Trey Griggs [00:00:11]:
Hey, Robert. How are you doing?

Robert Kowton [00:00:14]:
Good morning, Trey. How are you?

Trey Griggs [00:00:16]:
It’s good to have you on the show, and this is a great walk-up song, my friend.

Robert Kowton [00:00:21]:
Great stuff.

Trey Griggs [00:00:22]:
I need to let it play for just a little bit, you know. And we will get to Margaritaville later, but it’s always good. And I’ll

Robert Kowton [00:00:27]:
Let it be as smooth as confusing. Smooth in. Right?

Trey Griggs [00:00:29]:
That’s right. That’s right. It’s such a casual song. Such a guitar player? Are you a musician? Do you like that kind of thing, or is this just a just one of your

Robert Kowton [00:00:35]:
My favourite songs are music, and I wish I could play a guitar like yours. I have an uncle who’s very musically talented, but I’m two-left feet when it comes to music. But as far as loving music and its varieties, I’m all for it.

Trey Griggs [00:00:50]:
Well, you enjoy great music, and that’s what matters. And so, thanks for picking that song. That was a great song. And thanks for being on the show. Before we get started, I want to ask you a quick question. Are you a coffee drinker? Do you want a coffee mug? Or are you a water bottle drinker? Do you like water? Which one would you prefer? We’re going to send you one today for me on the show.

Robert Kowton [00:01:06]:
I’m both. You can go with the jeez. That’s a really tough one. I’ll go for coffee.

Trey Griggs [00:01:11]:
Coffee? Or we’ll surprise you and send you both. You never know. But we’ll get one of these out to you today. We appreciate you being on the show today and taking some time to talk a little bit about your expertise. I do have a fun fact about you. We’re gonna start with this. You recently purchased a gravel bike in October for adventure riding, and you’ve been doing this for quite a long time. How’d you get into that?

Robert Kowton [00:01:28]:
Cycling, I used to be a hockey player. I’m in Canada, so most of us play hockey. I played hockey up to about the age of 16, so kind of a higher level hockey, and I kept dislocating my shoulder. And I realized that going, I wasn’t gonna become an NHL player. Right? So I ended up departing, and through my sister, in fact, she had me volunteer at a triathlon. And I used my old mountain bike, a heavy-duty mountain bike out of triathlon. That inspired me, and I got a road bike, which led me to a race team. And. Through a fellow in my community, the Anguero family’s sons, Alex and Paul, have both been to the Commonwealth Games. They were both tracks.

Robert Kowton [00:02:08]:
Like, they’re high-end cyclists. Through that, I got connected to Juventus Cycling in Edmonton. I spent many fantastic years cycling around BC, Alberta, British Columbia, and Alberta, racing and having a lot of fun. It just really taught me a lot about myself and the community. And then, you know, wife, kids, life gets busy. I SPIll bike, but not as much. Then my neighbour reinspired me, and so I started; I ended up getting a newer version of a road bike a few years ago, back in 2017. I still have my original race bike built by Bob Townsend, but I bought another road bike. And then this year, I ended up pointing into gravel because I wanna stay off the highways.

Robert Kowton [00:02:48]:
I can’t trust the road the drivers as they used to be. So, wanna stay off the roads, and a gravel bike is that perfect mix between not. I don’t wanna be a crazy mountain biker flying down hills. So this gives me that mix they call mixed train riding. So you can do a little bit of road, a little bit of gravel, a little bit of singletrack, and have fun.

Trey Griggs [00:03:07]:
Yeah. I’m still thinking about a mountain bike and a triathlon. That’s just double the work. That’s probably a little

Robert Kowton [00:03:11]:
It was.

Trey Griggs [00:03:12]:
A little harder than when I was young.

Robert Kowton [00:03:13]:
I was pretty young. I was 15 or 15 years old or 14 years old. Just happy to

Trey Griggs [00:03:17]:
Be in the race. That’s right. Just happy to be in the race. You know, I looked up what a gravel bike is, and essentially, it’s almost like taking a road bike, listen-speed speed and putting a front suspension on it, and somewhat kinda like mountain bike tires. Little

Robert Kowton [00:03:28]:
Bit of a throttle. New. That’s new. It’s more that the frame is a little bit more beefier than a road bike. The terminology here in 2024 is that they’re built more slack than a road bike. If I showed you my road and gravel bike, you’d see the angles, and the slackness allows you to go down trails. It’s a little more comfortable ride, not as aggressive. So it’s, yeah, very intereSPIng, very intereSPIng.

Trey Griggs [00:03:53]:
Yeah. And I’m with you. I don’t I don’t ride bikes, but I like to run. When I do, I prefer a trail over riding on the road. Not so much for the cars, maybe for the knees, what it does to my knees. But at the same point, it’s much; I think it’s more enjoyable to kinda be out there on, you know, on a trail or on the gravel at so much.

Robert Kowton [00:04:07]:
I’m a runner as well.

Trey Griggs [00:04:08]:
Run. Yep.

Robert Kowton [00:04:08]:
Yeah. Very cool. Appreciate that. Yeah.

Trey Griggs [00:04:10]:
Yeah. What are some of the lessons you’ve learned in some of these endurance races, and how has that helped you in your career?

Robert Kowton [00:04:18]:
I’m gonna say I wouldn’t say I’m a super endurance racer, but I would say that, in fact

Trey Griggs [00:04:21]:
More than most.

Robert Kowton [00:04:22]:
I when I jumped into when I when I jumped into the world of freight brokering, I had started, and I started from ground 0 with no customers. And I remember one day, in fact, I was out for a run, and I’m like, I just had this vision, and I should be in Vancouver. And this was before I joined SPI Logistics. I’ve only been working with two brokerages. And when I started in the freight industry in 20 2008, and then I joined SPI in 2016. But in the summers, around 2,008, I was running, and I thought I should be in Vancouver. So I went out there, and I set out, and I met a bunch of customers. I had some set appointments and some open appointments.

Robert Kowton [00:05:00]:
Through that, I met people. In fact, I’ve been servicing two of the customers out there since that visit—since 2008.

Trey Griggs [00:05:09]:
Wow. That’s incredible. And I just had a vision for going to Vancouver. Now I can understand that. I’ve been to Vancouver. Believe it or not, I honeymooned there. I love that city. Where were you before that? Where did you start out?

Robert Kowton [00:05:19]:
So, basically, I went to the University of Alberta in Edmonton. My goal was, actually, to go focus on facility management or tourism was my angle because I have a degree in recreation administration from the University of Alberta. And I worked in that a little bit because prior to that, I was a lifeguard. I worked for playgrounds as a playground leader, lifeguard, and swim instructor. And, so I went, and I came out working at Grant MacEwan College. I was their kind of facility coordinator, booking space and such, and I that was great being at Grant McEwen College. And then a friend from university says, hey. I’m at Coca-Cola, and that’s great, and I think you’d be a great fit.

Robert Kowton [00:05:53]:
Well, one thing led to another. Spent from 1998 to 2008 at Coca-Cola doing account management district sales and eventually became a district sales manager for the last five years. So I had a team I managed, overlooked the bulk channel, and then I made the big switch to the freight world, where I started from ground 0. But I took that, my salesmanship, and my customer focus into that. Started from nothing and slowly built up. I had a great mentor when I started in 2008 at the brokerage where I was, and then, things changed in 2016 when I had to make a change, and I was looking for a company that had cross-border support. I needed LTL support. I was doing intermodal, full truckload, and various other things. I’m a generalist.

Robert Kowton [00:06:36]:
I guess you’d say many brokerage agents are very mode-specific, just reefer, just flatbed, but I focus more on customers. I looked at it from the standpoint that I could service the customer in various ways; that was my goal. And so, came across SPI logistics, and it was a perfect fit. And literally, within, it was January 6th or 8th or something. It was right at the very beginning of January. And within two days, we went through a list of my customers to verify I knew other agents had them. And within two days, I was up and running and didn’t miss a beat. And Wow.

Trey Griggs [00:07:10]:
That’s incredible. We’re going to dig into that here in just a little bit, but I have a question now. Knowing that you worked at Coca-Cola, I’ve been wondering this forever. Is there a difference between Diet Coke and Coke 0? The ingredients look the exact same on the cans.

Robert Kowton [00:07:23]:
As far as I didn’t regard to the chemical, I can tell you it’s a different sugar. Take a different instead of Diet Coke, which has aspartame; the Coke 0 is something different, and that’s what gives it a different taste. Because you have the diet, then you have hardcore Diet Coke drinkers,

Trey Griggs [00:07:38]:
And My wife the Coke 0 100%.

Robert Kowton [00:07:40]:
The Coke Zeros tasted a little different because, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Coke 0 was to some people who liked Coca-Cola but wanted something different but didn’t like the diet Coke, and that’s when they came up with Coca-Cola 0, and that was that perfect hybrid.

Trey Griggs [00:07:54]:
Yeah, because it seemed like the ingredients were almost the exact same. I could never figure out the difference, but my wife is pretty strict about it. She’s like diet Coke and nothing else. And Yeah, I tend to move around a little bit. So, good to know.

Trey Griggs [00:08:04]:
Alright. So, let’s get back to what you’re talking about. You know, being a generalist definitely makes it exciting because you you get to do a lot of different things throughout the day. I tend to be a generalist about things as well, and so I can appreciate that. So when you came over to SPI, you were servicing customers in many different ways. What made it a perfect fit working with SPI?

Robert Kowton [00:08:22]:
It was the fact that when I called and had a conversation, at the time, it was Greg. It was Greg, and he was the kind of VP of operations at that time, Greg Davenport. And the conversation was perfect. When I asked if you had this, Yes. Do you have that? Yes. Do you have this? Yes. He asked me questions, and then we went through the process of reviewing our customers. And they were that was in, well, obviously, we’re gonna talk a little bit about the LTL, and that was a big part of my business, and they had everything I needed.

Robert Kowton [00:08:53]:
They had cross-border support, dual currencies, and all the software that I needed. It was just a perfect fit.

Trey Griggs [00:08:59]:
Yeah. It’s nice when you find a home like that where it’s just plug-and-play. You don’t have to do much. It just enhances what you’re currently doing and makes it even easier. It always makes it a little bit,

Robert Kowton [00:09:08]:
A problem. The other main thing was the fact that they were very strong with their cross-border freight and having the systems in place, and that I needed because I did that was the bane of my business is cross border, is internal Canada and cross border freight. And so they had the mixture of all of that that gave me the opportunity. I can move my customers’ freight within Canada, within the United States, and across the border. So it’s it’s a full 360 opportunity.

Trey Griggs [00:09:32]:
Yeah. And the dual currency is a big thing too because, you know, many brokerages in the states don’t have some of those things in play. Absolutely. Cross border to Canada or cross border to Mexico. And so just having that in play is helpful as well. So, let’s talk about LTL freight. Let’s talk about, you know, some of the differences between the USA, and Canada, and cross-border complexities. What is it about that, kinda get you I know you have a lot of interest in LTL and you have a lot of business in LTL.

Trey Griggs [00:09:56]:
What is it about that kinda get you excited?

Robert Kowton [00:09:59]:
Well, I guess a lot of, as I mentioned, a lot of broker agents tend to be mode like, when I use the word mode, reefer, flatbed, heavy haul, drive in specific, and some agents are actually mode and lane driven where they only focus on drive and freight between Chicago and Texas and Chicago anything between Chicago and Texas, that’s, like, their forte. Right? That’s their thing. And if someone calls them about something else, they kinda have the blinders on, and they’re not interested. As I mentioned, my thought was when I came into this industry of freight brokering, I realized, you know, I wanted it to be somewhat recession-proof, so I didn’t go with the traditional, I’m just gonna go after the grocery distributors. I thought, well, what if one industry goes down? I need another one to offset. And it’s worked out for me because, well, I’ve been doing it since 2008, and I have the gamut from, you know, things related to construction all the way to frozen. I’ve got the gamut of there, and they always seem like when one slows down, another one picks up, and it’s this you kind of ride I’ve been riding that roller coaster of having that variety. And so tying in LTL, what it can do first and foremost is you can your customer can now really utilize you as it gets well, one, it’s gonna get you a deeper relationship with the customer.

Robert Kowton [00:11:16]:
So when I give a simple example rather than a long story, this can lead to others. So you’re you’re doing truckload freight for a customer. You deliver the last load. 2 days later, you get a call saying they got a call. When they received the load, the consignee, one of the pals, had the wrong product, the wrong SKU, or something wrong. It got picked up incorrectly by their warehouse. That customer is not planning to order another truckload for at least 2 weeks. Now they got this dealing, but they’re short one pallet.

Robert Kowton [00:11:45]:
So instead of the customer having to figure out how to do this, they can just call you up and saying, hey, we have this one pallet. We need to ship 1 pallet. And then we need to pick up the other pallet and return it. That’s that right there in itself. The second example I can give the benefits of having the knowledge and the skill set to offer LTL service to your customers, project freight. So again, because I’m customer focused, if a customer is in construction and they’re going to be building something or they’re they’re taking on a contract. They’re gonna build something, whether it’s a house, a hospital, or whatever. Well, sometimes they might you might be sending truckloads of a variety of equipment, bobcats and tools, flatbeds of that, but you may also be shipping, you know, a truckload of insulation or pallets of brick or something like that.

Robert Kowton [00:12:28]:
But meanwhile, they may need to order some widgets and parts, 1 pallet here, 1 pallet there, and then they bring it to the yard, put it all together. Because you have that LTL ability, you can do that. 3rd way I can explain that’s a benefit you can do it. So if you’re shipping a variety of things with your customers, like I have, I have customers that ship out of, say, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin. Sometimes when the stars align, and it happens more often than you think, they’ll say I got 2 skids here, 1 skid there. Sometimes it’s better I just ship each one separately. Sometimes I pick up the 2 from here, 2 from there, bring them into, say, Toronto, and then I put them on Intermodal rail and ship it as a half a container. So, being creative and having these modes that you have the skill set for allows that your customer can totally rely on you to help their supply chain.

Trey Griggs [00:13:19]:
Yeah. I love that. And I love the fact that you like, you’re always wanting to learn, it sounds like. You want to figure out these problems and not just have, like, the same problem every day to figure out, but actually learn some new problems and work with customers.

Robert Kowton [00:13:29]:
The bean of this business. Never stop learning.

Trey Griggs [00:13:31]:
Yeah. I love it. And, you know, I I started my career at DAT in Portland and, you know, DAT really, has their load board for the United States, but then there’s, there’s there’s Loadlinkup in Canada, which is kind of the sister company for that. I know at that point that there’s quite a few differences between Canadian freight and, freight here in the United States. Does that from an LTL perspective, how would you kind of categorize the difference between Canadian freight, you know, domestic freight here in the US and cross border, what the complexities are of that?

Robert Kowton [00:13:59]:
Well, I’ll touch on this, and then I’ll get on to the next. But bay the basic summary is if you’re taking an LTL freight, like, one pallet in Canada going from, say, Vancouver to Toronto or Montreal, and you’re taking one pallet from Houston, Texas to Chicago, and you’re doing the price calculations, number one difference is in Canada, the pricing structure is much simpler. It’s a cubic. It’s either actual weight or cubic weight, whichever is greater, pure and simple. So, carriers have a model of a minimum. They have a minimum charge, and then it goes up to 500. So if it’s less than that, you get the minimum or up somewhere between. And then what happens is it’s pretty simple.

Robert Kowton [00:14:38]:
Like, you see a chart, it’s going to be £500, £1,000, maybe 15, 2,000. Typically, it’s 5, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, and then 10,000. So basically, if the cubic weight, actual weight is whichever is greater, and we’ll talk a little bit, but we can dive into it, that’s how you get priced. Whereas in the United States, the pricing model is based off of the NMFC, National Motor Freight Classification System, and often those NMFCs is based on the description of the goods. And then when you open up that NMFC number, it might be density based. It could be description based. So you could have a density-based. So you have to know how to calculate the density, which will cross-reference the freight class.

Robert Kowton [00:15:15]:
So it takes a lot of work to get to that freight class. When someone says, Yeah, we ship a freight class 70, well, hang on a sec. We got to look into this. Just this just yesterday, I picked up a pallet that’s an MFC in Georgia. It has subclasses, but not based on density. It’s based on it’s a it was a valve and it’s based on is it aluminum or iron? There’s different in what it’s made of was the determining factor that determined the NMFC. So those are the that’s the simple answer.

Trey Griggs [00:15:43]:
This reminds me of our system of measurement here in the United States. We seems like we make it more complex than it needs to be. You know, we have our our measurements, you know, we got miles and feet and pounds and the rest of the world has, you know, meters, kilometres, and a lot of simpler, you know, units of measure. Why do you why do we make it so complicated, Robert? What’s the

Robert Kowton [00:16:02]:
Well, actually, Canada is can I have to say Canada is a bit messed up? You know why? Because we’re supposed to be all kilograms. Well, guess what? The price of hamburger is advertised on a pound basis. Really?

Trey Griggs [00:16:15]:
Oh, well, see, we’ve got a few things. We’ve got leaders for a few things, you know, like sodas and, you know, some of those types of things, but not a lot of things. And we have meters only for certain sports, unpopular sports like swimming. And

Robert Kowton [00:16:27]:
in theory, if you go to a job site and you’re working, you’re cutting wood most of the time. It’s not in millimetres and centimetres, which would be more accurate. But many times they say cut me a piece of wood at 7 3 eights.

Trey Griggs [00:16:39]:
Yeah. It’s crazy.

Robert Kowton [00:16:40]:
So we’re don’t

Trey Griggs [00:16:40]:
know what

Robert Kowton [00:16:40]:
that And if you go to the hardware store, you’re not ordering 1,000 millimetres of wood.

Trey Griggs [00:16:46]:
Yeah. See, that’s America’s bad influence on Canada. That’s what that is.

Robert Kowton [00:16:49]:
That’s right.

Trey Griggs [00:16:49]:
Where

Robert Kowton [00:16:51]:
we’re we’re a mishmash of both.

Trey Griggs [00:16:54]:
You got the international, you know, flare, which is way simpler, and then you’ve got us trying to work with us. And, oh, that’s, that’s hilarious. Yeah. The the the LTL classification system is is pretty archaic, and it seems like, why do we SPIll have this? Like, who has the stronghold? Why do we keep using it? But I think it’s that,

Robert Kowton [00:17:09]:
the way that they structure. So if I can kind of touch on one thing about LTL, because sometimes, say, if an someone who’s in the freight industry has seen this this podcast and is thinking, boy, that sounds like a great idea. I should I should really offer LTL freight. Hang on a second here. We gotta you gotta you gotta hold the horses for a second and and a couple things that I would bring up. With if you’re gonna enter your customers and you wanna try to provide service, a value-added services as of LTL freight, something to consider. Number 1, patience. LTL freight is not the kind of freight where you have a drive in load that picks up, say, a short haul that picks up on a Monday, delivers Wednesday, you’ve got the POD and it’s invoiced by Thursday or Friday morning.

Robert Kowton [00:17:53]:
That’s not happening with LTL. Even if it’s only a next day service, If everything’s right, sure. But often it takes several days for the, you know, the invoicing. And if there’s problems, it can take weeks. I just, I have a shipment from October that I’m going to finish this week because it had a claim finally. There are problems. So, one is the patience. Are you a patient? If you’re like, I just want to get the loads booked, delivered, invoiced, and moved on, then maybe LTL is not your forte.

Robert Kowton [00:18:19]:
It might be, but the next thing is willingness to learn. If you’re not willing to dive deep into the LTL organizational structure and the NMFCs and the freight calculations and the processes involved, if you’re not willing to get into the weeds of that, then it may or may not be a fit for you. The other thing to consider with LTL freight, it’s very competitive. So, it may not always be the highest dollar value. Right? But your percentage wise, if you’re making 15 or 10 or 15% on a truckload of $2,000, you might only you might be shipping a pallet that’s $200 and you may only put 40 or $50 profit, $60 profit, depends what it is. And so you’re so the dollar value may not look good, but really it looks like 26, 50, 40%, 30%. It can look good on a percentage ways, but dollar value. The other thing is the appreciation of the entire complexities of it because when you think about if you compare a truckload, like, right now, you and I could go out, create a trucking business tomorrow, hire 5, 6, 7 owner operators, both working we you and I could be working from our home.

Robert Kowton [00:19:31]:
We split the country. You dispatch these drivers, and I dispatch those ones, and we work from our homes. We have five trucks. We have no facilities. The drivers work from their homes, and they take the loads, and it’s all done. There’s no infrastructure there. There’s just you and Me; we’re doing everything.

Robert Kowton [00:19:46]:
We’re dealing with the brokers and all the paperwork. And as we grow, okay, maybe we add 1 or 2 people, but essentially it’s pretty darn simple. If you go to open up an LTL business and you want to be an LTL carrier, you’re buying a you have to have a warehouse at minimum. You’re going to need a bunch of trucks for the pickup and deliveries. You’re going to need dispatchers. You’re going to need a safety manager. You’re going to need customer service staff. You’re going to need someone to hire all these staff and manage all this.

Robert Kowton [00:20:09]:
So right from the hop, their their their investment is huge, but yet they have they’re expected in the marketplace to come out and provide low cost options and provide consistent daily service. So that is one thing. Like, you’re going to get one thing with LTL Freight is you’re going to get that consistency. You can pick up if it’s 1 to 5, 1 to 4 skids, you can literally call unless it’s a remote town where it’s only serviced certain days of the week. I have that history there. There’s a lot there. But generally, if you’re in major cities, you can pick you can dispatch every single day and get a truck. Sometimes, with those truckloads, you may or may not get a truck that same day and maybe the next day, but the LTL freight can be done daily.

Trey Griggs [00:20:49]:
Yeah. There’s reasons why we have hundreds of thousands of truckload carriers and only hundreds of common LTL carriers. It’s a hard game to get into. It’s a lot of complexities and, you know, infrastructure and networks that have been created over a long time. And so, it is it’s definitely a learning game. That’s for sure.

Robert Kowton [00:21:04]:
And I was gonna say that the the real thing that the other thing is there’s the whole thing about claims, but appreciating that there’s a claims process and there’s that as well. But I think the very the the best thing that LTL can do for you, if you’re willing to dive in and learn, is it will take your customer relationship level from, say, the kind of an entry level to a, you know, a risk kind of level. And it sorry. I would say to an excellence level, meaning because when you go into the LTL world, you have to become an educator and a consultant for your customer. You need to take the time to understand their how their warehouse works. You want it so that you learn their products, that you get to the point where if they have, you know, product ABC or a 20 and code a, d 20, and d sixties, all these different codes. And you know, when you can when your customer can call and say, yeah, we had a pal that’s gonna have, you know, 3 boxes of this, 4 boxes of that, and 3 boxes of this, and you know what it is, you can calculate and say, okay, that’s going to be a 48 by 48 by 64 pallet, and it’s going to weigh this much. When your customer, when you don’t, your customer doesn’t have to tell you all the weights.

Robert Kowton [00:22:14]:
I have that with customers. That is huge. And so, but part of that process SPIll is when you enter and venture into the world of LTL, you need to look at how are your customers’ freights. If their boxes always overhang the pallets because they always do truckloads, well, that’s not suitable because if boxes overhang up the footprint on the pallet, that ships at risk shipper’s risk and liability, which will lead to a claim. And then the customer is disappointed because you didn’t educate them that, well, yeah, it shipped out and there’s a claim, but we can’t put the claim through because your pallet wasn’t professionally packaged to withstand the rigours of LTL freight. So you have to be an educator. You have to teach them. If they’re only putting a little bit of wrap and they say, well, we want to do LTL.

Robert Kowton [00:22:53]:
Okay. How much is it going to cost to buy a band, a banding machine and band it? Alright. You got to educate them on this whole process. So, there’s that’s what it does. It just takes you to that next level with your customers.

Trey Griggs [00:23:04]:
Yeah. It creates a much stickier customer, and it has the potential to create a much stickier customer in that regard. Are you going to your customers’ warehouses to talk them through that? Do you do that through videoconferencing? How do you help educate your customers?

Robert Kowton [00:23:16]:
Well, a couple of ways. I can’t go to all mine because they’re I got customers all around US and Canada, but the ones I can, I do go, and if I go, I’m walking into there with my tape measure, never leave home without? I actually have a bag in that closet behind. That’s my PPE PPE bag. So when I go to my customer’s visits, I got a safety vest, I got a hard hat, I got steel-toe shoes, and I’ve got my, tape measure. And I’m when I go, I look. If I’m going to the warehouse, I come in prepared, and I’m measuring everything. I didn’t mean to ask. I just start measuring, and then I take pictures.

Robert Kowton [00:23:48]:
And if in doubt, I ask my customer to send me a picture and but I have to you have to find different ways, to get the information or you get it from the carrier. Or if I can, if the freight say the freight came from another city and it’s going to be passing, like, it’s going to be delivering to the city near me, I’ll go and find a way to get that, get pictures. I just try to gain insight however I can, the more I learn. And I’ll keep talking to my customer and say, hey. Do would you mind helping me get some information about your product so that as I learn, if I can research it, whatever I can do to gain that extra step to make myself differentiate. Because, right, my goal as a broker agent, whether it’s LTL, whatever mode, the ultimate goal of any broker agent is that when a customer says, we just won a project. We just won some big sales where we’re gonna ship we need to ship all this product. Right? Some sales rep sold something that they need to ship, and they’re in this conference meeting in a room, And when they say we need to ship, that the first thing that comes up is that Rob or Trey or whoever the agent is, that’s our person that we’re gonna rely on again.

Trey Griggs [00:24:50]:
That’s right. I love that.

Robert Kowton [00:24:51]:
That’s what you want.

Trey Griggs [00:24:52]:
Not your first rodeo. I’d love to see a picture of you with all your gear on out there just walking in, measuring. I can see you just taking over, taking control in there, and, and doing well, which I’m sure your customers really, really appreciate that. So that’s that’s awesome to hear. Alright. We gotta pause and play a little game. I’d like to have a little fun on the show. And, Robert, today, we are gonna play a little game of would you rather.

Robert Kowton [00:25:11]:
Oh.

Trey Griggs [00:25:17]:
Alright, Robert. The way this game works is we’re gonna put some, statements up on the screen, some some kinda, this or that type of thing. So would you rather do this or that? You gotta, you know, pick one and tell us why real quick, and then we’ll we’ll move on to the next one. The first one we have for you today is, would you rather be stuck in a romantic comedy with your worst enemy or in a horror horror movie with your best friend?

Robert Kowton [00:25:40]:
I’m gonna go with the horror movie with your best friend.

Trey Griggs [00:25:43]:
Do you like horror movies, or is it because of the best friend? It’s it’s just being with somebody.

Robert Kowton [00:25:47]:
I think I think someone I’d rather be with someone, that I can trust and talk about than my worst enemy, I guess.

Trey Griggs [00:25:55]:
It’d be more adventurous. That’s for sure. And I actually have a best friend who loves horror movies, so I think that would work out well for me. So I’m with you on this. I’m I’m going the same way. Horror movie with best friend, 100%. Alright. Next one.

Trey Griggs [00:26:05]:
Would you rather be able to speak every language in the world or be able to talk to animals?

Robert Kowton [00:26:10]:
Oh, wow.

Trey Griggs [00:26:11]:
That’s an interesting one.

Robert Kowton [00:26:13]:
That is. But you know what? The animals would be cool because I think they would have some deep thoughts to share with us humans that they could say sometimes how crazy we are. But I think when you if you’ve ever traveled, being able to speak languages is huge because you know what? There’s a lot of people around the world. We’re all the same. And the only sometimes that differentiates us is our language that we can’t communicate clearly. And having that ability to speak to people around the world would be huge.

Trey Griggs [00:26:35]:
So you’re on the practical side of every language, which certainly looks better in public. If you’re speaking to animals, people might think you’re weird. But if you could speak languages, people are like, wow. Look at that guy. He’s so smart.

Robert Kowton [00:26:45]:
Exactly. Exactly.

Trey Griggs [00:26:46]:
Go that route. Animals would be interesting, though. We agree with you that that would be interesting. Alright, round 3. Which one? Would you rather have a knife when you need a spoon or a spoon when you need a knife?

Robert Kowton [00:26:58]:
Spoon all day long.

Trey Griggs [00:26:59]:
Really? Oh, for sure.

Robert Kowton [00:27:01]:
I can cut lots with a spoon. I can dig things

Trey Griggs [00:27:03]:
If it’s if it’s sharp enough, maybe if it’s a plastic spoon, you’re done. I see. I I kinda go I got it the other way. I I think I can do anything with a knife because the opposite side of a knife is not sharp. So I could eat with that side if I

Robert Kowton [00:27:12]:
Oh, true. True. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. That’s good. Like, you can

Trey Griggs [00:27:15]:
do you have there are more possibilities with a knife to cut things, to beat. Sometimes a spoon

Robert Kowton [00:27:20]:
does. And it’s, like, easier to carry. It’s flat.

Trey Griggs [00:27:23]:
Could you cut a steak with a spoon? That would be interesting. I don’t know. I’m not sure, but I think I could eat cereal with a knife. I think. A little bit.

Robert Kowton [00:27:33]:
You’d be

Trey Griggs [00:27:33]:
A little bit.

Robert Kowton [00:27:33]:
Oh, that

Trey Griggs [00:27:34]:
That would be tough.

Robert Kowton [00:27:35]:
Oh, I see you make some funny videos. That would be a, a shorty that would be the the viral shorty of the day.

Trey Griggs [00:27:42]:
You know, I may have to do it this afternoon: make a little video of me eating, trying to eat cereal with a knife. I like where you’re going with that, Robert. Okay. Next one. Would you rather have to use shrimp-flavored toothpaste or deodorant that smells like cheese? Who’s coming up with these? Alright. Which one? Shrimp? I’m gonna

Robert Kowton [00:27:57]:
go with the shrimp-flavored toothpaste because at least you know what? It kinda seems exotic. Like, hey. This guy was eating shrimp. That seems

Trey Griggs [00:28:03]:
kinda true. And you can always wash it down with something else later. You can kinda get over it. Right? But cheese cheese deodorant, what is that? That’s nobody wants to smell like cheese. Yeah. I’m with you on that. That’s terrible. Alright.

Trey Griggs [00:28:13]:
Final round, Robert. Here we go. Almost done with this. Alright. Would you rather eat all your food with your hands or use utensils with only your nondominant hand? Oh, we we just talked about this yesterday with a friend of mine. Which would you rather do? Eat with your hands only or have to use your nondominant hand?

Robert Kowton [00:28:30]:
I think eat with my hands only. Just because I have I have a funky hand, my left hand that’s the nondominant. I it’s webbed, it’s smaller, and so it it’s just not Might not work.

Trey Griggs [00:28:40]:
Might not work.

Robert Kowton [00:28:40]:
Yep. It wouldn’t be it would work, but it’s just, yeah, I’d rather You

Trey Griggs [00:28:44]:
know, there’s something there’s something fun about eating with your hands too. Kinda something something enjoyable, especially if it’s something you can lick later. Like, Doritos are great because you get a little little extra afterwards. You know? Get a little extra bonus.

Robert Kowton [00:28:54]:
So Exactly.

Trey Griggs [00:28:55]:
I’m waiting on that. I think that’s a good one.

Robert Kowton [00:28:56]:
Too. It’s kinda primitive as well. Right?

Trey Griggs [00:28:58]:
So that’s right. That’s right. Well, Robert, thank you for playing. Would you rather? That was fun. I always enjoy having those conversations. And we have one more. We have a random question for the day. We always like to throw this out.

Trey Griggs [00:29:07]:
It’s just something kind of fun. So here’s our random question of the day: What would a world populated by clones of you be like? So the world is just all Roberts. What would that be like?

Robert Kowton [00:29:20]:
Oh, boy. My wife would sure have comments about that, I think.

Trey Griggs [00:29:23]:
A lot of cycling going on, probably. A lot of races. Everybody’s got

Robert Kowton [00:29:26]:
a bike. I I the only thing I guess I could say is I’m a pretty high-energy person, so I’d say that’s a positive.

Trey Griggs [00:29:31]:
It is.

Robert Kowton [00:29:32]:
Unfortunately, the world would not have a lot of music. I could, we could pretend that we would, we would think that we’re singing. But I guess you know what? I think I’m sounding really good if it’s all me. So if it’s all of us, we will all sound really good. But That’s right. To anyone else, it just wouldn’t be there. And then, you know what? I’m not a I love to research so that part’s good. I’m willing to dive into research, and I’m okay with math, but math is not my strong point.

Robert Kowton [00:29:57]:
So to to design a bridge and calculate a bridge could be a real there could be a lot of rivers without crossings. We’d have to use

Trey Griggs [00:30:02]:
It would be a problem.

Robert Kowton [00:30:03]:
That’s okay. I like to kayak and paddleboard. So the whole world would just have to kayak and paddleboard across rivers because I couldn’t build a bridge. So It’d

Trey Griggs [00:30:09]:
be a very natural world. I like it. I like I like your creativity with that. That’s that’s awesome. I love that. That’s so good. What a question. That’s a nice random question today.

Trey Griggs [00:30:18]:
Alright, Robert. So I have one more question to ask you about your work, and then we’ll get you out of here and get you on your way today. So, you know, you’ve been with SPI for a long time. What keeps you at SPI? What about working with the team at SPI that keeps you around?

Robert Kowton [00:30:31]:
The support. You know, you’ve got an accounts payable, accounts receivable team, and a client care team, and then you’ve got upper management, from Anita to Mark to, Joe, Mike. There’s Peter and then Mitch, the owner. If you need support in any capacity, whether you’re dealing with an issue or you have a huge prospect, if you need support, there’s support. And that includes the support of Anita in helping me hire people. I, to show the complexities of freight, of LTL freight, is I have a freight auditor that works for me that I hire. So 20 hours a week, that person’s there to help me keep on top of my LTL freight for tracking, tracing, and billing purposes, making it a little bit easier for SPI’s back end. And I try to be, you know, so that things match up and everything is and I’m dealing with all the complexities behind the scenes so that when it’s all said and done, it’s easy once it hits the back office.

Robert Kowton [00:31:31]:
And that’s just because of the nature of my business. I’m not saying that’s necessary for all agents, but it just works for my particular book of business. I think it works a little bit better. Yeah, I kind of agree with you. There’s a combination there.

Trey Griggs [00:31:42]:
I kinda agree with you. When I met the team at SPI, I could just tell that they love taking care of their agents. It’s a real passion for them, and they mean it. They’re not just saying it. They mean it. I got to speak for the support staff when I was up there. They are just phenomenal people. You know? And so it’s been a pleasure to have you on the show, Robert, and to talk about your experience with SPI.

Trey Griggs [00:31:58]:
Thanks for, you know, being so creative and having fun with us today. We’re gonna get you out of here with a little more Margaritaville. So great walk of song for that.

Robert Kowton [00:32:05]:
Isawa, kudos to you, and congratulations to you. You don’t talk about yourself a lot, but you have quite the, accolade of accomplishments in your career. And sometimes in our life, what we do one part, you talked about having to accomplish a sales career, but you were a teacher. And when you’re a teacher, you’re a salesperson. Right? You have to sell to the kids, and teachers, talk to your principals away, and you guys talk to parents. You’re always telling. And that’s led you to the success you’re having today. So congratulations.

Trey Griggs [00:32:33]:
I appreciate that. That’s very kind of you to say. You’re welcome on the show anytime, my friend. You have to have me back on the show. But thanks again for being on the show today. We’ll see you real soon.

Robert Kowton [00:32:40]:
Thanks so much.

Trey Griggs [00:00:46]:
What did you do before this that, put you in this position to, to jumping on the on the carrier procurement side.

Mark Funk [00:00:52]:
Yeah. Wow. Okay. So, prior to working here, I was actually the director of carrier procurement at A company called R&L Global Logistics, and, you know, I did a 3 year stint there. And then prior to that, I was director of carrier operations at Total Quality Logistics for 10 years. And then, prior to that, I was the, administration supply chain manager for Sara Lee US Foods, and and Prior to that, I worked for a company where I would actually travel internationally and and, you know, vet, suppliers and do some of the the, Shipping from overseas into the states.

Trey Griggs [00:01:26]:
Yeah. The one that stands out to me is Sara Lee. Did you get some good pies or something out of that deal?

Mark Funk [00:01:31]:
You you know, Trey, one of the things about Sara Lee, when I right there, I was thinking, you know, pies, it’s great. But, you know, at the time, you know, certainly it’s so much larger. Right? You you’re talking Hillshire farmer, Conn’s, back then it was Hanes Kiwi shoe polish, you know. It it just goes on. It’s $18,000,000,000 company. So, Yeah. But, yeah, I did eat my cherry pie.

Trey Griggs [00:01:51]:
Yes. I I figured you might have gotten a good cherry pie or something from time to time. Well, I

Mark Funk [00:01:54]:
was hoping the camera would make me a little

Trey Griggs [00:01:55]:
bit bigger, but that doesn’t is happening. Well, you know, we do what we can around here. We do our best. But it’s clear that you you’ve been around the block. You’re not a newbie at this. You’ve seen a lot in the industry. You’ve done this for a long time. And, you know, right now, there’s a lot of issues that are facing, you know, the industry, freight brokers in particular, Agents in particular, and I think about this a lot because especially for what you guys do with agents.

Trey Griggs [00:02:18]:
I mean, the reason why somebody becomes an agent is usually because they’re really good with customer and, again, good with sales. But in terms of, like, grabbing carriers, you know, booking freight and that type of thing, maybe they don’t wanna do that. Maybe you guys are helping them out with that or maybe they are doing that. But The vetting process has been a pretty cumbersome process over the years and is especially cumbersome now because of all the fraud, theft, and double brokering that’s going on in the industry. How are you guys helping your agents really tackle that problem, so that it’s not an issue for them as little as possible? It’s almost impossible to eliminate. We’re getting close to it, I think, with some technology. What are you guys doing?

Mark Funk [00:02:52]:
Yeah. You know, so, Trey, that’s great. Right? When you think back about, you know, what happened in the industry in 2008, 2009, you saw a rise in a lot of fraud and and things like that. But that is nothing to compare to what’s happening right now. You go to any conference, you talk to any customer, you talk to any agent, We’re with SPI or other other companies. One of the things that they run into is this whole fraud and and scamming that’s happening. Right? And and when you look at the different types of scams that are out there, I mean, you know, you got the ComCheck scams, you got the double brokering scams, you got the double brokering with theft Scams. You got the triple brokering with warehouse scams.

Mark Funk [00:03:29]:
You and it just goes on. Right? So, you know, here at SPI, what we’re doing is we’re really leveraging In in diving into technology. See, one of the things that that’s different now versus what it was back, you know, in 2008, 2009 when this stuff really became prevalent, is the type of technology. Right? So, you know, we’re we’re partnering with with great vendors in the industry right now. Shout out to Highway, you know, we’re we’re with Highway, great platform. A lot of, technology there. You know, another shout out to Carrier Assure. You know, Cassandra and what that team is doing over there, which is just fabulous.

Mark Funk [00:04:06]:
Right? And and, you know, we we bring in a lot of different technology, but That’s a little bit different with with SPI. Instead of going with just 1 single platform, We’re taking that platform, and we’re using our internal IT expertise and bringing all of those together. So when our agents go to look at a carrier, they can quickly say, this is a carrier that I should be able to to trust calling our customers from.

Trey Griggs [00:04:33]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s huge. You know? And you we saw, the partnership between CarrierSure and Truckstop recently. We also saw the partnership with Highway and TIA with their Watchdog product. And so It’s also good to see these companies really starting to work together to eradicate an issue that’s it’s causing a lot of problems for the entire industry. And, You know, there there’s really there’s really no way to completely eliminate it, but the the closer we can get to it, the better it is for the industry. And that’s what I like about, like, what Highway is doing is because they’re keeping the bad players out of party altogether until the bad players probably figure out a way to circumvent around that.

Trey Griggs [00:05:05]:
We’re I feel like we’re constantly gonna have to iterate to stay 1 step ahead of the the bad actors in the industry, kinda like hackers. Like, you’re never gonna completely eliminate hackers. You gotta keep Changing your security protocols to make sure you can keep them out. It it’s a never ending game, it seems like.

Mark Funk [00:05:21]:
What? You’re you’re exactly right. So, you know, one of the things that, that We used to look at a lot was inspections on carriers, right? So, you know, this was the days before we had highway carrier insurance, some other technology, we would look at, you know, carrier four zero one. We will look at inspections. If care didn’t have inspections, they weren’t business for, you know, 18 months, 2 years, maybe a little bit shorter than that as well. You guys start wondering, okay, why is that?

Trey Griggs [00:05:43]:
Yeah. Right.

Mark Funk [00:05:44]:
Right. So but so we would start excluding here, not just us, but other brokers and agent and and agencies in in the industry. So you know what they do? The the scammers, the bad actors, so what they do is they go out and they get a straight truck. They rent a straight truck, and they get these placards made up, And they slap it on the side of a rented straight truck, and they drive through and they get an inspection. So then you know what? Boom. That MC now has an inspection. You know, and and some ways to prevent that and and find that, but, that that’s a a great thing that, That that, we were able to to identify with the help of of external partners, but that’s that’s one area as well. You know, some some of the issues that we have too are just related to how MCs are handled and how they’re issued, and and there’s some things with that.

Mark Funk [00:06:30]:
But, You know, technology has been able to help us out a lot. And, you know, again, leveraging some of our internal technology, we’ve been able to link in Some of our telephony solutions as well and be able to identify that maybe this number is associated with a a known bad actor and things like that, as well as an email. So before you go to send that out, we can check that and say, hey, wait a minute, that’s that’s not a good

Trey Griggs [00:06:55]:
Good answer.

Mark Funk [00:06:56]:
Or it’s not associated with that carrier. Yep.

Trey Griggs [00:06:59]:
And that’s what I love about what Highway is doing as well is they’re bringing financial data into the equation as well. They’re being bringing in, you know, VIN numbers in the equation as well. If you got a carrier that has 2 trucks and has, you know, 60,000 in payables in a week, that’s not that’s not possible. Right? I mean, that’s So so being able to line all that up and say there’s something wrong here. There’s a flag here. We need to we need to do a further inspection or we need to just have a tolerance that eliminates them. I think those are the types of technologies. And as they continue to iterate and get better and better, are gonna make it a lot easier for brokerages to do that.

Trey Griggs [00:07:30]:
You guys provide that for your agents. That’s all included. When a agent on board with SPI Logistics, these services are all just, you know, par for the course. These are table stakes. Correct?

Mark Funk [00:07:39]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. There there’s no no additional charge or anything like that to the agents at all. Right? So so if you’re an agent for SPI, you know, we have that technology. We make it available. Obviously, it’s in our system for the agents. It because look. I I don’t know if you’ve actually tendered and out there on slum freight before.

Mark Funk [00:07:54]:
Right? But you said

Trey Griggs [00:07:55]:
6 months. You know that fun? I do.

Mark Funk [00:07:57]:
Okay. So you get it.

Trey Griggs [00:07:58]:
Right? Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:07:59]:
You spend all that time, you you’re getting that that relationship together with a customer, you made all these cold calls, they’ve hung up on you, they’ve hung up you finally, okay, hey, I’m gonna give you this chance. And it’s always some load going from nowhere to nowhere. Right? Yeah.

Trey Griggs [00:08:12]:
So you’ve got Hardest load possible. That’s right.

Mark Funk [00:08:14]:
Hardest load if it wasn’t hard, you wouldn’t have it.

Trey Griggs [00:08:17]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:08:17]:
But that’s your that’s your chance. Right? So the last thing you wanna do is risk that load on a a carrier that may be less accept.

Trey Griggs [00:08:25]:
That’s right.

Mark Funk [00:08:25]:
You know, so what we try to do is we make sure that when our agent looks at a carrier, that they have all the updated information. They know what they’re getting. You know, one of the things also that that we’ve done is we’ve integrated a character scoring model where we take in components From all these different sources, well, as our own proprietary information. And we can take a look at that in in a real quick one letter transfers into a number, our agents can look at that and say, okay, this carrier should perform, you know, to a level of expectations that we would want, Right? And what that does, it does look at different data data signals and says, okay, hey, this carrier because of so many different Insights, we’re gonna exclude them.

Trey Griggs [00:09:07]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:09:07]:
Right? So yeah, that’s all part of the package.

Trey Griggs [00:09:10]:
And I think that’s the best thing about one of the best things about, you know, SPI Logistics and and freight brokerages and agents coming on board. You know, if you’re a small freight brokerage, you just might not have the capital to invest in these technologies to avoid some of these risks, Especially if you’re an agent. You know? I mean, a small agent is really a super small business, and they might not have the resources when they think they might need a TMS. They might need all these things. The technology is already there. They get to come in and plug and play and just stay in their sweet spot of selling or customers customer experience, whatever it might be. They’re able to sustain that, but they get all the benefits of a big shop just by joining with SPI.

Mark Funk [00:09:45]:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Right, Trey? So if you’re an agent and you’re gonna come to SPI, You’re getting top of the line technology. You’re get you’re getting excellent back office support. If there’s an issue, if there’s a problem, You reach out and and and the team takes care of that. Right? And and when I’m talking about top line technology, you know, we’re talking Salesforce. We’re talking revenue. We’re talking access the highway, we’re talking access of carrier, sure, we’re talking all of those different things that come together to make it as easy as possible for an agent.

Mark Funk [00:10:14]:
You know, look, A year ago, right, the the market was totally different. You could call a wrong number and probably get

Trey Griggs [00:10:22]:
a load from a customer. Right?

Mark Funk [00:10:24]:
But trying to find a truck was hard.

Trey Griggs [00:10:26]:
Right. Right.

Mark Funk [00:10:27]:
Okay? And now now everything’s changed. Right? Yeah. You know, so now you you post a load and, oh my gosh, your your phones light up. They blow up. So what we and that takes a time and energy. So what we wanna do is make it so easy that when when an agent goes in And they put this information in, and and you know what? I left this out of of of what we’re talking about too. You know, we partner with Parade. Right? So Parade is capacity matching solution.

Mark Funk [00:10:50]:
You build that load inside Revnova, inside Salesforce, and you’re gonna get a listing of carriers that you know have ran through our grading system, have met all these criteria, And you you know what you’re what you’re getting at, and you also know whether they have the the LD tracking and where they’re at. So it it’s just So much easier

Trey Griggs [00:11:09]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:11:09]:
In that regard. Agents have have their own stuff to worry about.

Trey Griggs [00:11:11]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:11:12]:
They shouldn’t have to worry about banning the carrier. Yeah.

Trey Griggs [00:11:13]:
No. It’s huge. And I got to be up in the in the headquarters About a a month ago, back in the middle of summer, I got to got to go up and and see everybody, meet the team, see how they worked with agents. Everybody up there enjoys working with the agents and making sure that they they, are there to support them and make them, make them helpful. That’s the sign to me of a really healthy organization when the frontline workers enjoy the jobs that they’re doing. They’re in the right seats. They see the value they’re providing. They see their purpose and their why.

Trey Griggs [00:11:39]:
And the leadership At SPI, I’ve been so impressed with that, you know, with, with Joe and with Mike and James and and and all of them. It’s just been impressive to see the the leadership. What attracted you to come be a part of the SPI team to support agents?

Mark Funk [00:11:54]:
You you know, it’s funny you say that, Trey, because What you just said, I probably couldn’t say it better. This this leadership team at at SPI, it’s totally different. You know, I I I’ve worked with some companies that that I I still feel very fondly about. Right? But, You know, when I got a chance to actually sit down and talk to Anita, Joe, and Mike, and the team, there there was that sense of of of of just, Hey. We love what we do, and and they they truly when they spoke, it it meant something. So, You know, my interactions with everybody in the team from, you know, on the customer support side all the way up through the the executive side, they believe in servicing the agents. They truly believe that. And and that’s great because, you know, the last thing you wanna do is is work somewhere where you don’t, You’re working with people who don’t believe what what they’re what they’re what they’re representing.

Mark Funk [00:12:52]:
So the commitment to quality to the agents was the number one thing for me. And as I was speaking to the team, the leadership team, you know, it came through that, hey, Mark. If you come on board with SPI, we’re gonna be here to support you. You’re you’re gonna be able to do what you need to do, and you’re gonna help us in our mission to serve the agents. So the leadership team is what sold me, but all the way all the way just their commitment to the agents, I guess.

Trey Griggs [00:13:15]:
Yeah. And I think that’s that that that’s the best part of organization is the leadership in terms of evaluating if you wanna be a part of an organization. So I think the SPI has that going for him in spades, and it was really funny to get up there. Have you been to Vancouver? What a beautiful place. Man. I love it.

Mark Funk [00:13:28]:
I have been. I’ve. It it is absolutely beautiful. Thankfully, I I was up there in the springtime, and, you know, it was really nice and it was warm because I’m down here in Florida, you know, so I I love this.

Trey Griggs [00:13:39]:
That’s quite the hall from Florida all the way to Vancouver. That’s like a 6 hour flight.

Mark Funk [00:13:44]:
Yeah. Well, that’s a 6 hour flight, but you got some layovers in between the way too. So But, yeah, you know, it’s a beautiful office. You know, it’s it’s a great environment. And and even the just Sit into the room with with the the agent or with the people who are supporting the agents and hearing those calls and and just the intensity in your voice, make sure that they’re pleasing the agents. It’s key.

Trey Griggs [00:14:06]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:14:06]:
It it it’s it’s exciting. It really is exciting.

Trey Griggs [00:14:08]:
Yeah. And SPI has, has its annual agent conference every other year in Vancouver. So that’s a little perk because they get to go to Vancouver every other

Mark Funk [00:14:17]:
year, and next year, it’s in Nashville. A perk.

Trey Griggs [00:14:19]:
I’m excited about Nashville, but, But being up there in Vancouver, it’s hard to beat. It’s so beautiful up there.

Mark Funk [00:14:25]:
Yeah. You know, you mentioned that, you know, we it it’s called rendezvous, and what we do is we bring all of our agents in, and it’s a chance To to celebrate who they are and their accomplishments for the year, you know, we go over some of our our our road maps of what we’re looking for and

Trey Griggs [00:14:39]:
what we’re gonna

Mark Funk [00:14:40]:
be rolling out. So it’s a it’s a great chance to to actually, mingle, have a good time, but then also set our sights on where we’re going as a company.

Trey Griggs [00:14:49]:
Yeah. Awesome. And I was in Nashville, recently for, a charity golf tournament. That’s a great that’s a fun town, man. It’s gonna be a good time next year. I think it’s gonna be in April. I know. So it’s gonna be a lot of fun to Yep.

Trey Griggs [00:14:59]:
See the agents and be together, that’ll be that’ll be a good time for sure. That’s that’s true.

Mark Funk [00:15:03]:
Fun note, this year coming up, or in April that you’re talking about, it’s it’s actually May, our 45th year in business. So very excited

Trey Griggs [00:15:10]:
about it. Nice. Excellent. I’m sure there’s a special name for 45. I don’t know what it is. I’ll have to look it up. But, yeah, that’ll be fun. That’ll be a good time.

Trey Griggs [00:15:17]:
We gotta pause for a minute because we’d like to have a little bit of fun on the show, Mark. And so today, we got a couple of things. First of all, we’re gonna look at a random question of the day. Now listen, we come up with it. Our podcast director come up with this question, every every show. I don’t know if it’s a funny question, serious question. Could be a good question. It could be a dud.

Trey Griggs [00:15:34]:
I don’t know. See what it is. Today’s random question of the day is let’s see what we got. What has been the most memorable moment of your We’re so far oh, kind of a serious one. Okay. What’s been the most memorable moment? Funny, serious, whatever. What do you got?

Mark Funk [00:15:48]:
Oh my gosh. I I wasn’t prepared for that. So most

Trey Griggs [00:15:52]:
No one ever is, Mark. That’s always why we do it.

Mark Funk [00:15:54]:
Right. No

Trey Griggs [00:15:54]:
one’s no one’s prepared.

Mark Funk [00:15:55]:
You know, most memorable moment of my career is is probably a time where I where I failed. Right. You know, we’re going way back to when I first started. And, you know, long story short, I I put all some information together With all the leadership team and and I was supposed to send over 1 document, I ended up sending over all of the notes to the meeting.

Trey Griggs [00:16:17]:
Oh, no. To,

Mark Funk [00:16:18]:
to an opposing party. Yeah. So, I was young, and, The I I thought for sure that I was gonna lose lose my career at that point, but, the individual that that I reported to Said, hey, listen. You learned a lesson. We move forward.

Trey Griggs [00:16:34]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:16:35]:
And and the thing I take away from that is is I go through my career And when I work with people, when I encounter people where they may encounter an opportunity, it’s that forgiveness.

Trey Griggs [00:16:47]:
Yeah. And that,

Mark Funk [00:16:47]:
you know what?

Trey Griggs [00:16:48]:
Right.

Mark Funk [00:16:48]:
We we we’re all human.

Trey Griggs [00:16:49]:
That’s a critical moment for you. That could have been a moment where, you know, you you became harsh because somebody was harsh with you. Or Or but in this case, you know, there’s somebody showed you mercy and now, you know, now you’re showing mercy as well. That’s a that’s a powerful moment. Clearly, you’ve never forgotten that. That’s Very memorable. And the mistakes are usually the ones we remember the most. That’s for sure.

Trey Griggs [00:17:09]:
That’s for sure. I’ll tell you for me Yeah. I think the most memorable that I had, and it’s not really a moment, but it was a season, was when I transitioned from education to door to door sales to learn sales. I had a friend who said, I think you could you could be good at sales, and the only job I could get was going door to door business to business to sell office supplies. And so I’m 32. I have a master’s degree. I’ve got a family. My wife isn’t working.

Trey Griggs [00:17:33]:
It’s a 100% commission. It was the hardest season of my life. It was like It was like boot camp, like Navy Seal training. I mean, I I don’t wanna compare to that because those are heroes. Those are true heroes. But it was really, really hard, and, and I hated it. It was so hard. It was just constantly getting beat down and constantly just just fighting for everything you could get and just figuring things out and learning.

Trey Griggs [00:17:55]:
But when I came out of that 15 months later, I was prepared to do sales. And the next sales job that I got, I did very, very well. And it wasn’t, I remember this will be this is like if there’s a moment, this is the moment. I’m sitting at lunch one day, Mark, and one of my one of my associates, on the sales team comes to me and he goes, hey. What are you doing? And I said, I’m having lunch. And he goes, no. What are you doing? How how are you selling so many people? And I started to to, like, just talk through it. Like, well, what are you doing? You know? Like, I mean, this isn’t that hard, and I started to describe what door to door sales was like.

Trey Griggs [00:18:29]:
I started to say, it’s not like we’re going into their business and meeting them for the 1st time, and we gotta sell them today because we’re not coming back tomorrow, and it’s a 100% Shannon. You only eat what you kill. And as I’m describing it, that’s when the light bulb clicked of how valuable that door to door experience was. Yep. Right? It’s the same prepared to. Yeah. It was the same thing. And I just remember that season and that moment in particular of the of how valuable door to door sales.

Trey Griggs [00:19:01]:
And now I’m a salesman at heart. When I meet other salespeople and they start talking, I can almost tell which ones went through door to door like I did, because it’s it’s almost like a rite of passage to to do that. Yeah. So, yeah, that was a memorable moment in my career as well. So that’s a good to go. Those are those are 2 good ones. So it’s a good question. Good question today.

Trey Griggs [00:19:16]:
That’s good.

Mark Funk [00:19:17]:
Awesome.

Trey Griggs [00:19:17]:
Alright. Also, it’s time for us to play this or that. This or that. Okay. This is a fun game that we play. I think we might even have graphic for this. Do we have a this or that graphic for this? We we do. Let’s play.

Trey Griggs [00:19:28]:
Uh-oh. Alright, Mark. So I’m gonna give you 2 option 2 options. You just have to tell us which one you prefer. That’s it. Alright. Okay. We’ll make them real simple.

Trey Griggs [00:19:40]:
Alright. We’ll start with 1 super simple. I think I even know the answer to this one, but I’ll just throw it out there. Okay. Beach or mountains? Beach or mountains? Beach. Beach. Clearly. Beach.

Trey Griggs [00:19:50]:
Yeah. You don’t have to get away to the mountains. You like the beach. You actually I

Mark Funk [00:19:53]:
can look at the mountains maybe beach.

Trey Griggs [00:19:57]:
You’re a beach guy. That’s for sure. Okay. Alright. Okay. Hot dog or Hamburger. You’re at a barbecue. Hamburger.

Trey Griggs [00:20:04]:
Hamburger. I was at With cheese? And if so, what kind of cheese?

Mark Funk [00:20:07]:
Oh, absolutely. What kind of cheese? Cheeseburger in paradise, man.

Trey Griggs [00:20:09]:
Oh, that’s true. I should. That’s right. Good call. What kind of cheese? Do you go regular, like American, pepper jack, do you do something different, Colby? What do you American? Just American? Just American cheese. Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:20:18]:
Just American cheese. Yeah.

Trey Griggs [00:20:19]:
That’s a good one. Okay.

Mark Funk [00:20:20]:
Now you’re making me hungry. I know what I’m gonna do after we’re done here.

Trey Griggs [00:20:23]:
The next one is also food, so I apologize. Okay. Apples or oranges, let’s go healthy. Would you prefer to eat an apple or peel an orange and then eat that?

Mark Funk [00:20:30]:
You know what? I’m gonna say orange, because it goes with a lot of drinks.

Trey Griggs [00:20:34]:
Oh, okay. Alright. Very good. Orange, that’s a good one. Orange is not bad. I like Apple because it’s just not as messy. That’s why I like Apple, but oranges are good. Oranges are good.

Trey Griggs [00:20:43]:
That’s a good point. Okay. Alright. Sports car or truck?

Mark Funk [00:20:50]:
So I own a truck, but eventually, I’m gonna get Sports car. So right now, I think that’s what everybody wants to do. Right now, it’s a truck.

Trey Griggs [00:20:58]:
Right now, it’s a truck. But, yeah. But but you like those do you have a sports car picked out? It sounds like you’ve been thinking about this. Do you have one that you

Mark Funk [00:21:04]:
I have, but, unfortunately, I just can’t bring myself to to to get to that level as far as what the commitment is. But I really love the new Corvettes.

Trey Griggs [00:21:12]:
I think those look

Mark Funk [00:21:14]:
really nice, but

Trey Griggs [00:21:14]:
Would you like a new Corvette or would you like a classic like 77 Corvette?

Mark Funk [00:21:19]:
You know what? I really like the new ones.

Trey Griggs [00:21:21]:
Yeah. They really do. They are they are nice. They they look like Lamborghinis kind of. They kind of got the feel. Right? Right.

Mark Funk [00:21:27]:
Yeah. I just can’t I can’t I can’t bring myself to pay that, so I just drive my truck.

Trey Griggs [00:21:32]:
That’s a that’s a good one. Alright. Well, you know, that’s that’s a good one. Okay. Last one, vacation. Are you staying in the states? Are you going over

Mark Funk [00:21:40]:
Going on vacation next week and are gonna go up to another part of Florida.

Trey Griggs [00:21:43]:
You’re going to Florida?

Mark Funk [00:21:44]:
Panama City Beach.

Trey Griggs [00:21:45]:
Let’s let’s do this. A dream vacation. Let me make it dream vacation. Somewhere in the states or somewhere overseas?

Mark Funk [00:21:51]:
States, actually.

Trey Griggs [00:21:52]:
Stateside. Alright. Cool. You like to do national parks? You like to just like, what do you like to

Mark Funk [00:21:56]:
I’d go to Iowa or I’m sorry. I yeah. I’d I’d go to Hawaii.

Trey Griggs [00:22:02]:
Hawaii. Yeah. Have you ever been there before?

Mark Funk [00:22:05]:
No. I have not. It’s on my bucket list.

Trey Griggs [00:22:06]:
Bucket list.

Mark Funk [00:22:07]:
Yes, Brent?

Trey Griggs [00:22:08]:
I have been once. I’ve been once, and that was, that was last, last year, last May. And, I’ve never been there before. It was pretty cool. I got to take the kids too, so they’ve been there as well, which is nice. Kinda get that out of the way for them. Nice. That’s pretty cool.

Trey Griggs [00:22:20]:
Alright. Well, everybody, that was this version of this or that. So hope you enjoyed that. Alright. Let’s get back to this. We got just a few more minutes here before we wrap up, Mark. Just a couple of other things. So, know, we talked about your work at SPI.

Trey Griggs [00:22:33]:
What is your favorite thing about working with agents? What do you just enjoy? What gets you up and and just, you know, gets you excited? And are you working hand in hand with the agents? Are you really behind the scenes? About that interaction.

Mark Funk [00:22:43]:
Yeah. No. So I’ll start with the latter first. I’m a I actually go out in our in our business or visit our agents. I was visiting an agent, last week over here in Miami. I’m visiting agents a couple weeks from now. So, you know, part of my role, my job, It it is behind the scenes where I’m talking to carriers, I’m getting their equipment, I’m getting their requirements, I’m talking to our talking and working with our IT group

Trey Griggs [00:23:06]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:23:07]:
Making sure that any solution We bring we bring on matches and but, you know, what I really like and something I found about my career a long time ago, and Trey, I like to help people. I don’t know what it is. I’m sure somebody can analyze that, but you know what? I really like to help people. So when I can walk into an agent’s office And I can sit down and I can see that they’re spending a lot of time doing something that could maybe be automated and or that we already have a solution for, Then you know what? I’ll jump right in there. Hey. Let me show you this. Check this out. Right? And and we go through all that type of stuff.

Mark Funk [00:23:46]:
I absolutely love Helping people. And it isn’t necessarily agent agents, but it it does transcend nicely into that. Right?

Trey Griggs [00:23:53]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:23:54]:
So yeah. No. I’m I’m out probably 30% of the time with the agents. You know, another 70% of the time, I’m I’m working behind the scenes to to support the agents.

Trey Griggs [00:24:05]:
It seems like that’s the culture of the company because I know that Mike travels a lot to spend time with agents. He’s told me stories of, you know, going to a Kansas City Chiefs game with an agent in town and They’re doing these other activities. So it seems like that’s really a part of the culture is not just to support the agents from afar, but to really go and spend time with the agents in their neck of the woods.

Mark Funk [00:24:23]:
You know, Trey, it that is exactly our culture. And here’s the thing too. It it transcends just business. I mean, there’s agents that that I talk to on the phone all day. Hey. How’s it going? You know, and I know their family. I know their They’re they’re they’re kids. I know what’s going on in their personal life.

Mark Funk [00:24:41]:
And and, you know, it you build relationships. I mean, it the key and you get this because you’re a sales guy. The key To everything is relationship.

Trey Griggs [00:24:49]:
And if

Mark Funk [00:24:49]:
you can find people where you have that commonality and that you actually care about, it makes it so much easier to help them because It’s like an extended family, and I know that’s gonna sound corny if nobody’s ever experienced that. And and I get it, but It it is. It’s an extended family.

Trey Griggs [00:25:06]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:25:06]:
It really is.

Trey Griggs [00:25:07]:
No. It it seems like that’s the culture. And, again, talking to Mike, and, you know, he’s on the road a lot traveling, which is hard being away from home and and doing that, but it’s a commitment that the company has to its agents which, which is really great. So I love hearing that. I love hearing your heart for helping people And just wanting to really be a support for the agents, which I think is more differentiated for it. Yeah. How you guys great. Mark, thank you for being on the show today.

Trey Griggs [00:25:30]:
Appreciate that, and, much, much success to you as well. Looking forward to seeing you in Nashville, you know, maybe sooner. I don’t know.

Mark Funk [00:25:37]:
Yeah. I I think I’m gonna see you up in Tampa here shortly.

Trey Griggs [00:25:40]:
Oh, nice. Are you going to the broker carrier summit? I am. Yeah. Excellent. That’s awesome. Looking forward to seeing you out there. That’s gonna be a great event. Yeah.

Trey Griggs [00:25:47]:
We’ll be right Yeah. Good here, looking forward. I know. That’ll be great. Mark, again, thanks for joining us, and we’ll see you again real soon on another episode.

Mark Funk [00:25:54]:
Thanks for having me.