Casey Harrison: Welcome to today's episode of See Yourself IN, where you will learn about cool jobs, people, and companies in Indiana. You'll also hear about skills that will help you find success, and most importantly, we hope it inspires you to dream big. I'm Casey Harrison, your host. On today's show, we'll dive into Indiana's advanced industries and why they're important.
We'll talk about skills that are transferable across jobs and industries and determine some of the best ways to explore these great opportunities. We'll dive into all of that and more on today's episode of See Yourself IN. Today I'm joined by Bailey Rayford, Chief Executive Officer of Kendal Logan Logistics Incorporated, a black woman-owned business headquartered right here in Indianapolis.
Bailey is a dynamic leader in a fourth generation entrepreneur who got her start on a farm in North Carolina. Bailey is also a fierce community champion lending her time, talents, and treasures to drive equity and access across central Indiana. We'll dive into all of that and more on this episode of See Yourself IN.
So I'm joined today by Bailey Rayford, chief Executive Officer of Kendal Logan Logistics and Bailey, we're so excited that you're here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, of course. So we're gonna dive right in Bailey, I learned that you grew up in North Carolina And I'm very curious about what got you from North Carolina to Indiana.
Bailey Rayford: I did, I am a native North Carolinian proud native North Carolinian. My entire life has been there. My family's there, I am a farm kid. I grew up in a community, rural town, probably the size of this room, when flashing light, and what brought us here is my husband took a role here roughly about 14 years ago, and that brought us here to Indiana.
Casey Harrison: And what is the reason that you stayed? I mean, your husband obviously brought you, that was the entry point, but what did you fall in love with in Indiana?
Bailey Rayford: So Indiana for me has been somewhere where I can see opportunity. And ironically, the industries that I have a passion for are really strong here. At first, I was a stay at home mom, so I really didn't dive in.
I remember telling my two year old at the time, listen, we gotta get out and find some friends. So let's get out and start networking. So I joined a mother's, mom's organization prior to even, like moving into my house. Like if we would come look for houses, I'd plan it around mom's activities.
Casey Harrison: Wow.
Bailey Rayford: A mom's group. Because I'm like, we're gonna find some friends here if we're gonna live here. But what I love about Indiana is for an education, I feel like if you have access and resources, you can a la carte education for your kid. And that's important to me to be able to find what they need, a la carte it, chop it up, find a buffet, just find whatever fits their needs to be the wholesome human. And I feel like we can do that here in Indiana.
Casey Harrison: I love that. I love that because it's a central theme that a few of the podcast episodes have hidden back to is that network and that connectivity in Indiana that's just not. It doesn't exist everywhere.
Bailey Rayford: I think you can weave in your own spaces and you don't have to apologize for it.
There's, I mean, there are rules, don't get me wrong, of ways you live and move, but there's also, like, the openness of, I have one son, my son who's autistic. Finding what he needs has not been easy, but it's actually not, it hasn't been easy here either. But once you find it, you're actually like, all right, here are the resources. Here are the people. Let's go find them. Let's go. Don't apologize for asking the questions and don't apologize for asking for what you need.
Casey Harrison: Well, so I want to go back to your North Carolina upbringings because you mentioned your fourth generation entrepreneur, and you've said that a lot of what you learned about entrepreneurship is from the farm.
Bailey Rayford: Oh, absolutely. Or just my, my parents started a commercial landscaping company, 50 years ago, actually. And they never made us, like, leave the room. Good, bad, and ugly conversations. We were there. My brothers and I. my brothers more than I have probably worked and been more ingrained in the physical labor. But there was always something for us to do. It was always a, I always did stuff in the office. Like when people say, Oh, how did you know how to do this financial invoicing? Or organize this from a financial perspective? I'm like, I've been doing this since I was 14.
So there was never shying away from your kids having to go to the other room, adults are talking. No, we were in it. And I honestly think when it comes to taking a risk or being concerned of taking the risk, I don't necessarily probably hesitate like many. Because I always know, I, I've seen my parents do this. I've seen the good, the bad, the ugly, the ebbs and flows. So, it takes away sometimes, Oh, I don't want this to happen, or what ifs, and you know, it's like, no, you can bounce back, or it's just a risk you take. If it fails, get ready to figure out how to deal with the failure. Yeah. Or bounce back.
Casey Harrison: Absolutely. So, when you graduated high school, did you know what either college or career pathway looked like?
Bailey Rayford: not necessarily what career path looked like. so, I was an FFA kid. I did everything FFA all through high school. leadership programs, my entire summers were away because they were FFA, leadership, whatever, around the country. And I got to participate, or I was always signing up. So I was never really like the kid that stayed at home all summer. I attended summer programs at like North Carolina A & T, around ag, around girls in ag, or girls in leadership, just whatever, whatever my mom can sign me up for.
I felt like whoever I brought home and said I wanted to go do, no one ever said you couldn't go. It's just like, all right, let's figure it out. So sometimes I would like come home, drop a suitcase, pick up another one, and back out. But it was the best time. So I don't, to answer your question, I don't know if I knew. I knew at some point I would go in the ag, but I didn't know necessarily what it was going to be. But I knew that was my comfort. And ironically, a black female in ag is like a unicorn. So I don't, people are like, that's your comfort? It actually is. And even though I'm doing logistics now, Ag is still like one of my, like, that's always going to be like my first love. But I, I can't say I knew exactly what I was going to do, but I saw all pathways early. And I had built relationships early that I knew would provide me that network.
Casey Harrison: So you went to North Carolina A & T and you studied. What did you study?
Bailey Rayford: I, my degree is in ag education. So we have an ag education teaching track and then we have a business track. So the business track allowed you to learn all these different companies and business development and basically a sales component. If you chose not to go into education, you could go work. So that diversified you to learn mostly all about ag.
Casey Harrison: So when you graduated, then what?
Bailey Rayford: I went to work for John Deere straight out of college. I was a part of a leadership executive program they had. I did that for roughly six, seven years, six years, and then I stepped away. Another love of mine was public policy. So I went to work for the commissioner of agriculture. And I worked in his minority advisement staff. So I worked with communities of color. I worked with municipalities or basically cooperatives that were primarily working with foreign families. Farmers, black and, you know, Latino and Hispanic farmers.
Casey Harrison: I think that's incredible. I want to stay there for a second because the fact that you have this agricultural knowledge and family experience, and then you go to school and you find yourself in public policy. I mean, some people don't even think about those two sectors ever crossing. So I'd love for you to talk about some of the transferable skills that maybe made it easy for you to cross sectors like that.
Bailey Rayford: I was a page when I was in high school. I was a leader, a page for house member Frank Mitchell. He won the house seat and I was his first page that got to go to the House with him. And then from there I was a Governor's page later on, like my junior, senior year high school. So I always knew I liked government, I love the policy. I love the, you know, being able to not say negotiate, but basically talk through and see the process of how this bill became law. All the work that went into it, you know, it's really just. Pleading your case, basically, you know, kind of thing. That's why you have so many lawyers that are public policy or a lobbyist. It's, it, it sits right together.
So for me, it was just something that I always knew and I loved. And as it relates to minority farmers, black farmers, black farm communities, communities of color, regardless of what the industry was, I had lived it. So it was easy for me. to be able to speak on it and to feel comfortable talking about it. Ag in the black community is, of course, you know, at some point after slavery, we were sharecroppers, from, especially in the South. And then you would go now and you still have farm families who own land. And now you've got my generation who's trying to figure out what to do with it.
And they've never had a conversation. So that was such a gap. Yeah. I took it serious to be able to sit at someone's kitchen table. And talk to their next generation and their succession, what are you going to do with it? How do you have it designed? How was your succession plan? You know, so those were important conversations that mostly in our community, I wasn't, no one was having.
Casey Harrison: Well, what's incredible is that you aren't just an expert in ag, now you're in the logistics industry.
Bailey Rayford: I'm not an expert in logistics though. Believe me.
Casey Harrison: Well, so talk a little bit about how that transition happened.
Bailey Rayford: After my second child was born, I knew I wanted to do something professionally. I didn't know what. I remember, like cold calling a company and I'm like, hey, I want to be a broker with you guys. And next thing you know, I was having a meeting. So I did that for a while. I built it up. I also did dispatching. And I just started noticing like, you know, like trucking is called the last mile for a reason. It is the last mile. It's the last piece of money. It's the last everything. There's no negotiating. So I really want to be like, Hey, if I'm going to do this. Let's back it up some. Let's learn more about the logistics supply chain process. I had, you know, an idea and because of my time at John Deere, but I really didn't know the internals. So I actually met a great CEO and he already had a business that had for 12, 13 years. And I asked, he asked me, what do you want to learn? And I was like, I want to learn warehousing. And he gave me the invitation to learn it. And I did. I sat right beside him every day. And I learned warehousing.
Casey Harrison: Wow. I mean, it's pretty incredible. Indiana moved 724 million tons of freight. So we quite literally earn our designation as the crossroads of America. Tell us a little bit about Kendal Logan Logistics, your company.
Bailey Rayford: So I started Kendal Logan. And there is a sector of Individuals who are in, in e-commerce, and that's just one of our business units. But I had really started working with them in my previous capacity with this other company. And during that time, they were getting opportunities. After the death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, companies were opening doors and rolling out red carpets and saying, hey, we want, we're going to have these black business launches.
But what we were finding out is their product looked good, their product smelled good, but they didn't know the process in getting it to point A to point B. They also didn't understand packaging, leak proof packaging, barcoding, so all the intangibles that's going to make this process keep moving was Greek. So I really wanted to step in and support and help. Now, many will say, you didn't have to start a business to do that, which they're right. I didn't, but coming from a small business family, understanding when you get opportunity, how quickly it can walk away from you. I just, I couldn't sit back and watch possibly that happening.
And I'm like, wait, let's see what we can do. Let's figure out a way to close this gap, keep this train of moving and not necessarily be worried about, you know, some of these things. And like I said before, you just saw a disconnect in the process, the education of the process. So I wanted to support in that space as well.
So that's what really made me like wake up one day and like, you know what, let's just go try it. So that's how we got open. Currently today we are fulfillment, and distribution. We are kitting. We are providing some transportation. We call them the milk runs, the local runs. we're warehousing, we're cross docking. So we're offering a full service. We are a full service third party logistics firm. We offer full service work every day in our building. And it's been great. It's been great to watch. I mean, like I said, a couple of nights ago when I spoke somewhere else, four years ago, three years ago, this was a dream in my head to actually know that we're down and we're doing it and the work that we're doing, the people that we're supporting, I'm, I'm proud of it.
Casey Harrison: Yeah. Well, staying in the, in the name of being proud of things. I mean, Kendal Logan is black woman owned and you have an all women leadership team.
Bailey Rayford: I do. Well, I have my nephew now supports me from some IT help because he's that generation that I'm like, I don't know how to move in all these circles for social media.
I entrust it to the young guy. So women make up a lot of the labor. If you ever walk in a warehouse or manufacturing, women are on the floor. Women are driving trucks. Women are driving crown pickers. Women are driving forklifts. But you don't see women in executive roles. You don't see women in ownership, and I noticed that in where I was prior as it relates to the day to day needs of the women.
There wasn't a woman in the room who could address them. There wasn't a woman in a room who could even advocate. And you know, and it really touched me a lot during COVID where kids were at home, moms are now essential workers, many of them are head of households and they couldn't be fully at work because now they're worried about their kid being at home and trying to navigate. you know, the WiFi and Zoom and hearing the teacher. So you just started like having a feeling of, I personally did. I was blessed to be able to have support for my kids, but there was a lot of people who didn't have that. And, you know, I remember I used to go to, you know, the owner and I'd be like, hey, this mom needs to get on a call with her son's teacher today.
But she shouldn't have to take her 15 minute break to do it. You know, she's here all day. Let's, let's get flexible. And for many times in a space where men are all leadership, they're really removed from that. They don't think about those things like, you know, from a mother or how this woman is actually. She's halfway here. She physically is here, but half of her mind is wondering what's going on at home. Are my kids eating? Are they on Zoom? Are they listening to the teacher? Did the computer work today? And that's what we were hearing. So, when I started my company, I really wanted to find women that I could help support. I wanted to help move them from just being a worker. I wanted to give them a leadership role because they're really good at what they do. I wanted to, I mean, there's women that work with me who come off incarceration. I wanted to help them build the next step. How can you get a home? How can you start saving?
So all of those things, it's not just I wanted women. I wanted women to come and be a part of what we were doing. But I also wanted them to literally look back and say, this is how I started. But this is where we are.
Casey Harrison: I mean, generations of impact. It sounds like.
Bailey Rayford: I hope so.
Casey Harrison: Yeah. Yeah. We could probably talk for hours.
So I'm going to start to tail us down to the end here. But what would you say to people listening that are thinking about the opportunities in, in logistics, maybe ag, that are wanting to plug in, but they're not quite sure how?
Bailey Rayford: To plug in? Quit sitting on the sideline. I often tell my daughter, I have this thing between her and I, and I always say, you know, you're in I always build a rectangle and I'm like, this rectangle is your safe space, but when you just stay in that middle circle, and I build a circle in the middle, you don't even know where you are.
You don't even know how much more you could explore cause you don't even know where your corners are of your safe space. So I often tell her like when she gets out of the car in the morning, I'd be like, listen, I need you to go kick a corner today. I need you to go find the corner of your rectangle and just go kick it.
Just so you'll know how much more space you have to grow. I would encourage anyone just to really get out there and learn. There's nothing wrong with learning. And to me, Indiana is great for learning. teaching you and being, you know, sometimes accepting, but allowing, if you don't know something, you have an interest, go find somebody in the industry or go somebody, somebody who started it, maybe failed at it, let them give you some best practices, but believe me, just get out there and start would be the encouragement. I would tell anyone.
Casey Harrison: Thank you so much for joining us today, Bailey. This is fantastic. Yeah. We're so glad that you were able to join us today to learn about Indiana's advanced industries and how you can start or enhance your career journey. Until next time, we hope that you'll be able to see yourself in the unlimited opportunities in Indiana.