The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Theron Whitney, Vice President and Co-Owner of Xibeo, Custom and Portable Exhibit Solutions

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

Theron Whitney, Vice President and Co-Owner of Xibeo, Custom and Portable Exhibit Solutions Xibeo.com From Xibeo's website description When choosing an Exhibit Builder to assist in your trade show program’s success, be sure to put your trust in a company that is willing to be involved early and often, who will listen to your needs and pain points, who are willing to think outside the booth-building box and take an involved role in your company’s program. At Xibeo, our goal is to move beyond the role of vendor to becoming an invaluable partner in your success. Whether you are a seasoned marketing professional or new to the industry, our staff of trained professionals will work closely with you to ensure you are making all the right decisions for a successful trade show or event. We achieve this by offering: Award winning designs: Our team of exhibit designers reinforces and elevates your brand through a multitude of experiential platforms utilizing state of the art computer technologies and artistic techniques. Full turn-key service: From the initial design and production of your exhibit, to show logistical support, storage and exhibit management and maintenance between shows, Xibeo is there for you every step of the way. Experienced consultants: Our team of seasoned exhibit consultants has on average 20 years or more in the exhibit industry. Custom fabrication: Our on-site team of custom fabricators excels in their quality, creativity and dedication to innovation. Unique rental inventory: You won’t find any rental exhibit catalogs here. Each of our rental exhibits is individually designed and manufactured to meet your specific branding, design, and functional requirements. Interiors: With the same attention to detail, cost effectiveness and quality as our trade show exhibits, we provide the design, manufacture and installation of museum, restaurant and retail environments. Being a successful trade show marketing manager means creating an effective trade show experience, with the greatest return on investment. Xibeo is your partner in attaining that goal.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com.

Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate having you on the show. Listen, we've got an amazing gentleman on the show who's joining us today who's going to educate you about some of the cool things in the world and talk to you about entrepreneurism, how he built his company and everything else that went into it and how maybe you can, you know, some advice on how you can build your own and what it's like to run a company and some of the details that go into managing leadership, et cetera, et cetera. Before you get into that, we need to guilt and shame you with the usual, hey, have you referred the show to your family, friends, or relatives?

If not, now's a good time because if you do it now, you'll get two toasters for the price of one. Sounds like an infomercial, doesn't it? Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss, YouTube.com, Fortress Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Foss, and Chris Foss 1 on the tickety-tockety. Today we're going to be talking with a gentleman who's a co-founder and helped build an amazing company. And we're going to get some insights into his company, what he does, how he built it, and what he built. So there you go. We're going to be talking with theron whitney of the uh company called zbo zbo zbo yeah zbo there we go uh he's the vp and co-owner over there and we're gonna be talking about his uh company and everything that goes into it welcome to the

show theron how are you thanks chris thanks for having me i I'm doing good. Thanks. Thank you. And give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, Xibio.com. So X-I-B-E-O.com. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of the company and what it does. Sure. So Xibio started in 2001, November of 2001. And we specialize in trade show exhibits, event exhibits.

After COVID though, we've kind of broadened our horizons so that we can be more resilient. So we're doing commercial installs, retail fixtures. We're even doing home renovations. So because we have a shop, a cabinet shop and guys experienced in cabinet building we kind of cover a huge huge array of areas for production there you go there you go so I'm looking over your website tons of these big displays that when I go to the events you see the

double deck booths the custom build booths the corporate environments double deck booths, the custom build booths, the corporate environments, the portable booths, video marketing and outdoor rentals and events. All these different things in award-winning custom booth design. Yep. Yeah. So I do think 3D marketing, that's what we do. There you go. Well, there's a lot of that still going on, especially after COVID. We were talking pre-show about how COVID kind of shut down events there for a few years.

So it's probably good to be back on track. Give us a bit of a bio on you. What was your sort of upbringing and what led you to down the road to where you were co-founder of this company? Well, it's a weird story, really. My background is in sales, retail sales. So I started off with electronic sales way back in the day in the late 80s early 90s and got a little burned out of that and I had a friend who turned me on to this a exhibit company that was in Ventura and Ventura California and he said hey these guys are hiring why don't you go check them out so I thought okay sure and enough, when I had the interview, I thought this industry is so amazing. It involves creativity.

You're dealing with face-to-face with other businesses. And you just kind of, you are your own boss. At the time, I was an independent contractor. So I was kind of freelance uh commission only and so i just kind of took to it and really enjoyed the creative aspect of the job and then also the potential earning potential was unlimited uh exhibits uh back then were very expensive so uh a decent living at it uh now not so much prices have come down quite oh really oh yeah yeah what about those big giant things that i see like samsung building yeah those are

always going to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars yeah can't get away from that yeah but so i uh kind of took to it and then over time i really got to enjoy the industry and uh after about seven years of helping other companies make money for themselves um my partner and i decided to do our own thing and it just so happened it was right after 9 11 and uh the industry trade shows were kind of shut down because no one was flying september october of that year and those that's kind of shut down because no one was flying September, October of that year. And that's kind of like the big season for winter trade shows, fall trade shows. Oh, yeah. So we decided that, well, if we're not going to get paid,

we might as well work for ourselves and not get paid. And so began our entrepreneurship. And because we've been in the industry already, we had a lot of clients that just kind of followed us and when they found we were doing our own thing we would get phone calls and referrals and we had a pretty decent following of clients already and then just every year we just had about a 10 to 15 percent growth year of year after year and now here we are 23 years later, just about, and managed to survive the Great Recession pandemic. Started off 9-11.

So we're kind of the little company that could, I guess you could say. There you go. Well, that's awesome, man. And surviving COVID, especially when you're running events, we ran on events too where we went out and did a lot of interviews of CEOs and people at shows. And then the promotional aspect of it, we put the videos on YouTube and then they would be on the podcast. And yeah, just watching all the money just disappear, um, was just, you know, overnight was just extraordinary. You know, we do a lot of review products. So, you know, a lot of our companies that we work

with to review products, uh, you know, they were less like, I don't know what's going on. We're just going to kind of kick back. A lot of the PR agencies seem to get wiped out that we're handling a lot of companies. In fact, I think they've never recovered. I don't think I, I used to get thousands of emails, uh, before shows and now I never recovered, I don't think. I used to get thousands of emails before shows, and now I get, like, I don't know, a small handful of survivors. But it's been really interesting. So tell us about some of the different booths and services you guys provide there with how you do the exhibits.

Well, one of our biggest claims to fame when we started, uh, we did custom rentals and at the time that we started doing that, that wasn't really a thing in our industry, you could rent a booth. It was kit a, B or C usually from the show. Uh, there would be a couple of companies that would offer a portable display for rent, or if you wanted a modular custom thing they would have a extruded aluminum frame system if you've ever been to a show I'm sure you may have seen these like a tinker toy set yeah so we we decided that we wanted to

separate ourselves from a lot of our competition and so we had a lot of modular panel systems and in our in, it's called tension fabric, where you have these walls that are made of whole fabric that goes over a frame and you don't see the frame. So we did a lot of that at first. And then we kind of grew our inventory of portable modular counters, walls, custom ceilings, signs, hanging signs. And so here we here we are you know a couple decades later and we have a 3,500 square foot warehouse full of all these different components that we can pull from like a Lego set and we can custom design and build to whatever a client specs are and the advantages is that custom rentals

are about a third of the cost of purchasing. So customers that want to save money, they don't really want to make a big investment. They just rent from us for their big show that happens once a year. There you go. That's pretty easy. That's pretty easy because, you know, paying out the big expense is more expensive. And so having a modular sort of system makes it work uh what's it like being an entrepreneur and and what was the transition like for you to go from you know working for other people to building this company well i had the advantage of starting in this industry uh kind of being my own boss you know as a 1099 i had to work basically for myself I was freelance so I kind of developed a work ethic to you know always be at work always working the phones always taking care of my clients and then over time

once we started to build up the company there was a lot that I had to learn just trial and error especially like hiring they don't really teach you how to hire people in college and that was an experience of just kind of testing seeing what works interview methods being able to read people and in sales I I need to be able to read people but when you're hiring you really have to be able to kind of weed out the people who aren't really quite telling you the truth to the ones who may have potential. They just don't know yet. Yeah.

The importance of hiring is so important to be redundant. I found that out the hard way in our company, too. You know, we'd hire people and give them one interview. We're like, Hey, you seem like you're great. I'm sure everything on your resume is awesome. We don't even need to check those references that, uh, of your family and your mom, you gave, uh, I'm sure your mom thinks you're great. And, uh, you know, then you hire them and then, you know, you get in, you find out they're

the employees Satan from hell, uh, you know, they're stealing all your goods and, you know you get in you find out they're the employees satan from hell right you know they're stealing all your goods and uh you know lighting the place on fire and you're like this isn't the person we thought he we he thought he was so like it sounds like all my relationships um but uh uh the uh it's kind of like dating uh but but uh but uh so what we found is by establishing really solid rules and guidelines for ourselves on the interviewing process and putting people through three or four different interviews through different people. And, you know, just really spending the time to hire at first and also calling references like that aren't from your mom. Right. And, you know, actually reading the resume and finding out what people are telling.

That made like all the difference. We went from having employees from hell to having really great employees. Yeah, we did the same. Like I said, it took a few years to figure that out. But, you know, we couldn't be a charity case and help somebody out who really needs that job. You know, we couldn't be a charity case and help somebody out who really needs that job. We had to be really particular about who we were bringing on.

But we got it figured out, and we've got a great team now. We had to rehire after COVID because we were shut down for 18 months, basically. So we had to basically restart from scratch and rehire an all-new crew. Oh, really? basically restart from scratch and rehire all new all new crew oh really yeah we had two guys actually that we tried to find jobs during covid just odd jobs to keep them employed and so they wouldn't leave town or or you know get a really solid job somewhere else we just kind of kept them with part-time work until we were able to open up again and we were able to keep our two best guys that work in our shop who have the most experience. And then we just kind of hired around them. And now we've actually got

a better crew than I think we've ever had. There you go. You know, what was it like going through COVID? Because there are times when entrepreneurs go through these things where you have a business model and everything's working, everything's jamming along, you're like, hey, we got this thing, we finally got to dial in, right? Right. And then sometimes markets change, sometimes a competitor comes into the market, sometimes what customers want change,

and sometimes you can hit that point where you've got a full wind in your sales and then one day you're like, hey, where'd the wind go, eh? Is that coming back tomorrow? Because it was here yesterday. But what do we do now? So how did you survive that? What was your process of getting through that and trying to get to the next, you know, trying to get those winds going back through the sails? A lot of creativity.

So we had to do this once before with the, I was going to say depression. It was a little bit of a. It was very depressing. A little depressing and recessing. Yeah. So we kind of had an emergency plan where you, okay, all right. So you've got to check, watch your overhead and see what other alternatives are out there that you can do. But with COVID shutting us down completely, that was the first time that our actual industry was shut down. Like you cannot do the thing that you've been doing for so many years that you've been trained for so um i actually had

to kind of look at what was needed and there was a it was really a shotgun of here let's just try come with some of this some of that what's going to stick so we were building out um uh sneeze guards custom sneeze guards for local companies, hospitals, meat markets, ladies doing nails manicurists. So we kind of did a lot of stuff around locally. And then we tried to work on making clean rooms for COVID patients that would be portable and outdoors. Came up with a great solution for that, but the hospitals ended up doing something that we weren't planning on.

And so, and that happens in business where it's something that you're really trying to work on. It doesn't work out. We'll call it a failure. We'll just call it, you know, plans changed. And so immediately from that rather than get frustrated i looked at what's that what else is out there that people need and i was seeing that in our industry uh they were trying to do these virtual trade shows and ironically we tried

that when we first started in 2001 so So our company model, business model was originally designed to do virtual trade shows and virtual trade show exhibits. And we had already tested the market and knew what customers liked or didn't like about that and we already knew that it wasn't something that was going to work out well. But what we did know is that people still want to see the product, they want to learn about it and back then social media wasn't a big deal as it is now so i i connected with some guys that were out of business or out of work in hollywood they had their own equipment and we put together video marketing that could be

live streamed and uh people we actually had a couple companies one was doing explainer videos kind of showing the product in front of their trade show booth and going through step by step this is how you use our product and this is where you can get it and then we had another one that we did an actual 30 minute infomercial basically in our showroom with cars coming in and doing detailed video shots, b-rolls. We had three different locations that we had drones flying overhead with someone speaking over and music and it was just kind of a real production and that was actually fun for me because it gave me an opportunity to learn about how we can expand what we do for trade shows and do it in a completely different direction um so finding alternatives in your industry kind of a uh going

lateral versus vertical there you go and and that's and that's just sometimes it's just you've got to try and get through it and and figure out a way to do it. And then switching to the virtual side is a whole lot harder because you guys sell hardware, right? Exactly, yeah. Yeah. But then people still need to transact business. People still need to do, I suppose there was outdoor markets maybe you could target. I know a lot of the New York vendors, they took and set up outdoor stands so they could serve people and stuff. You couldn't go into the thing. It was such a crazy time. But you guys got through

it. Now you're on the back end of it. Were you able to rehire all your employees? Just the two that I mentioned earlier that we had in the shop. Everyone else was new. It really gave us an opportunity to do, as I was talking about interviews, it gave me a chance to do the interviews right and really pick and choose who we wanted. And we were able to restaff within the first few months, which was phenomenal for us. And because we had our shop already ready to go, we were able to hit the ground running when trade shows

came back, when other companies were still scrambling, trying to find staff. Yeah. Well, you know, that's a testament to running a good business and stuff. What are some of the other things that you've done that you think have helped you innovate and build a great business? The one thing that I could say to any entrepreneur starting out is developing customer loyalty. And the trick to that, not really trick, but the aspects of that I learned in retail. And taking that idea in retail and expanding it to business to business.

Basically, and let me back up a second. How do you develop company loyalty with your clients? Because sometimes clients can be very fickle and they want the best price possible. And if you don't give them that lowest price, they'll go somewhere else. We're never really the cheapest out there, but we are the hardest working and making sure that the client is a success at their show. And I've always gone with the philosophy that if the client's asking you for something and that you don't provide, you can find out what it is. And that way you're always their go to.

So I have clients that would come to me and say, hey, can you do a photo booth? Like, well, it's not something I normally do. And I would look it up and say, oh, do a photo booth like well it's not something to normally do and i would look it up and say oh yeah i can build something like that sure and then come back to them and say yeah i can do that you know that's how we got into um remodeling retail stores and store fixtures so someone said well i have this little kiosk i need in the store can you do that sure we can do that and then from there they got a referral to someone else. And then pretty soon we're, we're doing restaurant build outs. So, you know, if you take care of the client's needs, and you are always reliable to them, even if you can't provide that thing, and you are upfront with them, say, you know what, I can't do that. But I know this other company that can.

Let me hook you up with them. Your customer is always appreciative of that, and they will come back to you time and time again as long as you've taken care of them with everything else they need. Prime example, I had a client who we had a shipping fiasco. UPS lost a package, and I kind of had to wasn't on us wasn't on the client nobody would take fault but we stepped up paid an extra amount to get a new graphic done for them a new bits of hardware get it to their show so

that they had something for their show you know it cost us maybe a brand but that client was so appreciative and so thankful that, you know, they've come back multiple times and they've said, well, can you help me with this? Can you help me with that? And we have a client for life. There you go. And sometimes that makes all the difference. And some people look at it when those happen, they go, oh God, what a mess this is going

to make. Is it, you know, we're going to spend all this extra money. Is it worth it? But having that client for life makes all the difference. You know, I remember in my business, in the mortgage business, sometimes we would have a, the loan officer didn't listen to the instructions that were given to ask the client what they wanted. The client would say, you know, Hey, I want a 15 year mortgage when they would be taking the application. And because, you know, a lot of people do thirties, you know, the loan officer would just default into what everyone else got. And, uh, sometimes

they'd be like, Hey, I want to pay off this credit card to pay off these things. And for some reason, the loan officers to base it, usually it was, you know, the newer inexperienced guys. Um, and it would happen from time to time. And, you know, they would get to closing and find out that everything was a muck and a mess. And, uh, they would call me and, you know, and would get to closing and find out that everything was a muck and a mess. And they would call me and, you know, and they'd be very upset, rightly so. And then I would have to be like, okay, well, how do we fix this for you? How do we make this work? We take this back in.

We'll get it done. We'll do it for free. We'll refund costs. Sometimes it would cost me several thousands of dollars. I'd just say, look, we're going to refund all the costs for this. We're going to do it for free, and we'll fix it. And they'd be calling me every name in the book, and I'd just be like, look, we're going to fix this for you. We'll get it done.

But they'd still be angry, and rightly so. And I'd just kind of take it, but I'd just be like, yeah, I'll probably never see that business're going to bite it. Cause this guy, you know, our loan officer fucked it up. So, you know, he doesn't get his commission either. And, uh, uh, so we just eat it. And, uh, sometimes it was, you know, everything we give, we just lose money on the whole deal. And I just be like, okay, well, you know, make them happy. Um, let's just move on. And, you know, we, we, we're doing hundreds of loans.

So, you know, if you do one one bad one every quarter or every six months. And what was funny was nine times out of ten, all those people that were calling me names, saying all this hateful stuff to me about how we screwed up, which we did. And they would be back in a year or two or three years to do their mortgage again. And they would always come in to me. It was funny as hell. They would always back in a year or two or three years to do their mortgage again. Yeah. And they would always come in to me. It was funny as hell. They would always come in. They'd be like, hey, man, I remember how great you were.

Chris, you were so awesome, man. You took care of us. They didn't bring about any of the hateful stuff. Right. They were like, we just remember we had such a – they remember it as a really good experience. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes I'd be sitting there because I kind of back in the day i used to hold a lot of garages and i'd just be sitting there going i don't know i'm not gonna do business with the event again because

you said a lot of shit to me and i remember it you know and uh but they and there were some that came back for years they were multi-family investors sometimes so they were doing all their rental properties through us and stuff and they would always come back and just brag about how much they love me and i'd just be like i still remember but you know that was the beauty of it and we made you know sometimes 10 times whatever it was that we lost on that initial deal that got it got got mugged up. Yeah. So that's the power of customer service and everything else. Yeah. So as we go out, give us your final thoughts,

pitch us one more time on your company, what you guys have to offer people in the space. This goes, goes on LinkedIn where LinkedIn, you know, other people are doing a lot of business. Give us all that details as we go out. Sure.

So we, we make trade shows as easy as possible kind of a one-stop shop so no matter what a customer needs um we will be able to take care of it and on top of that not only will we design an exhibit we could rent the exhibit to them help them with graphics graphic design we also help coordinate shipping the labor at shows, fill out forms. So essentially all a customer has to do is say, I need a booth. I need to go to this show on this day and we'll take care of it from there. And they just show up at the show.

There you go. There you go. Well, that's the best way to do it. Thank you very much, Theron, for coming on. Give us your.coms one more time as we go out. Sure. That's Zibio.com, X-I-B-E-O.com. There you go.

And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Foss, YouTube.com, Fortress Chris Foss, and Chris Foss1 on TikTok. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

And we'll see you guys next time. Probably should have gave a plug out of the...