Jared Flinn:
You're listening to the Bolt Floats podcast, your number one resource for everything, bolt freight trucking. Hey, guys. Jared Flynn with the Bulk loads podcast. Got Tyler with me.
Tyler:
What's going on?
Jared Flinn:
Let's kick it off with the truck feature. This is a sharp. This is a great photo.
Tyler:
It's not blue, but. No, I'm just kidding. It does have my favorite color on the trailer, though, that gunmetal gray trailer.
Jared Flinn:
Golly, that is sharp.
Tyler:
Yeah. Red and black's always just a good combo. But this truck feature is Billy Hartzell with Taylor Farms in Castown, Ohio, and he's been a bulk loads member for quite a long time, since 2015. But yeah, sharp, sharp rig. Where's beat that red and black out of Ohio. Yep.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. Because it looks. He's got the pusher on there.
Tyler:
Yep.
Jared Flinn:
And man, what a setup.
Tyler:
Yeah, it's a good looking truck. I like it a lot.
Jared Flinn:
Awesome. Well, Billy, thanks for sending that in. If you would like to get your truck featured on this show, simply send an email to podcast at bulk loads.com. or as Tyler says, we have like 15 ways you can get it. Reach us through social media. Send us a picture however you can. We would love to feature that on there. And just while we're on the topic of talking about trucks, let's go ahead and talk about the calendar.
Tyler:
Yep, we got the calendar. Every single year we put together a calendar of all our bulk loads members, basically. Obviously, we do one truck for each month, but members submit pictures of their rig. I think we already got hundreds of comments on our Facebook post about it.
Jared Flinn:
But it's like 200 plus.
Tyler:
Yeah, yeah. There's a lot to sort through. So we're putting that together here and we'll have it ready to ship out. We normally send it out completely for free, especially to our podcast listeners, our bulk loads members, anybody who wants one. But right now, Garrett is putting it together and he has relayed to us that he needs some pictures specifically to represent the winter months. So December. If you have any photos of Christmas lights on your rigs or anything that represent the holidays, anything in the wintertime, definitely send those in. There's a good chance that you might get picked to be on it.
Jared Flinn:
That's what I was going to say. So, yeah, just a little. If you want a better chance of being featured on their better probability, give us a holiday picture. I would say any holiday. So if you have something around Thanksgiving for our November 1, December for Christmas, if you got a Valentine's one, maybe a heart on your travel, I would.
Tyler:
Be interested to see that one.
Jared Flinn:
So, yeah, get us a picture. We would love to see that on there. Yeah, a couple things before we start. I was last week up in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, I went to visit Fultz trucking. They had their annual trucker safety forum where all their trucks come in. Our trucking, our owner operators and company drivers come in and, yeah, had a great time. I'm gonna have Garrett throw up a couple pictures, but got to meet Ken, which I met before down here at the conference. He came and spoke, but then Frank, his brother Ken really runs kind of the operations.
Jared Flinn:
And Frank's kind of in charge of purchasing the trucks and trailers and all that. But yeah, I had a great time. Got to visit with them and their family and spoke at their trucker forum. I think we're going to get to go up there, maybe shoot a video. I was telling you about just their setup, how slick it is. And I think if anything, we know there's listeners on here that maybe not are going to be to that scale, and that's fine. But there's just some really cool things that they're doing that anybody can take away from just how. What practices they've implemented that has allowed them to have success in their company.
Jared Flinn:
So. And we're excited to go up there again. Thank you, Ken and Frank and the Folch family, for having me up there.
Tyler:
Yeah, very cool.
Jared Flinn:
So the other big picture I was gonna have Garrett throw up. A lot of people don't realize, you know, I used to drive a truck.
Tyler:
Yeah.
Jared Flinn:
And I always. I've said that before. Some people don't believe me, but I used to drive for rue materials so that I wasn't an over the road driver. I had my class a CDl, but I pulled a drywall truck, had a boom on it with a pupil. And this is kind of an example of that truck that I drove. There was one I saw going down the highway the other day. And every time I see it, I'm always reminded of my days when I drove that truck. And it was more 8100 miles radius.
Jared Flinn:
So I was home. Usually it was late nights, but I mean we put in 1214 hours days. But that was the truck that I got to drive. I've drove over the road truck. I mean I've been in the cab and I know how to drive those. But this was. I think they were Sterling's, if I remember.
Tyler:
Do you have any pictures of you? Actually, no.
Jared Flinn:
I wish, you know, you look back.
Tyler:
Somewhere in the archives. There's gotta be one of you in the driver's.
Jared Flinn:
I don't think we ever took one photo back in the day.
Tyler:
So we need to do a video just of you driving around.
Jared Flinn:
I can still reminisce.
Tyler:
Good old days, the boom.
Jared Flinn:
So it was wireless. You had a little yellow remote box, and I can remember running that thing, and it was kind of like a little game. Yeah, because you're picking up the drywall. You had to be careful rushing construction zones. But it was one of those that really led me to my next opportunity to work for Bartlett, which led me to co found bulk loads. Yeah, always, always kind of look and think of the past, and every time I see those trucks going up, down, I'm reminded of that. So a lot of people always ask and wanted to share that.
Tyler:
Yeah.
Jared Flinn:
So, cool. Well, today's podcast, I'm gonna bring in Steve Perryman. Steve lives down here locally. He actually has had a career in trucking, and we're gonna talk about that more on the podcast. But he's worked with prime.
Tyler:
Yep.
Jared Flinn:
Which most people know and really was on the inside of that when they were at a certain size and probably double now and really talks about kind of what he learned in developed there. He left prime, went to go work for Christensen, which, if you don't know them, they're another company based here, just up the road in Stratford, and really led them from, like he said, growing four times their size since he got there in 2016. So the guy has seen success. He knows what success looks like. He knows how to grow. I'll say this again, you know, he's been with big companies, but these same strategies apply to if you have one truck or two trucks or a smaller business. Like I said, you can take these and adopt these same ones. So do not tune out to this.
Jared Flinn:
I think you will get incredible value from what Steve has to say. He is a great speaker, he's an encourager, and, man, I have just enjoyed really getting to know him.
Tyler:
Yeah, I think it's very cool that he's taken all that experience over his career, and now he's kind of passing that on and becoming a coach or consultant for these smaller businesses, specifically in trucking.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah.
Tyler:
Cool.
Jared Flinn:
Awesome. Well, with that said, here is my conversation with Steve Perryman. Steve, thanks for coming in.
Tyler:
Thank you.
Steve Perryman:
Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah, well, it's been an honor to get to know you, really, over the last year and hear a little bit about your story. But that's one of the reasons I want to bring in, like, kind of your history and career in trucking. I think there's just a lot of wisdom in there, and we're going to kind of unpack that today and kind of even where you are at this present day in your coaching business as well. But, man, just kick us off. How did you get started in trucking?
Steve Perryman:
Well, my earliest experience was when I first got out of college, graduated from the University of Arkansas in the early eighties, went to work for a small public accounting firm down at Batesville, Arkansas. And there they had quite a bit of smaller trucking company business, you may remember, I'm sure you do, a great race car driver. Mark Martin. Mark Martin's from Batesville, Arkansas. Mark was a teenager at that time, and his dad owned a trucking company. Julian Martin, JMI Trucking. So through that small accounting firm, I got some exposure into the trucking world, the vocabulary, if you will, worked for several of the companies around there through that opportunity, did that for a few years, and actually ended up going to work for one of my trucking clients. That's where I got the controllership, if you will.
Steve Perryman:
Experience was way in over my head. You could go ask Dave McNeil today if I was qualified for that job, and in 1986, and he would probably tell you no, but I'm still good friends with Steve.
Jared Flinn:
Because you were, I mean, you were only how old at that?
Steve Perryman:
Oh, I was too young. I was 20. I was in my twenties. Yeah, I was still in my twenties, but it was great experience. And Dave McNeil, McNeil Trucking Company, his son now owns that company and probably has renamed it, rebranded it. But it was a great experience working for that group of people. So it was, it was a good learning experience. Continued my education.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah.
Steve Perryman:
So from there, well, I actually, I actually from there came to Springfield, of all things, to work for a big grocery store company here in town. If you've been around Springfield long enough, you probably remember Smitty supermarkets. I, through that experience, I developed an expertise for helping people establish accounting departments, processes, procedures, developing staff. Think about the timeframe there, mid eighties, bringing in computer systems and computerizing manual functions and that sort of thing. And that led me to an opportunity to meet Dave Trottier, who owns Smitty supermarkets here in Springfield. And so I moved up here and did that job until their acquisition by Albertson supermarkets, 1989, I guess, something like that. And at that point, I found myself unemployed CPA with trucking and retail experience, which is a little bit odd. And I was unemployed in January, which was also a little bit odd.
Steve Perryman:
And prime trucking. Everybody in the Springfield area and most people in the transportation, most of our listeners, yep. Will know who I'm talking about. Prime trucking ran an ad in the newspaper that was basically my resume, looking for somebody that has public accounting experience, income tax experience, preparation experience, working with individual truck drivers, owner operators and that sort of thing. They were opening up a driver services or what they called the Millennium building at that time, and they were looking for an accountant to establish an accounting firm in the building serving their owner operator. Lease operators did that started in March of 2000 with them not working for them. But I've always told people I had the best of all worlds. I had all the benefits of being a prime employee without ever having worked a day for prime.
Steve Perryman:
So it was great. And I have a tremendous amount of respect for what they do. And their business model doesn't fit everybody. But I learned a lot and we grew that business from no clients in March to probably 400 clients by Labor Day. And oh my God, when I left there in 2016 and handed that off to people who were a lot smarter than I was at about 2600 prime operators as clients. And they've grown it since then. So it's still a very well established business over there and do great work. So very proud of that, even now, eight years later.
Jared Flinn:
So, I mean, roughly how many trucks did they have at that time in the prime?
Steve Perryman:
In 2000? Yeah. Oh, in 2000, they were probably 3000, 2500, something like that.
Jared Flinn:
Okay. It's a lot bigger. Okay. Bigger than I thought at that early age.
Steve Perryman:
But they, if you know anything about their timeline at all, they started really rapidly trying to grow that business in about 2001, 2002, when they did their first acquisition and got back into the company driver business through that acquisition and really just excelled. Accelerated through the financial bad times of the first ten years of the decade. Really, really accelerated. Grew a lot. And they, again, very good business. Unusual business model.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah, well, I want to come back to that, but I want to finish that timeline because I think it segues perfect going back into so 2016.
Steve Perryman:
I left that to smarter people and had an opportunity to go to work for Don Christiansen at Christensen Transportation. I know you had Barry on a few weeks ago. Barry's a safety director over there. Don Christensen's a great guy. It was a great place to work. What I would call my end of career. Don and I are about the same age. Went to work for him with the understanding that I would again exercise my experience and my, and we grew the accounting department, brought it a little bit out of the last century, if you will, developed some processes and procedures and also took on a growth initiative that I led as the facilitator for them.
Steve Perryman:
And we grew that business, I'll take very little credit for it, but grew that business about fourfold over five years. And that's in truck count revenue, dollars of revenue, and that sort of thing expanded into brokerage and some other areas. But my plan when I went to work for Don in 2016 was we're going to find a good replacement for me over that period of time and I'm going to retire when I turn a certain age. And we're not going to tell what that is today, but, but got to there and got to that age and had a great replacement in place. And Ethan slaughter is now the CFO out there.
Jared Flinn:
No, Ethan Wall.
Steve Perryman:
Yeah, Ethan's doing a great job with that. So it was time for me to get out of the way. So I stepped back from that and now looking for the next exciting thing to occupy my time.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah, and we'll get that towards the end of this conversation. Going back to prime, you talked about that accelerated growth. And I think a lot of our listeners out here, whether they're a couple trucks or five trucks, trying to get to 2020 to 40. Can you talk about some of those initiatives that led to that accelerated growth within prime?
Steve Perryman:
Well, if you vary background on Prime, Prime's got a great story. And if you ever have the opportunity to hear Robert Lowe tell the story, please take 30 minutes and listen to this story, because it's, it is a great story. He started with a dump truck, got drafted, had a fella that was a friend of his dad's that says, well, if you'll trade the dump truck for an 18 wheeler, I will, I'll drive it while, you know, Rob's doing his patriotic duty. And that's how they got, that's how Robert Lowe got in the trucking business. So if you have enough time, you can build a very successful trucking business from one dump truck if you have enough time. But their success really is built around. Keep it simple. For example, they have a very simple mission statement.
Steve Perryman:
And I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget it. But the mission statement is to prosper while providing excellent service to our customers. Keep it simple, be disciplined to that. They're very disciplined to their model. They have a tremendous amount of belief that they have the model right. And they don't waver from that very much. They will. If you talk to anybody that works there and has been there very long, they will tell you the success of prime is their culture.
Steve Perryman:
So one of the things I'm hoping to do is help people with culture. You know, the kinds of things that I've learned from those experiences. But one of their initiatives was growth. How do we grow? How do we grow safely? How do we grow profitably? And they knew they probably were going to have to do it through some acquisitions. They did a few acquisitions, but were very, very selective. I'm sure. They probably passed on for everyone. They did.
Steve Perryman:
They probably passed on 50 potential acquisitions. And so that's where that discipline thing comes in. We want to grow. We have a desire to grow. We think we should grow. Growth is revenue, growth is truck count. But we're going to be very disciplined to the model. So that's hard.
Steve Perryman:
That means you have to keep your ego in check. And I think they do a great job at that. So that's, that's their model. I would, I would encourage you to get to know those folks. They would be great to come on the show. Darrell Hopkins is the, is a good friend of mine. He's the president over there now. He would be great on the show to talk about some of that.
Steve Perryman:
They love to tell their story. So I'd encourage you to have Darrell Hopkins own good guy.
Jared Flinn:
When you talk about, I mean, several different initiatives, but one they realized through acquisitions. Like, obviously, you know, you coined the term, it takes money to make money. But, like, sometimes just to go buy a company, I mean, that takes a.
Steve Perryman:
Lot of funding to buy it safely. It does. Now, there's a lot of people with cash out there. If you have the right story, you know, if you have the right story. I have found it fairly easy to find money if you have the right story.
Jared Flinn:
Okay.
Steve Perryman:
But that doesn't mean that you'll still be in business six months from now. So the key is. The key is having a good plan, a good business plan and then executing it. The money will, the money's not the hardest thing. I know that's hard for people that have one truck trying to find the second one and our five trucks trying to find the next five. But as you get into a strategic growth initiative, the money's not going to be the hardest part.
Jared Flinn:
Interesting.
Steve Perryman:
Good partnerships, good finance partnerships are important.
Jared Flinn:
I don't want you to tell Robert's story, but I always, every time you talk about it, they said that he was bankrupt or went bankrupt. That was part of his story.
Steve Perryman:
Definitely part of the story. They were in business and probably took on their first growth initiative in the late seventies, maybe. I have no idea what the truck count but was, but it was probably 300 trucks, maybe more. And deregulation happened, and they had a bunch of high interest rate. Think about 1980 deregulation and what the interest rates were during that period of time. And they had some, probably some 20% loans on the books. And it just was a formula for disaster. And they will, they will tell you it was the lessons learned through that bankruptcy experience that have led them to the formula of today, which is risk.
Steve Perryman:
It's risk distribution. It's rewarding. Hiring fewer really good people makes more sense than hiring a lot of average or mediocre people. One of Robert's things, I've never heard him say it, but I sure have observed it. He hires really, really good people and then he gets out of their way and lets them do their job.
Jared Flinn:
Wow.
Steve Perryman:
Which is hard for, it's hard for the smaller operator, whether it's 20 truck, trucking company or a person who has two grocery stores wanting two more. It's hard to. It's hard to let go, if you will. It's hard to trust. So building those trust relationships with your good peoples, and that's what they've done. They've hired very, very good people, paid them well, and got out of their way and let them do their job.
Jared Flinn:
I feel like we can camp out on every one of those things you just said. There's like such good wisdom in every one of those one thing, and you've told me this before, though. But like when he was this gross initiative, it wasn't just Robert coming up with this and going, he had good people to help him create this initiative. And I think if, correct me if I'm wrong, I think there was certain individuals that he hired or still has as an advisor or coach today that's really led to some of that success.
Steve Perryman:
Well, that's one of the characteristics I've seen through my career, which is now over 40 years of what I, by my definition, successful business people. One of the characteristics that I've noticed is they will all have. Using the word coach is not exactly it. They've had a person that they could have private, honest conversations with. Sometimes they call those business coaches, sometimes they call them their best friend, that they have a beer and a fishing hook in the water somewhere over. So it can take on a lot of different things. But, but they, without exception, they all had somebody that they could lean on privately to bounce ideas off of people that would be very honest with them, not sugarcoat anything. And Robert Lowe has that person and has leaned on him for a long time.
Steve Perryman:
And he does a lot of work internally out there. He's an external guy, but he does a lot of work internally out there with strategic planning and a lot of different things. I'm sure I don't even begin to know all the things he's involved with, but one of the things that individual has, has coached them on is managed by the numbers. Be a numbers focused organization and if you can know what your competitors numbers are because you're trying to be the best, if you want to be the best, you're going to measure that. Bye. By the KPI's, the key performance indicators or whatever those things are that says revenue per truck, per day, tons hauled, whatever those things are. If you can measure it. Your guy from last week, Justin from loves, I listened to that as this is being taped where that was this week's program, and he said you can't manage what you can't measure.
Steve Perryman:
And I absolutely believe that prime looks to the things they can manage and then they measure it and they measure it daily. It's not, gee, I wonder what our revenue was last month or last week. They pretty well know what their revenue is on a daily basis.
Jared Flinn:
You're saying your son is employed, works at prime and manages a terminal out in Utah. He's a fleet manager, our fleet manager.
Steve Perryman:
Fleet manager.
Jared Flinn:
You're telling me like, he knows his numbers like by the hour or by the day on where they're at, where they're tracking?
Steve Perryman:
Yeah, he, he will know. He's pretty, he's pretty tight to the vest with what he'll share with me. But I know for, I know for a fact that here it is, a little after noon on a Monday. He could tell you without any guesswork what his numbers for his fleet were last week. And he can also give you a pretty good idea about what his numbers for this week are going to be when he gets his weekly report. It's just confirmation of what he already knows. As I talk to potential business owners and business owners who want to strategically change their business, one of the things I talked to about financials information is it should just be confirming what you already know. If you're waiting till the, the end of the period, end of the week, end of the month, end of the quarter, end of the year to get your financial statement to know how you did, it's probably too late.
Steve Perryman:
It should just be confirmation of what you already know through some sort of daily reporting or weekly reports or whatever that might be. So that prime does it great. The prime is the best at that sort of thing. They're just a great example of people who have taken that and they take it sometimes to an extreme. But again, I like the model a lot.
Jared Flinn:
So from what I've seen just in my 20 years in trucking, you know, and I'm not casting this on the whole industry, but I think sometimes small business owners, small truck companies have a hard time trying to get those numbers or try to figure out those numbers. And again, there's a lot of different. You talk about the numbers, you know, you hear some guys talk about rate per mile, some talk about revenue per day. And I know there's different operations that do different things, but it seems like it can be across the board on how you measure performance and profitability in trucking.
Steve Perryman:
It can be, and I would say it begins with, figure out what works for you and then be consistent with it. Stress test it. Does it make sense? So, for example, I've seen in this industry, I've seen operators, especially smaller operators, really focus on revenue, dollars. You know, we're trying our truck count. Revenue, our truck count. We want to be a $10 million company or we want to be 100 trucks. And if you can't answer the question why, then I would suggest it's probably an ego, just an ego goal that you've set.
Jared Flinn:
I was hoping you're going to share this because you talk about that like, you know, if you're saying I'm going to beat 100 trucks, like, why I.
Steve Perryman:
Can be a contrarian and the first thing I'm going to do is ask you why? Why 100? Why is it not 125 or why is it not 50? Where'd you get 100? Why 100? I just think that's a. And if you can't answer that, then it's probably an ego driven decision. There's a great, there's a great. There's a great exercise that coaches will do, and it's called a ten x exercise. And it's usually with a group of people. And the question is basically this. If your business was ten times bigger, what would you be doing differently? And let's list those out. Big issue, small issue, doesn't matter.
Steve Perryman:
If you were ten times larger than you are today, what would you be doing differently? And then that turns into a strategic plan. Because if you have a growth initiative, you've already made the decision that you're going to add a safety director. You just now, it's just about winner in that growth. Or you are you. If you're ten times bigger. I'm going to have a safety director. I don't have one today. Well, in this growth initiative, I know that I've already made the decision.
Steve Perryman:
I'm going to add safety or a shop or whatever that. That thing would be. And that's a great exercise to go through. I don't care if you're just one truck, you know, if you have one truck and you have no desire to grow, I still think it's a great exercise because the question may be, when do I trade this truck? You know, how do I measure profitability out of a one truck trucking company for the purposes of making good, smart decisions, you know, trading or updating equipment? Do I lease versus buy? You know, there's a lot of strategy tools that big companies use that could be applied to one guy with a dump truck. You know, it just. And I find it's. It really is how you think. I've met through all that experience at prime, where I was working on a daily basis with these individual self employed owner operators.
Steve Perryman:
And it always astounded me how many of those folks still thought, like an employee, not as a business owner. Now, nothing wrong with thinking like a business. I mean, as an employee, unless you're a business owner, you know, because it's. It's a different thing. You know, the thing that happens on Friday is not a paycheck, it's a settlement. And if you've got a partner out there that you're leased on with or, you know, it's. It's collection of a receivable or it's a different process. Yeah.
Steve Perryman:
And the people that. That I've. Again, by my measurement of success, that are the most successful are the ones that stop thinking like an employee and start thinking like a business owner. And that could easily apply to one guy with. Or gal with a. With a dump truck or, you know, 1118 wheeler, and they've got a nice dedicated load hauling reefer loads back and forth through the northwest for associated wholesale grocers or whatever your model is. How you think when you went to.
Jared Flinn:
Christensen, you know, they. You said Don had. Wanted a growth initiative. Wanted to grow. Was it by revenue or by truck or.
Steve Perryman:
Well, we. This is. That's. This has been the process since fall of 2017 because we very naively, and I'm assuming Don will see this somewhere along the way. So I don't think I'm spilling any secrets that he wouldn't share. But we very naively started with a revenue initiative. We want x number of revenue, and we think we can do that with x number of trucks. And we've pretty quickly decided or discovered that it was something that we weren't necessarily wrong, but that was going to be the outcome of whatever we did, not the reason to do it.
Steve Perryman:
So we began to make different decisions, different initiatives. We wanted to grow 15% a year instead of having this set number. We want to grow. We want to grow profitably. Well, what's profitable mean? Well, now we set a operating ratio, bogey, if you will. And so it kind of changed the complexion of the initiatives that we set to, to try to achieve that strategic plan.
Jared Flinn:
I guess I'm thinking for the small business guy out here, they want to grow. The ones that do, they want to grow, let's say they're five trucks, they want to grow by 20. I'm using the truck example, not they want to grow by 20 trucks. I guess the first thing I think in my mind is the opportunity out there. If I'm wanting to grow that revenue, I got to find customers, number one. I mean, if you got the customers and you can get the equipment and all that, but how would you respond? Like, if you're wanting to grow, like, I got to think like, it's not just the fleet, but sure, is the freight available out there?
Steve Perryman:
Let me qualify that by, by making sure everybody understands my background. My background is full over the road, 48 state reefer, and then Christensen is a drive van company. So I know a lot of your viewers are in the bulk load. Obviously, that's the name of your business. So it's a little bit of a different piece. But I will tell you, I'm sure your freight, the kind of freight that your clientele hauls is no different than any of the other. Wherever you're at. We're in a cycle.
Steve Perryman:
It's a cyclical business. You're hauling commodities for the most part, you're going to be hauling commodities. Commodities go through cycles. That's all I really know about what I learned in economics in college. But we're in one of those, and we're at the bottom trough, if you will, of the current cycle, which there's a lot of companies out there right now financially struggling. I'm guessing that's not a big secret to anybody. I would tell you this is the time. This is the time to really look at growing.
Steve Perryman:
Not because your competitor may be going to be out of business three months from now, but this is, the freight will take off, the freight rates will go up sometime next year. I'm a believer that I would love to tell you that I have the data to back that up. I've listened to a lot of really good experts that I trust, and they all say, second quarter, we'll start seeing a rebound. I think on the reefer side, they're already beginning to see some rebound. Drive van. Still pretty depressed, but we will see a rebound. Historically, we always have. There's no reason to believe we won't this time.
Steve Perryman:
I think this is the time to get ready. Get ready to thrive was one of the ways that one of the experts that I saw at a panel a few months ago be prepared to thrive. This is the time to get. To get it. So this would also be a good time, if you're already in the business, to look at growing. If you're not in the business, if you have a farm and you have a couple of trucks there, maybe running those trucks under with just farm tags or agriculture permits, maybe now's the time to be looking for expanding that. You don't want to do it at the peak because you're just going to get in as it. As it falls.
Steve Perryman:
Interest rates are coming down. So if you're going to. If you're going to do. If you're going to need to acquire some equipment, lending is going to free up a little bit. I think. At least my banker friends tell me that. So now. Absolutely now's the time.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. So you left Christensen earlier this year, and kind of your desired dream is to really kind of branch out more into coaching or advisor again, company SRP advisors. But talk a little bit, I guess. Number one, the why behind that? Why did you just, you know, why. Why you. I mean, you probably be golfing every day if you want to, or fishing. Like, we were just talking before we got on the podcast. But why do you want to.
Jared Flinn:
Why do you still want to stay involved?
Steve Perryman:
Well, I'm pretty boring guy. I don't really have too many hobbies. I don't golf, I don't fish. I don't hunt. I don't garden. I live on a golf course and don't even own any golf clubs. Isn't that pathetic? I had this. It really was a dream, if you will, of mine, that I would get off of the merry go round.
Steve Perryman:
The work, the 40 hours, 50, 60 hours a week, Monday through Friday, the occasional Saturday, Sunday. Whatever it took to get the job done, I'd get off of that merry go round sometime while I still had time to enjoy doing something else. I wanted to be able to at least choose to continue to work because I was making a difference again. I felt like I had a great job. At Christensen, working for Don was great. I left a great job, but I had a great replacement there ready to go, and he's. Ethan's going to do the job so much better than I did it. So it was time.
Steve Perryman:
So the first answer is, it was just time in the whole life cycle, if you will, where I am on that continuum. And then the other thing that I wanted to do was, I knew I had some desire to give something back. I've looked at a lot of different things over the years. If you look at my LinkedIn bio, it'll say that I'm a lean six Sigma certified green belt in that. And I at one time, thought that maybe I had an opportunity to help people with process improvements and just go in and do process improvement initiatives for companies that were looking to become more efficient, especially if that was part of a growth initiative. Over the last few years, I've really focused more in on growing and growing, not growing, value of value growth. If you were to come to me today and say, I think we've got this business and it's worth $500,000, by some reasonable calculation, and we want to grow that over the next ten years to 10 million, and we're looking for people to help us get there, man, you could get me going.
Jared Flinn:
That's exciting.
Steve Perryman:
You can get me going in a hurry if you want to have that conversation, because those, especially if you can answer the question, why? Yeah, why? Well, we're wanting to leave a legacy for our children and our grandchildren. We're wanting to. We're wanting to give to our church. We graduated from College of the Ozarks, and we want to do something to be able to effectively give back to college. I mean, whatever it is, as long as it's more than. We just want to make a heck of a lot of money so we can retire comfortably. Okay. That's okay.
Steve Perryman:
There's nothing wrong with that. But I'm not sure that gets me too excited. So it's evolved through a lot of different things. Where I've really settled in on is this idea of coaching, whether it be one on one coaching with a business owner or an executive, that we're looking to do something strategically pass the business to the next generation. And how do we effectively do that? Or help me with an exit strategy to get out of this business as best we can. The one we've already talked about many times here already. I'm at five trucks, and I want to get to 20, and I've got a pretty good answer to the why question. I think that I can.
Steve Perryman:
I want to try to help companies do that. The first couple of referrals that I've gotten from very good friends of mine have been more geared to accounting department. It's not that they're not great opportunities, and I'm still working with those folks, but that's not exactly what I think that my current calling is. I've only felt like God's called me to do a few things in my life and not retiring and going fishing. I don't think God's called me to do that, but that could just be my ego talking, too.
Jared Flinn:
So I wanted. Because you have worked with some companies, and we don't have to talk about them specific, but, like, what would you. Or what would you say? You know, some of these companies out here, what would be some of those things that maybe they're lacking that you can really provide to them, or what do you think's holding them back? You know, that that business owner, he's sitting there, he's like, man, I'd love to grow this, but I just cannot figure this out. Like, I just. I don't see where this opportunity is. I want to grow it. I want to be able to leave a legacy for my kids or, you know, my. My children are getting old enough.
Jared Flinn:
I want them to get into the business as well. Maybe my grandchildren. But I can't figure this out right now where I'm at. What. What do you think's happening with a lot of these companies out there? That's where they got the blinders on, or they just can't see that next step.
Steve Perryman:
I sure don't mean to beat something over and over it again, but I would suspect those people that. That can't figure out where to start, if you will, can't answer the question why they want to grow. We really got. We really got to get to the bottom of that. I need to be able to explain why at my age, I'm 50 or I'm 40 or I'm at five trucks. I'm at this place in the continuum, and this is the reason why I want to grow. If you can't get the answer to that, then how to get there is impossible because you don't know where you're going. My daughter is a high school teacher, and she tells me that writing school curriculum begins with the end in mind.
Steve Perryman:
What are you trying to teach? Then you build back from there. Well, strategic planning is the same way. I want to grow? Well, we've got to get where we want to grow to and we can't decide that until we can decide why that's where we want to get. So. So for the most people, the, the place that's hardest is just getting through that and then the other, probably the more difficult next step is we're at ten trucks, we're at 30 trucks and we want to be to 80, whatever that is. The next thing I'm going to tell you is, are you ready for the hard decisions? Because you may, you're likely going to discover that the people that helped you get to 30 are not going to be the people that get you to 80. So do you really want to do it?
Jared Flinn:
That's a tough one there.
Steve Perryman:
Or at least decide that that's going to be part of the process and if it inhibits you, then you're going to be okay with that. So that's all of the people that I've ever worked with across my career is man, when it got down to making hard decisions, terminating my brother in law because we've just outgrown him, you know, he's a good guy. He didn't do anything wrong. We just don't have a place for him anymore.
Jared Flinn:
Hmm.
Steve Perryman:
You know, there's a great story about the Shackleton. I don't know if you know the Shackleton story, but Shackleton was a guy that took an adventure to the Antarctic 100 or so, 125 years ago. And they got down there for this idea to explore across, to sled across the continent. Well, they got down there and almost immediately got locked in ice. And so their mission completely changed almost from the beginning from an exploration mission to a survival mission. And one of the things they had to do was, well, they no longer needed their sled dogs and they shot the dogs. And so it's hard to be able to shoot the dog if you want to be really gruesome example.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah.
Steve Perryman:
But to grow, to survive, to accomplish the mission as it has been defined, you may have to shoot a few dogs along the way. Okay, so now we might need to go back over and talk about this why thing again.
Jared Flinn:
That's good.
Steve Perryman:
And that it's a one of very good friend, very successful friends has never had more than eight trucks and eight trucks. You can make a really decent living if you're in the, you know, if you're in the 40 year plan. And he's been in trucking for nearly 40 years and never had more than ten. Nothing wrong with that model either. But I guarantee you that he can answer the question, why?
Jared Flinn:
What about for those companies, maybe at this current stage that maybe they're on life support? I mean, are there ways, and I'm not saying I'm not, I don't put words in your mouth. I mean, can you bring value or help or solutions to maybe that company right now being like this cycle and it hit us hard, we overpaid for trucks or cash flow is not where it is right now.
Steve Perryman:
Two things I would be happy to help, honestly. Triage your business. If we discover that you're a turnaround candidate, I will tell you I'm not a turnaround expert.
Jared Flinn:
Okay.
Steve Perryman:
I would highly recommend bringing in experts out there that do turnarounds and then get out of their way and listen to what they tell you and trust them implicitly. And there are people out there that would do that. But if you have a company that you're not sure and you want some, again, triage it from a financial perspective. Yeah, I absolutely would. Don't bring in a turnaround specialist to do that. Get the triage done first and financial analysis, I've been involved with a few of those, and I discover their books are a mess. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to say, let's get the books cleaned up so we really know where you're at.
Jared Flinn:
So I was just going to say that, too. And we're kind of getting towards the end of this conversation. So typically, if someone reaches out to you and we're going to get your contact information in the show notes and talk a little bit more about that. If someone is, they say, hey, come over. We want you to check this out. What does that process look like besides just sitting at the table being like, what's your goal? Or what do you want to get to? But, like, I assume it's almost kind of opening the books a little bit, kind of seeing a little bit of what's going on. Do you have, like, a spreadsheet they fill out or like, what's like, how does that process work?
Steve Perryman:
Depends on it depends on what you've got. I'm going to assume that most of your folks that are beyond the, just the one truck owner operator, they've probably got some version of bookkeeping going on.
Jared Flinn:
Quickbooks.
Steve Perryman:
Quickbooks is the number one. There's, you know, Quickbooks is too inexpensive. If you've got two trucks or more and you're not using Quickbooks or something similar. Get started. So we start with looking there. How well are they maintained why are you keeping those books? The answer for the small operator is almost, well, we do books because the tax preparer needs them at the end of the year. Well, there's a treasure trove of information in there that you should be using. So let's get beyond just getting the tax return prepared at the end of the year and use that to financially manage our business.
Steve Perryman:
So we'll start there. We'll do an analysis of that. I have a checklist, if you will, that if you really got through the whole thing, we're going to pretty, we're going to do a deep dive into your business. Your top, you know, your top customers, your, your, if you have owner operator fleet, who your owner operators are, what their history with the company is, the software that you use beyond, you know, just to manage your business, how sophisticated you are. With that, we can, insurance is another big one, you know, are you properly insured? Risk, kind of a risk assessment, if you will, just to get an idea. That process usually takes one to two days of preliminary work, depending on the size of the engagement. A couple of days. I'd love to come spend a couple of days with you at your business and then an exit conference and then a follow up report.
Steve Perryman:
That follow up report would even include, I have a tool that will do a simple valuation of your business based on your tax returns. It's nothing that you would want to take to the bank and borrow money off of or use for estate planning purposes or that sort of thing, but it's a, it's a pretty good tool to give you an idea of the value of your business in the current marketplace. So we run your numbers through that and that report would be available. And that's a, that's a good, that's a good exercise to go through. So, so it depends on if through that process we discover that you're in trouble and you just don't know it. Or maybe you suspect you know it, but you're trying to avoid that, then the whole engagement could take a different turn.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah, I was just thinking about, you know, especially this last cycle, some of these companies that went out of business, but man, when did they not see the red flags or when did the lights, when did they say, like, oh, my gosh, this is coming to hold. And I suspect I, some of them did and they just were just buying time until they had to just close the doors.
Steve Perryman:
But in my career, I've only met, only met one client that had two trucks. That business plan was, we were going to run these trucks till they broke down, and then we're going to give them back to the finance company and we're going to go do something else. Pretty good business model for them.
Jared Flinn:
Hey, they had a plan.
Steve Perryman:
They called the finance company. When they broke down, they happened to be in Chicago. They were from St. Louis. They called the finance company and said, here's where you can find your truck. Keys are in it. And they caught a bus to St. Louis, and they went into a completely different business.
Steve Perryman:
And that was their plan all along. Unless that is your plan, then. Then you've got some other reason, and you better be on top of the key things. Cash. You have to always know your cash position. If you've got more than one truck, you probably have an employee. Then you have to begin to talk about the people component. You don't want to have a second truck and it be parked on the fence all the time because you can't find anybody to drive it, so on and so forth.
Steve Perryman:
And that's part of that growth process. Cash, people goals would be another leg to that stool, but cash is always going to be number one.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah, this has been so good. I didn't tell you this early on, but it was in 2020. I had hired a life coach, business coach, whatever you want to call it. And I saw the return. I mean, immediately, because it was at a time where we were growing bulk loads. It was. It went from a basement business into, we were renting a small space with a couple guys. And then all of a sudden, well, as of today, you know, 70 employees and trying to figure out how do we manage? Am I equipped to do this? Am I the right guy? Even at the, you know, one of the guys at the top trying to lead this team, and that person gave, I mean, just incredible coaching and advice.
Jared Flinn:
And again, it was just one of those, you know, we had our scheduled kind of calls bi weekly, but I could even reach out anytime, be like, I'm stuck right here, or this. I'm in this situation. I just need. There was times even specifically with employees, I was like, I got this situation. I don't know what to do. All right? But I think that's just as business owners for me, I'm speaking of, like, I just needed someone just to talk to. Just, I feel alone here, and I just someone to tell me, is this the right decision or what I'm thinking? Is this right? Or am I looking at this wrong? Because I don't want the whole thing to come crashing down.
Steve Perryman:
You gotta. I think you gotta have. You gotta have that person, especially if you're an entrepreneur, if you have any entrepreneurial juices at all and you don't have that person to keep you in check, if you will, that you're comfortable talking with, that you know is gonna be honest with you and you're going to listen to them. Even if you disagree with them, you're going to be able to argue with them, but at the end of the day, you're going to listen to them again. The guy that is the coach out at prime, he's not a PhD in anything other than trucking. He knows about managing by the numbers and he does a great job from that. But he's be surprised if he's a college graduate. He's a good guy.
Steve Perryman:
I consider him a friend. But, you know, don't, don't, don't put blinders on to think that it's got to be, he's got to be somebody that has credentials, that give them some credibility of being smarter than you because of something they've achieved. It's got to be someone you can trust, that you can have conversations with that are never going to leave that room, that will answer the phone if you call. And we'll be here tomorrow if you need them.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. So good, Lance. Steve, I can't thank you enough for taking the time and coming on here. We're going to put the information of Steve's business in the show notes below. So we'll put all this contact information, his LinkedIn profile as well. So you can click on that and reach out to Steve direct if you want to get involved with him and just learn a little bit more about his services. But yeah, this has been good. I think I'll just say this in closing, like, especially where you said this earlier, where we're at right now in this cycle, you know, we're.
Jared Flinn:
We're kind of at the bottom. We're coming back out and what better time right now kind of setting that framework and that plan about having that plan of action to move forward so you can reap those rewards instead of just maybe blindly thinking about it. So, man, thank you so much for coming on.
Steve Perryman:
Been a pleasure.
Jared Flinn:
God bless you.
Steve Perryman:
Thank you, Tyler.
Jared Flinn:
I hope this episode encouraged our listeners just some of the practical things that they can do if they're looking to further their business, grow their business, expand. We know not everybody's in growth mode, but again, we want to provide content that if people are thinking about growing their business, maybe those techniques and strategies and maybe you're not wanting to grow, but just get more efficient. I think some of the things Steve said can apply very well.
Tyler:
Yeah. I'll ask you this, Jared, because you've used different executive coaches in the past. How do you know whenever you're ready? Or how, like, what's the moment that you realize, like, hey, I should probably look into this. I think somebody could help making these. Helping make these strategic decisions to grow.
Jared Flinn:
Well, if you remember, because you were with me in 2020, we were at a pivotal moment on looking at starting TMS. The insurance was soon to come, and I think that's where I was just like, hey, I can't manage and control. This is getting bigger. And that's where. And ironically, I was on a trip where a guy introduced me to the coach that I had used, rob fall, which he's been on our podcast before. And that's where it was just this guy was actually telling me how much it impacted his business, because the guy that recommended Rob, he had went from I forget how many employees, but to a thousand employees. And I'm like, how do you like, what did you do? And he said, I had this coach that helped me build this company. And that's where just the light bulb went off to say, all right, I'm gonna.
Jared Flinn:
I'm gonna see if this guy can help. And it is so you just. A lot of our listeners, our business owners out there, man, they're maybe husband, wife, or, you know, they're kind of at the top. And, man, when you're up there, sometimes it can be a lonely place, and you're trying to make decisions for the betterment of the company, your employees. But it's scary making sure, like, you know, am I making the right decision here by making this choice? Is this gonna help serve our clients? Is this going to help our employees? But just to have someone as that sounding board, I think, has been. It was just helpful for me and to encourage me, because, again, you can be up there and you can hear the evil voices creep into your head that, you know, you name it, everything that you're not doing the right thing, this thing's going to fail. And I think that coach comes along and really encourages that. So that's where it was for me.
Tyler:
Yeah, that's a good point. I think, yeah, somebody can be making all the right decisions, but a coach might help them take the risk and say, yeah, you are right. But also, have you thought of it this way? So that could be anybody from an owner operator wanting to grow to five trucks or, you know, a five truck operation wanting to grow to 100 trucks. I think an executive coach can fit in there. So if people want to contact Steve, we'll drop the link down below. And Steve might be able to help you guys.
Jared Flinn:
And I will say this, Steve fairly well. Now, I've met him a handful of times. Got to hang out with us. The guy deeply cares about other people and the trucking industry. So I would encourage you to reach out to him. I think, you know, email him, call. I guarantee he will respond back and maybe he won't be able to help or your specific need, but I guarantee he will try as much as he can to get offer advice if he can't be a part of it.
Tyler:
Yeah. Awesome.
Jared Flinn:
So cool. Well, Steve, thanks for coming on. A couple things before we close out of here. Actually, I'm getting ready to leave again to Idaho for another trip. And we're gonna do a company visit and do some videos out there. But the videos have been taken off. If you haven't yet, check out. Well, if you're watching from YouTube, you can see them on there.
Jared Flinn:
But we've been doing a collection of videos. We're trying to push one out every couple weeks, maybe monthly, to just showcase our industry and highlight members in ours. We're kind of thinking it's kind of what you call it. It's like, it's not a document documentary, but like a little.
Tyler:
It's kind of like it's going direction to. Yeah, like a docuseries vlog type. And I think, yeah, the most important thing is to really show the world, like the inside scoop on bulk trucking and actually the operating pieces and how everything works.
Jared Flinn:
I've always known there was, this was a great industry and a cool story, but now we're bringing it to life and putting it out there where other people can see just how awesome of a community that we have in the bulk commodity, bulk trucking space. But yeah, if you have any interest. And we've got these things stacking up now. I mean, we're pretty much booked to the end of the year on some of these videos, but we want to keep more going. If you have interest, reach out to us. There's a submission form, right?
Tyler:
Yep. We'll drop the link below in the show notes. All it is is it just asks you some questions. Basically, we just want you to tell us a little bit about your operation and we want to film anything and everything. But basically it just gives you a chance to say, here's why. I think that, you know, I would be a good fit for you guys to come out and highlight my company.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah. So reach out if you want to be featured. At the very least, just send us an email or reach out. Say, hey, I'd have interest in this and we can contact you and. And take care of the planning. And it doesn't have to meet it. We can schedule it down the road maybe when trucking slower, whatnot. We'll work around your schedule.
Tyler:
Exactly.
Jared Flinn:
Conference. What's the dates?
Tyler:
Conference. We are in April, probably the third week of April. I don't want to say any dates right now, just in case.
Jared Flinn:
Third week of April. So block that off your calendar as of now.
Tyler:
Yep. We're looking at the end of April. So right now we're working with a couple different venues trying to nail one down and they have a couple different dates available. But how you stay in the know is going to bulkfreightconference.com entering your email and we will notify you whenever these decisions are made. That way you can reserve your seat as soon as possible.
Jared Flinn:
And that links right below in the episode notes. You can click on that. Just put your email address in there and you will be notified. It's we got to be within a couple weeks of getting that lockdown, right?
Tyler:
Yeah. I will say this, the, this 2025 conference is. You thought the last conference was good. This one's going to be ten x.
Jared Flinn:
I think the reason is we're trying to bullet down because this thing's a lot bigger. So we're trying to manage and schedule around just the influx of people that we think that will be there. Praise God. And we're super excited. So make sure just kind of tentatively block off the third week of April. It's going to be slotted in there. As soon as Tyler gets those dates locked in, we will send an email out to our community and that way you can get tickets when they release.
Tyler:
Yep. I'll say the same thing with sponsors or vendors wanting to show up at this next conference, we got a lot of great feedback saying last year, sponsors and vendors saying that they want to participate next year. If you did not last year and you want to get on that list, you can also do the same thing. Go to the website bullfreeconference.com dot. There's a yde a spot up there that says sponsors and there's a forum for you guys as well.
Jared Flinn:
Yeah, cool. Awesome. Anything else where we close out?
Tyler:
I think that's pretty much it.
Jared Flinn:
Okay, cool. As you all know, we always offer up prayer at the end of every episode. We actually this exodus last week a guy reached out. We have a prayer link. We send an email out with our every weekly podcast. And he just want to know the reason why we have the prayer link and just want to know the story behind him. And I just want to share that real quick. It was, you know, I came to the Lord probably in my mid twenties and, you know, in and out and again have sinned and been forgiven back and forth.
Jared Flinn:
But really, you know, we knew that we, most of us in this office are christians and believers and. But last year, I was at a men's conference. Kinsman, and you've been to one of them. And there was a speaker there called Sean Copelande, and he's the CEO of a bank down in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Regent bank. But he spoke about faith in the workplace. And it was at the end of this conference or the end of his speech, he said just this one liner that just struck me. He's like, just remember, you cannot be sued for prayer in the workplace. As long as you don't force it, you can always offer it.
Jared Flinn:
And he goes, there's never been a lawsuit that he's aware of that, you know, you can get in trouble for that. And it just like, man, the Holy Spirit or whatever, just ingrained in me. And it was that next morning, remember, I came in and we were in our morning meeting in here, and I just said, guys, can we start praying on, you know, in these meetings? And everybody said, sure, but I always said, it's only optional. You don't have to, you know, and. But I got, it was awesome. And I think it, most of us realized that, man, we want to practice more of that in the workplace. I do as a believer. So that is what stemmed prayer in our environment.
Jared Flinn:
We know that everybody's at a different walk of or a different stage of life with their journey and faith. But we want to be here for those that are out there, especially for those that believe in Jesus Christ. We want to praise God, but we also want to pray for those out there. We hope that we can be a light for those in our community. So that is the reason why we have the prayer link on there. It's why we close in prayer. We know that everybody, it's different. But, man, we are all believers.
Jared Flinn:
We are all brothers and sisters in Christ, and we want to share and glorify him and praise him for that.
Tyler:
Yeah, I'll say. Ever since we started doing that, our team has drawn closer. And, you know, whenever we pray every week as a team, it gives everybody an opportunity to be bold enough to kind of give prayer requests and that'll help us come together as a team and pray for one another. And whenever we start doing this for our members as well, we've got a lot of prayer requests that come in and yeah, it's just amazing to be able to have the opportunity to do that for other people.
Jared Flinn:
I used to be pretty nervous about it. I still get nervous, but I always, I say this often in the office, awkward is awesome. So when I get nervous in a situation, I just say awkward is going to be awesome and I take myself out of it. Not about me. When we pray, it's about glorifying God and petitioning our prayers. And I always, just always try to remember that. So when I get in that situation. So just an encouragement for you out there.
Jared Flinn:
Like if you think that I'm not going to do this or it's more private and that's totally fine, everybody sage. But if you want to take that next step, next time, just be bold and say awkward is awesome. I'm going to pray and see where the Lord moves us.
Tyler:
Yep.
Jared Flinn:
So cool. Awesome. Well, I'll close us in prayer today. Heavenly Father, we love you. Lord, we thank you for this show that we get to have the opportunity to broadcast out and share with other believers in you. Lord, we, we just know that you listen to our prayers, Lord, that we know that when we come to you and just ask for your forgiveness or for forgiveness of our sins, Lord, that you listen to us. Lord, that we know that you do answer prayers as well. So, Lord, we pray over our community.
Jared Flinn:
We pray over our bull clothes members, we pray overdose our farmers and everybody tied in agriculture and in trucking, Lord, that you just be over. Lord, we know that these are difficult times. We know that there are uncertain times. Lord, we're in a, just in a crazy political environment. Lord, we just pray peace over that. Lord, we know over everything that you are in ultimate control of everything. And Lord, we just have peace and rest knowing that you are in control. Lord, we pray for those that are hurting out there, Lord, that we pray that they will find peace and comfort.
Jared Flinn:
And Lord, that us as believers that we can provide support and encouragement for them. So, Lord, thank you so much for this time. We just pray of our community and in your heavenly and precious name, amen. Thank you as always for listening to the Bulk Loads podcast. If you haven't yet, please subscribe by clicking down here in the left hand corner. And if you know just one person, one person that you can just share this to as a thank you from us, man. We would love for you to do that. Share this on your social media.
Jared Flinn:
Anywhere that you're listening to this, there's an easy share button and that would mean the world to us to get this in hands to others out there that can be encouraged and grow their business. So thank you so much for listening and as always, God blessed.
