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
Insights with Charley Dehoney from Manifest 2025
Join us for Standing Out with Charley Dehoney. Charley shares his journey from struggling with working capital as a freight broker to launching Upwell, a company dedicated to transforming logistics finance. The discussion highlights the importance of innovative technology and collaboration in addressing common financial challenges in the industry.
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
Standing Out is a sales, marketing & leadership podcast powered by BETA Consulting Group, created to highlight best practices from industry leaders with incredible experience and insights! The goal is to entertain, educate & inspire individuals & companies to improve their sales, marketing & leadership development outcomes.
Hey everybody, welcome to Standing Out. I'm Trey Griggs. I'm joined here today by my man, Charlie DeHoney of Upwell. We are at the Manifest 2025 conference. Might as well. Do a podcast while we're here. Good to see you, my friend. You too, brother. We had a good time last night. Everybody you don't know this, but we did karaoke. It was phenomenal. I think we had like 40 people in a karaoke room.
Speaker 2:There was significantly more than 40 people. We exceeded the limit. We broke every rule.
Speaker 1:We broke a few rules.
Speaker 2:And drank every drink and everybody had a good time.
Speaker 1:That's right. No, it was a great time. So if you haven't been to Manifest, it's definitely worth going. Also, I will say, if you like, karaoke, the Broker Carrier Summit coming up in April, we're going to have karaoke on Wednesday night.
Speaker 2:Let's go.
Speaker 1:Dude know up. Well, there, you know we're there karaoke. If you like to sing, you know the upwell ladies are going to be ripping.
Speaker 1:I know you guys hey, you guys rolled deep last night. We did, came in with 12, really got the party going. Now, we had a great time food, drinks, it was a blast, it was a good time. All right, let's let's take a moment here and talk up. Well, but before we do that, let's talk a little bit about you and your career. But people may not know about you. Give a quick synopsis and how you got to this point where you took the crazy leap to start up off.
Speaker 2:Um, so thanks for having me, man. It's uh long overdue. Been friends for many years, so super excited to be uh connecting and talking. Of course, it happens at manifest where guys like us come to see each other. But, um, so I'm 21 years in the space, started with worldwide express uh mega broker right out of college, but in those days, um, it was a franchise-based company, and so I was able to work my way up as a top seller, become a leader in the organization and then ultimately got sweat equity and franchises.
Speaker 2:When I was a kid in California, by my late 20s, I was able to exit the organization. I went off on my own and I bootstrapped a couple of logistics companies in San Diego, where I'm from, and my wife became my business partner on that journey and we built two very nice lifestyle businesses while we were starting our family and raising our children. And my wife's superpowers are many and vast, but she's a finance person by trade and her education and background is really in numbers, and so when she became my business partner, she was exposing to me the challenges on the AP and the AR problems, and ultimately what that translates into is working capital for entrepreneurs is your oxygen, because the same money that I would use to pay my carriers is the money I would use to pay for my kids' school and pay for my rent, and so the amount of pressure that was put on our relationship and our family over customers paying us late or us overpaying a carrier and working on getting that money back, it was disproportionate in those days. And I was young and I didn't have a lot of mentorship man, so I didn't know that there was sophisticated working capital solutions that I could go access because, you know, 15 years ago there wasn't a lot and if there were, it was, you know, protecting some small boutique bank. So the long and short is that we were fortunate to sell those two companies in 2014 and be able to move forward from it.
Speaker 2:And then I went on and I was able to work within three venture-backed logistics startups. I picked three winners right in a row Cargomatic, shiphawk and Airspace, three companies that have all gone on to raise large amounts of venture capital and acquire a lot of market share in their respective spaces. But that's where I realized that my background experience in building franchises at Worldwide Express and my kind of hustler entrepreneur just kind of like you know mindset made me really good at that zero to one moment where there's a little technology, there's a decent idea out there, but they need somebody to go burn the shoe leather, get in front of the customers, get the carriers excited about it, get that network or that marketplace going to get the flywheel effect going. That's my gift, that's what I do. So after those three startups, I thought that there was probably a different path for me.
Speaker 2:You know, the evaluations were getting crazy in 2016 and 2017 in the venture-backed world and I thought to myself man, like the founder salary and the startup stock, that's really just monopoly money until it sells anyways. Like I got three kids now, uh, I put my wife through a lot. Uh, she did. She doesn't need to be working now she, she had accepted, you know, her, her real responsibility, which is running my life and our kids and taking care of full-time job, which is a hundred percent. I can't replace it, dude. That's the problem is like I can go hire people to do all the other stuff. There's nobody that could be a mom to my kids and be a wife to me and deal with all my bullshit like she does, and so, um, anyways, as we kind of uh, started thinking about our priorities in life.
Speaker 2:Uh, it was a good time to get out of Southern California. Uh, 2016, 2017 was a time where if you're not a really political person in Southern California, then you were getting. You know, you're getting cast in one bucket or the other, and I don't know about you, man, but that election I didn't want to pick a side in, and so I just decided like this is a good time to find something in the middle of the country over the coals on taxes.
Speaker 1:All this right.
Speaker 2:So let's, let's, let's raise our boys in the middle of the country. And I wanted to find a traditional logistics asset where I could use what I had learned in technology and finance to improve the business and ultimately drive the valuation disproportionately and make some money on the arbitrage. Because my thinking was, if I can take a normal broker and turn it into a digital broker, then I can go sell it to a digital broker, who will go sell it to a VC, and that everybody's making money on the way. So that was the whole idea, man, that's what we met. And then, you know, I was looking for back office automation tools and I was listening to a podcast and I heard, I heard Prasad at Trucker Tools talking about you know what they had going on and I thought this is exactly what we need. I was actually driving from from San Diego to Nebraska in the truck and on the move and I heard that, that podcast, and I was like, man, when I get the business and I get under management, I need something like this. Because the thesis was clear, man, it was really simple. Plan. It was get in, find the business, automate the non-revenue producers out of the operation, repurpose those budget dollars into sales rules, grow the top line revenue and fix this working capital problem that we can see clearly on the books. So a common problem that happens at Freight Brokerage man that most people don't know is like myself as a founder when I was young I just want to go out and chase the freight and solve the problem and say yes to the customer and provide the solution and go have the steak dinner and play in the golf match with my clients. Nobody starts at Freight Brokerage, brother, because they care about accounting and finance. No freight broker ever went to school for economics. So so really what? What I saw in that business that I see in a lot of business commonly, now that I'm working with business owners and finance professionals about how to clean up the finance in the back office, is a lot of people are just making so much money in their brokerage and I mean it's all relative Right, but we're talking.
Speaker 2:The guy bought this thing from his Omaha, nebraska. He's been pulling a couple million bucks a year out of it for a long time. He doesn't need the money. I mean he grew up very modestly and you know Southern Iowa on a farm. I mean if he's rich, there are no signs and that kind of guy generally doesn't care about his AR and his AP because if he's paying his carrier a little faster because they're his friend, it's no problem. If the customer's slow paying but they're just a little behind right now, it's no problem.
Speaker 2:And that's what I saw in that business and I knew if we can go in and we can unlock that working capital, I can repurpose that money into growing the business. And that was the strategy. That's how we executed it. So we bought products like Trucker Tools and HubTran and Buildcom and took these things off the shelf and my man, dave McCoy, who's now a BitBrader he was my guy at Dak Keypoint helped me deal with all that fucked up technology. But I mean, once we got that spaghetti mess fixed and the working capital problem was solved, the business was conveyable and it was conveyable in a really, really good outcome and so we sold the business to Fitzmark.
Speaker 2:There was a right, really good outcome and so we sold the business of Fitzmark. There was a right buyer great, great people. Scott's like one of the best operators I've ever known and and the team thrive. Man, I mean, once I got out of the way and those guys got on Fitzmark's platform and they got all the tooling and the expertise that that Scott's team brought. Omaha is still one of the most profitable offices, which, to me, dude, that's what matters is like I bought that business knowing this great brokerage is not going to be here in 50 years, like like it was either going to die on the vine or it was going to get rolled up to somebody else. And we found the right home for it. And I'm proud, dude, when I drive by that office in Omaha and it doesn't say Manning's on anymore, but it says Fitzmark. But I mean, I still see my team and they still wear their Manning's gear, like they still wear the old school stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so but that was a. That was a great turning point, man, and you know that was an opportunity for me to call my shot and I was building in public a lot Like you, and I met because, like you know, I'd put myself out there on LinkedIn or I'd jump on a podcast or I was writing for freight waves at the time and um and by, just just like. This is what inspires me about you, man it's like you put your ideas out there, it builds community, it gets people around you and I would say that that moment at Manning's and selling that business and that network that I built there set me up to do a lot of things. So fast forward. After that, I wasn't cut out to work at Fitzmark.
Speaker 1:We all figured that out after about five or six months that those guys were way better at freight than I was ever going to be.
Speaker 2:You're like I think we might be better if you just went home. It was more like wait, what do you do here again, you know, like you want to pick up the phone. I mean I couldn't broker any loads. I mean I couldn't tell anybody what the price was like. So anyways, um, I spent a little time trying to think about what I wanted to do with that outcome and I'd sold some shares in airspace year before. So it put me in a situation where a lot of people think they want to be where you're doing angel investing, and so I was working with a lot of startups and I'm really passionate about working with young founders. Like, I mean, these guys are half our age, they're twice as smart, but they're like fire in their belly just keeps you going and you're constantly hearing cool shit and you know what the, what the latest terminology and songs are, because you're talking to young people and like. So, anyways, as I got involved and I started picking some like really good winners like Basic Block and OnRamp and some of these like early bets that I made that have gone on to just build really nice businesses, it just gave me a lot of confidence. So like I wanted to spend time in and around that area, and so I went to work and I spent three years working with very large, privately held global logistics companies who are looking to develop new technologies or bring new technologies into their business. So the first role as CEO of a company called Freight Mango, and I worked with this fantastic private equity group out of the United Kingdom called man Capital, and they're the owners of companies like Vanguard Logistics and they own all the John Deere dealerships in most of the world. So Louis Mansour is the solo GP in man Capital, one of the wealthiest men in the world, and I got to work with his board and his team because inside of Vanguard Logistics, they had a lot of capacity in their network that they wanted to unlock through a digital freight marketplace, but they wanted to bring embedded financial services and products inside of that.
Speaker 2:In 2016, 17, 18, the banks were starting to get really competitive, excited about trade finance, and Amazon sellers were having a hard time paying for the transportation costs and the container, the price of the container goods, and and it became a working capital problem for these small e-commerce brands and and so they saw that problem at Vanguard and they wanted to expose it and and and solve it through freight mango. And so that business was wild because it was during the container crisis when all the steamship lines and the and the forwarders were saying no to the customers. So we had big brands coming to our site, like name brands, like the gear we're wearing now. People were signed up on our site and booking containers all by themselves and paying like 40 grand for a container. I mean it was wild, right, um, but we had an unfair advantage because we had buy side access over in China. So as we scaled that business, my real takeaway was um, digital freight marketplace would be hard, like I thought it was going to be really, really hard to build what we needed to build at the critical mass of the density we needed to build it it's going to happen and that it's a viable model. But companies like Freightos and Flexport and others have, like, really seen that it's hard.
Speaker 2:Second part about that was, as we started scale that business, I got to meet all these big banks because they, you know, through this private equity group we had access to these big banking meetings and these people were telling me that like, hey, what you're doing is really interesting. If we can embed finance in that, we'd really like to put a lot of money into this. And so when I started feeling that appetite, what's up, dude? Yeah, good to see you, man, I'll see you after this. So as we started like hearing that and plus, I was like by that time I'd invested to the board seat of Basic Block and some other payment businesses I'd been supporting, I started to see, wow, there's a real opportunity of freight finance. Freight FinTech was starting to become really sexy to me and so I would have stayed at Freight Mango for a long time because I loved working for those guys, despite the challenges of the business.
Speaker 2:But I got tapped by CMA, cgm group, the steam shipping line, because they had a, an incubation acceleration project going on that they knew that they needed to scale globally. But the thesis was this this chairman of the company, rodolf Sade, who's just like this amazing, amazing leader, I mean dude, the guy runs like a you know 50, $70 billion company and he knows everybody's name and what they do, and like I mean he's a savage of an operator, but he, he loves technology, and I mean he's like thinking about AI like 20 years ago and despite being in the steamship line right, but he also owns a bunch of like media companies Like the dude is just brilliant, but he always wanted to have startups coming into his companies, like CMA and Siva Logistics and Belore all these big brands he owns. He wanted startups in there, like innovating, and so his team found me because I was doing all this venture-backed stuff and they needed somebody with supply chain expertise, investment experience and somebody that was an operator, and so I took that job and when I was at Zbox for two years, we built this awesome team of people and I hired a bunch of my friends like Liz Ward and Jonathan Rapp and we'd fly into these cities and these are super smart people that were asking really intelligent questions to companies like BNSF and the Port of Virginia and Track Intermodal, the chassis company and Road One. And as we started hearing all the same problems from the same companies, it was really clear that what we were doing at Zbox was interesting because all these companies had very overlapping problems and that we would bring startups in there to help them solve those problems.
Speaker 2:And on that journey, I started seeing a couple more triggers that really informed me that this needed to happen. One, the big companies started buying software from startups, and I was seeing companies that were coming out of our portfolio companies like Expedock, open Envoy and they were knocking down big deals RPA Labs, now, rippy and full transparency. Most of these companies I was an angel investor in, and so when I saw these deals cap and I was happy, but I also thought like, wow, that's an opportunity. But then the other thing that I started seeing was that the biggest railroad in America and the biggest steam shipping line on the inbound side in America, neither one of them had a credit card processor. So if somebody wanted to take a credit card payment, they couldn't, which is so wild. How is that happening?
Speaker 2:And so what we saw is 167 problems surfaced in that first year, and there were about 12 to 13 maybe that were in and around the back office, but nobody was calling it order to cash. People were saying, oh, I got this credit credit card issue, or these documents are a pain in the ass, or you know asking me questions how are you solving? You know, cash application and stuff. And so as I went, I saw every cfo's piecemeal on their own stuff together and it's like I mean, these guys aren't ai experts like they're. They're out there teaching themselves about ocr technology and anything they build is going to be obsolete in like the next month, you know. And so I was.
Speaker 2:I was really getting these strong impulses, man, like there's something here. And this is about August of 22, when I got involved in this like billing dispute between two of our large corporate partners, and that was the moment where I was like wait, there's $15 million of unpaid invoices, wait, why? Oh well, this one's missing a bill of lading, this one has the wrong reference on it and this one, like, we're waiting on a document. I mean, I've seen this movie before, like I've heard this thing a thousand times. And so, as I started looking at the industry like the big players out there, the companies that, like I, admired the most and inspired me starting this company they were just not coming into logistics. And I knew why, man, because it's the same problems that you know you help solve, you know, in your career over time, is is helping these, these back offices, get efficient and getting the right processes and getting the right data in place and stuff.
Speaker 2:So I don't know, man, as I saw that opportunity, I really started hearing the same things from the CFOs. Like, as much as I was comfortable, making great money I mean, cma was such a fantastic, generous place to work Like those people took amazing care of me. But I couldn't sleep in August of 22 because I knew there was this massive company out there to be built. But I promised my wife I wouldn't do it again, man you know. And she was finally at a place where, like you know, I was gone all the time. I don't think she'd mind. You know, the checking account was looking good, the boys were happy and like everything was normal, and so, anyways, she finally one morning was like what's up, man, you know? Like what's going on?
Speaker 1:Like I got this thing, I can't stop thinking about it, I think I need to start another company.
Speaker 2:She's like, well, what is it? And I told her the problem and she's like, yeah, she understood. She understood Totally, totally. So. So, man, I still get goosebumps because, like when she was like that's a great idea, I was like, no fucking way You're going to let me start another company, no way, um, but then that mean I had meant I had to do something, right. So what do you do? Think, put, put some, put some prayers up, put some thoughts on paper, tell a friend, get a little feedback, you know. So, as I started kind of like whispering that I wanted to do something, and started getting a couple of positive affirmations from some buddies and start feeling like, oh, okay, like my friends will, they're going to support me At least. At least they'll sign up. You know, I mean, if I make something they'll sign up.
Speaker 2:And then, so that was about end of 22, when I really decided I was going to do it, reached out to a good friend of mine who had worked together at another startup in the past and he's the right guy from a technology perspective to come in and build this. There was, you know, out of my really long list of friends that are engineers or people that I had access to. There was four people that I thought could really start the business and luckily, number one accepted and said let's do it. And then really, when it all started, man was here two years ago when I was here with Zbox and I was running the startup ecosystem and we were the startup pavilion sponsor and between you know the angel investments I'd done the portfolio companies at Zbox. We were supporting probably 150, 200 startups here, plus all 12 of our corporate partners were in town. And meanwhile I'm like mentally, like I'm like I got to be here, I got to execute, but like this is my moment to get my next thing going. I didn't have a name yet, I didn't know what it was going to be called, but I knew there was an opportunity in the billing space.
Speaker 2:So I ran into at this conference guys like Brad Hollister and Matt Tillman and Jet McCandless and Prasad Glipoli and Kevin Nolan and Pat Martin from Venture 53 and like and Larry Cuddy dude from Invasi Technology, and I mean just this is filling my heart. Just think about these guys that I saw them here and they were like, yeah, dude, I'm in. What do you need? 50 grand, a hundred grand, you know, and like it helps having buddies that have, you know, sold their companies and just had a good outcome and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:But when your friends are like that supportive and dude, they had no idea. Like, yeah, I was making good money and all this stuff. But like I'm not rich, you know, like I mean, I needed that, you know. And so, with their support, I'd put 800 grand on the board and, you know, I'd put a little bit of money in myself. We had a million bucks in the in the thing and um, and then, uh, we're off and running. And then we're off and running and then, you know, two months later, you know, the VCs heard what was kind of happening and got some supportive friends from the venture world that helped me line up around and then we got the thing going, man. So Aaron and I left our jobs in the middle of 2023. We launched our product one year ago, in February of 2024. And we're doing the damn thing now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, dude, it's impressive and I remember you know there's a lot to unpack, but, man, like the moment that for me really crystallized because we did meet back in 2019, I think it was when I was trucking tools it's exactly what it was At that point yeah, but the moment that crystallized for me your ability and what you were going to do was when we had dinner with Mark Manera.
Speaker 2:I do St Louis. Every time I come to St Louis I try to get in together with you guys.
Speaker 1:I love it. I was able to be a fly on the wall. We were talking about off-shift and what he was building. We were talking about what you were doing as well. The way you spoke, the experience that you have, the passion that you have, the conviction that you have for what you're doing it's intoxicating. I remember when you did this, I was like I want to be part of this somehow, somehow, someway down the road. I want to be a part of this because it's special. And now you guys are. You got the round. You're starting to hire, you're starting to scale, things are moving in the right direction.
Speaker 1:But most importantly, man, you guys are solving a problem that I think most people just didn't even think was solvable. They probably just thought it was the price of doing business. You know, like that ARAP, well, people don't pay you. It's all manual. In many ways, it's just the way it is. There's just not too much you can do about it. And you guys are tackling that and saying, no, that doesn't have to be that way. There's a solution for that. And that's huge, because you're not only going to do well for yourself, for the people on your team, for your investors, but you're also helping these companies become leaner and more efficient and flow, because I'm a small business man.
Speaker 2:If customers don't pay on time, they can cripple you from for sure, you know. Or if they want to hit you with a credit card and you know they don't, they don't want to be a good trade partner and do an auto, ach, I mean, there's a lot of things that make this complicated, and so I appreciate you saying that, man, I'll, I'll tell you, like you know, from the earliest days, without a deck or a name or a co-founder or anything to attach myself to, it's the people in my life that my wife and my friends, that were willing to support me. That's, that's why you put it out there. And then, and then you, you make something. And guess what? There's all these other great people now, like people that I never knew, that are seeing what we're doing and they're just absolute grade a experts at what they do and they're attracted to what we're doing. And then they come meet our people and they're like, oh, of course, how do I get? Do I get involved, you know? And like, that's the, that's a secret weapon man, and so that's what's fun about being in a position to be able to, like, spend my time now with only my friends, like I only work with my friends. And if, if, every time my phone rings, it's somebody that is a partner or or or a colleague that I really care about, like let's go, man, that's what, that's what life's about. And so to have also just the the sort of welcome from the market look it's.
Speaker 2:I mean there's some like positive things are getting like lovey dovey here, but at the end of the day, man, people want to get paid on time. It's really important and there's a couple of triggers here that, um really gave me confidence to start the business. So, from a business perspective, this is why we're doing it Like, yes, I love building this community and having all these friends and like solving problems and meeting great people, but at the end of the day, man, like, shippers want to pay on time, carriers need to get paid on time because they're burning cash and brokers are in the same boat, and solving that little problem is a lot more simple than it is complex. You just have to get really, really deep in the weeds. And so that's ultimately where we're uniquely suited to get in and do this, because we're entrepreneurs, we're founders.
Speaker 2:This is what we do, but what I want to say as we start to look forward in the business is what started off as this software to help people make their invoices is turning into this deep back office partnership where CFOs and founders are opening up and saying, hey, man, like love what you're doing here. We got this problem over here, so you know. The whole idea now is to become the deepest partner with these logistics companies. So after that freight delivered, the cash comes into their bank and they're not worried about anything else. So the vision is, as these folks in the industry that are starting to see that AI needs to come into their business, they're starting to mess around with chat GPT. Good thing we were doing that six, eight years ago. Good thing that we've been messing around with this in the background for a while and we can help them deploy it now, and there's no reason that these things can't happen faster.
Speaker 1:We have the technology. You have to build it. You have to get the sequence, you have to focus on it right.
Speaker 2:You have to dedicate to it.
Speaker 1:But there's no reason it can't happen. It's just somebody's got to build it. It's got to be intentional, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2:So, as we're starting to think about this idea, aaron and I Chad GPT came out in October of 22 with the public facing, and so we started messing around with that. We started asking him some questions and both of us, independently, came to the same conclusion we should be able to build a company 10 times faster than anybody else before. Because we are going to lean into AI for every single thing that we do, from the creation of the logo to the writing of the mission statement.
Speaker 1:Did you create an AI logo? Dude everything.
Speaker 2:Look at our LinkedIn headshots, man, everything about our company is done with AI because it's better, faster and cheaper and it's a core value in our business. So, when engineers come to us, if you don't have an, if you're not, if cursor is not your developer environment, you're not my guy, like you're not working it up. Well, we need people that are already down the curve on the ai. So, yeah, I mean because this has been going on for a long time. So, like this is not a new thing, right, and I'd say that, like my vision is, I don't need to build the ai because you know what man? Does your freight broker care if you made the ai or not? No, no, in fact, your freight broker would prefer you don't use the term ai in front of you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, please right, because it's, it's insulting. That's such a good analogy. I tell people this all the time, like when you go to a steak restaurant, do you care how they cook the steak? You care what the name of the grill is or the you know anything else, the spices that rank, you just want it to taste good.
Speaker 2:I kind of get mad when they tell me the chef's name. I'm like you know, specials drink, like let me talk to my wife please. You know what I mean. This is like why I'm out at dinner. But no, you're right, we all care about outcomes, brother, and as life becomes more complicated and we are all fighting more for, for more time at home with our loved ones and more time doing the things that we love to do outside of, unburdened, unencumbered by the work responsibilities.
Speaker 2:What I love about selling to freight brokers and logistics companies and freight forwarders is it's no bullshit, man, it's like all right time out, what does your product do?
Speaker 2:Tell it to me in terms of what I don't have to do. If I use your product and then answer me am I going to get to go home at five or am I going to be here dealing with this bullshit after work and like that's all people want. So that's what I want to provide. It's like look, if I have to hire humans in the loop and put them in the in the back office in Omaha and if I have to have, god willing, I have 15 CFOs on my staff a year from now and brokers aren't using you know, and we are their outsource finance partner and we're helping them generate the perfect invoice, collect from their customers on time, pay their carriers in the most you know, elegant, dynamic, perfect way that everybody wants. If we're doing that, I guarantee you there's no freight broker out there that's going, I don't know. Man, I'm really really like my finance department. You know. I'm like I'm really looking to scale up my back office this year.
Speaker 1:I'm like I'm really looking to scale up my back office this year. I'm going to add some accountants to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, cause. Guess what man You're not like if they're touching your money like they're not. They're not $12 an hour, you know Right.
Speaker 1:Right, right, all right. So so where can people learn about Upwell first of all, and then we're going to talk about manifesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, please. So, uh, you find us at upwellcom. You can find us on Twitter at Freightbills. I mean, we're out here, freightbills.
Speaker 1:I like that.
Speaker 2:That's a good name, we'll be at every event Meg Boaz, brad Hollister, drew Reitz. We've got some really great people out leading the charge there. Lucy Ferris just joined us on Monday. We've got a lot of new people here actually. Yeah, man and man, we're uh and uh, I'm hiring. So if you like freight, you like payments, get at me.
Speaker 1:Hey, be sure to follow charlie on linkedin as well. It's a great follow and just a good guy to have in your network as well. Let's talk about manifest real quick and I'm going to wrap this baby up. Man, this, this show, has become a behemoth 6 000 people here, all supply chain, which I actually love, because me too. Very rarely do we get to come to a show and learn about warehousing, robotics, some other stuff that's just not really like in our lane, but it's neat to see what's going on and, um, you know, I mean like warehousing is becoming a guy that runs at the front and all these bots are going on picking stuff and loading. I mean it's fascinating what's going on.
Speaker 2:This is one of the few shows we get to see all that yeah, so, um, I've been a big fan of manifest since the earliest days. Uh, I didn't the first one, I didn't go to the first one. I came to the. I came to the first one that was in Vegas. There was one in Miami before this, I guess. Is it really? Is it 21?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I came to the first one in Vegas and then just, I mean, dude, if you meet Pam, you're like what a beast, like what a badass human being, just executors, right, and so I've just been behind what they're doing. And then you know, as the event grew, it's just I can't miss, because where else can you go For me just seeing all my friends, it's like my heart is so full walking around this place, high fives and hugs everywhere. So it's like this is exactly like what I love to do and to be here now with a team, because I juxtapose this, juxtapose this, dude, like two years ago I was here working another job, praying to god I could, I could build this and we got it done this time. Last year I couldn't come to manifest because we were in stealth and dude, for guys like you and me to like not be able to go to the thing, not have anything to talk about, like when you're not winning, and you got to stay home. That was hard and I missed it, but we were grinding and we were like we were.
Speaker 2:I was on the road in deep with these customers, getting in the back office recording all the stuff and uh, and thankfully, uh, you know it's worked out. So this time next year I think there's gonna be a lot of upwellers here and yeah, uh, you know it's gonna be a cornerstone event for me and you know our team and we're gonna make this a good off-site. We're gonna have a hybrid remote culture. You know, for engineering and sales talent, I'll take you wherever you are because you got to go meet the customers. But customer success, marketing, product strategy, finance, that's all sitting in Omaha, so we're building a big office. Dude, you're coming up soon. I am lining up the visits for when you're there, so we're gonna just uh, I'm gonna get you out there and and.
Speaker 1:I love Omaha man, I'm hot and you talked about. You know, the guy who has millions of dollars doesn't look like that's like classic or omaha millionaire, guaranteed like they're eating mcdonald's, they're driving toyotas. I mean well, dude like.
Speaker 2:The thing is that I didn't realize about omaha. You have to assume so when I when I first found out about this business of being an oh my College World Series, warren Buffett, sure, I'll go check it out it wasn't going to take a lot to really get me excited because I wanted the company. I got there. It's clean, safe, it's beautiful. There's so many things outdoors to do. It's got a big baseball ecosystem because of the College World Series. We host the Slump Buster every year, which is the largest tournament for youth baseball. I founded the Nebraska Twisters last year, which is the largest tournament for youth baseball. So I founded the Nebraska Twisters last year, which is my 501c3 baseball club. I run a baseball academy. A lot of the upholders that work here. Why?
Speaker 2:not Well, look, man, I mean Bezos didn't want to run a trillion dollar company. It's about who you hire, man, so I just have the club. I'm not the best coach, but if I have the club club, I get to be on the bench and I get to decide what tournaments we go to, where we stay when we're there. Yeah, but for me, man, it's about giving these kids the best possible experience.
Speaker 2:But, going back to this Omaha ecosystem, you have to everybody you meet in Omaha, you have to assume that they're rich because they got that farm mailbox money coming in from the acreage, like you know, south Iowa. And then you got these financial services. Folks like companies like TD Ameritrade and others were founded there. And then there's like folks like companies like td ameritrade and others were founded there. And then there's like allegedly 15 to 1800 millionaires that are rolling around omaha from the berkshire hathaway ecosystem, which that many out of a million people, that's is pretty wild.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, man, like, uh, you know it's, it's a good place, we're gonna have a good time, and then, uh, and then we'll start looking forward to uh, uh, this. This summer we're gonna host our closest customers and partners for the College World Series and we're going to blow that out and give people a reason to come see Omaha at its peak. It's going to be a wild week for me, man, because I'm going to have a College World Series board meeting and two teams in town for the Slump Buster Tournament. So we're going to be rocking it.
Speaker 1:Well, man, hey, thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2:the show Appreciate you, brother, always good to have you, yeah, you too.
Speaker 1:I'm excited for what you guys are doing so excited. Thanks, brother. Hey, make sure you come back every Tuesday for an episode of Standing Out with great guests like Charlie DeHoney. Also, shout out to our friends Josh Lyles over at sales-crm If you're looking for a CRM and you're a freight broker, you've got to check it out. It's built for you by freight brokers. Make sure you tell Josh you.
