this is really fascinating 65 of shoppers at the grocery store are still buying name brand goods even though they're more expensive so it's costing them more to start with because name brands are usually about 30 to 40 percent more expensive than generic brands but now they're even more expensive because of what's happening in supply chain and two out of every three shoppers are still purchasing name brand products because of the trust that they have they know what they're going to get welcome to life for the mile delivered by brakeworks one of america's fastest growing podcasts actually produced by trucks indicted to tell stories compelling drivers i need to do something like industry

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this is life of the mile delivered by freight works it is always an enjoyable time when we have a guest on but you know what there are some guests just going to sound terrible that i just i enjoy more and trey griggs who is the founder and ceo of beta consulting is our guest today we had a wonderful conversation at mats really went down and deep uh bungie jumped into considerations for the trucking and logistics industry i'm not gonna go at length here on his background but i will tell you this he uh he cut his teeth in door-to-door office supply sales for 15 months he accepted an opportunity with a leading technology and data provider in the transportation industry and through the years he has created all sorts of experiences in load boards technology rate analytics tms systems visibility solutions digital freight matching platforms robotic process automation he's got a lot to share about a lot of things all of this is now consolidated in beta consulting which has a mission i love and then we're going to jump into the conversation to glorify god and make much of him while helping each client build their brand what's their vision a community of successful team members strategic partners and satisfied clients pursuing excellence daily while valuing our work together and what are the core values listen to this this is what makes for great companies transparency honesty excellence family empathy education and leadership if i wasn't at the age that i am i would have my beat on my resume at your doorstep tray welcome hey thanks for having me on the show butch it's always good to be a part of the podcast well and it's it's great and we like it to be practical and informing and we know you're that way let me ask you to pick up the mop right now and paint in big bold hues what's going on in the marketplace and what are some of the key things you're hearing from your clients your customers and others yeah i mean it's interesting because there's a lot of volatility a lot of kind of unknown i think we see that in inflation we see that in the response of the us government some of the policies that they're discussing or looking to implement but we also still see you know a lot of really good economic behavior we still see people making purchases going out to dinner going on experiences vacation season is coming up a lot of people are still traveling and going on vacation even though flights are more expensive and fuel is more expensive so we see some some really positive aspects of the economy but we also see some concerns and so for you know the logistics industry the one thing we learned through the pandemic is how essential uh the supply chain is you just can't get away from the supply chain it really is the foundation of our economy and our culture and truck drivers are you know the source of that i mean everything moves on a truck and they're they're so needed and so critical and so it's it's an interesting time we see a lot of a lot of good signs but a lot of interesting signs as well what i'm seeing from from customers especially from a branding and a marketing perspective is an appreciation for their brand and what that means in out in the economy when times are really good it may seem less significant to have a really strong brand but as times seem a little more volatile brand becomes really important because you know who's really going to survive who's going to get who's going to win the business who's going to you know get those uh the great talented employees to come and be a part of what they're doing their mission and their journey and brand really plays a huge huge role in that as we talked about earlier so i'm seeing a lot of companies starting to invest much more in their brand and their reputation because as you get i mean your reputation is everything it's worth more than silver and gold and so companies are starting to understand that and investing that which is really exciting for me because i love to help companies tell their stories and to push their culture and their brand and their values their mission their vision out front center trey can you uh for people you know they hear the term brand can you give some operative illustration of the power of a brand to help accompany in bottom line ways but also to navigate some of these tumultuous times like we're in right now give some illustrations of what a strong brand can do for you practically well a strong brand really builds trust i mean it's what people think about you when they see your name when they see your logo and that builds trust do i trust this company or do i not some people might say do i like this company or do i not do i do i like their products do i like their their mission their vision or do i like what they're doing and they may not they might not talk like that but they think like that subconsciously that's what they're thinking about and so the the strength of a brand goes to a lot of factors that unfortunately some ceos and leadership don't understand fully i mean think about this when this is really fascinating 65 percent of shoppers at the grocery store are still buying name brand goods even though they're more expensive so it's costing them more to start with because name brands are usually about 30 to 40 more expensive than generic brands but now they're even more expensive because of what's happening in supply chain and two out of every three shoppers are still purchasing name brand products because of the trust that they have they know what they're going to get and when you think about that with your business no matter what your business is you want customers and prospects to see you as the leader and somebody they want to do business with because they resonate with your brand they have the same values or they appreciate what you offer they had a good experience with what you offer people talk well about that product in the marketplace and it can it builds trust but it goes so much beyond customers and prospects it goes towards your team we're in an environment where people can still find a job out there doing something else if they wanted to and it's so critical that we treat our team well and we create a vision and a direction that they want to be a part of that we treat them well your brand is not only what the marketplace thinks about you it's also what your team members think about you so how are you building that culture internally where they want to be a part of this journey or maybe they'll be offered more money somewhere else but they say now i want to stay here because of what we're building here what we're doing here and it goes for recruiting as well i've got a really good friend out in phoenix arizona josh breeze with freightvana and he was on my podcast recently and he said they've spent zero dollars on recruiting because they've focused on building their brand and they've grown from i think they started about 15 a year ago and now they're up to almost 70 people and they have spent zero dollars on recruiting that's a huge benefit of focusing on building your brand and again i think a lot of companies just miss out on some of those those those benefits almost byproducts because they don't invest in their brand let me ask you this question uh there's a lot of conversation i know years ago we may have talked about this in our earlier uh interview a lot of conversation about social responsibility about what companies believe in not just what they do i know years ago corporate america searches for a soul was the title of a fortune magazine article where essentially the premise was that america's consumers are interested not just in what you sell or what service you offer but who are you and out of this of course grew this whole area of cause-oriented marketing the like can you talk trey a little bit about how that has affected brand development brand management and brand marketing the whole issue of social responsibility yeah i mean the idea around social responsibility and and having something that's bigger than just yourself or bigger than just your product is so valuable some of the companies that i really look up to who have done a great job with this for example is like england logistics for every load that they move they provide a meal and they're trying to you know really focus on hunger world hunger that's out there throughout the world and so every load they're donating a meal and they've got account going and they've you know they're they're using it to support their brand if they're a generous company um freightvana to go back to them every load that they move they're planning a tree and so that's a part of their initiative and at beta consulting group in the same fashion we want to be known as a generous company so we are hosting events we're raising money for wounded veterans raising money for als patients and and some other charities that are really important to us because we want to give back you know business is about making money and it's about you know obviously you're in you're in business to make money but there's so much good that you can do with that that you can partner with organizations and make a huge impact in a way that an individual would struggle to do and so i think it's great when companies do that it's a i mean just to be honest it's a great marketing tactic to have a campaign to have a cause that you can all push towards and and and kind of you invest in together and you can start to bring in partners that say i mean i agree with that too you know i want to plant more trees as well and so i'm going to partner with you guys what you're doing or man i really want to in world hunger as well let's do business with you and let's just work together to to you know make a bigger impact in those areas so you know having corporate responsibility being known as a company that is generous to me is really critical to be a good steward of what god has given us and a company is designed again not only to make money but it's also to provide for people's livelihood to give them opportunities to create to give them opportunities to display their skills and and to achieve and so there's just a lot of good that can come out of that and branding is just one of those byproducts that just naturally is enhanced when you have a campaign towards you know corporate responsibility towards an initiative that's going to improve the lives of either the planet or people or a combination thereof that's so well said and i may have mentioned to steve but four years ago we had the opportunity at the advent of the susan b komen foundation to be a part of consulting there and now the pink ribbon is ubiquitous with any company that wants to be seen as being female health friendly and doing business you know we often tell people you know freightworks is a a biblically driven company just like your company is not everybody is a person of faith that works here but doing business we would say in god's way is actually good business it's not just a theological statement right it's it it actually is practical and so talk a little bit about how that and for i mean you're right up in front here with your your mission statement talk a little bit trey about how it not only informs but it's a bedrock upon which your enterprise is built well if i can go back to uh maybe the the origin of how that had occurred we started beta consulting group in january and i had written a mission and vision statement that was was similar to what we had today but it was more just client focused we're here to help clients succeed and help them grow their brand and in march i went to a men's conference in columbia missouri and i had the opportunity to listen to dan mears who is the mascot for the kansas city chiefs the casey wolf he's been there for 32 years they've been a team for 54 years and he's been mascot for 32 it's been a long time but he does a lot of mission work and tim tebow was also there speaking at the event so i heard dan meers and tim tebow they both gave really great messages very inspirational talked about loving and enduring and being generous all those kind of things what i walked away from from that conference was i just felt like god was speaking to me in my spirit that this business needed to be about him i needed to acknowledge him and make much of him and be thankful and appreciative to him and to not be afraid you know to be bold and so i came home and i immediately rewrote the mission statement to say we're here to glorify god and make much of him while helping companies you know build their brand while helping each client build their brand and i just went that direction and so just made the decision at that point to be a biblically based company in terms of how we function how we operate again we may hire people or bring to bring on team members that don't necessarily follow that tradition that's okay um but from the standpoint of the you know those judeo-christian philosophies of being generous and having empathy and caring for other people and putting others above yourself and being a servant leader those aspects are really really important one of the books that i'm currently working through is by a ceo right here in st louis david stewart he's the ceo of worldwide technologies based out of st louis here and he wrote a book called doing business by the good book and it's a 52 chapter kind of sermonette if you will of like little bitty lessons from the bible that are impactful for business things like pursuing excellence which is a theme in the bible or being able to delegate which is an old testament theme you know where moses needed help in order to be able to manage the israelites and things like that so it's a great book to go that direction but what i would say is this when you know from my perspective from my personal um experience being a follower of jesus it's also in business i just can't think of doing it any other way and making sure that this isn't about me this isn't about us and what we do but it really is about the opportunity that he's given us to do this to express the gifts he's given us to be creative and to help other people and to be a blessing to other people when we pray together as a team we pray that god would bless all of our clients that we'd have their favor that um that we'd communicate well that we would serve each other well that we'd lift each other up and none of those things are bad things you know those are all only helpful things when you're running a business that is so strong and you know what uh attract i just have to tell you i i knew this was going to be an encouraging conversation really what we have is we have two fo two followers of jesus two brothers we're talking about trucking and logistics but most seminally most importantly is what guides it all you know i i got rid of my office i had an office they had one for me here and i office in the driver's lounge because i want to interact with the with the drivers i'll often say to him so i'm sort of a gypsy i'm a nomad here at freight works i wander around there he goes and because i wear uh you know a dress shirt sometimes the drivers will come in and they think i have some authority to fix their truck that's in the shop and get it done quicker but i just listened but you know what's so great is i'll tell drivers look freight works is not perfect but we're we're doing the best that we can and we're guided by biblical principles so when we say we're never going to lie to you that's not just some corporate mantra it grows out of a biblical understanding that we need to be truth-tellers when we say we care for your family that grows out of a biblical standard we are our brother's keeper so these biblical values influence business behavior that even people outside of faith and things like the harvard business review and others you know there are articles and case studies as you know that have been written about the fact that hey you know what this is great business right yeah it is and it's a delicate balancing act because we've seen unfortunately people who um you know claim to be followers of jesus who have abused that authority and and done you know bad things and the truth is we're all humans like we're all people we're all one decision away from uh from losing you know losing uh our testimony in many ways and losing our other respect that we have uh in the community so you know it's a delicate balancing act of saying you know we're pursuing godly biblical you know truths we're pursuing these things but we're just people like everybody else we're not perfect we're not better than anybody else um in fact we would consider ourselves maybe the least of these in many cases um but it's a it's a delicate balancing act to to follow to say you know we're gonna we're pursuing perfection we're never gonna get there but we know the one who is perfect well and that's why we're grateful for philippians 1 6 when it talks about we're confident that the work that he started in us he'll complete under the day of of salvation this has been a great little interlude here let me let me shift back to no i love this it's the most important part of what we're going to talk about today let me go back to this for a minute let's say you have a company and they're saying okay trey we've never given attention to our brand we don't even know if it's strong or not how do we get started so i guess what i'm doing here is giving you permission to make a little commercial for your company and how does how does a company get started they may say hey you know what we don't have any wind in our sails we know it how do we start well the truth is every company has a brand whether they work on it or not and if they haven't worked on it it just means that the market has been doing the work for them which could be good or bad they have a good product a good service you know it could be promoting their brand and kind of helping out in those directions what we want to do is we want to throw some fuel in the fire of that brand and that message and so it just starts with having an honest evaluation of what's what's good or what's going on what are we doing today what have we tried that didn't work or you know those types of things but most importantly i think it starts with identifying who you are as a company you know for me it's always a hey do you have a mission and vision and values set up do you have it if you do are you using it correctly meaning are you communicating it internally so your team is all moving in the same direction are you using that as a foundation for what you're promoting uh in terms of you know your company culture to the marketplace a lot of people don't use their mission and vision to market to the to the marketplace they just don't use it to communicate to the marketplace i think maybe it's more only for internal use if they have it at all so we start with that and then we move forward with the different uh you know approaches that we want to have for getting the message out there it's important to know who your audience is where they live and what message they need to hear and if you know who they are where they live and what they hear then it forms um you know a strategy for how to best do that um does your audience like to read are they more into that type of content or are they more video focused um when you think about just the the entertainment culture of our of our society most people would rather watch a video right now than they would read a blog so how much how much we're going to put into blogging versus how much we're going to put in the video and what's the purpose of a blog is the blog for people to read it or is it there for seo optimization there have been debates both ways about how to best use a blog for you know gaining traffic gaining attention um which platforms are we going to use all right is our audience on tick tock are they on twitter are they on linkedin are they on all of them and if so what content is going to resonate the best on each platform so it's just a process of going through that discovery of finding out where you're at where you want to go who you're trying to communicate with what that message is and then you build a strategy from there that's interesting now talk a little bit about the role that your strategic partners play in affecting your brand in other words companies don't do everything in isolation so they have strategic partnerships for example we've got a strategic relationship with peterbilt we've got a strategic relationship with workhound can you talk a little bit about you know uh of course in scripture it says that bad company corrupts good character but how do these strategic relationships affect the brand of a company well it's huge um you really have to think through who you want to partner with there's kind of an old saying out there that says the only ship that won't sales a partnership i kind of joke about that but usually it's because it's not a good partner there's not a good fit and when you're thinking about partnerships uh to me it's it's like for personally for me it starts with two things um one do i share the same values as the people who are running that company or that that group as much as possible if i can and two is that product can actually make a difference is gonna help um and so for me it's a vet and evaluation process of the people and the product that are there but you always have to be careful with your brand because whoever you partner up with you're automatically going to get a little bit of their brand moving into yours and vice versa and so if you partner with a company that's known to do some bad practices or to not be honest or have bad customer service eventually that's going to bleed over into what people think about your brand so who you partner up with who you decide to do business with or to work together with is really critical for your brand it's powerful because you both get the benefit of each other's network and the synergy that's already there the customer bases and so on and so forth but i would not sacrifice you know your your brand your reputation for that i would make sure that the people that you're looking to partner with are people that um you have no problem promoting and vice versa that you have no problem sending a customer to them for their service and you know they're going to get taken care of so for me it starts with the people and the reputation the brand that they have and making sure that it aligns with my brand so that my brand doesn't get corrupted as you as you referenced earlier by some of the things that maybe aren't positive with their brand their company you know what folks this is trey griggs he's the founder and ceo of beta consulting uh this is life by the mile delivered by freightworks if you haven't subscribed please make sure you subscribe share engage become part of this growing family you know when we started this i remember talking to josh farmer and and we said let's do a podcast a great engagement with the marketplace i openly tell people we don't really know what we're doing but we're doing it and we're so grateful to have people like trayon and you can continue to engage if you'll just subscribe and get that notification bell whenever a new episode is out we try to do two a week you know let me shift gears here for a minute we both went to a christian college i think you went to william jewell right i did yeah i went to wheaton college and uh i was chicago right yeah uh 25 miles west that's where billy graham went that's what a lot of people say but you know what it's also where wes craven went who's the horror film director guy so um really yeah i didn't know that yeah but there are a lot of interesting things like that and it's a little bit about like the life of faith it's really are you serious about what jesus said but let me ask you this question because one thing that has struck me trey is that in talking to drivers so many of them have kind of an erstwhile path to get into trucking and logistics i mean i meet some including women who say i used to play with trucks and always wanted to drive a truck but so many you know veterans people that made mid-career changes and the like a lot of people come into this not getting up early in the morning one day when they're a teenager and saying i want to be in trucking what have you found about this diverse group of three and a half million people that call themselves professional drivers i mean you've had your finger on the pulse what what have you seen what what can you say the absolute salt of the earth uh is the first thing i'd say i think truck drivers are some of the most selfless people that are out there um behind the scenes not in the spotlight unless something goes wrong uh you know and and just working hard to make sure the economy continues to move uh being away from home i think the average truck driver is away from home over the road truck drivers away from home somewhere between 200 and 250 nights a year which is a lot of birthdays missed and games missed and dinner's missed and times with their family it's it's a you know it's a noble profession uh that uh that is done by noble people and i really believe that my dad was a local truck driver so i got to see truck driving as a kid yeah he drove a local truck in kansas city so i got to know uh you know the truck driving profession at least locally from that perspective but i have the absolute utmost respect for truck drivers and i mean they're like everybody else there's some bad ones in there some bad apples and the bunch they're not all not all perfect of course um but over all in all so thankful for truck drivers and one thing i'd love to encourage truck drivers to do is even though a lot of times they're owner operators i think 95 or so of the market are these owner operators or small fleets of five trucks or less 10 trucks or less something like that and they probably don't feel like that they have much much power in terms of shaping a brand or creating a narrative but the truth is they do with every interaction that they have it's building their brand if they're talking to a broker or shipper about a load and they're negotiating price how they do that builds their brand when they're at a receiving dock or a pickup dock how they interact with the dock workers it helps build their brand um how they you know communicate with the shipper or with the broker during a load builds their brand um you know those those little things that they can do um are really really powerful and with the use of social media they can actually build their brand and it's hugely important because at the end of the day a shipper and a freight broker want to make sure that their load is going to get delivered it's going to be on time as much as possible and that someone's going to communicate really well with them and be real with them and if they know somebody will do that if they know an owner operator or small carrier will do that they will work with them even if it comes at a little bit of a premium you know because they want to make sure it gets done right and so i think building a brand is really valuable i think that sometimes truck drivers and freight brokers as well they're guilty of this as well they think that those individual transactions don't mean anything because they're never going to talk to that person again but the truth is it does mean something every interaction that we have is a chance to build a reputation to build our brand and to create opportunities for ourselves down the road because of what we're doing today or to eliminate opportunities down the road if we don't focus on that so i love it when truck drivers are on social media i love it when they take their brand seriously and their reputation seriously and it's only better for our industry that truck drivers elevate their brands so that the the driver the driving profession becomes more attractive it's easier to recruit young people to become truck drivers and be a part of it it's easier for shipping and receiving locations to treat truck drivers better because they have a better reputation so there's nothing bad that will come out of building your individual brand one conversation at a time that is so good and of course one of the things we say here at freight works is we're interested in relationships long-term durable relationships not just transactions we don't believe in off anything and i used to coach some of the consultants in the company i owned years ago that every transaction is a deposit or a debit to an equity account you know and and also the principle that the unexpected touch carries the greatest power you tell a driver hey we just want to let you know here here's a gift card you may not know it but you just eclipsed this benchmark we've been tracking you and and we wanted to let you know we we we noticed and it's the unexpected touch that carries the greatest influence and i love the relational dimension that's threaded through what beta does it's so clear in the way you write about yourself i appreciate that yeah we know it's it's important i think relationships at the end of the day are everything um technology is a really cool tool to help us do things faster more efficiently and enjoy life better have more comforts but at the end of the day it really comes down to how you treat people um what you what you think about people how you treat them how you take care of them how you serve them and it comes through um without a doubt it comes through well speaking of taking care of uh a people trey uh we've now come to that time you know great conversations i say this often great conversations come to an end too quickly so we're going to make our uh exit here but before we do that uh you remember from mats we'd love to give a little affirmation practically for any guest that comes on so i'm going to do my little uh home shopping network or qvc invitation here i don't remember what you got before but we've got the freightworks one hat that's got the uh freightworks logo that's nice notice how i'm using my hand here the way that they do on qvc or you may have gotten this before we got the yeti mugs it's got the freightworks one logo of course we're coming from breakworks one studio it's got the light by the mile logo there of course yeti is its own brand and culture uh yeti

yeah into that or we've got the life of the mile this one we're great at mats we still have some red white and blue on the back there so we got your address which of these may we send to you those are all phenomenal choices i do have that last hat from matt uh that you have in fact i think i have it i have all of my hats hanging up in fact i see it right up there i've got all of my my hats hanging up that i want to keep i can't keep them all to wear because my wife goes crazy so i put them up on the wall um but i do have that last hat i'll tell you what i would love is that yeti that would be awesome and thank you so much that would be great of course and and what we're hoping for of course in building the life of the mile brand and the freightworks brand which by the way this has kind of been our solar system but we're trying to build the life of the mile brand in a way where it's a little bit of an outlier to the core brand of freightworks it's brought to you by freightworks a little bit like intel inside if you will but when people see that and they ask we're going to depend on you in the ways that you're so eloquent in doing and persuasive in doing in saying to them hey you know what it's like by the mile i've been on twice now one of the few that's been on twice and uh encourage them to subscribe trey we would appreciate that very much and sometimes if god allows i would love the chance to sample some of your barbecue there in kansas city which i understand is iconic right well there is uh first of all thank you for the yeti i really appreciate that i'm happy to promote what you guys are doing at life by the mile on the podcast and i encourage people to subscribe for sure not a problem with that at all um missouri barbecue is interesting so you got kansas city where i'm from and the kansas city barbecue is a little bit more of like a saucy barbecue uh and then in st louis it's more of a dry rub type of a barbecue where i'm at now so i tend to actually prefer the saucy type barbecue because that's where i'm from but they're both like you know dry rub ribs are amazing um so if you ever get over here we'll we'll be sure to go to some of the really good spots around here and uh sandwich that's great and i'm a native texan and when you talk about barbecue there they've got like nine different brands down there too and here in north carolina uh you know i've only been here a little less than five years i learned pretty quickly that uh your choice of basketball team and barbecue says a lot about uh what kind of reception you're going to get in any kind of setting that you're you're in this is trey griggs uh he's an industry expert and pundit but uh more importantly he's he's a follower of jesus and we sure appreciate that and more than that we want to make sure that you know that it's this kind of fair on life of the mile delivered by freightworks you get with these unplugged conversations he's the founder and ceo of beta consulting and real quickly how can people get in touch with you yes so they can find me on linkedin please follow us on linkedin because you'll see every time that we go live with all of our live content we've got four podcasts that we do and uh all slightly different audiences they can also check us out at betaconsultinggroup.com and be sure to check out our swag store we're all about building a community so we want people to you know enjoy some of the different brands that we have word on the street and standing on things like that so they can check out our swag store as well and uh and be a part of our community so those are the three ways probably to best get in touch with us always a delight trey griggs thank you so much look forward to talking to you soon live by the mild delivered by the great works and uh keep checking out the episodes uh each week have a great day thanks for watching this episode you know life by the mile delivered by freightworks is one of the newest largest and fastest growing podcasts actually produced by a trucking company now we want you to like and share this episode if you'd like to see more episodes click here and make sure that you subscribe to the channel by clicking here we'll see you there

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