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Talking to Jennifer Karpus-Romain from the TMSA

In episode 4 of Launching Logistics, Jim Becker sits down with Jennifer Karpus-Romain, Executive Director of the Transportation Marketing and Sales Association (TMSA), to discuss how effective marketing and storytelling can transform the logistics industry.

Drawing from her background in journalism and B2B marketing, Jennifer shares valuable insights on how companies can better connect with their audiences, align sales and marketing, and use storytelling to build stronger customer relationships. Whether you’re in logistics marketing, sales, or leadership, this episode is full of actionable tips that will help you drive growth and strengthen your brand.

Guest Info

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Jennifer is a strong entrepreneurship professional. Experienced marketing and publishing professional. Skilled in Marketing, Content Marketing, Social Media Strategy and Management, Media Relations, Journalism, Magazines and Interviewing. 

Check out Jennifer on LinkedIn.

Email Jennifer at Jennifer@TMSAToday.org

Learn more about TMSA at TMSAtoday.org

Interview Transcript

Jim Becker

You know, one thing I didn’t know is that you’re an adjunct professor. Right. And tell me a little bit about that.

 

Jim Becker

When did that start for you? Why? And in what area are you an adjunct professor now?

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

So I haven’t taught, an active class in a couple years, but I have for years taught, on the community college level. And I keep thinking like, oh, I had probably fallen off the active list and need to like, put my name back in and be like, I’m still ready to take classes, but or administer classes, right, like I taught in content marketing and social media marketing.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

So those are definitely, my, my strong suits and where I started in the marketing game. So I actually started my career in journalism and I wrote for B2B publications. And at the time it was like 2011 ish at this time where I was working there and we had Facebook and we had a social media presence, but the online team was who was doing it.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

So but and I was very confused on why there wasn’t an editorial editorial voice in that. Like I felt like that was really important, that we are making sure that we are being the voice of the publications because we’re the editorial team. So I kind of started doing more and more of that, and this was before you had to pay for it.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

I say I’m a social media dinosaur, if you will, because I was there and that’s my first line where I teach social media marketing is like, I have all the dinosaurs in the asteroids of like pay per click and like all the ads and all those things come in and ruin all the happy dinosaurs that existed before all that.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

But I was writing in the tire industry, and we really one of the publications I worked for targeted, independent tire dealers and I was like things like Facebook and Snapchat was like a big thing. Then I was like, you can do that with coupons like send. They send you what is wrong with their car? You send them a coupon.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

They have no idea what that coupon is work with. They have to show up and show you like the active ad, things like that. There was a lot of fun things that you could do play around with, and I really, really liked that. And so I slowly kind of transitioned into the marketing side. And then I still write journalistically on the side in my, my free time outside of Tulsa in the marketing world.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

But I really loved helping people tell their story and find their unique identifier and pushing them forward. So when I then went to teach, it was an interesting switch because I was used to social media marketing for a business, and a lot of the students were there to market themselves and like, oh, we are now either a brand or we are wanting to be like a makeup artist, but I want to utilize social media to raise my brand awareness, all that stuff.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

So that was an interesting switch for me because I was like, okay, well, there’s still a lot of principles that can be taken in, and I really wanted them to know how fast trends go on the internet, but where to find really good information, where like up to date, like social media examiner and all the different sites that are out there for that kind of stuff and where you can learn on your feet, doing things like Google Analytics training, even though that’s a little bit out of social, but still really important for you to know how it all comes in together, doing like HubSpot training and all that kind of stuff that will

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

really advance who you are. And then in the content marketing world, that was really fun because coming from journalism and then being a content writer, being able to kind of mesh all of those pieces together and teach, that was really, really cool. So.

 

Jim Becker

awesome. Yeah, it seems like you bring a lot of light wherever you go. And whenever I’ve been with you, you know, you ruminate a whole bunch of light to really just shine light on things that maybe people aren’t seeing.

 

Jim Becker

And, you know, now it explains a couple things with the journalism and and the marketing and not to mention the writing. And, you know, with all the awards that you’ve, you know, accumulated over the years, it’s beautiful. You know, one thing that I love to just dive into a little bit is the writing, because a lot of people, that’s some of the negative things that they have for themselves, or at least they speak to themselves as it’s negative.

 

Jim Becker

You know, what are the different types of writing styles that you’re now seeing in social media and or in writing books to give us a narrative, if you will?

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Well, I still think the hero’s journey is going to be really important for any type of engagement that you’re doing, whether it’s in fiction, or you can apply those business practices to your, your writing. But I think one thing to remember from a business standpoint is you’re not the hero of your story. Like, you’re you’re the guy, you’re the man or woman or whoever that’s guiding them through the journey.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

The hero is your customer. And so I feel like that’s a disconnect that people sometimes forget about. People don’t really care about what you do. They care about what you can do for them or with them to solve their problems. So I think that’s really important when you’re doing marketing, when you’re doing sales, it’s like you’re not the hero.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

So take yourself, you know, up out of that seat and be the seat that’s next to them, guiding them through that process. So I think that’s really, really important, especially when we are talking about our content, drafting our information, things like that. You’re not right. You’re writing it for somebody else to receive and then in that, how do people receive information?

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

I always find it really funny that when we’re kids, we’re taught about the different ways that people learn. Some people like to read, some people need to see, some people are hands on learners. And then we have things like my son has ADHD and that’s like a whole different ballgame of teaching and learning and engaging. But then we go into the workplace and we’re writing and we’re doing things and we don’t factor in that anymore.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

It’s like when we’re adults, we’re just expected to receive information one way and we just still don’t. Everyone is still a little bit different. So thinking about that okay, well this so this is a podcast. It’s an interview we’re talking a lot of people like to absorb information this way. Some people still want to read the information they really want to say.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Like for me I am really fast paced. I’m moving things all the time. I love listening to podcasts, like when I’m organizing my craft closet and when I’m driving places and things like that. But if I really want to absorb myself and take a really deep dive like that, I need to be like, dedicate some time to and really focus in and sit and think and have my highlighter out and like, put lines through it and all that kind of stuff.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

But if we’re only presenting content in one way, we’re only going to be attracting one type of learner. So really expand doing those different pieces and making sure that it’s, accessible for everybody and thinking through what, how they’re receiving information. Like if we’re a trucking company and we want our drivers to know information, are we sending it to them in an audio file?

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Because that’s probably the easiest way for them to receive that information because they’re driving. So there’s simple things like that that I think are still not always being thought through. The best advice I ever got actually in journalism school, but I take it through everything is just know your audience. I actually just like, we’ll shout this at my husband when he’s trying to, like, pitch something.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Like appeal to who you’re speaking to, not necessarily what you would get excited for. And so I think that’s really important thinking how are people, accessing information? What do they care about? How can I make sure I’m reaching them? Things like that. Really taking that the step further, is important, especially marketing and sales people that are telling that story, that are engaging, that are trying to, work with customers and clients.

 

Jim Becker

Absolutely. You know, you bring up a really, really good point where, you know, we are all consuming information not only when we’re, you know, on social media, when we’re driving around the billboards we see or what we hear in conversations or just the feeling that we get, you know, statistically, I’ve heard that somewhere in the area of 40 something percent of us are visual learners.

 

Jim Becker

We learned 40 something percent, and that’s how we consume it. We see it and we take it in another 30 something percent that we’re hearing something, and that’s how we take that information in. And then there’s only a small two digit, you know, 14 to 17% of us that are kinesthetic learners, that we feel a certain way when that information comes in.

 

Jim Becker

Do you find yourself writing in this way, this vivid way where you’re really being present tense to describe things so that the reader can actually see it from a vivid way and be able to hear it from a vivid way, as well as feeling.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Yeah. I think it’s important to give the scope in and details that you want, but to make it, platform appropriate to. So, like. Yes, you can put more information on social media. It doesn’t have to be just one line. But also, if you have a really, really long piece of content that’s on like LinkedIn, make sure the narrative is worthy of that.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Like, don’t just do it because you want to, but if you’re being a little bit more vulnerable or telling a little bit more scope, then those things call for it. And then when you’re writing longer form content, you do want to entice people to continue reading and to want to engage. But that was probably the hardest part of switching from journalism is like you’re always taught to put like the most important information right up front, because then people will want the details, which I think in theory, in journalistic articles.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

That’s how it should be. But creative writing is a little bit different. I also one thing, whenever I have like interns or people coming into the field, I remind them that everything you write, whether it’s a social media post or a longer form content or a white paper or a blog, whatever that is, that is somebodies first interaction with yourself, with you, with your brand, with your company.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

It is not just one of 15 posts I’m asking you to write that you are sitting in for the next two hours or whatever. This is somebody entry point into who we are and what we do. And if you were that person, how are you receiving this information? Do you understand what our businesses do? You understand what we do?

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Do we sound fun and engaging the way we want to? Whatever is, is our brand voice in that one post matching the one that we just posted before? And I think it’s really easy in every day when we’re just trying to push things out and we’re all super busy and we’re all spread super thin and two, forget that that this is the this could be someone’s first impression of you.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And what does that what does that seem like? And so that’s one thing that I try to teach in if I am teaching or if I have interns or people coming into the field or whatever, I think that’s a really important thing to remember. With everything that you’re writing. And same with like if you are embracing I, which people do I do too?

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

But what what the what does the AI bot say? And, is it still your voice? And it can start to mimic some of that stuff a little bit better. But don’t forget your humanity and who you are then with what you’re putting out. Either.

 

Jim Becker

Absolutely. Yeah. Usually you can tell what’s eye and what’s not, especially in in the narrative as you’re talking. And do you lose that humanistic piece.

 

Jim Becker

You know, I really have to shake, you know, all the negatives, that staring at me with who I am. And when I’m able to will that off, it’s really helpful to really be with the content in which that I’m consuming. Right? Especially looking up those words that maybe I don’t know, you know, that were from the 17th century that are now archaic, if you will.

 

Jim Becker

And I basically, open up my precociousness, if you will, building that verbose vocabulary so that every time I see a word I’m unfamiliar with, I become from the unfamiliar to the familiar, which really helps me with everything that I’m doing in my life. And it sounds like you kind of do the same thing, and you’re a kind of outvoted as well.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Yeah. I think it’s important to kind of figure out what works for you and then move forward with it.

 

Jim Becker

yeah, I love how you brought all that together. And, you know, I guess this is where, you know, somehow you ended up at the time as a and, you know, I’d like to hear more about, you know, how you ended up there, with your background and what you do there

 

Jim Becker

and what really inspires you, with that role that you you now have

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

So yes, I am the executive director at the Transportation Marketing and Sales Association. And I will have been in this role for almost three years now. So November 1st will be my three year anniversary here, which seems crazy to me. I get that question. Because I obviously just spoke about my love of words and I was a journalist and, and all the stuff in there, like.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

But how did you end up running a trade nonprofit in the transportation space? How does that line work? Well, the line doesn’t work. It goes like this. So I started my career in journalism. Did that really fall in love with marketing? So then I switched over. I worked at a marketing agency, loved working with clients, and I always gravitated to the industrial side of things.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Like, I’ve never worked in B2C, really. It’s always been B2B. I do help, it does help. My husband’s in manufacturing, and so he’s an engineer. He’s worked at, two different companies. And so it gives us a line to talk about, too. Because I have always been on the creative space and he’s more like engineer guy.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And so but there is overlap there. And so whether I was writing about tires or like the manufacturing processes or whatever that look like, as a journalist, that when I switched over to the marketing agency, it benefited me that I was able to kind of speak those languages a bit. And I understood more about the processes behind it, what what we were doing and what our customers were doing.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And so I really, really liked that. After working at a marketing agency for a little bit and having different customers, I branched out and ended up working for a software integration company as their director of marketing, and I oversaw all of the different pieces. So digital marketing, trade shows, all of that, and they hired me because they were looking to expand in a different industries, and they needed somebody that could kind of talk that language, but also have the perception.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

So we did like software integration, CRM, all of that kind of stuff. And it was funny, though, because when I first started there, I felt inadequate in some ways because everyone spoke so specifically on the tech side. And then I realized one day, oh, wait, everyone we’re selling to as a sales or marketing person. So I don’t understand what you’re talking about.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

They’re not going to understand what you’re talking about. And then I felt very valuable. And that’s what we worked on internally, is making sure that the messaging and things lined up so that our, our actual customer understood what we were doing. And one of those, markets that we served was the transportation space. And that’s how I came into TMSA.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

So I was actually a member, there used to be called affiliate members at the time. The other partner members and the partner members or TMSA, are the people who are serving the industry trying to help sales and marketing professionals be more efficient in their roles. Partner with them like marketing agencies, sales coaches, recruitment firms, technology providers that provide things like CRM and sales automation, marketing automation, all of that kind of stuff.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And so I became a member. And so that was like 2017, we became members. I came to my first show in 2018. I just fell in love with the organization. I loved everything about it. I loved the people. I loved what it represented. It was such a need. And at the time that I joined, I was a solo director of marketing.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

I was the only person who did marketing at my company. A little bit later on, we merged and so there was still two of us, but still really small and trying to figure out what that looked like and what other people were doing. And how were you able to execute and ask your team to give you the things that you needed to be able to execute on the things that they actually wanted you to do and all that.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

So being able to have those conversations and even as like a marketing person, being able to pick the brain of salespeople that I met in TMSA so that I felt smarter with my own sales team, like, okay, like let me create the collateral that they actually want, instead of me guessing because I don’t want to waste their time.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

I want to be able to give them what they need. And so that was really, important. I joined the education committee. Later on, I led the marketing committee. I joined the board of directors, very active. And then we knew that the previous management firm was looking to put it into new hands. TMSA was wonderful, but it definitely needed a modernization to kind of push forward.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

But Covid hit as hard as it hit everybody hard. How do we now continue to meet the needs of marketing and sales professionals in this space? So I kind of threw my hat in the ring because after being on the board and serving on different committees, I had an idea of what it was that we could move forward with.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

I knew we needed a new website. I knew we needed, a different and more, easily accessible member portal. I knew we needed to better highlight what we were actually doing. So one of the best things that we do is this benchmarking study, which I’m in the end phases of, of finishing it, but we benchmark sales and marketing stats just for this industry.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And it has like, how is your sales team broken down? Are you hitting your quotas? If you’re not hitting your quotas, what are the reasons why you’re not doing it? How is that shifted from two years ago? Because it’s pretty substantially different from two years ago. What technologies are you using with AI now coming in? How are you using AI?

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Is it governed all of this different stuff? It’s all there and it’s all just for this industry. And it’s a membership perk. It’s something that only members get. And so but like really emphasizing that, talking about it, saying, you know, this is a big use case for TMSA membership of pitching to your boss, of why you should continue to be a member and just thinking through, different things that we could do.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And so I had a passion for it. And the membership entrusted me to lead. And so which has been one of the most rewarding things of my career, being a pretty new leader, but having the backing and the support of not just the board of directors, but the membership at large and, continuing to be able to to lead and shift and evolve and, and take a listen to our current members, past members, hopefully future members, to see how TMSA can continue to help serve them and serve the industry at large.

 

Jim Becker

Yeah, absolutely. I love how you know your journalism as well as your writing and what you did in the past. And then coming to the TMSA, you know, three years ago, not only is who you who you are being that light, you’re able to also be that intermediary that that bridge that bridges the past to the present as well as now where you’re at helping your clients and other team members, just like, you know, being able to do the survey, getting that out there to benchmark is really making a difference.

 

Jim Becker

Now, with all that of what you have seen in your roles of marketing and sales professionals as they evolve in this business, evolves in logistics and in our transportation industry. How have you seen that marketing has changed, especially over the last few years, compared to the way that it has been in the archaic way of being? If you will?

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Yeah. I definitely think that, The thing that I wish would change that hasn’t changed is the overall understanding of the importance of marketing. And that’s one of my favorite thing. When leaders come to TMSA, my favorite thing is when they tell me when they leave. I look at marketing and everything differently. Now I understand the value of marketing.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

I understand I’m so happy I’m here and I’m engaging, and we’re going to put these practices into our sales and marketing efforts when we move forward, because so often we see the marketing budget is the first to get cut. And I get that, and you then are pressuring your marketing teams to continue to deliver more with less.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And that is really, really hard. And so then you’re in this position where you have to execute and you have to prove your ROI, but you’re not having a lot of the support to kind of get there. But there are, of course, creative ways that we can do that. One of the other big things that I’ve seen is the exposure of marketing in a way we haven’t seen it before, because our softwares are more integrated now than they ever have been.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

So in the past you would have like your marketing automation over here, your sales over here, your customer over here, all the stuff. But now with software integrations or all in one platforms that we’re utilizing, more people can see more about what marketing is doing, which is good and bad, because they still don’t always know what it means.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Could be like, oh, you sent a lot of emails out, but they don’t necessarily know how to look for an open rate or click grade or what that means or like. Then being able to see that customer journey, like, okay, this person actually did have like 80 touchpoints before we then made the sale or whatever. So I think the exposure is good because

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

any time people can better understand the value of marketing is great, but on the flip side,

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

If you’ve never worked in that role, you just don’t know what that is or what that means. And so it can, get kind of murky and you still want people to, to do their role and you, you do yours. But I do think that integrating does create efficiencies, that we can better see that customer journey line.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

I still always recommend when you get a new customer to ask them, hey, where was the first time you saw us? First time you heard about us? Because one, it is probably not necessarily what you might think it is like. And of course the salesperson is who is brought that person home and gets the sale, but it really helps to,

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

give marketing credit if those are coming in through an mql through some of your marketing touches, but it also helps you to know if your software is working the way you want it to.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Because if the answer isn’t the one that you know because it’s the one in your system, then how do we better map that for the future so that we know those answers already? And I feel like a lot of times people forget to ask that. And you just, it really helps to kind of close those loops together to be like, okay, you said you heard from us.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Okay, cool. That’s actually where in our CRM system we see that’s where they came in. That’s great. Or oh, we saw that as like the third touch point. This guy just forgot about these things over here. But that’s fine. He got here eventually. So I think those things are really important. Of course AI is the thing that everybody is doing more now of.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And as a writer, it’s, you know, double edged sword a bit because, I don’t think it takes away the importance of good writing and proper writing. Like you said, you can typically tell when something is AI generated and when it isn’t, and AI, the thing I fear the most is us forgetting that AI tools, any like efficiency tools, are that to be made to be more efficient so that you can do your job better.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And to me, especially for me for sales and marketing roles, a big piece of your job is that human connection, creating those stories, working with people, taking care of people, selling all that. And so we shouldn’t use AI to lose our humanity. We should be using AI to do some of this stuff over here so that we can be better humans to, to sell, engage, market, all of those things.

 

Jim Becker

Yeah, absolutely. It’s it’s like some of those tools that, that we use,

 

Jim Becker

Those tools should be helping us get to the next level.

 

Jim Becker

Those tools shouldn’t be like taking away us doing that piece of our job. Now there’s certain things that AI’s great at at like, okay, send this out at 7:00 in the morning. That’s when I want this to go out. Let’s send this out at noon. That’s when I want that to go out. That’s beautiful to use. You know, artificial intelligence, to kind of set those up.

 

Jim Becker

But when it comes to the crafting of a letter, the crafting of your point that you want to really just create vividly for someone, it it’s so important to have that human touch so that it really lands over there to the human being from a human being. I don’t feel that AI is at that level yet. That, and it will be at some point in time that it could take everything of who we are and really put that information into a paragraph or a story and tell it in a certain way.

 

Jim Becker

And I think sometimes, just listening and reading some of the things that I see out there, I’m like, okay, that’s I do, I know I’m not going to even, you know, go into that. And I because I post each and every day and when I’m posting, I’m posting something that, you know, I’ve, I’ve had my touch on and it’s me.

 

Jim Becker

You know, I’ve been doing social media pretty hard since 2019, and I’m sure you’ve seen some of it. And as we go on, it’s it’s keeping that alive and keeping it what it is. As one of the first people on transportation that has really taken, you know, that on firsthand and foremost, you know what I mean?

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Yeah. And I think it can have a place like. I’ve definitely used ChatGPT when my brain just doesn’t. It can’t find the words I’m looking for. So I’ll be like say this. And then I look at it and I think about it and then I turn it into me. So it’s great for a starting point, especially for the smaller marketing team.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Like I use it like I’m being an editor sometimes. So instead of being the writer, you’re the editor. You still then make it what it needs to be. You still craft it, you still make sure it’s in your voice. You make sure it doesn’t. I mean, ChatGPT itself even says the the robot makes mistakes. Make sure you check this at the bottom.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And so I feel like that’s that’s really important is that you’re so the expert on what you do and who you are. The AI isn’t. And so making sure that you’re utilizing it in those ways and not, offsetting it or, I don’t know, I feel like that’s the piece that is missing sometimes in these, and it’s popping up all over the place.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Like you can go in LinkedIn and like click a button and it’ll do like an AI thing now. And I know, like we use HubSpot and you can click and I generator and it’ll come up and I click them sometimes just to see what they say. And most of the time it’s not what I would say, but I think it could be a really great starting point, but it shouldn’t be your finishing point.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

So, keeping that in mind, and I do think the more and more people, use it,

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

the more will have this like loss of what? Like what is it for? And it comes to me. It comes back to what I was saying at the beginning of knowing your audience and making sure that you’re crafting your content for those people.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And I will continue to get more sophisticated and do that. But that’s your job is to make sure, hey, that I’m crafting this for this person. I need to make sure that that’s what that looks like, and whether that’s one sales email or a huge marketing campaign. Knowing your audience and knowing your purpose, I think are really, really important.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Because if you lose sight of that, then you’re not going to get any of the results that you want because you’re not even doing it with your own purpose in mind.

 

Jim Becker

absolutely knowing your purpose is like should be number one and knowing your audience number two, you know, just like you know, with you, you’ve connected with so many people in your role over there for the last three years at TMSA. You know, I know that TMSA focuses really heavily on really creating connections within the industry. Can you share 1 or 2 of the examples, how these connections have helped other individuals grow their companies?

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Absolutely. I do think that leadership piece and the importance of marketing has been a huge piece of that. So people coming in that may have not have always been a sales person didn’t really understand the real value of marketing and vice versa learning how to work together at the end of the day, both sales and marketing or trying to create revenue for your business, they just are a different parts of the pipeline.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

So understanding how both of those things can work together are crucial for both sides of the business. I also think it’s really great for mentorships. So as a we see a lot of like younger females coming in and we encourage them to reach out to we have really great gender diversity in TMSA and we’re continuing to improve across the board, with all different types of diversity.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

But I think that’s really important because maybe you’re someone who you’ve only worked for, man, and you want a female mentor, or you’ve only had a few more mentor and you want a man’s perspective or whatever that looks like people are in the space. Like, I love that I can talk to people at any stage of their marketing and sales career in transportation logistics through TMSA like that is just really impactful, and that’s something that I always try to do.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

So we actually this is something I started before I even took over TMSA, but we call it the TMSA buddy program. And you, when you come to your first conference, you can opt in to getting a TMSA buddy. And we really think probably too much on who these buddies are and like, try to match you as best we can to somebody that we think would be a good fit for you.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

But so you come in and we match you with somebody and that person you can schedule. We recommend scheduling a zoom call before you come to conference, meeting up with them when you’re at conference, like before the opening cocktail reception, getting to know them, telling them, hey, this is what I’m looking for at this conference or this is what I’m looking for, for or through my membership at TMZ, can you help me?

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And so those connections are really important. And sometimes they’re just for the conference and then people part. But we’ve had people who like kind of continue this relationship on. And we also we’ve expanded, like our membership committee. And now they all have kind of accounts and they all touch base with people. The membership regularly throughout the year.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Are your needs being met? Hey. And then when it’s renewal time, hey, did you get your renewal email? Because a lot of times when people are renewing, it’s as simple as that. Like, hey, did you get that email that told you that your renewals up? No, let me reset it to you or things like that. How can we meet your need?

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Are there do people that should be on your account, all that kind of stuff? Just really great touch points throughout the year. But I do think that that is so important in that at this year at elevate, when I opened the show, that was part of what my message was, is like, be your most authentic self, but be a little bit vulnerable and reach out to somebody and have those conversations and ask your weirdest questions.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And being able to do that in a like a safe space is so worthwhile, because no one knows everything and the industry is changing so much. And this is a tougher market right now. And there’s a lot of people who haven’t experienced that here that are newer to the industry. And having that from more experienced people who’ve weathered those storms and like getting tips and tools for that is incredibly important.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And so I feel like a lot of those connections are there. And through our committee involvement, people are going to having those touchpoints numerous times throughout the year, and not just at like a one day conference. Their regularly communicating with each other.

 

Jim Becker

Yeah. And it’s so important. I think you really struck on something that is one of my values isn’t that that’s being vulnerable, you know, sharing really where you are weak in certain areas.

 

Jim Becker

Like I shared this morning, you know, I wanted this PowerPoint presentation and I wanted it on my breakout room, not in the main town hall that we were having. And I explicitly said that to my admin. And then when I get there, I’m like, oh my gosh, there’s my regular okay, I’m doing it in the main room. Not a problem.

 

Jim Becker

And I just share that with this is what’s going on with me like right now. And so when you are at conference and you guys have several conferences per year, right. And I love to hear from you, like when you are involved in so many different conferences, can you share like two memorable moments that you had a breakthrough or you saw someone else have a breakthrough where they were vulnerable and they opened up and said, hey, you look like someone important, but I don’t know who you are.

 

Jim Becker

Can I can I meet you? And they did that or you did that? What did you see at the conferences and how many do you have per year?

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

So we have two conferences per year. We have elevate, which is in June, which is our bigger event. And then we have our executive summit, which is geared towards leadership and that’s in October. So that’s October 10th or 11th in Hoboken, new Jersey this year. So we are right in the mix of getting all that stuff together. Last year at that event, at the Executive Summit, our opening keynote was talking about organizational trust and how important it was.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And I loved his whole presentation.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

everyone was listening. If people had their computers open, they were actively taking notes and things, and it was at such an important part of our industry, because if you remember last year, I mean, it kind of continues on.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

But like so many like mergers and acquisitions and bankruptcies happened that the employees didn’t even know, like they found out from the news, like this was like a thing that was happening. And that was part of what we kind of talked about. There is like, your employees have to be able to trust that if something goes awry, like they’re going to be the first to know, like that, that should be like a baseline thing at a business.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And it was really impactful because he also had asked people to share stories where they didn’t feel organizational trust and

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

I shared a story about, like, being a female in the workplace, and I won’t get into it, but for me, it wasn’t even me telling the story. It was looking out.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And I remember specifically seeing like one of my board members faced, like just like lay flat. Like he could not believe that this was a situation. I was at brand and that meant more to me than I’ve already moved past the issue like and but it was it was cool to see that turn or like when I did.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

We do have like a Dei task force now at TMSA where we try to be more equitable and inclusive, both at TMSA and to help our members. And it was know, like the entire board approved to diversity chairperson on our board of directors. Like there was no question. And that was really important. So like those things are really cool to see.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

This year I remember sitting and talking, at a table and with her name is April Marone, and I just actually in her because of this conversation. I then interviewed her on On the Move, which is Tmz’s new podcast, and we talked about this, but she talked about how when she started her career as like a sales leader in logistics, she was not nice.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

She thought she had to be mean, didn’t, because that’s like what she thought she had to do. And then at some point over time, she realized she has a son and she’s like, what if people were treating him like this and like, what would I tell him? And so she slowly, over time, developed how to be a better leader and not to to just lead the one way.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And it was really powerful to hear her talk about it. And, there’s other people at the table, and we were just sitting there and I was like, can you come on to the podcast and share this story with me? And she did, which I thought was really cool, too, because it was vulnerable in the moment to share that it’s even more vulnerable to go on a podcast and share it and so I think that is a testament to TMSA in creating those spaces.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And then for me personally, I so to say, celebrated its 100 year this year. So like we’ve been around for 100 years, which is so exciting. And I was like, do you know what we should do to celebrate? I should sing in front of everybody who comes to show, which is crazy, and I recognize it, but I did it.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

So what I did was I convinced a couple of my board members to pretend like they were from 1924 and like, were the original founders of TFA. And so they came on and they had like suspenders on and hats. And it was really funny. We gave them the script, and they talked about Danny and how like, because Danny celebrated Danny Graham.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

For people who don’t I don’t know who doesn’t know him, but he has been a member of TSA for 50 years, so we, like, highlighted him too. But I then sang Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka because to me, like, that’s kind of what it is for those guys from 1924. I could you imagine 100 years later they were advertising and like for the railroads, like, that’s it.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And where we are today, being all the commercial nodes and marketing and sales, and we had a slideshow behind me that showed pictures of the past and all the stuff, and I thought it was great. I was like our opening keynote was talking about the power of storytelling. Someone great. We’re going to tell a great, powerful story, and we’re going to do it in our own way.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

I’m going to sing. We’re going to make these guys go on stage. And then it was like a week before conference. I’m like, why did I do that? Why did I think that was a good idea? But I did it, and I so I sing in front of all 200 plus people at conference, which was a very vulnerable moment for me.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

But I wanted to set the tone in which sometimes you have to be weird and vulnerable and tell the story differently in your way and not be afraid to take that leap. And so I did that.

 

Jim Becker

Wow, congratulations. I’m sure that went off fantastic.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Yeah, it I mean, people liked it. I got good compliments on it.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

don’t ever do it again.

 

Jim Becker

Yeah. And I’m sure you know he was there before deregulation you know and and that and life change after deregulation.

 

Jim Becker

You know ten years after he was a member. You know, all of a sudden here deregulation happens and everything changes. Back then the traffic clubs all looked a little bit different than they do today. And I’ve gone to some of those back in the early days. I started in 1991, and there are still an aftertaste, how things used to be and they were still complaining how it used to be.

 

Jim Becker

Well, now it used to be as it is the way it is today. You know what I mean? And I loved, like, really just how you brought us into that whole world. You know, in companies there is a way that things are done right. There is a way that how things are done, let’s just say it’s the background of an organization.

 

Jim Becker

It’s the same thing with the lady you spoke of about her son, with how how she had a background herself and she had to portray herself a certain way, which was maybe a little off putting to some where now, when you can really realize what that background is or that shadow, and you can have more of that light to illuminate, where you can actually see who you are or who you are being.

 

Jim Becker

It really alters even through someone else’s eyes sometimes to get that reflection of who you are being or an organization is being. Does that make sense? Like, I love how you just brought those in there. You know,

 

Jim Becker

I love what you’re pointing to. I love who you’re being. You know, I love just looking at each person and every idea of how we’re separate from each other just melts away. And I just see human being. It just human. Right. And who were being in that

 

Jim Becker

And this is great. And I love what you’re up to and what your stand is. And I love who you’ve become throughout all of this.

 

Jim Becker

I’m sure our listeners would like to know more information about the TMSA, as well as how they can get a hold of you and and get more involved in your organization. Can you give us some information about how they can find more information about the organization of TMSA, as well as yourself? Jennifer.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Absolutely. So our website is HTML, say today.org. So all of our stuff is in there. You can see our events, all that if you’re interested specifically, like on Executive Summit or whatever, our big event that’s coming up that would be like events dot TMSA today.org. So for the next couple of weeks will be Executive Summit. And then after that it’ll, switch back to elevate for next year.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

In terms of reaching me, my name is Jennifer Carpus Romaine. And you can reach me on LinkedIn very easily. Or you can email me at Jennifer at TMSA today.org. We are a group of sales and marketing professionals inside of transportation and logistics. We have people that are in those sales and marketing roles at trucking companies, at railroads that, three people, that Port Authority is all of that.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And then, that partner membership that is also then the people who are trying to help them with their jobs, marketing agency, sales coaches, all of that. So we’re just a collection of people that are in those space that are trying to make sales and marketing better in the space.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

We have a bunch of different committees and things that people can get involved into, which I always recommend.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

I think the more you put into something like an industry association, the more you get out of it. And so that’s really important. And, the benchmarking study that I referenced, it will be coming out in three weeks now. So right before Executive Summit will launch that for members. So a lot of great resources, especially, you know, being in budget season end of the year, what’s happening, what are we supposed to do next year.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

And all those kinds of things. So a lot of exciting things. And I’m always happy to chat about the industry or TMSA or anything.

 

Jim Becker

Oh Jennifer, thank you so much. It’s it’s such a blessed fullness to see you and your customer service. And you’re all about service. And that’s what you have. You have customer service in a world of service. And it’s just so great to see how you really help other people and really just continue unfolding throughout this life that you’re generating.

 

Jim Becker

Thank you so much. Thanks for being here.

 

Jennifer Karpus-Romain

Of course. Thanks for having me.