It does not matter the industry you are in or what skills you have, trade associations provide tremendous benefits. You can benefit from joining a trade association by meeting new people, associating with likeminded individuals, receiving resources, business advice, and so much more. Although trade associations provide a multitude of benefits many members do not take advantage of these benefits. Harry Brelsford of the CannaTech Group sits down with Jim Roddy of the RSPA to discuss how you can maximize your benefits in a trade association.
Video Transcription
Harry Brelsford
Welcome back to the CannaTech podcast. Back with Jim Roddy, Jim Roddy and I have been on the road, Jim, I’m tired. It’s It’s It’s back. The conferences are back.
Jim Roddy
Yeah, a lot of people lost their muscle toenail. It’s like, if you haven’t been in the gym for a while, you’re like, man lifting this dumbbells seems is, you know, 20 pounds is way heavier than it used to be a few weeks ago. So yeah, we’re getting back in shape from a trade show standpoint.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, yeah. When let’s talk trade association. So give us some tips. I, you know, I’ve joined a trade association. How can I participate? And how can I behave? How can I get the most out of my membership? What what do you tell people at the RSPA? Sure, and
Jim Roddy
I guess that’s what I’ll speak to it is through the RSPA lens. And again, the retail solution providers Association, we have about 700 member companies, and then all their employees underneath that are our members of our, of our community as well. So the first thing I’d say is, and this is kind of what we do from an artist pay standpoint is connect with somebody that association or find out who the right person is like, we have Member Services managers, and have them talk through why you know, what do similar situated organizations like yourself, do? Who did it? Where do they get involved with services that utilize things of that nature, what you read on the website might not be completely up to date. And it might not be everything that fits for you. So having that sit down one on one conversation talking about you, which hoping it out of it, and having somebody kind of act as a concierge, that can be very, very helpful. So I’d say that would be the the first step. And then after that, to me, you you have to follow through on that. And so, you know, we’ve seen in our association of folks who really reap the rewards, are the ones who get the most engaged. And so obviously, if you’re a smaller organization, it’s hard to get, you know, more engaged, because your time is so limited. But it seems like the smaller organizations tend to, you know, squeeze the juice more and try to get more out of their relationship with the Association and larger companies, and if they assume other folks are getting involved or not, but that’s where we count. So a lot of larger organizations to kind of divide and conquer. So for example, we have a cannabis community, we have a marketing community, we have a women to women, community, we have for software developers, an ISV community. Well, if you’re, you know, an ISV, and you’re big enough, you shouldn’t you are interested in the cannabis space, right? You should be any be involved in all four of those aspects. But it shouldn’t be one person necessarily who’s involved in, in all those. And that’s why we even tell people have two folks or three folks, join one of the communities and then just coordinate amongst yourselves who’s going to be able to show up for that next online meeting. But if you don’t get engaged from that level, if you don’t virtually rub elbows with folks, if you don’t actually figure out what the services are, that you can benefit from, you’re gonna look back in a year and go, Well, this wasn’t worth it. Well, maybe it was worth it. But maybe, you know, you know, you go to a restaurant, if you don’t order anything, it’s not going to be a great experience for you. Yeah,
Harry Brelsford
yeah, exactly. You know, I worked for a trade association early in my career as an IT pro, the Washington State Credit Union League. So I had some exposure to it. I think I was there two years. And what we saw was upon renewal people now that was different, because those are credit unions, and they’re not really looking for leads. But they would always kind of voice you know, well, what did I get out of it? Right? And, again, credit unions don’t need leads, but you get the point. What do you hear from members? You know, are they like, Jim, where are my leads?
Jim Roddy
Sure. And that’s part of what we manage people’s expectations. And maybe Harry, when you join the artists pay a couple of years ago, we might have well had this conversation where folks say, Man, I want to join the association. I’m going to access that member directory. And I’ve got a whole bunch of leads there to follow up on and we say, you know, this industry has seen a lot of folks play. I call it the b2b Hokey Pokey, right? They put the right foot in and they put the right foot, right, and then they jump back in and they jump back out, we say you’ve got to be in this for the long term. And so if you show up, and your first step is, how many leads can I get out of this? That’s the wrong way to approach it. It should be where can I get engaged? And then where can I contribute? And if the rising tide lifts all boats, if I can play a role in doing that, people are going to catch on to that and then they will be naturally drawn to you if they see that you are invested in that group. So again, we’re a channel Association. And so folks who get involved in all they’re doing is trying to let me help the channel. Let me help the channel. Well, naturally, folks are going to say, well, they seem like they’re helping the channel. I’m either going to talk to them about working with them or see if they know somebody to work with my first RSP experience. So this is going all the way back to 2006, the winter conference. And this is where, you know, you say this a cell from the opening bell, not when you’re engaging with associations, I will never forget this, I will not name the vendor. But it’s an open ended community discussion. And people are, you know, weighing in with that. And the guy stands up and says, Hi, I’m with this company. And we do this. And we do that. And we recently launched the whatever, whatever. And we think that would be great for everybody in the room. Okay, the next break, somebody walks over and says to him, like, Hey, I recommend you don’t do that. And he was like, Well, you know, I gotta sell well, this is the right forum for that. And then the guy went and did it again. And somebody talked to him and said, you will be thrown out of here. Like, we will pick you up and throw you out if you continue to do that. And of course, he never did it again. But then he never came back at the same time, either. So if you’re if I mean, the everybody knows, you know, there’s being sold to and everybody is being sold to at some point. In fact, you and I are probably selling to people right now, you know, as they’re having this conversation, right? We want them to understand that we know about the cannabis community, we know about the b2b community, we know about trade shows. But if all I did was say, interesting question, Harry, let me give you a pen, I switch over to my PowerPoint about the RSPA. And I’ll close you on a membership thing. People do not want that they will be attracted to folks, but not if you grabbed by the ear lobe and try to drag them over. Yeah.
Harry Brelsford
Any other any other groups that come to mind? That’s a good one, by the way that you know, the always be selling doesn’t necessarily work inside of a trade group.
Jim Roddy
No, I would also say to make sure that you pick your niches because, you know, in fact, we’re looking right now we have a lot of agreements with analysts, with associations with media outlets, well, that list can be endless. And so we’ve actually started putting the bigger list together and you’re like, Man, that’s somebody’s full time job, if you would try to manage all those things. And so obviously, inside of a small business, you can’t have a full time person just dedicated to being members of association. So really pick your niches, and pick the associations that are really going to benefit you. And that you can really benefit that association. So it ties in with like going to trade shows. I mean, again, here you and I are in the cannabis space, we could say you’re tired. Now I’m tired. Now you think we’re tired. Like if we would go to every cannabis technology related event. I mean, we would never, we never be at our desk, like we are right now. And so pick and choose and start, you know, the ol crawl, walk, run kind of thing. Pick one or two, really in your niche, get involved and see if you need to stretch out into that third, again, just like, you know, we advise VARs and MSPs, don’t start playing in a million different verticals really become that specialist and one or two or things that are adjacent. So that’s I guess the thing that I would say as well, if you say I’m too busy to do this, try to weigh it and say are there other things I should give up or other associations? I shouldn’t be involved in?
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, two final thoughts. One is to kind of paraphrase my dad, who was a Texas lawyer, we somehow ended up in Alaska when they discovered Prudhoe Bay. So that was kind of a natural act. But he always told the lawyers in the department at the Alyeska pipeline. He said, You know, you have got to go to the Bar Association lunches that convention, because the problem with pipelines is they’re a project, right, that was in the end about a five year project. And then they go into operations. Totally different crowd, right. And he said, You better be going to that monthly lunch. You know, any thoughts on that? Because that’s another way to interact with the trade group.
Jim Roddy
Yeah. So I always say education by immersion, like that is something that you should not skip out on. Should you do formal education. And we have formal education and the online, we call it RSPA. Accelerate, we have that programming go through it. There’s the courses, there’s a syllabus, our VP of education, Kathy meter acts as a concierge that helps folks with that, what you should do that plus, you’ve got to go to those meetings. And again, just immerse yourself because I mean, that’s actually, you know, I’m interrupting. I’m coming back from scansource. Were one of our distributor partners. And then I went to Bluestar, one of our other distributor partners, and I’m in the middle of going through my notes from those and saying, Who do I need to follow up with? What are the things I learned? What are the things that we should do differently? I was not seeking those things out. And in the online world, sitting at your desk, you reaching out making phone calls, that’s you seeking, but things of these events, you’ll just slam into them, you’ll bump into them, and it will be a learning that will really impact your business, the winter conference, you know that we have inspire that a lot of work, right. And that’s very expensive for us to put on and we talked about we have to do it every year. And if you could hear our members say, here’s why you need to do this every year. Here’s how this thing that I didn’t know I walked in and met this person never met before at this show, they shared this thing with me eight years ago, nine years ago, transformed my business, like the more opportunities that I have to engage with folks like that, the better. And that really helped us crystallize in terms of okay, this is how we serve our community. It’s not necessarily this is part you know, trade shows, we’re a nonprofit organization. It’s not all about where can I make the most money necessarily, when you’re running a trade show? It’s how can I best serve our members, and the members who get served the best are the ones who you know, jump in with both feet into things that, you know, especially those those in person events, like you mentioned, I, I know it’s hard to do. I know it’s expensive. I know, it takes time, but there is no substitute for that whatsoever. Maybe that can be another interview, we have some day about virtual events, like with those avatars running around like those just pale in comparison to the the in person event you can’t replace.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, I’ll make a note of that, because I was helping. You know, I do a bunch of side hustles. And I love it. But last winter, spring, I was helping a data center trade association, and reporting to the executive director, and their big thing is the annual events, right, the big conference in basically mid mid May. And they spend a lot of money in, you know, the lady was saying, you know, we could probably be more profitable if I didn’t have top shelf hot buffet and top shelf receptions. But she said, You know, that’s That’s not who we are. Right? The members want a nice experience, and it does cost money.
Jim Roddy
And it’s getting more expensive. And I’ve always said like, you know, the most expensive things are like how did this cost so much? Our college textbooks and meals, meals and a via trade shows like those two things are like, Oh, my word, but again, you know, that’s, that’s for the burden of us, you know, event planners here. But you’re you have to have that experience for your members. And they will walk away saying that was worth it, I would I would do it all over again. And that’s what we’re looking for. And we did the retail now an event this year in our summer trade show that gets you around 1500 to 2000. Channel executives, we got some feedback that breakfast should have been upgraded. And we’re like, okay, yeah, we definitely see that we’re going to do that. But then all the big things that they walked away with, they were saying, like I wasn’t, you know, I’ve never had an experience like this before, not just from how it feels, but also the connections and the knowledge that they take away from it. So that’s why again, I always say I was saying this about the RSPCA before I was being paid to say this, about the hardest pay, right in terms of how it’s invaluable. And it’s really the heartbeat of your community. So if whatever community that you’re in, find those niche associations, and again, join and join, get involved in attending events.
Harry Brelsford
And finally, speaking of events where several weeks out from mjbizcon in Las Vegas, folks, we’ve talked about that a lot over here at the Canada tech group. It’s the it’s the Comdex it’s the CES of the industry. It’s not the only show you should go to but you should at least go once. And, Jim, I look forward to working with you and your staff. I know we want to quickly conspire to see if we can put together just to informal receptions one of the evenings, right so we’re we don’t feel alone amongst 35,000 people,
Jim Roddy
right? Yeah, it does. You can feel lonely among 35,000 The ones so two things I’ll say is one wear comfortable shoes, of course, because it’s a giant trade show. But also you’ve got to prepare sometimes you can go to a trade show and just kind of wander around. That is not one that you can do that you’ve got to figure out what kind of you know, they they divided on the website into different groupings of whether it’s technology or you know, grow operations or you know, things of that nature. But that is not a show. You just want to meander through. You’ve got to put together a battle plan for sure.
Harry Brelsford
All right, Jim, thanks for your time. And in fact, we’ll see you in in a few weeks down in Las Vegas. Thanks, Jim.
Jim Roddy
Yeah, looking forward to it. Always a pleasure, Harry. Thanks.
