Are Trade Shows Getting PLAYED OUT? #Podcast

You are now watching the Biz to Biz Podcast with Allen and Justin. Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, Biz to Biz Podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Gordon Ramsay of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And in today's podcast, uh, we're going to be discussing trade shows. Well, not just any trade show. I mean, we went to a couple trade shows yesterday and, uh thought it was interesting the way they grouped them. And, you know, so we, we've been to many trade shows, and we're gonna just give our, you know, what we think of trade shows, right?

Yeah. All right, talk about what we think about.

How you doing, man? It's Friday.

It's Friday.

It is March 8th, 2024.

2 months and a week into the 2024.

The first thing—

it's crazy, it's time, it's flying.

I don't necessarily feel like that, but it's a lot of stuff is going on.

Yeah, how's your week going?

My week was— it did not fly by.

Okay.

By any means.

I don't know, I was just like all over.

Yeah, you're trying to get caught up. Yep, so we're getting there.

Yeah, we're getting caught up.

There you go, there you go, there you go. It is Friday, time for, uh, rest. I'm going to take this weekend to rest.

Okay. Yeah, it was an interesting trip. We drove down to Miami. On the way back though, I was getting a little bit— we were getting a little scared of the construction on the highway.

Oh, they're going over the bridges in Miami. Yeah, that is treacherous. I mean, it's just— it looks like they could— you could literally just crumble and fall to your demise. Well, easily.

It was looking like very rough.

Yeah.

And then they're spending all this money on some fancy arches with lights instead of just fixing the highway.

It looks cool, but I guess— I mean, every— you know, when I was thinking about it, uh, actually, like, every city kind of has that. Does Miami have one? Miami obviously didn't have that.

No, I don't ever remember us had— I mean, St. Louis has the big arch.

I'm not talking about an arch, I'm talking about a bridge, like some sort of— like Milwaukee has that, Chicago has one.

What, a known bridge?

Yeah.

I don't know, that's not even a bridge. It's just about—

it's going to be—

it's gonna— okay, it's gonna be next to the bridge or part of the bridge.

He was driving, so he didn't really get to look at the rendering of the, of the picture.

So I just saw—

yeah, I think it's going to be cool. I don't know what is the value it's going to bring. It looks like some Stargate shit to me, like it's going to enter the fourth dimension of whatever.

We're going to travel back in time and meet James Spader with the—

yo, they said if they made Back to the Future today, it would be 1994.

I feel a little old. Yeah, so there was 3 shows at the convention center. One was—

yeah, so they grouped 3 shows into one day. Yeah, well, no, all the whole— yeah, they were all next to each other in different halls, and it wasn't just one day, right?

Yeah, there were 2. It was a 2-day show for each thing.

3, I thought.

No, just Wednesday and Thursday. Yeah, 2 days.

Okay, Wednesday and Thursday, 6th and 7th.

Yeah, no, not the 5th, just the 6th and the 7th.

Oh, oh, they're having like a party or something on the 5th. Oh yeah, reception, right? Yeah, so they had 3 shows at the Miami Convention Center at the same time.

That was the first, and we got lucky, we got pulled into the parking lot and got an executive spot.

Oh yeah, that was a nice park job.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we didn't have to drive up to like the 7th floor of the parking garage.

Oh, those guys waiting for that elevator look so stressed. It's not even that stressful, just walk up the stairs, bro.

No, but I'm just saying, like, there's one elevator for the whole parking garage.

There's two.

Two, okay, it's two elevators for for a pretty large parking facility.

I mean, if you're trying to get out of Dodge, you know, that's not the— you don't really want to park in a parking garage, right? You know, you're going to want to find some better parking if you really got to get out of there.

Well, they got rid of the flat parking. That's gone. They got rid of it all. And then we saw where they're building that massive, uh, new hotel across the street from the convention center.

Yeah. Seen the— they had a model inside of the convention center of it. That looked like it's gonna look nice.

Yeah, it looked like it's going to be a nice hotel.

I thought it was going to be on a beach the way they had it, but it's just— they just got a big pool area, right? That's gonna be cool.

Yeah, it looks like it's going to be high up, so you're not going to see it from the street or the parking garage. Or the parking garage. Yeah, that's weird. You imagine that? You're at the pool, people are looking at you from the parking garage across the street.

Yeah, I think that's why there was like that big gray wall. Maybe that's what that is.

Oh, okay, right.

Yeah, that was on the model anyway, right? Who knows what—

yeah, who knows what it'll look like in the future. Looked cool, had two infinity pools, very—

it was a very large pool area.

But the convention center definitely— the convention center needs a hotel connected to it so people come into conventions have a place to stay close by and don't have to take Ubers and taxis and drive and all that into the— when they're attending conventions.

No, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, a lot of people don't want to— Miami's not for everyone, right? You know?

No, but I'm saying, let's say we were going to have a booth there. It's convenient. Stay right there. Boom, you're done.

Yeah, I get it. Yeah. So yeah. I, I thought it was— that was the first for us to attend, uh, a conference, and then there was just— they sectioned it off.

It—

I, I don't— that was a first. Yeah, I never— different kind of like expos going on at once.

Exactly. Yeah, probably. I mean, we wandered into one we didn't even have tickets for and just walked around. The one that was called Parts Base. It was all—

it was the PB Expo.

PB Expo.

Yeah, that was— that one was cracking. There was so many, uh, that one was full.

That had the most people in it.

A lot of people. A lot of people. I wonder if they had the best food.

Well, they had—

there was so many people there.

Oh, because people were going in there.

Burgers there.

Yeah, they had burgers, they had the vegan thing, they had tacos.

And they had one, I forget what the other thing was.

There was coffee in there.

Yeah, there was like an empanada spot.

Oh yeah, it was empanada.

It had all kinds of different salad. Was this— yeah, that was maybe that's why there was all the people were in that one.

People were probably—

but it was early when we, we got there, like, like 11 at 11. Yeah, yeah.

So it only went till 4, so, you know, we left around 2:00 to 2:30. It still wasn't— the other two shows were not popping. Uh, so the main show that we went to was a show called the Business Show, and these guys were like hardcore, hardcore calling us, trying to sell us a booth. Uh, thank God I didn't get talked into that, cuz I probably would have shot myself.

That was a lot of— there was just Every— it seemed like every booth was digital marketing agencies, like literally. And then the data protection.

Yes, cybersecurity and cybersecurity. Yeah, tons of stuff for cybersecurity.

It's got to be oversaturated.

And there was like— and we saw at least like probably 3, 4, 5 different kinds of lawyers in there. Oh yeah, yeah. There was like a data lawyer, a cybersecurity lawyer, trademark lawyer, trademark lawyer. Yeah, shout out to, uh Alec Ross, trademark attorney.

Yeah, he was cool. Yeah, yeah, he actually answered the question. You know, a lot of times attorneys won't answer the question, they just— right, they, they answer the question in their best legality.

Yeah, they, you know, they go around in a circle till you pay them money.

Yeah, exactly.

You gotta, you gotta pay to get the right answer, but he was cool. Hey, look, you know, we're going to reach out. Hopefully we'll have them on the podcast, which I think will be a quite an interesting conversation because we had a good time.

I mean, people should know. Yeah, I mean, depending on like what kind of business model you have and, you know, like, you know, there is— there's use cases for it for sure.

Definitely there are use cases for that.

Yeah. What did you think of having— I, I think it was I guess it could— it was smart for the— that's a big convention center, right?

Yeah.

So that's a great way to utilize space.

Well, it's definitely a great, great way to utilize space and to get people to maybe that you wouldn't maybe go in one—

trickle down—

go in one place, you're going to go in the other place. And we saw, yeah, there's like a lot of platforms had booths in there. So like GoHighLevel, Zoho. There was some one from Asia that I never heard of before. There was a few other CRM companies in there trying to sell their platforms.

So the only one I've ever heard of was Zoho.

So yeah, GoHighLevel's been around for a while.

What do they do?

It's a, it's like a CRM with more like— see, that's why it's, it's a CRM with more like shopping cart capabilities.

And a lot of the people using it— Hotspot doesn't even bother with that No more, dude.

They go to some shows, but not—

they gotta be big.

Yeah, big show. But they go to the, the, the high-level CRM. Most of the people who call us that are using that are trying to sell like coaching and things like coaching and courses and stuff like that.

But there are other ones, something that's built into it that like reaches them or something.

I have no— I don't know that much.

Now you got me interested. I'm gonna have to dive, see what GoHighLevel is all about.

Yeah, we met a guy from GoHighLevel. Let me give him a shout out so we can shout him out on the podcast.

Um, I thought he was going to be on the podcast.

He wants to come on. John Bermudez. Business development manager for GoHighLevel. So we're going to hook up with him on LinkedIn and then, uh, have him on the podcast and talk about GoHighLevel. Let's go. High level, it's interesting, they were really partnered up only with Stripe, so I couldn't help people with it. But recently they added the capabilities of NMI and Authorize.net.

Oh, nice.

And so we've gotten some inquiries from that. But a lot of the people don't understand, like, oh well, Stripe's getting rid of us, and they're getting chargebacks and people wanting refunds, and they don't understand about having— you know, these people show me their website, and we've talked about this before, they don't have proper policies and all these things on their site, and then they're getting hit with all—

you get so upset when you tell them that they need to have a refund policy. They're like, why would I want to? I don't want to refund.

Yeah, they don't want to have a refund. These coaches, they're like, oh, I don't want to have a refund. Well, And you need a box that says all sales are final, right? Right. So that the person has to check the box. Because if you don't have a box that says all sales are final and they agree to it, guess what? They can go to their credit card company and ask for the money back. And then if you don't have that on your website to fight the chargeback, the person is going to win. And that's as simple as it gets because people don't understand, like with chargebacks, I don't—

you can't explain it any easier than that.

No, but I'm saying with chargebacks, you got merchants, there's rules for merchants, and then the cardholders have their, their rules with the credit card, uh, issuer. So you have, as a business owner, you have to understand how both— how you have to, you know, you have to balance that out on, you know, if you want to have all sales are final, then you got to put it in the check on the shopping cart with a checkbox, I agree, all sales are final. And the other thing that they don't agree with is recurring transactions. So they have these courses, and then the course is $50 a month, let's say, and then the person pays for 3 months and they decide, I don't want to keep going with this. Okay, they can quit. You can't hold them to a 12-month contract. No. You could take them to court.

I mean, if that's how you— if you set it up, then yes, right?

But you still can't— if you're having a recurring transaction— oh yeah, no, no, yeah, no, the person wants to cancel, you have to let them cancel.

Yeah, and I don't think you can lock anyone in anymore.

No, not with the new rules. No, the new rules from that—

you can't be like, you gotta pay me even if you're not using my services anymore. That's just not how shit works anymore, right?

The FTC doesn't like that. Visa and MasterCard don't like it. American Express doesn't like it. So if you're trying to do that and then the person does a chargeback, you're going to lose.

Yeah, yeah.

Somebody came to me, they had like 135 chargebacks. I go, you told me you had none, there's 135 on the list. And then people were like, oh, we didn't even know. And I'm like, you know, you got to pay attention to what's going on in your business. They go, well, it says all sales are final. I said, yeah, but there's no checkbox and you can't lock people in. To these 12 payments. I said that's what happened in the gym industry.

Yeah, you know, I remember you explaining it to him.

Yeah, in the gym industry, gyms tried to do that, and then the credit card companies put the kibosh on it, and everybody else needs to follow along with that.

Why do you think, uh, there wasn't a turnout at the, the business show?

Maybe they— I mean, I just don't—

they were promoing the hell out of that.

Yeah, I think that trying to get people to— if you want to get people in South Florida, I think you've got to be in Fort Lauderdale for these business shows. I, I would say that's probably a good idea because then you're going to have people drive up from Miami. I mean, it took us over an hour to drive there, an hour back.

Yeah.

Okay, so if— and then if you want people to come from Boca, they're not doing— they're not going to drive from Boca. Or West Palm all the way.

It would have to be some— I would feel like there had to be some sort of really big incentive.

I mean, we drove to that, remember, that Small Business Expo, and there was nobody in there, and half the vendors didn't show up.

That was messed up.

Yeah, I mean, there was empty booths everywhere.

Everywhere.

Yeah, there was empty.

That was on the first day too, like the— when the you know, like the conference room opens up, right? What do they call it, the ballroom?

Yeah, the ballroom.

No, the showroom.

The showroom.

The showroom where the displays are in your booths and tables and stuff like that. So yeah, that was, that was wild. That, yeah, I don't— I think that, um, it's— it was smart to have the 3 expos, you know, just like for the, the amount of people, at least, you know. There was something else to look at, you know what I mean? Yeah, that was after Expo.

We wandered into the Disaster Expo and yeah, we went to it last year and there was a lot more consumer type of products there.

And this year there was a lot of— a lot— yes, there was. This year everything was like the—

for cities and things like that.

Yeah, for your, for your local governments that were going to be buying something to, you know, protect City Hall or something.

Yeah, for flood, flood stuff and first aid things and big huge trucks. There was a lot of trucks in there this time.

Trailers.

Trailers. Yeah, trailers. The—

there was a bunch of the, uh, mobile drinking water trailers.

Yeah, mobile drinking water, bathrooms, bathrooms, like hospital type things for—

the military tents were cool.

Yes, military. There was a bunch—

are so expensive. I was Randomly, uh, looked up random price. Well, yeah, no, but I was, uh, in my backyard. I've always, you know, my— the landlord doesn't want me to put any permanent structure up.

Okay.

So we've tried so many different things to just like, you know, put up during the summertime so that we can hang out in the backyard or whatever.

Yeah.

And when I was a kid, my uncle had a— he was in Vietnam, so he had one of those giant canvas military tents, right? Those things are like 4 grand.

Wow, that's crazy.

Like, even used, that's— you're not finding—

yeah, well, those things are tough, you know. You're not—

yeah, no, like, he— I asked him if he still have it. He said, yeah, I got— I still got it. What's it to you? So because he, you know, he still goes camping and stuff, you know what I mean? Like, there's no floor to it either, right? You know what I mean? So it's like you're literally camping.

Well, back in the day, it would take, you know, if you put something like that down, you'd put like wood down or something.

I'm not camping.

No, not camping. I'm saying if you put it out, you put tarps down. Tarps down, right?

Yeah, put a tarp underneath there. Well, he would— you would have to put two because there's— it's like a, it's like a house, right?

Those things are massive.

Yeah, those guys were—

it's like on the TV show.

I was disappointed there was no cars. They had like the giant trucks in there last year. Yeah, for the disaster, like the—

remember there was that whole area set up with like bodies?

Yeah, that was like stuff, but they probably got in trouble. I mean, it was cool, but they had literally like hum—

uh, it was like set up like there was a disaster.

Yeah, like something blew up, right? Yeah, it was crazy.

I remember there was massive drones in there too.

The drones were there this year but not like last year.

No, last year, remember, there was like a couple that were massive, the size of this room. Oh yeah, they were big. They were like 20 feet across, those things. Yeah, yeah, that one truck was really cool.

Can you imagine transporting that shit?

They probably got some 18-wheelers out there.

That's why they weren't there.

That's why they're like, we came once, that's it.

You got our website, you know where we're at.

Exactly.

You want to buy—

they might have been there with a smaller booth.

I mean, the drone booth that was there, that was cool.

There was—

I'm— I just want one of those airplanes. Like, to me it's just like a remote control airplane.

Well, they all have like 4K cameras on them now and all kinds of stuff. And we did meet that other lady in the business show. We'll give a shout out, Karen Booze from the Answer Connect.

She was very nice. Yeah, she was sitting in the back and I was— we had like, you know, like the awkward eye contact. Yeah, thing. And I'm like, oh shit, all right, let me say hi. Okay, so I said hi and I'm glad I did because we're investigating, uh, those, doing some research.

We weren't sure what they did because a lot— like, she didn't really have a sign up on the booth that said what did they do.

Oh, there's no booth.

There was just— she was sitting at a table.

Yeah, like a bar table, right? And then her— yeah, yeah, didn't spend much money on the booth setup. That's— no, but it was— yeah, that's the Those— it got my attention, you know. I think it was her blue hair.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, she was really cool.

From, uh, Oregon.

Yeah, somewhere in Oregon.

Yeah, she was from Oregon.

She knew where I was talking about when I said the Reggae Fest in Ashland, so that was cool.

Yeah, and that— a pretty reasonably priced service.

It was $3.95 starting out or something like that.

There was like a special Yeah, first 3 months, $10, right?

Yeah, that was nice.

That was, uh, you know, and those are the kind of companies that I like where somebody's like, okay, this is how much our service is, and then, you know, you could scale up. You can scale up. I wish you could scale down, but, you know, I guess it's just a basics. No, and I also like, like she showed us, like, oh, you get—

we don't—

we don't do a sales pitch or something like that, right? Yeah, we don't give a sales pitch, but we collect the data for you. And that's what's important.

And, and they're the most important part of it, right?

But they already had it like set up in their system the way she showed it to us. Oh, your name, the name of your business, your phone number, your email.

And then we have— if we— they said that if you have a calendar, they could book a calendar. Yeah, they'll share the calendar, share the calendar, book an appointment. Yeah, yeah.

So that was pretty cool. I like that. That was a good service. Because other places that we've kind of talked to, they're like, oh, that's extra.

That's not included. Yeah, no, you got 100 minutes. No, 10. It's, it's 10 seconds. It's $427 every minute after the allowed minutes that we give you. Like, bro, what?

It was all over the place. Plus you had to give them a script. We don't really want a script. We just want them to say, hi, Nationwide Payment Systems. Oh, how can we help you? Boom, get their information and pass it on to us.

The whole like trying to bundle the salesperson into the call representative, I guess, you know, right, whatever.

Well, that's what the other places were trying to sell.

That's what I'm saying. Like, why did you know? I get it because AI is taking over, right? So they're trying, everyone's trying to make a mad dash. I like this place because it's, you know, there, there's actual humans answering the phone, right?

All in, um, pretty much you said America. And speaking of that, real Canada and England.

Yeah, speaking of that, like, Google just came, had a, you know, a statement. One of the, the SEO— I can't remember his name, I, whatever, there's so many guys that contribute to the SEO world, but specifically in Google Um, you know, the human touch, there's, you know, like, it's important, right? Right. And that's built into the algorithm, you know what I mean? Like, so like, stop using AI for everything, please. Like, you guys have to use your brains. Like, the human race is like dependent on you. You know what I mean? Like, we must use our brains more than the computers. Okay, so when you're writing content or you're making your social media posts, stop copy and pasting that shit because everything is the same.

Yeah, I've seen where like I go look on Facebook, right, and you'll see somebody with a salon or something, right? A basic type of business.

Yes.

And then you'll see 2 or 3 salons and all the posts basically look exactly identical. They got them all from Canva or some service like that.

And all I'm saying is, is that, that shit is whack. You know what I'm saying? Like straight up, uh, as a creative person, I get business owners trying to, you know, save a buck, right? But you're not getting my business like that, I'll tell you that. Like, you know what I mean? I want to see humans.

That's right.

That's all I'm— that's all I'm saying. That's the human touch to everything is very impor— you know, keep that in mind when you're creating content for your internets. For the internets.

Yeah, for the internet.

Yeah. But you know, the trade show, that was a— I thought I thought it was cool, man. You know, we got to like break it up, you know, switch, switch gears. Seen a lot of interesting things at the Airplane Expo, PB Expo. That was nuts.

Those watches were cool. That was fire. Those watches from Canada, those were really cool aviation watches.

Glow in the dark.

Glow in the dark.

Yeah, that was—

those are those things expensive, like $1,000. I mean, that's a low end on, you know.

No, it's expensive for me, sir.

I get that, but I'm saying like as far as a luxury watch goes, that's on the lower scale.

Luxury watch? It was just a flight— it was an aviation watch.

Okay, I'm saying it was a nicer watch. Wasn't a Timex or a Seiko.

Oh, I see what you're saying. It wasn't a G-Shock.

Right.

So I'm just saying, you know, you have your regular Casio, or, you know, I mean, I, I love my watch. Listen, I looked at a gold Casio, I was like, that shit looks whack.

Gold Casio?

Yeah, they have like the same G-Shock style, right? But it's gold. It's gold.

Oh, that's crazy.

Well, I guess they're expensive though.

Somebody wants one.

Yeah, they're expensive.

They've got to be selling them. No, but I think trade shows, we get hit up all the time. Oh, get a booth at this show.

Get a booth next week.

Yeah, but I'm saying for us to get booths, and then, you know, it's disappointing when you go to the shows, people are not supporting the shows because I think business owners don't have time. They're shorthanded at their business. I mean, we took the day off because we said, hey, it's good to get out. I mean, I could have been at work all day doing a whole bunch of stuff, you know, and then I went home and I ended up working for another 3 hours. I've seen that, you know, doing a bunch of, you know, 3 or 4 hours I worked to get a few things finished up that I had started.

As soon as you messaged me, I had just got to the gym.

Oh, okay. But I'm just saying, it's, you know, you have to, you know, you got to mix up your day sometimes. But if you're running like a restaurant or you're running an office and maybe you're shorthanded, you're not going to have time to go run out to these shows. And then, you know, they're all 9 to 5. They're not— they don't go later in the day. Yeah. 6, 7, 8 o'clock at night. And I think that you have to put— think about that. And even like there's a multi-chamber trade show coming up and a lot of people don't want to get booths for it.

Yeah. I think we— the whole— since COVID has just kind of ruined the whole people wanting to do things with people. But anything else?

Well, if you tell us what you think about trade shows— is it good, good for networking? Is it good for— do you get business if you go to the trade show? Um, I, you know, what is your opinion on trade shows, local trade shows and regional and national trade shows? You know, I just see the attendance at all these shows is down. Yeah, that's, that's what I see from the list, because people send us emails about buying the lists, and I see like the number of people at these shows has gone down over the years, the last 3 or 4 years.

Well, there you have it. Thanks for listening. Check out B2B Vault on Instagram, Facebook, all the socials. Peace out. Peace.