00:59:41 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:59:41] S0: Yeah. Mark Chadwick, shout out to you. [00:59:43] S1: Yeah. He's the tech genius. He's, funny enough, you know, Mark, people always kind of corner him as a tech guy, but like, she knows he knows advertising better than us people you'll meet. Yeah. Because he's he's been doing it since the invite days. [00:59:56] S0: If you may, I'd love for you to tell the story when when he when Mark first started with you. [01:00:00] S1: Oh my gosh. Yeah. So we were in Philly and, just starting, early days of invite. And I remember his first day of work, he came in. He's the only guy who's ever done this in my life. He showed up with, two monitors, one under each arm, carrying them into the office. And I was like, did you, like, did you steal those? What are doing with these? And he's like, like, I thought this was a startup. I thought you got to bring your own shit. And we were like, cool. Yeah, they're yours. Bring them in. But he was like, I was like, man, this guy's awesome. This guy's like real into it. Like, he's in the startup life. We were so young at the time too. So yeah. And he was I don't if maybe it's three years older than me, maybe. But like at the time, I think we were 20. So I was like, oh man, this guy's a real real man, like, come in here with his with his own monitors. [01:00:46] S0: I love that story. That's one of my favorite. So, you know, the Vistar legacy and the out of home space, it's... I mean, that's a that's a massive when you talk about like a prideful thing, like this is, you know... [01:00:58] S1: It's nuts.
01:00:58 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
[01:00:58] S1: It's nuts. [01:00:59] S0: This is a rough industry. Like, this is like a... You go down a dark alley industry type of thing when you say... [01:01:05] S1: Haven't been on that alley yet, so I'll watch for the next [01:01:08] S0: extra play. I guess what I'm saying is is accepting people, new people into the space is a... It's a very difficult thing. And now for you guys to leave, not only the name of Vistar, but now to your point, like, yeah, programmatic advertising. It... It's conversations that happen on every major, you know, publicly traded out of home company. It's the conversation that investors are talking about. Yeah. You know, that that has to make you extremely proud.
01:01:08 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[01:01:08] S0: extra play. I guess what I'm saying is is accepting people, new people into the space is a... It's a very difficult thing. And now for you guys to leave, not only the name of Vistar, but now to your point, like, yeah, programmatic advertising. It... It's conversations that happen on every major, you know, publicly traded out of home company. It's the conversation that investors are talking about. Yeah. You know, that that has to make you extremely proud. [01:01:33] S1: Yeah. I feel... I mean, it feels an excellent and you feel it every time you go to an event. We talk... Excuse me. We talk about this all the time. Like, you go to an event as a Vistar employee, you feel important, you feel special, and that's exciting. It's motivating for a lot of new people. And I think it's nice to see like, you know, if I go back ten years even, I mean, the general layout of just the diversity of the people at these events now is so different than it used to be. Yeah. The average age has shifted probably by fifteen to twenty years. And these are all people again who are hungry to do something, to work hard, to build something, and I think that's really motivating, exciting. And I don't want to say the out of home space was specifically difficult or something. I think any space like, I mean, say like where I'm from in Texas, like we try to get in an oil and natural gas, right? [01:02:22] S0: Like, [01:02:22] S1: I'm sure that experience, you'd probably be met with similar legacy and similar like, okay, you've you've got to listen, you've got to prove yourself.
01:02:22 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
[01:02:22] S1: I'm sure that experience, you'd probably be met with similar legacy and similar like, okay, you've you've got to listen, you've got to prove yourself. [01:02:31] S0: There's literally a series about [01:02:32] S1: it now called Landman. I've been meaning to watch it. I've heard it's pretty [01:02:35] S0: good. [01:02:35] S1: Yeah. It's rough. Everyone says I like it. [01:02:37] S0: You would love it. [01:02:38] S1: Yeah. I'll add it to my list. But no, I think there's always that right of passage. I think there are industries that we hear about where maybe don't see that as common. So like the AI rush right now or the crypto rush, you know, a few years back, right? Those are like these these, you know, gold rushes that people are going after and there's no existing competitors, maybe there's like an open field, go out and go get there and do whatever you'd like. And I think a lot of people see that world of startups because it's publicized, it's talked about a lot. People don't really talk about like the grinding B2B companies that get created for specific industries like ours. But it is it is what probably most entrepreneurship is about is these kind of these kind of businesses, honestly. [01:03:27] S0: Yeah. You touched on this a tad as well, but just there's a lot of like misconception of like, what does the Vistar acquisition mean for the out of home industry? Maybe kind of demystify that fear.
01:03:27 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[01:03:27] S0: Yeah. You touched on this a tad as well, but just there's a lot of like misconception of like, what does the Vistar acquisition mean for the out of home industry? Maybe kind of demystify that fear. [01:03:40] S1: Yeah. I mean, look, I I would have never done the deal if it wasn't gonna be great for the industry, right? I mean, like I said, you know, it was amazing to have the Lamar investment, but at the end the day, was still a billboard company saying out of home is important. Right. And programmatic is important. Now we have one of the largest brands in the world saying out of home as a channel is extremely important to our business. And I hope that echoes to a lot of the other brands out there just to wake up and increase their investments in out of home and understand what they can be doing and talking to consumers in that passive tone. So I think it's a huge win overall for the industry, not just from a branding perspective, but again, promises around the data side of the business, the ability to build build even more measurable future for out of home, the ability to to level up retail media. These are things that I'm super pumped about and the whole industry should be excited about. [01:04:32] S0: Yeah. And it's such it's such a great shift from who believes in the space and and I wanna echo... [01:04:39] S1: Not an echo chamber.
01:04:39 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
[01:04:39] S1: Not an echo chamber. [01:04:41] S0: Yeah. Not... It's not the same people and I, you know, it could have... There was always this like, oh, Lamar is gonna buy Vistar. Was like that that was never the vision. The vision was always, there's going to be someone out there that wants to do it and, you know, I'm pre paid for a lot a lot of more behind the scenes stuff as well. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. No. Thank you. But it... Some of the companies that we're interested in in buying, you know, you just... I'm very proud of you. And I said about a billion times in text messages to you, but very proud of you in that side of it because you could have done what's best for you and Mark and and the team, but you really said, like, what's the legacy? And and that's... I think, you know, you're you're a genuine human for that.