Episode 88: From Inspiration to Action - Attendee Insights from skucamp!

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. SkewCast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

Yeah, I could grow my own sales and stuff like that if I wanted to, but that's not my vision. If I would have wanted to do that, I could have gone to a big distributor house and done it. We started Soul Swag for a reason, and I want to build a company and empower people.

So when a conference or trade show is over, what's actionable? What sticks? A few weeks ago, we wrapped up our second annual business planning boot camp, SKU Camp, a few days of intense workshops for entrepreneurs. And at the end of each day, I sat down with a few attendees to explore what they learned, but more importantly, to talk about what they plan to change in their business moving forward. This episode is about inspiring action. If you attended SKU Camp, you'll appreciate hearing what others learned. If you didn't attend, you'll pick up some tips just from tuning into their experience. These interviews took place in the Ace Hotel bar in New Orleans, and I'm thankful to my guests, Brian Gill from Thumbprint, Amanda Delaney from Imagine Brands, Stacy Carter from BrandOn, Brenda Spears from Buzztag, Angie Svek from Soul and Swag, and Brian Stidham from EMT Easy. Today's episode is brought to you by CommonSkew, the effortless business management platform that powers you to process more orders and grow your business. To learn more or to start your free trial, visit commonskew.com. And if you missed Skew Camp, or if you attended Skew Camp and wanna keep that momentum going, join us at SkewCon in Las Vegas on January 13th. It's the industry's inspirational kickoff event for the year. We would love to see you there. And now from the Ace Hotel in New Orleans, a few of our great friends and fellow entrepreneurs from SKU Camp.

Amanda Delaney, Regional Sales Manager for Imagine Brands.

Brian Gill, Vice President of Sales at Thumbprint.

Stacy Carter, BrandOn owner and sales and marketing.

And I'm Bobby LeHew. We're hanging out at this incredible funky Ace Hotel bar in New Orleans. Brian's already working on a drink and we just closed the the first day of SKU Camp. This is each of your first time. Amanda, first impressions?

First impressions was definitely the energy and the vibes. I mean, as soon as you walked in yesterday when everybody was checking in, just really high energy, happy people. Everybody's excited to meet each other. And then being in such a cool, eclectic place like the Ace Hotel in New Orleans just really added to that.

Brian? Yeah, absolutely. So I will be honest and say that I knew very little of the event before before I came here. I did very little research and I came in and yeah, I'm just excited to be around such young, hungry, driven, enthusiastic, like, creatives in the industry. It's very refreshing.

Yeah.

Stacy, I always say that Common Skew brings together the cool kids of the industry, and that's how I feel being here. The hotel, the people— you can sit down next to anybody and strike up a conversation, and you can ask them personal questions about their business, you know, that help you grow, that I never get to anybody about. I just think the overall energy, the vibe, people are so nice and friendly. And like the last speaker said, ask anybody in the room for help and they'll be excited to help you.

So we had Mike Michalowicz speak this morning who talked about the Pumpkin Plan and working with clients that you love. And then we had Jake Malishkovich who talked about sales process. We also had Rod Brown We just talked about building a company and a life you love. We had the great content marketing team with Bill Petrie and Kirby Hosiman. Kathryn Graham, of course, building a high-performance team. What were some of the highlights for you today? Was there a particular speaker or topic that really resonated with you?

I mean, they were all phenomenal. I was taking notes the entire time. I mean, just so much information and inspiring ideas for what I can take back, you know, to my company as a whole. But I think the most inspirational or the biggest takeaway that I had from the whole day was Rob Brown, by far. You know, he just came in and told his story about what he's done in the promotional products industry, and it wasn't, you know, statistics. It was just kind of like his story, and it was real, and it was raw. And then you get to the end of it where he tells personal stories about like what he's done in Africa with some of the underprivileged people there. The fact that this is a $23 billion a year industry and all the people that we can touch and have the ability to impact and change, hearing just one person really put things in perspective about how lucky we all really are was, I mean, not just phenomenal to hear, I mean, it really just made you want to take all of the people that we're talking to and we're touching. We have this huge platform, which is this, you know, this industry. And if every one of us wanted to, I don't know, I guess just do a little bit of what he's done in his life as far as the giving back, um, I mean, I think that helps make the world a better place, which is— I mean, it's, it's amazing. It brought me to tears.

Very, very interesting. What I loved about Rod is bringing that personal side into his presentation. You know, we hear a lot of business presentations just about the successes mostly, and very little about the human impact on your life. And just love that transparency, that authenticity. And it came through so well. It was just such a special moment.

Brian, how about you? What was— yeah, no, that definitely resonated with me. You know, I was talking to him after, after his presentation, and I've taken, you know, I've gotten very involved in my business. It's a family business. So I've been there for 20 years, and I'm taking something that my father built and trying to take it to that next level. And it's something that's very personal to me. And while listening to Rod, I couldn't help but think about this 3-year-old son I have at home. And, you know, it's— I love both things so much that I could, I could be— I could either be a dad for 20 hours a day, or I could be in sales and running a business for 20 hours a day, and either would give me this incredible joy. But it has me sitting here thinking about being— finding that balance and finding what's, uh, finding a way to grow a business and create a place for for people to have their own families and have roles and, and make a difference in their professional careers, but also remembering what I have at home too.

Yeah.

And but then also listening to Mike, it was funny when he started talking about the pumpkin patch and quench over saturate.

Right.

And crush— Explain that. Explain that to those that are listening right now.

So the quench over saturate. So really putting the time and energy into those— your large pumpkins, your colossal pumpkins.

Right?

And I find myself out there as I'm trying to grow the business, out there prospecting and looking for the next big thing. And I— and as he was sitting there talking about this, I found myself like standing in this pumpkin patch and I'm going, Brian, you're an idiot. You've got these colossal pumpkins over here that you're not spending time with. You're not, you know, you're not, uh, you're not quenching, right? And I'm out there saturating. And, uh, so he hit home on so many things. And the crush over cringe. Like, and I think about all the time as a sales rep, I think about my customer service team and how do they feel when a certain phone number pops up on their caller ID, right? How do they feel when an email hits their inbox? And at the end of the day, I know that some of these clients, I've allowed this cringe factor to impact my colleagues.

Yeah.

And it's time for me to go back, right, and change that for them. Yeah. So there, there were, there were too many things to touch on, but I definitely have a lot to go back and absorb.

Yeah, that was a big moment that for him to shed that light on that emotional impact impact of that.

Absolutely.

Stacey, big takeaways, impact today?

So I loved all the speakers, and I love how CommonCUE always brings in a speaker that's out of the industry. It relates to us, but it's different. And I agree, I loved Mike, and I loved how we talk about— and we're growing, and so it's really hard to turn away business. And we're getting to the point though where we can identify people and Just say, you know, the time and the energy that you suck out of me for the amount of revenue. And Catherine has touched on that before at SKUCon and then Mike saying it again. I'm like, you know what, you're right. Like pull those little guys out, get rid of them, put your energy into the big ones. You know, and then also just identifying the top 2 biggest clients and then it's so simple but he's like, You know, basically show up at the conferences and research the vendors. I love that approach, is talking to the vendors. You know, I immediately think of how can I partner with the vendors, what other inside scoop can I get, and then like you said, when somebody calls that vendor and says, hey, where do I get a shirt that's as awesome as that, or whatever, he's gonna tell them to call me.

It's always so obvious though, right? Yeah, always the obvious things.

Yeah, I thought that when they were going through all that too. I was like, God, why don't I think of that? Or there's like one thing I'm like, I do that, and I was like, wait, no, I— no, I don't. Not like you've said it. Like, yeah, it's—

yeah, no, because you really want to clone your— your best customer, the one that supports you, the one that is a pleasure to work with, that lets you be creative, that's willing to spend a little bit of money. So that really hit home. Um, and Catherine's just always such a pleasure to hear speak. She's just so mellow and cool and just, I'm sure she's a wonderful leader and we're looking to hire an employee so it's always great to have the notes ahead of time so we're not going to hire that person and then try to figure it out. So we have some time to figure all that out and then get the right person in place and have the steps to keep them and not waste the time and money and energy on hiring somebody that's not going to stick around.

One of the things I love too about Catherine's session is taking the time to stop and think about those things here at the conference. Because how many conferences do you leave, you're like, I need to go do that, that's a good idea, and then, and it just sits in your bag forever, you know. And I love that moment with those moments where we could just stop and, and focus on it right then. You might not finish it, but you might get it started, you know, kick-started. Also, and Catherine always just has great insights. As, as one of her employees, she is an amazing CEO. She's gonna hear this, so I didn't do that on purpose, I'm not like kissing up. She's an amazing CEO, she does a fantastic job leading a team, recruiting a team. Some of the things that I thought were interesting about her session were the things I think, like you said, we take for granted. Like the language we use when we're trying to recruit the right people. Having the confidence to use that kind of language about our brand, the magic that sort of people are attracted to. And that millennial focus, I mean, just the fact that the huge impact of that is big. Now, let's switch gears a little bit and go talk about Jake's session. Jake, Jake's very interesting because I've never known about you, Brian. I don't know about you guys, but I know a little bit more about Brian's business. Yeah. I've never really stopped to focus as much as I— I never stopped to focus as much as I should have with my salespeople to ask them, yes, what is the friction and frustration like for you in this selling process? Yeah, we think about it from the customer's perspective, but not really from the salesperson's perspective.

No, I think as a company, we spend a lot of our time and energy trying to clear the hurdles of our customer service team all the time. Right. And even being the sales manager and having a team, I probably do a poor job of thinking about what are their hurdles and how do I empower them.

Yes.

And I may tell them, hey, do whatever it takes for the client.

Right.

Go to bat for the client. But at the end of the day, do they trust it? Yeah. Do they know that they can go make that decision? Right. And then come back to me afterwards and go, hey, don't kill me, but—

Right.

The client's happy.

Right.

So that was one thing I found really interesting is how he— and it's one thing I want to go back and Kiel and I are my CMO. We're sitting next to each other looking at each other because I have two new sales reps that started today and I'm not there. And we're both sitting there looking at each other and I'm taking snapshots of everything and sending it back to my COO. Yeah. And Yeah, it's, it's something that we've never addressed before and it's silly not to. But as you have a growing sales team, you really do need to think about how do I empower them? How do they— thinking about how confidence leads to sales and how confidence leads to a better experience for the client. Yes.

So absolutely.

So I thought it was interesting, too. You know, I'm not in a management role. I manage my territory customers. But I mean, everything he was saying in that session, I mean, Inspiration after inspiration for ideas to take back to management, which is my main goal of being here. What can I take back to management that they can share with the team or kind of think about? And yeah, the empowerment of the sales reps. And it really put me in a position to think like, okay, I'm the sales rep. What kind of empowerment do I want from management? What would I like to be able to do on the road or in those one-on-one situations? Yeah, just a lot of aha moments for sure during his entire hour.

Content session that Bill and Kirby led, I think that's one of the most difficult topics when we hear all of that. There's so much that you can do, there's so much to do. I'm glad they addressed a lot of the excuses that we all make.

I definitely walked away— we've struggled with content. We tried to do it, we did exactly what he said we would do. We started it and we didn't finish, and I did it You know, it was supposed to be every Thursday, didn't happen. So, and I really liked what he said too about the planning it out. Don't even start it until you have at least 5 sessions done. But, you know, some of the thoughts that came to my mind, and they didn't say this, but I was, you know, we're not great writers. So there's resources that you can get online to help you with that. So to me, I was kind of thinking about to apply it to myself is What can I do to get the information together, facilitate having someone help me write it or watch whatever and figure it out, but then get that posted and do it consistently?

Or like how he said too, every form of content doesn't have to be the same. So find what vehicle you're good at. Find what you excel at. And even when he was talking about his adult beverage of the week, something so simple. You know, so really being able to maybe dive in and find out like what it is that you guys do excel at. And I mean, it doesn't have to be the norm, like a blog, you know what I mean? So I thought that part was really, really cool too.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's just challenging. Like he said, at the end of the day, he's like, there's no excuse not to, right? And you're just sitting there and you're like, God, like I do need to just make the time to do this. Like I literally looked at our Facebook page while he was up there, and I think we're pretty good. We had a post about 3 months ago, so I think that's Pretty good. I'm proud of ourselves. But at the end of the day, it's like companies are people. They're made up of people and we're dealing with clients who are people. That's right. And I had a client send me a text while I was here right now. And that's so cool that Thumbprint's in New Orleans right now. Yeah. At this conference. And I'm like, this is a client of mine. Like, they like knowing that I'm out representing our company so that we can be better for them. Yeah. Like, I'm a fool for not telling that story. And not making that visible to our clients. So again, it's about, I mean, sometimes as a leader in the company, you just have to go back and fall on the sword and say, I've been really bad at this, but it starts today. So I thought it was great. Like I said, Kiel, who's our CMO, was sitting beside me. He's only been with us for 90 days, but I kept looking at him going, C4, C4, C4. So it was what, creative, consistent, Consumable. Consumable and courage. So C4 is going to be my term for the weekend to Kiehl's. Kiehl's, if you're listening, C4.

One of the things I love about SkuCamp is the quality of people that I end up hanging out with. Sitting here with you guys, going to the bar with friends, sitting by people in the conference. I mean, that's one of the most exciting things about it. Did you pick up on that when you're here? You're like, wow, this is a good caliber of folks. I know you touched on this earlier a little bit.

Yeah, I definitely did. You know, I've been to a lot of trade shows and so on and so forth, and you know, obviously, like, you know, the big thing at these events, you get together and you get to collaborate and stuff, and there's usually a lot of drinking with a lot of people involved. And this is the first event that I've been at where that's happening, but it's not It doesn't— it's not like the main objective, you know what I mean? I mean, everybody, right? Which, I mean, actually is kind of rare to see. Everybody was like bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning. I think we talked about it before we started.

Very alert and very into the—

very alert. Yeah, everybody is paying attention. Barely anybody was ever looking at their phone. Nobody was getting up and going to the bathroom a million times. I mean, yeah, I mean, it was phenomenal. Just like The quality, and not just the quality of people, I've talked to some really great people, but just how engaged they want to be. It's, it's pretty inspiring. It's cool to be among those people.

Yeah, yeah. I think sometimes you come to these shows and people are in their own little space, right? They're just literally sitting there thinking, okay, what do I need to get from my company, right? What do I need to take back to my boss, right, to show that this was a good investment? And this was the first time I came and everyone's like looking up. They're not looking down at their laptops. They're not looking down at their iPhones. Like, they literally are looking up at the people and they're, where are you from? What do you do? Glad you're here. You know, have you been before? No one— most trade shows, I think because people are excited to be here, they want to know, are you a newbie? How many times have you been? And then they want to share the experience from the last show. And no one's ever asked me at other shows, have you been to this show before? Oh, last year was amazing. There's just not that same excitement. So this is— yeah, it's definitely day one in the books, but it's exceeded my expectations.

So day one is in the books. It's a lot of fun. Thank you guys for joining us. Any final words? Anything you didn't get to say that you wanted to?

I don't think so. I could probably talk about today forever, so I will refrain.

No, no, I think, Bobby, thank you to you for all your engagement. Shout out to the entire CommonsCUE team. This is a great event and I look forward to sharing this with with everybody back in Orlando.

Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. All right, thank you so much. Appreciate it. I'm Brian Stidham with EMT Easy in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Brenda Spears with BuzzTag out of Bend, Oregon.

Cola Sevec with Soul and Swag out of Omaha, Nebraska.

So you guys have been to SKU Camp before? We just finished the event. We're going to the party tonight. We had 2 full days of speakers content, and the event's come to a close. What are your first impressions, Brenda?

Absolutely overwhelmed by the, the quality of every speaker and every interaction I had, and the importance not only of the speakers that were presenting but also of the collisions and little group meetings that I had with all the other attendees, because that's where we actually solved a lot of problems. So bringing all that together, I'm just really inspired and anxious to get back home and get to work again.

Yeah, I think along with what Brenda said is just your, your wheels are spinning, right? You're going a million different directions to try to figure out where do we want to go when we get back, because there's so many inspiring, wonderful, amazing people that you come across here and the collaboration that goes on. Like Brenda said, not just with the speakers because you guys do such an incredible job of putting a lineup, a badass lineup together, but then the in-between things that happen too and taking all those pieces and finding out, you know, that's going to be my focus in the next few days traveling home. Where do we go first? Because there's so many different wonderful things we want to do, but to have that focus right when we get back and that drive to see say, all right, let's start with this and then let's build off of what we really learned and actually being able to implement that. And I think that's what we want to do better from last year's SKU Camp. A lot of the same things happen, but the implementation part is still challenging, going back and actually making it happen. So I'm excited for that. It's challenging, but I think it's gonna be a lot of fun.

So, so there's so many amazing speakers speakers. Like, every speaker was amazing. They were so different though. Like, there were so many takeaways. It was a great experience and overwhelming, even for me being a supplier. What did you think of Rod Brown's presentation?

Rod brought a, um, just a level of humanity with his presentation, and he was so moving. There was, you know, obviously a ton of inspiration that came all along, but then the way that he closed and inspired us to be better and do more and be bigger. And I think a lot of us got choked up.

It was pretty cool. Yeah, absolutely. And I think there was a portion of Rod's presentation where I was like, I don't understand, like, this is over my head, right? He's an incredibly intelligent, intelligent person, yet he brought it back in at the end of being very down to earth, being somebody who wants to give back and really make a difference and find that work-life balance. And I think that's such an inspiration because it's, it's one thing to say you're going to do it and then one thing to actually make it happen. And so to see the impact he's having and then talking with him outside of his presentation too, of just seeing this wealth of knowledge that we have the ability to learn from. And it was awesome. It was great.

What are you going to change in your business? Like, what tactical thing did you think, okay, I'm definitely going to change this, this, and this?

I think the fastest change I can make personally and we can make as a company is the part that I mentioned earlier today of no more transactions. So yeah, I could grow my own sales and stuff like that if I wanted to, but that's not my vision. If I would have wanted to do that, I could have gone to a big distributor house and done it. We started Soul Swag for a reason, and I want to build a company and empower people. So taking away those transactions that somebody else is fully capable of doing, and what you kind of mentioned just about Jake, right? Empowering those people to do it. And I think that's something I can change right away. It's going to be a little challenging and hard to not just do it. Because it's easier if I do it in my mind, but long-term that's not going to build growth. So that's what I plan to implement right away when we get back.

For me, it's all about being more intentional. There are a lot of things that I do that were presented here, but just being more intentional in the process and the way that we treat our customers, our prospects, in and how we track that, how we make sure that we're doing things on a script and not just by the seat of our pants. And also in having more confidence in my sales ability. I tend to not be very salesy, I always say. I have a great product, I'm really confident in it, but I don't go at it with intention, and that's definitely something I'd like to change.

I loved Ruth with Paperclip, her presentation. Her attention to her customers and the things that she did, like after and before, there were so many take-homes. I was writing down notes, everything she said. They were so good, and I cannot wait to find her later tonight and ask her more about, you know, her presentation. It was spot on. I loved That was the surprise for me. I was looking forward to her presentation, but when she gave it, I was wowed for sure. One of my favorite topics, and ergo speaker, Mike Michalowicz, because in this business you can sell to anyone. You can sell to a small school or you can sell to a large corporation. You can sell to anyone, and often in this business we get caught in that trap. And it's actually not so much a trap, but we're just doing everything we can to survive and build our business and be profitable. Before you know it, we have this swath of clients that may not fit us very well. And Mike was really, really direct about this. One of the comments I remember him saying is, your bottom 10% of your customers are costing you money. What was your takeaway from Mike's session?

Yeah, so I love what Mike had to say about it, and reflecting back to the first Rescue Camp, I remember a lot of people saying that, right? You have to be ready to say no. The best things you can do is say no. And we've done a lot of that in the last year, but to actually hear it kind of again, driven home again of saying you have to actually do that. And it can't just be the ones, okay, we have this customer and they just want 200 pens, so send them here, say no. We're talking about people that spend some money. Clients that when you look at it and you're like, they're in my top 10 and they drive me nuts. So having the courage, and that's going to be a hard conversation for us when we go back, it's somebody we see on a regular basis and he drives us up the wall, he wastes our time, he pushes this and that, you know, and so actually implementing what Mike said, it will be challenging, but it's definitely conversations that we're going to have to have. In order to really scale and expand where we want to be, where it's a win-win for us and our customer.

Tacking on to what Cola said, in preparation for this event, I had purchased Mike's book and audio as well. And in there he talks a lot about how you kind of call out some of the people that you don't want to work with. So last week I actually had a scenario where typically I would be really nice and offer to do something that I didn't want to do. And from his book and the lessons I extracted out of there, I actually put my foot down. I set a minimum budget for these people to be able to work with them. They kind of wanted everything for free and pay on long terms, and they came around and said yes to everything that I had requested. So yeah, it worked before the event even happened.

Yeah.

We had an experience once where we were firing a company store client and they had great dropship business, but their store was a real pain. It wasn't very profitable. So we knew we're probably losing the client altogether. And when the salesperson reached out to them and said, I'm sorry, we're going to close your store, it's just not profitable for us, and did it in a very tactful and professional way, they said, okay, but can we still get our drop— they didn't call it dropship, but can we get our other stuff through you?

Yeah, sure, we can do that.

When you finally have the guts to do it and you do it, it feels pretty good. It's hard though. I would tell my own team, I think it's the second hardest thing to do in business. The first one is obviously firing employees, but firing clients is probably up there.

In the end, especially in the scenario I had, I think they wound up respecting me more for standing my ground than to just have accepted it.

Melissa McCauley delivered a great creative session. One of the things that I loved what she said at the end was she said, you know what I really do? I just connect the dots. And when you have somebody that's that creative, we've seen the work she can do. But there were a couple of key tips she had there about the symmetry and elegance of what it is she's building. There were things that I really admired from a design perspective that she can see. But I think probably what I gathered from her too was to be bold enough to be that.

That definitely rung with me as well. And, you know, when I first started my business, I didn't want to have a lot of junk around my showroom. So it's designed really to be a community space. When you come in, you don't see samples anywhere. They're all hidden in boxes and tucked away. So When I'm having a conversation about it, I can pull everything out, but in between there, it looks like a gorgeous community gathering spot. And, you know, from that, I've had people, you know, thank me for kind of elevating everything in the industry for us because it makes everybody look good. And I really want to encourage other people to do the same thing because, you know, the long-term the long-term reputation of promotional products is not that great, but the more we all step up and change it and have a different vision like Melissa does, the better it is for everyone that's involved.

So I haven't told Brenda this, but we're, you know, we had a website we started through whatever template we used, and now we're having it custom built, and in doing that, the cool part about the Common Skew community again is the collaboration, right? So one of the websites we sent our designer was Brenda's, of saying, take a look at this. These are the pieces we really like. We didn't want to replicate what she was doing, but we wanted to do pieces of it, right? So again, of being inspired by other people, other amazing, amazing businesses in this industry, and then creating your own. So like Melissa touched on, of being bold, being different, but you can still find inspiration from some of the other awesome partners across the country into Canada, you know, and really collaborating still, but finding your own path. And that's been a lot of fun to work on as well.

I loved Melissa's presentation. It was so raw, honest. It was almost like you're sitting at a bar with her and just having a true conversation. With, you know, no one around, just you two, a one-on-one. And that's why I loved it so much, you know, because she was so honest and she showed everything that went on. Well guys, thank you so much for hanging out with me for a few minutes to talk about Sku Camp. Thanks for being here. It's such a privilege. You know, the coolest thing for us is we always want to try and put on a conference that we are so themselves would want to attend. But we always say this, it really is about the community. I mean, we all learning from each other. I love the fact that, you know, our speakers come from the community, right? We sure, we've got folks like Mike Michalowicz that came in, but our speakers come from within this wonderful creative community, and that's just, I just love that about it. 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.comandskew.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.