Episode 1 - Why become a freight broker?

Season one, episode one! Why become a freight broker?!? Josh Valera and Tony Darin discuss industry updates and attempt to answer the question of "why become a freight broker?" 

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Transcript

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Welcome to Young Lion Old Lion podcast, where hosts Joshua and Tony Darren take you into the world of selling and storytelling. With stories of the hurdles, victories and current struggles, they'll dive into the instincts and lessons that keep them moving forward. Hunting in the jungle of transportation. Welcome or welcome back. I'm Josh Valera. Era. And I'm Tony Darren. I just wanted to take a minute to thank everyone who listened to the first two episodes and those who are joining us today. Yeah, it's awesome that we're getting a little bit of a following here. I know it's only a few shows, but we're definitely looking to keep everybody and add some more. Yes. So I actually just got a message from a listener over the weekend and I really reinforced that feeling that we're doing something different and positive. So they said, I ran across your podcast the other day. You guys need to keep that up. I've listened to a few shows over time and most are just way too salesy. The old lion that's you. That's me. It's a great addition. He really knows the deal without being over the top. You guys make a good combo. Looking forward to the next one, which I just thought was a nice message overall, and I appreciate that. Positivity we plan to keep this going for as long as we can, as long as you let us. And I'm just trying to actually be over the top, so I guess I failed, but no, not but I'm not trying to do that. And I appreciate that feedback and we need to do better every day, but as long as people are listening and, like, what they hear, that's what's going to happen. We keep going. Yeah. So on the topic of reaching out to us, there are three main ways to contact us with questions and stuff, and actually, I'll add four. So there's our email, Youngline Oldline@gmail.com, if you'd like Young Line old Line podcast on Facebook and message us there. I got a Facebook message today, too, from a new listener, so that's cool. A voice message through SpeakPipe. Comyounglineoldlinepodcast. Yeah, let me jump in on that. That's cool, man. I tried that. I've done that for a couple of shows out there, the report and audio messages. It's cool. I'm a little nervous to hear what people got to say to us, but, man, we really want to hear from you, so throw us a shout at this point, since we're growing the audience. There's a good chance you might get mentioned on the air here. If your audio clips clean enough, we'll play it on the air. Yeah. No expensive lyrics here. Yeah. No bad words. No. Hey, Tony, you want to go over the debt as far as what loads are out there as opposed to open trucks? It's gone up 16.8% week over week. That actually went down from the holiday week for shippers that are wanting to spot their freight out there. We're in a new year now, so that's regulated itself a little bit. Spot truck posts out there, meaning I've got an empty truck, and do you have a shipment for me? If you can remember the holiday week, it was basically dead. Everybody was at home with their families like they should be. But right now, that has completely reversed itself. It is actually up almost 25% from the various weeks. So January 2 through January 8 is the reporting week, and its variance is based off of December 26 through January 1. So that's gone off crazy. So the rates, if you can remember, I broadcasted a little bit of a growth from the Wienet month over month numbers. And in the van or the drive van, 53 foot, 60 foot trailers out there that are taking your packaged goods, your product in January, it's at 2050 cents a mile, as opposed to December's numbers, which was at 241. Okay. So on the refrigerated full truckload, that has gone to 295. I think it kind of approached that last week, and it's holding. And December's number is about two point eighty two cents a mile. So that's gone up quite a bit.$0.13 drivers, everybody's a little bit happier about that. We're certainly getting a lot of requests for refrigerated, and the weather is continually being crazy out there as far as heat spikes and freezing spikes. We'll be all that through the next couple of months. All right, perfect. All right, so let's get into a question that I've got for Josh, and we talk about this already. We probably have about 15 meetings throughout the week. We're constantly going over our ideas. He leaves our customer sales portion of our business. So that's part of the business that hasn't been developed like it needs to be. And we're doing that together. Obviously a big catalyst. But to start off today's episode, I just wanted to ask how are things been going since you started here about a month and a half ago. So I come out of the gate swinging. So it's been a roller coaster of emotions. At first I felt overwhelmed, ill prepared. But as the month has taken off, I feel that I've got the right tools in my toolbox. But we're actively working with a dozen or so new shippers and working on their quotes and stuff now, so I feel like I'm making leaps and bounds towards that first actual shipment. I feel like it's right at the edge. Yeah. Tip of my tongue kind of thing. Yeah. I don't want to cut you off, but we've got commitments of about four or five truckloads coming on from some folks you just kind of connected with about a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, but it's not my thing. In my head, it doesn't count. I come from the car business, so on the car business, it's not until the wheels hit the street, hit the pavement, or cross the sidewalk. So that's kind of how I see it with this. It's not until the carrier covers the load, picks it up. Yeah. Drops it off. Same page. Same page. I'm with you, too, but we feel pretty good about what's building here, so just more about the emotion part of it. I mean, how are you feeling? I'm not going to lie or candy coat it. This business isn't for the fate of heart, and no sales jobs are. Let's be fair that I don't think there's a sales job, customer service job out there. That's easy. Not if you're doing it right. Yeah, definitely not if you're doing it right. I mean, you can be shady and do all those kinds of things, but it doesn't make it ethical. But the business not being for the faint of heart, that's where the mindset and attitude, I think, decide or influence the outcome. I mean, it's a direct impact. If I come to work every day and my head is in the right place, I will accomplish more, and I think everybody will. I don't really have the key to your head being in the right place, other than having a little bit of self confidence, and I'm going to make this work. Not necessarily fake it till you make it, but I will find a way. I'm determined. I'm not going to give up. I'm going to keep pushing, and if I keep pushing long and hard enough, I'm going to break through. So when I make a cold call and I can talk with that confidence and expectation to talk to the right person or get led there by someone in the company, I'm not perfect on the phone, and I mentioned that last episode. Yeah. And just to give you more feedback, you've heard me jumble things on the phone. You're trying to get to the right person. You've got three thoughts in your head. I mean, it's a balancing act, but that part of it. Like you've mentioned last week as well, when you stumble over things, you'd rather talk to the funny, stupid guy or whatever that's making a mistake. You like to talk to humans. If I got a polished person with a long script just to give you kind of my take is that, oh, boy, I know he's reading the script, so I got to let him get through it before I can tell him no, because that's the kind of guy I am. I want to give sales people an opportunity, but for the most part, they're just trying to fulfill what's on the paper. So it's cool. It shows that you're human. And I appreciate that about your calls. And if you got a fake confidence until you get on a good stretch of calls where you're getting some back and forth, what we got to do, right, what we got to do to get the next step. So I didn't mean to cut you off one day I appreciate it. I want all the feedback possible. Sure. That's kind of actually what I want to touch on. So you and I have talked a lot about cold calling off the air and tweaking my process. Let me officially ask you a three part question. Where did you expect me to be at cold calling when I first started? In contrast, where am I actually at? And most importantly, to me, what's my biggest fall on cold calling? Okay, so your first month I wanted you to grind from a 40 outbound call to the 60 count. Between the two and three weeks of ramping up. I think you started off with maybe 40, 50, but then you went to 60 much quicker. We had enough resources because we kind of helped build that up and get that established in the CRM. You did some conversions with the CRM. You built a process within a structure there, which is great. I appreciate that. Those things were all like blown away. Blown away, right. What's going on now? I'll just tell you right now, I know you're losing energy throughout the day and I want you to keep in mind let me go back to kind of give you the update. Like, you got great calls, way better than I would expect. Month two. Okay. The holiday month killed us all. The industry was just more dead than we thought it was going to be. I think people shift their last bulk orders like in October, maybe even September, November, december will slow here much lower than year over year, and the market was already trending that way as well. Back on point, I think that even in that dead time, you had great conversations and it positioned you to have some more, even better conversations starting off in January. And I think you've had those conversations I would probably take two to three weeks out of that December point to say, okay, let's get that out as actual time frame where you were building business because it was dead zone, the holiday weeks especially. So you're about to break through and break the seal with getting the freight on board by mid next week. By the end of this month, we probably need two more customers that we're going to move freight for. If we get that, then you're right on pace for that six month token to be saying, okay, I can see where my commission dollars are coming in and I can kind of plan for that. I will say this, we've got a podcast, so we do kind of prepare a little bit, but we try to keep it out of work hours because it's not fair to the company. We're doing this outside to let people know who we are and who our company is. In future shows, we'll have guests, all that kind of stuff. But when there's dead time, if you need to walk away and take ten minutes, if you need to have a conversation, to recharge yourself, do it. But if it's taking away from your focus, just leave the room, get some music in your ears, walk away. Because today you got through those calls quick, or at least those activities. You probably could have put 20 more on the board. I could have, yeah. So I know that. I know it, too. It's one of those I've always enjoyed when I've had people typically just starting, like starting a conversation with, what do you think you need to improve? Right. So it's like, I hit the 60 number and I'm like, oh, holy crap. All right, I'm here now. I'm done with that. Put that behind me. Let me go make some connects on LinkedIn. Let me go try to find a different avenue. Totally cool. And that's what I did for when I finished those calls today. Kind of was weird with those calls because it was a 50 50. So, like, the first half of them were end of process calls, and the other half were new calls. When I do a section of new calls, usually about 50% of them are disconnected numbers. It's called disconnected number call. Disconnected number. And so I can hammer out a bunch of them quickly. And that's where it's like cheating the system, because essentially you're not making a phone call. You're validating the data. It cleans it up with a process because it's just to clue everybody in. What we've built here, it's something that's been proven over time. It's basically an eight step program. Basically, we're touching a prospect eight times in our current situation, our current structure. There are some automated steps there, but as soon as Josh cleans up the information, they become part of that process, or they get ditched out and said, that company isn't at that address. Isn't that the phone number I've updated? Whatever. So it's important to do that part. But it's one less prospect that we've actually touched. We're kind of weeding it out. So our data is clean, which is important. It's clean, but it's also why I called the same amount of people today and hit a lower percentage, 4% less, because it's more data validation than it was anything else. So that's where, like, a day like today, I absolutely could have hit another 20 calls. So here's some more feedback, and I want to share from my perspective, too, as far as what I felt like in the seat, you're not new to sales. You're new to transportation sales. You did more consumer sales. Yeah. Facebook, automotive stuff is really what I mean. I did selling over the phone, which in that business is really weird because the status quo is face to face and then to close things over, it's different because you're dealing with a person in their money. Yeah. So far I think it's been easier because you're talking to somebody about most of the time about saving their company money or making them look good to their bosses. They're not spending their own money. So it's just different battle. Yeah. There's a bunch of different levels that we're speaking to and that we're targeting, too. So it's not as much as script, but how do we communicate to them and how are we connecting? It might be different at different levels, which is also a challenge because we got some mid sized businesses that you're calling owners, and you've got to go through not the decision, but the decision maker, which really is their money. Yeah. And it may save them a little bit. When we go back into the first couple of shows, we talk about transparency. That just doesn't help explain who you are and give them a frame of mind of your personality, and can I connect? Can I trust this person? It's also being flexible enough to say, okay, I can talk to an owner now. And those are hard things for the people out there not making cold calls every day, which we're trying to speak to through this. It takes so much energy to move and pivot emotionally and be ready to receive feedback from prospects. You're trying to be nimble out there. I'm ultra sensitive to that. And just to share my story not that you're asking. No, I am asking because that was actually kind of my next question, because we talked about when you first started out, you used to throw boxes, but that's not I placed them gently upon the other boxes that it's been long enough. Right? Yeah. They knew what I was doing. When you're doing that. Yeah. I was transparent then, too, hunting boxes across the yeah. So good leading. I had a great job at Ups. It was a hard I was a laborer at Ups. I was a union guy for years. I went through my undergraduate studies. Then I went into full time management and worked for finance and business development, pricing, yield management, all that kind of stuff through my career there. It got to a point where things structurally changed as far as compensation, but where it put me was a position where I wanted about your age, I think, maybe a minute younger. And I was serious about, okay, I need to make a step here. Kind of like you. In fact, it's kind of funny. It's very similar. So I was looking for another job, and there was a position for a finance manager or a director of finance, and I really wanted to see how it would play out in the general public outside of Ups. So I applied to the position, and I got a call back, and his name was Michael and really appreciate his personality. He's a really slick guy, great to talk to, and he wanted me to come in and talk to him more about the role. He tricked me. When I got into the office, which was downtown Chicago, I took the day off work and went and took the investment time to see what was what. He was the owner of a staffing firm that had an office downtown Chicago, and it was a really cool environment. He was a great dude, really appreciate his personality, and he had a role idea for me, but it was really to help him build an office in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, which was a lot of miles away from my home. But he sold me on who he was, what he wanted to do with this office vision. What you sold me on. Yeah. Well, similarly, you're going to be a very big part of this thing. You're going to help me run this. You're going to help me build a staff along with other people that are coming over to that office. And he talked about the selling aspect. You're going to be talking to hiring managers, and you're going to offer them recruiting services. So it would be great. And I thought it was great because I was a hiring manager for a large company. I was in the financial realm. I knew the skill sets. I hired my people. I knew what people worked in my office what didn't. So I was going to be able to recruit. Was really interested in that part, but I didn't understand what it meant to be calling and cold calling to businesses. So he had a rule there where you would wear a suit just fine with me because I wear suits at Ups. But you wouldn't take the jacket off of your suit until you scored your first appointment. So the sales calls there were to basically secure appointments, face to face appointments, so you could sell the recruiting services to the hiring managers. And I was calling sea level staff, executive recruiter. Sorry, but how much experience at that point did you actually have talking to that level of professional? I know you were at Ups, I don't know, kind of what level were you operating at at that point where you're making those calls? Yes, I was a manager, and I was dealing with director, VPs, some CEOs of mid sized companies because I was walking in with the business development staff and going over contract compliance and revenue tiered performance of what they were shipping. And I was involved in relaying information to high level folks at that time. It just a different hat that you put on when you're selling to them. And the problem, the biggest challenge I had is that I was a customer of the phone calls I was making. So I was the receiver of those calls. And I remember how I felt. I was a very busy guy. Ups, very tough market and industry to succeed at, you have to work very hard at. It was based off a 50 hours work week, which isn't much for an executive guy or whatever, but for most people working nine to five or eight to five I should say it's more than that, but anyway, so while working at Ups, taking those phone calls from recruiters, they annoyed me, right? I didn't need them. We had our own process. We're a big company. I always had it in my head of how annoyed I was. And that's what really drove me down in the beginning of these calls, because I was thinking like a hiring manager, and the calls I was making were very submissive. I really fell into whatever mood that person was in, like most people do. I struggled. I struggled quite heavily. And the owner of this company, he trained me by sitting shotgun, or actually right next to me with a dual headset on, so he could hear the call, didn't have a mic. I did what he did, which everybody he trained drove him crazy. He would hit you in the side and go, ask him this, ask him that. It's kind of like when you were making prank calls, if you ever did. I'm older than you, but when we made prank calls when we were kids, you'd both be sharing the phone with your friend, put him on speaker phone. Yeah, that's what it felt like. So you've got this script that you're trying to introduce your company and your services to, and as they're responding he's been in the industry for 20 years. This is my first month, and he's hammering me with elbows, saying, ask him this, ask him this. And it made for such an uncomfortable experience, but it really sharpened the iron. I had to learn really quick at that point. It got me appointments, and that's where I succeeded. Wasn't the cold calling so much as it was the appointment. So just like you, when you're in a face to face situation, your skill set that you knew of, or at least what you're succeeding with, was the face to face. I could pick up on different things. I can connect with them visually. And really, as it got better, I think that you get to a certain level in person or face to face selling, you already have a tone of voice that matches the body language. You can hear those little indicators in somebody's voice. And so going to a phone call, you got a lot of the same stuff. You close your eyes and picture them rolling their eyes. I know you said that's what you did when you started to put yourself in their shoes, and you're like, I hated those calls, and I'm thinking the same thing. I'm just looking at it differently. Well, and the bottom line of it is where I can do my job now and where I succeeded there was that I had to take my medicine every day. At one point, probably the third or fourth month, I said, I'm not going to hate my job. What I'm doing is what it's going to take to succeed. So I've got to find out something fun and cool about what I'm doing every day. So I would spend a half an hour getting early, spend a half an hour kind of taking a look at some of the companies I'm calling out to, not just cold dial and I'd find out some new things about it. Back then you'd have to put a reminder on their web page. It would give you an email to say, hey, their web page changed. You go follow their web page and say, oh, wow, there's a news article that updated. I would bring something up that was relevant to them. And what it did was just help me get into a conversation and help them realize that I'm not just reading a script and then going to ask you yes or no. I'm going to say, hey, really appreciated reading this about your Oxford, England office opening with another director to open up more business avenues for you. How do you feel about that? It felt great. I didn't know that. Yeah, well, we keep up on our target, prospective business partners and then I go into my spiel. But what you're trying to do is get them off balance enough to share with you something vulnerable, just like we talked about. And once I started feeling that out and getting better at it, I got something out of each conversation. And when I told you, Josh, when you got here, get a commitment on every call. That's the game in Gamifying. The job is that if I can get some more information from let me dare myself to get a little bit more. And I think you've succeeded at that. So I don't know if you're game of finding it in your head, I see you daring yourself or getting and taking another step to get. Hey, what rate did you close it on? I know we lost this one, but what did you get it closed at? Which that's probably the most common push that I have. Because if I'm giving you something little give and take fair, as the person that's trying to ship something, trying to save the money, you should want to tell me what that rate is too. Great point. And that's the thing that's always just made me nuts, is that a potential buyer if you would just tell me where you need us to be and you trusted me enough. Which we get to when we share this vulnerability with people we're trying to get to know business wise, which is why we do it. But at the front end of the call, if you got this covered at 1200, you'd win it. But if you got it at 1150, I'd use you every single time as long as you picked up, as long as I'm not losing too much money. Okay. Yeah, it's simple. And if you can do it, then we've got the start of a partnership here. But if you can't, great. Just let me know and be honest about it. Don't take that at 1150 and then not be able to cover it. And then I'm sitting here at my dock saying, Where's my truck? So we've done this to ourselves, people out there. I mean, as an industry, we've lied too much to customers, and customers have held back too many details where we can't meet each other at the dock. Let me share one thing that means a lot to me, and that's Josh shared a little bit. Josh has shared a little bit about, hey, this is what I'm feeling. And it's not always fun to get up in the morning, drive in here, get in front of your computer and say, okay, I'm going to call some strangers today. Right? Sometimes you worn down, and Josh, I hope you understand that. I might joke with you, but I'm never going to say, Stay on the phone, Josh. Stay on the phone because you're a professional and you're an adult. And I appreciate that because most of the time I can tell when you're thinking like, hey, dude, come on, you can do it. I feel the push. But here's the main thing, is that if I've got to tell you to do it, she's not going to do anything on the phone. Most of the time when I stop, it's because I know I've hit a wall, and the wall is me. And I respect that. It's not that I hit a wall with a customer. It's that I know that for some reason, I'm not in the right headspace, which I've had people use it as an excuse to not call, and that's not what I mean. It's different, I think. You know, for my calls, I'll come in and I'll hammer it, and I have moderate success so far. And I see you take a step back, and I see that as being a professional. So let me go back to the answer to the question. As far as my experience picking up the phone for the first time, I could not stand it. I sucked at it. And I had to be reminded to stay on script, to not be too creative. And that didn't work for me. When I found myself at a place where I got to get real and be who I am, it took me about a month and a half to find that spot, but I still did the job, and it was getting successful just for doing the job. So folks out there that are hitting the phones and can't stand it if you're horrible on the phone and that's why you can't stand it, you will get better, but you're not going to listen to that because you're sucking now, and it just sucks. There's no instant solution other than repetition. Yeah. So I've worked with people. I've hired people that were absolutely putrid on the phone, but they stuck to the numbers. They stuck to the numbers. And he's not bad. It is really a game of consistency and persistence. If you're selling something that's a necessity to the buying public and you approach it in an honest way and you try your best to service the client the way they expect, you're going to succeed, it's going to take time, and we just don't know how much time it's going to take. So that's where I'll leave that. I finally got successful, but I realized that cold calling every day wasn't for me, and I needed to be in front of people, and I was proving myself out where phone calls were bad, I was still making appointments. But when I got into the room with people is where I made an impact, and I was fulfilled by that. Josh, you'll get there, too. You'll be in bigger meetings and RFP meetings and procurement partnership meetings and that kind of thing as we gain steam. But it always starts at this point when you're growing a business that's small, trying to get the mid size and large. As far as my goals go, I'm not here to be at the floor the whole time I'm looking up. So in looking up, it's a lot easier to justify where I'm at when I'm up, if I can say, hey, well, I started making phone calls, too, that is exactly what I was doing. So this is kind of like the demon on one shoulder, angel on the other kind of thing where I'm having this internal battle over, what are you going to say when you have people that are doing this for you? Okay, well, I made my calls. I made the minimum. I went a couple over. I had a really bad day, and I knew I shouldn't make a call because there's good people on that list that deserve our service that I don't want to negatively affect and cause that relationship. Yeah, I call the job that we do when we're the first one in, it's a trailblazing role, but it's a test pilot. I'm going to hit Mach Ten and then I'm going to go back. I'm going Top Gun here, but I'm going to go back to Top Gun score. I'm going to teach these kids, these young pilots, how to do it because I've done it, because they're going to ask that question. So I need that perspective for me to be a better leader, to get to the next step and next level of sales success. And it's a necessity. And I think that's what leads me into the thing that I was more passionate about, what I wanted to get across. Today's podcast is speaking to folks that are managing a sales force, and Josh has, and he will continue once we continue to grow, is that a lot of people we talk about banging the phones and it's kind of this thing that it's just a necessity. We know it's got to be done, but we get insensitive about it and you've got new people coming to the organization, and you beef them up with all this. Yes, we're going to make this much money, and it's going to be fun, and we're going to be what do you call it? Banging the gong and all that stuff on your new account? Wolf of Wall Street. Yeah, all that good stuff. And the younger professionals, or even the folks just coming into the environment for the first time, they'll beef themselves up on old movies like Bullet Room and Tommy Boy and all this stuff, and they'll get back in that chair and they'll get a cup of coffee, and they'll be excited. And then that boss leaves the room, and they're by themselves with their phone, and they make that first phone call, and they get half a sentence out, and they get hung up on. They get hung up on and they say, I get calls from guys all the time. I just don't want to speak to you. We're good. We're all set. This is my 12th call today, and I heard that twice today. Okay. You know what that told me, because I've told this to you before, is when somebody tells me that this is the, umpteen, call they've gotten today from a broker just like me, I'm doing something wrong again because I'm falling into that bucket of everybody else. And that's how I know I'm off, because I won't hear that for a few days when I'm on a good run, and then I'll hear it multiple times in a day when I already know in the morning. I'm like, yeah, I'm not feeling myself, but I can push through it. And I made my calls, but I knew going through those calls and there were some positive ones in there. There are. I knew I was off. Yeah. I guess when you are that way and you're that person that's by the desk by themselves, the managers, if there's anybody out there listening to manage people that hit the phones every day, your people are struggling. Every single day. At one point or the other, they're struggling. And what they need, really, is for you to be in the room with them. I think that they need to know that you're on their boat. They're not on yours. Your lead in the charge. Any successful sales leader has got salespeople that are leading themselves by succeeding. So you're on their boat. They're leading the charge every day. You've got to be there as, yeah, that was good. Let them ask you questions. Tell them before they start calling, hey, I'm right here. If you're unsure about anything, like, hey, did that sound bad? Reach over, ask. But the biggest thing is what you've got to get to from a leadership perspective and the sales person's perspective that's making the phone calls. Just keep the course. If you can. Just keep the course and grind out a number. Be bad on ten calls and I'll tell you this, too. If you push through that bad stretch, you'll find a call that you can connect with, that you find somebody that you can connect with, and it turns the tide. Sometimes when we take too many breaks, you can't get the momentum built back up, and five bad calls lead you to two good ones. But you might have a good one on one end. Five bad calls and a good one on the other end. And it's much better getting back in that seat ending on a good note. You've got to find out what's the best path for you every day to keep your energy levels there. But my advice to anybody is to push through the bad stretch and find the good call. You don't stop until you have a good call. You'll end up taking less breaks to try to gather yourself, and the energy will come back because of the positivity you're sharing with people that you're getting to in the right way. For me, it's just days where I don't have the opportunity to share that positivity where I asked the question, and I just get, like, the straight lies hung up on more straight lies. And I'm like, all right, I know this is a company, so you guys are getting stuff in, like, you're manufacturing things. I guess unless you're a farm, it doesn't just grow on trees. So what's going on? Just an honest answer. Yeah, I've told people before, and you've heard it, and this might be a cringe for some people, but kind of the car salesman thing. Hey, if you're not interested or if you walk on a lot yeah. If you don't move anything at all and I won't call you anymore, just tell me. I'll leave you alone. Somebody else might call you eventually, but it's not going to be me. And the people when you mention that this is the 12th person I've called that have called me today or whatever, I don't know if you even have a chance. I mean, if you start and they know it's not someone they're expecting on the phone, they might just lose their mind. That's happened. Yeah. And I think the best thing to do is get off the phone as quick as possible with them. But I know you've got stories that you shared with me already that someone kind of, like, blew you off the first call, but then the second time, when you connected with them, they were in a different mood, different position, different place in their mind, and they actually accepted the information you sent them. And they had a little back and forth there. So it's just right person, right time. I think there is a point being made, because to me it's pretty clear. As a human being who's at a new job trying to be successful, the hardest thing I can do is ask my boss how he thinks I'm doing and how I should improve it and then share it with everybody who is possibly no. That's a good point. As far as being vulnerable, I feel like that's just putting it all up there. So I appreciate you sharing. When you first started a little bit different, just because I was in that sales role, I've called people who absolutely don't want to talk to me. When you talk about selling cars, some of your leads are from people who got stuck on cars.com or something and had to give their email to be able to check out a picture of a car. I don't know if that's a website that does it, but when you're dealing with people like that and you're calling them and they're like, this is the 30th phone call I've gotten from a car dealership today. This is the same conversation. So that's not the new part. The new part, which I think was nice about the first month being in December, and I got to talk to a lot of voicemails. I got to learn kind of some of the industry lingo started to get that stuff down, hop into January, hit the ground running. I think all of my connections with Shippers that are strong with quotes and everything has been this month. So in eleven days is most of things coming to fruition? It's a good point. And don't forget that the phone calls made in December got you positioned to refer that you call them before you left them a message. You had an email go out because of the structure we've got, which led you into a much softer entrance point, or entrance point for the phone call, which maybe that's fair because there was a couple, like receptionists or operators, press zero, couple of those that I made sure my notes I put in their first name. So if they didn't introduce themselves with their first name, I was like, oh, hey, so and so. This is Josh. Yes, how are you doing? And they're like, oh, hey. And it reminds me for the voicemail side, so a lot of people that leave voicemails I'm saying this because of some of those things you just mentioned. Like you were talking to people, but you're also leaving messages for people, and they were calling you back after the first of the year. Biggest pet peeve I've gotten. And what I learned from my recruiting years was when you're leaving a voicemail, I don't know why sales people do this, but they tell them everything. I used to get them too. That was a job that was very voicemail heavy, more when I was a manager because I got everybody's complaints. So leave me a five minute long voicemail. There was one system where it was nice because I could literally scroll through just like a YouTube video and move the bar a little bit to try to get the meat and potatoes. And if you got their mobile phone number and you think I scored huge. I've got the actual decision maker's cell phone, and you leave a message that's two minutes long and it transcribes. If they've got an Apple phone or anything that's of this current generation, they can scroll 2 seconds and go, delete. I'm not going to be picking up the phone when that number calls me again. I mean, it makes no sense. And here's why we do it as salespeople, young salespeople, because we feel like we're actually selling on the voicemail. Someone's going to get this voicemail. I'm totally comfortable because no one's going to hang the phone up on me. No one's going to yell at me and tell me they don't need me. I can give them my entire pitch, and they're going to listen to this and they're going to pick something out of it, and I'm going to give them all of the ways they can connect with me. They're going to pick your phone number out of it. They'll block your phone number. After they look at the transcribe voicemail on their work phone, they're going to take a look at the number on their Cisco server and say, yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and block that number. So what Josh and I have talked through is and what he does really well is I don't want to share a voicemail that's mine. Yeah, this is Josh calling with this company go logistic is what we are. And I'm wanting to talk to you about this. And what this is, is something that is accurate and true, but it sounds like they know each other, so maybe on a future podcast, we'll get some more details on the trick. But the trick on this one, the tip on this one, is young salespeople, don't give them your entire bio on a voicemail. Give them a call back when you're at their desk. But this is just like what we talked about last week, where you don't need to spill out. It's not your whole life story when you're giving somebody that peace about you, it's a piece. You're just giving them enough to connect perfect. And it's a reminder. And this is what keeps us on point, is what I take from that when I get somebody calling in with a voicemail that's ten minutes long or whatever, is that they are so wanting to impress me and feed all of the things I might need in my life. But what they didn't do and have no respect for is to try to find out who I am. Well, they have no respect for your time. Well, yeah, that's the biggest yeah, I need to get this out. I don't think it's on purpose. People don't leave you a voicemail because they're like, screw you in your time that you actually have a second to go through your voicemail. Right. That's not what they're thinking about. I think my voicemail box used to fill up at 16 voicemails like, on my desk phone, and so it'd be flashing, and finally I'd go and press the button to see how many I had. Oh, I had 16. Okay, I better listen to these. Yeah. And I go through 16 Voicemails if it's not catching me in the first couple of seconds or if I get, like, the gist of what it's about. Oh, I already talked to them earlier because they called back again and I answered it. Yeah. Be creative and allow any short message to be short first, but secondly, to offer something intriguing. Why would that person want to call you back? It's got to be a cliffhanger moment on The Voicemail, but it's true. Yeah. Do not lie, because that will end that relationship and that rapport build quickly. Once they call you back and say, yeah, you told me we work together. No, we don't work together yet. No. Yeah, we won't ever. That's called lying. Yeah. Because now you stole my time. I took 5 seconds, 10 seconds out of my day to reach back out to you because I thought I forgot something. You tricked me. You stole more time for me. You're dead to me. Just young salespeople, even older salespeople, are still doing the bad things like we mentioned already. Just remember that people are buying like you buy in the consumer world. You don't want anybody to waste your time. You want people to be honest with you. You want them to share what's most important about what you're looking for in a product or service and either walk away because they can't fulfill it or fulfill it. So that's what I'll leave as a tip or trick. Before Josh wants to share anything more, I just want to thank him for adding this to our podcast. As far as, hey, give me some feedback, sharing some stories and letting it this one is a hard one for me. Sure. It wasn't easy. I think yesterday when we were walking out, you kind of mentioned the question you were going to ask me. Yeah. And I think I told you that I was like, oh, crap. I knew this was going to be tough and I prepared very little for it. I tried to think about kind of where I would go with this, but the part I can prepare for is when I ask you the questions that I wanted to ask about where did you expect me to be, where am I actually at? And what do I need to improve and to ask you? I don't think we've ever dived in or touched on exactly what we touched on in person. We actually saved that for the podcast, so that's a tough one and but I appreciate your transparency on it and that's why I'm here and why I'm working for you. You're working with me. Yeah. I appreciate that, but we're definitely working with each other. Both got a lot of work to do in front of us. We're excited about it. It's a team sport. Yeah, definitely. And we've all got to be in it together, and it's a winner, and it's very it's from a movie. It's a song and a movie from a lot of it. Yeah. Thanks, everybody. I appreciate you guys stopping by today, and we will catch you next time. Yes. Thanks so much. Bye.