Welcome to Power of the Network. I'm your host, Tim Locker, Vice President of Broadband here at CBM. Today we've got a real special guest joining us, Mr. Jim Lucy. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Electrical Wholesaling Magazine. He's been in the industry for over 40 years, dear friend of ours here at CBM. He's got a journalism and writing background. He's got a passion for diving deep into the industry, trends, data, analysis, et cetera. So, Without much more ado, let's get into our conversation with Jim. Jim, thank you so much for joining us today. Longtime friend to CBMS, you've been in the industry for 40 plus years. I can't thank you enough for coming in and chatting with us today, but I have a question. Did you, I guess, what do you consider yourself? Are you a publisher, a journalist, a writer? Define kinda how you started, how you got there, like what you feel like you do. Yeah, that's a great question, you know, particularly in today's market now with the world of different ways you can get content out or podcasts like today. You know, I came up the I guess at the time the traditionalist journalist, trade journalism major at college and kind of eventually enjoyed feature writing, which kind of kept me going. I got into the electrical market and just found a lot of people that just loved it. And I were kind of my mentors and I kind of said, hey, they were, you know, making a good living, you know, it seemed to be really like what they did. So I kind of stuck with it. But I. Part of it's so part of his writing, you know, part of his news reporting part of it's maybe a little bit of teaching You know as you get to know a little bit more But now I think I find even more with you have to really decide which where do you want your content to go? What's it make more sense than a podcast post online? Shorter art yard than you can think of people are looking at this stuff on their phones They're not necessarily sitting down and reading it. We happen to be all digital right now. So it's kind of a combination But I guess a writer still, that's kind of my core, I think. Kind of the writing. I think that's the thing. And they were talking a little bit earlier about, I find with podcasting, I find that when I have good podcasts, I get the same kind of thrill out of talking, learning about someone, about their company as they did with writing an article on them. So it's good solid content, I think. OK, so that's a good point there, too. And so Electrical Wholesaling Magazine, right? You're editor-in-chief of that. And you'd mentioned last, up to about last year, you were still in print and now it's all digital. Yeah, yeah. Talk a little bit about that transition. I know it wasn't like, sure, if the magazine just went out of print, you know, that transition started way back, you know, many years ago. Talk a little bit about that transition and how that's been for you. Yeah, but well, you know, the magazine started in 1920, so we were around and we got put over a good solid hundred years in print. And really, it kind of came down, our mission statement was always, you know, even digital and print, it's kind of two things, helping our readers run their companies more profitably and to sell more electrical stuff, really. Sure. Yeah, well, that's one of the two major things. Yeah. So, we were for many years a subscription-based publication. But as the, as markets matured, as advertising matured, and as people who wanted to reach in the audience, advertising became more and more of a revenue source and really the primary source of revenue for most. most publishing companies. Although there's events, there's some different things as things are emerging. So things change like that. And we just were finding that more and more people, they're interested in advertising digitally, not as much in print. And you know, print has some costs with it. You got the mailing, you got the paper, you got something keeping up, updated with the list. So they made a, and we were always, we've been publishing or had a website since the, I guess late 1990s. We always did many things digitally, but we decided to kind of, I would say pull the band-aid off, but it was a tough decision that we knew was coming in. Sure. Well, there's a lot of history there that you don't want to let go, obviously. I'm very sentimental about it all. I've got boxes and boxes of the files, pictures, and people that I met and rolled everything. But no, I have to say it's been good. The transitions really work well. The advertisers responded. We're hitting all our numbers and it's worked out much better. I didn't know what to expect, but much better than I thought. Oh, that's good. Yeah. I guess talking a little bit about advertising, you know, obviously, you know, you guys are in it to make some money, you know, CBMs in business to make money. That's what makes the world go around. But do you think when you, does it, does it change your writing or your message at all when there's, you know, dollars coming in behind it? Do you feel like you still keep that honest? journalistic approach. Yeah, you know, you got to do the right things right. You know, there's certain that there are people aren't going to read our stuff. If it's just if we're pandering to a big advertiser, you know, yeah. And that's not saying you, I mean, personally, I think I know, I know where to draw the line. I can have a good relationship with advertisers and talk and if they say, hey, we've got this new product out, please put it up for consideration. Some of them are just being having a good, good relationship with it. But, but you can't write, you're not going to maintain your audience if you're just out there writing puff pieces about things. And it's a It's a short lived, if there's any, if you do that, you're not going to really keep them on. Now there's certain types of articles that could be about an advertiser that are just, it could be a good human interest story. I mean, there's fascinating people in the electrical market that happen to be advertisers, the backgrounds and some of the products. So you, if you do the right, if you do it right, it's okay to write about it, but you've got to be doing it for the right, it's like a lot of things in life. You've got to be doing it for the right reasons. If you think you're going to tell a good story about, you know, about a product, about a company, about a person in the business. Yeah, do it because it's good. It'll be interesting. It'll help the reader or in your audience, like I say, run their company where profit, sell more stuff. If you look at it through that lens, you can kind of, not to say some people don't pander and that's what they want, but there's a way of doing it right, I think. So yeah, I like to think of it kind of, looking through the lens of value, right? Where can we bring value? What can we do that, not to ourselves, but how do we bring value to others? Or like in your case, to your readers or your subscribers. So the electrical industry, in my opinion, it obviously touches everybody, right? But I think a lot of times it's kind of not really top of mind, if you will. So I think it's interesting, like you said, you can bring out interesting articles and different things that, there's a lot of hot topics today that that revolve around the electrical industry that maybe people don't tie into, you know, how you would tie it into electrical. They just kind of think it's a way of life. So what are some of the... top trends that you're kind of keying in on right now. You know, I think there's more things to write about now than ever. And some of it's a lot of different new markets, some of the new product opportunities that everyone in the business now has. When you think of everything going on with electrification, I think that touches distributors of all sizes. You think about certain electric vehicles, what's going on with renewables. Gosh, you know, all the lighting has been kind of an evergreen. There's been stuff going on lighting. You know, I I really think there's more, from a journalist or writer's point of view, there's more to be talking about than ever before. Certainly, merchant acquisitions. I could talk for hours on what's been going on with that, both the distributor level, now more and more the rep level, and certainly in the manufacturer side. Dig into that a little bit. I guess tell me, what are your thoughts that are behind some of that? Well, it comes at an interesting time. We just posted what we've done on the annual ranking since the 70s anyway, with the largest distributors. And we just finished what is now the top 100 distributors. And it used to be the top 150, but there were so many companies got acquired that we had to kind of slim it down. I mean, literally, I don't know the exact- So do you make the list if you're a distributor then, if they're shrinking? Oh, yeah, well, we still, we still, we want it to be of a certain size. And we still have people have to kind of qualify to get on it. And it's kind of depends what you consider a large company. But I have to say since around 219, I think about 60 companies that had been on the list were acquired, most often by one of the major ones. So that kind of took a big scoop out. There's a lot of a lot of sales shifting to some of the very largest companies, you know, the Sonopars, the West Coast, the Rexels, Graybar, City Electric, although they're more new. They do a lot of new branches rather than acquisitions. Border States is big. Right in town here, they bought years ago, bought a very big company, Western Xtralight. Well, certainly, you know, part of that's got to be just, you know, economies of scale. Yeah. You know, you grow, you can do more things more efficiently. How much of it is that and how much of it is just, you know, people retiring out of the market? It's, it's, it can be an awful lot of that. I mean, historically, an awful lot of distributors. I mean, you had your rural, the real, the, I wouldn't say ancient, the real old, some of them might, maybe they were started in the twenties or thirties and it's okay. They, they might be up to the third. maybe fourth generation, but really an awful lot of the companies, at least since I've been in the market since the 80s, they very traditionally, they might have gotten a startup sometime after World War II, maybe some of the service people that came home started up the company. For many, many years, family owned businesses, which really made it so cool to get to meet some of the families and some of the story and some of the people you meet, I'm sure you meet and you're going to be out and around too. There's so many. to the big corporations. But yeah, it did. Yeah. So there's been a lot of that family-owned business people just looking at it. Sometimes it can be hard to get to have a son or daughter that wanted to take over the business and keep it going. But so it can be certainly with the larger distributors. There are volume purchasing deals that make it a little bit easier for the very large, the big chains, like I mentioned, like a Sonopar, or a Graybar, some of the big ones. But that's... really a way for since the 70s at least, the independent family owned companies have very often become member one of the buying groups, which is the filet distributors or R-Mark. And they can, they pull their purchases and they get hopefully pretty close to a, similar pricing for their products. So they can be blunt some of that, but there's an awful lot as a distributor that they have investments that they'll be needing to make. in the computer system, some of the new technology, digital storefront, maybe some of the, just to be able to do something like a podcast, just to do some marketing, so there's a lot more that goes into it. But I think there'll always be, there's definitely a role and a place for the smaller company. Now, how you might define small, it's getting bigger and bigger. I mean, there's a lot of companies on our list that are over a hundred million in sales, and back in the day, that was maybe considered a pretty large company. Now, they're sort of middle of our rank. I mean, company like a Wesco is up there with almost $20 billion in sales and North America's owner parts around 16 billion and so the companies are just getting bigger and bigger you know than Elliott Electric Supply. I laugh I was putting a list together I remember when Elliott they bought actually locally in Kansas City here they bought Kansas City Electric Supply a couple of years ago about five or six years ago they made one billion in sales I was like oh my gosh that's amazing that is something they just topped two billion and four or five took on me they took double took 25 years or maybe more for Bill to get it to a billion. And then within the next couple, he just, and he happens to be a big believer in branch expansion, not too many acquisitions. So there's ways to do it. I mean, I think there's always going to be, and some people prefer, a lot of people prefer, I think, to buy through an independent maybe. They follow the relationships, they follow their favorite sales person, I think, in a lot of ways. And good service. Yeah, I've noticed that over the years too. You may have a sales guy that may bounce around from one company to the next, but. Yeah, a good sales guy. Yeah. People will follow him. It's all about relationships. It really is. It's, I think that's really, I find kind of one of the cool parts of the business. And one of the reasons I think I've stayed in this line, just, it's a, it's a industry of relationships and people and you see they may, uh, you know, someone wants this, I think it really applies. Someone told me, uh, he was in a wiring cable business and we were laughing about how people don't even think people leave wiring cables. Like he's like, you know, Jim, because it's like devil's island. you're on the island and wearing cable, you might change cells, but you're still on the island, you're still wearing cables. So I think you could apply that to a lot of different parts of the industry. Yeah, it might be doing the same thing with a different shirt on. Yeah, so, but, and, but I, you know, I kind of grew up in the telecommunications industry and it's very similar in those regards, cause you know, it's a very, overall a pretty small network of people. You know, you see the same folks that, you know, all the different shows and, you know, somebody may bounce around from one place to another, but it's, it's ultimately the same. Yeah. Same group of folks. And you know, and to me too, I like it. I think as even being a business journalist, you know, when you get to maybe say, if I've gone on to say a bigger magazine, everything's very filtered through the PR agency of the rep and what you can say, can't say, you don't, you don't get as genuine. I mean, there's been so many funny stories I've had of visiting with a company and they'll take me out to their fishing club. Just, it's real world, you know, or come on, let's go play some handball before we do the interview. But that's just the way someone comes into their business and that's how they do business. I kind of enjoyed it. I was looking at your website and you had, John Marietti had a video there just saying when someone came into town, they would entertain, he'd entertain, they'd stay over at his house. And I said, you know, that's, I think that's what makes the business great. You know, the people that still kind of works for, you know, in a lot of ways. a lot of different ways. But when I think of John Marietti, I just think of, you know, what a classy dude. He's just old school class all the way. And, you know, I think we're, we've lost a little bit of that era, you know, in general. And, and, but it's nice to have guys like that around. Well, I always, I moved to Kansas City area when the magazines were brought up, at the time was a small publishing company called Intertext. I'd worked with McGraw-Hill for many years in New York. So we moved my, they said, try it for a year, see if you like it. So my wife and I moved out with our two sons at the time and just coming into the market. And John was so good to me, just showing me around the market, around the industry. But he was, yeah, he was. I always remember one lunch, I wrote something, he's like, you didn't have the perspective, though you took me out to lunch, you didn't have the perspective of the rep in that article. This is how you could have done it. I was like, good for him. You know, I was like, it was right. But he was a classy, classy guy. So you mentioned consolidation and distribution, but talk a little bit about consolidation in the rep market. Because I see a lot of that going on. Oh yeah, and it's really ramped up over the last year or two for sure. I mean, you had, there was. always a lot of talk about something of the super regional rep and that might depend on how big the footprint might have changed, whether it was the Southeast, Midwest, or some of the reps in California, very large, it might have been only two or three really, really major reps. But I think in the last couple of years, particularly, they're just looking to get a bigger and bigger regional footprint. And it's hard to really put a, in some cases, I think it's the manufacturer that says, hey, I don't want to have to have as many companies and they have fewer reps for that certain company. Some of it, I think, is a little bit of the family business as we talk. Reps are very much a similar trend like that. But we've certainly seen, I don't know if you want to get into specific names, but there's been some pretty big name reps in the commercial industrial over the past year, at least three that I can think of that, you know, were acquired by a company called Forward Solutions that is kind of bringing reps in from all different types of all different industries. They have some, not back office, but some operational things they can handle centrally and let the reps stay out in the field and work with their people. So. It sounds like a good concept. I think Jury's still out. We'll see how it works in reality. I think one of the questions I would have, from a manufacturing side of view, I can see that it may simplify things, more direct lines of reporting, less avenues to go there. But being a rep, too, I know, like I said, it's all about relationships. And you've got certain people that have certain expertise. And so you may have, let's just say you got our, you know, 10 sales guys on the docket and you know, each manufacturer seems like they've kind of got a favorite. You know, this guy's an expert at this. So obviously that manufacturer's like, man, how come everybody can't be like him? And then you've got another expert over here. So you know, I just question how, you know, they've got to be able to have that direct link. But... still you got to have those relationships too. So, you know, there's always, there's always a dynamic there that kind of makes me wonder how that'll work. Yeah. And I think, you know, I always kind of, I think it's really pretty old school, probably kind of evergreen, but I always figure whoever's the closest to customer is going to win. I mean, in the end, I mean, I mean, really if there's another layer, if it's a larger district, larger rep or whatever, but it's still going to come down to the local relationships. I mean, being bigger doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have better relationships or maybe not even offer a better price or whatever. You got to really have the people that have the local. I think it's even more particularly true with reps, I think as well. And I think it's challenging. I mean, and I think it was been interesting in the rep world because you have everything from their very smallest company where someone has an entrepreneurial urge to go out on their own and they get a little package of lines and you get, they might expand. You've got really good sized companies like yourself. And you've got, there seems to be another level of companies developing with maybe ideas of getting semi-national. And I don't, it's hard to say where that will go or where that's going to be. And really some of it gets into, you know, there was, I think it's, what do they think they say about 75 or 80% of all products, I think this is in commercial industrial, go through the rep at least in part, you know, whether they'll have it independent or, you know, a factory. And I think that'll be interesting to see where that all change, you know, if the rep functional. How that's going to change. A lot will depend on the product and all, but I go back. I remember when companies like Eaton went to reps, that was a huge deal when they finally went over with different companies as they decided to take it on. Would you say the trend is manufacturing using more reps or using less reps? I think more. Yeah, I think more. And I think a combination of things. I think, you know, when I, and some of it I get. Well, some of them, I think there's some of the new products that come in. And I think of some, I could say this in lighting, commercial industrial lighting. I mean, there's so many new LED companies out there and they're all looking for a way to get to market. So you see some of the smallest of companies that are coming up. But I do think, and as I mentioned, some of the big ones, I mean, companies that 20, 30 years ago, maybe there was a factory person that they had, I think they've gone over to reps. And I think really part of that, I think NAMR has done an idea, the National Electrical Manufacturers Reps Association has really done a good job of promoting the rep function to manufacturers and putting on the events that they put on, particularly the annual conference, the networking, the meetings, the professional, it really puts reps in a really good light, I think. I think that's all kind of worked together. I say for sure, more rather than less, that I don't see the mood toward a factory salesperson. There'll always be some companies that will believe in it in some markets and maybe they have a really good person in that they can make it work. One place I know a lot of reps may struggle is just legacy planning. You know, if it's a small family-owned business or whatever, you know, how do you, how do you, you know, get out of that or what's going to happen with the next generation? And, you know, that's the one thing that sets us apart with our ESOP. You know, we've got that kind of built into the company structure. So there's, you know, it makes it easy when, you know, someone retires out of that top position and move on to the next. So I think that's pretty important for us for sure. Yeah, I know, you know, just talking about some of the companies that got acquired real recently, some of the rep companies and some, I know some of the biggest, I was kind of surprised didn't happen, but they hadn't informed all their manufacturers that they were going to get an acquired. And I thought that really, without mentioning names, that was a pretty big deal. That was a lot of talk about that because they were a pretty major vendor and they didn't necessarily. Well, yeah, there's no guarantee. buying another firm, there's no guarantee that contract's gonna transfer. We'll have to see how that all goes. I think the jury will, but I think it's the way of the world, as you mentioned, with smaller companies as they deal with legacy issues. But I think the function of the rep makes perfectly good sense in so many ways, as long as they're up to the... It's interesting to me just how many people don't understand what a rep does. Okay, now what do you do? I understand Joe, he's with the distributor, and I understand Bob, he's with the manufacturer, but like, what do you do? And so we always try to take the opportunity to explain what we do, whether it's, we don't always do direct sales because we're dealing with distributors and so on, but we're there for obviously spec position, we want you to buy our widget versus the competitor's widget. but we do a bunch of training and support and all of those types of things that people don't necessarily think about or see. So, and the business model is pretty simple. We don't get paid unless we sell something, right? So it's a very cost-effective way for a manufacturer to go to business. So, we got to keep the lights on, so we got to keep selling stuff. And I think when you lay over to by the type of products that a CBM sells or like we see, being a lot of our market is traditional pipe and wire distributors, commercial industrial, and you look in the lighting market. I mean, lighting reps can be, I mean, it wasn't all that long ago. We didn't necessarily see a CNI person have a big broad line of lighting products. Now you have the LEDs and now the controls they may or may not need. They might be part of the whole package. So that's a big deal. And then the real heavy duty lighting reps, it gets a whole different feel. They're almost kind of more specialized. You know, it's the lighting's one that that's interesting to me because, you know, in my mind, that, you know, we're always told we should, you know, never have competing lines, you know, but it seems like in that world, there's kind of no way around it. Oh, there's so many different, yeah. You know, everybody's trying to get a piece of their mind share. So it's definitely a little bit different. So many lines, so many different lines, so many to get cut, got acquired, rolled up, but still you see a lot of independent lines out there for sure, yeah. I wanted to take a second and explain what is a manufacturer's rep. You know, it's still funny to me sometimes our role is often misunderstood. But in a nutshell, what a rep does is we are a subcontracted sales force for multiple manufacturers. Our lines are complementary to each other and not competitive. And what this does is... you know, it often gives us the opportunity to, to sell a full line solution. So it really brings value to our customer when we can, you know, represent product from one end to the other. We're not a distributor, you know, we work with distributors to get our product to market, but we're really an extension of those factories. So just in a nutshell, if you're looking for a great manufacturer, rep with years of experience and great folks, look us up at cbmrep.com. So talk to me a little bit. I know you got a couple of podcasts. Talk to me a little bit about each one, what their functions are, what you talk about, what you go through on each of those. Sure, sure. Yeah, I've got two going right now. I'll deal with the smaller one. I'm still kind of getting ramping up. I call it EW Executive Insights. And basically it's just a do one or two a month. It's conversations with different folks in the industry, just about their particular area of expertise. We'll do... 15, 20 minutes of my 30 minute podcast on that. And that's been going well. I've got a couple of good, you know, like I said, I just had did one this week. I've got a couple of, couple of summers actually pretty busy with those. The one that's kept keeping me pretty busy mostly now and I'll be getting close to my hundredth episode with it's called today's electrical economy. It's kind of nerdy, kind of gets a lot of stats and stuff in there. But I came up and we, we put it together during the height of COVID. It was right, it was right in the middle of all that. And I said, you know, at the time, you're people like, why, what's going on with the economy? It's going to go up, down, sideways. So I tried to find some stats. I'm a kind of a stat geek a bit. So I found some weekly stats that I could put together and say, hey, you know, freight rail shipments are up, down, or sideways, unemployment claims. Obviously there's a lot of monthly stuff, building permit. So I put it together and I said, well, I can always, I covered news, acquisitions. new projects and all put a little bit of that together. And I did very crudely just did a PowerPoint and narrate a PowerPoint and myself and one of our regional salespeople handle the sales side. We were able to sell it to one of our vendors for sponsorship. So, well, yeah, we're just, just episode 98. So, but I like it. And I like we were talking earlier. The great thing about podcasts is when you really get the feedback from your listeners and you say, yeah, it's, you know, it's in some ways flattering. So there's a person that's listening. But when they have something to say, whether they speed up through certain parts of your podcast or they like that topic or hey, could you cover this also? The feedback is terrific and it's an awful lot of fun. That's awesome. Yeah, I've listened to a few of them and yeah, there's definitely a lot of data, but explain to me a little bit how some of that data relates. How do you, I understand globally and like how economically it works, but how do you say just the electrical, whether it's the unemployment or the rail cars or how do you narrow all that down to that sector? You know, one of the things that we've done, Electric Holston over the years, and one of my mentors, Andrea Herbert, who hired me back in the 80s, she was a mastermind. We do something called the market planning guide, where we basically break down, do surveys and do local markets. reps and distributors and any readers an idea what the market potential might be very locally. So with doing that, I just got real interested over the years, got real interested at saying, okay, here's Kansas City, what you know, what, how can I kind of paint a picture for someone that's maybe just trying to get us a thumbnail, how big the mark with the market opportunity, what numbers are out there. So, and you can get electrical contractor employment, you can get overall unemployment, get building permits very locally. population shifts, you can tell an awful lot, you can get it down to the county level of people moving in or out. That's kind of a pretty direct indicator on how building permits or how some of the other things might be doing there. But one of the things that we do on top of that, so you can get some broad data that in many cases from through the Bureau of Labor Statistics or Bureau of Commerce, and then you can get, we do some things where we'll get sales per employee, we kind of have an idea, say, okay, for every contractor or employee out there, their overall market potential is... I think what's the number we use? And I, about 80, about 80,000 per person. So you kind of get a general idea. And if we really, when other, some, through some other survey work we've done of distributors, we said, what is your product mix? And we'll say, how much does wiring cable account for? How much does lamps account for? And it's very rule of, you know, very national rule of thumb. But then you can start applying that if you're saying, okay, the whole market is X and. Kansas City is going to be different from Flint, Michigan, from Fort Myers. So it's going to be, it's going to be different, but you can kind of take some of those numbers out. If it's available locally and you can kind of paint a picture for the local market. And I think it's of interest to our readers because, you know, they might, maybe they're looking to say, should I hire maybe it's for a new branch? They want, I mean, I'm going to hire, don't need to hire people. I need another, I need a third party source, kind of that it with no acts to grind. And you know, maybe a vendor is saying, Hey, we think this market's worth this or that. And you can say, well, I don't know, I think this other source here is kind of, you know, it's these numbers say something differently. So yeah, I kind of, I've just had a wonky interest in local, the kind of local market data and I love checking out. But you do that for across the country. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not just local looking. Yeah, and it's a database. We have this electrical marketing newsletter that I also do and it's something that we sell for, you know, for pittance really. But yeah, no, I do that. I collect all construction project data and just to kind of layer it on top of there to see where the... and you can kind of start seeing some trends when you start. The projects really determine what's going on in a lot of territory, correct? They do, you know, and I have to say, for better or worse, minor, because of time constraints, I only look at the projects a hundred million and up, which is, I can understand, can be kind of, that's pretty big. I mean, there's a lot of great projects that are very profitable, much under that, but just to kind of give people a general sense of what might be available out there. So what would you say the overall electrical economy is right now. Is it moving up, moving down? It's decent. It's going to slow. I think last, and this is, I get to do surveys of our, you know, when we did that top 100, I had about, you know, say 80 companies came back and gave us a little feel for it. And I also get a quarterly survey also to give us a sense. So I think people expecting a slight slowdown end of the year, no recession, but I think a slow, slight slowdown. I mean, I think there's some markets that are blessed with all these huge projects that we hear about. There's the data centers or the semiconductor plants and they're going to do much better you know so but it's it I think overall and it's just going to be dependent on their particular market but uh yeah the overall for and this is on the distributor side the average annual growth rate is between four and eight percent so a couple points above inflation more or less so you know weather inflation is going down it's on the right side of yeah I think I think it's going to be decent I mean I think it's been pretty good demand really I was just looked at the construction figures most recent that you can get out there and I think it's going to end up being a decent year. It could be end up being a great year for some people. They're in the right spots here, I think. You mentioned data centers. Yeah. And obviously that's a hot topic for everybody. But what percentage of the industry is data centers? That's a good question. I can find, and I look, I do, I go as much data as I can to find the sizes of them. It's hard to say the actual total number, but I can say a number that I found really interesting. And I only found it from one source. But they said of a total, like if you see a, you know, Google has a say, you see the $500 million get mid-sized data center, 500 million. This one source said it was 43% of that is electrical stuff, electrical equipment, which I think is gigantic. I mean, I would have never guessed that, you know, I would have, you know, because I was talking, a couple of people said, you know, he's total construction project, pipe and wire type of stuff. 10%. That's your rule of thumb. It'll depend on, you know, how much lighting, how much security, how much whatever, but you figure 10% around it. But they were saying, it's crazy. I'm trying to get enough to vet that number, but I just saw that about a couple of weeks ago and it's a, it's crazy good. I mean, in heck, I mean, right. We're sitting here, just around here. Then also your neck of the woods and I were pretty darn good. You know, we're plumb full of them, but you know, from a, it's, it's interesting. It's, um, from a sales perspective, you know, it's, it can be difficult getting into the data center, getting to the right people, whether it's the right engineering firm or whether it's the owners directly. I think the contractors have certainly a better link to that because they're actually doing the work, but so many of these specs and different plans get done outside of someone's territory. How does someone break into that? What's the trick? I see some people traveling with the data. So I know some of the Ben, fortunately, I guess for the Midwest, I know some of the reps and some companies out from California, they they'll set up an office, you know, right wherever they'll do some, you know, hiring kind of locally. It's funny you mentioned that because there's a lot. You know, if you're, if you're trying to work within your territory and, you know, go by all of those rules and stuff, it, it makes it very tricky. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's funny. I got to connect. There's a local. contractor in town, Max Electric. And I saw that he was on, he recently did a NECA presentation. They're a small midsize contract, but his title of his presentation was, How does a small contractor get into the data center game? So it's kind of exactly what you're saying. I got to flag them down when I see them at NECA to see, all right, what did you learn? What are you guys learning there? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I was just at a sales meeting recently and one of the presentations they mentioned, I believe it was like 60% of the power in Virginia. was all going to data centers. It sounds crazy there, that whole western part of the west of the downtown out to Loudoun County and out through Fairfield. I can't even imagine the amount that's going through. And it's a, you know, you talk about the cooling of it and it's a big submission. Some of the, I know when you think of it, there's a little bit of a surge in the Phoenix area. Obviously some water issues in Phoenix. Yeah, well, we just, yeah, we came across an article yesterday that was mentioning the water and the cooling and how much they're going through and even AI affecting that words. You type in so many comments and now you're burning so many gallons of water. They say the... I hadn't heard that about the water too, but they say just the electrical power for a search, an AI search compared to a Google search, it's exponentially more. I don't have the number in front of me, but yeah. So where does it stop? I don't know. It's just such a crazy, I mean, this whole AI thing is going to, everyone's fascinated by it. I mean, from the stock market on down, it's just on fire, you know? And so we're, and everyone's trying to figure out where, how to. There's clearly some value in terms of, you know, production and speed and everything that it touches. But, you know, if we're burning gallons of water and, you know, piles of electricity, you know, what expense do we keep going just so we can, you know, look at Facebook or whatever. Yeah, you got good data and junk data, right? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, so obviously that affects the data centers affect the electrical industry, but also the power utility. Oh, I can imagine. Yeah, the amount of... Right now, it's... I mean, you've almost got to build a new substation for every data center is kind of how it's looking. But I don't know the sustainability of it is... It's an amazing world. One of my sons, he's a project manager for Nextar Energy. So he kind of travels and he did some wind sites up in Northern Missouri. Now they have them on the solar side. He's down in Texas. And he was surprised how much the battery storage he was saying, he goes, Dad, we have our backlog. It's like, oh, there's jobs helping me. It's amazing the amount that's going on. So the battery storage, talk a little bit about that. What does that look like and what does it do for a So he's looking at it for a utility or is there private companies doing it? What does that market look like? Yeah, his is a lot of their own utility stores. He's doing some local markets for it really, but I haven't got too much specifics on the battery storage. It was mainly the solar fields. He was just out on a big project out in New Mexico. Skywalker Ranch, I think it was called. I forget how many hundreds and hundreds of solar cells, but it was also a big, you know, It was a utility scale project out there that they were also working on. He's down, I think this week down near the Mexican border, San Angeles, I think. But yeah, same type of thing. But he says more and more of their projects are having that built right in there. So essentially they'll, you know, create the power when it's cheapest. Yeah, store it right on site there. And then at peak time, they'll use that cheaper energy to pull back in. Yeah. It's a fascinating time right now because you're starting to hear more about nuclear power. These modular smaller reactors and some of these storage sites and there are some of the renewable sites might be right on the nuclear grounds. And I was reading something saying the nuclear. Oh, there's lots of land around nuclear reactors. They got plenty of room to store. So I don't know. But there's so many things to be looking at. I really it's like I say, I've never seen a time where there's been so many interesting things to learn about and write about in the electrical market. It's been. It's fun like that. And that was the whole, it's like one of my tech, I learned about nuclear power. Yeah. That's kind of, yeah. Yeah. So kind of wrapping up a little bit, kind of everything we've talked about. What do you think some of the biggest challenges we have moving forward? Yeah, you know, I think it's, and I think it's kind of an evergreen, age old one is getting, finding the right people, keeping them interested in the industry and just. motivating them to be part of your team. I think that we've always said that about the electrical market and I think it's more true than ever. Good thing is I think there's more interesting aspects of the market that I think can draw people in a bit more. I mean, we're talking about renewables or EVs or lighting, talking about the grid. There's more things that I think can resonate more. It's not all, I don't know if it was ever really just all the stuff behind the wall, you know, where maybe it was a little harder to get folks excited about stuff that was behind the wall or in the ground and. This is what you do. But I think there's, it's got a little more juice, maybe a little more juice, if that's the right word for it. So I think, I think that's a big one for sure. You know, that's number one. I think as we were talking to for a midsize, smaller companies, just trying to figure the role as a acquisition to get big. You got the big, I think that's going to become a bigger effect. I mean, the market is, I wouldn't say it's discovered by private equity, but I think people it's on the, it's going to be on the radar more and more with the whole electrification thing. That's kind of a big topic that I. because we do get certainly contacted by different folks that are looking to buy and sell companies. And I think that's growing more. It's going to be under the, the microscope is the right word, but I think the acquisitions, I think it's going to be a big thing. I think that'll be as big. I think the role of it, you know, AI, what is the role of it? Right now everyone's talking about it from the big tech companies, Silicon Valley company. What about for a mid-sized company like a CBM or smaller, your customers, what does that, I mean, are there things in processes are going to be able to automate. I was listening to, I guess it was CNBC and they were talking about you've got your big global AI stuff, big stuff, you know, Jason Wong and these massive things that can compute. Yeah, some people are speculating that we're just going to be replaced all together. I don't see that happening. But what about the things like they'll have AI that AI apps for your on your iPhone that maybe it does help you. Maybe it's. and a trip or put together a quote. I don't know. I mean, it's going to be interesting to see. So I think that's going to be, and I don't know where that's all going, but I think it'll affect companies of all sizes. It's not going to just be all the big techie firms that are going to be using the power of AI. So good, better, worse, you know, so that, and just, that's going to be the old balance that we talk about the, uh, well, and, you know, you kind of touched on it earlier, you know, your magazine's been around since 1920. That's 104 years. So obviously you've been able to make changes and be flexible, you know, how the world changes. And I think that's going to be a big challenge for, that's probably a challenge for any company. Really, how do you stay relevant? I always tell people I learned to dance between the raindrops without getting wet. They go, how did you keep a career in journalism for 40 years? Like, oh man, I just kind of keep, you got to move in groove, you know, you got to just. try to stay relevant, keep in touch with people and just keep in touch with the market and the change, keep in touch with the people who really know the market, you know? Yeah. Yes. I think that's a lot about that or a lot about life, I guess. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. You mentioned earlier, you mentioned a mentor. Yeah. Who's been, you know, a mentor and had a big impact on your life going? Yeah. I mean, I mean, certainly, you know, family members, my mom, you know, obviously, mom and dad are good for. Good. good memories and good experiences. But, you know, it was one thing I do mention about my family. One of the ways I think I got into electrical markets, my dad was involved in the construction industry too in a different way. He was in to surety bonds when you have to get right a bond for a big project. And during the summers, he got something he would be able to engineer some summer jobs for the Lucy boys on construction sites. So I had some interesting jobs in construction. We could do another podcast on those. But anyway, so I had an and I just always liked working with my hands and stuff. But that was something got going with and I think I kind of blended that, you know, just like being around the construction and not being afraid to talk with people all different walks of life, you know, from anyone from the, I worked at an offshore drilling rig and I mean, there's people there were out of prison, devil worshipers. I mean, it was just like, whoa, dude, I'm two miles out in the ocean. I got along with everybody here, you know? But yeah, so I think that kind of got me interested in the whole construction scene. I was able to blend it with some jobs I had in college when I was doing my master's at a Votek school. got interested in that, did some studying about what high school kids thought about Bo-Tech school. And basically, as it came out, it was like the more they knew about the school, the more they liked it. If they didn't know anything about it, they didn't have much of an opinion or didn't think anything of it. So, but yeah, but as I moved into the electrical market, there's so many good people. I mentioned John Mariette, he was one locally, there was a guy by the name of Tom Preston, he was one of the founders of Memra. And he was had a lot of, he was another person, just loved the market. It's just people, you know how you feed off of people with good energy. And he was so many, he was one of the... folks that founded Nemrut with a guy by the name of Dick Noll. He worked for wholesaling for a while. Andrea Herbert was one that did the market planning. George Gansumler was the chief editor for about 30, 40 years. And he was just a big, big dude that was really well known and liked what he was doing. And it rubbed off on me, I think. So I've been lucky. I had people, publishers that have been real good and kind of made a home for me and kind of watched out for me when they said, what's this little electrical wholesaling? that you're able to take what you love doing, the writing and journalism, and transfer that into something entirely different. And people, I think a lot of people are teachers at heart as well. Maybe they don't teach in a school, but they have that ability, that effect on people to teach. I'm still trying to figure what I'm gonna do when I grow up. I don't know. Well, if you love me, if you figure it out, let me know. Yeah, I'm kind of in that same boat yet. So you don't want to quit. Yeah. No. You know, if you find something that you love to do and you've got purpose in life, then, you know, why stop? Yeah, no, I like it. I look forward to coming to work every day. Always thinking about it. I always tell people, I come up with some of my best ideas for articles. I'm in the shower just thinking about the day. What do I have to get done today? And you just think things through. It's hard to turn it off. Meet someone fun at a trade show or out on a job site. Or you're like, oh, that's interesting. And you just go on a whole new jag. You just start thinking about how this might work into something. Or so. What does your, what's your bench look like? Are you mentoring others to, to carry on it, you know, as you Yeah, I do try. We have a mentoring program at Endeavour, which I've been active in. Our little electrical group, you know, publishing runs pretty thin these days. But we do have a couple of young folks that are working primarily over at our sister publication, ECNM, and I try to help them out wherever I can on that, and we'll show them around. So yeah, I wish we had a little bit deeper bench to be honest with you, but I do look forward to every opportunity that I can help some of the younger folks out. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, I think we've covered a bunch today, but you know, I can't thank you enough for coming in. It's been a great conversation. Where can everybody find your podcasts? Give them the names again. And yeah, it's all available on ewweb.com. It's a today's electrical economy is the one and that's about 15 minutes or so, sometimes up to 20 and also EW executive insights. And that's also available on ewweb.com. If you have a mind for hardcore data statistics on the market, that's elec 99 bucks a year. Can't beat it. And that's, and you've got a list there too, like all the projects that you find, all that stuff's listed on there. That's all there. Yeah, all downloadable spreadsheets and all. So yeah, those are my, those are my labors of love right now. That's great. Well, we can't thank you enough. Thanks again for joining us and a special thanks to Jim. I really enjoyed our conversation and you brought some valuable insight to us. Remember, if you need expert advice on a project or are looking for representation from a top-notch sales team, look no further than CBM. You can find us here at cbmrep.com and thanks again for joining us on Power of the Network.
