DhungJoo Kim: Hi everyone, my name is Dhung Joo Kim. I am the CEO of Cherry Assistant and the host of Behind the Founders. Today we have Leonard here. Leonard, please introduce yourself to our audience and tell us about what you do and what's brought you here today.

Leonard: Hello everybody, my name is Leonard Jackson. I'm the founder and CEO of Norfleet Transportation. ⁓ we're a freight transportation provider. ⁓ we service the I guess the world. We ⁓ import ⁓ cargo from other countries and we move the freight all over the United States and ⁓ been doing it for quite some time. And what brings me here is d Mr. DJ here. I guess he Heard about me, you know, everybody knows North Fleet Transportations. I'm kidding. ⁓ We're mostly B2B, so a lot of haven't heard it, but ⁓ I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

DhungJoo Kim: Mm-hmm. Awesome. And I see on your LinkedIn you have a couple of things that you've done. ⁓ you have Lender Jackson Inc., you have Northfleet Transportation and Logistics and you have Factor E Funding. Can you tell us a little bit about these different businesses and how they work together?

Leonard: Absolutely. So Litter Jackson Inc., so I've also produced and star in a lot of television and commercials. So and we're starting to do a lot of commercials for our own entities now. but I used to do a lot of commercials for, you know, Pepsi, Coke, State Farm, Geico. I've done all that over the the same course of time that I built my business. I've always had the I don't know, got bit with the acting bug when I was really young. I just could never turn it loose. I did stand up comedy for a little while. So I always had this thirst for entertainment, but also this hunger for business. And I'm one of those guys where there's as Master P would say, no limit. I just go for it. And ⁓ and so far I've done over two hundred T V commercials, about a hundred T V shows, ⁓ a few movies and ⁓ I built a mid sized business.

DhungJoo Kim: That's awesome. So ⁓ did you? How did that go?

Leonard: And I ran for governor last year. It went well. I was doing really well and I had a I ran into a brick wall because the post office ⁓ I shipped my five years of tax returns that they need. ⁓ I shipped it through the post office and they delivered it late. So that excluded me from the ballot, just like that. So I'm very disappointed, but I'm coming back even stronger next time.

DhungJoo Kim: ⁓ So how do you balance doing all these acting gigs with running your ore fleet? ⁓ where does your time go and how do you manage that?

Leonard: You know, I this happened to me when I was really young. I was playing a lot of video games and watching a lot of sports. And I said to myself, it just hit me one day, I was like, man, I wonder how much more I could get done if I stopped playing these games. And I found myself actually having way more time on my hands than I thought I would have. ⁓ people don't realize it doesn't take a whole lot to be successful. You just have to, as Nike says, you just have to do it. And before you know it, just like, man, I got plenty of time on my hands. I mean, I still watch sports. I don't play as many video games, but you know, I have four kids. I have a wife, twenty f twenty what is it? We've been married twenty six years. I have four kids and I've very active dad. I go to all their games, I coach them, I run all their ⁓ programs, ⁓ a lot of the programs with the school. ⁓ I still go to auditions, I still do acting jobs. I I I you know, ⁓ people don't realize Time management is one thing. If you could get that down, it will change your life.

DhungJoo Kim: Right. And where does factor E funding fit into this?

Leonard: Yes, sorry. So factor E. So a lot of companies in my space, ⁓ you know, we're a transportation logistics company, so we do ocean, air, ⁓ rail freight, ⁓ full truckload freight, less than truckload freight. ⁓ and a lot of companies in my space, what they do eventually is they start a ⁓ factoring company. What is factoring? Well, ⁓ a lot of these trucking companies that you hire to do your loads. They're lot of mom and pops. They don't have a lot of capital. So factoring allows for them to get capital instantly. So for example, if they do a shipment, they deliver it, they send an invoice to the factoring company. The factoring company gives them like 90% of the face value of that invoice. Then the factoring company sends it to their customer. And when the customer finally pays the factoring company, the factoring company will give them the remaining 10%, but they hold. you know, five percent fee for that. So right now what we're doing is we have a ⁓ what you call quick pay. So we offer quick pay to the carriers to do our loads, but we're gonna ⁓ evolve into just a full on factoring company so we can help them get their money quicker, not just from doing our loads, but other companies' loads.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay, so it's almost like like payday loans, but for companies where they can get their invoices paid faster and okay. Awesome. Okay.

Leonard: That's a great way to put it. Yep. That's a great way to put it. And so we're digitizing the process. I've always thought about doing it. ⁓ I recently graduated, got my MBA from Pepper Dying, I would say how long ago now? Almost five years ago. And we had a special topics weekend and it was it was pretty much focused on digitizing things. ⁓ this is a little bit before AI became in everybody's conversation. but I that

DhungJoo Kim: Mm-hmm.

Leonard: weekend really hit me hard because I thought, man, you know, this process, there's still a lot of manual there's still a lot of human interaction with these pr processes. It's not automated enough. So ⁓ a partner a colleague of mine in my cohort in my class, ⁓ we partnered up and we started this this company called Factory and it's totally digitizing the entire process. Actually it's two Start off with just one other person from my cohort, but now it's it's three of us total now. and ⁓ we're gonna roll it out hopefully I would say by the end of the year. ⁓ but it's gonna totally revolutionize the pro the the I would say the whole entire industry.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. And is there is there any other companies that are doing it now or is this kind of like a new innovation that's coming out?

Leonard: No one's doing what we're doing. Yep, this is and you know it's funny, I just went to a conference last week in Nashville to to to answer that question. I wanna see who else is doing this, is it here, is it coming, is it's on its way? And no one's anywhere close to thinking about it, which I love.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. And it's and it's just digitizing the factoring process.

Leonard: Well it's a little bit more than that. ⁓ don't wanna say too much because you know, obviously no one's doing it. I don't want to give anybody ideas, but yeah, it digitizes the process. It almost fully automates the entire thing. but there's a few other ⁓ components to it that ⁓ if I let it out now it may ⁓ may create some competition, but it ⁓ it it it helps without saying too much,

DhungJoo Kim: Sure, yeah, ⁓ huh.

Leonard: It it allows for each party to find each other easier and to interact ⁓ easier. ⁓ and it allows

DhungJoo Kim: Gotcha. So is it more like a kind of marketplace where you're matching people that do the factoring and people that need it? Or is it a all in one platform where you come to get your factoring and you as a company factory provide it? All the above. Okay. Wow. It's quite a quite a platform. And when when when is that ⁓ rolling out?

Leonard: All the above. Yeah, we're looking to get it roll we're we're looking to have the MVP by the end of the summer. ⁓ we've been working on it for a while, so we're hoping to have it ready to ready to roll out to market by December, January. That's the that's the goal. We've been working on it for quite some time and we've we've made a lot of inroads and this ⁓ trip to the the conference, I really wanted to see are we

DhungJoo Kim: Okay.

Leonard: Not are we wasting our time, but are we gonna have a lot of competition and where are they in the process? And I didn't see any. Now there's probably people there that are holding it close to their vests. So they don't want people like me to know what they're doing, so that may be happening too, but you know, but MySpace was out here before Facebook. No one's talking about MySpace anymore, so you know. It depends on what yeah.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I generally believe that ideas are dime a dozen and it's all about the execution. I mean anyone probably has the idea. It's all about can you execute it or not at the end of the day. right. Yep. So going back to Norfleet transportation, so you've been doing that about thirty years, you said? So

Leonard: Execution. And how you execute. And how you execute. Yeah. I agree. Yeah, okay. It sounds so bad. I mean, it sounds bad because there's companies that's been around as long as I have that are Bohemuts, you know, they're massive enterprise companies and you know, we're mid sized, you know, we're, you know, tens of millions versus hundreds of millions.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. Okay. Do you mind giving is there any yeah, is there any kind of numbers that you would be open to sharing about your company, whether it's like top line revenue or evaluation or anything like that?

Leonard: I mean they people could look it up. Our top line is, you know, I I think our largest year was just under sixty million. And that's and that's not ⁓ you know, in my space these these companies do billions. So ⁓ and then you have some that are nowhere close to where I am. So I think we're kinda in the middle, you know. ⁓ they call us a mid sized company. ⁓ we're not enterprise.

DhungJoo Kim: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And for someone that doesn't ⁓ for someone that isn't familiar with the transportation and logistics industry, can you break down the a business model where, you know, let's say that sixty million revenue comes from?

Leonard: Yeah, sure. I mean it's real simple. It's simple high level, but when you get to the granular, it's a little bit more complicated. But high level we haul freight from one point to the other. For example, the US military is one of our largest accounts. So they will say we have some uniforms to move from, you know, New Orleans to Chicago. And we will say, Okay, we'll Charge you this much and they'll say, Okay, that's fine. So we agree on the rate, then we send a truck to pick up the freight, they pick it up, they deliver it. The driver gives us a pr what they call a proof of delivery is a signed bill of lading. So you know, yeah. Well, I was gonna say when you ship freight, you have to have a bill of lading at the shipper. And then when you get to the receiver, the receiver signs to bill lading. And then that becomes a proof of delivery, right? So the driver gives us a proof of delivery, we invoice the customer. And that's the A to Z of the transaction. Yeah.

DhungJoo Kim: That makes sense. Okay, and I imagine for a company like that there's probably different ways to do it. Like I assume some freight companies might own their own trucks, whereas some companies might like subcontract that out and they're just like a broker for the freight. Is that right?

Leonard: One hundred percent. So a lot of companies like JB Hunt, Warner Enterprises, ⁓ you see those on the road probably a good bit. They all have their own trucks and they all have ⁓ a brokerage. It's just like us. They're just much larger than we are. They're the ones that are doing twenty, thirty billion dollars in revenue, but they also been around for a hundred years. ⁓ but then you have s yes, that's correct. We have our trucks and brokerage, but there's some companies

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. So do you also have your own trucks and brokerage? Okay.

Leonard: Like CH Robinson, TQL stands for Total Quality Logistics. They don't have any trucks. And they are strictly brokers and they're doing, you know, twenty, thirty mil billion dollars in in revenue. So ⁓ you don't have to have a truck, clearly. They made that very clear. But we we like to have a little bit more control, that's why we keep our asset they call it asset division.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. What is keeping you from growing to the same size of these other companies that have been in the industry for a similar amount of time as you?

Leonard: Excellent question. There's one thing I just discovered late in my career is a a process called EOS Op ⁓ Entrepreneurial Operating System. Are you familiar with that? So we just ran into that and I'm so grateful because I'm starting to be able to put a lot of these ideas and processes into place and measure them. They say if you me if you can measure it, you can improve it. So we're trying to make sure our processes are solid and we're measuring it. And this is new to me. Whereas before

DhungJoo Kim: Yep. Yep. That's right.

Leonard: A lot of my sales was just me meeting people and you know, and then I would hire salespeople and nobody wants to pick up the phone anymore, you know, everybody wants to rely on emails and ⁓ automated processes on LinkedIn and stuff like that. Nothing beats good old fashioned, you know. Well, first of all, nothing beats good old fashioned face to face. There's nothing beats that. That's why so many people win when they go to conventions and conferences and expos.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Leonard: But then I think the second thing is you gotta talk to him on the phone. You have to build a rapport, you have to build a relationship. And that's where I think we really suffered. But I'm locked into that now. I have a solid team. I think ⁓ we're gonna double revenues, you know, every year from here on out. So I'm really excited about that. But the fact that I've we've been able to do s you know, fifty, sixty million just off of my relationships is I I gotta pat myself on the back a little bit, but shame on me for not implementing the solid sales process prior. But I will say this you know, most if not all companies in my space, they all like when you see accident attorneys, their number one expense is marketing. Yeah, I don't know if you ever see Morgan and Morgan, all these companies, you see Billboards, their number one expense. Same thing in my industry, because there's so many

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leonard: companies like ours, the competition is so steep that the sales process has to be solid. So when you see the big boys, they all have an amazing sales process. So the fact that we've been able to do as well as we have without it has been quite incredible. But now we're about to really show people what we could do.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. How big is your staff now?

Leonard: ⁓ we have about a hundred and twenty people.

DhungJoo Kim: Okay. That's pretty good. I mean you're doing what, about half a million in revenue per employee?

Leonard: Yeah, that's good math. Man, you're quick. Yeah, I mean

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah, that's pretty good. ⁓ are you looking to expand the number of people or what are you I guess what is your plan to kind of increase your revenue? You said you're looking to double revenue from here on out. What actually goes into that?

Leonard: One hundred percent. Yeah, we're gonna have to have more sales staff and we're gonna have to have more ⁓ operators, people who are actually handling the transactions. ⁓ we're automating like crazy. We have a lot of AI because everybody wants to automate everything, which I love. And we're not ⁓ letting people go, we're just moving people around. So that's really nice. and retraining people on s you know For the future really. Like a lot of these processes that we've been you know, that we've been doing for years, they're not gonna require adults I mean not adults, but humans to to process these things. So I'm trying to train people to stay ahead of that and and stay employed, whether they're here with us or somewhere else.

DhungJoo Kim: And let's get into the AI aspect a little bit more. So as AI gets better and better, what are you doing within your company to one, stay competitive, right? Because as AI gets better, that also means your competitors also get better. Because you all have the same access to the better and better AI tools. And two, are you looking to, you know, like what does that training look like for your employees to use AI? Are you bringing in outside trainers in? Is it something that you f yourself are becoming More familiar with and you do the hands-on training, what does it actually look like to kind of run a business now where AI is getting better?

Leonard: Right now the companies that I'm working with that are providing the software that has AI, they provide a lot of the training. But, you know, what what am I doing? I'm just making sure my staff goes to the training and takes these courses and, you know, they're doing what they're supposed to do. ⁓ but it's such a it feels like it's still kind of a wild west, you know, 'cause a lot of stuff these guys are promising.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. ⁓ huh.

Leonard: once we implement it I'm like, hey, I thought I could do this, I thought I could do that. I thought I could do this. ⁓ yeah, well you gotta do this, you gotta do so it's not fully automated. It's not it's not as automated as I thought it would be. So for example, you know, we wanna provide visibility to our customers and ⁓ the AI bots are supposed to provide updates to our customers every fifteen minutes or every half hour or whatever they want. It's just not doing that. The proof of deliveries that I mentioned earlier when they when they're sent in from the driver, it's supposed to automatically match it up to the the the proper load that it delivered in our system. It's not doing that. So you know we're still I feel like we're still figuring out this new tool called AI. You know? I know there's a thing called paperclip. I don't know. I I just learned about that the other day. Apparently you could train the bots to do exact exactly pretty much what you want. However, you have to put in s like really serious boundaries 'cause it'll go off and do all kinda things. So ⁓ it takes a that's what they're telling me.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah, yeah. And it takes a lot to configure. A lot, a lot of time to configure.

Leonard: So I was thinking, man, how much time is you know, I have to work, you know, I have to yeah, how much time ⁓ am I willing to put into that? So it's still a wild west, I feel like. I feel like we just have to really be careful, be focused, be diligent, and be aware that it is still fresh and don't rely on it too heavily just yet. You know what I mean? Like really look under and check things out. Don't don't

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. ⁓ huh.

Leonard: Don't rest on your laurels just yet with AI. That's where I'm at, you know.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. Do you have any predictions on where it's gonna be in a couple of years?

Leonard: ⁓ God. I say in the next it's so fast. It's moving so fast that you know AI it learns, right? It's cons it's constantly learning. You know, I thought ChatGPT was amazing. And now I hear you know, I've I just got Claude. Is it Claude? That's a whole nother level.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah, you just cloud cowork, open claw, Hermes, all these different AI agents. Uh-huh.

Leonard: Perplexity, Gemini. It's like a race. and I mean I'm I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm looking at contracts, for example. You used to just sign it and just, you know, that was it. You just throw it in the one of these ⁓ chats and it's like, Hey, you gotta sign this? Did you look at this? Did you look at that? Did you look at this? I'll create a response to that person. Let them know they need to change these things. Like that's gonna change the game so much. ⁓ So in the next couple years, I I do think the bots are gonna be a big deal. I just saw that Salesforce per ⁓ acquired Slack, and now they have these Slack bots. Man, we're about to see some stuff. So I think this time next year, our conversations are gonna be like, Can you believe this is happening? Can you believe that's happening? You know what mean? Yeah. Yes.

DhungJoo Kim: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well hopefully I'll have you back on the podcast in a year from now and we can talk about what's changed.

Leonard: Yes. And I have a podcast too, by the way. It's called No Half Stepping, ⁓ with Leonard Jackson. ⁓ just go to no half stepping dot com. You'll check all my stuff. But we talk a little bit more about ⁓ worldly things, maybe not so much about business, but ⁓ having this conversation is making me think I should probably talk a little bit more about business on my podcast.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you should. I mean it seems like you have a wealth of knowledge to share.

Leonard: Thank you. Thirty years. If I haven't picked something up in thirty years, shame on me.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ okay, and who is taking the initiatives right now inside the company to implement and try these different AI things out? It seems like you've tried a couple of things. Is it you know, are you just trying it out and see if they can try it out or it's like

Leonard: It's really me right now. I wanna say something I really want people to You know, if I don't say anything, I wanna say this because I really want people to hear this. One thing I've learned in business and s ⁓ and maybe it's just me, but you gotta do a SWOT analysis on yourself. You gotta know your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and thrift. But one thing I've learned being in business as long as I have is ⁓ you know, if I would have spent more time on my weaknesses or picked people to feel that void where I'm weak. I'd probably be a lot further along than I am. Now don't get me wrong, I know we do pretty well and a lot of companies fail after a certain amount of time. I know all that. But I just think I look at these my competitors that are doing hundreds of millions, billions, I should be right there. But these areas like hiring people, I'm not the best 'cause I give people too many chances and, you know, but this EOS thing I think I needed to know about this years ago. Had I really known really l paid attention to my weaknesses, I probably would have done it a long time ago. So know your strengths, know your weaknesses, and totally fully utilize your strengths, but also do something about your weaknesses. So I just want to make sure I say that. Alright, so what was that question again? I'm sorry.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. That's great advice. I think people take frameworks like SWOT analysis and they kind of chalk it off as like, ⁓ that's a some MBA framework, but it's actually really helpful for pretty much anything that you're doing.

Leonard: Anything. Anything. Even if you're a pro basketball player, you know, you might be really good at dunking the ball, but your your jump shots are not going down and your overall game would be much better if you did. I know people talk about Michael Jordan all the time, but I'm a big Michael Jordan fan too. But that's what that was him. He's like, I gotta work on my my jump shot. That's my weakness. And ⁓ and then when he couldn't beat the Detroit Pistons those two or three ⁓ seasons, he went to the gym, started working out. So you

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah.

Leonard: If you you know, obviously you wanna capitalize on your strengths, but you got to address your weaknesses. So, ⁓ and and be a doer. I know you said something earlier, you gotta execute. You know, we talked a lot about this in grad school as well. You have a lot of thinkers and you have a lot of doers. Yeah, thinkers. If you can be a little bit of both, I think that's the key. Probably more on the do side because when you do, you learn as you do, right? Because you're gonna fail.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah, yeah.

Leonard: Hopefully you'll fail because you'll learn so much from the failures. You gotta fail fast and get up and keep going. And that's the only reason why I'm in business. Cause I've I failed like crazy. ⁓ the first year, the first year and a half I got in business, I quit. I was like, Well, I tried, man, you know, I did the best I could ⁓ because things kept going wrong and I was like, All right, I guess that's not for me. And my dad said, Are you really gonna just walk away after all you put into this thing?

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah, you gotta fail fast. Yeah, yeah.

Leonard: I said, you know what? He's kinda got a point. So I went back at it and here I am today. So, you know, when you when you think it's the ⁓ a brick wall, is it's it's a speed buck. I I know we've heard it before, it sounds cliche, but I promise you, I'm not the smartest person in the w I'm far from it. But you just gotta have some ⁓ s tenacity, you gotta have some fight in you. If you don't have fight in you, then yeah, maybe it's not for you. ⁓ go get a job and you know work for somebody. But if you wanna have your own thing. You gotta know how to pivot, you have to know how to problem solve and you gotta have a little fight in you.

DhungJoo Kim: Is there any specific advice you would give to someone who's maybe wants to get into a similar industry as you? Whether it's a kind of brokerage firm or maybe they want to get into Fright and Logistics. Is there any specific advice you have there? And and let's say I mean obviously it's different than when you started your company thirty years ago, but knowing what you know now is any specific advice you give to someone who wants to start out in your industry?

Leonard: Run for the Hills. I'm just kidding. No, you know what's funny? I I I was listening to a podcast today. I usually don't listen to podcasts, but I'm gonna start more. But I was listening to one a day, there's a guy from a company called Reed Transport. They got bought by Werner Enterprises. Werner's massive. But he ⁓ he was talking about his beginnings. He graduated college and then he ended up ⁓ driving a forklift at UPS and then he ended up going up from there.

DhungJoo Kim: That's good.

Leonard: I actually started by working for when I was in high school I was working for a friend of mine's dad who had a very small trucking company, but he had a trailer repair company and he just had me he literally had me cut in the grass and I Well I'm a pretty good I could type. I'm a I'm pretty good with the keyboard. I could do stuff in office. So he brought me in the office ⁓ I think a few days later and he couldn't believe how fast I could get these invoices typed up. And I ended up being the vice president of his little company in two years. And I thought to myself, I this is not that hard. Like, I've always kind of had a business sense, you know. And I would ask him, Why aren't you doing this for this customer? Why aren't you doing that? Have you thought about this? I remember doing that a lot. And he's like, ⁓ no, ⁓ no. So I was like, I'm doing this myself. Like, this is crazy he's not doing these things. And that's where I got started. But you know, I think if you want to get in logistics, I think it's very wise to work for companies like mine to kind of learn the ropes.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah.

Leonard: ⁓ to come in as a truck driver, I don't know about that. I I don't think it's a bad idea, but I don't see a lot of these guys transition from truck driving. They kinda get there and they're kinda they're kinda there, you know. ⁓ but if they wanna be a dispatcher they wanna get into ⁓ being a l logistics specialist or ⁓ do sales, being a sales for a logistics company I think is key. That's huge. Especially if you want to have your own business at some point. Cause sales is ⁓ all right. Yeah. You already know what I'm talking about. If you know sales and you can get business.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. Everything sales. And and break that and break that down for for our viewers. What why is everything sales?

Leonard: ⁓ man, shoot, if you're a great sales and you could get the business, you could plug in a CPA, ⁓ a billing specialist, ⁓ insurance company, ⁓ a bookkeeper. Like you could plug those people in, ⁓ operations manager. But I'm gonna tell you right now, if you don't have sales, you don't have a business. Period. I mean, obviously if you have some novel, amazing product that everybody needs and it totally revolutionizes some space that you're in, yeah, you may not need sales as much. But if you're in a red ocean, I don't know if you're familiar with Red Ocean and Blue Ocean, there's a book called Blue Ocean. I think you guys should all pick pick up. There's three books you all need to get. Listen to me right now. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, ⁓ Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Blue Ocean. If you want to have your own business and be successful, I highly recommend those three books. Blue Ocean I didn't read until grad school, which is recently. And they talk about industries where there's a lot of competition, but you want to stand out. You gotta so they call the they call that a red ocean when it's just everybody fighting for the same customer. But if you come up with something novel within that space, you create a blue ocean and you just you you you now are in demand because you have a differentiator. ⁓ so I highly recommend that book.

DhungJoo Kim: Mm-hmm.

Leonard: And I'm not sure if I answered your question actually. We've all forgot it.

DhungJoo Kim: ⁓ I think the questi yeah, yeah. I think the last question was what would be like a specific like insight or something that you give to someone who wants to get into your industry, which I think you'd answered. Yeah.

Leonard: Okay, okay. All right. My bad. I I I know I go on tangents, but there's certain things I really want people to hear. And this is not just me talking. This is other entrepreneurs I talk to. So, you know, ⁓ but yeah, I think those are very important things to remember. And ⁓ you know, I'll say something else. ⁓ I you know, not everybody has a stomach for this, man. You know, I I I think if you are ⁓

DhungJoo Kim: No, no, no. That's great, that's great. Yeah.

Leonard: prone to be high stress, high high anxiety, can't handle ⁓ you know problems and you know, you can't develop the problem solving muscle. I I think it's just gonna it may not some people are better off, you know, working for for someone and and that's not a that's not a bad thing, by the way. That's not a bad thing because you gotta think about it. When you're an entrepreneur, you don't get a day off. You can't take work comes home with you. Even if you hire a COO or you hire someone to run your business, it's it you're still the guy. You know, if there's an accident or Yeah. Yes, yes. the one thing I talk one thing I remember, which is that's why I'm thinking about exiting my company, the one thing that sticks with me when I talk to people who s who have sold their company is

DhungJoo Kim: Your brain is always going twenty four seven.

Leonard: And I can't even imagine what this is like 'cause it's been so long. But they said they don't even wake up and have to go to their phone first thing and check their email and wait and holding their breath, like, okay, what went wrong? You know, like not having that, I can't even imagine what that would be like. Like, you know, so if you if you can't handle that, then you don't need to get in this business get in any business. ⁓ But I will say this as well I'm that guy who takes a break. I know if I don't, I'm gonna burn out. You know, there's some people like my son that's your age, pr I I'm assuming he's your age, but he goes and he doesn't have a br you know, he doesn't take a break. He just goes, goes, goes, goes, goes. You can't do that, man. You're gonna burn out and you're gonna you're gonna cook everything. So anyway, I'm going on a I'm rambling now. So yeah.

DhungJoo Kim: Okay. Well, last question for you as we're wrapping up here. Is there any certain marketing or growth strategies that have worked really well for you in your business? Because I know that you told me a lot of your ⁓ business comes from government contracts. So maybe tell me a little bit about, you know, any sort of sales or marketing tactics that have worked that has gotten you generally the most business. Where does a lot of that come from now? Is it conference I think you mentioned conferences too, is that is it a lot of conferences?

Leonard: Well, when I first Conferences, meeting people face to face is nothing's gonna beat that. I I just don't think anything could beat that. Because let me let me give you an example and I'll and I'll try to speed this up, try to condense it. But when you're doing cold calls, you gotta get through the what? The gatekeeper, right? And then if you're lucky enough to get through the gatekeeper, you gotta convince this person to listen to you, ⁓ give you a try, give you a shot, return your call, stay engaged. That that's an uphill battle. You go to a Conference or expo or something like that, you meet someone, you guys kind of hit it off, talk about the Lakers or whatever, you call him next week. He's picking up that phone. You've already kind of earned the right to be in a room, if you will. So nothing beats face to face. Now, the next step I think is phone calls. You know, some people do a lot of people hate cold calling. A lot of people hate it. And so that gives you an advantage right there. But if you finally get through that gatekeeper and you catch that guy or that

DhungJoo Kim: Mm-hmm.

Leonard: lady at the right time, they might say, you know what, I just had a car I just had a company fail on me. Let's give it a shot. I I'm so upset with this company, yeah, let's go. You just never know. This email thing, obviously that's what a lot of people are doing now. Email and LinkedIn and all these messages. I'm gonna be honest with you. I I once I realize it's a spam or it's a you know something like that, I check out. Unless it's something I'm really needing. You know what mean? So my success has been The relationships. I go visit customers. I check on how their kids are doing. Like the rapport, the relationships. God dang it. I said I was gonna condense this. The last thing I'll say about that is if you have a good rapport, a good relationship with your customers, when someone tries to backdoor you or someone tries to go to your customer cheaper rates or a better something, they're probably not gonna just say, Yeah, I'll take it. They'll come back to you first and say, Hey man, I'm gonna just tell you this guy's coming, he's offering this, this, this. I mean, can you beat it? Can you match it? What you know? 'Cause now my boss is looking at me like, Why aren't I using this company? Why am I still using this company? Right? You follow what I'm saying? So if you have a they're not gonna just cut you like that. So I think that's

DhungJoo Kim: Yep, yep, yep, yep. Right. It's a Michael Scott strategy. You you watch The Office?

Leonard: ⁓ I've I've seen some episodes 'cause my kids like it, but yeah.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just a very human element, right? Like Michael Scott in the office, he has a Rolodex of every single client. He knows when their niece's birthdays are, he knows everything about them and he keeps it intact. He color codes everything so that it is as human and memorable as possible for every single customer.

Leonard: I can't I know it's a T V show, but I can't stress that enough. I think that's massive. That's massive.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. And I think that's probably gonna get more important as AI gets more and more prevalent.

Leonard: ⁓ one hundred percent. I mean, can I add something so you know, even in the dating world, like everything is this now. Like, when I was dating, I I you know, there was no apps and all that. I I literally I met my wife through some friends or at a bar or a club. Clubs are hot back then. I don't think they're hot that anymore. But I had the w it was a face to face, right? It was a face to face. You meet people and ⁓

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. Yeah.

Leonard: I think we're getting away from that and it's making me sad. I mean, you look at the birth w the birth rate is plummeting, like it it's just it's just very and then now AI's coming and and then guess what's right behind that? Robots.

DhungJoo Kim: Yep. ⁓ they're already making They're already making robot companions, it's out there.

Leonard: See, that's what that's that's where we're gonna really see it's gonna be bad, man. I not to go on a tangent. ⁓ you could edit this. But I think it's gonna be bad because if you could create the perfect companion, spouse, whatever, why would you even date anymore? Like, I want you to cook, I want you to clean, I want you to have long brown hair, I want you to have green eyes, I want you to be this, and then poot put you know, right there. I don't want you to argue with me. ⁓

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Leonard: You know, ⁓ I want you to watch football games with me. Whatever. Man, we're in trouble. I I just hope that day doesn't come, but I don't know. It's probably gonna come.

DhungJoo Kim: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It it's coming. It's inevitable. And how do you how do you find the conferences that you go to?

Leonard: Ha ha ha. ⁓ ⁓ being in the industry, you know, I somehow they know my email address. Maybe because I went to one thing and now my email, my name is circulating. But I mean nowadays, honestly, you could say to Google or Gemini or Chat or whatever, hey, I am in this bus I'm in this space, I'm in this industry. Give me some ⁓ conferences or expos or conventions that I should attend. And I actually did that. And they told me some that are r ⁓ geared towards my industry, but what they're not thinking about is any any industry that has a product that needs to be shipped, I should be at that conference to tell these people I can ship your print. ⁓ so ⁓ yeah, I mean nowadays with all this technology it's so easy to do.

DhungJoo Kim: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Is there a certain strategy you do when you go to the conference? Like are you a person that goes around the room and just talks to everyone? Do you set up a booth, ⁓ like a dedicated booth, or you sell your services? Like how do you approach conferences?

Leonard: I need to start setting up a booth. I think the booth idea is fantastic. I haven't done it yet. What I do is I walk around and I like talking to people, you know. ⁓ but I also know people that aren't really big people people, people people, ⁓ you know, too personable and they they they do what they have to do, but I actually enjoy it. I actually enjoy meeting people, learning from people, talking to people. So I walk around and ⁓ I get cards and then I just follow up, you know, hey man, it's nice meeting you at the thing. Let me give you another example. I went to that conference last week. I have probably the the second day I got home, 10, 15 people, hey, it's great meeting you, blah, blah, blah. And I'm entertaining them. Whereas if it was a LinkedIn person or something like that, I wouldn't even respond. But they're like, hey Leonard, it's great talking to you. Can we set up a demo next week? I'm like, Yeah, sure. You know? So yeah, just like you said earlier, the human element is a real thing, you know. ⁓ you don't have to have a big personality or anything like you just be a just be yourself and talk to people like you would. Yeah. We appreciate that, you know? So ⁓ yeah, that's my two percents on that.

DhungJoo Kim: Yeah, just be a human. Okay, awesome. And to wrap it up, Leonard, if people want to contact you, I think you mentioned a couple things like, you know, maybe what if someone wants to work with you? Or I think you even mentioned you're thinking of selling your business. How would people contact you? Do you want to be contacted? How do they find out more information about you? Where would you like them to go?

Leonard: Yeah, man. I I know I said I don't really respond to ⁓ stuff on LinkedIn and emails, but if if you reference hey, ⁓ h heard you on DJ Kim's podcast, like that talked to you about XYZ, I'm all for it. So you can email me. ⁓ you can find me on LinkedIn. ⁓ yeah, I think those two those two avenues would probably be best.

DhungJoo Kim: Mm-hmm. Okay, awesome. So we can put your LinkedIn in the description and if anyone wants to find you, they can connect with you and send you a message and hopefully it's not just some spam. ⁓ but okay, is there any last talking points you wanted to cover?

Leonard: Perfect. That's perfect. Yeah. I just wanna say you do a great job, man. I you know, something told me to do this. I usually don't respond to a lot of stuff that come at comes at me, but I felt like this would be a good one and it and it is and it and and I'm glad I made the decision to come on here. I think what you're doing is great and ⁓ hopefully a lot of people are paying attention. Last thing I'll say, I think you know, at the end of the day, I don't know who came up with that whole just do it, but they're spot on, dude. If you have an idea, don't let it sit in your head too long. Don't wait until it's perfect. It will be it will never be perfect. If you have an idea and you could kind of have vision, if you can have a vision, ⁓ you just gotta start. Because I'm telling you, you can have a perfectly laid-out plan. I promise you, it's not gonna go as planned. You're gonna have to pivot at some point. Trust me on that. So Just get out there. Get out there and do it.

DhungJoo Kim: Right. And that's the final message for everyone. Just get out and do it. Well, thanks so much, Leonard. This is Behind the Founders with Dhung Joo Kim. And this is Leonard Jackson. Thanks so much for your time. And we'll see you in the next one.

Leonard: My pleasure. Take care.