Explore the world of driver recruiting with the Hire Truckers Podcast! Join us as we talk to recruiting experts, offering industry insights, marketing trends, and motivation to enhance your recruiting skills. Whether you're a seasoned recruiter or just starting, our podcast is here to help you level up your game in the trucking industry.
Welcome to the Hire Truckers podcast, where we interview experts in driver recruiting. We provide industry insights, marketing trends, and motivation to help you level up your recruiting game. Welcome to the Hire Truckers podcast. I'm your host, Aaron Craddock. Today, we have a cool episode for you guys.
Aaron Craddock:It's the top seven growth lessons from the 2024 Hire Truckers podcast. So starting with number 1, small changes lead to major results over time. As we plan for the new year, Luke Wimberly's insights on small repetitive progress as the best way to drive long term results is a powerful reminder. So many goals are abandoned in January because people don't focus on small achievements and changes and stay consistent with them.
Luke Wimberly:You know, I'm a result driven person. I don't know. Maybe it was the right way I was raised. You know, you don't halfway do anything. If you're gonna sweep, then you sweep with all your might.
Luke Wimberly:And you get every little piece of dirt that you can. If you're gonna sweep, then, you know, move things out of the way and sweep under and around. Don't sweep around things, you sweep under things and you move things. Right? And I I was raised that way.
Luke Wimberly:So result driven is what drives me. It's not money. It's not tangible things. It's really not. It is strictly results.
Luke Wimberly:When I do something, I wanna be the best at it. I wanna do the best job that I can do. And for me to have to go in somewhere and make a change really drives me. And just to see the results, you know, so how do I go into a situation and change it altogether? You know, what's the ultimate goal?
Luke Wimberly:Okay. How do I achieve that ultimate goal? Well, let's set a lot of little goals. Okay? And then we start seeing results.
Luke Wimberly:So I get a little a little result, I get a little result, I get a little result. And before you know it, you you look back 3, 5 years, and you have a huge change all because of little results. So that that's that's what drives me is all the small little bitty results along the way. You know? If I can get someone to answer the phone different, if I can get someone to smile when they're talking on the phone.
Luke Wimberly:Right? So if I sit here and and I really sound like this and, you know, you're looking at me. Right? I'm I'm not smiling, you know, but when I smile, my voice picks up. You can really hear a smile.
Luke Wimberly:So if I can get someone and coach them along and say, hey. Smile when you're on the phone because you can hear that. And I prove it to them and I show them and I share with them All these different things, then it makes a difference. And that one person's turnover goes down over time because they're smiling on the phone. They're building relationships.
Luke Wimberly:Let's get another one. You know? So it's all the little results for me because I'm a result driven person. I don't have to have the major change overnight. I want small changes along the way because eventually you're gonna have a big change.
Aaron Craddock:Number 2. Never get comfortable and you won't be left behind. Melissa Johnson's advice on never getting complacent has stuck with me. As we enter 2025 as a team, we are focused on continuous learning by staying curious, testing, and focusing on innovation.
Melissa Johnson:I would just say never get comfortable. You know, be willing to always learn and move. Be willing to bring people with you whenever you rise up or or learn something new is really good. So my boss over me, she's younger than me, and sometimes that can be hard for people to have someone who's a little bit younger than them over them. But she's taught me so much.
Melissa Johnson:Don't get left behind. Continue to learn. Continue to grow. Continue to know that it's gonna be a different day tomorrow. Every challenge is different, and that you can ask questions.
Melissa Johnson:You know, if you don't know something, you can always find a way to learn. Chit chat with your peers, people that you work with, and don't be afraid to ask questions because no question is done, especially in this industry because there is so much to learn and every situation is different.
Aaron Craddock:Number 3, choose joy instead of chasing happiness. Tracy Rushing's perspective on joy and how it ties into service to others is profound and a great inspiration for me to to focus my mindset on things I can control instead of chasing fleeting feelings. Just the one of the biggest things about this is just having joy and having fun in everything you do. If it's not fun, don't do it.
Tracy Rushing:Well, happy comes quickly and it goes quickly. And joyful is, to me, a state of mind. It's a determination that I've made in my heart that I'm going to serve joy joyfully. Whether I feel like it, whether my emotions are doing that thing today or not, there is joy in it. Seeing my safety team be successful in a coaching call with the driver who we never see that repeat behavior.
Tracy Rushing:Or my HR team being able to sit down with the driver who, you know, is coming in because they need employee assistance, because they have something going on in their family, and have them walking away feeling fully supported. There there's joy in that because we're pointed at the people. And for just a thing that you hear is people are the point. They're not the problem. And when we when we are able to be well prepared for those conversations, You know, we're gonna get it wrong.
Tracy Rushing:People are gonna make errors. And knowing that and being free to recover from those errors and and then have a better outcome or an easier outcome the next time, I think, is how you get to joy and satisfaction. Our driver engagement team has adopted that over the last year or so, and and still prompt to tell you about that because, you know, for a long time in our industry, we heard that happy drivers don't leave. And I got to thinking about that, and I thought, well, what if they don't have a Hebrew national hot dog at the fine jay, but they only have Nathan's Famous? Then that's you know, I can't be responsible for the happiness.
Tracy Rushing:If I'm if I'm happy if they have, you know, strawberry monster versus only the vanilla monster in the cooler or you just can't there are certain things that we can take on responsibility for. But whether or not our team is satisfied is driven from, are we doing a good job as a leadership team and saying, this is the expectation. This is how we're gonna educate you to meet that expectation, and this is how we're gonna coach you when we have failure. And knowing that going in, I think as long as we are open to being coached, all of us included, in saying, you know, we did the thing, and we got the job done. And we have we had a successful outcome, but it could have been so much easier.
Tracy Rushing:There could have been less obstacles if we had done it this way or if we had put things in a different order. I think knowing that that is how we drive our teams to being satisfied and joyful is kind of eliminating happiness from from our equation and saying, happiness is gonna be between you and the Lord, or you and and whatever your source is. And satisfaction is something that I can absolutely drive. And being joyful in that is a decision that I can make every day. And I think, you know, monkey see, monkey do.
Tracy Rushing:When you when you have a team of people who say, no matter what happens today, no matter what happens in the next 10 minutes, on the next phone call, we're gonna be joyful in that. We're gonna get to a point of satisfaction. It just makes the road smoother.
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Aaron Craddock:Visit truckingclicks.com or call 512-982-0816 today. Number 4, be open to conversations and healthy conflict. I used to be uncomfortable with conflict early in my career, but Kimberly DeBoe's words rang out. Conflict can be healthy, and it's imperative to have healthy conflict if you want good overall communication.
Kimberly DeBoe:And in that and we talked about this earlier in that, emotional intelligence is very important. You have to be able to you have to be willing to learn. You have to be open to conversations. You have to be open to conflict as well because not all conflict is bad. And you have to be able to take feedback and grow and learn from that feedback and then be able to give feedback in a way that people will accept it and grow and then be able to give feedback in a way that people will accept it and grow and learn as well.
Aaron Craddock:Number 5, build and nurture relationships. They're worth the effort. Kendra's humility and eagerness to serve others reminds us that showing up in our relationships is the number one thing we can do in 2025 for ourselves and others.
Kendra Patton-Richard:Never wanna be the smartest person in the room, and that's in anything. Even if in my personal life, I always wanna be around people where I could continue to grow. I think there's always an opportunity to grow and to continue to learn because the moment you feel like I know it all, you're failing yourself. So I definitely say take an opportunity to get around positive people, people that are doing great things, people who are meeting and exceeding goals, and and and and surround yourself with those individuals and take notes. Learn from how they brainstorm, how they troubleshoot, how they come up with new ideas, and how they're innovative.
Kendra Patton-Richard:So that's kind of my little motto. It's just trying to be around people where I could continue to grow even from even in my current role, I enjoy being around whether it's other executives, my boss, Tomas, and just seeing how he he troubleshoots, how he look at different scenarios as well too because that's another step that's done for me to continue to grow.
Aaron Craddock:Number 6, never assume the answer is no. Elisha Grayson's advice to never assume the answer is no is just the path we need to carry a growth mindset into 2025 and resist the temptation to self sabotage our success. Let's take a healthy risk and pursue our dreams in the new year.
Elisha Grayson:If there's something that you know the answer is gonna be no, like, you might as well not even ask the question. And I'm trying really hard to teach my daughter of, you don't know the answer is always gonna be no. Like, just ask the question. Like, if there's something that you want to know or you wanna do, you gotta put yourself out there and ask the question. So it's just kind of teaching women that they don't have to be in this little box of what like, that they're raised to be, that we can do more things and act different ways and get out of our shell and, you know, go out and have fun.
Aaron Craddock:Number 7, practice gratitude with a blessing journal. Kelly Jones advice on keeping a blessing journal and practicing gratitude in a tangible way will help us stay on track as we keep a positive mindset even when we head into the inevitable roadblocks next year. Keeping a journal is a great way to empower ourselves and see the beauty despite everyday challenges.
Kelley Jones:Actually, the owner of our company here who is the best of the best. I mean, you talk about a giving, a generous, a if people in the industry know Pat and Linda Patrick, the owners of Kennesaw, I I don't even have to shed any light on it. It it just speaks for itself. The kind of people that they are. But anyway, she and I were having lunch one day and, you know, she was telling me she said, Kelly, if you don't seek out and and really notice the the blessings that God's given you every day when you're in these trials that you'll miss them.
Kelley Jones:You know? And she said, this is what you need to do. You need to just get your little notebook, call it a blessing book. And whenever something good happens to you, just jot it down. You know, it doesn't have to be something huge.
Kelley Jones:It can be it can be anything. You know, and so, thankfully, 12 years ago, 11 years ago, I I took her up on that and I did that. And, sometimes I put the book in a drawer and I might pull it back out in a year. Literally. It's it's not something I I can say that I just religiously do all the time.
Kelley Jones:I don't. But is there a lot of things in that book? Yes. And I look back and and I realize what blessings they were. I mean, it was just little things, you know?
Kelley Jones:That the kids graduated from this or my my daughter finished college. Now now this one's a nurse. This one's through with the marines. The hurricane. You know?
Kelley Jones:It's just everything. There's so much that we have to be thankful for, and I think I have to be intentional to to look at that stuff every day if I don't because our world is crazy and can get depressing sometimes. With everything you see on the news and everything that's going on, there is so much beauty in it and you just have to really focus on it and and notice it. It's there.
Aaron Craddock:So that was the top seven growth lessons from the 2024 Hire Truckers podcast. I hope you guys have a great year, and I'm just super excited about all of our guests, from this past year and continuing some conversations with them, having them back on the show, and also all our new guests coming in 2025. So if you haven't already subscribed, subscribe to the Hire Truckers podcast. Thanks. Thank you for joining us today.
Aaron Craddock:Our goal with the Hire Truckers podcast is to provide industry insights, marketing trends, and motivation to level up your recruiting game. If we added value, take a few seconds to share this with your network. Have a great week.