Bear Down Logistics Inc.

Driving down the street and someone almost hits us, my wife will say “That guy came out of nowhere”. I tend to let little moments like this go (one does not need to enter into a philosophical discussion with one’s spouse on every subject... we learn this, over time...) but I like to think about it, myself, particularly when my business is in moments of difficulty or transition: there is no “from nowhere.” Everything that enters our path comes from somewhere. When we don’t see it or don’t anticipate it, it has more to do with our awareness and imagination or our worldview than the universe’s fundamental break in reality. Last week, I found out that my company was going to take a serious financial hit. One of our customers shut its doors and won’t make the pay its invoices. I knew we were vulnerable to this type of financial hit—I had begun the process of getting us insulated from this type of financial hit. But that work was not yet complete—and the other shoe fell. No, it didn’t come from nowhere. It was very visible. And now the question is: what should we do about it? The first thing we’re not going to do is give it a negative emotional value—nothing has meaning until you give it an emotional value. It happened. Mitigate the issue as much as possible. Move on. When my son was taken to live life in Africa, without my knowledge and counter to the custody agreement I had with his mother, everyone wanted to ask the question: why did she do that? Don’t ask me that question was my response to the question. I didn’t need to answer that question: he’s there, I’m getting him home. How do I get that accomplished? Moving on (by taking positive actions). In business, the financial situation happened. We’re solving it. Moving on. And there are solutions. Some hurt more than others. Some need a little grace. Some need a little hope. But we’ll be fine—because we will not give negative emotional meaning to the difficulty. I knew we were vulnerable. The shoe dropped. We know how to fix it in the future. Everything else is a temporary problem. When I work with businesses, I find, far too often, meaning is assigned to the wrong place. Meaning is never useful in the past unless reflections on the past can affect positive future decisions and outcomes. In business: the best use of energy is never—who do I blame? (if you own the company, ultimately, the answer is you). In business, the far better use of energy is: How do we apply meaning to the next moves we have to make? If actions are not forward thinking—if they aren’t predictive—if they aren’t made in full awareness—there is an imagination and learned experience gap. The point: Where do we apply energy, to understand the world better, or to recover from our lack of understanding? And two: bring positively informed and fully thought-through plans—execute them with the energy of learned experience and faith in oneself and team. ww.dezclarkspeaks.com

In leadership, especially at the C-suite level, we often speak of confidence, but rarely do we delve deeply into its true essence. Confidence isn't a facade—it's an unshakable belief rooted in clarity of intention. The most powerful leaders aren't those who merely push their agenda; they are those who approach every interaction with a profound sense of purpose and a genuine commitment to service. When we engage with clients, partners, or even our teams, the question isn't whether we can secure their business or their loyalty. The real question is: Do we sincerely care about their success? If the answer is yes, then why do we hesitate? Why do we second-guess ourselves? As leaders, our responsibility is to remove those internal barriers, those voices of doubt that whisper of rejection or failure. It's about aligning our actions with our intentions and knowing, deep in our hearts, that we are here to offer real value. This requires us to embrace a concept I often refer to as "humble courage"—the balance of audacity and humility. At Bear Down Logistics, we live by this value. We believe in engaging from a place of sincere service while being unafraid to take bold steps forward. In doing so, we cultivate a culture where confidence is more than just a leadership trait—it becomes the foundation of everything we do. Confidence, when paired with humility, transforms a simple transaction into a meaningful connection. As leaders of men and women, one of our primary tasks is to foster this culture of belief—not just in the product we sell or the service we offer, but in our own ability to positively impact the lives and businesses of those we engage with. It’s this belief that unlocks greatness in others and in ourselves. So, the next time you walk into a room, remember: you are not there to take. You are there to give. And when your intentions are pure, every word, every action, carries the weight of that truth. Whether it’s received as you hope, that’s not in your control. What is in your control is the courage to show up fully and unapologetically, with heart and humility. www.beardown-logistics.com www.dezclarkspeaks.com

I’ve been listening to statistician Nate Silver recently—he’s famous for running the website 538 (political predictions) and he’s also something of a gambler (at home in a casino, he says), and part of his way of looking at things is recognizing that the world is dynamic—that it changes. There are moments when predictions become easier to make, and there are times when they are murkier. I’ve learned that this is a huge element of business, as well, undiscussed. If you work in a business with dynamic pricing models (airlines, freight, etc.) there is more profit to be made when you can predict when the pricing will benefit you. When I started to look at my own business this way I noticed I could improve margins on some loads substantially—same load, same customer price—different profit margin. When I speak and work with businesses I see the need to recognize the deeper meaning here. It’s not just that seeing the world as dynamic gives you more profit opportunities—it’s fuller than that: Seeing the world as dynamic is a more accurate reflection of how the world actually exists. This means, we can’t expect that a person who is hired, who has a ton of energy and interest on day one will continue with that energy and interest unless the dynamics of day one stay with them. If a culture were to be more cynical, if people too often share disgruntled feelings and complain—that person will quickly lose their day-one energy—and the culture will bring them down. Or, cultures can be developed with maintaining that energy in mind—they are dynamic—they change, and they require a depth of training, transparent communication, and a commitment to mission—not just tasks, a to-do list, and a paycheck. If we recognize that the world is dynamic, that culture is dynamic, then it isn’t enough to have a “mission, vision, values”. They only work if we look at the implementation of mission, vision, and values as dynamic execution. Evolution has its say in the makings of the universe—and in the structure of a business. If we see the world as dynamic we will begin to see opportunities in it, not just liabilities. Some of those opportunities will make long-term sense (longer employee tenure, better culture) and some will make more immediate sense—like: If pricing is dynamic – pick your spots to maximize profits. www.beardown-logistics.com

I believe love is the path... The path to what? I'm glad you asked... 1. Purpose and Meaning 2. Respect and Recognition 3. Growth and Fulfillment I welcome your discussion and perspectives in the comment section. Love, Joy, Peace www.dezclarkspeaks.com

Alvys is truly an extension of our office and our team. They have been a huge reason why we've been able to grow as a company.

Alvys is truly an extension of our office and our team. They have been a huge reason why we've been able to grow as a company.

I like to think that I’m raising my son to be a gentleman, and in that effort, it has forced me to ask, exactly, what does that mean? There’s the root of the word: a-gentle-man. But it strikes me that the root is an insufficient definition. I don’t want my son to be gentle because he has to be a warrior. I want him to understand that he can be a warrior—is a warrior—and he CHOOSES to be gentle. He had all As and Bs in last year's last grading period of school, except for one class where he cheated on a test and got a 0—that knocked his average down—hard lesson. There are no shortcuts. And there are no shortcuts anywhere else, either. In the gym, I find myself calming his thought process down: you can do this—you can lift this weight—you can reach this speed. But then I try to help him understand: I don’t want you to rely on my calming you down to gain better focus—you calm you down. You learn how to calm the instincts and the mind—you learn how to control your warrior—how to give yourself headspace. You do this for you. You learn how to talk to you. You learn how to focus. The external world won’t always be conducive to your best behavior, son. You learn how to find the space to make decisions. This is not unlike many of the conversations I have in business contexts. Why didn’t we get back to that person who was a lead? “I was pretty certain they’d say no” “but there’s a chance they wouldn’t, or we’d get a different update, another opportunity down the line?” “yes, but I was pretty certain.” Then we need to find the space to be willing to hear “no.” We need to find the space to not take it personally. We need to find the space to listen, and care, for people we might not be doing business with and people who have no interest in taking our call. But we’ll do that. And we’ll succeed where we can—because we created the space for the conversation internally. We must let our internal disciplines dictate our behavior—never external circumstances. It strikes me that we forget that we have a choice in our behavior—we see this when parents are losing their minds in stores not able to find the right markers for their kids during back-to-school shopping—we see this in political discussion—we see this in discussions about money in a family, or in a business. So it strikes me that a gentleman (or gentlewoman) is also what we seek in business and in life: those in control who choose calm gentle behavior despite the storms that brew outside which their inner warrior will conquer. Those are the people that are reliable internally for businesses, and externally for clients, and internally and externally for their families. Those are people we need leading the way. www.dezclarkspeaks.com

Like many people, I have coaches and mentors—some of them have done the things they are helping me do (improve my marketing, improve my mindset, improve how I lead my team at Bear Down Logistics) and some of them have not—I’ve hired them on trust, I’ve hired them on philosophy, I’ve hired them on tasks and other experiences. This means, on any given day, when I’m asking for advice on something for which there are multiple factors, I get advice from all corners: everyone is smart—absolutely everyone at my conference table is smart—but not all opinions are equal. If someone has a lot of experience in something and can point to DETAILS that matter, I think of that person as much more likely to carry credible weight for decisions. If someone speaks philosophically without speaking practically—or if someone is too dismissive of countering opinions, I take that into account. I see this in business- and I see something similar in political and cultural comments. If one dismisses another opinion too easily, I’ve begun to see it as a sign of weakness, not strength, of an argument or discussion. If we don’t carry enough factual or experiential knowledge in our opinions—we devalue our own opinions. In business, I see this arrive particularly in leadership, marketing, and sales space: if someone says to me—this is the way to make your first $5M in sales—I immediately ask: do you have $5M in sales? Most of them do not. It doesn’t make the opinion wrong—it means the opinion is a projection—it’s conjecture. It’s, at best, well-described but trustworthy. At worst, it’s uninvestigated common knowledge. It’s the type of thing that gets passed down. It’s noise, masquerading as knowledge. I’ve noticed, in business, political, and cultural life, to learn when to distrust noise masquerading as knowledge: I investigate any sentence where someone uses the word “obviously” and I ignore any sentence when someone loses their cool and speak from a highly agitated state or anger. Both of those say to me: you’re out of intellectual juice—you’re guessing or letting emotion, not intelligence speak, and this is compensating for a lack of something. “I think it’s obvious (that the $5M sales funnel) will work.” Why? Give me a foundational perspective from which this is “obvious”. Noise masquerading as knowledge. When I work with leaders, this issue comes up a lot: how do we know when we have reliable advice, and how do we know when we have noise? What we need, I find, is a culture that is open to questions. If we can ask tough questions of each other, without getting defensive, in the spirit of trust and oneness, in a way we can separate the well-observed advice from surface-level commentary. With that culture, we have teams that know how to weigh decisions. Without that culture, we have teams and individuals that create a lot of noise and cloud decision-making. To learn more go to www.dezclarkspeaks.com

On a week in which a Presidential candidate left the race, after a week in which another Presidential candidate was shot—a week in which a war in Europe—and another in the Middle East—both rage on, it strikes me that we might benefit from a discussion of leadership, en masse. Here’s the thing I think we miss: Leaders know the destination—leaders rarely know—rarely, rarely, know—the absolute pathway. In Israel/Palestine—we know we want peace—the difficulty is there is a fast path to peace (stop immediate fighting. There is also perhaps a slower path, more war. And, there are solutions between the two opposite poles. When someone comes with a 10-point action plan—these are the things we need to do—I immediately think: That’s one path but what if there needs to be detours? Leaders often are charged with aiming for things they don’t have absolute answers for. Think of it like God and Moses: to be called on an adventure—not called to a road map. Moses and Martin Luther King share a destiny: to be great leaders—to know the trajectory—to set the world on that trajectory. It is always tempting to think of leadership as a person who knows all. It’s tempting, even for leaders—especially for leaders—to think of themselves as people who know all. But I think, at moments like this, about Moses: called upon to lead—and he knows nothing, doesn’t even speak well enough to deliver coherent messages. That was for his brother Aaron to do. One might wonder if God called upon Moses to lead not despite knowing nothing—but because he knew nothing. Maybe leadership, at its base, is simply this: I know the direction I want to go—I know the humility I need to take to that direction—and the rest, I’m smart enough and I’ve surrounded myself with smart enough people to figure out along the way. Team leadership at it's best. If we start to look at leadership, not as management but as directionality—it begs a question in several realms. In the political realm—choose your own adventure—for me—I don’t vote for management, I vote for direction and hope the leaders can figure out how to implement along the way. In the business realm choosing direction means choosing a path to a destination, it means seeking advice, changing strategies occasionally, and losing other advice. However, in the business realm, vision matters more than the method. We often hire leaders for the method. Nothing wrong here. But when method trumps vision, net effect: we have well-managed mediocre situations that don’t alter the course of businesses or the clients of our businesses. But if we understand leadership we will realize the mistake is our own: Aim high for the greatest valued outcome of the whole, admit we can’t predict and know an ABSOLUTE path to get there: And start. www.dezclarkspeaks.com

Owning and leading Bear Down Logistics is more than just a way to make money for me; it's an opportunity to serve and uplift an incredible team of people who stand with me in building this company. Every day, I have the chance to cultivate universal values and cultivate a culture that transcends the workplace during our morning huddles. This culture influences not only our work environment but infiltrates our home life and life within our communities. The ripple effect of our collective actions can reach our cities, states, and even our world. We are all interconnected, and I am profoundly grateful to lead a company filled with exceptional individuals who contribute to the greater good of humanity. As we continue our journey towards becoming the most trusted freight management service, our focus remains on serving our clients with unwavering dedication to truth. The foundation of our success lies in the trust and confidence our clients place in us. When the people we serve feel we are the most reliable partner, it opens doors to more opportunities and connections. We remain committed to this principle, knowing that by being the best for those we serve today, we pave the way to becoming a trusted name for many more tomorrow. Together, we can make a significant impact, not only in the world of logistics but in the world as a whole. One trusted relationship at a time. We are always on the lookout for broker agents who identify with our values. www.beardown-logistics.com