Finding Shippers, Insurance Insights, and Broker Training | Final Mile #42

We do our best to get to as many of them as we can , especially the ones that are really good for a wide chunk of the audience and are relevant .

So continue to do that and take a moment to hit the like button , subscribe , share us with your friends , leave a comment , send that question on yourself , head over to our website , freight360.net , to check out all of our content , including the freight broker basics course for a deep dive and how to get your brokerage started and successful .

And please take a moment to check out the sponsors in the description box . They help support this channel and allow us to continue to give you guys a lot of free content . All right , first question today is what systems or tools can I use to get shippers ? Well , I mean , we could do an entire hour episode on this and we're not going to .

Well , I mean , we could do an entire hour episode on this and we're not going to , but I picked this one , ben , because we you and I , as some folks know , we are a TIA instructor , so we the TIA has a , a program that certifies new freight brokers helped write and educate , or basically write that curriculum and deliver it , along with our friend , chris Jolly

, the freight coach . But we just did one like last week on how they can generate leads , how do they find shippers . Because you know , when you're brand new into this , you're like , right , I got to go out there and I got to find . I got to find freight . Where's this load board full of freight that I'm supposed to just go to and start bidding on ?

It doesn't work that way . You literally have to go out there and generate a certain amount of leads as potential customers that you can actually start to prospect and start to call on . So where do you find these shippers ? We'll give you a handful of them here and then I'll let you kind of add into it .

But the Internet is going to be your best friend in a lot of this right , whether it's just simply Googling or if you're going to use some online tools that allow you to get contact information or company information . So some of the obvious ones that folks have heard of are Zoom Info information .

So some of the obvious ones that folks have heard of are Zoom Info . If you do use Zoom Info , or if you are considering it , I would also encourage you to check out some of its competitors , like Apolloio , which I personally like . I think the price point's better . They do have a free one you can try out , but what ?

Um , basically they buy data from other places , but they also use email scraping , so they'll they'll see somebody's email signature as of yesterday , list of them as a traffic manager at ABC steel , and now you can confirm their phone number , email , et cetera .

Right , so that's how you can get companies and individuals at companies to call , I mean , one of our partners Blue Book , right ? Produce Blue Book , lumber Blue Book these are .

You can become a member and have access to tens of thousands of companies that are within either the produce industry or the lumber industry and , in general , any kind of trade organizations or trade groups where you've got membership . If you can get a list of all those , that's a great way to get a lot of leads all at once . Ben , give me a couple more .

I know I kind of named some of the common ones there , but what do you think there ?

A great tool we talk about a lot Data Axel , which you should be able to get for free through your library Everyone we've ever talked to was able to and that is a database of every company in North America listed by their industrial code , so you can literally source by not just a company but the code number for a company .

So if you've got a customer , or maybe no customers , what I would do is like pick something first , because looking for everything is impossible and you actually find nothing . So get a little focus and pick something or whatever that is . And then my next step is I usually do two or three things .

I go to GPT or Gemini , one of the AI models , and I say give me the top 100 companies , give me 50 medium-sized companies in here , and I look to just get a feel for how big the biggest ones are and the smallest . And then I usually go by the NAICS code and I throw it into Zoom Info and it will give me everybody that is under that .

And again , if you don't have Zoom info , it's super expensive , but you can use the free tool , data Axle . We'll still give you the same list of companies . You'll get their general phone numbers .

You can then take that list and work through it in LinkedIn to find some names of peoples with titles to get a little more specific , or then use that same list with , like , an Apolloio or Seamless , and you can get some individual people with phone numbers .

This is part of that lead generation time , right , like where you are just getting better at doing research , because that's what finding shippers is is . You've got to get good at finding information . And the other thing I want to point out right is the easier they are to find , the more people are prospecting them .

So what I have found is the prospects I really want are the ones that either have old websites , no websites , maybe a phone number . They don't have a huge public profile in a lot of cases , because why that's one less ?

You know it's a little bit less likely for the other 28,000 freight brokers out there to find that lead , to be calling them , to be trying to compete for the business . That I am Right . So I kind of move in the opposite way of trying to find the , you know , the under the radar medium sized companies that again tend to close or turn into customers faster .

Did it give anything other than the name of a company that I would then go into a website like a pollen , like all right , hey , I found the new contact and phone number . Um , could have just done that without having paid whatever he paid for the spreadsheet .

Our next question , and oh , back to the AI thing . I don't know why I missed that one , because I've used it before myself . It's great , all right . Next up , how do I get insurance for a special commodity that my insurance policy doesn't cover ? For a special commodity that my insurance policy doesn't cover ?

Okay , so examples of this could be that well , if you're a broker , maybe it's your contingent cargo doesn't cover it , but I'm assuming more so the carrier's insurance is not going to cover it .

So I don't know if this is a carrier or broker asking , but we'll answer it as if hey , I've got a load , it's got a weird commodity there's an exclusion on the carrier's policy , such as frozen seafood or berries or certain explosives , right ? What I would recommend for something like this is there's kind of like three ways .

We did an episode with Loadsure in the past . We personally use it at my brokerage and it's great . You basically go to LoadShare's website . If you have a DAT account , you're basically logged right in and just go to the tools and go to insurance . But otherwise you go to LoadShare's website and you get an account that way .

But you can buy an all-risk single load coverage policy . So if you've got one load it's high value or it's a commodity that is not covered by the standard insurance for the carrier you can buy that policy for that one specific load .

It's going to ask you all the details about where's it picking up , where's it going to , what's the value , what's the commodity , et cetera . Here's your price boom real quick .

In less than a minute you've got a policy that is a first position policy , which means they're not trying to go after the carrier's insurance to get any money back , they're just insuring it firsthand for the shipper . So that's one way is to buy like an all risk policy . Other options would be and there's more friction here .

But you could have your carrier go to their insurance and try to get single load policy written just for that load , whether it's an excluded commodity from their standard policy or it's a high dollar amount . Sometimes you hear that called like gap coverage or single load coverage , something like that . Then that's the carrier getting it themselves .

So I will tell you that if your carrier's policy does not cover something , don't assume that your contingent is going to pick up on it , because your contingent is contingent on the fact that the carrier's policy would have covered it in the first place . So any other thoughts on that one as far as different commodity stuff for insurance .

I saw it advertised in a school . I summarized that question . There is no such thing as a master freight broker .

But this brings up a good discussion , right , there's a lot of education out there and people are like you know , we're going to give you this top tier , $3,000 college level course on how to become a master freight broker and at the end you're going to get a certificate that proves you're a master freight broker . It doesn't exist .

That proves you're a master freight broker . It doesn't exist . The freight brokers . It's just a license that is given by the FMCSA and there's not even like a test . You just pay 300 bucks for lots of paperwork . You get a surety bond , Right , and uh and yeah , you're a licensed freight broker . It's literally all .

You don't even have to be licensed freight broker to broker freight . You can be an agent for a licensed freight broker or an employee . So there's really not , you know , nothing special and flashy there .

I think that's just a sales gimmick , obviously , that someone's trying to say , like , oh , freight broker school , Well , you can be a master freight broker with our stuff . Here's what I will tell you on education . Then , Ben , I'll let you give your take on it is there's a lot of information and education options out there in the freight industry .

What I would encourage a lot of people to do is take action as soon as possible and just learn along the way and always continue to learn . Don't feel like you have to go do a six month master freight broker school through community college of wherever , and then go start your business .

No , get into it , get the ball rolling , start getting your leads generated , learn some stuff . We got a bunch of free educational content that we do . We've got our podcast right . But also look at who are the sources of this information . Are they credible ? Do they work in the industry ? So that's that's my big take on it .

Obviously , you know I don't want to be a hypocrite we do have a course , but our course is built in conjunction with DAT . You know a leader in the industry and it's it's put together by us and we do this job day in and day out and we're not charging $3,500 and putting it through a community college . So what's your take , Ben ?

broker ? The hardest thing to do is to get customers , whoever's teaching that class . The first question I would ask is when was the last time you closed a customer ? When was the last time you talked to a shipper ? No-transcript ?

And I'll just say this from , like , my point of view , right , because I don't want to speak to anybody else's abilities , I'll just speak to my own . When I had a period where I was coaching and not able to work as a broker because of my non-compete , I was nowhere near as effective at coaching or training or working with anybody as I was .

Once I got back into it and this was only a year , right , like , and I was doing a lot of it , left for a year , basically , and came back and again I mean there was so much that I picked up again getting back into it that you just don't think about because you're not doing it right .

And I think this goes to the bigger point that Nate said of action .

Take action more than you want to take learning in a way and I know that sounds counterintuitive , but what I mean by that is I think oftentimes people use learning and education to delay or procrastinate on starting the thing , to avoid failure or avoid putting themselves in the place where they're going to be uncomfortable .

So I know , like Tim Ferriss , one of the guys I listen to a ton who is like one of the , you know , preeminent learners as far as , like , putting things out there to help people . He says that all the time right Is that like when you're not doing it right , like you're just well . He said this on his episode this week .

He's like his problem is he's like I procrastinate by reading , and why do I do that ? Because I enjoy reading and nobody ever tells me I should read less . So it's a great way to avoid doing the things that scare me , like starting a new business or doing this thing that might not work , because , hey , I'm learning .

Everybody respects that , and it's this catch-all right when learning is important . But learning without doing isn't anything , it's just spinning your wheels , right , and I think people do this in a way to well avoid the scare or the fear of failure .

And I wanted to read this because this is a really good tie-in from a quote that I saw that came in this newsletter this morning . And it's just people think of success and failure as opposite things , that the more I succeed , the less I fail . But that's really sort of a modern conception of success and failure .

The fact of the matter is that failure is woven into the fabric of success . For many , the more they succeed , the more they are also failing . They are just much quicker at recovering and learning from the experience that everyone else calls failure . It's not how do you avoid failure . That's the wrong question .

The right question is how do I fail , or how should I fail in ways that lead to the type of skill development and belief system that allows me to succeed in the long term ? Right , and it's more embracing that stumbling and falling as part of learning . Right , like you can't learn a bike only by doing it . Well , just by watching more people ride a bike .

You fall and that's how you learn not to fall right . It's the same thing with prospecting . It's the same thing with businesses like embrace it .

Embrace the fear , because when you make a phone call and someone hangs up or you say something and you feel embarrassed and it's awkward , you're never going to forget that again and you will probably never say that thing in that way ever again . Because of the negative emotion you felt , right , like people want to avoid that , but you can't like .

It's part of success . The people that do well are just accepting of the fact they're going to make mistakes and they don't beat themselves up over it . They look for the lesson and move on quicker Right , and to me that's really how you become a master at anything right , whether it's brokerage or not , it's embracing .

You're going to make mistakes , not learning and pushing off trying as far as you can .

I'm looking for a legit you're so stuck in your own ways , so stubborn right that the way you do it is the right way and there's there's never any chance that that's not the truth , like , yeah , you're not going to go very far , you might get a little bit , but you're going to be very , very limited .

You know you learned something because you changed right , you were willing to accept the new information and change right . That's growth , that's learning , that's improvement . Right Winning and avoiding stepping on things is teaching you nothing but how to avoid the things that might have led to a bigger success . Right or growth , however you define it For sure .

Stupidity is the same and that's why life's ? Hard .