Tristan Bordallo: 11:45
Yeah. The ground. You had to take pictures of real people or you can’t. You can’t take the their backs, right?
John Corcoran: 11:50
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. All right, I want to ask you about your best friend. Still your best friend to this day. His father was successful.
I don’t know what that level of success was. Maybe it was. It was the 90s, right. So maybe he was driving a Jaguar or something like that, or a Lexus or something along those lines. But what was it that you were like, I want to know what this guy does.
And and you end up asking him what he did.
Tristan Bordallo: 12:14
Yeah. My I mean, my best friend Jeremy, he was he’s what I love about him is no matter how, you know, successful his dad was, he’s just just a cool kid. And we got along pretty well. And, you know, he was driving a his mom’s M3 to school, and he had he and he had a path. I think it was a pathfinder.
It’s a a a or a Honda. Whatever the Honda was, I’m like, gosh, I, I had a 1986 Nissan Stanza that I had to wait till my brother graduated so I could drive it my junior year.
John Corcoran: 12:46
Yeah.
Tristan Bordallo: 12:48
So like his, his dad was super successful in brokerage. He started in brokerage before anyone, you know, in the 90s. So that wasn’t a thing back then. And and he just did really well for himself. And I wanted that lifestyle because I didn’t want to wear a suit and a tie.
And I just, you know, and talk about success. I mean, he has an awesome house in Malibu.
John Corcoran: 13:14
So you turn so you turn to his dad one day and you say, what do you do to pay for all this?
Tristan Bordallo: 13:19
Yeah, because I would go on, you know, I remember sophomore year we were he was his. He’s like, hey Tristan, you know, go snowboarding with me, go to summer camp. I was like summer camp like at Mount Hood to go snowboarding. And I’m like, so my whole entire life, like, Jeremy would have the best.
John Corcoran: 13:40
Amazing.
Tristan Bordallo: 13:40
Yeah. Amazing life. Like he would. He would go to coast. He’s like, dude, just pay your ticket.
You could stay with us at Costa Rica. And, you know, I’d go with them to, like, when I went snowboarding, it was like ski in, ski out at Salt Lake City, right? And I was like, what? What is it that you guys do? And so.
And his dad was never dressed in a suit, right. Like and and that’s what I was attracted to. And so I asked and it was broken and I was like, what is that? Because, you know, we all know real estate. We all know, you know, Wall Street brokerage.
But this brokerage was it’s different. I was like, wow, I like this, I like this, and it’s residual income, right? You people are constantly shipping.
John Corcoran: 14:23
And so did he then take you under his wing after that? Did he you know what happened next after you asked him about it.
Tristan Bordallo: 14:32
Yeah. No he he he always thought I always had a, you know, a good personality for it and that I could be successful. And he, Jeremy and I graduated. He graduated from USC. I went to CSUN.
I went to all the USC parties, though, that Jeremy went to. And we I remember asking him, like, what are you going to do after your year of traveling is over? And so he he had like he had this whole trip planned. And I only went to two months of it backpacking in Europe, but he took off for a whole year and he’d come back with no job I was working at. I forgot maybe the bank or and then I got, I was like, when he came back from his trip, I said, let’s go work for your dad.
And we asked his dad, and he didn’t actually train us. He had someone training and.
John Corcoran: 15:24
He didn’t want to be the one to train you.
Tristan Bordallo: 15:26
No way. Because we we actually, I actually got fired, man, the first two weeks because I was with Jeremy, we went to go like our first two weeks. We thought we ran the company. We were, you know, we were we were very cocky kids. right?
Like. And we got fired. And because we we we went back in the days, you’d have to go buy tickets. There was a Ticketmaster. Do you remember the Ticketmaster?
John Corcoran: 15:46
Yeah. Yeah.
Tristan Bordallo: 15:47
We had this idea that we could go from San Pedro to downtown LA for our one hour break, to go buy the tickets to this rave and back. We get stuck in traffic. We don’t come back for 2.5 hours.
John Corcoran: 15:59
Oh, so you got fired.
Tristan Bordallo: 16:01
You got fired? I had to beg for my job back. But yeah, I really learned a lot doing that. And I hustled my way. I proved that I, you know, I just I just focused on building my account base.
And then in three months, I asked to be a 1099 and that’s when I started my journey.
John Corcoran: 16:21
So you said you wanted to be a 1099 because you wanted more control over your, your your, your commissions and things like that.
Tristan Bordallo: 16:30
Yeah. I mean, when you’re a W2, you have to stay in the office. And I talked to some of the outside sales reps and I go, wow, that’s you know, that’s a way better lifestyle. I’m able to get out of the office. I don’t have to pound these calls.
I can I can go out because he his his dad also had a business partner that required us to to have to make those calls.
John Corcoran: 16:49
Okay.
Tristan Bordallo: 16:49
And so as soon as I landed a few accounts that I thought I could be self-sustainable, I jumped on the chance to get 1099 to be 1099, because when am I ever going to have a chance to be this young, to have no responsibilities, you know, to just to go out and try it and risk it. So it wasn’t that much of a risk anyways.
John Corcoran: 17:10
You did this for a number of years, kind of building your reputation and eventually you, you go to work for covenant. And this is kind of like I believe the structure here is kind of like you buying a franchise within covenant, which is doing brokerage as well.
Tristan Bordallo: 17:28
Yeah. So it’s an agency model. Covenant is a publicly traded company that has our own assets. So they have their trucks. But in 2009 and, you know, right around like 2004 or 5 six, there was a lot of brokerages.
So a lot of trucking companies that own assets wanted to get into the brokerage space. So they said so that’s what they did. They started a it’s called an agency program. It’s just like a franchise. But there’s not an upfront fee.
But there is a book of business that you had to have before. Back then, you had to have 500 to $1 million in book of business in order to have an agency, because covenant wasn’t going to take a risk on you to just be a sales rep, you actually had to be established.
John Corcoran: 18:06
Does that mean you took that with you from diversified?
Tristan Bordallo: 18:10
Yeah. I mean, the full truckload side, right. Like because diversified was LTL. There’s so many things in trucking. If you’re not trucking, you know, there’s LTL, then there’s truck loads and then there’s there’s airfreight and then there’s international.
Then there’s rail. There’s so many different types of brokerages. And then there’s drayage brokerage. So we we we wanted to focus on full truckloads. I didn’t for the first five years, I learned LTL and I turned down a lot of full truckload business.
And and that’s why we partnered up with covenant, because at the end of the day, we weren’t really, you know, there was no conflict of interest. We were doing LTL still with diversified, so I still had my diversified accounts, but then I was building my truckloads because anyone that does LTL is also doing full truckloads too.
John Corcoran: 18:53
Okay.
Tristan Bordallo: 18:53
So I was able to get that business up and running right away.
John Corcoran: 18:56
Got it. Okay. And then and you do that for about nine years and at some point you decide to part ways. Was that a difficult decision because you you actually had to do a non-compete after that. Is that correct?
Tristan Bordallo: 19:10
Yeah. So my business partner, he was you know, we met on the sales floor at Diversified Transportation, and we also started covenant together. You know, joined our books so that we can, you know, qualify to become an agent. And so, you know, things were awesome. I mean, you know, we I made, you know, made more money than I ever thought I’d ever make in my whole entire life.
It was good for me. And it was just something about being 40 turned 40 in 2018, and I just felt like I wanted legacy. I didn’t want to be under the brand of covenant, and I just just wanted to do my thing and my my business partner said, all right, you know, you could do that. And you just just signed a non-compete and for one year. And the funny thing.
John Corcoran: 20:00
Is, you couldn’t do anything in freight and trucking for that period of time.
Tristan Bordallo: 20:04
No, no.
John Corcoran: 20:05
I.
Tristan Bordallo: 20:05
Mean, because, look, you’re not you’re not competing. If you’re a brokerage with an asset based company, you’re not really in, you’re not really competing because it’s a totally different type of customer that wants assets versus the brokerage model. So it wasn’t really I wasn’t really stepping on his toes. Now the the funny thing was I wanted to start a brokerage too.
And covenant. Being a Christian company, they didn’t haul alcohol. And so I had I was like, well, I’m just gonna start a brokerage just to do alcohol. So yeah, I landed. Funny thing is, I landed, which is still my account today, a big wine account.
So I still have them. I met them on the airport on the way to go see my full truckload customer in Portland. So I was.
John Corcoran: 20:54
Just randomly at the airport.
Tristan Bordallo: 20:56
It was. So it’s such. I get so lucky returning my rental car.
John Corcoran: 21:01
Really? Wow.
Tristan Bordallo: 21:02
Yeah. That’s funny.
John Corcoran: 21:03
It’s not even at a conference or anything like that.
Tristan Bordallo: 21:05
Nope. They came from a conference. It was a wine conference, and we were flying back down to LA. And I was.
John Corcoran: 21:12
Like, did they have, like, something that you that you saw that, like, reason that you said something or anything like that.
Tristan Bordallo: 21:19
The believe it or not, I had I was like saving. I was hoarding water from my hotel because I, you know, I get like two waters a day. And I was like, I can’t drink all this water and then I can’t even take it with me. So I literally had like six bottles of water and they rolled up right behind me at the right, behind me when rental car return and I and I go, hey, you guys want water? And then I gave them.
They took my water. They they drank some of it. And we started talking. And then we end up in the elevator together. Just start talking some more.
I go and I asked what they were doing. They asked me what I was doing, and I knew the carrier that they were working with because they, you know, that somehow come up and I go, hey, I’m a carrier. And then I showed them pictures of my trucks. And then from then it was just game on, like they that trust and that and funny thing was they were at flying Alaska. So we’re hanging out the whole time waiting and just talking.
It was it was so amazing. So it I get lucky, you know I mean.
John Corcoran: 22:17
So Iamfr8. You have two different businesses Fr8topia and Iamfr8. Iamfr8 is asset based. Means you meaning you own the trucks. Was that difficult to or had you were you familiar with that model from before? But to me, in my my uninformed mind, to me it seems like, holy crap, you’re buying a bunch of trucks.
That seems very expensive to to put that together.
Tristan Bordallo: 22:40
Oh yeah, I started with three and I’ve never done it before. I don’t even drive a truck. I just thought it would be a way better.
John Corcoran: 22:48
How much are these trucks? How much are these trucks cost?
Tristan Bordallo: 22:51
At that time, they were 140. I couldn’t even buy a trailer. Right. Like, I, I couldn’t even buy a trailer, I.
John Corcoran: 22:58
So you’re talking we’re talking like $400,000 worth of trucks to buy three trucks.
Tristan Bordallo: 23:03
Yeah. I mean, the the loan total was like 450,000 plus. I had to pay 10% down for my first three trucks and then find the drivers to operate it, right?
John Corcoran: 23:13
Yeah. Yeah. And then what if a driver doesn’t show up on Monday morning?
Tristan Bordallo: 23:18
Yeah. It was like, oh, man, it was you know, ignorance is I think one of my the thing that worked for me the best is because I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and so I just went about it and just just do what I always do just hustle, make it work. And, you know, I had a customer that was willing to support me. I was I was actually hauling their trailers, so I couldn’t even afford a trailer, by the way, like, you can’t do anything with a tractor without a trailer, right? Like they just they disconnect.
So I, I, I knew going into it, it was going to be really, really tough. But I had I didn’t know, but if, if, if I knew now what I know there’s no way in the world I could have started it because there’s so much involved, so much risk.
John Corcoran: 24:03
And it’s so much it’s regulated and highly regulated.
Tristan Bordallo: 24:07
Especially being in California. And I actually ChatGPT this and it said California is the hardest state to run a trucking company. And I went, wow, that’s crazy. Like, imagine if I had ChatGPT back then. There was no way in the world I would have launched this company because I would have had too much information.
So I like being I like being dumb because.
John Corcoran: 24:28
Yeah.
Tristan Bordallo: 24:29
It’s literally the best the, the it’s like my superpower. Like, I don’t know, I’m just gonna go, it’s like.
John Corcoran: 24:36
There’s your headline for your book. By the way, being dumb is my superpower. I like that.
Tristan Bordallo: 24:41
Yeah. It was like even back in my surfing days or like snowboarding days, I’m like, why? Why is no one out today?
John Corcoran: 24:47
Oh, yeah. Because it’s storming. Yeah. Yeah.
Tristan Bordallo: 24:51
Like like, you know, it’s one of those things that you got, you gotta. It’s like you gotta. You’re never gonna find out if you don’t f around. So. Yeah.
John Corcoran: 24:59
So let’s talk a little bit about tools and technology, because I previewed that in the beginning of this episode. How do you see new tools and new technology coming along and affecting your industry?
Tristan Bordallo: 25:12
Well, right now I so I, I advise and a venture partner for Blue Impact Supply Chains and it’s a really awesome experience because I get to use my, you know, founder market fit to to to see what can help our industry because there’s a lot of tools for brokerages, right. Brokerages are the pretty side of the business, but the ones doing the hard work is a carrier. There’s not a lot of tools, and a lot of the owners are usually truck drivers that.
John Corcoran: 25:46
Kind of work their way up.
Tristan Bordallo: 25:47
Yeah, their operations guy, their I mean, their, their, their, their hands on, they’re not really looking. They work super hard.
John Corcoran: 25:54
They don’t have an accounting degree.
Tristan Bordallo: 25:56
Yeah. Working smart is something that, that, that, that they, that they lack. And so it’s awesome to to be able to look at the new tools today and see what I can use. Because now that I’m operating in their shoes, I get to see, okay, this tool will work a lot better and help us to be more efficient. And the big the biggest thing is the reason why there’s a broker is because we lack the technology.
We also. But we’re the ones doing the hard work. I mean, a broker could never, ever deliver freight. They just can’t physically because they don’t have a truck. They have to use our truck or they have to trick us into doing their loads.
Right. And I and I can say that because I used to do that all the time. Like I had no idea that I had. I got the customer you want to haul for my customer. Well, give me your truck.
It’s a horrible situation, right? Like I think about I was owning these trucks have made me become like a born again broker. Really? Using that, that lens of, wow, this is hard stuff. Like, if you want quality carriers, you’ve got to treat these guys right?
John Corcoran: 27:01
Because usually the broker and the carrier have more of an adversarial relationship. But now you have sat in both seats.
Tristan Bordallo: 27:08
Yeah. I’m, I’ve, I’ve lived in both seats. Right. And so I, I look at it with a different lens in terms of the technology and the reason why a carrier can’t go straight to a shipper that requires you to have the technology or the flexibility and the capacity, like it’s so fragmented that if I could get a group of carriers together, it doesn’t have to be a bunch, and you’ll see Uber doing it now. Oh, we have 100,000 carriers in our network like everyone is talking about this 100,000 40,000 care network, which is I call bullshit, right?
Because it’s like, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t manage that many carriers anyways, right? And that’s why there’s fraud. I mean, you look at today’s world of freight, you’ll see fraud everywhere because that’s that’s what we did. We we ran all the freight carriers out because we don’t understand their costs. We only understood that we can get the customer.
And you guys are going to haul for us forever. And and one of my biggest missions in doing this is trying to find the tools that will enable a carrier of any size to be able to compete with brokers.
John Corcoran: 28:18
Doesn’t that act against your own interests since you still have a brokerage.
Tristan Bordallo: 28:23
Yeah, I don’t care. I’m willing to go out of business. And if and if and if I’m going to go out of business, I’m going to put myself out of business.
John Corcoran: 28:31
Well, but why do that, though? I guess that just to be devil’s advocate here. I mean, it sounds it sounds like it’s.
Tristan Bordallo: 28:37
Like a honestly you. Yeah. No, honestly, John, it’s it’s it’s really simple, right? Like, the people doing the hard work should have the ability to service those customers. And if they could do it together and make more money because they’re at the end of the day, they’re the ones doing the hard work.
And as a brokerage, I do feel a little guilty about, you know, taking advantage of the capacity and the risk because I know what that risk is like. I know what that expense looks like. I know what that, you know, heartache looks like. I and and it’s and it’s the most crooked way for, for, you know, to do business is to, you know, the ones exploiting, the ones doing the hard work. And I mean, I that’s my mission right now is to try to level, you know, make it an even level playing field.
John Corcoran: 29:33
Yeah.
Tristan Bordallo: 29:34
And, and for those that want that type of capacity and why not. They should be able to get it. I mean.
John Corcoran: 29:41
Yeah. Yeah. And then what is it like for you? You’ve sat in the carrier seat. You sat in the broker seat for many years.
You’ve done sales all around this industry and now you’re in venture capital working in this industry. What’s that like shifting to that role?
Tristan Bordallo: 30:00
It’s it’s definitely being like curious about the money side. You know I, I understand like there’s there’s also. Like politics that that that sometimes like. Wow. I mean, and it helps me understand, okay.
That’s why a specific company did that or but you, you could use it for good too, right. Like there’s, there’s a lot of and that’s why I, I chose Blue Impact is because I feel that they’re they’re, they’re different in a way that they’re looking at the long game and, and the tools that they are building are, are more sustainable. So like helping the carrier side. Right. Because there’s, you know, there’s a long line to the brokerage space.
There’s a short line to the carriers because like they they forget about the carriers.
John Corcoran: 30:55
Yeah. And you also designed your own app. Yeah. That designed to serve the carriers. Talk about that.
Tristan Bordallo: 31:04
You know, I, I, you know, being part of Entrepreneurs Organization. You run into a lot of smart people and we we in my forum group we started we have an AI guy and one developer and so we just, you know, learned how to do it on our own by putting our minds together. And we we just design our own apps now through AI as an agent. But we we obviously have to understand the infrastructure. Like what?
Like what what’s the where do we get the database where how is it set up? Is it on Python. Right. Like it’s it’s pretty cool. Like I didn’t know coding.
Was this like so much work was a.
John Corcoran: 31:51
Lot of work. Yeah.
Tristan Bordallo: 31:52
Yeah. AI made it so much easier.
John Corcoran: 31:55
Where.
Tristan Bordallo: 31:55
Yeah I said holy crap. And even even the developers that I talked to are saying, wow, I can’t believe you could do this with what you just because I showed it to a couple of friends of mine and they’re, you know, it’s like 90% there. It’s not a completely you know, and if I’m. But if I’m just using it for myself, like why not? Yeah.
It actually works. Like I don’t need to have mass. I’m not trying to sell it to anyone. I mean, I’m I just want to give myself the tools to be more efficient, to be and to and the process of learning how it works. Because before I used to be impatient with a lot of companies going, I need this to look like this.
And I didn’t realize how the back end looked. But now I’m like again, like, I’m okay. I’m a born again tech guy.
John Corcoran: 32:42
Yeah, well, it’s fascinating how someone like yourself who’s got years of experience, you know, substantive experience in an industry, you know, can can take that and then turn it into into a tool that can, you know, help with financial understanding or, or speed up operations or whatever it is. That’s really cool. It’s almost like these layers that insulated or that made it difficult to create. These solutions are kind of melting away right now.
Tristan Bordallo: 33:10
Yeah. It’s it’s because I, I feel you know who who is better to design an app for the industry because I see a lot of, you know, tech people come into our space. Yeah. And all they’re.
John Corcoran: 33:26
Doing is the industry.
Tristan Bordallo: 33:27
Yeah. And they’re interviewing. Right. Like they think they could solve it with one or 2 or 3 or 5 or 20 interviews with, with founders, but they’re not living in the trenches. And so I felt like maybe I could design something even easier instead of instead of spending my time talking to a tech guy to try to help him build his product.
I love the fact that I could just do it on my by myself now. I could build MVP’s like I literally built two MVPs in the last like month and a half and.
John Corcoran: 33:55
Oh yeah, me too. I mean, I have a son who’s struggling with reading and writing a little bit right now, and so I created a more engaging, like quiz app for him to help with writing that was more interesting and tailored to his interests. So it mentions his name, his mentions his friends name, mentions things he’s interested in and he gets. I find it’s a lot more engaging. It’s so fun to be able to do these sorts of things.
Tristan Bordallo: 34:19
Yeah.
John Corcoran: 34:19
Yeah.
Tristan Bordallo: 34:20
It’s insane. It’s like an addiction as far as trying to solve your own problems. Like, I even I even want to, like, I was thinking, what am I struggling with on a daily basis that I could just. And just to go through the process. Right.
It’s not to to sell this app to make money. And eventually I know it’s going to help me in my business, and I could stitch it up with other things. But in all reality, it’s just about the process of how it actually works, because there’s it’s moving so fast and I don’t want to be left behind. You know, I’m in a I’m already 47 and but I still have a 11 year old and a 13 year old. I still need to be able to provide and, and try to figure out what to do and help them, my kids, to, to see what’s what.
Guys, you guys got to do this before the robots take your job? No, I’m just kidding. I don’t want I don’t want to say that.
John Corcoran: 35:11
Tristan, this has been great. Where can people go to learn more about you? And and and you have a new podcast as well that’s coming out very soon.
Tristan Bordallo: 35:18
Yeah. So I, you know, wait on that. The podcast is probably going to launch here in the next week or two. I could be found on LinkedIn and yeah, the, the that’s it. Tristan Bordallo, I’m only on LinkedIn.
John Corcoran: 35:33
And Blue Impact Supply Chain Ventures is one of them. And Iamfr8 and Fr8topia.
Tristan Bordallo: 35:40
And Adventure CPG as well.
John Corcoran: 35:42
Adventure CPG. You got lots of things you’re involved in.
Tristan Bordallo: 35:45
And EO.
John Corcoran: 35:47
And EO. Yeah. Tristan. All right. Thanks so much.
Tristan Bordallo: 35:50
Thank you.
Outro: 35:53
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.