The Fight Against Scammers In The Logistics Sector

Trey Griggs [00:00:46]:
What did you do before this that, put you in this position to, to jumping on the on the carrier procurement side.

Mark Funk [00:00:52]:
Yeah. Wow. Okay. So, prior to working here, I was actually the director of carrier procurement at A company called R&L Global Logistics, and, you know, I did a 3 year stint there. And then prior to that, I was director of carrier operations at Total Quality Logistics for 10 years. And then, prior to that, I was the, administration supply chain manager for Sara Lee US Foods, and and Prior to that, I worked for a company where I would actually travel internationally and and, you know, vet, suppliers and do some of the the, Shipping from overseas into the states.

Trey Griggs [00:01:26]:
Yeah. The one that stands out to me is Sara Lee. Did you get some good pies or something out of that deal?

Mark Funk [00:01:31]:
You you know, Trey, one of the things about Sara Lee, when I right there, I was thinking, you know, pies, it’s great. But, you know, at the time, you know, certainly it’s so much larger. Right? You you’re talking Hillshire farmer, Conn’s, back then it was Hanes Kiwi shoe polish, you know. It it just goes on. It’s $18,000,000,000 company. So, Yeah. But, yeah, I did eat my cherry pie.

Trey Griggs [00:01:51]:
Yes. I I figured you might have gotten a good cherry pie or something from time to time. Well, I

Mark Funk [00:01:54]:
was hoping the camera would make me a little

Trey Griggs [00:01:55]:
bit bigger, but that doesn’t is happening. Well, you know, we do what we can around here. We do our best. But it’s clear that you you’ve been around the block. You’re not a newbie at this. You’ve seen a lot in the industry. You’ve done this for a long time. And, you know, right now, there’s a lot of issues that are facing, you know, the industry, freight brokers in particular, Agents in particular, and I think about this a lot because especially for what you guys do with agents.

Trey Griggs [00:02:18]:
I mean, the reason why somebody becomes an agent is usually because they’re really good with customer and, again, good with sales. But in terms of, like, grabbing carriers, you know, booking freight and that type of thing, maybe they don’t wanna do that. Maybe you guys are helping them out with that or maybe they are doing that. But The vetting process has been a pretty cumbersome process over the years and is especially cumbersome now because of all the fraud, theft, and double brokering that’s going on in the industry. How are you guys helping your agents really tackle that problem, so that it’s not an issue for them as little as possible? It’s almost impossible to eliminate. We’re getting close to it, I think, with some technology. What are you guys doing?

Mark Funk [00:02:52]:
Yeah. You know, so, Trey, that’s great. Right? When you think back about, you know, what happened in the industry in 2008, 2009, you saw a rise in a lot of fraud and and things like that. But that is nothing to compare to what’s happening right now. You go to any conference, you talk to any customer, you talk to any agent, We’re with SPI or other other companies. One of the things that they run into is this whole fraud and and scamming that’s happening. Right? And and when you look at the different types of scams that are out there, I mean, you know, you got the ComCheck scams, you got the double brokering scams, you got the double brokering with theft Scams. You got the triple brokering with warehouse scams.

Mark Funk [00:03:29]:
You and it just goes on. Right? So, you know, here at SPI, what we’re doing is we’re really leveraging In in diving into technology. See, one of the things that that’s different now versus what it was back, you know, in 2008, 2009 when this stuff really became prevalent, is the type of technology. Right? So, you know, we’re we’re partnering with with great vendors in the industry right now. Shout out to Highway, you know, we’re we’re with Highway, great platform. A lot of, technology there. You know, another shout out to Carrier Assure. You know, Cassandra and what that team is doing over there, which is just fabulous.

Mark Funk [00:04:06]:
Right? And and, you know, we we bring in a lot of different technology, but That’s a little bit different with with SPI. Instead of going with just 1 single platform, We’re taking that platform, and we’re using our internal IT expertise and bringing all of those together. So when our agents go to look at a carrier, they can quickly say, this is a carrier that I should be able to to trust calling our customers from.

Trey Griggs [00:04:33]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s huge. You know? And you we saw, the partnership between CarrierSure and Truckstop recently. We also saw the partnership with Highway and TIA with their Watchdog product. And so It’s also good to see these companies really starting to work together to eradicate an issue that’s it’s causing a lot of problems for the entire industry. And, You know, there there’s really there’s really no way to completely eliminate it, but the the closer we can get to it, the better it is for the industry. And that’s what I like about, like, what Highway is doing is because they’re keeping the bad players out of party altogether until the bad players probably figure out a way to circumvent around that.

Trey Griggs [00:05:05]:
We’re I feel like we’re constantly gonna have to iterate to stay 1 step ahead of the the bad actors in the industry, kinda like hackers. Like, you’re never gonna completely eliminate hackers. You gotta keep Changing your security protocols to make sure you can keep them out. It it’s a never ending game, it seems like.

Mark Funk [00:05:21]:
What? You’re you’re exactly right. So, you know, one of the things that, that We used to look at a lot was inspections on carriers, right? So, you know, this was the days before we had highway carrier insurance, some other technology, we would look at, you know, carrier four zero one. We will look at inspections. If care didn’t have inspections, they weren’t business for, you know, 18 months, 2 years, maybe a little bit shorter than that as well. You guys start wondering, okay, why is that?

Trey Griggs [00:05:43]:
Yeah. Right.

Mark Funk [00:05:44]:
Right. So but so we would start excluding here, not just us, but other brokers and agent and and agencies in in the industry. So you know what they do? The the scammers, the bad actors, so what they do is they go out and they get a straight truck. They rent a straight truck, and they get these placards made up, And they slap it on the side of a rented straight truck, and they drive through and they get an inspection. So then you know what? Boom. That MC now has an inspection. You know, and and some ways to prevent that and and find that, but, that that’s a a great thing that, That that, we were able to to identify with the help of of external partners, but that’s that’s one area as well. You know, some some of the issues that we have too are just related to how MCs are handled and how they’re issued, and and there’s some things with that.

Mark Funk [00:06:30]:
But, You know, technology has been able to help us out a lot. And, you know, again, leveraging some of our internal technology, we’ve been able to link in Some of our telephony solutions as well and be able to identify that maybe this number is associated with a a known bad actor and things like that, as well as an email. So before you go to send that out, we can check that and say, hey, wait a minute, that’s that’s not a good

Trey Griggs [00:06:55]:
Good answer.

Mark Funk [00:06:56]:
Or it’s not associated with that carrier. Yep.

Trey Griggs [00:06:59]:
And that’s what I love about what Highway is doing as well is they’re bringing financial data into the equation as well. They’re being bringing in, you know, VIN numbers in the equation as well. If you got a carrier that has 2 trucks and has, you know, 60,000 in payables in a week, that’s not that’s not possible. Right? I mean, that’s So so being able to line all that up and say there’s something wrong here. There’s a flag here. We need to we need to do a further inspection or we need to just have a tolerance that eliminates them. I think those are the types of technologies. And as they continue to iterate and get better and better, are gonna make it a lot easier for brokerages to do that.

Trey Griggs [00:07:30]:
You guys provide that for your agents. That’s all included. When a agent on board with SPI Logistics, these services are all just, you know, par for the course. These are table stakes. Correct?

Mark Funk [00:07:39]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. There there’s no no additional charge or anything like that to the agents at all. Right? So so if you’re an agent for SPI, you know, we have that technology. We make it available. Obviously, it’s in our system for the agents. It because look. I I don’t know if you’ve actually tendered and out there on slum freight before.

Mark Funk [00:07:54]:
Right? But you said

Trey Griggs [00:07:55]:
6 months. You know that fun? I do.

Mark Funk [00:07:57]:
Okay. So you get it.

Trey Griggs [00:07:58]:
Right? Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:07:59]:
You spend all that time, you you’re getting that that relationship together with a customer, you made all these cold calls, they’ve hung up on you, they’ve hung up you finally, okay, hey, I’m gonna give you this chance. And it’s always some load going from nowhere to nowhere. Right? Yeah.

Trey Griggs [00:08:12]:
So you’ve got Hardest load possible. That’s right.

Mark Funk [00:08:14]:
Hardest load if it wasn’t hard, you wouldn’t have it.

Trey Griggs [00:08:17]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:08:17]:
But that’s your that’s your chance. Right? So the last thing you wanna do is risk that load on a a carrier that may be less accept.

Trey Griggs [00:08:25]:
That’s right.

Mark Funk [00:08:25]:
You know, so what we try to do is we make sure that when our agent looks at a carrier, that they have all the updated information. They know what they’re getting. You know, one of the things also that that we’ve done is we’ve integrated a character scoring model where we take in components From all these different sources, well, as our own proprietary information. And we can take a look at that in in a real quick one letter transfers into a number, our agents can look at that and say, okay, this carrier should perform, you know, to a level of expectations that we would want, Right? And what that does, it does look at different data data signals and says, okay, hey, this carrier because of so many different Insights, we’re gonna exclude them.

Trey Griggs [00:09:07]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:09:07]:
Right? So yeah, that’s all part of the package.

Trey Griggs [00:09:10]:
And I think that’s the best thing about one of the best things about, you know, SPI Logistics and and freight brokerages and agents coming on board. You know, if you’re a small freight brokerage, you just might not have the capital to invest in these technologies to avoid some of these risks, Especially if you’re an agent. You know? I mean, a small agent is really a super small business, and they might not have the resources when they think they might need a TMS. They might need all these things. The technology is already there. They get to come in and plug and play and just stay in their sweet spot of selling or customers customer experience, whatever it might be. They’re able to sustain that, but they get all the benefits of a big shop just by joining with SPI.

Mark Funk [00:09:45]:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Right, Trey? So if you’re an agent and you’re gonna come to SPI, You’re getting top of the line technology. You’re get you’re getting excellent back office support. If there’s an issue, if there’s a problem, You reach out and and and the team takes care of that. Right? And and when I’m talking about top line technology, you know, we’re talking Salesforce. We’re talking revenue. We’re talking access the highway, we’re talking access of carrier, sure, we’re talking all of those different things that come together to make it as easy as possible for an agent.

Mark Funk [00:10:14]:
You know, look, A year ago, right, the the market was totally different. You could call a wrong number and probably get

Trey Griggs [00:10:22]:
a load from a customer. Right?

Mark Funk [00:10:24]:
But trying to find a truck was hard.

Trey Griggs [00:10:26]:
Right. Right.

Mark Funk [00:10:27]:
Okay? And now now everything’s changed. Right? Yeah. You know, so now you you post a load and, oh my gosh, your your phones light up. They blow up. So what we and that takes a time and energy. So what we wanna do is make it so easy that when when an agent goes in And they put this information in, and and you know what? I left this out of of of what we’re talking about too. You know, we partner with Parade. Right? So Parade is capacity matching solution.

Mark Funk [00:10:50]:
You build that load inside Revnova, inside Salesforce, and you’re gonna get a listing of carriers that you know have ran through our grading system, have met all these criteria, And you you know what you’re what you’re getting at, and you also know whether they have the the LD tracking and where they’re at. So it it’s just So much easier

Trey Griggs [00:11:09]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:11:09]:
In that regard. Agents have have their own stuff to worry about.

Trey Griggs [00:11:11]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:11:12]:
They shouldn’t have to worry about banning the carrier. Yeah.

Trey Griggs [00:11:13]:
No. It’s huge. And I got to be up in the in the headquarters About a a month ago, back in the middle of summer, I got to got to go up and and see everybody, meet the team, see how they worked with agents. Everybody up there enjoys working with the agents and making sure that they they, are there to support them and make them, make them helpful. That’s the sign to me of a really healthy organization when the frontline workers enjoy the jobs that they’re doing. They’re in the right seats. They see the value they’re providing. They see their purpose and their why.

Trey Griggs [00:11:39]:
And the leadership At SPI, I’ve been so impressed with that, you know, with, with Joe and with Mike and James and and and all of them. It’s just been impressive to see the the leadership. What attracted you to come be a part of the SPI team to support agents?

Mark Funk [00:11:54]:
You you know, it’s funny you say that, Trey, because What you just said, I probably couldn’t say it better. This this leadership team at at SPI, it’s totally different. You know, I I I’ve worked with some companies that that I I still feel very fondly about. Right? But, You know, when I got a chance to actually sit down and talk to Anita, Joe, and Mike, and the team, there there was that sense of of of of just, Hey. We love what we do, and and they they truly when they spoke, it it meant something. So, You know, my interactions with everybody in the team from, you know, on the customer support side all the way up through the the executive side, they believe in servicing the agents. They truly believe that. And and that’s great because, you know, the last thing you wanna do is is work somewhere where you don’t, You’re working with people who don’t believe what what they’re what they’re what they’re representing.

Mark Funk [00:12:52]:
So the commitment to quality to the agents was the number one thing for me. And as I was speaking to the team, the leadership team, you know, it came through that, hey, Mark. If you come on board with SPI, we’re gonna be here to support you. You’re you’re gonna be able to do what you need to do, and you’re gonna help us in our mission to serve the agents. So the leadership team is what sold me, but all the way all the way just their commitment to the agents, I guess.

Trey Griggs [00:13:15]:
Yeah. And I think that’s that that that’s the best part of organization is the leadership in terms of evaluating if you wanna be a part of an organization. So I think the SPI has that going for him in spades, and it was really funny to get up there. Have you been to Vancouver? What a beautiful place. Man. I love it.

Mark Funk [00:13:28]:
I have been. I’ve. It it is absolutely beautiful. Thankfully, I I was up there in the springtime, and, you know, it was really nice and it was warm because I’m down here in Florida, you know, so I I love this.

Trey Griggs [00:13:39]:
That’s quite the hall from Florida all the way to Vancouver. That’s like a 6 hour flight.

Mark Funk [00:13:44]:
Yeah. Well, that’s a 6 hour flight, but you got some layovers in between the way too. So But, yeah, you know, it’s a beautiful office. You know, it’s it’s a great environment. And and even the just Sit into the room with with the the agent or with the people who are supporting the agents and hearing those calls and and just the intensity in your voice, make sure that they’re pleasing the agents. It’s key.

Trey Griggs [00:14:06]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:14:06]:
It it it’s it’s exciting. It really is exciting.

Trey Griggs [00:14:08]:
Yeah. And SPI has, has its annual agent conference every other year in Vancouver. So that’s a little perk because they get to go to Vancouver every other

Mark Funk [00:14:17]:
year, and next year, it’s in Nashville. A perk.

Trey Griggs [00:14:19]:
I’m excited about Nashville, but, But being up there in Vancouver, it’s hard to beat. It’s so beautiful up there.

Mark Funk [00:14:25]:
Yeah. You know, you mentioned that, you know, we it it’s called rendezvous, and what we do is we bring all of our agents in, and it’s a chance To to celebrate who they are and their accomplishments for the year, you know, we go over some of our our our road maps of what we’re looking for and

Trey Griggs [00:14:39]:
what we’re gonna

Mark Funk [00:14:40]:
be rolling out. So it’s a it’s a great chance to to actually, mingle, have a good time, but then also set our sights on where we’re going as a company.

Trey Griggs [00:14:49]:
Yeah. Awesome. And I was in Nashville, recently for, a charity golf tournament. That’s a great that’s a fun town, man. It’s gonna be a good time next year. I think it’s gonna be in April. I know. So it’s gonna be a lot of fun to Yep.

Trey Griggs [00:14:59]:
See the agents and be together, that’ll be that’ll be a good time for sure. That’s that’s true.

Mark Funk [00:15:03]:
Fun note, this year coming up, or in April that you’re talking about, it’s it’s actually May, our 45th year in business. So very excited

Trey Griggs [00:15:10]:
about it. Nice. Excellent. I’m sure there’s a special name for 45. I don’t know what it is. I’ll have to look it up. But, yeah, that’ll be fun. That’ll be a good time.

Trey Griggs [00:15:17]:
We gotta pause for a minute because we’d like to have a little bit of fun on the show, Mark. And so today, we got a couple of things. First of all, we’re gonna look at a random question of the day. Now listen, we come up with it. Our podcast director come up with this question, every every show. I don’t know if it’s a funny question, serious question. Could be a good question. It could be a dud.

Trey Griggs [00:15:34]:
I don’t know. See what it is. Today’s random question of the day is let’s see what we got. What has been the most memorable moment of your We’re so far oh, kind of a serious one. Okay. What’s been the most memorable moment? Funny, serious, whatever. What do you got?

Mark Funk [00:15:48]:
Oh my gosh. I I wasn’t prepared for that. So most

Trey Griggs [00:15:52]:
No one ever is, Mark. That’s always why we do it.

Mark Funk [00:15:54]:
Right. No

Trey Griggs [00:15:54]:
one’s no one’s prepared.

Mark Funk [00:15:55]:
You know, most memorable moment of my career is is probably a time where I where I failed. Right. You know, we’re going way back to when I first started. And, you know, long story short, I I put all some information together With all the leadership team and and I was supposed to send over 1 document, I ended up sending over all of the notes to the meeting.

Trey Griggs [00:16:17]:
Oh, no. To,

Mark Funk [00:16:18]:
to an opposing party. Yeah. So, I was young, and, The I I thought for sure that I was gonna lose lose my career at that point, but, the individual that that I reported to Said, hey, listen. You learned a lesson. We move forward.

Trey Griggs [00:16:34]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:16:35]:
And and the thing I take away from that is is I go through my career And when I work with people, when I encounter people where they may encounter an opportunity, it’s that forgiveness.

Trey Griggs [00:16:47]:
Yeah. And that,

Mark Funk [00:16:47]:
you know what?

Trey Griggs [00:16:48]:
Right.

Mark Funk [00:16:48]:
We we we’re all human.

Trey Griggs [00:16:49]:
That’s a critical moment for you. That could have been a moment where, you know, you you became harsh because somebody was harsh with you. Or Or but in this case, you know, there’s somebody showed you mercy and now, you know, now you’re showing mercy as well. That’s a that’s a powerful moment. Clearly, you’ve never forgotten that. That’s Very memorable. And the mistakes are usually the ones we remember the most. That’s for sure.

Trey Griggs [00:17:09]:
That’s for sure. I’ll tell you for me Yeah. I think the most memorable that I had, and it’s not really a moment, but it was a season, was when I transitioned from education to door to door sales to learn sales. I had a friend who said, I think you could you could be good at sales, and the only job I could get was going door to door business to business to sell office supplies. And so I’m 32. I have a master’s degree. I’ve got a family. My wife isn’t working.

Trey Griggs [00:17:33]:
It’s a 100% commission. It was the hardest season of my life. It was like It was like boot camp, like Navy Seal training. I mean, I I don’t wanna compare to that because those are heroes. Those are true heroes. But it was really, really hard, and, and I hated it. It was so hard. It was just constantly getting beat down and constantly just just fighting for everything you could get and just figuring things out and learning.

Trey Griggs [00:17:55]:
But when I came out of that 15 months later, I was prepared to do sales. And the next sales job that I got, I did very, very well. And it wasn’t, I remember this will be this is like if there’s a moment, this is the moment. I’m sitting at lunch one day, Mark, and one of my one of my associates, on the sales team comes to me and he goes, hey. What are you doing? And I said, I’m having lunch. And he goes, no. What are you doing? How how are you selling so many people? And I started to to, like, just talk through it. Like, well, what are you doing? You know? Like, I mean, this isn’t that hard, and I started to describe what door to door sales was like.

Trey Griggs [00:18:29]:
I started to say, it’s not like we’re going into their business and meeting them for the 1st time, and we gotta sell them today because we’re not coming back tomorrow, and it’s a 100% Shannon. You only eat what you kill. And as I’m describing it, that’s when the light bulb clicked of how valuable that door to door experience was. Yep. Right? It’s the same prepared to. Yeah. It was the same thing. And I just remember that season and that moment in particular of the of how valuable door to door sales.

Trey Griggs [00:19:01]:
And now I’m a salesman at heart. When I meet other salespeople and they start talking, I can almost tell which ones went through door to door like I did, because it’s it’s almost like a rite of passage to to do that. Yeah. So, yeah, that was a memorable moment in my career as well. So that’s a good to go. Those are those are 2 good ones. So it’s a good question. Good question today.

Trey Griggs [00:19:16]:
That’s good.

Mark Funk [00:19:17]:
Awesome.

Trey Griggs [00:19:17]:
Alright. Also, it’s time for us to play this or that. This or that. Okay. This is a fun game that we play. I think we might even have graphic for this. Do we have a this or that graphic for this? We we do. Let’s play.

Trey Griggs [00:19:28]:
Uh-oh. Alright, Mark. So I’m gonna give you 2 option 2 options. You just have to tell us which one you prefer. That’s it. Alright. Okay. We’ll make them real simple.

Trey Griggs [00:19:40]:
Alright. We’ll start with 1 super simple. I think I even know the answer to this one, but I’ll just throw it out there. Okay. Beach or mountains? Beach or mountains? Beach. Beach. Clearly. Beach.

Trey Griggs [00:19:50]:
Yeah. You don’t have to get away to the mountains. You like the beach. You actually I

Mark Funk [00:19:53]:
can look at the mountains maybe beach.

Trey Griggs [00:19:57]:
You’re a beach guy. That’s for sure. Okay. Alright. Okay. Hot dog or Hamburger. You’re at a barbecue. Hamburger.

Trey Griggs [00:20:04]:
Hamburger. I was at With cheese? And if so, what kind of cheese?

Mark Funk [00:20:07]:
Oh, absolutely. What kind of cheese? Cheeseburger in paradise, man.

Trey Griggs [00:20:09]:
Oh, that’s true. I should. That’s right. Good call. What kind of cheese? Do you go regular, like American, pepper jack, do you do something different, Colby? What do you American? Just American? Just American cheese. Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:20:18]:
Just American cheese. Yeah.

Trey Griggs [00:20:19]:
That’s a good one. Okay.

Mark Funk [00:20:20]:
Now you’re making me hungry. I know what I’m gonna do after we’re done here.

Trey Griggs [00:20:23]:
The next one is also food, so I apologize. Okay. Apples or oranges, let’s go healthy. Would you prefer to eat an apple or peel an orange and then eat that?

Mark Funk [00:20:30]:
You know what? I’m gonna say orange, because it goes with a lot of drinks.

Trey Griggs [00:20:34]:
Oh, okay. Alright. Very good. Orange, that’s a good one. Orange is not bad. I like Apple because it’s just not as messy. That’s why I like Apple, but oranges are good. Oranges are good.

Trey Griggs [00:20:43]:
That’s a good point. Okay. Alright. Sports car or truck?

Mark Funk [00:20:50]:
So I own a truck, but eventually, I’m gonna get Sports car. So right now, I think that’s what everybody wants to do. Right now, it’s a truck.

Trey Griggs [00:20:58]:
Right now, it’s a truck. But, yeah. But but you like those do you have a sports car picked out? It sounds like you’ve been thinking about this. Do you have one that you

Mark Funk [00:21:04]:
I have, but, unfortunately, I just can’t bring myself to to to get to that level as far as what the commitment is. But I really love the new Corvettes.

Trey Griggs [00:21:12]:
I think those look

Mark Funk [00:21:14]:
really nice, but

Trey Griggs [00:21:14]:
Would you like a new Corvette or would you like a classic like 77 Corvette?

Mark Funk [00:21:19]:
You know what? I really like the new ones.

Trey Griggs [00:21:21]:
Yeah. They really do. They are they are nice. They they look like Lamborghinis kind of. They kind of got the feel. Right? Right.

Mark Funk [00:21:27]:
Yeah. I just can’t I can’t I can’t bring myself to pay that, so I just drive my truck.

Trey Griggs [00:21:32]:
That’s a that’s a good one. Alright. Well, you know, that’s that’s a good one. Okay. Last one, vacation. Are you staying in the states? Are you going over

Mark Funk [00:21:40]:
Going on vacation next week and are gonna go up to another part of Florida.

Trey Griggs [00:21:43]:
You’re going to Florida?

Mark Funk [00:21:44]:
Panama City Beach.

Trey Griggs [00:21:45]:
Let’s let’s do this. A dream vacation. Let me make it dream vacation. Somewhere in the states or somewhere overseas?

Mark Funk [00:21:51]:
States, actually.

Trey Griggs [00:21:52]:
Stateside. Alright. Cool. You like to do national parks? You like to just like, what do you like to

Mark Funk [00:21:56]:
I’d go to Iowa or I’m sorry. I yeah. I’d I’d go to Hawaii.

Trey Griggs [00:22:02]:
Hawaii. Yeah. Have you ever been there before?

Mark Funk [00:22:05]:
No. I have not. It’s on my bucket list.

Trey Griggs [00:22:06]:
Bucket list.

Mark Funk [00:22:07]:
Yes, Brent?

Trey Griggs [00:22:08]:
I have been once. I’ve been once, and that was, that was last, last year, last May. And, I’ve never been there before. It was pretty cool. I got to take the kids too, so they’ve been there as well, which is nice. Kinda get that out of the way for them. Nice. That’s pretty cool.

Trey Griggs [00:22:20]:
Alright. Well, everybody, that was this version of this or that. So hope you enjoyed that. Alright. Let’s get back to this. We got just a few more minutes here before we wrap up, Mark. Just a couple of other things. So, know, we talked about your work at SPI.

Trey Griggs [00:22:33]:
What is your favorite thing about working with agents? What do you just enjoy? What gets you up and and just, you know, gets you excited? And are you working hand in hand with the agents? Are you really behind the scenes? About that interaction.

Mark Funk [00:22:43]:
Yeah. No. So I’ll start with the latter first. I’m a I actually go out in our in our business or visit our agents. I was visiting an agent, last week over here in Miami. I’m visiting agents a couple weeks from now. So, you know, part of my role, my job, It it is behind the scenes where I’m talking to carriers, I’m getting their equipment, I’m getting their requirements, I’m talking to our talking and working with our IT group

Trey Griggs [00:23:06]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:23:07]:
Making sure that any solution We bring we bring on matches and but, you know, what I really like and something I found about my career a long time ago, and Trey, I like to help people. I don’t know what it is. I’m sure somebody can analyze that, but you know what? I really like to help people. So when I can walk into an agent’s office And I can sit down and I can see that they’re spending a lot of time doing something that could maybe be automated and or that we already have a solution for, Then you know what? I’ll jump right in there. Hey. Let me show you this. Check this out. Right? And and we go through all that type of stuff.

Mark Funk [00:23:46]:
I absolutely love Helping people. And it isn’t necessarily agent agents, but it it does transcend nicely into that. Right?

Trey Griggs [00:23:53]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:23:54]:
So yeah. No. I’m I’m out probably 30% of the time with the agents. You know, another 70% of the time, I’m I’m working behind the scenes to to support the agents.

Trey Griggs [00:24:05]:
It seems like that’s the culture of the company because I know that Mike travels a lot to spend time with agents. He’s told me stories of, you know, going to a Kansas City Chiefs game with an agent in town and They’re doing these other activities. So it seems like that’s really a part of the culture is not just to support the agents from afar, but to really go and spend time with the agents in their neck of the woods.

Mark Funk [00:24:23]:
You know, Trey, it that is exactly our culture. And here’s the thing too. It it transcends just business. I mean, there’s agents that that I talk to on the phone all day. Hey. How’s it going? You know, and I know their family. I know their They’re they’re they’re kids. I know what’s going on in their personal life.

Mark Funk [00:24:41]:
And and, you know, it you build relationships. I mean, it the key and you get this because you’re a sales guy. The key To everything is relationship.

Trey Griggs [00:24:49]:
And if

Mark Funk [00:24:49]:
you can find people where you have that commonality and that you actually care about, it makes it so much easier to help them because It’s like an extended family, and I know that’s gonna sound corny if nobody’s ever experienced that. And and I get it, but It it is. It’s an extended family.

Trey Griggs [00:25:06]:
Yeah.

Mark Funk [00:25:06]:
It really is.

Trey Griggs [00:25:07]:
No. It it seems like that’s the culture. And, again, talking to Mike, and, you know, he’s on the road a lot traveling, which is hard being away from home and and doing that, but it’s a commitment that the company has to its agents which, which is really great. So I love hearing that. I love hearing your heart for helping people And just wanting to really be a support for the agents, which I think is more differentiated for it. Yeah. How you guys great. Mark, thank you for being on the show today.

Trey Griggs [00:25:30]:
Appreciate that, and, much, much success to you as well. Looking forward to seeing you in Nashville, you know, maybe sooner. I don’t know.

Mark Funk [00:25:37]:
Yeah. I I think I’m gonna see you up in Tampa here shortly.

Trey Griggs [00:25:40]:
Oh, nice. Are you going to the broker carrier summit? I am. Yeah. Excellent. That’s awesome. Looking forward to seeing you out there. That’s gonna be a great event. Yeah.

Trey Griggs [00:25:47]:
We’ll be right Yeah. Good here, looking forward. I know. That’ll be great. Mark, again, thanks for joining us, and we’ll see you again real soon on another episode.

Mark Funk [00:25:54]:
Thanks for having me.