John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Trajectory Energy Partners. Trajectory Energy Partners brings together landowners, electricity users, and communities to develop solar energy projects with strong local support. For more information on how trajectory is leaving the solar revolution, please visit trajectoryenergy.com

John: Welcome to another edition of the impact podcast. I am so honored to have with us today, Tony Sciarrotta. He is the executive director of the Reverse Logistics Association. Welcome to Impact, Tony.

Tony Sciarrotta: Well, thank you very much, John. It is a thrill to be here.

John: You know before we get talking about your great organization and for our listeners who want to find you or your great colleagues, they could go to www.rla.org and they could go to the ‘about’ section. I am on your website right now. It is a gorgeous website. It is easy to navigate. They could go to the ‘about’ drop down, hit that, and they could find your advisory board, your management team, and they can also, of course, find you there and it is very easy to reach out and connect with the Reverse Logistics Association. Before we get talking about all the great things that your organization does, Tony, talks a little bit about the Tony Sciarrotta journey and where you grew up and how you got to where you are today and how you got to be a leader of this very, very, very important organization in the United States.

Tony: Well, and, the world, John, I am going to try to take credit for being a global association–

John: I love it.

Tony: –that really have my heart from Detroit. I am one of the born and raised in the city of Detroit people that has left the city but still loves it. I went to an amazingly intense Jesuit High School in that City that really prepped me for the world. Did a little bit of college, fell into the electronics industry and my wife jokes about the fact that I really started to be involved in selling and dealing with electronics because I wanted a better stereo system. And she was partly right, and she was partly right.

Tony: I fortunately got involved after a little bit of retail spell with a rep firm and then I cut my teeth with Sony Corporation for five years and they were King Of The Hill in the ’80s, and I was there for it, won a trip to Japan, got to experience the bail side of having a great brand in your pocket. And now that I look back I recognize that a great brand name alone can help reduce returns and give customers a great experience and then I moved into Philips for twenty-five some years. Sales and marketing guy could do it in my sleep and I was part of a Sears team, I want to partners in progress in the ’90s and then late ’90s, Phillips somewhat arbitrarily used a consultant and two or three of the senior vice presidents to go through the organization, pulled my resume and my name out of a hat and said, “Go fix returns. We have a big problem.” This was 1998. We had a huge problem and I came out of sales and marketing which is both a nightmare to be handed that kind of role after sales and marketing and second, an opportunity that I had such a passion for figuring out what the heck is really going on. Why is so much stuff coming back? Why does most of it work? And I got taught by the big boys because I recognize if you are going to fix a problem, go out there and talk to the ones with the biggest numbers and it coincided with the fact that I loved working with people to figure out things, that I love to travel and all of those things came together in this opportunity, and by the way, around the turn of the century, Reverse Logistics did not exist very much, right?

John: Right, right.

Tony: Recycling sort of did. But the idea of returns management and recycling, John, not on a lot of people’s– what we did not even have a returns department at Philips. So, and we were two billion dollar electronics company without a returns control group. So I think that all of my growing up in a tough city and going to some really intense educational institutions, and then cutting my teeth at Sony eventually like I said, sales I could do in my sleep, but this was a challenge and and that is where the journey begins, John. You want me to tell some more of the journey?

John: I do and I want I want you to explain like let us frame up in the beginning because of course when I got in the recycling industry, I never heard of those two words together, Reverse Logistics. I had no idea what it meant. So can you frame up what that even means to you and to your great organization and how that term of art came about and so our listeners can understand and learn what that even means.

Tony: Sure and John it is a great story. In the mid to late ’90s, a gentleman named Dr. Dale Rogers and Dr. Ron Lembke wrote a book called Going Backwards. So here I am around a year ’99, 2000 looking for what to do about returns, you Google back then and up comes this book, Going Backwards, which, so help me God I could download for free off the internet. They did not charge anything for it. And some of the practices, the information in that book are still incredibly relevant today and it happened that as I started to go out and look for answers, I came across a company called Genco, one of the big players around the turn of the century, handling returns for Target and Sears and K-mart and others and I literally met Dr. Dale Rogers in person, listen to him speak, said “I got to get to know that guy.” Turns out Dale was from Michigan and went to Michigan State when I was at Michigan and there is a little bit of rivalry there but we got along nicely and I came at it from a sales and marketing background. Like how do you make your numbers and I came at it from an academic view of who knows what the hell they are doing in this space.

Tony: And you know, everyone was just pushing through returns and pushing and pushing no thought to the environment. No thought to reuse effectively. None of that existed and I am proud to say that I learned from the best and when I was at Philips, the numbers were staggering, the numbers were around eleven to twelve percent return rates, a two billion dollar business in the United States, North America and within three years, I had knocked it down to about six to seven percent. And by the time I was done with Philips, it was down around the three percent range, so I was one of the last people standing, you know, how companies turn of the century were going through cuts after cuts after cuts.

John: Right.

Tony: And for efficiency, of course, and I managed to survive one of the last people standing as it kept merging and cutting because somebody had to deal with the returns. And that was me.

John: what a story. So you are really, you were literally at ground zero

Tony: The dawn.

John: Yes, you were literally ground zero for the advent. The advent of what became and a very important part of the entire ecosystem of Commerce. You were at the advent of the Reverse Logistics industry.

Tony: Not only that, John. Back in those days we were coming out of the end of the century with things like six sigma quality control, TQM, Q1, all these top-notch technical quality programs and I was getting the crap beat out of me by the finance team, the CFO of the organization, the CEO, the VPs of sales and and service, like why are you letting so many things come back when there is nothing wrong with them? You remember that, John?

John: Sure, yes. Of course.

Tony: No fault found. No technical fault found.

John: Right.

Tony: The Holy Grail. Ninety percent of these MP3s coming back are no fault found and we are getting forty percent return rates. Well then, I discovered this amazing organization called the ease of use round table. And those people were rocket scientists as far as I am concerned. They were with HP, Intel, Microsoft, Dell, even Apple participating in these quarterly meetings where you say, “How do we make these products easier to use so we do not get the returns and why are so many returns happening?” Those are the days when buying a computer was a six-hour adventure to hook it up, turn it on, and get it to work. Six hours with the average time.

John: Holy, Toledo.

Tony: Did not even have color-coded connections for printers, or for keyboards, or for the mouse, or any of that. So in the process of three to five years of working with that organization, I brought back the concept of net promoter score to Phillips and Phillips embraced it on a global basis. And now you shift from, is the product great? Well sure the product is great. Ninety-nine percent of them all work right out of the box great, but is the experience great? Net promoter score which is fairly large program these days, right? It is well known and when Philips said that board level, our culture has to change. We have to make products that the customers love. It was a throwback to my years at Sony when you sold Sony stuff. Honestly, it was not the greatest product on the planet, but the experience of buying this product that was easy to use made it returned less. So Philips embraced it, other companies have embraced it, so it is no longer the engineers who are dictating return policies and even product design.

Tony: I met human factor engineers, right? Who were they? Usability Engineers. Who are these people? They were so cool, so smart. I brought it in the Phillips and I would like to say that, I am the superstar genius, but I am not. I got lucky to run into the right people at the right time, as you said, at the dawn of this. When returns were flying out of control because of digitization. And you know, the MP3 story, John, is a unique one [crosstalking] because MP3s around the turn of the century literally, if you bought an MP3 player and you plugged it in and used it with Napster and then try to use it with Windows Media Player, your music would be lost. They would not play nice with each other. They would not connect to each other and then if you try to use iTunes and go back to somebody else, you had that whole AAC format versus MP3 and people said, “What is wrong with this thing? It will not play the music I just downloaded.” So return rates, the industry was dying with MP3 players coming back. I am not kidding. It was in the forty percent range.

John: Wow!

Tony: We knew something had to change and that was about all digital products had to learn to play nice with each other and that took a decade or more and then still an issue. And so that was the whole no-fault found holy grail. When you change your view and your priority to making that customer experience better, you would not only have less products come back, you sell more products and who is the rocket science genius on that one, of course is Amazon, right? They learn to make that customer experience amazing, fast, easy, and returns easier than buying. So it has been a long trail and I am lucky to have been in the right places at the right time. And as you said now we have this organization, which I did join the RLA around 2004-2005 when I was just Phillips and when you write magazine articles about the success of what we did, you gain a certain notoriety and you get invited to speak at things and you get to meet some of the real smart people in the industry. And you get to combine what you hear from different places and I wound up sitting on the advisory board of the RLA along with some other colleagues. But we are going to be honest here and talk about the decline of the RLA.

John: Well before we go into that, I want to know how long did it take for others, they saw the success that you were driving at Phillips, and since you were as you say at the dawn of this, how long did it take other OEMs to get that quote-unquote the memo and put others like you in your type of role, find others within their organizations to be the next Tony Sciarrotta, that can make an impact at their organization, at their OEM as well. Was that a two-year deal? Was that over the last dozen years? I mean, how long did that take?

Tony: It is still going on. Unfortunately.

John: Really? Wow.

Tony: Right and you can tell because if you look for people in positions of power like a vice president of Reverse Logistics, they virtually do not exist in any company. Now, you might find some managers, hopefully you will find some director level but you need somebody of power and influence. And by the way, other companies would put returns responsibility in the hands of different organizations within the company like the service group, or the credit group for authorization of returns, for negotiating return agreements. I mean, there is that whole other world that the more I got into it, the more people realize, “My God, Tony is saving us a ton of money. He negotiated handling fees down from ten percent to four percent for our products and you know, four hundred million dollars worth of sales.” That is a fair amount and a hundred million with the returns. So those are big numbers and unfortunately, most companies still have not learned this.

John: Where does it, before we go into, I want to go back to the journey. But before we do that, where should it be sitting, should it be with the chief supply chain officer and that area? Or where should that be sitting now at an organization that is running at full tilt and doing it the right way.

Tony: So the organizations keep making mistakes thinking when you call it reverse logistics, it must belong in the supply chain group. No, no and no because a reverse logistics, a return, is a reverse sale.

John: Got it.

Tony: That is number one. But PNLs are divided in companies. Right, John?

John: Right.

Tony: The PNL is divided that when you sell a product, you make a certain amount of margin on it and that is what the sales group lives on. And then other organizations that deal with what happens after the sale are all having to reduce their cost of operating and processing and handling customer support. They used to do things like measure the call centers’ average resolution time. Right?

John: Right.

Tony: And if you spent too much time on the phone with a customer, what do they do? They cut them off and they kept charging back companies that were spending too much time on the phone, but that was the secret to a company like Zappos, right? Zappos is proud of their extended call center times. They will talk to people forever and they make people happy. So you have got this entire issue of where does it belong. I was lucky. I came out of sales and marketing. So I knew all those people. They all knew me and they decided that I belonged inside sales, inside a sales ops reporting structure, but I indirectly reported to the service and to the credit VPs. So I was a torn apart child in many ways, but it was right because they actually went as far at Philips as to assign part of their bonuses, their annual bonuses to performance on returns management and reverse logistics. Imagine a company doing that. I do not see him doing it today, but we did it at Phillips. Now this meant, John, I was treated like a king, right? Can you imagine like, “Tony, let us go out to lunch.” “Tony, let us go out to have a drink. We want to talk to you about that bonus program. What do we got to do here again?”

John: Right, right. Got it, got it.

Tony: There is another secret, John, about returns management.

John: Okay.

Tony: We get back garbage for returns.

John: Hmm.

Tony: That is when things went a little crazy when plasma TV started coming back on a pallet with other stuff put on top of them and you talking about a seven, eight, nine, ten thousand dollar panel television, flat panel being used as a palette for other crap on it and that just drew the line and I became the collector. I became the enforcer. I took pictures of everything that came back and if it was broken, if it was chopped up, if remote controls are missing, I literally got on planes flew out and imagine this one, to the buyers at these different major global corporations and I can name a few. Certainly the Walmarts, Targets, Costco’s of the world and I show up with a stack of pictures and say, “We got a problem.” And by the way, we collected money back as a manufacturer.

John: Oh. Interesting, interesting.

Tony: We said, “We do not send it to you this way. You should not send a return back that way.” Now by enforcing that, John, that meant that more products could be refurbished and resold into the secondary market instead of being trashed and it started to make a difference and I knew from my sales background you do not just go into the rooms with the eight hundred pound gorillas and say “You will do it this way.” You learn what it is from their sight. What do they face? Can we make the product information tags better? Can we have pictures at the returns desk so that those stressed out lowest-paid clerks in the world at the returns desk with the line in front of them, they take a moment to make sure the product in the box matches. Things like that. These are all very simple, best practices that made you know, again, I am not a rocket scientist, but to reduce returns from eleven percent to three percent over the course of about nine or ten years, I literally, I made jokes about it, John. I would stand on stage and say, “My job is to work myself out of a job. Reduce returns to a point.”

Tony: And honestly, in 2012 that is what happened. Returns were so low. I had already switched from a returns management role to a director of asset recovery. Selling all the returned goods because Phillips and other companies believe in controlling their destiny and their brand by taking everything back. Some companies do an allowance program, right? In lieu of returns and that is always a challenge and then you, John, and your company are dealing with that stuff sometimes just being thrown out for waste, for some rap, and it is all usually fairly good products. So the world has got a long way to go. This gets into those areas of circular economy and recycling and sustainability, and then we start going back to the mothership and saying “You should design it better, package it better.” So that at the end, we are more earth friendly and reusable, and all of that important good stuff.

John: And for our listeners who just joined us, we have got Tony Sciarrota. He is on with us right now. He is the executive director of the Reverse Logistics Association. To find Tony and his colleagues, please go to www.rla.org. Go to the ‘about’ button on the top bar there on the left-hand side. I am on it right now. It is very easy to navigate. You hit ‘about’, you drop down, you find the advisory board and the management team so you can find Tony easily and his colleagues.

John: Tony, you know, talk a little bit about companies. There are a lot of companies out there that are still evolving, that are growing up, and need to understand better. How they need to embrace what your organization teaches and shares the information about reverse logistics. So how does someone go at their company from almost like you said, what you did at Phillips and sales and become the hero of all heroes at their company because they embrace reverse logistics and the value it could drive at a given company.

Tony: Well John, that is a great area to go and I do want to point out that, my wife tells me I am much more handsome than that picture that is on the website. So keep that in mind as you reach out to talk to me, but–

John: That is okay. I do not mind commercial breaks and shameless plugs at all. That is why I am here, you know, we are here to promote great people and great organizations that are making an impact and you definitely have that in spades so any beauty comments you want to make is absolutely fine.

Tony: And John I will also say there is a certain amount of thrill to be in the return space and the returns world. Everything that happens after the sale is how we define reverse logistics, everything. Whether it is the packaging that has to be thrown away, whether it is a– but the thrill of being in reverse logistics world is you have a chance to become a hero. And I cannot tell you, stress enough of what it feels like to be a hero. To stand up on stage, yes sometimes you win awards, but just to be able to stand up on stage and know that you made a difference for your company of millions or tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars by just pursuing this relentlessly and I got to tell you have so much fun along the way because the secret to this is a little bit like the secret of sales.

Tony: You cannot just present the story, the program, the product, the merch program, without getting to know the people you are working with because every company, small example, Target considers their customers, what is the term that they– guests, guests. So you have to recognize that they do not want to mistreat their guests. Costco does not want to mistreat their members. They want to do everything for them. So you have to make it easier for them. But at the end of the day, if you can find ways to make it easier for them, by making product and signage and all of magic things you can do, they love you, because you made it better for them and they recognize that there are those efforts.

Tony: And again, especially about that ease-of-use concept, an example, these docking stations and clock radio dock stations that would have instruction books in twelve languages. Okay, that is not going to work. Another nightmare about those instruction books. Using a lot of words is not going to work, the average reading level in the United States according to Penn State University, that yours truly, according to Penn State has dropped below the sixth-grade level. So nobody thinks about that when they make instruction books in twelve languages and use words. But companies like Phillips got pushed and said, “You know what we need a quick start guide. We need a quick start page. When they open the box, look at some big pictures, steps 1 2 3 and 4 to make this work and do it.” Do not have twelve languages and a lot of verbiage and that does not sound like a reverse logistics function, but it is. It is where you belong because nobody else on the sales and marketing side is doing that enough. So you have to use some influencing skills. But the chance to be a hero, John, is just wonderful and I cannot say how incredible it is because I now have the fortune to lead this global organization and try to share these ideas around the world, knowing you get to be a tree hugger, right? Especially, John, you on your side, you get to be a tree hugger and you can point and say, “We are making a difference.”

John: It is true what you are doing and that is why I wanted you on Impact, Tony, because you yourself and your evangelism and your passion for this and your great organization is making a difference and making an impact and it is so important for people to hear your story and the story of RLA. Go into a little bit, Tony, if you may, what RLA is doing like, okay, we are all living through this horrific tragic period of COVID-19. But talk about during a regular year, post-COVID and beyond, how many conferences do you have a year and what other initiatives, great initiatives, and important initiatives are you focusing on now at RLA.

Tony: So the wonderful part about being in this industry, any important part is we are essential businesses. We are still all working. All of the member companies in RLA are working. Why? Because people are selling stuff and people may be less right now, but people are returning stuff that we do think there is this tsunami down the road of all this stuff that got sold early that will be coming back another as another peak, just like other nightmares. So in a sense, it is still an active year for the reverse industry and maybe somewhat smaller volumes, but it is essential. So I am glad to be in this industry and not in the hotel industry, or the airline industry, some others, and you know, we hope for the best for all of us, for our country, for the world.

Tony: Now, there has been of course some other steps that had to be taken but normally the way the RLA grew up was by having conference events around the world. And I brought those back in 2014 and ’15, the organization under the founder, it started to slip. It had perhaps become too much of a sales organization and not as much a members focused organization. So immediately when I took over completely, I made complete management changes across the board, brought in all new people who I knew from Phillips and other people, companies, and other people that had a passion for this.

Tony: And in 2016 I took over and in 2017, we went back to a conference in Las Vegas. That is our Flagship, North America, normally the largest. We started with about two hundred fifty, three hundred people. We got up to about four hundred, five hundred and then this past year and the year before, we had six hundred and more who have showed up in Las Vegas with an important notice here. I am not a show producer. I am a horrible show producer. I need people to help me figure out what kind of food to order for god sakes. I cannot even think through that stuff. What I do know is content matters. I want people on stage who are going to share the most important information for the people in the audience and give it well said, well done, and well documented. And when it comes to the panels, we try to always have the subject matter experts, our people, who have survived frankly at the retailers and manufacturers in this space and solve some of these problems. And then generally we mix it in with companies like in ERI, John, because you are considered a third party solutions provider or partner.

Tony: So it has to be one side and the other have to balance each other out to get through this and so I am proud of having the highest content possible and I picked each keynote speaker myself personally. I make sure I have heard them before and that they are delivering good information and a good format. And then I made the decision in 2018 to go back to Europe and we have been there in 2018 and 2019. We should have been there this month, but we will do a virtual version in September.

John: God it. And where in Europe is typically that conference?

Tony: So in Europe, we have generally been in Amsterdam. The RLA over its history tended to gravitate towards Las Vegas in North America because of the pull for the whole world and all of the country easily and we do it in early February because right after Super Bowl is quiet time, it is a little bit busy in returns, but it is a good time get out to an event. And then in Europe we were trying to do June. And then last year after June, we went to Asia in September in Singapore. And again, if you look at the board companies like the HPs and Dells and Intels and Ciscos, of the world and even the Amazons and Home Depot and Walmart, they all exist to some degree around the world. So the board represents the strength of the speakers that we can draw. I am saying we draw in, in Singapore, we get Del Asia to come and speak, we get HP Asia to come and speak, and Philips in Asia to come and speak. So we try to be local with the global companies and again content, content, content. We do not have advertising from the stage. I love to have sponsors on stage. I love to have a company like an ERI help to moderate the recycling panel’s best practices, things like that and that is a good combination, but nobody stands up there and talks about their better mousetrap because we need to know about all of them, not just some of them. So that is our focus for our event.

John: What are you most excited about second half of 2020 and we are going into 2021 then so the next eighteen months, what initiatives are you most excited about the next eighteen months?

Tony: I am hoping that Oxford University comes through with this vaccine that they are talking about and delivering a billion doses by December because I think at that point people would be excited about coming back to Las Vegas next February to another event. Initiative wise I take the RLA, it is the serious responsibility and here is what we owe the industry. We owe education, and we do not have a certification program. And I went to a couple of the global powerhouses, our CSCMP and Apex and ASCM. These are the education associations and they have forty-one chapters, forty-one different courses offered in supply chain. And only one course with one chapter talked about reverse logistics. That is a shame. None of the universities with one exception in North America have a reverse logistics degree or Masters. So that is a shame. So I am proud to have Tim Brown from Georgia Tech on the board. We are working towards offering education because the world needs that. There are not enough individuals that think like we do about how to fix these things and make them better. So education is important. I think the industry numbers are important and we do not have a handle on it yet but we at least have a willingness to support putting together– by numbers, I mean, John, for example, would it not be a help to know how many bleders are being sold in North America and how many are being returned. I do not care what brand it is, it can be KitchenAid, it can be Oster. It is not the brand and I do not care who is selling them and I do not need to reveal that it is Walmart or Target or Amazon. We just need to know how many, what is the volume, what is the size of that space because it helps companies like on the third-party side plan for okay, if there are a million blenders sold and we know ten percent are return and come back through the channel there is a hundred thousand. Now of that, fifty percent can be refurbished and resold, we need warehouse space to handle that and then we have another fifty percent, they are going to need to be either scrapped or recycled. I mean that that is valuable information.

John: Very!

Tony: That is a major initiative. We owe that to the industry and we will get there. We will get there.

John: That is wonderful. I love it.

Tony: I have one last initiative dream and this is a matter of needing resources and we are spread a bit thin trying to do everything we are doing but the ultimate resource for all of us in addition to the numbers for the industry will be for the consumers. We have a council of councils working on the concept of like, instead of Carfax, see effects. So if you go looking for a television and you know the serial number, you will know when was it born, where was it born, when was it sold and shipped the first time, where was it refurbished? And now I am buying it from Amazon or someone else online refurbished. There is no refurbished database. The Consumer Technology Association talks about numbers a lot. But no one has gone in that direction. That is my dream. We will get there before I get out of the RLA and turn it over to some other competent people, but that is the third dream on that wish list. The numbers and the CE facts and also seeing all of us go back to work on a near normal or new normal basis because some of what we have learned in these last three months I think will help us going forward. These wonderful communications like podcasts and Zoom meetings and all of that, John. They are really good communication tools and they are teaching us to think more about what we are doing.

John: And although I have given out your information before, I am going to give it out again. To find Tony and his great organization, the RLA, go to www.rla.org. Go to the ‘about’ button, which is on the top bar left-hand side, drop down and you will find the advisory board and the management team. Tony, communication is so important and leveraging communication tools that exist now that did not when you and I were young guys is also important. Talk a little bit about the power of LinkedIn and how you have harnessed it at RLA to get the good word out about your important work.

Tony: Thank you, John. LinkedIn is certainly one of the best business tools out there. For example, John, and I look at building this organization globally in a stronger, stronger, stronger way, and I am always amazed that people still do not know us. Now, reverse logistics, if you look in LinkedIn, there is somewhere north of a hundred and twenty-five individuals around the world that have reverse logistics in their job description or their title. I only have about twenty-five thousand registered in our community and our registration is free to join the community. We do have the memberships for more benefits, but we do have an open registration for more people to join. So LinkedIn is a major tool for us. We have a reverse logistics group, a Reverse Logistics Association group page. We go on there a lot. That is our social media to promote things like today’s webinar and upcoming committee meetings. And so LinkedIn is a tremendous tool. What we have not yet done, and we are going to, is use other aspects of it such as the Navigator, the more premium opportunities to look for things and for people because until we launched our new website last year, late last year and got the kinks worked out by showtime and we just added a few new benefits. I did not want to, I want to give people a better experience than they expect. And that is the secret in life, is under promise and over deliver as best as you can and that means, that does mean under-promise means really being conservative and cautious about what you say you can do to help people and then show them that yes, we can do that but now that you are here, this is what else we are going to do for you and that is my focus.

John: Well for my experience as executive chairman of URI, I have never had the pleasure of being to one of your great events, but my team has they said it is one of the most important events of the year so I can only share with our listeners our own experiences that if you have not been to Tony’s event, one of Tony’s RLA events yet, go to them. Get involved, join the organization. It is very important to what we are doing with regards to OEMs, recycling, and good practices and Tony, I just want to say thank you for coming on today. You have made an important impact on the environment, on the world. You have made the world a better place so as the RLA and for that, I want to say, thank you so much.

Tony: Well, thank you, John. We are going to keep doing it.

John: I cannot wait to have you on again, and I cannot wait to come to your next great event.

Tony: I look forward to it. We hope it is February 9, 10, and 11 right after Super Bowl next year. If there is a Super Bowl, normal, we will be there in Vegas with an important large group of influencers in the industry.

John: And for people to find out more about your great events and about all the initiatives you discuss today, they could then again go to www.rla.org. Tony Sciarrotta, you made an impact on me today. You are making an impact on the United States and around the world. And you are making the world a better place.

Tony: Thank you so much, John.