Episode 146: skucon at home!

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at Common Skew, and this week we opened up registration for SkewCon at Home. And in this brief 15-minute episode, I chat with Mark Graham, Common Skew's President and Chief Brand Officer, about why we created this opportunity and what you can expect. SkewCon at Home is not a webinar but a virtual interactive experience featuring interviews, keynotes, and plenty of breakout sessions to allow for collaboration and best practice sharing. SKUCon at Home features an amazing lineup, including keynotes from David Nicholson of PCNA, April Dunford, renowned consultant and author, and this is a new announcement since our launch, an exclusive conversation between Jamie Mayer and Barry Deutsch. Barry is the Chief Sales Officer at BDA. We'll also host many breakout sessions that you can participate in on topics like growing through sales through adversity, creative e-commerce, supplier-specific breakouts, why marketing matters more than than ever, and many more timely and relevant topics. We'll even have opt-in yoga and meditation facilitated by Ronnie Wright. Discussion leaders for the breakouts include a whole host of amazing entrepreneurs and friends. Denise Tashrow, Janie Gauntz, Renya Nelson, Brandon McKay, Pierre Martichoux, Brian Gill, Johanna Gottlieb, Anna Branch, Chris Ferriter, Haley Greene, and many more. Plus the most important contributor to the event, you. Think of this experience as your idea incubator and a gathering place to connect in a way we never imagined we could. Virtually. Tickets to attend are only $20, and proceeds from the event will be donated to the United Way Worldwide. We chose United Way for our charity partner because the impact of COVID-19 on our industry is truly global. From our supply chain to the CommonsQ community, SKUCon at Home unites all of us globally. This interactive experience takes place on May 21st from 1:45 PM to 5:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. You can register at commonsq.com/skuconathome. That's commonsq.com/skucon, the word at, Home. But to give you a little more background on why and what to expect from this experience, here's my conversation with Mark.

Why has this been so important to you and to us all on the team?

I think the last several weeks have been really traumatic for the people in our industry, and We have, I think, really felt the need to bring the community together. We've seen the community come together in great ways over the last several years at our in-person events, CommonSKU Sessions, CommonSKU University, SKU Camp, SKUCon, just to name a few. And they've always been fantastic, but the concept of an in-person engagement right now feels like something we did 50,000 years ago. There's a new reality. There's a new reality right now, and we kind of looked at a couple of things. Number 1, the fact that people are hurting right now. Number 2, that we need each other more than ever to lift one another up because if we can create an environment where people can share best practices, then that's truly how we're going to get out of this as an industry and as a community. And I think, number 3, the thing to realize is that we've got technology on our side. The ease with which we can communicate through a myriad of technology platforms now is the one great advantage that we have right now in 2020. There's not a lot of advantages right now, but that's certainly one of them. And so, when you take a look at those three things, we saw that there was no better time than to launch a virtual experience to be able to bring people together so that people's spirits could be uplifted, that people could share with one another because there are some bona fide success stories that are out there, and just the ability to help us collectively chart a path forward.

Yeah, well, and what has always been the secret, if you will, behind all of our events is the power of the community. And never before has that been more important. And what I mean by that is this is such a diverse industry with so many different distributors working with so many different types of clients and industries. And we've never seen this atmosphere like we have it now, where the supply chain has been decimated. You know, we've seen a recession before, but nothing like this. So in many ways, Gathering the community together in the style that we're doing, which we'll get to in a minute, is how we're going to tackle this thing going forward. Because one of us does not have all the answers, but all of us have a lot of answers. And so our idea was to invite as many voices and most importantly as many perspectives to this conversation as possible, because we're all seeing different things, we're all experiencing different things, we're all rising to the challenge in different ways. And this gives us a format to not just put on a conference. That's not what we're doing. We're bringing together folks at an acute time to share ideas. And we use that phrase so much at CommonsQ: collaborate, share ideas, the community. But never before has it been more important that we gather together and sort of feed off each other on what we're doing. Also, one of the keys to us having an event that we're excited about is the platform itself. So when I say platform, I didn't used to mean— didn't mean technology. That meant the venue that we had. A lot of what we built with the SCU Camp and SCU Con is the event itself was sort of like— we always joked that it was kind of our canvas. And now what can we paint with this particular unique canvas? And I kind of, you know, I recall when we were first talking about this idea, we asked the question, what is the magic about our in-person events and what part of that should we bring into a virtual event. And one of the keys was the platform. Once we find the right platform that can host a community of folks that are not talking at each other but with each other, then we know we're on to something. And that's what unlocked the venue in this case, which is the platform Hopin. Can you share with folks what Hopin is about, what the experience might be when they show up for this?

Yeah. So I think that one of the things we really wanted to do in this case was to not have a big webinar where you log into Zoom and Zoom has been fantastic. It's been a lifeline for many of us over the last little while, but Zoom has, it's quite good at doing webinars. It's pretty good if you've got a smaller group of people and if you have a larger group of people, it's usually more broadcast where it's not as interactive. In the case of Hopin, what's neat about this is that we're able to create a couple of distinct experiences. Number one is the main stage experience, which kind of replicates that keynote speaker that you would have seen at a SCU Camp or SCU Con where everyone is engaged and there's the ability to interact through Q&A in a chat window. There's another experience which is breakout-driven. So we're going to have a number of different breakouts that are all based on different subject matters, and we're going to have two key breakout sessions throughout the day. And that is handled very well through Hopin, where when that happens, you simply select the breakout that you want to go and join, and you can go and view it. You can also be participant where you can ask questions and be on video in that breakout, which I think will create a very dynamic and interactive experience. And then the third thing, which I'm really excited about, is the concept of one-on-one networking. So there's a great opportunity to have a few sessions throughout SCUCon at home where we'll have one-on-one networking where it's time-based. In this case, it's about 3 minutes where you're randomly paired with someone else who is at the event and you can share experiences about what you're excited about or how you can help one another or things that you found most intriguing about the event. And what I like about these 3 different opportunities is it creates this intimacy, even though we may have several hundred people that are at this particular event, that everyone feels like they're getting that chance to participate as opposed to watching, say, a YouTube Live or maybe a Zoom where you're on mute and you don't have the ability to interact or engage and you're simply watching something. And if that's the case, then you might as well just be watching the recording. In this case, we really, really want to lean into the fact that this is a live event. The only way to experience it is to be there live because there won't be a recording. There won't be the opportunity to engage in the content after the fact. And I think that'll create a very committed, engaged, and enthusiastic audience, which really drives the value for this.

Yeah, yeah. What I love about the breakouts is we are heading this way with SKU Camp for the fall. What I love about the breakouts is that we want to build more interaction with the community. We want folks to show up and be not an observer, but a participant. And that's what this platform allows folks to do. And the other thing about the networking, the one-on-one networking, which I, you know, me being sort of the introvert, um, when I first experienced this, as we were taking this for a test drive, we were on a, uh, con virtual conference with, I don't know, hundreds of people all around the world. And I pop into the networking section. And suddenly I'm in a conversation with a lady out of London, and we were all working at putting on these virtual events. We had something in common. And then I was whisked away to Boston where I was talking with a gentleman there who actually puts on these massive events, and they were doing the exact same thing that we were doing. And then suddenly I'm in South America talking with this gentleman, and I love the worldwide aspect. I love the fact— and when I say worldwide, it's literally worldwide because we have CommsCube customers all over the world, which, by the way, this is not just for CommsCube customers. This is for anyone. And I just love the fact As the introvert that typically would shy away from things like that, I think I was more open because the atmosphere made me open. I think the time right now is folks are seeking answers and we're far more willing to listen. And that's, that's what I sort of love is that this creates the two of the best things about a conference. Number one, it makes you a participant, not an observer. And number two, we're all ready to listen and learn from everyone because everyone has something to share at this point. Last thing, we grappled with whether or not to charge because at this time, it's obvious that that's a very sensitive topic right now with everyone, you know, hurting and business struggling. Why don't you explain to folks what we're doing about the investment it costs to attend?

Right. So we had a debate about this, and I think that what we came up with was a couple of things around how we would charge for this event. And I think it comes down to two things. Number one is that we have always seen a very direct link between charging people for our events and their level of engagement and commitment. When you have that, you end up with an attendee that really shows up and expects value. And that is really important for us because this is going to be a very engaging audience as opposed to someone who signs up for the 50th free event that hits their inbox and they may attend 10% of them. So we didn't want that. We wanted to really drive engagement. Number 2 is we wanted to set a price point that was really accessible for the vast majority of people. We recognize that this is a difficult time financially for people, which is why we wanted to set a ticket price that was very low. And then number 3, we wanted to make sure that we could donate all of the proceeds from this particular event to charity. So from that standpoint, we thought that we were really going to create a great win-win-win situation. A, an inexpensive event. B, something that would create really high-quality engaged attendees that really want to be there. And number 3, and probably most importantly, the fact that everything goes to charity, and that makes us feel really, really good about this. And I think it'll be an interesting model.

I want to add one fourth one to that, Mark. I was talking with a supplier friend last week and he said, thank you again for doing what you're doing, because normally events like these around the industry are carried on the backs of suppliers and funded by suppliers. And suppliers, as we all know, we're all struggling, but suppliers in particular are having an incredibly difficult time right now.

Right now.

And last week, the supplier friend said, thank you for charging for this, that it's the same fee for everybody, and that, um, that we're all in this together. And I also love the idea that we wanted this conference to be not just a distributor-focused conference. So our supplier friends can show up, and we're going to have breakout specifically for suppliers too. So this is sort of, Mark, reaching a vision that we've always had for some of our events. Number one, it's empowering far more community and engagement than ever before, which is interesting when you think about it. We had to go, we had, we're going virtual to get more engagement than ever before. And second, uh, we wanted to bring far more educational resources and partnerships for our supplier friends as well. So that's not just a one-sided event.

Yeah. I, I think one other thing that is really compelling about this whole concept is how the idea of virtual community building is going to persist once we get back to quote unquote normal. There's a bit of an experiment that we're undergoing here by launching SKUCon at home in this respect because some people have said, "Well, hang on a second. Does this mean you're getting rid of SKU Camp and SKUCon in your physical locations?" The answer to that is no. We're still very much committed to those because I think people really, really like them. But the concept of doing something virtually and not seeing it as an and/or, but seeing it as something that's complementary and that could be added to the event experience, I think to me, is really interesting. We'll see how this goes because I think at the end of the day, not everyone is able to attend an in-person event for all sorts of reasons. Time might not work out financially. It's a little bit more of an investment timewise, whatever the case may be, whereas virtual opens the conversation up to so many more people and is a lot more flexible. So I think that's really interesting. And I know a lot of suppliers and distributors are also looking at the virtual event concept and to see whether end clients are going to continue to embrace that as something that they do going forward. And here's the tie-in to our industry. Our industry has always been huge when it's come to providing engaging gifts for people who attend conferences. And it is my firm belief, well, I should say it's my firm hope, but it's also my firm belief and prediction that promotional products will absolutely thrive in virtual event settings. And we don't wanna give much away, but there will certainly be an amazing promotional merchandise opportunity inside to SCUCon@Home. Can't say much more about it other than of course we would use our own medium and we're really excited about seeing your response to that. And I think that if we can see how this goes, and I think it's a great example to end clients as to how to run virtual events with great promotional products tie-in. So I think that that's a very exciting and optimistic side to this in terms of how it is that we see these events and promotional products in the future.

Yeah, one of the things I think I'm most excited about as someone who works on content all the time is at this particular moment in our history, expertise is democratized. And what I mean by that is that folks typically will show up to a conference and they're ready to hear the pros bring down from on high what you should be doing with your business. And that's fine and that's great and that model works good. That's a difference between a wartime experience and a peacetime experience. What I love about this is when I say expertise is democratized, I would always remind folks when they're going to events to remember what I call the 10% rule. 10% of an event, of an experience, of a conversation can save or make you thousands of dollars. And at this particular time, it's really important that we open up our hearts and our minds to each other. And we grant each other the audience because now's the time where I can learn from someone right now who has a completely different demographic of clients who has a completely different makeup in terms of their, their own experience. And I can learn from them and apply that at a time when I need it the most. All right, Mark, let's tell folks where we can go to register.

Absolutely. So the registration will take place at commonsku.com/skuconathome. We'll make sure that all of the links are in the show notes. And we could not be more excited about hosting this event. And we can't wait to see you on May 21st from 1:45 to 5 PM, that is Eastern Standard Time.

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SKUcast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SKUcast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.

Mm-hmm.