SET BIG GOALS

“And for each one of those KPIs, not only we look at the first derivative change of that KPI, if first derivative is it's up 5%, it's up 2%, it's down 2%. But also what the second derivative looks like, which is what's the slope? What's the rate of change? Is that KPI accelerating in the direction you want it to? Or is it decelerating in the direction of in the opposite direction?”

“Generally, we break it down into three broad categories and this is the work side, But some of these carry over to the personal side and who you have personal relationships with. But number one at work would be, are they good at what they do? Or do they have a high intellect? Number two is, are they serious about work? Are they hard workers? And the third one is, are you collegial? Are you somebody who gets along with the rest of the team, who try to look for what's best in the team?”

“Yeah. That that's true. Actually, my hobbies are my work and my kids. So when I'm with my kids, for example, I don't use my phone. I put it away. I do meaningful activities with them as a engineer. Last summer, we actually built a robotic arm that we programmed, and we actually tried to make it solve a Rubikube. It didn't didn't work as expected, but we kind of give it a fighting shot there.”

“Success for me is someone, including myself, realizing their full potential, is being able to achieve what they can achieve with the tools, education, background that they have been given, and to be the best version of themselves. While doing so, also being happy and emotionally fulfilled because ultimately, you can achieve great business success at the expense of your family life as an example. But is that success? Because now you effectively are not emotionally fulfilled. You're not happy.”

“But probably number one, I would say, is to always think big. Don't set small goal. Life is short. Set big goals, whether it's how much value you're creating, whether how much profits you're growing, whether a certain project that you think needs three years to get done and how you can get it done in three months. Set big goals and do that at work. Do that in your personal life. Because when you set big goals, you achieve great things. If you set small goals, you achieve small small things.”

“I have this for me personally, I call it round robins. But when people either give a question or a takeaway, if let's say it was a meeting where we didn't submit those ahead of time, I always subscribe to the fact that the senior folks, including myself, I always speak last. I think Jeff Bezos had a similar perspective where always you speak at the end as a leader because what you don't want by giving your perspective, somebody somebody who's junior on the team who might have fantastic insights is gonna be biased to to think as part of the group.”

“So one of our large competitors went bankrupt in 2023. Very sad, obviously, for the company and for the folks involved. But at the same time, as a less than truckload network, one of the most important forms of capacity to grow and service the customer is the terminal network that you have. So effectively, when when Yellow went bankrupt, all of that real estate came up for sale. We effectively use data to identify all of these markets, and then we mapped their network onto our network, and we found 28 properties that would have the largest impact. And, we ended up spending nearly $1,000,000,000 on that real estate.”

“And then I always, apply the the airport test after spending an hour or a few hours with a person. If I get stuck with that person in an airport, am I gonna enjoy that time? Are they do they bring the vibe up that I felt uplifted after that interview or that I felt emotionally down.”

“Well, I think engineering gives you a very good roadmap and a very good framework of solving problems. I have young kids, and I always tell them whenever we have a something gets broken or something we wanna build, I always tell them what do engineers do. We say they build things and they fix things. And I think in the world of business, you're dealing every day with with either problems or goals you wanna accomplish. And a engineering mindset gives you a framework of how to solve for these problems.”

“If an a player walks into your office and say, Mario, you know what? I don't try to talk me out of it. Maybe my wife is moving to a different state, and I, you know, I took a job with another company. If the outcome out of that is feeling that you have a pit in your stomach, If you go back home, you're talking to your wife and say, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I just heard the most horrible news today. And if it's a feeling of angst, it's a feeling of, I'm sure I'm gonna replace that person. That's an a player. If somebody walks into your office and they say, hey, Mario. Don't try to talk me out of it. And your feeling is, that's good news. Actually, we're going to be able to upgrade talent. That's the C player.”

“So naturally, in my mind, what ego is, you think that you're so good at something that you stop learning. So I remember at the time, if, you know, a few years later, I came I came to MIT in Boston to do my graduate studies in engineering, and I met programmers that were 50 times better, that were just had beautiful minds, how they thought about things, how they problem solved, and that taught me that I'm actually, I'm a good programmer, but I'm no way close to being a great programmer. And that taught me humility.”

“I grew up in Lebanon in the eighties. During that time, the country was at war. And it's remarkable to look back at those times because I remember many, many, many nights where at night we wouldn't sleep at home. We would actually be sleeping in a shelter, in a bomb shelter. But also, we we had to flee the country because because of the war. We lived in multiple countries. We lived in Egypt for a while. We lived here in Canada for a while.”