In today’s episode, David Folwell sits down with Justin Clarke, Founder and CEO of F|Staff, to discuss technology, trends, and the future of staffing. F|Staff is an on-demand global platform facilitating interactions between CDL drivers and stakeholders on both ends of the market. In our conversation, we discuss his non-traditional path into staffing, lessons from his career journey, and how he founded F|Staff. Discover the benefits of a data-centric business model, why he thinks the staffing industry is broken, and how staffing agencies and customers can benefit from leveraging technology-based solutions. Gain insights into why reducing friction for customers is vital for success and the importance of streamlining the hiring process. Explore the current and future trends of the industry, ways the company is embracing AI, why AI won’t replace you but someone who is using AI will, and much more. Join us as we unpack the steps to building an on-demand future in staffing with Justin Clarke!
[0:01:15.5] DF: Hello everyone, thank you for joining us for another episode of The Staffing Show. Today, I am super excited to be joined by Justin Clarke, who is the founder and CEO of F|Staff: On-Demand Truck Drivers. For those of you that don’t know, F|Saff is the only two-sided marketplace for CDL drivers in the world. Justin, I’ve known you for about a year at this point and I am so excited to have this conversation with you today.
We’re going to be diving into technology, trends, and staffing. To kick things off, could you just tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into staffing?
[0:01:50.5] JC: Sure, yeah. So, F|Staff: On-Demand Truck Drivers is a convergence of a company that was originally founded in 2001 called Contracted Driver Services, and eventually, formed into now what is known today as F|Staff: On-Demand Truck Drivers, and really, I got into this business when I was 19-years-old. My mom was working for another staffing agency. That’s where I learned about the business model to begin with.
I was inspired by a couple of professors who saw, you know, my business planning and my understanding about maybe what I could do and really just inspired me to go down that road of creation and starting a business on my own. That’s really how I got started.
[0:02:29.3] DF: That’s awesome dude, were you a recruiter in your mom’s business or did – and was it in the trucking business to start as you already had expertise at that age?
[0:02:36.9] JC: Yeah, my mom was actually working for a – well, it ended up becoming a competitor of ours. So, my mom was for, maybe about a dozen years working for a driver staffing agency and so, I really understood the model really well just by seeing her work for this other company. I never actually worked for this other company, I never had a job as a recruiter. All of my first jobs inside of the staffing industry were inside of the creation of the business.
So, unlike a lot of people who started as a recruiter, learned a lot more about the job and in the industry, I literally just thrusted myself directly into it, right?
[0:03:10.0] DF: This is like, “I’m going all in.”
[0:03:12.2] JC: My learning curve was – my learning curve was huge, right?
[0:03:14.6] DF: Yeah, that’s great. I didn’t realize that and so with that, what are some of the challenges that you’ve had over the years with growing your business?
[0:03:23.3] JC: Yeah, okay. So, 22 years, there’s been always a bump in almost every single year, right? There’s learning moments and there’s things that we do. I would say, my earliest failure, you know, initially, like what did I learn, is to really research and understand a lot more about what you’re doing before you do it.
[0:03:37.4] DF: Yeah.
[0:03:37.8] JC: When I started this business, I actually started a contracting business, putting CDL drivers on assignment and not in a staffing environment and then I ended up payrolling some at another account, where I became a staffing company and learned quickly that I was making a lot of mistakes and mis-taxation and mis-insurance and all sorts of stuff.
So yeah, huge learning curve there, and I would say, most recently, we’re just really learning a lot more about people management, right? And KPI controls and understanding how to leverage process, you know, inclusion inside of the company to really just form a more consistent business model over time. So, yeah, it’s fun.
[0:04:18.3] DF: Yeah, and I know one of the things I’m really excited to talk with you about today and something that I think our audience is, if they’re not looking into it, I feel like the two-sided marketplace is that the staffing as a platform, however, whatever term you want to use for it. It’s had a big impact in the last few years, that is something that I know you jumped right into.
Can you tell us a little bit about how you kind of started down the path of getting excited about or involved in the tech space? I think you had the story related to something with that, with specific to paper. I think the most literal intrigue going out.
[0:04:46.5] JC: Yeah, absolutely. Right, so our business is a CDL truck driver staffing agency. So, every CDL driver that we hire, has to have a full driver qualification file, which means that each file has at minimum, 25 to 30 pieces of paper in it, which is their full history, their background, their motor vehicle report, everything you could imagine about you know, needing to qualify a truck drive because you need to qualify, make sure the information is accurate and you’re putting quality professional people out on assignment.
So, we can’t, like some staffing agencies just take a one-page paper application in. So, we had stacks of paper and we’re hiring hundreds of drivers. You know, I had paper flying everywhere, right? There was paper, paper, paper, all over my offices, and including time sheets that would come in every single week, and every applicant that we would bring in, we had to keep the applications and all of their information around for several years, right?
So, managing the paper was exceptionally hard and that was something that really drove me towards technology but in one of my offices, we actually had these racks that at one time full of banker boxes of all of our driver qualification files. So, I was in that office organizing those files and I was putting like, one last box on the wall pretty much, right? Where there’s like 50 boxes probably at a wall, on these different shelves.
As you can imagine, each box probably weighs 40, 45 pounds, and so, I’m not an engineer. I am a staffing professional and owner, as I’m in the back and I’m putting these boxes up and I didn’t realize that these shelves went past their weight bearing and I had a complete wall of driver files crash down on me and make me fall off of the ladder, you know, on to the floor, right? And I’m probably yelling and screaming in the background, right?
And people come flying over the office and that was a pain point of mine. You know, I’m like, “This is ridiculous, you know?” I can’t be, you know, managing my business off of paper for any time in the future.” So, after that moment, I started looking for a software that would replace this experience, which was very hard to find. I ended up finding an ATS at that time, it was like, 2006, 2007, we found an applicant tracking system.
We were one of the first staffing agencies to fall in love with the applicant tracking systems and it allowed us to at least, mitigate and reform our staffing agency around a paperless model, so we wouldn’t have these boxes flying off the walls and trying to kill the owner, right? Just trying to manage the paper. So yeah, paper pain was huge for me and that’s what really drove us for this technology.
[0:07:11.6] DF: I just think that’s the best, like, entry right into the digital transformation after just like almost dying but like –
[0:07:18.7] JC: Yeah.
[0:07:18.1] DF: Being clobbered by paper and then being like, “Okay, like, this is dumb, let’s move forward here.”
[0:07:23.9] JC: Oh God, yeah. Yeah, I could stack bonfires with all of the paper we had around the office, right? Oh God, it’s tough days and it’s great. Now that we have technology, it really allows us to be more seamless and to have a more controlled model because paper is really an error-filled model, and so when you can have a data-centric business model, it does definitely reduce human error points and creates a lot of efficiency. So, I’m all in on technology, especially in the staffing industry.
[0:07:53.3] DF: I’ve started off getting clobbered by paper, now, leading the charge on the tech front. So –
[0:07:56.5] JC: Right, we are.
[0:07:58.6] DF: So, I know, you and I talked briefly previously about how you think staffing is kind of broken. Could you share your perspective on that?
[0:08:05.0] JC: Sure, yeah. So, when we started our staffing agency, I think, again, I modeled it, you know, every closely to how other staffing agencies have built their businesses, which is you know, a really a branch model. Most staffing agencies will grow organically by adding branches into cities that they currently don’t service and then that branch becomes the place where you put a manager and a recruiter, and usually a salesperson, to run the business in that city.
You know, that model’s been around for decades now. It was probably around 2010, I started to see some major flaws with that business design because the branches often are inconsistent in the services that they provide, right? Like, the Denver Staffing Office for one staffing agency, might actually be completely different than the Dallas branch and I didn’t like that, right? I like to have a nice consistent approach and no matter what we did with our processes and culture and things like that, we still found that there were some changes.
I would say, material breaches almost to how we wanted to operate our business in that area and so, I started to see a lot of inefficiencies with the branch offices and that’s you know, one area. So, I do, I talk and I say that staffing is broken because I don’t believe that staffing agencies need branch offices in every city to succeed, if you leverage technology appropriately, right?
I think that you can remove that layer and really remove that cost from the price that you have to charge to your customer because if you have to have branches, then that means that there’s a whole level of cost that you have to incorporate into the pricing model that you provide to the customer.
So, the more efficient you could make your staffing agency, the better you can at controlling your margin by either offering discounts or pricing discounts to your customers or by improving the margin to your staffing agency. So, branch offices I think are dead. I think it’s kind of like the old-school fax machine or something like that. That’s how I equate it to.
This is just like, it’s like, so yeah, some people still have them around, you know? And yeah, they still work but I think that in the end, people are going to find that branch offices are not really going to be a model that is going to be required future for most staffing agencies.
[0:10:16.5] DF: I know the common or rebuttal to that is, “What about the people that want to come in face to face?” The interviewing, that draft interview process, how do you –
[0:10:24.4] JC: Yeah. Well, so here’s what I’ll say about that, things change. The same thing. Do you remember my conversation about paper applications, right? So, I had pain about papers but my team, even my internal staff, my internal team told me, “Truck drivers will never complete a digital application, Justin. Truck drivers are old school, Justin. Truck drivers won’t do that, Justin.”
And I continue to just fight that and fight my vision forward, and now, very few trucking companies take a paper application these days, if you do, you mean, you are really a non-efficient trucking company. You are probably small and you’re likely not going to be able to grow, for sure. You know, things change, David. So, I think that people will interview in a different way in the future.
I think that might be – include different technologies and new technologies and potentially even artificial intelligence type of tools that will help continue to make the process better because honestly, do you like driving to place just to go to see somebody face to face, you know, to find out that you actually don’t want to work with them anyway, right? Like –
[0:11:26.2] DF: Yeah, absolutely.
[0:11:27.2] JC: Of course not, of course not, right?
[0:11:28.5] DF: Absolutely, yeah.
[0:11:29.0] JC: And so I think that ultimately, the solution that provides the most efficient outcome for people will win, and I think that the future of interviewing and the future of hiring and the future of placing in people is going to change, you know? There’s definitely a morphing of that future right now.
[0:11:45.7] DF: I second that and I also think that it is funny when you think about all of the times where people are like, “Oh, the – our population.” Whatever segment you’re in and you’re saying like, “This isn’t how our candidates work.” And it’s like, “Maybe not today and maybe not all of them today but eventually, like if you just pan out, things are going to change one way or the other.” Like, we didn’t use to buy stuff online, and now, now, look at Amazon.
[0:12:09.7] JC: Exactly, right, yup. Everybody orders everything online now, right?
[0:12:13.0] DF: Yeah, so I mean, it sounds like you’ve done it. When you look at the model being broken, the branches, the cost of it, just in terms of it also the kind of alignment is component to, when it comes to kind of digitizing your environment, I think a lot of staffing industries have trouble with that and probably are like, “How do they shift from a branch model?” Any advice on lessons learned that you’ve had in terms of shifting towards more of a centralized model and going with the platform play?
[0:12:39.4] JC: Yeah, I think it’s important first to look at your process and you just look at technology to help you optimize your process and people oftentimes just focus on the outcome or things that they’re looking for and I really like what we’ve learned over the years of building technology and you know, really creating this future for ourselves because it wasn’t even available in many ways beforehand, right?
Like, I just think the future of staffing is going to be a lot more about reducing friction for the people that are actually hiring the workers and for the workers themselves. Right now, the staffing agencies continue to provide, you know, too much friction in front of their customers and I feel like that’s definitely going to drive, you know, a lot of the future, and the platform model, it doesn’t necessarily work for everybody.
So, you do have to start with your current process and just see where you could influence your business with technology and if ultimately, the talent marketplace is good for you, then that might be you know, the solution that that works for you and your business model and your clients. It may not work for everybody. I mean, for every staffing vertical but in the end, I think the technology will be a driver of every staffing agency in the next decade, whether they find it now or in 10 years from now.
[0:13:55.5] DF: Yeah, I completely agree, and I think the friction is something that I spent a good amount of time in conversion rate optimization on websites and people don’t understand how small things can really interrupt the process or just reduce applications as a whole. I mean, one stat that I don’t know how accurate this is today, it goes a few years back but for every additional form field you added to a form on your website, it was like a 20% reduction in conversion rates and so people don’t realize.
People are just like, assume that everybody’s going to go through every step of every process without actually thinking about what it’s like from the candidate side. So, I think that the – looking at where you can reduce friction is so important from a candidate perspective and an agency side. Do you have a process when you look at friction, like, things that you can reduce friction for the talent you’re working with or do you have a kind of any suggestions for the audience in ways that they could approach improving their processes?
[0:14:55.0] JC: Definitely. As you look at your process, you know, you can get a quick stop-watch out and you can time. I mean, I really –
[0:15:02.4] DF: That’s great. I love that.
[0:15:04.0] JC: As simple as that is but you can try and the amount of time that it takes you or your human beings to do the steps, right?
[0:15:10.0] DF: That’s great.
[0:15:10.7] JC: I mean, I would really look at that to identify the speed, you know what I mean? As a driver making those decisions, you know? Yeah, just old school man, look at your process and clock the time and see you know, how much it takes, and then really track your speed and the efficiency and make sure that that’s driving the direction you wanted to go.
[0:15:27.3] DF: I’ve never even thought about that just the time alone and being that having that be the metric, that’s a great way to do it and my dad just watched The Bear and I don’t know if you watched that show but in that show, there’s like laying out the kitchen and he’s like seeing how quickly he can get through all the stations and timing it to try to get like, “I need to go get through all those stations here” like more excited.
[0:15:44.7] JC: Good. Yeah, I think the best business minds think that way, right? Because it’s always about that in the end, especially if you have human beings doing certain jobs or even if you are going to replace and optimize it with technology, it should always be about the speed, you know what I mean? And the friction around you know, that like if an employee, if it takes him 10 days to complete your hiring process but it’s beautiful, right?
Hey, who cares, right? The candidate’s going to hate it, you know? So, speed is definitely on everybody’s mind rather than – whether they probably mention it or not.
[0:16:15.0] DF: Absolutely. So, one of the things that I know is changing in the market as kind of the perception of value created by staffing agencies and I think that’s happening across the board. I mean, there’s all these online tele-platforms, like I frequently would go to Upwork if I need a project done and just hire somebody quickly. I don’t have to go out to my network for something and I know you’re talking about kind of building that as a platform for F|Staff.
What are some of the changes that you are hearing from your customers or clients in terms of where they’re seeing value and in terms of where the market is going?
[0:16:46.8] JC: So, I think for us to actually achieve an on-demand future, we really have to be all about the information that we can collect and share to both sides of the fence and then actually reduce or eliminate that, you know, as much as possible. So, you know again, looking at speed factors, right?
I think and we’ve actually been able to prove this, it’s faster for one of our clients to put in an order directly through our portal and have that order directly go to the candidates who are the best-suited workers for that job than for the carrier or you know, the employer to call my team first and then recall the candidates and then rematch and then we call back, right? So, in our model, our employer partners get to put the job directly into the portal.
That algorithm is masterfully kind of protected in making sure we find the right candidates at the right time for the right job and then the employer gets their needs met a lot faster and the workers go to work a lot faster and in the end, if I say that I actually care about the people that I work with that’s what I need to be all about, you know?
So, we’ve learned that on-demand is just not – it’s not only a cleaner approach and you get more structured data around everything, it’s better for the customer in the end, right? Because our workers have agreed that getting the jobs on demand right on their fingertips, they know that we aren’t filtering the jobs for them. So, they get to pick and choose and take the jobs that best match to them.
Employer partners, you know, get to – I get access to the workers immediately and they’re not delayed by a phone call from a recruiter or a missed call from a recruiter or having to leave a voice message waiting for things, right? I don’t believe that people should – well, first of all, I don’t believe people want to wait for anything anymore, and when we have to wait, when we have to wait it’s annoying.
And then, we’re going to go figure out how to solve our problems in another way, and so staffing companies before, I mean, when we have a lot more time on our hands, I think we’re adding value because you know, we were at the desk ready any time you needed. Now, that’s not the case. It’s actually difficult to reach people on the phone these days, right?
We have different meetings and different times that we’re getting sucked away and so, I just believe in direct access. Our customers should be able to order and get direct access to the candidates, our candidates that we approved for work should get direct access to the jobs, and everybody can continue to work as fast as they need to.
[0:19:01.6] DF: Yeah, I felt like we live so much in the world of now. It’s like, “I need it now, I need it ASAP.” And it used to be next-day delivery was a big deal, then it was two-hour delivery from Amazon and now, I’m just like DoorDash-ing stuff from Target.
[0:19:16.3] JC: Yeah, I can’t wait. I need it now.
[0:19:19.4] DF: There’s a board game the other night, I was like, “I want this board game, I have people coming over.” I’m like, “Oh, I can get it from Target in 30 minutes.” So, I don’t like –
[0:19:26.2] JC: While I see, while I keep the dinner party rolling.
[0:19:29.4] DF: While Drizly delivers the booze.
[0:19:32.2] JC: I mean, isn’t that convenient, right? I am all about that future, like I’m an early adopter to Netflix, right? Like, I talk about this sometimes, sometimes people are earlier adopters and sometimes people are late adopters. I was the one getting the DVDs mailed in my mailbox, right? Because I was like, “Oh, this is awesome. I don’t have to go to Blockbuster now.” And it was not, it really wasn’t that much better like now.
And then once Netflix took the digital lead forward, right? You’re able to see how their vision of providing content to you as quickly as they could and as quickly as you wanted it, eventually morphed into the digital behemoth that Netflix is today, right? And so, yeah, the digitization is happening everywhere and I think in human capital management, it just hasn’t really caught anywhere yet.
Anywhere big, where actually somebody that has masterfully understood how to consider both sides of the fence and then get out of the way.
[0:20:24.1] DF: That’s also probably, I mean, we could talk about that, like the Netflix is such a great example. You were talking earlier about who is going to adopt and when a little bit and like people say, “No, our customers don’t do that.” And I definitely hear, I hear agencies say, “Our customers don’t want to put their orders in.” And maybe not today but someday. There’s a high likelihood that they will and I think about the Netflix story.
I don’t know if you know the Blockbuster and Netflix, how Blockbuster actually had a chance to buy Netflix, see them out –
[0:20:50.7] JC: Two times.
[0:20:51.2] DF: Yeah, two times, yeah. I have the ones respectively –
[0:20:54.3] JC: They said no twice, right?
[0:20:56.4] DF: I heard the story of like they flew out there, met with all the executives of Blockbuster, Blockbuster like laughed them out of the room.
[0:21:02.9] JC: Right, right.
[0:21:03.4] DF: It’s like, because they’re like, “Oh, nobody wants to do it this way.”
[0:21:07.1] JC: Exactly. It’s a little bit how we feel today at F|Staff, to be honest with you David, right now, I feel like I’m this guy that’s been fighting, you know, from this corner that nobody’s understood for a while, right? I mean, we started writing our own technology under a company called Forward Staffing in like 2009, 2010.
[0:21:27.3] DF: Oh, that’s amazing.
[0:21:28.4] JC: And so, that’s why we understand so much more about what today looks like and what the future looks like is because we’ve been envisioning this place already for over a decade and we’ve been building towards this place for over a decade and now, I think it’s just becoming popular at industry conferences because when I was talking about it at industry conferences even four years ago, I was kind of feeling like a whacko, right?
[0:21:48.7] DF: Yeah.
[0:21:49.6] JC: People are like, “Yeah, this guy’s nuts.” Right? Well, I still am a huge believer though in it, right? And I still don’t even think that we have fully achieved the vision that we’re after, right? And so that’s why we continue to fight every day, you know? To keep pushing forward.
[0:22:03.4] DF: While we’re talking about the future of staffing and tech, like the platform plays obviously huge and I know everybody is talking about generative AI and any thoughts there? Are you using [inaudible 0:22:12.9]
[0:22:12.9] JC: It is coming.
[0:22:14.3] DF: Yeah?
[0:22:15.2] JC: It’s coming so fast. We are in the middle of developing a partnership with an AI tool that would help us with some of the onboarding pieces with the business and we’re really excited about the potential and where that could grow and then I’m absolutely – I’m a nerdy researcher of staffing technologies, right? And so, I’m constantly looking for you know, stuff to look into, demos to have so I could really understand a little bit more about what’s coming.
But first of all, it is coming. I’ve tested recruiters that were AI recruiters that were developed in a weekend that had value, okay? They weren’t perfect and they weren’t ideal in a business case like today but they were good and they were valuable and they were created in a weekend, okay? So, I would just say that because of the advanced AI language models that are now coming out, they are forming the ability for businesses to be creative.
So, we can go solve these problems faster, so yeah, they’re coming and I think that staffing agencies should all look towards them. I think that whether it replaces inner recruiting or whether it replaces offshore recruiting or augmented and I think a lot of times, I think, when I think of AI, I think of augmentation not replacement in a lot of ways, right? And so, how does it augment your future, and where and what areas can you use AI to influence your business? But if I am a smart CEO in staffing, I’m absolutely looking into this stuff.
[0:23:35.4] DF: Absolutely, and I’ve been to three or four conferences where I’ve heard the same thing. The first time I heard it, I was like, “Oh my God, that is such a great thought.” It’s still a great thought, it’s just has become cliché in almost a month is that people are like, “Are recruiters AI? Is AI going to replace recruiters or is AI going to take my job?” The one I’ve heard multiple times is, “AI may not probably won’t take your job but somebody who uses it will.”
[0:23:58.0] JC: Right, yeah.
[0:23:58.7] DF: And I think that might just go for agencies too, it’s like, “Is AI going to replace an agency?” It’s like no, but agencies that use AI will dominate the industry.
[0:24:07.0] JC: I agree.
[0:24:08.7] DF: So, I think they see how much it accelerates things, so I use it daily. It’s like my little assistant that I have up all day long.
[0:24:14.8] JC: It is – I mean, yeah, I think that you can get so much more accomplished you know, with these new tools. People don’t realize how amazing it is and when things continue to evolve over the next decade. I mean, again, I can’t even really fully fathom what the world looks like, you know? But I think that there is a lot of disruption and a lot of human disruption and a lot of kind of unique AI design that’s coming that’s going to make our worlds just really, really better, right? In a lot of ways.
[0:24:39.5] DF: I mean, I think so too. I think there’s a lot of upside to it. So, you’ve talked a lot about what you guys are doing today and some of your vision for the future but what does the future look like for F|Staff?
[0:24:49.7] JC: So, at first, you know we are understanding how to build an on-demand future, right? For the CDL driver staffing market, right? And I think that you know, we haven’t yet expanded our vision out beyond, you know, supply chain staffing but eventually. I mean, we may be first to market to be able to actually produce a fully functioning two-sided marketplace that’s live on-demand, human labor capital acquisition, right?
So, when I think like that, if we’re only thinking about this one division for the future of F|Staff, I really do believe that might be a little short-sighted. So, I think that the future of F|Staff is big and I think that you know, we are really trying to see what we can do to bring a solution to the industry that’s honestly begging for it but you know, I think that staffing agencies that are moving kind of just in micro bits, they’re not changing the game and they’re not making it.
They are not creating a different ecosystem, so I think that in the next 12 months, we will have developed pretty far into the future of staffing and we’ll start to look at what is a full vision looks like for F|Staff but you know, really it’s I would say that for your audience, it’s removing the Berlin Wall of staffing and what I mean’t by that is just allowing again, for our customers and our candidates to meet, greet, and hire at the speed that they desire.
And then we will continue to be the best catalyst for support by getting out of the way, right? So, if we can remove ourselves from the equation in as many ways as possible and allow direct access for employers and workers to work together, I think we have changed the game to allow for, you know, kind of just a much better future for workforce management all the way around.
[0:26:35.6] DF: I love it. I feel like you are pushing things forward and doing some really great things on the tech side. So, yeah, just a handful, last kind of speed questions for you here. So, what advice do you wish you’re given before entering the staffing industry at the young age of 18?
[0:26:50.6] JC: Right, yeah. Okay, so I would say if I was going to give advice to my future self, it would be to find balance early. Over the years, in the last two decades, I’ve been able to find a good balance of balancing my desire for growth and the passion I have for business with my life but early on when I was first creating this company, I was so all in that I would say that I definitely did sacrifice friendships, relationships, and time in a certain part of my life.
Where if I would have really been focused on finding balance, then I think that would have been a better reflection now at that time because I look back now and I just remember grinding out 16-hour days, saying no to a lot of fun, and just going for this business and I think that’s, in one way, that’s probably what’s propelled us and gotten us as far as we have but it is a big sacrifice for those that are you know, considering it.
At least, if I was at least given the feedback to say, “Hey, find balance or search for balance early on.” I think I would have at least fought for it early.
[0:27:46.4] DF: That’s great, and in the last five years, what new belief behavior or how that has most improved your life?
[0:27:53.4] JC: Oh, okay. Habitually, I try to perform one act of kindness a week at least and it’s incorporated probably really kind of something in my life that I do daily. When you can incorporate kindness as something that you are doing, you know, regularly, like performing random acts of kindness or being thoughtful about being kind, I think that it really sets your mindset in the direction of kindness and I think you’re nicer to other people, other people are nicer to you and so, it just creates a better world all the way around. So, I would say, “The habit of kindness.”
[0:28:24.2] DF: Love it, love it, double down on that advice. The last question I’ve got for you is, what book or books have you given most as a gift or has been most influential to you?
[0:28:33.1] JC: For just people who are trying to understand a little bit more about you know, a lot of life in business, I love Simon Sinek’s book, Start with Why, because it’s just – I think it’s the right place to start for a lot of leaders when you’re just making decisions and trying to push yourself forward. So, I do love that book. My wife and I, we actually authored a couple of children’s books, I don’t know if I’ve given you a copy –
[0:28:54.1] DF: I didn’t know that.
[0:28:54.0] JC: Or not. We have a foundation for kindness that we have actually created and we have –
[0:28:58.1] DF: That’s amazing.
[0:28:59.0] JC: Yeah, a couple of children’s books and so, I give those out regularly at airports when I’m traveling, we do our best to try to give those out. So, that’s probably the number one book that I’ve given out as much as possible.
[0:29:09.6] DF: Yeah, I love that. That’s amazing, that’s great. Any closing comments for our audience?
[0:29:14.6] JC: I would say that, in our office, we say “Truckers drive everything” And your staffing audience, I’m sure is filled with, you know, staffing professionals and agencies that serve their population, right? And that will just inspire your audience to keep that in mind, it might be “Nurses drive everything.” Or it could be, “Accountants drive everything.” But whatever that is for you and your staffing agency, and for us, it’s, “Truckers drive everything.”
So, I would say that, let’s live our lives leading these companies thinking about our workers and not ourselves as much as possible. So, that’s what I would leave everybody with.
[0:29:45.3] DF: I love that. Well, Justin, this is a great conversation, I really enjoyed it. Thanks so much for being on the show.
[0:29:50.6] JC: It was a blast. Thanks, David.
