Self-Awareness and Entrepreneurship with Trey Griggs

Hello everybody , and welcome back to the show , excited this week because we're going to explore what it's like to search for and find product market fit as an entrepreneur with my good friend and founder of Beta Consulting Group , the one and only Trey Greggs . Trey , good morning .

I'm going to give you the credit back because this second iteration of this show would not be possible without you . Thank you .

I've also been in situations where there was no marketing , or very limited , and it made it very difficult to sell . As somebody who is very much a teacher , coach oriented person , I wanted to help as many people as possible as I could with that . I've always been a little entrepreneurial . I just lacked the courage .

But in January of 2022 , we made the jump started beta consulting group . Officially . I actually formed the LLC in 2018 . I had this idea for a long time but I never did anything with it until January of 2022 . I finally got the courage , along with the support of my wife and my kids , to do that . We jumped right in .

Our goal is to help companies with their sales and marketing outcomes , really to build their brand . I'm big into the value of brand and what it can mean for a company . That starts with your messaging . It starts with how you communicate with the market . It's been a fun journey the last 18 , 19 months of figuring all that out .

We'll talk a little bit about that today . That's , our goal is to help companies build their brands . We do that through messaging and testimonials and a few other things .

I think it's such a relationship business that as you form these relationships with brokers , with carriers , and brokers with shippers and shippers with carriers when you form those relationships , you tend to try to rely on that .

In terms of who you're going to work with , you tend to think that marketing is not useful , historically speaking , without social media and without everybody living online . There's probably a lot of truth to that . Brokers were probably more centralized and working with shippers in their neighborhood . Now brokers can work with anybody across the country .

Having a marketing arm of your company and being a little more visible online on social media it matters a little bit more now that it probably did 10 to 15 years ago .

We're so operations intensive and focused on getting the shipment delivered or meeting the objective , with our heads down 24 hours a day , that we live it and breathe it so much that it's hard to step outside of that and realize that customers have to go on a journey with you before they ever become customers .

In your last 18 months of doing this on your own , what have you learned about that journey ?

But what I would say is this is that there are a few companies and I say few companies that do such an amazing job that they can just focus on being great and the work will get out . I don't know what's happened , but that's the exception For everyone else .

They need to market , they need to tell people what they do , and I tell companies this all the time . Marketing gets your foot in the door . The value and quality of your product or service keeps you in the door , but those two things need to work together . You need to have a great product or service and you also need to tell people about it .

So , to answer your question , what have I learned about the customer journey ?

I think the biggest thing that I've learned is this At the end of the day , you are selling still to a human being , and so , keeping that in mind , when you're thinking about the words that you're using , the strategies that you're employing , really thinking about your experience and say what I want , this I think about this a lot with LinkedIn Outreach .

So often we get somebody who connects with us on LinkedIn and immediately wants to pitch us and it just shuts you down . When you recognize that internally , then you have to turn around and say , well , why would I then do that to somebody else ?

And so it's just understanding that at the end of the day , whether it's a mom and pop , you know shipper that you're trying to sell to , or a Fortune 500 or Fortune 100 company , at the end of the day , a human being is going to make that decision about working with you or not .

And that needs to permeate how you communicate and the strategies that you incorporate to share your message and to potentially work with a customer . And so that's the biggest thing for me is it's still a human to human sale , no matter what size or what you're selling .

And it got to a point , I think in my early 30s , where I said this is not good , this is not right , there's got to be a better way , and I need to understand who I am and why and the way I am . So I went to counseling , which I think is something that everybody should do .

One , we're all human and two , we all had parents and those parents screwed us up . That's just the truth of it .

I don't care how good your parents were , they did something or some things wrong or not productive for you , and you're having to deal with that as an adult , and so it could be minimal , it could be severe , but we all have something , and so going to counseling for me was really helpful to understand who I am and why I think the way that I think and where

that came from , and I learned a lot about my family , about my father , about my parents , about my family history and what played into that , where alcoholism became a part of our family , and how that impacted us and how that impacted me as a kid .

And the interesting thing about life , nate , is that the influence that we get as a kid really from age four to 14 , four , when we start understanding and remembering things , to 14 , where we start to really feel like we're about to be an adult that window of influence of 10 years of influence . We don't get to choose that influence .

It's chosen for us by our parents and they choose what influences we have . They choose what words we hear , what we see , who we talk to . For the most part , their friends become our influencers and the people that teach us in life , the people that we hang out with collectively , maybe our family cousins .

We don't get to choose that , but we have to deal with that as an individual . And if you don't explore that and if you don't dig into that and how it impacted you , then it's hard to be self-aware .

And I can say that when I went through that journey of becoming self-aware and understanding my shortcomings and why I thought about things a certain way and why I struggled with confidence , even though on the surface I'm a relatively successful person , accomplished person , talented person , like everybody out there .

We all have our talents , all the things that we're really good at . Seeing the resume of my life didn't match up with the confidence that I had and I had to figure out why . Why do I struggle with confidence ? Why is this an issue ? Because I went through that journey , because I did that and learned a lot about myself .

It helped me understand that everybody has the same type of experience . Everybody's dealing with something . Everybody is living based upon what they learned as a kid and maybe they've figured it out , maybe they haven't , but everybody has that .

My experience is unique to me , but the human experience is common and what we all experience is growing up , having our parents influence us in one way or another , and that creates problems down the road , consequences down the road that sometimes we don't even realize until we dig in . I just became aware of that .

You know what Everybody has , that Everybody's going through something , every interaction that you have . You don't know what happened that morning or what they're going through or what they're thinking or what influenced from a kid , from being a kid , that they're dealing with right now .

Some people have that with anger issues with eating disorders , with confidence struggles , with arrogance . There's all of these outcomes that we have as adults that are often the influence of how we grew up as a kid , and until we become self-aware and start working towards that , it can get pretty ugly .

Also , you're a person and there is something to be gained here that is actually pragmatic and how you go through life and your career . There are real ways that you can apply

this . What comes to my mind is last year I was starting to have success with the podcast to the point that people started reaching out to me wanting to be on the show . That was a trip by itself . One person in particular reached out . I invested a bunch of time with this person .

I wanted to get to know them before I said yes to having them on the show and when it came time to record they didn't show up . Then they went dark on me for four months , never responded to a message . I'm not going to lie . I had some ill feelings going on inside of me towards this person . I chose not to send the email that I wanted to send .

Out of the blue . They sent me a message and said I'm so sorry I've been AWOL . I've had some personal tragedy in my life and the last four months has been a hurricane . I would still love to connect . Let's jump on a call .

It was so loud and I felt so convicted of it because I had turned this person into the devil in my eyes , like how rude and how disrespectful and don't you know who I am . And all of these ugly things in me came out then to learn that that person was really going through something substantial in their life .

It was maybe the first time that I've practiced that concept and it had a significant impact on me because I realized how wrong I was .

If we bring this back to sales or marketing or growing a business that is 100% dependent on relationships , it is all too easy to put somebody into a bucket of you're a vendor , you're a customer and I'm going to treat you differently depending on which one of those buckets you're in and then minimize them and reduce them down to just a vending machine and a

transaction . I didn't expect to be getting this out of our conversation this morning . That's not where we were planning on going , but that's where we are and I just thank you for modeling that and showing that vulnerability of here's what it means to show strength . It is actually caring for other people . It's not machismo , king of the hill and show invincibility .

It's actually the opposite , and you do that in spades , and that's why I love getting to explore your story . I want to go back to 2018 , though you filed to get an LLC . Four years later , you had the courage to take the leap . What happened ?

So I started the LLC to do this project and was thinking about maybe I could do this . I don't know how to do this Maybe I could do this kind of thing . The truth behind it is I just struggled with courage . I struggled with confidence , like who would hire me ? How can I support my family ? At the time I was the only breadwinner . My wife stayed home .

We had two kids . We were homeschooling , I'll say hid behind it , but I think it was a legitimate concern is how do I support my family ? How do I start a business and provide for my family ? What happens if I fail ? There's all these negative thoughts were in my mind .

I chose to go the safe job route At that point , transitioned to working with Trucker Tools , with Prasad and with his team , and they have a great product over there . They didn't have a lot of marketing and a lot of structure in place . I struggled a little bit with that and I wanted to change things up .

This is when I started to realize that I'm not a very good employee , because I wanted to steer the ship but it wasn't my ship to steer . That was very frustrating and difficult . I kept finding myself disappointed with my situation . I really think it had more to do with the fact that I wanted to be an entrepreneur than the situation I was actually in .

I did that . Then , in 2020 , in the COVID year , I actually went out on my own for a month and I got great response . But then Lean came calling and I had an opportunity to go take a safe job . I did it . I remember when I took that job , there was part of me that was like man , maybe I should have just done my own thing .

It might have worked , because the response I got from the industry that time , after building my network for about a year and a half , the response was people reaching out to me saying , hey , what are you doing ? Maybe we can work together . I didn't run with it because I was afraid I was getting closer my journey .

I was just getting a little closer , but I still struggled with confidence In 2022 , especially with the encouragement of my wife , who was risk averse , who said you need to go do this . You need to do your own thing . I think she saw the discontent and the lack of fulfillment and the frustration .

Honestly , when you work for somebody else , you're at their beck and call . If you're going to do a good job , you have to do what they ask you to do . This was an opportunity for me to create the structure , create the life , to write the rules of what I wanted to do . That all finally came to fruition in January , but it was a long road .

I often thought about opportunity . I got to say it goes all the way back to 2010 when I was doing door-to-door sales . That was the first experience that I had where I could have become an owner In that environment .

They were training you to really become the owner of your own sales and marketing firm to do door-to-door sales and to hire people underneath you kind of like a cut-co experience or something along those lines , where you did have ownership and you did have the entrepreneurial feel . It was the first time that I'd experienced that and I loved it .

It was like an introduction just wet the appetite , but I didn't know what to do with it . It took a decade . Honestly , it'll go through when I first got the taste to when I actually acted on it 12 years to be specific .

I also know you had some really difficult decisions to make on what exactly are you going to go after and how do you find exactly the right fit for what you bring to the market . What is it like when you're deciding whether or not to pivot ? What's going through your mind ?

. When I started being a consulting group , my initial thought was hey , I'm a sales professional , I'm a teacher , I'll do sales consulting . I'd experienced some good consultants in my career and I thought I really appreciated them . I thought I could do that for the companies . I got into a sales consulting gig and I hated it .

I had to step back and be like , why is that ? And evaluate it . I probably pivoted away from that too quickly because I had one experience that was bad . I probably should have done others and tried to assess more on a larger sample size .

One thing I realized about myself in that moment was when a company hires a sales consultant , it's usually because things are so bad that they finally are willing to pay for help . You end up being very much a fixer , assessing problems and trying to fix them . That was not my experience or my strength . I'm a builder .

You give me a blank canvas and let me build . That's where my strength is . I learned that through there , that I'm more of a builder than a fixer . That was an important distinction to figure out . The other thing I realized , too , is sales consulting , and I struggled with this at the beginning .

Sales consulting itself is not scalable unless you want to hire a bunch of consultants and start selling the service . Most of the time , they hire you for you , not for your company . They want to work with you . Consulting itself is not scalable .

I had these two situations going on where I didn't like sales consulting and I didn't like the fact that it wasn't scalable . I pivoted to try to find something that I could do that would be scalable . The beginning stage is early . Probably April of 2020 was . I'm going to create a marketing agency . I'm going to manage people's social media .

I'm going to write their blogs . I love to write . I'm going to write their blogs , help with their content , their case studies and custom testimonials and become a marketing agency having no experience doing that . This is sometimes the crazy part of entrepreneurs we really think we can just do something that we've never done before .

Probably not the wisest thing , but I learned a lot through that as well . I look back with a lot of gratitude towards that time . We gained some clients . We started doing some work . Some of it was good , some of it was not so good . What we realized from that is that that isn't really who we are .

It was more of me trying to create a business than to live a business , if that makes sense . It was me trying to create something sustainable , as opposed to staying in my lane and being true to who I am as an entrepreneur and as a person . That lasted for about six months . We did that until towards the end of 2022 .

I just realized this isn't who we are . We're not very good at this . The market is saying no . We weren't getting new clients . The market was saying no to us . When the market says no , I think you really need to pay attention to that . It could be just a tweak of what you're doing or it could be a wholesale change .

For us , it was a wholesale change because I talked to some of my friends in the industry , yourself included , who I really trust . The feedback that I got was so good . It was honest feedback .

I think it's so critical to have those people that you can reach out to , who will be honest with you in an empathetic way , tell you the truth and true love , like in genuine love . I had that . Those people said you know what ? I don't know that I buy this version of Trey . I don't know that I buy this marketing agency version of Trey .

I don't know that I buy that . They were simply confirming what the market was saying . We don't buy this . What they did was they didn't just stop there , they poured into me what they would buy . This is what I think you should do . This is what I would buy . This is the Trey that I know that I think would be valuable .

What it came down to was they said listen , you're really good with words , with helping people create their stories , you're a storyteller , you're an interviewer , you're great at that . You should follow that path and go down that road . It was so fascinating because at the moment they said it , I'm like , yeah , that is who I am .

I'm a storyteller , I'm a writer , I'm a creator . What I found to his company is really struggle with telling their own story either , because they're too close to it . They don't know the fundamental elements of story . They only speak one language .

If you're a tech developer , you probably only speak in technical language for the most part , when you're trying to explain things , I started to understand that there's a great need for this . This is where my strengths are . This is where product market fit really matters . This is my encouragement to all entrepreneurs out there .

If you can find the center point , the midpoint , the convergence of these four things , you will have success . Those things are what do you enjoy doing ? What are you good at ? Also very important what does the market need ? Then , the most important , what will they pay for ?

And if you can find the convergence of those four things , then you will have a business that you enjoy doing that's in your sweet spot and your strength , that customers will get great value out of and they'll pay you full price for it and they'll truly become

fans . And that's what I learned was I had to find the convergence of those four things and , with the help of the trusted advisors that I had in my life , we've found that now and I'm incredibly excited about where we are . My enthusiasm for sales is 20-fold because I'm excited to tell people what we're doing .

I believe in it and we're getting yeses and we're creating great content in the form of messaging and customer testimonials now , and that's all we're doing . We're staying very niche . If somebody asks me to do some other stuff , I'm really going probably not .

It's easier to say no when you really know what a yes is , and that's where we've come to realize about ourselves and product market fit is . This is where our strength lies . And the other thing , too , is I love doing live shows and creating content .

I think there's a lot of value in our industry for that , for what you're doing , for what many others are doing , and so I also had to say if that's what I love doing , then why don't I find a way to monetize that greater ?

So we put a greater emphasis on growing our shows and making them better and going after sponsors who want to partner with us and get their brand out there , and that's been going really well also . So , again , this whole process has been so fascinating and enjoyable and fulfilling .

It's been incredible to walk this path , and I say this to entrepreneurs all the time you're going to find things along the path that work that you wouldn't find if you don't just start walking the path .

You may walk the path and it's not quite correct , but by walking it you start to find other things along the path that otherwise you wouldn't see , what I'm hearing from you now is a deeper level of conviction and confidence than I heard at all 12 months ago .

I have no doubt that this version of Trey is the best version .

But there was a meeting , probably in February , where I probably sounded like the most depressed person in the world because I was trying to figure this thing out . It was heavy , it was heavy Maybe it was January , I can't remember what month it was , but it was heavy , it was hard and it was frustrating and it was depressing .

But walking that path , going through that time there's a saying out there I think somebody wrote it and I can't remember what it is but the obstacle is the way . I think there's a book on that .

The obstacle is the way you have to go through the obstacle to really get to the side , and there's a lot of things you learn in going through the obstacle that you'll miss if you choose not to . So I went through that very difficult time of like what do I do now ?

I'm not quite sure and trying to figure that out and taking the advice and making investments of money I didn't really have to get to this place was so critical .

The people in those groups , man , I couldn't believe how accepting they were , how non-judgmental they were and how encouraging and supportive they were because they've lived it , They've been in that place . They're like oh yeah , I went through that too . Here's what helped me and that was so incredibly valuable .

I can't tell you how valuable it is to have those people in your life on a regular basis . I mean , this is a team game . Entrepreneurship really is a team game , even though you're doing it on your own main ways .

And then when you have the big win , you want to be able to celebrate that with somebody who knows what it took to make it happen . And then , when you're at your absolute lows , you want somebody to offer buoyancy to you because they were there also .

And I think when you start to see a large enough group of entrepreneurs collectively , you realize every single one of them is either going into a storm or coming out of a storm . If you can surround yourself with people so that you aren't alone , those rough seas are a lot less rough and you can survive a lot more than you can alone .

So that is the encouragement and that's a huge part of why this podcast came back is our whole point here is to share founder stories , support logistics , entrepreneurs through community and the best community for entrepreneurs . As other entrepreneurs , I don't understand that I'm going to go climb Mount Everest by myself . I don't have that instinct .

I don't know why somebody would want to do that . Unless there's a few rare people that that is exactly the right answer for , and that's not most , and life is too short . Why not do it in relationship with others ?

This is what it takes to be successful is you have to go through these obstacles , you have to walk these paths , and some are harder than others . It's definitely peaks and valleys . You know , in this moment we're on the biggest peak we've been at so far , which is great .

I'm sure there are some valleys coming that we're going to go through to get to the next big peak , but that really is the journey , and when you realize that that's the way it is , it gives you a lot of comfort to know that you're not alone . This is not your fault . This is a part of the process .

You have to learn , you have to make these decisions in order to get where you want to go . There's a lot of comfort in that .

For a lot of folks that is an aspirational place to get to , because they may be living in poverty and their whole dream is to just improve their family's circumstances to the point that they can put food on the table . So the idea of living in the suburbs and having a nine to five is the destination that they're working for .

So I don't mean to demean that . That's not at all what I'm trying to say . But for a certain portion of people the hard path is the way . It's a choice to lean in on . That Just reminds me of parenthood . Everybody often has this idea yeah , one day I want to be a parent . And they envision all the good parts of parenting .

They don't envision terrible twos and not getting any sleep , or they romanticize that stuff away , or teenagers who are rebellious and disagree with you or slam the door on your face .

And yet becoming a parent is a choice and you are signing up for that journey , knowing that you can't possibly know what is in store for you , but choosing to do it anyways , and so it's an honor to get to watch you go through this journey with Beta in a way that you're so transparent about it and you're so open , and other people are getting to listen and

learn from you and they're maybe about to have kids and say I've wanted to start a company for 10 years and I just formed my LLC , and they might still be four years away from pulling the trigger . Being able to learn from somebody who is where you are is incredibly valuable , so thank you for being so open and so honest .

Where can people learn more about Beta and what you're up to ?

And if I could nate , I want to give the best word picture I can give for what entrepreneurship really is . It's like when you're floating down a river and you see this cliff . It's 40 feet in the air and you see people jumping off of it . It's like man , it looks like fun . I want to do that .

You go over the shore and you get out of your boat and you start climbing up this mountain and you realize it was a little higher than I thought , it's maybe a little harder than I thought , and you get up to the top and you're looking over and you're seeing people jump and you really want to do it , but you're scared .

You're just thinking about am I really going to step off this cliff ? Am I going to survive ? What happens if I hurt myself ? What happens if something goes wrong ? What happens if I don't come up ? I mean , all these thoughts come into your head of what happens .

But the moment that you jump and you experience the exhilaration , the acceleration , going down and hitting the water and coming back up out of it , you realize two things . Well , maybe three . It wasn't nearly as bad as you thought it was going to be . You want to do it again , and then you want to tell everybody else that they should do it as well .

And that's how I feel as an entrepreneur .

It took me a while to finally jump off the cliff into the water , but now that I've done it and experienced the exhilaration of it , the challenges of it , the wins , the losses , the joys , the defeats , the relationships , everything that goes with it , the autonomy I love the creative liberty that you get as an entrepreneur .

I would rather solve all the problems of entrepreneurship and keep the creative freedom that I have than to lose that by going to work for somebody else , and not there's anything wrong with working for somebody else that just doesn't do it for me anymore because I've jumped off the cliff .

And so , having all of that , I want to encourage other people to do that , and here's the reason why , nate , I truly believe that people have visions and dreams in their minds , just like you did for this podcast and for working with founders , and other people have those right now . People listening to this right now have a vision .

They've got a dream , they've got something that they want to do , and I firmly believe that this world is a better place when people go after those things . I believe they're there for a reason . They're there to make this world a better place , and when people choose not to do that , the world misses out .

The world would have missed out had you not restarted this podcast , had you never started the podcast in the first place , had you never gone down the path of creating these founder groups and whatever else it is that you're going to do as an entrepreneur in your life . The world would have missed out if you wouldn't walk that path .

And I just encourage people that when you have a dream or vision that you just can't shake , it's been there for years and you really want to do it I just want to encourage people to start taking that first step down the path and start to figure it out , because it's incredible .

It's incredible when they make that jump and they land in the water and they come up out of the water . They're going to realize how great it was it wasn't as bad as they thought and they're going to want to do it again and keep doing it . It's just so incredible . That's my encouragement to people .

On that note , we will wrap , trey , thank you so much , and we will check in a year from now and hear what the latest is . Thank you , nate . I appreciate you so much , man . Thanks for listening to another episode of the Bootstrapers Guide to Logistics , and a special thank you to our sponsors and the team behind the scenes who make it all possible .

Be sure to like , follow or subscribe to the podcast to get the latest updates . 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 .