Nicole Glenn joins the podcast to describe her career path from the retail industry to a passionate entrepreneur and owner of Candor Expedite, a top woman-owned business in the transportation industry. Though Nicole shares that she never felt ready to be an entrepreneur, she has truly found her passion creating positive customer experiences and an engaging company culture that includes everything from happy hours to badass thank you cards and messages. Did we mention Candor Expedite has also doubled their growth in 2021? Listen in as Nicole talks about the importance of understanding customer expectations.
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About Nicole Glenn
Nicole Glenn, Owner and President of Candor Expedite since 2017, a critical expedite service provider as well as a white-glove B2B company. Prior to opening and operating Candor, Nicole worked hand in hand with company owners to develop their companies and grow their customer following and elevate their sales and operations teams. From building asset-based fleets to successful brokerages that specialized in expedite and standard truckload Nicole would also focus her efforts on her teams to enhance and lift the individuals that help move the companies forward. Nicole obtained a degree in Business Management and Marketing from Northwood University. In 2021 Nicole has been awarded, Top Woman to Watch from Women in Trucking, a finalist of the Distinguished Women in Logistics Award, a Top Female Owned Business Owner, and Enterprising Woman of the Year Champion. Nicole is dedicated to the pursuit of lifting and educating other women in business which has led her to create a platform to reach women through Ladies Leadership Coalition. This is a group of 7 women in business that all offer their experience and thoughts on how to help others. Nicole resides in Dallas TX with her 3 children, husband and boxer pup.
Understanding Customer Expectations With Nicole Glenn
A WBENC-Certified Business Enterprise Disrupting The Industry
I am so excited for our audience to be able to hear from our guest, Nicole Glenn because she is a badass, she is a powerhouse. She’s an amazing woman in the logistics industry. I’ll let you do the intro but I am excited because there are a couple of things that stood out to me in this. She talks about understanding the customer’s expectations. What is it they need to know and down to the detail level of who needs to know what how often? If you talk about really knowing your customer, if you know the answers to those questions, who needs to know what how often, you are going to have an amazing business if you deliver upon that.
Taking that a step forward, who needs to know what and what is their preferred method of communication? Is it an email? Is it a text? Is it a phone call? I just think that takes it to such a great level. For our readers, Nicole is the CEO of Candor Expedite. They have a very niche business with regard to logistics and she’ll go into who those customers are and what problems they solve for them.
A fascinating conversation but what struck me was she just shines as a leader. We did talk a lot about some really cool things she’s doing as a leader of a company. She’s growing very fast. The company was started in 2017 and it’s growing rapidly. It’s exciting to talk to somebody that is an entrepreneur and passionate about what they do with leadership skills that are off the charts. We should probably go ahead and jump in, Tony.
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Nicole, thank you so much. We are excited to have you here and we can’t wait to jump into this conversation. How are you?
I’m good. I’m so excited to be here, too. I think this is going to be a great discussion.
We’re going to jump right in. Why don’t we start with you giving us a little bit of your background, your journey to how you got to where you are right now. Tell us a little bit about your personal journey, where you grew up and where you went to school. Give us the bio of Nicole.
My name is Nicole Glenn. I’m the owner of Candor Expedite. I’ve been in transportation. I’ve talked to many different people about this topic for many years now but I started off living in Illinois. I was 1 of 3 children to my parents. I lived in Naperville. I always had that work ethic mindset. My parents instilled that in me. They were always going to work. I don’t ever remember sick days where they were at home. The only thing my mom would do is if it snowed, because we lived in Chicago, she made that rule with her employer but other than that, I was so used to my parents always going to work and giving all that they could to their careers to provide for us.
Customer Expectations: Everybody wants to have that ninja button in life.
In learning that I started very young with working. I was that kid at sixteen that over summer breaks had two jobs. I started my own little babysitting service. I paid for my first car that way and was on my own. My parents, after we started working, they were like, “If you want that, you have to work for it.” I started getting that little taste of independence, learning and applying myself. I was even that student that would leave at 10:30 in the morning, their junior and senior year of high school. I had a work remote visa that I was able to go to leave school and go to work. So I had two jobs. I was one of those crazy people.
I went on to work in logistics. I was working in retail. I met this man. He came inside and asked me a question and I remembered the answer pretty quickly. He was like, “Do you want to work in freight?” I was like, “What is that?” Because freight wasn’t what it was is now. We always hear different things about the supply chain and degrees now. It seems to be a very hip place for people to come now. It seems like a lot of younger people are interested in it because it’s so chaotic and moving. When I joined, it was, to be honest, a lot of just old guys.
I was the youngest one, the only female for a while and learned to love logistics. I stayed in it. I left for a little bit. I had my daughter, I left for three years. I stayed home with her and did a little part-time nannying and then someone called and said, “We have this opening and would you like to come back?” I jumped back into logistics on the sales side when my background had always been operations. I dealt with owner-operators. A little bit of customer sales but it was mostly ops.
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I jumped into my first sales role and I totally loved it. I stayed there at that company and grew within my career for almost nine years and eventually became president of the company. I loved everything about it. I loved people. On my sales journey, I got to a point where I found out I can only go so far. Your operations team, when they need assistance and need more people, they can only go so far with it and everyone was working hard. I did take the step into more of a leadership side begrudgingly. I was concerned that I wouldn’t do very well at it. When you’re in sales, you’re taught to be greedy and for yourself and go get revenue and make a commission. This was a totally different side of the world for me and I fell in love with it.
I loved running a company and working hand in hand with another business owner. I got to a point where I wanted to take that next step and be a business owner myself. I never felt ready. It was one of those things where I was very transparent with the gentleman I worked for telling him that I would love to have a stake in the company and be a part of that ownership path but it just didn’t work out.
Companies are set certain ways so it was time for me to take that jump and I did. I went and worked somewhere else for a little bit and it was that last little push for an entrepreneur to go, “This is time. It’s time for me to take this leap,” and so I did. I started Candor Expedite. 2017 was the year that I made the jump and started my own company and here we are years later. I’m loving it.
What a great story. I especially love the part about how it starts with how you were raised by your parents and the work ethic and moving into leadership even though you didn’t feel ready. Tell us about the business. It’s a unique business. It’s a very niche business. Tell us about what is unique about Candor Expedite. Tell us about your customers, the problems you solve for them, how you go about that and just your general culture of customer-centricity.
My background has been in expedite, on the sales side and then developed a truckload brokerage side of things. I had assets before I built a fleet. When I wanted to start my own company, I was like, “What is it that I love the most? What is it that I feel has the biggest need in the industry?” I decided to just stay with that expedited side and dropped everything off. It was great learning all of those things and being a part of many different modes. I worked with a company that had a great product. I’m like, “I would love to expand on that and focus to disrupt our industry on what service communication and what customers should start expecting. It shouldn’t be a little add-on feature of true service and communication. It should be what they get on every single shipment, regardless if it’s expedite or just an LTL shipment.
We started developing a service that was around that and listening to our customers and understanding what it is that they wanted. A lot of times when you’re talking about time-sensitive shipments, it’s needing that. It’s giving our customers that issue that they have with time. I would say that’s our biggest solve. Yes, we handle those time-sensitive shipments but we try to take over a shipment. We try to get to learn the customer, those needs and expectations and deliver on that so they get that time back.
They don’t have to chase a shipment. They don’t have to constantly ask like, “Where is this,” or play that telephone game. You guys would think that where we are in this day and age with technology, that that telephone game would be gone. It’s not and it’s still a big issue where you’ll pick up the phone and you’ll hear someone say, “Can I get an update on this?” There are 15, sometimes 20 people behind the scenes on an expedited shipment that need to know where it is. Giving that time back saying right up front, setting those expectations for our clients and going, “How do we tailor this for you? Who needs to know this information? How often do you need to know this information?
I love to tell my team this and I say it over and over again. Our shipping clients, we are just 1/10 of their jobs. I don’t think the world realizes what their jobs look like. Getting product out to their customer is a sliver of dealing with their customer service teams, dealing with reporting, making sure that production is on schedule. That little truck showing up and getting moving is not the end all be all for a manufacturer. Bringing that to light and letting our customers know like, “We got you. Please go onto what it is that you’re supposed to do. Make sure that your production is running on schedule. Get all of these things aligned and let’s save you that time.”
I find it fascinating. There are a couple of things and I’ll jump back into these as we go through the interview here. What you said was setting expectations, who needs to know how often. That intrigues me because logistics, when you started, was much different than it is now. Logistics now is about information flow more than anything else. That’s my takeaway from it. I remember my MBA program back in 2002. We were studying Walmart’s just-in-time concept. With all of that, they push this idea of information flow.
Now you’re taking it to this next level of, “How do we know exactly what information to provide to who, when and doing it in a way that they feel service is not just about providing information but doing it in the right way.” Talk a little bit more about that. There may be even an element of pre-COVID, post-COVID if you will. Tell us a little bit about what you see that customers are really expecting now versus what they expected in the past, not in information but also in the quality of that experience.
Customer Expectations: It’s a cycle of learning to fulfill a need for a client.
I think that’s what differentiates companies is the quality of that experience. I always call it the ninja button. Everybody wants to have that ninja button in life. When you’re working and you are paying for service, I feel like you should be able to get that. You should be able to tap that button and everything has been discussed in advance. It’s like when you’re calling a contractor to come work on your house. You express to them what it is that you would like for them to do and then what do they do? They take all the paneling off the walls. They remove the kitchen sink and then they start noticing that there are some issues. We as homeowners don’t understand, “That’s broken. Fix it. What is that going to cost? How does this work?”
It’s the same thing on the shipper side like I said. Their job is to more focus on getting that product out but getting it produced, getting all of that information for their customers and servicing it that way. We have that same expectation when we do anything in life. It should be the same thing when we’re talking to our clients and dealing with our clients. We are those subject matter experts and so we should be educating them but within reason. It’s like, “What do they need to know?” All they need to know is it’s broken. Here’s how I can fix it and here’s how you can look good. Here’s how we can get your customer to be happy with you, your boss, whatever the case is and handle that and give you that time back.
We get testimonials from some of our clients and we had one that said, “I’ve been in the global supply chain for 4 years and I’ve never seen anything like this.” My whole team wants to raise and wave this flag like, “We’re awesome. Look what we did.” We’re celebrating but at the same time, I didn’t say this to them but it’s sad to me that customers just from getting communication and transparency, it was the best thing that they’ve ever had. You would think that would be more of the norm in any industry and that’s the same thing that I’m seeing as a company owner.
I deal with vendors. I’m making sure too. I’m like, “I can’t believe some of the service and the lack of service that I get.” It’s the cycle of learning how to fulfill a need for a client but then also even being a vendor myself or my vendors asking, even if it’s not on the logistics side. Setting that expectation of what I’m expecting from them as their client. Doing that and knowing that, we’re able to go to our customers and go, “What about this? What do you need with that? How does that work?”
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That way things can just flow smoothly and seamlessly. As we continually go, technology becomes part of that. People are going to start developing tech to have those little extra bells and whistles. “So-and-so needs to know,” there are going to be buttons on a screen here and we’re trying to develop that to where it’s like, “John wants to know every two hours but then Karen on his team wants a text message to say this.” How do we develop those things?
If you can think of it nowadays with tech, it’s coming but then also making sure that we’re keeping that human element to things. I feel like a lot of industries are trying to just focus on tech and take the human side out of it but the world works on relationships. You need to make sure that people are there making sure that everything’s running smooth and continually being that extra little level of the ninja button for people.
I know that you have clients that have special circumstances where they need something expedited. Can you give us some examples of why they call Candor versus another company? Are there certain industries that seem to be particularly attracted to the type of service that you deliver?
There are. There’s a lot of just-in-time industries. Automotive is one of those so they’re running those production lines. A lot of food companies too need products brought out to their clients or products rushed in for production. We service a lot of aerospace clients, a lot of medical type companies whether that’s devices, even respirators we delivered during COVID into New York City but then there’s also this level of non-expedite expedite. What I mean by that is we’re in this tight time in the industry with capacity. When things are loosened and there are a lot of trucks and capacity, customers want that ninja button again. They have a TMS that does some routing and they may have two skids but I need to still get this to my client and I can’t LTL it.
They would just put it on a full truck, ship it out and it’s everyday business. Now with capacity getting tighter and rates are sometimes in certain markets very insane, we’re trying to show our customers two things. That they can utilize tailored equipment. As the supply chain keeps getting smarter and budgets keep getting, hopefully, smaller for some people, they are able to start looking at some of these different things to go, “What’s the best mode on moving this freight there?” I could move it with additional freight and take the chance for damage. I could let it run on a full truckload and not reap the rewards of those savings but then also that carbon footprint where you should be focusing on that these days. Making sure that you are doing all that we can as everybody giving that contribution back towards our earth.
I’m going a little bit out of scope here but what I’m trying to say is we have some clients that we’re doing that education piece on to say, “There are other options for you besides a 53-foot truck.” If you have a couple of boxes, we can have a driver hand load that product and you’re getting crème de la creme service at a fraction of the cost of a tractor-trailer. It’s getting more people interested because people are changing in their roles. They’re stepping into new supply chain spots where they have to get crafty and creative to cut costs and so that’s what we’re trying to help them do as well.
That’s interesting because what you’re talking about, I’m going to pull this out for the readers just so they reflect on this. You’re getting in there and understanding what the customer really needs and looking at what are the options that we can use to provide the best level of service to exceed their expectations, under budget if possible. You’ve got all these considerations out there that they’re thinking about how do I get my product to the customer?
You’re able to stop and look at all these other possibilities and say, “You could do it this way,” and give these different options. I find it fascinating because, when I see a semi driving down the highway, I don’t think about all the stuff that goes in the backend of that. How does it get there? What’s the process? Every day in my neighborhood here, I work from my home and I see FedEx, UPS, Amazon and there are probably some other private expedite companies that come through here as well and deliver stuff. We don’t think about it as consumers, how much there is going on in the back end and how many hands and how many humans have to touch something.
I find it fascinating and talk about this tailored equipment. I’m intrigued by this because as we look into the future, I know they’re working on electric trucks trying to reduce carbon footprint and all of that. If they can use vans or if they can use smaller equipment to get things places, it just seems to make a lot more sense that the cost of the human driver is probably a small fraction of the whole cost I would guess, but even that’s going to go away as we get to self-driving vehicles. What do you see there? That’s a little futuristic but what do you see?
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It’s definitely going to come and rightfully so. That again is a big emphasis on what the world’s trying to do. We see a problem, which is a driver shortage, and humans are going to make a solution and that’s one of them. I don’t know when that’s going to come. I know it will be here and there’s so much into it already with tons of money and funding to get those things to happen. It’s not that a company can just start that. You’re dealing with federal crossing state lines. There’s so much into that but as we continually move into this sector of life with tech, those things are going to start happening whether that’s locally and then going more regional, it may be intrastate to start and then it will unfold.
I would think that that would be something that in the next several years, we’re going to start seeing. I don’t know if it’s going to even be several years away. On the freight side too, there are a lot of technology that’s doing freight matching. Our company’s freight brokerage and you hear it. It’s like the stockbroker market. They go, “Is the freight brokerage market going to die?” There will be some high different changes, turnarounds, buyouts and a lot of just freight matching will be happening. It makes sense on some things because people cost money. Running these freight brokerages and all of that, companies are constantly learning, getting smarter and trying different things.
That’s another reason why I like the idea of the expedited side and I didn’t even make mention of it but we do a lot of white-glove at our company too is bringing in that additional touch to it. I like that niche. Get your hands dirty, have a driver step in there and help unload or bring school supplies up to the sixth floor in New York City to a small school. Those are the things that, tech of course is going to come and it does impact, but you can’t ultimately get rid of that for a long time.
It’s one of those things when you’re developing and designing a company you want to create a product that’s sustainable but yet can change. That’s what we’re trying to do even as an expedited company is, “What are those things that we can help our customers automate, help our company automate but at the same time, to be there in the next fifteen years.” That is one of the most interesting pieces I think in what’s happening in logistics now is watching this constant shift on what’s happening in these giant disruptions. If I could be a disruptor with communication, we’re doing something right.
When you were talking about tech, everybody knows tech moves at the speed of light. It’s different every day but COVID put a light on the supply chain. Everybody is talking about how long it takes to get things.
Because it’s affecting the consumer and they understand that.
Customer Expectations: Give contribution back towards our earth.
I think there’s a lot of interest in why is that. Our favorite little restaurant in our neighborhood, can’t get chicken wings right now and they’ve taken them off their menu and people are, “Why is that happening?” There’s so much to it. There are many hands that go into delivering chicken wings to your plate. Especially, on the food thing it gives people pause thinking, “We’ve never had a problem getting what we need in this country.” Thinking about how impactful the supply chain is all the way from start to finish. It is interesting to watch the disruption, the problem solving and the creativity and innovation to try to mitigate everything that’s going on. If you were sitting in a coffee shop, what would you love to overhear someone saying about your company?
It’s going to be what everyone wants it to be is that we made something insanely easy and it was one of the best experiences they’ve ever had. I have, not even in a coffee shop, I did get in an email chain that I don’t even know if I was supposed to be on and they were like, “I told you, it’s the best company we worked with.” I was like, “I don’t even know if I was supposed to see that. That’s so cool.” It would be something like that, to know that we’re exceeding an expectation for a client. It’s one of the best things. When we were in Illinois, we had a love wall and we would print out every customer comment or anything that we would get and post them everywhere. It’s exciting for people that even work and support that to hear those wonderful things.
That’s such a really important piece of culture to be able to share those, however, you do it whether it’s the love wall. I love that idea. In hospitality, where I came from, they would have these daily stand-ups. One of the things that we initiated was reading a positive review from a guest or a meeting planner that came through the hotel that prior day or the prior week. It does so much to form the mindset of the employee and the heart too. The mind and heart work together in that. How else do you develop the culture in your company? Because this communication piece is critical and demands a particular type of culture. How do you develop that and keep it moving forward?
It’s changed. When we first started, everybody was just in one spot. We were all up in Illinois. Everyone was in the office every day and then we opened in Dallas. I moved down here. I don’t want to say it was disconnected but we weren’t in the office every day. It was pre-COVID thankfully because what that did was start showing us how do we communicate together, not all being in the same spot. As we started adding team members and all of that stuff started happening down in Texas, COVID did start and started impacting us to where we were all at home.
Since we had already been doing that, it didn’t affect the way that we were going to business but our team hadn’t grown as much as it had today. In 2021 we’ve more than doubled our team. By doing that, now we have team members that never knew the members that were up in Illinois and they’ve never seen them in person. They never had that constant communication of making jokes at each other’s expense, lightly on Slack and having that fun. We have to intentionally do it.
On the communication side on training when we’re talking about actual work and getting those processes documented and out, we’ve spent a ton of time creating visuals for people that they can see on how to do things from start to finish. We put a ton of emphasis on that. When someone starts in our customer service team and a lot of them are starting in Texas and our customer service lead now lives in Florida. What we’re doing is doing everything on Teams, where they spend the day together sometimes as groups on Teams and they’re talking and that banter is going while they’re working. We have multiple screens. I have four in front of me right now. My team all have 2 or 4 in front of them. They’ll let that run. They’ll talk, they’ll communicate.
We have happy hours that we’ve done a handful of times. I send out a CEO letter to my group, my whole team, every month. It’s always the beginning of the month. Aligning that and telling them what the vision is, where we’re headed and what did we do last month. What are we trying to do this next month? Calling out rockstars. We have a program called The Badass Program. To show you this, we have these little cards. They’re postcards and it’s based upon our values. We all, as our group, made our values and everybody acknowledges each other when they hit those company values.
We send those in the mail, we have them virtual and it’s a way to reward an employee of the quarter and employee of the year and they’re all close. The team has become close because of these things and then hosting, we have our first in September 2021. We’re bringing everybody into Texas and hopefully, with the pandemic flaring back up again, we can do it but it’s to get everyone in the same area and have a weekend of fun.
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We’re trying hard. Even with moving down here and starting an office, we’ve hired people in Kansas. We have someone in Oklahoma now. Our truckload division started up in Michigan. We have some team members that work through Lean Staffing that are in Colombia, the country. We’ve spread out a little bit but it still feels like we’re connected from that constant communication. We have committees. People are on different committees whether that’s different departments being, if you’re not even in sales, you may be on the sales committee, you may be on the marketing committee, you might be on the customer service committee. That way, it just brings those people together to constantly be talking about, “How do we do better? How do we stay connected and how do we move this company forward with, hopefully, even double again with people this next year?”
It sounds like such a cool place to work. I’m ready to put my application in, Nicole.
We’re hiring. Join us.
That’s just such a testament to your leadership to put so much time and resource behind that. I love those badass cards. One of the things that we love to do on our show is talk about how our guests give back to the community. I know you’re doing some of those things. Is there a particular organization or something that you want to shine a spotlight on and we can put their contact information and website links, etc. in our show notes?
At this point in time, we’re still on the hunt for that perfect organization that we can help. We talk about this all the time as a group and it’s been one of the hardest things from being split on what we can do. As far as helping our community, we’ve been focused more on the Dallas area. We’ve done turkey drives and we were able to deliver a bunch of gift cards to a church by raising money from our team to do that.
We fund individual families for holidays, for children to get Christmas gifts but we haven’t had a charity that we’ve all come together to lift and support. If you have some great ones that you’ve heard from other guests, I would love to know what we could do additionally, to help people because our teams talked about it. Giving time and money too would be a great thing. We haven’t found that yet.
I’ll connect with you offline on that because we have heard of some cool organizations through the show as well.
I started looking in to see how to create a non-for-profit organization because I have a niece who is deaf and she has a cochlear and hearing aid. My sister hasn’t been working so I asked her. I’m like, “Why don’t we see what we can do on starting one?” She’s starting that research so that way we can help kids get cochlear implants and the newest technology but again we haven’t.
Customer Expectations: People cost money. So companies are constantly learning and getting smarter on running freight brokerages.
We have some contacts that could help her out through CEO Space.
Also, my daughter-in-law is an audiologist that focuses on children. We can definitely talk about it.
We’re solving problems on the show. I love it.
One last question for you, Nicole. What is something that if you think about our audience that listens to our show, is there anything that as a group we can do to support your efforts? Is there a particular company you’d like to contact? Is there some event that you want to know about? Anything that our readers might be able to do to support your efforts?
If there’s a contact that they have in need of something that needs to move whether that is to a home, we’ve moved benches into people’s houses that were insanely high value, or they hear of something that’s just not working right at a different company. Please throw our name in the hat. We would love to consult a client and see if we can potentially help them.
I wanted to ask this. I’ve got two daughters that are almost ready to go to college. As I was reading your bio, I saw how you’ve just been this amazing force to be reckoned with as a female leader. What are 2 or 3 tips you could give someone who is joining the workforce or maybe they’re already in the workforce but they’re looking for that leadership role? You talked about one of the things I hear a lot from women is that you didn’t feel ready. I think that’s one of the biggest things that I try to support my daughters and say, “You’re never going to be ready, go for it.” What are some of the tips that you would give either a young woman or maybe a woman who’s in the middle of her career wanting to do more?
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It’s asking. It’s funny, even being a business owner, I’ll see a lot of men underneath us ask for that next jump in their career. Ask for that raise or that promotion. I don’t see it a lot where a woman will ask. It’s one of the traits and there’s data behind this that says that females need to feel ready in order to do those things. You’ll see men taking jobs that they’re like, “I don’t even know how I’m going to do this but I got it. I’m going to try it.” It’s believing in yourself and understanding that if you’re not ready, you’re going to learn and then never stop learning.
That’s the one thing I would say to everybody, but females if you’re going to go into one of those roles and you don’t feel ready or you don’t feel confident, keep going out there, keep networking with different people that can help you get on a path and ask those questions and find a mentor. I think that’s a really big thing too that the younger generations don’t seem to put that same emphasis on. Find somebody that will listen to you and give you some guidance. It doesn’t have to be female or male. I’ve had both that have challenged me.
There have been times that I’ve felt that I’m not ready. I’ll talk to a business leader and they’ll go, “Do it, just try it.” I might not jump all the way in but at the same time, it’s like, “I’ll jump in enough to where I feel I’m uncomfortable.” It’s okay to constantly feel uncomfortable. That’s what I tell my daughter often. I’m like, “You’re never going to know everybody. You’re never going to know everything but keep trying, asking, learning, applying yourself and never stop.
Thank you for that.
I have absolutely loved this conversation, Nicole. Thank you for joining us. I have so much good information to share with our readers and we know you’re very busy so we greatly appreciate you taking the time to join us here.
Thank you very much. I appreciate it too.
We’ll see you soon, Nicole. Thank you.
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Betsy, I absolutely love Nicole and I love this interview. She is just a force to be reckoned with. What stands out to me is something she said. I didn’t even have a chance to go back to it because we ran out of time. It was such a great interview but she talked about in the very beginning that she wanted to start this company. She asked herself two questions. What do I love the most and what is the greatest need in the industry?
I knew when she said that, that we would have an amazing interview because it’s about the passion that we often talk about and you and I, as entrepreneurs, we have this passion. We do what we love but the other part that a lot of people forget to talk about, which is what our whole show is about, is really knowing your customer. What is it your customers most need? What does your industry need?
Of all things, and she even expresses her shock about how clear, transparent communication, setting of expectations and understanding the expectations and exceeding those expectations in communication, in the logistics industry of all things, that’s how she’s disrupting the industry. It blows my mind to think about that because you think about, “It’s going to be the next advancement in trucks, in loading equipment or in the docks,” and it’s not that at all. It’s communication. It reframed my perspective of the logistic industry and we’ve been working in this industry for quite a while now.
The other part of that is something that seems like a no-brainer for people that are good communicators. I think we often take for granted that that’s not necessarily the way the world sees it. Communication is such an important part. I know as a customer as well, myself, I had a situation where they were supposed to deliver my refrigerator between 8:00 and 12:00 and they called and said, “We don’t have that in stock after all.”
Thankfully, I got that call right away. I’m wildly disappointed but I wasn’t angry because they called and told me. I’m glad they didn’t just not show up and have me sitting there all day waiting for this refrigerator. They did communicate. Even though they communicated bad news, they still communicated. That was very helpful and I think that is such a message that needs to get out to businesses. All it takes is a phone call, sometimes.
The other thing too about, “What do I love the most and where’s the greatest need?” Those are the two questions that every entrepreneur needs to ask themselves before they get started. It seems so basic but it’s important. I also love the whole part of the conversation about how they work with a remote team, how they build that culture and how they put time and resources behind creating that culture. I didn’t ask her this. I wish I had but I would assume that she has a phenomenal retention rate of employees in a time when the labor market’s really tight because of all of that energy she puts into building that cohesive team.
Customer Expectations: Everybody acknowledges each other when they hit company values.
She did say that they’ve doubled in size in 2021 as of August 2021 and that’s a pretty significant growth rate from an employee perspective.
Tony, I love having these conversations. I love doing this show with you. That was another great episode. For our readers out there, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. We’ll see you next time on the show.