Noob School - Bridging the Gap with Jon Blair

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

Today on Noob School, we’re joined by an old friend in Jon Blair. Jon takes us through his career, from his time at Datastream to his tenure at ScanSource serving as their worldwide creative director, bridging the gap between sales and marketing as a natural salesperson. Tune in for a humorous and educating look back on all things sales, creative, and tech. Check out what the Noob School website has to offer: https://SchoolForNoobs.com I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #noobschool #salestraining #sales #training #entrepreneur #salestips #salesadvice

New School. All right, well, welcome back. Welcome back to the Noob School. John Sterling here, and I've got a wonderful old friend, John Blair, John, thank you for joining today. Oh, yeah. I'm glad to be here, as you know. Of course. I saw you last night, and it was like, let's cruise into it.

Yeah, it did take a little salesmanship to get you on the show, I must say. But you're a great salesman. Well, you said, I'm not really in sales. I don't know. I don't know where it was coming from, but you're here now, so I'm thankful. I'm thankful too. So I've known John for, I think, about 30 years? Yeah, 96.

So whatever. I don't do math. So you started the year we went public then. Yeah. We've had enough money to afford someone like you. That's what happened. I don't know about that. So, yeah, John is a highly accomplished, I would say, creative director in marketing.

Is that how you say that? The first couple words, I'm not sure. Okay, but it's marketing and it's creative. Creative director, brand. Yeah. Yeah. And that includes now, of course, the creative that goes into websites and all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. And so when you started with us, it was more brochures and positioning and things like that. Yeah. I brought some samples here. We want to show it at some point. We have some good ones there. We printed a lot. Yes.

We printed a lot. Yes. We did. We did. One of the reasons, you know, most of the people that we have on the show are salespeople. You know, most of them are traditional salespeople. or people who started in sales and ended up becoming, you know, entrepreneurs or whatever. But I just thought you always got along with the salespeople so well, including me.

And a lot of the reason that you have been successful, I think, is because you are a natural salesperson. You do a lot of the things salespeople do that make them successful. You know, for example, you're friendly. You know, you have a great smile and you start out every interaction with people in a nice, positive way. And you know what? people like that. They don't get that everywhere they go. So I think you're very good at that. And also, I can remember many times saying, John, I need a logo or something or make it green or whatever. And you say, hold on, John, just figure out what is it you want? What are you trying to do?

Yeah. And that's what a great salesperson does, is really try to figure out what they want versus just saying, all right, you know, if you want 14 cartons, here you go. You know, So that's one of the reasons I wanted you on and I appreciate you being here. Yeah. Thanks for the time. Like I said, sales, yeah, I was like, oh, do I want to do this? You know, somebody's get a little nervous. It's like, what do we talk about?

We've got a lot to talk about. Yeah. Just, you know, history together, 26 years or whatever it's been. You said something about the logo. I've got this thing. You know, can you make the logo bigger? That was always a request. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Can you make the logo bigger? Yeah. Sure. We can make a green. We can make it bigger. Yeah, we can make it any size. Yeah. We had those secret squirrel projects, we call it sometimes.

Right, yeah. He just pop over, do a little drive-by. We didn't want any, like, planning session, you know, no approvals. Didn't that time for that. Just do something for us real quick, particularly in the Ipercure days. Oh, my word, that logo, you know. We were talking about that last night, too. It's like, who's you, they're still out there, right?

Yeah, it's still, it's still works somehow. I don't know. Because it's a great logo. Yeah. So you have just, just, what we normally do is we kind of, we kind of start at the end, actually not the end, but where you are now, and then we back it up to the beginning. So where you actually are now is your head of creative and design at ScanSource, which is another great Greenville company, and it's much bigger than Data Stream ever was.

It's maybe $4 billion a year. Globally, what, 2,500 employees? Right around there, yeah. And John is in charge of creative for all their website and everything they do in marketing, creative-wise, which is pretty cool. Yeah, it's fun. Do you get to travel around? Do some, yeah.

We actually, this past year, this year, 2023, with our intelis side of the business, we were able to do what they have. It's called AMP. It's for their partners. And it's just an education, just talking through things that we're doing new. Or there was a spin this year called pre-amp. It was a marketing discussion where we talked about branding. tools they can use.

Yeah. Talked about trends. We talked about different things that could help them. Some of them are small. Some of them are one, you know, a company of one or two, three. So just some best practices, things that we've done well, some things we haven't done well.

You know, how we can help educate them and be a partner for them going forward. So Intellisusus was like your biggest acquisition ever, right? Yeah. Ataluma, California, about seven years ago. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great, great fit for the company. Yeah.

Got to be really good. You know, it's funny. Sometimes it feels like two companies, but, you know, just blending that to... Over time. Pulling the culture together and, you know, working from home,

maybe that doesn't help everything, but, you know, still being intentional about making an effort to partner with your team that's, you know, maybe all over the country. Yeah. Yeah.

Interesting. Things have changed. They have changed, but, you know, a lot of it, I think,'s good. Yeah. Certainly in my case, I much prefer,

to work remote and just work on my projects and then get with people when I need to. Right. Versus kind of always being in the mix. I like people. Yeah, me too. I'm distracted all the time. That's right. That's right.

Yeah, like John, your office, I think your office, when we worked together, was right behind mine. Yeah, well, I can hear some things, you know, to the wall at the bend. Some yelling. The cat. Yeah. And so, yeah, so John, unmanence to me, put some little device up in the ceiling in my office that was, make the sound of a cat. And he could just press a button anytime he wanted to, right?

It was actually just a phone. And it was Terry's phone that we would borrow for a while. Can we take your phone for a while? Stick it up there. Not that she didn't have, you know, emergency comes in. We're in trouble. Stick it up in the tile. Just call it.

We just called it her number and it would meow, like a little. And then I would just ignore it for a while. Then I'd walk around, start looking around and come ask you about it. And you're like, I'm not an or any cat? We had people like propping the tiles up just to be able to let it out if we were to try to get. And that's part of the fun of what we had, like building a team, being together, laugh and crying. Yeah. Being creative.

Yeah. That's what we do. Yeah, that was fun. That was fun. Yeah, it's wonderful. Well, let's back up because I think you're in a great place now. You obviously had a very good career, including your run with our company. but where you are now is wonderful and you still got a long you got a lot of runway you know to keep doing these creative things but let's go back to where you started and I don't I don't even know where you grew up where did you grow up I was born in Kentucky okay and then grew up we moved around my dad was a professor of radiology okay and we moved from Kentucky to Las Vegas nice quite a change yeah to Memphis Tennessee back to Kentucky and then Virginia so that was all between zero and eight

So when I was eight, we moved to Lynchburg, Virginia. That's where I grew up. So that feels like home. My dad taught at a university there. And, you know, at one point in my, as I was thinking about what I want to do, I was like, I want to do what dad does. I want to be a radiologist. Right. You know, right.

And through some of that, it changed, you know. But for me, I was always doodling and sketching, you know, in class or in church or wherever. Probably times I shouldn't have been. but I'd be doing caricatures of the teacher, you know, the big head, the little body. I just enjoyed doing that. But it was always like just on a note page, I wish I could pull some of those up for you,

but there was all these sketches. And I think that creative piece was in there. I just was, you know, kind of letting it out, you know, in different ways. And so after thinking, oh, maybe not radiology, what would I want to do? And I was at home of Virginia, I went to a school there for a year,

commercial art thinking, well, let's take some design classes and, you know, figure out what that is. Which even at that time, a computer was kind of new. Yeah. What year would that have been? Man, that was 89. Okay. 88, 89, 88, yeah.

So year of school in Virginia, and then wasn't making all the best decisions at that point in my life. 18-year-old, you know, I'm sure you were. I wasn't, John. So my dad found out of this little school in Greenville. Yeah. Not in military school, but kind of felt like it. It's very similar. It's very similar.

Yeah. So visited there. He's like they got a graphic design program that's, you know, and it's like, yeah, you know, why not? It was almost one of the things like, why not? It's a nice looking campus. Yeah. It's in this little town that's not even near what it is now, you know, but it was away, you know, five hours, whatever. And it was like, okay, I get to grow up a little bit and, you know, figure out who I am and what I want to do and enjoyed it.

got in a little trouble, John. Did you? Yeah. Well. And I don't know if you've heard the fraternity fly Delta Homa. But they sent me on a way. They said, what you've done? You know, just weren't checking out with some of the rules there.

They had some rules. Yeah. Darn. Had a few drinks that I shouldn't have. Well, there was an accident. Yeah. It was. Thanks for pointing that out.

I went home for a year. Yeah. Probably the best thing that happened to me. You know, sometimes you look back in your life. You're like, at the moment, you know, dad didn't even want to talk to me. He was like, because he's a college professor. Like that was education was so important to him. And I understand why. Yeah. And for me, you know, this guy gets kicked out of college and comes home. What's he going to do now? You know, it's over. It's over.

Yeah. It's over. Yeah. I'm living in a Van Dyme other river. Right. Right. Government cheese. Yeah. So through that year off, I took a few classes, worked at the J. Crew warehouse in Linsborough, you know, driving forklifts. And, um, no one in my mind, it's like, I don't want to do this rest of my life either. Not anything wrong with that, but I knew I could do more and should do more. So I went back to school in Greenville and Bob James. And, you know, for me, if I hadn't, I wouldn't have met my wife, you know, met her the year after I got sent home and went back. Yeah.

year in June and that's you know nothing else happened which a lot of good things happened there but that alone was yeah yeah yeah um so from there I interned at an agency in town at a agency called Jackson Dawson marketing okay um now Jackson marketing but interned there got hired on um and me and my wife she was from California so at some point we were like oh we'll probably move yeah yeah we won't stay in some more good yeah not Virginia probably maybe California maybe out west, but got a job. We're like, okay, it's a job. Yeah.

You know, it's an agency. It was a lot of things. You know, you've got to juggle a lot of plates, you know, and figure out brands and, you know, worked with Ryobi and Michelin and BMW and Sam's Club, some, you know, big names. It got to be part of teams to represent those and to communicate their brands.

So through that, we, Jackson and Dawson had pitched Datastream's account, you know, doing work for them. Yeah. What was the pitch? Do you remember what y'all were? I think it was to be their agency or record. Okay, okay. Friend of mine, Jeremy Tufts, I don't know if you remember Jeremy. He was at school with me. Okay.

He was on at Datastream. He was a creative graphic designer. At some point we talked and were like, hey, there's a position and open it up at DataStream. I'm like, yeah, I kind of know about them. I feel like, you know, we've talked through some of the content, you know, the company, who they are. He's like, you ought to come check it out. So that was in 96. Wow. And came on, got hired.

He left soon after that. I don't know if it's because of me or not. He got another opportunity. But from there until 2013, you know, through the acquisition within four. So that's 19, 19 years. 17 years. Yeah. A great run.

And that's how we met. You stayed until 13? Yep. Okay. Yep. So you stayed longer than I did. Yeah. A lot longer.

Yeah. So, I mean, the friendships, as you know, I mean, I don't. know if we'll ever have that again. You know, where I works great, got a great team. You know, but just I think those years in your life, you're kind of new 30s and you're never going to be in our 20s and 30s again to form those friendships. Yeah. Yeah, we have a lot to be thankful for. Oh yeah, for sure. I'd be thankful for. Why did you leave them? Was there other acquisition? Yeah, they were shifting some of the team. You know, they had moved their headquarters in New York City. Yeah. They were changing some of the way, you know, they were kind of creating an in-house agency.

Yeah. within the company. And it was just got to that point where it's like, they were trying to get their people in New York and built this team there. And some people through that, you know, we're like, well, we need to say goodbye. Yeah, the writing on the wall.

Yeah. So that was, you know, 10 years ago this month. Yeah. Are they still on New York? I believe so, yep. So then started looking, interviewing, talking to people, found out about scansports. I knew a lot of, you know, we'd worked.

Yeah. We'd partner with them. Right. With Datastream over the years. And, you know, just knowing some people that were actually there that we had worked with, worked with the data stream, and there was some connection there.

Yeah, definitely. Like you said, a local company that was growing and, you know, tech. And, you know, that's the kind of business I, it's fun to be a part of because it's changing and you've got to evolve and grow and, you know, more sometimes. I think that's a good lesson for the noobs too, John, is you, a couple of things that you've done well is you went, you chose a profession that you are,

had shown some interest in you know you have talent for the drawing and the ideas and the creative and doing different things and even back to when you were in high school and so then you study you studied that in college and then you went into it and so I've seen more and more people the people who get successful fastest are the ones who start first so if they started selling you know let's just say they were there were people who sold farmland and they started helping their uncle when they were in high school selling farmland and they sold it all through college, you know, while they were studying real estate and they got out of college and they'll already

been selling farmland six years when they start on day one. They're way ahead of the game. And so you're kind of, you're kind of doing that. And there's other people who do it too, but more than likely they're like people who study architecture or doctors or, you know, people who have a specific profession thereafter. Right. But the other thing you did well, is whether it was by happenstance or by choice is you picked two good up-and-coming growing companies. That's the only companies you've worked for outside of one agency. And, you know, when you work for a company that's doing things and growing, it creates opportunities.

Yep. You know, your team's going to grow. They're going to have interesting products. They're going to buy companies. You're going to have to merge logos and all that stuff, right? Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So if you, if you had gone to some company that, we'll just call it Acme Industries, that's been doing $6 million in sales for the last 24 years, you know, you would just be, what now? Yeah. Another dose of nothing. Right. Yeah. So do you think that makes sense? Oh, yeah, for sure.

I mean, that's why I was at Data Stream in for 17 years. I've been at ScanSor's 10 years coming up in February. So, yeah, I think I like to get in, you know, just cultivate a team and get in there with them together. It's not like, okay, you're the director and you don't do anything. I mean. Bring me in my reports. Yeah, I mean, that's all. Yeah.

You know, it's like you get there with them for events. You're there. You know, back when we were in the office, we would be there late at night building up for a big partner conference. And we would be there together playing music, having drinks, pizza, just working together, you know, on site together. Now we'll do that at home, you know, and it's a little different. But I love, you know, still being in the programs, you know, what's working in. I don't want to like be hands off because then you kind of lose touch of, you know, jumping back in and, you know, having that create. You know, creative mode where you never know. I mean, there's times when some of my team's out and I'm creating still, designing an ad or doing a social post or something. So I enjoy still the hands-on, you know. Still, there's always gonna be that direction and that level of directing a project,

but I like to get in there with them. You know, I've got a team of copywriters, designers, you know, art directors, web, digital designers, and it's a good mix. And we do enjoy the times we get together. We're meeting together after this, you know, for lunch And just, you know, the times you're together. I think it just builds up that.

Do you do a monthly lunch there? We try to get together, maybe not for lunch, but there's times we have a company meeting at the office and they'll bring lunch in. And that's a perfect day to just be with the team and meet for a few hours even in person, brainstorm right on a board, you know, not just talk through a video camera. I met a guy, we looked to buy a company about 15 years ago and they were out in Sacramento and they had 20 employees. they were all remote. They didn't have a corporate office. There was no office. If they were going to meet someone, they would like get a conference room somewhere,

you know, borrow a partner's office or something like that. But they literally had no. And back then it was like, I'm like, what? How can you be legitimate if you don't have, you know, all that kind of thing? That's right. And they had it all down to a science that they said four times a year, they would fly everyone to a location, and they would have a big meeting, and they would have some fun events.

Yeah. And so they got that four times a year, and the rest of the time they were either working in their house or they would let them do a little office in their backyard, a little hut. That's great. And they crushed it. Yeah. But they were way ahead of the game.

Yeah, that culture, you know, it's shifted some, as we know, just from working from home. And, you know, not having the times we had office every day goofing around doing that too. I mean, we worked hard, you know. You always hear that work hard play. I think it was both. You know, we enjoyed doing it together. And we learned a lot.

I mean, like I said, talking about the website we built early 2000s. I mean, I didn't know what I was doing. It's like, I could create the look, the front end in Austin. We had some different people doing, you know, the back end, building it out. Well, you all had a, I would call it really early version of the iPhone. I don't know what year that was. Yeah, yeah. That was like even maybe before you got there.

like 93 or something. Yeah, I brought that one sample. Remember just some of the mobile things we created. It looked like a bigger iPhone. Yeah. And it was for maintenance people to kind of do all their stuff on this little phone looking thing. Like connected to their...

I can remember, you know, our reps trying to sell it. Like, so you just carry this thing around and you don't need the computer. They're like, what? You know, I mean, nobody could believe it. That makes sense. Yeah. It's too early. It's our mind.

Yeah. I never forget one of my professors in college, we were working on a computer. learning freehand and Quark Express. Some of these programs that aren't even around anymore, illustrators around. There's some ones that have changed with that whole Adobe suite. But I remember a professor saying the computer, oh, it's a fad.

It's a fad. You still need to do some hands-on stuff and cut these things out and mock it up like that. I'm like, okay. But the fad has stayed around in it for a while. You know, we're both seen enough now where these technologies come along, you know, and the initial thing is like, well, remember like the internet on the phone?

It was like, it's too slow. Yeah. It's not stable. Well, it is now. Yeah. You know, it just takes a little time for the technology to keep turning, make it all work. Websites, you know, the phone. But now I was going to ask you what's going on with like chat GPT and Bard and all that stuff?

Are you into all that? Some. I'm trying to keep up with it. I mean, we haven't, I'll say we as really as a company, haven't really used. utilize that a lot. I know some individuals can and they may write a little, you know, an email and they're like, boom, that's what they use or generate that. It's coming. I mean, not that we want. You got to embrace it. You know, some people are like, oh, I'm scared. You know, I'm going to lose my job. I'm going to do. But we thought of that about other things like computers, you know, alone. It's like, that's going to take my job away. And sure, we understand that that may change the game of some things. We've got to be creative on how we go to market and how we, you know, you never lose the people, you know, and the minds. But. But it's changing the game. So how do we keep up with that? I think staying on top of it, being aware,

knowing, you know, we can create a graphic punching in some, you know, some words and some prompts. And, you know, it's like, is I going to take my job away? Who knows? But you can't think that way now. He's got to be like, you've got to learn enough about it. Yeah. So I have, believe it or not, I've played a lot with the chat GPT because, you know,

you can go, there's just an English language interface. Yeah. You can tell it what you want. And your product comes out the other side. So that means I don't have to be a programmer anymore. For sure. And so I've written several apps, you know, what you would call an app on the phone. They're called GPTs on chat that do a variety of different things in sales.

And I'm starting to release them on my website. The first one is called Pathfinder, where you can go in there if you're, let's say, you're in college. And you say, I want to figure out what kind of sales job I should get. and it keeps asking you questions. It helps figure out, well, you ought to be selling, you know, lumber in the southeast for a medium-sized company. And it kind of figures that out based on your answers to the questions. I did all that just typing in and telling it what I wanted to do. Yeah.

That's scary good. It's very interesting. Yeah. And what's five years from now look like? I guess we have to ask the chat. I don't know. Yeah. Let me know when you figure it out.

I don't know. But, I mean, I know this. I also did a little bit of work for your company for ScanSource a while back. I mean, over 10 years ago. And they had the idea of, you know, can we create a database of all the answers to the questions about what's going on, what's available with all of our suppliers. Yeah. It was called like kind of ahead of the game.

Yeah, that was probably right before me. Yeah, it was, it was something. It was named after a gorilla or something, I remember. But it wasn't sumo, was it? The sumo. Yeah. Sumo, yeah. That gorilla bit.

It prompted me, yeah. And it was just too hard to do at the time. Yep. But I bet you could do it now. We've talked about bringing that back. It's funny you said that because this year, we were talking about renaming it and presenting it in just a new way, you know. And so it's funny what's old as new again.

And, you know, these things come around. We built our first app for the company last year, our team. Just, you know, thought leadership, tech topics, different market trend, different things there. We want to do more with it. You know, there's a lot of opportunity there. So maybe we'll get Chad GPT to help us out a little bit, you know. Sumo Plus. Yes, I know. That's a good name.

Somebody like, what's that mean? Chat Summo. Chat Sumo. That's cool. Well, I'd love to get back involved. But it's another example, and I've seen this also over the years, and someone will have a good idea. Yeah.

And it won't work and I'll just give up on it. And it's like, no, no. If it's a good idea and it's not working yet, because of technology, just keep it moving. Give it time. Slowly. You know, maybe you work on it a little bit every week or something. But just keep weight because over time, it'll change.

Yeah. And then everything will work just fine. Yeah. Yeah, we had Mark, it makes me think about, we had Mark Randolph from one of the original Netflix owners on one of our virtual calls a couple years ago during a conference. And, you know, he's big on that. He loves to say fail, you know.

I mean, that's how we learn and grow. And talking about, you know, online. We thought Blockbuster would be around forever. Didn't we back in the day? Oh, yeah. I remember going from Datastream at lunch on Fridays, picking out a video for, you know, before they're all taken. And we can watch again.

Yeah, you'd have to get there. Because if they're gone, you're freaking out. Look in the box, you know, find me. But things like that where he's just, you know, they failed and failed and failed. Blockbuster could have bought them. They decided not to, you know, and turned into what is now, you know, And I think it was for a while, even the, you know, CD or the DVDs that you would get in the mail. Yeah.

Went from that to streaming. That's the thing for me is the fact that they were able to make that leap. Yeah. It's huge. Yeah. Because most people would just milk that till it's dead, you know. The foresight, yeah. They did a good job there.

And Mike Bauer say that too. I don't know if it's his quote or he said, you know, just if you fail, fail fast, you know, and just get up and keep moving. I remember going to Blockbuster. Like you'd be home and, you know, your kids, your wife would say, like, we need a movie. You know, all right. And a pizza. All right, all right, all right. Yeah.

So go get the pizza, go get the movie, and you get there. You know, like you said, you look in the bin to see what had been returned because it might be a good one. And you go get like, you know, die hard or something that was a sure thing. Yeah. You get out there like, sir, you've got some late fees. How much? It's like $72. I'll pay it.

I'll pay it. I'll pay it. I just want the movies. Tell me what you need. I don't want to let my family down. I know. And you think about what we have now as opposed to that. I mean, that was good.

But now, you know, it's like $12 a month. And it's all the movies. Right. And they're coming right to you. Right. On your phone. You don't have to take them back? No.

No. Be kind. Rewind. Remember those? Yes. Yes. The VHS. Yeah, they would charge you more or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, really? You're like, I did rewind it. I think I reminded that. You would protest that way. Yeah, I rewinded it. I want that dollar. We're back.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Technology. It is so fun. Yeah. But yeah, those days were good. Those days were good. And they're still good.

You know, I mean, sometimes you look back. You're like, oh, those, you know, 17 years were great. I mean, they were some of the best. Oh, yeah. Talking to Jennifer and Marty last night, just reminisce. I mean, that's what we do, you know. You said some of bringing some of our show and tells maybe next year. Let's see how far we come from day to duck, you know, back in the day.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. talking about the early days of data stream branding some marketing person brought to us a new design and it was two things it was a new slogan which was when you're serious about maintenance software and then a new logo which was like daffy duck the data data duck I'm no marketing expert but I don't know about that yeah they don't go together I don't understand

it it's fun while it lasted wasn't it yeah you know they can't all be winter they can't all be No, that's good. Failed fast, right? That's right. Yeah. So let's talk about this since you're, I'll call you a sneaky salesperson because you're always selling even though you're not carrying a quota per se. Yeah.

What have you seen over the years? Because you've worked with a lot of salespeople. Talk to me about some of the traits of the good ones that you've seen and some of the traits of the ones that aren't so good. Yeah. I mean, I feel like you mentioned a few things earlier. Just like being authentic, you know, I mean, we could. all say whatever you know on a screen or on a poster you know but when people talk to you even

if it's virtual you know i mean you kind of get a sense of somebody's character or they're um if they care you know about you right early on and i think just being yourself and i know that may sound like oh who doesn't do that but i think a lot of us don't you know because we we are selling you know and we have a brand you know we all have our own brand right and it's like who is john sterling who is john You know, and hopefully it's good things that they're thinking of. But yeah, I think just being quick to, you know, just respond back to people. And like I said, something seems so, oh, I get that. But send in an email, send in a handwritten piece sometimes.

Can just be like, these people do care. There's a lot of companies that do what we do, you know. And it's like, why do they choose to work with us? Because they trust us. You know, we are loyal. We say what we do what we say. say. And I think just being accountable, being transparent, being, like I said, just being real. And if something's not right, letting them know that up front and not, you know, beating around

the bush. So it's funny years ago, if you're like, it said that, you ought to get in sales. I'm like, I enjoy what I'm doing. I like this part. But like you said, there's that piece, I think within all of us that, you know, we're selling something, you know, whether it's our, like I said, our self, you know, our friendship or, you know, with family. You're like, are you real with your family? I hope so. I mean, they know you better than anybody. Yeah.

And your work team gets to know you pretty well, you know, pretty quick. That's why interviews, sometimes you're like, you know, you can get a sense sometimes interviewing somebody, but you may not get at all, you know, until you're together because feel can be nervous. They can be, you know, especially when you interview people, do you do like multiple interviews and all the stuff? How many do you do? Sometimes three.

with different people or yourself? Different people. Say I'm hiring somebody. I'll have, of course, myself, I'll interview, but I'll have different people on my team because, I mean, you want that fit to be there. I mean, somebody could look great on paper, but the fit with the team may not be right.

And I think that's more important. You know, you can train somebody. You can learn different things. I mean, this core things as a designer, as a writer, that, yeah, you've got to be good at. But there's also programs and process and different things within the company itself that you can learn over time.

So if they have a good character, good personality, you know, there's things that you're like, and just a good fit with our team. I think that's huge because you're in the trenches together for a while probably, you know, hopefully as you built the team. I mean, I've got this one, our director on team, Wendy, she's been with a company for 25 years, 26 years,

somewhere in there. I'm like, wow, you know, we've got some people on a team that are younger than that, you know, so I think it's some people on a team. kind of like me where you get in, you just kind of like hunker in, dig in, just work to build a brand and the messaging and the voice and, you know, put it all together with those little details like the icons and the graphics and the photos and, you know, make a, build a brand. And hopefully over time it changes a little bit or you re-fresh the brand.

But I think the brand is more, you know, a lot of times you just think it's the logo and it's, you know, the things you see. but really it's the people and the culture and how people perceive you in the market. I mean, that's really it. You can say what you are, but your customers will really... Yeah, I mean, I think the main thing you just said was that the best salespeople are just themselves.

They're authentic people. Yeah. And that a lot of the people that put on some kind of face or persona that you see when you're interfacing with them from marketing side, you just know. Yeah. No, not this one now. No, this guy's not going to be good.

He's knowing your gut. Yeah, he's not. And I'll tell you this, on interviewing, I've gotten to be pretty good at having exacting standards for what I'm looking for. Like, what's their experience, what schools might have they gone to, you know, what they get on their personality test. Do they have a reference? Where are they from? Certain things I'm looking, if I'm looking for the perfect profile. Right.

But then once someone like HR has brought that to me and said, well, John, here's one, passes your muster, then to like spend a lot of time with them. Yeah. Until, spend time with him until you decide you don't want them. Right. Right. It's like, nope. That's not going to work. Because you have to pass that gut test.

Yep. If you're going to be, you know, going to having pizza with him at 10 o'clock at night working on stuff, right? That's right. That's right. I did have one time. I'll say this. I said, okay, I'm going to take this guy to dinner. and just see how that goes.

Yeah. You know, because I really wanted to hire this guy. No kidding. He's got the fork in this hand, the knife in this hand. He's got, he stabbed the steak with the knife.

He's holding the steak on the knife, talking to me like a caveman like this. Yeah. Biting off the steak, off of the, just taking bites off of it. Wow. Like a Viking.

Wow. Yeah. So that was it? Yeah, that's it. He didn't make the cut. No. It's funny. We had a guy one time interview, and he just kept, you know, it seemed like he wasn't all there,

and he was pausing, and he was like, oh, and he's like, yeah, I had a light lunch today, and I feel like I'm just not all, I'm not all there. So, you know, you can eat too much or you can have a light lunch, and I don't know which one works about. Well, the point is it's important for your sake and their sake. Yep. That you find out if it's going to be a good match, because if it's not a good match, match they're either going to be miserable right but they're going to get fired yeah you know and you know either one of those so it's important for both sides to get this right yeah

do you have any favorite deals you worked on like supporting any big deals um oh man i can't say that john no um i'm trying to think back data stream uh can i tell you some funny things that didn't work sure i don't know if you remember this we did all these direct mail pieces back in data stream days And we had one piece that we had a red cross on it. It was just a red cross, simple. You know, it seemed like sent it out. We got a letter in the mail from the American Red Cross at some point. He said, that's our logo mark.

The way you can't use that anymore. So we learned, you know, from that. We not too long ago, it scanned source. I won't name his name, but we had missed one number. One number was wrong with the phone number at the bottom. send them to a porn hotline. That wasn't good. For some people it may have been, but overall, as a company,

not everyone complained. We shut it down quick. But that's one of those, sometimes you make mistakes like that. But I just think we were talking about the data stream website. You know, just sometimes when you're doing things like that, and you're like, we're learning as we went and we put this website up. And, you know, you go to that time machine, I think, or whatever it's called. You can go back and find these.

Sometimes I've done that to look and be like, this is where it is. Now you go to Wix or Squarespace or WordPress. You can build a website pretty quick. I think last year building this app with the team was a cool thing that we did together. Just something we hadn't done before as a team. But you know, you got to brainstorm and just do some strategy around that, what that looks like and how it can grow and morph. Yeah, there's a lot we can do with that still.

And that's the beauty of it. You know, with websites and with these digital properties, they're always growing and morphing and should be, you know, to where your content is fresh and, you know, it's relevant to today. And, you know, just keeping up sometimes with all these different, you know, digital. And, you know, like we did a cool piece last year, though, for some of our top partners that had maybe sort of doing some business elsewhere, we maybe have a little business.

And so we created this handcrafted package, built a program around it, and had, you know, gifts in there for them and a hand letter to them. And that was kind of a neat thing because we're so used to emails and spamming people. You know, just you can email people to death. Yeah, yeah. But I think that personal printed, you know, box piece that had elements in there and things that, it actually, generated a lot more business for us than we probably even thought because it was more intentional. Yeah. One of the themes we have as a team is create intentional impact. And I love the word intentional, you know, because you're thinking about it more. It's not just, you know, we can all be

going down the path. And you just kind of are a robot. Like you're just doing things and producing and getting things out the door. But we actually think about a person and a customer, you know, to the intent of, okay, I'm going to put this handbook. printed box with things in there together for you to be like, hey, we'd love to do more business with you, you know, and we care about you. And I think that word care, you know, is something we may not think about a lot, but I think it's important. I do too. I think it, you know, you're going in the right direction because I think personalization and kind of rifle shot marketing is what's needed because we all get these, we get so many emails every day. They're cold.

and they say, hello, John, I hope you were doing well today. My name is so-and-so, and we make, you know, they just start all yapping. And they may not even get your name right, which is even worse. Hello, parentheses, first name here. I've seen those. You might have two, you know. Name here. So, yeah, we do a lot of work with customers on getting their reps to do the homework

necessary to find some connection. Yeah. Like John Blair, you know John Sterling, don't you? That's why I'm calling you. He told me, you know, and all of a sudden. you've got something going on and like oh I'll read that that's interesting yeah and that's happened over the years our connections have helped other people maybe get a job or get you know connect with somebody our inter I was I was going back I don't know what made me think about this

John the internship program we have to is really a good way that we you know hire and we'll have someone on the team for you know three months in the summer and you know from that a culture fit is it right for us is it not you know you find out pretty quickly. So I think those internship programs are great too. So how many do you have a summer? Man, 25, 30. And how many would you hire? And in the company? Yeah. I don't know, maybe three or four. Three or four, yeah. Throughout the company, not just in marketing, but throughout the company. So 10%? Maybe more. 10%, yeah. Yeah. What's the best social media platform for scan source? Yeah, we use, we use Instagram more. It's funny. We did it for a while and I think there was

another scan sort that's some some fake account maybe that was. out there. I had to make it official, the official scan source account. I think that in LinkedIn, I feel like is the most that we're putting out there, you know,

from a social standpoint. We haven't got to TikTok yet. You know, is that something for our company? I don't know. Maybe not. But I think looking at those, sometimes you feel like,

oh, is that for us, you know, is that for our demographic? Yeah. Maybe not. But I think, like I said, we have a PR team. Yeah.

Someone that does that focus on that, just over the last couple years, really. And you need to, you know social's big so that's one of the bigger things yeah the two that we use mostly LinkedIn's the biggest one for me yeah for the noob school anyway and they're trying to get me to do more TikTok to get to the you know the kids yep that's what they're Instagram those be the two or Snapchat you know there's that

of course why not how about how about your favorite book right well this is one I showed you earlier I think John the brand gap the brand gap yeah I'm already Newmire. That's it right there. But he's done a few different books. And this is what it says here, how to bridge the distance between business strategy and design. And like I was saying before, being a creative,

sometimes I'm like, oh, not that I can't think strategically because I think I do, but having someone in sales or someone in financing or reaching out to like, what works for your customer? Because sales, they're close. of the customer, they're hearing things. They're, you know, and when they can tell us, okay, can we talk about a promotion or a campaign that would really fit the needs of, you know, this customer, just listening together.

You know, it talks about the left brain and right brain. And, you know, they call it the logic side and the magic side. You know, we can make some magic happen. But if there's not a strategy behind it from a business standpoint and, you know, what are those deliverables? What do we need to act on? You know, is it a campaign with an email and a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a website that we built for them or is it direct mail is it you know what works for that

that particular company you know as a promo and working you know we do a lot of supplier focus co-branded pieces too but um yeah I think it's just thinking a little differently sometimes like Apple said years ago you know we can get stuck in the things like I said email email email email it's like but does something else work better for that particular it's not the same for everybody, which is good, you know. So it's like thinking intentionally, methodically a little more about what you want to do. Spending a little more time up front. Yeah.

So you have the runway to build out a campaign promotion, a program that works better. Yeah. So I think the times have, you know, you feel like, oh, we need this done next week. You know, it's like, man, can we have a little more time at front? Because then the better ideas and thoughts, you know, come from that. I agree. Yeah. We can move so fast sometimes.

What is your favorite band? Man, I know this may be a lot of people, but Journey to me is this. They're good, John. I was going to, so I was supposed to see them in 87 in Rono, Virginia. One of the band members got sick and didn't get to see them. So, I don't know if you know, they're coming to Greenville in February. Really? It's not C. Perry.

And I know some people are like, it's not Journey. But I'm like, well, the band's there. He's iconic. I know that. But me and my wife got tickets. It's on Valentine's Day at the well. It's Roney and Toto. It's like, you know, some good 80s.

Then I found out my wife kind of spoiled a early Christmas present for me. I said something about Brian Adams, you know, in Charlotte. I'm like, I saw Brian Adams at 87 in Rone Oak. So there's something about the late 80s, mid to late 80s, you know, the concerts they were out there. But Dernie's iconic. I mean, everybody knows them. And, you know, there's just something about them. Guys like, you know, all those guys from that era are just tonning it right now because everybody wants to hear them.

They just, what's the choice? There's no good choice. I know. I saw, I saw Arie Speedwagon sticks last year, lover boy together. Great. They're in the 70s. Edwin McCain has been opening for them. Oh.

Traveling with them around the country. He goes, they mentioned him when I was, yeah. It's a real hoot. Our local, local guy, Edwin. Yeah. He says a lot of fun. Yep. No, that's good.

Yeah, I can't beat it. You know, it'd be fun to see him. You know, like said. I wish Steve Perry is there, but got to go with it. What about a favorite movie? I'm an 80s kid, John. I think, to me, like E.T., some of those, you know, I would say Star Wars, Indiana Jones, some of those Spielberg movie, I think he was ahead of his time.

Yeah. You know, just going even back nostalgic with E.T. It's like the 80s, and you see the toys in those shots and all these things that you had. So there's something nostalgic about those that I love. that, you know, it just brings back some good memories overall. And that's why when Stranger Things came out on Netflix, you know, a few years ago, it was the same thing. The music, the sets, you know, the things you saw in there, you're like, that's me as a kid. Are they coming back?

Are those? I think so. I think there's one more season, maybe. Star Wars was probably, my favorite movie is Pulp Fiction, but the second favorite is Star Wars. And it's because, I mean, obviously a great movie, but I think it was 19. 1776? Star Wars is 77. It was 77.

It was, the Empire Strikes Back 80. It was like three years. So I was in Clemson with a good friend of mine and we're just kind of driving around. He goes, hey, you want to go see a movie? I'm like, yeah, sure. So what is it? It goes, it's called Star Wars. I'm like, okay, we'll see it.

I had no idea what I was getting into. No. And so to sit there in this almost deserted Clemson movie theater and all of a sudden, the words start coming up. It's like, boom. It just hit you. What the hell's good, MoMA. You just disappeared for a couple hours. Yeah.

You did. You did. I mean, like I said, Spielberg was, and Lucas, you know, of course, that was his brainchild. But yeah, man, I mean, still, I've got toys in the attic, you know, all my original Star Wars sets and can't get rid of them, you know. I'll give them to my kid, hopefully. When they have kids. Probably. Thanks, Dad. I've got so much of that. But, man, I mean, yeah, hard to get rid of that. And this is what happens, though, because, you know, my kids are all, my kids are all married now. Yeah, and so you're like, and we've downsized, you know, to a smaller place. We've got, you know, the grand old, whatever, the chest of drawers or the bed or whatever. Anybody wants it? They're like, no. I don't want it to my house here.

We're good. We're good. That's one of barbonize projects coming up, John, is go through our attic and just kind of clean house a little bit. Yeah. I mean, these collect stuff. And I'm not a, I'm more of a pack rat. I'm getting less because I'm trying to just, you know, declutter a little bit. Yeah.

But, yeah, some of those things, it's hard to get rid of. You know, they're probably worth something, too. You know, some of these are in good shape. I'd be happy to sell it all because it's in storage now. I don't even know what's in there. You haven't touched it. If it's all gone and someone gives me a little bit of money, fine with me because it could disappear. That's right.

What about favorite word? Oh, my gosh. Man. I hope you like this, John. Succulent. Succulent. Yeah. Wow.

Tell us why. That's a good word. Well, it just. It sounds like what it is. I'll tell you a quick story. We were at a restaurant here in Greenville years ago. My kids were younger. And the manager came around after a meal.

And he's like, hey, how's everything? And your food? And he said, how was your food? I said, it was succulent. You know, and I don't know why. It just came out. And my family all kind of looked at me. He's like, I've never heard anybody say that.

So I'm going to give you a free dessert. Oh, my God. So, yeah. What does it mean, John? You have to look it up. I know juicy is one part of it. It's like a yummy, yummy, tasty, the best of something or whatever. I'm like, it's a good word, right?

I like it. Well, it's the word I'd expect out of a creative genius. That's good. Right. Is there anything you want to promote today? I don't know. Scansource.com? Oh, you want to talk business.

Not for me. Whatever. Non-profit doesn't matter. Yeah, go to scanstores. com. Find out what we do, what we're about. Buy some scanners or something. Yeah.

You know, let us know how we can improve our website. That's good. Scanswurst.com, let John Blair know how you can improve the website. There's a lot. I'm sure. Plus, we've got the Sumo Plus project coming. That's coming up. That's a secret project, John.

But yeah, yeah, let go there. Well, listen, this has been exactly as I expected. It's been great. Always great talking with you. Let's do it again. Thanks for coming out. I'll say no next time. Well, we will not take no for an answer.

That's right. All right. Thank you, bud. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Okay, thank you. All right. Talk to you soon.

All right. Thank you.