This week on the podcast, Brent sits down with Spencer Frazier, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at JB Hunt. They discuss Spencer’s career journey from starting at JB Hunt 31 years ago to now leading sales and marketing. Spencer outlines JB Hunt's diverse suite of transportation and logistics services and the customer-centric methodology the company uses. He shares his vision for the future of digitally-enabled sales and how technologies like AI can enhance productivity. Listeners gain insight into how JB Hunt partners with customers to solve complex supply chain problems through data-driven solutions and a collaborative approach focused on efficiency and value creation.

From a competitive perspective, if we

don't create value, someone else will. From a competitive

perspective, if we're not the most efficient, someone is

always trying to beat it. And then we know if we're creating

that value, then our opportunity to continue to earn that

business from that customer as their business grows.

Welcome to the Be Epic podcast, brought to you

by the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of

Arkansas. I'm your host, Brent Williams. Together, we'll

explore the dynamic landscape of business, and uncover the

strategies, insights and stories that drive business today. Well,

today, I have with me, Spencer Frazier. Spencer is Executive

Vice President of Sales and Marketing at JB Hunt. Spencer,

welcome, and thank you for being here today.

Hey, Brent, thanks for having me on campus

again. Love being here, being here with you. And looking

forward to our conversation.

Well, me too. And you've been a wonderful

partner of the Walton College for many years, you personally.

But even more broadly, JB Hunt, it's really been a special

relationship.

Well, I agree. Same, same for me. Well, you

It has. Yeah. Yeah and it's something I think

that has been unique for quite a while, we've got a lot of alumni

know, you mentioned a couple of things that maybe I'll start

in our organization, at all levels, and we look forward to

continuing that pipeline of talent coming to join our team.

But also just, you know, I didn't grow up here. I didn't

graduate from the University of Arkansas. But it's really been

an honor to be able to participate. And really learn

alongside you on how we can help students and really help our

organization continue to grow by making that connection stronger.

So it's really been a privilege to be a part of it.

with, well, first, you've been in this role of Executive Vice

President leading Sales and Marketing for I think, right

about a year at this point. But But you've been with JB Hunt for

basically your entire career

Pretty much.

And maybe just start there with us just a

little bit about your career journey. And then we'll kind of

get into where you're at today.

Yeah, you bet. Well, I started JB Hunt 31 years

ago, a little more than that. Prior to that, I did go to Iowa

State, grew up in Iowa, and went to the business college there

and got my degree in transportation and logistics.

And that kind of was interesting how all that came about. But

going to the Career Center and looking at opportunities and

different things. As I was trying to figure out what to do

as a student. It really stood out as opportunities for high

placement and also high salary. And so as the as a young student

saying, okay, that looks pretty appealing. I don't know

everything about it, but I'm going to try to figure it out

and finished up at Iowa State in 1992. But I'll say this little

did I know, I was destined for Arkansas. And I'd never been to

Arkansas. But I had two job offers when I finished. One of

them was Walmart. The other was JB Hunt. And they were three

days apart.

Really?

JB Hunt was first. And as a young kid with a

few student loans and things like that. I said yes,

immediately. And, you know, Walmart called later and I said,

well, sorry, I can't I can't do that. I've already accepted a

job of JB Hunt. And so I was on my way to Arkansas, and got to

start in the management training program. And that was an

interesting thing at the time, that we got to rotate through

all the departments in the organization, and learn the

business because if you were working in billing, you would

teach me that job for maybe a few days or a week. And then

you'd go on vacation, and then I would do your job and try not to

mess it up. By the time you got back. And so we got to go

through all different parts of the organization even work in

the shop and drive a truck, go through our driver training

school, which was great. And then we got our first real job.

My first real job was working night planning trucks, matching

trucks and loads from 5pm to 6am. And that was Thursday,

Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Wow.

And so needless to say through that program, and

I'll even say I'll put a plug in for anyone that works at night

or anyone that has an opportunity to especially

weekends. That's a fast track to learning.

Absolutely.

Because your resources are limited. And you

have to rely on each other as a team. And you really have to

kind of figure things out, but got to be in an operational role

after that in both our truck line and then had the

opportunity to go into intermodal, intermodal was still

in its infancy, so to speak, we started that 1989. About around

I think it was 94 ish, is when I got to start in intermodal,

doing similar things, making sure that we were coordinating

all of our shipments for our customers, meeting their

expectations. And so operationally, and then I've had

a few people say that maybe I'd be good in sales. I was

interested in that. And talked to quite a few folks in the

organization about it. And I had my first sales job in 1995. And

had a territory and Ford Taurus and a bagged phone and Rand

McNally Atlas, and worked on my pipeline and tried closing deals

then. So that's kind of how everything started.

How awesome. And so 31 years later, or I guess,

30 years later, you entered into this role leading sales and

marketing. And as you said, you've had quite a career in

sales. But maybe tell us a little bit. I don't want to

assume that, I know JB Hunt so well, that I can forget that,

you know, maybe some of our listeners don't fully understand

the scope of services, what your mission is. And then, you know,

what are you focused on in this role?

Yeah, well, the organization today, let's call

it around a $14 billion organization, 35,000 people,

around 24,000 of those are drivers. And then when you think

about the services that we provide, think of supply chain

solutions, transportation services, for the first mile of

a supply chain could even be international, different things

at the port, as well as kind of a middle mile things from

production to distribution, intercompany shipments and then

the final mile. And that's even from point of distribution all

the way to your home, coming in and do an installation of

equipment and home appliances, furniture, exercise equipment,

big things like that.

Yeah,

Yeah so our business is set up with five

business units.

Okay.

And I've had the privilege of working in four

of the five, in operational and or sales and sales support

roles. And so our history is of JB Hunt trucking, so our truck

line as you would expect picking up shipments from kind of

Chicago to Dallas or Atlanta to Philly or things like that,

moving truckload shipments. That's one business unit. We

also have, the biggest is our intermodal business unit. Very

innovative when Mr. Hunt and Mike Haverty from the Santa Fe

started that in 1989, a very unique relationship with the

BNSF today, also our other railroad partners, the CSX,

Norfolk Southern and others. And so that's our biggest business

unit, significant opportunities to drive efficiency into the

supply chain there. And then another strong and powerful and

really fast growing business is our dedicated contract services.

And that's more private fleet creation, private fleet

management. And that's where the majority of our drivers are

really doing hard, complicated work, hauling anything from feed

to animals to retail distribution to food, delivery,

and construction delivery and different things like that. And

then our final mile services, which is the one where we're

coming into your house, likely taken out your washer and dryer

for maybe a major retailer that you'd purchase that from,

integrated retail and point of delivery scheduling, operations,

and then providing the installation and making sure

that you have a good experience that represents that brand. And

then our last one is ICS. And that's our logistics and

brokerage business that really complements all of those, but on

its own is something that can provide really any type of

capacity for any type of shipment. And from a third party

perspective, leverages our tech that we've invested into in a

big, big way. So when you think of all those five business units

and where we're at at, JB Hunt's a big organization, but

relatively small related to the market that we play in. So say

around 14 billion, we play in a $645 billion market, highly

fragmented. But that presents a tremendous opportunity for us to

execute our mission. And our mission is to create the most

efficient transportation network in North America.

Well, and you know, something you just said,

is, is really one of the main things I want to talk about with

you, you know, you said, you want to solve problems or, you

know, for for your customers, and with all the different

services that JB Hunt offers, you've got the ability to take a

full suite of services to a customer, and help them solve

their transportation, logistics, and supply chain problems. And,

you know, but maybe I kind of wanted to narrow in on sales and

your thought about sales. When I look at our students, and you

know, the Walton College fairly well, you know, we'll have

roughly this fall 8,000 undergraduate students and, you

know, probably 600 or so, graduates.

That's fantastic too.

It's been wonderful growth. And it's been

wonderful to see those students get great jobs and succeed, and

that that's really why we're here. Many of them land in some

sales oriented role, whether they intended to necessarily or

not. And, you know, sometimes I think, I wonder if there's a

understanding of what sales really is, you know, and I

always see you start with the customer when you talk sales. So

just wondering kind of your whole perspective on what sales

actually is and how you go about it?

Yeah, well, that's a big question. Yeah. But

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. So I just believe in life, everyone's in

I'll tell you this. I don't think people realize it. But

everyone's in sales. Everyone is in sales. And even from a

sales. And so sales, to me is something to where, again, you

business perspective, or a personal perspective, everyone

is in sales. And what I mean by that, whether, from when you're

growing up to where you're at, as a student today, or in the

professional workspace, all of us are doing things where we

have to ask for something where we have to influence others, we

have to make recommendations, we have to encourage, we have to

solve problems. And to me, that encompasses sales. And so the

the influence and the opportunity, and again, whether

that's personally or with your family, and it goes up down and

sideways to there's no hierarchical aspect to that.

have the opportunity to think about who you're for, what

you're trying to do to help, whether that's an individual or

an organization, and then really trying to come up with the best

ways to influence and solve. And then with that solution, you

know, ask for business. And so I do believe that that's something

that, you know, people might think of sales as, yeah, and put

it into one functional little area.

Yeah.

But inside our organization today, I mean,

there's people at this very moment, who are in a meeting,

who are making a presentation that don't have a sales title,

but they're making some recommendation, some suggestion,

they're trying to get influence and understanding from the room

that they're in and then collaborate to solve an issue or

a problem.

Well, I couldn't agree more with you. You are

right, each of us no matter what our role is, what no matter what

function we sit in, we are influencing on behalf of our

organization, and often on behalf of our constituents, in

my case, or customers in your case, and you said something

that, that I think was very important, I don't remember

exactly how you just said it, but it made me think about seek

to understand first you know, and so as you you know, build

and lead sales teams, you know, how do you as you're going in to

help customers solve problems. What how do you go about that

and how do you help people understand why it's so important

to understand and listen first?

Yeah, well, I'll I'll kind of dig into this

Okay.

And so CVD for short. And there's really five

one a little bit more specific to JB Hunt. And so at JB Hunt,

really the way that we talk about going to market, also the

components of that. And you said, seek to understand, well

way that from a sell side of solution design and an

execution, we have a methodology that we call customer value delivery.

understand is the very first part. And so I'll give you all

five real quick. And then we can talk about different things. So

the five components of CVD, and you can kind of think of this in

a wheel, think of this as a continuous process. But we want

to understand what the customer needs. We want to understand and

collaborate with them strategically, then to deliver a

solution that creates value for them. And then, after delivering

that solution, we always want to measure it, what were their

expectations? What were ours, what were the assumptions that

we had built those expectations on? Are those assumptions true

in reality? Are we hitting the performance that we needed to?

So we want to understand, we want to deliver, we want to

measure all the time. Data is so important. And then we want to

have this regular cadence of communication. And that can be

in the moment always, but also, regular cadence that just shares

whether it's weekly business reviews, monthly, quarterly

annual business reviews, and we bring in other stakeholders and

decision makers that were a part of that, and share how we're

doing together. So did we understand? Do we still

understand are we delivering? Are we measuring appropriately,

are we communicating in a regular fashion, and then we

have this last part that's very, very important, is trying to

anticipate what's next, anticipate what the other

challenges might be or opportunities. And then you flip

back into, okay, now we're in this deep understanding phase

again. So you can think of that as a continuous flow of customer

value delivery, but the customers in the center. And

everything we do, we're trying to create value for that

customer, for the individual to hit their objectives for the

organization, and go back to our mission, if we're doing that in

the most efficient way, then we feel like our value proposition

is strong, or relationships can be very strong. And then the

opportunity to continue with that client goes on so.

Well, and you know, when we when we teach and

talk about sales here, you know, one thing we're very focused on

is how do we create value for others? You know, and I think

you said, the customers at the center, you're always focused on

creating value, just as you're thinking about, let's say, a

student here, and you're explaining like, well, why would

that be my focus of creating value for someone else rather

than myself?

Yeah, well, and I will say, okay, we are a

business. In business, we do invest. To invest, we have to

make money.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And we invest in really kind of three

key areas, our people, our technology, and our capacity.

But we do that, again, with the focus of being the most

efficient that we can. And with that, we know if we create that

value, then we're gonna grow. And so, to me, it's kind of all

laced together in the fact that we have to if, from a

competitive perspective, if we don't create value, someone else

will. From a competitive perspective, if we're not the

most efficient, someone is always trying to be.

Yeah.

And then we know, if we're creating that

Yeah.

value, then our opportunity to continue to earn that business

from that customer as their business grows, to earn more of

There's multiple services inside each

their share of spend, to be able to solve and add different

solutions, because I want to say this too, in that understand

phase, I really don't care what a customer buys. Now, I said

we've got five distinct business units.

one of those. But we know if we understand the customer

appropriately, we get synched up on the strategy that where we

can add value. And we provide a great experience through that

whole CVD process, then we know okay, our opportunity to

continue to create new solutions with other services or other

things over time, continues to be there. So that's really why

that customer value is so important.

That focus on customer, creating value for the

customer ultimately means that that that value is going to

accrue to you and the company in the long run.

Yeah, yeah. And we know as well, then we can

continue to invest in those things and continue to solve for

more customers. And again, go back to that mission of the most

efficient transportation network in North America, the more that

we are able to connect, and really think about this, too.

Yes, we're a big organization. But we have customers that might

do one or two shipments a month, very small. So micro small

businesses, medium, large, other strategic, so we kind of have

the whole portfolio you have, and there's lots of opportunity

to expand in that. And, and so, in that whole thought process of

focusing on the customer, we want to really try to meet them

where they are, and know regardless of size.

And so customers are often in a very different

place. You know, as, as we've talked before, you know, the

supply chain, any customer supply chain, and then the

overall web of supply chains, if you want to put it that way, is

complicated, complex, and at times delicate, you know, in

certain ways. And I feel like we saw that, or, you know, the

public really probably saw that and became acutely aware of it

during COVID. But, you know, that's still the case in certain

ways. When you when you go to a customer, and helping them solve

complicated problems, you have to bring a team with a pretty

diverse set of background and expertise to the table along

with probably that same type of team from the customer. How do

you go about assembling the right sets of talent on your

team to do that?

Yeah, well, that's a, that's a really good

question I do also want to talk about from a team perspective. I

view every one is in sales. But another thing that we talk about

is sales is a team sport. It is and so no one at JB Hunt has a

monopoly on the best ideas all the time. No one. But

collectively, and this is really where it kind of goes back to

our culture. And really our culture of inclusion, our

culture of really seeking out and making sure that every

person at JB Hunt, you know, has a voice that we hear them. But

going right to the customer, we know, on the sell side, we're

sitting there, and we've got an opportunity to create a

solution. And there are several that are pretty straightforward.

And I might be the seller, and you might be in my pricing team.

And I might work with you. And we say, okay, hey, we've got

something that we think can create value for both

organizations, I might bounce that off of our operations team

just to get their nod on it. And then we present that back to the

customer and see when we can start. But there are there are

others that you know, every customer is different. And so we

have a lot of opportunities in our organization from our

engineering teams. And by the way, they are some of our best

sellers. They don't have a sales title.

Yeah.

But really taking the opportunity to

understand the customer's data, work with the customer to not

just understand the data, but the realities of the operation.

At the dock level, even at the order level. Those engineers do

a wonderful job working with our sales team. And then when you

think about the complex deals, you also want to bring your

operations team along that's going to be executing on the

customer's behalf to meet those expectations. And make sure

we've got everything correct. And I'll say this. On the sales

side, you know, you talk about one of the things you have to

ask or do as a seller, you have to ask for the business.

Yeah.

So you have to close the deal. That's what

people talk about. I'll say that our operations teams are our

closers.

Interesting.

And so in those complex deals, I might share

with you the customer. Hey, Brent, here's how we're going to

execute on this business. This is what I heard from you. Here's

kind of the data that we looked at, the strategy that we

collaborated on, to put the solution on the table. But my

operator sitting next to me is not going to say what we're

going to do, they're going to say how we're going to do it and

the instant credibility comes right there, from the customer

that says, Okay, now I trust you, we will help our sellers

try to navigate based on each individual opportunity, we are

very solution focused. So it's very customized on each,

wherever customer, wherever they are, and what they need. And we

want to try to meet them where they're at, regardless of size.

So we'll rally a big team like that. Or we could have something

as simple that maybe in your spot in your business, you might

have seen an email or some marketing from our team, and

said, Oh, JB Hunt can do that. I need that today. And you might

do a self service, sign up on JB Hunt 360, get a quote, and

execute your shipment. And you might not talk to anyone.

Yeah.

Might not talk to anybody might not need a

salesperson. But down the road, you might need some support,

because you have a further question. And we'll meet you

there too.

You know, a couple of things that that you

said, One, talking about investment technology made me

think about the future of sales. You know, and I just wondered

from your perspective, sitting in, you know, sitting in your

role where you're, you're leading sales and marketing in

JB Hunt, but you're seeing so many customers, you know, and

what they're trying to accomplish strategically, and

you're interacting with them. How do you see sales evolving in

Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun.

the future?

So I do love sales. I love representing our company and our

team. And when you think about in the past, say back when I

first started, say the decade after that, even the decade

after that, sales has always been very relational. Very

one-on-one conversations, a lot of in person discussions, and

really trying to come up with, again, what's that solution that

can meet a customer's needs. But doing that, basically, in a

very, kind of high touch way. I still believe that's going to be

the case in the future.

Okay.

But I'm gonna say it this way, I think the

future of sales is going to be both digital, and personal. So

go back to that people you trust comment I made a minute ago.

People buy from people that they trust, relationships are still

very important. Now, can you do that sometimes in a very digital

way? Absolutely too, you can. And so I think, as we're really

looking around the corner into the next few years, we're

already looking at our sales tech stack. And you know, today

we're using Adobe, from a marketing perspective, content

management, we're using Marketo, as part of helping us manage our

content and contacts, and really helping us get in touch with new

potential customers. All of that, in addition to another

part of our tech zoom info, and trying to understand potential

buyers and buyer intent. And then connecting all of that to

our CRM, which is currently Microsoft Dynamics. And the

opportunities inside the Microsoft platform. And in all

of that, is to leverage the opportunity of AI generative AI

language learning models, to automate and present things to

our sellers in a way that makes them more insightful, more

impactful, more efficient. So even going back to our mission,

Yeah.

And so I think the future is really where the

automation comes in that digital side, but also, that AI becomes

personal to me, the seller. And so the seller that can really

embrace that, embrace that change and say, Okay, I want to

be a part of making this better. I want to be a part of helping

these models become more predictive, automated and

efficient to help me focus my time that, okay, I've got all

these things to do but based on where I'm at with this sales

cycle and this client and this opportunity. This is the

recommended task that I should do next. And then not only in

that recommendation, serve up to me some of the content, some of

the best ways to respond, that can really save me time and make

me more efficient. And now I still have to personalize that.

So that's where there's eyes on, there's hands on that, and then

to personalize it, and then leverage that in my conversation

with the customer, either online or in person. So I think the

seller of the future is the one who's going to embrace that

technology, to help them in their productivity, and also

their customer responses, the solutions we create, and I think

they'll be very, very successful. So it's really,

really exciting about what's coming up.

It is exciting to think about how technology

like AI can improve productivity, and allow people,

both for the seller and the buyer, to use their skills at a

higher level than they ever could before. So I personally

think that's maybe the most exciting thing about how

technology is going to unlock the future. So I love I love

your your point about the future of sales is still personal. And

at the same time digital. You know, and as you were saying

that it made me think about your customers. So I guess as, as the

sales team, you have to help that customer get comfortable, I

would assume but you also said contribute, contribute, and

maybe maybe didn't use that word. But that's the way I took

it was that they've got to be committed to helping make this

process better as well.

Yeah, I think that both from the way that we

work on solutions with the customer. So we want to have

data driven, insightful, but collaborative strategies that we

work with them on. And so again, there might be a little bit

different experience on kind of the maybe the smaller or other

self serve type customers, we want to do that through our tech

platform. We want to empower them to run their business in a

way that maybe they can't today through insights and visibility,

and access to information. But if you go back upstream to maybe

some of the more complex or strategic relationships that we

have, that's a very collaborative process to where

we want to create a roadmap jointly with our customers, a

mutually agreed to strategy that has goals and very high

expectations. But if we achieve those expectations, the

opportunity for us to achieve our goals together is pretty

significant.

Spencer, maybe kind of double click on data for

just for just a moment. You and I have been working together for

10 or 11 years. And I remember in early conversations, how

important the sharing of data was a decade ago. And it seems

like it's going to become maybe even more important in the

future, if we're really going to leverage these technologies. Am

I right? Or do you see that differently?

No, I, you're 100%. Right. But from really the

solution part, when you think about getting data that our

customers have? Well, one of the things and you know, in this

college, you really talk about the impact of forecasting and

planning and, and how all that comes together and really trying

to understand demand from a customer perspective. It's still

really hard, right, especially over the last few years, and

then the impacts of missing that by a little bit whether it's

missing sales, or having too much inventory. Our customers

have a hard, hard job. But trying to work with them to

understand, okay, what can we settle in on from a data

perspective that allows us to then look through and optimize

for them the best combined solution and give them things to

think about that? Maybe they haven't in the past? And one of

the biggest ones goes back to leveraging data to see what can

convert from the highway to intermodal in our world, and

that's the most efficient, most cost effective, most

sustainable, executing and really having 60% less of a

carbon impact, moving it on the train versus on a truck. And so,

a lot of customers we have to kind of talk through okay, well,

did you know this opportunity exists? And even try to expand

their thinking of maybe they are doing some of that business

today. But our network is changing the way that our teams

are executing with our railroads is changing. And we think we can

expand their view of that market in a big, big way. So that takes

a lot of data. And also takes then go from back to the

personal, developing a lot of trust in our execution. Because

there's been some challenges in that network in the past. But so

whether you're talking about that type of conversion, or

optimization of a fleet, that allows a customer to see, hey,

we think we could run your fleet a little bit more efficiently,

covering the same number of shipments with maybe a few less

trucks, handling the variability of that challenge of forecasting

a little bit differently than they do today. That creates a

more efficient answer. So that's kind of how all that comes

together on the front end, but data is so important, and then

how we present that back, we want to give them the

opportunity to visualize that solution.

And then coming down the road is even their

Okay.

opportunity to maybe click the parts of that that makes sense

for them today. Go back to the other part of data on execution.

One of the best parts about a quarterly business review that

we do is our customers continue to ask us today. Okay, well,

what do we need to do to be better for JB Hunt? For your

drivers? How can we help you become more efficient to help us

become more efficient? Great questions. And one of the things

that we do, talk about going digital and personal, is we take

data that crowdsources the experience of drivers at our

customers dock, okay. And we share the comments, we share the

reviews. And so there could be all kinds of KPIs and high level

service metrics and other things. But when you get down to

how does someone feel when they come in and work with my team at

my location? Customers are highly interested in that. That

makes it personal. And they know again, still a people business.

They want to make sure that they're doing the right things.

They're rewarding people on their team. They're providing a

great experience, and then coaching others that maybe

aren't. And then there are economic impacts of both of

those that we can share information to.

Because there's certainly cost to serve

implications on that I assume?

That's exactly right. So again, as a seller,

you can talk about the sales enablement part that I shared a

little bit ago. But now you can talk about this buyer

enablement, part of leveraging data, thinking about in solution

creation, and really that design and delivery, and then going

into that communication of the personal experience down the

road. And again, as a seller, that's all part of our, our

world, so.

Well, digitally enabled sales of the future, or

the growth of digitally enabled sales is is quite exciting. And

isn't it fun to be in, in a role and field that is constantly

changing? And where you have to learn and adapt every single

day?

Yeah, it really is. And I'll tell you, one of

the best parts about our business is we can always be a

student of business. And we get to work with so many different

customers. And we get to see how they do their business, how they

take care of their teams, what their focused on is, their

mission, their priorities, and get to learn quite a bit of both

from strategic all the way strategic planning down to day

to day execution. And so it really is a lot of fun. And it's

a great opportunity to just to continue to learn.

Absolutely. You know, as, as we conclude, maybe

just, you know, I've got 8000ish undergraduate students, and you

speak regularly I know maybe even every single semester on

our campus, about leadership. And so maybe a little bit about

your style of leadership. And then when you're in the

classroom, what what's the advice that you give that 21, 22

year old, like really looking at, you know, what's my future

gonna look like and how do I make my impact?

That's a good question. I'll maybe use two

words here, from a leadership perspective, you talk about my

style. I don't know you'd have to ask people I work with, but

something I've always tried to focus on is really how can I

serve? How can I help? Even going all the way back to

working nights or those first operational jobs, you know, we

are a team, we are a family. How can we help each other? How can

I help? Even if I don't know the answer? What can I do to learn

it to try to figure that out? So really, how can I serve? And I'm

still trying to do that today. It's a big responsibility in

this role. We have a wonderful team and I just always want to

serve them well. If you were talking about advice from a

student perspective, and advice I wish I would have had when I

was a student, is to really be present. And what I mean by

that, each of us has an opportunity every single day,

every single interaction, to be present. And in the classroom to

be present. I feel like let's see, I was in the classroom,

more focused on finishing the class, not as much focused on

being present to get what I could from the class, to learn

also to contribute where appropriate, but to really be

engaged in the classroom. And I think every student and even me

today, in every interaction, I know, if you can focus on being

present, not having the phone not having in really engaging,

listening, contributing. There's so much to learn. And there's so

much to take from the experience and opportunities that they have

today. And so my advice would just be present.

Spencer, I see that is such wisdom. And today,

it's really hard to do, right. There's so many distractions out

there. But you know, whether it's what can you take out of

the classroom or learn from whatever experience you're in,

you know, I agree with that 100%. But also, I know, when I'm

sitting across from you, you know, that you're going to be

present and engaged with me. And that means a lot no matter what

type of relationship that we have, whether it's a buyer

seller relationship, or whether it's a collaborative

partnership, like we have.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think it all comes down

to then, as connected to keeping things personal, building those

relationships, demonstrating a sense of respect and caring for

others. And I think that can just help all of us down the

road.

Well, thank you for the way you've partnered

with us at the Walton College and the way JB Hunt has really

partnered with the Walton College and University of

Arkansas. It's certainly been a pleasure for me over the last 10

years or so to work alongside you and I look forward to a lot

more.

Yeah, same here, Brent. I appreciate that

and looking forward to it as well.

Thanks for being here today. On behalf of the

Walton College thank you for joining us for this captivating

conversation. To stay connected and never miss an episode.,

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