Episode 050: Looking Back at The Last 50 Episodes of The Fleet Success Show

Hey there, Steve from the Fleet Success Show. Wanted to take a second and invite you to attend the Fleet Success Summit, a one-of-a-kind, two-day event designed specifically to arm today's fleets with what they need to succeed. We're bringing some of the best speakers from business, technology, leadership, and organization culture to the stage to share with you information that we believe has been withheld from fleet far too long. If you enjoy this podcast, you're sure to enjoy the Fleet Success Summit. Head to fleetsuccesssummit.com to view our speaker lineup and grab your your tickets today. All right, back to the show. Welcome to the Fleet Success Show, a podcast dedicated to talking about the fundamentals, standards, and best practices that empower today's fleets to achieve fleet success. Let's get into the show.

All right, welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley, joined today by Jeff Jenkins.

What up?

And Steve Salzgiver.

Good to be here.

Hey, glad to have you back. Yeah, right, dude.

I'm tired though.

Yeah, well, you've been on the road a lot.

I'm tired.

It's, uh, it's been quite the whirlwind week. Um, so today, big, big day for us. Episode number 50.

5-0.

Yeah, 50.

I don't remember how to say that in Spanish. Was that cincuenta?

No, I don't even know what it is.

It's a good question. Cuarenta, treinta, cuarenta, ciento.

50-0.

There you go.

Anyway, don't ask me to speak any Spanish. I can't even speak to my daughter-in-law.

Listen, I'm impressed we hit 50, like, and people are still listening and we're getting new listeners.

It's great.

And it's growing and it keeps going faster. Yeah, we kind of said at the beginning, hey, if we hit 5 episodes, we'll see what happens. So here we are, 50 in. So a big thank you to listeners and everybody who's been faithfully following us so far. We wanted to talk a little bit today, just kind of looking back, you know, it's always fun to reflect, see where you've been, as you kind of move to where you're going to go in the future. But it's always fun to reflect and look at some of our past favorite episodes. So we kind of looked through our episode list and picked out some of the ones that we enjoyed. And so, Jeff, I'm going to start with you. Two of your favorite episodes as you look through and said, yeah, I either enjoyed recording these or these were some of my favorite topics.

So there's a lot on there, obviously, because we love this business and what we do. But one is episode 22, Speaking the Kind Truth, for lots of different reasons. And are we going to break these down as we go along?

Yeah, talk about them. Why was that episode? Fun for you, or why did you enjoy that one the most?

Well, I enjoyed it because it's such a difficult topic, I think, for people to demonstrate when they're in the work environment. It's very hard to have that conflict and to be able to confront somebody in a professional manner and give them that kind truth. When I do interviews or I talk to people, the hardest thing everyone says is the conflict and being willing to address a peer, right? Or if you're a manager, being willing to put someone on a performance improvement plan or taking the time to coach them about the things that they're missing. And so because of just knowing how difficult that is for a lot of people, I thought that it was one of those ones that hopefully it resonated with a lot of people and they took some tips from it and were able to apply them into their professional lives, even their personal lives. I mean, you can speak the kind truth to anyone.

Yeah, I think that episode was one of my tops just because it is one of those things that a lot of us as managers, we want to be nice, we want to be liked. And so we struggle with sometimes speaking a hard truth. One of our cohorts talked to us about a saying they used often was, we want to throw hard, we just want to avoid throwing sharp. And so they would always say, throw hard, not sharp. Throw to make sure you make an impact, but don't throw to wound or hurt.

Yeah.

So I was talking to one of our salespeople and we were talking just about wanting to be liked, right? So he was kind of relating the kind truth to the sales cycle and how a lot of salespeople specifically, they try so hard to get their prospect to like them and they don't focus enough on the product or gaining that person's trust. And when you speak the kind truth, right, you get more trust with people than you do actually getting them to like you. And if you have the trust, in turn, that usually gets you to be liked.

Especially if you do it right. You know, I mean, no one minds if you've spoken the kind truth to— if it's something that you didn't realize you were doing. You know, I mean, you always hear people that say, I want, I want the feedback.

Right.

You know, I mean, I mean, I— where none of us are perfect. I've always wanted to know if I'm running short somewhere or doing something I shouldn't be doing. Um, but it all depends on the tone.

Well, it's intent, right? It all depends on the intent.

So I don't— I've got a— did I tell the story about when I was working at Knight Transportation and I dropped a load and it wasn't covered? Did I tell that on here at all?

I don't remember. It doesn't sound familiar to me.

So I, I had been working for— gosh, it wasn't very long. Few months, and it's all about miles. And what we do is we have drivers that would go to Southern California and back to Phoenix. And if you could get a guy to do that full turn in a day, you were making like $1,500 on that truck, which at the time was fantastic, right? A lot of money in a day on a truck. And so I had a load and it delivered the next morning like 7 AM. I could not for the life of me get it covered for delivery. Our local people refused to do it. I didn't have any drivers available to do it. So what'd I do? Just drop the thing. I was like, yeah, whatever, we'll fail that load. No big deal. I dropped it, had them on another load coming back. What I didn't know is that was a time-sensitive load. Like, it was very important that it made, right? No one said anything to me about that or anything. So the sales guy, um, we'll call him Mitch, and that was his name, but he—

there's no such thing as protecting the innocent around here.

He, uh, he comes, he's coming around, he's like, who dropped this load? Whose truck is this? You know, because he didn't really know how to use the system. All right, sales guys. So he finds out it's me. And so he comes to my desk and he goes, did you drop my load? And I said, yeah. He's like, you didn't have it covered? I said, mm-mm, no, I didn't. I said, I just couldn't find anybody. He grabs my tape dispenser and he just yanks like this long piece of tape. He gets a piece of paper and he kind of turns his back to the side to me and he writes on it. And he goes and he steps up onto my desk with both feet. So he's standing next to the ceiling. He takes this tape, he sticks it up on the ceiling so it's dangling, and this piece of paper is right in front of my face. It says, "If you drop another one of my effin' loads, I'll fire you." Right? Scared the crap— and he had no authority to fire me, but I didn't know that. I was new there, right? But it scared the crap out of me, right? Like, obviously a very bad example of how to treat somebody. You take that versus that same situation, My direct manager, whose name was Aaron, great guy, really his name Aaron, obviously, just 'cause he's a great guy. But Aaron, and he was the same guy that actually had that story I tell about making me sit back down and finish my work with the extreme ownership. Aaron sits me down and says, listen, Jeff, great idea. You had the right presence of mind on what you were trying to do, but you did it the wrong way. And then he took the time to show me, right? How to look further in and deeper to try and get loads covered, like reach out to other dispatchers to see if they had drivers that could do it. I mean, a bunch of different things, right? And he was like, you know, this is obviously a very important load, you need to do better, right? And that was, that was pretty much it. But he took the time to actually coach me, right, and speak that kind truth to me, to show me what a better way to handle that was versus Mitch, who was just a total asshole.

Yeah, well, I think we've all worked with those people. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's interesting, you think about the extreme ownership side of that, which if I was that manager in that case, it was like, clearly I didn't make this clear enough about why that load was important. Now maybe you were new. Well, then I didn't train you well enough, right?

They didn't train anybody well enough.

That was actually my first thought when you said that. It was, how did you even know?

Right. How did you know that it was important or that it was time sensitive or something?

It should have had some kind of a flag on it or a note or—

But as the manager, that's like, you know what? That's my bad. I'll go deal with, you know, Mitch and take on that one. But this is how we're gonna do this in the future, right? So that's good.

Back in the late '90s, early 2000s to training with Knight, it was basically here, sit with somebody for 2 hours and then take 60 trucks and have a good time. Good luck.

Yeah. It's amazing anybody made any money back then.

You know, that's a good point. That's why we do such a good, we try to do such a good onboarding here.

Yeah, onboarding's critical.

Because it's critical. I remember that, you know, it's a couple jobs where they just throw you into the, the mix and say, "There you go." There you go what? I don't even know who these people are yet. Right, yeah.

So Steve, you had a couple episodes, but what was your first one that you said, "Yeah, this is one that I really enjoyed." I really had fun with the Culture Fit Is Bullshit.

I mean, we were basically talking about something we saw on LinkedIn and somebody was saying it's all crap. And of course for us, culture is everything.

We put the cult in culture.

Yeah, and so, and I really just, I just found that incredible that somebody would not think the culture was important. To me, it seemed incredibly naive and short-sighted, especially in the environment we have right now where everybody's moving like crazy. I mean, people are dropping out of cultures just for 10-cent raise an hour, and with all the stuff that we're trying to get across and all the customers we're trying to get and the growth we're trying to do. To do in this company. It just didn't resonate with me. And I just thought it was kind of an interesting way for us to kind of go through that and really take point by point and say, this is why we disagree with this.

Well, it's someone who, I mean, I don't know their background, but apparently they either hadn't had really good experiences with culture or they've talked to people that didn't have good experience with the culture. And when you talk to people who are looking for jobs and employers and you hear culture fit a lot, it ends up being that they believe it's bullshit because is there really a good culture out there? Is there places that are going to do good for me and I can actually fit in where I'm not looking to jump to another job? We don't know their experiences, but I mean, to say something like that was that general and that blanket, it wasn't really the best comment.

And I understand it a little bit. I mean, we just hired somebody that I've been talking to a little bit.

It's like, is this real? Does it feel real?

That's exactly what they say is, is this real? I mean, I'm too cynical for this. I mean, could somebody actually have a culture like that? That they really care about people and they really are empathetic and they really speak the kind truth and all the things that we propose here. And I think people just, they can't believe it. And maybe this person, and I'll assume positive intent, Maybe they just haven't been in a good culture. Or maybe like me, I've been in many bad cultures, and so now I know what a good culture is.

Amen, brother.

Well, I think that's funny. You talk about maybe she just didn't understand. And that's one of my first reactions when I saw that too, is you keep saying culture fit, and the whole time I've got Inigo Montoya from Princess Bride in my head. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. That's all I thought about. We were reading that, I'm like, ah, this is— we're not talking about the same thing. We even had a conversation, me and her, on LinkedIn. And I was like, I don't think we're talking about the same thing. Oh no, we're talking about the same thing. Okay.

Dig in your heels.

So one of my favorites was, it was early on, it was Leaders Are Readers. And I think, Jeff, this was you and me.

It was.

Talking about some of our favorite books that we've read. Extreme Ownership and Five Dysfunctions of a Team were the two that we talked about in there. And for me, it was fun because it was really the first episode that we talked about just— it was its own topic, you know, and we'd been kind of leading up to that point talking about the 4 pillars of fleet success. And I thought those were really important that we set the foundation. But this is one where we kind of really just freewheeled it a little bit. We went ad hoc and it was just a lot of fun to kind of riff on things that we were really passionate and excited about, lessons that we've learned.

It was. And here's what I'll say, like, So we give books to people that are hired on. So I just hired a couple SDRs and we gave them their books. And one of them comes to me and goes, when am I supposed to read these? Or how long do I have? And I said, listen, if you need a break, go sit on the couch, read the book for a little bit. I said, you've got time to read them. I said, but you got to understand, you need to take this and this is for your personal development, right? If we're taking the time to help you learn new things and new ways to do things, it benefits us as a company. And she just stopped and looked at me and said, Wait, you're trying to make me better? Well, why wouldn't we make you better?

Right?

Right? And I kind of referenced our episode, Leaders Are Readers, where I said, go listen to one of our podcast episodes, Leaders Are Readers. I said, it's very important that you continue to gain knowledge as you go along, regardless of really the topic, because you're just going to be able to better yourself and how you treat other people and your job performance and everything else.

You know, I wasn't on that podcast, but it made me think about a question I was asked years ago. Somebody asked me, why have you been successful in life in the fleet industry? And that was the first thing that came to my mind because I'm an avid reader. I love to read. I used to spend 10 to 15 minutes just looking at publications every day before I even got into my work. I read, my wife gets mad at me 'cause I got bookshelves full of these business books, right? That I've had all these years of my career. I've kept every one of them. My college books from bachelor's degree to master's.

Oh, that's commitment.

And she said to me, "What are you doing that for? They're dated, they're old." I said, "Yeah, but there might be a nugget in there I want someday." Some principles that just hold true.

Accounting hasn't changed much in 50 years.

So that was kind of the, I totally agree with that. And that was, to me, reading is the one thing that has made me successful in life.

Do you guys mark up your books when you read them?

Yeah.

Do you?

Well, it depends on if I, if I read it or if I'm listening to it, right? Because you can't mark up the Audible, and I like the Audible because I drive to and from work and I listen to it on my drives. But when I read a physical copy of a book, I typically like to highlight it and then make notes in the margin.

Okay.

John Maxwell had a really awesome quote when we were at EntreLeadership last year. He talked about the first time that I read a book the book, you know, I mark the book. The second time I read a book, the book marks me. And I thought that was really impactful, is that he, you know, he went through and he talked about how he rereads the highlighted sections, and then that's when it really sinks in for him. You know, it's not enough just to read it the first time.

I lent someone one of my books that was all marked up, and they thought it was a weird thing that I marked it up. And I said, listen, if I'm thumbing through this book because I remembered, hey, there was a great quote or principle in there, I want to be able to recognize it without reading the whole book all over again. So let me highlight it, write something, and then I can just go right to those sections to find what I'm looking for.

I actually put sticky notes in there and make tabs and write on the sticky notes and the margins.

Yeah.

And then I highlight and I underline.

And so one of the things that I remember, and I think it was either Ken Blanchard or Ken Coleman, it was one of the Kens, they talked about this and he talked about how the person you become. I mean, you talk about personal development for this new SDR. But the person you become is a result or the product of the people that you meet and the books you read. You know, if you look at yourself and you want to know, where am I going to be in 5 years? Just look around. Who are the people that you're associated with right now? And what books are you reading? And that's who you're going to be 5 years from now. You know, and that's honestly all it comes down to. So, Jeff, what was another one of your favorite?

Reigniting— no, not reigniting, sorry. Conducting—

that was a fun one.

It was.

But no, it's not mine. Conducting effective interviews. This is why this one was good for me, because the first time I was a manager and I had to interview people, I've got zero direction. Like, all I had to go off of is me being interviewed for jobs, and that was like McDonald's, right, where they just wanted someone that had a pulse. Or when I got the job, um, at night, which was really just, uh, hey, we need somebody, come on in, you know. There wasn't a real interview in my opinion, so Having tips and advice for people out there on how to conduct an effective interview, I think, goes a long way because a lot of people, they, you know, they've got their canned questions. So tell me your 3 strengths. Tell me your 3 weaknesses. Uh, you know, tell me a little bit about yourself. I mean, there's like those, those, but they're not necessarily the most effective ways to get to know somebody, right? Right. Having a conversation with someone and getting to know them as a person is usually pretty effective, as opposed to just trying to get rehearsed answers from them, which is what you get when you ask a lot of business-related questions.

We're, uh, I'm actually speaking about this topic in a month at Elite Entrepreneurs and talking about some of the things that we do that we mentioned on this episode, which are things like doing playing cards during the interview process, you know, as a way to kind of get past those rehearsed answers and break through some of the, you know, the facade that you get from a candidate. And how you just get the genuine, real person.

It always throws them off a bit though, doesn't it?

Oh yeah. And you would think they finally learned if they've been listening to the podcast. Of course, this is one episode out of 50, so good luck finding it, I guess. But if they'd heard that one, they'd know this is something we do. We play a card game as a way to just kind of decompress, make it more natural, get rid of the rehearsed answers and settle down the nerves. 'Cause it's intimidating. We'll pull in these SDRs and they're meeting with the VP of Engineering and the CEO of the company. You've never had that level of interview before. You can get yourself a little bit psyched up for it, and so the cards really helps with that.

I look at it as kind of an in-between thing from where, I mean, I was in companies that did exactly what Jeff said. If you could fog a mirror in, you'd ask a few stupid questions. And then I've been in companies that are very high on the corporate end where They got a structured interview guide, a SIG, they call it. And you go through this thing and it has all these situation tasks and all that stuff. And they were good for guide as far as asking consistent questions to different people.

Which is good. You need to be consistent.

So that wasn't bad, but they were so structured that you didn't allow anybody to really shoot from the hip or give a direct answer that was genuine or—

Well, there's no way to flow, right? If somebody gives you an answer and you're like, well, let's unpack that a little bit and dive deeper on that topic.

So I like, I really like what we do here for that reason.

Go ahead, Josh.

And we do have a flow to ours, right? Like we've got steps, but within the steps then we just kind of like, okay, well, here's some questions you should ask. We've got a whole question bank that you can pick from. And then, you know, like, so there's like, it's trying to find that balance where it's, you know, there's enough structure and material to use, but then it's up to us as managers that if whoever's running lead on that, that we've coached them. And taught them how to do it. We've been doing some several interviews lately, and I've been including some of the frontline employees in that so that they can learn how to conduct proper interviews and they can watch and be a part of it and understand what it's like to be on this side of the table instead of as the candidate.

And I think that's important too, to involve coworkers.

Yeah.

Or people that could be working for the person you're hiring.

Yep.

So they can get a kind of a feel for them as well.

And they have a say in the process to some extent, you know.

All I was going to say earlier when you were talking was, you know, when you have a SIG that you have these questions you have to follow, most of your relevant data comes from your follow-up questions and really unpacking what someone has said. If you've got these questions that you have to follow, you're not going to be able to do that and ask those questions and then actually get into a flow and dig down and see what they mean or how they react to certain things. So it's very, very important.

Well, because people think the questions are more important than the interview.

Yes.

Right.

Yep.

And so you don't want to not ask a question, right?

Oh my gosh, I'm going to get trouble.

Well, and I chuckle at that because sometimes we're guilty of the card game becomes more important than the interview.

We're competitive.

We get wrapped up in that card game. We're like, whose turn is it? Who laid down those threes?

Who played?

So Steve, your second episode that you really enjoyed. Doing?

The gossip. I took my glasses off, so I'm gonna have to read this now, but the enemy of unity. I don't know how many organizations I've been to that most everyone has gossip. And the fact that we actually care and try to eliminate that in our culture is just an amazing feat. It's not always possible. But the fact that we focus on it, to me, is imperative that we do that. I wish that other people in other organizations that I worked in before could really have thought about that more.

Well, not just talk about it, but address it when it happens. That's the most important part of it all is addressing it. And a lot of people don't do that. "Oh, we don't have gossip." And then someone gossips and it's just like, "Okay, well." I guess we do.

Well, and that goes back to our favorite saying, which is, "It's not about what you preach, it's about what you tolerate." And so we could get up there and And that was early on, you know, I'd get up and talk about, hey, no gossip, no gossip, but nobody really believed it. And until people started, you know, like a couple of people lost their jobs, not because of the gossip, but because gossip and other things that were tied back to the gossip, right? And then you start, oh, they're like, they're serious about this, right? Or we start having, we just start addressing it immediately. Ho, ho, ho. I heard that chatter and we're going to talk about that right now. "Like in my office, let's go.

Let's have that conversation." The thing I didn't really think about much, and it makes so much sense, but what resonated with me about the gossip was if you're gossiping to somebody that can't do anything about it, then you're just wasting your time. You're venting and then you got to drag somebody into a conversation and maybe affected their behavior, their attitude, when you should have went to the person in the first place that could actually do something about it, which is really a no-brainer. You know, if you think about it in that context, but most people don't think about that.

No, they really think about it, right? They're frustrated and they just want to go vent to whoever.

Well, I think there's also people that have the low self-esteem, so to build themselves up, they'd much rather talk negative about someone else to make themselves feel better.

Yeah, I will say it's been really refreshing to see, you know, especially as we've brought in, you know, what, 12, 13 new hires, uh, as we've hired for that culture fit, like, this has been one of those things that I've actually seen decreased significantly over the last several years as we've kind of changed the blood out and gotten some new transfusion. It's been really rewarding to see that it's like self-policing now where we're not as managers having to police this and it's like self-reinforced within the company. The organism is building up its own defenses against gossip. And so anytime that somebody on the front line hears somebody else gossiping, they're saying something now. And they're like, hey, hey, hey, you know, why don't you go talk to them about that? Like, I'm not here for that. We don't do that here.

I can't even, honestly can't even think of the last time somebody came to me with any kind of gossip.

Well, hopefully your direct reports were coming to you.

Well, but I mean, just malicious gossip. I haven't heard anything for a while.

And I haven't heard it like since that last time we addressed it when I heard it outside my office.

Yeah.

Right? Well, now they know not to do it by your office.

That's right. Now they go outside.

Now they do it in the break room, the back, you know. But no, for the, for the most part, like, it has been really nice to tramp it out. So my last one was the one we just recently did, Reigniting the Fire. You know, like, for me, that was fun for two reasons. One, it was fun because we were talking about something really relevant to us that I know a lot of us have dealt with, you know, burnout and things like that. We're talking about employee retention and how important it is to touch into or tap into, like, somebody's higher sense of purpose. But I'll be honest, I think my favorite thing was just singing Righteous Brothers at the end. Like, that was definitely a highlight for the podcast in year one.

I think our listeners are probably glad I didn't join you on that one.

I think they're a little bit sad that we even did it.

Right. They wish Josh did a solo.

But that was definitely a lot of fun. And I think that's, as I look back, that's what I've enjoyed the most is just kind of the the ad hoc nature of how we discuss things and how these are really relevant topics. You know, of all of our topics, I was noticing this, really didn't talk a lot about fleet. You know, it makes me sad on one side, but I think it's because it's so relevant, right? Like the culture side of the fleet business is the one side that nobody's been talking about and it's the most neglected. And it's kind of why we started this whole message, right? It was, we've got to get culture out first and foremost, you know, and talk about stakeholder satisfaction, culture, and then let's talk about resource efficiency and risk management because those have been addressed so well in the past. They're really important, but, you know, like, we need to start talking more about culture than we have and make it equal with those other two pillars.

I mean, there's a couple I liked, but they were just down there from the culture. I mean, I like preventive maintenance when we did the preventive maintenance. I like the standard repair time. I was just going to say that standard repair times and But ultimately, I mean, you can't get good standard repair times or do good PMs unless your culture is where it needs to be. Well, it really boils down to—

It comes back to that. I just posted a quote on LinkedIn from Doc Rivers talking about the Phoenix Suns.

Yeah.

And basically what Doc Rivers said is Monty Williams came in and the first thing that he did was he fixed the culture.

Yep.

And now that the culture's fixed, look what has followed.

And then the wins, right? Like they fix the culture and then they fix the wins. And that, When I look at organizational health, right, this is one of my things when I read The Advantage, that's his whole message in that book is that organizational health trumps everything else. You know, you can be a very smart and good organization, but if you don't have a healthy organization, it will rot from the inside and it won't last. And so a healthy organization paired, like it forces itself to become smarter. And so I think that's why we resonated so much on these like, hey, culture, culture, culture. Because we really are almost the fleet culture people.

Well, and we have so much experience. And I could tell stories all day long about bad stuff that's happened or things that have shaped me. And it all revolves around how people have treated you and how they've acted and where you've been. And I'm sure you guys are the same way. So it's very, very prevalent.

I even think back when I was— I coached Little League for 12 straight years because I have 5 sons. The first thing I worked on was culture. I didn't really think about it then, but as I look back now after we're doing all this, I'm going, you know, that's exactly what I was doing.

Yeah.

Is I had to have the right culture, the right kids in the right spot. I had to keep the gossip down. I had to get people working together as a single team. And I spent so much time on that in practice.

Yeah.

You know, working on the one that maybe was not contributing as much as the others. Because you're only as good as your weakest link.

Yeah.

You know, so I mean, that's really what it comes down to on any team, any organization. Culture is paramount.

Yeah. So I think it's been fun for us. It's trade show season right now. And, you know, as Jeff mentioned, like you were out at a bunch of trade shows last week. We were at NTA a few weeks ago. One of the fun things has been, you know, as we've been asked to speak at some of these events, we've been able to take this message of fleet success Talking about the 4 pillars and the response that we're getting on the trade show floor after having these sessions, it kind of tells us like, no, the message is resonating. Like there's something for people in this message. And I want to just reinforce that with the listeners is like, hey, you guys are just as much a part of this as we are. I mean, we're on the podcast, sure. And, you know, like we've got the pillars and we keep talking about them, but You know, it's just as much for you. If this is resonating with you, share it with your peers. And you don't need to even mention us. Just talk about your own experiences with implementing, you know, better hiring practices or trying to establish your own culture. You know, like it's, it's kind of, it's on you as well to gather people to the flock, so to speak. You know, if this is resonating with you, it's going to resonate with others. So don't be afraid to share that message. You know, I would love to hear from our listeners as well. Like if they've got favorite podcast episodes, you know, send those in. I'd love to hear which ones have been your favorite, which topics you've just enjoyed us talking about. If there was a fleet-specific one that you really enjoyed. But Jeff, as we've gone through the trade shows, what are some of the messages or things that, you know, people have come up to you and said, hey, we really enjoyed this about, you know, like your sessions last week?

It's really talking about a different way of thinking about things, right? So, you know, you start off my presentation talking about stakeholder satisfaction and you talk about the different tiers and people don't consider much outside of, especially in the trucking world, outside of their customer.

Yep.

Right. So it's a different way to look at it. The biggest one is the intentional culture. So I had a bunch of people that were just single truck operators that after I spoke, they came and were talking about, they never thought how important culture was, but they are going to try to do things a little differently with the brokers that they deal with, or even their spouses who may be their dispatcher, right, find their loads from, or whatever else, because they realize that, you know, giving the attitude or just, you know, being short-fused or frustrated or whatever else doesn't do any good for anybody, and it puts a lot of animosity in that. Um, you know, they 'Cause trucking is simple, right? But when you spread it out and you talk about the different things that can affect it for the positive, it really opens people's minds and then they can think about experiences that they've had in their life and they relate it to what we're talking about and saying. Like I had a guy that asked me about, and I'm not a financial guy, but asked me about a P&L. Like, how do I read a P&L? I don't understand how to get my finances. He's only got 4 trucks, right? But he's got a bookkeeper who basically just sends him a bunch of garbage. And he didn't understand. I said, well, I tell you what, I've got a sample P&L for you. Let me send it to you. I sent it to him this morning and he replied back to you. I appreciate you doing this, right? Your message was great. I still love to come to your guys' summit. So, I mean, there's a lot of, you know, I'm saying there's a lot of people who just, they haven't thought about it this way. And by engaging that new train of thought, right, you are getting more people that are jumping on board to what we're trying to do.

That's what I actually love about our industry is everybody's willingness to step up and share and to help. And, you know, I mean, that's such a collegial atmosphere in Fleet.

Yeah. Uh-huh. You know, we had a guy, you know, came and talked to us. Um, oh gosh, I want to say his name is Micah, but it's not Micah. But we, you know, we went and talked to him. He was at the NTEA. You know, he's got a small little, you know, waste collection company, sanitation company that he's growing. And, you know, like, you were in the waste industry, one of the biggest waste providers in the world. And it's just like, "Oh yeah, no, I've got tons of stuff I can share with you.

There's tons of things that we can give and help you as you're on your way up." You know what's funny about that is I've saved so many things during my career that I've created. Yeah. I'm happy to share that kind of stuff because that's how I learned. Somebody mentored me or shared things with me that I didn't know. And now that I'm getting closer to retirement in the next few years or so, That's the most fun I have is meeting with people and sharing stuff.

Yeah. And I think that's the final message I'll leave with on our 50th episode is like, why are we doing this? Because Jeff just got that question the other day. Well, why are you putting on a show and not talking about yourselves? Because it really is about the message, right? It's not about religion, but it's essentially like creating this religion within Fleet. After, when you think about going to like New Testament times, right? After Christ died, what did all the apostles do? They went out and evangelized. And it's, you know, why? Because they firmly believed in what they were taught and they wanted to share it with the world. And I think that same thing has happened here. Like, why am I doing this? Well, it's because I was taught from all these great authors, you know, Jocko and Patrick Lencioni, and I wanted to take that and evangelize it into my industry. And it resonated with you guys and We're like the three apostles of Fleet Success. And I want everybody that's listening, you guys are in that same thing. You are the missionaries, you are our fellow apostles, and you're taking that, you're the evangelists. And just as much as I know, we love to share resources and things like that. As we're sharing things around culture and things that we've learned from the podcast, we've got a book coming out. You know, it's not the Book of Josh or anything like that. It's just the Fleet Success Playbook. And so sharing that with people. You know, we've got the Fleet Success Summit coming up, which is going to be an amazing show. There's going to be so many takeaways from that. Like, I can't tell you how excited I am to listen to people like Patty and Paul, to listen to Mike Pitcher and Brett. You know, these are people that I've always listened to, but now I get to like it's my own personal stage, if you want to think of it that way. Um, you know, they just have a message that, uh, that resonates with everybody in fleet.

I'm excited about Kristen because that's something I really hadn't really thought about before.

You've got Kristen, Sam, Brett— like, these are people that would have never— you'd never hear from these guys at NAAFA or GFX or any of these shows because it's just not their typical industry, right? Like, they're not going to get— GFX isn't going to reach out to Kristen and say, hey, come on in and come talk to us. They might get one of those kind of speakers, right? But we've got 3 or 4.

Yeah.

And then, and then we bring in fleet and then we bring in— so that's the kind of thing is like we're taking a message that hasn't been brought to fleet before and that's what we're doing. So the more that we can get other people on the bandwagon, you know, it's not about us. Like there's no branding at the Fleet Success Summit about RTA. It's just the Fleet Success Summit. I envision— I was telling somebody else, like one day I see this becoming a a huge show where you can't tell who started this thing. And if that happens, that means that we've been truly successful. If you can't tell that RTA was it, and we want to be the voice of fleet success, right? Like we, you know, we want to kind of be at the forefront when you think about it, it's synonymous. But if I were to ask you, you know, well, who started the word customer success? Well, I don't know, like HubSpot's gotten really good at preaching that, but they didn't start it. Well, who started it? Well, it was this guy over at Gainsight who kind of created it. But I only know that because he wrote this book and he talked about, you know, category creation. But like, there's— if we can get to that point with this where people are like, "Oh, I've just heard about this Fleet Success thing, and I heard about it from so-and-so who heard about it from so-and-so." You don't know where it started. I think that'll be an awesome day. So that's going to do it for us today. And as a reminder, we got the Fleet Success Summit coming up April 20th, 21st out here in Mesa, Arizona. Schedule's all up to date. We've got the updated links with all the speakers. So if you're curious about who's speaking, when they're speaking, that's all on the website at fleetsuccesssummit.com. Be sure to tell your friends and coworkers. You can enter the code PODCAST if you want to get a discount on your registration. And we will see you next week.

Evangelize.

Yeah, I look forward to seeing you at the summit. Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Fleet Success Show.

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