Hire Truckers Podcast

00:00 - 00:22
Aaron Craddock: 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, and excited to be with you again this week. Today's another solo episode as I'm coming back from a twenty one day trip.

00:22 - 00:37
Aaron Craddock: Why does this matter? It's the secret to stronger teams. Could it be time away? So today I took an extra hour and took a two hour lunch and took my son, my two year old to eat by the lake. He pointed out boats.

00:37 - 01:21
Aaron Craddock: I was at a cool restaurant outside of Austin called the Oasis on Lake Travis, the best sunset in Texas. He had a little quesadilla and I had fajitas and looked at the water and looked at the boats and actually really struggled even today, with taking that time because there's a lot of things on my plate coming back from out of town. Just a lot of things going on with different clients. But what I found is as I traveled to the lunch, I realized how much just ideas kept on coming into my head about how we can make things better for clients. Then, and then there would be moments where I can just be present my son and, listen to veg tales on the way there.

01:22 - 01:54
Aaron Craddock: And then as he fell asleep, flipped over to personal development podcasts and yeah, think getting there and that time was so healthy for me. And then we're an hour and a half into the two hours on the thirty minute trip back to the house. And I had some work calls, some calls where I needed to jump in and help the team. And so I think building a business is a little bit romanticized in that you can be off all the time, but it's more like you're on call all the time. I have a team that can handle most things.

01:54 - 02:21
Aaron Craddock: However, you know, sometimes they want my feedback and pull me in and then sometimes I jump in to client conversations as well. Yeah. So work life balance and why it's important in trucking. When I started the company, I was meeting with a mentor of mine, a friend of mine, and he said, what's your why? Cause I was like, Hey, I'm going build this business worth X dollars like this build a big of a business in the transportation industry and in the real estate industry.

02:22 - 02:28
Aaron Craddock: Here are my goals. Here are my vision. He's like, why? Like, why do you don't do that? My initial answer was, well, I haven't done it before.

02:29 - 02:43
Aaron Craddock: I've built a team and a division of a company up to, you know, X size and I have a vision for building my own company. This seems like a challenge. This seems like a hard goal. That's why. And he's like, no, this is going be a lot harder than you think and you need a why.

02:43 - 02:59
Aaron Craddock: And so then I kind of sketched out because I'm not one afraid to work seventy hours. I enjoy work most of the time. Not all the time, most of the time. I enjoy our industry. I enjoy the transportation industry.

02:59 - 03:28
Aaron Craddock: I enjoy working with people. I enjoy solving complex problems, empowering people on our team to solve complex problems. So I sat there and wrote down what could my why be. And a few of those were like time off, time with family, flexibility of schedule, being able to take a two hour lunch occasionally and spend time with my little ones and wife and travel and do things like that. Not necessarily time freedom in that I'm not going to work, but time freedom in that I have a more flexible schedule.

03:28 - 04:02
Aaron Craddock: And then I was like, I actually want to create this for our team too. How can they take time off? Like, can we make it a culture where it's okay in an industry where everything can be chaos and jobs on the line with recruiting problems. Yeah, it's just a big, and it's just a fast paced industry in some ways in that when there's a problem, it's pretty critical. And so how do you create a team and a flow that enables people to take off?

04:02 - 04:24
Aaron Craddock: And then how do you encourage that? And our team has gotten really strong through a pretty good work life balance. And that's been on top of growth the last few years and a lot of growth this year specifically. And so how have we maintained that balance? Well, I've just encouraged the team to take off.

04:24 - 04:46
Aaron Craddock: And it's always inconvenient in some way. So it's like, Hey, like so and so needs to take a week off to move just different, different reasons. Just encourage them to do it. Like to put family first, whether it's a family trip or to put yeah, the different needs ahead. And I try to always be like, what processes can we put in place to not create any problems?

04:46 - 05:27
Aaron Craddock: Like, what can we get ahead of and tackle so that nothing breaks? However, we just encourage our team to do it. Just the transportation industry in general is a culture of overwork, has been my experience, and just I've seen that a lot, like among our especially our clients. And it doesn't like like maybe there's a solution with a normal schedule. And so what I have found with our team, they might be burned out working more hours than they would like, but then they're out for a few days and reset and we can actually get things dialed back in just because we have to have documented and improved processes for them to be out.

05:28 - 05:42
Aaron Craddock: It's the same thing. If you want to take out, take off as a director of recruiting and use your PTO this year, which I highly encourage. Yeah. Just plan it as much in advance as you can. And then tell leadership here's how I'm going to have X, Y, and Z in place.

05:43 - 06:27
Aaron Craddock: That's going to make us even stronger. And what I have found being in this industry around fifteen years and, and being in different leadership roles is when I took time off, my leaders were stronger when I came back and, and that like my whole team, so I just took off twenty one days, like three business weeks and, or twenty two days and traveled with my family. So was a four month old, a two year old, and a five year old. And we traveled 4,400 miles, so that was 15 different cities, nine different states. And it started out with meeting with the great grandparents of my kids and getting them to meet as many of them as possible.

06:27 - 06:50
Aaron Craddock: We still have five great grandparents of theirs around and yeah, so just getting to tour around and see them around the country where they were and was able to take off. And so I'm just thankful. I came back. Our team was stronger in every area, client success, operations, sales, development, engineering. Yeah, we just made strides.

06:51 - 07:17
Aaron Craddock: Like, it's just such a cool scenario to come back and we've just made improvements in all areas. The business has grown while I've been here. I had someone kind of joke with me when I told him that, just that the business grew while I was out, that, that I should take off more often. That that's probably true. And then the other thing too, is by taking off for three weeks, which again, as long as I've taken off other than paternity leave is.

07:18 - 07:40
Aaron Craddock: Yeah, I was so hungry to come back and work. I'm a Christian, so part of my belief is that we were created in God's image. And if He's the creator of the universe, right? If it really was, he spoke it into existence in those days. And we're created in his image, like follow me here, then we're created to build.

07:40 - 07:58
Aaron Craddock: We're created to work. And so I personally just, again, enjoy work, enjoy building things and companies and teams specifically. My passion is building. I want to build the best recruitment marketing team and technology team in the industry. And that's what we're doing at TruckingClicks and HireTruckers.

07:58 - 08:17
Aaron Craddock: And yeah, so the twenty one day trip, and just came back rested, refreshed, and hungry. And so this has been a hectic week. Again, I didn't know how I would get in that lunch today, but I was like, this is on my priority list. I need to spend this time with my two year old. Then And we made it happen.

08:17 - 08:31
Aaron Craddock: And then that was the dream six years ago with my why. Like that checks three different whys that I had. I would just encourage you, like if you're leading a team, encourage them to take time off. If you're leading a team, you take time off. Just do it.

08:31 - 08:55
Aaron Craddock: And again, try to set up your organization to weather it smoothly. Now let's take a minute to thank today's sponsor. Do you hire truck drivers in hard to fill areas, or do you need help creating efficiency in your recruiting department? You're not alone. With fifty plus years experience, TruckingClicks specializes in data driven strategies, industry leading customer experience, and custom solutions that'll get you to your goal.

08:56 - 09:17
Aaron Craddock: TruckingClicks is your go to place for high quality direct leads at scale. Visit truckingclicks.com or call (512) 982-0816 today. Yeah. We've recently had our head of operations out for a while, and things got better. We had to have people cross trained on a bunch of things, figured out new things we need to improve.

09:18 - 10:10
Aaron Craddock: And then similarly, like we had our client success manager out and you had to, yeah, just improve things there and jump in on communication and yeah, just across the board, things get better when you pause, when you take time off, when you reflect. And again, I'm speaking to myself in this because I go, go, go and like a challenge. So what would it take to change the narrative in the trucking industry where we do pause and then we work really hard and build strategically, like back when we're back? So how do we make things so good or so improved with newer technology and or processes so that we can work forty hours and not sixty hours? Or we can take a week off and have someone else on the team step up into different roles.

10:10 - 10:34
Aaron Craddock: When we take time off, whether it's me as the CEO or in previous executive roles I've been in. It allows other people to step up. And some of those other people that stepped up when I was out ended up filling those different executive roles years later. So it's cool to see people grow. And I used to pride myself early in my career, like fifteen years ago, of just the hustle culture.

10:34 - 11:04
Aaron Craddock: I think there's a place for it, a place for just working hard, working long hours. I think there are seasons. However, I don't know that that's the best way. I even wonder if back in those seasons where I just hustled and worked crazy hours, like, was there a solution where I worked less and worked smarter and maybe got help? And yeah, and so by my not working too many hours now and not burning out, like just having balance, I'm able to make sure we have the right people on the team.

11:04 - 11:25
Aaron Craddock: Because I want to be replaceable in all areas in our businesses. I want to have, multiple people that can fill any role. So what happens when you don't take a break, don't rest? So poor decision making, high turnover, broken systems. I do think just with clear minds, like my mind's clear when I rest.

11:25 - 12:04
Aaron Craddock: My mind's clear when I pause. I'm like, yeah, just if you spend time just even thinking and planning your day, or being out and just not having a podcast on or a book on, but just being near nature. Like, how can that help you have a strong energy and a fresh perspective? So vision for the 2025. So just as an industry, like let's make this the most powerful and impactful year yet, just to the industry, and let's do it energized and not exhausted.

12:04 - 12:31
Aaron Craddock: I challenge you, different directors recruiting, to just take some time off, rest, recoup. I just want to encourage you guys, one study that I heard about that I've heard on a bunch of different podcasts and books and things like that is interviewing people near end of life. What they never say, I wish I had worked more, or at least rarely say that. I wish I'd worked more. I wish I'd put in more hours.

12:32 - 12:50
Aaron Craddock: They say, I wish I'd spent more time with the people closest to me. So I wish I had spent more time. And so, in a way that looks like for me on a daily basis is just how do I how am I present? And maybe it's not PTO. Again, maybe it's just changing up your just how you use your time.

12:50 - 13:14
Aaron Craddock: Like, is all just about how you guys use your time. Like, how can we help the transportation industry as a whole use use our time wisely and steward it well and not burnout. So anyway, if you're overwhelmed, I've been there. So if you're having a hard time, hit me up. I'd love to just be a sounding board and catch up.

13:14 - 13:25
Aaron Craddock: So again, this is Aaron with the Hire Truckers podcast. I just really appreciate you guys. Take time, rest, reset. Have a great week. Thank you for joining us today.

13:25 - 13:36
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.