SPEAKER_01: 0:01

Welcome back to That's Delivered Podcast. I'm your host, Trucking Ray, and today we're diving into something that every trucking and logistics company is feeling right now the cost pressure. Tariffs are climbing, holiday surge is coming, and margins are tighter than ever. My guest is James Terry, the head of U.S. Revenue at Index Flex. He knows the struggle firsthand. With over 15 years of staffing and HR leadership, including more than a decade at ADP, James is helping companies harness AI-powered staffing to scale quickly, cut costs, and keep goods moving when demand spikes. And here's why it matters in trucking. For us, drivers can't deliver freight if warehouses are understaffed or lows can't move, if ships go unfilled, and companies can't survive if overtime and burnout eat up the bottom line. And James is going to show us how to fix that. All right, James, welcome to the show. Glad to have you on. How are you doing? Thanks. I'm great, Ray.

SPEAKER_00: 0:55

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01: 0:56

Awesome. Awesome. That's great. You know, times are hard right now. It looks like you're helping out a lot of companies. Um take care of that bottom line. Um, what's uh something that you've worked on, some of the some of the things that you've helped out? I know you've been with ADP and uh Index Flex. Uh what's one lesson have you learned over the years or to help shape how companies can manage today?

SPEAKER_00: 1:18

Yeah, so uh I would say one lesson I've learned over the years, especially as it comes to logistics and freight, uh trucking, whatnot, is that uh, well, two things really. First of all, yesterday's best is not good enough for today. Um the second thing is that uh you have to live in a world and be appreciative of the fact there's constant change in this industry and you always need to be willing to move on a dime. And uh, you know, sometimes the best laid plans are great, but you know, when you get that last minute load that comes in, or all of a sudden like the Suez Canal gets blocked, or whatever it might be, there's a lot of changes and you need to be able to operate with a fair amount of nimbleness within your business to be able to ensure that you're delivering product to your customers. It's not just about having like a really strong operational plan, but it's, you know, I'd say like ultimately in the service industry, and that's what indeed flex, what we are, we we provide labor as a service. Um, in trucking, you provide transport as a service. Um, it's not about whether or not mistakes are going to be made and things are not gonna go well. That's inevitable, right? That always happens. You kind of walk into it knowing that. It's about how quickly can you improve, make changes, and uh solve the problem quickly. And I think that's one of the things that really resonates with me. And one of the things that I've I've I've always taken with my team is it's not about making a mistake, it's about how do you fix that and how do you fix it quickly so that it it does not create operational burden.

SPEAKER_01: 2:42

Wow. Uh what makes the space a little harder or more unique than others? Uh, maybe certain companies like trucking or logistics, uh, what what do you think is uh most challenging?

SPEAKER_00: 2:53

Yeah, so so I'd say that the the biggest challenge that we have is that, you know, in in trucking or in logistics, you're kind of at the very, very end of the supply chain. But if you think about like you need to design a good or service, and then you need to go and manufacture it, and then you need to ship it, and then you need to ship it to a warehouse or distribution center. And then you kind of need to make sure it actually gets, you know, if you're taking the example of like delivering something to someone's house, they need to make sure it gets to that person's house. And like there are so many places along the way where something can happen that's unplanned. And because of that, what ends up happening in the industry is there's a huge amount of unknown and and questions. Like we had a client, you know, as as we all know, it's early October right now. I'm sure this went when this airs, it'll probably be just entering the height of the peak season for a lot of people in our industry. And we just had a client who literally came to us and they said, Hey, you know what? Uh, it turns out we thought that our demand was gonna look like this. Turns out that, like overall, when you look at Q4 of the year, October, November, December, it's gonna be the same. It's gonna be what we thought it was, but it's gonna be a lot smaller in October and we're gonna need to ram it all into November and December. Right. And you need to be willing to get those emails and have those conversations and that communication, be able to like really turn on a dime because, you know, at the end of the day, like when we we as at Indeed Flex, we provide labor as a service and you know, it's temporary staffing. And so people typically like you want to fill all of your work with your permanent employees, with your permanent workforce. And they come to temporary labor as their contingency. And so you need to be faster and quicker and providing better quality, more consistent staff than they can do on their own. And so it's really important to make sure that like when they pull that release valve, that release valve is us. And so, you know, if if all of a sudden we're not able to provide the staff or we're not able to provide enough people or the quality of people they need, then all of a sudden that just doesn't have a downstream effect on us and our relationship with them. But now they're having to pick up the phone and call their clients and say, hey, we're not able to get this package out the door. We're not able to help you maintain your SLAs or your delivery commitments with your customers. And so it just becomes really, really critical. Like we're kind of the line of defense, the last line of defense for a lot of businesses. And it's so critical, especially right now, coming into this peak period of the year, that like everyone needs to be operating on full, on, you know, on in overdrive, really to make sure that we're able to deliver to a lot of these like very, very last-minute needs that customers have.

SPEAKER_01: 5:21

Wow. Yeah, deliver those needs. I mean, that's huge. Um, you guys are doing a great service. That's nice that you're also uh able to do that. I mean, and to speak on it and let other people know that you provide it. So how did you get into this space? How did you get into uh where you're at today? Uh you got a little background story you want to share with the listeners?

unknown: 5:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 5:38

So I I started, as you'd mentioned, I started uh my career at at ADP, and that's a payroll company, um, largest payroll company in the world, and uh and and really enjoyed that and and enjoyed kind of, you know, you call that like human capital management, the HR industry. Um and then when I was looking at at other options, um, one of the things that really uh that really appealed to me about Indeed Flex was the concept that they're trying to flip the temporary staffing market completely on its head. So here's what I mean by that, Ray's. Typically, I don't know if I'm sure a lot of the listeners on this call have had a temp job in the past, worked in a warehouse, worked as a server or banquet staff or concessions, clerical role, right? Temporary staffing is all over the place. It's a hundreds of billions of dollar industry in the US. What typically happens in temporary staffing is a worker applies for a job, maybe walks into a brick and mortar branch in a strip mall or something, and they say, Hey, I need a job. The person at this temporary staffing organization goes in and looks at it and says, Okay, well, you know what? We have a client that needs someone in this location or doing this job or whatever this shift is. And you get assigned somewhere. You don't really have choice. You don't have control over it. And we found at Indeed Flex that actually, if you flip it on its head and you actually give control and choice to the job seeker, you end up getting better results. So actually, like the genesis story of what happened and how Indeed Flex was founded was we had uh one of uh one of our founders was actually living in the UK and going to college, and he found out that like he worked at a staffing firm. And they would always have him drive out to these really, really, really rural locations to do like, you know, picture like Downton Abbey, right? Beautiful like wedding at this amazing estate. And, you know, it sounds great. But they would have him drive out there, it was 20, 30 minutes, and they realized he had a car. And so they would say, Hey, Jack, would you mind maybe picking up some people on the way and taking them out too? And so all of a sudden he was like carpooling people out, picking them up, dropping them off. And he referred to one of his buddies who was also a bartender to the same same staffing agency. Well, his buddy didn't have a car, so his buddy picked up all the jobs that were local, right down the street, doing bartending or whatever. And he's like, wait a second, this isn't fair. The only reason I'm I'm getting these jobs that are way out in the middle of nowhere in Podunk is because I got a car. And he's like, I should be able to choose. And so that's really where the genesis of Indeed Flex was like, how can you give people offers and you say, hey, here are the four, five, six, seven different opportunities you have. Maybe it is a temp-to-perm assignment, maybe it's ad hoc, maybe it's close by, maybe it's far away, the pay rate might be higher, the payment pay rate might be lower. But let people choose where and how and when they want to work. And if you do that, you're gonna get a workforce that's more engaged, more happy, more excited, that's more consistent. Because, you know, while while getting the highest pay is the most important, if I can get a job for 20 bucks an hour, but I have to work five days a week, but every Wednesday I have to take ground out of the doctor, potentially I can't pick up that job. Maybe I'd rather work something that's a dollar to less an hour, but I have more flexibility in my schedule, or maybe it's closer to where I live so I don't have to spend as much on public transportation. And so by giving people that control and choice, they pick up the jobs that they want. And when, believe it or not, right, when people do work that they want to do, they actually stay longer and do a better job at it. And so that's really kind of how we how we uh came about.

SPEAKER_01: 9:04

That's awesome. Yeah, and you know, and giving that respect back to the um to the worker is huge. Um, it it goes a long way. It's people remember that. I do remember all of my uh temp jobs. I've had them too. So they're a necessary thing, you know. Um, how can someone get in touch with you guys if they're a worker and they want to do more?

SPEAKER_00: 9:23

Yeah, I mean, you just go to indeedflex.com. Um, it's I mean, the idea is we've tried to make it super easy. The idea is it is our our goal is it's as easy as pressing a button to get a job. And literally you go and you apply for the job, you you see all the jobs that are open. Um, you can go through an interview typically the same day, really on demand. You can actually potentially apply for the job or apply to to be onboarded onto Indeed Flex and immediately going into an interview. Um, and our goal is hey, you should be able to download this, the app right now and hopefully start work tomorrow. Um and and you think about that, right? Like think about how much of a game changer that is for people to be able to go and start work tomorrow somewhere. And by the way, Ray, you know what? And then we also have a system called instant pay, which means you can get paid that same day. So you can go, you can be sitting there on your couch right now and not have a job and be have money in the bank tomorrow afternoon after your shift is over. And you think about how much the world has evolved in the last 15, 20 years to allow people to do that, right? Think about 20 years ago, like you're pulling out the yellow pages or right, like the classified section in the newspaper and trying to find something. You're talking two, three weeks down the line before you can get something. Now you've reduced friction such you can go and find a job tomorrow.

unknown: 10:36

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 10:37

That is amazing. Um what does it look like? Uh is there a brick and mortar building? This is all virtual. Uh most of the interviews are done online.

SPEAKER_00: 10:45

Yeah, most of the interviews are done online. Um, you can do uh your I-9 verification is all done virtually as well. Um, and and that's really the idea. Is like, here's the thing is that the best workers, the best people are the ones that are gonna get snapped up the quickest. And so our goal is like, how can we make it as easy as possible for people to get a job? So we do have a couple of like brick and mortar locations, but actually it's like our kind of our goal is like, why? Like, why even have them? Like if you can make it so easy, you don't even need it. We definitely do job fairs and all that to try to get our name out there and a lot of like local outreach and community engagement. But ultimately the goal is like, hey, why not allow someone to be able to download the app and go get a job tomorrow without having to, you know, get up off their couch?

SPEAKER_01: 11:29

That's amazing. Um, I feel the same way about receipts. I'm like, why do I get the paper copy? I don't need that.

SPEAKER_00: 11:36

Right, exactly. Yeah. I was I was somewhere yesterday. They're like, Do you want a printed receipt or do you want it emailed? And I'm like, just send it to me in email. And they're like, okay, cool. And then they email, but they also print it out. It's like it's such a habit, right? It's like, and that's I think a big part of the evolution of the industry. And you talk about AI and you talk about like these things we're discussing with like getting a job, and like people are like tiptoeing their way into this new way of working. Um, but they still want to give you the paper receipt because there's there, it feels like it feels different. But in reality, like we kind of all have to get with the program and be willing to kind of take that leap of faith.

SPEAKER_01: 12:09

Yeah, that's a small example to paint the bigger picture of what's really going on. I mean, AI is definitely shaping, reshaping things for the workforce, um, especially for things that happen instantaneously. Um this generation, too, they want instant gratification. So I'm gonna give it to them, right? So they can go to work and make those things happen. Is this in every state or uh how big is uh your Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 12:32

We're we're in just about every state. Um we are. And and actually the thing that you mentioned around AI, um we've actually uh most of our interviews, a lot of our interviews are actually done through AI. So we actually have an AI agent that does the interview. And uh we started about six or seven months ago. And do you know what? Um our recruiter productivity has skyrocketed. On average, our recruiters went from doing about 15 to now they're able to do about 80 because we still have recruiters like look at all the interviews to validate them. But you know what the really interesting part is, and this is I think where like that evolution you're talking about is coming in, is that um uh one of our one of uh an industry analyst group just ran a survey and they found that uh 88% of job seekers actually find an AI interview as good as, if not better than, a real recruiter interview. So people like it. And it's because A, there's no bias anymore, right? Like, you know, like AI is not gonna be biased against you because of how you look or what your background is or whatever. It's gonna actually look at the answers that you answered. Um, and the other really great part about it, right, is that like, think about it. I'm able to do an AI interview in the middle of the night. Like maybe I have a night shift and maybe I get off at 5 a.m. and I want to do my interview then. Like AI's always awake, right? With another interview live person. I got to wait until that person starts their work and then play phone tag with them. And so there's a huge amount of benefits in it that that people are only now starting to take advantage of.

SPEAKER_01: 14:06

Yeah, there's no burnout. Um a lot of interviews back to back to back to back. I know it can be really hard on a supervisor or a manager because they still have to get their regular work done and still fill those positions. And then someone turns around and they say, Wow, I'm gonna leave. And they're like, Wow, I just worked really hard to get that guy or get that position filled, and now they're gone. So that's huge. And you guys also do a lot of that heavy lifting too.

SPEAKER_00: 14:32

So Yeah, yeah, exactly. And and another, another part of kind of where we're going and what we're trying to do is um, you know, like I forget the exact number, but it's definitely over 70%. 70% of people lie on their resumes. And so you think about it, and it's like, okay, well, you know, the only way I have to actually validate who someone is outside of the interview is what they put on their resume. Knowing like such a huge proportion of people are lying on their resumes, it's like, well, you know, what what can you really trust? But you think about it, and it's like, hey, if you want to go out to a nice dinner with uh your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, friend, whatever, you go onto Google Maps, you can see all these reviews, right? And you can kind of see like, okay, is it 3.5, is it 4.5 stars? Like, where do I want to go? And like there's some like accuracy to it. But for a job, what do you have? You have a resume that people lie on. And so that's a big another big part of what we're doing is that as our workers go out and work, our clients are able to rate them on a five-star scale.

SPEAKER_01: 15:37

Yeah, I was wondering where you're going to succeed because uh like how people take pride in what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00: 15:44

Exactly. They take pride in what they're doing. And then what happened? The beautiful part about this is that the people that get rated really, really well, they get the five stars. That's one component. The other part that goes into our system is how do they do they show up late? Do they cancel their shifts last minute? Um, are they a consistent worker? I how often do they work? And so all of a sudden, every time when when a when a when a business goes on and says, hey, I need help, we actually prioritize the workers that are going to get that work based on who's the best, right? So the people that are the most consistent that don't know show, that have good five-star ratings, those are the ones that get prioritized from the offers. And so you start to play this out over like a long period of time and more and more data. And the idea is could we live in a world where you don't even need to interview anyone anymore? If I've got a bunch of five-star rated workers and I can see their rating, and by the way, I can see, hey, they've worked at this company and this company and this company down the street that are all competitors of mine, and they're rated five stars. Do I even need to interview them? Like they've already done a working interview for one of my competitors for six months. I can just hire them on full-time right off the bat.

SPEAKER_01: 16:53

That's pretty cool. I don't see anything wrong with that. I mean, it's uh if anybody I mean, my dad, he works for uh Ship. He's retired and he he likes to work there, set his own hours and everything. Um and he he starts starting it up and he says, I gotta get a good rating. And he kept going at it and going at it, and now he's got a great rating, and he sits back and relaxed and picks and chooses which one he wants and what he wants to do is relaxing for him, you know. But he get out of the house and get a little exercise. So yeah, I was you know, I got to looking at that, and I'm like, hey, that's uh that's a good thing for him. Um I can see it being a good fit. And uh I think this will be also the same for a lot of young ones out there that are struggling to get noticed, and you know, they maybe look get overlooked, but yet, hey, their numbers speak for themselves, so that's awesome. Yeah, and and you know what?

SPEAKER_00: 17:45

Like the the thing is that the the Gen Z and people that are you know just entering the workforce right now, um, their expectations. I'm a m I'm a millennial, I don't know, I don't know what you what you are, but like um getting older every day. Getting older every day, yeah, man. Um, the expectations is that I should have more flexibility in the way that I work and when I work and how I work and where I want to work. And so the idea of like uh, you know, the old Monday through Friday, nine to five or whatever it is, is not really the expectations of the workforce anymore. And so they want to be able to pick and choose their schedule. And they, they, you know, right or wrong, they value a different work-life balance than how a lot of people that are of jet different generations might might think of it. And and so I think for businesses, meeting workers where they are and saying, hey, you know what, maybe they don't want this same schedule. Maybe I need to be able to offer them a little bit more flexibility. At the end of the day, like, if you're having a hard time finding talent, why would you not think about changing things up a little bit and offering a little bit more flexibility in the way that you're approaching your scheduling? Uh, because that's how you're ultimately going to be able to find these other people that either are not applying for you or are working for you and then turning over really quickly because I realize that they don't like this type of really structured approach to their schedule.

SPEAKER_01: 19:07

Yeah, it's huge. I mean, you always hear the commercial, uh, you know, they use this platform, I won't say any name, but it's like finding a needle in the haystack. This is the quickest way to do it. And I was like, man, that sounds exhausting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 19:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 19:20

So yeah, I I'm rooting for it. I hope it works. Um, maybe one day you'll see it for drivers. Um, we try really hard to be good drivers out there, and there's a lot of bad actors in the industry, and and you're like, man, they just ruined it for the rest of us. So it's good when drivers do a great job uh when they try the hardest and pay attention.

SPEAKER_00: 19:39

Yeah, we don't we don't currently work, uh we don't supply drivers right now. Um, and the reason is because like if we do something, we want to do it right. And there's just a huge amount of compliance that goes into being able to supply to to you know, supply to our clients through with drivers. Uh so we don't do that, but it's definitely been something that we've looked at because we think there's, I mean, there's a huge amount of opportunity in it. And um, I think that the industry overall is is pretty ripe for change because there are there's logistically so many challenges in having like the right person in the right place at the right time with the right type of truck to be able to to take their the the the goods wherever they might need to go.

SPEAKER_01: 20:15

Yeah, and how does that person respond to change or learning something new? Um, it looks like they got this many jobs that they've been able to adapt to, so they must they might be able to get it done. You know, yeah. It's awesome. So when the holiday surge and peak season, there's a strategy I'm sure that gets implemented every December or every time a holiday comes up, there's a peak in the sales, uh, it turns into chaos. So what's the first warning sign that a company's workforce isn't ready for peak season? What would you say?

SPEAKER_00: 20:45

Uh first warning sign that a company's workforce is not ready for peak season is honestly when we ask them for their peak season forecast and they don't know. Um the second one, I mean, that's the easy answer. The second one is uh, and this isn't a bad thing. This is something we've actually had a lot of success with is we actually go to a lot of clients and they'll send us their forecast or whatever, and we'll actually tell them, hey, we actually think that our forecast is more accurate because we have so much data from historical trends and usage that we're actually able to predict a lot of the times better than they are. Because a lot of times they'll just look at like what's what are their clients telling them. Um, you know, and and their clients might not be super accurate about the way they're looking at things. And so where we find a lot of success is saying, hey, let's look at what happened last year. And, you know, as long as there haven't been any big changes last year and the year before, we're able to actually um we're actually able to predict quite accurately. So we have a couple of clients where they send us their forecast and we actually send it back to them and you say, actually, we think that this is a more accurate number for you. And and a lot of the times it proves out that our our forecasts are more accurate.

SPEAKER_01: 21:47

Nice. You know, the more you do something, the better you get. What do you think the industry uh has a problem with when they rely too much on full-time workers and burnout starts to arise uh instead of uh building that flexibility within their workforce? What would you say uh can help them?

SPEAKER_00: 22:02

Uh I I think that the the biggest thing is understand there does need to be a balance. Um, you know, you've got your permanent and your full-time workers, and a lot of the times people will walk into it and say, hey, we know we're gonna have like mandatory overtime in November and December. And like on one side of it, yeah, I'm sure the workforce at certain times really appreciates being able to get overtime, but that's again not for everyone. And so you need to really be able to balance, you know, are we offering or are we mandating? Because anytime you're gonna mandate something to a workforce, you're gonna have people that are gonna be unhappy. You're gonna have a higher risk of turnover. And and this is the last, the last time that you can, or the sorry, the worst time of the year that you can have turnover. And so it's really important. Like if you go and say, well, we're just gonna do mandatory overtime to be able to deal with a lot of this. Is that really worthwhile? Is that really what you want to do? Because you're gonna have people that are gonna be unhappy. A lot of companies will also say, well, instead of mandatory overtime, you know, organizers are gonna hire a bunch of extra people. Well, that's fine. But think about the cost in like recruiting and interviewing and onboarding and offering them benefits to know you're gonna let them go in three months, anyways. Like that's the whole idea of why you have temporary staffing is why don't you just say, hey, someone else is gonna be able to do this and they're gonna be able to do it better. And by the way, what we do is again, you think about this like five-star rating. These workers work for you during peak, but then I have a lot of clients that don't run on a normal peak. So then when January hits and that demand goes down, I can then redeploy those workers elsewhere and have them go work somewhere else. So for me, it's worth an investment of onboarding someone because I know that I'm not just gonna have them for three months. If we do a good job and we do retain them, we're actually gonna be able to retain them for a longer period of time. So, you know, whereas a normal business, I only need them for three months and then they're gone. And so that's where I think it's really important to like really be thoughtful about is the juice worth the squeeze sometimes of like, you know, doing it all on your own as opposed to saying, hey, there's a release valve. By the way, and here's the other thing is like, you know, if I'm gonna increase my headcount by 20, 30, 35%, I need to hire recruiters. Like, how am I gonna do that? Like, you know, like you don't have recruiters growing on trees, right? So how are you actually gonna be able to bring people on to then do the work to bring the people on? And so that's a big part of uh of what we educate clients on, is like, really, what are you trying to get out of this? And what's the best financial and business decision that you're looking for as you're as you're kind of doing the the planning for peak?

SPEAKER_01: 24:33

Yeah, a lot of times you exert yourself, try to save money with uh a lot of uh effort, but you end up spending more money because uh you didn't ask for help or getting more stress or taking on more um headache. You know, what do you want to how much of that do we need these days? We got enough of that.

SPEAKER_00: 24:52

Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, like, you know, if if if you're a 3PL, like your your secret sauce is like you've got a way of getting points or goods from point A to point B faster and more efficiently and with better throughput than anyone else. You're not in the staffing game, right? So like just like just like, you know, whoever has outsourced their 3PL to you, you should think about outsourcing some of your processes to someone who's just better at it, right? Just like we outsource our trucking to someone, just like we outsource our manufacturing, like you should outsource some of your staffing to people that are just frankly better at it and more experienced. Because you don't want to like, you don't want to be focused on something like at the end of the day, like look at your mission statement. Does it say hire and retain the best um ad hoc peak talent in the world? No, that's probably not what's in your mission statement. So focus on what you do best and let the professionals focus on what they do best as well.

SPEAKER_01: 25:49

So looking at Outlook, you know, it looks like tariffs aren't going away anytime soon. Uh labor shortages are always going to be a struggle, seems like. So we would love for things to get easier. Um, but what would you say that can help a company not get crushed by these forces?

SPEAKER_00: 26:06

Man, if I knew that answer, I'd be sitting on a beach somewhere, wouldn't I?

SPEAKER_01: 26:12

Uh dart, see what tell me. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 26:15

There's so there's so much uncertainty right now. Um so I'll here's what I'll do. I'll tell you what I like. I don't have the answer, but I I do think that we have we have a lot of customers actually uh that have had a lot of success growing actually over the course of the last couple of years, and especially even like during this tariff period. So I'll tell you what I what because I asked them the same question. I'm like, how are you guys doing it? And um their answers are pretty simple. It's A, uh don't try to reinvent the wheel. Stick to your cores and your fundamentals and just do what you do really, really well. Because that's how you can start to win business from your competitors who are starting. The other thing that I think was really interesting is that they all were willing to do two things. Number one, they were willing to fire bad clients. Right. So they had people that were paying them, right? Their clients. And if they weren't good clients, they would go to them and they would say, Hey, we don't think that this is a good fit. This this business relationship is a good fit. So they were willing to walk away because what they did is they realized what is a good fit and what type of customer or client or process or product was a really good fit for their business, and they doubled down on that. So they identified who is our ideal customer. And let's run really, really hard at delivering an amazing service to our ideal customer, as opposed to trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Because as these tariffs and as these nations and as these different kind of economic impacts happen, you need everyone to be as efficient as possible. And so if you've got a client that's like not a great one, but you just kind of like have kept them along and think about like how much more resource you're having to dedicate to that one client than to the good ones, the ones that like, and it's not the a good or bad, it's just like to the clients that fit the type of business model that you have. And so that you would you, as I talk to these customers, say, yeah, we would spend an outsourced outsized amount of time on these clients that just weren't a good fit for our business. Now they were bad, but just like for the type of business we had, they weren't a good fit for it. So being willing in certain circum circumstances to have a conversation, renegotiate, or walk away from those ones, and then just run really hard at the ones that, okay, we know that this type of customer, business, client, service, whatever, we can really do better than anyone else. And if you run towards them, then all of a sudden you're able to start to pick up and you start to realize like, what's my niche? Well, like, where can we really make a really positive impact to organizations? That's where I think people have had a lot of success, is just like not just stagnating, but like really focusing on what you're good at.

SPEAKER_01: 28:55

I like that. I really do. It's uh you just you just have to follow through on it. And I think a lot of customers will pick up on that, that they value certain things, and then it will translate to just good good care of the customer.

SPEAKER_00: 29:09

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 29:09

I think that's gonna resonate well because then they will remember it. You got a great experience, and somebody, you know, you know that your money has value where you spent it. So that's all that's all good education for a lot of people out there. I think we just need to keep spreading that word. Uh as long as we follow through on it, that plan, I think it's gonna I think that's a good one. I think he hits bullseye. Uh so and AI is gonna help them run faster too. So it may sound like a big thing to take on. I also have many small businesses um been able to get through the AI transition and not feel overwhelmed.

SPEAKER_00: 29:42

Uh what I think is really important is that you know, you see all these things all over the internet about AI and how everyone's using AI. And um I think that the way that you can start to think about AI right now is that it doesn't need to be zero to a hundred. It's like, how can you start using it to be a little bit more efficient? How can you, you know, step one in logistics is like, are you using AI to map out your routes? Uh, right? Like, like there's and that's just like the very beginning. There's all of a sudden all these different use cases you can use it for. And it doesn't need to be that like, you know, people talk about like, oh, there's gonna be a billion-dollar company that only has one person and they just use AI for everything. Like, yeah, maybe that'll happen. It's not happening this year, that's for sure. And and quite frankly, I think that the big change with AI is that AI is just it's foundationally impact every single business, right? Like every single business is gonna be impacted by it, just like every single business was impacted by the internet, and some more than others. But like quite frankly, you're always gonna have to have products shipped from point A to point B. So it's and and it's not that like it's not that humans are gonna completely leave the process, but how can you use AI to make yourself more efficient? In the hiring game, how can you use it to help you go through resumes more quickly from the 150 resumes you gotten to, hey, I AI, tell me what are the top 10 that I should really be looking at. You know, how can you use AI to be able to more effectively allow you to cost out and do your forecasting or whatever it might be? Like it doesn't need to be an all or nothing, but just start using it. Because if you don't start using it, you're just kind of you're you're eventually gonna get left behind. And so it's not you don't you don't need to like revolutionize every business practice that you have right now, but like it's about building the muscle memory. Like, I don't know if you ever, if you ever played sports, but you know, it's it's a great analogy. It's like you didn't, you know, you've heard about like Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hour rule. Like you become a pro when you just practice, practice, practice for 10,000 hours or something. That's the idea, is you just need to start practicing at AI and then you'll start to realize where you can actually use it for a benefit.

SPEAKER_01: 31:50

Nice. I like um as long as the human factor isn't eliminated altogether, I think we're gonna come out okay. I think uh not to sound old, but when uh I think it was shortly after 9-11, a lot of jobs started uh companies started downsizing a little bit and people would take on extra work. So let's say you would have a person in the office that did a task, and now they had to do three other tasks, and they got used to it. And then it after a while the economy went through the housing crash and the company scaled back a little more, say, hey, can you do more? Can you do more? And they're like, okay, I can take on more. Now you feel like you're doing six different things. And so I'm thinking maybe AI is gonna be that element that would kind of bring down that temperature, bring it down that person that was doing so much. They got really good at it. That's why they're still at that job. But now they can use the artificial intelligence to make that job more manageable, more sustainable, um, instead of that burnout thing that we keep running into as humans. So that I think that would be great if uh we as humans saw that path uh down the road, because you know, you kind of think, hey, where would I be in the next five, ten years? It could be a really good place.

SPEAKER_00: 33:02

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01: 33:02

Gotta keep thinking positive. And like the the service that you guys provide, a lot of companies out there trying to figure out what do we do to keep people happy. Um, well, stop burning out customers, burning out the employees, excuse me. It's just provide that relief. Like you said, be there like you guys can hit that relief and be that that person for them, you know, that that company for them that they can work with to get that that work done. So yeah, great job. Uh that's awesome. Um, on a personal level, what do you see? It all going staffing or even anything like that within the next 10 with your experience, 10 to maybe five to 10 years from now? What would you say?

SPEAKER_00: 33:41

Yeah, so the staffing industry is in and of itself, um, it hasn't been, I guess to like if to like to use like a very basic phrase, it hasn't been um Amazon's, it hasn't been Uberized yet. Like it is still a very, very, very manual, manual process. Um, and there are still like lots of brick and mortar branches and lots of whiteboards and lots of little ledgers and lots of mechanical pencils. And there's nothing uh inherently wrong with that, but there's a huge amount of efficiency that we're not taking advantage of in the staffing industry. The redeployment rate, like I was telling you, of uh a worker working for multiple businesses through one staffing agency is really low. Some in at some staffing companies is as low as like seven or eight percent. So that means that like less than 10% of the time is a worker working for multiple customers, right? Now I'm telling you about like this five star rating and being able to redeploy and how cool that is. Um, and so I think those, like those are the areas where like eventually at some point, like the the industry is gonna wise up to the fact that, hey, we need to use technology to be able to drive better outcomes for clients and ultimately for the job seekers. And I think that's a really important part is that if you can treat the job seekers just as well as you treat the clients, you're ultimately gonna have a more successful workforce that's gonna be better retained and ultimately you're gonna have a beautiful flywheel, or then you're gonna have happier clients. And I think that's a really important part of it is like raising the value and the level and the importance of the worker and what they want and what their demands are because as they're as they're evolving, it's really important. And then how can you use technology to just build more efficiencies, remove the friction in people getting work? I think that's really where where the industry is going.

SPEAKER_01: 35:33

Well, well, I got you here. Um, it's your personal angle. I mean, you got a lot of great insight, like um, like how you guys are doing things over there. Um, so I'm really glad to have you on the show. And you've led a lot of, you know, with leadership lessons, probably because of labor shortages or overcoming crisis. There's rapid change that you've seen to happen. Um, what's the hardest leadership lesson you've learned that maybe a trucker can learn from that's running their own business that they can relate to?

SPEAKER_00: 36:03

I think that there's there's a book um by a guy named John C. Maxwell, and it's called The 21 Indisputable Laws of Leadership. The 21 Indisputable Laws of Leadership. It's a great book. Uh it's a bit long, but really good insights. And I'd say the one that I think is the most impactful for me is the law of legacy. And what he means by that is you should be able to disappear tomorrow and have your team pick up and be able to continue to run things. I think too often in leadership, people feel like they have to almost like create their value and make sure that they're an indispensable part and every decision needs to be run by them. And I think that that sometimes is done a little bit out of like the fear of like, well, if I empower people too much, then what's my worth? Like, why even have me around? But the idea of that is that the idea behind the law of legacy is that if you're developing your team, if you're investing in your team, if you're letting your team and you're empowering your team so much that they feel like they can make the right decisions. And by the way, sometimes they're gonna make the right ones and sometimes they're gonna make the wrong ones. But it's a journey and it's about learning. If you can empower people like that, then what that does is that frees up time for you to actually be a leader and point the business in the right direction and help to understand and put together what the strategy is gonna be longer term as opposed to having to be in the weeds. Empower the people that you've hired to lead people to actually do that. And you will build your legacy as someone who is empowering, who is a transformational leader. Um, and that will free up your time to be able to truly be able to do things that are gonna better the business, improve the business, drive the business in directions no one ever thought it could go. But you can't do that if you're always focused on micromanaging the people that that work for you.

SPEAKER_01: 38:04

Nice. Deliver the relief you need, uh, deliver the relief that your workers, your staff, your you know, your team that they need, um, instead of keeping that pressure on and making people feel like you know they can never let it let up, you know. So eventually you gotta you gotta let your foot off the accelerator. And uh, you know, you gotta coast for a little bit and make sure everything seems right because then you can have that that far-sighted vision that you need for your business to keep growing.

SPEAKER_00: 38:31

Exactly. Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 38:32

So it's gonna have to bumper ahead of you. So great, great advice. Uh, I like that. And it's a good read. Um, I'll put that in the notes for anybody that's looking for that book so they can get that knowledge too. Thanks, James. Um, it's definitely been an eye-opener for staffing and for helping people get their their work done out there because it can be difficult to not burn out or crouch in onto that bottom line. You know, people want to keep that bottom line going, especially when it comes to the peak season. So for truckers who know what what that's like, or for truckers who are without people in the right place or freight that doesn't move, um, hey, reach out to Indeed Flex. Uh they can help you guys out. So it's one of the the new things that we can do is uh get help with not just AI, but also with that relief when it comes to staffing. So any words of wisdom you want to leave before we go? I I think you've kind of hit a lot of the main points. Um I'm sure people still have struggles out there, but uh they can always reach out for more.

SPEAKER_00: 39:32

Yeah, I would say uh, you know, keep keep keep on trucking.

SPEAKER_01: 39:37

Exactly. That's it. So for the listeners out there who want to connect and learn more about Indeed Flex, where's the best place for them to reach you or point of contact for Indeepflex?

SPEAKER_00: 39:48

Head to indeedflex.com and you can reach out to us right there.

SPEAKER_01: 39:52

Awesome. Thanks again for joining us, James. And uh for your audience out there, remember trucking isn't always just about moving freight. It's about adapting fast, building resilience, and finding smarter ways to deliver. I'm trucking Ray, and that's the lift.