Episode 2 - Storytelling and Transparency in Sales

Season 1, Episode 2 - Josh and Tony discuss the art and need for storytelling in the sales process. Perspectives are shared between Josh and Tony as well as sharing a story of their own to help validate the need to transparently be ourselves within the sales process. 

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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. Welcomer. Welcome back. I'm Josh Valera. And I'm Tony Darren. I appreciate you guys joining us today. I like today's topic, so we're going to be talking about, obviously, the data trends, any of the changes going into the new year and storytelling, which to me is not what you think of. I really think it's a sales strategy more than it is storytelling. What storytelling means made different from the perception of the general public because it's not make believe. Right. We're not talking about make believe, Jack and Jill kind of stuff. Right, right. When I think what the public feels about what sales storytelling is, it's like, you're going to tell me story. It's probably potentially all made up and it's all to be about trying to convince me into buying something. Yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah. So we have a different perception. If you're leading, if you're winning in sales, if you're leading a team of salespeople, you understand that it doesn't work consistently. The bait and switch, all of the little tips and tricks and tactics that sales leaders from previous or from different industries. I would say automotive, but more the used car salesman thought process. The out mortgage. Well, the mortgage sales people, the the people that kind of went through the gold rush and the mortgage mortgage industry back in the 2000s, they could pretty much tell anything and say anything and still make a score or make a sale. They weren't revealing who they were as people to build rapport and trust. They were just trying to they didn't need to. So Josh, in my opinions, are going to be more towards the latter. And that would be we storytell to explain who we are to the buying audience that we're delivering the message to. And we're extremely transparent and vulnerable that Josh will get into some of that. But this is part, if not most, of who we are as sales professionals, is that we're storytellers. And I think moving forward, Josh and I don't know if I've shared this with you, I think we'll probably tell a story every week just to stay in tune with exactly who we are as professionals on top of the topics that will have changing week in and week out. So that's fair enough. Yeah, I'll stop with that. I'll get us to the debt. Yeah, let's just roll through the debt real quick because I want to get to get to that. I want to get to storytelling. Thanks again for joining us. The week closing out the year because we are a week in arrear. As far as reporting numbers, it's December 26 through January 1. We've got some couple of rough days there. You've got the you mean Christmas rolling in after the Christmas buzz, you get the Monday off, which we're all thankful for, but it didn't pose well as far as the marketplace. So spot loads did go up 10.6% from the week before last minutes expedited things that needed to get there before the year is up. As a new guy, what is a significant change? Is 10% a big difference? Yeah. Anything above three or 4% is significant. Okay. That week was down quite sufficiently from the week before that. So that does play a little bit into the 10%, the double figure growth on the percentage increase. But to explain part of the reason why that happens is that I've got to get this product out or I've got a purchase order that's cleared for 2022. I got to make that purchase order. I've got to get that freight on a truck for it to actually be gone. Okay. That way makes way more sense because in my head, I'm just thinking about why would you want to ship anything in the last week of the year if you don't get paid on that shipment? Your sol. Yeah. So you're trying to make your numbers from a product manufacturer. You're trying to make your budget numbers if you're a buyer of that product. So that's kind of why that spikes up a little bit. It's in flows. We've had such a slow fourth quarter. That does make sense at the last week. We're trying to grab a little bit of the market share in the spots, the spot truck posts. Now, that is I am posting my truck that I'm available to take full truckload order. That is actually down almost 30%. So that was 23.9% down from the week before. So that's pretty significant. That just means that there's 29% less trucks out there saying that they're available for any loads that need to get picked up, delivered. Makes sense because some people might want that whole week off. Drivers are kind of landing where they need to be closer to home. They want to be get caught out into Colorado or Idaho. Plus with the weather that was going on too, that makes total sense. That is actually the better scenario. And the reason why that happened is that drivers were kind of mounting up and making sure they weren't going to be frozen somewhere along the Midwest and the Northwest and all over everywhere. Yeah. As far as the national van rates. Now, this is the 53 foot and 60 foot trailers out there that we see on the highway that sometimes getting our way, but we usually get in their way more so for the first week here. So this is the difficult part. We went from 241 last week, and now we're up to 254. It's difficult for the buyer of 2050 on that. So that went up significantly.$0.14. Again, that may have a play in some of the freight kind of being held hostage because of the weather, because of the lack of capacity out there. The rates might have to be getting a little bit higher for drivers to come and pig up. There's a little bit of leverage there that the driving universe out there has on the reefer, which is a refrigerated van or the refrigerated full truckload that went from 282 to 294. So that took a big hit. And that's protect from freeze because it's a controlled environment. In that trailer, things stay at a specific temperature, not just refrigerated, but it can stay at 50 or 60 degrees. It's a cooling and somewhat of a heating unit on some of those trailers. So I'll say one more thing about the storytelling piece. Although it's very important to us, I think, although although it means somewhat of the same thing to both my perspective and from Josh's perspective, some of the intricacies are different. I really appreciate your give and take on this subject. So I want to thank you for being here again and want to thank Go Logistic, who is our main sponsor of the podcast and wanted to share in the transparency of a tough day had. That's why we look beat down or feel beat down, sound beat down, secured a new customer they need to ship still, but they're about set to go. And we had a lot of quoting today, a couple of large meetings held by myself and our owner. So good day, challenging as every long days are, but glad to wrap it up with you and take it off. Josh, I know it's a great start to the week of the new year, start of my second month. So what we would tell you is today is about storytelling. But I think really to me what it is, is it's sales strategy. It's kind of the heart and soul of modern selling. It's not in no way, shape or form the old school or it's definitely not antiquated because I don't think enough people are doing it. So as far as storytelling getting, not talking about fairy tales, who are you and how is it relevant to who you're talking to, right? I mean, what I tell our guys here all the time and Gal is, hey, what makes me different from anybody else that's calling this shipper today? They're getting 1520 calls a day from brokers. What makes me different and what makes me different is my approach and my story, right? As long as I get the door cracked, I can share who I am and what I'm about, even if it's and most of the time I do it on accident because I am a goofball. But it's one of those things that there's nothing wrong with being yourself on the phone. It shows your vulnerability. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where I don't walk away from those phone calls like, oh, man, I messed that one up. I got to make sure that my phone call is perfect and clean every time. No, I'm going to be myself on the phone. I'm going to make my mistakes on the phone. Because if that person doesn't make mistakes, are they real? Yeah. Am I talking to the machine? I don't mean to jump in, but to add emphasis to your story and what I'm reading on that is that you're showing people the vulnerability, but it's also that every other salesperson is trying to be perfect, probably hang up the phone themselves if they're tripping over themselves. I've heard stories about people that literally, if they make a mistake on their opening line or their elevator pitch, they're done. Boom. They're just going to hang up and walk away. Yeah, I've seen that. And move on. I've seen that. Why? I mean, why? Yeah. Because even if you continue that conversation and they're like, man, this guy is an idiot. But man, he's kind of funny. I'll talk to the funny idiot all day long. Inform and entertain is the number one and two, I think, catalyst of keeping someone's attention. Because I might be a funny idiot sometimes, but I'm the hardest working funny idiot you'll meet. Agreed. Because I made it this far. Compensating for it. I do the push. No, I absolutely think it's vital to show who you are and the weird little stuff about you in a phone call. It's what's relevant to that person. We're in the Midwest here. If I told somebody, that army infantry veteran, I'm more than likely more than 80%, I'm going to get thanked for my service where somebody I've had people, customers be extremely rude to me back when I had my own office. And the customers would come into my office and sit down, and then they'd see the picture of me and my wife and I'm in my dress blues, and all of a sudden they got my story. They got a piece of my story that they're like, oh, wait, this guy can't be that bad. Kenny and the whole demeanor changes. So unfortunately, we don't have that ability. Somebody can't just see my picture, but they can if they look at my email. Right. Because I have that email signature with my picture in it. If they click onto my signature, it opens up the web page. They go and see our podcast or any of that stuff. That's all there. Transparent. This is who it is. I got that jolly face that I hate. So kind of what you see is what you get. That's funny, that's good stuff. You explain how you approach a cold call, how others have done it, your perception and how you see it, as if I screw up. I think of that as it's freaking me, basically. And that's exactly what the prospect needs to say. No, there's tons of times I mean, it happened today a few times where I'd say something funny or wrong and I would laugh at myself openly and then the person on the other end of the phone would laugh. Laughter is the number one wall breaker. I mean, that is how the ice is broken. It's not cracking jokes. It's not purposely being wrong, but it's knowing. Like, they know that I said that wrong. And if I laugh about it right now, I can really get a good gauge on the situation. You shared something in common. You both thought that was funny, correct? So it's an immediate rapport build. When I first got into car sales, some of the sales guys, there two of them in particular, both in their early 60s, been doing it forever. I mean, way longer than I've been alive. And they obviously were very skeptical of 23 year old Josh walking in, bright eyed, bushy tailed and thinking, I'm going to conquer the whole world. And Richard still talked to him to this day. He gave me many different little pieces of advice, but one of the first things he ever said to me was, you got to know your story. And three year old little me was like, what do you exactly mean by my story? You want me to lie to people? You want me to make up some fairies and rainbows? And as I thought about it and got a little bit of experience actually selling, I realized, well, I'm just sharing a little bit about myself in the car world. I was not a car enthusiast. I didn't know engine size and horsepower. That wasn't my thing. I'm just, hey, I'm Josh. Used to be in the army. I hurt my back, so I couldn't do what I was going to do when I got out. And so I needed a desk job, and here I am. Hopefully you're okay with it, but I'm a really direct guy. I'm very blunt, probably because of the army. So I'm going to kind of just tell you how it is, and I hope you can live with that. Most people are like, oh, no, I want you to be blunt. Nobody in this business is so perfect. When I start my phone call, I hop right to it. I'm not going on an elevator pitch. I'm just asking the question of do you even move anything? That's kind of where my story first kind of developed. So it was from Richard. It was from just the little piece, the little hint he gave me to the right path, because that's what I appreciate about the lessons he taught me, is it wasn't just giving it to me on a silver platter. I got it through learning in the trial and error because I need that personally. I have to make my mistakes. And as we get older, we're like, man, I really want to learn from other people's mistakes because I'm sick of these now. And I'm kind of a little bit of both still. I'm still young enough that in some cases, I'm willing to take the risk to make the mistake myself, even though somebody else might have anecdotal evidence that I'm wrong. But I'm willing to try. Kind of like the email I sent earlier, trying to get, what was the bid that we lost on that quote? It's such an easy question, but I'm willing to try it again. Not many people ask that. We haven't asked that since you handled that quote. Being the mind and the kind of motivation where you ask that, it makes no sense for me to throw you a rate if I'm not going to learn from it. If I can't win. If I can't win your business, why didn't I win? Is it rate only? Is it the fact I responded too late? Is it the fact that I had the wrong equipment? When I quoted you, you just took it upon yourself to go out and just ask the blunt question, and I did not think you would get a response. But you showed how easy it is to get us moved into that next step direction, to ask that person, the woman that we were trying to sell to, what did get this covered for you and found out that our rate was actually more cost effective than the rate she went with. We were just slow. We had meetings today, so that's how the cookie crumbled. So, Josh, as you're wrapping up, let me ask you a question. So has your story changed as you've gotten four or five, six years older and now moving to a different industry? The premise might be the same, but is your story about you? Have you gotten vulnerable about parts of your life that you didn't five years ago? Oh, absolutely. And I think that's that's where sales has grown me and I've grown within sales. So it's two separate things. So personally, my development as a human being has changed directly because of experiences in the sales world. And in the same way, my sales has improved because they feed off of each other. My story changing really comes from as I gain that experience, I can tell stories about in this business, I can talk about other clients I'm working with and kind of vague details about their situation that's relatable. So I would say that over time, the premise, or at least the want to share information about yourself from a vulnerable perspective has stayed. It's just the amount of information or the detail or the experience that you've now gained over years that's becoming part of your story. And unfortunately, because I'm such a process oriented guy, I like to keep my process the same. I'll use the same kind of word tracks every time because it balances me and it helps take out the me factor where I feel like I'm going to just mess it up. So if I stick to the kind of stick to the script, even though I don't actually have a written script. That's where I kind of find my safety. So I'm willing to go outside of that bubble if I think that I can connect with you on something you don't know about me. If you're having a crazy day well, I'm always having a crazy day because we're in the transportation business. We're all having a crazy day. Was a crazy day. Yeah. So it's not you going into your monologue before you start your TV show. Yeah. That's not what it is, which I think too many people do. I think that's a huge mistake where, hey, I'm Josh this and I that, and I hope to this and I and that's not what it's about. It sounds like the experiences that you had, I mean, going into the army, when you're at the age that you were at, spending four years in the army, almost five years. Five years in the army, I mean, that does grow you up a little bit, coming into the business world. I mean, you're not a typical 24, 25, 26 year old. Yeah. So I think that helps out, having the experience coming into the business world. I think your position more your heart's position, more your mind's position, more to say, this is who I am. I'm vulnerable to the point that I want to share with you my life. I want to hear about yours, but I want to be transparent and cut right to the chase and say, hey, this is what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to mislead you. Well, and that's the thing with transparency, is some people think that you're just being a jerk, where, honestly, I care about you enough to know that your time is worth something. It's worth something to your family. It's worth something to you, or it should be. And why should I take up a ton of your time if it's not the right fit? Yes. If you want to get home to your family, if you want to have worry free transportation, if you want X-Y-Z you want to look good to your boss, maybe get that bonus. Well, how do you achieve that? Well, maybe I can save you a couple of bucks on every load, and you've got 150 of them, and a couple of bucks adds up. Who knows what that piece is? But if I get straight to it, I'm not wasting your time, you're not wasting mine. I get to go home and enjoy my time with my family, and hopefully Mr. Or Mrs. Customer gets to do the same thing. Both successful. It's a win win. We're trying to search that out all the time. Being vulnerable is key to trying to get to know each other over the phone call. And I was not as vulnerable as you were. I was internally. But if I was to take my age at the time of going into a sales business environment, I was tripping over a script that was written partially by myself but partially by the owner of the company I was working for at the time. I was trying to promote the product and service that I was selling, more so than trying to connect with the customer. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. It was on conversations where I fell down, but the other party on the phone picked me up with a laugh, with, hey, you all right? Hey, you're okay? Go ahead and calm me down and say, okay, this is a human on the other side of the phone here. There was a connection made from my psyche and heart into the person's voice on the other end of the phone. And I got through the sales calls and realized, I remember a couple of occasions that kind of turned my head to say, this is a human talking to a human. I've got something that they may need. Let me find out if they need it and what does it mean to them. So I asked more questions than I did use a script. I was vulnerable in that aspect. I was asking questions, knowing that this person may not want to talk to me anyway. Why would they want to answer questions? And then it developed into sharing something about me. And then it was a natural script that really developed because I was answering the needs of the phone call itself. This is missing my personality. This is missing me telling them who I am effectively and sharing something personal about myself to open the door, to say it's okay for you to do the same thing. And I think storytelling and just the way you described it, how vulnerable you were, how you got there, if two people can meet in a business sense to take care of a problem, I think it's the greatest thing we can do each day. And absolutely, the connections are great. Josh, thanks for sharing that part of it. And I'm very thankful that you and I are working together, got the same mindset about how important that storytelling piece is. I wasn't as good at storytelling. I guess I was better at story listening and got sold more than I sold because I enjoyed a good story. But I ran into more people that were about selling the product or service, too, and they were trying to make it nice and shiny for me. And the story was about how great this thing was going to be in my life. So let me start my portion of this podcast from storytelling perspective, explaining a story that I found a lot of meaning in for different reasons and shared it in a different way of selling. I was selling myself at the time and telling the story. It wasn't about transportation, but it was in the transportation world, and I was meeting with a boss, and it was one of the jobs I had in my past that was a Silicon Valley startup organization. And we were sharing a little bit about each other. We were talking about the business world and our experiences, and we were still trying to get to know each other. It was important for me to be who I am, naturally, because I'm going to be working for somebody. And like Josh and I work together, we have to be transparent in order to get the most out of the relationship at work. Either of us are faking, being unhappy, being unfulfilled, unsatisfied, confused. I shared a story of a company called General Magic. You ever heard of that, Josh? I have not. So General Magic is an organization that's no longer around anymore, but was founded in 1990 by a man called Mark Perrett. So Mark Parat, actually it was original project that started in 1989 within Apple Computer. And Mark Perrette was an outside executive from something called, I think, the Aspen Institute. And that was out of Colorado. And it was a think tank full of very smart people, folks from all over the world, all walks of life, but at the CEO level, ownership level, founder level, coming together and discussing ideas, challenges and fixes that intelligent people usually do in our world. He comes from that environment and he discusses an idea he has gotten from all of these discussions at the Saspin Institute. But he goes to Apple Computer because at that time, 1989, the Macintosh had just come out a year or two before that, maybe three years before that. It was the most next level type of electronic gadget that was out there for the general public. And he saw Apple Computer as being an entity that he could bring his ideas to and they can make something out of it. So he convinced Apple's CEO at the time, John Scully, that the next generation of computing would require a partnership of computer communications, consumer, electronic companies, all to cooperate to provide this service that no one's experienced before but everybody's going to love. Prior to 1992 and 1990, mark Parat grabs Andy Hertzfeld, Bill Atkinson from Apple, who were the main designers and lead designer for the Macintosh. He also grabbed Susan Care, Joanna Hoffman, and a number of others that we'll talk to and talk about in a minute, including seven other folks that are very influential folks within the story that make most of the sense of this. And they start down this path of trying to create this next generation platform that everybody is going to be starting to use. The company was called General Magic. I believe this was called Magic. Cap was the actual product. They go through this process of confiding an Apple and the CEO named John Scully, like I mentioned about this product they're designing. And John Scully is under a lot of pressure by the board of Apple and they're saying, okay, we fired Steve Jobs. You're going to run the company better since his influence isn't here anymore. What product you can design that's going to match the popularity of the Macintosh and the Apple too? And he doesn't come up with a personal computer. He takes Mark Pratt's information from this build of this electronic product and says, I'm going to build the same thing. And he builds something called the Newton. And the Newton was like a PDA platform that you can basically take a stylus and write something on the screen. It turns it into text. It can be converted into a Word document or a Word pad document. At that time they get pretty much ousted by this product being introduced at the consumer electronic so the Newton is what it was called. So the Newton first to market in the consumer electronics convention. The biggest CES show is the computer Electronics show. I don't know what the term of it is now. I think it's the same. But anyway, it was presented out to the general buying public. It was basically wasn't as great as the idea of the general magic or the magic cap device that they were trying to create. These seven. And this is all within Apple. So a different piece of Apple. Well, Apple funded them starting up. Okay, so there was an external company, a third party company, but they were being funded secretly through Apple. Apple was allowing them the workspace, allowing them salaries. They were one of the largest investors. And there's a lot more detail. The storytelling to the ex boss I had about this is a little bit different. But I guess for our audience here on the podcast, I want to be transparent. Whole meaning behind the story stays the same, but different parts become important. It changes because I've got a different audience. So it's a good example. I appreciate that. But really the early years of this device being produced is that they had about three or four years that they're in production. They're trying to figure out how to make it. They get the ousting from this Apple Newton product because it's got to beat the Newton that just jumped in front of the line from their product. It's important. Yeah, that's this game. It is. So they carry on. They get some deadlines pushed as far as the production and the shipping deadline, which obviously we're familiar with shipping deadlines. And they finally get this product out. And what happens is in the background they've got a number of different partnerships. They've got Motorola, Sony, at and T and a couple of other mid sized organizations that have all gathered hands to say, we're going to provide you the support. We're going to provide you the equipment. So as the internet is not available, it's not invented yet. It's early 90s, not mid 90s. Wait, the Al Gore didn't invent the Internet yet? Was that later on? Okay, believe it or not, Mark Parette is under the gun to get this product out. It gets shipped. People like you and I, professionals in the business world, they're faced with the advertisement of this product saying that this is going to allow you to email, message, fax at the time, download certain applications. It's the first of its kind through different peripherals and allows you to book airline tickets, that's wild theater tickets, all this kind of stuff. And it was also a phone that was much more compact than the big old cell phones you see, like, in the all that. But the price tag for the general public back then was about the same price of a brand new iPhone today. Okay, I don't think that was really anybody's price budget. What they found out, unfortunately, is that the network wasn't sophisticated enough to make this a musthave thing. It was a bust. All of their partnerships that were helping to join hands to build this product and offer the service, they dismantle, the stock price goes down the drain. They were actually one of the first companies in Silicon Valley history that actually got a pre IPO investment from a private it's probably not the desirable part of Apple's history of like, swiping intellectual property from a company that they funded to then release that product. Not as good version of that product on their own. They explained that away. I think they explained a lot of things after Steve Jobs was fired or resigned from Apple. How do leaders respond and react in turmoil? Do they protect themselves? Do they protect others? Yeah, I was trying to explain the simple fact of it was a large failure. It was great anticipation, great idea, great promise. But ultimately it failed. And everybody came into the concept of building this device to make the world a better place, like most companies do in Silicon Valley. But as it dismantles, everybody that's on this team is just completely deflated. But they all left, took what they learned, some of the connectivity and the connections they made at this attempt of doing something great, and then they started doing different things in Silicon Valley, in the technology world. So I'll let you know some of the people that were on the team, one of the key members of this team was Tony Fidel. And if anybody knows Tony Fidel is he went on to Apple, where he developed the ipod and he co invented the iPhone, which is really what people want to know. Isn't that ironic? He made this predating magic cap or general magic cap or whatever it is, and Sony magic cap, right. Because of that stuff. Part of the design was Sony. Yeah. So the ipod was invented with the help of Tony Fidel, and then Fidel and then the iPhone was he was on the creative team there. He left apple. He founded Nest. So people who have the Nest thermostats that's the guy who founded that by what, google? Google for 3.2 billion. So now he does more investing in startups and that kind of thing. But here's something even crazier when we talk about the iPhone and what General Magic's product really meant to be with the people that were on his team. So Andy rubin was on this team. Have you heard of Andy Rubin? I've heard the name. I can't please. Okay. Andy Rubin is the reason why we called it and Droid. So he's the other half of the cellular world when it comes to phone manufacturing. He was on this team as a young lad out of college. Andy Hertzfeld helped. He was on the Macintosh team, but he became a lead developer at Google before Google was Google, and the founder of the Open Source Applications Foundation, which is really the premise and the culture that's behind every application on Google Play and the Apple Store and all that. So that process of buying apps and downloading them, how they're downloaded on both Android and Apple's format and the iOS, you can thank Andy Hertzfeld for that. I'm going to try to say this person's name correctly. This person actually came to one of the developers on the team and asked if he could do something different than the General Magic product and go into an online type of auction house. And they kind of laughed him out of the office and said, no, we're trying to build a product, dude. I don't believe that the web is going to be what the web is going to be to you. So you can continue working here or you can go doing that. He said, can I do both? He said, yeah, you can do both, but we'll see how it works out. Well, it worked out okay. Obviously, General Magic's product didn't really come to fruition. It did, but it was a failure. But Pierre Omendyar went on to find or defend ebay. Wow. Yeah. And then after becoming a billionaire at the age of 31, which is nice, kevin lynch is on this team. He went on to become the CTO of Adobe, which you and I both mess around with quite a bit. Then he joined Apple, where he developed the Apple Watch. Wow. These are all big hitters. Everybody that came from this massive or maybe in their lives. I know if that was me, like my biggest failure to spend all this time and energy building this product, that is the future. How do you even recover from that? I mean, so many people, I'm sure you know, and I know their problems are much smaller and they still hold them back from achieving. Right. I'm glad you brought it up. I'm sorry to interrupt. I'm glad you brought it up. I'll come back to that. Let me finish the list here. So another person on this team is Steve Perlman. He went on to found the web TV platform. Megan Smith was probably about 23 years old out of an MBA program. She went on to become our Chief technology officer of the United States of America under the Obama administration. Then Mark Perrette was the person I mentioned was the CEO of this magic magic hat general magic organization. And he went on to become the leader in clean Tech, entrepreneur and investor. Clean Tech is more of a venture capitalist and doing startups in technology based firms that are trying to get clean, pure data, more data driven organizations. I think he's heading up some organization, or at least he's founding them or he's funding them. Okay, so what I really reach into was the people aspect and what they became. And he was kind of blown away by the Tony Fidel because he knew of him but didn't know he was part of this massive failure. Yeah, I mean, he was part of this massive, devastating, life altering failure. And look at where he's at now. What I carried from this and what I shared with him was two things. The first thing I mentioned to people. The second thing was Mark Perrett, as he's describing what he sees now as opposed to then is then. He saw it as a complete disaster and failure. He took two years off, just tried to repair his friendship with his ex wife and then reconnect with his kids. He did get married again, he had more children. And then he became very successful in funding and seeing the talent and working with people that he's worked with in the past. Everybody brought Mark back in to a piece of what they were doing, which is, I mean, it's pretty evident in the fact that he got this dream team together. All of these people became very successful. Obviously the guy knows what talent looks like. Yeah, great point. That's a success. He did succeed based off of that knowledge and perception that he carries when looking back at it. Now, he takes a look at the experience being more like waves crashing where when you take a look at a wave crashing on the shore, you're seeing that wave, oh, it's died out, it's dead, it's done, it's done its thing, it's over with. But the wave has to crash to make room for the next wave to come in from the deeper waters. Some waves start in the middle of the ocean and have a great ride. Some waves start at the break and hit the rocks and look like a disaster. But now, today he's looking at more of it as it had to happen. So these people can break off, branch off, do things different, fail in other ways and then succeed in the grander ways. My example is a little bit different to my boss as far as the people. What I shared with him was a couple of experiences I had and letting them know what great people that I had the benefit of leading, watching them grow, succeeding. They did the work, I gave them the area and I guess the format and some of the structure to allow it to happen. And that's what I'm really loving about coming into this organization, is that we've got talent, we've got the want to, we've got the desire, we've got Silicon Valley behind us, we've got great investors, we got a great CEO, and man, I'm ready to get started. So that was kind of the end of the discussion. When you and I talked, when we were I think when you first got here, when I tried to storytell on myself to explain what's important to me so you had a better idea. I share with you Chris Perry from my past. He had just become a chief operations officer, and he was somebody that we took right out of Iowa a few companies ago. We took him right out of Iowa. His first job, first real job, he led the brokerage division as an operations manager. Got pulled in being a director of operations for another three PL and then kind of went into being more of a player in logistics. But also, I think the company is working for is it's not logistics, but he's a chief operations officer because of the things he's learned through the years. It's great to see that. I think that's really why I'm doing this now, because I love seeing what happens to people after we work together. Hopefully that it's a starting point or a diving board or a point where they can accelerate from. Just today there was a person, Brian McCaffrey just reached out to me today. Brian McCaffrey was from Michigan State. Myself and another manager from a company a couple of companies ago went out to a job fair and took a chance on a sophomore where most people were looking at juniors and seniors to come in as an intern and said, hey, man, you live nearby our location. When you're out of school over the summer, why don't you come out and start to learn more about logistics? That was his major. He led an operation for us with the help of another manager, and we had a uniform project for Chrysler and Fiat and warehousing, pick and pack sorting. And then we shipped these products out, and he helped manage that process. He learned a little bit from us, but he's, I believe at Pepsi, he's at a big company. He's a freight analyst and a logistics analyst. So he's doing great, and he's going to be something even greater in the future. And it's awesome that I had a chance to give him his first real job. And it's one of those things that kind of circles back. Whether it was you gave him the space to grow or the training or the ideas or you just know how to find them. Either way, some piece of that, it's the beauty that you get to look back at and say, whether it's me or I just right person, right time. This guy is doing something with his life and he's not the only one. So there's obviously a consistency there. Whether you're grooming young salespeople to become great, whatever that piece is, your hands in that I saw on you was more assertiveness. But transparency, this is who I am. I'm going to tell you straight up, I want to work here. That helped our process out a lot. I mean, there was no trying to make this seem bigger and better than it was, because that's not me, first of all, because you get in that chair. If this isn't what you expected, I've got a problem. You don't. I'm going to find out really quick. You can't. No. So we were very transparent. That's just kind of who I am. That's who you are, obviously. But like a Ryan, like a Chris, he was more of an operator, but you still need to talk to people. You still need to carry yourself in a business, professional environment. And he developed greatly there. But both all of the instances of the people I really connected with that did well, think it's because I saw them being genuine, I saw them being transparent. I already knew that I'm responsible for them and their success. That's the weight that's on me. But the hard part is on them every day. I mean, they've got to succeed doing what's set up in front of them. Yeah, I've got to play in that. It's got to make sense to everybody. It's got to work. But it's the hard work that people like you, people that much junior than you in my past that I've worked with, they've come with it on the first day. And seeing that in them, the transparency, they told their story. They told a story about, this is who I am, at least to today. They shared it honestly, like you did. I take a lot from that because I got to know who I'm getting, whether you're crap, whether you think you're great. I got to really know who you are. So I can say, is this right for you? Because I'm going to come with total transparency from my end. Because you're going to find out fast too. The moment to find out. Yeah, we're both going to find out. So that's where I just don't play the game. I'd rather just, hey, this is who I am. This is kind of the bumps in my road. Do you want me? I'm not perfect. I'm not going to tell you I'm perfect. I work hard. Which will be found out. Yeah, which will be found out. But I put the work in. So these are the ABCs of me, basically. Yeah. What we're trying to share to the people out there, this podcast, like I've said before, is also about how we feel about what should be going on in a sales environment. We are in the transportation industry, but the sales and the storytelling of the sales process, it's key because we're trying to tell you guys out there, this is who Josh is, this is whose Tony is. This is what the company that we represent really is. Because it's just like we just talked about. You're going to find out either way. We need to be true to the story that we're telling. We need to be vulnerable. We need to be transparent. We need to share exactly who we are so you know exactly what you're getting and you can give us the yes. That will really mean that, yeah, you do get who we are, you know what you're going to get. And we're going to have the opportunity to work together for a long period of time. Anything else from your end? I mean, from my end, I could talk about this all day. Storytelling, literally, it's one of the main pillars of what makes selling work today. So we have another podcast coming up. Hopefully we make it through another week. So happy 2023 to everybody. Happy New Year. I want to thank everybody for listening. It was important stuff that we want to share. We want to keep sharing important stuff with you, Josh. I look forward to it. I appreciate you guys and Gals, thanks for listening, everybody. We look forward to having you on next week.