Brent – 00:00:01:
Welcome to Freight Nation: A Trucking Podcast where we explore the fascinating world of trucking and freight management. We dive deep into the freight industry and uncover why the trucking industry is more crucial to our country now than ever before. Stay tuned to uncover the driving forces behind successful trucking businesses and hear from the hardworking truckers and leaders who keep the world moving. Let’s hit the road. All right, how’s everything going out there, Freight Nation? I hope you’re ready for a great podcast today. Today’s going to be one that you’re going to hear a great story. You’re going to hear about a person, a guy that just wouldn’t give up on chasing success. You’re going to hear his whole story. I’ve been friends with him for a long time in this marketplace, been friends with a lot of people for a long time. He’s one of the ones that I really have always appreciated his sincerity, his transparency, and his honesty about who he is and where he’s going in this world. Joining us today on Freight Nation is the one and only CEO of BETA Consulting Group, Mr. Trey Griggs. Trey, thank you so much for joining us on Freight Nation today.
Trey – 00:01:05:
Brent, it’s about time we did this, man. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while, and I was excited when you guys started your podcast.
Brent – 00:01:13:
Yeah.
Trey – 00:01:14:
And really, really thrilled when you reached out.
Brent – 00:01:16:
Well, that’s a high compliment coming from somebody who doesn’t just have one, doesn’t just have two. He has three different podcasts. And so the guy who’s all over the place, every show I go to, he’s always dressed in some crazy different shirt or something. Last time I saw him, he had a Bo Jackson shirt on because we were in Kansas City together.
Trey – 00:01:31:
I did. That’s right.
Brent – 00:01:32:
I love a little Bo Jackson. You guys know I’m an Auburn guy. Where’s my Auburn? So there’s my Auburn. That helmet is signed by Bo Jackson right there.
Trey – 00:01:39:
Ooh, nice.
Brent – 00:01:40:
So it says Heisman, 1985, I think, 1985?
Trey – 00:01:45:
85, right? Yeah.
Brent – 00:01:46:
Bo Jackson. So it was sent to me by Scott Musgrave, my good friend. But look, one of the things I’ve admired about you, Trey, in this market is that, number one, you’ve had a lot of different sort of stops along the way and all sort of focused in on the commerce of logistics. It’s been technology. You’ve had some things where you’ve been in consulting, not consulting, but you’ve been in like staffing where you work for Lean Solutions. You work for a TMS company. You work for Trucker Tools, another great product in the marketplace. Started by my good friend, Prasad. And so you’ve had a lot of cut your teeth in a lot of areas, you know, but you did something really unique. And this is really why I wanted to have you on Freight Nation was because, not just because we’re friends, but because you did something that a lot of people, it takes a lot of like courage and maybe just a lot of like elbow grit and gumption and to get after it. You, in 2019, you officially went out on your own and started your own business. And so I want to talk a lot about that. And so it’ll be really funny as you tell the story about how you got through that because, hey, Freight Nation, look, Trey is like the James Brown of logistics. He’s like the hardest working man. I think he’s got like seven different jobs that he does. Oh, by the way, on top of this Freight Nation, he’s also a registered realtor. So he can sell your home if you need to sell your property, if you’re in the greater St. Louis area.
Trey – 00:03:00:
In the state of Missouri. In the state of Missouri. That’s right.
Brent – 00:03:05:
Greater St. Louis area. It’s got to be the greater.
Trey – 00:03:07:
That’s right.
Brent – 00:03:08:
I’m sure you could sell houses all over the place. But no, one thing I admire about you, Trey, is that you took everything that you had gleaned over the years you’ve been in logistics and you saw an opportunity out there to help companies be better at what they were doing. And you started BETA Consulting Group, which is a marketing group. It’s a marketing consulting group where you help them get better at what they do in logistics and communicating who they are. And I love this phrase, you turn customers into fans. And so I think that’s a great phrase. So look. Start off by telling the Freight Nation watchers and listeners a little bit about just your story. How did you get to freight from where you were into the freight marketplace?
Trey – 00:03:47:
Well, like most people, I’d never intended to be in transportation. Although ironically enough, my dad was a local truck driver when I was a kid. Yeah, he drove a straight truck.
Brent – 00:03:57:
No way. What kind of truck did he drive?
Trey – 00:03:59:
A box truck, a straight truck. We grew up in Kansas City.
Brent – 00:04:01:
Okay.
Trey – 00:04:02:
And my parents divorced when I was seven. I actually lived with my dad. And in the summers, he didn’t make a lot of money. And so in the summers, he didn’t want me staying at home by myself all summer and just getting in trouble. So he’d wake me up in the morning, I’d jump in the car with him. We’d go down to the loading dock where they had loaded up his truck. And then we’d get in and we’d drive around all summer in the cab of the truck there.
Brent – 00:04:20:
You got to be kidding.
Trey – 00:04:21:
So he’s pulling into warehouses and a lot of them have concrete siding. I’d have a racquetball and a baseball glove. And while they were unloading, I was over there throwing the ball against the wall and playing a little baseball. And then we’d hop back in the truck, we’d go to the next stop. And that was kind of my childhood.
Brent – 00:04:35:
Dude, I love that. Yeah.
Trey – 00:04:37:
I didn’t realize that that was going to be kind of my future at the time, but it was pretty cool to kind of look back on that and just see the foundation of that.
Brent – 00:04:46:
So before you jump into the next part of your career, hold on, hold on, hold on. Yeah. And I love this. And I always stop our Truck Nation guests when they talk about they worked with one of their parents. So because that’s a big part of trucking. So many people that are in trucking at one time worked with their dad or their mom or something. Predominantly, it’s guys working with dads because this is still, you know, predominantly guys that drive trucks. So, all right, before you go into the rest or how you got to where you are, tell me what it was like just traveling with your dad. Like, you know, he’d wake you up and I’m sure you didn’t want to wake up as a kid, but I’m sure as you look back on it now as an adult yourself that you go, man, that was pretty sweet time. Tell the Freight Nation watchers and listen a little bit about your experience with that.
Trey – 00:05:26:
I have some very fond memories from those days.
Brent – 00:05:29:
Yeah. Me too. Yeah.
Trey – 00:05:30:
I probably didn’t want to get up in the morning. For sure. But what my dad would do is he would let me sleep in the cab because, you know, as a kid, you can sleep till noon or 10 or whatever.
Brent – 00:05:39:
Oh, yeah.
Trey – 00:05:39:
So he’d get me in the cab and he just let me sleep while he drove around and made deliveries. And then I’ll never forget this. About 10 o’clock every day, 10 or 1030, we’d stop at Quick Trip.
Brent – 00:05:48:
Yeah.
Trey – 00:05:48:
Because it was in Kansas City there and Quick Trip was a big gas station in that area.
Brent – 00:05:52:
Oh, yeah.
Trey – 00:05:52:
We’d stop at Quick Trip. We’d get the little sausage muffins, little two pack of sausage muffins.
Brent – 00:05:57:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. My dad was Hardee’s. He loved Hardee’s. Yeah.
Trey – 00:06:01:
Yep. If dad was having a good week, I could get the chocolate milk also. And so I remember that. And then I just remember listening to 80s music.
Brent – 00:06:09:
Oh, yeah.
Trey – 00:06:09:
I mean, that was basically from 1986 to about 1991 was the era in which every summer I would go and I’d ride around with them. And so it was like 80s music. I mean, whenever 80s music comes on, it puts me right back in the cab of that truck. And my dad taught me how to find a location based on an address because Kansas City is built on a grid. It’s really easy.
Brent – 00:06:29:
Oh, yeah.
Trey – 00:06:29:
And so just by using the address, you can actually find out where something is located in the city. And so I learned a lot of things from him. I learned how to back up a truck. In fact, my dad would always say, if you can’t back up a vehicle without just looking in your mirrors, you don’t know how to drive.
Brent – 00:06:41:
Yeah.
Trey – 00:06:42:
Because, you know, with a big straight truck, you can only look at the mirrors. And so, you know, he would teach me how to back up a truck. Other stories about that, but it was a fun childhood and a lot of really fond memories of that time of growing up when a lot of kids were sitting at home, maybe playing video games. I never got into video games because I wasn’t around them.
Brent – 00:06:59:
Yeah.
Trey – 00:06:59:
But I got some pretty cool experience in the city, you know?
Brent – 00:07:02:
Yeah, man. That’s super cool. My dad would never even let us have video games. He’s like, look, it’s a big world out there. You need to get out there and go experience it. And it’s not sitting in front of the TV. So if I wasn’t playing sports, I was going a lot of places with my dad. So I have those same sort of fond memories. Man, I’d give anything to be out there with my dad. Again, my dad passed away four years ago. And so I miss him every day. But man, am I so thankful for those experiences. All right, man. So you got a little trucking background in you. You can back a truck up. That’s pretty talented.
Trey – 00:07:32:
Yeah, we’ve had an RV now. So I’m used to driving big vehicles and kind of a pretty natural part of kind of who we are as a family and what we do. But to go back to how I got into transportation.
Brent – 00:07:41:
Yeah, sure.
Trey – 00:07:42:
So I had a lot of jobs growing up. I feel like I spent my 20s trying to figure out life, kind of recovering a little bit from childhood because, again, with divorced parents, it wasn’t always great. So kind of spent my 20s recovering from that a little bit, figuring out how life works. I was a school teacher. What? I taught high school physics.
Brent – 00:07:57:
Physics?
Trey – 00:07:58:
And to this day, Brent was my favorite job. My favorite job to this day was teaching high school physics.
Brent – 00:08:03:
See what? Hey, hang on a minute. You see what I mean, Freight Nation? It’s like every time I talk to Trey Griggs, he’s done something else. High school physics teacher. By the way, last time I checked, physics ain’t easy. That’s like science and mathematics blended together.
Trey – 00:08:18:
Yeah, it is. That’s right.
Brent – 00:08:19:
By the way, physics was my favorite class in all of high school, my high school experience.
Trey – 00:08:24:
If you have a good teacher, it is, you know.
Brent – 00:08:26:
So keep going. What else? Did you help us land on the moon as well?
Trey – 00:08:33:
No, I didn’t do that, but I wish I could have because I really wanted to go to space as a teacher. That was definitely on the agenda of what I wanted to do.
Brent – 00:08:39:
Yeah, I bet.
Trey – 00:08:40:
But I taught high school physics and I coached sports and I really enjoyed that. And then I did a little bit of youth ministry because I wanted to go that route and have more of a spiritual impact.
Brent – 00:08:48:
Yeah, I remember you and I talking about that.
Trey – 00:08:49:
But what I realized is that youth pastors don’t actually spend a lot of time with kids because the kids are at school all day where the teachers are. And so I actually went back to teaching because I wanted to spend time and have an influence on kids. And then when my wife and I got married and then when we had our first daughter, it was really important for us that she stays home. And I didn’t want to be a principal and I didn’t want to have to coach every sport just for us to survive and be gone all the time. And so I knew that I had to make an adjustment. At that point, I had a friend at church that said, hey, I think you would do well at sales. I think you have the personality for your competitive. I think you do well at sales. My first reaction, Brent, was no chance. I’m not doing sales.
Brent – 00:09:24:
Oh, no way. Really?
Trey – 00:09:25:
And the only thing I could think of. The only thing I could think of in my mind was a used car salesman.
Brent – 00:09:30:
Okay.
Trey – 00:09:30:
I didn’t think about sales from a business standpoint, because when you’re a teacher or when you’re a youth pastor, you don’t think about where revenue comes from. You just go to work, do your job, get your paycheck and go home. You don’t know how business works.
Brent – 00:09:41:
Right.
Trey – 00:09:41:
And so my friend said, no, no, listen, hey, every business out there has to have sales. They don’t have a business, which seems really fundamental, but I didn’t know that at the time. And so I started thinking about it. Okay. Okay. Maybe I could do this. At that time, Brent, my wife and I were relocating to Portland, Oregon, just to do something crazy and fun. We had two small kids. They were two and six months old, and we just wanted to live somewhere new and do something different. And we love the Northwest. My sister lives in Eugene, Oregon. So we knew about it. And so we made the decision to go to Portland and I was looking for sales jobs. And the only job I could get, Brent, with 32 years old, I have a master’s degree. I’ve taught high school physics for six years. I’ve been a youth pastor for a while. The only sales job, the only thing that would give me a chance. It was door to door. Office supply sales, business to business.
Brent – 00:10:26:
Door to door.
Trey – 00:10:27:
So door to door, business to business, office supply sales.
Brent – 00:10:30:
Well, I’m going to tell you something. Some of the best people come out of that.
Trey – 00:10:33:
A hundred percent.
Brent – 00:10:33:
Because it’s sink or swim every day.
Trey – 00:10:36:
Yeah.
Brent – 00:10:36:
Yeah.
Trey – 00:10:36:
It was a hundred percent commission, no benefits, no guarantees at all. I mean, you only eat what you kill.
Brent – 00:10:41:
Right.
Trey – 00:10:42:
And it was really hard. It was a shock to the system because going from teaching and ministry to that, it was a real shock to the system.
Brent – 00:10:47:
I’m sure.
Trey – 00:10:48:
But I am competitive and I do enjoy talking to people. And even though it was very difficult, I slowly over time figured it out. In fact, I’ll tell you one day that made the biggest difference for me is I was six months in and I wasn’t making a lot of money, stressing over money because I’m the provider of the family. My wife’s not working. We have two small kids. And there were many weeks, Brent, where I came home with $150 check. It’s embarrassing. And I remember I went to my wife and I said, I don’t think I can do this anymore. I’m done. I’m embarrassed. I don’t do this anymore. And my wife and her infinite wisdom, we all need a spouse that just sees things we don’t see.
Brent – 00:11:20:
Oh man, we need those cheerleaders. No don’t.
Trey – 00:11:23:
But my wife and her infinite wisdom, she said, listen, don’t worry about making money. We’ll be okay. You’re learning a new skill right now and they’re actually paying you to learn it. So just learn as much as you can. Just try to get as good as you can. And in six months, we’ll find a professional job and we’ll be fine.
Brent – 00:11:38:
Right.
Trey – 00:11:38:
And it took all the pressure off.
Brent – 00:11:40:
Oh wow. What wise advice.
Trey – 00:11:42:
Took all the pressure off. And now-
Brent – 00:11:44:
That’s a great partner right there. Yeah.
Trey – 00:11:46:
I’m going to work just trying to learn. I’m going into these businesses, just trying to be a better communicator, trying to make somebody laugh, trying to help them save a trip to the store, maybe save a little money. It changed my entire perspective from, I need this sale to what do you need? And because of that, Brent, I got better.
Brent – 00:12:03:
Right. Oh yeah. That’s the big change.
Trey – 00:12:05:
You know, I sold more. I was able to be more successful. I ended up becoming the top rep in the office. I broke records. I had seven sales in one day, which is crazy. The goal was two sales a day. Two. That was the goal. If you did three a day, people were asking you how you were so good. So I got seven sales in one day. That was pretty cool. I made $18,000 one week. That was pretty cool. So I started to see a little bit of success. And then after 15 months, that’s when I made the decision to get a real sales job. You know, maybe something with a base salary, maybe some benefits.
Brent – 00:12:33:
Yeah, sure.
Trey – 00:12:35:
You know, something like that. My wife and I had no insurance for 18 months. We were flying by the seat of our pants a little bit. So anyway, so I went to a recruiter in Portland, Oregon, and I said, hey, I’ve got this experience in sales. I’d like to find a more professional sales job. Can you help me out? She goes, yeah, I’ve got some clients that are looking. And one of them just happened to be Janice Compton at DAT, our friend Janice over there. She runs the inside sales team. So I got connected with her and interviewed there and got the job there. And I got to say, like after door to door, selling load board and rating services was super easy. I mean, comparatively speaking, you know?
Brent – 00:13:05:
Yeah. Cause they actually need what you do. So right.
Trey – 00:13:09:
They need it. There’s a brand there that people already know. I mean, I went from going in and meeting people for the first time, trying to sell them office supplies to just sitting in an office in Portland, Oregon, watching the rain outside instead of walking through it and people calling us saying, hey, I need access to the load board. And then it was just really easy. And I remember, you know, you said that door to door is very valuable. Here’s the day that I realized how valuable door to door was. I was sitting at lunch at DAT and one of my colleagues came up to me at lunch, and he goes, hey, what are you doing? I was like, I mean, lunch, what’s up? He goes, no, what are you doing? He goes, how are you selling so many accounts? And I said, it’s not like we’re having to go into their business for the first time and like meet them right away and sell them today because I’m not coming back tomorrow. And as I’m explaining door to door and what I was doing, his eyes kind of glossed over, like, what are you talking about? And I was like, this is what I was doing. I was going into businesses the first time and meeting them and trying to sell them on the spot. I said, all we have to do is answer the phone, make friends with them, ask them what they want, try to upsell them one. Subscription level and ask them what credit card they want to use. Like it’s not that hard, you know? And that’s when I realized the value of door to door. And Brent, it’s interesting. All the people that I know who’ve done door to door, they’ll say the same thing. They’ll say, it’s almost like people that go to bootcamp. They say this as well. I’m glad I did it. I hope I never have to go back and do it again, but I’m glad I did it.
Brent – 00:14:25:
Well, yeah, I understand. So when I was in the beginning of my career, learned a lot from my father, from a relational aspect, going and meeting people and all the things, same sort of experience with that. I just learned so much from my dad there, for, my people are valuable, people matter. Help people solve the problem they need solved. And then when I was trying to make some money in college, I actually sold Cutco knives. Do you remember Cutco knives? They’re really nice.
Trey – 00:14:47:
Yeah, yeah. We own them.
Brent – 00:14:48:
I sold those for about a year. And so you learn really quick how to make a sale because it’s either they’re the interest rate or the not interest rate. Very fast. So the thing is, you learn not to be offended by no. You learn how to take a lot of no’s. You know, and that’s super. So Freight Nation, when you’re out there, whether you’re selling your service as a carrier, whether you’re, a broker trying to sell, you know, a shipper, it’s the salespeople, the marketing people that are good at what they do. No, it’s just an opportunity to ask another question. That’s all it is. You just ask another question. So I’m sure Trey did that over and over and over as he learned his craft and then getting into logistics. When you’re in a marketplace where they actually need what you do, it’s a little different.
Trey – 00:15:26:
Yeah. And the mindset that I think you have to have in sales to stay sane, it’s just to understand that the only way to a yes is through a no.
Brent – 00:15:32:
Right.
Trey – 00:15:32:
Or through a group, a bunch of no’s. The only way is through. You got to go through the no’s to get to the yes. Every no is one step closer to your next yes.
Brent – 00:15:40:
Oh, yeah. For sure it is. Yeah.
Trey – 00:15:41:
So when you think about it like that, you’re excited to get a no because you realize, I’m closer. I’m closer. I’m closer. You know.
Brent – 00:15:48:
A little bit more. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So that was just your beginning into it. You’ve had some great stops along the way where you’ve learned and learned and learned and had different positions. Talk a little bit about those because that’s part of your journey as well.
Trey – 00:16:01:
Yeah. I mean, I feel like my experience in transportation has been really diverse and really good. I’ve seen the world from different perspectives. I’ve seen it from kind of the large corporate perspective, which, you know, DAT is a pretty big company. Then I’ve also been a lot of startups. I’ve sold load board services, rating services, other professional services. I’ve sold TMS. I’ve sold tracking solutions, smart capacity solutions, staffing solutions, automation solutions. So I’ve been at different places along the way. And each one of them has really taught me a lot. I learned what startup life is really like, you know, because it’s very different than corporate life. It’s hard.
Brent – 00:16:34:
Oh yeah. It’s a million miles an hour every day.
Trey – 00:16:37:
You wear a lot of hats. You have a lot of problems to solve and they’re not new problems. They’re just new to you. It’s not like it’s a crazy problem that doesn’t have an answer. It’s just, you just don’t know the answer. So you have to figure it out. But you know, I went to Port TMS and I learned a lot about TMS, how to build a TMS, what customers want, just seeing that perspective. Being at Trucker Tools and their tracking solution, that was a great stop there as well. Being on the staffing side and selling staffing services as well and seeing it from the resource perspective in that regard. All those stops have been really good and it taught me a lot. Learned a lot about marketing from a sales perspective. Here’s what I didn’t realize, and this is what led me to starting BETA Consulting Group.
Brent – 00:17:12:
Right. I remember when you did that. Yeah.
Trey – 00:17:15:
When I was at DAT, they had marketing. They had a brand. People knew who they were and sales was pretty easy, honestly. When I went to Port TMS, nobody knew who we were. We’re a brand new company. Nobody knew. So I had to build the marketing program to do sales. It was really hard. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was taking questions, but I didn’t know the answers to it and trying to figure them out. Same thing at Trucker Tools. They were a little bit further along, but they still weren’t the Trucker Tools of today. They were still pretty early on in their evolution and they didn’t have a lot of marketing. They didn’t have a lot of messaging. I remember we were creating the slide decks for sales presentations. We were creating the workflows in Salesforce for opportunities and contact management. A lot of those things just didn’t exist. I learned how to do a lot of those things from those experiences and I really value that time. When I was at Lean, I was really focused on building their brand. And getting their name out there and working on messaging and working on the sales process and some of those types of things. And so every step has been really helpful for me in seeing the transportation industry from a slightly different perspective. At one point, I did broker Freight for six months and I saw that perspective. It was enough time for me to know.
Brent – 00:18:20:
Where did you work where you brokered Freight? Because I didn’t have that on my list. But again, Freight Nation, you see what I’m talking about? Every single time I talk to Freight, it’s like he’s done something new. So it’s one reason why I respect him so much, because he just keeps going at it.
Trey – 00:18:33:
Just figure stuff out, try to figure it out. So after DAT, I went to MyFreightWorld. And the goal there was to sell their, they had an LTL/TMS platform.
Brent – 00:18:40:
Oh, okay. That’s right. I remember that.
Trey – 00:18:42:
/That’s why they brought me was to sell the LTL/TMS platform. What we realized is that most companies didn’t want to buy an LTL/TMS platform. They wanted a TMS that had everything. So I went back to ownership and I said, hey, if we really want to be a software player, we need to build a TMS that handles all modes, not just LTL. It was a great product in 2005. It wasn’t a great product in 2015. And so while they started to build the TMS and to build Port TMS, which is the company that came out of that, I had some time where there wasn’t much for me to do. And so they said, hey, why don’t you sling some freight? Why don’t you go learn that real quick and do that for six months? And so I did a little bit of reefer and a little bit of flatbed. It was an eye-opening experience to actually sit in that seat and to talk to drivers and to field questions when problems arise and do check calls and just all the different things that go into that. But it was a great experience, but it was also enough time for me to understand this is not the seat that I want to be sitting in. I wasn’t a good broker. It wasn’t for me. I mean, I think you have to have a certain mentality and just a passion for that and a love for that. I just didn’t enjoy it as much as what I do now and what I was doing with servicing brokers.
Brent – 00:19:40:
Right. Well, you know, you figure that out. Yeah.
Trey – 00:19:42:
So all that to say, Brent, that really led me to understand that there is a hole in the market when it comes to sales and marketing. In our industry, for some reason… People really value sales.
Brent – 00:19:52:
Oh, sure.
Trey – 00:19:54:
I’m going to hire some sales guys. I’m just going to get sales. I want to get sales because they think that’s the fastest way to revenue. And they’re not wrong. It is the fastest way to quick wins, right? But it’s not the fastest way to really building a perpetual flywheel and a brand where people really know who you are. And one thing that I also recognize is that if you focus on sales only and don’t focus on marketing, you’re just asking your expensive sales guys to do the marketing because marketing has to happen. You have to get the word out. You have to create curiosity. You have to educate the market. The question is, who’s going to do it? And if you don’t have any marketing services, you’re basically asking the sales guys to do the marketing, which slows them down. Because I say this all the time, cold calling, whether you believe it or not, in my opinion, cold calling is not a sales activity. It’s a marketing activity.
Brent – 00:20:36:
That’s a marketing activity, 100%. Don’t jump into all the operational stuff yet because we’re going to get into some of the special Trey Griggs sauce here in just a minute about the operational thing. I want you to focus on, all right, so you started, you learned, you took a new position, you learned, new company, you learned. You kept doing things. I’m sure at some point in there, you probably did something else that you’re going to bring up in a minute. So I’m looking forward to hearing about that. So you got all the way down the road and you started doing a little consulting as people started seeking your advice. But in 2019, you got real serious about it because as lawyers say, I hung out my own shingle, you know, sort of thing. You as Trey Griggs started BETA Consulting Group officially. I know you had been working on some before that, but officially. So, all right, where were you? What time of the day? Where were you sitting when you went, dang it, I’m just going to do it. I’m just going to do it. Freight Nation, I want you to hear this because we all kind of go through that one time or another. If you’ve got any bravado, if you’re in freight transportation, you got some moxie about you. I know that because you’re in freight. It’s a hard business to run. It’s a hard industry to be in. So I know you’ve got some grit and determination about you. So I want you to hear from Trey just his heart about what was it that it went from heart to mind and he made his mind up he was going to do it. All right, Trey, tell us what happened.
Trey – 00:21:54:
It was a journey. There’s no doubt about it. I think I’ve been entrepreneurial for a long time. Looking back at my career, building things, creating things has always been a part of my nature. When I was a youth pastor, I wrote a curriculum that I sold to other youth pastors in the area. Why not?
Brent – 00:22:08:
Of course you did.
Trey – 00:22:09:
When I was doing the physics program, I realized for every physics class that I had, I didn’t have to teach freshman physical science. So I was like recruiting kids to come and take physics and really building the program.
Brent – 00:22:19:
Right.
Trey – 00:22:20:
So when I look back on my career, the entrepreneurial vein, the creator vein and building something from scratch has always been there. But honestly, Brent, I’ve struggled with confidence majority of my life. And it came from childhood.
Brent – 00:22:32:
Yeah, I think a lot. A lot of everybody does at some point. Yeah, I’m sure.
Trey – 00:22:36:
A little bit. But mine is I’m not gonna say it’s worse than everybody else’s, but it was pretty, pretty dark. And I’m writing about this in the book that I’m writing right now. The reason is-
Brent – 00:22:42:
You’re writing a book. Of course you are.
Trey – 00:22:44:
I’m writing a book. Yes, right now.
Brent – 00:22:46:
Of course, you’re writing a book. Yeah. Why am I not surprised?
Trey – 00:22:50:
It’s on the power of self-awareness because I’ve been on this journey, Brent. I’ve been on this journey to understand myself. And when I was in college, I couldn’t ask a girl out.
Brent – 00:22:57:
What?
Trey – 00:22:58:
Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t ask for a phone number. Couldn’t ask her out. A lot of people don’t believe that.
Brent – 00:23:01:
Yeah, that’s hard to believe.
Trey – 00:23:02:
Because they see my personality now. Right. They see how comfortable I am up on stage and whatnot. But the truth is, I always felt like I was getting lucky with all the success I was having.
Brent – 00:23:11:
Right.
Trey – 00:23:12:
And a lot of it goes back to my relationship with my dad. My dad did a lot of really good things. A lot of really good things.
Brent – 00:23:17:
Yeah.
Trey – 00:23:17:
But one thing he didn’t do well was he didn’t give me credit for the things that I did well. He took credit. He took the credit.
Brent – 00:23:22:
Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.
Trey – 00:23:24:
But he always kind of put the blame on me for things I did poorly. And so over a 10 to 12 year stretch, the message that I got in my subconscious was that anything that was good was externally driven. Not for me. Anything that was bad was internally driven. It was for me.
Brent – 00:23:39:
Yeah. That’s a dragon to slay right there. You got to get that one gone. Yeah.
Trey – 00:23:42:
Yeah. So I lost the confidence. I just didn’t have it. And so as I’m thinking about starting my own company, like I want to do something my own, I kind of equate it to like when you’re on a cliff, there’s a 40 foot jump down into the river and you’ve seen other people do it, you know, it’s safe and you want to do it. But man, the higher you get up there to that ledge, and especially up there, it looks a little more scary and it’s harder to jump off. That’s how it felt. The more that I got close to starting it, the scarier it was.
Brent – 00:24:08:
Right.
Trey – 00:24:08:
And I started talking myself out of it. But late 2018, I had a good friend, Steve Van Otten at Freight Tec in Salt Lake City, who said, hey, I could use some help on a project. And I was like, yeah, I’d love to help you out with a project. And so with that, it was like super late, like November, December. You know what? I’m going to go ahead and just form the LLC. It’s 150 bucks, the state of Missouri, form the LLC. And so I’m official. And that was my first check that I ever got for BETA Consulting Group at the time. And it was like, at that point, I was like, wow, I’m official. And I thought, man, maybe this is time to do it. But I’m still sitting here, Brent, with a wife that doesn’t work and two kids and I’m the main provider. Man, it was scary. So scary.
Brent – 00:24:43:
A lot of pressure. Pressure can be good though, right? I mean, think about it. Pressure can be very good.
Trey – 00:24:48:
Yeah. So it can be good. It can be good. A hundred percent. Back you in a corner and you don’t have any choices. But so I went to work for Prasad’s Trucker Tools in 2019 while I still had it. I then went to work for Lean in 2020 for about two years, having this in the back of my mind that I was going to do this. And it wasn’t until, you had talked about today, it wasn’t until late October of 2021, I’m on a walk with my wife and she could see that I was struggling because I’m just pouring myself into building Lean’s brand and doing that. But it just never really worked out for me to be a part of ownership of that. And that’s fine. You know, it’s not my company. But my wife just said, why are you killing yourself? Like, if you’re going to work this hard, just build your own thing. And I was like, are you serious? And she goes, yeah. And I said, you know, I could fail. Like, you know what this could mean? And she goes, yeah, I know. So that was kind of like the… You know, the cheerleading kind of, you know, encouragement that I needed to really think about it. And then in December of that year, that’s when the opportunity arose to say, yeah, let’s, let’s do this. So I started officially in January of 2022 of like being full-time all in BETA consulting group. And so now we’re like 30 months into it and it’s been phenomenal, but that was kind of the evolution. It wasn’t really just one day. It was kind of these milestones along the way that I can look back on and haven’t looked back since. And I’m telling you, I’ve never been more fulfilled and more satisfied and also more challenged and depressed. Like the entrepreneurship journey is just a crazy wild ride, but it’s a lot of fun. I’ve got a great team. I love the problems that we’re trying to solve now. And I love helping more than one company at a time. And so it’s been good to answer your question. I got to say this to you. 2016, some buddies of mine here in St. Louis, my friend, Joseph and Phil, we started a company remodeling homes and we remodeled homes for two years. And I love that. I love that. I just couldn’t figure out how to make it full-time. If I had figured out how to make that full-time, we would not be here talking. But I couldn’t figure it out. So here we are.
Brent – 00:26:37:
You’d probably still be doing it. Well, I’ll tell you, you know, one of the things, and this is something I learned and do, and I did some distance running for a long time when I was, you know, an older guy from 35 to 45. I did a lot of like marathon distancing. What it helped teach me was this. And I think this has helped me so tremendously in my work life. When you’re trying to run 26.2 miles, it’s not about the physical, it’s about the mental. And so you have to have made your mind up that you’re going to put one foot in front of the other and complete it. No one’s paying me, so it doesn’t matter how fast I do it, but you got to make your mind up. You’re going to do it. And here’s what it taught me, Trey. I mean, this is what every time you talk about one more thing that you’ve done, you confirm into me this principle, which is we humans are poor measurers of our own capacity. We always think we can do less than we can. And what taking on something like a marathon taught me was I had so much more capacity than I ever thought and more ability, more gifts than I ever thought. I just had to set my mind to it. I was going to go try it. And I was going to go try it. So every time you talk about one more thing that Trey’s done, and by the way, we got to get a list. I got to start making a checklist on this. So it just confirms that. And I hope that my guess, and you can tell me if I’m right or wrong, is that each one of those little stops along the way gave you more confidence in who you are. Am I right about that?
Trey – 00:27:58:
A hundred percent. I remember when I was doing door to door, it was a revolving door of people coming into that company because it’s hard. And I remember as time would go on, like eight months in and somebody would come in for a week and then they quit. Somebody come in for months and they quit. And every time somebody left, there was this little part of me that said, you’re still here. You’re still able to do, like, you figured this out and gave you a little more confidence. So a hundred percent. And I look back to, you know, like a lot of times I’ll say things like, man, I wish I would have done this sooner. I think we do that sometimes whenever we start something, we realize how much we enjoy it.
Brent – 00:28:26:
Oh, we always do. Especially when we’ve had some success.
Trey – 00:28:30:
Man, I wish we’d done this sooner. But all those steps along the way, my time at DAT, my time at MyFreightWorld, TMS, Trucker Tools, Lean, all those steps along the way taught me something that has helped me today to hopefully be able to provide value to my clients from those experiences that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. And so I have to sit here and say that I’m very thankful for all of those because they led to this moment. I can’t look back with regret. It took me longer to become an entrepreneur than some. I became an entrepreneur at 44, but at the same time, I’m glad it wasn’t 54 or 64.
Brent – 00:29:01:
Right on time. You did it when you were supposed to, which was the time you did it. So you’re right on time. I tell people this all the time when I’m talking to a lot of young adults and stuff. So Freight Nation, this is another thing out there if you’re thinking about doing this. You’re doing it in the time that it’s supposed to happen. If you force it before, you’re not ready. If you don’t do it when you’ve got the motivation, then you waited too long. Do it at the time where it just feels like this is the next step for me. So that’s super important. All right, so Trey, what a great story and what a great encouragement to the Freight Nation watchers and listeners of keep trying things. One of the things I’ve learned in this finance world that we’ve been in, the investment world, which is try things. And if it’s not working, pivot quickly. If it’s not working, try something else. If it’s not working, pivot quickly. The bad thing is to chase a bad idea with good money or good time. All right, so you want to make sure that you’re pivoting quickly. All right, so look. So you now, BETA Consulting, I’ve got you starting in 2019. You said fully it was in 2021. So you’ve crossed the threshold. You can do this. You’re going to be a success at it. You can drive the revenue that you want to drive. And now sort of the upside is where are you going to take it? But as you’re talking to clients and things in the market, since we’re talking about marketing and the reason why, by the way, marketing is sales, sales is marketing. It’s all in the same thing. It’s just a different communication line. I love marketing because that’s what I cut my teeth on in transportation, working for a really big media group. I work for Overdrive magazine. A lot of Freight Nation truckers out there know who Overdrive magazine is. I worked for them for 15 years, loved every second of it. Some of the best people I’ve ever met in my life. And Overdrive has lots of great fans. So turning customers into fans, we did this all day long. So I want to talk a little bit about the operational side of what you do. So they say that so many people fire off the wrong way. They start thinking about tactics first instead of strategy. All right. So when you’re meeting with your customers, where do you start when you’re talking with them? How do you start the process of getting them to think strategically before they go off and do tactics? What’s the Greg special sauce on? You don’t have to give all of it because they need you. They need to reach out to you and employ your services, but give a little bit.
Trey – 00:31:01:
We’re pretty transparent over here. I’m not too afraid to share the secret sauce.
Brent – 00:31:04:
I know.
Trey – 00:31:05:
No, you know, like we said about sales and marketing is one. I feel the same way. It’s really one department with two different strategies or tactics to achieve the same goal, which is to drive revenue. Right. To bring in new customers.
Brent – 00:31:15:
Yeah, for sure.
Trey – 00:31:16:
Marketing is one to many. Sales is one to one, but they really need to work together. The best content for marketing should come from your sales team because they’re the ones that are having the conversations. They’re hearing the no’s and why the no’s are there, what the obstacles are. They’re hearing the yeses. Why are people saying yes?
Brent – 00:31:28:
Right.
Trey – 00:31:29:
I think customers are a goldmine of information that a lot of companies don’t tap into. So we’ll get into that in just a minute. But here’s what I’d say in terms of the starting point. All good sales and marketing, all good sales and marketing starts with messaging. It starts with how you communicate to the market.
Brent – 00:31:41:
For sure.
Trey – 00:31:42:
What you say, the words that you use. Let me give you just a quick example to try to hammer in the home this point. If I were talking to you about like mowing your yard, I came by your house and I talked to you about mowing your yard. And I said, yeah, I can cut it. I can edge it. I can blow it. You know, I can come by and make sure that you have your bill and everything should be good. I can do all that. Versus if I said, yeah, yeah, Brent, I will mow it. I will edge it. I will blow it clean. I’ll be sure to come by and make sure that your bill. You may have noticed I’ve only changed one word. I changed one word. I changed can to will.
Brent – 00:32:10:
Yeah.
Trey – 00:32:11:
But by changing that one word, I create in your mind. As a buyer, I create confidence and surety in your mind as a buyer because of the word that I chose to use. I chose will instead of can. And so the words that we use matter in sales and marketing.
Brent – 00:32:25:
Yeah.
Trey – 00:32:25:
You know, when you think about IBM versus Apple, IBM had this marketing plan that just said, think. It was a real clever one word marketing strategy. And then Steve Jobs came back with Apple and his marketing slogan was think different. He took their same approach. He took two words, but those words matter. How long do you think it took them to figure out that those two words is going to be their saying, their slogan for Apple? Because it matters. The words matter. And what a lot of people do is they don’t think about the words that they’re going to use. And when you say, hey, what’s your story? They immediately try to tell you their origin story and about their company. I started this company. I come from three generations and I started this company and we’ve gained 100 customers this year and we’re on the Inc. 500 list and blah, blah, blah. It’s all about me. That’s bad marketing. Good marketing is all about the customer. It’s all about their story. It’s about their problem. It’s about what they want to accomplish. And so we spend a lot of time with our customers, helping them understand the power of story and how to use that in their marketing because messaging is the beginning. You get on a sales call, if you’re not asking 15, 20 questions to dig into their business, if you just start off. Talking about your service and pitching it, it’s not a good strategy. So that’s where we start is we start with messaging. We start with the words. We start with how you’re communicating and who you’re communicating to.
Brent – 00:33:41:
So your first discussion with a client, and Freight Nation, this is important. So your first discussion with a client is how are you going to frame your business with the words that you use? How are you going to frame sort of like your value to them? So that’s part of your, that’s your strategy on the front end, which is how are you really expressing yourself in words? Because you’ve got to have a communication with them in expressing your value of who you are as a provider of them. Is that fair?
Trey – 00:34:09:
That’s correct. Because everything you do in sales and marketing starts with the words. You know, people make buying decisions based upon what they read or what they hear. It’s the words that matter. And so it’s really important to get those right. And it’s important to position yourself correctly. I often tell people, my client says all the time, this is one of our biggest things that we talk about. And I’m glad to share this is that in every marketing piece of content that you put out there, you have to keep in mind that your customer is the hero and you are simply the guide. That’s all you are, is you’re the guide helping them get what they want. You are not the hero. So stop talking about yourself as if you are the hero, right? Make them the hero, talk about their problems, talk about what they want. Let me give you a really quick example. This is my favorite example, Brent. Let’s just say that you were a hundred pounds overweight. All right. And you’re like, man, I got to get in shape. And you and I are buddies. And you’re just like, man, hey, Trey, I need to lose a hundred pounds. I mean, I don’t know what to do. If I came along and just said, you know, hey, well I lost a hundred pounds. I mean, it was great. It was a blast. It was so much fun. Like I lost in about eight weeks. My energy level is high. It’s all great. That doesn’t help you.
Brent – 00:35:07:
No, I’m happy for you.
Trey – 00:35:10:
Just to hear me to talk about me doing it. But if I said, hey, you know what, Brent? That’s interesting because I lost 100 pounds two years ago on this program. It was really simple. And now I actually coach people to do that. I’ve got 20 clients that I help do that. Let me ask you a question. If I just sent you some prepackaged meals that you ate and you just drank five bottles of water and you made one meal for yourself a day, do you think you could do that? You’re like, yeah, I can do that. Like, that’s all you got to do. And you’d be like, I have to work out. No, you don’t have to work out. That’s all a math equation. Just got to eat different food. I’ll help you with that. I’ll coach you. I’ll keep you on track. I’ll just be available to help you out. You want to get started with that? That’s a much easier yes, because now I’ve positioned myself as a guide to help you. And you’re the hero of this story. You’re the one that’s going to lose the weight. You’re the one who’s going to feel better. But if all I do is just tell you how great I am, that doesn’t help you out. And a lot of people take that approach in marketing.
Brent – 00:35:55:
Well, that’s fantastic. So now I want you to talk a little bit about, okay, because we talked about this in the beginning, and this is something that you talk about, how to turn customers into fans. So this is another, it’s a big deal. Okay. So when you’ve got a fan of your business, they’re kind of an external brand ambassador for you. They’re a salesman for you, their referral for you. There are those things. So it’s really important to turn customers in or help customers become fans. So talk a little bit about that methodology and why that is so important.
Trey – 00:36:24:
Well, you know, a lot of businesses, when I talk about this, they say, I don’t want to think of my customers as, and I say, why not? Because what does a fan do? A fan pays full price. A fan keeps coming back and a fan tells everybody about their experience.
Brent – 00:36:37:
That’s right.
Trey – 00:36:38:
Right. That’s what every business ultimately wants are fans. We just think it’s kind of weird to talk about it like that. And so when we think about not only our customers and how can we make them fans of BETA Consulting Group, it all goes to the experience. It all goes to the experience that they have with you. The value that they’re getting out of you. Great marketing gets you in the door, but a great product or service keeps you in the door and really develops fans. I was actually talking to one of my customers about this recently, because I was telling him, he’s become a friend of mine. I said, man, one of our primary goals is to really have our customers be fans of ours and love what we do. And he said something so profound. He said, you’re not going to have a fan on the first visit. Like when somebody goes to a game for the first time, typically they’ll become a fan right away.
Brent – 00:37:18:
Typically not, yeah.
Trey – 00:37:20:
But they’ll become a fan over time if the experience is consistently good.
Brent – 00:37:23:
For sure.
Trey – 00:37:23:
Right? And so he said, your first engagement is not when you’re going to make your fans, it’s your second. So you need to get to the second engagement, which means you need to do a great job on the first engagement. And we started talking through like what that looks like. So that’s what we’re with our customers is not only do we want to market their company, their products or services, but we want to give them some insight to help them become better at what they do. So we want to talk to the customers. One of our processes is that we require our customers to let us talk to their customers because we want to hear from their customers. What do they do well? Where can they improve? You know, what would make this a better experience for you? And really creating a customer advocacy program for lack of better terms, like how can we help your customers really become advocates for you? How can we help them become fans and move in that direction? So it’s part marketing and it’s part excellence. It’s part quality. And that’s really important to us because at the end of the day, if all of our customers end up having fans, then we’ve done our job and they’re going to be much, much happier, right? Their customers are going to pay full price. They’re going to keep coming back. They’re going to tell everybody about it. They’re going to be brand ambassadors to the marketplace. I have one customer who’s a recruiter industry, and he called me like, I was like three months ago. I remember this call was late at night. We’ve become pretty good friends. He called me and he said, dude, I haven’t had to tell anybody about what I do or the quality of how I do it.
Brent – 00:38:37:
Oh, wow. That’s pretty great.
Trey – 00:38:38:
They’re telling me because that’s what they’re hearing. I’m like, dude, that’s what you want, right? You want that to be the result is that people start to know who you are and have an opinion about you from your fans, from your advocates. And so that’s really, really important. I mean, there’s no better, than a word of mouth referral. And that’s what a fan does. I can’t, as a marketing agency, I can’t get word of mouth referrals for truck stop. Couldn’t do it. But if we build the brand, if we build what you guys stand for and the experience that you’re providing and make sure people know about you over time, your customers will start telling people about you and then you’ll get customers from them. And so that’s the whole point of what we’re trying to accomplish is that flywheel that does that.
Brent – 00:39:17:
Yeah, no doubt, for sure. So one more question on the operational side, then we got to close it out because this has been such a great session. I’ve actually lost track of time.
Trey – 00:39:24:
I know, we could talk for a while, I’m sure.
Brent – 00:39:26:
So great, which is great. So one last operational thing, because we are in freight movement and logistics and technology has bombarded and invaded it. We’ve been around for a long time, so we’re not a new person to the marketplace, but other aspects have. Now, technology can kind of remove this sort of making fans of people because it can be impersonal or you can craft it as a compliment to the experience and creating fans. Tell me how, what’s your advice is, as to customers on utilizing technology to create more fans among your services that you provide?
Trey – 00:39:58:
I think there’s two aspects to this. One is if you’re a technology provider and you’re thinking that being a technology provider makes it harder to get fans. Some of the companies that have the biggest fandom in our industry are actually tech companies. But it’s because there’s a lot of communication going back and forth. If the question is how do you use communication or how to use technology to create more fans, it’s just never been easier to provide value. It’s never been easier to provide value. You can send an email and provide value. You can send a text message and provide value. You can create a podcast and provide value. You can put a video on your website and provide value. You can communicate in so many different ways using technology with your customers and do it to provide value. Here’s what I would say to everybody. In marketing in general, especially with your communication with your clients, the majority of the time you should be providing value and the minority of the time you should be asking for something in return. And if you get those right, if you get eight to nine out of three times, you’re just providing value. And one to two times you’re asking for something. That’s how you really create a fan because you’re giving, giving, giving, giving, giving. Oh, hey, can I ask you for something? Giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving. Hey, can I ask you for something? And technology facilitates that. You know, you can see an article that is really powerful and shoot that out to your network and say, hey, I was just thinking of you guys because I saw this article. I want to make sure you saw it. It has a great, you know, take on whatever the topic might be. Don’t ask for anything. You know, I had somebody ask me this recently. They said, how do I follow up with everybody at the Broker Carrier Summit that I didn’t get to meet? Right. Well, what do you think their natural inclination is to do? It’s to blast an email out and say something about the Broker Carrier Summit, but then ask for something in return. Let’s meet, check out our website, whatever the ask might be. I said, no, don’t do that. I said, why don’t you send an email that just says, hey, thank you so much for investing in the Broker Carrier Summit. We love being around like-minded people, and we hope to see you again in Fort Worth in October. Done. You’re not telling me there’s some people that would read that and go, hey, sorry we missed each other. Maybe we can connect in Fort Worth and a conversation will begin. Because you didn’t ask for anything, right?
Brent – 00:41:56:
Yeah. I love your principle. And I think this is a good teaching moment. Hey, Freight Nation, I think it’s really wise counsel from Trey here when he talks about providing value and mostly, in other words, the predominance of the time you’re talking to somebody, providing value, which is what everybody, if you’re trying to work with somebody, providing value is what they want from you. And then the ask is the minority part. So a lot of times we, as someone trying to market our services, we’re asking all the time. We’re asking most of the time and providing value only after the ask, but provide value even before the ask. So what great advice, Trey. That’s super great. By the way, you hit on it. Let’s close on this because I just got back from Kansas City, where you were not just at the Broker Carrier Summit, you were the emcee and host of the Broker Carrier Summit. Did a great job. And so it was my first time to go to it. And I was really taken aback by the desire for brokers and carriers to want to communicate better together. So let’s talk a little bit about that. Then we’ll close it out.
Trey – 00:42:50:
Yeah. I mean, that event’s become really near and dear to our heart because I didn’t really know anything about it until Dan Lindsay approached me. This is Dan Lindsay’s event. He’s the creative visionary behind it. He’s a freight broker and he just got tired of brokers complaining about carriers and carriers complaining about brokers and nobody talking to each other. And so he said, you know what? I’m just going to get them together. Let’s get them in a room and see what happens. And so he did that. And then he invited me to MC the event in Tampa last October. And honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. And I got there and you see these kind of drastically different parties, brokers and carriers, like two different languages, but like-minded in the sense of wanting to be successful and wanting to help their partners be successful. These brokers, they knew that their carriers need to be successful. They need to take care of them and the carriers need to take care of the brokers, but that’s not what you always find in the marketplace. So having them in one place where they can communicate that to each other, talk about the problems, air some grievances, because it’s like family, we’ve got issues, we’ve got to talk about them. But those conversations were so rich and it’s become one of my favorite conference, and this is probably the highlight of this last one. I just heard about this. We did a kind of a special thing at lunch on Tuesday called Lunch in Lanes. So if you’re a flatbed carrier, sit over here. And if you’re a flatbed broker, sit with them and talk, see if maybe there’s opportunities to work together. Same thing with vans, same thing with Reefer. And we’re trying to connect people as best we can. And one of the carriers came up to us on Tuesday afternoon and said, hey, I couldn’t believe this, but I just had lunch with a broker. We talked for an hour, talked about business, what Lanes he’s running. He already tended me five loads.
Brent – 00:44:14:
No way.
Trey – 00:44:15:
It’s like, what?
Brent – 00:44:16:
How nice.
Trey – 00:44:17:
How cool is that? So you’re finding people, you’re sitting over lunch, there’s a different level of trust. There’s a different relationship there. And so it’s a really exciting event. Really honored to be a part of that, to be on the board now and to be able to help steer the direction of that. It was a fun event, and it’s more conversation and less presentation. And we’re always trying to tweak that and make that skewed more to the conversations, because that’s what really matters. It’s getting people in the room, giving them a chance to talk to each other, meet each other, hopefully do some business together and be like-minded business partners. That’s what it’s all about.
Brent – 00:44:46:
Yeah, no doubt. Well, the Broker Carrier Summit carries on the same purpose that Truckstop does, which is connecting the broker and the carrier together so they can beneficially do business together. And so, man, thanks for doing that. It was great for Truckstop to be part of it. We appreciated it being there.
Trey – 00:44:59:
I know you got sponsored a golf hole at the golf tournament. We appreciate that and got to see you as well.
Brent – 00:45:03:
Hey, there you go. Hey, man. Always wanting to invest into our clients and making sure that we’re providing value no matter what. It was really great. I got to host a couple of sessions. I got to learn a lot. So just providing value, provide value and relationship across the board. Trey, this has been fantastic. Freight Nation, I hope that you took away a couple of things. Number one, I hope you took away some operational things like good marketing is all about the customer. The words you use matter. Provide value over your ask, over at making a request at all times. I hope you take away those things. And I hope you also take away that continuous effort is what creates success. And if there’s anybody that embodies that, it’s Trey Griggs right here, the CEO and the hardest working man in freight of BETA Consulting Group. Trey, thanks so much for joining us on Freight Nation today. It’s been fantastic having you on.
Trey – 00:45:50:
Brent, thanks for having me on, man. I’ve enjoyed it.
Brent – 00:45:53:
Oh my gosh, so much fun. I’ve learned a lot. The man has had so many different jobs. I feel like I haven’t worked hard enough. I got to get out there and work harder. Freight Nation, don’t forget. Don’t forget as we like to say, man, work hard, be kind, and stay humble. We’ll catch you the next time, Freight Nation. Thanks for watching and listening. On behalf of the Truckstop team, thanks for listening to this episode of Freight Nation. To find out more about the show, head to truckstop.com/podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you hit subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes. Until then, keep on trucking and exploring the open roads with Freight Nation, a trucking podcast.
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