Join us as we explore the critical role of storytelling, drawing on Dhruv’s rich experience in the field. With a passion for solving real-world logistics challenges, Dhruv reveals the story behind Axle’s revolutionary product that is transforming the logistics industry by streamlining communication and enhancing efficiency.
A word about our sponsors:
Sponsored by SPI Logistics. If you're looking for back-office support such as admin, finance, IT, and sales as a freight broker - reach out to SPI Logistics today! Learn more about becoming an agent here: https://success.spi3pl.com/
Standing Out is a sales, marketing & leadership podcast powered by BETA Consulting Group, created to highlight best practices from industry leaders with incredible experience and insights! The goal is to entertain, educate & inspire individuals & companies to improve their sales, marketing & leadership development outcomes.
Join us as we explore the critical role of storytelling, drawing on Dhruv’s rich experience in the field. With a passion for solving real-world logistics challenges, Dhruv reveals the story behind Axle’s revolutionary product that is transforming the logistics industry by streamlining communication and enhancing efficiency.
A word about our sponsors:
Sponsored by SPI Logistics. If you're looking for back-office support such as admin, finance, IT, and sales as a freight broker - reach out to SPI Logistics today! Learn more about becoming an agent here: https://success.spi3pl.com/
Standing Out is a sales, marketing & leadership podcast powered by BETA Consulting Group, created to highlight best practices from industry leaders with incredible experience and insights! The goal is to entertain, educate & inspire individuals & companies to improve their sales, marketing & leadership development outcomes.
What's up everybody and welcome to another episode of Standing Out, a show about sales, marketing and leadership. I'm Trey Griggs, your host, so glad that you're with us today and it is summer. So what are you doing out there? What are your summer plans? Where are you going? We've got some big plans this summer around the Griggs household. We're going to have a good time. Throw in the comments what you're doing for summer. What's the best thing you're doing this summer? Got a lot of stuff on the agenda Can't wait to do.
Speaker 1:Hey, when you get a chance, take a moment to check us out at betaconsultinggroupcom and see how we are helping companies in the transportation space to truly tell their stories and to create some marketing for sales. Marketing only counts if it leads to revenue, so that's what we're all about is helping companies with that. Check us out at betaconsultinggroupcom On the website. There's a little button there that says to schedule a call with yours truly. Tell us your story, we'll help you write yours and looking forward to meeting you. If we haven't met before.
Speaker 1:I want to give a few shout outs before we get started today. Listen, we have turned our attention now to the Broker Carrier Summit coming up October 23rd through 25th down in Fort Worth, texas. If you are a freight broker, a truckload carrier or a vendor to one of those parties to a broker or a carrier, make sure you sign up for this event. It's one of the best events of the year. It's going to be in Fort Worth this time around and it's all about bridging the gap between brokers and carriers, having those conversations a lot about conversation, a lot of less presentation at this event. It's unlike anything you've been to before, so make sure you check it out. Go to Broker brokercarriersummitcom and get registered today. Also, don't forget, if you are a golfer at all, sign up for the Post and Pray Classic on Wednesday, the 23rd. It's going to be an incredible event, really looking forward to that. It's a two-person team event, so it's going to be a blast having a good time with that Also.
Speaker 1:One other thing just to throw out there is we love being a part of Reese Across America. If you're listening to us right now on Reese Across America Radio, thank you so much. Radio, not radio Radio, thank you so much. You can check out an episode of Standing Out every Tuesday night at 6 pm on Reese Across America Radio and, while you're at it, make sure that you go ahead and make a donation to Reese Across America for one of the Reese that they're going to place on the tombstone of a veteran in mid-December, coming up here in 2024. Be a part of that. Get involved in some way or another with your team. If you're a carrier, volunteer to move some wreaths around, just absolutely love being a part of this organization. It's wreathsacrossamericaorg, so check them out.
Speaker 1:Finally, I want to give a shout-out to our sponsor, spi Logistics. Listen, if you're a free broker and you're tired of just having all the admin back responsibilities of having your MC and insurance and buying tech and all that stuff that goes into it and you just want to stay in your sweet spot of working with customers and moving loads, make sure you check out SPI Logistics at successspi3plcom. They got the technology systems and back office support to really help you succeed. If you're a freight agent not happy where you're at right now, don't feel like you're being taken care of well enough, these guys will take care of you. Again, check them out at successspi3plcom. All right, it is time for our guest today, so excited to bring this guy on. He's young, he is a fireball, he's doing some great work, him and his partner in the industry in terms of creating tech that's actually moving the needle. So please welcome to the show from the company Axel API, or also their product beacon, the CEO of Axel Technologies, drew Hoopda.
Speaker 2:Now, this is a great song right here.
Speaker 1:I love it. That's a great song, man. I love that how are you doing?
Speaker 2:What a banger.
Speaker 1:What a banger. What a great movie, dude. What a great movie it is. It is. You're actually going to like this. So I was at Kohl's recently and was wasting some time because you know my daughters. They were buying shoes. This is where we spend a lot as a girl's dad. This is what you do. I was me meandering through the men's section and they had a teaser section and they had a top gun t-shirt and I bought it oh, I'm like man that's how I got it.
Speaker 1:So I feel, uh, I feel really special now that movie's been out 30 years. The new one came out a couple years ago. Uh, I just now got my first top gun shirt. So feeling pretty special, that's for sure. How are you doing, my friend?
Speaker 2:I am great man, I am great Feeling on top of the world, you know, having a good time.
Speaker 1:It's great having you on the show, man. We've had a chance to get to know each other recently and hear what you're doing over at Axial API, especially with your Beacon product and some of the other things that you guys are doing. I got to meet your co-founder, Jen. Just a lot of good stuff happening. Man, how the heck did you get into this industry? What is your story, man?
Speaker 2:Okay, so the honest answer or the investor answer which one do you want?
Speaker 1:I kind of want to hear both.
Speaker 2:Okay, so the investor answer is that I was hiking through the Himalayas and I met this sage at the top of the mountain who said here's the. You know, freight brokers have been struggling for decades and you have to solve this problem and it's a calling from you know, calling from God. That's the honesty.
Speaker 1:It makes for a better story.
Speaker 2:It does, it does Right, that's what they tell you about, like Steve jobs and and mark suckenberg, right, they, you know, they they found some like sage in the himalayas that they uh, who's who's passed now, um, and apparently that's when their, their companies, kind of took a, took that, took that hockey stick growth no that so the real answer is I played a lot of sim city as a kid. To be honest with with you.
Speaker 2:Just like, ever since I've been young, it seriously, like seriously, simcity four, that was my jam. And ever since I've been younger, I've just been really interested in, like you know, just transportation logistics and I and I came up with this personal thesis throughout, you know, throughout college, especially where I went to. I went to college to study the intersection of transportation planning, logistics and computer science and engineering, and and I came up with this wait hold on.
Speaker 1:That was a program in college the intersection of like supply chain transportation and computer it was a dual degree in political science and computer science uh, and, and I was focusing on uh transportation planning yeah. Oh, wow, okay, All right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've never heard of that it was a really good time, yeah, and so, you know, I spent that time coming up with a personal thesis, and my personal thesis ended up being there's like two things that determine whether someone can be successful in life. One is, you know, outside of family and all of that, but just like two macroeconomic things, the first is can you get to somewhere where you have some opportunity to succeed? And the second is do you have the resources around you to succeed? And I think so much of that is tied to your personal conveyance, personal ability to get somewhere and the ability to get things to you.
Speaker 2:As you could probably have guessed, my family is all from India. I immigrated here when I was very young as well, and you know, you see that in developing countries, you see that where people that live in places where they can get around and get to opportunities just have some, have so much more opportunity to flourish, people that live in places like urban places, for example, that have opportunities to get resources to them, have so many more opportunities to flourish than folks in rural places or other developing places or underdeveloped places. And so I really care about this, I really care about what we're building, and I think I'm just excited that we're solving a really cool problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is so interesting, the intersection of those things. I never really would have thought that is something that you would study in college, necessarily, but it is true. It's like where, where the resources are, sources are in, your ability to get them is really important. It's like I think of, like um this is probably back in the day, it's kind of a weird example, but like American Idol was a show that we used to watch early on and you have these people that have this amazing skill, this amazing talent, and they're waiting tables and they don't even know how to get those resources or publicity to them. And then the show comes along and they go and they audition for the show and they blow somebody away. And then you have like kelly clarkson and carrie underwood, who their entire careers change, their entire lives changed because of that show, because they were able to get the resources, the access to things.
Speaker 1:And I think about how many people are in in parts of the world whether it be, you know, rural parts of america or other parts of the world that nobody will ever know about them, but they have maybe the the best singing voice, so they have the best mind, the ability to do math or, you know, do architecture but they just don't like there's just nothing there. I just wonder about that. You know, it's like that, that's a real issue, so that's interesting there's. So I got deep really quick. Jeez, it's true, man, it's true.
Speaker 2:You know why? It's because, like, what we're doing here matters right. Like I think people coming from the tech side, a lot of people look at logistics and they're like, oh, it's this backwards industry where you know, like it's not tech forward. And you know, people aren't doing it because it's sexy. Yeah, people aren't doing it because it's sexy, people are doing it because it's really fucking important. Sorry, can I say that it's really important?
Speaker 1:Be yourself my friend, whatever you want to do.
Speaker 2:My mom can't watch this, um, but it's, it's just so important and I think that, like it's a fundamental bedrock of our economy, of our society, and when it goes wrong, people notice, and when it works, people don't give it due credit right, right.
Speaker 1:It's just like like umpires in a game If nobody notices, they do their job, it's when they mess up that people notice it and your mom should be proud. She created somebody really passionate about something that's important in life. So you know we'll let it slide. It's not a problem at all. Hey, before we go any further we appreciate you being on the show I wanted to throw a little gift. Your Are you a coffee drinker or water bottle kind of guy? Which way do you want to go?
Speaker 2:First of all, thank you. I am a coffee drinker.
Speaker 1:It's probably bad for my health. Actually, I hear coffee has a lot of benefits. I don't actually drink coffee so I don't know any of those benefits, but I hear that they're good. I think it tastes terrible, but I hear that they're good. We'll get that coffee mug out to you quickly. We appreciate you being on the show today. Um, which is great. All right. So also before we get started today, uh, a little fun fact we learned about you. I didn't know this. You have two and a half fake teeth. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's um yeah tough story about this one. My whole family has a bad history with teeth um, we're all cavity prone.
Speaker 2:Please tell me, please tell me there's something we can relate on. We're all cavity prone. That's a whole other problem. So when I was younger, I have two stories. When I was younger I was playing soccer and I was a really aggressive soccer player to the point where I ran into this kid and I got my two front teeth stuck in his head I'm not even exaggerating Pulled that, ripped out of my mouth, stuck in his head and that's how I lost my baby teeth.
Speaker 2:And then, when I got older, I got into a bike accident, accident, and so that's how I lost adult teeth up front, and so these first two are one and a half fake, and then I've got another fake one back there, so a lot of mouth trauma. I learned that there are not just dentists there's endodontists, there's periodontists, there's oral surgeons.
Speaker 1:It's a whole cabal. You get to meet the whole crew. If you do enough, that's right, you get to meet the whole crew. Well, I have two baby teeth still to this day. Oh wow, I have two spots where permanent teeth never came up and the dentist back in the day said, hey, you can keep these for 30 years Now. He told me that when I was 16. And I just turned 46, so I don't know how much longer these are going to hang out, but they're still there. They're hanging in there. So I'm 46 years old with two baby teeth on my bottom half, but on the top half I had permanent teeth growing in sideways, growing into the other permanent teeth.
Speaker 1:I had to go and have oral surgery, cut the gums open, pull the teeth down, braces and all kind of stuff you do. You meet the whole clan of dental physicians when you have certain situations in life and we have had our fair share. It sounds like Mine are a little bit more genetic. Yours are a little bit more activity-based. It sounds like Fighting kids' heads off and playing soccer. I mean, you know those things are dangerous.
Speaker 2:Look, you ever want to get rid of those baby teeth? I can point you to a kid who's got some experience.
Speaker 1:You can help me get them right. Well, I know they're going to come out at some point and I'll probably be able to put in permanent teeth and maybe even get braces on my bottom teeth to straighten them out. But it all just sounds like a lot of work. I'm just not sure that I care to do all that.
Speaker 2:I think your smile is gorgeous, trey, don't worry.
Speaker 1:That means a lot. Appreciate that. That means a lot, All right. So let's talk Turkey a little bit. Let's kind of get into this. So you recently posted a video talking about Beacon, which is one of your products, one of your flagship products. It's really cool. I got to see that a little bit. Tell everybody a little bit about what it does and how did you get to this point? You know you're building technology. You had a different product prior to this and then something led you to this. Talk about what it does and kind of how you got here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So, first of all, what it does freight brokerages, dispatchers, freight forwarders, 3pls in general right, it's a really hard job, margin driven. Any moment that you waste, you know you're losing money. Right, literal definition of time is money. And you feel trapped, I think, pretty often by just the work, the day-to-day toil that you have to go through. Right, there's emails, there's phone calls, text messages, whatsapps, carrier pigeons, someone breathing down your neck. Right Like everyone is trying to trap you in. Just like getting like little things done, and so what we try to do is we're an assistant that plugs into your inbox as well as your TMS and any of the other tools that you're using. We try to take that toil away from you, right Like we try to take the basic shit off your plate so that you can focus on actually getting things done. We think of it as like a communication co-pilot, so to speak, where we try to automate and simplify quoting, load building, data entry, booking and scheduling loads, and then, of course, track and trace, and we try to bring metrics and KPIs to all of this so you can keep track of what's actually going on, figuring out whether each customer, for each customer, whether the juice is worth the squeeze? What are the carriers that you like working with? What are the team members that are actually productive and do their job well? How do you interact with carriers and customers? These are all kinds of things that we want to take off your plate so that you can focus on the actuality of what a 3PL does, which is build great relationships, so that you can build a damn good brokerage, and I'm really excited about it. I'm really proud of what we've built. I'm really excited about you know some of the great customers that we've been working with over the last few months.
Speaker 2:As you said, our first product was kind of different Same ethos, but different space. Our ethos was there's a lot of data in the logistics space. My co-founder has a literal PhD in data privacy, so he knows this like the back of his hand but all of that data is so separated and hard to use it's hard to actually turn into something right, and you've been hearing that data buzzword for the last few years. That's not surprising, but I think it's been rare to see someone actually do something with it and turn it into something actionable. What we were doing initially was we were primarily taking telematics data, dashcam data, elds and trying to turn that into something that brokers and other software companies could turn into something actionable, right Like, bring all of that data into one place so someone could really build features and functions on top of it.
Speaker 2:We realized that you know there's, we realized that there's a lot of value to that information, but what we found was brokers kept asking us for can you take this data and can you communicate it to someone? Can you send it out to someone? Can you do something with it? And we realized that the software stack for brokers to plug that information in and make it actionable just wasn't there and we didn't feel like there was someone that was building something that would really enable freight forwarders, brokers and free PLs to, you know, do the things that they wanted to without having to spend all their time clicking through some other software interface or doing something else. We wanted to meet people where they are. Everything happens through your inbox, right In your Outlook, your Gmail, your Front, whatever it is, so that you don't have to. One of our customers coined this you don't have to deal with screen fatigue, and that's what really excited me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's interesting is probably four or five years ago the idea was let's get everything out of an inbox so that they don't have to live there anymore, they can live in their TMS, and we can just get things out of an inbox so that they don't have to live there anymore, they can live in their tms and we can just get things out of the inbox.
Speaker 1:And what we realized was that's never gonna happen, at least not for a while.
Speaker 1:Maybe down the road someday that'll happen, but right now the inbox really is a king in terms of communication with uh, with customers, um, and so what you've built is basically kind of a for lack of better words a plug on an assistant for the inbox and makes it really easy to perform actions right inside the inbox, which I actually love.
Speaker 1:I don't use your product because I'm not in freight brokerage, but in sales, I use the HubSpot plugin in my inbox and so from a sales perspective, I'm able to you know, catalog emails add a document. There's so many things in there that I can just do real quickly without having to copy and paste from other places, and it allows me to move at a much higher rate of speed in my sales processes than if it wasn't there, and so I see the value of that just in the things that I'm doing. And this is very similar to that and we're starting to see a couple of companies kind of pop up that's doing something similar to what you guys are doing. What is your differentiator? What helps you really stand out?
Speaker 2:similar to what you guys are doing. What is your differentiator? What helps you really stand out? Yeah, I think the biggest thing is that I think there's two things. The first is that our ethos is we want to meet you where you are.
Speaker 2:If you're using different tools, if you have different functions, if you have all these actions that you're thinking about, right, we try to get to you right. If you're using using green screens, which is one of our integration partners for quoting, great like, we'll plug into phenomenal product, yeah, incredible team, fantastic product. If your tms is tie, no problem, we'll plug into that. If your tms is algex, no problem, we'll plug into that. Right, like, if you're um, if you're thinking about appointment scheduling, we'll plug into the appointment scheduling tools that you use as well. As maybe you have a doc manager that needs to do an email back and forth to schedule, no problem, we'll automate that too. That we try to offer, as well as in just the ability to sit down with you and try to understand here's what you actually do day to day and try to plug those things in together. I think it's. You know, it's very unhelpful sometimes to have a point, solution or one part of your feet functions and then you know it just doesn't work for everything else and you want to go off and try something else. Yeah, we have some of that too. Right, we're a startup. There's only so many things we can bite off right now, but the vision is to try to take over anything that you do in your inbox outside of relationship building. So that's kind of the first thing. I think.
Speaker 2:The second thing that's a differentiator and that I'm really excited about is the way we think about metrics and just measuring success. It's really hard to know whether you're doing something profitably because it's so hard to take into account the time that you actually spend on taking an action. How many quotes am I getting in that I'm actually responding to? How much time is that taking? How many messages am I getting in that I'm actually responding to? How much time is that taking me? How many messages am I getting that I'm actually responding to and how much time is that taking me? Is this carrier that gave me a rate that's $100 less than everyone else actually just a pain in the ass to work with? Is that costing me money? That's, I think, an extremely valuable feature and thing that we try to measure and present to you so that you can get a great idea of do I really like you know how do I actually work, and do I really like working with these carriers and customers in a way that's profitable and valuable for you?
Speaker 1:All right. So let's try to sell this to a broker who's watching the show right now. Let's focus on what do they get out of this Like? What's the end result of putting this in play? What's the conclusion? What do they get? No features what do they get? What's the result?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the way I like to think about it is your day kind of sucks right.
Speaker 2:You're spending a lot of time doing things that you don't want to do, and that's just the reality. I mean true for anyone, but, like I think it's especially true for brokers, because every time you're spending time typing something in, you're not on the phone selling, or you're not on the phone figuring out how to untangle some problem that someone else has caused. We give you time to do that and, as you know, time is money. That might mean more loads booked. That might mean capacity to handle those loads that you've had to say no to because of sales, you know, because sales has been breathing down your neck but ops isn't able to handle it. That might also mean maybe you have more time to reach out to carriers and build better relationships, get better rates. More time to reach out to shippers get better rates there. We want to leave you more time for relationship building. Whether that turns into better operations, whether that turns into more loads, that's your priority. But we give you time back in your day and that's what I'm really excited about.
Speaker 1:I think we should go with this. I love what you just said. I think we should go with Beacon a less sucky day, a less sucky day. Yeah, I love it, I mean you know they get their time back, that's sure. But a less sucky day, I think that might translate because hey, your day sucks. We're just going to make it suck a little less with Beacon that's why I love that word toil.
Speaker 2:it just makes it feel like, you know, I'm just in the minds as an 8 year old, you know, with my little newspaper boy hat. Someone said you know what, instead of a pickaxe, here's a jackhammer. That's how I feel. Yeah, that's how I feel.
Speaker 1:Nice. All right, let's switch gears for a minute, because I want to talk about this. You're an entrepreneur man, I'm an entrepreneur. It's not easy. There's a difference between leadership and entrepreneurship, but they also go very much hand in hand, because if you're going to build a company as an entrepreneur, you have to be a great leader. So let's talk about a little bit of that. What have been some of the biggest challenges? Navigating, building a company, navigating building a product from that leadership seat. What's that been like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a few things come to mind. I mean, the biggest thing is and this isn't particularly new, but it's a pretty emotional journey. I'm someone who I wear my heart on my sleeve. If I'm emotional about something, I you know, anyone can see it, whether they know me well or not. That's good or bad, right. Like the good thing is that I'm emotional about something I you know, anyone can see it, whether they know me well or not. That's good or bad, right. Like the good thing is that I pride myself and my co-founder prides himself on being very transparent with our team, with our customers, with our vendors, anyone that we're working with.
Speaker 2:We try to be very honest and upfront. Here's what we can do. Here's what we can't do. We didn't expect this. We expected this. Our investors really appreciate it, because they don't usually get that level of transparency into companies.
Speaker 2:But the downside is that you know it means that you're sharing your genuine feelings and emotions with someone, which leads to vulnerability, which can lead to issues. But I just think that's a better way to be a good person. I think that's the way to build, as we were talking about this earlier. It's a way to build relationships, have people truly realize that you care about them and they can care about you, and I think it's a great way for folks to show their true colors. But it's just an emotional. It's an emotional journey it is. It's a roller coaster and it could be like 8 am feeling absolutely great, top of the world. 11, you know, am feeling absolutely awful. 2 pm, something happens. You're feeling great, but then it you. But throughout the entire day you have to be the first to smile, the first to pick everyone up and the last to lose that sense of equanimity. I think that's one of the hardest things.
Speaker 1:I agree with you. I think entrepreneurship is one of the few things in life where, within the span of just hours, maybe even minutes, you can go from this is the greatest thing I've ever seen to I don't want to do this anymore. I want to quit. I mean, the swings are just wild. You know, and I've mentioned this before, I think entrepreneurship is more about who you become than what you build. Like, building is fun and building is great and it certainly helps.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, if you build a successful company, successful product or service, it helps the marketplace, it helps the world, which is which is obviously a really great thing, but it also, like helps you become a different person. It's the journey of who you become along the way. If we're going to be a million-dollar marketing agency, I have to become a certain way. Then, if we're going to be a $10 million marketing agency, I have to be a different way. I have to grow in ways that I couldn't handle at $1 million, that I've got to be able to handle 10 million. It's just a constant process of changing who you are and growing in order to become better at what you do.
Speaker 1:And it's like that journey is just crazy, it is just wild and I think a lot of people don't don't want to take that journey because it's hard. It's just hard, like those emotional swings are hard to go from I want to quit to let's run through a wall together. This is the greatest thing since sliced bread, type of that. The swings, it's just not easy. A lot of people are like you know what? Just give me a paycheck, I'm fine, let me go do that. Maybe they're smart man. Yeah, maybe they are, in fact, nvidia's founder. They said what would you do differently if you could do it all over again? And he said I wouldn't do it.
Speaker 2:And everyone was just shocked and I was sitting there like yeah, he's right.
Speaker 1:That's right, he goes. I have no idea how hard it is until you get started, you know, and it is hard, it's just not easy. But I appreciated that level of candor in that conversation because it's just tough. You know it's tough to maintain that mantle of leadership and keep everybody moving along, especially when you're like this isn't going to work, like you have those doubts, like this isn't going to work. You know, there are days where you feel that way and then there are days where you're like I can't believe. You know, we ever doubted that this would work, this is going to be so great.
Speaker 2:It's pretty wild. Yeah, always got this big smile on your face and you could be literally telling me the most heart-wrenching story. And you've told me a couple of pretty tough stories. You always say it with a smile and I really admire that about you. I really appreciate that. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Life is at least better when you're smiling. It is interesting. I used to teach high school physics and you know physics is not really for a lot of people. It's not one of those subjects that they would think is really exciting and really fun. But I thought it was and I remember just thinking to myself man, if you can't figure out a way to have fun and what you're doing like you shouldn't do it. You know not everything ises is not fun, but you can find a way to have fun while you're doing it. So I don't know, I just kind of took that mantra and run with it. So I appreciate you saying that. Man. That means a lot, but I try to smile. Life's better for me and for other people if I smile. Nobody, nobody, wants to see a frown. I need to throw that out there to the, that's for sure. What when you're alone and you're having a little bit of doubt, like we all do? I mean, how do you get yourself through it? What do you say to yourself?
Speaker 2:yeah, I'm, uh, I am very much. If I isolate myself, I will spiral um and um. You know, sometimes you need some space to think and um, but there's like basically two things that I need to do. The first is I need to get outdoors, get some vitamin D and breathe some air, because otherwise I'll get stuck in my apartment or in this office or whatever. I need to get outside. And then the second thing I need to do is I need to talk to someone who cares about me, or I care about them.
Speaker 2:My co-founder is usually my first call and he is just. I am so blessed that he is so patient with me in situations like that. I am so blessed and I and I hope that I can do the same with him my you know second call is always either my mom or my girlfriend, whoever I hit first, and then, um, my third call is the one who I didn't call the second time. So I, uh, you know, I, I um family, family, really just. And I don't mean family in the like blood sense, I mean family, just like the team that you have around you. That makes such a big difference. I think my one thing we do on our team, and we do this religiously is we do something called Rosebud Thorn at the end of each week At work.
Speaker 1:Rosebud Thorn. Rosebud Thorn. Is that what it is? Okay, all right. Yeah, let's hear it. We spend an hour we spend an hour.
Speaker 2:Basically everyone goes in a circle and we talk about. Here was my rose for the week, something that went really well. Here's's my bud, something that I'm really excited about. So two positive things. And then here's my thorn, something that was just absolute ass this past week. Um, and everyone is extremely honest and we're and, as, as leaders my co-founder and I are also very honest and it, uh, I think it just brings everybody back down to earth. We are doing something amazing. It's really cool what we can do. The people that we work with are also absolutely phenomenal. But you kind of come back to ground and just share the little things, the personal things, together, and it helps. It feel a little bit more like we're all in this together. We're all a team.
Speaker 2:And so having that, family around me, whether it's my girlfriend, my co-founder, my mom, my dad, my sister, of course, and then, like our actual team, just makes it really beautiful.
Speaker 1:That is okay. I love the Rosebud Thorn thing. I'm going to have to steal that now because I think that's great.
Speaker 1:That's a great conversation starter on the dinner table with, with my kids especially. It's great for our team Like that's, that's a, that's a really, really good one. We're going to have to make sure that we implement that one. That's. That's really awesome and it was interesting you talked about. You got to be around other people that you really care about and I was.
Speaker 1:I was reading about this recently about entrepreneurs, and you know, when you decide to start a company or become an entrepreneur, the crowd of people applauding your actions goes way down, and that's an interesting thing because you're taking risks, you're doing something that could really benefit society and culture and whatnot, and providing jobs, and yet people don't necessarily cheer for that, and I think I agree with this assessment. There's three types of people in the world, and there's those that will never be entrepreneurs and, because this is so different, they just can't support it because it's crazy to them. I get it. That's the majority, actually, by the way, that's probably 80% of the people out there. And then there's a small sliver of potential entrepreneurs, people who are thinking about creating something, they're thinking about building, they're thinking about starting something, but they haven't yet, maybe out of fear or for some other reason, and so for them to encourage you is actually an indictment on themselves, because they haven't done it. So what they do is they just stay silent. They don't criticize, but they don't really cheer you on either, because it's an indictment that they haven't started the very thing that they're cheering you on for. That's a pretty small slither.
Speaker 1:And then the smallest slither are entrepreneurs, and those are the ones that will actually cheer you on because they know how hard it is, they know the risks that you're taking and they'll cheer you on.
Speaker 1:But there's such a small amount of them that you often don't hear their voices. And so that's why groups like Ballast that we're in with Nate Schutz, and like Entrepreneurs Organization and those types of organizations are so powerful, because you surround yourself with people who man. They know what it's like to be up at night on the 30th of the month and you're not sure exactly how payroll is going to come out. They've been there, they've experienced those types of things before, when you have to pivot and do something completely different because what you're doing is not working, and how depressing that is and how negative, discouraging that can be. They know that, and so being around them gives you the encouragement that you really need from people understand it's just so valuable because it just gets so lonely as an entrepreneur. It can't Right. And so, having having Jen next to you, having Coleman for myself, he's my first call and he is good with me, let's me kind of be myself and let's me go through those valleys, and he doesn't get discouraged by that.
Speaker 2:It's good to have a right hand. Who's who who can be that for you. So, uh, it's just incredibly valuable, you know. So that's a great answer. I'd have one more category to that, which is your tribe, right, it's.
Speaker 1:It's your. I was referring it to to it as my family right.
Speaker 2:It's people that, like, really do care about you because you're you um and uh, especially in a situation where you can get very emotionally wrapped up in your company, you can define yourself, your identity as like your revenue. These people don't care about that.
Speaker 1:They care about you.
Speaker 2:They want to know whether you're doing well. They don't really care about whether your company is succeeding or not. And those people you know they're the first to feel the pain when you're hurting. They're also the first to feel the pain when you're busy, but they're also the first to be there when you, when you need them. So, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause your family can fall into those different buckets. Your family can be in that first bucket of never entrepreneurs. They're the ones that are pretty critical about it. There's some of those that are thinking about it and they but're right. Having your tribe around you, the people that just really cared about you and want to help you succeed, that's that's really important to you. So, man, I love that dude, I love that. All right, listen, before we get you out of here, we have to have a little bit of fun every day on the show or every time we have a show, we like to have a little bit of fun with games or questions or whatnot. So today we have a random question of the day all a dud, I don't know. It could be funny, it could be serious, I have no idea.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:So let's go ahead and take a look at this. The random question of the day is what is the, what is the most annoying color, andrew? Do you have a color that just drives you crazy? Is there a color that just oh, you don't like that at all.
Speaker 2:Ah man.
Speaker 1:Um, I've got mine Go for it. I've got mine Go for it.
Speaker 2:I've got mine. I've got mine. You want me to go first?
Speaker 1:Yes, what is yours. What color is the most annoying?
Speaker 2:It has to be like. It has to be a light blue or like just like hot, like neon light blue. And I have a very specific reason for why it's not because it's the colors of standing out, which'm only like. I sure hope. I said that and I was like I'm an arsenal fan.
Speaker 1:Can we get them off of here? What is this?
Speaker 2:oh no, oh man, okay, all right, make your case, make your case no, no, I. My case is very simple. My case is very simple. I'm an arsenal fan and I'm extremely anti-man city for 115 reasons, and if you know what I'm talking about, you know all right, so okay, so that's a legit reason.
Speaker 1:All right, it's not just because it just doesn't look pretty like there's a there's an animosity to that color yeah I can.
Speaker 1:Okay, I can appreciate that. I can appreciate that, um, mine's a little different. So mine's in the mine's in the cool color family, but it's different. So there is a green that is like. It kind of reminds me of like, like, like lima beans. Um, it's like a turquoise slash, like grass green come combined together and it just makes me think of like throw up or I don't know just, it's just, it's an ugly, annoying color and nothing should be that color. It's in the cool family. It's not blue, but it has a little tinge of it maybe or kind of this weird, I don't know. It's kind of a weird color green. So I'm not a fan of that color green. That one drives me crazy, especially like back in the day it used to be on cars. They used to make like a car color that's gross right.
Speaker 1:It is gross, it's annoying. People would buy it. Well, they probably got a discount. They must have gotten a really good discount on that car. That's the only explanation I can come up with as to why you would go with a car like that. So for me it's going to be that nasty green color. For you it's the colors of standing out. It's all right, I'm not going to take offense. I'm not going to take offense. I'm okay with it. I'm not going to be offended by that, all right.
Speaker 2:It's nothing to do with it, it's not personal.
Speaker 1:Drew, listen man. It is so good to have you on the show. What is next for Axel slash beacon? What's next on the horizon for you guys?
Speaker 2:Oh man. I we are building some really cool features and functions. I like really incredible products. I think we're like we're growing really quickly and if you want to learn more, reach out.
Speaker 1:please, please, let me know how can people learn more. Give us the website. Give us how they connect with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's axel A-X-L-E, apicom. Or send me an email at my first name at axelcom. Or, of course, the tried and true find me on LinkedIn. Name's hard to spell, but you know, you've got it right in front of you.
Speaker 1:AxelAPIcom and check out their new product beacon for less sucky day Y'all. That's what it's all about. So, drew, thanks for being on the show. Man, thanks for stopping in and sharing with us what you guys are building. Really excited man, it's awesome.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me trey, you are the best podcast host ever. This is so much fun and I will uh, I will catch you later that means a lot, man means a lot.
Speaker 1:We'll talk to you real soon. We'll see you all right, everybody, make sure you come back every tuesday for another episode, just like this one, with great guests like drew. Make sure you check them out at axel apicom. And, as we sign off today, thank you to our friends over at SPI Logistics for sponsoring the show and making it possible. Remember, if you're not happy with where you are as an agent, or if you're a freight broker that doesn't want to just deal with having you on MC, again, check them out at successspi3plcom. And until next time, remember, stop standing. Still. Start standing up. We'll see you guys soon.