NAPL Top Management Conference 2010

Marco Island, Florida

February 14-17

Interviewer:  Randy Davison, President and CEO of WhatTheyThink and I'm here with Joe Truncale from NAPL.  We're at the TMC Conference here in Marco Island in Naples.  Joe, tell us a little bit -- this is the second official day of the conference.  Tell us a little bit about today's keynote with Andy, which got a lot of buzz after the event, and some of the other things that you've got planned for the rest of the conference. 

Joe Truncale:  Well, of course, Andy kicked off the conference, as we've been doing the last several years with the State of the Industry Report and in that report kind of gave an update as to where the economy is in general and where the industry is specific to the economy.  And a couple of lessons coming out of that presentation, if you will, are these: one is that, yeah, the recession seems to be ending but that does not mean boom times are ahead.  That recovery will come painfully slow and, in fact, there is a difference between recovery and expansion.

Recovery in the economy begins when the recession stops and we start growing again.  Expansion happens when we get beyond the point that we left a couple of years ago in the economy and we're a long ways away from that.  In fact, in Andy's estimation, it could take three or four years to even approach those kind of economic numbers.

So we've got some work to do.  That and also that not all companies in the industry are going to participate in the economic recovery.  Their success is going to be tied not just to economic growth, but to their own ability to deliver a variety of services more effectively.

Interviewer:  Right.  And the rest of today they're doing breakout sessions and then tomorrow you've got a nice keynote on Wednesday. Tell us about that.

Joe Truncale:  Some more economic information, more broadly about the way the capital markets affect businesses of all kinds, in particular ours, specifically getting financing for business expansion.  As things start to recover and we see some improvement, hopefully our members will look to invest in new technologies and so forth.  Well in order to make that happen, you've got to fund growth and that means financing.  Financing has been a real challenge lately and we'll take an in-depth look at that from some experts in the banking and lending industries.  And then we have breakouts on strategy, on marketing, on sales, on production, technology, use of social media, which is a big topic at this particular conference for the first time ever. 

Interviewer:  Right.  Well thank you very much, Joe.  I wish you continued success. 

Joe Truncale:  My pleasure.  Thanks, Randy.