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
Revolutionizing Logistics Through AI with Annalise Sandhu
Ever wonder what happens when scientists decide to tackle the chaos of logistics? Annalise Sandu, co-founder and CEO of Chain, joins the Standing Out podcast to reveal how her journey from medical school dropout to freight tech innovator is reshaping broker-carrier collaboration. Annalise Sandu, co-founder and CEO of Chain, shares how their AI-powered visibility platform is revolutionizing freight brokerage operations by automating manual tasks while preserving human relationships.
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.
What's up everybody. Welcome to another episode of Standing Out. I'm Trey Griggs, your host, so excited that you are with us today in this first show in the month of April. Can't believe it Quarter two. Where is the year going? I feel like every year that I get older, this stuff goes faster and faster. Nonetheless, here we are. Thanks for being with us on the show today.
Speaker 1:When you get a chance, check us out over at betaconsultinggroupcom. I help my companies become rich through messaging, through marketing, through sales that actually work. So make sure you check us out. We'd love to talk to you and find out your story and where I can fit in, where I can help you out. Also, before we get started today, I want to thank our sponsor, my good friend, josh Liles, over at sales-crm.
Speaker 1:Listen, if you're a free broker and you're listening to this show today and you have not checked out, or are you not using sales-crm? I need you to change the way you're showing up in life people. You got to go to sales-crmcom and check this out. This is the only CRM in the industry built by a freight broker for freight brokers. Josh Lyles has been in your seat and you realize. You know what. There are no CRMs out there for freight brokers in the specific workflows that you have, so he built one. It's phenomenal. A brokers and the specific workflows that you have, so he built one. It's phenomenal. A lot of top brokers are using it right now. It's getting better and better, so make sure you check it out at sales-crmcom or you can visit on our website, betaconsultinggroupcom. Forward slash standing dash out to learn more about that. Request a demo. No matter what you do, though, make sure you tell Josh that you heard about it right here on Standing Up. I got to get credit folks, so make sure you tell them that you heard about it right here.
Speaker 1:And finally, we wanna thank our friends over at Wreaths Across America for the opportunity to be syndicated every Tuesday night on their Trucking Tuesday lined up with our show. We definitely appreciate their partnership. I got to see my friends from Wreaths Across America. I got to see Jeff and have a little conversation Jeff Pierce over there at MATS at the Mid-America Trucking Show last week, and I got to tell you, if you're not a part of Wreaths Across America, it is worth looking into. It's such a great organization that is all about remembering the past and the sacrifices that our veteran soldiers made and teaching the future generations about that. Go to wreathsacrossamericaorg to learn more about that and you can actually sponsor a wreath with us. You can partner with us. If you just simply add on slash standing out, you can sponsor wreath. The event is coming up in mid-December, so it's a little ways out, but it's going to be here before you know it. Again, we just thank them so much for being a part of their Trucking Tuesday lineup every Tuesday night and for being a partner with them, just on the work that they do.
Speaker 1:All right, it's time to get this show on the road. We've got a great guest today with one of the companies in the space that's making some waves, a little bit newer in the industry, doing some really cool stuff, and so please welcome to the show one of the co-founders of Chain, annalise Sandu Dude. This is a banger. I like this song. That's a good song. What's up, annalise? How you doing Good, that's a good song what's up?
Speaker 2:Vonalise? How you doing Good, How's it going?
Speaker 1:Dude, that's a great song. I got to add this to my playlist. That's a good one. That's awesome. You know, one thing I love about walk-up songs is that you always need to learn a little bit something about people, and we haven't talked to music yet. But is this your preferred genre? Is this what you're listening to going down the road or, you know, when you're flying on a plane?
Speaker 2:yeah, I would say somewhat of a mix.
Speaker 1:I do love kendrick, though, so yeah, do my daughter oh my gosh, we got a lot of kendrick lamar going on the car whenever we're riding around. Um, I think I think I know too many words to peekaboo already, like I know you know, I know quite a few. The uh, the halftime show was was a banger around the house around here, here. The kids were really, really, really. They enjoyed that quite a bit. All right, annalise, it's great to have you on the show. Tell everybody just real quick, a little about yourself and a little bit about Chain. And to make sure we're not confusing people, there's other, there's Chains. There's several Chain companies in the industry. Yours specifically is trychaincom. Trychaincom. That's the right one to go to Give us a little bit of your background.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. So my name is Annalise, I'm the co-founder and CEO of Chain, and we're an AI-powered visibility platform. So we have all the standard visibility features, but the cool part is that one. We make it easier for brokers and carriers to work together a lot easier, and we also take care of all the manual work. So think about, like you know, the work that people are doing today that falls outside of just a simple dot on the map. That's check calls, confirming ETAs, making sure that SOPs are met. For, you know, certain shippers, they have custom requirements. All of that we take care of automatically, so that way, our customers can really just focus on, you know, the relationship aspect and the parts where humans should step in and are needed, not the, you know, redundant manual work. We do have about like one and a half billion dollars of freight that's moving through our platform and about 2 million emails and 400,000 text messages that are fully automated on our platform every single month. So it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Well, I've spoken to some of your customers who literally swear by your product, which says the world to me, because you know they're not being paid to do that, and so that's what impressed me. Whenever I got to know what you guys are doing and then my good friend kevin coombs recently went over there, that brought a little more attention for me to what you guys are doing, and so it's been exciting to see your journey to do that. We're going to talk about your origins in a minute, but I have to say I feel a little silly. I've been calling you Annalise because that's how I read it whenever I see it together. I have a niece named Anna. I have a niece named Anna, but for some reason, when I see the lease behind it, I always want to make it Annalise. So, annalise, I'm going to get that right from now on. I admit that was a huge mistake. Does it bother you when people get the name wrong?
Speaker 2:be honest, be honest I didn't, I actually didn't even notice oh well, I noticed man, I felt terrible the whole time.
Speaker 1:Oh, no, yeah we'll get it right from this moment on. I learned a long time ago the most important word in any language is a person's name, so gotta get it right, all right, well, let's talk a little bit about chain and about what you're doing, although before that, I did learn a fun fact about you. I didn't know this you are currently learning japanese oh yeah, yeah, it's pretty random, but something that is random.
Speaker 2:You is like learn another language and I was like, why not japanese? So when I get time in the gym at the morning like I have the japanese going and I was thinking like, okay, it should not take that long to learn, maybe six months.
Speaker 1:Nope, this is a long time, this is hard yeah it's, it's characters and symbols, and I know it's not the same as Mandarin. I know they're different, but I have a friend who speaks Mandarin who's trying to tell me how the language came to be and how the symbols work together. It's hard, like it's a really difficult language, and so what? What was it about Japanese? You're like I think I want to try that. Do you want to go to Japan someday and be able to speak? Was it just something that maybe you heard somebody speak it and you liked it? What was it that got you on the Japanese kick?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's probably just the language and I, like you, know Japanese movies and I always like challenges too. So the fact that it's like one of the hardest languages to learn and like there's three different um alphabets, like really attracted me for whatever weird reason. So I was like I'm going to have to tackle this. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You're just a glutton for punishment. You just want to suffer. That's what that's about. I mean, like you know Italian Spanish, you know Russian. Might be easier than that. I don't know. That's pretty wild. Do you know any other languages? Now? Is language something that you've always done pretty pretty easily, or is it? Is it something brand?
Speaker 2:new, it's new. I know a little bit of Spanish, but I never.
Speaker 1:Like we all do right Exactly.
Speaker 2:Can't count it, especially in California.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly that's true. Well, good luck on that. Do you know any phrases or words in Japanese that you're willing to share on the show today?
Speaker 2:It's like super basic, it's just, it's super basic. It's just. Do you uh understand Japanese?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, clearly the answer is no. How do you say no in Japanese? You say yeah yeah, so I'll say yeah, so that's it. Wow, that's so. So it's amazing. Your voice completely changed inflections and pitch, and all that.
Speaker 2:Like inflections and pitch and all that Like that's, that was impressive.
Speaker 1:All right, I think you're going to be like oh, that was totally wrong. Well, it sounded good to me and that's where we're going to go today, so good luck on on on speaking Japanese. Do you have a date of when you want to try to be fluid, or?
Speaker 2:let's target 2026. Let's do it.
Speaker 1:Oh, all right, Okay, so you got. You got about seven, eight more months to really lock this in and we'll see how far we get. We'll have to have you back on the show and see if you know, maybe we'll get Kevin on, who also speaks Japanese. I think right, doesn't he speak Japanese?
Speaker 2:or does he speak Chinese? I think it's Mandarin.
Speaker 1:Maybe he might be Mandarin. I know he spent some time in Asia and he learned the language. Not going to work. We'll have to figure out another way to validate your your japanese, all right. Well, let's talk a little bit about chain and your story. So you and param are building this company chain, but that is not where it started. Give us a little bit of background about how you got into building chain and what it all originated from yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:So, um, actually, both of our background is in the sciences. So I was, um in clinical research. I was at, um, you know, working at university of california, san francisco. Um, and he was also in the sciences. He was working at a consumer packaged goods company as a chemical engineer formulating products like armorall. Um, it really started with him, so this whole logistics thing did start with him. Um, so he's punjabi and um, well, we're married. Actually, the story will make a lot more sense to lead with that part.
Speaker 1:Well, I would say. I would say we're already off to a rocky start in the fact that you guys are both in sciences and engineering. Somehow you got into transportation and logistics, but keep going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So he, he has like a lot of family members that are in trucking. He just got tired of the nine to five and was like, all right, I'm just gonna start a trucking company. Um, so he ended up quitting his job. Um, you know, started off with five trucks and um, I actually, you know, was helping him to dispatch as well. So, like um, I got accepted into medical school and on my way to medical school, like in the summer before, and even into medical school, I was helping them to dispatch.
Speaker 2:And, you know, we just saw like a huge opportunity.
Speaker 2:Just like we were on the phone all day, like, you know, every single day we were waking up, you know, making phone calls to book loads, answering the phone for brokers that were calling us for check calls, sending emails, and it was just a crazy amount of manual work.
Speaker 2:We did grow the company to 20 trucks, but it was extremely difficult to scale beyond that. And we just saw an opportunity on the software side, like, hey, let's try to build something that solves some of the problems that we're, you know, directly facing. We started out with a product for carriers and, like, as it turns out, if you're trying to build a collaboration platform that really helps two you know two sides work together a lot easier carriers is not really the right place to start because it has to be driven by the freight broker. The freight broker is the one, you know that is responsible for executing the freight. So we did end up switching to the freight brokerage side, but I think it gives us a unique perspective on the carrier side, because we understand that and we build very intentionally with AI features to make sure that it's something that respects the carrier and that also works for the carrier as well.
Speaker 1:And did you get through med school, or how far did you get into med school before you're like this is where we want to be.
Speaker 2:Yes, I actually dropped out at the end of my first year, so that was when I was really you know. We made the decision. It was something that we were thinking about and then I just made the decision. I was like, all right, this is not for me, I think technology side and we actually built out, you know, the initial platform ourselves.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, coding is another language. You got to give yourself credit for this. You did learn another language prior to Japanese, so you have this ability to put yourself in difficult situations that come through.
Speaker 2:So that's great yeah, japanese and TypeScript it works out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, I mean it is. It's like a whole nother language. So that's, yeah, japanese and typescript it works out. Yeah, exactly, I mean it is. It's like a whole another language. So, uh, no, that's awesome to hear.
Speaker 1:That's it's a fascinating story because you know, I mean, obviously you guys had successful careers and we're moving in that direction. Obviously, pre-med and getting into med school I mean getting in alone is a difficult thing to do, much less, you know, complete the first year, but you guys walked away from both of those to get into trucking transportation. I think that's cool. Number one. Two there's a new trend in technology right now among founders and that is former operatives, former operations people. You guys were in the chair, you were dispatching, you were making those phone calls, you were dealing with all the inefficiencies that are in our industry, and you said, no, I think we can solve this and I think that's so awesome. Companies that have operators, former operators, that are driving the technology, because you know what it's like to be in that seat. Now you said you switched over to the brokerage side. Did you guys have any experience in brokerage or has that been more of a learning?
Speaker 2:curve. I would say like initially it was a learning curve. We're lucky that we kind of, you know, had some relationships there and it helped us to like speed that up a lot faster, like the initial part of building product, like we were just like in our customers offices sitting behind the users and watching like exactly what they're doing. So like we understood it conceptually, just being on the other end of it as a carrier. But there definitely was a learning curve for the brokerage side.
Speaker 1:Just not afraid to hop right into crazy stuff and just see what happens, you know. Just not afraid. I love that. That's awesome, that's cool. What has been the most challenging part about the technology build?
Speaker 2:Maybe something you didn't see coming. Yeah, I would say one of the most challenging parts is there's a lot of noise in the market. There's just so many people that are pitching AI and talking about AI and it's an industry where, historically, people have been burned by technology in the past. This isn't just talking about AI and like it's an industry where, historically, like, people have been burned by technology in the past. Like this isn't just talking about like AI specifically, just you know, across the board. So I think brokers do tend to be very skeptical.
Speaker 2:As somebody like me like you know, I'm, yes, I started on the carrier side and the science side, but, like I'm a super techie at heart. So, like, for me it's just like, oh yeah, like let's build technology and like everybody will use it. But there is like a part where you have to like establish trust and be able to like have strong references to you know, keep getting your product in the hands of more customers in the industry. So I think that part was like a bit unexpected. But once you have like a strong customer base and references, it makes it a lot simpler.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you're right. A lot of technology companies historically have promised things and haven't kept those promises or haven't been able to come through. In fact, I worked for a company one time as a salesperson. I sold something and then I had a customer call me into the office and said hey, trey, would you just come and spend a couple hours with us? And they were very nice about it. They weren't crazy pissed off about it, they just had me come in and sit down and watch them work. And I could tell this doesn't work and I felt horrible. But you know what happened is, uh, we owned up to it. I stopped selling, I stopped pitching it.
Speaker 1:A lot of times you only get one crack getting that right there.
Speaker 1:You know when that trust gets severed.
Speaker 1:And the sad part is that when one company breaks people's trust about technology, a lot of times they carry that over to newer technology or something new that they haven't even tried yet. I always tell people it's so critical to get to know the people who are building the technology, not just the technology itself, because that tells you a lot about the quality, tells you a lot about the commitment, tells you a lot about your willingness to sit in a brokerage office for, I would imagine, weeks on end, maybe a month, month or two, just to learn the process and make sure your technology is actually solving a problem. That's big. So I encourage all my friends evaluating technology get to know the people just as much as the technology. I think that makes a big difference. In that regard, how do you go about establishing trust? How have you guys been able to do that with prospects who maybe aren't familiar with you, aren't familiar with your technology? What's really helped you guys out in terms of standing out in this, you know, crowded field of technology?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you know each customer is so different, like everybody has the same problems, but like everybody just in terms of operationally like at the end of the day it's humans, right, and everybody does things a little bit differently. So we make it like very clear during the sales process that like we're not just a vendor of technology, like we're a technology partner, so like they can come to us with like different things that they're facing and like we're willing to work very closely with them. I think that's been a big difference in the sales process is really just showing them that like we're here for the long haul, we're here to like make sure that like actually works. Um, last thing we want to do is like is go live and people are disappointed because that's like a personal um, what do you call it? That's? I take it like very personally if the product's not working for somebody. Um, and I think it comes through in the sales process when people kind of see how we work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a. It has to be something that just kind of like, has every bit of you like, you're fully committed to it and when it doesn't work, like you take ownership, you fix it and make it better. That's for sure. Let's talk briefly about what the product does. I'd love to get a better feeling for the audience of like, especially for brokers like how is it saving time? How is it streamlining processes? What, specifically, are you doing for customers today? Is it an out-of-the-box solution? Is it customizable in any way? Just get a little bit of background into what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we actually. So, like I mentioned, we have the visibility piece and then we also have the AI automation piece. We do allow customers, like, if you have a visibility provider and you're not looking to switch, we call it BYOVP, so you can bring your own visibility provider and let us handle like all of the check, all automation. So some of the things that we do is like it is customizable, we integrate with like all the major TMS providers and what we do is we have like what we like to call the proactive part of the AI and like the reactive part. So the proactive part is where you specify, like what are your SOPs, what are the things that people are doing day in, day out that are repetitive tasks? So like, maybe you know it's a, they're picking up at a farm and they have to confirm case count. You know, maybe it's just confirming ETA, maybe it's at certain warehouse locations you have to remind the driver like okay, you need to bring a hard hat. Um, so like there's very specific nuances that we let like people actually make sure that every single time their process gets followed exactly how it should be followed.
Speaker 2:Um, so that's the proactive part is, like you know, doing that outreach. And then the reactive part is. Now people are asking questions, um, and you know they're saying like, hey, what's the pickup number? Um, and you know saying like, oh, can I change the appointment time? Are reporting an exception? Um, those are things that, like, the ai will detect and then loop in the user. So I think a big part that's cool about, um, the way we're handling the building is like we view it as a full workflow, so like we're not trying to like say like, hey, okay, there's this one task right here, like let let's automate it. Like we actually use human in the loop, where we have a lot of this automation that really runs across the entire workflow, you know, from booking all the way to delivery. But we automate the work that people like shouldn't have to do manually, and then the rest of the time we're assisting the user, so it does still involve the user as well.
Speaker 1:Do you have any problems with the stigma of the word or of just the abbreviation AI and artificial intelligence in the sales process? It seems like everybody's using that now in their marketing. Everybody's saying they're using AI. Some companies aren't using AI, but they say they are. What's been your take in terms from a sales perspective? Is there pushback? Is there skepticism? Is there? I don't even know what AI is. I don't believe like. What has that process been like for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think initially, like we've been working on AI for a while now, so I think definitely in the early phases of kind of interacting with customers and talking about it, there was like some pushback around like okay, what does this mean for us? And like how is this going to change our team structure and just a lot of questions. In general, it's becoming less common because I think when people have the chance to interact with it personally, like when you're interacting with something like chat, gpt and you see exactly what, like how it works and like what its use cases and like how it's's super powerful and how it can make you like get through a million things, but it's not necessarily replacing your job, I think now people are like oh, like, how do we get this into our operations today? So the conversation has shifted, I would say in the past, like year okay, I'm gonna put you on the spot.
Speaker 1:What percentage of freight brokers out there do you think really know what ai is?
Speaker 2:really no, I would say probably a small port. I mean, I think you can conceptually less than half, right, I mean yeah, yeah, I would say like less than half.
Speaker 2:Like, because it's so easy, like you said, for people to just say like we have ai, and people think that, like you have ai, um, and you know ai will become the standard part of every product, um, within like the next five years. Like, you'll just see it in everything that you're using. But um, I think in terms of truly understanding, probably not too many yeah, because we, you know, we had robotic process automation.
Speaker 1:That kind of came into the in the foray about, uh, um, I don't know, five, six years ago, yeah, and then um, and, and then this is, you started to take over a little bit more. So I think there's there's some confusion a little bit around that, but I'm telling you everybody, everybody and their brother, if you're selling technology, has AI in their name or in their tagline or whatever. I mean, it's everybody. And I have a feeling that a lot of them aren't really using AI.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Sometimes like somebody will say like oh, like do you solve like X problem with ai? And I'll be like well, we solve that problem, but like actually you don't even need ai for that. Like there's a conceptual misunderstanding of like what ai is needed for versus what you know so it's almost like we need a master class from somebody.
Speaker 1:Somebody should put out a master class on, you know, understanding ai and everything that goes along with it and all that. Does anybody have that out there? That that might be a great little series you guys could put on, where you educate the marketplace on on what ai is, which can be good. Um, all right, well, let's shift gears for a minute. So another thing that's really important to your chain is fitness. I didn't know about this until we had a chance to speak. I think it manifests we spoke about this, or maybe afterwards, um, and that's a big part of uh, your, uh, you and prom and also with the company culture. Talk about how that came to be and what do you guys do. You guys do some innovative stuff I know about. Talk about some of the things that you do in your company just to promote fitness, uh, to have a little bit of fun, but also just keep everybody moving.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's um, it's just important health wise. It's something that we realized when we were on the dispatch side, and batch diet and we're, you know, putting in long hours like early, is that you just have to get out there and, you know, do something. It could be anything. So we do promote fitness at our company. I think we've done some fun challenges in the past where you know people can try to put in a certain number of steps per day and have it be competition focused. But I think, just in general, the more that like people can take small steps towards being more active, it helps with your personal life. It helps, you know, be more creative and work better. So it's something that we try to put out there and tell people that it doesn't have to be. You know, you don't have to start doing like hit every day for an hour to be fit, like you can just take a walk around the block, you know, once a day.
Speaker 1:Dude, walking is like the secret weapon that people often don't realize just getting out walking it makes you feel better. Get some sunlight, get some, uh, fresh air. It's so, so valuable to do that. And I'm excited because you know my good friends, michael lombard and nick clean and smith. They're both going to be at the broker carrier summit and we have our little show on tuesday mornings iron minds just to get up and work out and get moving, and you guys have sponsored the iron minds workouts at broker carrier summit. I'm really excited about that. I think we're going to do a 5k walk run and I think we're going to do some sort of stretching like a pilates or yoga type of a workout, and so, first of all, thank you for that, but really looking forward to that and kind of encouraging brokers and drivers at the summit to get up a little early and, uh, not too early, of course, not too early. Get up early and just get a little movement in, you know. So thank you for doing that. That's going to be fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're excited. So anybody that wants to, you know, take part in that and then come. I think it'll be a good chance to get in a little bit of exercise.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's going to be a good time. And again we're going to make some shirts. We're going to to have a little bit of fun on the show, from time to time do something a little crazy, and today we're going to play a little game called. Would you rather? All right, annalise? It's as simple as it sounds. We're going to put up a banner with two options and you've got to tell us which one you would rather do. All right, so here we go. First one would you rather watch nothing but Hallmark Christmas movies or nothing but horror movies? That's a good one.
Speaker 2:Horror movies for sure.
Speaker 1:Oh man. Okay, Morgan, our producer is going to love you because she's all about horror movies, so she's going to be really happy with that one. I'd have to go Hallmark Christmas movies because I can't watch horror movies Like. I get scared. I'm a weak one, you know. I see a chainsaw and some blood and a mask and I'm good. I'm not really into it anymore. So I'd be probably on the Hallmark Christmas movie thread. But you're on the horror movies thread. All right, fair enough. Very good, you and morgan on the same page with that, that's good, all right.
Speaker 2:Number two would you rather find a rat in your kitchen or a roach in your bed? Oh god, I would honestly have to go with the roach in your bed, just because of the hantavirus thing. If you have a rat in your kitchen, not safe.
Speaker 1:So only otherwise.
Speaker 1:I would choose the rat in the kitchen if it wasn't for that yeah, I didn't know that I was gonna go rat in the kitchen at first, because I felt like that was a little safer. You can throw all the food out, you can clean everything and you can start over Roach in the bed, though oh, that just sounds awful, I don't know. I've always heard of like you know, obviously bedbugs and these different things. I've heard stories of like little spiders that potentially could crawl on your nose at night and you wouldn't know it. I don't know if that's true, but that stuff freaks me out. So I would definitely go around the kitchen, as long as this virus thing is not not a part of it. Okay, all right. Next one Would you rather always have a full phone battery or a full tank of gas?
Speaker 2:Um a full phone battery.
Speaker 1:Yes, interesting. Okay, yeah, I'm kind of a full tank of gas kind of guy. I don't know. I mean, full phone battery would be big. I guess that is important, but I don't know. I hate stopping to get gas. I would just rather just never have to. I'd never have to. I mean plugging your phone at night, you're sleeping, you don't need it, but having to stop getting gas. I'd love to get rid of that inconvenience. That would be great. So I tend to be more plus, listen, you can. You can plug your phone in while you're using it during the day. So to me that's that's not a hassle at all. I'm going full tank of gas all day, every day. All right, did I convince you? Probably not all right. Next one would you rather live in a tree house or in a cave? Uh?
Speaker 2:definitely three houses, yeah. Because you get more light out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the only thing good about a cave is the temperature regulation. Oh, yeah, it'd be the same temperature all the time. Right, you wouldn't have to worry about that.
Speaker 2:It would be easier to sleep in a cave, I think.
Speaker 1:It would be easier to sleep in a cave, although I mean your tree house. You got the birds singing, you know you get to see the sun from time to time. That's a good question. I don't know. I think I, I think I'd go treehouse, but the cave cave would protect you probably more, you know, from severe weather that's a good question all right, I might. I might have to go cave, but treehouse would be nice.
Speaker 1:I think the views would be better okay, last one last one would you rather have all traffic lights you approach be green, or never have to stand in line again? These are great questions today well done, that is it which one would you rather do?
Speaker 2:probably to stand in line, because I, yeah, I'm probably in line more than I am driving through traffic lights.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, you're not driving a whole lot and you're okay with a few red lights from time to time, but standing in line is definitely a pain. You know, if that included, uh, theme parks, I'm definitely on the standing line one. Definitely if that includes theme parks, that's for sure. Airports, grocery store and theme park. If that was the case, yeah, I think I'd have to go with that one as well, because I could probably handle a few red lights, although it's nice when you get all the greens it is nice yeah when you get all the greens.
Speaker 1:I'm not gonna lie about that, so that's a good thing, all right. Well, that was fun, and we also like to end our game every time with the random question of the day. Now listen, I haven't seen this question, annalise. It could be a good question, it could be a total dud, it could be funny, it could be serious, I don't know. Let's check it out. Today's random question of the day is if you could eliminate one thing from your daily routine, what? What would it be and why? Okay, all right, that's a good one.
Speaker 1:I know mine.
Speaker 2:I can eliminate one thing from my daily routine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I would say, if everything was just always clean and my food was always just magically prepped for me, that would be amazing.
Speaker 1:So housework, yeah, keeping the house going and meal prep and and all kind of stuff, that's a good one actually. If you could, if you could put an umbrella into just like housework, yeah, actually I think I would sign up for that one as well. That's actually a pretty good one.
Speaker 1:There I was thinking something a little smaller but on the same line, and mine was hygiene, because you know it's something we got to do every day. You know you take a shower, you, you know whatever you wash your hair, you brush your teeth, you know clean up, like if I could just be clean, like my teeth are clean, my body's clean and I can just wake up and go. Uh, I think that's, that might be every man's dream. It might be. It might be because I would love to just get up, get dressed and leave. I don't really want to have to deal with all the stuff of getting ready and you know that could go as far as like doing your hair, potentially doing your makeup. So maybe I mean women might go for that too, because that's a lot of time with prep wear.
Speaker 2:That sounds very appealing.
Speaker 1:Getting ready yeah, so hygiene for me would be it's still a little bit of an umbrella blanket, but you know, I think it fits. We'll go with that Same, I think it fits, we'll go with that. Same idea All right, Annalise, let's bring this plane in for a landing by talking about what's coming up next for Chain. What do you guys have on the horizon? What can we look for? What can we expect to see?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're working on something really cool.
Speaker 2:I think we'll release it within the next month or two, but we're working on in terms of our AI agents.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of tribal knowledge just that goes around at free brokerages and I think that's one of the biggest areas where it's hard for AI to automate, because it's stuff that is spoken. It's not really something that you necessarily have written down. So what we're working on is like how do we now learn from the users, like what they're saying, what they're doing, and then even allow, in some cases, for people to like specify certain things that they have that are specific for their brokerage um, and then making sure that, like those rules and those um you know pieces of tribal knowledge that they've built over time are really followed and enforced by the ai um. I would say that's next on the road map is really now making it one step smarter continuous learning and focusing on like these aspects and nuances that um you know today are are lead manual work on the table yeah, well, I know, like you know, if you could 10x what a rep could do, if you could supercharge that, that's a win.
Speaker 1:I mean, I you know, I was just talking to somebody. Today we have the broker carrier summit coming up, which I'm very much a big part of, and there's a lot of work to go into that, along with the everyday work that I do with my clients and all the things that I do. So it's like if I could become more efficient and more productive in what I do, man, that would just be absolutely tremendous.
Speaker 2:So I think there's a lot that you know.
Speaker 1:There's a huge opportunity for AI agents, for voice agents, for administrative type of work, virtual assistant type things that agents can do. It's exciting to see what's coming down the pipeline and where this is all going to head. I have a prediction to make for you, annalise. I think this is going to be true. I think in five to 10 years, all freight brokerages still in existence are really going to be at the core technology companies.
Speaker 2:That's what I think.
Speaker 1:And I think you're going to have people that handle exceptions or customizations or special like specialized type work that maybe needs to be more hands-on right now until they figure out the tech side of it. But I have a feeling that you know a lot of this stuff's going to get automated in the next five to 10 years and brokerages are really going to be, you know, tech intermediaries in many cases between the shipper and the customer. I was talking about this with a friend of mine. What would it look like to have a one-person brokerage do 100 million dollars in revenue? Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean right now. Right now, it's like two to three million is is really good per like revenue, per head revenue per person. Um, I know some people are trying to get to five million right now and moving beyond that. Can you imagine a day where one person could handle a hundred million dollars with a freight?
Speaker 2:yeah, I definitely think it's. It's for sure possible. It's just a matter it's got to be possible, but yeah yeah, it's, it's gonna be.
Speaker 1:It's a wild thought, that's for sure it's a wild thought. Well, who knows, maybe, uh, maybe, you guys will be the reason that that happens. You never know. Let's see where that goes. All right, annalise, thank you for being on the show. We really appreciate you coming by today. What's the best way for people to get connected with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if anybody wants to get connected with me I'm always on LinkedIn Just shoot me a message. Also, be TIA is coming up. I'll be at broker carrier summit, so we'll the rest of our team. We have Kevin Coombs and Chris Franklin Thorup, so reach out to any of us, or you can also go to try chaincom and then we can connect from there.
Speaker 1:And remember everybody, everybody, it's trichaincom If you look it up online, trichaincom. Like Annalise said, do not get confused on that. Annalise, we'll see you out there on the road real soon. Can't wait to see you in Indy for the BCS. And again, thanks for coming by today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, looking forward to it, Thank you.
Speaker 1:All right, everybody. We appreciate you watching today. Also, again, we wanted to give a shout out to our sponsor, sales-crm. Go check them out at sales-crmcom and, if you're listening to us right now, on Reese across America. Thanks so much for tuning in. We appreciate it and we love being with you every Tuesday night as a part of their trucking Tuesday lineup. Until next time, my friends, don't forget, stop standing out or stop standing still, start standing out. Man, I butchered that. I got to do that again. Let me try that one more time. Folks, until next time. Remember, stop standing still, start standing out. We'll see you guys.
