00:41:44 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
[00:41:44] S1: Right. Like, you don't get that feedback as clear. But when you run a business like ours in B2B, people tell you very clearly, like, I have I have a bunch of old emails that maybe one day I'll release that are pretty amazing, that, you know, it's from the agency side, the owner side of people being like, this is dumb, don't email me again, like, never gonna happen. And it's like, I don't know if you if you've ever been a competitive person, right? Like we both were athletes, like, you just get fired up, you're just like, F that, like, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna prove you wrong, I don't even know who you are, I'm gonna prove you on. This was a blind email, but I'm still gonna prove you wrong, you just get fired up, I don't know. [00:42:25] S0: I have some printed, right here on my desk for the audio actually one of them is relation to selling Vistar day... Year one. Oh, god. But no, that's... But again, I love that because it's the fuel that kind of kept you guys going, where a lot of leaders in your position may have been like, hey, guys, this is really tough industry, we're barking up the wrong tree, like, we we need a backup.
00:42:25 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:42:25] S0: I have some printed, right here on my desk for the audio actually one of them is relation to selling Vistar day... Year one. Oh, god. But no, that's... But again, I love that because it's the fuel that kind of kept you guys going, where a lot of leaders in your position may have been like, hey, guys, this is really tough industry, we're barking up the wrong tree, like, we we need a backup. [00:42:48] S1: We've had those nights. We definitely had those nights. Early on, there were a few nights where you just say, like, I'm tired. And Yeah. This is like a lot of pushing pushing pushing and not really feeling any give from anyone. And look, that's a hard, I think there's a little luck in that for us, but I think there's a lot of startups that keep pushing, pushing, pushing, and they never get their break, they never get their chance, and they're they're fifteen, twenty years in, and haven't scaled revenue, aren't maybe even profitable, and still struggling. And there's a moment where you do have to decide like, is this is this the right thing? Is this... Was this a good idea? Is this a good product market fit? Like, if I'm getting so much negative feedback, there there has to be something different I need to do. Mhmm. So so I do think that like, as tough as some maybe some of those early years were, I'm glad we kept pushing because clearly it was worth it. But I don't know if it's always worth it. Yeah. There's definitely companies that maybe should have stepped back at some point in different industries, of course.
00:43:51 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:43:51] S0: Well, and you're you're disrupting an industry right at, like, the evolution of a... Of technology. You know, again, we're talking about an industry that's fifteen years ago, twenty... We'll call it twenty years, twenty plus years ago, was still taking maps, putting stars where their billboards were, and faxing them over to people. So, you know, one of the big things you're also doing is you're trying to introduce yourself as, hey, we are not replacing this process Yeah. Or the evolution that was happening on, you know, faxing fourteen years ago, but there were still... Some people were. Yeah. Some people were. Jesus. But those people probably still aren't on the Vistar platform. [00:44:31] S1: I'm sure there's still faxing.
00:44:31 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
[00:44:31] S1: I'm sure there's still faxing. [00:44:32] S0: Yeah. There's still faxing. But you're also trying to change not only the mindset of of an industry that's done something for literally probably sixty plus years. It's like sign, billboard, I want that. Yeah. And you had you had the vision because there's other media that exists online, mobile at the time, and a little bit of social that was selling this audience base, this impression So based twofold, you're trying to introduce yourself as like, hey, we're Vistar Media. Oh, and by the way, there's this thing called programmatic advertising that you you aren't even automating what you do today, but we wanna we wanna automate. And, by the way, I don't wanna sell your specific panel. I want to sell a conglomerate of panels and I'm going give you some data, some carrier data, and we're going to do. So the challenge there... There's a lot.
00:45:23 · Michael Provenzano
[00:45:23] S1: Yeah. And of course, it's gotten more complex over time. Yeah. But look, I think there's generally like people you're trying to sell to your audience. We we struggled early on understanding. Did people have a problem or not, or were we creating a problem for them? So, you know, I'll give you some basic examples, like if you were a seller at a large media owner and you were making good commission every year, you didn't need programmatic, like your life was good. There's no reason to have programmatic involved, like you were very happy. If you were a public company and out of home, and like Lamar producing great dividends, performing extremely well, there's nothing that you needed. The market was happy with the result of people who you had to report to at the end of the day are happy about what's going on. My whole thing was like, I think we can do more. Like, I was like, I think that the industry can grow faster. I think there can be brands that you haven't seen spending, spending it out of home, and let's go do that. And you have to be hungry to do that. Yeah. It requires a hungry. It requires a having nothing to do that. And I think you have to find the people within any organization who who need that too, who are hungry, who want to unlock that future, because the current reality is not giving them enough. Mhmm. That that was a big challenge in an industry that's so well established, has a huge legacy, because there are people who, again, even today Mhmm. Don't need programmatic. It's okay. Their lives are completely good with with or without it. But I believe for the future, the industry, future employees of this industry who need to build their their own legacy and their own careers, something had to happen because there wasn't enough growth to handle that.
00:47:24 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:47:24] S0: Yeah. And it's interesting because you have to find those curious people within those out of home organizations even just to have that conversation. [00:47:33] S1: Yeah, it's brutal. I I was lucky with you because you're just like, hey, I'm that guy, I'm like, great, I found him. [00:47:37] S0: I think I literally said that to [00:47:38] S1: I didn't even look. [00:47:39] S0: Didn't even look. Yeah. [00:47:41] S1: But yeah, it's really it's really tough to find and and then, you know, it's a tough conversation because, you know, if you're working with private equity firms, right, they're investing companies, you know, 10 to 30% growth, steady growth, whatever it might be, and, you know, if you're getting VC funding, they expect you to have some exponential growth, and everyone's got different expectations of what quote good is. [00:48:06] S0: Right.