- Okay, so today I have a question for you and I usually don't ask questions without having some idea of a solution. More to follow on that, right now the question
that I have for you is, how do you find shippers? Shippers that you do business with on a day in and day out basis, the shippers that are going to provide the revenue for your business, the customers that are
gonna be the lifeline of your business, how do
you find those customers? Where do you look for those customers? And I'm not talking
about Amazon or Walmart, because for some reason, everybody thinks that freight brokers start
off working with big companies like Amazon or Walmart and although those are great companies, you can move freight with those companies. I've been moving freight
for over six years, millions of dollars in freight moved and I've never moved a load
with Walmart or Amazon. They are definitely not the only players. As a matter of fact, there's a whole lot that you've never heard of, which is why I'm asking you,
how do you find shippers? Because without shippers, your
business can't make money. All of this talk about how
much freight brokers make, what a lucrative opportunity it is, it means absolutely nothing,
is just a bunch of happy talk. And what I call happy talk is people get a lot of
excitement around freight broker and especially when they first get started but then they run into a wall and the wall that they run
into is that they realize, "Oh my God, it's gonna
be a real problem for me "to find shippers. "I don't know where to look." So in today's video, I'm gonna
take you into my computer and I'm gonna show you
exactly how to find shippers to work with your freight broker business, because at the end of the
day, customers will determine whether you're successful
or not in this business. So now let's get into the business. So before we get into the video, just in case you don't know, I always put freight first. Freight comes before anything
and the reason why that is because in business, is important to put first things first and what comes first in this business before anything else, is freight. You must get freight
because freight is the gold, is the attractant, it's
what's gonna attract carriers. People ask me sometimes, "Hey Brandon, why don't
you put carriers first?" Well, that's a good question,
you should always ask why. But why I don't put carriers first is because I know that carriers
are attracted to freight. Yes, I have to build
relationships with carriers but I know that once I have freight, then I have something to negotiate with. I have something to build
that relationship with. Can you go out and start
talking to carriers before you get freight? Sure you can, but in my experience, carriers don't usually wanna talk to me if I don't have freight. They don't wanna talk about freight that I'm gonna get next month, they wanna talk about freight
that I have right now, because it's time to make money now. So I put freight first because it's the most important
thing in this business, especially if you are non-asset
freight broker like me, which simply means you don't
own your own equipment. You don't own your own trucks and if you don't own your own trucks, the next best thing that you can have some controllership over, is guess what? Freight, because trucks need freight. So they have to come to you if you have controllership of the freight. So that's why I think freight should be priority number one. So now without further ado, let's go ahead and check the computer out. I'm gonna show you exactly
how to find shippers. Okay, so now I wanna give you an idea of how we go about looking for shippers. There are different ways of doing this, different people do it different ways but I wanna show you my way. Now, as you can see here, you don't notice me on Blue
Book, MacRAE's Blue Book or Produce Universe. The reason why I don't use that is because to me, Google is just as good or better than those resources are. The reason why I say that is because you still
have to explore the lead. They are just leads. Their leads are all in one place, somebody has already gone out and supposedly had done leg
work to give you the numbers but you still have to go
in and explore the lead, you still have to find
out who the shipper is. So I would rather do
it the way of going out and looking for the information myself. That way, I'm gonna be more aware of what's going on with the customer, because I'm doing the work. I'm putting the work in,
doing the research on my own and then I'm starting
to explore the context. I think is important also to get direction when it comes down to what type of freight you're gonna move, because we can be all over the place when you're looking for dry van freight, refrigerated freight and flatbed freight. So for me, I'm not the type of guy that can be in too many
different areas at one time. I have to go ahead and focus in one area because then I feel more direction and I don't feel like
I'm all over the place and get overwhelmed. So what I am going to do is to choose which area, which niche
would I like to explore. And in my case, I'm gonna
say refrigerated freight. Within refrigerated freight, what type of freight do I wanna move? So I'm gonna say dairy
products or cheese products within refrigerated sector. That way, I'm know exactly what
it is that I'm looking for. Now I can go into Google and start the process of
looking for my shippers. All right, so now let's start the process of actually looking for shippers, looking for the customers that we're gonna be doing business with. Now, if you notice in Google, I've already gone in and put these in, these phrases, cheese distributors
in Appleton, Wisconsin, cheese distribution in Wisconsin, cheese in Wisconsin, cheese warehouses in Appleton, Wisconsin. We want to put a place because then of course, that
narrows the search even more. So if we say cheese
warehouses in Wisconsin, we start off with a broader search. Now, we're not saying
places that sell cheese or cheese shops, we're looking for warehouses
or distribution centers because we wanna move freight
from those centers, okay? We're not looking for cheese for us to eat but cheese for us to move. Wisconsin Cheese Mart. That's like a cheese shop here it says. Let's still look at that. See what it says over here when we look at the picture, okay? So when I see this picture right here and although it says Cheese Mart, it makes me wanna go into this and take a look at it even further, because that may be something
that I'm looking for. Okay, it says Wisconsin Cheese Mart, specialty market features
hundreds of cheeses plus wine. That might not be what I'm looking for. So we'll back out of that
one and go back into, we see Cady Cheese Factory & Shop here. That looked like another shop. Weyauwega Star Dairy Incorporated and then we see that this says warehouse and when we go here, take a look, we don't see anything over there but that's definitely
something we wanna click into and then take a look at a little further. All right, it gives me
the contact information. Then it comes down and
it shows me a picture and this is exactly what I'm looking for. I'm looking for this type of facility because I can look at this and see that this is a
warehousing area, says it here and it gives me the information. So this is one contact that I would put on my
customer spreadsheet and I would do some research on it and I would start contacting Weyauwega Star Dairy Incorporated
as one of my options, to see if we can start
working with those folks. We're gonna put cheese distributors
in Appleton, Wisconsin. Home, Lamers Dairy Incorporated. Locally owned and family operated. That's certainly one you wanna contact. I like to work with
family owned companies. So let's click inside there
and see what we come up with. See what it looks like. What you're gonna notice is a lot of this is just doing a research, it's like almost like
you're a beagle hound and you're trying to sniff
out all of the leads. You're trying to figure out who is available to work with you. Okay, locally owned. Take a look at the team there, see if they got a contact
information in here. Hmm, yeah, so I see a phone number here is in 920 number here and a 866 number. So I have some contact information. It's a lead that we can start to explore. Now let's go into Agropur here. Dairy Foods Magazine. Let's see what they're
saying about Agropur. Hmm, comes out and it gives us some contact information of Agropur, 2701 Freedom Road. Then it gives us a contact
phone number, 920 number. So we would definitely
take down that information and consider it as a contact. Let's go and see what else
we can find on Agropur because they have aroused
my intuition here. Let's see what we got, Agropur. I'm gonna read this to make sure, so Agropur is a top supplier
of frozen mozzarella sticks to the worldwide Foodservice
and CPG Retail channels. Produced in our Little
Chute, Wisconsin plant. That's definitely what we
want to find out more about. This is the type of
company we're looking for. Let's click on that. The cheese maker of
choice, Agropur Cheese. Look like a facility there, you go and click on there, they'll play. Now, let's see what we're working. 1 billion pounds of
cheese produced each year, 2,500 dedicated employees, seven cheese production
plants in five states. Oh yes, this is exactly
what we're looking for. So this is one of the companies that we'll put on our contact
and we'll reach out to them and definitely see if we can
do business with this company. And we'll go back here and we'll
get the contact information and we'll copy that
information right there and we'll put this customer
on our customer contact sheet. And once I find the type
of company I'm looking for, then I wanna know who
their competitors are. So I just put in Agropur
competitors and it comes up and it shows me some
different information here, the top 10 competitors in
Agropur's competitive set are: Ornua, Saputo, Parmalat, Foremost Farms. So I'm getting a lot of
different information just from putting in who
their competitors are. That's gonna give me access to different types of shippers
that may ship cheese or milk. We just have to look into
it a little bit further. And as you can see it comes down and says Agropur's competitors,
revenue, number of employees, even shows here Agropur
Incorporated company profile. We'll click into that. You can see that it shows us all of, let's big it up a little bit. So it gives us the address of the company, gives us a phone number here and then it tells us
something about the company. It says the company description here is located in Wisconsin, United States and is a part of Dairy Products
Manufacturing Industry, has 319 total employees
across all of its locations, generate over 180 million in sales. So quick recap of what we just discuss. Number one, we talked about
the importance of freight. Freight is the most critical piece, that's the piece that we have to conquer in order to be successful
as freight brokers. You have to acquire
customers for your business, otherwise you don't have a business. There's a way to do that. Different people do it in different ways. We showed you our way and we're gonna give you
a quick recap of that. Number one, when you're
going out getting shippers, you have to decide on
what type of platform you're gonna use. Are you just gonna go the Google route, which I definitely like and suggest, because it's free and it's
a very good route to go, you can find whatever you need on Google or you can go to MacRAE's Blue Book or the Produce Universe route, where you can have all of
your leads in one place and you can go in and
just start sourcing leads. Either way works, just
depends on what you wanna do. Don't make a whole big fuss about that, just choose away and go to
work as quickly as possible. The next thing that we talked
about was choosing a niche. Are you gonna work in refrigerated
freight, flatbed freight or drive van freight? I think it's very important
to choose an area. That way you're not all over the place. You are directed, you have more guidance because you're in one area and you're looking for
something in specific instead of just looking all
over the place for everything, because it can kinda
make you get overwhelmed because you feel like you're
in this big huge ocean and you don't know what quite to look for. But when you narrow the space and you're just dealing with one thing, it's a much easier way
to go about the business, in my opinion. And then finally we talked
about once we find a customer, we wanna find out who
their competitors are, because just like we
work with the customer, we also wanna work with their competitors because we don't discriminate. So we're gonna do it
simple, Google search, just put whoever that customer
is and their competitors and then we're gonna start
to source that information. So that's what I wanted
to share with you today. This business is about finding customers, finding those shippers and
then offering your service and continuing to do that so that you can win in this business. I certainly hope this
information has been helpful. I wish you the very best
in your life and business, see you at the top because the
bottom is much too crowded. (logo clinking)
