Coach Sid Meadows: Hey, everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of the Trend Report! I'm glad you're joining us today for a continuation of a mini series that we've been doing in the first part of 2023, where we're talking about the FUTURE.

Today is no different! We've shared information and insight about the future of the dealer and the future of showrooms… Now, we're going to talk about the future of the independent rep, and I'm really excited to have Kurtis Michela here with us today. Hey, Kurtis, how are you?

 

Kurtis Michela: I'm doing great. I appreciate you having me on. How are you?

 

Sid: Oh, I'm doing great. Thanks, sir. So Kurtis, tell everybody who you are, where you work, and a little bit about what you do. 

 

Kurtis: So my name is Kurtis Michela, and I am the principal of the McHale Group. We are an independent manufacturer’s representative that covers DC, Maryland, and Virginia. 

I am second-generation, so over the last few years have been the process of me taking over the company fully. Basically as of January 1 this year, my dad stepped away into more of a consulting role. So the future is a very timely topic at the moment.

 

Sid: That's great. Well, first off, congratulations on taking over the family business—that's got to be really exciting for you!

 

Kurtis: It is, yes! You know, it is unexpected and certainly not something I dreamed about as a little kid growing up. 

 

Sid: Let's be clear… Nobody dreams about going into the office furniture business when they're a kid growing up, okay?

 

Kurtis: Well, when I was growing up, I wanted to be one of the sports center anchors. So, I'm like halfway there, right? I got my headshot…

 

Sid: That's great. So let's back up for a minute.

You and I met in 2020 in Baltimore when I was helping host a spring breakout event. And I remember you shared with me that you were just coming back into the business or coming into the business. What made you like what was the decision to say, “hey, I want to join the family business”?

 

Kurtis: A lot of it tied into personal stuff that was going on. So I moved out to Los Angeles, chased my college girlfriend out there. She was working in the entertainment industry, and fast forward, it worked out. We are now married. Just now my wife.

 

Sid: It's not where I thought this story was going, by the way… But okay, it was a good chase, then!

 

Kurtis: Yeah, so we met in college, went to college in Maryland, she moved out there.Then after a while, and this was all pre-COVID. But she decided no longer wanted to be there.

We started looking at the house, kids, family, all that kind of stuff, and then wanting to come back to Maryland. So during that time, it created an opportunity where my dad knew he was closer to the end of his career than the beginning—and he said if you're ever going to join, now's a great time to do it. 

I had worked for a few different tech companies. I was doing sales in the tech industry. So, the concept of selling and the fundamentals all transition well. I worked for a startup where I got to be involved in every single part of the business. So it gave me a nice foundation to transition into a small business.

 

Sid: Sure. So you come in and join the business. What year did you actually join your dad?

 

Kurtis: That was 2019.

 

Sid: So just a little bit before you and I actually met. 

When you came into the business, what were your first thoughts about understanding what your dad had been doing? What was the role of an independent rep?  What was it like adjusting to the furniture world?

 

Kurtis: There was a pretty big adjustment, and really the hardest part for me to wrap my head around, and also still to this day—explaining to people outside of the industry is what an independent rep does. It's a little bit specific to our industry and some adjacent ones, but so many companies just sell things directly. Our industry does not. 

So the biggest adjustments for me were understanding that flow and the concept of discounting. I was like, “What is 50 and 10? What is 50 and 20? Why don't you guys just say it's 63% off?” This makes no sense at all…

 

Sid: I actually did research on that very question years ago. We were putting together a training program for people new to our industry. And we did research to try to figure out where 50:20 all that came from, and we were not able to find the root source of it. But I sure would like to meet the person that thought that was a great idea. Because I'm with you. 

Why can't we just say 60 or 63% off? Whatever the discount is?

 

Kurtis: I'll have to make a note to follow about that, because I have asked my dad before he started in the 80s in the industry, and he had a pretty good grasp of what the answer was, but I forgot. 

 

Sid: I would love to know—those who sell office furniture would absolutely love to know. So, you came in Kurtis, and started to learn the industry, a couple of things stood out to you. 

One of the things that I've always appreciated (and I know I talked about it and several of my colleagues talk about) — people coming from outside the industry, and whether they're adjacent industries, or in your case, tech and a startup — you come in, and you see things differently than what we see. 

In my opinion, that allows for industry transformation, for outside eyes to say, “Well, why have you always done it this way?” You know, “why can't we look at what other industries are doing and learn from those?” I think that's really important. 

So I am curious—Did you make a change in the business that was impacted from the past?

 

Kurtis: So the first thing I did when I joined was get us on Salesforce. So a lot of bookkeeping was done in Excel, and through conversations, I was like, “Alright, if we're gonna scale this thing, as we grow, having a CRM is extremely important.” We have since then left Salesforce and moved over to HubSpot, because I think it gave us a little bit more, but that was the first sort of tech change, a CRM.

I've also integrated some video messaging. I’ve tried them all, like Loom and Drift. I have since just started using Vinyard, but that comes from more of a personal level of mine, where I hate emailing. I feel like it's just writing the long formal emails and reading emails, and it's a large part of what I do. So if I have the ability to talk that out, particularly with so much of the buying process happening online and on websites, and MyResource Library and those types of things, and being able to walk people through those is something on video I've started to integrate as well.

 

Sid: Alright, so I want to come back to that, because I have a couple of questions around that. I think it's great that you've started with technology and realized that capturing of data and information about your customers or influencers to specifiers was an important strategy to help fuel the growth of the business. 

In this case, you started with one CRM and then by experience said, “Wait a minute, there's another tool that's better.” And then you upgraded to a more robust tool that fit the business model, which I think is fantastic. 

More people need to think about technology impacts in our industry, and how introducing some form of technology will help your business grow and capture leads. Because really, what Salesforce and HubSpot do as a CRM or a (contact relationship management tool), is about understanding who your customers are—capturing information about them, and then being able to communicate with them at the appropriate times and keeping track of information like opportunities, orders, and things of that nature. 

So, I love that you started that technology. Before we dive into the video message, I want to go back for a second. I'm going to ask you the question, and tell me how you answered it— “What does an independent rep really do?”

 

Kurtis: There's a few different aspects to it. So stealing this line from one of your previous episodes—we have multiple customers, the three-customer approach. 

One of our customers is the actual manufacturer. They are the ones at the end of the day who are paying us. So I think of it, as small to mid market manufacturers outsourcing their sales, customer service, and sometimes marketing to local rep groups around the country. That's the easiest way to grasp what we do. 

Compared to the Herman Miller or Steelcases of a world who have direct reps, we get paid only based on what we sell. But at the same time, we have the freedom to run our business however we please. So that's on the manufacturer side, on the local influence, if you will—the dealers and the A&D community. For them, we’re a source of knowledge, we're a resource, we provide the customer service post-sale, but also just try to be a tool and a partner for them.

 

Sid: Okay, I just want to clarify—three customers being the manufacturer, the dealer, and the end user? I love the way you look at that, because the manufacturer truly are a customer. So three different ones?

 

Kurtis: So ultimately, the end user is someone that I wish we were more involved with. Sometimes I have found that the dealers like to keep a distance between us, and part of it is because if they're talking to me, they're talking to some competitors, or you're talking to other manufacturers. 

But a lot of times, the end user is the other customer as well, because they're the ones who are ultimately using the furniture. So understanding how they're using it, what they're using it for—is it a chair they're sitting in for 30 minutes or for three hours? So making sure that they have the correct product, as opposed to when we're working with the dealer, we start to say things like, “Okay, we'll give you 50 and 20, instead of 50, and 10.” So that's kind of where I view that third customer.

 

Sid: Sure. I think that's a great analogy of them as well. It sounds like you have a really great understanding of who they are and the role that the independent rep plays within them. 

When you think back to the 80s and the 90s, when your dad started in the business, and I would say this probably continued through the mid 2000s—an independent rep was, for the most part, somebody that walked into a dealership, went into the library, updated the binder, the physical binder, and then walked around and talked to people to see how they could help. 

How can I help you? What are you working on?

I remember being at a dealer that happened almost daily that a rep would come in, and they were very welcome in the business. But now that job has changed and evolved, with tools like My Resource Library and other tools, where now we're in this digital transformation where people want things at their fingertips. 

So talk to me for a minute Kurtis, about how you, as a rep group, are evolving to meet that change that's happening in the industry? 

 

Kurtis: A couple of different ways. You're exactly right about not being able to see people. One of my customers, they're a fairly large dealer in the area—and the way they have their office visiting setup is that the sales reps never has to physically be there. The designers come in twice a week, but they get to pick the day. So it's not like they're all there on Wednesday. So, finding a time to get in front of them is extremely challenging. 

I have to figure out ways I can interact with them every day or multiple times a week to stay top of mind. So when a project comes up, my job is to say wonderworker, to SAS, becoming that first thought. We're doing it with a couple ways. 

I mentioned the switch from Salesforce, to HubSpot, and that is basically to be able to stay in their inbox. You don't want to spam people, but since we're business partners, we’re sending them pictures, sending them updates, sending them successful projects that we've done. Anytime our manufacturers are running promotions, we share that. But also creating and integrating other tools so that when I'm not there, or the people on my team are not there, the customers are still able to do it. 

By the time this comes out, we'll actually have our new website up which is going to integrate with My Resource Library. I'm always surprised when I go into dealers, either that they don't know about it, or they know about it and have never used it.  Spending time to show them—”Hey, here is the McKellar group's library in my resource library. If you type in ‘chair’ a picture of every single chair we sell comes up, no matter who the manufacturer is.” Just raising the awareness around that.

 

Sid: Sure. So you highlighted something that I think is important to understand, because I've talked a lot about —I think one of the greatest opportunities, as well as one of the greatest challenges, in our industry, is the evolution of the hybrid workplace and your customer. I've also focused a lot on the design community, and how do we reach the design community? 

Because some of them are working, some of them are not working—but you just highlighted there is a dealer in your market that is fully embracing the hybrid workplace. Salespeople are never required to be in the office, they're your number one or maybe number two customer, right? Then the designers only come in two days a week, and they're your number one or your number two customer as well. So maybe the salespeople and the designers are tied for that number one spot. So the people you need to reach on a daily basis are not in the office when you go to the dealership to visit with them, which makes sales very challenging. 

One of the ways you address doing that is email communication. You got to HubSpot. It's a powerful tool. Now you're doing some email automation, you're sharing images with them, product updates, updates to your website, including your My Resource Library binder. I also noticed on your website, you have a chat bot? Are you going to continue with the chat bot?

 

Kurtis: Yes, the chat bot will continue to be there. So right now it's set up as common incident response. Ultimately, I would like for it to be the Verizon is the first one that comes to mind. It's pops on and it says, “do you have a question about existing customer versus account management? Are you looking for a new product?” Having that automated flow—that's eventually where I would like to be. So if I can't respond to that, it goes to an app on my phone, so I'm able to get it relatively quickly. Creating those types of tools so things can be working for me, even when I'm not working.

 

Sid: So you're leveraging technology, is my biggest takeaway so far, to meet your customer where they are—which is not in the office, they're likely on a device, a computer, a laptop, a smartphone, or an iPad type device, looking for certain things. You're making it easy for them to get access, not just to you, but to information about the products that you sell.

 

Kurtis: Yep. Not just that, one of the things we're gonna have is an interactive lead time guide that will update monthly, because it's changing. You'll be able to come to the website and say, “I need one”—it'll show people where manufacturers are. Okay, hey, someone needs three chairs in three weeks—I can get it here. Versus someone doing a full project. You can see—this one has an eight week lead time. 

Just having that as a resource, because right now people just ask, what's the lead time on this? It also gives me a reason, it gives my team a reason to proactively reach out to one of those customers, which would be the dealer and A&D community. So, every month instead of just sending an email saying, “Hey, how's it going?” I can say, “Hey, the first Friday of the month, here's your lead time guide for February, plus reading content that has some value.”

 

Sid: I absolutely love that—giving them the information that they want, they need, and they're looking for. Not every project can have 6 to 8, 10, 12 lead times—some people need things quickly. You're providing a tool and a resource. I assume that's on the public side of your website. Is that correct? Is not gated? 

That's awesome. I think that's a great tool to share with the dealer community, so they can truly see without having to try to track you or another member of your team down. 

In Episode 108 of the Trend Report which was my conversation with Amanda Schneider, the President and Founder of Thinklab,—we talked about the currency in our industry, and how the currency and the industry had changed pre-pandemic, during, and now coming out of what we've been through. One of the things Amanda talked about, Kurtis, you're actually doing—but I have a question about it, which is Amanda's. 

The way she described it was—prior to 2020, the currency in our industry was relationships, which I would totally agree. During 2020 and 2021, the currency in our industry was information; people were seeking information anywhere they could get it to specify projects, to work with their customers, and things of that nature. Now coming out of this, 2023 and beyond—Amanda's thought process on this is that the currency in our industry is now customer experience. Combined. 

So that's the information combined with relationships, because relationships in our industry will never go away. The first part of that you're addressing really, really well, with giving them technology tools; you're communicating with them. We're gonna dive into this video chat in just a minute, you got a chat bot, you got an interactive lead time guide, you're on My Resource Library. 

So they want to hear from you. Everyone comes up with great tools, but how are you addressing the relationship side and building the relationships with the people that aren't in the office? Can you share some tips or insights around that?

 

Kurtis: It's a challenge. Like selling in any industry, follow-up is extremely important. So when you are presented with those opportunities, do what you say you're going to do, so that they're more likely to come back. In addition to taking every opportunity you can to go to the office, going to events, industry events like IIDA or AIA, interacting with real estate people. 

I have taken an approach on the relationship side where I don't view every independent rep group or every manufacturers rep as the competition, I think particularly on the independent side, it's better if we work together. Now, whether that'sa manufacturer's rep group that is in a different part of the market, so perhaps, there’s a little more transactional selling. Perhaps, they're doing super high-end furniture that's handmade in Italy, or something like that, or it's a flooring rep or ceiling tiles. 

Instead of treating those people as competitors, saying, “We're trying to get in front of the same person—you're selling flooring, I'm selling furniture, let's walk in there together.” And maybe, we can pull on each other's relationships.

 

Sid: I love that I've often talked about as an industry, how we are better together than we are apart. I love the collaboration with higher end or lower end furniture products. I also love it as relates to ancillary products or adjacent products, because bringing a carpet rep or a fabric rep along with you, or them, bringing you along with them, helps everybody. It helps you, it allows them to introduce you to people that you don't know, and vice versa. It also gives you an opportunity to start building stronger relationships inside that dealership or that design firm. So I think it's a win-win. And my term I should probably try to trademark this is, co-opetition.

Let's cooperate together, let's help each other because we are better together. And there's no reason that we have to fight each other for every little piece of the job. I think we should collaborate together. And I think we've got a long way, as an industry, we can move forward as an industry. Honestly, that's what we're doing here, right? 

You're coming together, you're sharing what you're doing, that's transforming your business that's helping your business as a second generation owner, grow, and you're sharing it with our community. 

Hopefully, members of our community get ideas that they could actually go and implement in their business as well, whether they're a dealer, an independent rep, or a manufacturer—because in some sense, Curtis, we're all facing similar challenges. I think if we can solve them together, then we're better together.

 

Kurtis: When I joined the industry, I had business experience from another field. So then I came to my dad, and I learned the way he ran it, everything he did was very relationship based and customer service based. But then, I would look at other rep groups and see that they were doing a really good job with social media or their website or industry events and was very quick just to reach out and say, “hey, I'm new to the industry. I don't know what I don't know… why are you doing this?” Or, “do you mind if I buy you a coffee, and we talk about this thing?” Everyone has been extremely receptive, extremely helpful. 

I encourage people, if you've been in the industry for 15 or 20 years, don't stop trying to learn. One of the things I've leaned on our manufacturers for is anytime I have a conversation with the VP of sales, I'll say, “okay, what's your number one territory?” If they say, it's this part and the country, what are they doing there? What tools are they using? 

Maybe they'll say, “oh, that's actually the principal, there is Michelle at the lions group, you should reach out to her,” and then, I'll talk to her at NeoCon or talk to her over the phone and say, “Why are you doing this? What do you do in this thing?” 

Just exchanging those ideas, because like you said, we're not competition. So if everyone does better, then it's good for everybody.

 

Sid: 100% and I love the idea of reaching out to other people across the country, and the question you're asking your VP of Sales. Regionally, it’s a great question to ask—what are they doing to benchmark success? and then hearing the stories like this again, right? Hearing the story, and then you take away what component of that story that you heard, that works for your business. Whether it's one aspect of it or the entire thing, it doesn't matter, but you take something away from it. 

Then you move your business one step forward, which again, is helping you help your customers and your specifiers. It's helping our industry progress.

I want to go back to the video for a second, and the sending the video to the dealer or the designer. A lot of people have video phobia—they don't want to be on camera. “Gosh, you can see all my wrinkles on camera.” But what was the first catalyst that had you saying, “I want to try this sending video, rather than sending emails”?

 

Kurtis: I had previously used it. So the startup I worked for was a company called Snack Nation, and we basically sold healthy snacks to businesses. So it was b2b, which caught on the off managers, it's straight-up cold calling, and the company grew really quickly. So as employee number 12, when I left, there was 150. 

It gave me the opportunity to go through all the different roles within the sales organization. So we tried out every possible sales technology. We were using a lot of them at the time, so I had experience with it. But it was really when COVID started, and I was asking, “Oh man, how am I gonna stay in touch with these people?” I was able to fall back on… Oh, yeah, I've used drip before. Let me go download that real quick. 

So having some experience with it, and that made it an easier transition.

 

Sid: You're also young, let's be clear. Kurtis is young. Trying a video app was easy for you, because you brought it from the other startup industry you're in, because it was pretty much all cold calling. And if you've ever cold called, you know that that is not the easiest thing in the world to do. 

You started with one application, then you move to Vinyard. So I'm a little bit familiar with video, but tell me what do you get out of using video messaging?

 

Kurtis: An important note on it is that it's rare that I will send just a video to a stranger, because realistically, we have to hope we make it through their spam filter, then also hope that they click it and watch it. So it would be cold call first, an email, then maybe a video. So it's a good tool for someone who at least is going to recognize your name. If you have a relationship with them even better. 

The way I most recently used it was for a project I'm working on for OMCT, one of our CD manufacturers, and they wanted a specific fabric that you can put on a conference chair, but you can't put it on attached share. So with vidyard, you're able to do a little box down in the corner that shows my face, but I did the screen sharing. 

So essentially, it was showing them—you want this fabric? We can do it on this one, it's going to cost X amount of dollars, or for a little bit more you can do a true leather. And this is the cost difference.

I showed the price guide, showed the pictures, the chair, compared the two fabrics. I pulled up my calculator app, typed in the difference, sent it to him. And it was about a 72nd video. 

So that's someone I've worked with before, I wouldn't send something that long to a complete stranger. But knowing that I was able to show them and give them all of those answers in 70 seconds, and that would probably have taken them 10 or 15 minutes, or they just wouldn't have done it. They would go to sit on its website and use their interactive. Part of it is like the David versus Goliath thing—how am I going to fight these giant companies and trying to be creative doing it that way?

 

Sid: So my takeaways here are—know the customer that you're sending the video to. It's not a great idea to do it as a random cold call or to a designer at Gensler that you've never met before. “Hey, I'm Kurtis, you know, the owner of this blah, blah, blah,” right? So, know the person or the audience you're going for, and then provide good succinct information. 

In your case, you're responding so you screenshare and then listen to that. 70 seconds. That's a minute and 10 seconds. Think about that for a second. You provide it, and you send through the app or you send it as a link is embedded in the email. 

 

Kurtis: Email.  So I do just like a thumbnail, still video, or a GIF, like an animated five seconds of that—you have the ability to customize that way they see

 

Sid: It's a video, and they see your face and all that kind of stuff. I'm thinking about a similar conversation I’ve had with somebody. What you just did was save yourself time and them time, because if you jumped on the phone first, if you tried to do an email—you probably would have gone back and forth with four or five different emails, trying to answer the question. You could have gone back and forth, dozen plus emails to accomplish what you did in that 72 second video. 

 

Kurtis: Possibly over 24 hours, absolutely.

 

Sid: Then if the team tried to do it on the phone, it could turn into a 30 minute phone call, then that's great. It certainly facilitates relationship building, but you got a lot to do, that person's got a lot to do. they've got deadlines they're trying to meet. Let's get this done. So you took five minutes to prep, and then you hit the record button. You sent a 72nd video with all the information that client needed, and you solved the problem quickly.

 

Kurtis: I love it. You made a comment about not necessarily sending it to a designer, I've never met a designer I would potentially do that with. But it would be, led by a couple things first—I would try to call them and have a reason calling them say, “hey, maybe I know they're involved in this project.” 

A good example would be, so we're with a company called Fact that makes acoustical ceiling tiles, and I believe one of the Gensler locations around the country did a project they're putting it into their showroom. I don't know which one, but maybe I'd call them and say, “Hey, I'm calling to talk about Fact, one of your other offices, is putting this in your showroom, when some time that I can talk about it?” Start with the voicemail. Then next time in DC, I would maybe drop my card or drop a little pamphlet off and make sure it's on their desk, then I follow up with email. If I still haven't heard anything back, I'd send in the video that says, “hey, you probably saw this on your desk, here's who left it for you.” 

So there is a time to send video to a stranger, and it's extremely valuable tool. But I would do a couple things leading up to that

 

Sid: Perfect. And you just outlined a great sales strategy, honestly, to reach a designer. Leave a voicemail, follow-up with an email, drop by their office with a brochure or a note, and then follow-up with a video email. That's a great strategy, because it is a challenge reaching the dealer, reaching the designer—it is one of the biggest challenges we're facing, because they specify millions of dollars with the furniture. How do we get to them? You just outlined an amazing strategy to try to get in front of them.

 

Kurtis:  And, you know, if they haven't been to the office in a month, and let's say it's an organization where I know they're not going into the office very often—maybe it's a Starbucks gift card or something that you leave behind say, “Hey, I left this gift card on your desk.” I want to give them a reason to go back into the office, but also $10 is still cheaper than a lunch-and-learn for the whole company.

 

Sid: Yes, absolutely. Lunch-and-Learns are becoming rarer and rarer. 

 

Kurtis: Extremely rare, extremely rare. A lot of times I don't even think they're interested in one of our one of the principles of a dealer. I read avery brash LinkedIn post that just said, “The Lunch and Learn is dead. If we can't find it on your website, we're not working with you.” And that was back in the fall a couple of months ago, but that’s when I thought a new website is my number one priority. Responding to what my customer wants and making that my priority.

 

Sid: My biggest takeaway from this conversation is the future of the independent rep is about innovation. It's about innovating the process, it's about trying new things. It's about changing and adapting to the way sales in our industry is changing. It's about changing and adapting to your customer, because your customer, the specifier is getting younger and younger and younger. They don't operate the way that I operate, or the generation above me operates. So innovation is the future or key component of the future of the independent rep.

 

Kurtis: Innovation, for any kind of selling multiple touchpoints. A lot of what I am basing this off of is how I like to buy things. So most recently I did it with my Garmin watch that I'm wearing. 

So I started by typing in Google best fitness tracker, and a couple things come up. I say okay, well let me read the CNET articles. Then it gives me their top 10 based on price points, when I'm doing activities, what type of my phone I have, then I go to YouTube, and I watch three different videos reviewing all these. Now granted, I'm not like spending my entire afternoon doing this, but at night, when I'm going out of bed or laying in bed watching TV, I'll watch that. So it's a multi touchpoint buying process, and what our industry needs to do is adapt to that quickly. 

One of my goals, it's probably more realistically, middle of 2023, is having multiple videos on our YouTube channel where it's little things. Some of it can be for people outside of the industry, but also people in the industry—what are all those levers under the chair? Why are there three of them? Why are there four of them? Most people have no idea (a lot of people in our industry have no idea). So making a three minute four minute video that just says “well, this one does the height, this is a seat slider, this locks the tension”. But now that it's up there on YouTube floating around, it's something that can sell for me when I'm not selling. 

Let's say a dealer takes a chair out, they take a specialty chair out to an end user. Now there's two degrees of separation there. Someone's going to be making a judgment on my product that I don't have as much influence on as I would like. Maybe I can say, “hey, if they have any questions, check out this link on YouTube.” And there I am saying, “Here's what this lever is, here's what this lever is.” It puts a person and some personality into the product. 

So I think people, particularly younger generations—who live and die by what the first five results on Google are— online experience has to be part of the buying process. I think that's where our industry has a long way to catch up to.

 

Sid: Oh, 100% you're spot on. We have a long way to go to catch up with it. You're leading the way, friend, and you're doing things that other people aren’t doing. And I absolutely love the fact that you're going to YouTube and starting to put consumable information out there that people can discover. You're going to direct it back to your website, add more information, and creating content that your dealers can share. 

You can direct people, “Hey, here's a link to the YouTube channel where I describe all the features and functions of this chair.” And in three minutes, they could watch it and understand the chair and ask you for more information rather than you going back and forth. 

 

Kurtis: On youtube, its gaming chairs, or its people that are working at home. It's just someone with a popular YouTube channel bought a new chair from Amazon, and they're reviewing it. You'll occasionally see someone spend maybe seven or $800 on something from Steelcase or Herman Miller, but it's pretty rare. It's usually “these are the three best chairs from IKEA.” That's what's probably going to pop up when you Google best that home chair.

 

Sid: I'm so excited to see what you do with YouTube, because I've said a long time ago that somebody in our industry needs to step up and start putting real office furniture content on YouTube, commercial contract office furniture on YouTube. Are you going to TikTok? Let's start following you on Tiktok. Am I gonna see you dancing with chairs and stuff, Kurtis?

 

Kurtis: No. I think I see the value of it, or the potential value of Tiktok, but it's not on my 2023 priority list. I'll put it that way.

 

Sid: Alright, so I'm just gonna say to any of the listeners, if you happen to see Kurtis on Tiktok, I need you to just comment, “You said no to this… and here you are.” I'm gonna be watching for you!

 

Kurtis: I know. We'll start with baby steps. We'll start with YouTube. So, one of my New Year's resolutions was to have no resolution—just say, “Okay, it's not a year long thing. Let's focus. Let's take this 30 days at a time.” 

So January is the website, February, March, April. Later on in the year as YouTube and the company grows, having some time for Tiktok—but I think for the b2b world, I don't quite see the value there yet. I think the b2c world—absolutely. If I were selling a trendy koozie that went viral, I think Tiktok is a great place for it. But I don't know if someone's going to be buying a phone booth.

 

Sid: So only gotta be instinct. Kurtis, thank you so much for joining me today, for sharing your insights and what you're doing! Congratulations on all that you've accomplished and the amazing ideas that you have about moving the business forward. Congratulations on being second generation!

So it’s your first year, I'm going to be excited to check in with you later in the year, see how things are going and give us an update about what's going on. And I'll be looking for that YouTube channel! By the way, what's the YouTube channel handle? 

 

Kurtis: I do have it set up. There's nothing on there yet. I should notice it'll all be on the website you'll link to it from so it's www.themichelagroup.com, our new site will be up and we'll have a link to the YouTube.

 

Sid: Perfect, we will be sure to link that and your email and all that in the show notes. Again, thank you for being here today. Great conversation. If our community would like to get in touch with you, what is the best way for them to do that?

 

Kurtis: Send me an email, [email protected] 

 

Sid: Be sure if you do reach out to Kurtis directly let him know you heard him here on the Trend Report, and you're reaching out because of this great conversation. Kurtis, thanks again. Go out there and have a great day, everybody. We'll see you again in a couple of weeks. Take care. 

Thanks for joining me today on this episode of the Trend Report Podcast. I'm glad that you're here. And I hope that you got some amazing value out of today's conversation. For more about our podcast and this episode and our other episodes, please visit my website at Sidmeadows.com 

We look forward to seeing you next week and go out there and make today great!