, this is somebody that we should be tapping as a lead, and so it's been pretty fascinating to bring that to logistics.
Speaker 2:I think in the early days of carrier source, we just realized that there was so many hardworking and professional carriers out there that didn't have any way to show a fair reputation online, right, there were freight guard reports inside carrier 411, can't get a positive freight guard report, right.
Speaker 2:There was TIA watchdog reports for theft and fraud and that's important for the industry, right, but again, couldn't get a positive watchdog report. And outside of that, it was really just Google reviews, and I think everybody has their own opinions of Google reviews. For most carriers, half the time it's a disgruntled former employee driver who writes 40 reviews, right, and it's not verified. It's not industry specific, and so you know, originally we just really wanted to help good carriers stand out. And in terms of getting one negative review because you were late to a receiver or or, um, you know, somebody had a bad experience with a dispatcher or whatever it might be like, that happens every single day, probably too many times Right, but oftentimes it's out of the control of the carrier or they take action to remedy the situation, but they're never, never highlighted for that and right, and so if you've got nine positive reviews and one negative review, like that's a very realistic situation for a carrier.
Speaker 1:Right, you're always leery of only positive and you're leery of only negative. But when you see Little Mix, you go okay, this is legit, this is real. It just gives you a better feeling about doing business with them. And I think you're right, because we only highlight negative things, usually Only things that go wrong. We don't usually have a place to highlight things that go right or go well. I even think about the flawed view of inspections. A lot of brokers have a standard that carriers have so many inspections in order for them to be legit, not often understanding that inspections come from breaking the law. You do something wrong, you get an inspection. If you have a lot of inspections in your new carrier, that's not a good sign. But we tend to think that that's good that they have inspections. Oh, if they don't have any inspections, something must be wrong, like it's this mindset that we have. That is not healthy. This gives a place to change that perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we hear from drivers all the time like, hey, you're showing I have no inspections, and now this broker won't work with me, but I've worked with CH and Warner and whoever for years, like what's happening? And that's when we say like, hey, sorry about that. We also disagree with that approach. But if you go, it's free to gather reviews, like, go get reviews from Warner and CH and your reps there, who you've worked with for a long time, and use that as an advocate for you, right, and so that's the way we hope to approach that. But yeah, it never really made sense to me that by trying to do something negative in order to prove that you're a good, a good carrier, was was the right way to do that.
Speaker 1:Right, I agree, and it should be a standard process for carriers to simply just send an email. Thank you for the opportunity. Would you please take 60 seconds and give us a quick review on how we did? You know, good or bad, just make that a part of the process. And I think that's really powerful because social proof really matters, like we've talked about earlier. So you started with carriers, now you're shifting over to brokers to also let carriers get a chance to review brokers. Talk about how that's going. It's going well. What's been good about that? What's been challenging about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been interesting. You know it was a long requested feature and we always intended to do it, and you know it's only fair that if brokers could review carriers, that carriers should be able to review brokers, right, and it's been going pretty well so far. I think the initial wave of reviews tends to lean a little negative, right.
Speaker 1:Everybody's like oh, I got a spot, I got a chance, I can. I can say what I feel, like you know that kind of attitude towards it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that happened on the carrier side, right, Like the first brokers that were writing reviews. It was negative a little bit to start, but 80, 85% of our reviews in general of negativity and a few specific brokers that may have been a little sketchy, that weren't paying carriers right, that suddenly got 10 reviews very quickly for never paying carriers. Once we got past that it did start to become much more positive as we've gathered more reviews, and so it's been interesting to see that and I think you know we hope to live in that positive middle ground. Right, you know we don't want to just be a dumping ground for complaints. Right, we want to promote the folks who are good to work with and help them build genuine partnerships.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's huge, I mean. I think again it goes back to the idea of like partnerships, relationships. Those things really matter and, like you said, if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. I think it's great that carriers get a chance to review brokers as well and, for the same thing, I think the brokers should make that a part of the process. Simply just send an email. Hey, thanks for holding that load. You did a great job. Would you review us and just give us honest feedback? And I think, if it becomes a part of the standard process, you're going to get some positive, you're going to get some negative. It's going to help you grow as a company, but it also creates a very realistic picture and puts just a little bit more onus, a little more pressure on doing the right things, and I think that's you know, ultimately, that's that's really good Cause, as you said, the psyche of a buyer and the research that they're doing ahead of time now, because it's available, is really powerful. It's become a standard part of the process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so building trust during that pre-research phase for a buyer is just so critical. And so when we were at G2, we ran surveys and we actually found that if you had eight five-star reviews, one four-star review and a two-star review, that was a much more trustworthy profile page than 10 five-star reviews. People were just naturally-.
Speaker 1:That's not real. Nobody's a five-star every day.
Speaker 2:And you take that to transportation right, and it's impossible to be perfect in this space. There's just too many outside factors that influence the ability to pick up on time, deliver on time, communicate constantly throughout. And sure, some folks, some loads, do go that way and that's great right, but it's just it's not a hundred percent there and so you know, when folks do get negative reviews, it's free to respond to those reviews. We really encourage them to do that to help build that trust right. Show that you provide a high level of customer support, that you care about your company's reputation, you care about your relationships with your brokers or direct customers, and highlight that on your page through a professional response to a negative review.
Speaker 1:Yep, and I know how I feel when I see a company respond to a review, especially a negative review. What's the research on the psychological impact that that has for a buyer when they see a company respond to a negative review? What's the research on the psychological impact that that has for a buyer when they see a company respond to a negative review, especially if it's with grace or with humility? Talk a little bit about that. Obviously, if they come out blasting, that might not be great, but talk about the psyche of that and what companies can do when they respond to make it more in their favor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and in those same research reports that we ran, those same surveys, right, we asked what is more impactful to you an additional, another five-star review or a really strong response to a negative review? And it was overwhelmingly the response to the negative review was more impactful to a potential buyer, right, and so it just reinforces that you should be responding to every review, five-star reviews included, just to say, hey, thank you, appreciate your business, can't wait to keep working with you.
Speaker 1:But those negative reviews.
Speaker 2:Showing that you care is just critical.
Speaker 1:Who's the best person to handle that within an organization? Should this fall in the marketing department's jobs? Should this be, maybe, in the sales job? Should owners do this? I mean, who's the best person to really own that, that relationship, that digital relationship of reviews?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it kind of depends on the the organization Right. I think there's there's opportunities for owners to respond directly. I think if you have a customer support team, those folks can easily be on top of it. Oftentimes marketing is tasked with it because they manage the profiles right, and so they are the ones that are inside there and can respond. But at the end of the day, your employees should represent your company equally right. Everybody who you hire becomes the face of your team, and so you, you should feel empowered to do that regardless.
Speaker 1:Wait a minute, rob, wait a minute. What are you saying here? Everybody on your team is a part of the sales and marketing team. Is this what you're saying? A little bit, I agree, I mean I agree.
Speaker 1:Every member of your team has an impact on whether somebody either buys your products or continues buying your product, all the way down to the engineer who's building the platform, to the salesperson who sold it, to the customer service person who takes a phone call, to the marketing person who speaks to prospective buyers. I've said this before Everybody on your team is in sales and marketing, whether they're designated that or not. So I think that's very true, but I think somebody needs to own it for sure. I think the worst thing that can happen is a negative review that doesn't even get addressed, because it kind of silences compliance. It kind of gives validity to it whenever people don't speak up, totally agree. And even if it is valid, the company just responds and says you know what? We got that wrong. Here's a coupon for your next visit, dude, that's huge. Win a customer back, win over future customers by going wow, these people are awesome. I mean, it's not rocket science, but I think it takes time and intentionality to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, and I think there's definitely two different psyches with all of this. I think sometimes brokerages that are relying on spot freight that aren't necessarily building the same foundational relationships with carriers that they should be most of the time right, they're going to view reviews a little differently. I think those direct customers that are coming in and looking at that they're really wanting to build a strong carrier network and they're also looking for strong brokerage partners too, right? And so they are going to dig into those reviews a little differently, right? I think you know, if six out of 10 reviews are good for a spot load that you know you're only making a little bit of money on, I think most brokers are going to say great, can they take it? Wonderful, let's go. Those direct customers are looking a little more critically than that. They want to make sure that, um, overwhelmingly the the you know loads are going to go smoothly and and that the relationship is going to be really positive yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, that's a powerful way to think about it, for sure. So, and you you mentioned at the beginning that one of your kind of missions for carrier source was to help carriers have a better representation or reputation, digital footprint out there. So one thing that you also do is that you basically provide carriers with kind of a pseudo website through your platform. So a lot of carriers don't have websites, or that's something that some have, but a lot of them might have a starter website and you're working on giving them a little bit of a digital footprint from a marketing perspective as well. Talk a little bit about what carriers get through carrier source.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so everybody's got a profile page that's free to come in and claim and access and you can update some information on there. Right, put a good description of your business, the services you provide, what type of equipment you have, what type of shipments you run in lanes states regions you service. Right, you could put all that out there for free If you want to utilize our enhanced sales and marketing features. Right, you can upgrade your profile page. Make it look nice. Put a nice branded banner image across the top.
Speaker 1:Make it look nicer. Make it look nicer, it still looks nice. The site does look very nice. I've seen them. I've seen them. Yeah, they can upgrade it, but the free one still looks really good.
Speaker 2:Mark, one of my co-founders, would get on me. He's our front-end engineer and designer, so it does look beautiful, mark, but you can make it look even nicer and branded. You can also advertise throughout the site. We're doing nearly half a million visitors to the site every month right now. It's huge. Your traffic's insane, yeah. And visitors to the site every month right now it's huge. Your traffic's insane, yeah, yeah. And so it's a great opportunity to push your brand out there. You can spin up a business website through your profile page. You can purchase your own domain, you put it in there and you instantly get a business website that is your own, and then we provide some lead generation services as well to some of those mid-market and bigger folks who are looking to attract direct customers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which again I think is really powerful, because if you're a smaller carrier when I say smaller, I mean if you have under a hundred trucks getting a seat at the table with shippers sometimes is really difficult, and so having the ability to market them I've been saying this for a long time I think every carrier out there needs to intentionally start marketing directly to shippers, because obviously those relationships are really powerful. Brokers are incredibly helpful and a part of the equation, so it's a mix of all, but if you can start marketing to shippers as well, that's a huge benefit for some of those carriers as well. So I love the fact you're just giving them a voice, giving them a place to do that, and I think that's really powerful. Before we have a little bit of fun, how could a carrier or a broker learn more about this and potentially claim their profile and get started with you guys?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so anybody can come to CarrierSource. Like I said, it's open. It's free to access. You can search for your company, whether that be a brokerage or a carrier, on CarrierSource. It's free to claim your profile page when you sign up there Once you do that CarrierSourcecom.
Speaker 1:Right here's that ios is important. Why we ask so carriersourceio. That's where they need to go that's good enough.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, free to sign up, free to free to access that profile page. And then, yeah, if you are interested in learning how we help you get more direct customers, feel free to reach out to me or go through the channels on the website perfect.
Speaker 1:And now I gotta ask you just a question, just totally off the mark, before we even do our random question. This is another random question is what does I-O stand for? I know, Gov is government, EDU is education, B-I-Z is biz, Com is commercial. What does I-O stand for.
Speaker 2:I always make the joke that it means that you couldn't afford the com.
Speaker 1:That's what it stands for. But there has to be something right. I mean I don't know, does anybody know what does IO stand for? I mean it's there's gotta be something.
Speaker 2:It stands for IndianOcean, and I don't know why. Are you being serious?
Speaker 1:I am yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's some nerdy techie thing that I know, but yeah, it stands for dot Indian ocean. I think it initially had to do where servers were based and what folks were doing there, but yeah that's what it's?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. It's funny because I think back in the day, obviously and still now, thecom kind of is is most desirable, but you're seeing more IOs, you're seeing more dot AIs, you're seeing a lot more dot dot net. For example, some of those um we've, I've even seen some like manifest.
Speaker 1:Every I mean the manifest there is is m-a-n-i-f-e dot s-t yeah, so it's not even a com, or what if it's just manifest when you read it, with the dot in there, starting to see more and more of those. It's starting to become a little more acceptable than I think it was, you know, five, ten years ago yeah, we debated carriersource early on.
Speaker 2:We almost almost did that. It would have been an interesting one.
Speaker 1:Carriersource or carrier-sourcecom, because you can get that, but you got a dash in there. All these things you got to decide when you're thinking of a name and where you're going to park your company digitally. Pretty fascinating stuff. Okay, now it's time for the official random question of the day. We like to ask a question that I haven't seen. Our producer. They make these up so it could be funny, it could be serious, it could be a good question, it could be a dud. I have no idea. Let's see. What is it today? The random question of the day today is oh, we're putting you on the spot. If you could give a piece of advice to a previous employer, you're going to do a review anonymous. What would it be? What would you give to a previous employer, previous?
Speaker 2:employer? Yeah, it's a good question, I think, um, I would push on training for middle management more. I think in the startup world so often you hire younger folks who are eager and excited about an idea right and you you slowly elevate them throughout the organization as the company grows and matures. But oftentimes you're putting people who are strong and ambitious individual contributors into management roles, which I think is a fine way to go about it if you are really backing it up with lots of management training and an innate understanding of how to manage those folks who were formerly your peers right on your team. So that would be kind of the one thing that I've taken away at working in startups.
Speaker 1:That is so well said. I think it is incredibly accurate. I know from personal experience. I'll just let you in on it. I'm a terrible manager of people. I was an individual contributor for so long. I never was put in that position or really trained to do that. I'm not complaining about it, I'm just saying that was my career path. That's what happened, and I realized that when you go from being an individual contributor to a manager of people without experience or training, it's not great. It's not great, and that's why we have coleman ruffin, because he's managed people before and he's good at it and I'm not. So you know, I think there's a lot of truth to be said about that. You know, it's crazy. Back in the 80s, management training was a big thing and then I think companies got into having to, just like you know, figure, find ways to make shareholders happier, make more profit, and they cut that stuff out. It's rare to find companies that are really good at management training these days.
Speaker 2:It's incredibly rare and I think for so long, especially in the tech world. Right it's, it was hyper growth was the focus. And so you know you were either elevating those younger folks who were individual contributors that you probably weren't paying very much in the first place, right um, into those management roles, which I think is the right approach, because they have an innate understanding of the business, where it's come from, what needs to happen. They've learned, they've grown, they've made it that far. Or you're bringing in outside management to come in and then you know, suddenly the folks who've kind of felt like they've really built that company are now being told what to do by somebody who didn't cut their teeth in there are now being told what to do by somebody who, who didn't cut their teeth in there, um, and so that's, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It's a hard balance, but I think if you are able to support those folks as you are elevating internally, it makes for a smoother transition, easier growth and yeah better benefit for the company well, and I think of companies like chick-fil-A, who, if you're going to be an operator at one of their stores, you go to corporate and you do a lot of training on everything from the business, but also hiring people, managing people, all the things that go into it, and they're super intentional. Culver's is the same way. Some of these restaurants that are really successful are the same way. I mean, I just think a lot of that is missing. That's a really profound statement. Sadly, that is a profound statement that you made about middle management.
Speaker 2:It's a super hard skill. Like you said, it's not my number one skill either in terms of people management. So those folks that do get that support and training, I know that they do better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, 100%. So I couldn't have said it better myself. So, all all right. Well, listen, hey, man. Uh, that got that got really serious there for a minute talking about leadership, but I think it's true. But anyways, it's always good to have you on the show, my friend. I'm excited to see you down in Fort Worth soon. And for what carrier source has coming up next? So for everybody, uh, thanks for being on the show. Man, appreciate it. Thanks for having me try. It's been great. All right, everybody, make sure you come back every Tuesday for another episode just like this, with wonderful guests like Rob light, and make sure also that you sign up, if you haven't yet, for the broker carrier summit. We can't wait to see you down in Fort Worth.
Speaker 1:If you're a small to medium sized carrier looking for brokers who are actually going to help you grow your business, this is the place to find them. Have a meal together, talk business together. Same thing for small to medium freight brokers. If you're trying to find carriers that you know you can rely on to make you stand out and look good for your customers, this is the place to go. Check it out at brokercarriersummitcom and, until next time, make sure that you also check out our friends over at sales-crm my good friend Josh Lyles and what they're building for freight brokers to manage and organize your sales. You don't want to miss out on that. Make sure you let them know that you heard about it right here. On Standing Out and finally, as we head out, remember, friends, stop standing still, start standing out. We'll talk to you real soon.
