Randy Vlasic — Scaling a Legacy Brand in a Modern Market

So a quick note before we dive into today's episode. If you're trying to grow your business and you're wondering where the real gaps are, we built a free diagnostic tool that we are calling Q20. Give us 10 minutes and you'll get a custom analysis back. No pitch, no call required. Scalingcoach.com/q20. Go there now. Scalingcoach.com/q20. Well, working with other people is for sure the hardest part, right? But, and yet all the great things that we do, the dent in the universe we make, we make together with other people, not alone. Our guest today built companies and exited early on. Success nearly destroyed him. He hadn't done his personal work. He's going to talk about some of those stories, some of the personal work. He runs a fully remote freight brokerage company based on trust and accountability. We're going to get into all that more in just a minute. Hey everybody, Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast. Our show comes to you weekly, nearly 700 shows now. Wherever you get this, turn it on, like, subscribe, notifications, all that good stuff. Leave us a review if you want to do something nice for us. You can also go to scalingcoach.com. Why would you want to do that? Well, At scaleandcoach.com, there are some groovy extra free things. One of them is the Q20 diagnostic. You tell me about your company, 20 questions, about 10 minutes, and me and AI together— it's a little human, a little bit of AI— will give you some feedback about growth pathways for your company, the risks and things, with outside eyes, with experienced eyes who's helped grow and sell lots and lots of companies. For free right there. And there is a sales pitch in there, but you can ignore that and just take the groovy diagnostic that comes with it. It's totally fine.

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All right. Randy Vlasic is our guest today. I won't make any jokes.

Nice. Thanks for having me on the show, Bill. I appreciate it very much.

Randy is founder and CEO of a tech brokerage company. And I'm not going to pronounce the acronym. Life is what you make it.

Life is what we make it.

Life is what we make it, right? What we make it. Yeah, the emphasis on the we. And he runs a fully remote team. He previously was a franchise operator and a VP with Bluegrass Logistics. He won awards. He did that kind of thing. He got bought out. We'll get into all that more. Welcome to the show, Randy.

Thanks for having me, Bill Gallagher. I'm so excited to be here. I'm just learning about your show recently and love the mission and what you're doing here. So excited to be a part of it.

Well, I love people coming on and talking about their real stories and the challenges and the things that they went through. So you had best friend in high school. Yeah, best man at each other's weddings, that kind of thing. Rookie of the year. You sold your company, got bought out. And that's a pretty good thing at an early age. And, but you, that was a problem for you. Tell us that story. Tell us, how did that lead to a problem?

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, you know, as a kid, you know, we always dream about doing big things together, especially with our friends. And that's really where that started, you know, was me and my best friend. And we were, we just wanted to take over the world, right? And We eventually got aligned in our 20s to logistics and started working together and eventually started our first company. Our first company that we started was with Blue Grace. It was a franchise. You know, we were salespeople at the time. We never ran a business before. The franchise model made a lot of sense for us. You know, it gave us a lot of the backend support and things like that that we needed to launch. And we grew quickly from 2016 to— or 2014, 2016, we grew to almost $15 million in top-line revenue. Um, after that, there was a private equity firm that got involved with Blue Grace and invested some money, and they wanted to consolidate the franchise network. So they bought us out in 2016, 2 years later, for 7 figures. And, uh, and we stayed on through an earnout. You know, that partnership was always challenging. I think, um, in business when you have 2 alpha males, or we're trying to act as alpha males, you know, it's challenging to figure out where we kind of fit into the business processes and the roles. And so after the acquisition, we started to really scale. Bluegrass was investing significant amount of money into our location, and we had to get really, really aligned on what our responsibilities were. And so I kind of focused more on the business development side. He focused more on the operational side. Well, as we continue to grow and we brought on executive-level leaders, you know, I started to see, we started to have this interaction where it was almost like a mommy-daddy kind of, a mom-and-dad kind of a vibe, where your kid would go to mom and ask for something, and if they didn't get it, they'd go ask dad. And so some of that stuff started to happen. And those lines that we had initially had, they started to blur a little bit, and it started to create this toxic environment. And Ultimately, what ended up happening was, you know, I just knew it wasn't a good environment for me to be a part of anymore, and so I needed an exit. And so I ended up talking to the owner of Blue Grace, and I said, hey, you know what, I— we got these big rent-out goals that we want to hit, and I was limited in, in, uh, capital that I could allocate to really hire. And so I said, you know, how can I find people that have books of business that, that can have immediate ROI on the company and that's how I can move this needle, right? Because they're not going to give me more money. So I went out and I started searching for people, and I started building a remote team. I started finding great people that weren't necessarily close to our brick-and-mortar locations that had books of business that could start and ramp quickly and have ROI immediately. And it took off. And I think that channel, we did another, I don't know, $12 million or something like that just in the first year in that channel. Um, and so I ended up leaving that office to go start that remote channel. And so I My office was a bike ride down the street and I ended up moving home and I let him take over that office. And I think where that— where ultimately where this all breaks down because I haven't talked to him since and it kills me to this day. It was communication, you know, I— at that time I didn't like the environment and I needed an exit and I found one and I chased it and I took a risk to do that. Um, what I should have done was I should have faced the hard conversation. You know, I should have sat down and said, hey, this is how I'm feeling and this is what's happening. Can we work through this? And, and I have this other plan and strategy and I want to try to make this, you know, work for both of us. Can we figure this out? I should have had that hard conversation, but I didn't. And, uh, ultimately after that it led to the downfall of our relationship. So it's been almost 10 years now.

So you, you're working in this business, you sell it out, you, you then have an earnout, you're working for the other company. It's difficult in that environment and you see another opportunity and you leap at that. But that cost you your friendship.

Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Yeah. And like, how does that affect you today? Like, what has been the aftermath of that? Is it cleaned up? Is it transformed? Is it— did you learn from it? Like, what?

Yeah, I learned a lot from it. I learned that, you know, communication is, is so important, you know, and facing those hard conversations is, is challenging, but it's the right thing to do. And, you know, the aftermath of it is I lost my best friend, right? This is my best friend I grew up with. He was— I was the best man at his wedding. He was the best man at my wedding. Like, that hurts. Every birthday that comes around, every Father's Day, I think about him, you know, and it's just challenging to deal with, but it is what it is. I have to deal with it now and so as I move forward, you know, I may not be able to fix that relationship. I hope I do in the future. If he reached out tomorrow, I would jump on an airplane and go see him, you know? But as I look forward to business now, I really realize that communication is so important. Those relationships that we build over years are extremely important too and so When I look at my team and I look at people I work with— customers, carriers, vendors, employees— you know, I have to think about those relationships and I have to really make sure that I'm having those hard conversations and communicating well with those people because I don't want to do that again.

In the, in the working relationship, what is it that you were good at versus what your your friend and partner were good at. Where were you different?

Uh, my expertise has always been on the business development side. I love going out and chasing opportunities and finding unique strategies to onboard business. I am not, uh, um, when it comes to operations, I'm, I'm not very technical. I don't like to spend my time on that. I can do it, but it's definitely not my superpower. Um, I do better in the outreach, reaching out to clients, building those relationships, finding the opportunities to bring some value, and then bringing in the right people to manage those relationships and make that a successful partnership and, um, and finding the right people to do that. So recruiting, making sure our core values are aligned, and finding the right people that can fill those gaps. Because I learned early what I was good at and what I wasn't. And, you know, everything has to get done, but sometimes just not by me.

Yeah. And what was your partner and, and friend good at?

Um, he was, he was also really great at sales, but he was very, uh, he was very technical. He had a very technical knowledge along with being good at building relationships. So when it came to the execution of that account that we brought on, making sure that we were aligning, um, the proper vendors and the proper solutions and the technology and putting that all together and make it successful, that was, that was where he was really strong at.

And when you look back at that today, is it that he didn't respect your unique skills or you didn't respect his skills? What do you think was the bigger issue there?

I don't know if it was a respect or appreciate. Yeah, you know, um, I think it was the fact that we just weren't really aligned on what that, that, uh skills were— which, which areas of the business were supposed to be handled by the other person, you know.

So you had different skills, but you didn't agree on what your job versus his job was? Correct. Uh-huh.

Interesting.

Yeah. Do you use any, uh, systems or anything like our job scorecard today to clarify the roles, or our functional accountability chart, or anything like that to the systems that you're using today? Or comparable, right? They're not the most unique things in the world.

Yeah, you know, especially with AI today, I've done a lot to document our business and different roles and responsibilities that we have and to use it to analyze what we're doing on a regular basis. You know, as far as functions and that kind of thing, we're definitely much more streamlined than I was previously. But other than that, I couldn't name a system off the top of my head. No.

Mm-hmm. Interesting. So you're building on that, but you don't have a particular system or approach for it.

I think for me, everything starts with the vision, right? So I guess you could call it a system if you want to, but I know where we're going as a company. And I think having that vision and having it very clear and defined, I have that documented on a piece of paper that I can hand to anybody, right? So It doesn't matter who you are in our company, you know exactly where we're going. And when they look at us as a business and somebody's looking to come start with us, they can see where their career is going to take them. So I'd always start with the vision and what the future looks like. And then we break that down into small goals to achieve that vision.

I love that you have it on paper and people can do it. What do you do? Do you actually give it to them? Do you train them on it? How do you teach them about it? How does that come into being? How do you keep that alive? What do you do with that paper?

That, yeah, that becomes a working document for us. So we'll regularly talk about where we're going with that, and then we try to incorporate that into everything that we do. So whether it be core values or things that we're trying to create, any document that you see from us is going to have that incorporated into it, right? So if there's a specific core value, that'll tie into a job description. So we're constantly bringing this stuff to light, and we're constantly talking about where we're going. On almost on a daily basis, you know. Um, everybody knows and knows exactly what that is. And, and, uh, where, where—

so I, I come to work with you or partner with you, or, uh, like, and where do I— how do I encounter that? Where do I see that in the beginning and ongoingly?

Where? Oh, right in the interview process.

Okay.

So the first day that we sit down, I'm going to tell you exactly what we're doing. Um, In the interview process, we're going to read to that doctor. She didn't understand that. And we're gonna— I'm gonna ask you where— if you see yourself fitting into that and how— what responsibility of this vision do you see yourself owning? Right from there, as we talk with somebody, we're setting those goals and those expectations in a clear— in their clearly defined position. And then we're revisiting that. So if I talk to you today, Bill, and, you know, I say that, uh, you know, we're going to build a world-class exceptional customer service experience for our customers, and you say that you want to own a certain piece of that, each time that we talk, whether it be on a quarterly, weekly, or monthly review, we're talking about that vision that you have for that, that piece that you said you were going to own. And are we achieving that? Are we working towards that or aren't we?

And then, so that's in a one-on-one conversation. Do you have any team meetings or anything like that, that you—

Yeah, we run, uh, so we run daily huddles every single day. You know, being remote, we have to really be intentional on getting time together. And then we run monthly, quarterly, and annual retreats. So, you know, because we're not spending money on office space, we can spend that on trips and things like that. So this last one we just did in January, rented a, you know, a 15,000-square-foot house, brought everybody out, everybody stayed the weekend. You know, we go back through the vision again and we talk about where we're going, what we've accomplished. What we didn't accomplish, what were the good things that we did, the bad things that we did, what can we learn from that, and then we lay out the next year ahead.

So I show up for the daily huddle and what happens? What's that agenda look like?

Mm. So typically we're reviewing regular metrics. So we're tracking shipment count, margin, revenue, all those things that you think of, but it's how we get together. So there's a little bit of an icebreaker. Everybody talks about, you know, maybe what's going on in their lives and some positive things that may have happened yesterday. So I try to drive some positive things into the environment, recognize each other, call something out for somebody on your team or somebody else. And then after we get through the metrics, the final 3 things is, or the final thing is talking about your Top 3 for the day. So I'm very much a believer of the Top 3. Every single day, I start with the Top 3. It's a must-do.

Non-negotiable.

I ask my team for the same thing. It gets us aligned on what we're working on today. What do those things impact? How are we doing those things? And then we're going to go out and meet those expectations and get those things done.

So in the daily huddle, you're not looking at the vision and the values, or are you, in some place you didn't mention?

We talk about the vision and the values all the time, in a lot, almost in every conversation.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Interesting. So after, uh, so this whole thing breaks down and then at some point you find yourself, uh, dealing with depression. What happened there and, uh, how did you get through it?

Um, you know, when I got laid off, I see the problem I had, Bill, was I, I had always tied my identity to my business, you know, and I spent all of my time on that business. And when I, when I sold the company and I finally got let go through COVID, I didn't have that anymore. And I lost my identity, really. And so I had to, I had to find myself out and find out who I really was again. And, and, um, you know, I started to really look at what are some of the things that I love, what are some of the things I like to do. And it got pretty dark for a little bit. I was, I was drinking a lot. I wasn't, I wasn't building any relationships. I was, um, siloing myself even from my family. And then, uh I started going back to church. So God started to pull me through that and eventually led me to a random stranger that I met to talk about identity. His name is Martin Rohan. I talk about him all the time. Martin shared a book with me called Living Fearless by Jamie Winship. And I read it and I started to realize that God had a plan for me. And that was people. You know, I genuinely love people. And so that's where LUMI, or Life Is What We Make It, came from. That was the whole concept. And I'm really trying to move it where we trying to create a movement where we bring each other together. You know, I— there's so much good in this world, and I don't believe in the self-made, uh, I think everything is we made, right? I mean, you can't do anything without somebody else helping you get there. And so I created this idea of Life Is What We Make It, and, um, that was the passion and the vision that I wanted to go after. So now I wasn't building a company just to make money anymore or income. I was building a company that I could use as a tool to do some good in the world and create a lasting legacy, right? And and I could also bring some people along and help them achieve the goals that they wanted to achieve in their life. So yeah, that was a— it was an interesting time. My poor wife, um, thank God she stuck around. She pulled me through a lot of that.

You have kids?

Two. Two? How old are your kids? Daughter and a 12-year-old son.

Oh yeah, that's an interesting time.

Uh-huh. We're having a lot of fun.

12 is still a little precious, I think. A little still— there's still a little innocence and sweetness. 15, like, that's usually a challenge.

It definitely is. You know, um, my daughter's a great kid, world-class in everything that she does, but I'm definitely not the most important thing in her life right now, that's for sure. And so I have to be intentional on the time that I spend with her.

Yeah, it's a— it's a Yeah, my kids are older, um, so, uh, 26 and 28 now, so it's a whole different stage.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh, okay, good. So now you have— so talk, talk to us about the company that you have today. What you— it's a transportation company, it's remote, virtual. How big is it? What kind of work do you do? Like, tell us, paint a picture for us of that.

Yeah, uh, so we're a fully remote company. I, I I still believe in that, you know, I can find great people all over the country and all over the world. We'll continue to do that. I have no plans for an office. From the transportation space, you know, what I found is the companies that I worked for were always built to go after everybody. You know, it was like, if you had freight, we wanted it. Let's just go out after everybody. And, you know, I saw a lot of challenges where quality control wasn't exceptional, you know, and there was a lot of different systems that didn't work sometimes, and data quality wasn't exceptional. I remember trying to present data sometimes and not even having the right data for the client. And so when I built this company, I said I wanted to, I wanted to build a technology that was all in one place, um, that was super robust and gave us flexibility to, to build custom things for clients. And I want to focus on a specific type of customer. The companies that we do best with are companies that have deadlines, delivery dates. They're high visibility, they're important, um, and they need it done properly. Services is more important than just the dollar.

And, um, are you shipping containers, pallets, packages? What are you— what are you transporting?

Anything that's one pallet or more.

Uh-huh.

Anywhere in the country, United States, Canada, or Mexico.

One pallet or more. So you have to track I mean, it's essentially a package. It's a big package, right? So you're tracking things across things multimodal or just one truck?

Yeah, multimodal.

Yeah.

Containers coming all the time. We bring them in from the port or the rail yard, break them down, repack them, do the final delivery.

So you've got things moving all over the place all the time. You've got a team of 8, did you say?

Team 8. We're having this year probably more than ever— the amount of opportunities we've gotten in the last 60 days is probably more than we've gotten in the last 2 years. The market is changing. The drivers are leaving the market. The fuel cost has gone up about a dollar. Um, it's the wild, wild west out there right now. And so a lot of companies are, are struggling.

They may—

their transportation was something that, you know, was running really well for the last 2 or 3 years because the rates were so low and there was capacity everywhere. But that's not the case anymore. And so there's Managing that increase in the market and that change in the market's a real challenging time right now.

Interesting. And what kinds of industries do you cater to? Like, what, what sorts of things are you moving?

Uh, so we're moving a lot of semiconductor equipment. Um, there's a lot of, um, big plants that are being built for some semiconductor production. We're doing a lot of that delivery, a lot of, uh, um, office build-outs and design. Um, we handle all the transportation warehouse design and implementation. We're doing a lot of deliveries there. Um, and then we get a little bit into, uh, pharmaceuticals and electronics.

So a pretty big range of industries, but I don't hear like heavy manufacturing, uh, or things like that, right? They're doing full containers and—

yeah, we're the, uh, mainly finished products. Is what we're focusing on. The commodities, we don't do a lot of building materials, things like that. It's really finished products and high visibility again, and significant deadlines that need to be met.

[Speaker:TREY_LOCKERBIE] Let's talk about a couple of things. I think it'd be interesting to hear what does your day and week look like personally? What are your personal routines from waking up in the morning to going going to bed, like a picture into you, as much as you're willing to share.

Yeah.

And then, uh, and then what does it look like in reality? You like your work style. How is your, um, interaction with your team? What does it look like? How do you work? Like, and, and how do you think it's changed? So start personally first. Tell us as much as you're willing to share about, um, about what your day and your, your personal habits are.

Sure. Um, you know, I work from home, so I don't, I don't drive a lot. Uh, when I get up in the morning, I typically start my day around 5 o'clock, and, um, I like to start with a little bit of movement. So that's either some tai chi or a walk or the gym. Um, after I, I get done with the gym, I come home and I spend some time with my wife and kids, getting the kids off in the morning, and then, then I get my day started for work. The typical process for me in the morning is—

so the first bit is personal and movement related, then it's family, then the work.

At the beginning of the day for me is body, mind, and mission, right? So I gotta move my body, I'm gonna read a little bit, maybe I'm gonna read a chapter, and I'm gonna do one thing that's gonna help me get the day going on my goal. But yeah, everything's personal up until, you know, 7:45. Okay, 7:45 hits, um, I like to keep a journal, analog, I have a passion for fountain pens. I love fountain pens. I love writing. I have ADHD, so it's a great way for me to just let my mind wander. So I start my day with the top 3, and I'll usually have a top 3 for business and for my personal life. So I'll list my top 3 for the day, and I'll plan that out, take a look at the calendar, make sure I have all that stuff aligned and that I have time allotted to get the 3 things done that I wanted to accomplish. And then I have a top 3 for my family. So After work, you know, what are 3 things I'm intentionally going to do for them? You know, help my wife with something, plan or take, uh, plan something, take her out, do something with the kids, pick up, you know, practice, whatever that may be. But I always start with the top 3. After I get the day going, we do run the daily huddle every day at 8:45 Central Time at the same time. My interaction with the team is very much a I don't want to do their jobs for them. I expect them to manage their roles and their responsibilities and to level up in what they're doing. I am definitely not a micromanager, but I do hold them accountable to the expectations. So I'm very much a check-in kind of guy. What can I do to help take some of those roadblocks down? What are you facing right now? What's one thing I can do to serve you? And where are we going? And then they're, they'll, they're typically taking the ball and running with it from there, and they'll get me involved if they need to.

And what sort of roles do you have? What are the different roles of the people in the company?

Yeah, so, um, right now we have a director of finance, such as managing— a director of finance and administration. She's taking care of our ARAP office backend work. Our VP of Operations, his name is Rob. He manages all of our carriers and vendors and a lot of operational development for onboarding for customers. And then Taylor's, she's our Director of Account Management. She's the one who's executing that plan on a daily basis with her team.

So that's a range of them. Then you have service people, account people? Are people tracking packages? Are they— what's the, the like customer interaction like?

Yeah, we're, um, there's pretty much two sides of the house for us. There's, there's customer sales and what we call carrier sales. So we have salespeople that are going out and trying to find new opportunities and bring those to the table, and then we have carrier sales. Those are the, the team that's going out and finding the right trucks and trucking companies to, to meet the demand for that. That's really the two sides of the house that we have. From a transactional standpoint, our customers are broken up into two stages. It's either enterprise managed services or it's transactional. So maybe you have a percentage of freight you want us to handle, you know, they'll reach out for quotes and pricing and we'll handle that for them. The other side of it is managed services. We have a transportation spend that we need help managing and we need to execute that with technology implementation, vendor management. You name it.

How has your— so what is it your, like, leadership style or the interaction with your team look like today versus what it used to look like before the old company, before the breakdown, before the depression? Like, what's the difference then to now?

I think in my past, I was so results-focused and business-focused. I never really looked at you, you know, I never really got to know you as a human being because I was so focused on just driving the result. And I think after I, I left that company, I had my breakdown. I started to think about a lot of those relationships that I had and what those relationships were like. And some of them that were broken, and that was absolutely my fault on some of those. And I started to really think about that. Today, I, I really want to know what you're into. Like, I want to know about you. I want to know what your passions are. I want to know what you're trying to accomplish in and I want to know how I can make that stuff happen. Today I'm more focused on servant leadership than ever, um, versus it being just driven specifically on a metric or a result.

Is that an issue for you ever, that people don't want to tell you what they're up to or what their thing is?

To be honest with you, I haven't— I haven't had anybody who had an issue with that. Uh-huh.

Yeah, yeah. So people are pretty willing to, in your case, to tell you, but that's been How you been since you've run the company?

Since I've started it, sure.

Yeah. And, uh, um, are they all over the United— like, where— how far, uh, dispersed is your team?

Um, most of them are here locally.

Um, so we have the same time zone mostly.

Yeah, I mean, we have, uh, one person on the East Coast, um, but that's about it. Everybody else is Central time zone.

So It's not like you're talking to somebody in the middle of the night or that kind of thing, right?

You haven't gotten that far yet.

And then you come together for these meetings and you'll rent a big house or something and you do— how long do you spend for your, your monthly and your quarterly and your annual meetings?

So we're not getting together for the monthly meetings. That's— we're doing all that stuff online remotely. Uh-huh. So it's typically going to be around an hour that we're going to spend on a monthly huddle or you know, we'll call it an internal all-company meeting, right? The annual meeting, though, we'll do a whole weekend. And so typically, we'll all show up Friday night. We'll spend just Friday doing something nice for the team. This last time, we, you know, brought in some massage therapists, you know, and we just hung out, relaxed, had a good time, had brought in some massage therapists, had dinner together. Saturday was our working session. We spent the entire day working through the business and every single stage of where we're at, every single department, problems, challenges, things that have come up. And then again, hang out and relax Saturday night. We brought in a private chef, did a really nice dinner, spent some time doing some working sessions where we got to know each other a little bit better. And then, and then Sunday we have breakfast and take off.

Mm-hmm. So, um, we've been talking about the people side of things, the human dynamic, and your journey. Um, uh, a couple questions. The first one is, where did this come from? Like, are there particular books that you studied or courses you took or things like that that helped you to learn these practices and put them in, in your case?

Uh, Yeah, I think, um, I've always had a CEO coach. Yeah, you know, I've always had a CEO coach. There's been a few coaches that I've had over the years, and, um, you know, I've always found that I don't really always have the best solution. Sometimes I have to find somebody that, that's in the shoes that I want to fill, and I need to go out and ask for some help. And I am definitely that type of person. I'll reach out and find those people. So there's been a tremendous amount of mentors I've had over my life. Um, books, I, I I do read. I'm not great at it, but, you know, sometimes I'll read a chapter, I have to go back and read it over again. I force myself to do it. Right now I'm reading How to Know a Person by David Brooks. It's about building relationships. And, you know, obviously there's Jamie Winship's Living Fearless. That's the identity book that I read. So, but the business coach for me is the best part. I think I can't really go complain down in my company when I'm stuck or having a challenge. I can't go complain to my team about that. I can, I have to have somebody else I can reach out to. So I do that through, through a CEO coach, you know, or a forum.

What is it that made you get a CEO coach or a forum? Like, where did you hear about that? Did you learn that as a kid? Like, what's the source of going to that? Because a lot of people don't do that. They try to do it all on their own.

I'm actually surprised to hear that. I think everybody should have a CEO coach. It all started when I, when I started the first company. The owner of that company, Bobby Harris, is a great mentor and just a tremendous individual, super smart. He had a CEO coach. I was like, you know, this is, that's a genius idea. And so I started looking for a CEO coach. I started working with a company called CEO Coaching International at the beginning. Had a few coaches with them and it just worked out really well up until the acquisition of our company, right? And we scaled that company quickly. Yeah!

They're friends of ours in our world.

Oh, okay! Yeah! So they did a great job with us. Eventually, once I sold the company, you know, I ended up working with Bobby's coach, which is now my CEO coach now, which is— his name's Cameron Herold.

Cameron is also a personal friend.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, I worked with Cameron, and Cameron's obviously done a great job in the space. You know, Blue Grace, they got to be— I'm not sure how big they are at the time right now, but when I was there, you know, $400, $500 million, the $250 million investment from Warburg Pincus, you know. So Cameron obviously knew the space and saw that grow. And so when I started this company, I was like, How could you not have a CEO coach, number one, but especially somebody who's managed to work with somebody in this space really successfully?

Yeah, both CEO Coaching International and Cameron and his prior companies have all come out of our work and come from that. So we're very related. They have their unique twists on it and the things that they specialize and focus on, but they're— we're all very related. So, um, that's all familiar territory.

Excellent.

Well, let's talk about technology then before we run out of time. Um, you, we've been talking about people and your habits and things like that. Do you, um, what role is AI playing? What other technologies are important to you? How are you grappling with that?

Yeah. Um, from a transportation management standpoint, Salesforce is what we've built everything on. So our, our CRM, our transportation management system, and our Invoicing is all done in one, one place. So we can build and customize that any way we want to. And that's one of the benefits we bring to our clients. When it comes down to artificial intelligence, I think one of the challenges that I have as a business owner is how do I now get my team who's never used AI to embrace this? And then how do I manage this with some guardrails so that the wheels don't fall off the train? The way that I use AI today is I try to find simple tasks that I have to do on a regular basis that I probably suck at, you know, and I definitely don't like doing. And I just use AI to automate those processes for me. So whether that be like the daily huddle, you know, putting together metrics, a report, all that kind of stuff, I can run a prompt and have all of my stuff ready to go for the huddle in, you know, 20 seconds. All the metrics. And so we're incorporating AI in that way right now. We've— we're exploring ways to use it to automate some things like tracking and tracing, check calls with drivers, those things that are just real, you know, those tasks that just take a lot of time and nobody loves doing. But the challenge with that then is the guardrails that come along with that, right? If I give AI access to update something in my system, I got to make sure it's going to update the right thing. So we're currently implementing that and building some guardrails around artificial intelligence to manage the tracking and tracing of that. And then also when it comes to analytics, you know, we're able to take a customer's freight profile, we'll look at 90 days of invoices and we can build a whole analysis with artificial intelligence. And it's the one thing that I find all the time, you know, is it's not always right, right? So we definitely have to go back and double-check the work, but sometimes it gives us ideas and, and opportunities that we've never even thought of, you know. It gives us a unique insight that maybe we've never even seen before that's unique to that client. And so we're using it to uncover things that we haven't before and then start to build the analysis that we can build that, then go back into and make sure it's accurate before we deliver it to the client.

Mm-hmm. So really interesting. Thank you so much for coming on, sharing. If you want to know more about Randy's company, Lumi Logistics, we'll put the link up on this. Oh, randyvlastik.com.

You can go to lumilogistics.com if you're interested.

Randyvlastik.com, both of them. We'll put it on the screen, we'll put in the show notes, that kind of thing. Uh, Randy, so much, uh, thanks for coming on our show and sharing a little bit of your, your sharing your story, your struggles, your— the things that you've been grappling with. Appreciate hearing, like, it brought to life and made real for people, like, what people are going through as they, uh, try to grow their business. Uh, thanks to Wanda and Anna for getting our show ready and out the door each week. Big thanks to my friend and mentor, the guy who started it all, Verne Harnish. Uh, first with the Rockefeller Habits, and then it's grown into Scaling Up, the whole Scaling Up framework and ecosystem that's at the core of our business. If you want to know more about our show or do one of our workshops or do that Q20 assessment for free, you'll go to scalingcoach.com/Q20 or scalingcoach.com. Find that. I got a book coming out later this year, so you go get a link over to that as well. Busy Is Broken is the book coming soon. Thanks again, everyone, for watching, for listening. Till next time, keep scaling. Thanks again for listening. I'm writing a book now called Busy Is Broken. If this episode resonated with you, you'll probably enjoy the book too. It's coming September of 2026. To follow along, go to busyisbroken.com. That's busyisbroken.com.