Came back with a bank window down yelling now money anything hey oh Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when I'm getting to the back hey Got the foot on the gas pedal to the metal when the lane moving fast hey Let them all cross if they hate then let them make a bigger balls.
Hey what is up ladies and gentlemen? We are back. We are live. It is a freight coach podcast, the top podcast in transportation coming to you guys every single weekday, 8:30am Pacific, 10:30 Central to break down some industry headlines. But most importantly, you guys provide some actual insight into what you can do with all of this information. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome. This is the real side of freight, ladies and gentlemen. And I say that before every single show.
And what I mean by that is I only speak with transportation professionals because at the end of the day, you guys, I want to talk to the right individuals who have done what you're looking to do or who are currently doing what you're trying to achieve so you can take that information, apply it, utilize it, and see a meaningful difference in your business and your life. Happy Thursday, everybody. I got a very special guest. I'm going to bring him up here in a second. But you know, we're going to talk about the realities of building a business and entrepreneurship and all of this stuff inside of transportation and really what you're actually going to face out there and you know what you can do to kind of better prepared for a lot of it. I mean, going out on your own is.
Is talked about almost every 38 seconds inside of transportation, across social media and everything else. And you know, it's kind of glorified. It's fun at times to be self employed, but you know, there's a whole other side of it that I'd like to bring to light every once in a while. So with that being said, I got the founder of Southern Rains, Mr. Jake Mathis, on the show today. Jake, thank you so much for joining me.
Yeah, man, appreciate you having me.
No, dude, it's a pleasure. You know, we met for the first time back in October, I think it was, you know, with our mutual friend Hastings. And you know, dude, you got an energy to you and I like, I love it. I love the energy and I think that we're going to bring some, a ton of value out here today, man.
Man, you're talking about energy. I hope your audience got the hype up song. I was back here in the backstage, just bob into it. I like it, dude.
Yeah, we just came up with it here. We, we, you know, we slowly pieced together all of this stuff. You know, we're trying to always have like the best intro music, the best audio quality, the best video quality, all of that stuff up. Because dude, in my mind, I have the best podcast in the world, let alone inside of the transportation industry. So we're always looking to just get a little incrementally better every single time with it. I got, you know, team behind the scenes, my man Christian runs the, that runs the show now. Essentially I just come up and talk and we just kind of go from there. But yeah, that was his idea on that. But. So dude, what brought you into transportation, man? How'd you get your start in freight?
Well, I didn't go to college to be a freight broker, I can promise you that. Right. And I don't think a lot of people in the industry kind of dreamed of being in the business. You just kind of find your way in here and once you're here, you're kind of a lifelong transportation guy. So right out of school, I was interviewing for my big boy corporate job. It was a three or four month interview process and I didn't have three or four months worth of savings and my parents cut me off. So had a buddy, my old boss, who referred me over to the good guys Nolan Transportation Group, and they were always hiring. So that's where I kind of cut my teeth in the industry. And man, it was an awesome ride.
And I just fell in love with the industry just about immediately. At the end of that three or four month corporate interview process, they offered me the job that like I really wanted, but I had like fallen in love within just the first few weeks of trying transportation and thought I, I had some early success and just thought that I really wanted to like see it through and see what I could do with it. You know, if you've been in the freight brokerage world, the energy is contagious. It's not a corporate quiet cubicle, awkward environment. It's very lively, very energetic. And that's what I like, that's what I enjoy. So here we are, man, about 12 years later, we're still rocking and rolling.
Dude, I love it, man. And what was it that, you know, what happened that you were just like, I got to go out and do this on my own? Like, was there a, a certain event where you're like, man, I got this itch, I want to go start my own thing or you know, kind of how did this all come about?
It wasn't really an itch, honestly. I love my job. I loved working at ntg. I loved the people, I loved the leadership. I mean, it was really everything that, you know, you could kind of ask for from. From culture, environment. The pay was good, the I'm everything was good. I also got in at an earlier stage where it wasn't what it is today. Everybody knows NTG now, it's massive, top five, top 10, whatever. But it was a lot smaller. The culture was a lot tighter. It wasn't nearly as big and chaotic as it is today, but just through a couple of different mergers and acquisitions. I just started kind of seeing the writing on the wall, if you will, and just it wasn't what it used to be. And the first two or three deals that went through were really good.
If I could kind of give you analogy with just putting fuel on the fire. It was everything that we needed. We started scaling, growing. Everything was awesome. The big one at the end when I left in 2019, was the one where, like, that was almost kind of like the. The line in the sand for me where I was just like, you know, I don't love it anymore. I'm not enjoying waking up and coming into the office and giving someone every ounce of my being, which is what I was doing.
Yeah.
And just wanted to take the risk. I wasn't married, I didn't have kids, so it was kind of like now or never. So took the risk and went out on my own. And here we are a couple years later.
It makes it sound so simple like that. Right? Here we are a couple years later.
Yeah.
I look at it as, you know, so, like, with where you are going, did you. It, like, you brought up a couple of good points there. You know, I think that some people working for a large corporation, it has its benefits, but it has its downsides as well. Right. And you know, I was in there as well. I worked for a very large corporation for like six, seven years, man. And it was just like, man, I just like the small feeling of. Of business. Right. Like, I like that team environment that it is. And you know, I think, like, as I grow and scale my company, you know, like, yeah, I have some audacious goals. Right. Like, I want to build the largest transportation company in North American history. And I'm going to do that.
But I'm also like, how do you keep it to where it is that. That small environment that you're describing there, you know? And I know exactly what you're saying, is that what you're looking to do now, man? Like, and you're trying to keep it like that, or you're just like, man, we're going all in. We're going to go as big as we can.
I would say that, like, my answer changes every few years. And, and when I say that, I kind of. I started this with a vision of just having a good medium sized brokerage, keep it kind of tight, keep it kind of here in the Southeast where we're headquartered. And I had a conversation early on with a mentor and he was like, what's your dream? You know, what do you want to do with this? And I was like, well, I don't want to be Nolan 2.0. But then it's like, you know, you. You get a taste of X goal and then your dreams get bigger and then you hit that goal and then you dream a little bit bigger. Right? So I'm not saying I'm trying to be the next CH or anything like that, but I do want to see what we can do.
I think what we have going on here is special. I think we have proven that what we're doing is working. We've expanded with the second location, and I do see possibly a third or fourth location opening up over the next 12 to 24 months once we kind of fill in the seats that we have available here. So I think that my answer will continue to grow. I think my dreams will continue to get bigger and bigger. But I never want to lose the sense of, like, who we are, who is Southern Rains, who am I, what kind of leader am I for the team? So I'm very present, I'm very involved. I'm on the sales floor every single day. Whether you like it or not, you're going to see and hear from me every single day. But I love that.
I love the energy, I love the fight, I love the grind. I love walking in and the phones are buzzing. I mean, I love that energy and I want to keep creating that and expanding and growing off of the momentum that we have right now.
I want to ask you something. If you don't want to answer it's fine. Is it all worth it, do you think? Everything you're going through behind the scenes, and I say that from the context, Jake, of like, I feel like a lot of stuff is glorified out there because a lot of people can see where you're at right now and be like, oh, it's easy to say that, or everything else is it worth it still to this day, going through some of the shit? Because, like, I know what you've gone through without knowing you. Because I'm building my company as well, right? I know all the shit, stuff storm that happens behind the scenes that isn't really talked about.
Yeah. You made a comment in your intro, and it was. Everyone thinks it's easy and fun. And I would say that there's very little easy and very little fun. We. We create the fun, right? And we celebrate the. The wins and the easy moments. But it's. There's. There's a lot more hard and a lot more dark than there is sunshine and rainbows and easy days. You and I were chatting before the show, and, man, it is every single day, Monday through Friday, if not seven days a week, 365, that I am just waiting on a call or a text about something going wrong or this or that. I mean, it is every single day that there is an issue, a fire to put out, some sort of claim, stolen load, what. Whatever it is. I mean, it's never ending.
And if you're the leader or you're the owner, you're the president, you got to solve that problem, right? So I do think that when you ask me, is it worth it, there's plenty of days I just want to give up, dude, I think I've done a great job to get us to where we're at today, but, man, it is a fight every single day. But I'll never give up. I've got too many people depending on me to deliver, too many mouths to feed out here, too many goals, too many customers, carriers, everything. I mean, you know the sense of responsibility you have when you walk in every single day and kind of see where you're at. So if it's worth it, I would say it depends. I mean, what. What's worth it to a lot of people?
Because for me to give everything I have to this company, something's got to give, right? So that a personal relationship, Is that family? Is that whatever it is it my own mental health, right? I mean, there's so many things that, like, you got to kind of set off to the side or not give as much love and attention to that, like, ask my wife, ask my family, is it worth it to them? I don't know, because they probably don't get as much of me or my attention that they used to. But I hope and pray that one day they all see all the sacrifices were worth it. Right? And I think that's what's continued to motivate me is that, like, one day all this will be worth it. We hope, right? That's what we're doing.
No, I mean, that's a phenomenal answer, man. And it's very accurate, right? Like, it's. You know, I feel like there's, you know, the. The biggest. I think the biggest realization for me going from being an employee to, like, kind of starting my own out on my own is for. For me, it was like, dude, it was the deafening silence in the first couple of months. Because it's like you go from working inside of a system, you know, like, no matter what, you're working inside of somebody's system, you got stuff going on, and then there's nothing, right? Like, there's silence and then there's that, you know, that inevitable realization that there is no more money coming in, right? Like, it's done. And, like, dude, like, I don't. I don't come for money, right?
Like, I don't have a family member I can call to bail me. I got nothing, right? Like, I got me and that is it, right? Like, I do an early on, man. Like, I damn near emptied my 401k just to keep my bills paid. Because, like, when I started everything, man, like, it was in the beginning of 2020, right? Pandemic. We all know what the fuck was going on back then. And, I mean, dude, I started on my laptop in my bedroom. Like, I had no idea I wasn't cold calling shippers for freight. Like, dude, I was trying to create this media stuff and, you know, the sales consulting stuff. So it's like, that was one of the biggest things and the biggest realizations that I had early on was like, I gotta reinvent everything.
I like sales everything, and I gotta come up with it, right? Cause, like, I have a finite amount of money that will run out inevitably or eventually. Excuse me. Unless I start taking drastic action. So it's like when I have, you know, individuals comment, like, how do I go live every day? How do I do this? How don't I? You know, like. And then furthermore, like, I've been coming up on this now, like I said, for five years. Like, dude, I have systems in place. Like, I'm very fortunate. Like, I got probably 200 people in my phone that I could text at any given moment. Hey, I got an opening on this day. Can you jump on the show? Like, finding guests isn't hard. You know, a lot of the stuff that was hard early on isn't there now.
Now the New hard is our. All right, how do I get that consistent revenue coming in, right? Like how do I change things up to where it's like now necessarily, I don't have to worry about revenue every month because I have contracts in place for a certain amount of time, but that's a finite amount of time. And then again, ultimately, if my advertisers don't see the value in working with me anymore, they're not going to resign, right? So it's like how do I, how do you balance that out? And then now it's like building that team behind me. Like I said, like I have people who are, you know, I have Christian, who's handling a lot of that. But like, all right, what's next? How do we grow on social media? How do we grow from a media perspective?
And then that's just a portion of my day, right? Like I'm growing a freight brokerage as well right now. So it's like, it's building that system up to where it's like, man, when I'm present and I'm able to focus on those tasks at hand.
Yeah, I, I think it's funny you say that because I, I'm on a similar timeline. We started like 2019 and I had a non compete, so I was by myself. And those dark days, those no one else around you, the silent days, et cetera, you'll really find out who you are when your back's against the wall, right? And so when you don't have a choice and if you don't come from money, you don't have savings, you don't have X, Y and Z in place, right? Like your back's against the wall and it's you versus you know what I mean? So like you really will learn who you are and what you're made of.
My early days, and I don't want to get like too dark into this, but like I had left Nolan, I had a two year non compete, I was going through a lawsuit with that situation and my sister passed away, all within the first 12 months of me leaving my job. And that was a very unexpected situation. So that was probably the darkest time of my life. I had left a job that I was making more money than I ever dreamed of making, all the way down to zero dollars a year, right. And so like you said, how do you create revenue, how do you manage finances, how do you do all these different things that, you know, a lot of people don't see? They see the nice office. They see whatever they see, and they think, oh, how easy, man.
I think I'm just going to go jump in and do this by myself. Yeah, it's not that simple. And there's a lot of dark things that have to happen in order to kind of crawl your way out of there just to be able to breathe, right?
Yeah. And, dude, you know, and to kind of relate with you on what you're saying there, man, like, I didn't even talk about, like. And I don't talk about a lot of the stuff that happens outside of work because, like, man, I don't want to think about it because if I did start thinking about, like, that journey outside of it from a personal perspective on, like, the losses that have happened over the last five years, man, I want to quit when I think about it, right? So it's like, I. I try and, you know, you. You brought up the, you know, like, the sacrifice, like, something. Like, I have to, like, I compartmentalize a lot of that stuff. And I really try and work on, like, all right, how does. How do I improve myself? How do I become more mentally strong?
Because, like, I also look at it as, man, like, everything is a test, all right? Like, everything is a test. I'm a man of faith. I unapologetically believe in God and everything. And I speak about this often because I feel like whatever you pray for out there, whether you pray or not, or whatever you believe in, it comes at a cost. It comes at how bad do you actually want it? Or are you just saying a lot of this for the sake of saying it because it sounds good? And everything that's worthwhile comes with a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice.
Yep, a hundred percent. I believe in that wholeheartedly. Everything. You gotta give up something to get something right. And your time is just so valuable that, like, you just get to a point where, like, you can't buy enough minutes in a day to give everybody equal love, equal opportunity, equal everything. So, like, you really do have to compartmentalize and say, hey, what's the biggest priority today? Let me do that first, right? So, like, if you try to call me or catch me and talk to me, it's probably going to be early afternoon before you get to me, because there's so many things that, like I said from the second that I wake up, I'm prioritizing every single part of my day of, like, what needs to get done first that cannot wait all the way down to the lowest level thing.
So I'm with you. Structure, consistency. I'm the most routine individual you will ever meet. You will know exactly what I'm doing at every second of every day, 99% of the time. I mean, I'm just so structured in my day to day routine. So it's boring. It's not, it's not like it's anything fancy. It's a lot of just work, but it's very consistent. And I think that's where like anybody, any sales rep, right, can go have a big month. Anybody can go have a hundred thousand dollar month or do whatever, but can you do it 12 months in a row? Can you do it 24 months in a row? Can you do it 36 months in a row?
Yeah.
Those are the people that like, you start weed now. Oh, yeah. You had a good month. Congrats. And now you just did half of it the next month. That's a wash in the end, right? Like, you had an okay two month span.
Yeah.
You got to be consistent to win in this game.
I think, dude, I, I'm laughing because I joke with my wife all the time. I would be the easiest person to assassinate because I literally do the exact same shit every sing at the exact same times. I mean, it comes down to it where it's like, dude, I just, I built a routine around progress, right? And you know, into that consistency. So that like, that's actually the word that I chose this year for 20, 25 for me is consistency. Because of what you're describing right there, right? Like, it's easy to sit there and say like, oh, I had a great month or I had a couple of great months and then others things start to slide, right?
So it's like for me, I talk about the importance of doing a set thing every single day to find out how do you get a little bit better, right? I think too many people put too much of, they put too much on emphasis on unattainable goals, right? Like, oh, I'm gonna make a hundred cold calls every single day. Okay, great. Can you do that every single day? Exactly, right? So it's like, what is that number? So like for me, it's like I started at 35, now I'm up to like 50 a day every single day. And I'm trying to find out how do I effectively make 50 cold calls while managing everything else out there.
And then now after I get into that routine, all right, how do I increase it to 55 and then I'm going to stay there for a set amount of time. But my thing is if I do 50, if my number's 50, I'm going to do 50 every single day. If I hit 55 today because I feel ambitious, I'm not doing 45 tomorrow to balance it out, I'm doing 50. Right. And again, it's that consistency. Because for me, dude, I'm like, I, I look at it like this, man. Like, I'm like a pit bull, man. I'm gonna keep showing up every single time. Like, I have kind of passed that point now, Jake, of like relying on motivation or anything else. Like, I've built that discipline inside of me. Like, dude, I had like for yesterday, for example.
The reality of making cold calls, you guys, guess what? People are not excited that you're cold calling them. All right, just throwing that out there. But I'm going to continue to show up and make them. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go through the hang ups, the not interesteds, everything else. And again, I'd like to throw this out there to people. Like, people are actually pretty cordial if you're cordial to them. So, you know, take that for what it's worth. But for me, I'm just like, man, like, it is so important for me to do my daily tasks. And that's one thing that I really focused in on last year by completing the live hard program, which is through 75 hard andy Frisella and everything like that.
And now that has been my thing this year in my business where it's like, dude, I got Andy Frisella again. I'm a massive supporter of his stuff. But he talks about the power list often and that is choosing five things that you have to do every single day inside of your business or whatever it is to move the needle forward. So it's like for me, man, my focus is that, dude, my focus is getting my 50 calls in. It's doing some other critical tasks today. And then after I'm done with that today, that's a win. Whether I onboard a new shipper or do anything like that is irrelevant. That's a win for the long term goal.
Always say, don't negotiate with yourself at the numbers 50, you do whatever you got to do to get to 50, right? And if the number 70, you do whatever you got to do to get to 70, if you got a time block, if you got to stay past five, if you got to call west coast shippers because we're here in Georgia, whatever it is, stick to that goal. Do not negotiate with yourself. Like, I have too many guys and girls that I've seen either here in the past or whatever. And it's just like, oh, well, I got busy. Oh, I had five loads on the board, man. Five loads is 30 minutes worth of work. You know what I mean? Like, stop making excuses, hit your number, don't negotiate with yourself and just better at like blocking off time.
Like, I was such a routine and I had a set schedule for every single day. And I knew that whenever I was selling freight every single day, if I wanted to make a hundred thousand dollars and I was making X percent commission, I knew exactly what I had to do every single month, broken down to the week, broken down to the day. And so I didn't look at $100,000 as like my everyday goal. I looked at, hey, I had to sell $2,500 worth of GP every single day to hit that goal. So I had it all the way down and I wrote it on my little notepad that I had every single month. And I would gauge my day of like you said, if I had a $5,000 day, great.
That's a rainy day for like one of the slow days that, you know, you're inevitably going to have. Right. So I felt like I was just so structured and like doing the same thing day in and day out and having really small attainable goals. I was always like, if you can win the day, you'll win the week. If you win the week, you'll win the month. And at the end of 12 months, you're going to win the year and then that hundred thousand dollar goal is right there in front of you. Right. So always kind of breaking it down on like a micro level.
Yeah, I think that's imperative to when you're starting out anything again, you know, again. How long did it take you to realize that though, Jake? Because I feel like, you know, for me this is our. Yes, this is, you know, my fit. Well, coming up on my 5th year being self employed. But this is like the beginning of year three of our brokerage that we're, you know, we're building out, right. Like we're an agent with SPI and this is, but like I, me and my business partner, we kind of spent the Christmas break being like, all right, we got to get more dialed in here, right? So that's, these, that's, this is the first year that we're doing just that, right. Like, we're like, all right, my number is 50. His number is, I think it's 30.
And then he does site visits as well. And then we have our daily number that we're going to hit every day. And that's what we put out. Like, dude, I. If any of you guys ever come inside of my office, you'll see my number because I have it written on a piece of paper that is on inside of my office. And then when I walk into my office as well, there's a sign that's hanging up. So I see it everywhere and I do that. How long did it take you to get to that point? Like, where was that realization where it's like, dude, we got to structure this out. And this is how, like, was it year one, year two, where did that come in?
I did that back in my Nolan days. So, like, just as a sales rep, as an individual, like, I had my own goals. So now kind of being the leader of this company, you know, we send out goals every single month, we send out numbers every single day. I'm sending out updates every half day, right? So, like, everything is out there in the open. We don't hide behind closed doors. No one's getting away from having a big goose egg on the board. We call that out every single day, right? So you are 100% exposed here, company wide. From Track and Trace down in Columbia, from Dalton office to Alpharetta office, everyone is going to see exactly where Chris Jolly stands on the leaderboard, how many calls you've made, how many loads you're moving, what's your GP for the day?
And we call things for how it is. I mean, it's very black and white. There's. There's no gray areas. And we demand a lot. But we also reward our folks, too, right? Like, I mean, we. We pay our folks good. We. We have a good thing going. We have a nice office. We do a lot of extracurricular stuff together. I mean, when we come in the doors Monday through Friday, 8 to 5, business is business, but it's those that want to step up that we go celebrate outside, right? So I think we've created a good culture, a good environment. If there's anything I'm most proud of today, like, where we're at today would be the culture and the environment that we've created.
I think if you walk through the front doors of our office, I think you would get a sense of who Southern rains is within 5 seconds of walking in the door. And I'm really proud of that because I think that's a really important thing. All these people want to Be agents. All these people want to work from home and do things on their own time, on their own schedule. I want to invest in the people that are here Monday through Friday, 8 to 5, the ones that are in the trenches every single day, giving it every single thing that they got. Those are the people I want on my squad.
What's one thing that you wish you would have realized earlier and made a change inside of your business?
I would say early on, we. Whenever I first started hiring, like my first sales reps and operations rep, it was more like we had some customers, but weren't like, really putting in the extra effort to grow the business outside of that. We had really good customers. We had good numbers, good margins. Everything was good. But it wasn't until I really brought on, like, a true sales manager that was like, what are we doing here? We got to have, like, call metrics in place. We got to have X, Y and Z. Where's the CRM? Who's tracking the call numbers? How many site visits have you had? So really kind of when I brought that sales manager in to really take it off my plate, because like I said, I'm leading a lot of different roles and responsibilities.
So, like, it just wasn't top of mind to me because were growing and things were kind of trending in the right direction, but it just wasn't a metric or it just wasn't being, I guess, looked at under a microscope. So really kind of bring in a sales manager in to take on that role really pushed the sales team, and now we're doing the same with our operations team. We're putting metrics and KPIs in place for those guys. It's not just post and pray, as you say, or just sit back and wait on the phones to ring and cover the load. Right? I mean, it's outbounding. It's building care relationships. It's doing X, Y and Z. So we're really tightening up all of our different departments and holding everyone to a higher standard.
Yeah, it's. You know, I'm not like the. The biggest KPI guy, right? Where it's like, hey, you know, you're. You spent too much time away doing this. But, like, I. I understand the value inside of what you're describing there, man. A lot more now because it is, dude, it's all about tracking. It's all because to me, I'm trying to. To see, like, I want to take my internal data and be like, all right, how do we shorten it? Right? How do we Improve our internal system to maximize my efforts. Right. Because revenue is revenue, you guys, you need it to stay in business and you need to see where can I improve my outputs to keep that going, to keep this growing. Because it takes so much capital to run a business.
Whether it's a small one person operation or you got a hundred employees. You guys, it's a way more expensive than you think. So for me it's like, all right, how do we just get a little bit better here to improve our outputs, to maybe spend more time focusing on customer relationships and stuff like that, to grow that out. And dude, so I was like, I'm right there with you and like very, I'm very fortunate for my business partner when it comes down to this stuff because he tracks all of that stuff, right? And it's like, we're ready, dude. Like when the revenue is there for us, Jake, like we're ready to hire. We have training already built out. We have everything already built out. We have a system for people to follow.
So it's like, you know, that's the stuff that I'm the most excited about as we kind of get going. And you know, again, none of it's accomplished unless we make our dials every single day and try and introduce ourselves to as many people as possible.
And I think that's a big thing that like, maybe I've learned or have learned over the years too, is that like I was a successful sales broker. I covered my seat times 10. Right. But a lot of these newer guys that aren't in the industry or haven't, you know, been in the real world for a long time, you know, they come in and they hit 10 grand in margins for the month and they're like, dude, I'm the man. Like, this is awesome. And it's like, man, you've covered the cost of your seat. What about the other four or five people that you need to cover the cost of their seat? Because for you to just sit here and pick up the phone and that be. Your only responsibility is to self rate. That is not free. Right.
Like you, there's a lot of operations, there's a lot of all this marketing, there's a lot of all the technology, the insurance, the tm. I mean the list goes on and on. I'm talking hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for us at this point.
Yeah.
To break even. So we have real bills and real responsibilities and like the days of just coasting and being a 10, 15 $20,000 broker like, okay, congrats you got there. Let's now get to the next level because that's not going to do it for much longer. You know what I mean?
Yeah, just preaching to the choir, man. I know exactly what you're describing right there. And that's, you know, again that's one thing where it's like, you know, for us, we're more, we're more dialed in than ever. Right. And I'm like, I'm starting to feel, I'm starting to see the sentiment changing out there from a business development standpoint. I think that the more hyper focused you can be from an outreach right now, the more of a response rate you're going to get. I think like the spray and pray methodology I like, you know, we've been in the industry around the same length of time here, Jake. So, you know, you remember what it was like selling back in 2013, 14 and 15. It's completely different today than it was back then, man.
And it used to be a couple of cold calls, couple of decent conversations, you're going to get an in and an ability to quote. Now I'm seeing 12, 15 month sales cycles at a minimum for some people out there.
Yeah, we just had Josh Lyles in our office in January and we're big promoters of him and his business sales dash and that's what we use to track all of our CRM and stuff like that. But he gave us a stat which he tracked and it was like from the initial contact you made with the actual decision maker. Yeah, it was on average like 82 days cell cycle to close and get that first shipment. So setting those like you said back in the day, man, 2013, 14 like you said, man, I hit 5 grand my first month, 10 grand my second month and just kept climbing. It wasn't hard. I didn't know what I was. There wasn't a metric or a baseline that I had because I was new.
But judging that against the world that we live in today, dude, it is night and day difference. I mean it is constant follow ups, constant prospecting just to hopefully get someone to just have a decent conversation with you. So kind of changing the expectation level and giving a little bit more grace where it's due goes a long way in my opinion.
I agree, man. Jake, I appreciate your time. How does anybody reach out to you? Are you guys hiring anything like that? Put that stuff out there, man.
Yeah, 100%. We, we just finished up our office renovation. You and I were just talking about the. The post that I put out earlier this week. We've got 30, 40 more desks to fill up in Alpharetta. We're working on a bigger Dalton space or bigger space up in Dalton, Georgia. We'll probably have 20 or 30 more folks up there. So sales, operations, a little bit of everything, but primarily sales and operations, their main hiring right now. So I'm excited.
Perfect. If you guys are in the south, hit up. Jake, you'd be. He'd be a guy who I would look into if I was. Well, I'm not looking for a job, but you know what I mean? That's. That's the environment that you will thrive in. If you guys are thinking like that. But hit them up. As I was, you guys, if you guys got value in what you heard, subscribe to the show. If you're not motivated to get out and do something after this one, I don't know what it's going to take, but if you are, rank the show as well. You guys, that's how we get out there and reach more people on itunes and everything else is because if you saw value, your network's gonna see value as well. I appreciate you guys.
I love you guys and we'll be talking to you soon. We don't have any fancy.