The Freight Agent Trenches with Warren Debiak

LinkedIn presents

welcome into another episode of everything is logistics a podcast for the fingers in freight. I am your host Blythe Brumleve. And right now I am joined by Warren Debiak and I say that name. Like I'm gonna start every podcast from Vancouver because we were laughing at SPI logistics run de vous there and annual conference for their freight agents. And yes, I say that every time I hope I pronounce your name

Who I am with SPI, basically, Owner, business operator, contract with SPI. And then what we do is we work in a relationship with one another in order to take care of customers bring in freight, move the product, send out the invoicing and basically do a full service for individuals outside of you know, companies. Right?

And so when did you kind of like a lot of people say like I either fell into freight, or it was a family business? Which one do you kind of fall into? Well, I

would, I'd say neither of them. Actually, I saw. So I was doing like, starting out insurance. And then I was doing the cold calls only. And I got tired of having to find sales every day. And then I had heard about repeat customer repeat business. And then so my friend was talking about and I was like, oh, that sounds something I'd be really good at. And then so I jumped over there. And then which happened to be ch Robinson. Yeah, CH Robinson

So take me back, I guess to those days of like, when you're branching out on your own? How did you know what to look for? As far as like becoming a freight agent? Like, going out on your own? What What were those initial questions? How did you get those answered?

There was a lot of it was scary. I was terrified. I was actually really scared about this, because I had no clue. You know, I always felt like those huge corporations, they got your back, they'll take care of it. But there's actually a lot of better opportunity outside of the huge corporation, which is you just don't know better. Right? Well, it's

that salary sort of safety net, I think that most folks are used to is it's very challenging. Most folks are risk averse. They don't want to take that risks are

taught that. Yes, they're taught that they're taught that, hey, you just need that security that base income, but they've got to remember all are getting missed the bare minimum. Right?

And you're talking about like from those larger, like, sort of? Yeah,

any company, they're gonna pay you just enough to keep you on.

But you wanted something more out, you thought there was more out of life. So you said I'm going to do this on my own.

My dad, he owned a business, right? And I saw him do it. So therefore I had the mentoring a little bit and at what I had hit that point in my life, hey, I'm doing the same thing. I'm grinding, I'm working it. I'm not making as much more because it's, you know, small percentages. I think it's time that I can do it on my own.

So what were those are the questions that you you are questions concerns that you had before you joined SPI or that you wanted answers to?

Well, it was the security as far as hey, you know, I'm gonna go out and do this. What type of support are you guys going to offer me what I needed? Or what type of you know liabilities will be available if something had happened in like, you know, a damage claim or freight or, you know, death or

so you need to ask about that ahead of time. Yeah.

What invoicing you know, insurance bond

and so those were a lot of the questions that you had before SPI or were you talking to any other companies or did you kind of talk to

a few of them and I actually went on with one of them and I won't bring up the name or anything like that but um, it kind of went sideways a little bit and then I had reached out to Joe Chandler I read a little bit about it. I didn't know much about SPI but we had like a two hour conversation and then literally the next day I was on board. Oh, wow. Yes, I've not looked back since.

So if you don't mind me asking what was the the conflict that happened in the other company that said, I've got to get out of here. So I you know, they've got these non compete. Okay. I know who you're talking about. A non

compete and Miss I had bounced out of there. And the company that I had gone to, they kind of just folded up and said, Well, you know, this is who's here and you can have access to everything you had. So I kind of went to a little bit of panic and all that. And I did come across Joe and Joe said that he would take care of us no matter what,

that's awesome to be able to have that kind of security and safety, I would imagine creates loyalty to other companies. Yeah. And so you make the decision, you're gonna you're gonna join SPI, what does that sort of onboarding process look like? Did you have to revamp everything? Talk to your customers? Like, what was that? I guess, evolution looking like?

So simply put, like, you do have to reach out to customers, you've got to tell them, hey, listen, I'm gonna go ahead and and be changing and going on with this really good company. And they've given me more control. Because you know, these customers, they're not, they're not working with the company. They're working with you. And if you've got that back office support, and they know that this is going to a great

And so they that's a common thing that I'm hearing among freight agents is that they, it's a little bit of a worry, but it's not too much of a worry if you have to switch providers, because your customers trust you that you're making the right decision for them. And they're afraid. Yes. And so

I promise you this, if you actually take care of your customers, they will follow you anywhere.

What does taking care of your customers look like to you? I mean? Answer the calls at 2am. On a Saturday, where's

what's going on? Hey, can you call this receiver? Can you call the shipper find out where the drivers that I mean? It's like literally, if you think you're just gonna book a load to walk away, that's not taking care of your customer. You've got to wine and dine.

Who doesn't love to be wined and dined I guess,

respectfully. You got to wine and dine them. You got to really take care of them because they are taking care of you. That's the important part.

And you're solving problems for testily so if you are creating more problems for them, they're more likely.

Yes, they're looking for someone where it doesn't make their life more hectic. makes it less hectic, right. Hey, I give Warren my load. I know no matter what it's going to be taken care of. Right truck breaks down, he'll get me somebody else to get in and train load. So yeah.

So you have your established customers, you make the move fully over. But what does getting new customers look like think that kind of signals back to our our social media versus cold calling versus cold email? Like, what is your strategy for getting new customers?

My new strategy is so you do have the referrals and all that stuff. But you said

new new customers? Oh, okay. Okay, I thought you meant new strategy. And you know, I get new No, my

strategy has always been what my strategy is. There's different tiers, when it comes to finding new customers. When you're coming out of the gates. It's 100 calls a day, nonstop. You build that little 50 pipeline, you keep replenishing them, call them three, four times, if you don't speak to them, you get rid of them. And then you keep it going

the deep sell is. Well two who are who weren't here at the conference to listen, Mike Michalik he made a comment earlier about you know deep selling to your already established

customers do you have selling is huge. But you've got to keep that pipe of potentially new customers always they're always there.

And so how do you manage this you have a CRM like I'm thinking of like the nightmare of managing personally. I use Excel right that's how I really know CRM

Excel, okay. And then it's real simple. You know, you click Get rid of technology is not my thing. I'm more of the speaker and all that stuff. You're doing this and I don't even know what this is.

Having conversations right, so Okay, so you vehemently agree with Mike or disagree about the 100 cold calls a day because that was his his comment is that you don't need to be making 100 cold calls a day.

If you are already established. He is correct. If you are new into this industry, I am absolutely correct.

This episode is brought to you by SPI logistics the premier freight agent and logistics network in North America. Are you currently building your freight broker? Rich's book of business and feel that your capabilities are being limited due to lack of support and access to adequate technology? At SPI logistics, we have the technology, the systems, and the back office

They call you five, six times you never want to pick it up? No, really,

I even have it on my phone. Like why? Well, I do think that there's a difference between and I have heard this from other freight agents, the selling to people during the COVID lock downs, because everybody was just on their cell phones versus in the office, it's much easier to cold call folks in the office because they have their desk phone. But on my cell phone, it's an automatic setting that I can just click ignore any unknown numbers that are not already in my database. So that's

guys, this technology is a killer telling you if you don't keep up with it, I understand what you're saying, Yeah,

I don't want to waste my time. And I don't want to get on a because I'm in the middle of like certain deep work and I don't want to answer the phone. For my own mothers. My own mother can't get through your damn shirt. Right, right. So that's where I think of like my personal experience. And then how does that apply to the difficulty of the job that you're talking about? Making those somebody

wants? Let's say this, you've talked to them once. Now you're more likely to answer the phone next time if you liked them or did not like them, correct?

Yes, as long as I'm not doing something or I'm maybe I genuinely liked the person, but I'm busy and I can't talk right

now. But you'll somehow get back to him. Maybe possibly, right,

they left a good voicemail. They left a voicemail that says what they're calling about and not just hey, this is me XYZ. Give me a call back. Tell me why you called

Oh my gosh. My feelings be hurt so much if I really knew you. liked me. They know.

My best friend does not bother calling.

Do this in real life. You call everybody back you always do.

That's what my dad says to me. But I do not. I do not listen, because it's it's spam calls that don't stop. It's political. Anytime there's a it feels like there's an election every two months in my state. So I'm getting all of those text messages and calls to I think,

blow 30 mid 30 Oh,

I'm almost 40 I'll be January. So still okay. But you're never

the end of this stuff. Like this is crazy. This world is changing so much. Which is why

I'm a big proponent of social media. I gave a talk earlier, which was great, by the way, about LinkedIn and

my eyes like, oh my god, what am I? What am I not doing, but that's where

that's where I would push back against the cold calling because you can turn a cold call into a warm call. If you have a digital relationship established with them on social media first,

I agree with you 100%. I think there's many ways of doing it. Right? It's

always it's gonna Yes.

Like the whole media way, could take a week or so. Right. But the cold calls instead. It just depends on how you're looking to do it. You know what I mean? Media way, I think it'd be easier. But I'm looking to grind it out. Now. What about both I need now? Yeah, both would be fantastic. Right? You'd be doubling up both pipelines. But like I told you Instagram, like I you know, are you it was LinkedIn I'm looking at, I'm like, Holy shit, this is amazing. Now we're gonna do all

you brought that up, because there are people who exist that will take conversations that you've had. So say, for example, we have this conversation, and it gets transcribed. You could take that transcription and send it to an assistant or a VA or you know, a ghost writer, and they can take your quotes that you've said, and write LinkedIn posts about it. Wow. And just paraphrase exactly what you said. And that's how a lot of executives that don't have the time to do

So I think the problem is here. I'm thinking, Oh, my God, it's so much work. What I need to be thinking is, who can I get to do it for me?

Yes, based on what you've already said, right? That's where I think a lot of folks missed the boat on is that they just hire a social media agency. And the social media agency doesn't know what the hell to post on your regard if you're not already making content if they don't have something to go off of. So these social media agencies then turn into like, Happy Valentine's Day from XYZ company and nobody

my talk. You just sold me like a bunch of stuff I didn't get. Well, I shouldn't say I'm not an easy sell.

So what is I guess what has been the biggest barrier for you not to be on a platform like LinkedIn?

Is the timing. Like, I don't know anything about it. You know, I know enough about it, but not how to go after certain industries and so forth. I'm inundated with business stuff all day long. Right. And that's the issue. Like, I just don't have time to think about how else can I get out there market? I don't have a website. Right? I got a LinkedIn profile, but it's mediocre.

You got to do the facelift. Yeah, did a facelift on it when I'm sitting on

the beach, or whatever. That's me, you know, I think. And yeah,

so there's a couple of different ways that I feel like this is probably evolving, but it's a conversation. So I'm gonna roll with it. So there's a couple of different ways that you could handle it if you're you and you

I've got to talk about something I don't want to talk about. Let me go to

my document. And then it's you can just pull right from there. So I call the lingo library document, where you're writing down the questions that your customers are asking you during the week. The responses that you're sending out to your your customers, or your prospects are really driven

all these ideas. In literally I keep saying to myself, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do any of that. That is you're exactly right. That's why I need to get someone Yes, do it. So then I don't want to do that stuff. But with the

technology behind that we now have that we can all take advantage of you can take those transcriptions, you could take this episode, and you could send it off to a writer. They write it for you they paraphrase exactly

what he says. Thanks very good.

I wish I had like a company, I need to probably add in a company that could pitch it's like a really good company to do this for but there are several like, the good thing about marketing and logistics now is that since 2020, there's been an explosion as far as like content creators in the space. And when I say explosion, I mean like 40 people are now making content within the space, but it was barely

a lot of stuff has moved towards the media since COVID. Stuff like it's like really taken off and I need to get on it. I need to get on that train. And the way

that you could do it um say is batching outsourcing or just spending you know the first 30 minutes of your day instead of diving into email, check out your your LinkedIn feed, who's talking about what and then you can either comment, engage, do whatever you want hire

Yeah, hire somebody to do

Then you could do that as well. Yeah. But the easy way to do that is to really take a conversation like this, transcribe it, send it to them, and let them handle it and and then you can handle the fun part of engaging with that customer replying back to them, you know, maybe having a future meeting with them. If those posts go, Well, I'll let you know there's 100 different ways that you can handle it. But it's just getting the ball rolling with just a

about this, the podcast, I'm watching you. I'm thinking about Oh, my God, I got so much to do you know what the media is? Oh, yeah,

it's just, and I treat it like what I had to say about how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? Yeah, start small, make the profile over? And

that is gonna make that initial step. Yes. Right, get it started.

And then that way, if you just do the URL, if you just make over the profile, you don't have to do any posting, you don't do any liking or commenting. But during your cold outreach during your cold calling,

hey, I'm gonna send you or hey, check out my, or hey, right?

Well, it's just, it's an extra level of verification that this person is not a spammer? Or is not a double broker

link profile on your email signature. Yes, hey, check out my link profile. Exactly. And that is not who we are, if I know what I do,

and you're reducing the level of okay, is this person legit? Is this person real? You're reducing that those level of risk questions? So we talked, you know, earlier about risky sounds?

Really, right. So here, yes. And so that's

where I, you know, you don't even I wouldn't even worry about posting until you make over the profile, and then that just use that as your leverage for now. And then once you, you know, kind of interact with them. If you've ever do it two

years from now, I'm gonna be showing you.

It might be too late by that. Okay, so I guess back to the real interview,

already know where we are, right.

So what else, I guess within your freight agent business, do you think would be important for other potential freight agents to know like, if you weren't looking not to say you are looking for a new partnership? But if you were, what were what would those things?

Well, I can tell you what I struggle with right now. What I am struggling with where I am now, is I'm trying to expand. But I have a little bit of an issue of letting go with control a little bit because I've put my heart and soul into

I think that's maybe a safe assumption for most business owner, but I'm

really struggling with it. Yeah, I'm really struggling with it. I just don't know how to do it or where to go.

And so it's. So I dealt with this, I worked at a magazine, and I wanted to became their Editor in Chief. And then we had a Jaguars issue come up. And I'm a huge Star Wars fan. So I wanted to write every article that was in the magazine, but as an editor, that's a terrible idea. You shouldn't do that. And my boss at the time, he told me, why don't you think of yourself as the conductor to the orchestra instead of trying to

I love the concept. executing it is the tough

part, you know, do you wish there was a central place to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit employees, and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business? Well, all of this should already be on your website. But too often, we hand that responsibility of building are online home off to a cousin, a neighbor's kid down the street, or a stranger across

really passionate person? Okay, so there's been a long weekend for me losing, my brain is actually working. It's I'm pretty Intune and very passionate stuff and like, I had an agent wasn't going so well just wasn't for them. They moved on, I brought in a family member, which by the way, don't ever do that. And, you know, so that was kind of brutal a little bit. And so now I'm back to square one. Back to square one. Yeah. Well, two times already.

Do you have your like processes? Like all mapped out? No, that would help a ton?

I'm sure it would. But it

also helps with execution. I just went through this whole thing. And process mapping is fun. But not really. So yeah, I feel your pain on that

I definitely have some areas where I've got to improve in order to to get the process really rolling.

How are you? Do you document your processes at all?

As far as which portions like

all of it? Like, if you were to hire somebody right now to start making cold calls? Yes. What would you what would they do?

I would hand them a sheet. And I would inform them how to do it. I've got the Excel, this is how I do it. I would train them, show them. And then say, Hey, here's my presentation, learn this thing, and then make it your own is how I would do it.

And so then do you process Matt, for all the other aspects of work? So adding to your to do list? Yes,

we do. Okay, so we first when they start out, I teach them about what it's like to work with carriers, how to call them. So on a daily basis, they're going to be calling them for a month or so. So they get familiar with talking with these truckers, then they're going to be reaching out and they're going to be calling to make sure that the customers are okay. That is the second process. So first, you learn how to talk to the truckers. Now you kind of know what you're talking about.

And then sounds like you have some important processes mapped out. I do I've

got it in there. It's just the it's the how do I bring them on to do it the way that I need them to do it.

That's where I start. And they're the reasoning behind different decisions. Because I'm assuming like, yes, you can freelance for a little bit. But there's dangers in that freelancing as well, because you haven't experienced this particular problem that happens when you freelance, right?

Because this is it's a very fast paced business. And it's not you know, like, hey, every time it's this way, it's Hey, this has happened, you need to adjust quick, and you need to get creative sometimes, like real fast, you know,

so I guess it how are you approaching? Maybe the rest of this year? What does what does your outreach process look like? Are you you know, marketing yourself to any new customers? I mean, probably all of the above and market like

to be honest with you. Okay. It was so brutal with the new employees wore me out. And so I'm just gonna relax just for a little bit. Gonna regroup. You know, I think that that's what I'm gonna do. I feel

like that's a smart play, because then it'll allow you to get your bearings straight. Yes.

And like the COVID thing, it went from boom to skyrocket with business. And I am a little wore out. Yeah, so I am gonna let regroup a little bit right now. It is real. Yeah, it is. It really is. And, yeah, yeah, it really is.

It's definitely one of those things where if you've, if you feel like you're already burnt out, if you feel like you need a break, you're probably well past the type of like,

I'm about a year and a half when I do the break. So this year, I'm just going to maintain, I'm going to regroup and rethink, put in some new goals, and then try to execute a mixture. And I

think that that's a really great place to sort of in the conversation because we can learn so many things that you know the rendezvous. It's like we're here right now, talking about LinkedIn, what's working for you what's working for me, all of those good things. But ultimately, you have to implement them and you have to execute.

Thank you.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. If you liked this episode, do me a favor and sign up for our newsletter. I know what you're probably thinking, oh God, another newsletter. But it's the easiest way to stay updated when