Ep. #14: Matt Vogrich

The man who I built MOLO with one of many , but the guy who really led the business , mr Matt Bogrich , is our guest today , otherwise known as the mop-topped assassin , dating back to his basketball career . Let's start with basketball , mr Bogrich .

I'm going to read you a blurb I saw on rivalscom about you , just to give a lay of the land of your skill set . Matt Bogrich is known as a very savvy offensive player with an arsenal of moves . He has great at drawing contact with pump fakes and other moves and his money from the free throw line .

On defense , he is a hustler in every sense of the word and he uses his long arms and athleticism to clog passing lanes and pick ball handlers' pockets . Bogrich is also a good rebounder for a kid his size . Then they go on to point out that you had a 4.7 out of 5 GPA Just kind of an all-around stud with the nickname mop-topped assassin .

Where did that nickname come from ?

Some brilliant Lake Forest High School basketball beat writer came up with that nickname mop-top assassin . I really liked it . I had it as my call of duty name in high school and my email AIM name . I continued to play that nickname into my life because I liked it .

What did that lifestyle look like growing up ?

I remember being seven , eight years old at our house in Lake Forest waiting to see my dad's car come around the turn where I could see his car and I'm out in the driveway shooting baskets because I know I've got a rebounder coming and we're going to play one-on-one and pig .

I've got three hours to hang with my dad and just play basketball until we have dinner or whatever . I love just shooting and playing one-on-one with him and hanging out with him . Then it evolved into I'm pretty good at this and my dad just got me into the AU programs and shooting classes and whatever . I loved competing . I loved being a part of a team .

I wanted to be a college basketball player all my life and I just tried to perfect shooting . Part of the rivals profile that I don't agree with necessarily is that I had a plethora of moves , because that's not really true . I was a great shooter and I didn't put the ball on the deck a lot , which is because I loved shooting .

My dad loved to watch me shoot and perfect that , and I did not focus on everything outside of shooting , which made me a really , really good shooter . But I was not exactly going to beat you off the dribble all the time either .

And in middle school and high school my job was to score . My job was to score and rebound .

And then in college , my job was not to score and rebound , it was to we'll have to rebound and play defense and hustle , and it was to shoot if I'm open and if I'm not past a Trey Burke or Tim Hardaway or somebody else who can get a shot themselves a lot better than I can .

But in high school , my job was not to pass and dribble , it was for Kevin and a lot of our other guards to get me the ball and my jobs to score , and so that's what I was good at and trying to do .

whatever the team needed . So you know it's . The reason I really read that quote was because it did remind me of the guy I got to know . I didn't know you at all in high school or for your basketball . It wasn't until we started building a business together that I got to know you .

But in any case , I do want to spend a little time here because I think this is some interesting stuff . So you go to Lake Forest High School use three year starter , end up breaking the record for most points , which was a record held by Rob Polinka , who is now the Lakers GM , also played basketball in Michigan .

You end up being the Gatorade player of the year in Illinois . Who did you beat out for that ? Was there anyone interesting that you were competing with for that title ?

My sophomore , junior , senior year , like going into those years , I was either working Todd Zafrosky , who you know , and I had a car detailing business where we would go to people's driveway and detail their cars like on site , instead of you having to go somewhere . So I did that or I was playing basketball .

Every weekend I was gone and I would kind of just get in arguments with my parents because I wanted to go out with my friends and be a normal high school kid and I got to do plenty of that , but a lot of it was spent playing basketball and I loved it . At the same time , kevin Bardini , who I mentioned , got one of the first Molo hires as well .

We had a key to West Campus and we would go . We had like a music set up there and so we would go at 11 pm and we would shoot from 11 to 1 in the morning on like a Tuesday night , just because we were awake , we were friends , we had fun doing it .

We would go mess around , but we , like , we're always shooting and trying to find a way into the gym to get better at what we were doing , to try to win basketball games .

He was Mr Basketball in the state of Illinois , got it and so you decide your senior year .

I was a sophomore . I was probably 6'1" , 140 pounds , I was skinny , and he's like , just let's see . Going into my junior year in AU , I shot the ball really well , I had like the best summer playing basketball in my life and I started to get a few big offers .

And then , when you start to get a few big offers , a lot of the other coaches are like who is this guy ? Why does he have offers ?

I remember talking to my AU coach and he was kind of like you can play almost anywhere because you've gotten like five or six offers from Virginia , georgia Tech , notre Dame , ucla , and so I remember talking to my dad about it and we were like well , it's got to be a top 30 school because you're not an NBA player .

It's like he just wants things written and documented and excel it out . So we had a pros and cons list and , like I remember the first thing was you're not going to school . It isn't a top 30 academic school , so let's start there .

But it was like if you're not going to play basketball in the NBA and basketball is not going to make you money , a career , you know , help make sure your family has a roof over their heads . What else can you do ? And it always was you need to get good grades . That was how I was raised . It was .

You need to have a 4-7 GPA , you need to get good grades and you need to go to a good school . And so first step was top 30 school academically and he kind of let me pick from there and I really liked John Beeline . I really liked Ann Arbor . I thought it was four hours from home . I grew up watching the Big Ten .

I could stay in the Big Ten , I could see my family , some , and Beeline had a four or five guard philosophy where he plays a lot of guards , he shoots a lot of threes . He was very successful at every school he went to .

I thought he was one of the only coaches that I'm trying to phrase this the right way , because all the coaches I met were great , but he was probably the coach that was the least bullshit Like he told me like it was . He didn't tell me I was going to start . He didn't tell me that he guaranteed me minutes .

He was honest with how it was going to work and how hard I had to work to play and what he thought the program would look like . Didn't promise me anything and just kind of . I thought he was the most authentic coach that I met and I liked his basketball strategy and his life philosophy and wanted to go play for him .

So that was why Michigan he was a big part of that .

If I played well in my three minutes stint there , I would get another one of those in the second half . If I did not play well in my three minutes stint there , I did not get another one of those in the second half . So that was my freshman year .

If you do a decent job you get another three minutes later . What was that like ? To kind of navigate .

Again , however , you need to have confidence in your role and your ability to do the job , and that is something that you build one by being in the gym constantly and knowing that , hey , I belong in this game , I've perfected my shot , it's going to go in , I'm going to shoot it with confidence , make it with confidence , but that's hard to do when you go in

for three minutes and I remember in the middle of my freshman year I was like not scared to shoot , but I knew if I missed , I'm coming out , and like that is a harder shot to make when you know you don't have another one , and like that's .

It was just hard to understand your role coming off the bench , especially my freshman year , when it was like five minutes that I was playing You're not sweating yet and it's like if I'm even remotely close to open , I'm shooting , and if I because I want that's my job , if I make it great , I'm going to get another five , ten minutes out of this , and if I

don't , I'm coming out and I'm going to have a bad evening where I'm pissed at myself for missing the shot and I don't get another chance for three days and I get another three minutes that time and I better try to find a way to make a shot .

I mean it's not like you've been warming up , you've been sitting on the bench for the last 20 minutes , so you're just in the game , there's the pressure and you know , if you get the ball in your open , you have to shoot , if you don't , you're getting taken out and you have to make it and if not , you're probably getting taken out .

So I just how did just the dynamic change I mean coming from high school to college , like ? What did that jump look like in terms of the day-to-day preparation , the lifestyle you know , coming and working for playing for a guy like B-line , I almost want to say working because it feels like it's a job . But what was that like ?

It was hey , you guys are lifting from eight to ten , and from ten to two you have class , and at two we're gonna watch film , and at four we're gonna do a skill session , and then it's an optional open gym , which aren't optional .

You know , I get to play basketball , I get to wear Michigan's jersey and play the sport I love always , and it was fun . But it was not like I had the same amount of free time as everybody else . But I do think it taught me a lot about time management . It taught me a lot about myself .

I'm a routine person now and then I mean , I learned how to be a routine person when I was 18 . I definitely wasn't . You know . It was like you're in high school you think you could do whatever you wanted , whatever hour of the day , quickly learned that a routine is the way I'm the most successful .

And then , you know , I didn't even realize that , I guess , until COVID . I want to say Molo times and fast-forwarding a little bit , but I was only at home in March . And then I'm eating .

So I'm eating sandwiches every day and rolling out of my bed at 7 am because I have a meeting at 7 and I'm three minutes late to it and now my brain's not turned on . I realize I need to . I need routine . I need to get up , I need to go to Starbucks , I need to get a coffee , I need to drive into work and listen to podcasts and then I'm on .

From the time I'm on and then I need to drive home and turn my brain off . So I'm there for my , my wife and kids and like I just I didn't even realize that B-line in Michigan basketball kind of developed that routine , that 40 hour a week work basketball structure and that's the way that I turn my brain on .

And then the most successful now and they kind of ingrain that in you when you're an 18 year old kid .

Yes , that shape I've ever been in , but I so I'm allergic to nuts and and peanut butter and that was a kind of a problem because the immediate recommendation was eat like four peanut butter sandwiches a day .

I would eat a turkey sandwich and I'd go back to bed because it was like you are like the skinniest , weakest person in the big 10 and if you're gonna play minutes as a freshman , you need to be able to guard Draymond Green like I remember we switched a lot and I remember guarding Draymond Green and he I don't know what he weighs , but he's a lot bigger

than I am and it is hard to box that guy out , especially when you weigh 165 pounds soaking wet . So it was . You got to gain weight by any means necessary , and it doesn't even have to be great weight .

You just like yes , we're gonna work out constantly , yes , we're gonna lift , but you gotta weigh 190 pounds to like step foot onto the court and how do you gain 25 pounds as quickly as possible ?

Was like step one and that was eating 24 seven and like actually doing it 24 seven , waking up in the middle of the night to eat a sandwich and pound one of those Gatorade protein shakes and go back to bed so when I look at Michigan's records and performance during your time , it's kind of an interesting growth story because your freshman year the team went 15

and 17 .

And then your senior year they were a top five team in the country , went 31 and 8 and made it to the national championship , uh , losing to Louisville . So talk about that experience . What you think contributed to that success is this beeline . Obviously talent improvement on the roster , but talk about the beeline effect to an extent .

And what else do you think contributed to the the team , growing at such a kind of fast rate in terms of performance ?

Some of the other schools that I looked at were already great and Michigan wasn't at the time . When beeline got there . They had a lot of turmoil prior to him and weren't super successful with deep tournament runs . Um . He was the best lead by example culture person I think I've ever been around . Um .

He always just held everybody accountable , one through 15 , whether it's Trey Burke , national player of the year my senior year , or me , who you know was the 10th , 11th guy my senior year and didn't play a lot . He's holding us to the same standard .

He's holding himself to the same standard , he's holding his coaches to the same standard and he was all about the details . He was all about team um . He was all about the Michigan beeline values , a few of which I remember when we were creating the molo values we tried to incorporate .

Uh , just because he's the best culture builder , team builder winner I've ever been around from . Uh , every day he does the same thing , he has the same routine , he expects the same thing from you . If he doesn't get it from you , he's going to hold you accountable . Um , and he wants to win .

I mean like if , if we lose and do the same and do ABC wrong and he's been hammering ABC into our heads there's no angrier person on the face of the earth . The next morning and we are running like I had some of the worst practices ever , but it wasn't because he was , it wasn't because we lost .

It was because we lost and did selfish things or we lost and didn't do the basic things that he's been teaching us from day one . Um , the worst practice I ever had was he put a TV in the middle of the , in the middle of the court , and there were , like you know , we probably had 10 basic concepts that he had taught us from the beginning .

Um , and I think this was my sophomore junior year and we got crushed by Wisconsin at home and we walked into practice . There's a TV in the middle and we just knew it was bad and if you , he would play two clips . If you made a mistake in one of the two clips .

You went and sat by the TV , basically , and then everybody else ran um and and so , and we did it . Multiple people got thrown out because they're not , you're not making the suicide . We probably ran 50 , 60 , 70 suicides that day . And you get to watch yourself do something self-fit , like it wasn't , like you missed a shot , it was .

You watch yourself do something selfish or not , get through a screen the right way that was on the scouting report or whatever um . And then you have to like , watch your teammates run and like , throw up and like quit and get yelled at because he wanted to win and he wanted to win the right way .

And um , he was a hell of a coach from uh , x's and O's standpoint , but more so , I think , from a culture . I know how to win . I know how to build the right program .

I'm recruit the right players that also want to come in and win um , and they're going to make the right decision from a pass to the open guys standpoint , take a charge , standpoint , put your body on the line , whatever . He built a roster and a culture that he knew was going to win and we won a lot of games because of it I mean .

And if , if those little things , if you weren't doing those , that's what he held you accountable to . Yes , I mean that's leadership in a nutshell , that's . I mean that's that's . It's interesting because I hear you , I do always remember you talking about wanting to instill B lines values into our business .

And when I kind of look back from here now at how you let our people and how you let the business and how you kind of design the structure , a lot of it was just like that . It was let's get the X and O's down on paper , let's create the right KPIs and then let's hold people accountable to those KPIs .

And you know you either did it or you didn't , and we can coach you up if you're not doing it right . But the fundamentals are what matters how you approach the business , how you approach the team and and culture .

That wasn't like what he always preached , it was something stupid , like maybe he swore or like which he did a lot . So it wasn't that , but like maybe he just did something stupid .

So just imagining this old guy doing suicides , I mean that would tell your team , if anything .

We were like 14 and 17 and I remember my sophomore year . Then he he was like we , or even midway through the season he was like fuck , midnight madness , we are never doing that again . You guys think you're , you guys think you're all that because of it and we're not like we're not playing basketball the right way because of it .

He was just like a low-key guy . He didn't want to make a huge spectacle of it . He hated things like midnight madness and like all the rah-rah BS . He wanted us to just go out , play basketball the right way and win basketball games , and I appreciated that .

What was it like being in March madness and going game after game after game , where every game is , you know , win or lose . Go home , talk about that for a minute .

So I started the first six games that year and Nick Staskis came off the bench and not you know , we each probably played 15 , 20 minutes a game . The first six , first five six games .

We won a tournament up in New York City at Madison Square Garden and I remember coming back from that we ranked eighth or something like that . Keras Laverne was red-shirting at that time and he was the hardest worker on our team . I mean , he was in the gym every morning 6 , 7 am .

He was asking Trey Burke , who's a national player that year , national player of the year that year , to play one-on-one and holding his own and like beating him sometimes , which Trey would probably dispute but like beating him sometimes and competing with him . And we landed after winning a tournament .

Beeline called me into his office the next morning we hadn't lost yet we're five or six and oh , and he goes , I'm burning Keras's red shirt . I think he's an NBA player . He is the hardest worker on the team . He is competing with Trey , who's a preseason All-American , and Staus is going to start and you're not going to play anymore .

I'm doing my usual like hustle shoot when I'm open , get a couple of rebounds , yeah , get a couple of rebounds . Like you know , I'm probably averaging three or four points a game , playing 15 , 20 minutes a game , but our team's winning Whatever . That was tough , but he was right . Like so the next day , keras still is in the NBA .

Nick Stauskas was the eighth pick in the NBA draft in 2015 , 14 . Know it ? Like the next day , I remember going home , cried my basketball career like is over . At that point , I think at least , and it's like at least my playing career and it's like all right . How can I approach this now ? How can I approach this now ? Like I'm not my senior year ?

Thought it was my chance to play Our team's really good , but we have studs on the team . What am I going to do about it ? Probably took me a day , two days , three days to like return to my normal self type deal . But it's like now my job is . I've got to know my role .

Now my job is to be the best scout team person I can be , be positive for my teammates , try to help them in some way , shape or form when they're struggling or had a bad game or whatever . Like all you can do now is try to be the best version of yourself , to help them be the best version of themselves so our team can win games . Not easy to do .

I still played some like I . Still somebody gets in file trouble or be lying for some reason , decides to throw me into a game . Like I'm still required to play that freshman type of season . Come in for three minutes and try to make a shot and if you do , maybe you see the court in the second half . So I had to like stay focused there .

But my role completely changed to where now I'm 10th , 11th guy . My job is to be positive . My job is to help the team win in any way that I can , and I'm more of a spectator than I am like a contributor to the team success . Like I was my sophomore and junior year , at least on the court during the games .

But it just taught me a lot about myself and about knowing your role and about Karris to . I mean he outworked me , I mean he outworked everybody on our team . But like he outworked me , and then is you know , the seventh , eighth , ninth guy and I never really wanted to let that happen again , but it was .

It is what it was , and Karris was a hell of a basketball player and he plays in the NBA now . So B-line was right and he was right to the point where Karris helped us win games in the NCAA tournament and so did Nick .

I mean we had like five or six freshmen who played big time minutes in the NCAA tournament in Final Four , and that was one of the best experiences of my life . Going from , you know , the round of 64 , round of 32 to I got in in the Elite Eight because we blew Florida out on the way to the Final Four .

It's just fun to like be on the court in the Elite Eight score . No , you're going to the Final Four . In Atlanta Beat Syracuse in the Final Four game and then we lost to Louisville in one of the highest rated college basketball and national championship games , I think at the time .

Now there's been great games since then , so I think we've dropped down a little bit , but we were better than Louisville . We just lost in that one game . They all played us but I think we win seven , eight out of 10 times . If we do it again , but it was . I mean it was one of the coolest rides I've ever been a part of .

Just to watch the whole community get behind us and how many Michigan fans are out there and watch people step up and tournament games and make big shots and just have your team win was a really cool experience .

With two , three minutes left , gray hit like a 40 foot jump shot to tie and we beat him and over like they were up three . Mr Free throw tray hit a 40 foot jump shot over Jeff with the , I think , to send it into overtime and we beat him in overtime .

And then we blew Florida out in the elite eight to go to the final four , like I think those two games were .

That was the coolest thing ever and we came to come back and win and just watch everybody stay together , stay together , stay poised through the Kansas game when we should lose we're not playing our best and come back and beat them and then go blow Florida out and you know we're going to the final four .

We won our region were , we're whatever West region champions and the celebrations on , but you got to focus back in and go beat Syracuse in the final four to have a chance at winning the national championship . That whole experience , coming on watching all the support from the Ann Arbor people was cool .

figure out what's next with my life . I was sad , but it was such a fun ride and we got to play a lot longer than a lot of other teams that I don't know if I was like as devastated as I should have been . I was more like that was an amazing thing to be a part of our team , just outperformed .

You know what I ever thought we would when I started here and you know I don't even think I realized how much I loved competing every day and being a part of the team every day and the routine that I had established until it was gone a couple weeks later .

Or you know , I started working in IBM and it's like what am I missing in my life that I've always had ? I don't even think I realized that until it was Weeks , months , years later that it was like I miss waking up and competing and being as passionate about something as I was about Michigan basketball , until later in my life .

So like if a regular student takes 1516 , I was like 12 or 13 , because I'm also doing eight in the summer . And of the 12 or 13 , you know , I'm doing two or three business school classes and then , like I get to register for classes first .

So whatever other Class I find that I think I can get a good grade in , and it's not Rocket science like it's , it's like whatever I find in the full registry of classes that I think I can Do as little work as possible and get a decent grade in . But then the business school classes were hard .

Those classes were difficult . I loved it . I knew I wanted to do something with within business .

I didn't know what I wanted to do and so as a , I decide all these little bunch of schools come to mission business school , to , yeah , a bunch of companies come to the mission business school to recruit or to tell you more about their company and see who interviews and whatever .

I like looked at the starting salary for all of these companies and Circle the ones with the largest starting salary and try to go interview and get a job at those places . I didn't really know much about the company , I didn't really know much about my role , I didn't think about what I like doing .

I just saw the money and was like all right , cool , I'm gonna go make this salary the pie salary I can get coming out of college . I am offers a pretty quality starting salary , call it a day . That's why I started at IBM and my my options were taking IBM starting salary or Zach know that , it know back .

A teammate of mine was playing in Amsterdam making 25000 untaxed euros a year or something like that and like those are my options and I picked business because it's I don't want to go to Europe Play basketball , not make a ton of money and delay an opportunity to learn more about business , start my career , come back when I'm 27 and have no business experience

and start back over at that IBM job . I wanted to just start and try to figure it out and learn about a company and about making money and about a sales career , so I picked an IBM sales role .

I went in and started networking with an IBM and pivoted to the sales role within their supply chain services group . So I was selling to distribution companies and I think they classified that as CPG and retail . So I was selling to CPG and retailers basically everything that IBM had to offer from a software and services standpoint .

So that could be big data , ai , which they called Watson and wasn't really like AI is defined now , but like Watson big data , blockchain , network optimization . I was selling these kind of big buzzwords as it relates to the software that you have . You know , sap was something that we could resell and IBM would go and implement it for you .

So I was selling a ton of different software and supply chain services offerings to distribution businesses and then I was pretty good at it and got an opportunity to start to like lead a region and I learned how to sell and learn how to get in front of the customer and ask the right questions and Understand when and why they were buying , what the reasons were

for them to buy and buy something from me . A 23 year old kid that walks into an office and doesn't , like , fully understand a lot about their business , is just selling them something .

But I learned how to try to manage a pipeline , sell , close deals , be confident , what to say , what not to say , and then I started to learn how to manage or lead a group of people , and that's what I did for four years at IBM .

But though I know you didn't ask this question , but but the last two , I started to complain a lot to my wife and just like myself , about my job , my situation , and it's not that IBM isn't a great company . I just felt like I was one of 400,000 people and Kind of goes back to when my basketball crew was over .

Like I realized then , when I'm 2526 years old , that I missed being on a team that I woke up every day and cared about . I missed competing every single day and doing something that I made a difference towards , and I just wasn't really getting that .

When I was coming in at eight and leaving at five and selling supply chain services for IBM , I just felt like I was leaving a lot of meat on the bone there .

So you spent your time at IBM , and now we get to the real meat of the story your story , our story , our origin story together . Here , as we talk about MoLa , let's talk about our baby , the company that we built together with an incredible group of people over a four-year span , from zero to $600 million in annual revenue . Take us back to the beginning .

Take us back to the origin before we move the first load . How did this thing come to be ? Paint a picture for us of what that looked like .

But I don't know anything about freight brokerage at the time . I'm just excited to go dive in and feel proud about what I'm doing every day , try to build something for myself , my family , everybody around me , and make an impact , the place I work .

And you had this kind of idea in your head that we could build a brokerage that focused on the customer a little bit differently , instead of it just being , hey , we're going to provide a great service to the shipper . Our strategy was all centered around 3BL , which we almost named the business .

With Molo , we want to build the best infrastructure experience for those three groups and that was all we talked about for hours , days , weeks , months of like . How do we do that ? How do we focus on all three of those things with every ounce of our being every single day , and we do that the right way . We can make a massive impact on this industry .

We can build an incredible company . We can create opportunity for tons of people , and that reminded me of competitive basketball and being on a team and just attacking something every single day , and I was super pumped to just try it .

Even though I didn't know anything about brokering a load at the time , I thought that the concept of that sounded fascinating and was something that the two of us could do and build together .

I remember I remember two things very distinctly . One I remember Googling how to make a business plan and printing that out and trying to go point by point of okay , we need to do this , we need to do this , we need to do . I think we got through like two thirds of the first page before we threw this out .

We're like let's just , let's just make this a lot simpler for ourselves . I remember thinking this industry has been changing a lot . It's you know , it's . It's early , it's probably May of 2017 at this point and I felt like there wasn't someone who was really , really focused on execution at the highest level anymore and servicing the customer above everything else .

And we actually wrote down this is the other thing I remember we wrote down on a piece of paper what are the things that people hate about freight brokers , and we focused on our three B's , our three best buckets our employees , our drivers and our shippers . You know what do employees hate about freight brokers ?

A lot of them hate that they're way too cutthroat , that people will step over one another to make a quick buck . There's there's minimal camaraderie and teamwork , as much as there is . Just I'm going to do what I can to make my money .

And when there's a mistake and when you know if I'm a sales guy and this carrier up , screws up my load , I'm going to be yelling at them , screaming at them . I hate them , whatever . So we're like , okay , we're not going to do that .

For the carriers , it was not paying them detention when it's due , not paying them assasorials or not not continuing to give them loads when the market is no longer in their favor , things like that . Like okay , we're not going to do that . And then the shippers was the easiest .

To me it was just executing the commitments you make , even through tough times , and we built our whole business around them , our whole strategy around that . And remember the arrive situation too .

And so the thought process is okay if we're going to create the best experience internally for our people and externally for our drivers and shippers , how do we use our competitive spirit and find somebody who is attacking the market in a similar way , who's growing like crazy , who is one of the best up and coming freight brokerages ?

How do we find somebody like that and make them almost the enemy , or who we're chasing or who we're trying to build and surpass our business ?

And we modeled it after arrive and I remember we looked up their annual revenues in their first year , their second year , their third year , et cetera , and we worked backwards from there to say , okay , if they could do that and do this in year two , well , why can't we do this plus 50% ? Why can't we do ?

More volume , more revenue , more margin , bring in just more customers and opportunity . And that's how we kind of reverse engineered our forecast and how we're going to model this business . And how many people are we going to hire to achieve those type of volume and revenue goals ? What is our tech stack going to look like . What are we going to focus on ?

It all was around competing against who we thought the best up and coming broker was , and we picked arrive and weaving in the strategy of while we're thinking about all of this , doing all of this , we want to be the best in how we treat our people , our drivers , our shippers , and that was what we spent hours building and mapping out .

We understood how many loads a carry rep could typically move in a day and we got to a place where in our forecasting we set up experienced reps versus new reps and the amount of time it would take them to get ramped up . And really the only bet we were making was on our ability to go get business and that was the biggest question .

But at the same time it was , I think , the thing that we were most confident in them because , at the end of the day , selling in this industry is it's about being persistent , especially a professional and respectful way , and we knew that our story , we think we thought could resonate with people .

And so we said let's just go balls to the wall , so to speak . Let's put these numbers on a forecast that would make us the fastest growing broker ever and then let's do absolutely everything it takes to make that happen .

And I remember , I just remember looking at those whiteboards that had kind of spiderweb looking things on them as we kind of forecast OK , this is year three is going to be , say , 250 loads a day , and break it down how many carry reps do we need ? How many customer ops reps do we need ? How many sales reps do we need ?

And then you and I got to fill in the gaps and we got to make sure that we land every opportunity we can . And I just look so fondly back on that time . And then we hit a snag , and that snag was realizing , or me thinking I'm a little naive here and thinking , ok , well , I've got to non-compete here .

So I should probably reach out to my former employer and let him know what I'm doing and try to do it in a respectful way and say , hey , I won't come after your employees or customers , but this is what my friend and I want to build . I thought they'd be like , yeah , sure , go ahead . And I was wrong , understandably so .

And they said no , dude , you've got to go , sit out your non-compete , you've got till April of the next year before you can start moving freight again . And so that was our first snag . And that was when I said OK , matt , well , you've got an idea of now what we've got to do . You just have no idea how to do it .

And that's when I said , ok , well , here are two guys I know that want to work . One worked for me , one worked with me Will and Stefan . Let's get them into the conversation and they can help teach you the ropes and get you going . And then the second piece was we needed funding .

We were not going to do this where we just try to build it slow and steady and , month over month , use the profits from the last month to go hire new people . If you want to grow as quickly as we did , it was imperative that we were always hiring ahead and hiring talent for the business we would have , not the business we did have .

Again , that takes really betting on yourself and believing in your ability to sell .

But we knew we could do that and I had been reached out to from an old customer , a produce company that had been wanting to start their own brokerage , and heard that I had left and said , hey , maybe we could make something happen and walk us through that initial phase of getting investment and maybe some of the mistakes we made or things that we didn't think

through as intelligently as maybe we should have .

Because our strategy from the beginning was we want to hire people ahead of the freight that we have .

We want to hire great , excited , hungry people who believe in that vision , who believe in Molo and what we are trying to build , and we want to train them the right way , we want to get them up and running the right way and when they're out of training , we want them to have freight available to call on and attack , which means we're betting on ourselves and

our sales team to go sell and land the business that we are investing people to go cover .

That was our strategy from day one and we did that end to end , where we're always hiring ahead and we are always a little bit that on the people side so that we can put kind of our feet to the fire , so to speak , and go get the business to support those people . So then comes your non-compete situation and investment partner .

I was scared when you had to sit out for a year because I don't know freight brokerage . I'm making a big life decision I'm quitting my job to go start a freight brokerage without the person that I was counting on to learn the most about freight brokerage from being there with me , and I think some people probably thought I was an idiot .

I definitely was terrified of doing it , but I wanted to again go , be proud and excited about the place that I worked and met Will and Stefan and was already bought into this vision and strategy of we are going to be the best at how we treat our people , our drivers , our shippers . I don't think there was no turning back at that point .

I was in and I was going to do it , whether you could join or not for the first year . Here's the way I approached that , and Will and Stefan and everybody else that we hired out the beginning were amazing people to learn from , so that was super helpful along the way .

Then comes the investment group . So I remember we walked into lunch at I don't remember the lunch place Club Lago . We walked into Club Lago , dark , kind of dimly lit lunch spot and we committed , we explained to this produce company hey , here's our plan , here's what we want to do . We want to hire ahead of the freight that we have .

We know that if we build the right infrastructure , the right team , we instill the right values and beliefs in these people on how we're going to broker freight . We can do this . We can go land business . We can give these drivers an incredible experience and they'll want to come back and work with all these amazing Molo people .

We need money to do it and we need to hire ahead of that , which is going to be expensive short term . The investment group committed to $5 million and said hey , we're with you , we agree . We shook hands and left and started to make investments in our business . A lot of software , rented an office above a bar in River North , started hiring people .

I called some of my best friends who stood up at my wedding and said hey , we're doing this . We've got investment commitment , we've got a strategy , we're starting a brokerage . Will you quit your jobs and come build this with us ?

And three months into it , we've got some momentum , I thought , and we're adding customers and we're adding volume and we're in a freight bunker standing up , yelling prices and moving loads together . It was the most fun I ever had . But I get a call from the investment group who we did not have an operating agreement defined . We did not sign one .

We went with the trust model of investment , which is one of the dumbest things we did . They said , hey , we don't agree with the strategy anymore . This is expensive and you guys want to hire another five people . You guys are adding customers . This does seem to be working .

The freight market is tight right now , in late 2017 , and our margins were not where they needed to be because we've got it's just challenging starting a brokerage to buy really well and get quality freight and we're trying to build this thing and they kind of hit the pause button and said , hey , we're not making payroll in a week .

And I will never forget that phone call because that was the next snag .

And I get on the call with these guys and they make the statement Like we're not going to pay your , we're not going to pay your people next week .

I hated the fact that I couldn't get involved to help , but I just knew this was like . At the end of the day , one of the things that I've appreciated the most about you and about all the people that we surrounded ourselves with was this tremendous resiliency and the fact that we loved having our backs against the wall .

One of the reasons I loved hiring ahead for the first four years . Really , we didn't stop hiring ahead until May of 2020 when COVID hit , and that was a mistake .

But we were always hiring ahead , and the reason I loved it is because it just put this pressure on us this pressure on me and you and the rest of our team to go get the business and make it work , and I just loved that . But the reason they were upset is we were not prioritizing accounting , and I'm going to let you talk .

I want you to talk about two things when we think about challenges in the first , say , year of the business . One is credit . So I want you to talk a little bit about credit . The first talk about the accounting issue or the lack of prioritization from us in that , and that was a big mistake . So go ahead , yeah .

timely manner , that we are collecting money as quickly as possible and we're paying our carriers and drivers as fast as we possibly can , because that's how you build your credit and that's how you get these factoring companies to approve you and that's how you get them to extend more opportunity from a capacity standpoint your way .

But we're not really invoicing our customers and collecting the money and that's where you run into a problem and our investor is like , hey , we're not just going to keep pouring money in here when you haven't invoiced us for the freight that you're hauling in 15 days . And that's just because it was not the focus .

The focus was revenue growth , take care of the shipper , the driver , the people and invoicing fell to the wayside and that was a massive mistake . I remember when I was on my honeymoon and this was in late September yeah , late September and we didn't have a focus on this .

But we are kind of getting folded , so to speak , from this investment group of like how are you so slow from an invoicing standpoint ?

I was setting alarms at like three in the morning , hawaii time , to get up so that my wife didn't know I didn't disrupt her honeymoon experience because I didn't want to mess that up and didn't want to bring tons of freight into it and I was sending invoices and trying to get our accounting up to speed .

But that's not a long term approach and that was not the right way to just kind of manage the situation . And so I understand to some extent why that investment group was like you guys need to manage this a lot more effectively than you are doing today .

I mean the idea of waking up at 3 am to invoice customers so your wife could get her beauty sleep on her honeymoon and that she doesn't even know . You're spending three hours doing that every night and then just going back to your honeymoon . It's just crazy . It also speaks

to well . I know it was a huge mistake not to have prioritized this stuff . It's like you guys were working like 18 hour days and that included Saturdays and Sundays . I mean there was no support . There wasn't a team to track .

On the weekends , when a carrier had to move a load , they were calling in and one of you had a phone that had to be answered , and I think people don't understand how big that undertaking really was .

And again , it's just one of the things that I think leading by example is something that I think especially you did extremely well and showed our team that if we wanted to build the best company in the industry , we had to put in the work , and nobody was going to do it for us , especially in the early days . We did not while we were hiring ahead .

It wasn't like we had 50 people day one . I mean . By the time I joined in April of 2018 , 10 months in , I was employee 25 . So the company was growing quickly .

But again , let's go back , though , to the credit piece , because I didn't give you a chance to talk about that Falling away maybe the biggest surprise that I don't think we were prepared for , and you talk about how you dealt with that .

Like you said , I love putting those goals out to say , hey , we got to go work our tails off to put enough business in front of these people that we are hiring and make this thing work .

But what motivated me even more was then having my friends quit their jobs and people I cared about , who all are in this freight bunker together , and these investors calling to say , hey , we might not make payroll . It's like that's not an option . I'll do anything to make that succeed .

And it just kind of brought me back to the carousel vert basketball piece of like . I'm not going to let anybody outwork me , I'm going to like I will not allow this to fail because I didn't put everything into it Once I made this decision to do it . I'm going to do everything I can to make it work .

It doesn't matter if I got to get up at 3am , and I think everybody else bought into that too . Well it did .

And we're going to run through that next one too , which was this investment group or which was the credit so credit and these factoring companies and carriers they don't know us from , from anybody else .

They're getting a phone call from me , will Steffen , whoever and we're trying to sell this load to them and they're they're depending on us to pay them in a timely manner .

But then they look our business up and it's who are you and why would I commit thousands of miles and and take the risk of moving this load for you , when I can call any other broker in the country that I trust and I've heard of ? And they're going . I know they're going to pay me . I don't know if you are going to pay me .

I think that was something that we didn't plan for the way we should have . And then , when it started to hit us in the face , we're like the first load we moved . I remember we sold it probably 1520 times .

But then we kept getting a call back after and it was the carrier or the carriers factoring company saying hey , you're not approved , we don't know who you are , we're , we're not moving this load for you .

And so we had to reset and try to sell it again and again and again , just rattling through carrier four and one until eventually we're like All right , we'll quick pay you . We will quick pay you 5075 percent , I don't fully remember .

We're going to pay you a lot of the upfront revenue in this load just to get you to commit , to go sit there , get loaded and take it to the Consonny and then we'll pay you the rest . The second you unload the product and we get a , we get approved delivery .

So we changed the way we numbered all of our freight moving forward . But the first 20 loads in our system were just load one , load two , load three , and all of them were a Venmo or a chase , quick pay from somebody's personal account to that carrier , begging them to go pick up the freight , essentially .

And then we learned , okay , the factoring community and the credit community and the carrier community we have to sell to differently and we need to explain our story , our investment , our vision , and start treating them just like the , the shipper community , to say each and every factoring company matters .

We need to explain them who Mo is , why we are going to be in business in a year , in five years and 20 years , the investment commitment we have , our commitment to paying them and the carriers and how we're going to manage all of that .

And that was a grind where you know one of them hears your story agrees extends a little bit of a credit leash and then you have to execute for it .

You've got to pay them on time , you've got to call them back and ask them to extend that leash a little bit further and you eventually kind of snowball into some momentum and you get a check mark on all the external websites and then it's kind of like the game changes Because the first three , six months you are begging carriers to pick up your , your loads

and after that , when you get a little bit of credit and the factoring companies start saying , yep , you're approved , you can buy a hell of a lot better and find a lot better , just like more consistent capacity out there . That that is a better price and a better service .

I mean they are extremely important and you need to make sure you're continuing to pay them on time , fulfilling your commitments to them , just talking to them and explaining your business and the ebbs and flows of it , and you know they want to know everything about why you're , because they're the ones that are extending thousands , millions of dollars of credit and

risk your way , and so they want to make sure that you are . You're going to follow through on that and it was just a constant sale and relationship game that I don't think we fully appreciated until we were in it and people say I was just going to say you brought up relationships , but people say this is a relationship

business .

Because if you don't and they cut you off , you see what happens . You know , you see someone like freightways a few months ago announced that OTR had cut off convoy and what happened a few months later they were out of business . I mean that that it's a telltale sign . If the factors aren't willing to work with a broker , trouble is coming . So .

So I mentioned that was a sigh of relief . Let's let's pivot back to a moment of stress . So we talked a little bit about the call from the investor saying , hey , we're out , we're not going to do this anymore unless you change this . And that was when you and I were like OK , matt . I said Matt , I can't help you here , you got to go find some money .

Talk about that and kind of how we got to the next phase of the business and then the introduction to WinTrust and how important that relationship became for us over time , what they did for us .

I saw how the carrier community and these drivers wanted to keep working with us and the real , you know just the fun we were having . And I saw the way the shippers were appreciating the service we were providing and how quickly they wanted to give us more and more business . But I didn't have you and your network and we've got to find money .

And so I kind of leaned into my network , my friends and family , and started selling this story and mapping out hey , here's what we can do for the next year or two , here's our plan , here's what we think we can be in five years , and got a group of people to commit money to buy out the produce group and invest in the future of our business is more of

kind of a bridge investment partner to get us to the next phase of growth . And then we were introduced to WinTrust , a local Chicago bank and started to sell the same story . And , hey , this is who we are , this is what we're building , this is what we can do , showing them our forecast , showing them what we've done for the first six , nine months .

And they were impressed with our growth and our story . And we made a partnership commitment to open an ABO and slowly start to show them our financials and build that .

So they were extending credit to us so that we could pay our carriers faster , because as you get larger , you're paying carriers faster than the money is coming in , and so you need a partner like WinTrust who will help you float that gap . And they were like , yeah , we'll do that for you .

And we negotiated terms and they were now just like the factory companies another customer of ours that we have to constantly sell , to constantly make sure the relationship is there , constantly show them that we are executing our forecast and doing everything in our power to stay ahead of the cash flow .

And they were a tremendous part of our success from that kind of next investment group that was a bridge investor who introduced us to them , getting us all the way to the finish line , and they were with us every step of the way .

I mean , with the rate at which we were growing , you were having to call John Merrickson , our partner , I don't know how often I mean it was multiple times a year to get our credit line raised with them and he was having to go to work for us to make that happen . But at the end of the day , I mean , he believes in our story .

I think one of the things I learned from my dad and this was actually about being a public company and I don't know why this is , I'm remembering this now , but he talked about being a public CEO and he had never done it but in dealing with public investors , who tend to be short-sighted , how do you manage a big business like a cyclical business , like

Brokerage , and he's like well , the most important thing is you tell a consistent story and that you act and execute on that story that you're telling . So , matt , I think at the beginning of this you use that kind of terminology of best , best , best and best experience for our people , our drivers and our shippers .

That was our North Star and you and I have spoken about that in some way , shape or form , I mean hundreds of thousands of times to anyone who is willing to listen . And then our actions backed it up .

The way we designed our compensation plans , the way we designed our communication I mean our communication , I think , was one thing that we did extremely well with how just transparent we were with people to get them bought in and we showed up for them .

We were willing to do the work right next to them and I think that that got us buying and people saw like , yeah , we really are creating the best experience for our customers . Our drivers are loving working with us and our people are having fun together . We had this really fun , great environment and it just made it easier for us to get more business .

It made it easier for us to hire . Over time we started to win awards . I mean I love the Chicago Tribune . Every year , the Chicago Tribune did an annual survey where they post companies in the area who applied and they ranked them for the quality of the work environment .

And I remember I would tell our team every year be honest , and it was none of this , we'll give you 100 bucks if you give us all A's or all 10 out of 10s . It was be honest because , first and foremost , we're going to take this feedback and try to use it to make our place better . If there are areas that we are not doing well , put that in here .

And every year that we did this , we were the number one ranked brokerage in the city and there are a lot of good brokers in the city . I actually remember we had a bet with my friend at Arrive , tony Tim Tlauri .

He and I were kind of talking smack at food shippers one year and we made a bet on whose company would be ranked higher and the loser had to go to the other guy's office in front of their company and say , hey , you guys did better . And of course we won that bet because every year we were ranked higher than them and Tim had to come to our office .

I set up a company-wide meeting and they all stood in front of him . He had to be like , yeah , you guys won . But I just think when you tell a consistent story and then your actions back up that story , your life gets a lot easier and whatever you're doing , because , people . That's how you build trust .

Is you actually show up and execute the way that you intended to ?

I think the way that you constantly would weave any story and connect it back to our people , our drivers , our shippers you were also met it and the way that you would kind of leave those company-wide or create emails or just communicate on a daily basis , constantly weave that back in .

I think that was a big pulse within the business and everybody rallied behind it and it was an easy story to sell . It's not like which is a cool part about what we built it wasn't like it was rocket science , it was pretty simple to understand .

Hey , if we take care of each other , if we treat these drivers incredibly well , those two things are going to execute a world-class service for our shipper , no matter who they are , and if we combine all three of them , it's pretty hard to stop us and we're going to build momentum , and so I think the way that you did that and you communicated .

That was second to none . And then everybody kind of rallied behind that vision , that strategy and it was just fun to be a part of .

Because Anihajar Bush was the first large company to take a chance on us and we had this idea that growth begets more growth and growth was such an important . Growing quickly was so important to us for a number of reasons . One we knew we were coming into this largely commoditized market that was fairly undifferentiated .

We weren't going to come in and say that we created some new mode of transportation , or that we were this digital , this , or that we were coming in and we were busting down your door with the basics . We were saying we are a freight broker , but we are going to be a very , very good one for you .

We are going to execute to the commitments we make , we are going to understand the rules of your game and we're going to play them better than anybody else .

And the reason why is because we , as a leadership team , have created a phenomenal environment for our people to work in , and they want to work hard for you , and we take care of our drivers , which is something that , for some reason , so many companies don't seem to do . But in order for us to grow quickly , we needed big customers to take chances on us .

And then we needed to absolutely , like explosively grow with them . We needed to show up like no one ever had before . And so when AB gave us that first chance , I remember sitting down with Russ , who was our account manager on that account , and being like I need you to be perfect .

I mean we need you like they have a Carer of the Year award and I want us to win it . Like , whatever it takes , we got to figure it out . Like you know their spot board . I mean my favorite approach with big customers , especially any customer , really is , when you get that first chance , blow them out of the water . I mean like literally make it .

So they're surprised and they call you back into their office to be like holy cow , how did you do all this ? And so Russ went on their spot board and we had a team that had to go on their spot board because of how their spot board used to work , where every load expired at the same time .

So we'd have like 10 people logged in quoting loads and we literally won every load we could .

I mean it was not about trying to make a bunch of money , it was about showing up and showing them who we could be , because we thought if a big company like this gets behind us , then think of all the other ones that might come behind and say , hey , if you service them well , I bet you could service us well .

But that story I mean I remember we sent an email out to the company like , hey , we got our first chance with them . And then a few months later it was hey , we're getting on boarded to the next group tier of carriers because of how well you service them and how many loads you service them over a short period of time .

Then we won our first award with them , our first , I mean our first bid award with them . We're going to have to come back to that when we talk about mistakes we've made .

But to constantly come back to that story , I remember over like a four year period we just were sending the same email chain out telling the story before we finally did win their carrier of the year award . And then , once we did that like . It just was easier for people to see like this strategy works .

Servicing your customer at the highest level sets you up for a much better relationship , much more trust , much more essentially preferential treatment where you can get the business . That really works for your network . So , with all this good , let me let me pivot and talk . Talk some growing pains .

Let's talk about some of the challenges in those first couple years . Talk me through what you think were some of the bigger challenges . Growing pains , because when we did grow , I mean to give people the numbers , I mean our , our , the second half of 2017 , which is our . You know , we started July . We did 5 million in revenue .

Yeah , 2018 , we did 40 million in 2019 . What was it ? 130? .

. And so the first couple of years , you know , okay , we get , we get our investment situation resettled , we get a partnership with WinTrust and we're outselling constantly . That was our , you know , that was our lives for the first 24 to 36 months and it was fun . I've never had my life Nothing like it . What ?

Just flying around conferences , selling and selling , like you said , the basics , selling our people , selling stories that we've seen , selling something that we were so proud of and confident in that it was easy to say , like I know that the Molo team is going to take care of you this way , and most of these shippers had heard it before .

You know , we've heard that before . But I think we we kind of knocked their doors down with persistence and with storytelling and with passion and with math behind why we're growing our business , the way we're doing it , how we know how to execute this , how we're setting this up to succeed , and every one of them , for the most part , gave us a chance .

And then , when they did like you said , it's how do we blow them out of the water ?

With our first impression and it didn't matter if it was the first month , the third month , the ninth month I knew we were going to get an email from one of the shippers you know , saying you guys came in and talk the talk and your team walks the walk , and that makes it so much easier to go sell and explain who we are and what we were doing when we

had this incredible team that's going to rally around that message and take care of them , and that made it fun . And then we come into we are growing at such a pace and we don't have the business set up the right way to handle that pace , which I think is a big growing pain .

And what I mean by that is and this ties back into the mistakes we've made and the Anheuser-Busch story but we've got tons of enterprise customers , we have a carrier floor and a customer floor , basically , and an accounting back office team and there is nothing in between . Like we don't have an assembly line of sales to account management , to operations , to .

Like we don't have the groups that are flowing . Yeah , we don't have the groups that are flowing the right way from A to Z , so everybody is as efficient and effective as possible .

We basically just ran through a wall every single day to get ourselves to a couple hundred loads a day and then you get to a point where it's like we're running through a wall every single day and it's getting really hard to do that with the volume that we have .

And now we need to not just be attacking grinders we still need to do that but we need to be super sophisticated and smart with how we are moving this freight , because each customer is a little bit different . They want a little bit of a different experience . Each carrier is a little bit different .

They want a little bit of a different experience and they want as much optionality as possible . And our people deserve a quality business and infrastructure so that they can do their jobs as efficiently and effectively as possible and they can maximize their opportunity .

And I think this is early 2020 where we kind of started looking at each other like we need tons of new teams here . We can't just take a bid from Anaheim , husser Bush , and say there are 2,000 rows on it . Let's find five people , divide it up and everybody prices 400 rows . We're hoping it's right and we'll do that all day long .

We need to build a yield team .

We are going to manually plug those into the DAT or a pricing engine and we are going to use our tribal knowledge and understanding of their freight and manually enter a price into a spreadsheet .

Then , at the 11th hour , we are going to combine all of those prices and I probably am going to run a formula to smash them all together and pray that it uploads into Jagger in time . As the clock is ticking , this bid is doing four minutes and I just remember us all huddled around a desk like get it uploaded , get it uploaded .

When you do that and you're working at that pace and that's your process and you start to get bigger and bigger and more and more opportunities , you make mistakes .

I remember Anheuser-Busch Chris Agnew priced a lane from Texas to Louisiana On his second day .

There was nobody else close to his price After we called on it . Then , okay , we win the lane . It's tons of freight . He won a lot of that lane we own . That was our power lane . We start looking at it and it's like we're going to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars on this . What do we do ?

It was a crossroads moment where it's like , okay , well , we've made this commitment to Anheuser-Busch . We went in there and told them if we price a lane , win a lane , commit to a lane , we're going to accept what you guys asked of us and we're going to take it and we're going to move it as effectively as possible . We did that .

We're like , okay , we're going to lose a ton of money on this . It's going to be an investment in our vision , our business , our plan , our word . We're going to tell Anheuser-Busch that we're going to try to offset it with as much other volume as we can get from them .

Our carrier team started calling on that lane day in and day out and booking $200 losers left and right , just trying to protect ourselves against more losses . We knew it was going to be a losing lane and it was a moment where we said , all right , we're going to do this . And we actually , three months later , did this across our entire business .

As we get into COVID and probably should talk about that and the strategy there we said we're going to stand by our word and we're going to try to differentiate ourselves at least Anheuser-Busch and show them that we mean what we say . We made a mistake .

We're going to own it and we're going to execute it to the best of our ability and hope that in six months Anheuser-Busch remembers it . In 12 months they remember it . In 18 months they remember it .

They'll continue to reward us with quality freight that fits our network and this is going to be a moment of growth for us , not a moment of hey , we messed up , let's throw that grenade back at them .

Frankly , I think this is an important call out to . When your role changed , we said , hey , as much fun as it is for you and I to fly around the country all the time and sell , we need somebody who's actually in the business , in the office running the day to day . It was not something I was capable of .

Not only was it something you were capable of , it was something that you were exceptional at your pivot from just being president to being president and COO not like that title really meant or mattered , but more so , it just represented you taking over all of the business and everybody now reporting to you other than sales , which I kept customer sales , that is but

the rest of the business went to you . I think , if you will talk about how you thought about , because your leadership style is something that I I don't say envy , but I commend I think that our team really appreciated because you did take the business and do it in a way that allowed us to get a lot more sophisticated , a lot more focused .

If you will talk about how you thought about that , how you thought about splitting up the team and then supporting the people who are working for you , I think the audience might appreciate that .

It was just kind of selling this story and motivating people internally and externally , and we couldn't both do that , and so somebody now had to focus on this sophisticated business and how do we level up , so to speak ?

And I had I kind of remembered all of the mistakes and triumphs along the way and started to map out okay , where do we want our business to be in a year , two years , three years , and how do we get there ? What are we doing really well ? How do we continue to do that really well ?

How do we improve some of the areas that we're not doing super well , like RFPs , dividing and conquering ? That's not the right approach . And we had all these incredible people within our business that bought in the same way that we did , like they bought into this vision , this plan , and they were doing things .

So , above and beyond whatever they did , day one , that my thought process is hey , we have to put these people in a position to go build these teams and go help level up our business , and we're going to split this thing up a bunch of different ways , from just a customer and a carrier and a counting team to we need to have tons of pods and many teams

within each of those . We need to build a yield team , we need to build a data team , we need to build , so on .

It's an incident resolution team , and I think we both were extremely confident that we have incredible people that are going to step up and attack this , and so my thought process was my job is to put the right people in the positions to build and scale their teams , their new departments , whatever and empower them to always think about the best , best , best ,

always think about our people , our drivers , our shippers , and if you do that and you make the right decisions there , we are going to continue to be successful . Give them a chance and kind of shield them from everything else .

Like I want Ryan Dent , who I think is one of the best in the business at managing risk and knowing pricing and understanding buy and sell and A to B , I want him to focus 100% of his time on that yield team , that we tapped him on the shoulder and said , hey , ryan , can you build a yield group ?

Because it's going to be the heartbeat of our business if we do it the right way . And then watching him go attack it and trying to do everything I can to help him along the way , but not getting his way either Like your job is to now go build this . I know that you can do it . You're incredible at it . How does our business enable you to do that ?

Versus get in the way and kind of block you out of doing some of that stuff .

So my thought process was let's put the right people in the right positions and trust them to be successful and kind of shield them from everything else and let them go run and attack that problem and be entrepreneurs in their own right and building their own department or group or team .

Seeing someone who came in as a entry level ops person and saying , hey , we want you to take over our entire tracking department managing a group in Columbia , in Mexico something they had never done before , giving them the reins and then watching them thrive I mean , seeing that over and over was probably one of the most rewarding things for me and , I know , for

you , and it just gave us more motivation . I mean , we really thought that we could take over the industry and I still frankly think that team can with this approach . Now , you mentioned kind of leading into COVID . What a crazy thing we didn't expect there . Let's dive into that a little bit . So why don't you walk us through that first ?

You know , from finding out we needed to make a change , how our team kind of came together . I want to walk us through March , march of 2020 , because that's one of the most memorable times of my life and I know it's for you too . Yeah .

. And COVID hits , and you know , the world is kind of in a state of confusion and we I remember all of us , everybody that worked there was like , okay , we're used to , we're used to this , we're used to back against the wall , running through a door every single day to execute for each other , for our drivers , for our shivers .

This is just some additional chaos , how do we manage it ? And everybody kind of rallied and figured out a different way to make it happen . I remember Nick Lawler went to CDW to pick up a bunch of monitors in a U-Haul and they wouldn't let him like , bring them back . And so we then said , okay , we know how to move stuff .

Somebody found a carrier within their network to go pick up a bunch of monitors for us , bring us to the , bring them to the office . And 300 of them , yeah , and 20 of us or 30 of us or 40 of us sat . You know , we were a human lumper service and we were just , we were unloading all of these monitors into our office .

And then I remember we had someone kind of acting like a librarian and all of these people would file through and like , pick up their monitor , their power cord , their keyboard , their headset and send everybody home and then everything went nuts .

I mean , then we've got we're primarily food and beverage , and we're a big retail presence and everybody is buying everything and inventory is flying around and , yeah , and things are just like supply chains are breaking and , okay , our volumes double overnight and we're all at home , we're all in our apartments , whatever , all throughout the Chicago land area and nobody

missed a beat .

Everybody was like we've been here , we know what this company is about , we care about the people that work to our left and our right digitally now and like we're going to figure this problem out together and we go from you know , 50 loads a day with some customers that are now asking us to move 150 loads a day , and we still don't have these teams built

yet to be a sophisticated brokerage to move all this freight the right way , and so we're kind of building these teams and tapping people on the shoulder and asking them to grow this or that while our volumes are exploding . It was fun .

The first three or four months were chaos , but it was so much fun and nobody blinked , everybody just executed as best I've ever seen and our customers were blown away , which results in them asking you to take more and more volume .

And then you know we're in this constant state of like we need to hire people , train people and build these teams as quickly as possible , because the sky's the limit right now and our customers are counting on us to execute for them .

Our people are counting on us to continue to do this the right way , and our drivers want to just continue hauling this freight and making more and more money for themselves . And it was just an incredible experience for the first three to six months .

You were building and scheduling loads . I remember you were staying up till 1 am and this is three years into the business Presidents , coos of companies that are $300 million in revenue , don't do this kind of crap . But you did , and I think it just continued to set the tone .

And then everybody around you wanted to do it because people realized like this is , this is when it matters most , this is where our overt transparency , our communication , was so important and people were still so bought in because they realized I mean I remember thinking people will never forget Like there are a lot of things you know .

I think people joke like people have short memories in logistics and you could do 100 great things and then the 101st thing you screw up . That's the only thing they remember . And that certainly tends to be true . But I just remember thinking man , none of nobody in our lifetime had ever been through a pandemic . We didn't even know what the heck it was .

And also , we're all at home .

Not everybody's business was exploding , but ours certainly was , and this was a put up or shut up moment , and I just remember telling our team our customers will never forget the way that they were treated during this , because they're also sitting at home and the ones that their businesses are doubling and tripling and they need more help .

I mean , their asses are on the line too , and are we going to be the ones who show up for them ? And everybody on our team said , yes , we are . And having you lead the way that you were , I think , just set the tone in a way that just made it clear to everyone like this is who we are . And our team loved those moments .

I mean we loved , we thrived in those moments , and that it just was fun . I mean there was something fun about waking up , and I mean it's . I mean I lost my damn mind . I mean those first couple of months . I don't know if you remember this , but I was . I was not well mentally . I mean I was . I shaved my head and really , if it wasn't for COVID ?

I don't . If we weren't all at home , I think I would have people would have seen it more directly in the office that I was literally losing my damn mind and you were there supporting me and making sure I was okay . But COVID was crazy and I think , as I think about that year , I think that really shaped us into who we were forever .

It also , though it also changed things . The volatility was unlike anything we'd ever seen before , and the second half of that year . So you know , we talked about losing a bunch of money for a customer around a specific lane .

So people who don't know our story might be thinking , man , these guys must have just been losing money hand over fist , like , oh , anybody could grow a brokerage if you're willing to lose millions and millions of dollars . That wasn't the case . We didn't lose any money . Our business was basically break even until late 2020 .

So we had made a bunch of commitments , contractual commitments . Our business was 50 plus percent contractual at that point a lot of enterprise business , and now it's a meaningful number . I mean we did 275 million that year in revenue or something like that . So that's a lot of business . We saw in March was rates went crazy .

In April they were crazy and then May they just tanked something like that . I mean , you saw $4 a mile down to $1.50 a mile nobody's shipping anything . And then it came back the stimulus money .

Everything came back and that second half of the year saw some of the highest growth in rates that we'd ever seen and we were sitting here with rates that we had committed to before COVID . Talk about that process , how you led the leadership team through that concept and what we decided to do , and the impact and what came from that .

This is June , july 2021 , when we see the pattern and we know that this is the next six months and most other brokers are going back and renegotiating rates and each shipper reacts differently Some understand , accept it , some of them buyer them for adjusted rates and some of them try to meet in the middle or whatever .

We decided , and we did this with our investment partner , with Jeff , and said you know , hey , this is going to be , this is going to be expensive , but we think it's the right investment in our brand , in our shippers , in our Everything .

This is like what we have , this is what we built , and we are now in a crossroads position where we can go back on a word we can be like everybody else , we can reprice this freight and probably get away with it , but that will likely sacrifice our growth in the next year and our opportunity the year after that , because people don't forget shippers .

Don't forget when you do that . And instead we wanted to say , all right , our backs are against the wall , we've committed these price points . The market has gone crazy . Let's execute it like it's like it's the exact same market when we priced it and let's do our best to mitigate the losses .

We know we are going to run at Negative 5% on our contractual stuff . Let's do everything in our power to service the heck out of that freight . Show up for that customer , ask them for as much other freight as they're getting back at an updated market rate , attack the spot markets to offset that .

And let's , let's , let's do our best to mitigate the loss but put ourselves in the best position for 2021 , 2022 , 2023 and beyond , so that everybody knows that that's the way Molo executes . It doesn't matter what happens in the market . It doesn't matter if there's this crazy pandemic that nobody predicted . Our , our word is there . Our execution is there .

If you guys set the rules , we're going to try to follow through on them to the best of our ability , and that was the strategy , and it wasn't that difficult to sell back internally . Everybody was like , yeah , that makes sense , that we would do that . We've always done that . We're let's , let's go , let's figure out the best way to to make that happen .

And you know , I just remember how , how difficult it was going to be , but how kind of seamless it was when everybody just rally behind it and July turns to August , september , october , and nobody missed a beat . Again .

We're moving freight for all of these shippers at the , you know , at these tough prices , and spot freight flying in , because they're all rewarding us for the service that we're providing them at the rate , at the competitive price we're doing it for .

And I just you know , I knew that that was a huge moment for us where , in 2021 , you know , you hope , but I think most of these shippers are going to come through and double our award . So , like , how do we get ready for that ?

Because we're going to go from 275 million to 600 plus million and we're still building the infrastructure , we're building these teams , we're promoting somebody kind of every week to go attack a new problem .

We got to get ready for then the next year , because the way we're showing up for them now , I think is going to set us up for such a successful 2021 and beyond . How do we prepare for that ?

When the numbers actually started coming in and our margins were as low as they were , I couldn't handle it . I mean , I like lost it . And one of the things that I really appreciated about you was how , even killed , you remain through . The most stressful moment of our lives .

I mean , that was we were taking a big risk in saying , hey , this is , this makes sense . Our customer we're trusting our customers are going to reward us for this . But it was not easy to do and it was expensive and we didn't know what was going to happen .

On the other side and one of my character flaws is is my just tendency to emotionally react to situations , something that I'm actively working on . But I didn't deal with that .

Well , I was angry , I was pissed and I was struggling , and if it weren't for you staying cool and say , hey , it's okay , we're fine , we're fine , we're fine , every day showing up and telling our team hey , we're fine , we're fine , we're fine . I don't know that we make it through to the other side .

And boy did we , and I think we all , a lot of us , have you to thank for kind of keeping us dialed into that , because 21 came around and that trust kind of paid off in some ways . So , you know , we did grow explosively and we went from 275 to 600 million .

But there's something that I think we all learned the volatility was too much and it was too much for a lot of shippers to stay the course . You know , there tends to be this game of hip for tat in our industry where it's well , the shipper screwed me , so I'm going to screw them , or the broker screwed me , so I'm going to screw them .

And so when you saw in 2020 , where 98% of brokers went back to their shippers and said , hey , you got to give me more low or , I'm sorry , you got to give me a higher rates , I'm not holding my contract rates anymore what did that tell the shippers they should do ?

The next year , when it flipped the other way , they did the same thing , and so there were some shippers that stuck by us . I mean , we grew a lot , every shipper gave us more business , but there had to be a strategy shift by , I think , mid 2021 , when we realized like this this is , this is a different game we're playing now .

This volatility is something that that has created a monster , so to speak . Where is it right for us to commit to someone and say we're going to uphold all of our contractual agreements and rates for the year .

If , three months into the year , if the rates are lower than you you thought they'd be , you're going to just take my business away and give it to someone who's offering you a lower rate . And that happened to us , not by everyone .

I mean , this was when our strategy shifted for shippers from just uphold every contract rate for every shipper for the whole year to more of it's the shippers game . They determine the rules and we'll play by their rules . If they want to change rates every three months based on the market , then we will do that with them .

If they want to lower them when the market's in their favor and raise them when it's ours , we will do that with them . If they want us to stick to a year rate and they're willing to stick to a year rate , then we will do that with them .

But that was a big pivot for us in needing to be a more mature organization , not because we didn't want to uphold rates anymore , but it just we were getting the short end of the stick more often than not and it was imperative for us to reconcile that and , again , the rules that we thought about , where it's your choice as the shipper , you determine the rules

of the game . We will play by the rules better than anybody else , but we're not just going to get our teeth kicked in and then allow you to kind of take advantage of us .

And I think that was such a pivotal turning point for us because it made it clear to shippers that we had to be there , had to be mutual respect , and I think that if we didn't do that , the business would not have been able to get to a place where it could keep growing and do so in a mature , profitable way , which is what we eventually saw in in 21

2022 , as the business kept growing .

It just meant that now we are in the driver's seat for the negotiation and the discussion with the shipper , where they'll say , yeah , we want to give you more volume . You guys showed up for us in a way that very few other brokers did , but we needed to put our business and put people and build the infrastructure on the back end to .

No matter what they then say in that kind of negotiation or what freight they give us or how that goes , we need to be able to execute it , and each shipper is a little bit different . You know , some are , some are going to double volume , but make you , make you show that you're buying really well in some type of program . I mean , it was , it was okay .

We've slightly differentiated ourselves , but they still have a budget that they need to adhere to . They still need to get super competitive rates . And how do we set everything up within our business so that we can use this small advantage that we gain for ourselves in the back half of 2020 and maximize it .

And that's where you have to have the business position to succeed , the right people in the right seats to execute these teams and these growing teams .

And then , whatever type of shipper you're working with enterprise or SMB how do I make sure that the business structure is there to maximize the opportunity for them and take our brand and catapult it into a billion dollar brokerage that can play any game with any shipper and provide an incredible service and do so profitably ?

That , I think , was the next challenge , because it wasn't just like they were going to give us all cost plus volume because of the work we did for them in the back half of 2020 . It doesn't work like that .

When you talk about kind of how you saw the maturation of that group and the things we did that allowed us to stand out and allowed us to be smarter about making contractual commitments , I mean I think that was a pivotal point for us as the business got more sophisticated and you led that with Joe and their team , if you wouldn't mind talking about that ?

Joe's job was cover all the loads , build an incredible carrier group , but put us in a position where we are going to be on the same playing field as all these sophisticated billion dollar plus brokerages and we're going to build an incredible carrier group that can buy with the best of them and service the heck out of freight .

He just I mean , he did an incredible job of differentiating that group and it was , it was the basics , it was sticking to . We want to provide the best service for our people , for our drivers and our shippers . But it was also how do we structure the team ? How do we incentivize the team the right way ?

How do we communicate internally to tell Because I don't think it's just carrier that leveled up , I think it's carrier can can build this infrastructure and machine to where they're buying extremely well and providing a great service .

But then how do they communicate that across all the corners of the business so that all the other corners of the business can take advantage of the capacity that we now have ?

The effort that this carrier group now is putting in on a daily basis , the way that they're structured , the way that they're regionally buying , the way that they're taking advantage of power lanes and and this , these carrier relationships that they're building , how can yield maximize that for the price point that they're giving back to the shipper ?

How can our account management team maximize that for the way that they're spot quoting , in the way that they're adding new volume , in the way that they're funneling it internally within the business ?

And I think the way that our carrier team built relationships , structured their business , attacked their KPIs and knew what good looked like and knew what the expectations looked like and then distributed that information to all corners of the business to say , hey , we have one of the best carrier groups in the industry .

Take advantage of this , take advantage of these relationships , take advantage of these amazing drivers that want to work with moho , take advantage of this Twice that we are getting .

That was what I think we did an incredible job of kind of communicating that data and and they hammering it everywhere so that we can go from 275 million to 600 million to a billion with that capacity , because we had it now .

sophisticated . Mature is the idea of Now not just taking a career .

You know , I think a lot of care groups are in history are just , but we were at a point where we were leveraging the technology and the data to create true routing guides so that our Our carriers could look at us like a true partner , a shipper , and we could say to them hey , you've done a great job for us on this lane .

We're going to allow you to haul it for us every time it gets tender to us . It's your lane , you own it and you start to build those partnerships . And then they take it a step further in in even setting up some dedicated Fleets within our own network .

I mean , very few brokers can develop the level of trust with a carrier to the point where they will create a dedicated group with you , a dedicated team with you , where these care , these drivers , are going to haul for Molo no matter what , and they don't have a load , necessarily , don't know where they're going to be going ahead of time , but they trust that

Molo will take care of them and Molo is going to send them from this place to this place . It allowed us to go into hot zones that other other brokers couldn't get drivers as easily . So in produce season we had dedicated drivers we could send down to Florida and know that they were going to pick up a load for us coming back .

I mean , that's the challenge of being a broker is managing that volatility , managing the up and down , and what we were able to do by building trusting relationships on both sides of the business is create a level of consistency .

And I think one of the biggest challenges as a broker and I think about this just holistically is building trust and doing it the right way , because there is that game of tip for tap that seems to exist and it's always well , this carrier screwed me or so I have to screw over this other carrier .

And for us , if we were going to build the right kind of network long term , we had to be the ones willing to trust first . We had to trust first on both sides . We had to tell shippers hey , we're willing to trust that you're going to do right by us . Give us the business will execute for us .

And if after a year they take our business away , well , that sucks , we lost out on that deal . But you have to learn from those and you get rid of the ones that you can't trust and you build deeper relationships with the one you can .

And the same thing on the carrier side where it's hey , we're going to give you this contractual lane while the market's hot and we're going to keep you on that lane even as the rates go down by 10% .

But when it's the other side and a carrier commits to a rate at two bucks a mile and then the market goes to 230 and then they disappear , that capacity disappears . It's like , oh , we trusted first and we got burned . Here I was always okay with us getting burned .

As long as we learn from those , as long as we learn not to go back to the well with those same carriers and folks . I'm finding the ones that wanted those long term partnerships , because I assure you they were out there and we found them .

Joe and his team did a great job finding the carriers that wanted to do that , and our customer team did the same thing , so I think that was a pivotal catalyst for our growth .

We're trying to move all 2000 loads we have on the load board today . It's no , we've got X 1000 trucks carrier driver relationships . How do we , yes , cover the same day load board but how do we maximize this opportunity for bids and for spot quoting and just like , disperse that across the entire company ?

That was cool to watch the transformation of that group where they had like a huge voice , probably the biggest voice within our business , on a daily basis .

I mean , I remember stupid things like not stupid , but they created , like that execution , an execution channel and somebody knew would post every day and they'd , yeah , they would , they would post every day and they'd make it their own version . But it's the same stuff we're talking about . We're hammering home . You know our pre book percentage .

We're hammering home market shifts and where we have capacity and how to leverage it , and you know it was like a living , breathing thing now and it just changed from that . See what book load , move on to the next load to like . We're going about this at a different way and we've leveled up that group and how we buy itself .

What do you think were some of the biggest challenges that you personally dealt with and that the group dealt with ?

My first challenge was I started a freight brokerage without knowing how to broker a load .

That's that was challenge one for me and and it this will lead pretty well into remote versus in office I learned how to do it and fell in love with it by being forced to do every little piece in in moving a load from point A to point B , and the way I approached it was .

I am going to be myself , I'm going to be genuine , I'm going to attack each situation . I am OK with sounding like an idiot on a call and I hope somebody tells me you sound like an idiot and I'm going to learn from that mistake discussion , sale and try to improve the next time . And sitting in an office with will step in .

And then you know more and more people and just rocering freight in a chaotic . That's how I learned how to do it and that's how I learned how to broker every little piece along the way .

I mean , we didn't have a tracking team , we didn't have an after hours team , and so we all rotate and we all did it and we all came in and worked on the weekends and and that's how we were forced to do it to start , and we didn't , we didn't have a back office team .

So we're sending invoices and collecting the money and I think that that helped me learn how to do whatever job I was doing , because when you know how all the pieces connect within a freight brokerage , you're really dangerous , like when you know how to do not just the carrier rep job but you know how to do your job so that it helps everybody else do their

job within this machine . I think that's when you can be really successful in your in your role . But I had to kind of Drop my ego a little bit , I guess . Or just like , walk in vulnerable and know I'm going to say some stupid stuff on a lot of calls and the drivers will tell you , or the shipper will tell somebody will tell you that was dumb .

Or immediately you quote a load and it's tendered over to you 10 seconds later . It's like yep , I under quoted it , and the cool part about freight brokerage , though , is that it's one mistake and you can fix it the next call , the next quote , the next conversation .

There's nothing that's like so detrimental with how many Opportunities there are out there that you can't Learn from that mistake and move on and adjust the way that you're operating on a daily basis . That was challenge one learn how the heck to do this . That just resonated . How I did that .

And then another challenge across this whole In office remote thing , I learned from the people around me and all the amazing people that we hired that knew what they were doing and just tried to listen to every conversation and be a sponge , almost of like he said this , this and this , it worked .

How do I incorporate that into the next time I try to solo load ? He said this , this and this , it worked . How do I incorporate that into the next time that I try to ? You know , land a new customer , win a new load , whatever .

And then we all went home , and the way that you communicate , and the way that you learn , and the way that you Train , and the way that you become a really quality freight brokerage Changed , and it's something that you know we've debated about constantly of like what is best for the business .

Is it this hybrid model that our business thrived in , where almost everybody is remote ? We give you the optionality and we all figured out a way to communicate really effectively and continue to broker loads the way we always had and show up for customers and win awards and Everything was working . So why change it ?

But you miss out on someone without freight experience coming into this business and sitting across from an account manager , sitting across from a business development person or sitting next to the accounting or the data team and learning how they do their job and why they do their job and listening to them talk every single day and incorporating that into how you're

doing your own individual role . So I think the remote challenge and how to continue to train people , how to continue to improve the way we broker freight , how to continue to communicate effectively and set up processes to do that was a massive challenge that that you know .

I know everybody is still working on in this like host COVID environment of how do I set my workforce up for the future now , what's the right approach to remote in office , training , hiring , etc .

The way that our team showed up and executed during that remote setting , and that was why we leaned heavily into telling those folks hey , you can be remote forever . And there was a lot of dispute about this and this was something where I was heavily leaning . I was the one driving the . We should let him be remote forever .

And really everyone else around me was kind of like I don't know long term and I don't know that I was thinking well , enough , long term . This is where you know we talk about this concept of best . Best . Best create the best environment for your people to care of your drivers and shippers better than anyone else . This is where like it gets .

It's a simple concept but it's hard to execute all the time because some decisions you don't know what's best for the individual verse being best for the team . What I saw in trying to lead through this remote environment I remember distinctly having back to back meetings with two people in one on one conversations .

One of them was in the office , the other was remote , and the in office guy said to me he's like I'm so glad we're back in the office , I'm having my best month ever . I just got too distracted when I was at home .

And then the other meeting was with this kid , jake , and he was in his mom's basement and he was like I'm having the best Months of my career . I would get so distracted when I was in the office because there was so much noise and all the chaos .

This is so much better for me and I remember thinking exactly this is why it makes sense To allow everybody to keep working from home , because everybody's different . Some people work better from home , some people work better in the office . Like everybody has Different priorities , different things they care about .

So , like at the individual level , I understand why I thought it makes sense to let people who can perform perform wherever they want .

I didn't necessarily , I don't know that I was thinking intelligently enough about the future and long term and our culture , because culture you know , when I think about culture , again , it's not ping pong tables and and free coffee and kombucha . We have those things , but that's not what makes culture .

Culture is how a group of people operate and how they do so together , and so when I think about culture , the example I always used to use is you could have 10 carry reps sitting in a row . How are they answering the phone every time someone calls ? Are they respectful to the driver ? Are they honest with the driver ?

Are they giving them all of the information about a load ? Like these are the things that determine the quality of your brokerage , is how you treat these people , and so , for me , culture is that stuff right there , and building culture is when you take an 11th person . You put them right in the middle of that group of 10 .

And over time , that person could come in with bad intentions , with good intentions . Over time , they're going to be molded by the people around them . So if everybody around them is behaving effect , behaving the right way , over time that person should start to behave that way or they'll be ostracized and pulled out of the group .

It's really hard to do that in a remote setting . If Joe is in Chicago and Mike is in San Diego , it's really hard to build culture the right way . And if you're going to grow at the rate we were , where you're hiring people year over year . Where are these people developing culture from ? Can you do it remotely ?

I think that's hard , and so you know there's a part of me that regrets making that long term commitment and saying that forever . You know you guys could be remote and I mean it's not like it's really my decision anymore . I just think about that as something that's a really big challenge , and one of the ways that we tried to combat that is in 2021 .

Our office lease was getting ready to end and we saw an opportunity now to maybe solve this problem in a different way . What if we invested in the best office in the city ?

I mean , what if we literally went and got an unbelievable office that people would want to show up to , that people might prioritize showing up to above being able to stay at home in their pajamas , and we thought this investment would be a way to show our customers like look at the investment we're making for our people .

Not only are we giving them a great remote policy , but we're also giving them the best office to work in and the best environment to come and do their jobs , where they're going to have fun every day . And I think about that , and you know , who knows if that was the best decision .

I think that's one that I think we've always had the best intentions and we got to a place where there was no simple solution . There still is no simple solution .

I remember debating like we're at a crossroads of best best best , Like we want to do what's best for our people and the folks that work at Molo , and that , in your example of talking to the two folks on your calls , is some people people are different and some people work really well remotely and some people work really well in the office .

How do you create both options and does that then sacrifice ? If you go with the remote option , does that then sacrifice the good of the brokerage as a whole ?

Are you sacrificing the growth and the training and the ability to learn how to broker freight the right way across all 100,000 , whatever people you have , and does that then dilute the experience you're giving to the people that want to come into the office , to the drivers and the conversations that they're having and to the shippers ?

And it is a very difficult problem to solve end to end and there's no perfect answer . I leaned towards let's get this brokerage humming again , get the energy and get everybody back in , because that's the best way to learn and that's the best way how to broker freight .

But I totally understand that not everybody wants that and some people work really well in a quiet environment and they broker freight super well on their own . So I think it is to be seen on that office and how the team decides to manage that kind of remote or in-office policy .

But I know this was an area where we kind of disagreed and I don't think there's a right answer .

We had grown and we had done it deliberately . But I remember meeting with the folks at 167 North Green and showing them our financials and telling them our story and they were like I don't know that this makes sense for you guys .

At the same time , we were just starting to go through the process to raise money and we told them hey , we're going to go raise private equity , we're looking to probably raise a couple hundred million dollars here to get us to a point where we can be a multi-billion dollar brokerage and continue to build this thing .

And they were like okay , if you do that , sure you can have the office . And why don't you walk us through kind of what eventually became the sale to Artbest and how we even got to that point ? Because that was not the plan but eventually became the best possible plan for us . But walk us through that .

And , talking to Jeff and our investment , our investment partner it's . We need to plan for that and we need to start going out and finding a long-term financial partner who can help us become a billion dollar entity . And we partnered with JP Morgan and they were going to kind of lead us through the process and they wanted us to go the private equity route .

And at the same time , we met Artbest and Artbest . What we thought was a strategic partner for us and I'm trying to like the private equity group in our minds is capital and they're going to be very cost conscious . They're going to want us to focus on cost efficiency and get a return for their money as soon as possible .

Artbest is this 100-year-old business with tons of relationships within the industry that primarily specializes in its great at LTL service and they have a brokerage that's similar to ours in that it's growing and they're building it and want to invest in it , but their brokerage is very heavily reliant on small , mid-sized and mid-market shippers and they haven't had a ton

of enterprise volume flowing through it . We are the opposite . We are very heavily enterprise driven motivated . We have the processes built for it , we've got the teams built for it and our sales group is small compared to theirs . I mean we had 20 or 25 sellers at the time . Most of the selling had been done by a small group of people .

We never really needed a massive sales department because we were building and scaling our revenues like crazy .

Artbest , on the other hand , had hundreds of sellers , tremendous relationships with all of these shippers nationwide and they had a very healthy balance sheet and a willingness to invest in the current brokerage that they had in our brokerage and put the two together , it was a match that made tons of sense .

We're going to take Molo from an enterprise-heavy brokerage to . We're bringing the best of both worlds into one house and we've got funding and a great parent company to stand that up underneath .

We should take a very serious look at this instead of going the private equity route , and ultimately we felt like Artbest made the most sense and offered the best short and long-term opportunity for Molo and now Molo-Arkbest to build and scale an incredible brokerage . And so that was kind of the thought process and decision .

We knew we needed capital and we felt like Artbest wasn't just capital , they were capital experience , history , sales floor relationships and we thought it would catapult us to multi-billion faster and better and that's why we partnered with them and I think that go ahead .

I mean we would have had to hire another 100 plus sellers and we just the hardest part to me in selling and brokerage especially if you're not going to pretend you have some fancy thing that you probably don't is getting the meeting Is getting a customer to just take a meeting with you , because there are so many now .

I mean there are thousands and thousands and shippers probably get a good shippers probably get 100 emails a day from people wanting their business and it was so hard . I mean , I remember telling folks that it was a curse and a blessing to be us .

The curse was , because we were selling the basics , that it took a lot longer for us to get in with customers than you might want to and you had to be respectfully persistent and wait for that chance . The blessing was we were so good at executing that once you did finally get in , you were likely to grow very quickly with that customer .

We had tremendous depth with our customers and we had 500 or so maybe 600 at most customers for a $600 million revenue business .

And then I see ArkBest , a $4 billion company , a lot of LTL , good expedite and not a lot of truckload brokerage , but they have thousands and thousands of customers and they have these great sales people who have 20 plus year relationships with their customers and it's like so you're telling me you can just walk us in the room with these folks and we can haul

their freight like or at least get a meeting , because we knew once we got a meeting , I mean we were likely to get some business out of it . So that , to me , was the biggest thing I couldn't take my eyes off of was this was going to make getting to multi-billion so much easier . I mean we really wanted to take over the industry .

We wanted to be the top revenue producing company in the industry and we thought it might take us a long time to get there , but we thought with ArkBest we could get there even faster . I still think they can .

I still think it's there for the taking and you know , while you and I may not be there anymore , the people running that business are the people we kind of hand selected and putting those roles Jack and Sarah and Ryan and Joe . I mean we , you and I hand selected those people and hired them .

It's funny because I I just remember interviewing those folks and it debt not so much because he was earlier , but the other three I remember interviewing and you were one of the biggest selling points for me on why they should join the team and they became such important point parts of our team .

I'm I'm very grateful and I think one of the coolest things for me throughout that process was the fact that each one of them after the fact because you know , I think they knew me for being this kind of crazy oratic dude who could sell a little bit , but the idea of me running this brokerage was probably a little crazy to them before they joined Molo I told

them well , wait till you meet that , wait till you see what this guy's like to work with . And I think you're , you'll be very happy that this is a guy you came to work for . And months later , each one of them , at various points , would say to me like dude , this

is . I've never worked with someone better , and I think it's a testament to what a great leader you were for our business from day one until our very last day , because you did build a sustainable business with a group of people who carry on beyond our own legacy , and so I think you know this has gotten me to thinking about what I'm proud of .

I'm going to spit it back to you and ask you in the grand scheme of what we built , what are you most proud of ?

We want to be the best at how we provide an experience for our customer , our people , our drivers , our shippers , and to watch everybody whether you know they didn't have any freight experience or they came from another large freight broker , come into our business and say the , the culture you've built , the strategy that you've set , the way people approach this

business , treat each other , act they all , they all kind of said you guys walk the walk versus just talk the talk , and that that , to me , was what I always was most proud of .

The way that you know our people maximized their opportunity and the way that people came in as an ops rep and next thing , you know they're running a team or they're building a new department was incredible and just the the .

The way that they all work together to change each other's lives and provide this freight experience for one another is what I'm it's not even close Most , most proud of is the people that we worked with and got a chance to spend time with and build the business with , and now that we're not there anymore , to your point like just so confident in the group that

still remains in the arc best team that we merged with and just , they have the right people , they have the right mindset , they have the right infrastructure in place to take it from where they are today to being one of the biggest brokers in the country .

If they continue to just keep that simple strategy in mind and continue executing every single day , with the people , the driver , the shipper , at the center of what they do .

I'm trying to figure out what's next and what motivates me , and I know it will be competing in some fashion with a team of people that are super bought into a mission plan , because that's the fun part about it doesn't have to be within freight or transportation , it's just a group of people that you want to work with and you want to show up for and compete

with and attack with every single day . That's what I'm looking to do next .

I don't think we'll be broker and freight anytime soon , certainly not . But if there's anything that we've learned , it's that you could probably figure out just about anything and , if you can get the right motivation and idea and concept , the world's kind of your oyster .

Hopefully we figure that out soon and have a way to get back into whatever the game is and start having fun again To our audience . Thank you for listening . Hope you enjoyed the Matt Bogert story . The Molo story intertwined within that . We'll see you next week . Thanks for having me .