#2 How Shawn McLeod Grew Axle Logistics to $1B: Culture, Sales, and the Secrets Behind Explosive Growth

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[00:00] Jesse Buckingham: It took a lot of failure to figure out how to manage people the right way. You know, it's one thing I was taught very early on: you never worry about others, always worry about yourself. And I learned the hard way that you shouldn't do that. If we can get that balanced out, we'll have a lot more retention here. Success is adding carriers to our portfolio that take care of us and we'll take care of them, adding customers to our portfolio left and right. Everyone has a monthly goal that they need to strive for and hit. Welcome to the Freight Show podcast.

In this episode, we're joined by Shawn McLeod, president of Axle Logistics, who helped lead the company from $17,000,000 in revenue to over $1,000,000,000 in just over eight years. Shawn shares how a relentless sales culture, a build your empire mindset, and a deep commitment to customer service fueled one of the fastest growth stories in freight. We dig into the leadership lessons he's learned, scaling a team from dozens to nearly 700 employees, why culture is inseparable from strategy, and how Axle invests in training through its Launchpad program. Shawn also breaks down the balancing act between automation and relationships, the tech bets that are paying off, and why travel restrictions are a mistake in a soft market. Alright. Let's dive into today's conversation. This episode is brought to you by Vooma, the back office automation platform built for freight brokerages and 3PLs. From AI powered document handling to streamlined workflows, Vooma helps logistics teams move faster and scale smarter. Learn more at vooma.com.

Speaker 2: Awesome, Shawn. Thanks so much for joining us on the show. I'm excited to chat and learn more about your story in building Axle.

Shawn McLeod: Yeah, no, thanks for having me, looking forward to it. Shawn, maybe to kick it off. I'd love to give us the spark notes of Axle today and the journey that you've been on with the business over the last sort of ten years. It seems like it's been an incredible ride from the outside.

[02:06] Shawn McLeod: Yeah. I mean, actually today we just moved into our new headquarters. So Headquarters Number 2, I guess number 1 is sitting right next door. This building should hold probably nine fifteen, nine twenty people. So we think it could probably sustain a couple of years of growth. We hope, the quicker we fill it up, I guess the more success we're having at a fast pace. We're just under 700 today.

Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah. And your original office, how many folks are in that one?

Shawn McLeod: So we have probably 150 in that one. So we still have our office team sitting over there. And then, you know, we run both models. So I have the cradle to grave model and the Chicago model, the sales account development ops. And so the account development and the ops team sits in HQ 1 and then all of 360 sits here in the new building.

Speaker 2: Wow. Cool. And so 900 total. That's awesome. And what's been the journey over the last ten years?

Shawn McLeod: So I mean, it's fast. It's hard to keep up sometimes. John Clay and Drew Johnson started the company in 2012 and I think their first shipment moved on January 11 of that year. And they had really good growth at the time. And John comes from the brokerage side of the industry and Drew came from the asset side. So it's two different perspectives that really seem to work out well from the level of service that Drew expects versus the technology driven brokerage side that John expects. So worked out really well,

[04:06] from their two different viewpoints. But you know, they grew up together in the same neighborhood. They had known each other for some time and they had pretty good growth from 2012 to 2015. And they got to a point where they were looking for someone to come in and help manage the office at the time. It was like a branch manager role. And I had gone from CH Robinson to a very quick stint in the asset side of the business and realized I didn't like selling assets. In November 2015, we ran into each other, had a few interviews with them. They brought me on in February '16 and think we were around $17,000,000 in revenue then. You know, it's just been, I say to the moon and it's always just been the rocket ship. Right. Do things right. Service the way you're supposed to, execute the way you're supposed to. You know, we hit our first billion dollar mark last year. That's incredible growth. We had a huge, you know, COVID was tough, but also it did help with the growth side of it, you know, from the idea that we're gonna not take advantage of the market and the margins and just grow volume and customers as much as we can. And in '21, we had that jump from January 2020, it was $170,000,000 to May 2021. So in one tough year, that was the year to add a couple hundred people quickly and train them and develop them and teach them how to sell and broker freight at the same time.

Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot around training and onboarding that I'm curious to get your perspective on. Cause I know that's something you guys really focus on. I am curious though - that's like phenomenal growth. What do you think,

[06:09] they saw in you in bringing you in as branch manager and what are the things that have enabled you to lead that much growth?

Shawn McLeod: Wasn't expecting that much growth that quickly, even though at the same time I had made this business plan and when I gave it to them during my interview, I told them I thought we could hit a billion in 10 years and we hit it in just a little over eight, I believe, from the time I started. But for me, I think it was more just, I understood the business. I understood what they wanted out of the organization as we grew. They're very culture driven, culture protective people. So they were adamant that whatever we do from a growth perspective, I followed the culture that they've always wanted and valued: a loud, energetic atmosphere, treat everyone like family, come in and grind every day and get the job done. And then they also liked my business insights into what I thought we needed to fine tune from a go to market strategy from a service perspective. I was always looking for a role where there was this open kind of platform. You know, I wanted to be able to step into an opportunity and be able to run with it and just do as much as I can. They agreed that I keep the culture the way they want me to, and I can run the business the way that I want to. And it's always worked out knock on wood.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like this combination of a cultural foundation and legacy that you've been able to continue. I often think about culture as being

[08:11] actually very connected to strategy. Sometimes I think of those as being separate. You started to talk a little bit about some of the elements of the culture that you're building, but I'm curious, how does that culture reinforce your strategy as a business? What's the interconnection between those two things?

Shawn McLeod: It's everything. I think that if the culture were to ever shift, right. You've gotta have the same mindset that we've had from day one. You know, our motto is build your empire. Come in to Axle and you build your organization or your company within the guardrails that we provide you. So, you know, when it comes to the culture, everyone's gotta be on the same page. Everyone wants to achieve the same results, have the same growth. You know, we want a loud sales floor. We want energy flowing at all times. We want competitiveness out here on the floor. You know, we still do contests throughout the company all the time. I'm pitting teams versus each other or general managers versus each other, to create some sort of new opportunity, especially on the new sales side, in this market, which has been tough this year. Culture's number one in the strategy for the growth. We have to continue to make sure that we improve the culture over time and we never want to lose what we have. And it's extremely hard and difficult to do when you continue to add more and more headcount to manage the business. So you know, we went through a spell where we had three different offices here in Knoxville. You started seeing these little micro cultures of poison pop up and you could see very quickly how detrimental they could be to the team that was in that same building. This new building couldn't come quick enough, but we had to make a lot of team shifts, bring people back to the

[10:13] headquarters and make sure that they remain on track. You know, we don't want to micromanage time or micromanage vacations. As you grow at the pace we've grown, it's very hard. You had to add leadership levels in between. That was always difficult for us. We've been a flat company since they started the organization. So adding the different layers in between have been difficult because you have successful employees right out of college that are 24 years old and now you have to manage a team of three to 10 people. I couldn't imagine managing someone at 24, 25 years old. I mean, I'm still learning today. I managed six people when I came to Axle. And it took a lot of failure to figure out how to manage people the right way.

Speaker 2: What have been some of the big leadership lessons for you? How would you describe your leadership style today versus back when you started leading folks?

Shawn McLeod: My executive team tells me I'm getting too soft. You know, to premise the leadership piece, my dad's been an executive in furniture corporations, presidents, CEOs. He owned his own company for the last eleven years. And

[12:14] before he retired he was pretty much my free consultant, so to speak. So you know, I would ask him questions every day. How would you handle this scenario? And in the beginning I have the same mentality he does. It was more of a drive hard, push hard. I'm not worried about what you think. Just get it done. Probably not show as much empathy as you should, not communicate as much in the beginning. These are all things I don't like to talk about now because I've had to work hard to fix it. But you know, communication is key in everything that you do from the growth of an organization. You know, in the beginning, my mindset was as long as it's what I wanted and the owners wanted, then we're just going to do it and not worry about what everyone else thought. And that was, I learned two years in, that was not the way it could be long term. And I asked for a lot of feedback, it's funny. Someone made a comment the other day. Was sitting at like 4AM, I couldn't sleep and I have work to do. And someone's like, you know, you're leading an organization today. Why are you there grinding at 04:00? Well, it's just in me, but also it's in the team. If I'm grinding, they're gonna grind with me. So I've set the example. The same thing: I ask for true, honest feedback from my team. Yes. I may be the president of the company, but I want honest feedback. If there's something I'm doing that you don't like, tell me. And I value that feedback and that's something that five years ago I probably couldn't have taken. Just didn't want to hear it. So between communication and feedback, leadership books are not gonna work. They don't work. It's really, you've got to learn how to treat people with respect and

[14:17] be empathetic and understand what they're going through at the time. But at the same time, you've gotta sit back and listen to them and help them be part of the decision making process. And I get on some of them today, especially my executive team. If they make a decision without talking to the group, that's a problem. Talk to me. That's fine, but you still gotta talk to the group, make sure you get insight from everyone.

Speaker 2: What have you found? Like if you don't have that sort of level of engagement and buy in from the team, what happens when you don't move through big decisions that way?

Shawn McLeod: Whatever you wanna roll out, you're not gonna have the support to roll it out. You know, back in the day, I think I managed 76 people at most before we decided to start scaling out the leadership team and the different levels. And back then I think if we had something that we wanted to get done, whether it was a new piece of technology or a new way to price or any sort of communication around how we're going to attack our bids and RFPs. It was easy for me to walk out on the floor to 76 people all in one small room and say, this is what we're going to do. And I sat in that room with them and I could hear them. But now we have a building with 150 people and five floors over here. You can't do that anymore. You've got to get everyone's buy in. So to get their buy in, get their feedback, you know, and talk to them about what our thoughts and strategy are and let them give their input. In the end, if we know what's right for the organization, we're still going to move forward with it, but we do our best to make sure that everyone on the team's bought in.

[16:17] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this resonates. Like one of the things that you can fail at both ends of the spectrum. It's a failure mode to just be too dictatorial. But then the flip side of that is also challenging, where sometimes you've just got to make decisions for the business. There's a line you can walk where you say, hey, this is the direction that we're going to go, but you're going to have a voice and you're going to get the opportunity to provide feedback and sort of shape it.

Shawn McLeod: Yeah. It definitely works. By no means are we perfect and we still have a lot of things that we need to fix internally. But the one thing that I've realized is that we want their feedback and their input. But one thing that I don't see and we'll see how this plays out, but they don't bring ideas to the table, you know? And if we're sitting here as a leadership team and we're trying to think about all of the different tools and technology that we need to improve our customer and carrier experience and create a better work life balance or create some efficiencies internally, it's great that I have an executive team that can think out of the box. But we need to get the rest of this group to think and put their ear to the floor in the industry and see what else is out there and help bring some ideas to the table. We need the team to be bought in.

[18:19] At some point, if you're not bringing ideas, I don't want to hear what you have to say. Right. I mean, it's not that I don't wanna hear everyone's opinion. You know, get creative, think outside the box a little bit. We stay too siloed sometimes in their role and there's just so much going on within freight and managing teams and worrying about fraud and everything else in between. So at some point they've got to stop and think, okay, what are two or three things that this organization's going to need either now or in the future? So we can continue to build and try to make ourselves better.

Speaker 2: Yeah, you guys bring on - I mean the level of people growth is wild and given how important culture is to you guys, what have you learned about how to do that successfully? Bringing on 200 or 300 people in a year is a wild amount of headcount growth. What is your mental model for how to find those people, hire them, train them, make sure that they're absorbing the culture and learning the job?

Shawn McLeod: There's a lot there. Well, you know, one thing we realized in the last two or three years is that we're never gonna get it right. It's a fifty fifty mix when you hire if the person is gonna make it or not. And I wish the percent of longevity is better for a new hire, but there's nothing that you can do or say in a room from an interview perspective that's gonna really help you understand how they're gonna handle the pressure and the speed

[20:20] and the time management and all that you have to do. When we hired during 2021, huge year and adding a couple hundred people, it was pretty much sink or swim. Going to give you thirty days of training. Allie Fraley is my VP of learning and development and her and her team are the ones that developed our Launchpad training program, which is unbelievable. But back then it was her and myself training these people that would come in. You know, we've always built relationships with the University of Tennessee, and that's where the founders went to school. We've created a really good relationship, partnership, connection there. We have a class that we teach each semester there, from a sales perspective.

Speaker 2: It's a sales class. Did you teach that?

Shawn McLeod: And they come in and they'll learn how to make real cold calls and hold meetings and if you land business during that class, we're gonna operate it. But if you come on full time after you graduate, we'll give you that business back.

Speaker 2: Oh, so they're actually coming in and cold calling in a live scenario. Wow. That's an incredible opportunity. It's like our interns. We got 20 or 30 interns this summer. The intern awards dinner is tonight. You come in and do it all. You learn everything about the TMS and the systems and the cold calling and the meeting management and having difficult conversations.

Shawn McLeod: So Launchpad has been great, but in the beginning it was like sink or swim and we're going to teach you everything you need to know and the rest you're going to learn by operating. But today we have a more structured, again, Launchpad, Allie and Sarah and that whole team, you know, it's six weeks and it's

[22:23] everything from learning our TMS on the technology that we have and how to negotiate with carriers and all the way up to how to make a cold call and introduce yourself and pitch Axle's go to market strategy to strangers on the phone and how to give rebuttals. They have to do a lot of role play. Then the last two weeks of the training, it's kind of like a deep dive into just sales. You know, you're gonna call, you're gonna have somebody sit with you and we're gonna listen, or we're gonna make those calls for you and give feedback. But in the end, it's still hard. You know, you teach so much in six weeks and then you hit the floor and you know, you're given a book of business, a small book just to help you get started. You've gotta learn how to operate and balance your time and

Speaker 2: and still make cold calls. And so folks start out kind of cradle to grave initially?

Shawn McLeod: Typically they do. Yeah. I mean, we hire, if we have a need for outside sales, we'll hire from outside of Axle typically, but we also will promote internally if someone wants to do that full time and they've proven themselves.

Speaker 2: Most of the hires come into the cradle to grave side. You mentioned on the hiring side, hiring is one of the hardest things. Your point is like if you can bat over 50%, you're probably doing it really well. It's really hard to fully understand if someone's gonna be successful in your environment, even if they've had a track record of success. What have you learned about how to move the needle on that probability? What are the highest signal things that you can identify about

[24:23] people? What are the characteristics that ultimately make people successful in the role? And how do you try to get early signal about those?

Shawn McLeod: We've tried personality testing, and we've tried to have people go through these questions and they'll be rated as like a scholar or a maverick or whatever that may be. And typically if you fall into these categories, you'll have better success in sales versus management and so forth. But what we realized is that when we started having employees that were already hired take it, if we followed those processes the way we were told to do so, you would probably miss out on most of the hires that we had today that have had a ton of success and do really well.

Speaker 2: Interesting.

Shawn McLeod: Out of everything, I think that there are a few things that stand out to us in an interview. It's what have you done during high school and college from not just sports, but from a job perspective. You know, you can see a huge difference in people that grind and work during that time versus those that had not had to. I used to think that an interviewer being nervous or fidgety when they're speaking with you at the table was almost like a bad quality. But what we've kind of realized is that people that can't sit still or they move around too much, they almost have a lot of pent up energy. And that's exactly what we need here: someone to come in and just be a ball of energy that's raring to go all the time. And we've seen a lot of success with that. And it's not about what's on your resume and your past experiences. We almost want to teach people that don't have experience because I think that

[26:24] there are locations that probably teach a lot that you don't want them to learn. Take care of your customers, pick up the phone day or night, things like that. Other companies may not require that, but we do. It's still a work in progress from the hiring side, but you can tell. I go to the team immediately. We do like a meeting every Monday. So this Monday we had a new hiring class of twenty, twenty one people. You know, when you go and talk to these individuals, do they shake your hand or approach me to talk? If I go and speak to them, do they look you in the eyes or do they kind of shy away from it? I'm batting pretty well on the percentages of people that won't make it based on just small things like that. It used to be, when we had smaller classes or even during like an interview, we would have a few chairs down in the lobby at HQ1. I tell all my executive team, if you walk by an interviewee sitting down there, just sit down and strike up a conversation with them and just see how they respond to you. You know, that still doesn't alleviate the fact that there are long hours that you have to work in the freight industry and your work life balance, especially the first two years, probably doesn't exist as much as you want it to. But we try to teach that and beat it into their heads.

[28:25] It's just a different animal. You can be the best salesperson in the world. I've had reps come in and they'll land 15 new customers in their first ninety days. Yet they leave. I feel like cold calling and landing business is the hardest part of the job. They leave because the operational side and the phone calls after hours - it's just not for everybody. So that's our biggest struggle today. That work life balance, trying to improve quality of life - ten years ago, even five years ago, I didn't care about that where I do a little bit more today.

Speaker 2: I've spoken with other brokerage leaders who have, when they look at their cohorts of teams that join, really is when you start to look in the out years of like two, three, four years, when you build up a ton of experience and a big book of business that people are able to become really successful. So you need to be able to get people to that point. Is that how you think about it? What role does retention play in how you think about things?

Shawn McLeod: Think about retention every day. Yeah. You know, Allie sends me a report at the beginning of every month for any turnover. And you know, we were actually talking this morning because it's a fine balance. People come to our industry because there is good money to be made from a commission standpoint. Right.

[30:27] But the base pay is never great to start out. We leverage a lot of the growth and the income on the commission side as a motivator to get people to come in and work hard. And I think that long term, the base pay will probably need to be adjusted at some point. But I don't think that's necessarily a keeper of people. I think it's just how we sell ourselves internally to our employees when they come in. The way our business is set up, you come in as a consultant on the 360 side. You can work your way up into a team leader role and then you can work your way up into a general manager role and so forth and build teams under you. We always want to give someone a few customers to start out with. That's gonna help them from a commission standpoint. But you have issues where people from the same hiring team, one person's given three customers that can generate $20,000 a month in gross profit and then another person may be put into an opportunity where they get $30,000 or more. It's just based on the need of the team. You know, it's one thing I was taught very early on. You never worry about others. Always worry about yourself. My first general manager, James Barker was awesome. And that's the first thing he told me was because I always worried about everybody else and what they were doing and

[32:30] never worried about myself. And I learned the hard way that you shouldn't do that. If we can get that balanced out, we'll have a lot more retention here. I mean, the building is great. You know, we try to, we spend a lot of money on culture and activities and just a great place to work. You've got a huge gym downstairs. You've got a full half court basketball downstairs. The swing suite opened yesterday. If you want to go and hit golf balls, there's pool tables or ping pong tables on every floor. It's just a great feeling and a great place that you want to be. So we do everything we can to make it comfortable and enjoyable. It's just people themselves have to work through not worrying about what everyone else is getting or doing and just focus on their own growth and their own opportunities.

Speaker 2: It sounds like there's a lot of people that come in and can be successful from a sales perspective, which is often the hardest piece, but then the volume of work that's required to move freight ends up being overwhelming. What are the big levers that you think you can pull over the next few years? Is it process? Is it technology?

Shawn McLeod: We think we've got the process down. Right? I like both models in our business. And I think there's a need for both from either an enterprise level account perspective or even, you know, we run enterprise level accounts on the cradle to grave side. But

[34:38] you know, I think that when it comes to actually just building out the teams for the future, it's hard to teach anyone how to be organized. Time management is something that we bring up in every one of our new hire meetings and luncheons. You know, what's one thing we need to learn quickly? Well, you need to learn how to manage your time quickly, structure your day. You know, typically there's a good time of day that you need to cover your freight, typically in the morning from seven to 10:30 or eleven. It's hit or miss on cold calling, especially right now. The industry is tough to get people on the phone and the market's soft, so no one really technically needs help. So whether you make a cold call at eight in the morning or four in the afternoon, I don't think it makes as much of a difference as it used to. So I think time management's huge to be successful, but in the future, it's really coming down to technology. You know, when you think about tech, before I really understood what to look for or how to look for it. I had a couple of good friends in the industry say, well, listen, you need to look at whatever you do multiple times over and over and over day in and day out. That's where you need to start focusing and honing in on what tech you need to add. So you can try to automate that process. I've got a guy that runs reports every day and looks at multiple touches within our TMS every day and figures out a way to automate that touch. Do we really need to sit here and check a box to say that this shipment's ready to bill a customer? No. If you have the right technology on the front end from an invoicing perspective, for example, that

[36:40] ensures that all of the paperwork's there, it can tell if there are six pages of a bill of lading, all six are there. It can tell if the signature's in the right place. It can read a document and tell you if it's legible. All of those things, you know, we do that with Navix and so this huge process, it took 50 people and now it takes three to five. And so that speeds up that process. I still have someone going in and rechecking the paperwork again and then checking a box ready to bill, for example. And so he'll find something like that. Do we really need to be checking this box? No. So as soon as Navix says the shipment's ready to be invoiced, he's now automated that step. Same thing with pricing. Right? You get hundreds of pricing requests from customers a day. Number one, how can you price that many quickly? You know, there are customers and shippers out there that want the best price and there are some that want the quickest solution so they can move on to their next task at hand. So you need to be able to respond quickly. So that's where we work with Vooma and we're trying to feed as much pricing tools - we have three different tools we use and we're going to feed them into one. But then we're having success with reps that are testing the auto reply with the rate that we built through our algorithm and the auto reply is winning them freight that they've never been able to win before, you know? So does it save time? Yes. Does it make you be able to focus your efforts on sales or customer service or relationships? A hundred percent.

Speaker 2: So I think there's something powerful in the framing there. There's usually not a silver

[38:41] bullet. It's this journey of chipping away at productivity and then reassessing. Even your example with Navix, you implement that, but then there's still sort of the next wave of it. And you're never really done with this sort of stuff. So it's this continuous chipping away so that every year you look back and kind of accumulates into pretty dramatic shifts in people's productivity.

Shawn McLeod: Yeah. As soon as you think you have something figured out, there's always gonna be something different that's gonna hit your plate, you know, from a tech perspective. I think that in our industry, it used to always be back in the day in my CH Robinson days, you pitch your tech and you've got something that no one else has. And it's come such a long ways today and it's become so much more affordable than it used to be. Just about everyone has tech, you know, so it really comes down to service and execution. So on the execution side, you can use your tech to help you execute quicker and more efficiently. Whether it's auto updating your shipments via track and trace, or something that we haven't incorporated yet, but AI on the inbound call side just to help improve that process. We have so many missed calls in a day. We could always get better at answering the phones, but what it really comes down to is how can we make our employees' lives easier or maybe bring some sort of outside of the box solution to a customer via tech that they have never thought of. I just want to be cautious. I don't want

[40:41] the tech to replace the human aspect when it comes to having conversations with your customers and building relationships with carriers. It's going to be a fine balance. It's just, like you said, we're going to add it and we're going to try to evolve it over time and see what works and what doesn't work.

Speaker 2: It seems like a big part of the DNA at Axle is very customer driven, strong sales culture. And you started to touch on it, but what is your framework for thinking about where you want to make sure that your team stays very focused on the relationship? And what are the areas where you are comfortable trying to move towards higher levels of automation?

Shawn McLeod: That's a tough one. That's always the question: how far can you push it without affecting the relationships? But yeah, I don't, you know, there are customers that they don't worry about the relationship. They want to get their freight picked up and delivered on time. They want the competitive price and they're happy with that. And then we have customers that, you know, if you don't speak to them on a regular basis, you will lose freight. You make your customer feel like they've been forgotten. You know, I had a team lead today that said, we just got back from this trip to see these three customers and they went to see them because the business had fallen off and the manager that was running that business is no longer with the company. And

[42:41] they're just like, we don't know what happened, but they never reached out. They never spoke to us anymore and we just didn't feel valued. It's a fine line. You want to automate as much as you can, but at the same time you can't because I think it will affect your relationships long term. And that's also the fun part of the job. It's part of the culture. Speaking with customers and getting into solution design and traveling to see shippers in other parts of the country, that's the fun part of it. You don't want to replace it with AI talking to them. At the same time, AI will build up a quicker response for them if it's something simple that they need. We'll have to figure it out. We're still in the infant stages of it because, you know, someone called me out in a podcast that I did last year. I said I never will have AI in this company ever. And obviously we have it today. I just want to make sure that we do it the right way and that it benefits all parties involved, you know?

Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I think it makes sense to be very thoughtful around it. And I don't think that these things have to be in conflict actually. There's a good part of the shipper market today that does really value that human touch, especially for the smaller shippers where you're like a strategic logistics

[44:42] partner to them. But there's a lot of the execution that isn't really relationship building. A lot of quote requests are folks kind of writing like a two line email with a number, and that's probably not building the relationship. Having the conversation at the beginning or the end of the week, about what are they struggling with, what's the outlook look like for the next month - that seems to be the win win scenario.

Shawn McLeod: I agree. There's a lot of technology out there. The hard part is, you know, what is out there? It's like the minute one thing pops up, then there's 10 more of the same. And then you've got to try to figure out, again, it's all relationship based, right? When I look at tech, the first thing I do is look at, well, who do I know that's in that field? You know, you and I did a panel at TIE that time and just that connection for that day made us go to you for the pricing piece of it, you know, the auto rating and the quoting through email. For me, it's all relationship based on who you speak to and who you get to know. Through these events, there's just so many of them. And everyone throws stats out there that sometimes I find hard to believe. You know, prove it, like show it to me, show me what you've done.

[46:48] Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm a big believer in putting your money where your mouth is with this sort of stuff.

Shawn McLeod: But I agree. I mean, if there's like one downfall that we have as an organization, we move slow when it comes to changes like that, because we try to dig in and make 100% sure that it's going to work and do what we say it's going to do and add the value that it's going to add where it needs to be added. And we're very, very slow moving when it comes to that, but it works out so far.

Speaker 2: There's different ways to approach it. You can probably have a higher hit rate. And then there's others that will be more experimental. Both approaches can work. It's obviously been a challenging market. You guys have found ways to grow throughout it all. How have you navigated the last couple of years? What have you learned about how to continue to move the business forward in difficult market conditions?

Shawn McLeod: I mean, the market's only as tough as you make it out to be. If you listen to everyone that's out there today, it just beats you down. If you try to always look at things, we look at everything in terms of market share. We're still very small in the grand scheme of things. There's just so much business out there. One thing that John and Drew had done from day one is not only did they hustle the phones and set the example with the team, but I've done the same thing and we have a huge focus on sales. Everyone here sells all the time. I told somebody on lunch right before our podcast, I'm like, man, I had this cold call today and it was brutal.

[48:50] Sometimes I'm on it and sometimes I'm not, but in the end, I can still finagle my way through a conversation to at least show where we can add value. And that's one thing we push hard out here. Success is adding carriers to our portfolio. They're gonna take care of us and we'll take care of them. Adding customers to our portfolio left and right. Everyone has a monthly goal that they need to strive for and hit. If they don't hit it, that's fine, but show the effort. Everything here is just sales focused and sales driven. That's why we grow the way we do. Technology does help us from that standpoint, but it's just starting to really help us in the last six to eight months. It's just the work ethic that we portray here. And it goes back to what we were talking about earlier with culture. You can't sit out here on this floor. You can't sit on this floor in a sales role and not sell. You're gonna feel extremely uncomfortable sitting at a desk quiet with the vibe that goes on on each one of these floors when people are hammering their phones. I love that. So that's where we have success. Yes, we do push hard to land business and take care of customers and carriers and our employees. But at the same time, I don't think there's ever, especially in the last year and a half as the market slowed down, you know, starting in March '23 post COVID, we push everyone to get out and see our customers. We travel as much as we can. You know, during an environment like today, when I hear some of my buddies that are in the brokerage world saying that their travel restrictions have been put in place, I'm like, you're crazy. If it's anything that you don't want to restrict, it's travel. We have reps on the road

[50:54] all day, every day, year round. And you've got to get out and still see customers and have these conversations and add value. We're just really good at servicing business. The more I travel, the more I get worried about the economy slowing down and I wanna hear what's going on from everybody else in our industry. One thing that I hear in every single meeting I go to is: you all have the best customer service of any freight broker that we've ever worked with. And it's just something that we push hard. We somehow have a lot of Google reviews for still a small broker in the grand scheme of things. And someone a few weeks ago said, yes, you have a lot of good reviews, but you don't pay people for reviews, right? We don't. We will reach out. We'll find someone if they leave a one star, but we don't find them to have them remove the review or change the review. We find them because we want to fix whatever issue we caused that caused someone to be unhappy with us. And my entire executive team, if a one star hits, you better have an answer for me in a couple hours of what happened and how we're gonna fix it internally. So it doesn't happen again.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It seems like for you, there's just a really strong focus on the fundamentals. You've gotta be out there. You gotta be hitting the phones. You gotta be providing great service and everything else is kind of trying to support those objectives.

Shawn McLeod: Absolutely.

Speaker 2: Shawn, one last question for you. I'm curious as you think about folks, within the industry or even outside of the industry, that have influenced

[53:03] your leadership approach, who comes to mind and what have you learned from them?

Shawn McLeod: Well, outside of it. Well, you know, I mentioned my dad in the beginning, just because I've always watched him and his successes. He's grown over the years. The work ethic I think that I have probably comes from him. He's on my case now about working too much. Yet he was a Monday through Saturday guy. He was out of the house at 5AM and he was home at seven every night. So from leadership, he's definitely been the head of that. But there's a gentleman here locally that when we were doing personality testing, we don't work with them today, but it wasn't because they did anything wrong. It was more because we were just afraid that we were going to miss the talent that we didn't want to miss. But he gave me a lot of insight early on into how I manage and from the conversations he had with the employees on the floor, what worked and what didn't work. That really helped me kind of structure myself a little bit better or ask the right questions internally. You know, there are a couple of guys, Chattanooga is always a melting pot of brokerages, and there are two to three gentlemen down there that from day one, if I need something, I can still reach out to them and talk to them. And they give me advice on what they've done in the past that helped them and

[55:04] or what they've seen today because they're still in the industry. They just aren't in the freight brokerage side. Hey, this is what we see when we go to other organizations that work or don't work, don't make this mistake, hey, we see this and it does work. I don't think there's any one thing, like I said, leadership has been so much trial and error. Sometimes I'll watch YouTube videos about things like, man, that sounds like a good idea. Let's try it. I'm hard on myself. I think I'm good at being a leader through setting the example. I don't know if I'm always the best at speaking the right way to some.

Speaker 2: Some people would argue that's probably the most powerful form of leadership, especially in a business like brokerage, where it's a hard job. And so being able to lead from the front, it seems like you really do chart that course. Shawn, thank you so much for the conversation. It's been awesome getting to learn more about your philosophy and congrats again on everything you've built with Axle. It's really impressive. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Shawn McLeod: Podcasts are my thing sometimes. It's hard to slow down and think about what you've done in the past because you're always thinking about the future. Right? So it's good to do these and kind of reflect a little bit. Helps you think about some things that you missed in the past too, that you should probably have done. So it's good.

Speaker 2: Well, I've enjoyed it. Thanks so much.