Designing Success in Logistics: Kris Rzepkowski’s Creative Approach at Bennett Transportation & Logistics | Logistics Series

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspoti and today’s guest is Chris Sapowski, Vice President, Corporate Business Development at the Bennett family of companies. And we’re founded in 1974. Bennett is a leading logistics and transportation solutions provider, specializing in everything from trucking,

to international freight forwarding. They are recognized for their We Care motto, reflecting a commitment to top-notch service, safety, and integrity. Now, Chris brings over 25 years of marketing and strategic leadership experience to Bennett. He has driven growth for clients across the US with customized logistics solutions and previously served as vice president of marketing and communications at Bennett. Under his guidance, the company’s market presence expanded.

earning Chris accolades like the Trailblazer Award for producing Bennett’s 50th anniversary book and the Purpose Award for community-based initiatives with Wreaths Across America. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. Imagine being able to give your employees free access to doctors,

therapists and prescription medications in a way that puts more money in your staff’s pockets and the company’s too. As an example, one recent client with 450 employees boosted net profits over $412,000 a year. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, the VP, Corporate Business Development at the Bennett Family of Companies.

Chris, thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Kris Rzepkowski (02:01)
Thanks for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (02:03)
So Chris, you actually started out as a user interface designer. What skills did you learn in those early days that are helpful in your role today?

Kris Rzepkowski (02:15)
Yeah, so I went to art school. I was a bachelor of fine arts, communication design. And so early in my career, I was designing computer interfaces to help people use printers and copiers. And so what we would do is we would observe people using our designs and how they interacted with the equipment that we were working with. And so by watching them, you could tell whether the design work that you were doing actually resonated and helped them

use the equipment. So what I learned from all of that as I’ve gone through my career is that best intentions and great ideas are all well and good until you actually observe them in the field and in the market. And then you have to adjust your strategy to real world usage. I there’s a lot of difference between reality and what your intentions were. And so the companies and people that can modify their

strategies based on true observation, true data ⁓ are the ones that do better.

Anthony Codispoti (03:18)
⁓ Now that makes a lot of sense. that skill of being able to observe people, see how it is that they’re actually doing the thing that you want them to do, and then being able to pivot and adjust to those behaviors.

Kris Rzepkowski (03:32)
You might say that you really, really like something that I’ve designed or that we put in front of you, but when you actually start using it and you fumble around and you can’t figure it out, I know for a fact that we’ve done something wrong. So what you like and what you do can be two totally different things.

Anthony Codispoti (03:46)
I can appreciate that. so then kind of fast forward a little bit. 2011, you had an opportunity to step into a management role at Hudson Staffing Company. What was that experience like? And maybe think about the biggest lesson you learned as it pertains to managing other people.

Kris Rzepkowski (04:05)
Yeah, I I prided myself on technical ability, really being indispensable to my team and to my supervisor and that kind of thing in my early years. And as I stepped into more of a management role, stepping from an individual contributor amongst teammates and that world into having to manage and be somebody that inspires direction and leads people to a different…

result and really helps to foster their growth. That’s a huge transition for me. that was a journey for sure stepping into management there.

Anthony Codispoti (04:42)
What kind of helped you through that process? Were there any mentors? Was it just sort of fumbling along and making mistakes and learning from them on your own?

Kris Rzepkowski (04:50)
Now, a little of both. had a wonderful mentor who he spent time with me, my boss, he would bring me into his office and he would spend an ungodly amount of time just talking and listening to me and listening to my concerns and my interactions with my team. And so that really started to model for me what it was like to be a manager and a leader rather than just an individual contributor. The rest of it was fumbling, learning, ⁓ know, engaging in books and just trying to

be the best version that I could for my team. But yeah, it’s definitely mentorship was a big part of it.

Anthony Codispoti (05:26)
Yeah, because, when you’re a good practitioner, sort of a natural thing to kind of keep moving you up, you know, through the ranks, but not everybody who’s sort of good at the skill itself is then also good at managing people doing the skill. Did you ever kind of doubt or question if that was going to be you?

Kris Rzepkowski (05:46)
Yeah, it’s easy to focus on what’s in front of you and this and like I said, the craft and I’m still doing the craft here 30 years later. I mean, I’m I my fallback procedure is to work on the technical aspects, the work itself. Working with people is brutal. Like this job would be a lot of fun if you didn’t have to have people involved. So the people side of it, I’ve always doubted myself throughout the entire journey. But you know, that is it is part of growing into leadership is understanding that probably

60 to 70 percent of doing leadership well is actually the people side of it. Caring, listening, guiding, know, feeding them so that they can be the most productive version of themselves.

Anthony Codispoti (06:28)
Yeah, and I’m glad you give voice to that because, you know, I think that’s something that a lot of leaders end up feeling like they have to hold in. You know, the challenge of managing people if you’ve never done it before is, well, a challenge. I liked your word brutal. You know, you’re dealing with all kinds of different personalities and how to get them to mesh. you know, they’ve got everybody’s got their own sort of life problems going on behind the scenes and how that may show up at work and how you navigate that.

Is there maybe a resource, whether it was a book or a course or something like that, that you found helpful in sort of this, what’s ongoing, this ongoing process of kind of ⁓ leveling up your leadership skills?

Kris Rzepkowski (07:11)
Yeah, I I listen to the, ⁓ so I attend the global leadership summit every year. It is a, it’s a wonderful event that is put on by Willow Creek church in Chicago. It’s a globally ⁓ broadcast event and some of the speakers there, Greg Rochelle is the leader of that particular conference. He’s a leadership podcast. ⁓ And I just, ⁓ he is very grounded in some of these principles and just keeps you.

And when you listen to it, it’s like, okay, my job today is to come in and be a leader and stop thinking about self, think about the others on my team and how I can help them to grow. So I do, I do listen to that pretty regularly. And I attend that conference every single year for sure.

Anthony Codispoti (07:53)
Okay, so now you’ve been with the Bennett family of companies for nearly 13 years. How did that opportunity first come about, Chris?

Kris Rzepkowski (08:02)
So we had a management change at my prior company. I could tell that the team was ⁓ kind of turning over. were bringing in their own people from outside the organization. My supervisor ended up getting let go. ⁓ And so I could kind of see the writing on the walls. I was working from home and it was one of those bad day kind of thing. I never listened to recruiters, but this particular day a recruiter called and I answered the phone and they said they have an opportunity at a small privately held.

trucking and logistics firm in McDonough, Georgia. I was living in Rochester, New York and I had never heard of McDonough, Georgia, but I did know it was South. ⁓ so I listened to the discussion and over the course of doing the dance with Bennett, I ended up going to a really ⁓ intense 13 person panel interview. That’s what it’s like at a family company. You get the family members, you get the senior leadership, they’re vetting you, they’re making sure that you’re a cultural fit because

privately held and family oriented Christian company. They wanna make sure that you’re a culture fit as much as you are a technical fit for the role. So they needed a leader to run their marketing department and I guess they chose me.

Anthony Codispoti (09:14)
And you relocated. ⁓ Tell us before we get into a little bit more about what your roles have been and now are today. Tell us a little bit more specifically about what it is Bennett does.

Kris Rzepkowski (09:15)
I did.

Well, I like to shorthand it. We do a lot of things. We have 12 different operating companies across a lot of different trucking and logistics modes. But the easy answer is we are good at moving the big, heavy and ugly. ⁓ We do trucking and logistics for things that most companies don’t know how to handle. So we have large ⁓ open deck trailers that can handle freight from 30,000 pounds all the way up to a million pounds.

⁓ string different pieces of equipment together to take that over the open roads. We have crane and rigging that can take those pieces and place them in very specific locations very safely. So ⁓ we do things that most other trucking companies aren’t willing to take on. We do arms, ammunition and explosives for the federal government. We do ⁓ aerospace type of moves for companies that you probably know very well.

that have space components. So really specialty freight moves is our number one. We move manufactured housing all over the country and modular buildings. We have a fleet of people that get into trucks and move them off of the assembly lines to their dealers. That’s called drive away where you put contractors in the cab of a newly built truck. So we’re a very diverse company that does a lot of very specialty ⁓ freight logistics projects.

Anthony Codispoti (10:53)
Why so many different operating companies? How did that unfold?

Kris Rzepkowski (10:57)
Our CEO, Marcy Taylor, who’s owned this place in 74, a woman owned company. And what she has told us is that it’s been by saying yes, saying yes to customer needs. So they will stumble upon a particular long time customer that has a particular need that they have to take care of. Like for instance, one of our big customers in Augusta, Georgia needed a large warehouse. And so over the course of a year and a half, we built a million and a half square foot warehouse to help warehouse their.

you know, their projects and feed their assembly lines. So it’s really been an organic growth in areas where our customers say they need help.

Anthony Codispoti (11:34)
So why so many different companies? Why not sort of one entity? If you guys acquire different businesses and then sort of let them stand alone on their own.

Kris Rzepkowski (11:44)
Yeah, both. So ⁓ it’s helpful in trucking to have kind of a holding company and then the individual entities because this is a very insurance focused risk based business, right? So if something negative happens in one of the areas, you don’t want to allow all your other areas to have, you know, to be taken down. So it has to do with insurance. has to do with risk.

⁓ the ability for one company to stand alone from another. So it’s practical in that way. And it’s also when we became the Bennett family of companies in 2019, it really helped to show that we also have grown by acquisition. And so what we do plug in companies into our business model, ⁓ that’s part of our growth strategy. So it’s both. It really helps us have a coherent strategy to the marketplace.

Anthony Codispoti (12:36)
So each of these different entities, are they doing similar services but in different geographies or are they doing different types of trucking, transportation, logistics sort of services?

Kris Rzepkowski (12:48)
It’s a little bit of both. our industry, if you can, it starts with assets versus non-assets. So assets means the company owns trucks and trailers. A lot of our customers want to make sure that we own assets. And so when we acquire a company, we acquire ⁓ the trucks and trailers that they use to move things. And trucks and trailers can move freight ⁓ all over the place. So a lot of times there will be some overlap in services, but also geographic. ⁓

So as an example, have an entity called American Eagle Logistics. They’re focused on the oil and gas industry, mainly in Louisiana and Texas. Can they move freight all over the country? Does it overlap with our Bennett Motor Express business unit sometimes? It certainly can. And that’s actually a benefit for us. So when one of our companies needs extra equipment or extra capability, we can slide in some of the extra services from one of the other companies.

Anthony Codispoti (13:42)
And you mentioned the name of one company is American Eagle, so they’re not all carrying the Bennett name.

Kris Rzepkowski (13:48)
Welcome to my journey as a marketing person here at Bennett since 2012. Yes. So I would have loved everything had a Bennett name, but no, our, our, our company ownership, our family, they, they actually like to leave companies alone when we acquire them. So they’re very proud of their brand and they’ve, they’ve created an operating structure and a, and a marketplace for themselves. So when we bring them on board, sometimes they become a Bennett company and sometimes we leave the brand alone. So we’ve got.

American Eagle, ⁓ Ace Doran, Road Masters, some other legacy brands that ⁓ retain their original brand name.

Anthony Codispoti (14:26)
And so is it done? I’m going to connect the dots here. I’m going to guess it’s done maybe for two reasons. One, because that name carries some weight. The branding carries some weight locally. They’ve been around for a while. They’ve got reputation. And two, if it sounds like part of the strategy is to kind of leave them alone to run their operations the way that they’ve been doing a good job for years doing. This probably helps that entity to internally feel like they’re maintaining some sense of independence.

Kris Rzepkowski (14:56)
Uh, a hundred percent on the second side. So it helps them feel comfortable coming to our organization. We’re a very family oriented, caring company, almost to a fault where we, we don’t tend to streamline the operation a whole heck of a lot. And we try to make people feel comfortable when they’re coming into the company. You know, they got there for a reason. And so a lot of times a company won’t come to a new organization unless they’re, you know, made whole and allowed to continue to keep their culture. So.

It’s probably more of the latter. Just there’s some brand recognition in the marketplace, but like I said, as a marketing person, I would prefer everybody to be Bennett branded that would help, you know, just create the recognition in the marketplace.

Anthony Codispoti (15:40)
Tell us about the agent model that Bennett uses, Chris.

Kris Rzepkowski (15:43)
Well, there’s a source of a little bit more of our fragmentation and benefit. So Bennett as a whole is meant to service entrepreneurs and business owners, both on the driver side. So we’re mainly an owner operator company. So most of our drivers, nearly 80 some percent of them are independent. We provide safety services, ⁓ billing settlements for our drivers. And then on the freight agent side also. So we have over 200 independent freight agents out in the marketplace. They’re independent business owners.

They have their own LLC, they lease to Bennett, and then we provide services like billing, insurance, and then the drivers for them to be able to move the freight that they need to move. And then we pay them a certain amount of commission on the freight that they move through Bennett. So we help all day long independent owners of, and they’re small mom and pops up to 30, 40 employee terminals that come to Bennett to.

use our trucking services to serve their customers, their relationships.

Anthony Codispoti (16:46)
Now, did I hear you correctly before that a lot of your customers want to see that Bennett owns the equipment that you’re using? How does that sort of intertwine with the owner operator kind of agent model that you guys use a lot?

Kris Rzepkowski (17:00)
Yeah, so number one, Bennett has a lot of trailers that we actually own. So we don’t necessarily own as many trucks as some of the other big companies you might recognize, but we do have over a thousand pieces of equipment in our fleet. And so when an owner operator that owns their own truck comes to Bennett, they can choose to bring their trailer or use one of our trailers to service the customer. But the reality is what that owner operator leased to Bennett.

it essentially becomes our asset to offer to the marketplace. they really can’t run, they’re not an independent ⁓ operating authority when they’re leased to Bennett, they become a Bennett asset.

Anthony Codispoti (17:40)
Oh, interesting. Okay. So I’m curious to kind of explore the transition of roles for you. Executive Director of Marketing, then VP of Marketing, now VP of Business Development. Which one of those transitions, whether first coming into the company or moving in between those spots was kind of the most challenging for

Kris Rzepkowski (18:04)
Well, obviously to start with just coming to a new company in the new industry was really challenging. I went to, you know, I had done marketing for 15 years prior to Bennett, but it was in professional services. So coming into logistics, trucking, family owned, coming out of a publicly traded company, that kind of stuff was a huge transition and what strategies we would use to continue to grow the brand. At the time I was $260 million company.

And over the course of my tenure in marketing, we grew to just under a billion dollars in revenue. So was a lot of acquisitions, a lot of strategic changes to get to that point. So that was the first, and then just moving to the South and the whole thing was, was a huge change, a huge, new team of people, all that stuff. ⁓ but that went really well. And by the time last year rolled around moving into this new role from marketing into corporate business development, I would say is actually.

Uh, one of the is more challenging, right? I, took this role for a reason to get really uncomfortable again, to like, literally I didn’t, I wanted to be energized getting out of bed in the morning, not knowing what I was going to do and how I was going to figure it out. Like to me, that’s how I grow. And so I’ve been at this since November of last year, full time in corporate business development. My job is to

Try to tie all these 12 operating companies together and their services and help bring the customer a more simplified version of dealing with Bennett. So that’s you’re dealing with the Bennett family of companies rather than each one of our little entities. And how can we bring the complete magnitude of all of our services to really bigger and more complex projects.

Anthony Codispoti (19:41)
I love what you just said there. You wanted to get uncomfortable again, like really uncomfortable again. And I think most people assume that that’s not the place that they should be operating from that, you know, the whole point of life is to be comfortable and relaxed and kind of go with the flow. But in my experience, and it sounds like you’re sort of wired the same way. Growth comes from those uncomfortable edges of life, the, where it’s uncertain, where you don’t know what you’re doing. Have you

kind of always been wired this way or is it something you sort of picked up along the way?

Kris Rzepkowski (20:15)
No, it’s well, it’s a hundred percent. What I’ve learned very quickly in my career DNA was, I can only really lasted anything for about three years. Like I’m on a cycle of I’ll take a particular position. I will learn it in the first year, be really uncomfortable. Second year is proficiency. Third year is strategy and like, okay, I’ve got this thing down. And then it’s well, what’s next, what’s next. And it’s kind of been my flow every three years, whether it’s internal to a company or external.

And it’s when I get to the point where I know exactly what my next three months is going to be and I don’t have anything that’s challenging me or that I don’t need to learn or that’s just not interesting. It’s like, all right, let’s shake this up. Let’s make sure that I don’t know what I’m doing so that I have to learn it. Like I’m forced to and not just like it’s kind of something I want to do. It’s like I’m put into a business situation where I have to learn it to be able to continue to earn my check. And it provides extreme amount of value to the to the organization that I’m working for. So that has been.

I’ve always looked for the more strategic role or the more ⁓ engaged aspect of the position so that ⁓ I can dive into it and the speech like completely out of sorts when I get to the office.

Anthony Codispoti (21:27)
I love that. mean, such a, for me, think it’s such an attractive trait, whether it’s a partner, an employee, a leader, ⁓ just that, that sense of, never wanting to kind of rest on your laurels and always looking for that next challenge.

Kris Rzepkowski (21:42)
being calm and, and you know, understanding internally the chaos that’s going on, but presenting yourself to your team and to your colleagues as, know, I’ve got this and you can rely on me and I’m going to show up and I’m going to take care of it. Like that’s kind of my, my special sauce, I guess it’s, know, keep all that angst inside, use it as like a ⁓ nucleus to learn from, and then just explode with value out to your teammates. So.

Anthony Codispoti (22:09)
I

love how you put that. ⁓ You’re a guy, Chris, that likes to sort of blend creativity with strategy in your work. Can you walk us through an example of how your background in communication design has influenced a pivotal marketing or business development campaign at Bennett?

Kris Rzepkowski (22:29)
Yeah. So as I kind of said, we, had sat in the marketing seat at Bennett for about six years, dealing with a kind of a legacy brand, all these different aspects of the different companies we had acquired. And then we put a couple of new ones in place. We started our own company, Boss Crane and Rigging in 2015. So we had all this stuff going on and it was like the brand was just not working for us.

We embarked upon the first and honestly, it was our CEO. have a very supportive like Marcy Taylor has built it probably the one of the most marketed trucking companies in the space. And so she said, Hey, let’s rebrand this thing. Let’s do a proper branding project. So I went out and I vetted partners and we built this, ⁓ this whole brand positioning campaign. we, we arrived at the together. We can move anything tagline. We did a new logo. We, ⁓ worked on an.

new social media campaign and ultimately finished off with a brand new website in, uh, towards the end of 2020. And, uh, it just, to me, that brings obviously all elements of design to the table. Um, but you have to convince your people internally, like we’re going to aspire to this because we’re so messy internally and we talk about these things in very technical ways, but to the market, it doesn’t make a lick of sense. So simplify Bennett family of companies, new brand.

new website, new messaging, and that really to me brought all that design background to the forefront.

Anthony Codispoti (23:59)
And maybe this is just me, but I sort of have this stereotype in my head of trucking, transportation, logistics, kind of being like old school companies, maybe not sort of as forward thinking with rebranding and social media presence and that kind of a thing. I right? sort of Bennett is kind of, and the leadership of Marcy Taylor is kind of a bit of an outlier there.

Kris Rzepkowski (24:22)
⁓ You’re accurate in all accounts. So we’re still old school. The industry is probably 10 years behind some of the technology industry. So no doubt about that. But we definitely leaned into social media early on in my tenure here. I brought it from my prior company and we just started hammering on it throughout my tenure here because our culture is probably one of our key differentiators. As I said, privately held, ⁓ very family oriented, very Christian company.

And we’re not shy about a very patriotic company. So not shy about some of these core values that we bring that are different than another company. And the only way to get that across with authenticity is social media. ⁓ And social media is inexpensive compared to all the other things. Now, we got into NASCAR recently, which is not inexpensive. But before that, social media was the way to go to market and ⁓

And I think we did lead the way. Like we were pretty early adopters before a lot of the other trucking companies were really embracing it. I think now it’s a little bit more ubiquitous in the marketplace.

Anthony Codispoti (25:25)
Tell us about your involvement with NASCAR. That sounds really fun.

Kris Rzepkowski (25:29)
what a cool story. At 2022, we’re trying to figure out after the rebrand, we’re trying to figure out how to recruit truck drivers and continue to grow the brand. We got presented with an opportunity to ⁓ sponsor a driver in the NASCAR Xfinity series, Austin Hill. He was a local kid with Richard Childress Racing. His dad had a steel business and we said, okay, they said if you can move the freight for ⁓ Austin’s dad,

We can help offset some of the costs of sponsoring the NASCAR. And my, had no experience in racing. said, when he came in for the interview, I’m like, Austin, do you know what to do with your hands in an interview? Cause it’s a reference to Talladega Knights. had no idea. So, we raced a full season, 20 some races with our brand on his car. He won his very first race at Daytona. And we were like, wait, this is how this goes? You just put the brand on the car and you win?

Anthony Codispoti (26:21)
Wow.

Kris Rzepkowski (26:26)
So once we did that, mean, was, we were just absolutely addicted. So he, had a one, had rookie of the year in 2022 and we’ve sponsored him every season since then. He’s become a really well-known figure. Xfinity series is the series below the cup series, which is the senior circuit on NASCAR. So we race on Saturdays.

Anthony Codispoti (26:48)
Okay, ⁓ wow, it’s so much fun. So you sponsor a car and you’re moving a lot of the equipment from one racetrack to another.

Kris Rzepkowski (26:56)
Yeah. So one of the big benefits of that sport of motor sports versus, you know, sponsoring baseball or football is you get some of this B2B engagement with other sponsors. So if you look at any car on Saturday or Sunday, they’re all fertile ground to do business with. So we partner with a lot of the different companies and try to move their freight and then with NASCAR themselves. So we have, we’ve moved ⁓ golf carts from track to track for NASCAR. We’ve moved credentials, trailers, all kinds of different.

opportunities to do freight and logistics within the racing circuit. Now we’re moving, actually this week we just started doing F1 moves. So now we’ve crossed over, F1 started to see we were in NASCAR and they’re like, okay, well, can you guys move some of our freight from track to track? So yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (27:40)
That’s fun. Let’s

talk about something else that’s fun, the Playing with Trucks series.

Kris Rzepkowski (27:45)
cool. Yeah, so how do you become business development guy ⁓ after you’ve been a marketing guy for 12 years? You try to take your own advice. So I had always been harassing our sales and business development teams to do something on social media, do something for personal branding because honestly customers deal with people, not with companies. you don’t, you’re not going to know Anthony, you’re not going to ask Bennett family of companies to move your freight. You’re going to ask Chris. So.

I kind of leaned in and I’m like, what can I do moving into sales for the first time to put myself out in the marketplace? And I actually use chat GPT and AI to help me invent this series. And it’s basically I’m using toy trucks to explain very complex logistics and transportation topics. I grew up playing with matchbox cars and stuff in the dirt. So it was very natural for me to use, you know, toy trucks to explain complex logistics topics across our different companies.

Anthony Codispoti (28:40)
So something

else interesting there, used AI and chat GPT to kind of come up with the idea for this series. So again, like I’m hearing sort of this layering in of technology that’s probably not very typical for where the transportation industry is.

Kris Rzepkowski (28:58)
Yeah, for AI is infiltrating all of our business lives and it is incredibly compelling and powerful to help us level up our careers as leaders, as salespeople, as marketing people. ⁓ So I love having a conversation and planting a seed of an idea with ChatGPT in that particular case. And I said, Hey man, I’m going into this new role in sales. want to build a video series that

You know, really helps to show my expertise. Here’s my LinkedIn resume. Here’s what my company does help me develop this series. And we had this dialogue and it comes down to scripting. And then what are we going to do in the scenes? And I mean, the thing’s amazing. And so you can see how AI is helping in all different aspects of executing sales, executing marketing, very excited about how it can help analyze trucking lanes, ⁓ safety, those types of things inside of logistics. ⁓ it’s just truly remarkable. We’re in a

We’re in the dawn ⁓ of an era that I don’t think we’re ever going to witness again.

Anthony Codispoti (29:59)
It really is incredible. Are there other ways that you’re seeing it being used within your company or sort of within the industry at large yet?

Kris Rzepkowski (30:07)
Yeah, so every autonomous vehicle, every Tesla that you hear about in the marketplace is really AI is at the base of it, right? It’s running the analysis of how an autonomous vehicle can go down the road and see traffic and mean, Waymo vehicles turn on their own. So in trucking, they’re trying to do some things with autonomous and that kind of stuff. In our big, heavy and ugly, I don’t think AI is ever gonna handle a 200,000 pound load and all the escorts and stuff like, I’m not worried about that.

But what it is doing, it’s helping on the safety side. So all the cameras that are facing outward from the truck, inward from the truck, we deal with a lot of ⁓ safety issues on the roads. And so the AI is helping to give back to our safety department, whether there’s a hard breaking event or whether somebody has swerved or whether there’s low wires or low bridges, like the AI is helping to provide us with very detailed safety feedback and then helping us to coach our drivers to do a better job.

out there, you know, paying attention to all those risk factors. That’s just one way.

Anthony Codispoti (31:10)
That’s really interesting. And you know, some people have talked about initiatives like this and sort of painted it with like a scary big brother brush. But the way I hear you talking about it, Chris, is that this is more designed for keeping your drivers safe, keeping other people on the road around them safe and looking for coaching opportunities that, hey, we saw that you did this here in this environment. Let’s talk about that. Let’s review what would have been a better strategy.

Kris Rzepkowski (31:38)
It is, it’s computer augmented, you know, human excellence, honestly. mean, if you think about your traditional safety department, they were relying on police reports or, you know, somebody, how’s my driving? You ever seen those stickers on the back of a car? Somebody calling in said, Hey, your driver did X, Y, Z. But now there’s data being fed in and, you know, safety personnel can analyze the video with the driver and they can coach them together with.

you know, with evidence, I’ll give you the flip side to truck drivers love AI and they love inward facing cameras because there’s so many things that we call them four wheelers. The everyday driver on the road does to put a truck driver at risk. And those, those cameras are ready and able to analyze that situation and actually exonerate truck drivers 95 % of the time.

Anthony Codispoti (32:27)
interesting. So what are some things that us four-wheelers typically do that threaten their safety or make their jobs more difficult?

Kris Rzepkowski (32:35)
my gosh. If I could ask for one change in our industry, it’s that they put ⁓ commercial motor vehicle safety into driver’s ed. You have no idea. First of all, if you’ve ever sat in the cab of a big rig, the blind spots right in front of the truck and right on the side of it on both sides, a car absolutely disappears if you’re sitting in the driver’s seat, unless you’re looking at the mirrors and you’re really paying attention as a professional. So being in any of the blind spots in a truck is an extreme danger.

gotta realize how much weight is going on in a truck. cannot stop on a dime. cannot swerve on a dime. So all the weight that’s involved with trucks, which people knew more about. And then there’s just, know, people get really, really impatient on the roads. They have no real empathy for that. These guys are professionals. This is their career. One bad accident or one incident can basically cost them their career. And yet we rely on these folks. ⁓

every day of the year to move our precious freight and our precious Amazon loads and everything else. people need sensitivity training, honestly, to what drivers are doing.

Anthony Codispoti (33:42)
Wow, something I’d never really thought that much about. I’m glad that you’re given voice to it here today. So, you know, and as I’m thinking, like one of these, one of these things that I could probably do a better job of myself is yeah, when there’s sort of that traffic on the highway, ⁓ man, ⁓ a big rig is a great place for me to sort of cut back into the lane I want to get into because they’re leading, leaving such a like big safety space there where they’re leaving. As I’m listening to you talk, they’re leaving that safety space because

they’re carrying so much weight, they don’t have the ability to speed up quickly or more importantly, to slow down quickly. So they’re doing that for their own safety, but also everyone around.

Kris Rzepkowski (34:22)
That’s right. And just realize that about 30 or 35 feet in front of that buffer that they’re leaving is when they can actually first visually see you. Now they know you’re going to cut into them if you’re closer, because they’re just professionals, but they literally can’t see you if you’re too close.

Anthony Codispoti (34:37)
35 feet. That’s the first time. So if I’m if I’m 30 feet away from the front of that, which is a fair distance as I think about they can’t see me. Okay.

Kris Rzepkowski (34:44)
You’re not there. No,

we’ve had, I mean, terrible situations. You’ll see things on YouTube if you look them up, but you’ll see a truck driver that’ll push a car, you know, a mile and not even know it’s there. I mean, the weight of a Toyota Celica is nothing to a big rig. And if you’re just disappeared in front of the hood.

Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (35:05)
Okay, all right, well there’s our public service announcement for our listeners today. Yeah, okay, let’s shift gears. I want to talk about the Bennett’s 50th anniversary book that you spearheaded and led to you winning the Trailblazer Award. What was this book about? Why did you create this?

Kris Rzepkowski (35:10)
Be safe.

Well, I’ll show it right here. First of all, that’s the book. ⁓ Beautiful golden cover, very much a hardcover coffee table type of book with photos and stories and things in it. ⁓ I’ll tell you what, when you work for a family company, ⁓ and so it’s the mom and her three kids and then the next generation of grandkids, and then you’ve got all the old timers that tell all the stories of how this company was built. And remember too, in the 70s and 80s, was a…

Anthony Codispoti (35:26)
Okay, that was beautiful.

Kris Rzepkowski (35:54)
completely different time, much more of a swashbuckling era, lots of goofiness going on in the workplace. All these stories are hard to piece together and capture to really get the essence of a company for 50 years. And there was a lot of pressure when we celebrate an anniversary every year. So we hired a outside publisher that’s good at helping to capture stories. We spent a year and a half, myself and the granddaughter of our owner spent a year and a half gathering stories.

writing manuscript, organizing the book. A lot of times people’s memories aren’t really accurate. So you’re trying to make it the most accurate Bible of what’s actually happened to this point, because to this point we had never written down a lot of the stuff. So a very interesting journey. The most fun part is they’ve saved all the articles they’ve been in, all kinds of memorabilia, old hats, old signs, old…

everything we’ve got it in a warehouse over here on the property at Bennett. And so this mixture of ephemera and a really compelling story to get us through for the last 50 years ⁓ really became a passion project for myself and the granddaughter of the owner.

Anthony Codispoti (37:05)
Sounds like a lot of fun. And then what happens to this book? Is it just sort of distributed internally? Do you provide it to customers?

Kris Rzepkowski (37:12)
Yeah, it became all the above. So we wanted to make sure it got in the hands of every single person that’s either currently working here or ever worked here, agents, truck drivers, all that stuff. And then we made it available on our website through a special 50th anniversary campaign. People could go to the site and request a book and we would send them the 50th anniversary book. We sent it to partners, vendors. We still give it out when we are trying to attract a new customer. And just to show that

there’s a good swath of 20 or 30 customers we’ve had for nearly the entire span of this company’s life. And so when you become a Bennett customer, you become one for life.

Anthony Codispoti (37:50)
⁓ what a powerful way to be able to demonstrate that legacy and that customer loyalty that you guys have built up. ⁓ I want to hear about Wreaths Across America, a community-based initiative. How did this project shape your perspective on corporate social responsibility?

Kris Rzepkowski (37:56)
Yeah.

Well, I’m glad you asked. Wreaths Across America, their mission is to put a holiday wreath on the gravesite of every fallen soldier ⁓ in the world that has sacrificed themselves for ⁓ their country. And they’ve been doing it for about 20 some years. It was started by Morrill Wooster, a guy that had a wreath company up in Columbia Falls, Maine. And early on, his first goal was to cover every…

Grave site Arlington National Cemetery. And to achieve that, he had to have trucking partners to bring the wreaths down from Columbia Falls to Arlington National Cemetery. It’s truckloads and truckloads of wreaths. Well, over the ensuing 20 some years, he’s continued to develop partnerships. Bennett jumped in in 2017. And we moved a small, I don’t know, 500 wreaths or something down to a cemetery in South Georgia, a national cemetery called Andersonville National Cemetery.

500 wreaths on a national cemetery that has 20,000 grave sites. Andersonville was a prisoner of war camp in the Civil War, and so they buried some 13,000 soldiers there, but beyond the 13,000, some 7,000 soldiers have been buried there from the Georgia region as a national cemetery for honored veterans and that sort of stuff. So when we started to…

move wreaths there and we saw the kind of lack of support in the community for this initiative. We really leaned in as a company. Our core value of patriotism. We have a ton of veterans on staff, a ton of veterans in our truck driving force. Everybody started to understand the mission of recognizing these veterans for their service. They say that the last time a soldier’s name is said is the last time they’re remembered. And so what they do is you place a wreath on the grave site and you say the soldier’s name and thank them for their service. that, you know,

kind of brings their memory back to the forefront. So it’s a very somber and reverent approach, but our people love it because it aligns with our core values. We’ve used it for corporate social responsibility kind of marketing. It’s sort of a part of our culture is how do we go to market that people know that we’re really big on reason across America. We do a huge ceremony every year here at our home office. have custom decorated trucks that

that transport the reeds. do a big ceremony to honor all those folks that are part of it. So it’s a big part of our company.

Anthony Codispoti (40:36)
that’s what a neat way to celebrate it. And sorry if you actually mentioned this. I’m assuming that this happens around Christmas time, just the wreath being sort of associated with.

Kris Rzepkowski (40:45)
Yeah, I’m sorry. it’s usually like the second week of December is National Rees Across America Day. It’s usually, yeah, that’s when you place the rees and then the rees are taken off sometime in January.

Anthony Codispoti (40:55)
And this is still sort of spearheaded by the same company in Maine that manufactures the wreaths.

Kris Rzepkowski (41:00)
Yeah, the national, yeah, Reese Across America is housed with the Reese company that’s up in Columbia Falls.

Anthony Codispoti (41:08)
Neat. So going back to the significant growth that we were talking about earlier, I think when you joined, you guys were around a couple hundred million. Now you’re just shy of a billion. Aside from the acquisitions that you’ve made, what lever have you guys pulled that has really contributed the most to that growth?

Kris Rzepkowski (41:29)
Well, you said aside from, because I would say that’s tough. mean, we’ve tried organic growth. We’ve, we, have started some companies. So we did start, like I said, boss crane and rigging in 2015. then, so things that are logically associated to our business. So when you, a lot of times when you’re moving big, heavy and ugly, there’s also a crane that’s needed to move the thing on and off of the truck. So that was a very logical growth piece for us. So that was about a 60 or $70 million just organic.

company startup out of ⁓ Longview, Texas. Apart from that, we invest heavily in recruiting for truck drivers and advertising, as you’ve mentioned, for customer growth. you know, every single time you acquire a new agent, so we really work on bringing new agents to the company. That’s sort of ⁓ recurring revenue. They bring their book of business, we service them well. They bring their customers on board, they need trucks to move. And so we just continually work on recruiting new agents to the company.

recruiting new trucks to the company. That’s sort of our organic growth model, but the rest of it really is by finding companies that had just something wasn’t quite right with their financials or they hit a particular tough spot with insurance or there’s something wasn’t right with how they were going to market. So we’ve acquired, like I said, a number of organizations that are just in that part. then we do enough to fix their financials, get them, you know, stable. then.

You know, our owners are pretty smart at buying low and selling high. So like when oil and gas was doing poorly, they go and get oil and gas and now oil and gas is doing better. So that’s kind of all mixed together.

Anthony Codispoti (43:03)
Interesting. And so these companies, ⁓ you talked about, you one of the big things that you guys do is spend a lot on recruiting drivers, because without drivers, you don’t have folks to, and there’s a big driver shortage in the country. Is that something that you have gotten involved with, with the marketing background, or is that more of like an HR thing and they’ve got sort of their own system?

Kris Rzepkowski (43:14)
Mm-hmm.

No, no, I’ve definitely been involved in it because as I said, we’re mainly owner operator. actually HR doesn’t have very much to do at all. We have actually independent driver recruiting portion of our company. So it’s recruiting and qualification to make sure that these independent drivers meet our safety standards and our requirements for experience to lease onto our company. So the recruiting engine here is all about ⁓ advertising and doing events. So we’re big on the truck show circuit.

We bring experienced owner operators. What we say is you’re the, is going to be your second place to work all the way through retirement. And so we go to some of the big truck shows. So where they show the big, pretty big rigs and these guys take a lot of pride in their equipment and we’ll go and, and say, Hey, could you bring, know, would you be interested in leasing on your equipment to us? And so we’ve affiliated ourselves with, ⁓ Tony justice, who was a country singer truck driver. ⁓ he’s been helping us market and we go to 20 some truck shows a year. We’ve got a huge.

We put on our own truck show at Atlanta Motor Speedway in the fall called Star Stripes and White Lines, which is where we bring, we do a national championship for the, you know, the big, beautiful, big rigs that these guys spend millions of dollars ⁓ putting together. And then all their buddies come and that’s where we can hopefully find some new recruits.

Anthony Codispoti (44:48)
So I’m somebody who likes specificity. We’ve talked a little bit about how Bennett prides itself on these customized solutions, the big, heavy, weird, ugly. Can you maybe describe one of the more complex logistical challenges that you and your team approached?

Kris Rzepkowski (45:04)
So I’ll give you one. ⁓ As I said before, we work with some of the top space agencies in the country. You would know them by name. It’s pretty obvious. And they have to move components for these large rockets. So whether it’s a rocket booster or fuselage or even some of the satellite componentry. And the thing is when they make these pieces wherever they’re manufactured, whether it’s Texas or Florida or Alabama,

⁓ it’s, it’s one of one, there’s no spares. There’s no, you know, it’s, it is what it is. You have to keep it very much climate controlled. You have to make sure that it doesn’t shake, rattle, roll, get out of gauge, anything at all. It’s like, you know, moving something on an eggshell, you know? So to do that, you have to be very specific with how you load the piece and then how you escort and work with it all the way from the point of pickup to the point of delivery.

And so we put an entire team and process around the movement of these high dollar pieces of equipment. And it, mean like we’ll send a camper full of additional ⁓ maintenance guys so that the truck, if it were to break down, they can immediately get out, fix the rig and keep the load moving. are police escorts. There are, they do a pre pre route survey to make sure that there’s no overhanging.

Lines or overhanging trees that are going to get in the way and if there are they will send a bucket truck before the load They will get the trees cut or the power lines lifted to be able to make sure that it moves over Yeah, so ⁓ yeah, you have to work with every minute and if it’s going from state to state the Permits in one state are different than another so you might not be able to move during the day in one state You have to hold it overnight in a holding area. So you’ve got a pre predetermined where you’re going to park overnight

Anthony Codispoti (46:41)
wow, that’s a thing, huh?

Kris Rzepkowski (46:59)
You have to guard the freight and you have to make sure it stays climate controlled. So sometimes we’ll have to put an ⁓ enclosure around the piece just to make sure that it doesn’t gain temperature or lose temperature or anything throughout the transit. So it’s quite complicated going from state to state in the US, believe it or not, with oversized and very specialized freight.

Anthony Codispoti (47:22)
So many things that never would have thought of. I figure you just, you you get in the truck and you go. And there’s permits, there’s sometimes there’s wires to be moved. You gotta park overnight because a different state has a different rule before you cross the state line. This is why.

Kris Rzepkowski (47:35)
And it’s hazmat. So a lot of times there’s explosives involved, so you’ve got to be hazmat certified.

Anthony Codispoti (47:42)
Okay, and you guys check all these boxes, obviously. This is what you specialize in is the big, heavy, weird, and ugly. ⁓ Okay, Chris, I’d like to hear about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome in your life, whether it’s personal or professional. How’d you get through it what did you learn?

Kris Rzepkowski (47:48)
Yep.

Well, Anthony, I wish I had a compelling, I mean, some of the most compelling individuals that we know have some, you know, rags to riches tail or something that was, that really affected them. For me, my journey has been discomfort and I’ve done it twice, which is to move. And, and that’s really the most, the biggest challenges that I’ve created pretty much for myself. So I’ll say that I started my career.

⁓ in my hometown of Rochester, New York, and after getting married and realizing that I was sort of bored with my first role, I decided to put my resume on monster.com and ship my entire family off to Chicago, Illinois area. ⁓ within 30 days, we sold our house and we were in the new market 30 days, took an entire house full of stuff, putting in an apartment. And I started wailing away at a, at a startup company in Chicago. And my wife and I.

you know, did everything we could to just, you know, survive and thrive in a new market. ⁓ And so that’s where we had our kids. That’s where we met. You we have to, you have to be able to meet new people very quickly. That means find, I like to find a church. Like that’s just how we figured out how to meet new people. And that will put you through about as much stress as on a marriage and a family. Cause we left our core family back in New York. ⁓ And so, but we did it again. We moved.

Back to Rochester, you know, after that first stint to Chicago, we brought our kids back. worked from home for eight years in Rochester. And, ⁓ you know, when working from home, wasn’t cool. It wasn’t a thing. So I had to figure out how to manage a team of 10 people all over the globe, ⁓ with rudimentary technology back in those days. And, ⁓ and then I did it again. And that’s the story you’ve already heard of me moving down to Atlanta to a market I’m very unfamiliar with. mean, South and the North are.

like, you know, oil and water. It took me about three years to figure out the speed, the cadence, the friendships, the life down here. And we took our fourth and fifth grader out of their school up there and plunked them down here. And so it’s just, it’s very jarring to your relationships, to your family, to your personal life. You learn just how to be adaptive, how to meet new people, how to make friends, how to set up a house, move a house, you know, but.

Yeah, that’s really the hardships for me. It’s probably more self-created than anything. I have a wonderful family, great parents that were always supportive. I don’t have any huge health issues. I’m very blessed and thankful for that. I just kind of self-made angst, I guess.

Anthony Codispoti (50:39)
Aside from finding a church each time that you move, which sounds like that’s pretty core to you getting a foundation, you know, kind of finding your people, finding some friends. What’s another strategy that you learned from moving so many times that over time, as you sort of got to your last move, helped to make the move slightly less jargon.

Kris Rzepkowski (51:01)
Woo, a great wife. mean, she’s, she’s, she’s, she’s been, yeah, she, my wife has ⁓ moved around a lot when she, in her background as a, as a kid, her dad was in the Kmart family of companies. So they moved every two years moving to a different store. So she’s very adaptive at making new friends and very quickly meeting neighbors and, and, and those kinds of things. I personally lean into my hobbies. I’m a volleyball player. So.

Anthony Codispoti (51:06)
Smart man.

Kris Rzepkowski (51:27)
I like to go and immediately find a sports league to get involved with and make friends that way. So it’s, it’s pretty basic on the personal side and in the professional side, you have to lean into finding advocates in your organization. I did it twice, especially when I came to Atlanta, I found a guy within a week of meeting here. kept meeting all the people at Bennett and ⁓ my mentor here, he said, look, in your first 90 days, you got to make an impact. And he, he, he,

embraced me and helped advocate for me inside of the organization, making sure that people started to feel comfortable with my style and the things that I was trying to achieve. definitely have to find ⁓ advocates at your new professional position.

Anthony Codispoti (52:11)
How did you help your kids with these books?

Kris Rzepkowski (52:15)
parenting. you know, they, they’re resilient. ⁓ My son was in Boy Scouts. My daughter was involved in drama and acting and that kind of stuff. And so you just have to get them involved very, very quickly. They become adaptive and teach them, you know, to be resilient. Again, the two times that we, the first time we moved, they were babies. So they didn’t know. But that second time when we moved them as fourth and fifth graders, they still talked to my wife and I about, ⁓

the night we told them we were moving, they were just distraught because they had great friends where they were from. But they’ve, they built new friendships, you know, within six months of, know, being the new kids at the new school. And yeah, that’s part of life. Like I think they, you know, when they went off to college and they continue to move in their lives, I think they’re thankful that we’ve done this, they weren’t just always in one place.

Anthony Codispoti (53:05)
Yeah, they learn to be uncomfortable much like they’re dead. You mentioned ⁓ oil and water moving from north to south. What was the big difference that you’ve noticed?

Kris Rzepkowski (53:09)
That’s right.

The speed. my gosh. I moved like this. just, mean, I go, I go 90 miles an hour up North. ⁓ and you know, you would walk into a Walmart down here or whatever. like, anytime, anytime you want to be done with the checkout would be great. ⁓ so, but you learn, you learn that it’s not that there’s a difference in intelligence or, or even thoughtfulness. It’s just the difference in cadence. And so just had to learn that like people are just as

You know, want to move just as fast down here from a business standpoint. They just don’t want to, they just don’t want to talk as fast. And they don’t want it to seem as high, strong and stressful as I might make it seem.

Anthony Codispoti (53:57)
Spoken like a true New Yorker. I would describe your superpower Chris

Kris Rzepkowski (53:58)
Yeah.

I started at school and it’s just throughout my career. It’s I’m a problem solver ⁓ more than anything. So I have this ability to take in really complex technical aspects. still to this day, like I said, I’m nerding out on AI. I’m doing very technical implementations on websites and CRM and all the things. So I have a keen knowledge for the technical. I also have the keen knowledge for the business.

I’ve sat in so many C-suite meetings ⁓ at this point in my career, I can kind of listen to the drivers of profit and loss and efficiency and sort of synthesize what’s going on and come up with very ⁓ succinct solutions that we’re going to work on and get it done. So I’m a get it done guy. I’m not a talker. I’m a doer. And so I always lean on, okay, we get close enough to what we think the right answer is given all this information, we’re going to start executing.

And then we’re going to ⁓ learn from executing. We’re not going to learn from talking about.

Anthony Codispoti (55:05)
I like that. Have you found any conflict with that as you’ve moved into the South or people kind of get on board?

Kris Rzepkowski (55:13)
Oh, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. It’s, it’s as much about, I don’t know if it’s, it’s a little bit about the South and it’s a little bit about just people’s, uh, style, learning style and, execution style. Like you said, you’ll always get into a room in any leadership meeting with people that are much more of an analyzer than a doer. I’m a, I’m a disc. I’m like a DI kind of a guy. So very dominant and kind of want to make sure that things are getting done. So it’s not really a.

It’s not really a geographic thing for sure.

Anthony Codispoti (55:44)
Yeah, there’s different people all over the place. Some people are like ready, you know, fire and then we’ll aim and then other people are, you know, they can actually get paralyzed by too much, you know, analyzing. It sounds like you’re definitely the former. Yeah. How about some daily habits or practices that help to get you started in the day, keep you on track as you’re going?

Kris Rzepkowski (55:50)
Right.

Exactly. ⁓

Yeah. So, ⁓ moving into this new role, we started to engage a sales training company called Sandler. So there’s a Sandler model for sales training and we’ve been taking the deep, deep bootcamp. And one of those bootcamp elements is, ⁓ journaling sales journaling and sort of sitting down on a daily basis, reviewing what you did the prior day, going through one behavior that you did well, how was your attitude towards the sale? And then some of the specific.

points that you want to do to improve. And over the course of a couple of weeks of doing that, you really start to see your patterns in sales. know, sales is unlike design. Design, can see the results. Sales is like, it’s soft and it’s interactions with people. So the only way to examine and get better at sales is to actually examine what went on. So I do feel like journaling has been something that’s been really helpful.

Anthony Codispoti (57:01)
Have you identified a particular habit of yours or pattern of yours that ⁓ maybe you’ve wanted to correct or have worked on correcting?

Kris Rzepkowski (57:12)
I would say the opposite. I’ve kind of been surprised. The surprise for me was that setting an upfront contract with somebody is one of the Sandler elements is you spend a lot of time on the front end outlining what the discussion is going to be, what the agenda is going to be, what the specific outcomes are going to be. And look, if you and I don’t get along in this discussion or it doesn’t seem to make sense, we’re just going to agree to part ways. And we’re going to, here’s the quality next steps. I’ve gone through that. Most people don’t.

set up that agreement with individuals before speaking with them. And I’ve done it and I’ve actually been thanked for that. I’m like, wow, like people don’t, people don’t, know, pre-screen what they’re going to do in the sales discussion. But the answer is no. Most times people just come guns a blazing with their pitch or their services or their products. And they don’t listen to what you need. They’re trying to, you know, make a sale, but not a line.

you know, 90 % of the time we’re not going to do business together and you need to acknowledge that. So, ⁓ yeah, that was the habit that I want to keep doing. I want to keep reinforcing that. I’m trying to learn that setting of expectations with the other party and having that patience, because we all don’t love being sold to.

Anthony Codispoti (58:28)
And so part of this was it Zandler was the name of it? Sandler. The Sandler sales process is kind of setting those expectations upfront ⁓ and kind of outlining sort of the out for the other person. Like, hey, you know, we may get to a point where it seems like this is not a fit and we’ll just agree that, you know, we’ll go back to what we were doing and we don’t have to bother each other.

Kris Rzepkowski (58:38)
Mm-hmm.

You should be a Sandler trainer. Absolutely. Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (58:55)
I summed that up well.

Chris, as I look back and I’ve got the opportunity to talk to a lot of business leaders and I’ve seen the same thing, there’s this pattern of sometimes, in the moment, we make what we think is a big mistake and we feel bad about it, we beat ourselves up over it. And then as we get further away from it, look in the rear of your mirror, we see, wow, that mistake, quote unquote,

was actually a big turning point for me or a lever for change that actually I’m really grateful for. Can you think of an event like that in your past?

Kris Rzepkowski (59:36)
Yeah. So I’m sure you can tell from talking to me, I get really passionate about what I do. very, like I said, I’m very technical, very precise oriented. so I would early on in my career and my prior role, ⁓ I was building a website. had a very prescribed method for the content and, ⁓ got very technically involved.

Got into a meeting with fellow marketing people and some of the other folks that weren’t as experienced in online, they were just general marketers. ⁓ I just wasn’t thrilled with how they were executing the project. And I, got into a, ⁓ a discussion with them and ultimately I just let it go and talk to my boss, you know, a week and a half later, my boss said, Hey, you know, you got into this discussion so passionately that, you know, your teammates started to cry in front of me. I’m like, not me, but.

in front of the boss. said, really? Like they actually cried. like, yeah, you were, they really didn’t feel very good about that interaction. And I started, and I was like, my gosh, I had no idea. And ⁓ I’ve still bumped into that once in a while, like just the way that I care, I’m very ⁓ outwardly facing. I wear my feelings on my shoulders and on my sleeve. And I definitely have a point of view when I’m in a discussion. And that moment though of hearing that I had made.

it made my teammates cry. Well, throughout the rest of my journey here, it’s like I’m very sensitive to how my words and how my presentation and how I bring my points across affect the listener and affect the person that’s receiving those things. And not everybody is as into my delivery style as I think I am. So ⁓ it’s definitely just taught me as I’ve gone through leadership, like, dude, you better be really aware of how you’re delivering the message and be very, ⁓ increase your emotional EQ, right? I’ve done a lot of

addition, all my learnings and books and things is like, how do you keep working on your EQ, your emotional ⁓ quotient there to, ⁓ to make sure that people aren’t, you know, getting negatively affected by how I deliver.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:40)
And so what did that look like in a practical sense? You sort of just scale back the intensity of the delivery or are you doing a better job of sort of like checking in with people, you know, ask them questions, kind of see how they’re receiving it.

Kris Rzepkowski (1:01:52)
Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s both. Yeah, for sure. Like, ⁓ it’s I’ve even seen it in my son, as I watch him in his career, it’s like, we’re both built very intensely. So when you think, ⁓ that, you know, it’s all about the technical piece and it’s all about executing perfectly. And it’s all about that. It’s, it’s really not like the person’s just trying to get their job done. They’re just trying to, they’re just trying to succeed. So it is about the content and the volume and just what you’re saying. And it also is very much about.

Listening and being a better listener of the other person’s point of view, what they’re bringing to the table, what their, what their excellence brings into the team setting. Like it’s not all about me and what I’m bringing. It’s more about what the team is bringing to the table and the collective unit is helping to shape the project. So yeah, but being a better listener, more empathetic with my speech style, more empathetic with my writing style so that it doesn’t come off quite so harshly.

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:47)
Chris, I’ve just got one more question for you, but before I ask it, I want to do two things. First, I’m going to invite all the listeners to go ahead and hit the follow button on their favorite podcast app. We’ve had a great conversation today with Chris Sapkowski from the Bennett family of companies. And I want you to continue to get more great stories like this. Chris, I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you. What would that be?

Kris Rzepkowski (1:03:08)
Yeah, I’d just say follow me on LinkedIn. So Chris Zepkowski, K-R-I-S, Zepkowski, R-Z-E-P, K-O-W-S-K-I, look me up on LinkedIn. ⁓ Give me a follow. I post a lot of content all the time and that’s where I like to engage with people.

Anthony Codispoti (1:03:24)
Great. And we’ll, especially since your last name is a little tricky to spell, we’ll make sure we include a link to that in the show notes for folks who didn’t pick it up that were listening. So last question I have for you, Chris, you and I reconnect in a year and you’re very excited because you’re celebrating something that’s just happened. What’s that thing?

Kris Rzepkowski (1:03:42)
So my big project here, stepping into this new role, is to implement a company-wide CRM. ⁓ This Bennett family of companies has never had a true enterprise customer relationship management system. So we’ve chosen HubSpot. I lead that project. I’m in weekly calls here since probably six months ago, trying to onboard people that have really never dealt with putting sales contacts and sales interactions into a system.

So I’m hopefully a year from now we’re celebrating not only that most people at least know how to use it and are on it and having good success with it, but that there was some real value that we got out of having a CRM, that we learned some more things about our customers, that we gained some more sales opportunities and that we as a company function more coherently, I guess, across all of our different business units.

Anthony Codispoti (1:04:35)
So not only you introducing a new CRM, but it sounds like for some folks, it’s maybe their first opportunity to use a CRM.

Kris Rzepkowski (1:04:43)
Yeah, this, as you said earlier, this industry is, behind, by, by about 10 years. So yeah, the good majority of our individuals at Bennett have never even been exposed to a CRM system. So teaching them the value of it, ⁓ you know, how to put information into it, how to leverage what’s, ⁓ in there to advance their sales activities is all brand new content to them. Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (1:05:07)
and doing

this across 12 different companies, some with their own very distinct identity. Big challenge for you, I imagine. What’s the hardest part about it that we haven’t already touched on?

Kris Rzepkowski (1:05:12)
100 % for sure.

⁓ it’s ⁓ CRMs have come a long way. HubSpot is very ⁓ user friendly compared to other ones that I’ve used before. So the biggest challenge is just getting people logged in, just getting them integrated with their outlook so that they can use their email to email ⁓ contacts directly from their system and have it documented. All that is just mind blowing for people. So the biggest challenge is real basic right now.

Anthony Codispoti (1:05:46)
Well, Chris Zipkowski from the Bennett family of companies, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Kris Rzepkowski (1:05:54)
This has been a lot of fun. really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

Anthony Codispoti (1:05:57)
Yeah, folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.