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
Remote Sales Strategies and Personal Branding Explained with Cody Koehler
Ever wondered how a friendly baseball bet could lead to a deep dive into the freight industry? Join Trey Griggs and Cody Koehler, the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at A&Z Trucking, as we chat about everything from my pink New York stocking cap to the power of LinkedIn in bringing industry professionals together. Cody offers a peek into the operations at A&Z Trucking.
Technology is revolutionizing logistics, and we're here to unpack its impact. Armed with partnerships like Turbo's TMS and Parade, they discuss how to tackle capacity challenges head-on. If you’re looking for insights into how podcasting can amplify industry connections and knowledge-sharing, this part of our conversation is one you won’t want to miss.
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 https://lnkd.in/eM7F82qj
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.
what's up everybody. Hey, everybody, what's up everybody, and welcome to another episode of standing out. Welcome to another episode of Standing Out. What's up everybody. Welcome to another episode of Standing Out. Now you may be wondering those regular time viewers what is happening today. Why am I wearing a New York stocking cap and why is it pink? Listen, these are great questions. We're going to answer those later today. We're glad that you're here.
Speaker 1:I'm Trey Griggs, founder and CEO of Beta Consulting Group, so glad that you're with us today for another episode of Standing Out, a podcast about sales, marketing and leadership. Hey, do me a favor after the show, go check us out at betaconsultinggroupcom and see how we are helping companies with their marketing, their messaging, their branding. We're all about building great brands in the industry. And also you can find us on YouTube to find other episodes of Standing Out and Word on the Street and the other things that we like to do in the industry. Also, before we get started today and bring on our wonderful guests from the Valley of the Sun, got to say thank you to our friends over at sales-crm. Josh Lyle is my good buddy. He's building a CRM specifically for freight brokers and you got to keep this in mind.
Speaker 1:Not all CRMs are created equal, especially when most CRMs are not built with your freight brokerage in mind. Sales-crm is built by freight brokers, exclusively for freight brokers, so be sure to visit sales-crmcom or check us out at betaconsultinggroupcom. Forward slash standing, dash out. We've got all the information right there as well. You can request a demo. Learn a little bit about them, learn a little bit about us. A lot of good stuff on the page as well. Thank you, josh, appreciate your support. All right, it is time to bring our guest on to the show. Today Met this guy on LinkedIn. It's the power of LinkedIn, everybody and how we connected. He is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at A&Z Trucking.
Speaker 2:Please welcome Cody Kohler. I love it.
Speaker 1:You've probably never seen somebody in a pink stocking cap jamming out Interesting man. It doesn't happen a lot. It doesn't happen a lot.
Speaker 2:How you doing man, what's going on. I'm great man. How about?
Speaker 1:yourself. Well, I got a quick question who's your favorite baseball team? Do you like baseball? Are you a fan?
Speaker 2:no-transcript, and I'm hoping that maybe we can be on the right end of a three oh series.
Speaker 1:That was an Epic, Epic meltdown against belt Boston. I'll never forget that. It was pretty, pretty intense, First time it ever happened. But yeah, you know the recording of this is the day after game four of the world series. It's now a three one series lead for the Dodgers, and so I'm going to put you on the spot here when this comes out, the world series will be over. I'm going to put you on the spot what's going to be the outcome of this world series who's winning and how many games.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I mean I've got to go with us winning in seven, I mean I my heart's got to go there, right.
Speaker 2:I mean, my gut's telling me that that's a big hill to climb, but you know, we looked. We looked good last night. We got Cole on the on the hill tonight and I think, if we can you know I was listening to something last night, I think it was on ESPN or something but there's never been a game six in the world series. If anyone's ever been down three, oh, there hasn't even been a game five since 1970. Really, yeah, I was shocked by that. Usually they just roll over If they're down 3-0, right, I guess that makes sense, yeah, or gentlemen's sweep.
Speaker 1:Sometimes they might get one, but then they'll lose the next one, I guess that makes sense, but I'm a little surprised that it's been that long.
Speaker 1:Well, at least they'll make some history if they win the next game. They can at why you play the games. You just never know. You never know what's going to happen with that. Now let's get to why I'm wearing a pink stocking cap with new york on it. All right, so I'm a royals fan. I'm from kansas city. We had a little banter, uh, online by the power of linkedin like this. This podcast doesn't happen, our friendship doesn't happen without the power of linkedin. But I was posting about new york or about, uh, the new york royals series, new yorkC series.
Speaker 1:I was hopeful that the Royals would play well. I felt like they had a great shot after winning a game in New York, because now we're going to a big ballpark and they play small ball and that would have been, should have been in our advantage. We just, you know, every at bat seemed like we were trying to win this stupid thing and we ended up losing. But we had a little bet and that was that I'll wear it on Word on the Street. I figured this was a nice little kind of middle ground compromise, for now that you can see in why the whole show while we're on the show, so I'm just going to wear this thing the whole show. We'll just go with that, but that's why it is.
Speaker 1:Now, why is it pink, cody? Well, that's a good question. The reason it's pink is that I'm a girl dad, and just about I think four out of every five things in my home are pink, and so I don't have a lot of options here. Not a lot of options. This is what we're working with today, so we got to go with this. All right, cody, let's get this show on the road here. Talk a little bit about what you do and a little bit about ANZ Trucking. You guys are freight brokers. You have some assets that are available.
Speaker 2:Talk specifically about the freight that you move and your role as a senior vice president of sales and marketing. Sure, so ANZ Trucking started in 2003. So we've been around 25 years in February. So you know pretty aged brokerage we started out of the. Our CEO owner actually owns a produce wholesale company as well in New York, upstate New York, and kind of got tired of dealing with freight brokers. So he said you know F it, yeah, he's like I can do a better job, right. So he's like I'm just going to start a brokerage and that's kind of how it started.
Speaker 2:And he's like he's literally the American tale. Like he, you know, he came over here when he was 15, from India, right, and worked in New York, started his original company, which is the Far Protein that's our wholesale site off of a pallet of tomatoes. It's a really cool story, like really really cool story. I think I screwed up most of the time that I tell it, but basically he got 200 bucks. He was working a bread route right, driving for a bread route and delivering to all these food service companies, all these restaurants and everything. And they kept asking him like hey, can you get fresh produce? Blah, blah, blah. And he's like oh well, you know we don't carry it. But he got 200 bucks because they were expecting him and his now wife were expecting their first child together. Got 200 bucks to go buy a? Um a crib, so didn't tell his wife that. He got the 200 bucks and went down to the bronx market and bought a pallet of tomatoes with instead and went and literally started delivering tomatoes to all the restaurants on his bread route, turned that 200 bucks into a thousand bucks and then just continued from there and he built. I can't remember how many companies he owns now, but built his whole empire off of pallet of tomatoes. It's really cool story. But, um, for us, you know, A&Z started in 03, um ANZ started in 03. Anz started in 03.
Speaker 2:We are very, very heavy in the produce industry, you know. So we move I don't know. Probably 90% of what we move is produce A lot of California, washington, idaho, arizona stuff. So if you guys, you know, ever listen to anything that I'm ever on or my podcast, we talk a lot about produce logistics. You know the difference between Yuma season and Salinas season. For everybody who doesn't know, any salad that you're eating during the year, whether it's Olive Garden or store-bought, it's either grown in Yuma, arizona, or Salinas, california, depending on the year. And so, yeah, I mean we work, we're all food and bed. We don't really move any, we don't chase, we don't move flatbeds, we don't do that. We're very good at what we do. And we're very good at what we do and we've been doing it for a long time and it's very, very good.
Speaker 2:Power lane I mean our power lanes are honestly anything outbound out of those produce regions. We actually do own assets. We own our own warehouses in Washington State so we do apples, pears, cherries, onions, all that sort of stuff out of there. We also own a warehouse in Salinas, california, one in Yuma, arizona, and one in New Windsor, new York, so upstate New York, and we do a lot of like cross-stock consolidation programs for customers. So for those people who don't move produce, trust me, you never get a one pick, one drop. I'm just being honest with you. Everything's just in time, right. You don't know how the harvest goes every single day. Most people don't realize that if you see a load of produce on a truck, it was harvested the day that it's loading. There's no back, with the exception of, like onions and um, apples and potatoes and stuff. But, like you're leaving stuff that's literally harvested at 8 am, cooled at noon and on the truck by like 6 to 8 pm, um, and then you know boogieing across the the nation, usually on a team, because there's such a short shelf life, right? And so we decided about seven years ago to get into the warehousing game.
Speaker 2:Um, because of the difficulty that a lot of our customers are having. Like, if you get a team load that needs to go to california to new york or from california to new york in two days and they spend two or three days loading because they got six pigs, a product that they first loaded, it's gonna be toast right? So, yeah, yeah, we do is we have contracted um carriers that work with us. They're all dedicated to just us and um, our customers will just send out pos to us, right? They're just gonna say, hey, I need these 15 pos picked up today. Um, this is what the outbound loads look, need to look like.
Speaker 2:So we route everything according to you know distance and and what makes sense and all that fun stuff and availability of the product, and then we send out our fleet, whether it's on a bobtail or a semi or whatever it is going to be that day, depending on the number of pallets. They bring all that stuff into us and then we build the outbound pallets. So what you know, we can take a. I think our top was like a 16 picker we can take 16 picks, consolidate it, get all of that done in 12 hours, bring it to our facility and get your outbound truck out. So that's been a huge thing for us. We're one of the few that actually offer that Is your owner, syed Zafar?
Speaker 1:Is that who it is? Syed, yep, syed, yeah, and that's an incredible story about taking 200 bucks, buying the tomatoes, doing the route and then to an empire. I mean that's incredible. I mean, as Frank Sinatra says about New York, if you can make it there, make it anywhere, right, yeah? So that's a cool story. In that regard, I want to ask you about your operation. So you guys are doing a lot of picks, a lot of drops, a lot of cross-docking warehousing. What technology has made the difference for you? Do you guys have a lot of custom proprietary technology, or is there a TMS out there? That's that, that works well with this? I'm just curious, that's. It's obviously more complex than like one pick, one drop, van freight, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So we partner with Turbo Turbo actually has a very good TMS, and then shout out to Josh.
Speaker 1:I didn't know he was one of your sponsors.
Speaker 2:I love his CRM. Yeah, I'm a faithful user of SalesDash. I actually have it in the background behind my laptop, right now, Josh, we didn't plan this man. We didn't plan it, we're just giving you some extra love.
Speaker 1:Josh is a good friend of mine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's a phenomenal CRM for, priced right and functions great for what we do. But yes, we do have some proprietary software but we partner really heavy with that too. That helps us a lot with customizable data for us, because we are kind of unique with what we do right. We also partner with Parade. Parade has been a great partner of ours from a capacity standpoint. They've really helped us figure out a couple issues that we had in the past. They're a great company to work with. If anybody is new in this industry, the capacity crunch will be here. I know it's been easy. I don't want to say easy, but it's been easier the last two years right, capacity wise, but it's coming. You know I've been in this industry for 21 years and every high has a low. So if you're not preparing right now for when that capacity crunch is going to happen, you know you're going to be in trouble.
Speaker 1:So Parade's one of the great partners of ours. There's such a blessing in having a history of being through some cycles and kind of knowing what to expect. You don't know when it's going to happen, but you kind of know what's going to happen when it does. And that's a huge benefit to have that. And I don't know if you noticed or not, but I got my career start in the industry at DAT. I don't know if you Did you yeah so?
Speaker 1:2012,. I'm living in Portland, Oregon, and I was doing door-to-door sales of office supplies and I did that for 15 months and then I was ready to get a real sales job quote-unquote something with a salary and some benefits, maybe because I was 100% commissioned doing door-to-door stuff and the recruiter that I met there just happened to have a relationship with Janice Compton, who's the director of inside sales at DAT, and that's how I kind of got my foot in the door and got in the industry and 13 years later, still here and can't really get out. As you know, like once you're in it's a great industry, it's hard to get out. But I remember when I was at DAT, 18 months in, I got promoted to the enterprise side with Mike Weaver and at that time we had some really, really talented people at DAT, jeff Nassoff being one of them, and he basically came back to Mike and the team said, hey, we're sitting on this data. That's really good. We just don't have a way to put it on the, on the, on the load board. We don't have a way to put it out there for people to see. And that's the whole beginning of professional services.
Speaker 1:That was the beginning of their analytics arm, what they're doing extensively, and I remember just being there. It's like we had this data on spreadsheets that we just started selling and it was dark capacity. It was good. It was good data, good information, more of the search history, which is real valuable what carriers are searching. That's happening. So it was. It was interesting to be a part of that, you know, and to see where it's come. At this point, it sounds like you guys are getting a lot of benefit out of it yeah, they're a completely different company from even five years ago.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, their analytics has been uh, really, what separates those guys from their competition? Honestly, honestly.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, they rebranded to DAT, frightened Analytics to have that in there. Here's another fun fact about DAT when I started there, if you said dat, they hated it. They hated it. They were like no, it's DAT, it's DAT, it's DAT. And we had to drill that into the minds of customers and prospects and our marketing and all that. And I think now they're like I don't care. I hear people saying all the time In fact, I think I heard one of their employees actually call it that recently. So some things have changed over time. I guess is how that goes, which is good. Before we go any further, you did mention having a podcast called Crossing the Finish Line. You've hit eight episodes. You're just getting started. You're on your way to that. What led you to start a podcast? What kind of got you to that of? Hey, I think I want to do this. I mean, chris Jolly had to be, you know, inspiration.
Speaker 2:I'm really good friends with Jolly and Samantha Jones, right, I've worked with both of those guys professionally.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they're both great friends as well as Cassandra, right, cassandra Gaines, that's. That was actually the first podcast I was ever a guest on was hers. Oh, okay, a couple of years ago. Yeah, and I, I'm, I'm on the DAT podcast usually every quarter or two to talk about produce with those guys. So, yeah, I had a lot of outreach actually from some of the episodes I was on and people were reaching out to me and wanting to work with us, and so I figured, you know, if that's going to help me on my personal branding and help our company, then I figured it'd be worth a shot, and it's been good. You help our company, then I figured it'd be worth a shot, and it's been good. We've had a lot of great guests. Hopefully you'll be on there one day and talk some sales with me. We're actually really happy.
Speaker 2:I'm talking with Jolly and Samantha about doing a big end of year blowout. Just do a big consortium of people who are in sales Do a big episode hour, hour and a half, or whatever talk about have a guest come on little by little, two at a time one at a time, three at a time, yeah, yeah, yeah, you should join us for that for sure.
Speaker 1:Come in. I mean, as long as I can do it, man, I'm in. That sounds like a lot of fun and I love the fact that you did that, because I think people think of podcasting and if or nobody's going to listen, there's kind of that doubt that creeps in of what to do. I think it's great, man, because it's like, in my opinion, the podcast of 2024, 2025, your strategy is really like the blog of 2006. Back in the day, people were like, should we start a blog? And now you know, we realize that blogs are a great way to get information and listening to podcasts it's become a regular part of how people consume information. I mean, think about the presidential campaigns. I mean we don't know who won at this point because when we're doing it we'll know it after this.
Speaker 1:But the thing I've noticed about this cycle is how much podcasting is playing a role where it hasn't before. I mean, that's all people want to listen to, right, it's a podcast because it's unscripted, it's uncut, it's unedited, it's just raw. It's real, and it's funny how we're kind of moving back to that direction. It's like before you had to be with somebody in person and live to know that they're real, and now we're starting to move back to that where we want to see a podcast, where they're just sitting there, the cameras are rolling, there's no editing, that's how we know it's real. Podcasting is a big deal. I'm so glad that you started it, man. That's awesome. Yeah, it's been, it's been great I got.
Speaker 2:Surprisingly, I have a lot of customers that watch it right and they'll, they'll, hit me up afterwards and all of them are like gun shy, like oh, I don't know if I I want to be on there. I don't know, and that's the thing. Every customer, everybody has a unique story, that nobody else has lived.
Speaker 1:You know, even if it's the same, if it was a produce grocery store chain, whatever, even though it's the same type of business, the way they got there and how they run it and who they are as people, it's always unique, it's always different. So kudos to you, man.
Speaker 2:Great, yeah, it's. I mean I came from the shipper side.
Speaker 2:I was on the shipper side for 12 or 13 years, you know, and then, I, yeah, and I actually I worked with ANZ on a consolidation product or a project in Denver at the time, right after I'd moved down to Phoenix. I grew up in Utah, just right out of Salt Lake, right outside of Salt Lake, originally Moved down here to work with Taylor Farms for a year, was director for those guys and just became really good friends with Saeed. I was director for those guys and just became really good friends with Saeed and you know he made me an offer that was was good enough to jump ship and you know been great ever since.
Speaker 2:So, but that's awesome, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:What, what, what? Suburb of Salt?
Speaker 2:Lake city. I lived in Layton, so like right by Hill Air Force Base, just right on Dude that is beautiful out there um, especially winter time. Right, if you can win a title driving in the show.
Speaker 1:Oh man, yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. That was one of my first territories at dat, so I was like my second business trip that I ever took at. Dat was actually just tallake city with uh celestial freight down in provo and uh steven on the freight tech uh there in uh uh bountiful, which is like just north, and uh um uh, oh man, I'm failing to remember all of them, but yeah, there was a lot of customers there. Cr England was there, josh England became a friend of mine. Just a lot of neat people there in Salt Lake City. But the views, man.
Speaker 2:Amazing, really incredible. And if you're into outdoor stuff, I mean you can't beat Utah. You have family there. You still go back yeah, I still go up there. In fact, that's originally how I listened to Jolly's first podcast. I was joking with him. Last week I was driving to Utah to go to a golf tournament with a customer and I was listening to an episode of Joe Rogan and his popped up as like a suggestion. Right, and this was three. This dude's in Phoenix he's right by me Listen to like his whole catalog driving up to Utah. And then afterwards I was like I got to meet this dude Him and I have been like great friends ever since then.
Speaker 1:Oh man, one of the best, one of the best guys in the industry, that's for sure. You're a golfer. I like hearing this too, man. We're learning all kinds of things. So we got to get you to. The event itself is phenomenal, but we have the Post and Pray Classic. The Post and Pray Classic it is the premier golf tournament in the industry. We give away the best giveaways. It's a two-person team event, it's not a four-person scramble. I hate those things. I hate four-person scrambles. People are cheating all the time. It's terrible for your golf game. We play a shamble, which is a little bit different. You'll help off the tea like a scramble and then you play it. Anyways, we got to get you out there to the Berkacare Summit and to the Postal Break Classic and I play. That'll be great. Or I just need to come down to Phoenix and play some Desert.
Speaker 2:Always welcome down here, buddy.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's what we ought to do right there for sure. All right, let's jump back into talking about this. We had a conversation on LinkedIn when we first got connected, because I just asked what are you seeing out there, what's going on, how's that? And you kind of shared with me that you know, obviously, volumes are okay, even up a little bit, but margins are way down and your sales guys are working hard. They're making less money. And I asked you this question. I want to dissect this a little bit. How do you keep a sales team intact, motivated, driven, excited, energetic, when you're in a down season, when you're down a market? They're working harder, but they're making less money. I mean, what do you do in the moment? To that? I'm sure you're projecting hey, listen, this is going to pay off in the long run because as rates come up, margins will go up and you'll be making more at that point. But in the Valley sometimes it's hard for people to get that perspective. Talk about what you do with your team just to keep them in the game.
Speaker 2:It's all about culture number one and I know I'm going to sound like a broken record because most people talk about culture. Right, but at the end of the day, from a company standpoint, we know that there's going to be times where we've got to take care of our employees because the market's going to dictate. X Market's the market. Right, we can't change the market, so for us, it's just finding new creative ways to incentivize them, maybe switching up your KPIs. It's not all about gross profit all the time. At the end of the day, you got to make money and keep the lights on and get that. But right now I'm more concentrated on what they're doing today to help us next year and help them next year. So it's planting the seeds. It's understanding that we live in some very long sales cycles in food and beverage. Some of them are six months, some are 12 months, so you could prospect somebody for a year and not get any chance. But all it takes is that one RFP and you can change your life forever from a monetary standpoint. So it's fine. In just creative ways. I'm more focused on quality right now. So I think I mentioned this yesterday on my podcast with Samantha. I would rather my sellers right now. So I think I mentioned this yesterday on my podcast with Samantha I would rather my sellers right now make five extremely good quality calls a day than 200 cold calls, right, so you know we track length of call.
Speaker 2:That's a big one for me, because you're never going to close a good customer and a 10 minute call. You might close a customer but they're probably never going to pay you. They're going to have crap freight. They're just going to be onboarding people to get rates. You see that a lot, especially in the down market. They'll onboard everybody and they'll send you an RFP, but all they want is your rates to go back to their incumbents and drive the rates down. That's not what we want. We have an ideal customer profile that works for us. That's what we target and you know, for the most part I just want to keep my sellers upbeat. We take care of them. I like to throw out extra little kicker bonuses based off of random KPIs that are going to help us in the long run. Right, it may not produce gross profit dollars today, but I know that it's setting us up for success in six months, 12 months, whatnot?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Now are your sales guys in the same location. Do you have kind of a sales floor? Is everybody remote?
Speaker 2:So we're actually a smaller team. I believe in having a couple of killers instead of a legion of okay people, right? So I have two sellers right now, one's here in Phoenix and one's in California, and strategically it works out for us because they're very close to several of our larger customers, right? So, yeah, it's that, but they both work remote. Um, I don't really care on the sales side if they're ever in an office, quite frankly, because if they're in, if they're wasting time commuting or anything like that, that's time that they're not spending with their customers.
Speaker 1:You know, we travel a lot, and that's an interesting perspective. Obviously, I'll be in outside and traveling a lot. That changes a little bit, but that's an interesting perspective, because some people are diehard Like, hey, sales guys need to be in a, in a, in an office, they need to be working off each other. There needs to be a combat. You know, from a sales perspective, you know that kind of thing and some people are really religious about that. And other people, like you're like, it's not really that important, that's not what matters.
Speaker 1:I think in this day and age. It's a real. It's a real question that people have to ask is do I create an in-house team or do I just go out and get the best talent? I don't care where they are? And I want to ask you this question because you've gone the route of remote what are some of the other metrics besides length of phone calls, which I think that's a great one, by the way. I think that is so solid? What are some other metrics from a remote management perspective that you take a look at just to make sure that these guys are doing well, that they're staying on task, that they, uh, that things are moving along nicely? Cause here's what ends up happening is you hire somebody for sales remote, a killer, quote, unquote killer. You pay them maybe a high salary. It's hard, to hard, to know what they're doing. Sometimes it's hard to kind of really manage them and keep an eye on them. Talk about what you guys do for that.
Speaker 2:So I'm. I'm actually blessed cause I went the talent route right. So I went to find people who are motivated and I am zero micromanager. I've never been a micromanager in my career. I don't believe in it because it's always hindered me and when I've had a manager that was micromanaging me, I think that everybody sells differently, right? So our main KPI we're still going to track volume. Right, we're still going to track productivity. But what we're tracking more is what's the end result versus just your, you know, checking a box.
Speaker 2:I hate, I hate coming up with KPIs that are just check a box, you can hire anybody to check a box. Right, you can hire anybody on the street that can say I can make 200 cold calls a day. Right, in six months, they still haven't produced a dollar for you. I don't care if they check every box, right? Right, it doesn't matter. So for me, it's we also. We, we manage or we measure all of their LinkedIn content, all of their LinkedIn outreach.
Speaker 2:I think LinkedIn that's how you and I hooked up. I think it's a great tool. It's a huge tool for sellers, right? If you're not active on there and you are not creating a personal brand versus just traditional selling, right, exactly, yep, I know what you what, what your specialty is, but personal brand is everything, man, I mean. It turns a this is my famous saying is personal brand is the bridge that turns a cold call into a lukewarm call.
Speaker 2:So they know who Trey Griggs is from seeing this episode. You're a real person. You're not a bot in zoom info that's just randomly saying you know, sending out an email saying, hey, can we move some freight with you? Today it's instead saying hey, I've, I've seen Trey Like he. He talks and talk, he walks the walk. He knows what he's talking about. So that's a big one for us. That was something that we really rolled out this year. It was new to us, but I'm working with Samantha. We actually worked with her on our consulting side. She was a consultant for us for a while and that was something that she pushed and we've seen great results with it. So you know they have KPIs based around how much their output is on LinkedIn, for example.
Speaker 1:I love hearing that and I mean a lot of. I think of it like this Imagine 30 years ago all that salespeople had basically was a phone and a car, maybe, Like that's how they got people. And then email came along and we had to make email a part of the sales process. And now, of course, it's embedded in the sales process. But to me, personal brands is the next thing that you have to incorporate for sales to be successful, especially in our industry. Relationships are everything, and I think about this all the time. Like I follow Gary Vee, you might follow him as well.
Speaker 2:Love.
Speaker 1:Gary Vaynerchuk Love him as well. I feel like I know him. You probably feel the same way, like I know he loves the New York Jets. I know he's big on wine. I know he's big on empathy and leadership and on social media for personal branding and consistency. I feel like I know these four or five things about him and the consistency that he's had makes me feel like I know him, even though I've never met him. I feel like I know him number one. Number two if VaynerMedia ever called me and it came up on my phone, vaynermedia, I'd answer that call, not because I want to work with them or know anything about what they're doing, but because of him. Because of him, and I think that's the power of personal branding is that it creates this feeling, this perception of familiarity and trust, before it ever even starts. You're just getting halfway into the relationship automatically. You know, automatically and like that's like. That's such a powerful thing. I think it's. It's massive Kudos to you guys for doing that. That's huge and Samantha's great Glad you worked with her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. Actually, funny story is I landed a customer that's a Red Sox fan, literally because of an episode yeah, because stuff just go to and he started talking trash on linkedin to me but like in a very that's so great, you know, friendly sort of way. Yeah, yeah, you know, and we became good friends after that. I've got several friends that are red sox fans, but that one was funny because, you know, I landed a customer that came to me which, yeah, most people in this industry, like customers, don't come to you, they don't go to your website and look, they're not googling produce brokers, you know, in america. But you know he happened to be a die hard red sox fan. You never know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you never know I mean the power of linkedin. When I was working at trucker tools, there was this guy now I'm gonna call him out mark labros from mcclay's logistics in detroit all right, my buddy mark. He's a good friend of mine. Now I was calling on this guy and calling on him and no return phone calls, no responses to email, nothing. And then I put a video on LinkedIn of me shooting baskets because I played in college and so I had this video of shooting baskets and the whole point of the video. I think it was like my coach had told me when I was in high school if you learn how to shoot now correctly, you'll always be able to shoot a basketball. And it's true, cause I can, I can, I can shoot pretty well. So can Brent or Suga down there from Phoenix.
Speaker 2:So, anyways.
Speaker 1:So I, so I, I put, I put this out there and lo and behold, Mark LaBrosse likes basketball and he comments on the post and he's like a free year of trucker, Like like how about a one-on-one for a free year, trucker tools? And I was like let's do it. And that started a friendship that has lasted now for like six, seven years. From that one post that I put on social media about basketball. I couldn't get that guy on the phone, Couldn't get him, Yep. And now if I call him he would pick up right away. He's a good friend of mine. You know it's like it's crazy. So love you, Mark, but that's what it took. How do you have an experience like that, like you're a Boston Red Sox fan, for that to happen, and you just never know.
Speaker 2:That's why it's so important to do that.
Speaker 1:It. All right, cody, listen, we have to have a little bit of fun on the show. All right, we're going to play a game, and this game here that we're going to play today is called Would you Rather. Got it All right. Here's how it works. Our producer is going to put something on the screen, this or that, pretty much a Would you Rather and you have to tell us which one and why real quick, and we're just going to go kind of rapid fire here and see how we do. All right, the first one is would you rather have a mullet or a perm?
Speaker 2:Oh, man Like.
Speaker 1:I, I ain't got much left. You know, If you word it out, which one.
Speaker 2:If I had to draw it. I mean I think I'd go with a mullet man.
Speaker 1:Got a party you know that, in my opinion, the only guys that were cool with perms were like the 80s rockers. They could have a perm and they could get away with it.
Speaker 2:I just think of Richard Simmons when I think of perm, right yeah that's actually a bad example.
Speaker 1:So definitely not a perm. I'm mullet on that. All right, that's cool, all right. Next one Would you rather only watch Hallmark movies or only watch horror movies? Horror movies, you're a horror movies guy. See, I'm opposite man, I'm a scary guy. Dude Scream bothered me when I was a kid. Like I can't, I can't handle it. Our producer absolutely loves scary movies and totally makes fun of me for that. Because I do, and I'm also a girl dad. We watch Hallmark movies all the time.
Speaker 2:I'm just you?
Speaker 1:That makes sense. Okay, all right. Next one Would you rather find a rat in your kitchen or a roach in your bed?
Speaker 2:Rat in the kitchen by far.
Speaker 1:I don't want anything in my bed, absolutely not Depends on is it a New York rat? Those can get pretty big.
Speaker 2:But at least I can. I can shoot a rat right Like I can. I can grab a 22.
Speaker 1:But you get a paper towel, you can get the roach out. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 2:True, I don't know, but I always hear that you know if you find one roach, that means there's a couple hundred that you don't know. Are there right?
Speaker 1:Well, maybe there's a bunch of rats rolling around too. Why is there a rat in your kitchen? That's the question. Would you rather live through a zombie apocalypse or a robot Zombie?
Speaker 2:zombie robot. I mean, what are you going to do against a robot?
Speaker 1:apocalypse, exactly, no, I mean, yeah, that freaks you out, there's not much of a chance. Yeah, you get it, you get a, you get a cave and you kind of, you know, wait it out for a while. You might survive, that you know, and kill them a little bit occasionally. But yeah, robot apocalypse does not seem scene. It was awesome. Good, okay, all right, do we have another one here? Last one, here we go. Would you rather have a personal chef or a personal chauffeur? Chef, a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, two reasons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do too. I do too. I think that's one of the reasons why you know how they say that, like in 10 years, none of us are going to own a car, we're just going to ride share, no man, I want to drive.
Speaker 1:Yeah me too that's the fun part of it is driving, so I'm with you. Definitely a personal chef, that would be better. Oh, that'd be good, all right, last one, last little fun thing. We're doing A random question of the day. Cody, we're going to get you out of here on this one. If you could only bring three things with you on a deserted island, what would they be?
Speaker 2:What would you going with? That's a tough one. Three things on a deserted island. I mean one has to be a knife, right, I mean you got to have that, it has to be a knife. And do I get cell reception? Can I bring my phone and still watch sports?
Speaker 1:you know, that's a good one If I could bring like an iPad or something and still see an important detail.
Speaker 2:The question is there a cell tower on the island, right, yeah, I mean, I mean he does say deserted, start starting getting people internet everywhere, right, so that's that's actually what you should do, because it's a deserted island, so there's no internet.
Speaker 1:So you want a starlink satellite, yeah, and then you need to have some sort of generator that never stops, like some sort of perpetual generator, because you got to power the thing at least solar.
Speaker 2:I mean hopefully if it's a desert, tropical right.
Speaker 1:So so so this is funny because you have a knife. So only three things a knife, starlink and some solar powered thing. You don't even have a tv to watch anything on her.
Speaker 2:Yeah exactly, so maybe, maybe, ditch the knife. I can, I can rock, or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe, maybe the knife should go just catch some fish. Uh, as best you can, I don't know that's we have to. No, no knife. No more knife on dessert islands. We need a TV starling, or maybe a laptop, actually a laptop star link.
Speaker 2:I just sold it. I got it on my fourth man. I'm a sports nut, I got. I got my Yankees and my Buckeyes.
Speaker 1:So you can watch sports and move freight. If you had that set up Exactly on a deserted island, Not that it would do any good, but that might be the way to do it. All right, Cody, this has been really fun. Man. Thanks so much for being on the show today. It's good having you. We've got to make the next one happen on a golf course, my friend. I'm down for that any day, buddy, let's do it. We'll talk to you soon, buddy. Cool thanks, All right, everybody. Follow him on LinkedIn. He's a great follow. Knows a lot of stuff. Follow his podcast for sure. It's called Crossing the Finish Line. It's a logistics-based podcast with guests each week, each month. Whenever he does a couple times, he's going to be getting to episode 10. By the way, I don't know if you know this or not, but episode 10 is a key one. Most podcasts never get to episode 10, so he's going to be there real soon and before lyle's over at sales-crm for sponsoring the show.
Speaker 2:We appreciate that and your partnership, my friend, we'll see you guys real soon and have a wonderful thanksgiving coming up. I don't see before. Then, if you don't catch a show, have a wonderful thanksgiving. We'll see you guys real soon. Peace, thank you.
