 Even before you can bring a venture fully to market, trade shows are a way you can gain investors, connect with consumers, engage the potential impact your product or service may have. Tom Burton, a Shark Tank winner, is DAV Patriot Boot Camp's most famous alumnus. And though there are many topics he could cover as his company, Grip Mat, has gone through the roof, when I asked Tom what he wanted to talk about, he was interested in topics that he felt could best help his fellow veteran entrepreneurs and folks in the Patriot Boot Camp community. Tom felt trade shows gave him an incredible advantage early on and he should know he's participated in more than 100 of them. But they're expensive and you can leave a lot on the table or unnecessarily waste your funds if you're not careful. I'll introduce you to then tech Sergeant Tom Burton on Shark Tank before CEO Tom Burton introduces himself from sunny Spain. Hello, sharks, my name is Tom Burton. I'm an F-16 weapons mechanic in the United States Air Force and I encounter a problem time and time again. When working on top of the aircraft, I'm constantly trying to keep my tools close and my hardware organized. Seems like a simple enough task, but on the aircraft's slick surface, it is nearly impossible. Mechanics are using anything from rags, muffin trays, and my favorite, urinal cakes. Yes, to solve this problem, I introduce to you the Grip Mat. It's a flexible, non-slip tool tray ensuring that your tools and hardware stay in place on any surface. Let me show you how it works. It's small equipped with six compartments to keep your hardware organized. The medium has two small compartments and an open field for hand tools. And then the large has four small compartments and open field for hand tools and then handles so you can easily move your work station. Although the Grip Mat was born into aviation, it can be found useful in every field. Building rockets, assembling computers, making jewelry, or tinkering underneath the hood of your car. So, Sharks, one question remains. Who here is ready to get a grip? A Grip Mat, that is. Do you have samples for us to look at? Yes. And thank you for your service. Thank you. Absolutely. So, this is the medium. The medium is actually the most popular size with the Virgin Galactic in mind and with our airlines in mind. Yeah, this would be tremendous. Silicon goes to 500 degrees. Correct. Let's say on an engine or if it's hot, that's not gonna melt. Silicon goes to 500 degrees. You're smart, ladies. I think there's something else here. I think this is good for infants. I think this is good for... For infants? Living with dexterity issues or even in hospital beds, right? You know, the tray can easily slide off. So, are there other areas that you've tried to sell at all? I had a lot of interest in like gunsmiths. Medical was a really big one. So, how much have you invested so far? So, personal money, about $40,000 and then also raised about $150,000 through grants and doing business competitions. You are incredible, my friend. My mission here is to get as many sharks to take a bite out of grip mat today as possible. What would you offer for two or three sharks? Depends on the sharks. What else would sharks do? Would you do 30% at $360,000? What? 30%? One, two, three for $360,000? I'll do that. I would do that. Deal. Wow, that's pretty cool. Here's my gift. Thank you, sir. Great, I'll give you a hug. Thank you. See you. That was awesome. How's it going, guys? My name's Tom Burden. So, that was me. If you're wondering who this Viking slash hippie guy is, that was a couple of years ago. So, I've been traveling like my hair grow out since COVID. So, yeah, when I would say with startups with business, one of my superpowers, I would say, I said probably one of my most unique superpowers is trade shows. And I've, like Dan said, I've done over 100 of them. And I've, my first trade show, I did everything wrong. And towards the end, I was, you know, before, my last trade show was actually just before COVID. And, yeah, it's basically night and day. So, I'm super excited to show you guys, you know, all the tips I have to, you know, have an awesome trade show. Let me share my screen. Cool. So, I don't know if you can see me and my screen, but yeah, so, Grip Mat, that's the Grip Mat on the nose of an aircraft. That's actually, that aircraft is actually the owner of Victoria's Secrets. I was living in Columbus, Ohio and that's the headquarters there. And I knew the mechanics. So, we ended up doing a photo shoot with them. So, I'm Tom Burden, the CEO. Let me, there we go. That is me and the Air Force. Specifically, I was in the Air National Guard. So, for any military members here, if you've ever heard of the Air Force being the chair force, the Air National Guard is more like the massage chair force. It's like the most cushy thing that you could do. So, this is me slacking. As you can see, the missile is like lower on my end. So, yeah, this is the Grip Mat. It's flexible. Also, it's like super grippy. This is what I call a party trick, which we'll get into the party trick later for a trade show booth. And then this is the Grip Mat underneath the hood of a car. So, what we realized, you know, initially when I was on Shark Tank and we were initially focused on aviation, and then we grew into a lot of different markets. Automotive was a really big one. So, me again on Shark Tank. This is my very first trade show booth. If you can see up in the top right corner, this is the GI, the name was Gryption Industries. Basically, I had three little banners and I like put them together and I was like trying to make a bigger picture. And the Grip Mat's originally were green. Everything was green. So, overview. So, I'm gonna talk about some pointers, trade show styles, saving money, making money and the display. So, the pointers. When you're considering doing a trade show, you know what, you'll figure out what works best for you, is that two styles is cash and carry, which means you can have inventory there and then you can sell it out of the booth. And then, oh, sorry, it's supposed to be cash and carry versus networking show. So, most shows you are not allowed to sell out of the booth. I'll show you, I'll talk about a way to get around that. The shows are just for networking and you're supposed to do the business after the show. Vegas versus the world, what that means is that about, at least, I would say at least 50% of all the trade shows in the United States are in Las Vegas. I guess like I used to have a storage unit in Vegas. You can have a storage unit for about $300, $400. So, if you're going there repeatedly, it's nice to have a storage unit, $300 to $400 for the entire year. So, instead of shipping things back and forth, I would just leave things there. Also, you know, trade shows can be very strict. They are always the strictest in Vegas. I would go to a trade show in Tennessee and I knew I could get away with a lot of things because they weren't as strict as Vegas. What I'm talking about getting away with is for example, I would never, I never had a budget for marketing at a trade show. So, I would take flyers and I'd put them on top of all of the urinals. And at Vegas, I typically get in trouble for that within the first few hours. Anywhere else, they could be up for days. GSA and Freeman, I thought they were named Freedmen, but I was looking online. I think they rebranded to Freeman. These two companies rebrand a lot. So, these were my enemy. I cannot stand these two companies. So, what happens is that trade shows, these are two unions that almost every trade show hall works with that they manage the process of your entire booth. So, if that's the setup, if that's shipping inventory, if that's getting electric, these guys will, these two companies handle them. I have some tips on how to work with them as minimal as possible because they're unions, they have very high fees and they could, I've got miscellaneous bills for thousands of dollars from both. Plug in a cell. So, at my booth, I did not want electric and I had an intern plug in his cell phone and they sent me a bill for, I think, $260 because I was going to have electric for the next two days. And then giveaways. Giveaways are tough. So, what I always talk about with giveaways at the booth, people always want to hand things out. The key thing with a giveaway is relevance. So, the thing is I see a lot of people have something like a pen or some type of random like catchy giveaway. If you're putting your name on a pen, it is not worth it. Like, I honestly wouldn't even hand out flyers. I would say the easiest thing and best thing is our stickers if you're just, if you don't have a good giveaway. Because the hard part with giveaways is being relevant and also inexpensive. My best giveaway was a 10 millimeter socket. So, why that was relevant is that in the automotive industry, about 80% of all the cars are assembled and disassembled with a 10 millimeter socket. And a lot of people will lose them. They're known online for being lost. So, to buy a 10 millimeter socket is between $3 and $26. I found if I bought 5,000 of them, I could buy them for 24 cents. So, having a 10 millimeter socket was a great giveaway at an automotive show. And I had people Uber from one trade show hall to another trade show hall walk a quarter mile to my booth because one of his friends took a picture of the 10 millimeter socket and thought it was funny. And so, that's the kind of things that you want with a 10 millimeter, with your giveaway is get people to remember you and use that little giveaway. So, there's three styles that I do for trade shows. There's have a booth, what I call hack a booth and walk the floor. I would say to toot my own horn for number one and two. I think I haven't seen anyone that does better than me at trade shows. For number three, I have a good friend named Tom Prizalski. He kills it with walking the floor. So, pros and cons. So, pros for walking the floor, one, it's the cheapest, it's the fastest. If it shows three days long, you could go walk the floor in a day or half a day. Now, it's the cheapest because at the most all you're paying for is a ticket to get in. Tom Prizalski would always ask me for extra passes and I always hide them and he'd buy me dinner or something. Yeah, you can leave when you want with these, when you have a booth and they're very strict on when you can come and when you can go. It's very nice to scope out the event. Sometimes I would do this if, well, two reasons why I would do this. I was talking before about the HeliExpo. This is a expo for everything in the helicopter industry. I was curious about the event, never been there. Also, I didn't have time to schedule it. By the time I decided I wanted to go, it was a few weeks before the show and I couldn't have a booth there. So, it was very, very short time you can schedule to have a booth, there's a lot of, it's pretty intensive with scheduling. So yeah, I put in there minimal planning. The cons are lowest potential for sales slash connections. Sales are much harder. So, and then least amount of eyeballs. So when I say sales are much harder, like Tom Brzezowski, he had a software development company. So he would go to these shows. So he was specifically in the aviation industry and so he's designing software products in the aviation industry. So what he would do is he had, he would look at every single booth at the show and then he would see if it's a, he would print out a list of every single booth in order of how he could walk it and then he would highlight the ones who, he would highlight them and have a priority system of like, I think it was one, two and three of like, how good of a fit it would be for his company to work with them. So the entire year he would be at one or he would set up at one or two trade shows but he would walk the floor almost weekly or every other week. So he was covering a lot of trade shows. Now the thing is I was never able to really like make the walk, like walking the floor as profitable especially not as much as Tom Brzezowski but it can be effective depending on your business model. So having a booth. So this is the most potential for eyeballs. People can find you in the directory. Why that's important is, sometimes you're at a trade show and they're so big for example, the biggest one that we would set up at is called SEMA. It's the world's largest automotive show. I think it's the second or third largest trade show in the world. So it is impossible to cover everything. So at that show it's so difficult to cover everything. Some people are just like trying to search you or sometimes you can have like people search like tool accountability and then grip that would pop up or maintenance or something like that. So the directory can be pretty effective. A big one is you get access to new product exposure opportunities and press so there's almost every show there'll be like the new product haul that is very good to be in. A lot of times they'll have like competitions or like at SEMA 2017 we won best new product and then we got like a few global media awards where they'll have like different categories and they'll pick the best product within a certain category. Cons, they're very expensive to have your own booth typically costs about $5,000 to $15,000. This is everything included. Flights, places to stay, food, booth. The most expensive one time cost is the booth. That's typically like two and a half to four and a half thousand dollars. Yeah, intensive planning and scheduling. That was always my downfall because I was always signing up for the trade show last minute. So sometimes it's hard for me to like get fully registered and everything. You need the most people for this one. So the cardinal sin is to have no one at your booth. You always have to have someone at your booth and you're on your feet a lot and it can get pretty exhausting. Hack a booth. So at the top I got giveaway or speech. So what I mean by that? So I used to have like my most minimal display. I would, so I had some I would call trade show friends. They were going to military contract shows that I didn't want to pay for because they were extra pricey. And also I didn't know if I would be able to make it profitable. So I would go to the show with them and the thing is you are not allowed to split a booth with another company. But this is how we would get around that role is that they were a company that was they were trying to get officers to sign up for something. I can't remember what it was. I think it was something with like banking and they would use the grip mat as a giveaway. So I'd have a quick little display to show off the grip mat. And so the thing is if someone were to come up to us and say, hey, are you guys splitting a booth? They would just say, no, this is just the grip mat. We're just doing a giveaway to try to get more people to sign up. So we're just giving away a grip mat. Now another like killer opportunity and like potentially being a speaker can give you like more eyeballs and like a better image than having a booth. Like being a speaker at an event is huge. If you can, sometimes being a speaker you can actually negotiate a free booth. Whenever I've done that, they would never give me a free booth but they give me some type of free space. It would be like, it would wanna be like the size of an entire booth. But actually there's a few times they give me a free booth but if you can be a speaker, that's always killer. So like cons to this, you know, you're not in a directory. You don't get the new product access and also aren't typically, you don't really get much press there. Now, if you're a speaker, sometimes you can get, you can get around that where you'll get the press. Okay, so I'm gonna go over two things. Save money and making money. Okay, so what will happen is specifically hotels. Okay, for lodging, there's kind of like three things with lodging. There's one, a lot of times these trade shows will be in a hotel. Sometimes they will have a hotel discount if you have a booth. Now, sometimes what I've noticed is that the, it's still pretty expensive. I always go and get an Airbnb. That's the cheapest way, especially in Vegas because like the Vegas strip, it could easily be $150, $300 a night where if you go off the Vegas strip, I could get a four bedroom in place for $300 for the week. So when you got a team, that's pretty effective. Now, the hotels, what they'll pitch is like, well, you know, everyone's in the same hotel so there's like some after hours networking. That is true, but I mean, everyone's going to the trade show, going to the after parties, going to sleep. So as long as you're at this trade show, you're at the after parties, you're pretty set. Now, this is a trap I fell in the first time I got a booth. When you register for a trade show, they will sell your information when you sign up for the trade show. And there'll be people calling you, trying to sell you anything. So sometimes, so I actually, someone called me and said, hey, are you registered for the hotel, for a hotel for the trade show? I said, no, I was like, sure you're about to try to figure that out. I'm glad that you called. So they sold me on a hotel that was not in the same building as the event. So this was like the worst case scenario. So I was like, I'd have to get a taxi or Uber to the trade show. If there was any additional after hours networking, I missed out on that. And I think it was about the same price or more than having the hotel in the show. But the thing is, they don't announce, they've tried to be kind of sneaky with who they are. They will, I would say, are you with the trade show? They're like, oh yeah, we work with the trade show, but they're not a part of the trade show. So they can't sell the hotel that you're staying at. So another thing is- Hold on one second, okay? Hold on one second. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I don't know if they're talking to me. So number two, food. All the time at these trade shows, there are people, there's companies that are doing after parties or lunch specials. And I would say seven times out of 10, I would never go buy food. I would just go find an after party that had, typically the after parties are open bar, open buffet. So that was always pretty nice. Now the thing is, I have seen some people, they're like, you can pre-register to like get meals delivered for lunch. Do not do that, because it's always way too expensive. I always just go get a light salad or I'll get like six light salads for the whole team and then we'll eat more at the after parties. Electric. So they will, at your booth, they will charge you for electric. So basically you're paying $4,000 for a booth and then they'll say, hey, do you want electric at your booth? And you're like, how am I gonna charge my phone? Yep, you need electric. Electric can be between $150 to $350. So what I would do is I would get extra extension cords and extra power strips. And I would just go to my booth a little early and my neighbor's booth, I would just use their outlets because I knew that they were already paying for the electric and I would just load it up with power strips. I would never get in a complaint unless if the neighbor did not have a place to plug in their extension cord or phone or whatever. So that's why I would always bring tons of, I'd always bring like at least two or three power strips because so then everyone has a place to plug in. Now the thing is, yeah, it's only maybe $150 to $300 for electric but like I said, I've done over a hundred trade shows. So that adds up very quick. Trash can, they will ask you if you wanna trash can at your booth. It will literally be $150 for a cardboard trash can. It's literally flat and then you like open it up and then you put a bag in there, that's $150. Do not do that at your Airbnb or your hotel. Take the trash can from there and bring it to the booth. I've done that countless times, flooring. Another thing is to have flooring at your booth could be, I've seen it to be between $300 and $500 where what I would do is those workout flooring mats that kind of fit together like a puzzle. I would buy that off of Amazon and I would actually do like a checkered pattern that looks more like a garage which would fit really well with like the grip mat style. So to have Amazon ship that was like $90. Afterwards, I would usually like donate it to like one of the mechanics or something. So yeah, at the top, I'd have save money, don't buy anything. So whenever they ask if you want something, don't ever buy it. If it's tables, chairs, anything, do not do it because it's always, whatever it is, you could buy it and throw it away at a cheaper price than rent it which usually I would buy it either donate it which I've heard some people buying cables and chairs and then they'll donate it to Goodwill and then they can, they'll use it as a tax right off. So that's just like more cost effective way. So number six, I got two checks, two wheels, military special. Okay, this is what that means. The same for even if you have a box that has four wheels, you have to pay a union worker to move it. And when you pay a union worker, there's typically a minimum of like two to four hours and a minimum of two union workers. So potentially you could be paying for eight hours at a $60 rate just for them to pull in your container. So what I would do is I got these, I have pictures of them later, these containers that would basically hold my stuff and then they would transform into a table and they had two wheels. So I would have two check luggage and I would just wheel those in myself and not have to pay anyone. Now the thing is I got on their military special. If you are in the military, you can get basically two free check luggage and I think every single airlines. So I would use my military IB, I've used it, I've probably saved at least $30,000 by constantly using my two free checks because I would get them at exactly 50 pounds. I can pick up a bag now and know if it's within a pound of overweight. So, because I've just done it so many times. A tip with that is that they don't weigh your carry-on. So if you have anything that's heavy and small, typically it's like flyers, put that in your backpack, don't put that in a check. And then number seven, if the trade show hall is in a hotel, a pro tip is if you have a lot of stuff that you're moving in, just use the luggage rack at the hotel. It works like a dream. Okay, making money. Okay, this is number one, the QR code trick. This is one of the best breakthroughs I've had at a trade show booth. So when I was talking about two kinds of trade shows, there's cash and carry and then there is the networking ones. The networking ones you cannot sell out of the booth. Specifically it's cash and carry. You can't take money and give them a product. So what I would do is on the back of everyone's name tag for the Grimats team, I would put a QR code that they could scan and would take them to our Amazon page. And we would give them a 25% off out of the booth. And so basically like another issue is when these people go to a trade show, they got check luggage too and they packed it, they can't really take things back because they'll go over the 50 pounds. So with this Amazon trick, it shifts it directly to them. And if you do, we would do the 25% off to do a pressure sale out of the booth. And when we did that at SEMA, two big things happened. One, that gave us an additional $32,000 in sales in three days that we would not have captured at that sale or at that trade show. And also when we went into SEMA, our Amazon listing and automotive department of Amazon was like, I think it was nine, no, no, no. I think it was, we were in the top 200,000. So it was actually like way low on the list. After the show, we were in the top 900. So we had so many searches, like I had someone on my team, he had it on the back of his phone, he put his phone out, he'd have five people searching, like scanning this QR code and take them there. And then basically we'd have a one-click purchase. So Amazon is like ranking you based off of searches, purchases and reviews. And we were just like killing it on the first two. And then the reviews came later. And then also what happened was that pushed our ranking up just before Christmas. And then like the entire Christmas season, we just were killing on Amazon. Shorter POs from the booth. So when you're selling, so when you get someone who wants to do a B2B deal, normally we would have like, let's say you gotta buy a hundred grit mats to get a distributor discount. We would shorten it down to one case. So basically if you buy eight, you can get the lower price point. So that was a way that we could get people to commit and to buy right out of the booth. If you ever get, number three is, if you ever get the opportunity to get a corner booth, always take it, always take it. A 10 by 10 quarter booth. So typically a booth size is 10 feet by 10 feet. 10 by 10 corner booth will be a 10 by 20, like in the middle, like every single time. Badge scanner. So when I told you don't buy anything at the shows, this is literally the one thing I would buy is the badge scanner. So everyone has a name tag and you can scan their name tag with your phone and have all their information, their email, their phone number, everything. So the thing is, what I know, now the thing is this could be, I think I'd normally pay about $500 for this. So this is very expensive, but this is a very, this is such a good email list because one, it's a warm list. And two, like this is your core demographic, is your core demographic and it's a warm list. As in when I say warm, it's like, they've all seen you, they've talked to you, they know you. So having that email list is very good. Now, what I notice with that, the hard thing is you have people at the booth who are talking and showing off the product. If you can just have one person that's designated to scanning badges, who's a little ruthless at it, that's the best. That was my mom. She would come to the show and she was kind of like, she's a little nervous about selling. She's like, I'll just stand. And I'd be talking to someone and my mom would just like reach around me and like scan their badge and then just disappear. And people were like, what was that? I was like, that's my mom, she's, you know, wild. Now the thing is, my mom would, I have never seen anyone hustle the badge scans more than my mom. I mean, she, I think she was getting about seven to 800 stands a day. So, I mean, at a trade show, you get an email list of 3,000 people. So a super specific hot email list for 3,000 people, like that's $500, you can get your money back pretty quick. So the booth party trick, I was talking about this before. I was on a plane earlier today, I was thinking about this. So what we would do, you guys saw before is we, I'll go back to it. We would drop a, it would actually use a stool. Because I'd like to sit on a stool. So this is a little table, but we would pick up the stool with a small. Now the thing is our party trick was with the grip mat. That was key. Having the party trick, a part of your company is super key where the thing is, I've seen a lot of companies have party tricks, but it wasn't with a company. I've seen the wildest things. One of them was at an aviation show. It was like techno river dancing with strobe lights. I have no idea what the company was. And that's the thing is people aren't gonna remember you or your company, they're gonna remember that party trick at the booth. And so the thing is I just remember techno river dancing. There was another one that they would pay the gold medalists of the women's ping pong to go to their booth and then you can play her in ping pong. And then people would just kind of crowd around and watch everyone getting killed by this girl. She was real small and she would just kill it. But I mean, that was fun and exciting. But the thing is I still don't know who those companies are. And one guy had this like little ball maze. He put the ball in and then it goes down and then if it goes the right way, you like win a bottle of liquor. Thing is this is an aviation company. He doesn't, you know, he's not selling liquor. So I actually wanted one about a liquor because we have so many trades, so many of the same trade shows, I would try it every time. But yeah, so when you have your party trick, make sure it's just relevant to your business. After parties, people always ask me are after parties really worth it? Yes, after parties are totally worth it. The thing is make sure you are under control. Like two things, these trade shows can be very draining. Like being an extrovert is very, like even the, I'm very extroverted, even this can wear me down, but going to after parties are important. You can like really connect with these people on a personal level. Now the thing is you can do different things with after parties. For example, with SEMA, I know, if anyone knows about Vegas, there's the main strip and then at the top of it is the old Vegas. So I knew what day everyone would go to old Vegas. So I would have people on my team wear giant grip mat flags and there'd be three of us and we would just walk down main Vegas or old Vegas and people would see us. And the next day they'd be like, hey dude, I saw you at old Vegas, that was crazy. So there's just like knowing what they're doing after the show is pretty important. And also that's where you can get free booze and food. So some of the wildest parties I've been to were after parties from trade shows. This is very key, okay? And at the trade show, you could talk to thousands of people in a day and you will, there'll be so many amazing opportunities that you'll forget about by the time you leave or the end of the show. So what I would do is, someone wants to be a distributor. I would, as I'm talking with them, I would, they'd say, hey, here's my card, send me an email. I would say, I'll send you one right now. I'd take a selfie with them and then I would just reference whatever we talked about in the email and send it right away. Ideally, I would always try to text them because I knew people would open their texts more than email. And yeah, because the thing is, what's gonna happen is, especially if you're doing after parties, you're gonna go to the booth, you're gonna be there at least eight hours. After the booth, you're gonna have an after party. That could be three hours. You're gonna go to, you're not gonna wanna do any emails by the time you get back, you're gonna be tired. And then you're gonna wake up, you're gonna do it again for at least three to four days. So then the only time that you're really gonna have time to do it is potentially a day or two after the trade show. And at that point, you've already forgot 90% of the people that you're not with. Okay, so I'm gonna go over the display real quick. So there's three products in this. There's like these little pop-ups. That is, there's two. There's one on the left and one on the right. Now this one on the left, I like a lot because it's lightweight and it's like a little star thing that will break down. So you basically just have like five little sticks. Now on the right side is, it's a similar display, but it like unrolls and then spring loaded and it'll roll back in. Do not get the one on the right. They're heavy, they're more expensive. Also people think, well, it's easier. It's not easier because when you're, when you unrolling it is nice, but when you roll it back in, a lot of times it'll like, it'll get crooked and it could tear the edges. It happens, I think I've had like five of those and I've torn every single one. Now in the middle here, it says propel. This is the case that I was talking about that has wheels. It's kind of hard. Hey, Tom, we broke up just a little bit there. Can you maybe start over with the case? Okay. Hey, Tom, we're still struggling a little bit with connection, maybe refresh real quick. Tom, when you talk, it sounds like a Morocco, ruckus thing that goes in the background when you're talking. That's all right. This thing's been so good. I want you back and I'm getting my whole team involved in this one. This is great. Maybe refresh your network real quick, Tom. And I mean, before I think we were looking at, you were showing a case that had two wheels as opposed to four. We'll get Tom right back here in a second. Yeah, maybe even worst case, if he dumps out and comes back on that might give him something new. Yeah, sounds better. Can you hear me from here? Great, thanks. Okay, so I'm using the audio for my phone. Okay, let me know if you guys can hear me, okay. That sounds much better. Much better, okay, great. Okay, so with the red straps, so this is like the case in travel mode. And then you can transform it into basically a table. So if you see this propel with, it has like this tight skirt that goes around it. It's a little difficult to assemble honestly, but it looks very nice at a booth. So if you look over here, so this is, we got three pictures. I think the one in the top right, you can see the table the best. So it's like a tight elastic skirt that you can have your logo or whatever you want on there. And then I made this really slim curve display to have the grip mats on there. And then also in that case, typically they sell it with a back banner. So if you see like that aircraft picture with the grip mat in the top right corner. So with that back banner, with that back banner, let me see if I can go back. With that back banner and like two of these little displays on the left. And then this curved white display, I think two curved white displays, two little banners, the big back banner, all that would fit inside that rolling case. And I think that was about 43 to 45 pounds. So sometimes I would throw some grip mats in there or some tools. If you can see in the top right corner in the background, I have a TV where if it was in Vegas, we would just leave one in the storage unit or I mean, I've probably done it 20 times if you buy a TV from Walmart, then you go return it after the show. If you do that, make sure you take off your trade show badge. Don't look like you just came from a trade show. Like don't be tucked in polo with khakis on. Yeah, try to make it look like you didn't come from the trade show. So this is everything that I have. Yeah, this is my last slide. So that was like a lot of information, but yeah, that's my take on trade shows. Thank you so much, Tom. I know we're gonna have a lot of questions. One question I have right off the bat is how important was it for you to have like an elevator pitch or have a script kind of and how you engage people through your shows? Yeah, so can you still hear me? We going on here? Okay, so elevator pitch is very important. What I'm trying to show you right now is the most effective thing that I could do for an elevator pitch is that on the background of my cell phone, I would have a picture of my product and use. So you can't see it right now because I'm using it to talk through my phone, but this, let me see if I can... Nope, but this is not doing too well. And then I have a second picture back here for my home screen. So why that's so effective is that I can get, I can show you a picture within under two seconds. And I've seen it a million times where people would be like, oh yeah, I got this invention idea and they're like scrolling through their photos and they just like, I've literally seen it in an elevator. I was like laughing at, I was like laughing in my head because I was at the Thomas Edison Awards in New York and I was in an elevator and I saw, I listened to this guy say, what do you do? And this guy's like, oh, I got this product. The guy had to leave because he was at his floor. So yeah, elevator pitch is super important. And also Dan, what I was gonna put in the slides were what's so amazing about this is when you're the founder at your booths, you are refining everything thousands of times. Like there's never a situation where you can interact with a thousand different people and practice your pitch in a thousand different ways. So when you do that, you know how people react in so many different ways. Why this was so important for me doing so many different trade shows. This is how I knew when basically when we went from online, we went focused on online just before the pandemic and what kept us alive even through the pandemic is I just knew how they would react. I knew that the number one buyer of GRIPMAT was women. And because I've seen it a million times where I'd be at a show where a husband and wife would walk by the booth and the husband doesn't even know what's happening. He's like, what are you guys doing selling tools? And she'd be like, no, this is to help you when you lose your tools. And then they'd be like, I don't ever lose my tools. And then she'll give them a look and be like, no, I remember that one time that you came into dinner mad because you lost your ranch and whoever's car. And then because I knew that we were like, hey, let's let's test this out online. And just being in person so many times you get really a different understanding. That's great. Richard Contreras has a question. Richard, do you wanna come on? Yeah, yeah. Hey, I'm not much man. I'm also like a F-16 and F-15 crew chief and I've actually used your product on a fly line and it's great. Nice. So my question was what's one of the hardest parts about like selling to like the military? Everything. So right away is that the difficult part is having it, it's called Barry compliant where it has to be at least 51% made in the United States. So the hard part is that if you're selling commercial and then you typically that's a product made overseas. Hold on, are you guys got me? Yeah, we got you Tom. Okay, okay. So yeah, a hard part is like when you're selling commercial typically you're trying to get more cost effective product. So you're making the product offshore and then when you sell it to the military you need it very compliant so it has to also be made in the United States. So that's a big hurdle that a lot of people have troubles with. I mean, another thing is the networking. Actually, honestly, the way things are going with online I'm pivoting the company to focus on military. So I've probably had like 5% of our sales be from military but I think there's some opportunity there. Great. Hey, Tom, I have a question. You know, your round trade shows and you meet so many different people, different audiences different things that they can do for you. What do you do when you're kind of being besieged by time vampires, has that ever happened to you? Yeah, we were talking about this a little bit before my trade show friend of mine he calls it break the wrist and walk away. Yeah, that's always a good practice. But yeah, I guess the first step is just noticing those people and you're like this guy's not gonna buy. And then so I would say the worst time vampires for me I mean, you guys saw the Shark Tank where I looked very young. I would go to these aviation shows where like I'm younger than the people's interns that are there. And so everyone I would call it everyone would want to dad me which everyone's like, hey, I'll put you under my wing and they just stand at my booth forever and then they just tell me things that are like I've already thought about already done or they'd try to tell me how to do a trade show when they do one a year. Like the best year I've been more trade shows in your entire life. And you're gonna like, don't do that badge scanner it's a rip off you can't. Yeah, yeah, don't do that. It's too expensive. So yeah, it's just acknowledging it and then I would always kind of like do a swim move past and be like, hey, let me grab this guy real quick. Yeah, and then also I would try to a really good one is especially with a party trick I would try to get a crowd because I would try to like save my voice because I'm talking to so many people I would try to talk to 10 people at one time and then as a collective they those are asking questions. And another key thing if it's a cash and carry like you're selling out of the booth I don't know why this is but if you get a crowd of 10, 20 people talking or watching you do the, you know the party trick and like your demo. Man, if one person, I've had crowds of 20 people one person will be like, oh, wow, that's great whip out money and just hand it to me and I can't take their money fast enough. I in five minutes I could sell $2,000 worth of grip mats. And then I've seen times where that first person never did it and all 20 people just walk away. It's almost like contagious where one person like whips out their wallet and then the other one's like yeah, yeah, I'll buy it too. And then if like, I've always thought about like what if I just had a friend who just like stood in the back was like, wow, I'll buy two but just hand me $200. So yeah, yeah, break the risk, walk away you'll start figuring that out of the time vampires. Thank you. Ray Antonino from permits.com has a question on booth size, right? Hey, thank you so much, Dan, appreciate that Tom this is awesome and very timely. Permits.com, six years we've been at it and we now know very clearly who our customers and that value problem. So we're gonna, for the first time ever actually go after them at the National Council. To that point, I wanna make a splash. I have respectable amount of money to put toward this. I don't, it's not infinite and we're not taking venture money. So I'm really looking at 10, 20. Ray, real quick. You said you have a respectable amount of money to put towards the company or to the trade show? To the trade shows. Okay, okay. And what is that? We can talk offline. Go ahead. Because you can spend an infinite amount of money but I've seen people spend a million dollars in three days. We're not gonna do that. Don't do that, but anyway. I'm looking at right between, I mean, the numbers tell me by travel and time and the space and the flooring and the electrical everything you talked about that I'd be about a 25 to $30,000 if I did a 10 by 20. I could potentially pull off a 20 by 20 at some conferences. But that would be, you know and that of course is omitting the set of itself. So. So Ray, this is your first time doing trade shows? I wouldn't say my first time doing trade shows. For this company. For this company. I've actually been at trade shows but it's to be the first time we're actually coming out as permits.com. We did it under another brand before we evolved. And we were the 10 by 10 and we were like everybody else. And I think it's like, yeah, we kinda wanna say who we are and show up. So I don't wanna waste money, but I'm a very frugal guy. But also don't want to just be something else in the crowd. I wanna make sure you know we were there. Yeah, yeah. So what I would suggest. Okay, a few things why I'm asking about like how many booths you've been to or shows or whatever. For example, like SEMA or like really any show they'll have like a priority system. And that priority system is based off of like seniority really. So the thing is what I don't want you to do is you're like, okay, I got this company. It's my first time at this show and I'm gonna get a 10 by 20 and never been to this show because you're gonna because it's your first time you're gonna have low seniority. So then you got a bigger booth in the crappy location. So I mean, does that make sense? Makes perfect sense. Yeah. So the thing is I don't want you to waste money on a larger booth when it's your first time. Now I would suggest if you're trying to make a splash I would try to get a speaking position at the event cause then you look like when you're on stage it's just like, you just look like the expert. You know, you look like that that is like one of the most powerful moves you can do. Yeah. So I would recommend that. Yeah. What else would you do? So I'm actually, so I'm in Europe right now and the sun's starting to go down. So sorry, it's getting a little dark on me but okay. So top secret, this doesn't leave this call except it's live or whatever. I'm working on a system to airdrop people from like a hundred yards. So I would, cause I would airdrop people to try to get them to come to my booth. So the thing is if you could airdrop people, you know from the, imagine if you could airdrop everyone in the entire trade show to like come to your booth that's something, but obviously like for you that's not really tangible at this moment. But I would say like, hold on where's the next trade show gonna be at? Is it in Vegas or is it, you're on mute, Ray? I'm muted, sorry about that. Orlando and then Vegas. It's Orlando. And these are industry specific and I've been building the relationship with the people that have been trying to sell me on getting a booth for three years and I'm filing. So I understand that whole priority, I get it. Another thing is, yeah, don't go all in on a show for the first time. Every time I got more than a 10 by 10, the first time I regretted it every single time. Especially like, literally the National Hardware Show was one of the biggest mistakes I made. We'd never had a knockoff until after the National Hardware Show, anyone who ever asked me about that show I'd always say do not go. I would be one of the last people to leave, swear to God, I would see people like running through the halls, taking pictures of like products to go knock it off. But I'm sure whatever you're doing is not gonna be like that. But yeah, just 10 by 10 is always best. And then another thing is, for example, one of the best shows I sold at was one of the, it was a small show called, so there was MRO, which was like big for all of aviation. And then we went to MRO, no, no, it was called, sorry, the big one was NBAA, which was big in aviation. And then there was like, they do these mini shows called, so it'd be like, I did NBAA, so it's National Business Aviation Association. And then there was MCC, it was like, or MMC, it was like maintenance, something maintenance group. So it was a super tiny show that was all like the directors of maintenance of all these planes. So the thing was, this smaller, cheaper show, I made 10 times more money at than the big show, where I would have thought to get like, I need a bigger booth at the big show. We're really, if I need anything a bigger booth, this guy should be the small show. And like these, there was at the small show, there'd be companies that had, there'd be companies that had, they'd have a 50 by 50 booth at the small show, they'd have a 10 by 10. I was honestly, I did shows back to back and I shipped two full pallets of grip mats and I was like, we had half the inventory. So we had three shows and we had half the inventory for the last show and I was like, I was like, damn dude. I was like, I gotta pay to ship all this stuff back. This is like hundreds of pounds of grip mats. And we sold all of them, like we sold so many at the small show. This is like one of my most proudest moments at a trade show is a guy came up to me or he just walked up to the table and he grabbed a grip mat off the table and started walking away. I was like, hey, what are you doing? He's like, aren't these free? Like, no, they're not free. He's like, oh, sorry. He's like, how much is it? I was like, it's $60 for one or two for a hundred. He's like, I'm so sorry. He's like, I've just seen so many people with these. I thought they were free. I thought you were just handing them out. I'm like, no, everyone's buying them. So the thing is, but that show also, I mean, another thing is with these shows, I mean, I prefer a medium to a small show because I know I can dominate that show and I know I can make sure every single person knows who I am before I leave. Now these giant shows like SEMA, like man, it was, I mean, I was swinging for the fences and we were doing everything possible. It was still hard. Like SEMA, we had like two booths. We had, we were the best new product of the year and it was just like lots of PR. We won like three extra global media awards. And it was still like the amount of people that knew who we were is like, it was maybe like 10% because it was just so big. But the things that these smaller shows, we just crush it. Now, again, I don't know what your product is, but sometimes the show that you think is the right one, like something completely different could be it. For example, Oshkosh, which is EAA, it's one of the world's largest air show. And it's a world's largest air show and the guy who was next to me would sell bird feeders, like hummingbird feeders. Now I was always like, what the hell? This is an aviation show. I don't wanna be next to the bird feeder guy. I think this dude had a 10 by 10. At that show I'd have a 10 by 20 because that was like a big show for us. And I think that dude, I mean, I'd have a team of like five people. Typically we'd sell about 60 to $70,000 like in the booth. I think that dude may have sold more than me at a 10 by 10 by himself. And the thing is I would have never thought to if I'm selling bird feeders to go to that, an aviation show, but he would kill it. Hey, Tom, I got one more question and I know the sun is clearly going down in beautiful Spain, but this might be helpful as well for Ray. Someone asked, what do you recommend? It's a very different thing when you have software as a service. Do you have any recommendations for party tricks or anything that you can do with that to leave an impression? I guess for a party trick that, you know, I'd have to think about that one, to be honest. It doesn't have to be party tricks. Just any advice for software as a service folks to really make a splash. Yeah, yeah, I would say like definitely the networking after the trade shows is very important. You know, I would say also your giveaway, depending on if it's a fit for your company that could be very effective. I'm thinking about my friend, he had a software company and he was set up a South by Southwest. Now, yeah, I mean, it really depends like, honestly, it depends what you're looking for. Are you looking for people to download your product? Because honestly, if you're just looking for downloads, I would not go to a trade show. I think it's too costly. Now my friend, he was a South by, he was just trying to get investors, but he was like, he was called Script Drop. It was basically Uber Eats for prescription drugs. So he was just like, he had them lined up already. So he was just like using it as a meeting point and he would, he was using it to get them to be competitive to each other. He'd invite them at the booth at the same time. So that's a little bit different. But yeah, yeah, I mean, software? Yeah, I mean, this is a tip I forgot to put in there. If it's software or any product, I would say your best ally at a booth is your booth neighbors. Almost like, almost every show I do, I go as soon as I can get into the door and I talk to every single booth neighbor as like, like I'll talk, every single time I'll talk to hundreds of booth neighbors. And I'll just say, hey, it's my first time at the show, you know, I just wanted to introduce myself, learn a little bit about what we were doing and kind of show you what we got going on with the grip mat. Leave a flyer, because almost every single time, like what was happening, especially at Oshkosh is that they're all aviation people, almost every, like all the vendors were buying grip mats and then they would just talk about the grip mat. So that was like to network with your, with the other booth people that that's always effective. So if that's software or hardware, but yeah, I would have to think about the booth tricks specifically with a software, you know, depending on the software company. Tom, thank you so much for your time. I know we went over a little bit. Ray had a tip for you, Sammy. He said, visual displays that can run demos is a must for SAAS and I think that's great advice. Yeah, wanna let everyone know, thanks Ray. Just let everyone know we are having a Patriot Bootcamp event at DAV National Headquarters for new founders, folks who haven't been through Patriot Bootcamp before October 20 through 22nd. For more information on that, you can sign up. You can actually register through PatriotBootcamp.org. That's October 20 through 22nd at DAV National Headquarters near Cincinnati, Ohio. So please sign up if you're interested in mentoring or if you have any more questions that we might be able to route for you to Tom. You can email us at info at PatriotBootcamp.org and please encourage any founders, you know, who are in our community to go ahead and check out those October dates and thank you all for your time. Thank you, Tom, great, great, great experience having you on and we'll have you back again, I'm sure. And thanks for everyone for tuning in. We'll see you.