Ep. #16: Eddie Leshin

I am recovering from a few days in Houston , texas , where I watched my Michigan Wolverines win the national championship . I was a little worried my voice would be working today as my fiance in the first quarter , as I was screaming I mean I'm a loud fan and she goes . You know you're recording in two days , right , and I go .

So I was like okay , well , we're just gonna have to risk it , because there's no way I'm sitting here silently for four quarters .

You know you've got JJ , our quarterback , who seems to be one of the wisest young kids in the country , who's a big meditator . Before every game he's sitting out on the field with his shoes off , getting grounded , meditating , preparing himself . But Donovan Edwards , you know he had a great year last year .

In the last game against Ohio State he scores two long touchdowns and he's our second running back . He is not the starter , but he is an NFL talent . He plays behind Blake Horum , who's , you know , maybe an undisputed best running back in Michigan history at this point , and he came back this year . He could have transferred , he could have been drafted .

He came back , did not have a great year . His yards per carry was like half what it was the year before . He only had a couple touchdowns compared to , I think , seven last year . And he was asked in an interview just two days before the game . You know , when they're doing media day , he said the guy says to him hey , you know , you've had a tough year .

Has it been frustrating for you personally ? And he just kind of smiles and he's like you know , god puts challenges in front of us , he gives us ups and he gives us downs and he keeps us grounded . And this was a challenge for me . It was a tough year for me mentally and you know , I went and I got a therapist .

I talked to that therapist all the time and I just stayed focused , stayed focused on our mission and the wisdom that this young kid has . To kind of stay focused like that , despite the challenges where many people be like , screw this , I'm leaving , I'm getting out of here , I'm going to go transfer because I'm not getting my playing time .

He said no , I'm going to stay focused despite a tough year . He comes in in the national championship game in the first quarter twice , gets the ball and makes a great play , runs for 40 plus yards for two touchdowns to really set the team up for the win . I mean that was incredible .

I don't watch a lot of Michigan football because I'm clearly a badger , but my daughter is at Ohio State , so those two things don't go to me with Michigan . But but ultimately I'm happy for the big 10 and I'm happy for my Michigan friends that aren't the worst fans .

But generally speaking I think he was a great sort of back that took the ball off the short pass on the screens or on the outside and they just had so much power and weapons to sort of take advantage of on the running game and that probably took away some of its opportunity , even as a backup , because there certainly are good backs that play backup roles ,

that come in for certain types of plays that are more advantageous , and it was good to see him have a good , you know , finish to the year .

Or you know , in in , in dealing with that , you and I are two people who have both had to sit out non-competes and you know that is , in one respect , away getting knocked on our ass . And I think I heard you say on another podcast that you're a professional non-computer .

I found myself saying a lot , and I say that from a place of tremendous privilege . You know I've sold the company I made . I made good money but still , you know , the thing I cared and loved about most was taken from me and you've had , you know , similar experiences . So how have you ?

You know you're older and wiser than me I don't know about wiser , older , but how have you dealt with , kind of getting knocked on your ass ?

They they asked me like when they were like talking about leaving , what I wanted them to say , and I said why do I care what you say , I'm leaving , you say whatever you want to say .

I think I was just sort of like you know , good riddance , you know , go fine , if you don't need me , if you don't want me , you know I'm happy to find something else to do , and I think for me it was .

You know , during that period of time and you probably went through this , you know , the motions were on high on the first sort of like what am I going to do ? I got to get back out there , I got to figure out what I'm going to do . This non-compete thing is kind of like will it stand , will it hold up ?

If they really fired me , so to speak , and it probably wouldn't have held up , but they had a bunch of money that they owed me and I knew they were just holding . I would end up having to go after

them .

So , and it was two years , and it was literally in 2008 , the day after Bear Stearns collapsed , and then six , three months later , the entire world went to garbage in the Great Recession , and so I think the way I dealt with it was like look , like anything in life , you know , if you work for somebody else or you sign up to do something where you're

responsible to other people , but somebody owns your sort of job and your role . This is the risk , and so , unless you want to do it on your own which then as you probably also know , you're beholden to private equity or banks or investors , so there's always somebody unless you really do it yourself , organically , from scratch or with your own money .

And so I kind of just took it like hey , you know , I'm going to figure this out . I saved for this day . I knew financially I was in a position to buy myself a lot of time to be able to figure out what I wanted to do next , and I wanted to explore doing other things . So I mean , that kind of was the way I sort of .

But the first 30 , 60 days were like I got to keep my network and I got to make phone calls and you know , get out , reach out to recruiters and see what else is out there . And then it sort of settles down and you're kind of like , okay , this is not the end of the . You know things in my life that are going to matter .

This is just the end of a chapter and it's certainly not going to define me as the entire story or , you know , the conclusion of the book .

I felt like I made a part , my own baby , even though , you know , I didn't start it or anything . But I put everything I had into it , like so many of the people we worked with . But leaving that , I was motivated , so I was good .

You know , I was inspired to build Molo and but then , leaving Molo , there was a part of me that felt like that was my life , like that was it , that was everything . As time has passed and I've done the work and I've , you know , I really .

I mean , I meet with a therapist once a week about this stuff and I meet with a coach separately once a week about this stuff . I don't know , you know different words , but they do the same thing for me .

They help me see the world through another lens and for me it's like I'm now , you know , nine , ten , ten months removed actually , and I am starting to see things through a more positive lens , one where it's like I'm learning more about myself now than I ever did before , and I think , you know , I had a coach and a therapist when I was still at Molo , but

I don't think I was as bought into them as I am now , because then I thought , like I'm running this company , I got these answers , I can figure this stuff out like I prioritize the business so I would you know , I'd have homework from my coach and I put it on the back burner because you know I'd more important things in the business .

Now it's like I got nothing else to do . So I'm doing this work , this kind of deep work on myself , and it's realizing like there were a lot of things I had that were issues while I was running the business and if I hadn't left , I don't think I ever would have dealt with them .

You know how many times Abraham Lincoln , you know , ran for office , didn't win , or the things that you know there's famous like 10 things that he didn't do before he became president , that he was not elected , or you know and there's plenty of those stories in the world the people who got knocked down before they got back up .

Certainly , you know , if you look at Steve Jobs and what happened with Apple and then when he came back , there's tons of those stories , and I think what you know , that that old famous you know saying about , you know makes you stronger . The things that in your life that knock you down a little bit is true . I you know it's funny .

I'll tell you a funny story . I know you'll appreciate , because you've been through what you've been through the last 10 months , but I went to a Hawks game with my son right after I think it was right after Coyote sold or right after Coyote .

I left Coyote or I don't know it's sometime during the Coyote situation and there were two executives , one of the executives from Robinson with my counterparts at Rob from Robinson at the game that I ran into and one of them was responsible for my exit at Robinson . When they said we're gonna move in another direction and you know , goodbye .

And I said to my son . I said this is so-and-so . I don't want to name any names , but this is who you have to thank for at least 60% of our wealth it's all about perspective , all about perspective . I don't think he enjoyed the , the comment , but but that's . You know , that's the the other one . You'll like this story too .

When I got to Coyote I went to an SMC three conference and ran into the other person who was part of that team that that ultimately terminated me at Robinson and I was going into the bathroom and as I'm coming out he's like , hey , eddie , I haven't seen you . And I'm like where would you have seen me ? And he's like , well , you know , I don't .

I don't know , you know around or whatever , I haven't heard . You know I haven't talked to you . And I'm like the last time we spoke you basically fired , so I didn't really think about calling you up to see how your family was doing or really send in you know a holiday card , but nice to see , I guess .

And you know he walked away sort of dumbfounded by the conversation because he didn't know what to say . But I kind of feel like that's probably just a little bit about their personality of like .

It's like you know , ten months later , if you're still sitting there and you're angry at this person , what do you think that person's thinking about ? They have long forgotten you , they have long stopped worrying about you and your issues and it's like you're giving so much power to this individual over you . So it's like that's a bit has been .

A big turning point for me is like , let it go , man .

Like I'm not helping anybody , especially myself , to sit here and be resentful or upset or angry at what had happened , versus like do the work and make sure that a year from now , two years from now , five years from now , I'm in a place where anybody is looking and saying , oh okay , that guy did get back on his feet .

And look , I often say I would not be the person I am today if I did not go through those experiences that I went through , because I wouldn't have learned any portion of the amount I learned about private equity , about , you know , investing , about angel on the part of Hyde Park angels and angel investing and being a deal lead and and valuations , and you know

safes and convertible notes and and all these things that I just would have never gotten the exposure to how to finance and raise capital . I just wouldn't have ended up doing those things and I was a loyal guy . I probably would have never left either of my jobs had I not been sort of , you know , come to a yeah or just certainly .

You know they decided to move in another direction and you know that happens people decide that you're not the right fit for their organization any further and they have the right to make those choices .

So I may not agree with them , but I'm not in that position to do so , and so you know , I look at it as a learning and an opportunity to better myself yeah , so I kind of jumped right into this through the Michigan quote and then in a non-competes I didn't give your background or your bio at all .

So you did join Hyde Park Angels , which does angel investing , and Woodlawn Partners private equity you founded .

So a lesson , I think , to anyone who will sit out and on compete or something of the like , rather than sit and sulk find something to do , find a new skill you can learn where you can apply your experience or whatever you do know or learn something new .

I mean , there's just there's so much opportunity out there and yeah , I have that kind of one-track mind . I definitely spent months with this kind of significant fear of freight is the only thing I know . You know I started in freight when I was 16 .

I barely paid attention in college and you know I'm 33 today and now I've got three years where I can't touch freight again . I'm screwed .

I'll never be able to do anything else and it took me a while to get off of that kind of feeling sorry for yourself , pity train and now start to focus on what else I can do , because you know , if you can learn freight , you can learn a lot of things .

It's certainly a skill and I think trying to figure out how to reinvent yourself or do something different than you know is a really difficult thing to do and it takes a little bit of that patience , like you said , sort of the you know , work it out . Some of it is timing and luck . You got to get a little bit of help from some other parties .

It's not easy to just sort of start thinking about doing something else .

But I do think that there is a vast world of opportunities and a vast world of things you can do and it just takes time to sort of figure out how to plow through that stuff in your first 30 and 60 days and then through that first year to kind of see how it's really a you know , as people always say , right , it's , it's , it's a marathon , not a sprint ,

but it is a journey .

And even you know , but with my kids I always say , like you know , your first job isn't maybe it will be your only job , but it could just be a , you know , a part of your journey and it leads to another sort of fork in the road and a choice to be made in the path and whether that's the right decision you'll make will lead to another choice and another

decision . You know , I jokingly say to people all the time , you know , I met my wife at college . You know , I was 20 years old , she was 18 at Wisconsin and you know , I don't think if I didn't go to Wisconsin or she didn't go to Wisconsin , I wouldn't be married .

That doesn't mean I would have been as happy or certainly is in love with the person that I am . But I think that choice , when I was opening the envelope , deciding where I was gonna go to college , I wasn't thinking like , well , what if you meet your wife there ? Would I have gone to Wisconsin ?

Maybe not , you know , maybe I would have gone to , you know , someplace else . So you know , ucla sounds a little bit better . Or you know , maybe someplace out California or South .

But you know , I think it's hard to always know how those those , those choices and those things that are gonna come your way will affect you in the long term , but their choices and there's fortune , the road and there's past , and you find your way and there's opportunities and everything .

I'm not gonna sound like an idiot if I go talk to this guy in private equity or you know , whatever it may be . And so I feel like there's kind of paralysis of caused by fear of like I don't want to look like a dummy because I only know about freight , so I don't want to start this conversation .

But you just kind of have to put yourself out there and be comfortable being uncomfortable , or be comfortable sounding like a fool to an extent because you don't know something . Ask the questions and be curious and try to learn , and that will show you a path of what could be a next interesting chapter in your life . Well said , I couldn't agree more .

So last thing , on non-competes nothing to do with you and I and our non-competes , but where do you see there's ? The non-competes are interesting in our industry , you know , if it weren't . For if you think about the way our industry works today , we're gonna eventually we're gonna go to backhaulers after this .

But so many of the successful companies in our industry that exist today are a product of , in some way , shape or form , tied to , american backhaulers , and so , in a lot of ways , you know , if they were more strict or non-competes in the world , maybe a lot of these companies wouldn't have existed , because people would have been tied to their origin and not be

able to leave or whatever . But our , our industry is very entrepreneurial in nature . People are ambitious , they see opportunity , they see it's not that hard to start a new brokerage . What are your general thoughts on non-competes ? Should they exist ? Should they not ? We can tie non-solicits in there too . How do you think about the whole thing ?

But I do get in a non-asset based business where you're not producing a product , there's no sort of trade secret type stuff for the most part , other than sort of some intellectual property and maybe some code which most people aren't really getting access to . You know that non-solicitations have always made sense to me . Non-competes never did .

I always felt like it was . It was sort of a joke to sort of say somebody can't work and I think the companies that that created them always figured that they would sort of see how people challenged them if they came up .

But I just am not a fan of of telling somebody that you don't want to work for you or doesn't want to work for you , that they can't work in your industry . But not taking their people , your people and not taking your customers I think is completely reasonable and valid .

And , ironically , one of the things I think is the funniest about non-competes which you will get now that you've been a CEO , founder and owner , is that non-competes when you sell your company . Start the day you sell the business even though you're working for the company that bought you , and so the clock starts ticking for your non-compete .

You could stay for three years , have a three-year non-compete , work through the three years and leave with no non-compete because you sold the business . The most important people in the company , the most valuable people that are selling the company to somebody else , are treated better in a non-compete fashion than the people who work for that company .

Seemed always ironic and almost just ridiculous to me .

But it is interesting that , like , as you brought up kind of selling that , like you know , I remember that being a part of the conversations what do non-competes look like ? And there is a value attribution to that . Because , if I mean , how do you think about M&A in general in our industry ?

And I'm just moving along here because , like , do you feel like it works ? And you know , bringing up M&A ties directly to non-competes , because I have seen a lot of situations where after a deal is completed , people leave , and there are a lot of examples You've been a part of two , three .

You've been through several at least the businesses you've been a part of have . So do you feel like it's a successful can be a successful move for a company to go and buy a brokerage and expect that they will get significant return over time on that investment ? I think there's yeah , absolutely .

I mean , certainly if you look at private equity businesses that are buying and investing capital and putting you know forth the effort to try to deploy more capital to help a business grow that a company wouldn't necessarily do on their own , those are strategically valuable investments for both the sellers and the buyers .

I think if you're looking at people who buy additional service lines , those can drastically improve their overall go-to-market strategy or their company trajectory .

I mean , if you really look at Robinson as an example , buying Phoenix or Freq , those are pretty strategically valuable investments that they made to bring themselves globally and into sort of the digital marketplace on the small parcel and the freight and the LTL side .

So you know and there's so many examples I mean certainly Brad Jacobs has built a tremendous valuable company through taking whether you call it a shell or a small business , I don't know what he would refer to it as and building out , you know , a completely different sort of product category or service line than he intended to initially , where he was just going

after brokerages and wanted to be not asset-based and ended up , you know , buying Conway and New Breed and a bunch of warehousing businesses and turned it into a global , you know supply chain solutions business . Those are really successful stories . So I think M&A does really work .

I do think you know I've been a part of a couple of M&A transactions where , you know , I own a small warehouse and trucking business up in Boston called Tie Logistics with a Capital Partner and we bought Shear Logistics back in July of 2022 with another Capital Partner .

And you know , I think those opportunities are how do we utilize capital and partners to help , you know , take a business that is currently being run by an entrepreneur or founder that doesn't necessarily have the desire , the wherewithal or the knowledge base of how to take it to the next level , or doesn't just have the desire to take the risk associated with

putting that capital back into the business . And , you know , at whatever age they're at . You know Tie , we bought from a third generation Shear . We bought from a founder that was , you know , approaching retirement years and wanted to certainly not continue to take the same risk or built a great business .

So I think it depends on the reasons for what you're acquiring and what strategically advantageously comes out of that . I think there's a lot of really good strategic purchases that have happened to them today .

So I knew some people , one of whom owned a company called M Nails that ended up . Oh , who did they sell to ? I don't remember who it was , but they . I did some Home Depot displays and cap displays and worked for them for a little bit . And then Paul Lowe reached out and said you know , I'm a partner in this trucking company , bt Trucking .

They need a dispatcher . And I was like , all right , well , okay , I got to figure out what I'm going to do after this sort of project-based work ends . So I went to meet Mike Irwin of BT Trucking and drove up into Bensonville and you know no idea the airport walked into a small little office and got the dispatch job and there were no .

You know we used to run computer mileage cost a dollar to run every time you wanted to run miles . So you looked it up in a Ram McNally book and we had a circular board with T cards on it that kept track of all the trucks and the loads . So I learned my way through that .

And then Mike and Paul had backed a guy who came from a company called Ace Pool Car who started Blue Thunder Truck Brokerage in the back office of BT Trucking . So I started to learn a little bit about pool distribution and started learning about cross docking and learned how to drive a forklift and loaded trucks .

And then my first sales call was with a guy named Jeff Silver who , basically Paul , called me up and said Jeff's going to meet these guys . I think it might have been Norcall , but it might have been Willamette out in North Lane . You want to go check it out and see what you know sales call is all about .

So I went to the sales call with Jeff and then Jeff went back down to back haulers and I believe the story goes . He said to Paul you know we're calling like crazy , why don't you bring him down here to help us ? And I was ready for the next challenge . You know I sort of became head dispatcher .

I had been off , you know , learned a ton of lessons about truck drivers and loads and almost got threatened to be killed a couple of times for poorly acting . Poorly acting for you know , yelling at your driver once or twice , that I should have never done and you're like okay , now I understand , so I got you know .

You know , I would never have known those things if I had just gone into work at back all the truckload driving . And so I got a really really great education in the business .

And then I went to back allers and started as Paul's assistant and it was funny , back allers back then was 40 people and I just sort of like started doing everything that nobody else wanted to do , which has always been the story of my career , because you know we did contracts and no one ever read them and I started reading them and then talking to lawyers

and , you know , coming up with better claims processes and really sort of the fundamental operational services .

Plus , I had a group and grew my group and actually you know my claim to fame is the first month that I ever beat Paul in dollars , not loads , because he did a lot of loads but he didn't do a lot of dollars and I did a lot of dollars and not a lot of loads , because I didn't like that part of the business .

The first month I ever beat him was the last month he was a sales rep . Then he dispersed all his accounts and went on to , you know , obviously build back allers to what it became and sold it to Robinson . But it was , it was funny . I mean it was , it was .

It is really remarkable the talent that came out of that place and you know I learned every facet of the business from you know , really going from 40 people to 700 people .

He is known in a lot of circles as kind of the Godfather of Freight Brokerage because , you know , back callers is the origin story for so many great companies today and it's funny though , as I hear you talk about , you know Paul had when 40 , 50 , 60 employees and he's managing his own accounts and you know everybody's kind of doing everything and everybody's got

to sell . And then you start to grow and you start to pass that stuff off and there's an assistant or an ops type person who's figuring out the contracts Okay , we've got claims , got to figure out how to settle claims , handle claims and starts to build processes and it's like what was that company in the early nineties ?

It reminds me a lot of what my company looked like in 2018 , 2019 . And I think a lot of other brokers who were probably listening to this think , dang , that's what my 50 person company looks like today .

The technology probably was a little different back then ? I well , not probably . It definitely was . What was what ? Would they give us some color into what brokerage looked like in the early nineties ? Like I mean , yeah , I mean macro point forecast did not exist .

There was no Google Maps , there was no . If you were giving driver directions to a place , you looked in the book for the name of the warehouse and you read them , the directions that you had gotten for the driver .

So I don't remember that there was a computer at back hours when I started , even though there was stuff falling down from the ceiling on your desk that might have taken out you know , a few papers or maybe a computer or a phone , or Jeff was busy , you know , knocking down walls to expand space .

But the you know the crux of it was there was a computer system that sort of tracked orders and I think it was really more kind of for the financial aspects of trying to keep track of things than it really was about free brokering . And then there was the icon , which I don't really know .

You'd have to ask Jeff about this , but the icon was sort of like the next technology and it sort of had some pieces of the transactional , but the real like underlying informational stuff that was important to a load was nowhere .

So when John called you and gave you that load and you know whoever it was going to in Columbus , ohio , let's say it was going to Pigley Wiggly , you know you wrote down , you entered the order . You wrote down on a pink pad which , if you go to the ABA Facebook page , you can see .

All these things that people still had , like a pink pad , was your orders and it was at first . It was you know what did they call that where it went through to the second piece , so you had the record in case the order got lost . But I get carbon , whatever it was , but I get what you're saying .

So you , it was like a checkbook register where you wrote the check and then below it was another piece of paper that kept track of what you wrote .

You know , well , before me well , I don't know well before me , but before me they had already really separated into customer and carrier , the Chicago way , the Chicago , you know , style and split model , which was really we can get to , but a direct result of the carriers telling , you know , backhaulers , how much they hated Robinson's structure of having to call

each office and never getting treated well by one party or the other . So they were like , well , why don't we treat them like a customer ? But you would go and you would call that warehouse to find out the information , no differently than you did growing up in this business , and you'd be like , okay , what's your hours , do I need an appointment ?

And can you give me directions off the major interstate for the driver . And you'd put that in a book so you didn't have to call back again every time to ask and write it down . So then , when the driver was in dispatch , you'd be like , okay , what's your load number ? You pull the load up in the system . And then they'd be like , do you need directions ?

Yes , and you'd go and you'd pull the book out and you'd be like here's the directions . Eventually that got moved into the eye to the from icon or whatever the next one was and , you know , eventually we didn't have books anymore . But I remember being at a late 90s grateful dead show when the when I got a call .

I just got home at like one o'clock in the morning and I got a call from Paul or Jeff or Paul I think it was Paul that the system had crashed in the back .

The backup was six hours behind and we were in after reenter all the loads and we worked for like 36 straight hours and we enter all the loads into the computer before Monday morning because it was like a Friday night show or Saturday night show that I went to and that was the life you sort of like , did what you had to do and that was it .

I don't know if it was the winter snowstorm or another storm before the winter snowstorm , but basically we had to wheel chairs with computers down the street to the arcade because there was no power in the in the building .

And like that was my first week at coyote , I was wheeling a chair with computers stacked up and cords around my neck and like down the street To paint the picture for the listeners

.

But I guess to your point in this story and I remember this because it was chaos I remember we were sending people to our house in Lake Bluff it was anywhere where there was internet . This was during a work day , like in the middle of the day or something , where everything was gone , all the power was out and there was no way for us to do our jobs .

And it was a Tuesday morning or whatever . You know the term freight never sleeps . It certainly doesn't sleep at 10 am on a Tuesday during the work day .

So I was like , okay , we'll fix this . This will not happen again .

What are some of the things that , in your mind , drove the success of that business , like why was backhaulers such a powerful kind of company in the industry and what do you think drove that ?

You know different sort of ways of thinking about a training programs and bringing in classes of people .

And John Thompson , who you know you don't hear as much about these days because I think he's been out of the business for a little bit but Johnny , you know , really built what we know is the Chicago style carrier system today and some of the greatest you know leaders from the carrier services side of the business or capacity sourcing side , came from his tutelage

. And you know there was just I don't remember who I was talking to the other day that said to me , you know , like it's about the team I mean , you know people would jokingly call it the Beatles and whether or not you think of it as Jeff , paul and John , you know in the same capacity of who was the other party .

You know in that foresum there were plenty of people that became sort of integral to that business .

That could have been the fourth or fifth and you know person responsible for that team , but it does take a team and I'm sure you know that from building your business and I think the same thing at Coyote I mean , we had an incredible team of people and I think that that when you can trust everybody to do their part and you can trust that those people are

as loyal and as passionate about the business and the direction as the others , then I think that that's what gives you the ability to sort of take the risks and drive the business to be the success that backhaulers was . But it takes that vision and that leadership from Paul to , you know , want it to be that business and those people to take those risks .

And you know , one of the early parts of backhaulers was Noam Frankel , who I don't know if you know , but you know Noam left right before or right after I got there and I think that there was just a difference of opinion about the direction of the business that Jeff and Paul had , that Noam had and I think Noam decided he was just gonna get bought out and

go in another direction . So you know , that's where you sort of kind of think about directionally . What was the things that defined that business ? I think it's the people that made the people underneath them stronger , smarter , better . You know , we just never took no for an answer and did our jobs in the best of our ability and started at the top .

You know , if there's one thing I've gotten to know about you from working together with you at Coyote is you were very much respected and revered and seen as a mentor by a lot of the mid-level , high-level kind of young , up-and-coming people . Coyote was littered with very talented people , young people who had come out of college and rose the ranks .

This wasn't a company that was just kind of hiring a bunch of people from outside and putting them in big roles . It was very much . People were able to grow into these big roles and you were definitely seen as someone who helped a lot

of people on the way . I'm curious can you talk about your leadership style a little bit and why ? Well , what's the best way to ask this question Like what ?

How do you become a good mentor is maybe a good question to start with there , and how do you think about your role as you did come into Coyote eventually we're skipping over Robinson for a minute , but just because my experience with you was at Coyote , and these folks who I worked with the camera rams of the world , and all these folks that really kind of

respect you and looked up to you .

I tend to always think that one of my strengths and weaknesses has been that I've put everybody before me .

I said to you earlier I don't know if I'm like you know , if it was on the , on the prior , during the , during the call today that you know I probably would have never left either of my jobs had I not sort of been asked to to leave or people decided to go in a different direction and I wasn't part of that choice and I'm pretty loyal to a fault ,

including at back callers . To Paul you know I was the one who stayed at Robinson after Jeff left , john left , paul left . You know I was the one left and I stayed for eight more years . Now , some of that was circumstantial . I was younger than them . I had , you know , primarily not . I had two young kids at home .

So I think you know the unselfishness and desire I've always found it to be incredibly satisfying to see other people succeed . I don't know if it's a you know , a characteristic that I just . I just think it's incredibly satisfying to see people succeed and to help them be more successful .

And I've never thought of myself as somebody that's smarter than anyone else in the room . We all come from different sort of experiences and backgrounds , and so I always enjoy being around smart people in the room and I just don't have the ego . I've never wanted to be in the spotlight .

I've never been the person who wants to be in front of somebody and , to a fault , probably have hurt myself in some respects , and not so much as to what I'm doing . I think that's probably my greatest trait . I mean , you know the famous coyote story .

I know you had Cameron on here , but and I listened to his podcast but the first day at coyote , you know , when I got , when Jeff said to me , what do you want me to call you ? And I was like I don't want you to call me anything he's like well , what title should we go with you ? I'm like I don't really .

You know , janitor , I don't know I'm really concerned about the title coming in . You know , at the time Greg Seeple was the COO and I was like you know , I'm not really worried about the title . And he's like what do you know ? What are you going to do ? And I'm like I'm going to sit down and I'm going to figure out what needs to get done .

And he's like what do you mean ? I'm like I'm going to come in and I'm going to sit down and I'm going to figure out what needs to get done . And he really brought me in originally to help with the US Foods project because they were getting on a bunch of business and they didn't .

And he's like I don't know anything about LTL and I had built the LTL platform of Backhawars and Robinson for Chicago Central and I knew a lot about it and I , you know it was like yeah , no problem , I can help you , we'll take it on , we'll service it .

And so the first day I sat down , I sat next to Kate Van Dyke and Cameron and I'm like they're like who is this old guy coming in here sitting down next to me and what is he here to do ? And they didn't know me from any Like .

And so I sat down and said got any load you need to enter , appointments you need made , and everything else just started coming to me from there . So that was my mentor style . It was like problems will come to me . People will say , well , how do I deal with this ?

And I remember the first meeting that we had with the management team and Jeff was up at the board and I think I made some comment like what about this ? Or why did we do this ? And we left the meeting and I think Danny Espoir and her Pat came up to me and said you're the first person that's ever spoken to a meeting other than Jeff or Mary Ann .

And I was like , well , that's got to change . But they were all young and they didn't know anything . So it was fun . It was a really , really incredible opportunity to come in and see all these people who really just needed to have somebody to talk to about their issues , their problems with their freight , their life challenges and I don't know .

I just always felt like I was in touch with that .

When you think about your leadership style in challenging some of these young folks through getting them to think about problems in a different way , as I say that , does that jog anything for you ?

Unfortunately , one of my character flaws is that I'm not an empathetic listener , so I tend to start thinking about the answer faster than they're saying it and then I want to talk , sometimes cut people off and tend to want to get to the resolution relatively faster than some people are able to move , but I do want to know if they're on the path , and I think

one of the greatest skill sets that I've had throughout my career that I've often tried to teach people to do is what I used to say is sort of the six degrees of management , which would be six degrees out and six degrees down . I always tried to keep in touch with six degrees away from myself and the people surrounding me .

So , if you remember , like a coyote , I knew as many people that I managed directly as I did that they managed , and I always wanted to walk around the floor and talk to people , and one of my claims to fame at Robinson was that I used to work later because I hated coming in the morning I'm not a morning guy and I used to work the West Coast very early

on when we didn't have a West Coast . I was one of the first people to have West Coast freight .

So I was always there from like 7 in the morning to 7 at night and eventually I started coming in later because people wanted to come in early and leave early and I came in later and stayed later and I used to , you know , every night before I would leave I would go over to driver's services and say goodbye to every single person that was there , and the

last day at Robinson I went to every single person's desk to say goodbye . I did the same thing at Coyote to each individual person to thank them for the work that they did to help me be the success that I was , because it takes an effort by a team .

But the ironic thing about that story was that at Robinson the person who ran the driver services group that we had built said to me you know , I just want you to know , every single night you walked this way and say goodbye to us when there was a door four feet from your desk that you could have walked down to the garage , and I just want you to know

how much it meant to every single person in this department and I never thought about it Like that just was the way I was raised , right . Like you know , these are people and a part of it goes back to what we sort of talked about , which is , like I realized really early on the drivers are what put food on my table .

You know the carriers and the drivers are really , and the customers too . But you know the drivers , if you treat them right , you treat them with respect and you recognize how valuable and how completely irrelevant we are without them . You really recognize that everybody in this process in a non-asset-based business is critical .

So , getting back to your thought or your question , I think the questions that I ask were always to see how well people could come up with a solution on their own , or to try to understand what they needed to learn . And that six degrees was always to try to keep in touch with every person you know connected to every other person .

But you can't do that 10 wide or 20 wide , so I would be selectively trying to look at ways to position that . And then the other thing I used to say is probably what my greatest leadership style was and the best ability to mentor people was I was willing to give a lot of rope .

I just had a really good sense of when we were gonna need to , when something could choke us or when something could do damage to the business . And I think a lot of people have a very hard time delegating out that wide or far to give people the rope necessary to really expand their own skill sets and develop their leadership skills .

And I could just see it coming a mile away when there was gonna be a problem that this was gonna create , that was gonna require somebody , something that was gonna risk a customer or a carrier relationship or big , big dollars where I was gonna need to be involved .

And I think that those things really helped me to to develop people and mentor people and really , you know , create the business leadership that we had . And I used to always say I was a player's coach . Right , I only wanted to be the person who made the decision when it was necessary , otherwise I was just a member of the team .

I mean , they're not going to develop it if you don't give them the opportunity to . But it is hard to know when you're putting yourself at risk by trusting someone that doesn't have the skill .

So I guess it's kind of doing it with a watchful eye and some of it is just some people are just innately better at recognizing talent and recognizing that someone is capable of taking on more than they're currently taking on . So I think that's an interesting piece to what you

said .

So I think I inherently trust and want to believe that everyone's capable and until they disappoint you or maybe that's the wrong word until they prove themselves not worthy or capable , I always felt like everybody , given the right chance and the right help , could become a little better , if not a lot better , at what they do .

So my job was to help them be a little better or a lot better at what they do . And you know , ironically I don't know if you remember this story , but I think you know at our first Christmas party at Coyote , you came up to me and you're like I don't understand .

Like you know , you had some question about driver services or dispatch and you were like you know , I'm not really sure I shouldn't be doing your job . And I said I'm not sure , andrew , you won't be doing my job one day . And when you're ready to do my job .

I hope you'll do it better than I will and my job is to make sure that there's somebody there that will do it better than I will . That will help the company succeed well past my timeline . And you know , that was just a real representation of your youth your exuberance , your passion , arrogance . It was all fun , it was hysterical .

I think I had your name tag . I think I still had your name tag from that party . But you know that was I loved that part of my career , watching people who wanted to be even , you know , greater than me . I was always like go get it . You know there's a lot of talent out there . You should go get what you want .

As you're walking out the door and even taking the long way whether deliberately or you weren't taking the long way because you wanted to take the long way you just this is part of what you felt you should be doing is saying good night to everyone .

When I think about my time at Molo , I think there are times where I was really dialed in and was being a great leader . I also think there are times where I was lost and was not , was not on my game . But what you just said and I'm a very self , I'm very self critical and there's a lot of negative self talk that I .

It's hard for me to remember some of the good times now because I spent a lot of time thinking about the shit I did wrong . But what you said reminded me of .

There was a period , I think for maybe two years , as we were growing , where every morning I would , the first thing I would do is just walk around and say good morning to everyone , and that was part of the best part of my day and became became an expectation for people that they were going to see you and if not , I'd get messages like coming in today ,

things like that . But your comment , too , about like the six degrees of separation out and down . I tried to stay as connected as possible with our team , especially those on the front lines , because that was how I thought I could really understand what we were doing well and what we weren't .

I mean , I thought you know , essentially my job was to understand what our customers needed and communicate that back to the masses and for our custom for us to make decisions based on that . And we looked at our customers as the shipper , the carrier and the employee .

I think the employee is such an important customer and brokerage if you're doing it the right way . You know . You spoke to non competes and the idea that a non compete is a fear driven tactic versus you know something I've always said , which is you shouldn't eat them .

You should just be focused on building the best business possible so people don't want to leave .

But in any case , one of the challenges that we had or I think some of my senior people felt they had was people eventually thinking they could just go to me to get around their bosses Because they did feel like they had a direct line to me and as we got bigger and bigger when we were up over 500 people it got to a point where it was almost like Andrew

, you shouldn't try to stay as connected with people on the front lines because , like , there is a hierarchy that we need to follow and you know directors and VPs can't feel like their orders are being ignored or something , because a rep is going to just go direct to you to give their problem and they know you're going to come back and try to get involved .

So I don't know , that was a challenge that that kind of came out of that . I'm just thinking of that now . I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or yeah , I mean that definitely does .

There was , I had nothing to hide and I don't sugarcoat too much , so for me , I would just turn around and I would react . To not react in a way , I would I pull that person into the room and say , look , this person feels this way and you manage this person and we need to get to the bottom of this . Like what's the problem ?

And I think both people knew I had their back , so it wasn't ever , you know . Comes back to your point about trust . Like you know , I never , there was never a second guessing that that person went around them , because I didn't let that stand , I didn't let that issue become fester to a fault .

You're sometimes , because sometimes it people would be less inclined to tell you the truth , right , like one of the things you know about leading a big business and growing into the CEO that you became is that people tell you what you want to hear . You know , I jokingly say , throughout my career . I was never the person .

There's an old UPS commercial ironically UPS where the guy you know comes into the boardroom and the guy's like tell me everything you know , I don't want you to be yes man and it's called the yes man commercial and I don't want you all to be yes man , whatever , and the guy says something that he's packing his box .

That's me Right , like I'm the person who , when , when you know someone says , I don't want you to tell me what I want to hear , I'm like okay , well , let me tell you what you don't want to hear . And then they're like wait , I didn't really want to hear that . So you know I was said that but I didn't really mean it . It was funny .

You talked about therapy . I'll tell you a funny therapy story . So after I left Robinson , I'm like well , you know , I'll go talk to a therapist . I , you know I got things to learn about myself and better myself and I thought to a therapist for a while and I had done therapy when I was a kid too , when I lost my dad .

But but it was different and you know he said that he wanted . Your biggest greatest flaws but incredible characteristics about you is when people you know are like they go to the South and somebody says to them oh , I wish I knew you were coming , I would have invited you for dinner . You actually think they mean it .

Or when somebody says to you oh , I haven't seen you in a long time , we should get together . You're the person who goes home and says let's get together Like it's just a . It's just a saying right , like I'm literally , like I can't lie , I don't have that like characteristic or ability to sort of sugar code , like I just say it like it is .

So it's ironic that I just never let that get in my way , because I think that's one of my strengths but it's a weakness and you know , I would be literally like talking a different language to people , because I think they literally mean everything they say and then when they don't , I'm like okay , well then , let's just deal with what you really mean .

So I guess my question would be like do you feel like there's a certain size company that you are best fit to , be most effective at ? Or because I've wanted this about myself and I don't know if it's just kind of that kind of negative self talk or feel like I always told myself like I can never be a public CEO Like I was .

I just didn't have the chops for it , didn't have the MBA , you know all that stuff . But I'm curious if you have a thinking about what you just said , if there's a thought there like you fit really well in a certain spot .

For me , too big is too siloed and too much politics , and too small is , you know , moving that flywheel . I just didn't get , I didn't start there .

So I always started with the foundation and I feel like building off that foundation was one of my greatest strengths and taking it to a place where somebody else could come in and play the politics and do the corporate world is a sweet spot .

And most of the people who worked for directly for me at Coyote I always taught them from day one that I was not going to be there past their time of , you know , becoming the leaders they were capable of . I knew that I was leaving when Warburg sold or Warburg left . I just had no , you know .

It's funny that you say that because I think if you look back on history and you and you think about history , most of the CEOs of very big public companies retained those roles because they had ownership and they had the ability to retain those roles and not be put out .

You know , I would guesstimate that if you look at , you know why Zuckerberg is still running Facebook , even though he doesn't run necessarily , and they brought in you know people to accompany him , or Serge and the Google story , or you know every one of those stories are people who retained ownership to the point where they had all the voting rights and they

couldn't be kicked out , you know . And then there's the Travis Kalanek stories and the you know other people who got put out because , whether there were issues or the boards owned enough of the business .

So one of the lessons in PE is , if you raise money , know who owns your business and know the choices you make around control , because I never thought I'd be the COO of a public-economic company unless it just happened out of circumstance . But I certainly wasn't going to interview for that job and get it Playing politics or doing some PowerPoint presentation .

You know , I've said my whole career . I'm a claymolder , not a model builder . My idea of a project plan is show me the clay , I'll mold you a beautiful , you know ship , but if you want someone to lay out the pieces on the table and put together a project plan and show you the box cover with the model on it , that isn't me .

the clay and you were seeing how you could mold it right and the business was also the clay right . But I noticed you joined boards and you've kind of gotten to that point in your career where you are more active on boards and not necessarily as kind of in the weeds , kind of seven to seven .

How do you mold clay from a board position and how does kind of your mindset shift ? Because it's harder to mold clay if not sitting there next to the two people asking the questions and seeing what you're doing ?

You know that's , if that's your greatest skill , which I think I agree that that's definitely one of them how do you make that impact from a board level ? And part of why I'm asking this is because I've thought about myself being able to join a board one day . But my skill is also in being in the business and seeing and understanding .

Okay , this is what the customer needs . This is what we have to give them . Can't necessarily do that from a board seat , or how do you do that from a board ?

I ended up doing board advisory work because I couldn't compete so it goes back to the chief non-competing officer but the during that period of time I got more comfortable with doing it and I started to recognize that it was harder to go back to doing a seven to seven job and putting in 60 to $100 a week into a job , even though I missed mentoring and

developing people and there is sort of that missing piece of the puzzle that I crave . So I've tried to bridge that gap a little bit . It isn't the same . It doesn't give you the same satisfaction , it doesn't give you the same ability to effectively watch people grow up like your children do in a business .

But I would say at the same time , if you do enough of them and you're involved in enough conversations , they sort of come to you with the same sort of questions like hey Eddie , have you seen this ? What would you do about this problem ?

You know how would you address this or you know what challenges have you seen , and then you sort of you're just working with a smaller group of executives and you can't see or effectively touch as much of the impact they're making . So you have to rely a little more on blind faith to sort of coach and develop them and let them sort of sink or swim .

There's a lot , a lot more rope and a lot less of your ability to catch them if they fall . They're business . They got to choose and decide how they're going to run it .

They also don't necessarily always listen , but I do think generally it's similar discussions and to your question earlier , to your point earlier , it's asking questions , getting answers , then seeing where you can add value and add and try to help .

But it definitely doesn't have the same satisfaction level as it does when you're running a day to day business and I do miss that a lot . I mean it has been a .

You know , sure we just hired a new CEO and you know we discussed me taking that job and I just I just wasn't ready to give up all the board seats I do and the advisory stuff I do and the lifestyle I live to go back into , you know , a 60 to 100 hour a week business and for what I just ?

I felt like I was getting a lot of really great experiences and a lot out of my career doing what I'm doing . That it's different , less satisfying in some respects and more satisfying in others .

Or people who say I'm thinking about a career change , or what do you think of this opportunity ? Or Eddie , I don't understand this language in this document . Or convertible note , or you know how much should I invest in this ? Or why is this tax thing work this way ? I just have a brain for that stuff . I don't know really why I just do .

I was always good in numbers and so I feel like it's giving back and it's different sort of dialogue , but it's the same , and I tend to not say no .

When I turned 40 , you know , my dad passed away when he was 39 years old . And when I turned 40 , I said I'm not going to keep saying no .

There's always a reason I can't go on that golf trip or that vacation , or my kids got this , or I got to work , or you know , I started to say yes a lot more to things and I just sort of was willing to sort of explore and think about how I could make the you know time we have on this earth as fun , enjoyable , valuable and give back as much as I

could to the people that I feel like you know helped me get to where I am , or wanted help , and I don't know .

That's sort of my MO and my priorities have changed a little bit about you know , I used to tell the training classes at Coyote and before Coyote , even at Robinson , that my goals were when I graduated college to make six figures by 26 and seven figures by 37 . And I achieved both those goals .

But I did that by starting out making 22 , five the first year , 25 the second year , 27 five third year and 30 the fourth year .

And I remember a conversation at Coyote where , if I told , I said to I don't know if you ever heard this story , but I used to tell the training classes you know how many of you got a college education and took on , you know , 100,000 , six figures worth of debt for a four year degree , and there'd be you know X number of people that would raise their hand

and I'd say how many of you , if I pay you 100 grand will give me the next four years to teach you about freight before you ask me for a raise . Hmm , you're willing to take four years of college , take on 100 grand of debt and learn , limited to Lee , almost nothing about business .

I'm willing to pay you 100 grand for the next four years to teach you how to make a lot more money . You won't give me six months before you want to know how much more you're going to make .

His was damaged to the point where you need to have it replaced and , for whatever circumstances happen , they monitor it for a long time and then decided it was the right time to do it . He went okay , but something happened and no one really knows what transpired . But he died nine months later .

And you know I only talk about it because it was probably the greatest impactful thing in my life that changed the trajectory of who I am and why I am .

As my mother likes to say , I got the , I got the mold , but I didn't get the bronze , because when you don't grow up with a father , I was never really taught how to schmooze or , you know , play the game . Maybe that's why I don't do so good in grad school and politics , but you know it changed the whole person that I am .

I mean I always tell people I wouldn't trade who I am today because of those circumstances . I grew up very early . I was the only male in my family , my other than my cousin . But my direct family was my sister , my mom , my , my aunt and my mom's sister and her two daughters , and that was I .

Was the only male older than the other side of my family , with one male cousin . But you know , I just learned a lot of hard knocks very early on in life and it changed the trajectory of who I probably would have become , who I am and how I parent . And you know it's funny . You talk about the lessons you've learned .

As you know , in business I always say it's amazing to be a father when you didn't have , you know , a father to learn from . You know , at 11 , I knew who my dad was , but I didn't know a lot about how he parented . You know , as an adult , as an adult male , right .

And you know your kids aren't born with an instruction manual , although it'd be really great if it came with like 6000 pieces of Legos and you know an instruction manual that tells you how to raise your kid . I'm not sure it would be right , but it would certainly .

You know , I'm not sure you wouldn't want to return it to IKEA , but it's , you know , it's interesting . That's how I've always looked at life in general , you know it's a journey and a challenge and you try to find your way . So it was a very impactful thing in my life and it definitely is 90% of who I am that impacted moment .

I tell my kids we're all going to the same place and there's a whole lot more people there than there are here . So when we're going , you know I don't know , but I'm going to try to do the most I can with this time in this life to enjoy the opportunities and the things that I have been afforded .

And a lot of that for people you know differs in what they choose to do with that time on earth .

For me it's probably about interacting with people and trying to give back and certainly be a good role model and a mentor . You know I tell my kids look , warren Buffett's going to die , maybe broke , if he gives it all the way under that thing he signed up for . But there will not be a dollar amount on his gravestone .

Every gravestone you see talks about that . He was a loving , respected father , brother , parent , son , friend . There's no dollar amounts on the news Two yard others , two yard others , and who shows up at your funeral ?

Hopefully not a lot of people , because you outlived them all , but relatively speaking , you know I try to do what matters when people you know I make that phone call that you need to make .

I try to teach my kids to be polite people who give back and are respectful to others and recognize that the world's a tough place and not everyone's nice , but look at the bright side and hold your head high and try to , you know , be the quality person that you want others to be . Hopefully we're coming around goes wrong .

It's just that stress and is it worth it ? I definitely . You know there's a , there's a part of me that is now not desperate . I just I really miss building . And it's not that I miss 12 hour days or miss sending emails to customers at nine o'clock at night , but I just miss the camaraderie and the team and the , the results that you see and build .

And I miss that so much and I want it back . And I'm not saying I need a back and brokerage , but I just want it in some fashion , but separately . I've had a conversation with my fiance where she's like , listen , you're not .

You know if you go back and start something , you're not traveling four days a week again like you used to , flying around the country to see customers all the time . Like we're building the family , we're going to do it together . It's like managing those priorities .

You know my family will always be the priority , but you know there's also that need to make an impact and impact others . You know I think about legacy a lot and what I wanted to .

You know I I always appreciated kind of seeing how many people at coyote were impacted by what we all built together and looking up to my parents and seeing kind of the impact that they had on so many people and it's like I wanted that for myself .

I wanted to be able to look back in 20 years and see that there were people who were grateful to what I helped them create in their own life . And you know I don't . You know there are parts of me that feel like we did a lot of that , but there are also parts of me that feel like there's there's something left still out there that I need to do .

So I don't know . I just am thinking about this as we talk about that .

Not working full time , part time doesn't really do it . So it's a balancing act , right .

And I think for people who didn't experience what I experienced , you know , fatherhood , like I remember , when my son was born , it was like completely like he was the first born , you know , like I was like this is what all I ever wanted to do was be the dad my dad didn't have the chance to be .

That was so much more of an impactful part of my life than most people who grew up with a father , you know . But there's plenty of people who've grown up in divorced households or you know challenging circumstances that you know they have different circumstances that drive their desire to be a parent and it's a balancing act .

Some people really need the professionals . You know impact to self , be the person they want to be . It doesn't define them , I wouldn't say , but it helps them be a better person a better . You know that's their hobby , that's their sport . I would say , jeff and Paul , that's their sport , right , winning in business , like Jeff used to always be .

Like I can't believe you're wasting four hours golfing , right ? He still says that Exactly . So you know , and Paul used to be like what do you mean ? You're going to the Cubs game . And I'd be like what do you mean ? I'm going to Cubs game .

He's like , well , there's freight on the board and I feel like there's always freight on the board , paul , thank God , there's always freight on the board . Thank God , there's always freight on the board . But you know he would have that way of being like then he'd call you at the Cubs game and the workload isn't moving .

You'd be like yep , I don't I see If you were here it would have been moved , you know . So you know , and you laugh because that was their sport , that was their . I just , you know , a part of me , I feel like , just sort of looks at the world and says , look , there's other parts to it also .

You know , I've traveled a ton , I've seen so much , I love history . I just think that the world you know we're here for such a short period of time in the scheme of how long the life has been around that you know there's a lot to do and a lot to see and a lot of things that drive or impact the person that you are . But it's hard .

You can do a lot of that part time , which can't do what you're talking about part time , and you just got to balance it . But you will , because you won't . You know , you'll live the normalized life of what people who had the ability to look back and say I know what that balance can be .

Yes , there's going to be times where it's not as balanced as I'd like it to be . There are other times I need to prioritize my family in front of the work , because it's just that balance needs to . You know , tip the scales that way Because you grew up in a more balanced environment to begin with , even though I know your family .

Your parents were divorced when you were younger . But I think , generally speaking , some people have the ability to balance those things out . For me , the weight was so heavy on the be the father side that I was willing to sort of think about .

And then the non-competes got in the way and I started doing things that didn't allow me to go back to work full time . And my kids were young enough and I got to spend all those years with them , even though they didn't really want to spend any time with me when they were that age and older . You know they were about their friends .

So you'll figure it out . I think you'll do a fine job at satisfying both sides of that equation , because I think the world needs your talent , your skill , your passion , your drive . You'll find your way .

That'll drive you , I think , in the direction you need to go , and don't let the don't let the forks whether they're intentional or they're throwing in front of you like a non-compete don't let those take up too much of your time and energy . And find a way to make the most of it , because it sounds like for you .

You ended up with a pretty nice situation where you got this part time stuff as a result of the non-compete and that allowed you to focus on the fatherhood aspect that you know was important to you . So I don't know . I'm looking for lessons here .

Look , I think what's most fascinating about our industry is that , again , I don't know if you ever heard me say this , but you know , if you work in customer service at ComEd , you know . Or Xfinity Cable , the people that call you are like they don't call it . That you know . Hey , thanks , my remote works so well .

I love that talking command into the remote control . And hey , comed , thank you , my power works 99.99% of the time . Those people field calls every day from people are like you know , my power's out . Why does my cable not work ?

They call you with a problem , like the customer service . People get calls in Comcast and you know that's the love , the luxury and the incredible fortune we have in being in a business that's daily and transactional and not a diagnosis by a doctor that tells you what's wrong , fixes you and you don't want to ever come back .

So you know we're fortunate to work in a space that's incredibly challenging , incredibly . You know just gift giving and I've been so blessed . And you know now I've seen a lot of different sides of it . I work with a Brazilian company . I worked on some of the early stage sides of it . I work with a warehouse and trucking company , a managed trans business .

You know I've looked . Now I'm working with a company called Better Trucks that's doing a small parcel final mile stuff . I love looking at every facet of logistics in the industry and I think we're fortunate to have the opportunities to do that and I think you will find your way .

No problem to put your stamp on something that'll make the world a better place , in logistics terms or in some other way , if you choose to go that direction .

at least one . So let's talk about the team , the managed transportation business . Let's talk about sheer . How did you why ? Why manage trans ? Why specifically sheer ? Like what brought that into the fold for you .

Jordan Cast was actually given to me by your father to manage when he came out of training . Jeff liked to give me the more challenging projects and Jordan was a really smart , passionate , driven kid who just wanted to conquer the world and I think he had no patience for anything .

So we developed what became sort of the managed trans sort of business out of backhaulers and one of the first customers came out of our group after the initial ones that are well known from Jordan and , I think , scott Simonic and .

But we had Ocean Spray and they came to us and wanted to do a managed trans business and we weren't really ready and so we put them off and then they came back around after they had done a contract with Schneider Logistics . We did their business and I've always felt that that part of the business was a really more interesting part of the business for me .

It was less commoditized . It was less , much more strategic in discussions around the supply chain and how to help a business you know execute .

But in 2011 or 2010 , when I got to Coyote and I think Heineken was really still pretty early on in the CTM experience , I remember having a conversation with Jeff and Pickett and Bill and Cicillor even too Maybe I don't remember who else , maybe it was Danny because he was working on Coke at the time or running the enterprise team but I felt like the managed

trans side of the business was just in the early stages of , or the early innings of , the game , because if you look at businesses that outsource right , you're talking about from the industry in general . Correct . Okay , just to- , no , that's a good clarification . The you know I felt like that .

I don't want to go on too long about this , but people had Y2K in 2000 had caused a lot of people to invest in ERP and technology because the Y2K scare and it kicked the can down the road a lot longer on the technology cycle for people to invest in technology because they had just all done it in 2000 to get ready for Y2K .

And then you had the 08 sort of great recession .

So , coming out of that period of time , technology was innovating and technology was aging and so what transpired during that period of time was I had looked at the industry and said you know , like ADP is an outsource for payroll , there's a lot of outsource manufacturing , there's outsource HR , there's outsourced other areas , and most of it had a lot to do with

whether it was manufacturing or services , had a lot to do with the fact that it wasn't a core competency of companies and other than prior to 2000 , when Walmart made supply chain a core competency and a differentiator in how they sourced and bought product to bring pricing down and to grow their business , that many followed , including Home Depot and others , there

really wasn't a reason why companies were in the execution part of transportation . It made no sense to me ever that there's a person , not that the job didn't make sense , but that there's a person worrying about a single transaction occurring through a TMS .

On the customer buying side of transactions , of free Strategically owning the decisions about who does that for you and managing what awards happen and how you manage the relationships and make the determinations about who should do what with a party that executes , made a ton of sense to me .

And whether you think about that from the financial institution space as an example of when you had a broker versus a wealth manager as an example , I just always felt like the industry would evolve to be less owned TMS and more owned strategy and outsourced execution , and so that kind of played out when that first evolution of technology occurred after the Y2K and

the Great Recession and it was the catalyst to a lot of large companies making those choices . But the smaller business is really just outsourced , right , they were single sourcing or they were .

There was somebody's job at stake and so , coming full circle to the current age , a lot of the companies that evolved those technologies whether it was CTM , tmc , transportation Insights , xpo , menlo that got bought . All these businesses became transplaced . They are behemoth now .

So for them to penetrate and work with the small business or the midsize customers a very challenging thing . They're much less flexible . They need to get bigger customers to make a bigger impact on their bottom lines and on their revenues . So coming out of COVID , I thought that the market looked ripe for small business and midsize customers to be like .

We do not want to be back in this challenge with supply chain Again . We don't want to be in the execution business . We need technology to help us better supply chain decide and there was a void in the small business and the midsize area of managed trans . So we had been looking for a managed trans business for a while .

I've probably looked at many and here was the second one . We added LOI in place and an exclusivity on a different business that came to market six months earlier that ended up not selling .

At the final hour they decided the capital partner decided to keep the business , probably because I shared too much of my cuff again , like I'm doing now , about why I like the space .

But ultimately we knew this business was coming to market and we thought we would buy it as an add-on and bid for it , but we didn't get the other deal because they walked away . So we went aggressively after this one because it was enticing . I think the space has a tremendous amount of upside .

I think of it like net suite was to SAP in terms of the void , and I think we can build a better mousetrap than anyone else because the people who have built the best mousetraps are busy taking care of their big customers and their large managed trans product categories and there's a lot of competition . Don't get me wrong . But there's just a void .

I think that needs to be filled and I think we're going to try to fill it . So we have a great team and a great product and we love cheer because the founder , joe , had built a business .

He came from Hub and worked on the managed trans and an immobile side at Hub and he built this business really the way you and I sort of looked at how businesses were born and grown , really based on the service lines and the relationship with the customers and building a great product first .

So they had a great product , a very mature product for the marketplace , with a little less of a sales force and a little less of a kind of a path to scaling and strategic way to invest in the business without a capital partner .

So it was a perfect making of put these three people together the woodland part , the operating side and the grow capital with the capital side and the sheer team and try to really help the industry evolve and grow into a , you know , penetrate the mid market and the small customers on the managed trans side .

People love these mugs . I have no idea why it costs $1,200 to go from Chicago to Cincinnati to move these mugs and why two months later it's 1800 and you know , I get that and I think I'm picking up what you're putting down there .

I'm curious if your thought on the growth then is to create the playbook , the sales playbook and the execution playbook , and then go M&A and go find 10 other sheer like companies and aggregate them kind of Brad Jacob style or more .

Build the right team You've got your CEO now and let them organically build the culture or continue to build on the culture that sheer has to kind of build this thing the way you've historically been a part of growing companies .

It's hard to buy them when you're not buying the tech and the underlying skill set just for the customers and the employees and the culture . So rolling them up is a little tougher .

On the managed trans , I think , although there are some segments of the industry and verticals that are specialized in that category automotive is one of them , chemicals is one of them , there are others . So I do think there is a possibility . We'll look at strategic acquisitions there .

I think we will also look at strategic acquisitions for companies that have a roll of decks of transactional customers that are a single source or that are potential brokerages that focus more on the smaller , midsize customer and that we could try to penetrate . One of the challenges with this business is timing .

So you have to sell transactional services to customers until they're ready , whether they're in the cycle of working with another third party that's managing the trans or the ring and outsource relationship a single source , by plant , or it's decentralized or all the things you know about . Why the economic decisions are made the way they are .

It will just be a matter of timing . So we want to have a relationship building opportunity with that customer , doing transactional services with them prior to selling that , and we also want to sell value logistics . If it's not capable to sell them technology , there are going to be large customers that are never going to outsource or use managed trans .

Maybe they'll use managed trans solutions for project management or specific parts of their business . As you know some companies that do that today . But they're not going to . They're still going to own an ERP and a TMS and they're going to , you know , manage and own the technology and so maybe we have to just sell value and project free services around .

That I just don't want to . I never loved , you know , funny when we talk about backhaulers . When I got the backhaulers I don't know if you ever heard the story , but Jeff was selling paper , paul was I don't know raw materials and chemicals or something I don't know what .

He's minerals , sand and minerals and no one was metals and Harold became metals and Gary was plastics and they were broken up into verticals , because those companies , those business lines , were all companies that had huge expenses related to transportation .

As a result of that , they were the first people willing to talk to brokers , because transportation made such a big impact on their profitability so they were willing to save money at any cost . So $50 matters . So when I told you the story about beating Paul , paul had customers that he'd make 50 bucks on I was like I am not doing this work for $50 .

But it was the 90s , not the 80s , right ? So I was in a business ability to go out and sell to like CPG and customers that needed , customers that needed expedited services . So I was making , you know , 150 or $250 of rip and I was selling like LTL that we could piece together and make multi drops and pool distribution , all this other stuff I learned .

So , generally speaking , just the industry as a whole has evolved and I think you know I lost my train of thought on the man on the trans side of it . But you know those people that , like commodity free , they sell volume , right , and it's getting more and more difficult to make spreads because the spreads are more visible through technology .

Right , the spreads are tighter , just like any market . Their , you know seasonalities are more known , you know when the market's shifting . So you got to do a lot of volume and digital services and digital connections and you know it's going to be a fight to the volume and the cost structure of how you execute the best on the commodity side .

I don't want to try to play in that park and I don't think I can win that game .

I don't think I could win that game , so I'd rather try to focus on the areas that are harder for them to win , which is the small business and the medium-sized customers that I think are really labor intensive to capture . They're very hard to .

They don't move the needle for a large company as easily and I think that's not going to be the end game for the large institutional players in the space . They need to win at the lowest cost denominator to deliver the you know capacity to a customer with the best spread they can get , but they need to do it with volume .

I want to do it through managed trends and through sort of value logistic solutions .

didn't feel that the competition within managed trans businesses , the operations folks , were at anywhere near the level that my people were at and we didn't have the proprietary technology built out to do that .

But I do remember there were a few customers and one of them was really large that they were working with a specific managed trans company that got bought recently and I knew that within 12 to 18 months their business was going to be for sale and all I was thinking was man , we're the top provider of the network , why can't it be us ?

So like I'm picking up what you're putting down and I do think that if you have the right people operating in that business , there is a leg up there , because I don't feel like a lot of the managed trans operations folks .

One thing that brokers are exceptional at over time is solving problems and doing it with a voracious speed , because we do it like our life's on the line and like our businesses on the line .

And I don't feel like that's necessarily the case with a lot of managed trans companies that because most of the time those operations folks don't have that brokerage experience and they don't move at that same pace .

But if they did and they had that fundamental like true understanding of freight and lanes and rates and what it's like dealing with these carriers and how to solve these problems quickly , I feel like the results would be better and the customer would be happier . So I do see an opportunity there .

It's something that I've thought about a lot but never got to bring to fruition .

But there's a cost to it and it's hard to get that cost out of a technology sale or transactional execution where you're just sort of putting in route guide information and running it through a waterfall and it goes to the carrier and they accept or reject and then track and traces , you know , done through whatever technology source the customer chooses .

Like that that's a different business model . So it depends who the customer is and the client is and how service oriented their needs are , whether they're the plastics customer or the CPG or the right .

So you got to build what the customer needs and I think that your point there's tons of opportunity there and you know it's funny that you said you know share the reason for the name of the business is transparency , right , because share is transparent , so you can see through , and that's the idea is to try to give transparency , you know , to our customers to

really understand . You know , and we did that really well at Coyote too but I think you know the idea around everybody is how do we give our customers the opportunity to help them better succeed and better understand how we make money ?

No one seems to mind that StubHub maneuver make 10% , but they seem to really balk at when a broker makes 12 on a freight move and ironically , those people have no capacity sourcing needs right . So it's amazing to me that the labor costs for those two businesses at 10% is so much less and people are like no problem .

But in freight brokers we want to make 15% , even 20 , because we have two sides of the sourcing responsibility and operational needs that are far exceeding what somebody does on a commoditized transaction and people balk about the percentages and it's typically on a lower dollar amount , which is even more surprising , but maybe not a lower dollar amount on the top line

side of a ticket or an Uber . But you know , I think , just generally speaking , the this gives you an opportunity to have a conversation with a customer about what you make , why you make it , how you make it , what your costs are .

Those are the things that I always I just felt more interesting about in the business than just some of the commoditized stuff that you have to do to grow volumes .

Love all the parts of the business , but this is one that I've been fascinated by for a long time and really felt like was where I wanted to spend my time with the rest of my career , hoping that you know , this will be the maybe not the final chapter , but one of the later chapters .

The thing that is surprising to me is that I knew there was going to be a downturn , and I know I'm a pretty good sort of economist , if you call that , and I understand macro and microeconomics pretty well . And what I didn't think hard enough about was how high the peak was , to think about how deep the trough would be .

And that is really what's driving the problem today around inventory bloating and oversupply . So the market is really really as challenging as it's ever been . But I do think that there's a bottom that you know . Just .

There's a point where carriers just won't move free and then there's a little bit more pressure on the third parties in the middle as customers continue to get a take advantage of those lower rates and push the market before it rebounds .

But I didn't see the trough as deep as it has become , although I was expecting a downturn , and I didn't realize that a managed trans business doesn't necessarily really know well enough how to execute to your point as transactionally as we grew up doing , even though they do transactional work .

So we've had to sort of build that out a little further than I would have expected , but otherwise I'm not surprised about anything . It's been . They have a great piece of proprietary middleware . They have , you know , a great team . They have built their business on satisfying and servicing customers , as well as anybody I've ever done work with in terms of .

You know , we did a voice of customer before we did the acquisition and every customer raved about them and it stayed true to date and they have real , true , sheer conversations . Like you know , this doesn't work for us . Does this work for you ?

And that's the part that excites me about the industry and the way you know whether you were interviewing you know Kevin or Bill or Cam , everyone's talking about like the more strategic conversations , not just a bid package anymore . Like people really want to understand you know how they can interact with the people they do business with .

Everyone always talks about how they understand it needs to be profitable for everybody . But a little more transparency and a little less fighting for the , for the you know , the dollars .

I think that really comes to fruition where people really start to think about how do we work together to solve these problems , because markets will go up and markets will go down .

I mean you talk about how the industry's got more commoditized and how you know there's there's you didn't say this and you didn't even mean it but like a broker could more easily take advantage of a shipper five years ago versus now , because now a shipper can see how the market is really behaving in as close to real time as possible and it just is allowing

for more educated , more informed decisions to be made . And you know , frankly , I think the convoy thing too plays plays into this in shippers wanting to be more strategic and more knowledgeable about what's really going on behind the curtain for their partners . It's interesting because I love transparency , I'm all about it and think that that's a .

You know , I learned about it through just how we let our people , but I was not afraid . I wanted to venture into a world where our customers could see our margins one day and , like you know , that won't happen with me at the home there , but I think that that's discussions happen , but it doesn't really solve the problem .

It came to market with 1999 trades and the reason it was able to do that was because there are exchanges that exist and transactions where the buy in the sell or the bid in the ask are based on contracts that are all very simplified contracts .

Our business is much harder because the contracts involve a lot more variables than a single transaction like a 55 gallon drum of oil or a contract like a stock contract .

But the interesting thing about the dynamics of that are if you look at where floor traders made all their money back before digital marketplaces or e-trade or what we currently trade on like Robinhood , is they made all their money because there were wide spreads between the bid and the ask and they were the only people that knew what was going on in the market

on the floor . There was no screens , there was no buddy . The buyer and the seller had no idea what was going on the market . So if you look at the evolution of how markets become more efficient in general , freight is no different . The difference is there's no exchanges and there's no simple contract .

So it can't get to that point where you'll get complete digitization and no spread between bid and ask , because there's always going to be variables that drive things and there's service lines and people and drivers who will make decisions around why freight doesn't make sense to them .

And I love the driver who wants to drive empty from Dallas to Chicago because he doesn't want to take it for 85 cents a mile , even though you're not the person telling him he should . That's just what the market bears , and he's upset so he drives empty . That doesn't come into play in digital marketplaces , right ?

That's irrational or logical , I don't know which one , but regardless , the markets will not get to that . They will not get to that efficiency because the contracts are too tough and the bid spreads . But the bid spreads have come to your point . They have gotten so much tighter and there's no more .

I know before , you know , everybody knows when the market soft or tight .

Everybody knows what's going on in the marketplace in real time , and so that changes the game a lot and it creates the environment where efficiency drives transparency and it also drives , you know , people that need to do more volume , lower margins and , truthfully , just be better at execution .

Whether the driver's parked their trucks and go drive a Uber , or they go and do something in construction or oil or whatever , there should be a supply side correction that drives .

Why , if they're not making money today , aren't they just leaving the industry ?

And I think a lot of it has to do with they probably have lease payments , they bought a truck , they own a truck or companies bought trucks , they have drivers in them , they're paying the drivers , they're trying to get through the cycle , but I think that cycle has come to a place where people just can't make money and they're going to get out of the space .

So I do think we will see supply side diminish a little bit , less capacity availability , and I do think we will work through some of the bulk inventory problems that have existed that are different than the other sort of inventory problems that we worked through over the last 12 to 18 months .

Bulk inventory is a major problem because if you bought a tanker or you had to buy a boat to bring product in liquid or bulk , you are probably at a year or 18 months of excess inventory , not three months or six months , so that which ultimately drives some also additional capacity in some other areas .

When it gets domestic or in the US and has to be transported , it doesn't get transported in bulk . The same way could buy rail car , but we won't get into that . So I think there's going to be a supply side correction that plays out in the first half of this year .

I do think the bulk side will decrease in inventory buildups and start to get replenishment to orders and I do think oversupply of bloating , will you know , of other inventories will rationalize . So I think we'll have a stabilization .

My problem was the demand side and my problem with the demand side is that during COVID every single person had no access to purchase any services or travel or goods you know non goods , right , they were purchasing all material goods and everyone I know , except for buying stuff that they would go out in or use to go out because they weren't leaving or doing

anything , bought like tons of stuff for their house or even like rented houses and bought stuff for that house , or you know . Now , look , I'm not talking about the average person , but generally speaking , people did buy material goods at a rate that reminds me of like a Christmas splurge for buying like tickle me Elmo , where everybody's got to have it .

So everybody buys a new TV . If we just squished five years of purchasing of goods into a 18 month period of time , it is going to take five years or so for that to wear out . It goes back to my Y2K example on technology , and everybody buys new technology in Y2K in 2000 . They don't go . There's a void in technology sales for three to four years .

I think that's what COVID did to demand on the good side and I think that challenge is going to be a real one . That's going to take a little longer than people think to work through . So I'm calling for a fourth quarter start in 20 post election , assuming it's not whatever political side . You're on a disaster .

I don't know what that means or what that means to each of you that are listening , but whatever that is , let's assume it's a somewhat fair and legitimate election and we don't have a civil war or something else . I think we will see a fourth quarter surge .

Once that's been passed us , it'll be a good holiday season and a stronger 2025 , but I don't see anything before that .

I have to tell the truth , and I could , I would be the person to be like I don't think the market's going to rebound . The stock would go down $10 . I'd get fired . So you know that's the truth . They can't tell . They got to tell .

You know they can say six months , but if they say a year , people are going to be like well then , what are you going to do about it ? You got to go to your business . You got to , you know , satisfy your investors .

I'm certain I will not only read about it , but hear about it , and we will talk against it .