What if you were the coach of a football team and someone dropped the opposing squad’s offensive playbook in your lap?

We’ve seen this scenario depicted fictionally on television and movies over the years and have even heard stories of real-life buffoonery where professional and collegiate players have left those books or iPad/tablets with the playbook on them (technological advancements) in places they shouldn’t.

ASA member volunteers play an active role in establishing the association’s strategic plan by identifying the most pressing issues facing our industry and determining how to respond, and bring a unique perspective and a specific point of reference, which is critical to ASA’s ability to offer the most relevant programs and services to help our members thrive.

ASA has seen that firsthand with the popularity of what we call our best practices roundtable sessions. These usually hour-long sessions, where ASA members share their boots-on-the-ground experiences, gained original traction with our Emerging Leaders group and its annual EMERGE conference.

The 63-page report is produced for ASA by Industry Insights, the association’s long-time business intelligence partner.

In its fourth decade of being produced by ASA business intelligence partner Industry Insights, the OPR is a nearly 100-page book stuffed with data to compare your PHCP-PVF distributor company against other firms in the industry.

CONNECT offers a solution that provides professionals in 10 vital job functions an ability to meet online in monthly peer-to-peer-facilitated sessions led by The Distribution Team’s Jason Bader and Marshall Jones to discuss common challenges, gain insight and practical solutions, and learn from peers on critical topics. Available CONNECT communities include: accounts receivable managers, finance managers, human resources managers, operations managers, technology managers and training managers. These six communities are open to all ASA member companies (distributors, manufacturers, reps and master distributors).

One of the father-daughter activities myself and said daughter enjoy is listening to music on car rides, specifically anything in the 1970s-1980s genre. Apparently, my daughter is a teenager going on 40 years old. Her tastes range from The Carpenters to Twisted Sister and Vanilla Ice. Like father like daughter. As we were listening to a recent Motley Crue song, she indicated the band had a lot of hidden gems on B-sides of albums. Who would have known? That a today’s teenager knows what a B-side album is, now that’s impressive. “Too Young To Fall in Love” is one of my favorite underrated Crue songs, though I’m not sure if that was a B-sider or not.

Do you want the OK news first or the bad news first? How about we try to stay somewhat positive out of the gates. ASA recently released findings from its second special compensation/benefits study that it commissioned business intelligence partner Industry Insights to conduct in the latter part of 2021.

There are certain world/U.S. events that you can recall exactly where you were when they happened. The first in my upbringing was the attempted assassination of President Reagan. I was walking up to our front porch after getting off the school bus when my mom told me about it. The Space Shuttle tragedy: I was in school that day. If my memory serves correctly, we had a grainy TV on that was on one of those huge school AV carts.

The topic of labor has been front and center for quite some time now inside and outside of this industry. But it wasn’t until the recent Thanksgiving holiday break that it really hit home as to just how bad the current situation is. While waiting for my daughter to finish a recent fitness class, I decided to run a quick errand to mail a package. While driving down this road in an industrial park setting, business after business had roadside signs looking for labor — virtually every business on this busy road.