This transcript was generated with the help of AI and may contain some errors.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:00:00]:
How do we keep working to make the whole life cycle of a commercial vehicle be efficient, helpful for that particular type of customer? Right. And I think we’ll be getting involved in partners, partnerships with insurance, with financing, with maintenance. All of those are what I consider to be the ecosystem to make it easier and easier for the business to focus on what they do.

Kyler Mason [00:00:33]:
Whether you’re going to market through dealers, distributors, or some other partner channel. The mediated sale is complex. We call it B2B2X.

John Gough [00:00:41]:
But the leaders in the industry are the ones who are making it look simple. I’m John Gough.

Kyler Mason [00:00:46]:
And I’m Kyler Mason. And this is Why You Win. Presented by Element Three.

John Gough [00:00:51]:
Kathryn Schifferle is the CVO and Founder of Work Truck Solutions. Work Truck Solutions is a technology company that serves the OEM and the dealer and the upfitter, really every part of the B2B2X ecosystem and commercial vehicle. What makes this conversation really interesting is Kathryn’s experience as a serial entrepreneur. And so in our conversation, she pulls on the threads that have made her successful over the course of several different business ventures and her rules that she has for how to make a company a great place to work. It’s an awesome conversation. We hope you enjoy it. Kathryn, it’s great to have you on the show today. Thanks for coming on.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:01:30]:
You got it, John. Good to be here.

John Gough [00:01:32]:
So you have a very interesting role, and you’ve been in it now for a while. Can you tell us about your role and how you started Work Solutions?

Kathryn Schifferle [00:01:41]:
I should start with. I’m what’s called a serial entrepreneur. Serial entrepreneurs are people that, you know, can’t help themselves from starting companies. It’s. It’s almost a little bit like disease. Right. And so, you know, I’ve had. I’ve had previous companies and I cert.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:01:59]:
I gradually moved into the technology space as technology started happening. And I love the concept that we can build tools that can help our lives be better, that can make things better, that can make us more efficient, that can, you know, help us live better lives. And so that’s sort of the pattern. And yet I had stopped. You know, I’m of an age that I went, okay, maybe that’s enough. And I started teaching and I taught for about 12 years. I will tell you what was really funny. While I was teaching, I was allowed to get my MBA, and so of course I had to sit in the front because I needed to hear and see better than everybody else in the class.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:02:42]:
And then I would be there and I’d be hearing something And I’d go, oh my God. That’s why that happened. Right. You know, because I didn’t have any formal business training before that. In the middle of that, I got introduced. A friend asked me to help a guy who was. He was going to be publishing a magazine for the magazine was, is today, we’re still publishing it, called Ford Pros. And it’s a magazine, it’s a professional magazine.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:03:07]:
It goes to all the Ford dealerships about what’s important around selling commercial vehicles to businesses, which is B2B. And I’ve always instinctively been involved with business-to-business, never business-to-consumer. I’m not personally a big consumer myself. Anyway, I love how businesses work and how to help them and how to solve problems. And so I got introduced to this industry, this commercial space, and I fell in love with it. Hardworking, salt of the earth, backbone of the US economy, powering 80% of our GDP. And they’ll tell you anything. I mean, they’re just good folk.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:03:50]:
And I came out of my last industry was the absolute opposite. I was in the cable television industry, which is not a good culture anything. And for a nickel, they’ll stab you in the back. I mean, no offense to anyone who’s working in that industry, but get out now. And I didn’t understand how important culture was. I didn’t. And then, you know, I love creating content, I love publishing, I love using technology. And so I started doing that while I was teaching.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:04:21]:
And then I found a big problem. And the big problem is that the VIN. And I know you guys all know what a VIN is on a vehicle, right? The VIN is assigned to the vehicle when the OEM is producing it. Chevy or Ford or whatever. But in commercial, the vehicle’s not finished yet. There’s an extra part that goes on the back of the truck or the van gets special equipment in it. Those are called upfits. And that upfit is foundational to its business use.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:04:56]:
And no one was keeping track of what a vehicle became. Now at the time, I still get a little chill when I say that out loud. At the time, it was $130 billion industry annually. New. And I’m looking around and saying, how could this be? I must. I’ve missed something somewhere. Somebody’s doing something. They’re fixing this somewhere.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:05:21]:
I spent a couple of years. I talked to people, I talked to the OEMs, I talked to the upfitters. And it was bad timing. Cause it was 2009 and 10, and that was right after 2008. And everybody was really cranky, right? And so I said, well, you know, this is a big problem, and it’s a problem for dealers. And so I think if, since nobody else is doing this, I’m almost, like, compelled to fix this problem because I don’t think anybody else understands it the same way. Think about it. If you don’t know what a vehicle is, you can’t search for it online.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:05:56]:
So you couldn’t go online and search for a dump truck. That’s the problem. You couldn’t find them anywhere. And the dealers, if you went to a dealer’s website and you were a business, first of all, you didn’t know if that dealer had anything for you. And then the way that you would have to look is you would go to their new inventory and you would start looking at photos and scrolling to try and find a dump truck. And imagine how inefficient that was. Is right. Or you had to drive from dealer’s lot to dealer’s lot and look physically at seeing what they had, which was the most traditional way of commercial sales anyway.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:06:38]:
But, you know, it’s comp. It’s hard. And if you think about it, you know, the cost of building a commercial vehicle meant that dealers didn’t have whole oodles of them like they did on the retail side. So they would get one of these and two of those, but not one of those. And so, you know, it was a huge gap between what the businesses needed and what was available. So the first step that I made was to build a plugin for the dealers websites that handled all that, that took the data, parsed it into commercial, added the upfit information, made it searchable by what it became. We call them wireframes, used little pictures of them. So that, that was.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:07:29]:
So then we started realizing there was a bunch of other problems we were fixing. Like, for example, if I say, hey, I’m interested in a service body, you may think that that means something other than what I think that that means. But if it’s a picture or a diagram, I can click on it. The feed coming for the dealer’s website for the. The chassis and the vans, they have a price on them, an MSRP that they use to populate their website. Well, guess what? That’s not the right price anymore. They’ve just done all this extra work and added, you know, added cost. So it’s really bad if you’re showing the price of something and it’s the wrong price.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:08:07]:
And, you know, there’s. There’s laws around that, too. So they can get, not only get in trouble trouble, but they can be held to it. So there was things like that that we started realizing that we could help. Our platform continued to expand to really focus on how different the commercial department is because it’s a completely different set of customers. It also behaves differently. One customer could equal five vehicles as opposed to 10 customers equaling one vehicle on the retail side. Right.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:08:44]:
And the vehicles of course, are more expensive. So then you get back to the, well, hey, how do I know what to stock? So that was the next really fun thing that happened. About three months into the launch of our first dealer, which by the way, in a few weeks we’re having our 12-year anniversary with that dealer. I called them and I said, hey, Francis, have you ever stocked a dump truck? And he said, I’ve been in this business for 30 years and I’ve never sold a dump truck. And I said, yeah, that’s not what I asked you, have you ever stocked one? He said no. And I go, well, look, it’s the second and third most frequently clicked on wireframe in your listings. He went, oh, and he stocked one and he sold it within 10 days, which is like instant in this space. And now, you know, for the last 12 years he’s had at least probably one dump truck.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:09:38]:
But he also learned seasonally when the activity was greater and developed a whole plan around what time of year he should have two or three of them. And the margins on dump trucks are. I’m not going to say the actual number because that wouldn’t be fair to him, but because I know it, but it’s very, very good. He’s told me many times that one of the reasons why he loves what we do is that his customers can go and look and read and shop and then tell them, you know, and it just helps everybody. And about five years into this maybe I realized that the upfitters, those folks that are doing this, that they have to drive to the dealer’s lot with a clipboard to see what’s still in their channel that they’ve sold. And I went, okay, we can help with that. We started alerting them to when something would move so that they could reach out to the dealer and say, hey, not only did you just sell that dump truck or that service body, but you sold it faster than the last one, so you should probably have two of them, right? And then they didn’t have to worry about their competitor coming in, happening to be the one that drove on that before they could get there in the next two to three weeks. Right.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:11:00]:
Because it’s all about physically having to be there. And then we realized, well, since we could do that, we could actually aggregate all their inventory into a site and put it on the upfitters website so that a customer who’s brand loyal to that upfitter, by the way, their brand names were totally hidden. Nobody knew them other than somebody who maybe had bought one before. And so then we started powering their website with where all their in stock inventory is so that a customer who’s for example, Knapheide is the largest body manufacturer. So Knapheide has, you know, X number, I think 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 vehicles that you could go and just shop right now it’s right on a dealer’s lot. Right then that went so well that we were contacted by General Motors to do the same thing. So we power chevrolet.com, gmc.com and gminvolve.com now we power their commercial listings, their search for them. And actually we are now powering all three of the major.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:12:10]:
Well, Ford will be launched within 30 days, but we launched RAM in July. One of the things that makes me so happy is that everything that we’re doing helps everybody in this space. It’s like this space was so opaque and inefficient that it was affecting negatively everyone, including the end buyer, including the person that. All I’m trying to do is find exactly the right truck. You know, that would be the one that I could live with for the next 10 years that can help me do my job. I want to find it at the right time, I want to find it for the right price and I want to find the right one. Right. So that’s really kind of our mission is making that happen better and better.

Kyler Mason [00:13:01]:
With technology, you’re connecting the dots across all of the places along the shopping journey. So OEM upfitter dealer, what’s next? Like what do you. What does your crystal ball tell you?

Kathryn Schifferle [00:13:15]:
So my favorite little chart that I’ve done is this. It looks like we’re the sun in the center of the solar system. Right. Because the way I think of it is an entire ecosystem. So those are the main physical parts of the vehicle itself. Oh, and I should say we’re also launching. And you’ll be the first to hear this and a partnership with JD Power, we are launching EV hub for commercial vehicles on our national marketplace that we launched five years ago called Comvoy. So comvoy.com and that was kind of our last thing after we were doing OEMs.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:14:00]:
We decided that we should help everybody too. Right. Like Omnichannel. That’s the. That’s the kick right now. Right. Help anybody, wherever they want to be, find what they’re looking for. And so electric vehicles and all vehicles are unique in the space.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:14:16]:
They’re, they have very specific deciders that are different. The geography is really, really important. How big your fleet is kind of important too, like how much you can afford to test things and start going through transition. And then the use case is huge. Right. So we’ve been in that a lot. We’ve had our biannual commercial vehicle business summit.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:14:42]:
It’s always been a bigger topic. And so we just said we need to make a commitment here. And so we have licensed from J.D. Power and are actually partnering with them to customize all the tools that they acquired from ZappyRide when they acquired ZappyRide, which was. They’re the group that’s built all of the total cost of ownership, mapping and building, you know, your routing based on all of the different charging stations. What are the charging stations, how different are they and what are all the different. Accurate across the whole United States. Incentives, amazing set of tools.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:15:22]:
And we’re getting ready to launch that to help businesses because it’s all been. It’s always all about the consumer, but in reality, the businesses are the ones that usually have reasons to try stuff. Right.

Kyler Mason [00:15:33]:
You said electric hub or EV hub. Is that what you called it?

Kathryn Schifferle [00:15:36]:
EV Hub. EV hub, yeah. We’re doing the integration. It’s not just integrating it into Comvoy, it’s making it specific to businesses also.

Kyler Mason [00:15:45]:
Tell me more about that.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:15:47]:
Well, for example, there’ll be a lookup to find a certified electrician to install a level 2 charging station. The total cost of ownership is focused around, you know, business needs, not personal needs. All the vehicles that we’ll be highlighting will all be different. And then when you think beyond that, we’re in the middle of putting together partnerships with other folks. There’s a group called Veriforce. So Veriforce sits in between about 700 large construction companies that do things like bridges and skyscrapers and stuff like that, and 30,000 subcontractors. And they make sure that it’s verified that the subcontractors have the right insurance, that they have all the things that are needed. Right.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:16:38]:
We’ve added an ability for their. For their members to be able to search for commercial vehicles on their membership portal. That went so well. Then. We also have recently announced the same type of approach for a group called Vera. Let’s see, this is Routeway 360, and they sit in between all of the snack and bakery companies and tool Companies that have 45,000 independent route drivers for delivery. Of all of those, they sit in between there and do similar types of services, you know, insurances and et cetera. And we’ve added a search for commercial vehicles on their member platform.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:17:30]:
So we keep looking for, you know, how do we keep working to make the whole life cycle of a commercial vehicle be efficient, helpful for that particular type of customer. Right. And I think we’ll be getting involved in partners, partnerships with insurance, with financing, with maintenance. All of those are what I consider to be the ecosystem to make it easier and easier for the business to focus on what they do rather than having to worry about their vehicle. And, you know, these are mostly what we’re focused on. Like, about half the numbers of commercial vehicles sold each year go to big fleets, but 64% of all fleets are five vehicles or fewer. So, you know, who’s serving them. And that’s really a lot about what.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:18:33]:
What’s going on here, too, is helping Those smaller fleets, 5, 10, 15, 20 fleet, you know, vehicles, helping them get through what’s become a more and more complicated environment for all of us. I mean, clearly, everything, right?

John Gough [00:18:48]:
Katherine, when you talk about being a serial entrepreneur, one of the things that stands out to me is, well, I guess two things. First of all, you gotta be willing to sell. And the partnerships that you are describing over the course of this journey, even just in the last couple of minutes, ring in my ears about a willingness to identify a problem and then go say, hey, I can fix that. I can fix that. And just be willing to raise your hand, which I’m totally in love with. And the other part of it is this sort of just innate sense that no problem is not an interesting problem. Right. Several of the problems that you’ve described, they were not your problems.

John Gough [00:19:23]:
You were an educator, and then you became aware of them and you thought, well, I’m just. I can solve that. I’m interested in that. I can be interested in that. And that willingness to be interested just cascades into a moment where you’re partnering with J.D. Power and Ford from being a teacher. It’s such a cool progression, what I.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:19:44]:
Learned about myself, because as a serial entrepreneur before, the ideas were all mine, they were things that I was. I thought I’d figured out something that somebody wanted or that I could get somebody, like you said that I could sell to somebody. This was really more I don’t know if I could call it a labor of love, but it’s definitely. This business has been different for me. It’s been more about helping and making sure that there’s positive outcomes for everyone. And that’s what’s given me the passion. And I will tell you, passion is a huge part of being successful. You know, if you’re just going into something, anything, you know the question back of why you win.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:20:30]:
Right. Passion is at the top because it’s not always easy. But if you have passion, you can hang in there. You know, I’ve had a lot of people say, well, you’re just. You’re just so determined. You’re just, you know, you just stay, I mean, 12 years. Oh, you know, actually, 14 years. Yeah.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:20:50]:
Right. But it’s the passion that fuels it and drives it. Like, I know that what I’m doing is something important for other people, and I’ve figured out that that’s actually more important to me.

John Gough [00:21:01]:
I love that thematically, too. In this show, we’ve talked to futurists and we’ve talked to ev dealers and we’ve talked to people who are selling tractors. And it may be as surprising or would be surprising to somehow, often that is the answer. Like, I actually care about the problem that I’m solving. That’s why you’re winning.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:21:23]:
Yeah. And to me, it makes it even stronger when it’s through the problem to the people. I went from an intellectual problem solver, right. In my first companies where, the problem was interesting. Like you said, I liked the problem. And now it’s not just that I like the problem. I really like what the results can deliver to other people. And it was a big step for me.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:21:50]:
I will tell you. When I was getting ready to start Work Truck Solutions, I said, holy cow. I’ve made so many mistakes. And unfortunately, some of them more than once. I need to have a list of at least three things that I’ve learned or I’m not starting another company. Right?

Kyler Mason [00:22:05]:
Did you do that process?

Kathryn Schifferle [00:22:07]:
I did. I don’t know if you’re going to have to bleep this or not, but rule number one is no assholes. It never works. It doesn’t matter how much you think you can get from a relationship in a business perspective if it’s not a good person. And so the definition of that word obviously has to be clarified. Right. But it never works out. And so don’t let things trick you into thinking that somehow the money or the leverage or the whatever is going to be worth the time it’s not.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:22:43]:
And rule number two is really kind of what we were just talking about. For me personally, I needed to really embrace. I like smart people. I really do. But I had to embrace the concept that I was going to hire smart people, make sure that we were all on the same page, you know, the goal, and then let them do it their way. I wish I’d learned that earlier in my life because it was a big game changer for me because worrying about how they were doing, it was getting in the way of things getting done. And I even believe it was a blocker for me to the universe. And what I mean by that is, as soon as I kind of let go that way, magical things started happening.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:23:32]:
Serendipity. Whether people really believe that that is a kind of a separate thing, or it’s because you’re able to pay attention to opportunities differently. It was so intense, and so much happened where I’d go. But that was the next step. Look, they’re right there. Kind of things, right. You know, that I had to put a label on it because it was almost a little weird. So you want to know the label, too?

Kyler Mason [00:23:56]:
Yeah.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:23:57]:
Truckma.

Kyler Mason [00:23:58]:
How do you spell it?

Kathryn Schifferle [00:24:00]:
T R, U, C, K, M, A. Like karma, only with truck.

Kyler Mason [00:24:10]:
That’s so good.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:24:14]:
The third was really. I had, you know, multiple companies before. I’m not a. I’ve not in my past been a terribly patient person. I really, you know, entrepreneurs are often people that think everybody else should be just care just as much and work just as hard and blah, blah, blah, Right. So I’m like, okay, this time I’m going to really think about the work environment. In one of my companies. I had allowed a person to be in the company.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:24:40]:
That was not good. And I learned. Thank goodness I can learn. And so it was perfect timing because it was right around the time, this is like 13 years ago, where Google and Whole Foods, there was so much discussion around their alternative business culture environment. So there was a lot being written about it. And I’m like, okay, you know, it’s certainly. I’m not afraid to do things that are different, but it was definitely permission in the. In the environment that, you know, didn’t maybe exist ten years before that.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:25:17]:
Right. And so I said, okay, rule number three, I’m gonna build the best darn culture of a company ever. And I made a list of the things that I thought would make a place great to work. Transparency. So we monthly have. We share everything. We share our financials, everything that’s going on in A meeting once a month with everybody. Collaboration.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:25:44]:
We encourage collaboration. We encourage lively discussion. We encourage people not quite yelling at each other almost. Right. And then making better decisions because of that. Right. We encourage support and appreciation. We do lots of things where we talk about.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:26:04]:
Every week there’s a. We have a little history thing where we. It used to be physically, we’d pass this little truck to somebody and they got the parking spot for a week. We’re 100% virtual now. We changed it to a gift card, but the person who was giving the truck explained why they were giving it to the other person. You know, what’s been done, why they appreciate them and all of that. And then we had to make two of them because we made a rule where you couldn’t do that to people in your department because that just was like a circle. Right.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:26:33]:
And then. So then you got. You had to do it out of. But then one in your department, too. And so, you know, every week we talk about that kind of stuff. It’s hard work, by the way, to build a culture. You have to pay attention all the time. A culture will do whatever it feels like if you’re not paying attention to it.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:26:53]:
And about five years in, I could see that we started having a little anchor group of people that believed the same thing, that really appreciated it and that would keep an eye out for people that weren’t. And then it wasn’t like. It wasn’t like they got ostracized. It was more like everybody noticed, you know. And then we got really good at not finding bad people. But then we started realizing, well, you know, but they really need to fit too. It’s not just that they can’t be bad. It’s that it’s not good for anybody if they don’t.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:27:26]:
And we’re hard workers. All of us are hard workers. So you gotta be a hard worker. You’ve got to appreciate this kind of lively environment that is very open. And. And then as a software company, the other thing I started. Oh, thank goodness for the, for the cloud.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:27:43]:
Oh, every day almost. My software company was hardware, software and floppies and. Oh, my gosh, you know, now, yay. But, you know, doing sprints is a very quick way of iterating. And what I realized is that that’s another thing that I felt a culture needed to be. Like learning, but also embracing the concept that if you are always learning, you should be always improving, which means that you’re iterating. And so then that became another real big part of our culture. And not everybody can live in that kind of space.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:28:21]:
They can’t. There’s a lot of people that need to know where their cheese is every morning when they get up. I don’t know. I have to say that for me, I love what we’ve built in the company around the culture. And we. It has continued to grow in reputation to the point now where most of our employees are referrals. And a lot of times they’re people that have been waiting a couple of years. That just makes me feel so amazing.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:28:47]:
So I used to talk to every employee before they were hired. I didn’t, like, do the interviews, but I would. You know, that’s how you do it. You say, here’s the culture. If you’re going to be offered a job, you need to understand it’s a responsibility. And it’s something that is also kind of. You should feel proud that you could fit in. And then a little over two years ago, I handed off the CEO role, which was the most phenomenal thing I ever did for me and the company, because I am not a natural operator.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:29:25]:
Like, I would do it because it had to be done and I would be responsible, but it’s not like I’m instinctive at it. Right. I was able to bring on a guy that I’d known for a long time. He actually helped me with the modeling in the early day. But he was the president of a software company, an ERP software company, you know, had his own career. And then he came. His name is Aaron. His this teaching seems like it would be very interesting.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:29:48]:
And I said, you know what would be even more interesting? You should come and work for me. And by the way, half the people working for me used to work for you. He is a perfect operator and with the same culture, feelings. Like, we look at things from opposite sides, but we always end up in the same place. And so I’m very, very fortunate. And now I don’t interview them before or talk to them before, but after they’re on for a couple of weeks, I, I do get to do a little yacht rah rah about culture and congratulate them for making the cut.

Kyler Mason [00:30:23]:
That’s very cool. How’d you know that you were ready to make that decision to hand off the operator role?

Kathryn Schifferle [00:30:30]:
That’s a great question. And it’s interesting for me because when I went to start this company, I said, okay, I’m going to do. I’m not going to mortgage my house yet again because I promised my husband. Okay, we’ve done that three times. And paid it off, right? So I did the traditional seed round, then an A, then a B and then a B1, because we were going to launch Comvoy. So, you know, that all exists. So we have very wonderful investors.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:31:00]:
And you know, when it got really frothy, the valuations got really frothy in 2021, we started looking at maybe doing, you know, the next stage of the company, which would be an exit for our investors. And then of course, in first quarter of ’22, the economy went bizarro and we had laid out our roadmap, but everybody went, well, but that’s just a roadmap. You haven’t actually done that yet. And so we went, yeah, nevermind. But in the course of putting all of that together and examining it and et cetera, and Aaron was basically my coo, we talked about it and I said, we can accomplish this if I can focus on growth, if I can focus on business development and if I can focus on vision. And would you be willing to step into the CEO role? Because it is a commitment. Right? I mean, you know, he’s the boss now, our attorney, who is a nice big firm in Sacramento. He said he has never seen a founder transition like that before.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:32:06]:
It was not just graceful, it was highly beneficial for everybody. People ask me, are you working less? I go, no, I actually work more. But I’m really enjoying it a lot. Right. Because we’re at that place now where literally, you know, we were just talking this morning just before this about what 25 is going to be like. And we really think that dealers are, are becoming more and more aware of how important the commercial environment the businesses around them are in their market. And you know, we feel that what’s happening over the next year or two is going to be like what happened with F&I in a dealership where they went from, you know, their brother-in-law running it to making it a real thing.

Kyler Mason [00:32:48]:
When you say dealers are going to realize, are you saying that the traditional like retail mindset dealerships are going to start to like broaden their horizons and understand the opportunity in commercial more? Is that what you’re meaning?

Kathryn Schifferle [00:33:04]:
Okay, I do. And I mean in a broader sense of what commercial is too traditionally. Like when I started, they were 65-year-old white guys selling white trucks that had cranes on them. Right. That was the definition. And they did not have smartphones or know how to use the email. Now when you, if you have ever done any kind of market analysis around the difference between B2B and B2C and you understand that then you can look at your market and you can say, what are all the different ways that I can serve businesses in my market? And it may be that as a dealer you don’t ever want to sell a medium-duty truck. That’s okay.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:33:48]:
It would be easier now because we’ve got this old guy’s brain in our software, right? You don’t have to have somebody that knows how to build a truck, right. Anymore. But it’s still a certain type of customer. So maybe all you want to do is sell to the, you know, some of the local businesses that do deliveries or that, you know, need a special kind of bins and boxes or want to understand how, what the financing difference is for commercial versus personal. And it’s a separate thing. And so, yeah, I really believe that it’s an opportunity for any dealer. They just have to decide where in that, you know, that range of opportunity they want to tap. And the more that they want to tap it, the more there are resources now.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:34:40]:
And you can see this in the OEMs. I mean, when Ford launched Ford Pro, right, they were declaring to the world that a big chunk of their business is commercial. They’ve built other products around it, telematics, charging, because they’re businesses, they’re not consumers. And then GM launched GM involve, which is their kind of commitment to broader understanding of fleet environment, which could be small or large fleet. And then Stellantis launched Stellantis Pro1, right? And so they see that this is, here’s the bottom line, it doesn’t ever go away. It doesn’t matter what’s going on, what were the vehicles that you saw when we were all home. It doesn’t stop. So why would you not want to be involved, especially as a dealer in your community? You know, that was another thing.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:35:39]:
I’m like, it’s so weird sometimes for me to think about. I had the same problem when I was in the cable television industry. I kept trying to get the cable company to understand how with our system that they could, they could do content for their local community. And they were like, yeah, we don’t really care about that. Like, but you should, you should care about that, right? And so I’m not having, you know, flashbacks or anything like that, but because now I really believe that the dealers do, they do care about their community. And part of it is it’s smart too, but part of it too is it’s kind of like in their DNA. That’s where they got started. They’re all unique for sure.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:36:18]:
Every dealer has their own way of thinking about their business and their community. I think that that’s something that we were lucky because I had to arm wrestle every dealer one by one by one. We didn’t get a contract with an OEM to start with. We know what best practices are, but we will customize it to whatever the dealer wants and help them see benchmarks around what they’re doing versus what they could be doing. All sorts of things like that. Right.

Kyler Mason [00:36:45]:
You went dealer to dealer.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:36:47]:
Uh huh. We have 1200 dealers and we’ve closed the only deal that we’ve closed that was bigger than a few. We do have Hendrick. They made a very smart decision to get in to commercial and they kind of selected, I mean they already had quite a few that they acquired that were involved with us, but they looked at it as a new business. Go figure. Let’s figure it out, like who should be doing it.

Kyler Mason [00:37:13]:
Paint that picture for me. Were you, were you calling, were you walking into dealerships? What did this look like?

Kathryn Schifferle [00:37:20]:
Yes, early on it was anything we could do. But think about it because first of all, dealers are hard to track down and get to talk to you anyway. And then you’ve got this extra problem of the dealer principal probably doesn’t know exactly what this guy in the trailer in the back is doing. Right. So we really had to start with the users. We really had to start with the users. And then of course they didn’t like technology. That’s why it took so long.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:37:48]:
It took so long.

Kyler Mason [00:37:50]:
Who are the users though? Really quick, before you keep going, when you said the users, who were they?

Kathryn Schifferle [00:37:54]:
Commercial salespeople. There were enough big powery things like somebody can actually see your inventory and they can actually search for it and then they can reach out to you. That, that, that was enough that we were able to slowly build a group of dealers. But it’s been, you know, it’s. There’s so many conflicts in the dealership that affect us like between the department and the retail part of the business where the marketing person is. Doesn’t understand the difference between commercial. We try to foster education but a lot of times the marketing people, well, they’re experts at retail, right? They’re experts. They are.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:38:31]:
And so to separate it out and say, well, we have a lot fewer leads, but the leads are closers and the closers are for a lot more money. And you have to look at the maths that way. But it’s challenging. So there’s been lots of challenging things. And I will say we were probably the first company in northern California with GoToMeeting. I kicked that off right away because I did my cable business from Northern California and I worked on the phone and I talked to people and I got them excited and I got them interested. And then we would fly and have a final sale meeting or a demo and just do what you gotta do. It’s really selling the idea.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:39:17]:
But having the product that provides functional benefits right out of the gate and then having some folks that will. Will say that, you know, we’ve been very fortunate that. And I will say the other thing is that, you know, I knew right away it wasn’t going to be 100% technology. I mean, we’re literally 50% customer service and 50% technology. Because when I first started the company, I said to the small group of employees, if the dealer has to do anything, it won’t happen. And that it was all about us doing the work and making sure that the work got done correctly and making sure that we could communicate that we got the work done and all of that. That was in 2012 and then 2014. I noticed our team had grown a little bit, and I noticed that there was a little bit of, like, I don’t know, kind of sarcasm around it and maybe a little bit of joking about, well, you know, those dealers, man, they don’t do anything.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:40:20]:
And I’m like, okay, we got a problem here. You know, I do not want that kind of attitude because these are our customers. And by the way, they deserve to not have to do anything. Look at how much other stuff that they’re doing, right? So I thought, okay, how can I fix this? Well, I’m going to have a contest and we’ll see. You know, there’s a murder of crows and there’s a herd of elephants. So what is the name for a group of dealers? So the winner, winner, winner, chicken dinner. They got a really nice night out with their partner, a blessing.

Kyler Mason [00:40:58]:
Oh. So they had to submit their recommended names.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:41:07]:
We had a whole bunch of the team that they all put in things, and I picked that one. That’s right. You know, it is. It’s all about customer service and being there for people and being, I think, the other thing, too. And maybe we’ve heard or maybe we’ve kind of seen this recently, but people want people to be real. They want people to be who they are and not these layers of stuff over the top, you know, be genuine. And I think that our culture fosters that. I’ve had a couple of the recent people tell me that for them, it Was very weird to be in the first meeting in our company because there was so much lively conversation, not quite argument but you know I like this or I think this and da da da da da da.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:41:58]:
Like that. Right. And at the end of the meeting we there was a decision of what to do. Right. And they had not experienced that they’d been in environments where people were afraid to talk. And I just think that that’s such a waste because true diversity is in the mind. It’s how everybody thinks differently. That’s what we really want to have.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:42:21]:
One of the other listed things for our culture is a good idea can come from anyone. We’re very flat.

John Gough [00:42:29]:
I think that your, that your rules, your first three especially just speak so much to that experience and just the value of having a little bit of ground under your shoes to know that building culture, no a holes, hire smart people and let them work those things you can read that advice is not, it’s not hard to come by but it is hard to earn. And until you earn a little bit of it, you don’t really appreciate how valuable it really is. And I think that that story you just told about people coming in and sort of looking around maybe a little bit wide-eyed and thinking like I didn’t know where it could be like this. It’s a great thing to be able to give to people and another sort of notch in your belt, a thing you should be really proud of.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:43:13]:
It actually is the thing I’m the most proud of. I’m the most grateful for an opportunity honestly to fix some of the things that I didn’t understand before. I didn’t understand that that was really the most important part.

Kyler Mason [00:43:28]:
What happens when you find yourself in a prospective client environment where you don’t sense culture values match, you know, when.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:43:39]:
You’re genuine, you don’t have to worry about that. It is true that I may tone my genuine person down a little bit. Right. But I am genuinely interested in hearing their problems. I am genuinely interested in helping. There is no culture that gets in the way of that period. Two ears, only one mouth. Listen more.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:44:06]:
That’s really part of the rule, right?

Kyler Mason [00:44:08]:
Oh yeah. I think that’s a two-way street what you’re describing. And I think it’s a part of your core in your everyday life. And that’s like you said to new employees, even for your prospects that could be jarring. That could be really not normal. I think you could find people be like I don’t even know how to react to this. This is different business than I’m used.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:44:30]:
To as a business. We have customer service people and salespeople. They are much more traditionally scripted, but they are also empowered and expected to be customer-centric. Because that’s really what I’m talking about in my own kind of flamboyant way, I guess, would be, you know, to answer your true meaning. Being customer-centric overcomes a lot of confusion around culture. Right. If it’s all about them, we don’t really run into. How would we go make a decision, right? Because it’s all about them.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:45:06]:
And. But it is true. I mean, there’s people that you can’t. I know all three of them that don’t like us. You know, it’s always about communication. I mean, human nature is not a mystery. If there’s something wrong in the communication that they’re not understanding that it’s a genuine desire to help them. They’re feeling defensive, they’re feeling somebody has said something to them that because they didn’t, you know, something happened and then they.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:45:32]:
They built everything around that. Like a house of cards or something. I mean. Yeah, that’s just like again, that’s another type of puzzle, right? It’s another type of challenge.

Kyler Mason [00:45:42]:
This show is called Why You Win. And we are talking about like the people in B2, B2X, you know, distributing through dealerships, either to consumer or business. And a lot of it’s like strategy and go to market decisions and things like those are very important. And a lot of what we’re talking about today is from your heart. And I think that’s another very important way to win.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:46:07]:
It is. Again, it’s persistence and passion come from that. I think there’s so many sports analogies, you know, around winning in business. And practice makes perfect. Always practice the way you’re going to play. You know, I do a monthly little workshop with our team, but my. One of my commitments to our culture is that our team, if they want, can continue to improve their careers. Right.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:46:35]:
Whether they’re going to stay with us or whether they’re going to go somewhere else. And I mean, there’s no amount of effort that is wasted if you’re working to get better or you’re working to be good at presenting or good at writing or good at, you know, analysis or whatever. Like everything you do, it’s like sports. Anything you do is going to help you. So you know, people that don’t make that commitment. That’s. That’s where I would say it’s on you. What is it 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:47:08]:
That’s maybe a little extreme, but it’s true, you know, in that you have to do the work.

Kyler Mason [00:47:13]:
Does that show up in your core values somewhere, whatever you just described?

Kathryn Schifferle [00:47:16]:
Well, I said we’re hard workers. Yes, I do have that in there. Because what would happen is there’d be somebody over there and everybody would be going, what’s he doing? What’s she doing? You know, like we’re all over here working. Right? So you can’t do that. You can’t do that. You’ve got to be hard worker.

John Gough [00:47:35]:
Kathryn, you’ve given a lot of, a lot of gold to people out there. Typically, what I would ask you at this point is what would you say to your younger self? What advice would you give to somebody coming up and was looking at you and saying, man, I want to be just like her when I grow up?

Kathryn Schifferle [00:47:52]:
Well, you know, I was teaching at a four-year college for a while and I’ve had conversations with younger people. Part of it is I like to encourage them not to stress too much when they’re younger because they probably don’t know exactly what they should be doing. And so I worry because I see young people that are all stressed about not knowing their whole career by the time they’re a senior in college. Right. I’m like, no, explore. But the most important things to explore are you should look for culture and you should look for, you know, people that you want to work with because that’s going to get you to where you want to be faster than the best job offer with, for money or the most exciting job title or the whatever, you know, work with people that you like, work in a culture and either at the business or in the industry that you like. That’s what I think. And I’m very different in that my pathway.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:49:00]:
I did a lot of traveling. I, you know, did crazy things. I had a lot of wiggles to work out and bad decisions to make first.

Kyler Mason [00:49:11]:
I bet you are glad that you did, though.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:49:14]:
I am, I am. I have some pretty great adventures and, and things that I’ve experienced. I feel, I feel very for. I’m such a fortunate person. I mean, I’m not saying I haven’t had huge, you know, bad problems, but I do believe that we’re fortunate to be here and that if you have the right attitude and you go forward that you can be lucky and every morning you should just be thankful. But one of the best quotes I ever heard was, you know, you understand that I believe in hard work. So this isn’t something that I’m saying you shouldn’t care, but you should know what’s important to you because you can be successful within that framework of success without being measured by how much money you’re making and how many cars you have and what kind of, you know, all of that. Those are scorekeepers.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:50:06]:
Yeah, I get that. I get that I’m very competitive, but that’s not what makes me happy.

John Gough [00:50:13]:
That’s great. Great place to end it. Kathryn, you’re putting great Truckma back into the universe. We appreciate you. This has been awesome. And we’ve got a lot more, a lot more stories to hear in the second episode.

Kyler Mason [00:50:26]:
Oh, yeah, we do. Thank you so much for, for joining us.

Kathryn Schifferle [00:50:29]:
Yeah, it was nice meeting you guys.

John Gough [00:50:31]:
Why You Win is presented by Element Three, a marketing firm focused on modernizing go-to-market strategies for manufacturers that sell through complex distribution channels. We help leaders solve problems across demand generation, sales channel support and brand development.

Kyler Mason [00:50:47]:
If you’d like more from myself or John, connect with us on LinkedIn. And for more from Element Three, visit elementthree.com. That’s elementthree.com