Make No Mistake with Nate Johnson

Second , he's in logistics and third , he's in Minnesota . So I feel like I found my mirror twin in the logistics industry in Nate Johnson , who's the founder and CEO of GLCS . Good morning , nate . How are you doing today ?

So , and that's what happens when you get a lot of messages on social media , you just go through your queue and you respond to people and and I had responded to one of your your posts or or whatever that may be and it said somebody had commented on something and I was quickly going through my day . So , uh , it is what it is .

I mean when you say mic , half the room stands up . So I'm sure social media is the same way .

And that can be through vendor selection , that can be through day-to-day support , that can be in tier two , tier three support and vendor selection .

Meaning you're looking at a new technology , you're looking at options that are out there to replace your existing technology , you're looking at a new technology that you've never had before and looking for the best solution for you . And we all understand what happens when you mispurchase something .

Not only are you purchasing something that doesn't fit your organization well , but in today's world that can be very expensive to deploy something that doesn't work well . And two , it can be a culture hit . And so to appropriately select technology is important .

So we can kind of go through the whole life cycle of technology , from selection to implementation to continued support throughout the life of technology for transportation logistics providers . That includes carriers , brokers , technology providers and some shippers as well .

There's a little asterisk next to some shippers , but we also are an integrator , so we do a large number of integrations for technology platforms . So two disparate technology platforms in the transportation logistics space . We have well over 100,000 units integrated on our platform across over 200 some odd customers right now and climbing .

We work with some of the largest well , the largest ELDs in the space . We work with seven or eight different TMSs and growing . So that's what we do .

How I got into the space ? I've been in transportation logistics for 28 years . This year , glcs is eight years old . Logistics for 28 years . This year , jlcs is eight years old .

Most of my time in transportation logistics or about actually a little over half of my time in transportation logistics was on the ownership operations end of trucking and logistics companies , and in 2011 , I decided to move to technology and I spent quite a bit of time at TMW Systems .

When I left there in 2016 , jlcs actually started as a management consultancy first , so just helping companies better their processes . That's something that we do today , as well as streamline process . That's something that we do today as well as streamline process . So we started that first , not really adding in technology for some time .

Now technology is the primary focal point , but certainly technology and process . What we call people process technology really is kind of the hierarchy of things . If you have solid people , you know technology and process can be weak , but you can't have great technology , poor process and poor people . Technology can't , can't make your business run .

But great people , poor process , poor technology you can still have a business . So without diving into that too deeply , you know JLCS then evolved into the business that it is today . I started it primarily because , you know , I've been a leader in business for a long time and you know a lot of people were saying that it was something that I should do .

I agreed . There's a . You know a lot of people were saying that it was something that I should do . I agreed . There's a . You know I've run trucking companies throughout my entire career . I've owned trucking companies prior to this and it's my passion and the merge of transportation and technology .

You know I was a driver for a while too , so I have that kind of trifecta going on of quite a few miles on the road owning and operating trucking companies and brokerages and then understanding that technology piece together . So you know , glcs kind of came together as that .

I think I heard the statistic that 93% of venture-backed companies fail and only 7% survive , and of that 7% , only 10% ever make it to some large scale version of success , whereas the much more common story that doesn't get as much attention is what we're all about is .

You spent two decades learning an industry from multiple positions learning an industry from multiple positions . So when you walk into a carrier , for example , and you can speak to what it's like to be a driver , I would imagine the credibility that you carry with you is something that can only be earned over decades worth of work .

So you're maybe a later entrepreneur in your career , but you have a tool belt that's larger than just about anybody .

You know there's a fine line between success and failure , and it's the fact that you've decided to stop . So you know we fail daily and it depends on how you look at it . Some days are beautiful and you have some great wins , but other days are not .

And you know , I was talking at a or speaking at a group with the ATA recently and I had maybe a group of 50 company owners in front of me , and when I said how many of you or all of you , I think is how I made the statement all of you have been on that precipice of closing your doors , moments away from closing your doors , and any entrepreneur , any

business owner , knows exactly what I'm talking about .

You have that option of where you walk in in the morning and you say I can go left and close my business or I can go right and grind through it , and so that's the difference between you know it's , it's me , and you may , as a venture backed company , still be in those scenarios , but you're it's not entirely your decision anymore and there's a grind that

comes with business leadership and business ownership . That happens no matter who you are , and if you're not prepared for it , you're not going to make it . It's not always fun . So you look at people who make it look easy . You hear the silver spoon , where someone , no matter what they touch it , turns to gold , for example , you know .

Or the silver spoon analogy . I bet you , if you ask that person how their day goes , they would say that's what they want you to see goes . They would say that's what they want you to see . That's what they're making . You see not how their life actually is . That's the way they're portraying themselves .

I don't know if it's so much that entrepreneurs are more willing to embrace risk although we know that that's a component of it but that wake up in the morning and go left instead of right . Yes , how do ?

And that's , I think , key , because in many cases those risks are unknown and you don't necessarily understand those risks . And a lot of entrepreneurs , a lot of business owners , today are sitting on more debt than what they potentially ever were before due to COVID .

A lot of them drug their businesses through COVID just to get through it because they knew they had to , and we see that from a variety of companies that we work with and they'll power through it . But it's going to take a decade to get out of it and no one , for the most part , is really talking about that .

They're all paying their low interest loans that they all took out because they're not that painful , but it is something that's sitting on a balance sheet . So , but that risk that's sitting out there is an impact . There's also other decisions that were potentially made throughout that time period to keep businesses alive .

So you have throughout that time period to keep businesses alive . So you have um as a new entrepreneur , you know there are plenty of of companies and plenty of people that make decisions that they don't fully understand because you're not educated . So your second , third , fourth and I I own , you know multiple different businesses . Right now .

I think there's four . Um , I don't think I know there's four . Uh't think I know there's four .

Uh , so the more often you do it , the more you know how to navigate those first four years and that those first four years and the growth plan around them , especially on a bootstrap scenario , um , those are are different than the next four years and the following four years after that so you're describing a longer term mindset .

If you can make it through those seven , you know , getting to know each other and live together and understand each other's quirks and all of those things , that it truly takes that long to get to know another human being . You know at that level and we of course burst out laughing and thought that was really funny .

And so you describing you know the first four years and the next four years reminds me of another local friend that I have who bought a freight brokerage and a small trucking company about two years apart and he did it through an SBA loan and had to put up part of his home equity as collateral and he's been very successful with it and he's grown both

businesses . But soon after he had done it I said do you feel like you've arrived ? And he said yeah , I feel like I've arrived at the starting line , because now I have 10 years before I have paid off the debt on both of these companies to where I'll finally have a reward , and he's approaching that 10 year mark now .

And he to sign up for something knowing that there's not going to be a payoff for a decade is a different mindset . We have an instant gratification lens most of the time , and so you're willing to do things that others aren't Right .

You have a learning curve that you maybe don't even understand in there and you know , I still learn things on a day-to-day basis and I would say sometimes you make mistakes and you go okay , I'm going to adjust things and and hopefully this mistake I made wasn't catastrophic and you adjust your business and you you go through and guide the company and don't make

that mistake again and adjust your procedures and you get better for it . You get better for it . You look at your issues and your crises that you have in your business and you make them happen less often . As you mature , those crises become less often . You look at a 20-year business and they appear to not have crises . Why ?

Because they've matured to the level that they know how to navigate them , or they're large enough that they have a war chest that allows them to navigate them . It doesn't mean that they're never going to have them , but the likelihood of them popping up are probably much slimmer . They've evolved to that level where they're not going to .

So to that point you have a debt . That's there , but you don't have the intellectual capital of running a business for 10 years . When you start it . You have to gain that and even after 10 years , you still are learning things . You , even after 15 years , you still learn things .

section . Uh , airplanes , the older they are , the safer they are is a general rule , because that plane has been through hundreds or thousands of flights successfully . It's been through storms , it's been through renovations , it's been through all of that . Whenever I get onto a brand spanking new airplane and everyone's like , ooh , this is fantastic .

I'm the most scared because this is an untested plane . It's only flown a couple of times . Give me the old one that I know has survived for those 15 years .

So there's something to be said about that . You know , the , the , the , the new thing isn't always the best thing .

And my lesson learned when I closed my trucking company was that some really bad things can happen and everything can still be okay . So it's a matter of understanding what's coming ahead , understanding what's coming ahead , um , having great accounting . So understanding your finances very well and understanding cash flow very well .

And if you don't have those things in front of , you know you can navigate some waters . But , uh , the stress that comes with that , you know some of it requires some metal . I think the founders group that you have has been nice for that too . You know being able to speak with people , meeting people .

You know when we've , when we've met um members of the organization , you sort of cut past the initial discussions that you have with other other founders and you go right into let's , let's go deep , let's , let's just start talking about life , and you know that what you talk to them about is not going to go out to the world , so , so you can have discussions

with other founders , especially if it's one-on-one or a group of them , um , so that's that's nice to have have an organization like that . Um , there's a few other people in your life that you have those types of discussions with as well , people in your life that you have those type of discussions with as well .

But , uh , uh , you know , outside of that , having a good partner in your life too , is extremely important . Tell me about her . Um , you know she's equally as smart as me . So , uh , that's that's that's important . You can sit down and have a great conversation and kind of level level things with everybody .

You , you know the uh um discussions you have with someone . Um , you shouldn't have to sit there and explain every detail , uh , so you know we have a great relationship and and , uh um , you know we can understanding every aspect of the business and and talk about .

You know we can understanding every aspect of the business and talk about , you know the long term and the short term and and business planning and what can be and what can't be , and you know anything and everything and where it can be .

So when times are tough , we have those discussions , and when times are good , we have those discussions as well those discussions and when times are good , we have those discussions as well .

I love working with companies , I love talking with leadership , I love helping solve problems . That's what I'm passionate about , and so what I do on a daily basis from a work standpoint

is great . From a personal standpoint , I have kids in high school that were putting through college . And I just look at you know I'm launching three kids into life and until I get that done , I'm not really worried about the next phase of life at this point .

And I didn't think I would have said that because a few years ago you start thinking about retirement and you know retirement still weighs off , but you know , and of course we're still financially thinking about retirement . But you start thinking about retirement but right now it's literally getting kids into whatever they're going to do after high school .

I have one in college right now kids into whatever they're going to do after high school .

I have one in college right now Getting them through that effectively , ensuring that you advise them and have them weather the stormy ship through college and get them through that in the best way possible and have them come out of that as successful as possible without massive college debt , which can be absolutely astronomical .

So that , I think , is our mission right at the moment is to get to that point .

So when I , when I started to kind of climb the corporate ladder , uh , I largely focused on creating good jobs for people and creating relationships early on and I started to become a study of of culture , of employment culture , uh , and then eventually that changed into culture change .

Probably about 2002 , 2003 , I started studying culture change in businesses and that really became relationships you know , employment type relationships and studying that as well and it ultimately comes down to creating great relationships with people . And I have a wonderful team here at GLCS .

But if you actually dig into it , I have people that have worked for me for 20 some odd years on and off . I have people that have worked with me or have been customers for 15 plus years . I have former co-workers of mine that have been with me for 14 plus years .

I mean , glcs is eight years old and over time there are people that have just come there , are our former employees that are our customers of ours from many years ago .

There are , uh , there's a crazy network of those relationships that have grown because we foster them and and that , you know , it ultimately comes down to that relationship skill that that started many years ago and I think that's where the seed of all this comes from .

So , building out the , the family dynamic no one's perfect on the family dynamic is , you will know , you have a family . That's uh , um , you know nine years , right , you said nine years ? Yeah , correct , um , you still learn new things on a daily basis there and as you're , um , as you're growing that out , you learn new things as you go .

My oldest son is 19 and I'm reinventing how I interact with him on a daily basis . So he's no longer a child , he's now an adult and he gets to make his own decisions , and so it's now an advisory role instead of a parent . You know , I get to tell you what to do , sort of role , so , but there's a little bit of a blend there .

It's not exactly that , but it's certainly a learning curve .

The song is from both the father's perspective and then also from the sons and , you know , one has wisdom and experience and is looking back at , effectively , his younger self , who's full of uh , vim and vigor and ready to take on the world . And I came across that song the week that I was getting ready to move my son into college .

And , yeah , you know , since then I it's a rite of passage to know we were that ourselves and we had no , you know , full view of what the world actually would be like . We just had a lot of confidence and tolerance for risk and newness and different things .

And you know , the world pushes back as an adult and you don't get what you want and you experience disappointment and heartache and all of those things that life has to offer .

And with that comes perspective that I'm super happy to see our kids grow into wonderful adults that they're becoming , and also know that they have , they're going to have , their own hardships and challenges ahead and we'll be here to support them when they need it , but we can't guide and direct them .

Like you said , you know , tell them what to do , and it's the beauty of having your priorities straight , of knowing that the people in your life are literally the . Your family is the most important , those are the most important relationships . Everything else is secondary .

If you can't do the right thing because it's not possible , then be communicative and explain why you have to do something that you don't want to do . And that's in business , that's in life , that's in , you know , in the personal life , that's at any relationship that you have . But there are times where you have to make a choice . That's not the best choice .

It's the choice that you have to make for for whatever reason . But , uh , integrity above all , and you can be , you can have integrity and make a bad choice , but that's by saying I'm doing this and this is why you're not going to like it .

So , um , you know , and , and someone can say that that's not not moving forward with integrity , but at least you're addressing the issue ahead of it instead of ignoring it .

I wouldn't say it's as strong as some people , but you know , when you look at social media and you're like I need to get numbers , I need to do this , you talk to other people that you would categorize as an influencer and how they look at things , and I I maybe have have what I would call leveled up here recently where I no longer care .

I no longer care now . Now my and and you'll see if you go back a ways , you will see where that happens .

You will just see where that happened , where I no longer care anymore , and the podcast reflects this too where the podcast is now about what we feel is the best message for us and our audience and who we want to speak to our , our audience and who we want to speak to Um , it's no longer about , you know , gathering um viewers , but actually the viewers have

shown up , because the energy is there in , in the um , in the interviews , but the messages that I do on a daily basis are now more specific to what I want to talk about , not necessarily what is going to get stuff . What is it going to get Engagement ? Yeah , exactly Engagement .

So , and a lot of people will say that for a long time and it wasn't that I was doing just , you know , I wasn't picking the news line and going with that . I was actually doing meaningful content that was adjacent to what we were doing , but now I just don't post anything if I don't have anything to say .

So to that particular point , you know , just do what you think is going to be meaningful and don't worry about what other people necessarily have , because you have visibility to your world trying to do , and if someone else is trying to influence you , or if you're , you're comparing , and I I say the exact quote escapes me right at the moment , but comparing

yourself to others is a great way to to uh , proceed to failure , uh , and and that's whether that's in social media . It's hard to necessarily fail , uh , because you're just not going to hit numbers . That's in social media . It's hard to necessarily fail because you're just not going to hit numbers .

That's really not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things . But in business , if you're sitting there trying to compare yourself to another company , that other company is hard to understand and you're not behind the scenes , you don't know what they're doing .

So in reality , unless you're losing sales deals over and over and over to them , you don't really have to sit there and occupy every thought about how to beat them . Just be in your own world . You know , especially if you're a small company , there's there's no reason to try to compete with a much larger company .

And then eventually , one day , I started getting traction and then doing the podcast and starting to become more visible . You do end up attracting a lot of attention . More visible , you do end up attracting a lot of attention .

And for the first year or so it was not going to say innocent , but it was very honest and pure and I wasn't doing it for any other reason than because I love this subject matter . I love talking to entrepreneurs and specifically in logistics .

And then , at a certain point , though , I do recall it starting to change for me , where I began to chase numbers and the dopamine hit of getting 200 likes on a post and it being reshared 20 times and knowing that I got 180,000 impressions with one post was addicting and and then it began to have an impact on me and fortunately I've got people in my life

that said it to me . Hey you're . You're changing a little bit Are you sure you want to , and I went dark for a while on purpose to kind of detox from that and get to that place of what you describe of .

It's not that I don't care , it's just that I don't need it anymore and now I can be more authentically myself and have real conversations and meaningful discussions with people that share a lot of the same values . And if our listenership drops because of it , you know , know what . I'm okay with that and our sponsors are okay with it .

They understand and they get

it too . And you know the folks at Rapido are good people . I have spent a lot of time with them and they care way more about having an impact than they do about you know the number of likes and that's meaningful to me to partner with companies like them and Bitfreighter , brad Perling and his team that are the same way .

They're rooted in relationships and people . And Thelo with Levity same thing with levity , same thing Like we're . We're spanning the globe now on companies that are a part of this strange little journey that we're on because they want to do good and it has to be commercially viable . Also , it needs , it needs to be good for business in order for it to last .

And you have found a way also to put people at the forefront .

You're a community builder , you know , with what you're doing , with freight movement and trying to get people together in person and build meaningful relationships , and that can be good for business and you can learn and grow and fail and make mistakes as a founder and as a human being , and that's what all any of us really want at the end of the day .

That's why I mean you come across to me as somebody who's very content .

So , and I mean freight movement , now that that you mentioned it , you know , when you go back to my roots , where I was talking about culture and employment , culture and just the relationship side , it's really the culmination of all of that and bringing different organizations together . So that tells you how far back that passion goes 20 years .

So 20 years and putting it together and it's really a social I don't want to call it an experiment massive funding that points us in a direction that we lose our mission behind it and it may get a little bigger than that over time . But but uh , that's a long way off and right now it's . It's been the Minnesota events so far .

There's some discussion about other ones , but we've had some interesting uh requests and a few phone calls lined up here just from the , the last uh last event . So over the next 30 days we'll have uh a few meetings and see what happens from that , and I've got two or three other companies in minnesota that want to sponsor events here now too .

So min , minnesota is well stacked . Chicago and Ohio and Atlanta are being spoken about . Some of it comes down to just time and how we put it together and how all the stuff works out .

So we're learning as we go , but pulling people together and talking in small events , these are people that normally don't always get to go to national conferences , they don't get to network like that , and so getting them out , you know whether they're a local , smaller company or they're not the typical people that just get the uh , draw the ticket to go , and so

it's nice to get folks out to meet and you know . Whether it's 50 people or 500 people at a freight movement event , I don't think we necessarily care what the uh , what the numbers are that that show up at them .

Um , as long as we have an idea that you know we're getting 50 , a hundred or 500 , cause obviously the venue would explode if we're planning on a hundred and we get 500 . But uh , uh , the evolution of freight movement will be interesting to watch , uh , to see what we're able to do with it over the next 12 months .

I don't know if it's we're all tired of Zoom and we just want to be in person , or if there's so much technology in the world that it's dehumanized the other side of a transaction , but there is a hunger and an appetite to building community and getting together , and what you're doing with Freight Movement is something I'm glad to be a part of myself and glad

to support

. So good luck with that experiment . Glad to support . So good luck with that experiment . And thank you very much for just opening up on your journey and what it's like to be an entrepreneur in supply chain and for going deep . That's what we're all about and you've done that in spades . So thank you again , nate , and we're all rooting for you .

To learn more about the show and connect with the growing community of entrepreneurs , visit logisticsfounderscom . And , of course , thank you to all the founders who trust us to share their stories .