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. Well, hello, Freight Nation. Welcome back to Freight Nation: A Trucking Podcast. So glad that you’re joining me today. Today is a really interesting version of the Freight Nation podcast. Today is a version that I like to call the learning version of the learning lesson or continuing education or sharpening the saw. How you can make sure that that tool that you’re using to grow your business is as sharp as possible so you can grow it as fast as you’d like to. So Freight Nation is part of what we do here at Truckstop. We’re always here about helping you grow your business. And we want to hold back on nothing to help you find the best ways to grow your business so you can really, truly enjoy and make freight move as fast as possible in the United States. So thanks for joining us for Freight Nation. Today’s a good episode because anytime I can learn, look, I’m 57 years old. And one of the greatest joys of life is continuing to learn, knowing that I’m progressing along. And today, Freight Nation, you get a real special edition here. Where you’re going to get to learn from the coach himself, the Freight Coach, the man who put coach in logistics, Mr. Chris Jolly, the Freight Coach. Thanks a lot, Chris, for joining us today. I appreciate you joining us on Freight Nation.
Chris – 00:01:39:
No, Brent, I appreciate the invite. And I always love coming on here and talking shop. Really just, I guess, one thing I always rely on is I just know a lot of what not to do in this industry. And I wanted to put more and more of that information out there to try and help some people.
Brent – 00:01:54:
For sure. What’s interesting, Chris. And this is. Freight Nation. And I hope you see this as you’ve continued your journey into freight transportation in the United States is that, man, this is an industry likes to help each other. We truly do. They like to help each other across the board. And it’s one of those things that makes our industry the best industry in all of America, which is we’re an industry, even though it’s a trillion dollars. We all are fundamentally wanting to help each other succeed. You’d be surprised. It’s not just small players helping small players, medium players helping medium, but it’s billion dollar publicly traded companies that are talking to each other, helping each other be successful. So, man, I am so excited for the freight coach to be on today. I’ve gotten to be around Chris for many years, talk to him multiple times about the business, about the industry, about what’s going on. So you’re going to get to hear Chris’s journey into freight, which I’m excited about. I don’t know every part of it. So hopefully I’ll get to learn a new part of it. Also, you’re going to get to hear about his aspirations on his journey into continuing his success in freight. He’s not just a media mogul guy. Also, he has his own brokerage company as well. It’s on the marketplace. So he not only talks about it, he lives it as well. So, Chris, again, thank you for joining us. And here’s how I want to start, because you have a media platform, the Freight Coach. You’ve done. How about this for your nation? Over a thousand like podcasts, webinars, media interviews online. I mean, it’s amazing how much information he’s put out there. So he’s done that. So he owns a media platform. He also owns a brokerage division of a company called SPI, but it’s called the Freight Coach. And so he also is into coaching companies individually as well. He’s not just online, but he’s coaching as well. So he does all kinds of things in order to help this industry grow, but also help his platform grow. So, Chris, help me out, man. So I know you didn’t just wake up one day and you own a platform, a media platform. You got a journey into this. So when you were like younger in your career, did you start out in transportation or was it something you like? You just something happened. You became part of it.
Chris – 00:03:51:
I’ve indirectly been in transportation my entire life. So I come from a family of truck drivers. When my great grandparents immigrated from Germany, they started a trucking company in Iowa back in like the 1930s. And then my grandpa on my mom’s side, he was a dispatcher after he got back from World War II. He was a dispatcher. And then my dad was an owner-operatorowner operator. He drove for 40 years. Uncles, godfathers, like I’ve just been around.
Brent – 00:04:16:
Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Your dad was an owner-operatorowner operator?
Chris – 00:04:19:
Yeah. Yeah. He drove for 40 some years. He started in after he graduated high school. He joined the army and he drove trucks in the army. And then as soon as he got back, he started driving right away. And that’s all he did.
Brent – 00:04:30:
So my goodness. Did he start driving, like the mid 60s or the 70s or when was he driving?
Chris – 00:04:36:
Late 70s. He drove from the late 70s through-
Brent – 00:04:39:
I think 2010 or 2011 is when he stopped driving?
Chris – 00:04:43:
So yeah, through the absolute heyday of the industry.
Brent – 00:04:46:
So you actually have diesel in your veins, man. Literally. Legitimately. Dad, uncles, grandfather, all part of it. I got to ask this question.
Chris – 00:04:56:
Yeah.
Brent – 00:04:56:
Did you ever drive a truck?
Chris – 00:04:57:
Did I ever drive? I did not legally, but I drove on the dirt roads by my house.
Brent – 00:05:04:
Yeah. So, well, that’s fantastic. So was all this when you were growing up in Wisconsin?
Chris – 00:05:09:
Yeah. I grew up in Northern Wisconsin. It was all out of there. My dad, pretty much primarily ran out of Minneapolis. He ran Minneapolis to the Bronx for 30 of the 40 years that he drove. That’s all he did was New York City. And yeah, so I was just around it. And then I actually got my start in brokerage after I moved away. I moved out West in 2011 and I got a job brokering and that was pretty much primarily what I did for 10 straight years. And then I moved down to Phoenix here with my wife and my son. We moved here in December of 2019. And then by March of 2020, we all know what was going on, but I found myself out of a job, at that time, but I actually quit. I had the very phenomenal timing Brent to say, Hey, I feel like I’ve accomplished everything I wanted to as a broker. I’m going to go learn the trucking company side of things. And I’m going to work assets for five to seven years. Then I’m going to make a C-suite play was my whole plan at that time. And I had a bunch of interviews lined up and then I resigned from my job on a Monday. And then by Thursday, COVID was COVID. And by Friday, all the interviews I had lined up went away. So here I am in Arizona, no job, beginning of a pandemic, just moved down here. And I’m like, Oh crap, what am I going to do? And so naturally I took the weekend and drank my face off because that’s the logical thing to do when you’re at the beginning of a pandemic and you’re out of a job. But I woke up on Monday morning and I’m like, all right, if nobody’s hiring, I got to be candidate number one everywhere. I’m like, what can I do? So I just went to LinkedIn and I started just looking around and I’m like, did I suck that bad? I’m like, why is everybody just talking about how easy it is to get customers? And I started going back and I’m like, I just need to speak about my experience. And I’m like, I’m just going to start posting. And I was listening to a lot of Gary Vee, Gary Vaynerchuk at the time. And he was like, I’m just good. So that’s what I did. I started posting once a day and I just started talking about my experiences, right? Like I started talking about heavy haul, flatbed, all of that stuff. And I was doing that. It was probably 30 days. And I had a really large brokerage reach out to me at that time. And they’re like, hey, we saw your post on Heavy Haul. They’re like, can you talk to one of our sales reps? We want to really offer this, but nobody has any real experience doing it. So I was like, absolutely. Maybe they’ll just hire me. This guy’s going to say, I don’t want it, but you should hire this guy. And then fortunately that never happened. No job offer came, but that’s when the light bulb went off in my head. I’m like, man, if these guys need help with sales, who else does? And I’m like, nobody’s hiring. So I’m just going to create my own company. I’m going to say I’m Chris Jolly Freight Consulting. So I started that in April of 2020. And I just went from there with it. Naturally, I went viral overnight. I’m being facetious. That didn’t happen at all. But I was out there and I’m like, all right, I have this business now, but now what do I do? How do I get out there? And so I was actually, I started delivering pizzas because that’s all who was hiring. And-
Brent – 00:08:18:
You were delivering pizzas?
Chris – 00:08:20:
Yeah. I was delivering pizzas in 2020 because I got a family to feed, man. And I don’t come from money. And I had a finite amount in my savings account. And if I was going to start this business, I’m like, I got to buy stuff. And so I just went out there and I did that. Again, I was listening to Gary Vee at the time. And I was delivering pizzas one night. And he’s, if you’re starting a business in 2020, he says, start a podcast. Just go out there, start a podcast. Interview founders always want to talk about themselves and their story. So like, I literally took that weekend and I spent like 40 hours on what I call YouTube University to find out what’s a podcast and how do I podcast. So I did and I got it all. And I released my first episode in July of 2020. And that is naturally, again, nobody agreed to come on my show because nobody knew who I was. I was just some random person with a podcast at the time. And so I just did that. I did one a week, the first four months. And I’m like, I got to get out there and I got to increase my output. And I was doing that because I still wasn’t getting any business from it. I wasn’t getting anything. And I mean, I didn’t even get my first customer until September of 2020. And I’d been doing it for four months at that point. So it was like fast forward, probably 15, 16 months in. And that was the first month I actually broke even in business. 15 months.
Brent – 00:09:46:
Wow, that’s actually pretty good. Most of them are like three years to return the profits. So not too bad at 15 months.
Chris – 00:09:53:
Yeah. And so we got that. And that’s when I got my first couple of advertisers on the podcast. And I’m like, this is something like that’s when I actually when somebody offered to pay me to talk. The first thought that came into my mind was to call my older brother and talk shit to him for him telling me to shut up every day of my life when I was younger. But after that, I was like, dang, I got something here. And I really wanted to create a platform for people that they could just come in and learn a little bit about the trucking industry. Because during that time in 2020, Brent, there was a lot of people who were selling courses on the industry. Right. Everybody had a course about trucking. And I was like, I got a couple of phone calls from some people who were like, hey, man, I literally gave this person my last thousand dollars. They didn’t teach me anything. Can you help? And I’m like, okay. Again, I just went out there. I just gave him a little bit of the fundamentals of what I was taught in the industry. And nothing about what I talk about is proprietary. And that’s why I openly speak about the best practices that I do, Brent, because ultimately, if somebody can listen to my show and that’s what keeps them in business, because, you know what, maybe they hear about the right company then that’s going to help them out. That’s what it’s all about to me. And again, I’m very fortunate to have advertisers who are like helping me do this because they see, the education focus that I put on this. And now fast forward some years later, like I have a track record of what I talk about on this show now. Like you said, there’s over a thousand episodes. You can go back and listen to all of them and you’re not going to find me talking about controversial topics or going for clickbait or anything else. One thing I’m very proud of myself on is I have stayed course this whole time. I haven’t bit into the algorithm bug of just trying to get more clicks and more likes and anything like that. And so it’s to me, it’s like there needs to be more people who are willing to share their story out there that puts the right information, because ultimately everybody has to make their own decisions in their business and their lives. But I at least know that I want my brand, my media, the platform that I put together. I want it to be known as, hey, you know, you can go and listen to that. You get some really good information from it. And there’s no catch behind it.
Brent – 00:12:14:
All right, so let me back up a little bit because you just said something I think is remarkable. You said that you feel like one of the best things you can do is help others understand how freight moves and how they can create success in moving it by some of the experience you have. And you said none of what I’m talking about is rocket science. It’s not proprietary. It’s the basics, but you’ve learned it and you’ve experienced it. So let me go back another quick step. So you spend a lot of time around your family inside of transportation. I’m going to guess you spent some time in the truck with your dad.
Chris – 00:12:48:
Lots. Lots.
Brent – 00:12:50:
How, and this is what I want to bring out because you’re going to talk about some of the details and some of the great blocking and tackling that you need to do if you’re going to be in the brokerage industry. We’re going to go into that in a few minutes. But before we do that, I want you to talk about the role, that experience of you being with your dad and your uncles and your granddad, how that shaped you into, being the person you are today, somebody who really just fundamentally wants to help. So tell the Freight Nation watchers and listeners, like, what drives you when you think about that?
Chris – 00:13:21:
I mean, now it’s more about family legacy in the industry. And I guess I want to be known as the person who like fixed the industry ultimately.
Brent – 00:13:28:
Ah, there you go.
Chris – 00:13:29:
Like I want to be known as the person who really bridged that gap between drivers and brokers and really fundamentally fixed things. Because my old, I wanted to interview him on my show and he actually refused. He refused to come on. Yeah, because he was like, Chris, I listened to what you talk about and nothing’s changed, man. I started driving before most of these people were even born. Everything you guys are talking about was a problem in the 70s. It was a problem in the 80s, the 90s and the early 2000s. So if nothing’s changed, why would I come on there and talk about anything? And I’m like, ah, that’s fair. That’s fair. But you know, for me, it’s. I just want to bring awareness to what actually goes on out there, because it’s easy for a lot of people to sit in their offices. And not have to deal with traffic, not have to deal with breakdowns on the side of the road, not have to deal with showing up to a facility just to find out that the broker didn’t actually set their appointment. And then they have to sit there for two days and miss their kid’s birthday and everything else because I had that happen. My dad wasn’t at events growing up because of his chosen profession and everything. But I think ultimately, we’re at a very pivotal moment in this industry where we actually have an opportunity to fix things. For drivers to actually be heard for the first time out there, and I talk about this on my live show a lot, every time one of the top 10 on Transport Topics is released about top 10 concerns for fleets and top 10 concerns for drivers, they’re never the same. So it’s even there, it’s those things. So I think ultimately now, I wanna be a part of the solution. I don’t wanna continue to be a part of the problem because early on in my career, I thought I had everything figured out as I think most people do in their mid 20s and late 20s. Everybody thinks we have it all figured out and we’re different and we’re better than everybody else. And then eventually you get slapped with reality. A few times you lose a key customer or something like that because you lied and everything else. And I think everybody reaches that moment, or they should, where they’re like, all right, enough’s enough. I gotta change my ways. I don’t wanna do this anymore. I talk about this a lot. I was that prototypical broker that lied about everything. There was times, Brent, where I lied so much, I didn’t even know when I was telling the truth on some of these situations. And I just, I had enough at that point.
Brent – 00:15:47:
I got you. So you decided to have a change of heart and something to help build things up instead of just focusing on what’s best for you. But that’s unique, Chris. That’s unique in your approach to transportation marketplace. Here you are. You got all the way down to when you launched your platform for the freight coach. I mean, you have to have a reality check for yourself. This is good for the Freight Nation watchers and listeners to hear this because we all have to go through that in our life. We do a reality check on who we are and who we want to be. So something brought you to that. What brought you to being the guy that people can trust?
Chris – 00:16:21:
I think a lot of it is I wanted to have a brand that could grow over time and not a brand for a season. And I think you see a lot of that out there. There’s a lot of people get caught up in the algorithm bug, Brent, where they’re like, oh, I got to say something else that’s going to hit and all this stuff. And it’s only self-fulfilling, right? Like, I’m going to be a human. I’m going to make mistakes. But I didn’t want to have any intentional blemishes out there where it’s like, oh, I went down that whole driver versus broker thing and I just openly talk trash on other people. I didn’t want my brand to be associated with that. I wanted to stay on course with that. And it’s tough at times, right? Trust me, man, I’m competitive. Like, I want to chirp sometimes, but I don’t. I keep my mouth shut because I heard something. I’m in an entrepreneur group called Arte Syndicate, and I’ve been around very successful people. And I had a guy who told me, it doesn’t matter if you’re doing $100, $100,000 or $100 million, you need to hold yourself to the standards of if you were the CEO or a founder of a billion-dollar company, would you react to that? Would you say that? Even though I’m nowhere near a billion-dollar company, I want to hold myself to that standard right away because it’s a lot easier to stay course to that way where I can see things, but I’m like, that’s not my mission. This is my mission. And I’m going to stay on that. Because again, this is an actual business now, Brent. This isn’t just a hobby. This isn’t just me at my kitchen table. This is an actual thing that brands seek out, right? Like, I’m very fortunate to have people come up to me and want to talk to me about advertising on my show. And that’s because of me holding myself to that standard for a very long time, Brent, where there’s a track record of, hey, this guy’s not going to go off the rails every other week. And they might have good engagement, but he also might cause a shitstorm for our brand. And I also think ultimately what I want to do as a person, like, I want to use the platform to help people, right? Like, ultimately, that’s what it boils down to. So I think when your mission is greater, you can see through that short-term gain. And when you start with nothing in a business, because again, like, I bootstrapped everything. I don’t have investors. I don’t have a golden goose of family that just deposit money into my bank account. Every dollar of revenue I get, I got to stretch it out into $15 of ROI. To come back with it. So none of this is a hobby as well, because this is how I feed my family. And I take that very seriously.
Brent – 00:18:51:
Yeah. Well, I know how that feels. I got five mouths to feed here and they’re all adults now. So I know how that feels. And in the end, your integrity and virtue is what you die with, man. That’s what people are going to remember you as. So thank you for being that open and honest about things. That’s a fantastic thing. I know that was a benefit for the watchers and listeners to glean from that. Because the whole purpose of this podcast is for people to improve themselves or improve their business in this industry. And so that’s exciting to hear from your point of view. So let’s talk a little bit about when you started getting into coaching. All right. So you’ve lost your own platform. You’re getting into coaching. You’ve got some experience in the past. So you’re bringing that forward. When you’re talking to somebody about coaching with them, what do you start with? Hey, you got to get this right first. This is the most important thing to get right. Where do you start?
Chris – 00:19:40:
So for me, it’s finding out like, what do you want to do with your company? Right. And I think that a lot of individuals out there are like, I just want to make money. I get that. That’s a very critical component of it. But ultimately, what’s your mission? What are your core values? Who do you stand for as a business? It’s also, what are you training? How are you training your individuals? Is your training program, here’s a drive-in, here’s a reefer, here’s a flatbed, now go cold call? Or is it actually teaching people the fundamentals of what freight, works in what mode? What is the most effective way to go out there and transport a lot of this product? Or is it more of how can I just make the most money in that transaction? And a lot of brokers, and again, I speak like this because I’ve been a broker for a very long time. And I’ve seen enough on social media to know that this is how a lot of people think. A lot of brokers want to think, how can I make the most money in every situation? And then they put their company first, which I get. But ultimately, your customer has to win and your carrier has to win before you win as a broker. It really has to happen because otherwise, why is anybody going to work with you through the long term? If you’re just out there and you’re just putting yourself and your company first, you’ll be fine. You’ll make a little bit of money, but you’re never going to grow to the levels that you want, right? So I think it’s really finding out what’s their identity. And then it’s mainly, where do they need the most focus on? And I think a lot of companies get it wrong, Brent, in the sense of like, they only want to focus on sales, but they don’t want to focus on operations. Where I almost take the opposite approach, where you need to have rock solid operations before you can even really sell. Because otherwise, I use this analogy a lot. You can put a thousand truckloads on your board tomorrow, but if you don’t have any way to cover them, you might as well just give all the freight back. You’re done, right? So for me, it’s learning about the fundamentals of this industry. It’s the blocking and the tackling that hasn’t changed. Ultimately, it’s all one in the same. And this even goes to the shippers that I work with now. Not one of them have asked me about what’s been talked about at a lot of these conferences. Right? A lot of them are focused on, do you actually know what you’re doing? Are you just calling me? Or do you actually know that my load of frozen chicken needs to be tempted this and it needs to be moved on this? Again, it’s those fundamentals. So to me, it’s about building that out. And then really just building a repeatable and a scalable process. Because that’s what brings the value in the long term. If your goal is to build your company and sell it one day, you better have everything documented. You better have processes. You better have all of that stuff on lock. Because that’s where the value is, right? I can’t sit here and just say, oh, I’ve been doing this for a long time. I did X in revenue. You should buy me for Y. So it’s really about building out the infrastructure of your organization. And I think a lot of it is finding out what do you do every single day? How do you document that and turn that into a process to where if you’re gone, you’re done. The person who’s watching knows exactly what to do. They know exactly what to say. And I think it’s building that foundation and then going out from there.
Brent – 00:22:51:
Yeah, for sure. So I appreciate your point of view on, first off, know where you want to end up, know where you want to land, and then prepare yourself first. If you think about the military, they don’t send you into battle. You don’t put a uniform on and go into battle, put a gun in your hand and go to battle. You train for quite a while first. So I loved your point about the training aspect of things like really prepare yourself to win. So I’m with you. I’m people that focus on, look, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to create financial success. What I would say is focus on creating success for your customer, and that will determine your financial success. So if you can satisfy the customer’s need, everything else will be taken care of for you. So that’s super exciting. So I know that there’s sort of a relational industry, a very relational industry. And I know you’re a relational guy. I watch your work all over the shows that we’re at and the events that we’re at, and you’re super relational. How does building the right relationships for your brokerage, because people go, well, no, no. I’m going to buy the freight from the shipper at this point. I’m going to make sure I got that taken care of, and I’m going to make sure I could sell it for this amount. I’ve got some automation set up and technology, and I’ve got everything dialed in. I’ve got everything dialed in. They’re focused on the speed at which they’re doing everything, which is important. That’s efficiency. But how do you coach on the value of a relationship?
Chris – 00:24:09:
I think it’s one of the most overused terms out there, Brent, because most people view relationships as like, how do I as the individual win? I don’t care what happens to Brent. I have a relationship with Brent as long as I win. That’s how a lot of people approach that. I’ve seen it so many times. Again, this is, I guess, the joys of getting older in life is you experience a lot of different aspects of things. And I see that a lot. I saw that through every market swing over the last four years, when people were crying about relationships, and then when all of a sudden nobody was talking about relationships. And for me as a broker, I want to be a broker of choice to my customers and my carriers. I want my carriers to see my name reaching out to them, and they know they’re going to be taken care of when they accept our freight. They know that all the information that comes across is legitimate. And there’s that kind of that track record out there. Because in my opinion, if you take care of the carrier, they will take care of the customer. Because they’re that front line as a broker out there. And if you send in a driver with the wrong PO number, the wrong weight, the wrong everything, that’s a direct reflection of you. As a broker, they only want those carriers to do whatever they want when it’s convenient for them as the broker. I say that because I used to do that stuff, man. I used to lie about this and everything else. And that just wasn’t a sustainable thing in the long term. And as a broker, you got to make sure your customer wins and your carrier wins. And it’s not like anything that you have to do to make that happen is above what your SOPs are, your standard operating procedures. Call the shipper, verify details. Call the receiver, verify details. And I think that a lot of people find themselves in trouble when they’re posting uploads and they post it for $20,000, but it comes in at $35,000. It’s not the fact that a driver can’t haul the weight. It’s the fact that you lied about the weight. Now, what else are you lying about to them? And that just starts that spiral, right? So it’s for me, I just want to be brutally honest with people. When we post loads, because we do, we’ll let them know, hey, this is a truck in hand opportunity with this customer. We don’t physically have the bill of lading. We’re looking for a truck. We’re looking for availability. Are you okay with that?
Brent – 00:26:22:
Wow. So the idea of the relationship, the standpoint of repeat business, how’s it going to benefit you long term with what you do? That’s interesting. So you’ve been around long enough to experience this too. So my next question is this, because I think the Freight Nation watchers and listeners will love to hear about this as well. You’ve been around long enough to see a lot of technology come into the marketplace. So talk about your perspective on when you’re coaching brokerage companies or agents that work for brokers and you’re coaching these guys on what role does technology need to take and where does it not need to be used?
Chris – 00:26:58:
I think technology and automation is another very overused thing. And it’s not that it’s not beneficial. It is very beneficial if you can afford it, right? There’s some tech out there that’s push for, we’re talking tens of thousands of dollars of monthly overhead before you’ve even moved a load, right? Like you got to move a lot of freight, to pay for a lot of this stuff. And a lot of it in theory is great, but is it necessary? And I don’t personally think it is necessary. The only necessary piece of technology a broker needs, in my opinion, is a TMS and load board access. And if they can both be integrated in with each other, even better. But that’s really the only piece of technology that you need to start. And then you can throw tracking on theirs and number three in the event that you can afford it at that time. But I also think like the more reliance on technology one becomes, the less able they’re going to be to do their job if the technology fails. I’ve been around this industry long enough, Brent, where I know how to cold call, right? Like I know how to make outbound calls to carriers. We just did that today, right? But guess what? We got a load. We had to make outbound calls because it’s in a market right now that is very tough in the Pacific Northwest due to produce. So guess what? Nobody called. So what did we do? We picked up the phone. We made some outbounds. And we booked a truck that way. So it’s like we can operate if the power is on or not. We’ll find a way to make it work. And I feel like a lot of people get too reliant on technology. The bells and the flashiness of it is phenomenal. But is it required to get shippers?
Brent – 00:28:33:
Right. Oh, that’s an, whoa, hold on. Is it required to get shippers? That’s an interesting statement. Unpack that one, my man. That’s a great statement.
Chris – 00:28:41:
What I mean by that is it’s not. You don’t need technology to get most shippers out there, right? Like I make cold calls every single day and I know we’re going to get to the brokerage thing here in a little bit, but I’ve never once had a customer stop me in the prospecting phase and ask, what does your tech stack look like? How is your back office automated? How is this? I’ve never had that happen. Now there’s customers and there’s prospects who are like, hey, are you EDI compliant? Do you have access to EDI? Do you have access to tracking? That does happen, but that is almost a rarity out there. The majority of the customers that I have, even to this day, I mean, I’ve been working with the same shippers now for over two years. Not one of them has asked for a direct link to tracking. Not one of them has asked any of that. They trust the fact that I know what I’m talking about, right? And I just think that a lot of technology that is pushed, it’s more convenient than easy, all right? It might be more convenient in certain situations, but it’s not required and it’s not just gonna miraculously make you have a successful business, right? I’ve bought into that so many times in my life where I thought that there was an easier way and a better way to do things, but all I was really doing was overlooking the work that I knew I needed to do because I was being inherently lazy in that moment. And again, technology is great if you can afford it, but if you can’t, it’s not required. There are plenty of shippers out there that aren’t going to require you to have integrations with certain things. There’s brands out there that will, but you’re not cold calling them and getting set up with the companies of that magnitude in a 12 or a 24 month cycle. That’s three to five years of prospecting before you might get to the door with somebody who requires high chain analytics and a bunch of stuff like that. And I also think there’s that resistance out there that gets built up over time where you hear enough about them, to where, oh, I need this. Oh, I can’t cold call that person because I need to have this or I need to have that. You don’t need anything. You need an internet connection and a cell phone. That’s all you really need. And you can go out there and develop business that way.
Brent – 00:30:46:
Wow. So what you’re saying is don’t overburden yourself with technology because it’s not always needed because it’s a giant marketplace. There’s a very deep pool of shipper customers that need to move freight that aren’t necessarily requiring that. Mitigating your cost on, what you think you need to get into the marketplace. Because most people look at what does it take for Schneider or Coyote or C.H. Robinson or some big player? What kind of technology are they using? And here’s what I hear you say. In reality, you’re not competing with them. So stop trying to compete with them because you’re just wasting your effort and energy.
Chris – 00:31:19:
They have more money and resources than I will have for the foreseeable future. Not forever, but for the foreseeable future, right? And what is my competitive advantage though, ultimately? My competitive advantage is me. My competitive advantage is, because people buy from you because they like you, right? And it’s back to some of the lanes that are out. It’s like, you’re not gonna compete with J.B. Hunt on Atlanta to Chicago asset lane as a broker, right? So it’s, why are you going out there and chasing after stuff that might not materialize? I need revenue as a business owner. I don’t need fictitious revenue. I don’t need a facade of, oh, I’m only going after. Like I said, I got a family to feed. I will move a truck load of trash if that’s what it’s required. But again, I spent so much time looking for the easier way, right? Like I bought in to the email bug in freight where it’s like, oh, just email, say all your sales, email outreach. And I did that for 15 months and we were flat. I have a literal direct line item on my P&L, Brent, that shows when we said, all right, enough’s enough. Pick up the phone and dial and where all of our return came from.
Brent – 00:32:26:
Wow, that’s exciting, man. When you’re talking to the broker about now, selling the freight down to the carrier, let’s pivot into the language that you use or the coaching that you use for the broker who’s in the marketplace. And if you don’t mind, identify the type of broker that you typically coach.
Chris – 00:32:45:
Yeah, so I mean, the only area that I do any real coaching in anymore is within the TIA. I’ll do the new broker success program that’s inside of there because all of my time now is spent building my own brokerage. But like a lot of what I talk about on my podcast, Brent, is what I apply in my business every single day. And so I put those best practices out there because ultimately I want to save that person that headache that, you know what, if I’m moving a specific lane out there and I’m paying 900 bucks to a quality carrier every single time, but maybe the market drops down to 50, I think it’s very much in the broker’s favor to continue to pay that carrier $900 when that market has dropped because ultimately I’m banking on the fact of when that market increases to maybe it’s 950 or 1000, they’re going to continue to do it for 900 bucks. And it’s because you help them out in the times when everybody else was driving down the prices and you were able to give that consistent rate out there. So for me, I want to find out carriers and the lanes that they want to run. I don’t want to utilize a load board and then post a load and then try and drive down a rate and then be their backup option, right? Because if a carrier is telling you like, hey, I need to get to Dallas, I want to run this Atlanta to Dallas. And you’re like, well, I have this Atlanta to Oklahoma City. And then they just reluctantly take it because the market’s bad and they might not find a load. But what do you think they’re doing in the background? They’re out there trying to find that load to get them into Dallas. And then all of a sudden, miraculously, they have an issue with their truck or they’re not getting offloaded in time, all because you didn’t listen. So it’s like, for me, I want to have a conversation with the carriers that we’re working with. The majority of the freight that I book to this day, like we’ll move 100 containers this month. And 90% of them are with three trucking companies.
Brent – 00:34:35:
Wow, that’s remarkable.
Chris – 00:34:36:
Yeah. And that’s because like we build up our network based on we have two primary carriers, two secondary carriers, and a no shit carrier on every single lane. So we create our own internal waterfall.
Brent – 00:34:48:
Did you just create a new category of carrier?
Chris – 00:34:50:
I did. They’re the best ones out there. They’re more expensive, but they always have a truck no matter what time of day or week.
Brent – 00:34:55:
The OS, they’re part of the OG, but you got the OS carrier.
Chris – 00:34:59:
Yes. For me, I want to find, those carriers that are running specific lanes no matter what, right? They got that dedicated customer in Dallas that they’re coming back to it. They go into Atlanta with. We moved this load out of Atlanta, actually going out to Odessa, Texas. And I had a carrier of ours that we found that was based out of Odessa. They delivered into 100 miles outside of Atlanta in Alabama, right on the border, a town over there. And they were like, we would literally deadhead back empty down to Texas because like we moved so much volume with the shipper. And then we just got them on, I don’t want to call it a rinse and repeat, but every Monday morning, they drive into Atlanta, they pick it up, they deliver us for us on Odessa on Wednesday. So we want to build up our carrier network based on the lanes that they want to run and that they’re already running. We just find that complimentary freight that matches up with their book of business. So I want to find the why behind it, right? Why do you want to run this lane? Do you have a drop yard in that area? Do you have a driver who lives in that area who needs to get home? What does that look like? Because again, I’m not looking at that as how do I make more money on that? I look at that as like, how do I have the most reliable carrier that I know is going to pick up this load no matter what? And so I build up that network out there because again, it’s just me and my business partner in our brokerage. And we got to grow it to a point to where like we can get into profitability and be able to hire and everything else. We can’t spend time of our day recovering loads because we wanted to pay 850 every single time or 825. We wanted to drive that rate down when the market rate was what it was. We had a quality carrier at 900 bucks. So you got to look at, is that $50 margin or $100 margin actually 50 or $100? Or how much, what was the cost of acquisition in that shipment and stuff like that? So I think the more and more that you do that and focus on that, I swear by this and I will die on this hill, Brent. As a broker, if you take care of your carriers, they will always be there for you.
Brent – 00:36:53:
Oh, well, yeah, the natural yin and yang of a relationship. All right. So that’s super great advice, man. Thank you so much for disclosing that to the Freight Nation out there. So I got a couple minutes left. I want you to talk about this because this is something I think we all have Jedi skills at. I think you’re very good at creating the right motivation for the inside psyche of yourself. And then I think you’re also really good at adaptability. So talk a little bit about how the freight coach looks at motivation and adaptability, and then we’ll close it out.
Chris – 00:37:28:
So I think motivation is a lie. I am more about you have to cultivate discipline, and it takes a lot longer to get to that because motivation fails. Motivation goes away. Motivation is more of an emotion. It’s not a habit.
Brent – 00:37:44:
Okay.
Chris – 00:37:45:
And this is just coming from somebody who—
Brent – 00:37:47:
Discipline is what drives the things.
Chris – 00:37:48:
Yeah. Discipline. Discipline is what makes sure that you get the work done no matter what, regardless of your feelings. Because I played into my emotions for too long about, oh, I’m motivated today. I’m going to go work out. Well, okay. That might work out for a couple of days, and then I stop because I’m tired, right, or I’m sore. Or it’s the same thing with a lot of stuff. I would only do it when I wanted to. But then when I didn’t want to, I had every excuse in the world to not do anything. But that doesn’t really pay your bills too long. So for me, it’s about creating that discipline to show up and putting in the work that you set out for yourself every single day. And that’s why I talk about the buildup of your skill set, right? If you’re out there and you’re like, I need to start making cold calls, don’t just say, go rip out 100 calls in one day and then not make any for the next three because, oh, I made 100 a couple of days ago. Set that number. Make 10 calls a day for a week or two weeks, whatever it takes until you get comfortable doing it. Then increase your output, increase your output and increase your output and increase your output. And then you do that. And then all of a sudden, you’re rocking out 20, 30 calls every single day without fail. And you’re not even thinking twice about it. All the emotions that you had early on, all the nervousness has since dissipated. And now that’s just your habit. That’s just your routine. That’s just what you do. And you hold yourself to that. And it was the same thing about creating content and creating the podcast because, one thing that I’m asked a lot, how do you do this so much? I’m like, well, I have system, you guys, this is an actual process that I follow now. I stuck it out for so long. I don’t necessarily have to fish for guests very often. I have a lot of people who come to me or I got a list of 100 people I could book for the next 20 weeks on my podcast if I really wanted to. And that came from showing up every single day, no matter what, without fail and holding myself to that standard because a lot of this stuff, it’ll go away. Your motivation is going to go away. But what are you doing in the days that you don’t want to do anything? When the last thing you want to do is pick up the phone and call another shipper, how are you holding yourself in those moments? Because that’s really where a lot of the gains start to come from. And when you can start to quiet a lot of that stuff inside of your head because, I mean, I was a professional victim for the longest time, Brent. I bought into that all the time about, oh, I did this last week. I’m good this week. And what I realized was is I had so many peaks and valleys. There was no consistency that ever rose from that.
Brent – 00:40:18:
Wow. Well, I appreciate you put it that way because I love what you talked about discipline because if you have discipline, it’s amazing the success that comes behind disciplines. I think about it like an athlete. If you have muscle memory on something, that’s a discipline that you’re going to do it the same way no matter what. No matter what comes your way, you’re going to do it the same way because that’s what will create success. Man, what great advice today. I really appreciate it, Chris. And I knew I would learn something new about you. And the fascinating thing for me was your history inside of this industry. And how really you look at the freight coach and you go, yeah, well, you wouldn’t have thought the Freight Coach is like three generations of trucking. The Freight Coach, it’s not that you’re not super surprised by it, but it’s like amazing how you look at how people that really are fundamental parts of this marketplace, how they came from a part of the industry where it just encouraged them to continue to be inside of it because it’s part of who they are. That’s exciting, man. Thank you so much for being on Freight Nation today. I really appreciate your encouragement and your advice and your coaching. To the Freight Nation watchers and listeners.
Chris – 00:41:20:
I appreciate the opportunity, Brent. Thank you so much. And I just I love everything about this industry, really, when it boils down to it. You were saying this earlier, and I agree. It’s the greatest industry that’s on earth. And I truly think that it’s up to us to fix all the flaws and imperfections of it. And it’s on us to raise those standards that are out there to help benefit everybody else and especially prepare the next generation of transportation professionals to have the right way of doing things in front of them.
Brent – 00:41:48:
Well, man. Those are great ending words, my brother. Thank you so much for always being an encouragement to others. And thanks for being on Freight Nation.
Chris – 00:41:55:
Thank you.
Brent – 00:41:55:
All right, man. Well, Freight Nation, that’s a wrap. You got it straight from the Freight Coach, Mr. Chris Jolly himself. So thanks a lot for listening today and watching along. We appreciate it. And thanks for giving us your time, your effort, your energy. And thanks for making trucking great. And as we say, Freight Nation, don’t forget to work hard, to be kind, and always stay humble. Thanks a lot, Freight Nation. We’ll see you the next time. 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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