72. Discover Why NAW is the Ultimate Game Changer in Distribution | Eric Hoplin, President and CEO of NAW

Karthik Chidambaram: Hello everyone! Welcome to a brand new episode of the Driven by DCKAP podcast. We are here in Washington DC at the NAW Executive Summit, joined by the Chief Executive Officer of NAW, Eric Hoplin. Eric, Thank you so much.

Eric Hoplin: Thank you so much, Karthik. Happy to be back on the show.

Karthik Chidambaram: Yeah. Thanks for being a part of the Driven show last
year and it's great to see you. First off, I want to begin by congratulating
you, though the conference is not over yet. You guys did a great job, you
did all of this here at home and we had a blast. So thank you for hosting a
great evening.

Eric Hoplin: You're welcome. It's so much fun when you get 500 distributors
from all over the country to distribute all sorts of different things. And
talk about the future and talk about what we do best, which is keep an
American supply chain going.

Karthik Chidambaram: I've had a great time here at the conference, and a
couple of things which I thought was very, very interesting this year. Dirk
Van Dongen, he just passed away last year. He was 20 years a CEO of NAW.
It's very awesome that you're honoring him, and you know, you also
distributed some awards in his name, so can you talk about that?

Eric Hoplin: Yeah, sure. Happy to. So, every year, we like to recognize the
greats in the industry. And so we've been giving out an award we call the
Distributor’s Deliver Award. And this year, we gave it to ABC Supply, and Keith Rozolis,
the CEO of ABC, was on hand.

They're just great members. They're incredible in supporting their
community. It's a great distribution company, and an incredible American
success story. And so, we wanted to honor the legacy of ABC last night with
the Distributor's Deliver Award. But we also started a new award last night.
As you talked about Dirk Van Dongen, who had been my predecessor for 41
years. As he passed away, we wanted a way to honor him. And so we have
initiated a new award. It’s called the Dirk Van Dongen to get a Lifetime
Achievement Award. And we gave him to Stan Bergman, who's the CEO of Henry
Shine.

And I think about my first days as a CEO, I came in the middle of a
pandemic. And I saw Stan on CNBC. I emailed him afterwards. He called me. He
said, Eric, we've got to do something about what's happening in this
country. So we partner with Shine. And then so many of our other members
felt to vaccinate America and get the country back to work. And so I could
have thought of no better person to give that first award to than Stan.

Karthik Chidambaram: And you're also starting a fellowship under Dirk's
name. What is that fellowship? Can you also talk about that?

Eric Hoplin: Yeah, you know, one of Dirk's passions was about public policy.
And he loved capitalism, and he loved free markets, and he loved free enterprise. And so,
you know, there's a lot of debate that happens in Washington every year about
issues around that. And so, the debates are won by people who come armed with
facts, and armed with great arguments.

And so what the Dirk Van Dongen award is going to allow us to do is we're
going to do research every year about key public policy issues that will
support the agenda of the industry. So we're going to be marching up on a
cap on the hill with confidence, talking about the facts about how these
policies will impact our industries positively or negatively. And so by
endowing this fellowship, members are contributing to the fellowship. So
that way we'll be able to have some

funds every single year to continue to do research annually in Dirk’s name

Karthik Chidambaram: I'm really glad you're honoring Dirk. I also like your
leadership style.

One thing which Larry started, the outgoing chairman of the NAW board, one
thing he talked about is under Eric's leadership, NAW has evolved quite a
bit and it's evolving and it's evolved a lot. And I totally resonate with
that because I was also chatting with other distributors out there who have
been here (this is just my second year here) but who have been here in the
past, coming for the last ten years. And they say a lot of great things
about how evolution and NAW is, and I think that's a great thing. You take
the best from the past, and then you move forward.

Eric Hoplin: Yeah, we're standing on Dirk's shoulder with him, and he built
an incredible association. And if we had a start from scratch, we'd be
nowhere near what we're doing now. But one of the ways that we measure
impact for our members is we look at the number of hours we engage through
our programs with our members every year.

And before we got here we were engaging with members of the distribution
industry about 5,000 hours a year, but last year in 2024, after we added all
of these new products, programs and services and so many new members, it
went from 5,000 to about 50,000 engagement hours in 2024. So, that's just a
sign of the growth of the industry and the health of this community here at
NAW.

Karthik Chidambaram: So what is your outlook for 2025, and not just 2025,
the next four years?

Eric Hoplin: Well, you know, I'm bullish for a number of reasons. We
acquired MDM last year and MDM does great economic work. We partnered with
the University of Colorado and some other data scientists to really crunch
the numbers. What's happening in the distribution? Where are the trends
where things headed?

And then you couple that with surveys from executives to really get a flavor
of not just the qualitative and the quantitative data, you put it together
to get a sense of where things are going. MDM is projecting growth in the
industry in the year ahead of about 6.2% in aggregate. Now of course,
there's a lot of different lines of trade and distribution. So some are
going to be higher than that, some a little bit lower. But 6.2% growth is
pretty robust for the industry.

So I think that we're feeling bullish, and it's for a variety of reasons
that we see this growth. Our members have been innovating the last couple of
years and I think they're starting to see the fruits of that labor. And
beyond that, I think, as you probably had in your conversation with Brian,
you know, they're feeling that there's gonna be a bit of a tailwind at their
back with maybe Washington making it just a little bit easier to do business
in America.

Karthik Chidambaram: Yeah I love the MDM content by the way, so any time I
get an email having MDM on it, I make it a point to read, because I kind of
believe that it is a lot of research that goes into it, so it makes sense
for me to have time. I mark the email and then I just go through it and read
it, so thanks for doing that.

So another thing I want to ask you, in terms of, how do you do things? For
instance, running an event like NAW. So again, you put together a great
event, which is awesome. But I understand that part of it, because there are
a lot of moving pieces and you get there. But how do you prepare for an
event like this, personally?

Eric Hoplin: How do I do it? I don't think there's too much magic to that,
but you used the important word which is teams. We've got about 50 people
that make all this magic happen. And people that know the members really
well, what they're going to care about, people are content. What are the
trends in the industry we're going to talk about?

People are making sure that the logistics of the entire meeting, which are
immense, are running smoothly. And the finance people make sure that we're
paying for everything and bringing in the revenue and marketing. So the
right people show up. So there's so many people involved in all of that.

And so my role, I'm part of the team too, my job is to give a good speech.
My job is to come out on that stage and to rally the industry to a couple of
points, to a couple of areas that we want to go together. And so I spend a
lot of my time prepping for what do I want to say, what is the most
important things our members need to hear from us? What are the biggest
trends that might be impacting this industry that we want to get ahead of?

And so I spend a lot of time on messaging. What do we want to rally around?
And then it's prepping for that. How do you deliver that in a way that’s
compelling? You sit at a conference, sometimes you hear speaker after
speaker, and you're sort of droning off and you're looking at your phone
after a while. You know, my goal is when I'm on the stage. I want all the
phones down, I want every single eyeball on me. And that doesn't happen by
accident. You gotta prep for it.

Karthik Chidambaram: Definitely. I just want to delve in a little more about
it because that's going to help a lot of leaders, a lot.

So for instance, you were in the PAC breakfast, right? And that's a
different conversation. And then you were chatting with Oscar. That was a
great conversation, by the way, it was really really good. And it was fun
listening to Oscar. And so there's a transition and then there's another
speech you need to give. So do you write it down or is that all in your
head, or what goes behind it?

Eric Hoplin: So, if you've been to a conference and you've seen, you know,
the fireside chat. You know, some of them are amazing at the insights they
reveal and some of them you’re like, "what are they talking about?"

And so I think the ones that are amazing, there's two ingredients. The most
important ingredient is the speaker and their history and their insights and
what they're ready to share. But they can talk about the weather. They can
talk about a whole bunch of inane things that don't matter to the industry.

And so I actually spent a lot of time prepping for interviews like that. So
with Oscar Munoz, the former CEO of United Airlines, I read his entire book.
And so you can see what are those snippets that he's talking about
throughout his career that matter to the distribution industry. And then you
spend some time with Oscar ahead of time, getting to know him a little bit.
You kind of walked through some of those questions.

Some of them, as he talks about it, aren’t all that interesting. Some are
fascinating. You want to learn more. And those are the questions that you
put on stage. And then you sort of, you know, you don't want to get in the
way of a speaker who's telling a good story and so you got to know when to
sit back and listen but you also got to know when they’re rambling, and when
it needs to wrangle it in and get back to the conversation.

So I think that just comes to practice having had an opportunity to
interview you know Vice Presidents and Secretaries of State and the CEOs and
you know members of congress and everybody in between and so you know with a
little bit of practice you can make it look easy.

Karthik Chidambaram: What is one thing you want to tell the distributors
watching the show?

Eric Hoplin: Yeah, well, I think if you're not a member of NAW, I'd say you
gotta join this community. This is an incredible group of business leaders.
They care about their employees, they care about their customers, but one of
the reasons they come to this community is for the most part, their
competitors aren't here, their direct competitors aren't here.

Everybody is distributing something. Everybody's moving the product
throughout the supply chain, but they’re different products, you know, from
healthcare to food and industrial products and everything in between. And
so, because their competitors aren't here, they're really happy to help each
other. And if your fellow lumber distributors are here, you're not going to
get them the keys to the kingdom. Here's how I do it. But if you're talking
to a food distributor, yeah I’ll help you, and they'll reciprocate.

And so that's one of the foundations of the NAW community. So that's why I'd
say if you're missing out on the best distributors in America come to NAW
because they want to be better.

That's why we're growing so fast. So many new companies want to join.

Karthik Chidambaram: Definitely, there's a lot of learning here. Even in the
PAC breakfast yesterday there was a big learning - focus on culture, take
care of your employees well. So that way everything else follows. So even if
there are big policy changes, you don’t really have to- I mean, you have to
take care of it. But if your base is strong, it just really makes it easy.
So we all know this, but when you hear it again on stage, it really gets in
more, right?

Eric Hoplin: Yep, absolutely.

Karthik Chidambaram: Last time, I remember when we were chatting, you were
reading a book on Churchill. So, what are you reading right now?

Eric Hoplin: Well, I tell ya. My son, Thatcher, just turned 14 yesterday.
And, for Christmas, he requested a book on Napoleon. And so, what I like to
do is, I like to read with my boys. So I got him a book by Andrew Roberts.
It's the definitive Napoleon biography.

So he's reading it and I'm reading it together and so at night we talk about
it. And I just love that I got a 14-year-old who cares about the world and
he cares about history. If you were in the PAC breakfast yesterday, I took a
bit of fatherly privilege as I was interviewing Senator Sheehy and Marino.
And so as the last question, I said my son is turning fourteen today and
would want me to ask this, he really cares about America's relationship with
China and the competition there, where that's headed, and so I asked the
senators about that and was very happy to relay to him last night their
answer, so.

Karthik Chidambaram: Yeah, I'm really glad you did that.

Eric, thank you so much and I always learn when I chat with you. Thank you
for this.

Eric Hoplin: My pleasure thanks so much.