Ep. #5: Ryan Daube

You know we live , uh , you know different spots that have the cubs meet , if the Braves meet , if you know whatever , and all those teams are now gone .

So it's baby shark Doot , doot doot , doot is that where we're a little past that , but not too far from that . So okay , All right . Well , my Michigan .

He's now the founder of 240 Logistics , dedicated to optimizing supply chains in the cannabis industry . In addition to that , he is also heavily involved in his passion project , camp Kowaga , a summer camp for boys based out of Wisconsin , which is focused on developing and building character of the boys who attend .

Finally and this is the first person we've had on the pod that I happen to know in a work setting I've sat across the negotiating table from Ryan and I can tell you that he's a great negotiator in the business . So , with that , welcome to the pod , ryan .

By the way , it's a computer weed out , so Andrew's dad , jeff , would have been beside himself dealing with me in that , but I , needless to say , I ended up getting a zero on a midterm because I had an issue and then had to retake the class . I got a business certificate , but school was , you know , I had a good time outside of class .

I learned a lot , maybe bedding , maybe booking some bets , you know , doing some different things to try to support the family and , you know , learn the streets of Bloomington .

So Paul basically told my family to have Ryan come over and take a look at the business that's Jean's t-shirts , hats on backwards and Paul continued , for whatever reason , saying that I was just like I'm gonna check it out and it was unbelievable . It was just like any floor you know if you were seeing like a Wall Street or any type of trading floor .

There was a tremendous amount of action . People were instant messaging , People were , you know , mouthing words over the phone they're holding . You know they got three lines going at the same time negotiating and it was awesome . So I got hooked , basically said that you can make as much money as you can .

There was a lot of customer base that was still wide open . So I'd go through show books , literally like hardware shows , all the different electronic shows . Basically there's book after book , calling , asking for the VPS supply chain and building rapport . You know quoting hard lanes like what's your , what's the lane that you're having the toughest time getting covered .

And let me prove myself straight you can imagine how persistent I'll be to retain your freight . And I just got hooked .

You could see the transparency . You could see where everybody was ranked . You could see everybody spread . You could see the number of loads they were covering . You know it was really as competitive as somebody would be .

They immediately started changing our commissions . They were charging us for , like what they called a Baker Lou and they were taking a percentage off the top .

It seems like you knew him on a maybe a more personal level , but what was he like ? What was he like in the working environment , and what did you take away from your time with him ?

Just , we belong to the same country club and he was always just the most polite , understated and he was always in a t-shirt , low-key guy , and his dad had an office like parked up in the upstairs of this building and his dad was a sensational guy too , like you could just see that it was a , you know , a familial orientation and when Paul was always in

there early , you know he was always there late . He , you know he was grinding with everybody else and I think he was . He was really neat to see him .

One of the coolest business days was actually the day that CH acquired us and they communicated it . Paul took a seat basically across from me on somebody else's phone , like the guy was addressing a question about what it would mean that CH acquired his account .

And I listened to Paul on the phone and he just knew the business so well and he knew the people so well and it was , you know you'd run through a wall for the guy because you could make a fortune .

In that orientation he was not greedy and by not being , by being like , by allowing everybody to make the mind that they were , everybody was willing to work as hard as they could to get the job done the right way . It was awesome . What are the characteristics ?

The culture , we , you know , obviously the culture is just it felt like a fraternity . You know , just you , balls are getting thrown all over the place , people are having , you know , eating competitions . There's literally people are sprinting in the parking lot . They're literally racing each other .

So I would say that's a pretty strong catalyst . And I took the best sales rep that was at the company at the time His name is Greg Harris and another guy , michael Nervik , and he was a carrier sales rep . He was fantastic and covered all of my free . I was like I'm going to build around a business plan and it just all worked out .

It was not easy , but it all ended up working out .

And he's like , hey , I noticed that you didn't market a half day or whatever it was , and I was like , really , I got 15 business days left . I got 11 days off . You're going to sit here and give me a hard time . I'm like I'm going to do two top three rep At the time . I'm like what are you trying to do ?

So when you think about culture , you sit there and you have a conversation like that .

We did like $9 million worth of revenue in the first year and 27 in the second year , 48 in the third year , and so this is all and it's all bootstrapped . So we got sued . Obviously it's got to fight them for seven years . We won in court , they appealed and they won and then we ended up settling . But it was really fun .

We were in a room one day with their attorneys and they were suing me and they were basically holding the right to continue to possibly sue Mike . After I was like , well , that's not going to work , I'm not going to settle with you , so you can go and sue my partner .

And I said to them well , how about I just agree not to call QTG and I have a Korean that to call ? You know Campbell's to go . I won't call your major accounts .

I know , I obviously know your major accounts and the general council looked across the table from me and he said you know you have as much opportunity of closing those accounts as flying to the moon . And how does it sit in there ?

But we would , you know , we were up at 4.45 in the morning going to Deerfield and you know whether we're covering loads or posting loads on the debt , giving them a cover as responsibly as we could . We had a $400,000 credit line so we had to be as prudent as we could . We didn't want to stretch ourselves too thin .

We had to manage our you know , obviously our budgets were very small . We had a customer that paid us in seven days and we gave them a discount for that . So that really helped sustain that growth . If you're wondering , how do you get $9 million of revenue on a $400,000 credit line ?

So we just kept pushing and you know we've worked from five in the morning until like 10 , 30 , 10 , 45 at night , because you have to bill out the day after you're done , like getting the loads covered and calling your customers . It was a full on grind . I was 25 . I didn't exactly have like a lot of money sitting in the bank .

I was playing for my life for sure . The only way we really celebrated . We would have Friday lunches . We'd buy Chipotle for everybody . So , like everybody looked forward to Friday lunch and bringing it in , so we could , you know , cover any type of last minute freight for the weekend .

So I knew that there were for this company , hire America , which was one of my bigger accounts , haier they were like the biggest exporter out of Qingdao . I knew that they had 601.8 cubic foot refrigerators on a 53 foot trailer . I knew that you could fit 482.7 cubic foot refrigerators on a 53 foot trailer . So you know the ability to optimize off of LTL .

And if somebody understands that there's a linear foot rule in LTL , if you go over 14 feet you start getting charged obnoxious truckload rates . So you know if you make one mistake as a shipper , if you're not paying attention , you know you literally could spend your whole . You know you could be spending your whole LTL month by accident .

So I thought that we were very disruptive to the LTL business by driving larger . You know multi-stop truckloads .

You know , it was truly it was a brotherhood and there were some really really good brokers that came out of that time and we didn't do anything for free , right ?

I mean , the biggest thing that I always sort of I guess my biggest proud , prideful moment is that we never , we never had a year that wasn't profitable 16 years of profitability in some very tough times , keeping , keeping our customers honest , right , that there was value in our time and value

in their time .

We always wanted to make sure that our customers knew that we respected their ability to want to grow in other areas and not to have to put a huge amount of infrastructure around supply chain and logistics and however we could get them confident that whether it was a price per pound , you know , contemplating how to drive results all the way through to the product

skew was always helpful because we understood their business . We tried to understand their business like they did and become , you know , better partners .

The market basically built around the nucleus of the guys that knew how to do it and then we started just recruiting it all kind of . You know , we went to Indiana , we went to Michigan State , went to Iowa , went to every college campus and just started buying the bar and having a good time and finding the people who you know .

Usually the guys that were , that looked like , you know , had faces like mine , that were surrounded by nines and tens , those were the guys that you knew could sell . So try to recruit that way .

And we had budgeted and forecasted for growth and all of a sudden , like October of 14 , you could see that things were starting to slow down and then 15 got nightmarish .

Like February , March were really pretty brutal slow months and you could see people in the room kind of waffling on whether they wanted to try to cash out at 80% vested versus having the ability to fight through , and I kind of was hoping to see everybody fight through .

And then I was going to , you know I would have reopt on the LTIP , but I think in retrospect it might have been smarter to just reopt on the LTIP and keep them all secure . So we've , you know , I think that that was a tough learning lesson for me , but also , you know , trying to explain .

It's like hey , if it was 14 , and if we happen to sell it 10 times , that's $140 million valuation . If we're on a track to be only at six this year , that's an $80 million loss on . You know what the paper value of the business is . You know I'm absorbing the lion's share of that but I'm riding with you guys . So I kind of was .

You know , I thought that everybody had the stomach for it and I didn't expect we ended up like rolling off most of our executive team All like Adam Wakefield live logistics probably doesn't happen .

If I'm smarter about how I manage that and I think that Adam and I are like friendly enough to like , you know , kind of laugh and joke about you know sort of the situation and how it all played out . But you know some moments there .

We trained all of our guys you know incredibly well . You know our operations was just glue and you know we were family . I mean , we watched . You know , from a 25 year old kid to a guy with four kids , there was , you know I don't know , 60 , 75 children that were had over the you know , 15 , 16 years . Afn's family just got bigger and bigger .

I still have pictures of the whole team where we're taking pictures from the roof waving and you know it just felt like you know we were . We had a gym in the office . You know people , people didn't leave , they'd come early or they'd stay late . It was never . It never felt like a job .

I literally felt like we were all trying , we were in it to win it and we just had a really tight nucleus .

Everybody had the ability to decide . You know , there were carriers that were great off the West Coast so they got to come in two hours later but they'd stay two hours later , right ? There were carriers that were great on the East Coast and they'd come in an hour earlier and they'd leave an hour earlier and get to play golf . Everybody had the ability .

You know there's no real benefit to telling everybody that they're handcuffed to their desk . You know that you can . If you want to work out in the middle of the day , if you had a rough , whatever , someone's going to recover your phones . You know we're humans . You know we log in . How are you feeling ? It's not like you know .

I remember one of the days oh man , on 9-11 , at back callers or now . Then was CH Robinson . Basically , there was always a microphone that you could dial on and be sort of mic'd up through the entire organization . A certain individual got on the mic . He said I'm aware of the fact that some planes have crashed into the World Trade Center .

Now it's time to go back to work . What that message was . At that juncture I was sitting there and I'm like holy cow , is anyone excited about sitting at that desk anymore ? And you can lose people that fast . I'm sure that the guy who said that didn't have the intent of what he had said .

But holy moly , just sour , a complete audience in a tenth of a second . That's a real strong learning lesson .

It just feels like it's missing , and I don't know if it's just something that can't be trained or it's just something that people are intuitively born with , but it just seems like that's lacking more and more and again , as we were looking into you and what I understand about you is that you've always had that emotional intelligence and that's what's helped you to

build the teams and build the organizations that you built . And so I actually just want to touch on that a little bit , because obviously I know a lot of people that you've worked with and I just asked for feedback . I'm like , what was it like working with Ryan ? What do you have to say ? All positive feedback .

I'm happy to report back , but I'm going to give you a couple quick quotes .

So , up and down the organization , people would jump in front of a bus room . He had a knack for creating internal competition while still pushing the idea of we all win together . There's another one that said he had a way of letting you know that he cared about you first as a person and then as an employee .

So just , I mean , that's coming from different people , right ? So just talk to us about how intentional you were about being that type of leader and how you demonstrated that from day to day .

I think I've learned how to be more composed , but I would tell you that I think there were a lot of people in the moment that were beside themselves about my feedback , where I would be saying , hey , I think you have more , like , I think you can do more , I think you can be better . I'm here to help you be better .

And people are telling me later on that they're prepared to choke me out because they were doing really .

They were obviously doing really , really well , and then , 10 years later , someone might text me and say , hey , I want to let you know how important it was that you did push me that way and how much better of an executive I am today and how much better of a father or parent or mother I am today because you asked for more . Right .

I think that people are afraid to criticize or coach or guide or critique . Today . I think that people are pretty sensitive and you have to be conscious of that , but I always want to be pushed . I always hope that someone's comfortable in telling me that I have a blind spot and there's some place that I'm neglecting .

And if I can be a better leader , if I can lead by a better example , if I can be vulnerable and comfortable making mistakes because as a sales rep you can't take yourself too seriously the amount of times people don't pick up the phone or don't respond , so it's just having the characteristics of being on . When you're on , you know , competing the right way .

I always want to lead by example and if my kids were in the room , you know , if my dad was in the room and my dad was working with me for the bulk of the time , I want to make him proud .

You know , that's the part that's cool about Andrew Getting to see and I just wonder what Jeff thinks about him and his boys that are all competing in their own way in this industry . I mean it's just fascinating . Whatever school they went to , what they learned that was most valuable was , you know , this industry , and that's just so cool to me .

In my opinion . I hope that my kids somehow or another body some of what it is that I have the capacity to do entrepreneurially and make it better .

25 . So how do you feel like your leadership developed over the years , or what did you use as guidance to become a better leader ? Like , did you have this kind of patience and composure at 25 ? Or you know what happened over the years that developed that ?

You know , I want to compete as a person I think we're being raised watching Michael Jordan play basketball you want to be able to compete and I like to compete .

I like to do better and hopefully , you know , by being that way , people around me , you know , wanted to be the same way , right , hopefully , brought out the best in all of us , and if it wasn't for you , then it wasn't for you , and we knew that and they knew that , which you know . I think it's just nice to be able to cut to the chase sometimes .

I think what he's getting at is , you know , if you do look at Andrew and I have talked about this but if you look at certain organizations and their coaching trees right , the organizations that they went on to lead , there's quite a few names you know on the AFN list that I can , you know , start building out a tree there , and to me that's that's a

testament to a lot of the things you're talking about here , which is the culture that you built , your leadership and ability to help develop that talent . But so when you think and reflect upon that , like , what do you see when you look at the AFN coaching tree and how we got to this point ?

right , that there is , like this AFN wake . You know , I don't I don't take it lightly , I'm proud of it . Like , again , even , you know live logistics , all of those guys seeing Blaine over at Edge , you know , there's a lot of people that are making a big difference in a lot of places and that's awesome , like it's .

I couldn't be prouder of them and I , I , I sort of laughingly joke that I'm the laziest leader and I take pride in the how , in my laziness , my ability to let them lead and not sit there and ask and question and debate , and as long as , like our vision of being , you know , high in integrity and always tell the truth , I think is a great place to start

. If you're a customer , if you're here , driver had a flat tire . It's like the laugh-ha-ha of our business that everybody just makes up some excuse for why their driver didn't show up on time .

We took our service incredibly seriously . You know that there was very seldomly a discussion around a charge back at Niagara , and Niagara had some of the toughest SLAs around . We take great pride in delivering bad news well . I think people run away from dealing with a problem . We ran towards the problem and we ended up getting more business because of that .

But I think it was 2017 Blackhawks game . You surprised a lot of your team by flying them , I think , to St Louis on a private jet and taking them to the game . So I guess , tell that story and then just help us understand what was behind your thought process on that .

And there was a handful of people and , yeah , we ended up making it happen and everybody had a great time . I was really sad , obviously we'd lost and I was like God , I can't believe we did this . And then we ended up losing , like everybody's gonna be so demoralized and literally everybody just kept having a great time .

Like , I hate to say , it was almost like it didn't matter and we were just sort of having such a great time like with ourselves .

And I just think , you know , I think I'm sure that it had to feel a lot , a lot of similarity at Niagara , like you guys were growing a business rapidly together and you guys were growing together you know , ashley's young , you're young Like we were all kind of playing hard and we just knew like that you know , if we just kept supporting each other , we could

all grow and be better . I do feel like .

If you really want to get to the bottom of the secret sauce , though and it's something that I'm learning today more is that operations is absolutely the glue , and if you can customer service them to death , then we just got touches everywhere , whether it was in our dispatch department , our operations department , our legal department , you know , we literally were

making sure that everybody understood how much we cared , and our ops team though they would literally they would sell out , you know , they literally whatever hour it took to be , you know , whatever needed to happen whenever it was Christmas and Niagara had a push to Kroger and a DSD project , whatever it was going to be , we did it , you know , and we worked very

hard and we charged appropriately for those services , and everybody appreciated that . If we're going to tell people that they're not going to be at home on Christmas or New Year's , the juice better be worth the squeeze .

Trying to get in there , man , yeah , and I'm just sitting here listening to your story , listening to the AFN story , and I've listened to a lot of stories of brokerages that started and were super successful , like yours , like Molo and I feel like the secret sauce is it's you know , it's the people for sure , it's the undying commitment to execute , it's the

ability to communicate effectively , especially in the face of bad news . But it's all these things that we all kind of did similarly and I guess what it says to me is one there is so much room for success in this industry . There will never be just one winner . But what I am kind of stuck on is the quote . Whoever gave you this quote about ?

Ryan but specifically that belief that , because I would go up against anybody and tell you that the team I had at Molo and the team that still exists at Molo , I believe , is the most talented team in the industry I believe that's my core and I believe whoever gave you that quote also believes that the team Ryan and everyone at AFN built was the best in the

business by far , and I bet we could find another 20 , 30 people , even more who have built super successful brokerages . That would say the same .

Everyone else wants to believe like that and when you have that level of belief in a competitive mindset with competitive group of people , you will go to the ends of the earth to succeed and to feel that level of success that makes you feel like you're the best .

And that's what winning is in this industry is like building a business , feeling like you're part of a family . I mean , I just I don't know , I'm ranting a little bit , I guess , but I just I'm stuck on that .

What are , like , the fine points of how you actually execute something like that , and I think a lot of people are looking for what is that ? That I can say I work for the best team ever . I , you know all these sorts of things , and I think a lot of companies can't find that , quite frankly .

But , aside the point , like I remember , in the early days , we I don't remember saying , hey , we need this business to feel like a family , like it wasn't a strategy to say we want it to feel like a family .

What it is is you get a group of people to buy into the same goal , to a common goal , and then work their fricking asses off to accomplish that goal , and then it just feels like it , over time , when you spend that much time working as hard as you can with a group of people focusing on the same goal , feeling the same wins , and every day that win gets

a little bit bigger . Today it's we move 10 loads . Tomorrow , or in a month from now , we move 50 loads .

Six months from now , we moved 100 loads on a day , and you just get so fired up about those accomplishments that , over time , next thing you know , you just look around and you're like I care more about these people around me that I'm fighting with or building with than I do anything else in my life .

You know ideally your person , your actual family comes first . But , like when you're building a great business , that kind of happens and everyone gets so bought in that it just over time you feel like a family . Is that , ryan ? Am I speaking gibberish ?

I think that understanding that , you know , in our third year of doing business , you know , one of the guys on the team almost made a million dollars , right ? So I'm 25 and I'm 27 years old and we had the ability to pay somebody out a million dollars .

And you know , at CH , one of the managers came up at one point in time and Greg had just gotten a $50,000 commission check . And the guy came up to Greg and he said , hey , how many more months do you think I'm going to let you make more money than me ? And I sat there and I was like again like hey , do you think that that motivated Greg ?

That you know that you're sitting there and like sort of sitting over his check and a little green with envy that he's . You know he's making more than you as a manager and as a manager , you have to understand that your high performers should be making more money than you .

And seeing a guy make a million dollars and letting that be real to the environment , let everybody know that there was a guy who had made a million dollars . I think that that's pretty exciting , and the idea of calling trucking companies and making hundreds of thousands of dollars . There's just very few places that offer that type of upside potential .

And our guys were clearing you know the good carrier reps were clearing three , four hundred thousand dollars a year . That's pretty decent living for calling trucking companies .

And it has me thinking about , like I , you know , as we started , as I started thinking about all these businesses that I know of that have that kind of familial type feeling , that are super successful , that have great cultures . I can't think of a single one that's bigger than , say , a billion , maybe two billion in revenue .

And then , as you think about the bigger companies in the space that are two , three billion plus , that are much bigger , that doesn't exist , those feelings don't seem to exist . And there seems to be more of what you just referred to , of the hey , you're making more money than you , than me . How long is this ?

How long do you think I'm going to let this last ? I'm just curious is it possible to build a multi-billion dollar business that still has a feeling like being part of a family , like , is that , is that unreachable ? And if so , is it why ? Why , why does that happen ? I mean , I just want to talk about that for a minute , if you guys have any thoughts .

There are literally there's companies that are dying as we speak , valuations that are astronomically high , that will never be met , and those businesses never made money , like literally never made money , and will not ever make money , and people don't know how to lead those companies . People don't understand how to fight for that profitability .

But I do think that the debt markets are going to have a huge impact in a very short period of time on what ? On the brokerages that survive .

So I think that the ability to teach people a little bit of fiscal responsibility and understanding what it means to have real equity in a business there was a $30 million payout to the team after we sold that company the ability to . We ran a process to wind up with Global Trans as a partner we had .

We sent out booklets to probably 145 or so different PE and privately held companies and within like 45 days were some pretty substantial bids and some people were more excited than others and move faster . But I think that the two you know my team , the team that was , you know , the executive team that went that left in 2015 .

That was you know , that was we had a completely rejigger team basically coming into 2016 , 2017 . That was a big learning lesson and I didn't feel I didn't feel as connected to the business , having lost a lot of those executives .

I still felt connected but if I looking back , if I hadn't done it and I would have had to survive with our team during COVID holy cow . You know , I think my lucky star is that we took our chips off the table .

We were looking at Amazon , looking at Uber and just reconciling the ability for people to spend , you know , billions of dollars on tech and tech infrastructure While we don't . I'm sitting here with this little piddly , you know seven figure budget for you know , improving my tech , so just trying to compete with those guys .

Inevitably they were going to eat my lunch and I felt like it was a responsible thing to do to . You know , to pull it together , I got myself up to 267 pounds running that business and I don't want to . I don't welcome the drinking and the abuse that I put myself through at that time . To play it to the bone .

There was high stress and luckily there's not as much stress today .

Was it during the 2015 kind of chaos of a lot of your executive team leaving , or was that just through building a business , you just weren't taking great care of yourself ? You were drinking and eating a lot .

But it certainly should be a priority because I felt like , personally , once I did start focusing on my kind of health , I was able to be a better or more productive worker . I don't know if you felt the same way .

I don't know that it's going to be a good time to be brokering freight over the next two to three years and I think that there will be substantial reduction in the footprint of competitors over the next couple of years unless you have found a real niche that will continue to survive this .

If you're providing maybe great pharma logistics , Maybe that's an opportunity . But in terms of what traditional retail is going to be , traditional grocery is going to be , there's a lot of broken supply chains out there right now .

. Yeah , what I'm reading speaks to the fact that everybody's spent all their COVID aid , that there's now trillions of dollars of additional debt . There's consumer credit card debts never been as high as it is .

Interest rates are as high as they've ever been during our lifetimes , so just having the ability to reconcile what that means doesn't aid consumers to be able to buy more .

I've read a lot since selling AFN and I've found out that cannabis is an anti-inflammatory and that there's a lot of health benefit and there's over a hundred phytocannabinoids within the plant .

That sounds pretty weird but everybody's really chasing after THC , which is a single cannabinoid and your body has an endocannabinoid system that they've found basically in the late 1980s , early 1990s , and your body has the ability to create a virtuous cannabinoid cycle . If we hug , we basically create cannabinoids within our body .

So this orientation of inflammation and the reconciliation of Tylenol or acetaminophen being FDA approved , there are cannabinoids within the plant . There are flavonoids within the plant that are up to 30 times more potent than acetaminophen .

So I see this health and benefit orientation of trying to stay off of Tylenol , trying to keep my kids off of ADHD medicine , which inherently drives them towards opiates addiction . So we've been learning about the plant and hemp . Anything that's less than 3.5% THC can be . One can be banked and two it can go across state borders .

There's products that where you see your cogs at a pretty reasonable number and they have very high retail outcomes . So I think about what you can put on trucks and the values of those from a retail perspective , and I'm incredibly enthusiastic about the idea of moving into this completely new , overregulated market of cannabis .

After watching Paul take a market that had been highly regulated and , as deregulation occurred , this backhaul market came to play and he capitalized on it with no competition in place , and I'm looking at the cannabis market in a very similar orientation .

Sometimes they'd have seven day terms and some of our customers could stretch us out 60 to even 90 days depending on the situation . So the reconciliation of the liquidity on the carrier side who's got the heaviest lift ? We always ended up having a lot of better or stronger carrier relationships because we provide liquidity to our carrier base .

So I've looked at that in a similar orientation in the cannabis space .

The manufacturers that are in developed markets like California , colorado , oregon , washington all the manufacturers are getting put out of business because the dispensaries have so much oversupply that they just they'll stall on paying out their manufacturers and move the product to a different product on their shelf rather than paying them .

So a lot of manufacturers went out of business . So we're looking to do similarly to what we did in our carrier sales base we're going to drive that liquidity to our manufacturers . So if we can offer our manufacturers payment and assure them payment sort of factoring the dispenser we're receivable right . So playing that middle is very opportunistic .

So we're going to add value on both sides of the supply chain that way and we've basically set up a data scrape at the retail store , and so we're understanding how to manage order to cash all the way back to the manufacturer so that they're putting the right skews through their systems at the right time .

It's like okay , there's a $35 billion market out there and there's not a single freight broker playing in it and I sit there and I look and I'm like holy cow , we've got the technology in place , we're pulling the data . We understand exactly what we need to do . I have space on my trucks . Who wants to load them up ? You know what I mean .

That's how I feel right now . It's enormous and it's a health and wellness play .

So I literally feel like consciously , like this is good , conscious capital , bringing health and wellness to our consumers and hopefully bringing education to the fact that they should not be taking Tylenol , they should not be leaning on ADHD medicine , they should not be feeding their kids cereal and milk in the morning and expecting them to be able to focus in the

classroom while they're coming down off of all their iPad hits .

So we've got some serious health and wellness issues with society today and I really feel like I'm trying to make a difference in the way that people attack their health and they can be more proactive about it , rather than reactive and winding up in a hospital where you sort of become at the doctor's behest and you trust them , like you trust the therapist , and

of course they're going to medicate you with something that's going to make you feel better . But is that really the case ?

They've already established a reciprocity to other states so they have the ability to export cannabis if and when it becomes fairly illegal to move freight that's over 3-tenths of a percent THC over state borders . But we've established that we acquired this business .

We're currently working with 400 dispensaries in the market and we're lending credit to these cannabis dispensaries right , and then we're lending credit . We're basically working on consignment with a couple of really great brands out there and helping them support their business .

So one of our biggest farms did $550,000 of revenue last month and so we get a percentage of their sales , and when we started doing business with them , they were doing about $50,000 of revenue . So you can see how they have exploded .

They've now got these , they've got three more joint rollers manufacturing , automating these types of businesses and we're seeing great growth and fortune .

I bought a one gram pre-roll for $20 plus tax , which was $26 . So if you do the math on a one gram pre-roll , that cannabis at pound sold for over $9,000 . And I know the farmer , the outdoor farmers . They can grow cannabis at $4 a pound . So just that spread is so big .

If you buy dog walkers today at Dispensary in Chicago , there's 6.35 gram cigarettes basically that's 1.85 grams you pay $43 . The retail price of a package of five or six gram pre-rolls in Oregon are less than $20 .

So just seeing the arbitrage in those dollars in a developed versus an underdeveloped market with very average cannabis versus fantastic cannabis , seeing that arbitrage and understanding how to find the middle of that , has a very large middle for probably at least a few years . Okay . So I think that's a good point , at least a few years .

But on products that are , you know , other hemp orientations , other cannabinoids , cbn , which helps sleep , or a terpene called Mercin , which helps an aid sleep , those types of commodities don't necessarily require a THC . So there's chapters and levels to this and the federal regulation .

I don't know how long it's going to take for if it becomes something that's federally legal or if they just leave it to the states to make those decisions , because most times we're seeing more regulatory trying to stay within the states and the tax dollars are really good for the states .

So it's really just a matter of I don't think that they're going to walk it back . I don't think they're going to bring it to Canada as being illegal again . But I'm not . You know , I'm definitely conscious of worst case scenarios , and I should .

I'm definitely trying to do my best of considering , hedging my best and starting to contemplate , like raising capital outside of my own to invest in the growth of this infrastructure .

It could just be you calling a lot of these weed farmers trying to move their weed . You know , I just think that the more challenging it is , that the higher the opportunity , or the greater the opportunity should be to make some money on it . So you know , I think , from that perspective , you're in a good spot .

So the idea of 240 , the Peregrine Falcon can fly at speeds of up to 240 miles an hour , so that was why we named 240 logistics .

It sounds like it played a massive role in your development professionally . So what was your interest with , you know , getting more involved there on the investor side and what do you ? I guess ? What are you just trying to do to help the community or the boys that are attending that camp ?

And whether it's , you know , making your own bed every morning or taking out the green bucket and trash , or sweeping out the floors , or going to instructional swims , whatever it was , you know , the ability to develop a community and a team and understand that you're going to sort it out yourself and , I think , really allowed for me to develop faster , because

there was no mom or dad that was going to stand over and say , hey , that's not fair or hey , you shouldn't do that , you shouldn't behave that way . So for me , like now with kids having , you know , I mean kids have cell phones and iPads .

So early I'm watching parents literally take their kids to dinner and the kids had their iPads sitting at the dinner table with them . Parents are talking to themselves , but sometimes the parents are looking at their phones and I'm just trying to reconcile what that's doing to everybody and their personal development and ability to communicate .

At camp , the kids don't have any electronics and the ability to just sort of shut down the noise of what's going on in the outside world is a you know . To give that peace and quiet to these children is something else you know to be able to see .

You know that we have a parents weekend four weeks in and some of these kids get anxious to see their parents , so there's like a really large reprieve that these kids get while being taught how to be , you know , hopefully , great , humble , well represented members of our society , and we're trying to lead them to be great people , great children , great men , great

counselors and learning how to , you know , compete in different sports . There's a lot of instruction , whether it be something like water skiing or sailing that you don't ever get to do at home , or , you know , just standard basketball , softball , football and it's . You know , it's literally .

It was the time of my life as a kid and being able to be there all summer , being able to watch the kids grow and improve and be happy . I mean , I literally it's like I cry putting them on the buses back home because , like I know , if I could run a year round camp against a year round school , I'm going to win all day .

My kids in 10 years are going to be out leveling and out pacing and out advocating , out collaborating , out team working . Anybody and I just people aren't learning how to work collaboratively .

I think that COVID took everybody apart into this like self , individual working environment and you know I really sit there selfie in themselves like , oh , this is me , in case anybody cares . We need to try to reconcile that and I think the camp teaches people how to play like a team .

Whether it's building a tent , whether it's cleaning a cabin and getting perfect inspection , whether it's putting the forks in the right place on the lunch table , the boys are learning how to you know how to take care of themselves , how to brush their teeth , how to put their laundry away . You know the things that most moms are doing for their kids at home .

So our kids are , our boys are going to be more self serving . Our boys are going to be ready to .

You know they can do their own laundry , they can wash their own dishes , they know how to take care of themselves and then , when they get old enough , like my oldest son , they can be camp counselors and that's like the next level of you know , you're sort of a legend now on these kids minds coming through , having been a competitive , you know , an older senior

of the camp and then all of a sudden you're you know you're one of their camp counselors and just being idolized and I think that that's just so cool to be able to be in there with you know five , six , seven boys and trying to help them with their situations and their problems .

And by dealing with those situations , well , what you know , working a kid through from maybe being hysterical or having some sort of issue that they're navigating through at home .

You know parents getting divorced , anything that they're dealing with , having them helping them navigate that in a way that's non-confrontational with their parents , I think is priceless and being able to offer that , you know .

You see these kids come back 10 , 15 years later just appreciating what it meant and I think that that avenue and that orientation of camp and Kowaga affected how I attacked at backhaulers and AFN .

And the skills are hustle , communication , organization , grit . And let me define hustle and grit differently . Hustle is about being willing to put in the time , that , no matter what time , this person will respond and answer and do what has to be done .

And grit is more about like problem solving , that , no matter what , they'll figure out the solution to the problem . So your choices are hustle , communication , organization , grit , or I'll give you , I'll give you technological . They can build phenomenal technology .

If you're not gonna hustle or have grit , organization for me is is very important at right , like currently . I feel like process is everything , as we're trying to develop what is sort of essentially a new brokerage . So I think you know , if it's for me , I don't need . I feel like hustle can be taught .

I think that grit you gotta have it , but at the same time it can be , it can be taught and improved . I think the communication skills are gonna be a lost art here . I see more and more people communicating online and I can text my wife I love you and she can be like what's your fucking problem ? So I think that the luck is lost in text .

I think a lot . You know , I always talk about how you can sense somebody smiling on the phone , like you can hear them smiling on the phone and that type of stuff . That art , I believe , is the reason why you know why Paul and I have a still a relationship where we can pick up right where we left off , why .

He asks you know , are you still talking to Ashley ? And he knows that of course I am Like . These are long , long friendships , long standing friendships , where people just know that we're dependable people . So I think that the ability to build those relationships is absolutely critical . But at the same time , without organization , I would ruin .

I'd ruin every one of those relationships because I didn't actually do the work to make sure that we were supporting our customer . I knew what we could do for our customer , but I didn't do the work to provide that service for our customer .

There are TMSs out on the market right now that you can buy that can do most of what we would need , as you know , but obviously , again , what you're dead built and express was next level . But today most load boards are built after what your dad put together .

So I don't know how important tech really is in the orientation of a similar , a similar service offering . I don't , and I don't know when you tell a business is being differentiated . I don't know what Uber is offering . I don't know what convoy is offering . I don't know what arrive is offering .

I don't know how they're differentiating themselves other than just dropping their pants and saying you know , tell me how low for prices . Ouch , ouch , I know , I know that one's gonna hurt . Hopefully no one's listening at this point .