Why WHSL Is the Must-Attend Show for Liquidators | Matt Leavell

Yeah.

You know, they do have a big, actually quite a few retailers have a big presence there, but that's not necessarily the reason. ⁓ Well, the reason that we are there is probably the same reason that those big retailers are there is because it's very centrally located on the Eastern side of the United States. So it Louisville specifically has an international airport that someone can fly directly into. We're in the international Kentucky convention center, which is

Mm-hmm.

right in downtown, it's a few blocks from the Mississippi River. And it's just super convenient and easy to get to. It's probably, I don't know, 10 minutes at most from the airport. ⁓ So, I mean, it's super central, very easy within driving distance for a lot of people. And most of the other conferences that do anything in our space are out in Vegas. So we thought, hey, would be nice to give a little bit of love to the guys on the Eastern side of the US.

Yes.

Yeah, no, 100%. You're right, completely. Most of the shows are in Vegas, and I think Kentucky would be a great change of scenery and to kind of be able to have conversations. ⁓ I would love to, before we get into the show, I'd love to introduce you to the audience, kind of know about yourself. So if you don't mind, can you share a little bit about your background with the space? I mean, I've had a chance to kind of look into your career, and I got a lot of...

⁓ insights out of how you've been a reseller yourself, how you've built marketplaces, how you've operated in multiple roles within the industry. So a little bit about yourself would be helpful.

Yeah. So I generally refer to WHSL as kind of my, my Batman moment, you know, like my, that's when I get to put on my, my Cape and go fight the bad actors of the industry. but in all reality, my, my boring day job is being CEO of Bilo warehouse. we do operate in the liquidation space. ⁓ we, ⁓ we sell a lot by the truckload. ⁓ and then we, we have.

Mm-hmm.

some warehouse space that we do. ⁓ We actually run a bin store. have some retail that we sell out of there. We have a fairly large live selling operation on platforms like whatnot and such. ⁓ And then we also sell by the pallet and we have online auctions. ⁓ So, you we have in recent years moved a lot more towards direct to the consumer. We still have a very robust wholesale arm and do a lot of business by the truckload and by the pallet.

But in recent years, we've really pushed more direct to the consumer. yes, I guess that would be my day job. I've been in the industry since I think early 2018. So right around eight years. Before that, I've been an entrepreneur pretty much all my life. So I had a stint in property management. I had an MMA promotional company for a little over 10 years. I had a marketing agency for a little over 10 years, dabbled in some real estate.

done quite a few things, ⁓ but they've all kind of been with a leadership entrepreneurial type skew to them. And so find myself in the liquidation space and you know, this industry more than most in my opinion is constantly changing. You just don't get, this is not an industry in my experience where you can build a, define some processes, build a system around that.

and still be running the same game plan six years later. Heck, you're going to be good to do it six months later. So it's something that I think it's constantly evolving. Things are constantly changing. It's a very contract driven and relationship driven industry.

Yeah, no, 100%. I love your background, especially the MMA piece that coming from those and the real estate piece. So I'm a big MMA fan. I'd love to learn more about that sometime. Yeah, mean, yeah, you're completely right. I completely resonate with that. industry, liquidation industry, is always evolving. The controls of it are not with the main operators. It's mostly with the brands and retailers who are producing this liquidation inventory. and it's,

It's changing all the time and having a show like WHSL, which happens once a year, it becomes a good community meetup where everyone can kind of exchange insights, share particularly what's working for them, what's not working for them. The other thing that you touched on selling directly to the consumer, I think that's a trend that even we are seeing on our side where brands and retailers love to be as close as they can be to the actual customer. And the way to be best close to the actual customer

is selling directly to them and not through wholesale. So I think that's a trend ⁓ that is only going to get more and more deep in as the industry evolves. But ⁓ there is no consistency. But it's a good time to be in it for sure, given how return rates are increasing, how much we are producing, and how less it is getting used, and also with the sustainability aspect where more and more brands are now required.

make sure that they're liquidating versus landfilling. ⁓ Awesome. Next question. Yeah, sure. Would you like to add something to it, please?

Yeah.

Well, no, you had mentioned that ⁓ WHSL provides a good opportunity ⁓ for kind of an annual meetup. And, when we started WHSL, there were kind of three pillars that we really wanted to attack. ⁓ One was education. Another was bringing better integrity and morals and ethics to our industry. And the third was

creating a good networking opportunity. You know, I've gone to some of the largest trade shows out there and they're great. ⁓ I have no bad thing to say about them, except for the fact that they're so big that it becomes really hard to find the people that you can really do business with. ⁓ There's plenty of businesses there. They just might not be specific to your niche industry or my niche industry. And so what I found myself doing was going to these big trade shows. ⁓ Yeah.

I'd walk through the exhibit halls and walk past a bunch of booths. And then I'd just wait for the conference to shut down and then wait for the meetups at night to start. And that's where I got my real value. And you know, there's nothing bad with that. Heck, I built a business out of doing that. However, that's not the best, in my opinion, ⁓ opportunity or forum that you can participate in. So.

One of the pillars of WHSL when we started was to create the best networking opportunity for a small to medium sized liquidator ⁓ in the liquidation space. And so that's one of the things we've tried to do. Sorry, that just as you talked about a good place to meet up, I thought that was a pretty good segue.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, ⁓ mostly at the other shows, it's most like a subsection of, let's, create a small Facebook group and meet it in the evening. But the good part about this particular conference, WHSL conferences, it's meetup all day, you know, so, ⁓ and it would drive a ton of value for anyone exhibiting. I mean, you answered the next question I had, which was about what value, ⁓ you know, like buyers and visitors can kind of expect out of the show. So,

⁓ pretty pumped about the education piece, ⁓ exchanging of insights and making relationships because as you rightly said, ⁓ is such an important part of this industry because there are not a lot of quality indicators or it's not black and white, there's a lot of gray in there and trust is how you kind of fill that gap.

Yeah, so what can someone expect if they attend the conference? I'll kind of attack this question in a couple different ways, because number one, it's what do you expect to gain? And number two is, what do you expect not to gain if you don't show up? And so it's kind of a couple different ways to look at it. So from a what do expect to gain perspective, we're going to have some really good ⁓ industry education.

Mm-hmm.

I am unaware of any other place in the liquidation space that provides curated information, especially for targeting the small to medium sized liquidator. see plenty of articles written that talks about, Home Depot or some other major retailer ⁓ diverted X amount of tons of stuff from the landfill into re-commerce channels and talks about how they...

built that system in their company and all of that. And I mean, all that's great, but dude, a small to medium sized liquidator, doesn't help them at all. ⁓ Not one bit. Like ⁓ maybe knowing that our subset of the industry is growing helps, but hey man, as a small to medium sized liquidator, I need to know what channels are going to get me the highest recovery. Where can I have myself through the fastest?

What are some, you know, with the different revenue channels that are popular in our industry, such as online auctions, bin stores, pallet houses, whatever it is, ⁓ with those channels, what are the nuts and bolts of running those specific types of businesses? ⁓ Who's a trusted source that I can buy from? So all of those are some pretty important questions that you just, can't.

you can't find in a lot of other places. I mean, a perfect example is every year at this conference, we launch our state of the industry report. so WHSL collaborates with some of our sponsors to send out quite a bit of surveys to not only people we're connected with, but our sponsors are connected. This year, we worked with B-stock in collaboration on this report. And we got a bunch of survey respondents talking about, OK, here's what happened in calendar year 2025 for their business.

How did that compare to 2024? And after we get all that data, it's an anonymous survey, but we got all that data and we turned around and we compiled, crunched the numbers and compiled a state of the industry report. And so at the conference every year, we'll launch that, which is unique content. You're not going to get anywhere else. And then we have a PDF download that people can get from that. We also have panels where if...

we normally will take some of the most popular business models or we have in the past that I'm not guaranteeing that any specific subject right now, but where we might say, Hey, let's get three people that are running online auctions and let's have somebody who's just started out with maybe one online auction that they're running and they're successful with have another person that maybe has three and another person that maybe has 15 because depending on where you're at in that journey ⁓ you may be experiencing different problems. so

on a panel, want to have a good representation of that cross section. And then we opened up for Q and A and let our customers or our attendees ask questions of those panelists. So we've done that in the past. Also, we've had speakers where I'm not going to lie, the first time I ever got one of our keynote speakers, I looked at his resume and turned to a guy sitting next to me who's in the industry. And I said, man, I didn't even know they made people with resumes like this. Like this is nuts. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

the different companies that he worked for, the positions he held, it was just a who's who from a liquidation company and a role perspective, all in one resume. And we had him speaking to our attendees, but we don't forget that we're talking to small to medium sized liquidators. That's our target demo. So we're not going to have those speakers that want to talk about, I don't even know what they're called, recycling credits or whatever the government hands out to these big companies and all that.

We don't care about that. What we care about is delivering information on the small to medium sized liquidator. So we've had people that are there that talk about social media marketing. We've had some attorneys show up that talk about how to properly structure your business and how to properly avoid risk. We've had these panels that I mentioned. We've had how I did it, which is somebody that's a case study that gets on stage, gives you about 10 minutes of what their journey has looked like. And then it opens up for question and answers. ⁓

We've had a lot of different types of education, but it's all geared to that small to medium sized liquidator. Because when I first started, you know, I'd have a good week and then I'd take a sit back and I'd be like, man, was that just me? Did I do something like really good that deliver these results or did everybody experience this? And as we started to get bigger and we had more customers, I started getting more and more questions. Hey man, are you slow this week?

Hey, have you seen pallet sales really pick up? And I started to notice it wasn't just me who felt like I was on an island. It was everybody who felt like they were on an island. And so one of the things that we wanted to do with WHSL was to provide a platform where not only we could get good quality educational content, but also give people that opportunity to feel like they're no longer on an island, but maybe they're part of a larger group, a larger community.

to know that if they had a great week and everybody had a great week, okay, it's just the market. But if they had a great week and somebody else didn't, now maybe they can look at their numbers and say, what did I do that generated that? And they can become more intelligent about the decisions they make in growing their business. So that's more of the educational piece, really making sure it's curated to the demographic that's gonna be sitting in the booths or in the chairs. ⁓

going to apologize. actually forget the question. I think you, you mentioned about the content because I've been talking about the content for a bit, but if I have not answered part of what you asked, please look.

Yeah, no. Yeah, no, I mean...

I think you covered a lot of fit and I think even more with respect to the value from a buyer perspective or a perspective from a small to medium liquidator who's going to be visiting the show as a guest. Let's flip the question and kind of also address what would be the value that the exhibitors would be getting out of it. The obvious value that I at least see is the relationships piece, meeting your customer face to face, learning about what their needs are.

how they're experimenting in the industry. So just to flip the question a little bit, what value do you think the exhibitors would get so that they're also encouraged to sign up more and more?

So before I answer that, I actually now remember what your previous question was. Your previous question was, what is the value that somebody would expect to get by showing up? And I went down a rabbit trail of content. And although content is very important, that's just one piece of it. The other piece is networking, or one of the other pieces is networking, but not just networking, networking with people that have integrity and that are people that you can trust to be there.

⁓ We open up a lot of opportunity for networking, both with exhibitors and other attendees. We have events outside of the conference that helps with the networking. ⁓ And then from an integrity piece, that's always been a big issue I've had with the liquidation industry is it just sort of attracted and made it easy for a scammer to take advantage of people. And that's never sat well with me. I don't want to participate in an industry where scammers are just

Yeah, it happens. You know, it's a daily occurrence. I don't like that. And so I wanted to do something about it. So one of the things all of our sponsors and exhibitors sign a moral and ethics pledge to even participate in the conference. You know, I mentioned earlier, I'm CEO of Biola Warehouse. The fortunate part of that is Biola Warehouse pays my bills. So when WHSL comes around, I don't have to make a profit.

I would love to cover our cost of the conference, but if a scammer shows up or somebody who I know who's a bad actor in our industry saying, Hey man, I'll pay double for a booth. Just let me get a booth. No, no, because that's not what I stand for. And that's not what WHSL will stand for. So money doesn't sway us when it comes to saying, Hey, who are we choosing to allow to get booths ⁓ and exhibit at our conference or speak at our conference or sponsor. ⁓ So that's the other part, the integrity.

That's it.

piece, the networking piece, and then the education. some of the things that like, if I told you I'd answer that question also, what you would miss out on. And some of things I would say is you're going to miss out on like when you're you're a competitor down the street, all of a sudden starts getting a new load type and you're wondering where they got it. You're saying, man, how are they finding these sources? Well, that would probably be something that you're starting to figure out you're missing out on.

You're missing out on the opportunity. And that's not just from exhibitors, but just the networking. You know, who knows who you're going to meet as another attendee that might be at the same business model, not be in competition that could tell you one thing. And whether it comes from a panel discussion or another exhibitor, they tell you that one thing that helps you avoid a problem that could have cost you 10, 30, a hundred thousand dollars. And because you just had that one conversation, you get it. And you, you avoid that mistake.

Another thing is this is so relationship driven. Look, I think voice and video calls are awesome, but you're never going to replace being in the same room with somebody and the relationship that that builds or builds ⁓ going to dinner and really getting to know somebody. You can't, you can't replace that. And with this being such a relationship driven industry, that's one of the things that you're going to miss out on pretty heavily. If you don't not just WHSL, but any conference, if you're not frequently attending conferences,

You're missing that you're missing your opportunity because your opportunity may not just come from somebody new you meet. It very well could be with the person you've done business with for years and you just didn't know that they now had access to this new program. And so it's those conversations and being around them. You know, I people all the time trying to decide, am I going to go to WHSL or am I going to go to this other conference? And I'm like, why, why is that even a decision? You should be going with both because

You're never going to go to one conference and get every contact you need to have a successful business. You're going to get one, maybe two, possibly three connections out of each conference. So it's the habit. It's the going and continually attending these conferences that's going to build that Rolodex of contacts that you can build a business off of. So I would not say, choose one or two and say choose them all. now to get back to the, the exhibitors.

I can tell you for the exhibitors and the value that they get, you're going to have, when I say small to medium sized liquidators, I think people sometimes gravitate towards the small word world or the small word that I use and say, well, I need somebody that can take a truckload. Buddy, a small liquidator might be doing a million dollars in business every year ⁓ or more. I would consider a small liquidator to be 5 million or less. So they have purchasing power.

⁓ it, put it in perspective, I had one person that didn't even have a exhibitor booth last year. She followed up with me about three weeks after the conference. And she said, Matt, I just want to tell you your conference is underpriced. Okay. that's an interesting statement. Why don't you give me a little bit more information there? She said, Matt, within three weeks of me attending your conference. And again, she was not an exhibitor. she just attended. ⁓ I did have her on stage speaking at one point. ⁓ but she said in three weeks.

I have sold over $200,000 in deals that I would not have sold any other, any other way. I did not know those people before your conference and I would not have met them without your conference. And I have purchased over $130,000 in those three weeks from suppliers that I never would have met if I wasn't at your conference. I mean, that is $330,000 in business transactions with one person in three weeks after the conference. So.

If you're an exhibitor saying, you know, small to medium size, I'm not sure that's what I need. Buddy, there are people walking around that have the purchasing capabilities to buy five, 10 truckloads a week, if they're the right truckloads. If they're not the right truckloads or there's a problem, then obviously they're going to pass. But just because I say small to medium, I mean, a medium sized liquidator is going to be in my regards between five and $30 million a year, probably.

It would be at my definition of a medium liquidator. So small to medium size ⁓ is if you're an exhibitor and that's who you're looking for, buddy, we're going to put you in front of 700 to a thousand people that are in the liquidation space. ⁓ You can go to another conference and find that number of people that would visit your booth. My question would be how many of them are your core target demographic of liquidators? And I think that's where we separate.

We are smaller than some of those conferences, but we're way more curated and targeted for the demographic that's going to be impactful, either as an attendee or as an exhibitor.

That makes a lot of sense.

you would avoid the noise. You would directly get to the crust of the buyer base who is actually interested. And the other signal point is because somebody is taking the effort of traveling to a show, they are actually serious about buying. So as an exhibitor, you're getting directly, you're getting good quality leads if I have to put it in that respect. The other question I had, like flipping it back to the buyer side of the value proposition, what do you see the best buyers do during an

after the show.

Oh, wow. So love that question, by the way. I actually did a video on this not too long ago because I think it's so impactful. Like you can go to a show and if you don't prepare or you don't have any type of post show follow-up, you're really not going to get a lot of value. You know, I think people sometimes have it all wrong. They think, oh, I'm going to go to the show. And when they're leaving the show, they have a stack of 150 business cards.

And they're like, super pumped, man, I killed it at the show. This is going to be so good for me. They didn't prepare. They didn't have quality conversations. And then at the end, they don't follow up and they get no value. When I go to a show, I'm really only looking for one, two, possibly at the top end, three contacts that I can leave and do business with. Because it's more than just shaking someone's hand. You got to have a good conversation with them so that you can start to build that rapport.

You got to start to build that level of trust that they believe they can work with you because understand before you have any of that, you're just another face or just another person shaking their hand. You have to separate yourself a little bit. So how do you do that? So before the conference, there's a few things. First of all, they're going to bring good walking shoes. they're going to have snacks, you know, so they can keep their energy up. They may do a little bit of research getting on there and saying,

who are the exhibitors, what kind of product or merchandise do they sell, what's their business model, ⁓ can I research any of the key people that may be there that are associated with that company so I can actually talk on a little bit more in depth, maybe hop on LinkedIn and figure out who else that I know knows these people and see if you can do some pre-research. Also, you may set up a dinner or a lunch or just reach out and say, hey, I'm wondering if you're gonna be there and if they say yes, then.

I'd love to just shake your hand. I've really been looking to want to get to meet you and create those opportunities and have some pre-work done to where when you sit down, you're not, or when you meet them, you're not just like, what do we talk about? Like have something you can talk about so you can build that rapport and get them to where, you know, they may like you better than the next person. Then the second day run back by and say, Hey man, I was really thinking about our conversation from yesterday and

I had these other couple questions. Again, you're, trying to separate yourself from the other 500 people that they met. And so how do you do that? You prepare, you may follow up with the second day and, have a follow-up question that shows you really had some intent and thought in the conversation that you had. And then after the conference, you need to have some sort of follow-up sync sequence where maybe pop them an email. Now realize that they just met a lot of people, probably more than you did. So don't expect an immediate response. They're going to do their best.

And you need to be a little bit patient. You also may need to give them a few memory joggers on what you talked about or who you really are. And that's another thing after you meet somebody, take their business card and write a few things on the business card about what you talked about or have a notepad or something, but take some notes as you're at the conference and just write a few things down so that you can quickly jog their memory on the backside of saying, Hey, here's who I was. Here's what we talked about. I'm really interested in learning more about this.

Also, that's going to help you because I promise you, if you meet a hundred people, you're not going to remember every conversation and you're going to start getting confused. So on the backend, yes, you send that email and then maybe have a reminder in your calendar for seven to 10 days later, follow back up and, have a follow-up process. And look, some of those people are not going to respond to you. And maybe that's because they didn't see the value in pursuing that relationship that you saw in pursuing with them.

You know what? That's okay. Now, if you feel like there's a huge amount of value, okay, you can push that a little bit harder, but some of them is just not going to materialize. But again, if you set your sights on just having one to two, possibly three out of every conference that you can move forward doing business with, then over time, it does not take a lot of people to really build a good business in the liquidation space.

Yeah, no, I mean, you need five good suppliers to get yourself into a good spot. You don't need the, you don't need hundreds of them and, and take the load of working with all of them to try to build a business. So yeah, I mean, I, completely agree. There is a, there is value in meeting face to face for both parties to be able to have a conversation, whether there is a fit. There are, there are liquidators come in all, you know, shapes and sizes, I guess, if I can say that.

Someone's really good at apparel, someone's really good at small appliances, someone's really good at LTL, someone's really good at truckload, someone's really good at auction, someone's really good at X, Y, Z. So you gotta find who those app partners are for you because noise sometimes can be more of a distraction from building your core business versus actually helping it. So I mean, making a segue into learning more about, so having heard, you know, ⁓

the spiel about the show, Matt, it seems more of an ecosystem, more than a conference. So what do you think? And it could be a very open, open-ended question. And I'd love to just kind of get your overall opinion on it. But what are you, what, is the team trying to do or doing different this year versus the previous show so that the viewers and the buyers ⁓ don't, don't even think about missing the show.

Yeah. So you made something a second, you made a comment a second ago and, and yeah, like we like to say we're a community built on trust. Like that's, that's what we are. Uh, it is more than just a single show once a year. Um, you know, when you start to look at having the legitimate suppliers and knowing that you're working with people you can trust and not just the exhibitors, but then the other attendees, there is a wealth of knowledge in the other attendees.

If you just are willing to shake someone's hand and introduce yourself. And we create the space for that. So this year, what we're doing a little bit different, we do have a few different speaking talk types, that's intended to help keep the energy up in the room and, and to where people aren't just sitting there listening to 30 minutes and then 30 minutes and then 30 minutes. And like, so one example of that is we have a five ideas in 30 minutes.

where we have five speakers, each speaker has one idea, one slide on the projector, and they got six minutes to talk about it. And we just rapid fire person by person. And the intent is let's keep the energy up and make sure that those are gonna really be highlights and sound bites of each of those ideas. But then the audience gets the opportunity to say, wow.

Out of those five people, there were two that I really think could benefit my business. So I'm going to now earmark those two people. I'm going to go find them at their booth or find them walking around in the conference. And I can ask them a few more questions and dig in a little bit more on that topic. And so we're really trying to create those opportunities for networking. And we do that. We have a couple, what we call cocktail hours that happen after each event or after the evenings, we have a

cocktail hour Monday evening when people are showing up before the conference starts. It's from six o'clock to nine o'clock at the ⁓ SNSC. It's the sports and social club. ⁓ And again, there will be some free drink tickets there and it just gives people an opportunity to show up, relax and kind of start getting into the flow of things. That's actually ⁓ sponsored by one of our sponsors, Excess for Less. And then we have the same thing the next night.

free drink tickets again, but you can pick those up at the high bid booth during the day, the first day of the conference, because they're the sponsor of the second night. Again, at the Sports and Social Club, six to nine. We'll also be doing our cornhole tournament. All the proceeds from that are donated to the charity that we support, the 33 Forever Foundation. And that the cornhole tournaments actually sponsored by Willow and West, another one of our sponsors.

Then in the morning, the morning of the second day of the conference, we have what we call speed networking. Think speed dating meets networking. And not the most creative when it comes to naming stuff. So we just call it speed networking. But the intent is for those of you that may be a little shyer, not just wanting to walk up and shake someone's hand, put yourself in a situation that forces you out of your box. Okay, so you have an hour, nine to 10 o'clock. And our intent is that we introduce you to 15 to 20 other people.

that you have a chance to understand what they do a little bit about their business. They understand a little bit about your business. And when you walk out of there, you have 15 to 20 people where you can say, hey, these three people, I want to go get to know better. I think there might be some synergies that we can explore and look at. That's just with outside the conference. We also have some built-in time during the conference where things are, there's no speaker on stage and you have a chance to go talk with the exhibitors and the exhibitor hall.

We're going to have some really great exhibitors. mean, everything from the top of the top when it comes to liquidation sponsors ⁓ to some of the smaller guys that may be a little bit more niche. They may not be the huge sponsor that you may know, but that doesn't mean that the offering they have is any less valuable or can make you any less money. know, we as Bilo Warehouse do a large amount of business ⁓ in the liquidation space and I buy from all different people.

Whether they be large contract holders that everybody knows, maybe contract holders that only a few people know, brokers that just have access to a deal that I don't know where it's coming from, but I know I can trust that broker. And I know they're making some money, but they're giving me a good enough deal that I can make money on as well. So it's getting out there and really rubbing shoulders, building those relationships, because that's another thing. You may know where product is originating from.

That doesn't mean they'll sell it to you. And a lot of times you have to rub elbows a little bit to build that relationship so that you can get access to the product that you need. Because if you're not willing to do that, somebody else is. And pretty soon you won't be able to find that product.

Yeah, no, 100%. If I may add to that, not just the source of supply, but also the tools and technologies that you need in order to be a successful reseller and a liquidator. So I was talking to another fellow exhibitor who's exhibiting fast mini scan. So I think it's not just a place for to kind of ⁓ do your sourcing, but I think there's also opportunities for buyers and visitors to kind of learn about what are the new tools

and tricks and technologies that are in place for you to accelerate your business. So that piece, think you did not cover. So I wanted to discover that with respect to the tooling companies that would be exhibiting who are building specifically for the liquidation industry. So that if you have been spending hundreds of hours maybe receiving things or you've been emailing and talking to like 50, 60 liquidators.

I didn't.

there would be lot of tools for productivity and tooling to be able to do your product or do your business faster.

I that's a valid point. Very, very important. Cause yes. And those, I don't mention it because I always kind of get into a, a mindset of, we're trying to get rid of scammers and we have good suppliers. And that's kind of a natural progression. And it causes me to deviate, not mention the, ⁓ the, the service providers and man having the right tools, as you kind of said, I mean, you, said, Hey, if you've been spending a hundred hours on a project,

Man, yeah, if you have the right service provider, they're just as good, if not better than a good supplier, because what if you can take something that took you a hundred hours and take it down to five hours? And, and maybe that a hundred hours was a hundred hours a month. Well, you just saved 95 hours a month for 12 months. That's a huge return on investment. So that's why a lot of times I say you go to a conference, man, you don't, you don't have to set your sights on meeting a hundred people.

You just need to meet the right one to two. And that's it. It'll have such a dramatic impact on your business. That's probably all you'll be able to handle initially is one to two new contacts every conference anyway, until you kind of get it into the flow and you understand. And then you can start to open up and be ready to meet another one at the next conference. you really, mean, growing a business is a lot of times it doesn't happen overnight. And if it does, you, you are exposing yourself to a

decent amount of risk in that process because you're slinging a lot of mud at the wall really fast and you better have a really big piggy bank for the mud that you sling that turns out bad.

Yeah, no, 100%. I follow the same mantra, two to three good contacts out of a conference. I'm almost on a flight every week, just because I know the importance of, and I've learned it the hard way with respect to learning of how you can't you can't at least do this business behind the screen. You have to actually show up. You actually have to shake hands, have those dinners, wish those birthdays and,

just check up on each other. So Matt, I really appreciate the time ⁓ and I'm super excited to be on the show. Hopefully the viewers and the listeners got some value and would consider coming to the show because I think ⁓ it happens annually. I think you guys should think about doing it at least twice a year because ⁓ I think sourcing, just like other shows, I think there would be value if people can meet twice. ⁓

Other ideas could be having Slack channels or groups where when the show is not happening, if the community can stay alive and still have a way to connect. So really appreciate the time, Matt, but any last words on the show or anything else that you'd like to share?

I just, if we have not been able to help convince you the value that a show can bring, like WHSL, I don't know what else we can say. ⁓ But I will say for the minimal investment of time and money, it is a free show. I don't think I mentioned that. You don't have to pay to attend. Everything is free, except we do have a ⁓ three-hour educational class that we're collaborating with. ⁓ Everything's circular.

That's a good point.

⁓ that they are teaching on the Monday afternoon ⁓ before the conference starts. That is a paid course. You get a certification, you get a book of it. It's a pretty legitimate deal. I'm actually going to be involved in it. I'm looking forward to it. ⁓ And, you know, if anybody wants information on that, on our website or they can get information. They can either email us at support at WHSLmarket.com or get it off the website. If you want to register, ⁓ you can

go right to our website, www.whslmarket.com. Again, it is free. ⁓ If you are looking for an exhibitor booth, then just shoot us an email at support at whslmarket.com and we will get right back with you. We are running pretty low on exhibitor booths at this point. So if you are thinking at least start the conversation, reach out to us, get the information and let's at least start it because it.

I do have to turn the drawings into the fire marshal at some point for him to ⁓ approve the layout for egress and everything. ⁓ Other than that, man, April 21st and 22nd, Louisville, Kentucky, at the Kentucky International Convention Center. It's a beautiful facility and a beautiful city. So really hoping that you guys make it. And if you do come up, shake my hand. Love to meet you.

Yeah, 100 % highly encourage all the listeners to come up and come to the show. It will be an amazing one, especially if you're in this industry. It only happens once in a year right now, so you don't want to miss an opportunity for another year to build that relationship. Whatever your margin or your business is right now, you'd be taking 20 % off it. Just think about it that way. And then plan and not plan to come to the show. if I were you, I would. So thanks a lot for your time, Matt. I'm super excited to be there.

and looking forward to the show and meeting everyone.

Yeah, man, me too. Thank you for the time today. This was, this was awesome. Really fun.

Yeah, likewise. Thank you.

Bye.