Building Your Team From a Cultural Perspective for Success

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Process Breakdown Podcast, where we talk about streamlining and scaling operations of your company, getting rid of bottlenecks, and giving your employees all the information they need to be successful at their jobs. Now, let’s get started with the show.

Speaker 1: (singing).

Chad Franzen: Chad Franzen here, co-host of the Process Breakdown Podcast, where we talk about streamlining and scaling operations of your company, getting rid of bottlenecks, and giving your staff everything they need to be successful at their job. Past guests include David Allen of Getting Things Done and Michael Gerber of The E-Myth, and many more.

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Chad Franzen: Josh Brawley started his career as an entry level logistics consultant in 2016, before transitioning into a pod lead, a role that displayed his elite leadership and provided the opportunity to become vice president and later chief operating officer of FWF. Coming from a family of educators, Josh’s ability to lead teams and foster growth has been instrumental in his success as a professional. Josh, thank you so much for joining me today. How are you?

Josh Brawley: Doing well, Chad. I appreciate you bringing me on here. Excited to chop it up and talk a little bit about what we’re doing over here at Fifth Wheel.

Chad Franzen: Great. So, FWF. Tell me what that is.

Josh Brawley: I still say Fifth Wheel. Our marketing department probably wouldn’t be happy with that. We went through a rebrand in 2018, from Fifth Wheel Freight to FWF. What we are is we’re freight brokers. No fancy way to, I guess, say that. We find people that need stuff shipped and then we find the means to ship it. We’re kind of that middle man that allows the transportation space to go smooth. Hopefully, go smooth. That’s not always how it goes, and that’s kind of why our jobs exist because the issues that arise in transportation. But we are trying to make sure that America’s truck drivers are moving and getting goods on the shelves.

Chad Franzen: How many people are with you guys there at FWF?

Josh Brawley: We have just over 100. I believe it’s 105 right now, and we plan on continuing to grow into 2022. We’ve got a class of 24 people that are going to start in January, and hoping to add around 70 to 80 throughout the entire year.

Chad Franzen: What types of employees do you bring on? That number of employees, what kind of things do they do?

Josh Brawley: Largely, the biggest role that we’re recruiting for is our sales role. Obviously, sales drives revenue, so that’s the number one, I would say. Out of the 70 hires that we bring on, probably about 55 to 70 of them will end up in sales. On top of that, though, when you increase revenue, increase profit, you have to make sure that that all comes in. So obviously, accounting roles will continue to build with that, and then operation roles as well, the roles that allow revenue producers to go about and have their day and go about producing revenue and producing profit for the company as smoothly as possible.

Josh Brawley: Like I said earlier, this is an industry that has a ton of issues and a ton of stuff pop up. And so if we can not allow the revenue producers to have that weigh their time down and an operations person can take that over and they can focus on talking to more clients, everybody wins.

Chad Franzen: When you say that there’s a ton of issues, can you highlight some of those ones that maybe would tend to pop up most frequently?

Josh Brawley: Well, yeah. You can probably imagine yourselves, if you guys are listening to this on the road right now, I’m sure on the time that you finish your commute, you’ll probably see a truck that’s pulled over. Sometimes stuff is simple like that, with a driver blows a tire. Sometimes it’s 10 times worse than that, where we’ve had over-dimensional shipments where the bridge clearance wasn’t properly laid out there, and we thought that we could fit this 15-foot container underneath this bridge, however, that’s not the case.

Josh Brawley: The bridge’s clearance is only 14′ 8″. And so now we have to not only let our customer know that we’re going to be late, but we have to go back and find a proper route that is going to allow us to get this over-dimensional shipment to our final destination safely. It could be something as crazy as that, or it could be… When I was brokering myself, I had a load of potatoes just catch on fire. And I saw on the news, somewhere in Oklahoma, two hours later that this load of potatoes had caught on fire.

Josh Brawley: In transportation, there’s thousands of things that can go wrong. You’re very, very thankful when the shipment picks up when it’s supposed to and delivers when it’s supposed to. Those issues are really what allows players like Fifth Wheel Freight and other freight brokers to have their jobs and provide a value to companies.

Chad Franzen: When you talk about not being able to clear a bridge or get under a bridge or something like that, how do you prep for things like that without just driving the route already?

Josh Brawley: That’s called a route survey. I’ll be honest, that’s something that I was not near as well-versed compared to some of the other people in the company. I didn’t do a bunch of over-dimensional shipments. But that’s a route survey, where you’re going to look at the bridges. You’re going to look at power lines as well, because power lines are a big issue when it comes to stuff that big. We’ll have shipments where we have to send bucket trucks, meaning trucks that’ll just lift up wires, so that way, folks can go underneath them.

Josh Brawley: But normally, when you’re dealing with a shipment like that, the drivers that are hauling that type of equipment are extremely experienced. These guys have got 20 years, 30 years over the road. And then the companies that you’re working with too, they’re used to doing the route surveys, they’re used to providing escorts and things of that nature, and as long as everybody collaborates and goes back and forth…

Josh Brawley: I think the most important piece of that information actually going through is the dimensions of the product being correct, because the dimensions… Let’s say we’re using a caterpillar tractor type thing, for example, the dimensions of the product when the air’s inflated in the tires are different when the airs are not inflated. And so something as small as that could be the difference between making it under a bridge and not making an under a bridge, or [inaudible 00:06:41] thousand dollars in new shipment.

Chad Franzen: You talked about bringing on new employees. Would you say that, considering all these aspects, people are the most important thing in terms of your success?

Josh Brawley: Yeah. There’s no question about that. I think you ask anybody in the company, from the founder, the CEO, myself, we realize that the people that we hire are what allows us to have success. We’re in a unique position where we’re in the transportation industry, but we don’t have any trucks. We don’t have an insurance bill or stuff like that. Truly, our investments are our people, and it’s also what drives profit and what drives revenue for the company.

Josh Brawley: Choosing the talent to continue to grow with us, it’s imperative. We’ve had people in here that were talented from a sales perspective and can bring revenue and can bring business, but if you don’t align with the others from a culture perspective, that can be extremely dangerous to have in your organization. So for us, we know that people is as important as everything.

Chad Franzen: What kind of a culture do you try to set there at FWF?

Josh Brawley: This is one of my favorite questions to answer, because I came up with this whole metaphor myself. I ask it during the interview process often and usually get some weird looks. But I’ll ask you, Chad, have you ever seen the movie 300?

Chad Franzen: I have not.

Josh Brawley: Okay. Not super important. It’s a movie about 300 Spartans. What is more important is they use what’s called a flank shield system, meaning you hold your shield over your left shoulder, and obviously everybody is really tight together and it creates this strong wall and this strong force. That’s the exact same type of culture we want to have in here. The person holding their shield over that left shoulder, that shield’s not protecting them. It’s protecting the person to the left of them, and the person to the right of them is protecting them.

Josh Brawley: So let’s have that same mindset in here. If I’m coming in here and I’m working on a day to day basis and I’m making 100 cold calls a day, trying to find people to move their freight, and I’m only doing that for myself, I’m going to burn out eventually. There’s no doubt about it, unless I’m super money motivated and those commission checks really drive me. Then I’m probably going to burn out and I’m not going to enjoy my job.

Josh Brawley: However, if I know that me making those 100 cold calls a day is going to return, let’s say, an amount of profit for the company, once that amount of profit for the company exists, now we’re going to go reinvest that money and we’re going to go create a job for somebody, and six months later I watch a person, see walk in, and I feel like I am partially responsible for that person, that’s going to allow you to kind of extend that burnout phase and go a little bit more further. It’s the idea of working for something greater than yourself.

Chad Franzen: So how do you set that culture, as the leader?

Josh Brawley: That’s what’s taught to them early on, day one. We give out an award at the end of the year, every year too, it’s called the Shield Award, which is basically who encompasses that culture the most. And I think one thing that allows us to show that is not just talk, because it’s easy to have culture that’s just, “Hey, we’re a family. We’re blah, blah, blah.” We don’t like to use the word “family,” just because not everybody’s had a good family experience, and I don’t want to say like, “Hey, we’re a family,” if your family experience is an awful one.

Josh Brawley: But no, this is a place where you can find coworkers that have stuff in common with you, that are going for something greater in terms of the career, but you have to live it. I think that’s what we actually do. We do a ton of events outside of the office. We have our Harmony Network, which is about the diversity and inclusion. But everybody knows everybody. I talk to every single rep on a day to day basis. The CEO of the company does the exact same thing. We actually have relationships with the people that we lead. It’s not just a number.

Chad Franzen: You’re in the trucking industry. What would you say is the prevailing attitude toward implementing new technology and things like that in that industry?

Josh Brawley: That’s going to depend who you ask. If you ask the VCs, they’re loving it right now. You got the venture capitalist companies that are coming in and talking to companies like ourselves, trying to pitch them on some tech that they’re working with, with some other partnerships that they have. They’re super excited about it. And then you’ve got the drivers, who are obviously the backbone of the industry, who, I would say, are not near as enthused about technology entering the industry.

Josh Brawley: Back in 2018, that’s when ELDs became mandated. Those are electronic logging devices, basically devices that track how long a driver’s driving, making sure that they’re not driving too long and putting everybody else on the road at risk. And that was a huge issue when that happened at first, just because the drivers didn’t want people looking into their trucks and understanding where they are. They’re thinking of it as a Big Brother type of thing.

Josh Brawley: And since that’s happened, more and more tech has been rolled out that’s not on a mandate, but more as a convenience thing. And you’ve got apps that are supposed to be able to track drivers and show them where their next loads are going to be available. Drivers are excited about that because it’s easier to find your next load. However, they realize that once they want to book that load and then they want to call in and actually talk to somebody, that they’re not able to do that. They’re stuck talking to a computer and that’s extremely frustrating for them.

Josh Brawley: So you’ve got companies like ourselves, they’re super excited to adopt tech that’s going to just drive efficiency and get rid of waste. However, you need to make sure that the drivers who actually are going to be the ones that allow that tech to flourish, adopt that, because if they don’t adopt it, then us adopting it doesn’t [inaudible 00:12:13].

Chad Franzen: So is that kind of a pickle you’re in right now? What are you driving toward, knowing that you would like to see more tech implemented, but maybe there’s some resistance?

Josh Brawley: For us, it’s more about stuff that… We’re finding ways to implement tech that aren’t as much on the driver’s side. There’s certain things with just processes in terms of building a rate confirmation. Every single time there’s a shipment, we have to build a rate con that shows the driver where the shipment’s picking up, where it’s delivering the rate, any special notes that we have in there as well.

Josh Brawley: We’re looking at technology that allows us to not have to do that every single time, but, “Hey, we’ve done this one 15 times already, let’s have a robot just know what the spots that we’re looking for. We check these two or three boxes, and then they go and build that rate confirmation for us.” Where you’re seeing the big push right now in technology, which I think is just kind of like the silver bullet for anybody who can figure this out, they’re going to do very well for themselves, is the rating side of things.

Josh Brawley: You go to Walmart, your price of milk might be fluctuating right now, but it’s not going to be 50 cents higher one day and then $1.50 lower the next day. That is how the transportation industry works, where there’s a shipment that goes from Grand Rapids to, let’s say, Indianapolis, might cost $1,200 today, on a Monday. By the time Friday rolls around, it might be $1,800, and then next Monday, it might be down to $900.

Josh Brawley: And so a lot of companies are trying to predict rates, and it’s difficult. DAT is a company that’s been around for a very long time and it’s kind of been their staple. But as a broker, we know that you got to take it with a grain of salt. And so you see a lot of companies trying to come in here and push that tech piece to get better idea of rates, and that is one that drivers need to be a part of, in order to succeed. If drivers do not want to log where their trucks are at, log where they’re getting paid, it’s going to make it much more difficult for those machines to learn and actually provide an algorithm that rates accurately.

Chad Franzen: Is that something that you’ve implemented then?

Josh Brawley: It’s something that we’ve tried to implement. We’ve worked with a couple different companies, four or five, and I’m still working with different companies right now, and we’ve demoed a bunch of different ones. At the end of the day, though, the human touch is something that’s still needed.

Chad Franzen: Is there any other examples of technology maybe that you’re trying to implement?

Josh Brawley: Yeah. I would think that on top of those things, just better ways for us to understand what carriers are going through. Because there’s some companies right now that are allowing carriers to see ratings on their facilities, like, “Does this place have showers and things of that nature? Do they have a place for me to actually park my truck or am I going to be trying to back up this 18-wheeler and into a 50 foot spot, which is going to be extremely difficult to do?”

Josh Brawley: So there’s a ton of different things, and it’s crazy because we’re getting knocked down on the door every single day, all these tech companies that are specifically in a logistics space. However, there are other ways for us to drive efficiencies with non logistic space companies. I just did a demo with an email-based company that allows our teams to just communicate in a much smoother process back and forth.

Josh Brawley: And so there’s a tons of different things that we’re looking at, some of it logistics related, some of it communication related, that’s just going to drive efficiency. Because we’re in this huge transition where we’ve got teams, instead of just… When I was brokering freight, I handled everything myself, and now we have it where it’s set up where we have our top person that’s in charge of the entire team, but he’s got three or four people underneath him. To make sure that communication is as flawless as possible, that’s something that’s important.

Chad Franzen: What kind of staff makes up a team of three or four people?

Josh Brawley: As it’s set up currently right now, we have our SSEs. That’s what we call our senior sales executives. Those are the folks that they hold the highest relationships in the company and they’re dealing with our biggest clients. And underneath an SSE, he’s going to have an OM. That’s his operational manager.

Josh Brawley: That’s the person that is just making sure that the revenue that is already accounted for is going smoothly, making sure that drivers are where they’re supposed to be, and then leading the team members, which are actually negotiating with the drivers, talking to trucks, getting them down on rates or fixing issues and stuff like that. So you got the SSE on top, and then an OM, and then he’s got one or two people that we call our dedicated operations.

Chad Franzen: What does your day to day process look like?

Josh Brawley: That’s a good question. It’s different. I mean, with a growing company, it could be around different. I just had a long meeting this morning, just kind of overall what our plan for ’22 is looking like in terms of any compensation changes we might be making, overall visions for the company. I do a lot of our recruiting still. I’m kind of the final stamp on all of our recruiting.

Josh Brawley: And then a large portion of what I’m working on right now is the technology. Choosing our technology partnerships, and then partnerships just within the West Michigan area, going back to making sure that the career services folks at the schools know about Fifth Wheel, knows about the opportunities that we have to offer, and then just driving those relationships more and more.

Chad Franzen: I have one more question for you, but first just tell me how people can find out more information about Fifth Wheel, FWF.

Josh Brawley: I would say the biggest one would be our website, www.fwf.com. Follow us on LinkedIn as well. We’re super active there. Our Instagram page, I would be remiss not to give that a shout out. Our marketing team does an excellent job over there, and that’s probably going to have the bulk of everything. If it ends up on our website, it’s probably going to be on our Instagram page first. So check out the Fifth Wheel Freight Instagram page, but fwf.com. And if you’re looking for a job, fw.com/careers is a way that you can get put on my desk immediately.

Chad Franzen: And you’re looking for who again?

Josh Brawley: Sales reps, mostly. However, we will be hiring operations people, folks in accounting, accounts receivable and accounts payable, things of that nature as well.

Chad Franzen: What is the key to success in selling what you guys do?

Josh Brawley: Patience. Patience, number one. Work ethic, number one. Work ethic, number one. Patience, number two. If I’m super talented and I don’t want to work hard, I’m not going to have success. But as long as I work hard, and then I have patience too… Because it’s like baseball. If you go three for 10 in baseball, you’re a Hall of Famer. In sales, if you go three for 10, you’re making a significant amount of money, but you can’t let those seven no’s stop you from getting those three yes’s. So having that patience, having that work ethic, and just having coachability as well.

Chad Franzen: Do you have any advice for overcoming rejection?

Josh Brawley: Embrace it, is the best way, the easiest way. Same thing with truck issues here. I tell people to look at issues as a good thing, because that’s why you have a job. This is going to make me seem young here, well, I guess I am young, but I use the Pokemon analogy a lot. In Pokemon, you start off and you’re fighting really small Pokemon and you’re just building those experience points. That’s the same thing you’re doing with cold calls.

Josh Brawley: You’re going to get told, “No, no, no, no, no,” but every single time you get told no, you should be able to take something from that and apply it to your call, and hopefully learn from it. We like to say in here, it’s a Nelson Mandela quote, “I don’t lose. I either win or I learn.” And that’s where we look at the no’s as an opportunity to learn, rather than a loss. It’s kind of like a mindset flip. Let’s just not say that you just got rejected. No. What can we take from that and apply and hopefully get a yes the next time?

Chad Franzen: Do you have any advice for making a cold call not so cold?

Josh Brawley: Yeah. My number one goal when I was a cold caller was to make sure that the person I talked to met with me. There’s different ways that you can go about that. I think the number one thing is to just realize that this person has no idea that maybe this is your first time calling this company, they don’t know that stuff, and just humanize yourself.

Josh Brawley: I used to tell people all the time, I would say, “Hey, X, Y, Z, I’m calling in as a broker from Fifth Wheel Freight.” They’d go, “Oh, another broker.” I’m like, “Yeah, but I bet none of them will tell you a freight joke.” They’re like, “Oh, maybe not. Let’s hear it.” And I’m like, “Oh, it’s semi funny.” And then they wouldn’t laugh, it’d just be dead air, and I’m like, “Oh, that was the joke.” And then like, “Ha-ha-ha.” I’m like, “Oh, I guess I should work on my delivery.” And then after that, they’d laugh.

Josh Brawley: I know every single time when I call back, I can say, “Hey, I’m that guy that made that dumb freight joke.” Making a cold call is one thing, but you should know that you’re not going to accomplish closing the business on the cold call. So your number one goal is, be remembered, and don’t worry about everything else down the line.

Chad Franzen: Would you say that it’s more or less daunting to do a B2B cold call than a B2C cold call, like calling somebody in their living room or their kitchen?

Josh Brawley: That’s actually a good question for me. I came from Michigan State University. The job I had before I graduated, I was in charge of calling alumni and asking for donations. And in that situation, I would 10 times rather call B2B, no doubt about that. However, when I was calling for donations, I’m calling for donations and not actually providing something, but for me, I’d rather go B2B all day long.

Josh Brawley: I think that you might find a different type of success with B2C, but business to business, I think there’s a lot of compensation advantage from talking to large companies and things of that nature. And you can find those persons too. Even if it’s a B2C, at the end of the day, you’re talking to a person and you can find that just as well on the business to business side.

Chad Franzen: Okay. My final question for you is this. Do you have any books or podcasts that you have found particularly valuable or enjoyable as you’ve kind of gone from entry level to COO, vice president?

Josh Brawley: Yeah. The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Bleep is one that was extremely helpful for me, just because I’m young still, and to have the responsibility that I have, you have to let that stress roll off your shoulders somehow and find a proper way to do that, is something important. I’m a huge fan of John Maxwell too, the 101 collection, Leadership 101. All those books that he’s written, I’m a huge fan of.

Josh Brawley: And then for me, it’s more about just constant resources, reading, finding mentors, finding people that have been in a similar position as you prior that you can lean into. And that’s one thing that I can say I’m very blessed to have, is just the team that we have here at Fifth Wheel. It’s young, like-minded folks that, as I said earlier, aren’t necessarily just doing it for themselves, but they’re doing it for the entire team too.

Chad Franzen: Hey, Josh, I really appreciate your time today. It was great to talk to you and find out a little bit more about FWF. I really appreciate it.

Josh Brawley: Awesome. Appreciate your time as well, Chad. It was a pleasure.

Chad Franzen: Thank you. So long, everybody.

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Speaker 1: (singing).

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